by Niels Hammer
“Caitlin?”
Rising slowly – still suffused by the afterglow of serenity – she sat down beside him and her smile was radiant in the rainy darkness. Putting her arm around his neck again she hummed a little tuneless tune of satisfaction into his left ear.
“We have about a quarter of an hour before Wroxham. I’ll change clothes, and then I can take the tiller while you change or dress rather. It’s getting cold.”
Deprived of her body heat he shivered in the linn that ran down over his shoulders but she found the bags with their spare clothes and the towels and began drying herself while he sat watching her with chattering teeth though warmed by the glow of remembering their past interaction.
“Poor dear! Now its your turn.”
The raindrops continued to flow down along his neck and echoes of the thunder kept ringing in his ears. He did not want to move for everything was wet and cold and clammy – but assured by her competence he had just strength enough left to dry himself with the other towel and seek shelter in dry underwear – socks – shirt – trousers and sweater. Now he was only somewhat humid by association but as soon as the sou’wester began to protect him from getting wet again he felt relieved. The wellingtons were still dry – as the ski socks they had used in the house –
“Do you feel better now?”
Her sagacious humour was stirring just below the surface of her timely concern.
“Much better, and do you?”
“Oh yes, and I’m not cold any longer. We must have drifted around in the current for about half an hour, but at least we did not get stuck in the shallows because of the rain.”
“So did the result match your expectations?”
“Oh yes, and more in the only way that really matters.”
The direct tone of her voice – comrades in arms on all fronts. He had consolidated his conquest.
Relief on both fronts. An open space ahead in which to recuperate.
“The lights there are from the railway bridge. Are you ready? You know where the house is?”
“Yes, and I have the receiver, but I’ve left everything else here.”
She placed the bicycle along the gunwale on the port side as they passed in under the road bridge. Without the scaffold there was no need to keep precisely in the middle. He edged inwards to get close to the wharf and she went forward to jump ashore with the anchor rope and make a clove hitch around the bollard. As he lifted the bicycle she snatched it out of his hands and rode away without a word. He put his wet clothes into a plastic bag and began to erect the scaffold in the faint light that hazed down through the rain from the street lamps. The thunderstorm was moving north-eastwards out over the Sea but it could turn round quickly enough to overtake them before they came home. Passion was not limited – there was no limit formed by the past that might not be transcended but it would become increasingly difficult. Would acceleration or deceleration continue to be subsumed by a steady double flame? That was the question – but not right now. When he had enclosed the scaffold in the tarpaulin he lifted the boards up – bailed the water out and placed the mattress on the plastic bag. In the dripping darkness the most simple twists and turns became problematic and time consuming – however – a fine light drizzle would have necessitated both the tarpaulin and the mosquito net. He looked up hoping to see her. It had taken more than twenty-five minutes but she would come soon and an accident now was unlikely. Wishful thinking – pious hopes – for everything that could go wrong would go wrong. He kept looking up – but saw nothing apart from the rainy haze illuminated by the bleak faint light from the lamps. The ugly colour of the Sodium lines – a dirty turbid yellow – how he hated that colour – not the yellow of an Oriole – a male Brimstone – an Iris or a Buttercup – a Laburnum – a Primrose or a Dandelion – and the dullness was aggravated by the darkness – by the lack of genuine depth in the black as the besmirched yellow light drained space of life. From time to time the headlights of passing cars shone through the thicket or through the crown of the trees along the road. What could she be doing? Thirty minutes or more even? Maybe it was difficult to find the car? But not with the receiver. Maybe the transmitter had dropped off and she was searching for it along the road? No – in that case she would leave it alone as it could not be connected with the car. She might have had a puncture? In the worst case it would be a delay of an hour. She did not have a repair kit as she ought to have had – and he ought to have made certain that she had. It was always his own bloody fault. It was always his responsibility. The masks they ought to have had as well. Always! There was nothing as false as excuses – a lack of courage to accept responsibility for that which came to pass – but there was an added strength in the water now. When they had come last Saturday the river had been flowing gently along between her green-sedged brinks – but to-night she was showing her canines as froth at every turn – at every bend – at every stone that obstructed her wild rush to reach the Sea. That light – yes – there she was at long last. Braking hard on the wharf she jumped down into the boat and he knew what had happened.
