by Julia Jones
The mouth of the River Blackwater stretched wide and blue ahead of her. Meresig shone glassily to port and to starboard the long flat line of the St Peter’s peninsula curved away into haze. She ignored the redundant nuclear power station – it looked like it was a building site now – and she let her eyes follow the coastline until she managed to glimpse the tiny chapel of St Cedd looking eastwards out to sea as it had done for more than a thousand years.
It was possible that Xanthe dozed a while.
Was that a yacht smudged against the skyline? Wrong shape. Possibly a sailing barge? Not big enough. She’d been reading local histories; she knew there’d been a time when this river was home to fleets of fishing smacks. Tough livings for the men and boys of Flinthammock and Meresig. That was probably what it was – some sort of antique, sail-powered, fishing boat.
Then the boat began playing tricks. First the image grew, then it inverted. It was sailing upside down. Huh? Xanthe stood up and stared.
It righted itself as she tried to understand what was happening and seemed to sprout another mast. The outline distorted and grew fins and flippers. Xanthe pulled her mother’s camera from its waterproof case and began taking photos.
The distant vessel rose from the surface of the sea as if it was floating on a grey-blue cloud. Enchanted fairy ship? Then, for a moment, she seemed to see it clearly in the golden morning light: it was a fishing smack, shapely and full of life and sailing like a dream.
The chapel of St Cedd had vanished into haze and now the concrete cubes of the former power station lifted up into the warm air, shimmered and disappeared. The straight stalks of the distant wind farm concertinaed like melting plastic.
Xanthe kept her eyes focused on the smack. She was heading in towards the river, her wide brown sail full out to starboard. Starboard? Xanthe took another photo then checked the water all round her dinghy. If she was going to get hit by a breeze like that she needed to be ready.
But there wasn’t a ripple on the glassy surface. And when she looked out to sea again, the boat was gone. There was nothing except herself and her borrowed Pico and a sudden realisation that she was going to be late for breakfast.
She put the camera away, cast off in a hurry and dug into the water with her paddle. She’d got to get her fitness back. Must hurry. Never mind shoulders. Kids to teach. What a complete idiot. She hated herself for messing up.
A powerboat was slicing towards her, direct and definite as an arrow, spreading V-shaped ripples through the calm water. She recognised it as the RIB from Godwyn and that must be Dominic Gold.
Had he come to help her? That was so excellent. She really hadn’t fancied much more paddling. Suddenly Xanthe felt ridiculously happy. Her appetite wouldn’t be a problem today.
“Hi there,” she called. “I don’t take sugars in my tea but it’s gotta be brown sauce if you’re offering a fry-up.”
He swirled alongside. “Pass me your painter. There’s no time to waste.” His blue eyes were cold and his bony face unsmiling. Her brief happiness congealed.
“In that case you should have let my egg go hard,” she said. “I’d have been back in time for the washing-up.”
He cleated her painter to the RIB and carried on without bothering to raise his icy voice. “You should have asked my permission before you borrowed the Pico. But I wouldn’t have said yes. We don’t go out alone.”
She thought she had signed an agreement to work with this Project as a volunteer sailing instructor. She didn’t think she’d sold herself into slavery.
“You’re saying that I can’t…take a dinghy out for a sail…by myself…in my own time?”
“Not a dinghy belonging to the Project. And there’s nothing else for you to sail here.”
He towed her back to the lightship as if she were a straying sheep.
“High-fives, sister,” said a skinny black kid who seemed to be all arms and legs plus a total toothy smile. “Do you know why seagulls fly over the sea?”
“Because they’re stupid-not-allowed to take a level one dinghy and have a couple of hours’ peace in a flat calm on the river,” Xanthe didn’t say. This boy must be one of her students. Great start. Not.
The adult visitors had finished their breakfasts and gone. Her five kids – two girls, three boys – were left hanging around in the mess room while she vented her bad temper on the tables. She couldn’t smile back at him but she forced herself to stop, squeeze out the cloth and answer. “Nope. Not sure I’ve heard that one – and your name is…?”
