Becca at Sea

by Deirdre Baker

  Through the window, Becca could see her bathing suit on the clothesline. It was bobbing in the wind as though it could hardly wait to jump into the sea, but out on the beach, Kay and Marion were packing up their wet towels and the Keswicks had already headed up for their dinner.

  “It’s okay,” she said, filling the sink for the twenty-seventh time that day. “I don’t really feel like swimming. Anyway my scratches still hurt.”

  6. Runabout

  The plumber arrived by sea.

  “And a good thing, too,” remarked Gran, as Becca rowed them out to pick him up at the mooring buoy. “Pull on the starboard oar, Becca.”

  “I am.”

  Becca had to row hard. Waves were bouncing into the Zodiac.

  “It will give Fifi time to collect her wits,” Gran said. “She gets herself into these states. Hard on the port. And I do wish I hadn’t invited Mac, too, if pie is all we have for dinner.”

  For after all, Aunt Fifi had not got beyond making a pie.

  The plumber bobbed about in a fancy motorboat, trying to make fast to Inglenooks’ mooring buoy.

  “It’s an addlepated place for a mooring buoy,” Gran said. “This is no bay to spend the night in a boat. No protection and with the tide in and out so far there’s no depth.”

  “He’s just coming for dinner, isn’t he?” Becca asked.

  “With Fifi around we’ll be lucky if he stays that long,” Gran said. “Hullo, Merlin. Are you ready for a ferry ride?”

  The plumber raised his red face, pushed back a shock of hair.

  “I am,” he said. “And look! A surprise! My brother-in-law told me to try out his boat, so I did some fishing on the way.”

  He brandished a salmon.

  “You are a magician if you managed to snag one of those,” Gran said. “Foresightful, too.”

  Merlin climbed over the stern of his boat and into the lifting, falling Zodiac. “Thanks for coming out to ferry me. I thought I might have to swim in.”

  * * *

  “Look,” said Gran. “It isn’t hard, or even messy.”

  “What’s this?” Becca asked, poking at the salmon’s squishy bits.

  “That’s the liver. And look — here’s its intestine and stomach. If we wanted, we could check out what it’s been eating.”

  “No, thanks,” said Becca. She stroked the salmon’s beautiful silvery side.

  Gran pulled the guts out and threw them into the sea. She sliced off the head and washed the fish.

  “We’ll leave the head for an eagle,” she said.

  Becca put the head on Mermaid’s Rock.

  “Is his name really Merlin?” Becca asked.

  “It is. He’s a wizard with pipes. At least, that’s what his van says.”

  “Do you think they’re arguing about Shakespeare?” Becca asked.

  “They might be,” said Gran. “We’ll take the fish up and referee.”

  But Merlin and Aunt Fifi weren’t arguing. Merlin was washing lettuce and Aunt Fifi was in the garden, snipping herbs.

  “She’s a busy woman,” Merlin told Becca. He could hardly find room for the lettuce among the fifty-seven jars of jelly. “Did somebody die here?” he asked, looking at the stain on the floor.

  * * *

  “Dugald says it will blow,” Becca reported, hanging up the phone. “Winds from the northwest, gusting to thirty knots.”

  “I may have to walk home,” said Merlin, ripping up lettuce and watching his brother-in-law’s boat rise and fall out by the mooring buoy. “Or perhaps you’d give me a lift, Isobel.”

  “Or I will,” said Aunt Fifi. “Would you like a glass of wine? Or would you rather replace the washer in the kitchen tap first?”

  “That would be lovely, thanks,” Merlin said, taking the wine. “Fifi, dear, you don’t even want to think about what I charge.”

  Gran glared at Aunt Fifi, but Becca thought her aunt was being unusually polite.

  Merlin replaced the washer, and the salmon hissed quietly in the oven. Aunt Fifi packed the jars of jelly away and Becca set the table. Mac arrived and it turned out he, too, knew Merlin.

  “When’s that pump going to arrive?” he asked. “I need it in before I move on to the next stage of building. I have relatives coming and the sooner, the better. Here, Isobel — I brought you a nice bottle of my namesake to enjoy on chilly nights.”

