‘Let’s go and see George.’
‘I thought you were working.’
‘M’bored. Done enough to show willing.’
‘I can think of more exciting things to do.’
‘Let’s get it over with.’
They couldn’t even flirt any more.
II: JACK
Charlotte dressed up for the boatyard, enough to make Jack wonder who she was trying to impress. Wide-brimmed straw hat, supercool shades, crisp cotton and a lot of leg. Shoulder bag with phone, iPad and suncream. Charlotte stepped through the boatyard like an exotic wading bird, tottering on heels that did wonders for her calves and nothing for her balance.
Jack’s mood lifted at the sight of Draca. His ship. Or would be, soon. She’d been beautiful, once. Still was, until you came close, even without her mast, even with the tide so far out that only the aft end of her keel and the tip of her rudder were in water. She lay on blocks, tied to pilings and with ‘legs’ of timber supporting the hull, like a grand old lady on crutches. The bowsprit was still rigged, stabbing inland from beside the stem post and adding a fencer’s elegance to a bluff bow, but her stern gave her grace. It swept up from the keel into a slender counter that would stretch out over the water when she was afloat, lovely enough to take your breath away.
‘Is that it?’ Charlotte’s expression was unreadable behind the shades.
‘I said she needed work.’
Jack walked on. He’d seen George out on one of the pontoons, and wanted to meet her in the open, not in her office like a schoolboy in the headmaster’s study. He braced himself as they converged on Draca.
It was easier to apologise than he expected. Maybe the warmth of Charlotte’s greeting helped. George brushed away his fumbled words, once she’d disengaged from Charlotte’s hug, saying it was ‘all cool’. She stood in an assertive, shoulders-back slouch with her fingertips pushed into the pockets of her shorts, a pose that went more with an old gaffer in a flat cap and dirty overalls, not a young woman in baggy shorts and a tight, hooped T-shirt. She reminded Jack of young marines, just out of training, who can scowl because they’re trying to look hard.
‘Have you decided what you’re going to do with Draca?’ George lifted her chin towards the hull.
‘I’m going to restore her. Bring her back to her former glory. She’s mine now, or will be when we’re granted probate on Grandpa’s will.’ And George’s hairstyle was strange, too. Close-cropped at the back, like an old-fashioned schoolboy’s, and an orange streak through the front.
‘Good. I’ll send Chippy Alan over, our shipwright. He’ll have a look at her with you and you can agree what’s needed.’ George turned, tilting her head to look Charlotte in the eye. ‘Do you sail, Charl?’
‘Charl?’ Jack didn’t think anyone had ever called her that before.
‘No, but I’d love to learn.’ Charlotte’s smile broadened.
‘I’ll take you out, if you like. Are you staying long?’
Charlotte made a knees-together, bum-out squirm of delight.
‘Leaving early in the morning.’ The shades came off so that George could have the full, big-brown-eyes treatment. ‘But I could come back at the weekend?’
George shook her head. ‘Weekends are busy. Plus I need to keep the charter boats for clients.’ She paused again, sniffing the wind, eyes on the sky. ‘It’s quiet today. All the kids are still at school. Take you out now, if you like, while Jack and Chippy talk about ropes and planking.’
*
Jack was on Draca’s deck when they walked out onto one of the pontoons. They were laughing together like schoolgirls playing ‘dressing-up’ games. Charlotte was in borrowed clothes, too loose on the top and too short in the leg. Her hair flowed in a ponytail behind a baseball cap, and her feet were pushed into canvas slip-ons so that she moved flat-heeled, like an athlete rather than a model. He watched them, bemused by their instant friendship, until the rattle of the ladder against the ship’s side told him someone was coming aboard.
A tanned, lined face appeared, framed by tufts of grey hair under a dark, Breton cap. The man beneath the cap climbed with the steady pace of someone who has learned to take life as it comes. He paused at the top to catch his breath, holding on to the projecting length of ladder, and nodded at Jack.