“She had already left when I came. The transmitter gave no response. Her car was not anywhere in the vicinity and the road outside the house was almost empty. I’ll sprint down to her house to see if I can recover it there. If I’m not back in an hour sail home and hide the jewellery somewhere, maybe on the brink of the small rill where we went ashore, and wait for me at home or at the landing.”
“But when she returns she might very well find that her jewellery has disappeared and then you will be exposed to scrutiny if you try to remove the transmitter on her car.”
“Only if she replaces her jewellery in the casket as soon as she comes home, but it’s more likely that she’ll either just drop them on her bedside table or replace them when she goes to bed, and if there’s trouble in the wind I’ll just turn round and come back.”
As he gave her a kiss she spun round and jumped up on her bicycle again. There was no way of knowing if she had come five or thirty minutes too late so counterfactual speculations were pointless – but at least they had managed to get away from the house before she came home and there had been no lights from a car when they were looking for the boat – so in all probability the dog would have had time to become wide awake before she returned – but if she had noticed that the dog showed symptoms such as drowsiness or even indifference towards her she might have become suspicious and begun to investigate immediately in which case Caitlin would come too late. If she should arrive just prior to an investigation she would be at risk for a couple of minutes – a narrow enough window of acute danger – but it was one through which he found himself constantly staring. They ought to have anticipated such a development – and taken the necessary precautions. A long-range transmitter? This was just an instant of a stochastic event – the Joker of chance had granted them the cover of the rain – but endangered them because of Mis’ess Trevor’s impatience to get home earlier than she had intended. What could he do now but wait and play as they had planned? She had given him a calm and composed impression and he felt certain that she would take the right decision or at least find the optimal solution within the given set of solutions – however narrow that spectrum might turn out to be. Heavy drops dripped down from his hood – the surface of the water was alive with drops and the uniform sanding of the tympanum had a slow stupefying effect on the mind. By an act of will he avoided looking at the watch. This waiting state of stasis was by far the most exasperating part of such an enterprise – especially as he had tholed it several times already. What was she doing now – right now? Removing the transmitter from the car? Racing back to him here at the wharf or back home having realised that she would not be able to catch him before he had sailed for she would have noted how long time it had taken her to reach the house. Fixing his eyes on the road he anatomised the faintly lighted patches of leafage beneath the slimy lamps for a passing glimpse of
movement. A car came in the opposite direction and its glaring headlights swept slowly through the thick vertical stream of drops before it disappeared forever. A little later a car came going north – maybe it had just overtaken her half a mile back – or maybe not? He looked at last at the watch for if she had decided to go back home directly she would arrive long before he did – and he had first anyway to deposit the jewellery and it would take him a further thirty or forty minutes. She ought to have been here by now if everything had turned out as planned – but nothing ever did. An hour – he would wait five minutes more – not more. The road was as empty as the feeling in his stomach but there was no reason to despair. She had decided to go back home so he released the rope around the bollard and started the motor with one long last desperate look up along the deserted road. In the growing darkness the steady rain dampened the chuckling of the water against the prow or perhaps the continuous and monotonous sound had blurred his senses? No! It was rather because he was now borne along on the current that had been strengthened by the northern arm of the river. By leaving the homely lights – in the last analysis a prophylactic or apotropaic Ave Maria against the greater darkness – far behind – he joined the accommodating