Nobody Loves a Ginger Baby

by Laura Marney

  The money was enough, just, to buy a luxury forty-five foot cruiser. Without telling anyone, he travelled to the coast on a Saturday morning and, after a turn around the harbour with the chandler, took it out alone. He could use the motor until he learned how to operate the sails properly. Then he would bring his mum and dad on board and show them his competency, his mastery, as a sailor.

  She was beautiful, streamlined and sleek, and sat high in the water, built for speed sailing. Sean’s yacht, too young yet to be named, was made of virgin plastic, so modern and clean and white that it hurt his eyes to look at her in the bright sunlight. Fresh from the factory, the immaculate upholstery was still wrapped in polythene and smelled like a newborn baby. There was nothing left of the pools money to pay for mooring or maintenance but Sean didn’t care, it was a dream come true.

  Using the motor was a little frustrating, too easy, and, new as the boat was, he could get no real speed with engine power alone. Sean was keen to unfurl the sails and catch the wind. He took her out to open waters leaving the coastline far behind. But he could find no wind. It was an unusually hot, still day. He was fast using up his petrol supply so as a precaution he cut the engine and waited for a breeze. Eager to see her in full trim he hoisted the sails, but without wind they sagged impotently. Sean was getting hungry and needed to pee.

  In his excitement he had forgotten to bring a sandwich but he could get something to eat later. The boat was not so luxurious that it had on-board toilet facilities and Sean was reluctant to pee over the side. He worried that it would spill; he didn’t want his lovely new white boat streaked with yellow. On the spur of the moment he decided on a swim.

  He pulled his clothes off and jumped with a ‘wahoo’ from the deck. After the heat of the sun the water was shockingly cold and took his breath away but peeing was a sweet relief. To warm his muscles he swam hard and fast away from the yacht and then back towards her again. This was the life, a man alone in the elements. He floated on his back, letting the sea support him like a babe in arms, bobbing in the current of the water. He was relaxed but not so relaxed that he wasn’t alert for the sound of approaching vessels. It would be extremely embarrassing to be caught swimming in his Y-fronted pants but more importantly, he didn’t want to get his head stoved in on the prow of a boat that hadn’t seen him. It was time to get out. There was always next weekend, and every weekend. Perhaps he should keep the boat a secret a bit longer. He had all the time in the world to learn to sail.

  He turned on to his front and swam towards the boat. She was further off than he’d thought and he was tiring by the time he approached her. To his surprise she had started to drift, the sails were flapping and were beginning to fill. She had picked up a wee wind. Good girl, Sean thought, as he slapped her smooth bow, now he might get some sailing done. He circled the boat and came all the way around, back to where he’d started from, before he realised the shockingly simple stupid mistake he had made.

  He couldn’t get on board. He had dropped no anchor or line, nothing with which he could use to scale the sheer even sides of the boat. He felt all along the waterline as she glided slowly and gracefully but there were no ledges or toeholds that would give him access. He jumped and lunged, he threw himself at her, but though he was less than three feet below the deck, it was three feet too far.

  He chased her for twenty minutes before he had to give up and watch her, his ghost ship, now splendid with white sails billowing, cruise away without him. He began conserving energy, treading water, hoping for a passing boat, his Y-fronts now the least of his worries. Where would she end up? America? How would he ever get her back? What if, without him to tend her, her mast cracked in heavy weather? Would she sink?

  After another twenty minutes or so he had all but forgotten her. How much longer could he last in the water like this? Nothing came near him. He could see three boats in the distance and shouted till he was hoarse, choking on seawater in his panic, but it was useless, they were too far away to see or hear him. He was tired and cold and he wanted to go to sleep.

  Suddenly his eyes were filled with colour. A bright orange had replaced the grey blue haze of the sun and the sea. It wasn’t until they were nearly upon him that he heard and understood their instruction to grab the lifebuoy.

  To this day Sean remembers nothing of his rescue. He remembers only Bernie, standing over him; walking him, bedraggled and rubber-legged, with her mighty arms around his shoulders, from the quayside to her house. And later, how she looked after him, fed him and gave him clothes, how she phoned his family and asked the fishermen to find his boat. He remembers how he fell in love with her.

