by Peters, Sue
`I’m Roddy. O.K., Skipper, I’ve got her,’ he introduced himself, and took firm hold of Jo at one and the same time, and pulled her along the deck for a foot or two to enable Dan to bring both feet on to the Kittiwake and help Lance perform a similar service for Chris.
`Our new apprentice,’ Dan introduced the boy laconically to Roddy, who grinned in a friendly manner. ‘Keep an eye on him,’ he instructed the redhead, and for a moment the eyes of the youth and the man met. Roddy nodded. ‘He’ll be all right with me, Skipper. Come on, young ‘un.’ With a look of dazed delight on his face Chris stumbled after this new hero, and Jo smiled.
`Thank you.’ She looked full at Dan, letting her gratitude show, and for a moment the self-contained sailor looked disconcerted. ‘Do I qualify as crew?’ Jo asked him meekly, taking pity on his obvious embarrassment.
`You can make the kye. I’ll show you what’s in the wheelhouse,’ he told her gruffly, and took her arm, steadying her as she walked uncertainly forward. ‘You’ll find it helps if you develop a nautical roll,’ he said amusedly as she staggered on the shifting boards. ‘Stand still for a minute until the Sea Swallow’s gone past, we’re catching her wash.’ He stood still himself and drew her to him, keeping her within the circle of his arm as a similar vessel came in close, following the curve of the harbour wall as it headed for the entrance and out to the open sea. The man at the wheel did not even glance in their direction and Jo saw his pipe stuck belligerently from the side of his mouth. Amos made it plain he disapproved of women aboard fishing boats.
`What’s kye?’ Jo let her ignorance show in order to cover her confusion. Dan’s arm round her made her feel sheltered, and safe—and suddenly shy. Lance’s mischievous grin did nothing to help, and she wrinkled her nose at him, silently begging him to stop.
`A sort of thick sweet cocoa, with a knob of butter in it
and a lacing of rum.’ Dan’s deep voice rumbled through his chest, and sent unaccountable tremors through her that she decided she did not want to listen to.
`Ugh!’ She brought her attention back to his recipe, and shuddered.
`It helps to keep the cold out when you’re gutting fish in a keen wind,’ he told her calmly. ‘Come on, she’s steadier now. If you stay in the wheelhouse, you’ll be able to see everything that’s going on, and keep warm at the same time,’ he told her. ‘I’ll send Chris in to you now and then, to make sure he does too,’ he added.
`Shan’t we be in your way?’ It rather sounded as if he was parking her out of his way, she thought ruefully, but like Chris she had every intention of doing exactly as she was told while she was aboard the Kittiwake. The boat was Dan’s world, and on it she acknowledged that as master he had the right to reign supreme. Ashore it was a different matter …
`Once we’re out on the grounds you’ll have the wheelhouse to yourself,’ he told her. ‘There’s the stove, if you insist on being a member of the crew,’ his lips twitched slightly. ‘The supplies are in the rack,’ he indicated a deep wire basket affair screwed to the bulkhead, ‘you’ll have to use condensed milk—we don’t bother with bottles on board, they’re liable to get broken. Oh, and if it gets rough, use the fiddles on the stove, it’s safer. Ready to go, Lance?’ he stuck his head back through the wheelhouse door, and at Lance’s cheery affirmative went to join him and left Jo to sort herself out.
`Fiddles? What fiddles?’ She could see nothing that looked remotely like a fiddle. A steady vibration from the deck under her feet told her they were under way, and glancing through the windows of the wheelhouse she could see the harbour wall already beginning to recede. Dan had been right about having a good view, the little enclosure
was all glass from about the height of her waist, which took away any claustrophobic effect its size might have had.
`You don’t get seasick, I hope?’ Dan rejoined her, guiding his boat with a light touch towards the entrance to the harbour.
