The Bed I Made

by Lucie Whitehouse

  The road became a track of mud and shingle, its edge shored up by a stone wall which kept back the tide. It was high water now and the first colour of the sun, a bloodish rose, caught the surface wherever it was disturbed. On the other side, the saltmarshes lay low and dark, brackish water shining here and there amongst them, made glassy by the cold. My anger was beginning to dissipate already, the rhythm of my feet breaking it down. The track found its way between trees, and the estuary disappeared from sight. It was darker again, gloom lingering among the trunks and in the undergrowth as if rising from the ground.

  Twenty minutes later, I turned the last corner and saw where the end of the path met the lane to Freshwater. At the low stone bridge over the top of the river I stopped. The estuary was spread out in front of me now like a spill of mercury and at its mouth, hazy in the early-morning mist, I could make out the roofs of Yarmouth, the spire of St James’s and the tall red-brick chimneys of the George.

  A long way downriver, something was moving. I watched, and saw that it was a rowing boat, making a silent but steady progress upstream. Minutes passed. Only when it was thirty yards away was there any sound at all and then just the gentlest plashing, the slow beat of oars dipping into water and lifting out again. The boat was a silhouette between sky and water, a black shape amongst tones of silver. As it drew nearer, I could see that the rower was an old man. His back was curved but he rowed neatly, waiting for the boat to travel as far as each stroke would take it before pulling the next. The oars dipped then rose, dipped again, and the water shimmered around them. I watched until he was close enough to talk if he turned and saw me and then I moved away.

  I followed the lane up the hill and into the small square in front of the parish church. In the graveyard frost sparkled on the grass between the headstones. A robin perched on one of them looked at me in surprise as I went in but made no attempt to fly away.

  At the back of the church, hidden from the road, I sat down on a wooden bench. It had been many years since I had stopped believing, if I ever had, but there had been two or three times when I had found peace in churches, not by praying but just by sitting in their silence, surrounded by things built by people whose lives were guided by belief and commitment, who were sure there was a purpose. I found a similar comfort in the gravestones now: they commemorated those who had done it, got through from birth to death, their lives no longer the uncertain skein of difficulty and confusion and fear but facts, the finite dates, the defined relationships: beloved wife, cherished son. Resting my elbow on the arm of the bench, I put my hand across my face and closed my eyes.

  I woke to find that it was no longer early. The delicate light was gone, replaced by the frank tone of mid-morning. The sun was out and for the first time in the year there was heat in it. It was shining directly on me, and the thighs of my jeans were warm to the touch. I made a move to sit up straight and felt the stiffness in my neck. My arm, too, was dead from supporting the weight of my head. My mouth had been open: my tongue and throat were dry. I wondered for a moment whether anyone had been past and seen me, then realised I was really beyond caring if they had.

  I went the road way back to Yarmouth, walking quickly, wanting to get home and go to bed. There was traffic now and cars sped past me in both directions. I had the strange disconnected feeling of having been awake and asleep at the wrong times; the day already felt old.

  As I came down the last part of the hill at Norton, the Solent was laid out in front of me. Today it was blue, taking its lead from the sky, and patched only here and there with the familiar green-grey that mirrored cloud. Its surface was scintillating with gold like a haul of coins and though I wanted to get home, I stopped for a moment. In my exhaustion, the sparkling resolved into thousands of flashing lights.

  At the yard just before the bridge, a man was working on a small wooden yacht. Struts against the hull held it upright and the mast lay along the deck, protruding at the stern from the burgundy tarpaulin which covered it. The man had his back to me and was crouched scrubbing at the keel. As I watched, he lowered himself slowly to his knees to work on a patch further down, putting a hand on the hull to steady himself. Something in the movement struck me as familiar.

  ‘Kate!’

  For a moment I considered pretending I hadn’t heard but he was pulling himself up again, waving. I raised my hand and went over.

  ‘I won’t kiss you,’ he said. ‘I’m filthy.’

  ‘Hello, Ted.’ I put my hand down to stroke the blond head which came pressing enthusiastically against my thigh.