  He did not return that weekend to Glasgow, to his job as a joiner with the Corporation. He did not return to Glasgow ever again except to visit. He married Bernie and sold the cruiser for a fishing boat. He struggled hard to make a living on the island and considered himself a very lucky man.

  And now he is apparently trying to win again. After forty-odd years of accepting his destiny he is gambling again. Not the football pools this time, but the National Lottery, a pound for a chance to change his life. In the noise of The Harbour Arms he is ducking around heads that obscure his view of the telly. He is licking his pencil and recording the winning numbers in large smudgy figures.

  Then he asks Pierce to do him a favour. Pierce has a bad feeling about this but what can he do?

  ‘Aye sure Sean, no bother, what is it?

  Chapter 17

  ‘Come with me to the phone box and we’ll give her a tinkle. I’ll say these are the numbers on my ticket and ask her to check it. She keeps the numbers for me every week now. I’ve been buying these bloody things for months. If you’re there, she’ll believe it, she won’t think her big boy would get up to any jiggery pokery.’

  The underlying jealousy in the way Sean says the words big boy does not escape Pierce. There is no rancour, but there has always been a rivalry for Bernie’s love between the two men. Pierce doesn’t yet understand the game plan but he understands his role: to add authenticity to the deception and, trusting that Sean’s intentions are good, despite the bad feeling in his gut, he is willing, eager even, to play his part. Anything for Bernie.

  ‘Agnes? Aye. Can you take the phone through to her? Ah there you are. You’ll never believe who’s standing here with me. How the hell did you guess? You’re a witch, so you are, woman. He’s right here. Just bumped into him. He’s standing here with a stookie up to his shoulder. Aye, broke it, rescuing some damsel, he says. Well I’ll ask him, okay okay, I’ll put him on.’

  In the cramped stinking space of the phone kiosk Sean hands Pierce the receiver. With desperate smiley gestures he is miming, trying to convey that he has accidentally run into Pierce but it’s okay, Pierce is up to speed. The cord on the receiver is too short and he has to stand with his head cocked at an awkward angle.

  ‘How’s my best girl?’

  His best girl, in a far away sleepy voice, probably something to do with the pain control drugs, assures him she is fine.

  ‘Aye, I was here with a bit of business. It’s nothing, Bernie, I’m fine, a couple of weeks and I’ll have the plaster off.’

  She takes a bit of persuading but is eventually satisfied. It is so like Bernie to be more worried about him than her own precarious health.

  ‘I popped in to the Harbour Arms on the off-chance and who should be standing there but your old man. Well I wasn’t planning to. Aye, I suppose I could for a few days if Sean will bring me back to the mainland. Sean, can you bring me back over in a few days’ time?’

  Sean is smiling, delighted, with his thumbs up signifying how well it’s going but now his demeanour changes and he says in a loud gruff theatrical voice, ‘Well, I suppose so, but I don’t know who’s going to pay for the bloody fuel.’

  The moment his line is out of his mouth he clamps his hand over it, scared he’ll laugh down the phone. His wide eyes demonstrate how much he is enjoying the schoolboy naughtiness of it.

&n
bsp; Sean lets Pierce chat with Bernie for a few minutes and then makes impatient signs that he wants the receiver back. He is bursting to get on with the ruse.

  ‘Bernie, have you the numbers in front of you? Wait, wait. No, don’t read them to me. The best thing is if I tell you what I’ve got and you can tell me if any of them have come up. Okay? Okay.’

  Sean fumbles around in each of his trouser pockets but he can’t find the envelope. It is in the breast pocket of his shirt, Pierce can make out the outline of it through Sean’s threadbare green woollen jumper and is pointing to with his stookie arm it but Sean, with panic building, misunderstands and slaps his hand away. Realisation dawns on Sean and he smiles an apology while keeping up a cheery banter with his wife. In the limited space he ties himself in knots trying to extricate it from his shirt. As Sean’s face gets redder Pierce is forced to put his good arm up his uncle’s jumper and grope at his breast. He has turned his head away, he doesn’t want to feel the soft warmth of his uncle’s belly, he doesn’t want to smell the sea and the sweat off him.

