Occasionally, in calm, settled seas and with a good forecast by the electronic nagivation equipment, two of us, in strict rotation, would blissfully share a joint while the third sailed the boat. Otherwise, neither of them assumed the role of skipper. Nor did they scrap or bicker or argue, as most parents do. We laughed a lot. I was a sort of daughter/friend/able seaman. And they didn’t need me for any sort of sexual adventure, because they had each other. That is why they went sailing, why they had escaped even from the nineties when such things are supposed to be okay. They didn’t have AIDS. They just loved each other and had decided on a different sort of life. I tried to respect that. Most people wouldn’t call it a marriage, but I would.
Of all people, you, Martin, will understand.
I’m not going to bore you with details of that long Pacific journey. Thirty-one months I was at sea. Yachting magazines and whole books are full of long accounts of visits to the Galápagos, the Canaries, Alaska, or the Antarctic, but when it’s all boiled down, seafarers all have much the same sort of experiences, don’t they? They have gales and disasters and they hit things, and the ones who survive write tedious books about their adventures.
But we had our adventures, oh yes. We survived storms, lightning, two freak waves, and another, bigger still, which pitchpoled us. We sloshed around in flat calms and reveled in trade winds and ran terrified before gales and put out sea anchors. I’ve seen icebergs. I’ve changed sails with snow on the deck, ice on the rigging. I’ve seen flying fish, whales, albatrosses, and rare dolphins and slept on the deck under the stars when it was too hot to sleep below. We hit a whale off Tonga and a container between Tahiti and Hawaii. On that long passage, one night, we also lost Barry over the side. Because he was a good seaman, he was wearing a lifeline, and Harry and I hauled him back on board, trembling and shocked and half drowned. Once is enough for that sort of exercise. We had weekly person-overboard and fire drills.
Harry tended me when I got tropical fevers and rope burns, as gentle as any nurse. He dug fishhooks out of my hands and foreign bodies from my eyes. I learned to cook all kinds of exotic fishes in coconut cream and banana leaves and pineapple juice. We attended village feasts in the Cooks. Our eggshell-thin dugout canoe got nudged by a twelve-foot shark in a lagoon. We sailed past that dangerous, rocky landing place on Pitcairn Island where Fletcher Christian’s mutineers found another sort of escape and refuge. Barry studied his birds and his navigation and wrote his songs and Harry wrote his book. I learned to splice and mend sails and carve dolphins on bone. I was very happy. I returned to Auckland a different person and knowing what I want out of life.
And that is the end of the tape, and where I hope I’ve totted up my five thousand words and earned my ten thousand pounds.
It’s got quite dark, making Mother’s bed of white roses below my window glow, almost as though touched by phosphorescence. I have Harry’s book of stories and Barry’s book of songs beside me on my bed. I haven’t yet decided what to do with them.
They returned me safely to Auckland, without having to explain anything to any customs or immigration officer. I’d just been on rather a long holiday around the Hauraki Gulf, that’s all. Quite an undercover operation it was, with Pete sailing his keelboat out into the Pacific fifty miles east of Great Barrier Island and a dawn meeting between two small yachts making sure no one else was snooping around. Pete took food and fuel too, but the cousins wouldn’t or couldn’t tell us what their plans were, just that they were heading north into the sunshine again.
It was only when I got back to Pete’s house that I found the two books in my pack. Harry’s was written by hand, of course, but it wasn’t a book about birds or navigation. It was a book of short stories, all about different sorts of love, but especially their sort of love. And Barry’s was a book of music—song words with melodies and guitar chords.
I haven’t read them properly yet, because I need some space between my dawn memory of the Dolphin sailing away from Pete’s yacht and the news item a month later that a yacht had been lost on remote reefs south of Tonga. They never properly identified the pieces of the yacht or found any bodies, but there was speculation that it might have been a yacht called the Dolphin owned by two thirty-something cousins, New Zealand citizens but believed to be British-born. They were such careful, meticulous navigators. I can’t…I’d rather believe they are still sailing round the Pacific somewhere, or beyond, westward to the Indian Ocean or the Mediterranean.
From them I learned everything I know about seamanship, about the sea, about living, about enduring, about love, and about myself. I got aboard the crew for the Whitbread race next month because, though I could not produce a written curriculum vitae to tell them my true story, I was confident enough to persuade the skipper to take me for a trial sail.
We were somewhere south of Land’s End when a fearful storm blew up in the English Channel, one that wasn’t forecast. It was nearly as bad as that terrible gale that flattened southeast England at the end of 1987. Apart from the skipper, I was the only one who wasn’t seasick, who could help get the sails down and the sea anchor, the storm jib, and lifelines rigged in the storm’s initial fury. I took continual cups of tea and dry bread to all the others who were horizontal on their bunks, and cleaned up their vomit. We had to run before the storm into the Atlantic. The skipper and I sat up three nights without sleep, sharing the helming and the cooking.
One day, after the race, we might share a life too.
So, Martin, there’s my whole story, or nearly whole story. Not bad, is it? The earlier part will earn me ten thousand pounds, enough to buy a small yacht of my own or travel again. That earlier part must be about five thousand words, what I have recorded for Penelope’s magazine.
