by C A Devine
‘No, Dad, I don’t. I would tell you if I did.’
‘And you told him I was behind you being there.’
‘Yes.’
‘And there was a team of four searching high and low for him.’
‘Yes, I told you that in the hospital.’
‘Are you sure you’ve told me everything you remember.’
‘Yes. Don’t you believe me?’
‘There must be something. Concentrate. Think.’
I let him badger her over and over, hanging on her every word. When he finally hung up she returned to the chart table and started typing, ignoring me.
We rolled on all day in silence with nothing on the horizon, but endless sea. The islands of the Azores were long out of sight, the coast of North America a long way off. I sat up on deck in the fresh air trying to keep the queasiness from my stomach, but she stayed below typing. Even when I kicked her off the navigation station to mark up our course made good, she just picked up the iPad, shuffled into the saloon and carried on.
It was dark when she finally pushed herself up from the couch. She shuffled through the main cabin, shoulders hunched, face scrunched in pain, sweat beading on her forehead.
‘Are you okay?’ I asked.
She raised an “are you stupid?” eyebrow at me.
‘No, I don’t mean like that. Are you feeling hot? It’s cold in here and you’re sweating.’ I stepped forward and lifted my hand to her forehead. She shrank back, but not before I got a good feel. ‘You’re burning up.’
I retrieved the first-aid kit from the aft cabin. Medical kits for ocean voyages contain all sorts of interesting titbits including antibiotics and opiates. It’s not like you can run to the local drugstore if something goes wrong. I stuck the thermometer in her mouth.
‘102,’ I read the display. ‘It’s the wound on your back, isn’t it?’
Distress flooded her pale face.
My heart felt a stab of pain, but I kept my voice level. ‘I can tell it’s there. You practically scream every time you move. You should let me take a look, it might be infected.’
She shook her head, ‘No.’ She stepped away from me, ‘Please, don’t.’
‘I didn’t get you back just so you could die of infection, out at sea, like some Victorian tragedy.’ I sighed, ‘I just want you to get better.’
She shook her head once more, opened her mouth to speak, but thought better of it. Her eyes glazed over, her breath quickened.
‘Hey, it’s okay,’ I said, ‘it probably just needs cleaning up a bit. It’ll all be done in five minutes. I’ll only touch your back, I promise,’ I added quietly, ‘just a quick look. Please.’
Tears threatened to brim over, ‘I don’t want you to see,’ she gulped, ‘my body, it’s …’
‘Hey. Max. Don’t. Don’t think like that,’ a lump jumped to my throat. ‘This whole thing, it isn’t us, isn’t you and me. Back on the beach in Spain, in the sun, naked,’ I forced a smiled, ‘that’s you and me. When this is all over it’ll be like it used to be. I promise.’
She stood still for the longest moment, eyes wide and wet. Finally she turned, shuffled through the galley and into her cabin. She didn’t close the door. She kept her back to me as she undid the buttons of her shirt. It slid off her shoulders, down her body and onto the floor.
A large section of her middle back was covered with a bloodstained surgical dressing. There were some dried dark patches, but more worrying were the bright red fresh spots. A patchwork of purple bruises scarred the rest of her back and arms. Rage rose from my gut, but I pushed it down into a dark corner and forced myself to concentrate on the task.
She crawled onto the bed, her face screwed tight against the pain. I touched my fingers to the corner of the dressing. She flinched. ‘I know you don’t want to be touched, baby, but I need to take a look.’ I inched back the surgical tape, peeling two edges at a time. She whimpered. ‘It’s okay,’ I shushed her, ‘it won’t take long.’
Angry weeping lacerations glared out from her tanned skin. Yellow puss oozed from scabby craters and crimson blood, from open jagged wounds. The edges of the cuts were red and swollen with infection. I peeled off the last of the dressing and leaned back to examine the wound in its entirety. The slashes had been made with a very sharp knife or maybe a scalpel, not so much random cuts, but incisions etched out in a pattern. My brain began to process the pattern, pulling it into focus, revealing shapes – shapes I recognised. I froze, horrified.
I blinked, not sure I could believe my own eyes. The rage rushing up through me threatened to boil over. I closed my eyes willing it not to be true. I sucked in a deep breath trying to calm my roaring blood. I opened them. It wasn’t my imagination. He had carved the word WHORE into her back.