‘Chippy Alan.’ He didn’t smile. ‘Sorry to hear about your grandfather.’ Chippy spoke as he moved, steadily, the speech of a man who worked with his hands, who thought much and said little. ‘Bit of a wild one, but I liked him. I’d have come to the funeral, but one of us had to stay here.’ He followed the line of Jack’s eyes to where George and Charlotte were pulling the sail cover off a small keelboat.
‘Glad she’s getting out. She works too hard.’
Chippy looked around him. They stood in the debris of the cockpit, which was sunk perhaps two feet below the level of the deck, shallow enough to drain into the sea, and protected by a high, teak coaming. The last time Jack had stood there, with George, he’d rocked on his feet in water, illogically surprised only to feel cold, soaking socks on one foot. Now the water had drained or dried to leave smeared dirt.
‘Bit of a mess, isn’t it?’ Chippy bent to pick up a tangle of rigging, and rubbed his thumb over the ropes. ‘I wouldn’t trust my life to that no more. Chuck it?’ At Jack’s nod he heaved it over the side, where it splatted onto the blocks beneath. ‘Best get started then.’
*
Two hours later they again sat together in the cockpit. The cabin below held a jumbled stack of deck panels and fittings that they’d lifted to examine the massive, oak hull frames beneath. Some of the two-inch-thick elm planking between the frames would have been Eddie’s work of forty years before. Jack had managed to shift enough of the remaining ballast beneath the sleeping cabin to get to the mast footings, a heavy job moving iron bricks in a cramped space. ‘Got a bad back,’ Chippy said, excusing himself, but Jack didn’t mind. There was only space down there for one person.
‘Biggest damage is in the mast footings, but we was expecting that.’ Chippy sat, very upright, on the helmsman’s bench aft, with one hand resting on the tiller like an old man of the sea. ‘At least the hull seems sound. Bit o’ rot in some of the oak frames, but not so bad that we can’t cut it out and scarf in new. Might be worth strengthening the scarf joints with extra timbers.’
Scarf joints. Timbers. Even, once, the richly evocative ‘futtocks’. Chippy spoke the language of shipwrights. It might have been a younger Grandpa sitting there.
‘More rot in the deck, but we may be able to patch that. Depends how deep it goes.’
Over Chippy’s shoulder, the harbour shone in the afternoon light. Boats were heading back towards the marina like white-winged birds coming home to roost.
‘New mast, of course, but then you knew about that. Your gaff and boom are fine.’ These were the spars that ran above and below the mainsail, stretching it into its irregular, rectangular shape.
‘Your standing rigging, stays and the like, is sound. Probably needs a new dressing of linseed oil.’ Eddie had chosen traditional hemp rope rather than modern steel rigging. ‘But a lot of your running rigging is worn.’ Running rigging hoists and trims the sails, the sinews and tendons to the sails’ muscle.
Jack looked away, wondering how to ask about his grandpa’s last sailing trips. One sail moved erratically across the harbour, making sudden corrections like a learner driver. Jack wished he’d brought binoculars.
‘Personally, I’d replace your sails.’
Jack switched his attention back to the old man at the tiller. Grandpa had fitted Draca out with canvas sails for authenticity, refusing to fit modern polyester fabric. They were still useable but were growing old and perhaps a little thin, like a shirt that has been worn too many times.
‘That would cost a fortune.’ And the old sails’ faded russet colours were as much a part of Draca as Grandpa himself.
‘Then treat ‘em gently. She deserves some love and care.’
>
Chippy was quiet long enough for Jack’s attention to wander back to the boats spread out across the water. It was curious to look at the hills and islands near Grandpa’s cottage from this new perspective. The erratic boat was closer now, close enough to see that Charlotte was steering.
‘Your grandpa was a shipwright, wasn’t he? Like me?’ Chippy stroked the woodwork by his hand, almost caressing it.
‘That’s right.’
‘If you don’t mind me asking, how does a shipwright afford a boat like this?’
Jack didn’t mind. Chippy was growing on him, even if he had fallen out with Grandpa. ‘My grandmother inherited money, and died young. Grandpa bought Draca as a wreck and restored her himself.’ George and Charlotte’s sail swayed from side to side as they changed position. George would bring her in.