  ‘You’ve met my assistant,’ said Chris. ‘I’ve got Peter roped in all day, too, though God knows he’s got enough on without indulging me. Peter – Kate’s here.’

  There was the sound of tools going into a bucket and from the other side, where he’d been hidden by the hull, Peter appeared. He was wearing a large black-and-white marled jumper and paint-splashed jeans muddy from kneeling on the ground. He wiped his hands on a dirty cloth as he nodded hello. His face was closed, his eyes screwed up against the sun streaming across the yard from behind me.

  ‘We’re getting her ready to go back in,’ Chris said, laying his hand on the side of the boat. ‘The sanding’s nearly all done now so we’re ready to start varnishing.’

  ‘This is your boat.’

  ‘What do you think? She’s a bit old-fashioned but I’m not a fibreglass man.’

  ‘Neither of us is.’ Peter balled the rag between his hands and tossed it on to the tarpaulin on which Chris had been kneeling.

  ‘I want a boat.’ The words were out of my mouth before I realised I was going to say them but it was true: I did want a boat, suddenly and urgently. ‘Not like this, though – a rowing boat.’ I looked down, embarrassed. I felt Peter watching me.

  ‘Anything in particular brought this on?’ said Chris.

  ‘I don’t know. No, I do. I saw one this morning at the top of the river just as it was getting light. It was . . . serene.’ I thought about the old man, the steady creak of his oars and their reliable course through the water. I wanted to feel even closer to the water than I had today, to go out on it myself, become the machinery between the natural and man-made, river and boat.

  ‘What were you doing out so early?’ Chris took his hand off the boat and put it on my forearm, where my sleeve was pushed back. His palm was surprisingly warm, hot even, against my skin, and the feel of it was a shock. I’d read an article once about single women who relied on personal services – manicurists, hairdressers, masseurs – and how they were paying people to touch them. I’d been sceptical but I felt it now, the power in the skin-to-skin contact, the connection.

  ‘I’ve got a dinghy you can borrow.’

  I turned. Peter was looking at me, his eyes still narrowed.

  ‘A rowing boat,’ he said. ‘Wooden. I’m not using it at the moment.’

  ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘Why not? As I said, I’m not using it. It’s not going to put me out if you have it for a while. It’s better that it gets used – they dry out otherwise.’

  I was torn: I wanted a boat with a desire that I hadn’t felt for anything uncomplicated for a long time and yet this wasn’t uncomplicated. I didn’t want to take anything from Peter: it felt dishonest, given my suspicion of him.

  ‘Have you rowed before?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How long ago?’

  I paused, wanting to lie. ‘I don’t know,’ I confessed. ‘Sixteen years – maybe seventeen.’

  ‘You’ll need a refresher then and I’ll have to bring you the oars anyway. What are you doing tomorrow?’

  ‘Working – translating.’ I looked at Ted, now sniffing round Peter’s boots.

  ‘All day?’

  ‘Yes – I’m really busy.’

  ‘So am I so we’ll keep it brief. It’ll take half an hour, at the outside. You know where the slip is, in the harbour? I’ll meet you there at three thirty.’ He turned away and bent to pick up his
bit of cloth.

  Chris’s hand had stayed on my arm and now it slid down and squeezed my fingers so tightly I could feel the bones in them. ‘Good,’ he said.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I walked the long way round to the slip the next day. Coming along the harbour wall, I would have a clear view of where Peter was waiting, if he was there on time. I didn’t like the idea of getting into a boat with him, it being just the two of us, but if I endured this half-hour, the dinghy was mine. And it was a distraction; while I was in the boat – in company – I hoped that I could slip out from underneath the pall of dread which had settled over me again the previous day as soon as I’d been alone.

  When I reached the harbour, I saw Peter at once. He was about five yards from the slipway, idling with the oars, taking small strokes now and again to keep from drifting too far. The boat was wooden, as he had described, and the planks of its varnished hull overlapped tightly so that they had the look of a ribbed cockleshell. It was small, just the right size for me on my own, but it would be tight with both of us.

