by Ru Pringle
SHE’S CONFRONTED by a desk of dog-eared and heavily-pencilled nautical charts. A pencil, a chunky and well-used rubber, brass dividers, and something that looks like a huge hillwalking compass have been placed on them to stop them curling. Beyond the desk, beams of sunlight from the window-slits illuminate the living area’s table, whose folding wings have both been raised. Plates and cutlery are laid out, along with a bowl of bread, a pack of butter and a saucepan of what looks like porridge. Pride of place is given to a plastic tray containing the aluminium kettle and mugs she remembers from last night. The kettle is steaming.
‘Morning.’
Alistair’s wearing what could easily be pyjama bottoms and a faded T-shirt of olive hemp. The pyjamas are tie-dyed maroon. His thick blond hair is untied, hanging down to his chest. Barefooted, he looks loose, lean and very fit. Coira watches sinews moving in his arm as he transfers a spitting frying pan to a mat on the table. The smell from the eggs in it is driving her crazy.
‘Sorry,’ he says, wiping his hands on a dish towel decorated with Kylo Ren and other characters from an old Star Wars film. ‘Should have warned you. Was it right on the edge?’
At first she doesn’t understand why he’s rubbing his forehead. Then she copies him. Her newest bruise is hot under her fingers. ‘Ah. Yes, I think so.’ She’s distracted by the food. There are wrinkles at the corners of Alistair’s eyes as he slides on to the bigger of the two couches.
‘Never sleep in there if you’re drunk,’ he says, darkly. ‘Anyway, I hope you had a good rest. Looked like you could do with one.’
He gestures at the table.
‘So … eggs are fresh from a farm down the coast. Bread I made yesterday. Just tuck in. There’s cheese in the fridge if you want some – nice kebbuck from Kintyre. Um … I also have diluting juice, and bramble jam. Not the Ritz, I’m afraid. I wasn’t really expecting to be entertaining.’
Needing no further prompting, she bum-shuffles on to the nearest bench and crams bread in her mouth. Mmmmmph! She spreads butter on a further couple of slices as she chews, scoops an egg from the frying pan, and makes a sandwich of it as Alistair pours them both tea.
‘Water’s probably okay without boiling, but the tanks make it taste a bit, um, stale.’
She nods, chewing. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve any coffee?’
‘Sorry. Habit I never picked up.’
As he pours himself a bowl of porridge, Coira can’t help studying his face. It’s remarkably like the one she remembers, despite the honey-brown hair covering much of it. A beard suits him, she decides. His face was always quite long, and the hair balances it somehow. Having added jam, he begins eating, with evident pleasure. Just a year younger than her, and she could swear the bastard doesn’t have a single grey hair. His eyes are as eerily penetrating as ever. Just as sapphire blue. Sadder, she thinks, but then life does that to you. He isn’t balding. Despite shadows under his eyes and a careworn air, he looks ten years younger than he is.
She sips tea, lubricating a bolus of egg and bread that she’s swallowed too quickly. Its warmth is heavenly. Damn it, he’s still a good-looking man.
‘I took us along the south coast,’ Alistair’s telling her, as if to break the slightly awkward silence. ‘Of Mull, I mean. I was going to anchor in the bay near Lochbuie, but it looks like there’s a migrant camp there now, so I kept going. We’re not far from Ardalanish.’
She doesn’t know – can’t remember – where Ardalanish is.
‘Awesome beach!’ he exclaims, seeing her expression. ‘No one about. Speaking of which, I’m going for a swim after breakfast. You’re welcome to join me.’
She almost chokes. ‘Seriously?’
‘You won’t find me joking about something so important.’
Despite herself, she returns his grin, mouth full of sandwich.
‘What have you done to your hands?’ He beckons across the table, examining her reluctantly extended palms with a scowl. ‘Shit, Coira, these look bad. How on earth did you do this?’
Yup, his accent has definitely gone English. ‘Long story. It’s been quite a few days. I never realised it was like this up here.’
‘You and me both.’
His eyes are still focused on her hands. She snatches them away. ‘Look, don’t mother me. They’re fine. It’s not like I haven’t got worse elsewhere.’ This makes him grimace.