“Nelson. They’ll have warned you off of me. I’m trouble. But you and me, sister – we’ll do fine. About those seagulls…”
“Hold it there, Mr Midshipman.”
If this Nelson was some sort of leader and if – as he claimed – he was trouble, she’d better start to regain some of the authority she’d lost being towed back up Roffey Creek like a failed escapee.
“Your sister, I am sure, is one lucky girl but I am your captain and my name is Xanthe Ribiero.”
She didn’t high-five him – that wasn’t what a teacher did. She held out her hand and when he was slow, she took his and shook it. Then she did the same to all the others. Start formal, make eye-contact, try to dredge back some respect.
Nelson stuffed his shaken hand under his armpit and hopped around as if he’d been stung by a jelly. The others mumbled their names and looked away. The smaller girl put both her hands behind her back and shook her head.
“She’s Siri, she don’t ever speak,” Nelson announced.
“She don’t get a chance with you around,” said a large, sulky-looking girl called Kelly-Jane.
“Waddever. But about them seagulls…” He’d taken his hand out from under his armpit and was holding it up in the air, flapping it like a single broken wing.
“And another thing,” Kelly-Jane was fronting up Xanthe. “Sister’s what they want you to say instead of Miss or Sir. Got more rules in this place than they have at bleedin’ school.”
“In my crew,” Xanthe snapped back, “I make the rules. We’ll all use our first names unless you get appointed officers.”
Kelly-Jane shrugged and turned away.
“Cap’n Xanthe,” said Nelson. He’d put himself between her and the door, desperate to gain her attention.
“Yes, Mr Midshipman Nelson.”
“Why do seagulls fly over the sea?”
“I told you I don’t know. Why do seagulls fly over the sea?”
“Because if they flew over the bay, they’d be bay-gulls – Bagels!! Geddit? It’s a breakfast joke. Because you didn’t get any…breakfast, that is…or jokes.”
He jumped up and down waggling his elbows and grinning with delight. Maybe she didn’t have to stay bad-tempered.
“Okay, very funny, helps to fill my empty tummy,” she said as they set off to the on-deck training area.
Nelson was running beside her now.
“I’ve got another. It’s a good one.”
His eyes were wide, his face was eager. She had to smile.
“Give it to me, bro…”
“How do pirates know that they are pirates?”
Eh?
“They think, therefore they ARRRRRR!”
It made her laugh.
“Ok, here’s one for you – any of you. Why do pirate children take so long to learn the alphabet?”
Kelly-Jane was dragging behind but the two other boys, David and Kieran, looked at Xanthe with the beginnings of interest. The quiet girl, Siri, seemed to be miles away. She had pale fair hair in two wispy plaits that tapered away into nothingness by the time they reached the thin rubber bands at the end. Her eyes were sweet-sky blue and her face didn’t move at all.
Nelson was swinging from every metal handhold and rail as they made their way up the narrow stairways and onto the sunny deck. He was muttering as he
swung.
“A, B, C, D, E, F, G…”
He really wanted to get the answer. He was trying so hard but he was missing it, totally. Maybe she should help him out?
“Think of those gulls, the ones that didn’t fly over the bay.”
“They were seagulls…oh, I geddit, C-gulls. Okay…okay…” But he was still stuck.
“So how many seas are there, in pirate books? We are talking storybook pirates here, not the real sort.” She felt she had to keep saying that.
“Don’t read a lotta books.” He looked deflated. Stopped swinging.
“There’s seven seas…seven Cs?”
“Ok, I geddit – so the pirate kids mess up because there’s only one C in the alphabet.”
“Y’r there, bro.”
It wasn’t a great success. She didn’t naturally do jokes. She’d better get on with what she’d been hired to do. Teach them sailing.