  ‘5, 9, 12, eh? Oh ho! Well that’s us won a tenner at least, fish suppers for the tea tonight! 26, 37, you are kidding me on? Last one 44…’

  A worried look has come over Sean’s face. The line has gone quiet. Pierce realises instantly how dangerous this is. Bernie’s heart is probably weakened. This could kill her.

  ‘Bernie? Oh, you’re there.’

  Sean screws his face up knowingly at Pierce but they both feel tremendous relief that Bernie has not keeled over with a heart attack.

  ‘What? Are you sure? All of them?’

  Sean nods and grunts into the phone for a good few minutes letting her get used to the idea.

  ‘Now listen, Bernie. You keep this under your hat until I get it checked out. Don’t tell a soul. I’ll phone up the lottery people just now and find out what we have to do. I’ll maybe have to stay here another night until they can get a cheque to me, can you wait another night to see him? Yes, I’ll bring him first thing tomorrow as soon as I’ve sorted it all out. And I’ll tell you another thing my girl. Me and you are going Stateside! I’m going straight from here to the travel agents to book two seats to the Big Apple.’

  At this moment Sean winks again and effortlessly produces two airline tickets from his back pocket and waves them at Pierce.

  Everything falls into place. Pierce never doubted Sean but now he sees why he needed the elaborate scam. This is no joke. Sean has somehow or other come by the money to take her to New York, something she has dreamed of for years, something she has talked of every summer for as far back as Pierce can remember. However Sean has come by the money, he is unable to tell her the truth.

  Perhaps it’s the drugs but, as unlikely as it seems that a penniless fisherman with a terminally ill wife should twice win a fortune, Bernie readily accepts it. She’s asking her husband what clothes she should pack.

  ‘No, forget that old thing, and anyway, it’s too big for you now.’

  Pierce cringes at this: Bernie’s losing weight, diminishing, fading. He’s frightened to see her, frightened of how she’ll look. He doesn’t know how he’s going to hide his fear, she knows him so well. But he must hide it, the way Sean does, or she’ll spot it before he’s even off the boat.

  ‘All you need is something comfy to travel in. We’ll buy new stuff when we get there. We’ll go to Macy’s.’

  Pierce never ceases to be amazed by Sean. On the outside he seems like a fat old codger in a green woolly jumper. But he is much, much more. The new refrigeration plant demonstrates just what a player he is. The woolly jumper and easy manner are a perfect disguise for his Machiavellian intrigues. By playing one government body against another, slowly, deftly, despite funding being repeatedly withdrawn, he secured almost half a million pounds to build the plant. But raising the money for this New York trip would not have been as easy. In the island’s only pub, The Pibroch, there had been talk of a whip-round to send Bernie to America but Sean is not a man to accept charity. He must have got the money some other way. He must have sold the land.

  A few times over the years when the fishing was particularly thin Bernie begged him to sell the fields. Sean always refused, he did not consider them his to sell. They were Bernie’s, they came to her from her father when he died. Sean, more than forty years on the island, still an incomer, had no business selling them. He always found a way to keep going, to hold them in trust. The fact that Bernie and Sean had no children held no irony, the land must stay in the family. A few fields on a lonely island are all they have to pass to posterity.

  The whole lottery scam, which had at first the feel of one of Sean’s cheeky manoeuvres, is much sadder than that. It’s desperation, a selfless act of love.

  ‘When are you going to New York?’ Pierce asks as soon as Sean comes off the phone.

  ‘Next week.’

  Now Pierce understands why the camera has to be instamatic. Sean and Bernie don’t have enough time for anything else.

  *

  Next morning, after a cramped rocky night aboard The Statue of Liberty, Sean insists they wait a few hours. Pierce is impatient to get started; he wants to see Bernie. However ill she might look, he wants to see her face when Sean hands her the airline tickets.

  ‘First class, all the way,’ Sean shouts proudly above the roar of the engine. ‘None of your rubbishy cockroach hotels this time: New York Hilton, best-of stuff.’