I heard myself speak, my voice deceptively calm, ‘It looks infected, I need to call on the radio for some advice. Lie still, I’ll be back in a few minutes.’
I closed the door of the cabin behind me and headed straight for the hatch, trying to force air into my lungs. My chest felt like it was caught in a vice. I couldn’t breathe, I was choking. I dragged myself up on deck, cold sweat poured from my body. I collapsed on the floor of the cockpit and let the cold ocean air bathe my face. I sucked in a breath and tried to control the murderous rage. I leaned out over the side of the boat and was violently ill.
*
Max didn’t need this, she needed my help. I had to kick in the cop training, pull myself together.
You can access medical advice 24/7 when you are at sea, on a PAN PAN MEDICO radio call. That is if you can raise a shore station on channel sixteen of your radio, or can find someone to relay your call, or as in our case – thanks to Marcus – have a satellite phone. I got through to a doctor in a hospital in Cork, Ireland. She told me to clean and dress the wound everyday – I never wanted to see it again – and instructed me on the dosage of antibiotics and painkillers.
A half hour passed before I stepped back into the cabin. Max lay where I left her. ‘It’s bad, isn’t it?’ the small voice trembled. ‘I could hear you up on deck. They wouldn’t tell me in the hospital, but I knew by the look on their faces that it was bad.’
I was sitting on the edge of the bed, swabbing the wound with saline solution, trying to make my big hands gentle, trying to blank out what I was seeing. ‘It’s okay baby,’ I said, ‘it’s bad, but it’ll heal.’ But the scar wouldn’t.
14
Fiesta Major
‘I love you, Max,’ we were lying side by side in the back cabin of Two At A Time. Ever since we had sailed the high winds, I could think of nothing else. I loved her spark, her sarcasm and, yes, her naked body. I loved her.
She eased up, staring at me. She kicked her legs to the floor, ‘Let’s just forget you said that.’
‘What?’ I choked back a splutter. ‘I thought …’
‘What? What did you think? I told you this was nothing, just sex. That’s what we agreed right from the very beginning, no past and no future. I’ve never pretended to you that it was anything else.’ Her voice sounded hollow, ‘Why did you have to say that?’ Her eyes swam, ‘You’ve ruined everything now.’
I felt like she had landed a blow to my chest. ‘W-Why Max?’ I stuttered, ‘Has this all been nothing to you?’
She closed her eyes and laid a hand to her forehead.
‘I told you the rules from the outset,’ she grabbed her underwear, pulling it on. ‘I’ve no interest in relationships, no interest in your interference in my life. I’d hoped you’d respect that.’ She yanked her tank top down over her head. ‘I’d never have got involved with you if I thought you’d react like this.’ Her accent had changed. That polite upper-class English voice was gone, her vowels were more enunciated, R’s rolled, she no longer sounded English. Irish or maybe Scots?
‘It always amuses me that women are labelled emotional and needy,’ she scowled down at me with her wide dark eyes as she zipped up her shorts, ‘because in my experience, it’s the male of
the species that hold those traits.’ She stomped out into the main cabin, ‘I don’t have time for this. Go home, Mac.’
I jumped up, yanked on shorts and followed her out. ‘Get on a plane, go back to New York and forget about me. You don’t know me.’
Emotional? Me? Definitely. Needy? I’ve never really thought about it. ‘I know we don’t know much about each other, but that is why I said it. I need you to understand why I need to know more.’
‘Believe me, you know more than enough.’
‘Why are you doing this?’ I grabbed her by the arms and turned her to face me. ‘Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t feel this too, Max.’
She pushed me away. ‘Go home, Mac,’ her voice broke into a sob, sending her fumbling for the steps, swinging up and out of the hatch.
‘Max, wait, please,’ I was up and out after her. She was flying down the side deck, grabbing the shrouds for balance. She hit the front of the boat at a good pace, throwing her left leg forward, hurdling over the top bar, dragging her right behind her.
But you can’t easily run from a sailboat, even if you have been around boats all your life, you pay attention to every step.
I was 10 feet behind her when her toes caught on the underside of the bar. The momentum toppled her to the right. Her arms went out, grasping the slip as she fell. Her fingers grappled on the edge a moment then slid, scraping the side. Crack! Her head hit the concrete, whipping her neck back. She collapsed into the water sending spray up into the air.