‘Seriously, though. What happened to you? Why were you …’
‘Rowing from a war zone in a fucking dustbin lid?’
This makes him snort.
‘I’ve had a few things on my plate.’
‘No shit.’
‘Things haven’t … been going entirely well. And I just wanted …’ She stares at the table, unable to get the words out. ‘Well, needed, I think, to come … You know. Mum and Dad.’
Face collapsing, Alistair reaches across the table. ‘No, it’s okay. I understand.’
‘I wanted to go to Glenamachrie.’ She angrily wipes away what’s leaking from her eyes. She isn’t putting this on: her face is screwing up of its own volition. ‘I hadn’t expected things over here to be so bad.’ Her throat makes a strange gulping sound as her lips peel back from her teeth. ‘Fuck, Alistair, I didn’t even get to see their graves.’
She’s acutely conscious of Alistair’s breathing. ‘The government isn’t exactly trumpeting what’s going on up here,’ he murmurs. She returns to chewing. Studies her plate as Alistair sips tea.
‘You?’ she asks after a while. ‘Have you escaped from care?’ This causes him to eject tea onto the table. ‘I mean, I have to ask. Who in their right mind would be cruising around here right now …’
‘… In a wee sailing boat?’
He dries his nose and chin on the dish towel. Replaces the tea he’s spilt, pours more porridge, and adds another dollop of jam.
‘Well, the answer to your first question is no. As for your second … Truth is, I’ve been asking myself the same thing quite a lot in the last few days. Especially since last night.’
He looks up at the blue sky framed by one of the windows. His irises are like cut crystal.
‘I don’t know, Coira. A lot of things brought me here. Number one is that I might not have a job when I get back. On top of that, things with my messed-up family are … difficult, to say the least, and with everything so, whatever the hell everything is now, I think I needed –’ His nose wrinkles as he turns to her. ‘I don’t know. Something to remind myself why I was still alive.’
He looks away again, sheepish.
‘Sounds melodramatic when I say it like that, but I really think I’d forgotten what it felt like. Being alive. Why it mattered. And the way things are going …’ He looks at the steps, chewing his lip. ‘I think something was telling me that the time when people get to do this kind of thing is coming to an end. That this might be the last chance I get.’ His brow creases as his eyes turn back to hers again.
‘Does that sound really stupid?’
Coira shakes her head. No. It doesn’t.
There’s a pause.
‘So what’s this job you might not be going back to?’ she asks smoothly, picking a stubborn bit of egg from her teeth. She sucks her fingers. ‘Sounds like something high-powered.’
‘Oh. Well, not really. I’m kind of a civil servant.’
For a moment she doesn’t breathe. ‘You work for the government?’
‘Tangentially. The firm I work for is under government contract, essentially. It’s, um, not that exciting. Kind of human resource management. Far too much time near a desk, to be honest – and before you ask, yes, it’s bloody stressful.’ He takes a mouthful of porridge. ‘Even if they let me, I’m really not sure I want to go back.’
He looks lost. If he knows what I’m supposed to have done, he is a very good actor. ‘Funny,’ she tells him. ‘For a while in our teens I thought you’d end up being a commando. Or a secret service agent or something.’
‘So what do you do?’ he asks around his mouthful. ‘I was never sure how you’d wind up spending your life. I thought maybe, I don’t know, a peace activist. Greenpeace, or Amnesty International or something.’
‘Police officer.’
His spoon stops on its journey to his mouth and his eyebrows shoot up. ‘Seriously?’
She nods. ‘Though I might not have a job to return to either.’ Responding to his expression, she says, ‘I was meant to be guarding someone. Someone important. I can’t say much about it, but … I fucked up. People got hurt.’
‘Terrorist attack?’
Something inside her twists and bellows, but she just nods.
‘Bloody idiots,’ he says, looking away. ‘That was never the way to change things.’
‘But charging into another country’s capital city with tanks and armed aircraft was perfectly okay?’
He looks irritated. ‘Come on, Coira. That’s ancient history now. And the way world events were going, we both know it was inevitable.’
‘Even if I accepted for one minute that was true – that makes it right?’