  By the time I had walked down on to the slip itself, he was alongside. ‘I’ll row for now,’ he said, without any other greeting, ‘and we’ll go up the river a bit, out of the way. Then I’ll show you where you can keep her.’

  Water lapped over the edge of the slip, threatening my trainers, the most appropriate shoes I’d had. I put my hand on the side of the boat and swung my leg in but as I made to do the same with my other leg, the water displaced by my weight washed back and soaked the foot which was still on the concrete. It was icy but I said nothing and pretended I hadn’t noticed. My trainer dripped conspicuously as it came over the side and the bottom six inches of my jeans were plastered on to my leg. I settled on the bench in the stern where he indicated, facing him.

  ‘OK?’

  ‘Fine,’ I said.

  He spun the boat round with a few casual strokes on the left oar and then, rowing with both, took us across the top of the harbour, past the enclosure where the lifeboat was moored and the pontoon outside the harbour office. I had a sudden memory of the first time I’d seen him, standing on the wall there silhouetted against the fading sky, Alice’s scow tied up below and the lights in the lifeboat going out. I risked a quick look at him but it was hard to tell what he was thinking; his face was inscrutable, his eyes fixed on some point behind us, over my head. He was wearing the same clothes as the previous day and I had a clearer view now of the paint on his trousers and mud patches on his knees. There was paint on his hands, too, white among the dark hair on their backs. The size of the boat meant our feet were close together on the boards, my trainers inside his wellingtons, even with my legs drawn back as far as possible. His feet were enormous, almost twice the size of mine.

  ‘Equal pressure on both oars to go straight, just use one if you want to turn,’ he said. ‘If you need to go forward for any reason, reverse the stroke.’

  I suppressed the urge to tell him that I knew. To make the point, I looked away. The harbour was different seen from this angle. As we rounded the long pontoon where the little boats and dinghies were tied up, we passed close to the yachts on our other side, close enough for me to touch. With both our weight, we were sitting low in the water and they towered above us.

  ‘Is it what you had in mind? The boat?’

  I realised with embarrassment that I hadn’t said anything at all about it. ‘It’s lovely. Thank you – it’s very kind of you.’

  He pulled another stroke, leaning back into it to make the most of his body weight. We were coming under the bridge now. Its dark timbers reared up around us and the light was muted. The smell of the river was particularly strong here, that rich salt smell with its fishy top-notes. Oily bladderwrack clung to the supports, exposed by the tide. A few more strokes and we came out from under it again and he turned a little and took us up into the shallower water near the sailing club. Here the scows were moored, bobbing lightly on the water like a group of large coloured gulls. I looked at him quickly but his face was composed. Where was Alice’s scow now? It had had an unusual name – Vespertine. Maybe he didn’t keep it in the water any more. Maybe the police had kept it for evidence.

  He held the oars in the water to stop us. ‘Your turn. We’ll have to be careful when we swap thwarts or one of us will go over the side.’

  ‘Thwarts?’

  ‘The seats – benches; it’s what they’re called. You move first.’

  I stood up gingerly and turned round. As I did so, he ducked over and took my seat at the back. I settled on the central bench – thwart – and braced my feet against the bar in the bottom of the boat as I had seen him do. I put my hands on the oars, which were still warm from his. Turning them so that the blades entered the water squarely, I took a first stroke, feeling the pull of it through my stomach and thighs. I angled the blades so that they were parallel to the water as they went back to take the next stroke, as he had done and as I remembered from years before. He nodded at me. We went up the river, leaving the sailing club behind, passing the larger boats on their moorings. Peter watched the oars and I watched the water behind him, where it fanned out in our wake.

  ‘So you’re a natural,’ he said. I tried to hide my pride but I felt myself smile broadly anyway. I looked at him quickly and saw that he was smiling, too. The unexpectedness of it took me aback. His face looked quite different. Though his eyes were narrowed against the sun, they didn’t look closed and assessing; the fans at their corners looked like laughter lines. He turned out of the sun and met my eye. I looked quickly away and pulled another stroke. I was slightly out of breath from the effort; the boat itself wasn’t light and his weight was a considerable load. I didn’t care, though; I was filled suddenly with something close to euphoria, the sheer pleasure of moving us through the water and the sound of it sluicing past, the clunk of the rowlocks, the breeze blowing strands of hair into my face. I watched as the muscles in my thighs tensed and relaxed and my feet pushed against the bar.