I decided to tell the story because I want girls to know that you can take risks when you are traveling and find you’ve trusted your instinct and it’s okay. Not every risk turns out to be a horror story about white slavery and girls ending up in Thai jails convicted of being drug couriers, despite what my mother still thinks.
But one detail I’m not telling anyone, not even you, Martin, not yet, anyway. Not for instant fame like Priscilla Presley or John Lennon’s girl Yoko Ono; not if every woman’s magazine in the world offered me thousands of dollars or Hollywood wanted the rights to make a horrible, dishonest film about a girl abducted by a couple of gays sailing round the Pacific. I’m not greedy, and I made a promise.
I’ll tell my bear instead. He sits on my bed and has heard all my ramblings so far as the sun dropped behind the birch trees and the sky turned twilight pink. The roses are still glowing white and Mother is calling me for supper.
Remember, bear, I wondered what Barry and Harry did for money?
They had a beautiful, well-appointed yacht, everything on board new and carefully chosen, the best German wines, the best Jamaican rum you can buy. There was always money in the bank, whatever port we visited. They bought me mementos I treasure: a collection of silver dolphins, some French jewelry in Tahiti—real gold; a pearl ring; an uncut sapphire, the color of Pacific waves, for a ring when I meet the man I shall marry.
Remember I said Barry sang a lot?
Remember a certain teenage pop star of the late seventies who disappeared mysteriously about five years ago… the beautiful English boy with long limbs, a beard, long tawny hair, the flower child idolized by millions of girls, and boys too… who wrote all his own songs—another Bob Dylan, they called him? He was just about to make the big time in Hollywood. He’d have been another David Bowie or Sting. There was a lot of publicity and speculation at the time—about murder, about the drug underside of the music industry. He just vanished.
Well, he showed me photos one night, and apart from Harry and a lawyer in London I’m apparently the only person in the whole world who knows the real and famous name of Barry Wildblood.
Now there would be a story. And I have a manuscript book of his last songs.
Tessa Duder
Educated
as a journalist, Tessa Duder has been a professional writer for fifteen years. Her seventeen books have brought her six major awards, several fellowships, and travel to international conferences from her home in Auckland, New Zealand.
She is known best by teenage readers for her novel Alex, published in the United States as In Lane Three, Alex Archer. The novel, which is about a teenage girl’s efforts to make the New Zealand swim team for the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, was a best-seller in New Zealand and was made into a feature film called Alex. Ms. Duder followed that success with three more novels about the competitive swimmer: Alex in Winter, Alex in Rome, and Songs for Alex. The Alex books were later published together as The Alex Quartet. Ms. Duder’s most recent book for teenagers is an anthology called Nearly Seventeen, which includes her short play “The Runaway,” about an incident in the life of Joan of Arc.
Although she played tennis, field hockey, and cricket as a teenager, Tessa Duder’s main sport, like that of the main character in her Alex books, was swimming. She was the first woman in New Zealand to compete seriously in the butterfly stroke, and in 1958, at age seventeen, she represented New Zealand in the Empire Games in Cardiff, Wales, where she won the silver medal in the 100-yard butterfly event.
Her sporting life now, more than twenty-five years later, is limited mainly to yachting and fitness workouts. She has sailed as a watch officer on both of New Zealand’s sail-training ships, Spirit of Adventure and Spirit of New Zealand. Ms. Duder reports that she has met several young female British travelers like the girl in “Sea Changes” and has been on a yacht that was the home of a gay couple who seemed to be spending their life cruising around the Pacific without worrying about money. The mysterious past of one of the characters in this story, however, is entirely her invention.
Jennifer has a mysterious past and won’t talk about the future. But she 2nd Andrew play winning tennis together, so he doesn’t ask too many questions. Still, what is she hiding?
The Gospel According to Krenzwinkle
Never develop a crush on your mixed-doubles partner.
She had a ridiculous last name, Krenzwinkle. It sounded like a cartoon character, but her first name was Jennifer and there was nothing remotely cartoonlike about her bright blue eyes or her blond hair or the way her long legs flashed beneath her white tennis dress.
The Krenzwinkles had just moved to our town during Christmas vacation, so no one in our high school knew very much about Jennifer. When she came out for the tennis squad and Coach Nutterman paired the two of us up as the varsity second mixed-doubles team, I figured I’d get a chance to know her much better. You can never tell where long tennis practices and new friendships may lead….
Anyway, I was wrong. Two weeks into our season I knew very little more about Jennifer Krenzwinkle than I did when she first walked into our honors English class in January and amazed Mr. Otto and the rest of us by asking: “Don’t you think both Hemingway and Fitzgerald’s stylistic innovations were more important contributions to world literature than the actual novels they wrote?” I knew her name. I knew that she was my age, seventeen. I knew that she quickly became the best student in our high school. I knew that her family lived in a nice, new, middle-sized ranch-style house on Briarwood Lane. And that was all.
I probed gently. Jennifer retreated skillfully. I inquired more directly. She managed to duck or turn aside every question with a smile or a question of her own. One afternoon two weeks into the season, I asked directly: “Jen, where did your family live before you moved here?”