She led them off the lightship and round to the gravelled strip that had been constructed between Godwyn and the creek. It made a secure enclosed berth and provided a sort of artificial embankment that was almost like a miniature quay at high water. The Pico had been pulled out and left there, still semi-rigged. Maybe the dinghy was in disgrace as well.
Xanthe was aware of Jonjo, the children’s youth worker, standing close and watchful. He was a tough-looking character with short hair and a South African accent. Probably in his late twenties? Xanthe had the oddest feeling that he could be armed. Martha, the Project administrator, was on the side deck, outside her office, looking down on them.
There was loads of water in the creek now. Blue sky, light, warm breeze. Best possible conditions.
“Okay, so here’s our first dinghy and there’s plenty more of them. Has anyone already sailed a Pico?”
The kids stood and looked. No one approached the Pico or looked like they were going to answer Xanthe.
“Why’s it called a dinghy?” asked Nelson at last. “It’s a tickly word. It makes me want to laugh.”
He threw his head back and started giggling. It was obviously a put-on. Then he collapsed onto the pebbles and carried on laughing even more. The others stared at him and decided to join in. Zingy-wingy-dinghy. Now Kieran was rolling around and David and Kelly-Jane were doing fake laughs that were rude and silly.
Xanthe could feel Jonjo and Martha watching. In a moment one of them would yell at the kids to shut up and listen. But this was her class. This question was hers.
She sat down cross-legged on the pebbles.
“I don’t believe this,” she said to Nelson. “I’ve been sailing all my life and I’ve never thought about dinghy as a word. Respect to you.”
He went quiet.
“It doesn’t sound like an English word so we have to check out where it came from first. I haven’t got internet where I’m lodging but I suppose there could be a dictionary on Godwyn or one of the adults might know. Let’s give bonus points to whoever finds out the answer.”
“Look, sister,” Kelly-Jane cut in. “Is this gonna be like school? Cos I don’t do bonus points – or dictionaries. They told us this was for outdoor adventure – and Fun.”
“But safe,” added Kieran. “Not outdoor adventure where you might get hurt or nothing.”
They must be related, thought Xanthe, looking up at the two Ks. Both a bit overweight and unhealthy-looking, as if they’d been spending most of their lives indoors. Sitting on sofas probably, eating junk food.
She stood up from the pebbles.
“No, it’s not going to be like school. I’m here to teach you to sail. Is it not what you wanted? I mean obviously I’ll also be helping you to keep safe.”
There was silence. Nelson had turned getting up into a sort of breakdance routine – though not as if his heart was in it. The rest of them moved a bit too close to each other. Kelly-Jane took Siri’s hand.
“We knew we gotta be kept out of the way,” she said. “No-one asked us what we wanted.”
Jonjo shifted slightly. Nothing much. Just enough to make them pay attention.
He looked at Kelly-Jane and shook his head. She stared back at him. Then her shoulders sagged.
Kelly-Jane had been trying to say something and had been silenced.
“Stuff the goons.” Xanthe turned her back on Jonjo. “So do you or don’t you want adventure? I’m not saying danger but do you want sailing? You need to tell me yes or no.”
If they’d been forced into learning she wasn’t going to do it.
No-one answered. The only sounds were the river noises: wavelets lapping against the bank, halyards against masts, the shake of a sail, seagulls calling…It looked as if she’d talked herself out of a job before she’d even started.
“Hell,” she said, forgetting that she wasn’t allowing herself to swear. “Look out there, won’t you? There’s sky, there’s water, there’s boats and distance and places to explore. Will you please just face away from me!”
One by one they turned towards the creek.
“Okay,” she said. “Stick your eyes to your telescopes, Nelson-style, but make sure it’s your good one.”
Nelson flung up his arms in a shrug. Kelly-Jane sighed angrily. Kieran and David looked completely dumb and Siri stood like someone sealed into a vacuum.