company of the open space of the river. So would she be racing back right now through the rain to wait for him? And the keys? Yes – he had the keys to the house – however – she could just break one of the small windows in the kitchen. He had forgotten to give her the spare set and – once again – there was no excuse for failing to envisage the most likely bifurcations of each set of events. The flapping of heavy wings just in front of the prow and the annoyed cackling at being disturbed at such an ungodly hour by such a silent approach denoted a small gaggle of Canada Geese. The distance from her house to the railway bridge had been fairly easy to navigate – but this turning and twisting of the river – in and out and out and in – made a mistake of entering one of the Broads likely – so he would have – more or less continuously – to compare the topography as he sensed rather than saw it – with the map – fortunately coated in plastic – though here and there the glare of a village or the contours of a mill if he chanced to see it in the light of the torch – would keep him safely afloat midstream. The sweet waterways here were connected with the North Sea and the North Sea with the ocean and all the shores of all the oceans so water had a capacity for connexions which far surpassed that of roads and highways. In springtime the inevitable yearning for the illusive horizon where the Sea fused with the Sky had always made him too restless to remain marooned on the black Earth. How was it? Hweteð on hwælweg hreþer unwearnum ofer holma gelagu – but here – sailing through the meadows and the fields – the windmills stood out as trusty beacons ready to catch each gust of wind in a four-armed embrace – and furnish – ealla onmēdlan eorþan rīces – all that which was bought with the soul. This had to be the confluence with the sharp bend – so here he should turn North and go against the current the rest of the way. It was now three o’clock and the new day would bring him either triumph or disaster but he did neither have the ability nor the inclination to stay detached. If keeping fairly close to the brink which gave him the impression of an absorbing mass of darkness in contradistinction to the water which was alive with a slightly greyish sheen – there could be no risk of a mistake. He looked out over the flat marshland to engage his attention – but the lack of distinctive features in the rainy haze made him relapse into a protective state of stupefaction in order to shield himself from the black ominous clouds of his imagination that turned his doubt and anxiety into living nightmares. El sueño de la razón produce monstruos. Passing the bridge he noticed again the force of the current and his speed here could not be more than four knots. Estimates of reality determined the chances of survival. Her decisive actions would by now be history – but he was left in ignorance about them to fear the worst and hope for the best as only a poor fool would do. Odds and statistics. What would her chances have been? Ninety to ten or fifty to fifty? All such conjectures were only expressing subjective states of mind so he would not have a sporting chance of imagining a likely set of propositions – and what was worse – neither would she – or did he underestimate her experience because of his ignorance? The North-east quarter of the Sky was beginning to get a faint grey colour in spite of the prevailing cumulostratus – and here and there he had heard a Swan or a duck getting ready for the day. At the old shipyard he turned North against a slightly weaker current from the Broad. On both sides of the river the landscape was here as flat as flat could be and the solitary trees were only dark and sombre shadows whose crowns sometimes formed diffuse silhouettes against the horizon. Coming out into the Broad he kept as usual rather close to the west brink and the slowly increasing light made the shape of some of the tree clusters recognisable. Would she be sitting in the sofa waiting for him or would he come back to loneliness and an empty house and the torture of a long legal procès-verbal – accompanied by obnoxious fees – only to endure days of misery and nights of desperate yearning? But as the tree cover along the brink began to increase he tried to imagine the best place – and as she had said – he could just as well go up into the rill. That ought to be good enough for now.