  ‘How long are you staying?’ Pierce bawls as spray crashes over the port side. After waiting till after lunch to strengthen the illusion of the arrival of the lottery cheque, Sean is now pushing the wee boat as fast as he can back to the island. The throttle screams as the boat rises and falls with the water slapping the sides. Black smoke is belching from the engine with a thick grease that lines Pierce’s nose and throat and masks the comforting old-fish smell of the deck but Sean, usually carefully nursing his old boat, never lets up.

  ‘The whole week.’

  It’s along way to go for such a short time, thinks Pierce, but maybe that’s all Sean can afford, or maybe that’s all Bernie can manage.

  ‘I’ve a full programme lined up and you can bet your life it doesn’t include bloody hot dogs! That American bread is stale and the sausage tastes of nothing unless you put half a ton of sauce on it. I’m going to book dinner in one of these places where you can see the whole Manhattan skyline. It’s a pity the towers are gone now but that’s your bloody terrorists for you.’

  It’s typical of Sean’s island mentality to think that the biggest, potentially the most cataclysmic event in modern history, has spoiled the view for Bernie’s posh Manhattan dinner.

  ‘And the best Broadway show, I’ll need to get tickets. What is the best show on Broadway just now, Pierce?’

  ‘Don’t know, what is it?’

  ‘I don’t know either; I’m asking you. It doesn’t matter. Whatever it is I’ll get tickets.’

  Pierce can make out the outline of the island on the horizon now. He loves this feeling: the anticipation of stepping on to the quayside, back on the island, back with Sean and Auntie Bernie.

  ‘Night cruise as well, it’s a bloody rip-off but she’ll want to see the statue. She’s too… she’s not up to the ferry trip just at the moment.’

  A look of anguish crosses Sean’s face and Pierce turns away. The wee boat is too confined a space for such big grief. For the next five minutes Pierce busies himself preparing the mooring lines ready for landing.

  ‘I’m getting a carriage,’ Sean shouts, perky again, calling Pierce to join him at the wheel. ‘One of those horse-drawn carriages to take her round Central Park. I hope there’s going to be moonlight. And I’m keeping the best till last.’

  Sean indicates that he wants Pierce to take the wheel and he nips below deck. On land Sean moves at a ponderous pace but aboard The Statue of Liberty he is as agile as a monkey. He’s back in a jiffy and hands Pierce a small dark red-padded velvet box. There is a ring inside, gold with a r
ow of tiny diamonds.

  ‘It’s beautiful, Sean.’

  ‘She has my mother’s wedding ring but it’s worn away to nothing. I gave her scrambled eggs and toast the other night and she when she rubbed her hands to wipe the crumbs it flew right off her hand.’ Sean is laughing. ‘She’s that skinny!’

  Pierce would like to laugh but he can’t.

  ‘It’s an eternity ring, son. When you find a woman like Bernie you want to be sure and keep her.’

  Sean pulls back the throttle and the noise is now a gentle thrum. Pierce can see the quayside and watches it get bigger. The sea-swept weather-beaten harbour and the houses that huddle around it look like they always do; quiet, permanent, but the refrigeration plant, too new and alien to have yet been assimilated into Pierce’s mental picture, spoils the view. It’s not the same anymore. He’s looking for Bernie but of course she won’t be there to meet them.

  ‘Now remember, Pierce, mum’s the word. If she finds out we didn’t win the lottery she’ll skin me alive.’

  But Pierce isn’t listening. He’s looking at the quay. Now he can make out a small group waiting at the moorings. He recognises some of Sean’s friends, Bobby and Jim, and though they are still some distance from landing, he can clearly read their expressions. Agnes McConnell is with them. She is looking down at her feet and ringing her hands.

  Chapter 18

  Bertha books the Nile cruise as a lovely surprise for Donnie. If she has to have a reason then it’s an anniversary present, wedding or divorce, they both happened around the same time. Now that they are back together it’s the only way she’s going to get a half decent holiday. Donnie freely admits it; he earns peanuts.