`I never have been yet.’ Sudden doubt assailed her, and she thrust it hastily from her mind. Seasickness was mostly a matter of nerves, she told herself robustly. But it would be just her luck to suffer a baptism while she was in Dan’s company. To divert her mind she took stock of the minute wheelhouse. With Dan occupying it as well, his bulk made it look even smaller, and she crouched on the wooden bench type seat running along its length and pulled her feet up under her, so that they occupied as little floor space as possible, and tried not to think of the varied smells that assailed her nostrils. A mixture of salt, tar, fish, and wet oilskins, to say nothing of the acrid reek of diesel oil, would not help if she became queasy.
`I usually keep the door open.’ Dan spoke without turning round, his attention occupied on his route. ‘It takes off the effect of the engine smells.’ He left her to open or close the door if she wanted to, whether from indifference to her comfort or consideration in case she might feel cold she was left to conjecture.
I’ll have to ask him what fiddles are, she decided re luctantly at last, occupying the ensuing silence with looking round her. It meant she would have to show her ignorance for the second time, but she discovered she did not care. I’m enjoying myself after all, she realised. In spite of its size, or lack of it, the wheelhouse was a cosy place to be, and at a squeeze there would be room enough for them all if the weather turned really wet.
`The Kittiwake isn’t as big as I thought it would be.’ She had imagined, from the pride with which Dan spoke of his boat, it would be much larger.
`She’s under sixty feet long,’ he told her. ‘There’s a local byelaw that forbids a bigger boat from fishing within three miles of the shore, so I keep the fleet below the regulation length, and it gives a greater margin of choice for working, particularly when the shoals come right into the bay. They do sometimes.’
`It still seems small.’ She glanced at the seemingly endless expanse of water confronting them as Dan let the spokes of the wheel trickle through his fingers, and put the arms of the harbour gradually astern.
`She only seems small in contrast to her surroundings.’ Dan spoke of his boat as if it was a human being. ‘If she was in a canal she’d look big enough to you then,’ he said with unanswerable logic. ‘Don’t worry, the Kittiwake can take any weather that’s likely to blow up around these coasts,’ her master assured Jo confidently.
She was glad to hear it. She was not exactly nervous, she told herself, but her land-bred feet were accustomed to terrain that stood obligingly still, and the Kittiwake was responding to the rhythm of the open sea. In the calm water inside the harbour walls the boat rocked with cradle-like gentleness, but now it shivered like a live thing and lifted its bows eagerly to the oncoming sea, which passed with a hissing rush of water as the vessel pitched.
`We’re all set now until we reach the grounds.’ Lance poked an enquiring head into the wheelhouse. ‘I could do with a cup of tea,’ he hinted thirstily.
`I thought you drank—what was it?’ Jo tried to remember the name of the revolting mixture Dan had told her about.
`Kye? No, that comes later, when we’ve finished gutting and stowing,’ Lance told her. ‘And you won’t pull a face like that when you’re frozen to the bone and still within hours of home and a fire,’ he told her. ‘You’ll be glad enough to drink a mug of kye then. I’ll put the kettle on to boil now,’ he offered.
`Jo’s in charge of the galley,’ Dan told him, ‘the water’s in that container in the corner. Just turn the tap at the bottom,’ he instructed her.
`I’ll take that.’ Jo swung to her feet and relieved Lance of the kettle. She knelt beside the water container, unsure whether or not to resent what amounted to an order from Dan. She had offered to be part of the crew, and evidently he had taken her at her word.
`I’ll let him see I can manage by myself,’ she vowed, and reached out hurriedly and grasped the edge of the stove to keep her balance as she stood up again and the boat gave a livelier than usual buck just as she regained her feet.
`Try not to spill the water
, it’s all we’ve got to last us until we get ashore again.’