  * * *

  “So, Becca,” said Merlin. “Is it my freckles that interest you or do I have something stuck in my teeth?”

  Gran stared sternly at Becca, and Aunt Fifi smiled.

  Becca didn’t know what to say, so she looked at her plate. She couldn’t tell the plumber that she was hoping to hear his teeth clack, or even to see them fall out.

  “I was wondering…” she said.

  Aunt Fifi smirked. Gran looked a warning at Becca, very serious. Even Frank watched her intently — but that was probably the fish.

  “…how you got so interested in Shakespeare,” she finished at last.

  “Shakespeare?”

  “More fish?” Gran asked. She thrust the remains of the salmon in Merlin’s face. No doubt she was thinking of the time last summer when Becca had seen his feet twitching with argument.

  But Merlin smiled. He had quite ordinary teeth, Becca thought, as she stared into his face.

  “I used to be an actor,” he said.

  “A real actor?” Becca asked. “In theaters? I mean, on stage? A real Shakespeare actor?”

  “Indeed.”

  “But how does a plumber get to be a Shakespeare actor?”

  “You mean, how does an actor get to be a plumber,” Merlin corrected her.

  For a moment Aunt Fifi looked stunned, and even Gran was pink in the cheeks.

  “An actor! So that’s why you know nothing about the sonnets,” said Aunt Fifi.

  “Fiona!” Gran warned.

  “What did you act in?” Becca asked.

  “All sorts of things,” Merlin replied. “Mainly the comedies. You know, plays with happy endings, all about love. I played almost every drippy young lover Shakespeare invented.”

  “Drippy!” gasped Aunt Fifi.

  “Face it, Fifi,” Merlin said. “All those young lovers are airheads. Just a bunch of pretty faces.”

  “Pretty faces!”

  Becca looked at Merlin’s beautifully freckled face with its rather ordinary teeth, and thought she could just see him as a handsome lover.

  He grinned at her.

  “I had a terrible accident,” he related, as the wind beat against Gran’s cabin. “I was acting this fellow who goes around sticking poems on trees.”

  “Orlando,” said Aunt Fifi. “As You Like It.”

  Becca knew Aunt Fifi couldn’t help naming the character and the play he came from. It was like Gran identifying birds.

  “The same,” Merlin said. “Well, we had these very lifelike trees, but of course they weren’t exactly rooted to the floor. I went to nail up a poem and in a strange accident — whack! One of them fell and bashed me right in the face.”

  Aunt Fifi looked horrified. So did Gran. But Becca laughed.

  “Well you may laugh,” said the plumber. “That tree ended my career. It knocked out my front teeth, and a few others. That was the end of it. Whoever heard of a Shakespearean actor with no front teeth? No one. Even the oldest, most decrepit character in Shakespeare needs teeth. ‘Last scene of all, which ends this strange eventful history,’’’ he said, suddenly sounding intense and even a little crazy, “‘is second childishness and mere oblivion, sans eyes, sans teeth, sans taste, sans everything.’”

  There was a little silence.

  “‘Sans’ means ‘without,’” he told Becca in his normal voice. “Without eyes, without teeth — you see? Shakespeare knew that when you lose your teeth, y
ou’ve reached the end. Of your acting career, at any rate.”

  “But you have teeth,” Becca pointed out.

  “Completely artificial,” Merlin said, tapping his front incisors. “Look!”

  For the tiniest instant he removed them, and Becca saw a dark and toothless space. It made him look completely different, as though he did actually belong in a play, and wasn’t Merlin at all. Then he put them back in and looked like the plumber again.

  “That’s… interesting,” Becca said. No doubt this was the secret of the teeth-clacking.

  “Remarkable,” Aunt Fifi said.

  “Yes,” agreed Merlin. “You wouldn’t think Shakespeare could affect your teeth so drastically. For a while there I thought I’d be eating through a straw for the rest of my days.”

  “I didn’t mean your teeth,” Aunt Fifi said, annoyed. “I meant, that you’ve acted in all those plays! You must know them through and through.”

  “I do,” Merlin said. “I know them by heart.”

  He crossed his hands over his chest.