She surfaced face down. I waited a desperate two seconds for her to pull her face up and cough. She didn’t. Panic surged through me. I would have jumped in after her if it wasn’t for my old English sailing instructor screaming in my head, Stay in the boat! Stay in the boat! One can’t do anything, if one is in the water with the victim.
The boats were stacked together in this marina; no space separated them unless you pushed them apart. Max had fallen between the bow of the Island Packet and a 30-foot Bavaria. She lay in the tiny pool created by the narrowing hulls. There was no easy way to get her out. I glanced around, shouting for help. I could see no-one.
I needed to get her face up, or she was going to drown. I grabbed the boathook from the boom and stepped gingerly to the bow. I leaned down and pushed the pole under the water, in line roughly with her breasts, and then drew it up. The pole slid out of the water, catching nothing. I pushed it back in, lower this time. I pressed it against her body then inched it upwards. This time the hook caught. I levered the pole back to her forehead and her face lifted out of the water.
I waited. One, how long to wait? Two, what if she didn’t come around? Three, did I need to lie her on her front to push the water out? Four, wait it out, Ryan, wait it out. After five eternal seconds she began to cough, weak at first, but then big, heaving, spluttering coughs.
‘Max!’ I snapped it out. Shocked or dazed people react best to orders. But she didn’t react. ‘Max,’ I shouted again. She was staring straight ahead gulping in heavy breaths. ‘Max!’ She glanced up at me. ‘Swim between the boats, Max. Okay?’ Her head rose and fell in a slow automatic movement. I let go of her and used the hook to push the boats apart, creating a channel. She didn’t stir. ‘Swim!’ She pushed her left arm forward, pulled it back, then the right, slow shaky movements. She inched down the narrow gap towards the stern of the boat. After five strokes she stopped. ‘Swim damn it,’ I roared. She started forward again, plunging in the left arm and dragging it back, then the right, in and back. Only a few inches were gained with each torturous stroke. I willed her on, in and back, in and back, looking down on her helplessly from above. She finally reached the stern of the 30-foot Bavaria. ‘Left, Max, left, the swimming platform.’ She turned in the direction I pointed and paddled around to the stern, throwing up an arm and grasping on to the deck.
I grabbed the toe rail with the boathook and pulled the Bavaria back towards me. I vaulted the lifelines and stepped to the stern of the boat. Max was clinging on with one arm. I threw out the swimming ladder and dragged her to it. I held her weight as she struggled up and we collapsed onto the deck.
*
I had managed to drag her back onto Two At A Time, and began pulling off her wet clothes. She was shaky, disoriented, and pleading. ‘Don’t take me to the hospital, please,’ she was gasping for breath. I didn’t know if it was from shock or desperation.
‘You need to be checked out,’ I said, ‘you banged your head.’
‘No.’
‘You could have concussion.’
‘Please,’ she dragged out the word, grabbing onto my shirt as I towelled her down.
‘No discussion, you’re going.’
She pushed me away, stumbling back towards the hatch, ‘No.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘Just …’ she grabbed the ladder.
I rushed over as she slumped to the floor. ‘Max, what the hell is going on? What are you so afraid of?’
‘Nothing, please, just don’t make me leave the boat,’ she shuddered. I grabbed a blanket, wrapping it around her back. She threw her arms around me, ‘Please,’ she pleaded lifting her head and dragging me down to meet her. She kissed me with shaky lips, ‘Please, just let me stay here with you, you’ll take care of me.’ She kissed me again, harder this time, deeper, pressing her naked trembling body into me. ‘I don’t need anyone else, just you. Make love to me, New York, that’ll make me feel better,’ she was distracting me, I knew, but I didn’t care. The thought of losing her made me want her even more. She was running away from me and now she was back. I would take whatever I could get.
Her shakes subsided and her breath evened, she dragged me down on top of her and pulled at my clothes, ‘Now, New York, now.’
*
She slept soundly, the physical and emotional turmoil dragging her down. I fell from one nightmare into another, chasing after her, trying to save her, or find her, but always losing. Every time I woke, I grasped her closer to me.