We had just finished half an hour of giving each other overheads to smash, and she took her white headband off and shook out her long blond hair. She looked at me, hesitated, and then gave me a tiny smile. “Think we’ll win tomorrow?”
“Yes, but that’s not what I asked you.”
“I know, but that’s what I’m answering you.”
I would have been angry at her if she hadn’t been smiling at me. There weren’t too many smiles that pretty in the whole state of New Jersey. “One reason people ask questions is to get to know somebody they’re starting to like,” I told her.
“That’s true,” she said. “What’s your middle name?”
“Eric.”
“Mine’s Amanda. What’s your sign?”
“Pisces.”
“Mine’s Virgo. What’s your favorite food?”
“Bacon cheeseburgers.”
“Mine’s fried chicken. Bye, Andrew Eric Logan. Get a good night’s sleep—I want to win tomorrow.” She turned and started off.
“Bye, Jennifer Amanda Krenzwinkle,” I called after her. “Don’t worry about my tennis game. Worry about my sanity.”
We did win, and we kept winning, but by the middle of the season I was half crazy. Everyone on the team called her the Mystery Woman. Nicknames are fun and mysteries are fine, but when you can’t sleep at night because you’re lying in bed hour after hour picturing a pair of bright blue eyes floating on the ceiling, a few hard facts would be more than welcome.
“Maybe she’s just shy,” my big sister, Beth, suggested on a weekend visit home from college. When we were living in the same house, Beth and I never got along, but things got better between us when she moved out, and I even started asking her for advice about girls. “Don’t press her. You’ll scare her off.”
“But she’s not shy,” I objected. “She seems normal and outgoing, except that she doesn’t like to talk about herself.”
“Maybe she’s hiding something.”
“She’s hiding everything.”
“Give her time.”
“It’s driving me crazy.”
“Then tell her that.”
“Really?”
“Sure,” my sister said. “If she’s really driving you crazy, let her know.”
I let her know after the Hasbrouck Heights match. We won in straight sets, and Jennifer raised her game to a new level. She had an amazing first serve for a girl, and against Hasbrouck Heights she served up one blistering ace after another.
After the match, on the bus ride home, several of our teammates congratulated Jennifer, and old Nutterman told us he thought we were cinches to win the county championships and even had a shot at the state tournament. “There’s no chance of that,” Jennifer said.
“Why not?” Nutterman asked.
She shrugged, and he didn’t push any further—I guess maybe he thought she was just being modest. When the bus let us out at our high school and Jennifer began walking away across the parking lot, I caught up to her. “Hey, Mystery Woman, wait up.”
She turned, smiled, and waited.
“You played like a top seed at Wimbledon today.”
“Thanks. We make a good team.”
“Yeah. Nutterman’s right. We’re gonna win the county tournament. Maybe the states, too.”
She shook her head.
“Why not?”
She kicked a pebble. “There won’t be any state tournament.”
“What do you mean there won’t be a state tournament? Of course there will be. It’s down at Princeton this year.”
“Nope.”
“What do you mean, ’nope’?”
“The state tournament is in May, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, there won’t be one.”
“What does it being in May have to do with it?”
“Forget it,” she said. “Let’s talk about school. Did you start on that report for Mr. Otto yet?”
We were out of the parking lot, on Mason Street. The street was completely empty except for a black poodle on a chain in a driveway a hundred feet up ahead. I stopped walking and Jennifer slowed and then stopped too. “Is something wrong?” she asked.
“Jennifer Krenzwinkle, you’re driving me crazy.”
“Why?”
I looked her right in the eye and took a deep breath. “Because I’m starting to like you. A lot.”
“Don’t,” she said.
“Why not? You don’
t like me?”
“I didn’t say that. Just don’t.”
“Give me a reason.”
Her palms rubbed together nervously, like she was trying to erase something between her hands. “There wouldn’t be any point to it.”
“Why? Do you have another boyfriend?”
“No.”
“Do you have some problem at home? Are you in some kind of trouble?”
“No,” she said, looking more and more nervous. She bit down on her lower lip and tapped her tennis racket against her knee.
“Let’s start with something simple. Why won’t there be a state tennis tournament?”
“There just won’t.”
“But there’ll be a county one?”
She looked off down the street at the black poodle, which was running in circles, causing its chain to twist around its legs. “Yes.”
“And there won’t be a state tournament because it takes place in May, whereas the county tournament takes place in April?”
She nodded.
“But if the state tournament took place in April, there would be one?”
“Yes,” she said, “there would be. Please don’t ask me any more questions.”
“You won’t even tell me where you’re from and why we can’t get to know each other better?”
She hesitated, her eyes still on the poodle. “If I answer those two questions, will you let me alone?”
“Yes.”
“Promise?”
“Yes.”
She swung her eyes from the poodle to me. “I’m from southern California. And I don’t like answering questions about myself for reasons of religious freedom.”
“What does that mean?”
“You promised no more questions,” she reminded me, starting off down the block.
I immediately gave chase. “You’re right, no more questions. Could I buy you an ice-cream sundae if I only talk about tennis? We’ll discuss backhands. Jennifer, please?”
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