Jo compressed her lips as Dan spoke to her without bothering to turn. He could not possibly have seen the water slop over her hand before she managed to get the lid of the kettle in place, so it must be pure guesswork on his part that she had had a spill. The fact that he guessed correctly annoyed her unreasonably, and he did not miss the opportunity to criticise her, she thought, vexed that he seemed to be making a sport of her difficulty in keeping her balance. She clattered the kettle on to the top of the stove with a feeling of relief at having got it safely where it belonged, and turned to look for a match.
`Watch it!’ Dan reached across her and grabbed the kettle as it slid at the behest of the pitching vessel, and would have crashed to the floor, water and all, but for his intervention. ‘I told you to use the fiddles.’
`Fiddles mean violins to me,’ Jo snapped, her patience running out. ‘And it’s unreasonable to want cups of tea when nothing will stand still for two minutes together,’ she told him blackly. ‘Surely it would be easier, and safer, to bring flasks with you? If the kettle had been boiling there could have been a bad accident.’ She steadied it as it tried to slide back the other way, and the spout instantly re-gurgitated some more of its precious contents.
`You’ve filled it too full.’ Dan picked it up and poured half of its contents back into the water container. ‘It’s better to give the water room to surge, that way you won’t get scalded. And the fiddles are to stop it from slipping over the edge of the stove,’ he added, reaching down and fishing out some long narrow pieces of metal, which he proceeded to fit into slots along the top of the stove, making a safe barrier several inches high all along the sides.
`I’ve seen wooden ones used on the table of a cruise liner in rough weather, but I didn’t know they were called fiddles.’ Enlightenment dawned on Jo as she watched him at work. ‘And the liner didn’t heave up and down at the same speed as the Kittiwake either,’ she added critically, resenting what she considered to be his superior attitude to her land-accustomed clumsiness, that made her stagger on the unsteady deck as she released the edge of the stove to give Dan room to put the kettle behind the newly fixed restraints.
`A cruise liner is bigger and heavier than the Kittiwake, it would sit lower in the water,’ he retorted calmly. ‘That would make it more stable.’ He reached out and steadied her with his free arm, and used his other hand to lodge the kettle safely on the stove. Unhurriedly he lit the burner underneath it, and when he was satisfied that it was going nicely he clasped his one hand loosely in the other, behind her back. Unresisting, he drew her to him, and looked deep into her startled eyes with an enigmatic smile in his own.
But it wouldn’t be half so much fun,’ he said. And kissed her.
CHAPTER FIVE
IT was a tantalising kiss—half jest, half taunt, full on her parted lips, so that her gasp of surprise was stilled to silence by the firm pressure of his own.
For a moment she lay passive in his arms, stunned into immobility by the unexpectedness of his action, and then she stirred, and struggled to break free, and he released her, though he still kept one hand lightly on the stove behind her, so that when she stumbled backwards, caught unawares again by the movement of the boat, she came up against the hard whipcord strength of his arm instead of a sharp corner of the wheelhouse furniture, and did not bruise herself.
`You—you !’ she put her hands to her burning cheeks, and choked into indignant silence. Still his blue eyes held her, boring into hers, watching her reaction, and she could not look away. His look mesmerised her, and the bleak grey world of water and sky outside the windows of the wheelhouse, and the presence of the others on the boat, faded into unreality as she stared back at him, trapped by his compelling stare.
Had he ever kissed Tessa Tremayne like this? The question came, she did not know from where, and it should not matter to her. But it did. Had he, perhaps, brought Tessa out with him on the Kittiwake, and made love to her? With the boat surrounded by a sheet of inhospitable water, there would be no way she could escape, even if she wanted to. But Tessa would not want to escape, of that she felt sure—and realised with dismay that only half of herself wanted to. The commonsense half, that told her to flee while there was still time, before her throbbing heart became irretrievably tangled in the carelessly flung meshes of this fisherman’s net. Part of the flotsam and jetsam that Tessa had accused him of collecting.