  Aunt Fifi looked thoughtful as she cleared the dishes from the table. She was probably thinking about how she had called the plumber an oaf.

  * * *

  “This is terrific pie,” Merlin said.

  “Even on its own it would have made a superlative dinner,” said Mac.

  “One of your best, Fifi,” Gran agreed.

  “It must be all the blood,” Becca said, showing Mac and Merlin her arms with their scabbed-over scratches.

  “Yes,” Merlin said. “No one tells you that acting Shakespeare or picking berries can be life-threatening. They just let you learn for yourself.”

  “Doing anything with Aunt Fifi can be life-threatening,” Becca whispered. She liked the plumber and wanted to warn him.

  “I believe you,” he whispered back, but before Becca could tell him and Mac how Aunt Fifi had flooded the house with jelly today and fallen into the blackberry bushes yesterday, Aunt Fifi returned to the table.

  “Let’s take our coffee out to the deck,” she suggested. “It’s windy but nice. And we won’t have to look at the dirty dishes.”

  “I’ll do the dishes,” Merlin offered.

  “Later,” said Aunt Fifi, and led the way out to the deck. She seized a mug of coffee and plonked herself in a deck chair.

  “So you feel the young lovers are drippy,” she said.

  “Saps, to a man,” Merlin agreed. “Lovely coffee.”

  “It could be that that’s not the most important thing about them,” said Aunt Fifi sternly.

  “Of course it is! Think of Orlando’s awful poetry!”

  “Poetry!” cried Aunt Fifi. “What do you know about poetry?”

  “Look at that boat,” Becca said. “Isn’t it kind of windy to be out in a boat?”

  “It is,” said Mac. “There’ll be a gale force warning in effect by tonight and gusts from the northwest up to fifty knots. That boat won’t last a minute.”

  “What boat?” Aunt Fifi asked, but she hurried on. “Merlin, I don’t know why you have this anger, this unreasonableness, about poetry! A man who used to act Shakespeare!”

  “What’s unreasonable about it?” Merlin demanded.

  “Nobody would be silly enough to go out in a small boat in this weather,” Gran assured Becca.

  “Well, there’s nobody in it,” Becca reported. “It looks like it’s all on its own.”

  “Another rescue!” predicted Mac. “What is it with you people and boats?”

  Becca saw the light of the setting sun glint off the windshield. The boat hung on the crest of a wave, lurched and disappeared into the next trough.

  “It’s an inboard-outboard,” Becca said. “Same kind Merlin came in.”

  “They aren’t listening,” said Gran. “In case you hadn’t noticed. Woe is me! He’s the only plumber on the island!”

  Huge swooshing breakers tore and foamed into the bay and up on to the beach. On the point, great curtains of white spray tossed themselves carelessly straight up into the air, hung suspended for a moment and then fell back into the sea.

  “Isn’t that what you call broadside to the waves?” Becca asked.

  “Broadside to the waves!” exclaimed Gran, leaping to her feet. “It certainly is! Merlin, isn’t that your brother-in-law’s boat?”

  “How can you say that, Fifi?” Merlin argued. “‘Mind’ and ‘Rosalind’ don’t even rhyme, and that’s one of Orlando’s better efforts. What did you say, Isobel? What boat? Oh, great Pollux! Oh, Neptune’s noggin!” Merlin cried, tearing down the steps to the beach. “Arnulf’s boat! It’s going to be wrecked!”

  “Becca, it’s time for a swim,” Gran told her. “Run and get the suits — Fifi’s, too. Hurry.”

  “I knew that mooring line was no good!” Merlin wailed. “I told Arnulf!”

  “Mooring line, nothing,” retorted Gran. “You need a few lessons in knots.”

  “I hope his plumbing skills are better than his boating skills,” Mac remarked and jumped down on to the beach.

  Panting, Becca pulled on her bathing suit. Gran and Aunt Fifi were out the door before her, running down the beach like a couple of fleeing goddesses Becca had seen once in a painting. They were like goddesses in sensible bathing suits. Even in the twilight she could see Aunt Fifi’s long legs flash, and then Gran’s. They raced past the wailing Merlin and ran out on to the sand and into the foaming breakers.