Now he’s holding his hands up. Clearly meant to be pacifying, it just makes her blood boil faster. ‘Hey, hey!’ he’s saying. ‘I see some things haven’t changed.’
‘So do I,’ she fires back, hotly.
‘But we’ve only been talking ten minutes! Having not even seen each other for – what?’
She regards him levelly. ‘Twenty years.’
‘Exactly! Jesus. And here we go already.’
He sighs, hard.
‘Please. Let’s finish our breakfast, then come outside. You’ll see – it’s a lovely day. Let’s go for a swim. Or we can take the dinghy to the beach, if you prefer? Let’s not fight. If we need to put the world to rights, we should do it properly, in the evening, over a bottle of wine.’
Maybe he has changed. With great effort she stamps down on what’s boiled up inside of her. Puts it into the pressure cooker she uses to contain it, where it bucks and seethes quietly. ‘English wine?’ she inquires, with only half-feigned disgust. He grins.
‘I’ve a couple of bottles from near Lincoln. Lincolnshire’s growing some of the finest Riesling in the world right now.’
‘The water out there’ll be freezing.’
‘Actually, it’s not far from the warmest it’s been all year. There’s a lag because of water’s thermal mass.’
‘I don’t have a physics degree. Or a swimming costume.’
‘Coincidentally, neither do I.’
‘Fuck’s sake.’
AFTER USING THE HEADS and borrowing Alistair’s toothbrush, Coira follows him through the hatch into bright morning air. The sunlight is warm but filtered by the omnipresent mid-century haze, from forests on fire half a world away. The breeze is from the south-east, according to the boat’s compass and wind-vane. It feels positively balmy.
Alistair’s boat is anchored in the mouth of a narrow bay. Between rocky arms of land, a small beach transmutes from silver-white through aquamarine to royal blue beneath the boat. Out to sea, a thickening of the horizon might be the island of Colonsay. She could probably see Ireland if it was clear. The sea is languid. No people are visible; there are no buildings. Other than the complete absence of wildlife and the storm-line of sun-rotted plastic, it feels like the kind of holiday scene people used to fly across the world to visit.
There’s a little inflatable dinghy lashed to the foredeck. Alistair unties it, flips it over, and launches it carelessly over the side, towing it to the stern by a cord tied to the bow. As he unclips the chrome gate by the tiller, she sees that it hinges down to the water, forming a ladder. Having unclamped a tiny outboard engine from the rail near the stern, he shoulders a small blue bag and jumps nimbly into the dinghy to fit the outboard.
He pulls the cord. The engine splutters to life.
‘You’re burning diesel?’
‘Perk of a government contractor,’ he tells her. ‘Biodiesel. It’s mainly for the dinghy, though. The main boat only has enough for emergencies. Shall we go?’ He holds up a hand, which she takes for balance as she steps down into the boat. For the first time, she notices the name emblazoned in white on the navy blue paint of the stern.
‘“Otter’s Pocket”? Really?’
To her amusement Alistair actually blushes, holding his palms out in protest. ‘Not guilty. She was Otter’s Pocket when I got her. I never got round to changing it.’
She treats him to what her mum would have called “cod-eye”. ‘Thousands wouldn’t, but I’ll believe you.’
THEY PUTTER TOWARDS THE SHORE in a fug of diesel exhaust, beaching near a strand-line of seaweed and the omnipresent jellyfish. She tiptoes across the glistening barrier and helps Alistair haul the dinghy after them.
‘You know, people could come at any time,’ she gripes, rubbing her arms as he strips his clothes into a heap on the sand. ‘We’ve no idea who’s around.’ She can’t help staring. He doesn’t have the physique of a bodybuilder. He’s more like an endurance athlete, with sinewy muscles clearly defined all over his body. His shoulders seem broader than she remembers. As, perhaps, is his waist. He’s definitely grown more body hair.
‘True. But we could also be killed any minute by a meteor.’
Alistair vaults the line of jellyfish and splashes noisily into the sea. A yelp tells her the temperature isn’t quite as tropical as he’s been making out. She watches his back arch, like a dolphin’s, and his feet rise and disappear. He surfaces half a minute later, much further out.