Tessa had accused him of being soft-hearted, as well, but Jo did not agree. It was no kindness to her, she thought wretchedly, to casually kiss, and awaken her heart to a swift response when she would fain it had remained free. Now she knew, with a feeling akin to fear, that it would never be wholly free again. Part of it—the sweetest part, that Melvin for some reason had never awakened—would always belong to the master of the Kittiwake, and sail with him on his frail barque that his brother had laughingly compared with a wife to its owner. And it would leave herself with only the empty shell of the part that was left, to chart an uncertain course across a sea of future days that suddenly looked bleaker to Jo, and more stormy, than the reality they floated on now.
`Here’s Lance, with Chris.’ She grasped desperately at the diversion, anything to enable her to break away from Dan’s stare. To her relief he turned and looked towards his brother.
`They’ve come for a cup of tea, I expect, and it’s not ready yet.’ He made it sound like an accusation of inefficiency, and Jo gritted her teeth. The moment was gone, the sweet, shattering moment between herself and Dan that had lasted for perhaps two minutes, and done damage to her heart that a lifetime would not repair.
`It’s almost ready.’ The kettle gave a cheery signal just as Lance appeared, pushing Chris in front of him.
`That’s the only thing that’s allowed to whistle on board,’ he told the youngster solemnly. ‘If anyone else whistles, it’s bad luck.’
`Don’t stuff his head full of that nonsense,’ Dan said sharply, ‘or he’ll grow up with as many taboos as Amos. One in the fleet is quite bad enough.’ He ladled tea into the pot with an expert hand, and adding water from the noisy
kettle, put it back on the stove, safely behind the fiddles. `Give it a minute to brew, you’ll find mugs in the cupboard underneath the seat.’
She delved and discovered half a dozen enamel mugs slotted safely into holes drilled out of a board shelf. For a second her heart misgave her. Everything on board seemed geared to withstand the onslaught of rough water. Except herself and Chris, and if it came the child would probably be more thrilled than afraid. He still retained a sublime faith in the grown-up world that Jo herself no longer shared.
`I’ll pour out, you sit down,’ Lance took pity on her unsteady stance. ‘Chris is finding his sea legs a lot quicker than you are,’ he teased.
`That’s because my one leg’s a bit shorter than the other since the accident.’ Chris seemed unaware of the sudden silence that descended on the wheelhouse, and went on matter-of-factly, ‘Roddy says it’s an advantage really, when the boat tips I can put my longer leg on the bit that goes down, and it helps level me up.’ He accepted a half filled mug of generously sugared tea, and looked askance at the door. ‘What about Roddy’s?’ he asked, considerate of his new hero, and innocent of the sudden compassion in the faces of the two men in the wheelhouse, and the quick tears that stung Jo’s eyes.
`Roddy will have his tea next.’ Dan found his voice first. `We’ll be shooting the nets soon,’ he talked on, easing the tension, and accepted his mug, half full the same as the one Chris held. ‘It only spills if you fill it to the top.’ He glanced across at Jo and she felt a quick flash of vexation. She could have sorted that out for herself, she thought tartly. Dan must think she was witless to need advising on every tiny detail.
`I’ll take this one for Roddy.’ Lance picked up the last mug and prepared to depart.
`I want you to stay in here as observer.’ Dan checked
Chris’s move to f
ollow him. ‘Keep an eye on the wheel for me, will you?’ he asked gravely. ‘It should stay steady.’ He carefully fixed it so that a hurricane wouldn’t shift it, thought Jo, but she said nothing, grateful for his attention to the boy. ‘If it shows signs of breaking loose, come and let me know. Oh, and if you kneel on the end of the seat,’ he turned in the act of quitting the wheelhouse, ‘you’ll see everything that’s going on. Try and remember what happens, and when you’re as big as Roddy you’ll know what to do without being told.’ He spoke as if he took it for granted that the boy would come out on future trips, and looking at her brother’s rapt face as he obediently curled up on the seat and pressed his nose against the glass pane, determined not to miss a move anyone made, Jo realised Dan had just made it even harder for her to leave Penderick House than it had been before.