‘You sailed with him, didn’t you?’
Chippy nodded. ‘We was good friends for a while. I heard a lot about you. Dead proud of you, he was.’
‘What went wrong, Chippy?’
‘He went a bit wild.’ Chippy bent to pick up a small brass tackle from the gratings. Jack recognised it as part of the system that lashed the tiller in place.
‘In what way?’
Chippy spoke downwards, towards the tackle in his hand. ‘Things changed, all in the space of a year. There was a group of us, see, who went out with him. Mostly retired folk, like him. A few of us still working. All men who liked to sail but couldn’t afford a boat of their own. First sign we had that something was wrong was when he put that ugly great carving on the bow.’
‘Grandpa was proud of his Viking ancestry.’
‘Yeah, but it’s a bit strange to spoil the lines of a lovely ship like this.’
‘It became a kind of talisman for him.’
‘But before that, he’d always taken care. Looked after the boat. Then he started taking risks. Chasing storms, carrying too much sail. We fell out.’ Chippy shrugged, as if lifting regret from his shoulders.
‘I found his diary. His mood seemed to change that year.’
‘It reached the point where no one would sail with him no more. One of the group said he was like a man possessed, as if the boat had taken him over.’
‘I wondered if the cancer was there long before we knew.’
‘Maybe. But we’d been friends, see? Like a little club. He said things, hurtful things, like he wasn’t himself. Then he took the ship out on his own in a bit of a blow. Crazy. An old man in a boat this size, in a gale. Sprung the mast. He was lucky to come back at all. Did he say anything to you?’
‘At the time, only that he was giving up the sea. He said it was arthritis. “If you can’t reef,” he said, “you can’t sail.” He was pretty cut up about it.’ Beyond his shoulder, George brought her boat alongside, very neatly.
Chippy stroked the timber by his hand again. ‘Classic boats like this get under your skin, you know. Don’t let her get too close.’
Beyond his shoulder, Charlotte and George had climbed onto the jetty and Charlotte was hugging George, life jacket crushed against life jacket. It seemed she’d enjoyed herself.
Chippy twisted to follow Jack’s gaze. On the jetty, Charlotte pulled off her baseball cap and waved it at them, spilling a mane of brown hair that tumbled over her shoulder.
Chippy waved back. ‘Shall we join the women?’
III: JACK
Jack took Eddie’s last diary to bed that night. He had a niggling unease about that entry in the earlier volume about the dragon knows his friends are down there. The oath-breakers in the realm of Rán… It was too much like Grandpa’s ravings about Vikings before he died. He had to push back a sense of intruding, almost of guilt, both at reading a private diary and at being in his grandfather’s bedroom, even with Charlotte around to justify their taking the double bed. Perhaps especially with Charlotte around, performing her nightly grooming rituals in the bathroom next door.
*
1 st January. Wind ENE, light airs, cold.
We like the fire by the boat seat. The dragon watches it with me now, in the darkness, and I can feel him come awake. The boat’s wood clicks around us as the heat spreads, and the dragon shifts on the seat. I think it sees things in the flames. What would it tell me, if it could speak? This was more than a figurehead. They worshipped it like a god. Now we’re just two old men staring into the fire and remembering the good times.
It saw movement, under the trees, before I did. I felt it tense. It knows whoever’s there. Too dark to make anything out; just a shape moving in the darkness. It frightened me.
*
Jack looked up, frowning, remembering the movement he thought he’d seen under the trees, the night before Grandpa died. He’d visited Grandpa early in the New Year, probably within a day or two of that entry, and he’d seemed perfectly rational. Nothing to suggest that, in his eyes, the carving had life and personality. Jack was still staring at the wall, distracted, when Charlotte came back from the bathroom, wearing nothing but a towel turbaned round her hair.