  I took us further and further upstream, glancing over my shoulder occasionally to check our course, keeping silent for fear that if I talked, he’d suggest we turn back. I wanted to go on all afternoon. The river was quiet, and apart from the creak of the oars and the lapping of the water around us, the deep peace was punctured only by the cries of the birds which darted over the surface and the warm drone of a small outboard motor on an inflatable dinghy coming down the estuary. We left the moorings far behind and got up into the shallower water whose edges disappeared amongst the scrubby mudflats. Peter said nothing. He was watching the marshes as we passed them but I wondered whether he was seeing them at all. His eyes were glazed, as though his focus was turned inward, and his lips had gone back into their usual line.

  At the top of the river, feet from the bridge, I stopped rowing and let the oars idle in the water.

  ‘Do you want to take us back or shall I?’ he said, coming out of his trance.

  ‘I’m happy to carry on, unless you’d like to?’

  ‘No – not if you’re happy.’

  The effort had made me hot. I’d taken my jacket off before starting, to free my arms, but now I took off my jumper, too, so that I was down to a long-sleeved T-shirt. I turned the boat around, casually using only the left oar as I had seen him do earlier, feeling as if I had been doing this all my life.

  ‘Go in here,’ he said, as we came back under the bridge and round the pontoon of the dinghy park. ‘You can keep her here for the time being.’

  I brought us alongside and he stepped out on to the jetty. The dinghy rocked as his weight left it. He took the rope from the bow and tied it up to a ring. The cold in the air had made itself felt as soon as I slowed down and I put my jumper back on. I picked up my jacket and gently stood up.

  ‘Pass me the oars and rowlocks,’ he said. ‘Don’t keep them in the boat – they’re too easy to steal.’

  Preparing to get out, I reached for the edge of the pontoon to steady myself but he put o
ut his hand instead. I hesitated but took it. His palm was rough and I felt his strength as he pulled me up out of the boat. Embarrassed by the contact, though, I let go too early. My back foot – the dry one – was still leaving the boat and it caught the edge. I kept my balance but my foot dragged through the water.

  Peter was looking at me. At first I took his expression for consternation but then I realised he was trying not to laugh. ‘At least you’re symmetrical now,’ he said, mouth twitching.

  I tried indignation but couldn’t manage it: the euphoria of the rowing bubbled up and became laughter I couldn’t contain. Peter’s laugh was low and warm, surprising, but when after a few seconds I glanced up to see his face, he stopped abruptly and shoved his hands into his pockets, looking if anything slightly guilty.

  ‘Right, well,’ he said. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’ He turned and headed up the jetty.

  I called after him and he turned round.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘For the boat.’

  He nodded quickly. ‘No problem.’

  Walking back along the harbour front with the oars tucked under my arm, I passed the queue for the ferry. There were more cars waiting than usual, weekend visitors making the Sunday-afternoon return to the mainland. The oars slipped a little and I adjusted them, holding them tighter against my body with my elbow. My feet were soaked, my hair was a rat’s nest and at the base of my fingers I could feel the start of blisters, but it occurred to me that to the non-Islanders I would look like someone with a connection to the water, a local, and I quite liked the idea.

  I crossed between the cars and made my way up to the house. Leaning the oars against the wall, I got the key out of my pocket. A piece of paper had been put through the door. It was a note from Sally, written in a round and looping script, asking me for supper on Tuesday.

  The breeze which tangled my hair on the river had strengthened during the evening and now blew through the rigging of the boats in the harbour to carry its eerie chiming music across the grass to the house. I lay in bed listening to it, too tired by the rowing and the sleeplessness of the night before to stay awake for long. On the rising tide after breakfast, I would take the dinghy out on my own for the first time, and I tried to focus on that rather than the thoughts of Richard that crept up on me again.