A Lapwing began circling above the boat at a height of fifteen feet – but he came quickly out of her critical circumference. That was remarkably late? All her first eggs had been lost – but her penetrating and plaintive cries suggested that life still evolved all around him regardless of how despondent he had become. An old ketch lay swaying softly at her anchor but there was no indication of activity on the deck because of the weather – and in the distance the mouth of the rill began to be discernible. He would have to use the kitchen knife and the earth would be soft though there were bound to be networks of large and small roots everywhere. He tested the edge of the knife against the tip of his finger. It might have been better but the rain had stopped and soon the Sun would come up to bless a new day in this that was his life – but what would the new day bring? Heaven or hell or much more likely a rock ledge somewhere in Purgatorio. Apart from the ketch there were no signs of human presence so he changed course and sailed quickly – now the current had become insignificant – in between the well-wooded banks of the rill. As the water level had risen he had some difficulty in lifting the branches of the old Rowan up over the scaffold without pushing the tarpaulin backwards – but when he had come through the place where they had moored appeared to be as well suited as any other – and taking the knife and the water-tight container into which he had put all the jewellery she had had in her vest – plus the bag with the receiver – the three transmitters – the whistle – the pick gun and the electric gun – he jumped up on the brink with the line from the prow in his hand though there was hardly any risk of the boat drifting away here and yet there was to-day far more of a current than usual. Fastening the rope to a branch he looked around for a suitable place. Beneath a tree there would be thick roots and with a depth of seventy centimetres and a square of twenty by twenty he would have to remove a volume of twenty-eight litres – so he had to use the large plastic bag beneath the mattress. When he had fetched it and taken off his gloves he began – at a fairly open place between a Goat Willow and an Alder Tree – to cut a square out of the vegetation by inserting the knife into the soil at an angle of forty-five degrees from all four sides till the piece of greensward had been cut loose. He placed it on the further end of the plastic bag and began wriggling the knife down into the open wound. Bit by bit the hole deepened as he loosened the mould and shovelled it up in his hand – maybe one hundred and fifty grammes at a time. That meant two hundred and fifty or maybe three hundred handfuls. There were many small roots – and at a depth of about thirty-five centimetres he came across a root which – when he had loosened the earth around it – proved to be about six centimetres thick. He would have to cut through it twice. The toughness of the fibres or their tensile strength made it difficult to move the blade of the knife but when he
had cut through the last sliver of the epidermis he tried to break the root but it was far too resilient so taking a couple of deep breaths he began to cut through it on the opposite side of the hole – but became soon tired enough to consider abandoning the attempt and try his luck somewhere else. However – after a short pause he continued and as the root was cut loose in one end it could be twisted aside to ease the movements of the knife. The soil consisted now partly of sand and the digging was easy but at a depth of about sixty centimetres water began to trickle in from all sides so he decided to stop. Washing his hands in the rill as well as he could and wiping them thoroughly in the towel he put on his gloves and placed the water-tight container at the bottom of the hole and the plastic bag on top of it. Taking his gloves off again he began filling the hole with loose earth – but for every eight or ten handfuls he packed the earth with the cut-off root. When he had fitted the conical square of greensward down into the slope-sided cavity without flattening the grass he removed the loose earth carefully from all the four edges – brushed the whole area with a branch and carried the superfluous earth wrapped in the plastic bag into the boat. Looking at the place where the treasure lay hidden it was obvious that it gave a somewhat maltreated impression – but that was all. The initial risk of hand-habend had been eliminated. As it had stopped raining he filled a plastic bag with water and sprinkled it out over the whole area to blur the traces he had left as well as to erase his footprints on the brink. A heavy shower would add the final touch. Now he only had to memorise the exact position of the hole between the two trees as well as the trees themselves so as to be able to distinguish them from all the other trees on the brink. It was on the south side about two hundred and fifty metres from the mouth of the rill – and about fifty metres past the old Rowan and there was a small Common Comfrey at the right hand corner. Fastening the marline he kept under the stern board to the Goat Willow he sailed downstream till he came to the old Rowan and made a double loop on the line. Sailing back he loosened the knot and dropped the superfluous earth in the water. It had taken fifty-five minutes and he had been so intent on what he had been doing that he had forgotten everything else. The dreaded and longed-for hour of truth cleared the horizon. He began to sail back – wriggled the scaffold out beneath the overhanging Rowan and approached the mouth of the rill. It was ten minutes past six – the Sky was overcast but it had begun to blow from the South and the trees along the brink were still stretching out their branches to pull him out of his anxiety but he could not lift his arms high enough to reach their leaves. Though his state of exhaustion made it too difficult to imagine anything he tried to brace himself for a disaster and turned round the Weeping Willow at the corner of the river to catch sight of the landing. Caitlin was sitting there – leaning up against the bollard – fast asleep – so his worries had been caused by existential anxieties. As he slipped up along the bulwark she woke and stretched herself with a long feline yawn but her slow smile of teasing innocence was tinged with satisfaction.