Coira sighs. Finds herself smiling as she too strips off. This is too surreal. She runs fingers over the scabbed stitches in her groin. Hopes they aren’t too obvious, and that seawater won’t reopen the wound.
She scampers down the beach and plunges in.
IT’S COLD ENOUGH to steal the breath from her as she dives in. After the initial shock, however, she finds herself adapting, even enjoying the feeling. When she puts her head under, blue-fringed jellyfish are all around, but they’re small and blue – about the size of a drinks coaster. Not a species with stinging tentacles. She surfaces to see Alistair almost halfway back to his boat. She suspects the beach is for her benefit and that, if alone, he’d have jumped straight off the deck.
She breast-strokes around by herself for a few minutes before the cold starts taking its toll, then splashes back up onto the beach, her skin tingling as though from a pleasant electric shock.
She feels healthier than she has in days.
In Alistair’s blue bag she finds a couple of travel towels. She wraps herself in one and sits in the sand, watching him stride out of the sea towards her. His genitals, she can’t help noticing, have almost disappeared into the dark bush between his legs.
‘That was bracing,’ he admits, as he begins drying himself.
‘So I saw.’ She draws the towel closer as he pulls on his trousers and sits in the sand an arm’s length away. The air’s warm enough for her not to need clothes, but she’s going to have to put some on too, she thinks.
‘Nasty cut you have there.’
She reddens. ‘Looks worse than it is.’
‘In fact … you’re covered in cuts and bruises.’ Catching her expression, he looks away awkwardly, saying, ‘I just … No, I’m sorry. I know it’s none of my business. You don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to.’
She rises. Pulls on her far-from-clean knickers and blouse. She has a nasty thought that her period must be due round about now, assuming recent stresses haven’t thrown her schedule to hell. Her twenty-year-old Mooncup is still at her house – or, more likely, in a forensic evidence bag somewhere – and she doesn’t have any tampons.
‘Look,’ she says, ‘sorry I keep returning to this like some ski
pping CD, but I have to ask …’ She’s aghast to see that she’s toeing the sand, like some fucking schoolgirl.
‘What next?’ He nods. Yawns, and lies back, pillowing his head on a forearm. ‘Time for a snooze in the sun, I think.’
She digs a heel in his ribs. ‘You know what I mean. What are your plans? This is very nice, and obviously I’m incredibly grateful. You might have saved my life. But … I’m miles from anywhere I expected to be right now. And I need to know …’
‘How things stand?’
Her turn to nod. Weirdly, she finds herself missing her kayak. At some point it had come to mean security. Independence. Alistair rummages industriously in his earholes, and props himself on an elbow to face her.
‘Look, Coira – you don’t owe me anything. I know things were probably never destined to work out between us. But still …’ His eyes dip. When they return to hers, they seem to be smiling. ‘To be honest, it’s just nice to see you. I’d intended to be cruising around by myself for a while. Getting my head together.’
He turns his gaze at the sea for a moment. It’s almost a relief. She’d forgotten what being impaled by those eyes was like.
‘All I’m trying to say is, if you want to stay aboard for a while, that’s fine. In fact, it would be great. Much better than knocking around on my own.’
‘Have you a ’phone?’
He looks agitated, she thinks, as he shakes his head. ‘Even if there was a signal, believe me, I’d rather work wasn’t able to contact me right now.’
She feels herself relax. Maybe he really doesn’t know anything. What’s more, no ’phone means the boat can’t be tracked. ‘I know that feeling.’
‘You need to call someone?’
‘What happened at Oban’s probably in the news by now. There’s someone I’d like to know I’m okay.’
Alistair protrudes his bottom lip. ‘Well, I was going to call in at Iona later today, if you’re up for it. I was just going to nose around the abbey, see if the island has any useful supplies. It’s possible they’ll have a working ’net link.’ He doesn’t sound too hopeful. ‘Or I could use the VHF. Leave a message with the coastguard. VHF’s for radioing shore stations and other boats, but you never know, your message might get where it needs to go. Bigger boats have all kinds of modern bells and whistles on theirs – stuff like GPS tracking and satellite messaging – but my set’s just a cheapie. Unfortunately.’