We slept late the next morning. Neither of us mentioned the I love you thing. We showered and dressed in silence. Dread coursed through my veins. She left the cabin as soon as she was ready. I pulled on shorts, followed her up on deck and onto the dock. I felt the life being drained out of me with every step she took. She slapped a hand on my chest as I started down the dock behind her. Thump. Thump. Thump, thump, thump.
She looked at her feet, drawing in a deep breath before turning her eyes up to me, ‘I need some time, New York.’ Thump, thump, thump. Drums beat in the distance, or maybe it was my heart in my chest.
The sound of gunfire rattled the air. I dived for her, shielding her, my hand reaching automatically to my side. It was in the distance; I scanned the horizon, where had it come from?
‘Hey it’s okay,’ she said, easing me back with a hand to my chest. Her face lightened, ‘Look, I’m sorry, I’m just distracted. I’ve got a lot going on. Come on, throw a shirt on, we’re going to town for some fun.’
‘Fun?’
‘You’ll see.’
The narrow streets were jammed with people. We stopped at a stall under a banner announcing Fiesta Major; Max pulled money from her shorts and bought two straw hats, t-shirts and bandanas. ‘Here, you’ll need these,’ she said, tossing me one of each. She pulled on the t-shirt, bundled her hair up under the hat and tied her bandana bandit style. I copied her.
A huge crowd was flowing along the street away from us. I could see lights flashing in the distance mid-crowd. Thump, thump, thump, the thumping of the drums dulled the noise of the hoard. ‘Come on, let’s get in front of it,’ she turned off to the left. I trotted after her.
‘What for?’ I asked jogging along beside her. ‘What is it?’
‘Shut up, New York, and just follow me.’ Trumpets sounded a fanfare. She marched us through empty lanes away from the crowd. Drunken bodies were slumped in doorways, dressed in the same hats and bandanas we wore. The air was dank with smoke. I could hear the thump, thump, thump of dr
ums and the rat-tat-tat of what sounded like Chinese firecrackers.
We pulled back onto the main street 300 yards further down, 20 yards in front of the thronging mass. The pound of marching drums reverberated up through the crowd. The thick smoke was permeated by an eerie orange light. ‘Come on, you have to see this,’ Max grabbed my hand and dragged me towards the oncoming swarm. As we approached, squeals of laughter and screams of fear joined the already burdened air.
The front of the crowd parted and a pair of luminous saucer eyes emerged from the smoke, staring blankly, coming for us. A head danced after it, dark in colour with bright yellow and red markings. Orange fireworks exploded from the bulbous head. I jumped back, diving for cover. Max grabbed hold of me and spluttered a nervous laugh. The orange glow lit up the whole form, unveiling a dragon. A green dragon, covered in red and yellow scales, spewing fire. The crowd screamed and cheered in delight. People in straw hats and bandanas ran up close and underneath the spitting fireworks. The dragon waddled on past us, revealing a long scaled body and four pairs of sneakered feet. There was another explosion, this time from the back end just as it passed us. Max jumped then squealed and I started laughing.
Next up was a glowing pink bird. A bulbous body and long spindly neck was holding up a small fowl head, dressed up with huge black eyelashes and a golden crown. She spun sparklers into the darkened sky from her tail feathers. The rat-tat of the snare drums and the thump, thump, thump of the base drums banged out an appreciative rhythm.
The lady was followed closely by the devils. Figures with horns in painted sackcloth capes. They held aloft pronged forks of spinning sparklers. Sunglasses shielded their sinister eyes from the ordinary man. They chased though the crowd scattering revellers. The murky air was choking. Max pulled the bandana up over her face and pulled her sunglasses from her pocket, covering her eyes. She tore off, racing in under the spinning orange wheels of crackling fire. I chased after her. Shooting sparks rained down on me, singeing the hair on my arms. We exited the far side. Max screamed in glee, turned and ran back in. It was proving difficult to see in the fog and I lost sight of Max. I spun around looking for her, but everyone looked the same in the hats and bandanas. A hand reached out and grabbed my arm, dragging me to them. Max pulled down her bandana, ‘Keep up, New York.’ I followed her in under the back of the pink lady. A devil ran at me and I flinched away from the big orange sparklers. The whole thing was crazy and scary and totally exhilarating.