Charlotte wore her nakedness lightly, as if it was her natural state. There was no display in the way she moved around the bedroom, no conscious allure, as if either Jack wasn’t there or, at least, wasn’t male. The sun on the water had bronzed her skin, leaving a pale shadow of the life jacket, a boundary between peaches and cream across her chest. She tugged on a thick, cotton nightdress that might have been designed by a Victorian penal establishment, and Jack’s hopes sank. This was Charlotte-speak for ‘not tonight’.
He lay on his side, watching her as she climbed into bed. He’d hoped that the morning’s honesty might lead to intimacy, but she pulled the duvet up to her chin and made no move to come closer.
‘You seemed to get on well with George, Lottie.’
‘Mm. She’s so wonderfully competent.’ The sunlight had put the same kind of blush on Charlotte’s face that she could wear after they’d made love. God, how long ago had that been?
‘It looks like she’s a good sailor.’
‘She’s going to give me some sailing lessons.’ Charlotte turned to snap off the light.
‘Oh?’
‘Mm. You said to come back when I wanted.’
‘Sure.’ Jack paused, not sure if he could ask the question outright. ‘She’s an attractive woman, isn’t she?’
‘Sweet face. And a strong girl. Very physical. Must be all that hauling on ropes.’
Jack wished he could see Charlotte’s face when she said that, but his eyes hadn’t adjusted to the darkness.
‘You fancy her, don’t you, Lottie?’ This was another ‘first’. Before the morning’s conversation he could never have asked that question. Charlotte’s tastes would have been the elephant in the room, known but never discussed.
Charlotte pretended to consider. ‘Big shoulders for a short woman, but a very good body. Shame about the hair.’
This was bizarre. Jack reached out to touch her, sliding his palm up her leg, feeling the skin slip under the cotton.
‘Lottie…’
‘I’ve got an early start, Jack.’ She turned away from him, mumbling her goodnight.
*
He was woken by a gentle vibration in the bed, a delicate shaking from Charlotte’s side. A soft line of natural light, starlight perhaps, filtered over the top of the curtains, enough to show Charlotte’s profile. She was on her back, mouth open, and Jack didn’t understand what was happening until he made out the movement over her crotch and smelled her arousal.
‘Let me do that, Lottie.’ She froze, but he touched her face and let his fingertips trace downwards over her neck, her breast and the plain of her belly, where the nightdress was already bunched into folds.
Charlotte pushed his hand aside, spun onto her knees and sat astride him, coupling wordlessly, urgently. She rode him hard, eyes closed, until she reached a single, shuddering climax in which his own was incidental. Jack reached for her to pull her down, into his arms, but she slipped away from him and lay with
her back bowed and her knees pulled up above her waist. He lay awake for a long time, staring at the ceiling, spent but somehow soiled.
*
He woke to grey, dawn light and a room filled with Charlotte’s scent. She stood in front of the mirror, brushing her hair, wearing the same dark business suit that she’d worn to the funeral. Black seams ran down the back of her stockings into black shoes. Jack stood behind her and kissed her neck, his hands shaping her waist, and she turned to plant a farewell kiss on his cheek.
‘I gotta go. Long drive. Early meeting.’
‘Of course.’
‘Bye, chum.’ A touch on the face, a fleeting smile. The previous night wasn’t mentioned.
The cries of the seagulls reminded him that Draca was waiting.
* * *
York. ↵
Chapter Four: Haugbúi
(Old Norse: ghost, undead man)
From the Saga of King Guthrum
Harald Guthrumsson’s dragonhead ship flew so fast across the water that he entered the great harbour of the Saxons with just five of his ships. That night they stayed hidden behind an island, and his men lay in their ships without tjald[1] or any covering, that they might be ready for battle. There were those that counselled waiting, for they were yet few, but Harald believed in his strength and was bold, saying the fewer the warriors, the greater the honour. At daybreak while the folk yet slept he fell upon the fort called Fyrsig, charging out of the mist with ladders and axes.
And the joy of battle was with them, for it was a fight of which the skalds would sing; Harald Guthrumsson and his berserks-gang running shoulder to shoulder through the fort, killing as the Saxons dashed sleep from their eyes, before a shield-wall could be made. It was a sword-time, a blood-time, and Odin was with them.
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