Xanthe marched round all of them, making them do as she asked. Both hands cupped round and held up to one eye. The other eye shut.
“We are playing a game. I am calling it I-spy-glass. You don’t have to stand still. You can swing yourself around and you can stop wherever you like. Then you focus through your telescope and you tell me what you see. You say ‘I spy with my single eye something beginning with…?’”
If they thought she’d lost it, she didn’t care. Lose now and she’d lost them anyway.
“Mr Midshipman Nelson, you go first.”
He whirled wildly around, gazing up and peering down, hyping up his confusion and maybe aggravation. His choice came as no surprise, however; “I spy with my single eye something beginning with..D!”
He could hardly say for the giggles. And this time they were totally real ones.
“It’s the D-D-DINGHY!” spluttered the awkward-looking boy called David. Then he giggled and Kieran giggled and Kelly-Jane giggled and even Siri almost smiled.
“You’re good!” said Xanthe. “You’re very good. So now we look closer at this rib-tickling object. There will be more weird words.”
They forgot to hang back and clustered round her like any normal group of kids while she showed them all the different parts of the dinghy – hull, mast, rudder, tiller, hiking-strap, boom, sheets, halyards, dagger-board, gooseneck, pintle, painter, thwart, vang. She didn’t explain what they were for, just gave them the words and checked each one for its giggle factor. Most of them scored high.
“Alternatively,” she said, when they had no laughter left, “You could think of all these words as coming from a language that you haven’t yet learned. You could let yourselves believe that this…dinghy…has the power to take you to a different world.”
There was longing on the light, fresh breeze that was ruffling the sunny waters of the creek.
“Imagine that she has been stranded here. She is suffocating on this dry shore. We have to return this dinghy to her element. And I need you, Mr Midshipman, to hold her painter.”
She handed him the flecked and braided length of rope and he held it as if it were the holy grail. Then they all watched the very ordinary plastic boat as she slid back into the creek and swung to the last of the flood.
Suddenly Jonjo was beside her ready to take away the trolley and Martha produced a half dozen buoyancy aids and began helping the kids to put them on. She was bustling around them, chatting and smiling.
“This morning,” continued Xanthe, “We are gonna to keep it simple. All that I’m offering you to
do is to take turns sitting in this dinghy. Then you can tell me whether you choose to go further. There is no pressure. If you don’t want to learn to sail, I sure as hell won’t force you.”
They did want to – all of them – but she was still amazed how scared they were. It was as if she truly had been asking them to step into some alien dimension.
“Haven’t you ever been on the water?” she asked Kieran. He was a sturdy, open-faced boy, the sort you’d expect to be outside fixing things or making some old go-kart or something – if he hadn’t looked so pale and flabby.
“There ain’t no water where we live…” He looked at Kelly-Jane. “Where we lived,” he corrected himself.
“You didn’t, like, go to the seaside on your holidays?”
“No, Miss. I don’t remember no holidays.”
Maybe she was the one who’d been living in a different world.
Kieran sat completely still, staring at the water, which was now so close to him. Then he relaxed and began watching some of the other boats that were moving up and down the creek on this sunny half-term morning.
Kelly-Jane gasped and froze when she felt the Pico shift beneath her weight. It was an act of bravery when she allowed Xanthe to talk her gently down until she was sitting low in the centre of the dinghy and could trust that she was safe.
Nelson swung recklessly around the mast and nearly pulled the dinghy over while David tripped over his own feet even before she’d got him anywhere near the edge of the quay. Only the silent Siri stepped on board with the instinctive grace and balance of a bird.
“So have you been on the water before?”
The small girl looked up at her, directly, as if she was going to answer, but her face stayed motionless and her eyes seemed to bulge slightly as if there were words behind them that simply couldn’t break out.
“Have you?”
“She’s not able to reply.” This was Jonjo. “But I’m guessing it would be a no. These are inner city kids and they won’t have experienced water and boats unless someone’s made the effort to take them.”