  Becca caught up to them in the shallows.

  “What are we going to do now?” she shouted. The wind blew her hair straight out from her scalp and hurled spray into her face.

  “We have to catch the boat before the waves smash it on to the beach,” Aunt Fifi yelled. “Come on!”

  Becca seized Aunt Fifi’s hand and headed into the oncoming seas.

  “The water’s warm!”

  “It’s lovely!” Gran and Aunt Fifi shouted.

  * * *

  Merlin’s brother-in-law’s launch had taken on a life of its own. It reared above them broadside to the cresting waves, and whenever Aunt Fifi jumped for the bow, it jerked out of reach.

  “We want to turn it around,” Gran hollered. “Take it in bow first.”

  Smooth white fiberglass rose high above Becca and dropped down before the next roller. Her hands slipped off the wet sides.

  “Stand back, Becca!” Gran shouted. “It might hit you!”

  In the dusk, in the bounding waves, the boat was like a huge clumsy animal leaping wilfully just out of reach.

  It wallowed into a trough, and there was the low part of the stern where the motor was. It was made so people could climb over it. There were even handles to make it easier.

  “Hey!” Becca called.

  The wind blustered, the waves rolled, and nobody heard her.

  The boat lifted, slid sideways.

  Becca gripped the handle. A wave heaved the boat upwards and Becca went with it.

  “Hey!” she shrieked.

  “Becca!” Gran called.

  “I’ve got it!” Becca yelled.

  “Of course!” said Gran, suddenly hanging on to the transom next to Becca. “We can turn it from behind. Merlin! Fifi!” she boomed into the coming dark. “Mac!”

  “Push,” said Merlin, appearing beside Becca, dripping and warm. “Push, Fifi!”

  Waves sloshed, lifted and pushed. Becca rose and fell so that sometimes her toes weren’t even touching the sand. She and Merlin, Aunt Fifi, Mac and Gran shoved and pulled, tugging at the back of the boat. Seawater splashed into Becca’s face, into her mouth. Little by little the stern went round; the bow pointed into the beach.

  Aunt Fifi and the plumber each seized a gunwale and started to guide the boat into the shallows.

  “Maybe we can take the motor off and haul the boat up onto the b
each,” Merlin hollered. “I could get Arnulf’s boat trailer and tow it home. But it’ll be too heavy to get up the beach with this big motor on.”

  “It won’t work!” Aunt Fifi said. “You won’t get the motor off a boat like this that easily. We should just haul it up and wait for morning and better weather.” She sounded quite kind.

  “You’re right,” Merlin said, pushing uselessly at the motor.

  “Never mind,” said Aunt Fifi. “It’ll be safe on the beach.”

  “I don’t dare leave it,” Merlin replied. “It’s not even mine! What if something happens to it?”

  “We’ll babysit it,” Aunt Fifi told him.

  “That’s asking for trouble,” Gran grumbled to Becca and Mac, as they pushed the boat forward until the waves beached it, gently enough, on the sand.

  But Becca had suddenly realized something. First, that Aunt Fifi was having a great time, and second, that she liked the plumber.

  * * *

  Aunt Fifi took a thermos down to the boat, along with Gran’s lantern and a couple of beach chairs. Merlin had already changed into dry things — a pair of Grandpa’s old sweatpants with no elastic and a mustard-colored sweater full of holes. Gran kept them stored for such emergencies, but they left Merlin’s wrists and ankles bare to the elements.

  “Life is so eventful around you,” Mac told Becca before he left. “What do you do to get these adults so wound up? Or is it just that your cousins aren’t here for you to drag up and down cliffs, so you have to find some other excitement?”

  “I didn’t do anything!” Becca protested.

  “So you say!” said Mac, and he departed, dripping, for his own cabin.

  Becca looked down toward the beach. She could see the tiny glow of Gran’s lantern reflecting off the boat’s shiny hull, making shadows of Merlin and Aunt Fifi.

  “What do you think they’re talking about?” she asked.

  “They shouldn’t be sitting out there together,” Gran said gloomily. “And all night, too! No good will come of it. And he’s the only plumber on the island!”