*
It took George a while to settle. She splashed water on her face from the old, fold-down porcelain bowl in Draca’s cramped little head, and stood in the saloon afterwards, looking up through the chart-room at the outline of Jack’s shoulder against the stars. George felt she was an intruder. All around her was old wood, dark and shiny, with every space filled with tightly fitted cupboards. The saloon smelled of books and old tobacco, new varnish and a paraffin pressure lamp that hissed on the table and made its own fug. A moth danced with death around its glow. This was a male space: the sort of cabin that should be filled with bearded explorer blokes in chunky sweaters, sitting on those leather benches, smoking pipes as they wrote their journals.
She wondered whether to apologise again. In the end she just called out ‘goodnight’ and went forward. Feck, when you’re in a hole, stop digging.
The sleeping cabin was more cramped, even claustrophobic. The mast rose through the middle, and there was no skylight, so the deckhead pressed down on her, short as she was. Even with the electric light on it was a place of shadows, the sort of cabin that made her open the door to the fo’c’s’le to make sure there was no one there.
With the light off, a faint glimmer of moonlight came in through two circular scuttles cut into the hull, one on each side above the bunks. They were the old-fashioned, brassbound ship’s windows that hinged inwards or could be screwed tight to the hull with wing nuts, and she cracked them open to get some fresh air. She climbed into the single bunk, drew the curtain behind her and felt like a child in a tent in the dark, listening to the noises outside. For a while Jack moved in the saloon, and the wooden rumble must have been the cockpit hatch closing. After that there was just the slap of water against the hull and the rattle of the anchor chain as the boat moved with the tide, tugging against it.
George knew she was dreaming, and that sort of made it OK, at first. She sat on the deck with her legs dangling into the cockpit either side of Jack’s shoulders as if there’d never been a coaming in the way, and the texture of his hair through her fingers was strong and wiry, long enough in her dream to flow over the backs of her hands, so sensuously that she wanted him. She wanted him so much she ached, and when his head began to turn in her hand she leaned back, closing her eyes, knowing he was going to kiss her there, over the ache. His lips were light and hardly touched, just a tease, enough to make her need him more, and she moaned and opened her legs a little further. But her knee brushed against the hull, chill and real, and she began to wake even though she fought to stay in the dream.
How could Jack fit into that narrow bunk? But then his breath was at her neck and she became fully awake, eyes snapping open, as a beard dragged across her throat. As the first scream rose in her chest she flailed upwards with her arm, expecting to hit flesh but instead sweeping through the curtain. Enough moonlight came through the scuttles to hint at unfamiliar outlines of mast and lockers, but the darkness was not empty. There was breathing near her face and the stink was vile, like rotting seaweed. George was still screaming as she snapped on the light, expecting to see someone crouching on the deck between her and the still-closed door.
The cabin’s emptiness shut her up, but she swung her legs out of the bunk, gasping for air. Whoever it was must have got out of the room somehow when she had screamed. Jack? She couldn’t believe it of him. George wrenched open the door, ready to fight, with some vague idea of grabbing a knife from the galley. Anything was better than being cooped up in that tiny cabin, wondering what was on the other side of the door.
Jack was half out of the bed he’d made up on a bench, blinking in the shaft of light from the cabin, and George knew immediately that it hadn’t been him. He’d thrown back his duvet and had one foot on the floor. The other still stood beside his bench, still weirdly wearing its trainer and with his chinos crumpled around its goblet-shaped fitting. His hair was tousled and he was naked apart from boxer shorts, like a confusing echo of her dream, and she dragged her eyes away to stare into every shadow of the saloon. For a moment the only sound was her own breathing, fast and shallow.
‘George, what’s wrong?’
She couldn’t understand how no one else was in the saloon. Even the hatch was still closed. Surely they’d have heard the rumble as it was opened? She spun back and opened the door to the fo’c’s’le, where the shadowed blackness felt evil until she found another light switch and saw just lockers and racks of sails.
‘George, tell me!’ Jack grabbed his leg and was pulling it on as she ran past him through the saloon into the chart-room, groping for the hatch. George had to have air. Fresh air. Open space that didn’t stink of rot. She took great gulps of it in the cockpit, waiting for her breathing to slow. She’d gone to sleep in just knickers and a sweatshirt, and the air was chill on her skin, but there was a sharper cold between her legs that she touched, exploring. She groaned, disgusted with herself at the dampness she found. When Jack appeared she was huddled on a bench in a corner, stretching her sweatshirt downwards to hide the humiliating stain. He stood on the companion ladder, head and shoulders out of the hatch.
‘What’s going on, George?’
He sounded gentle but she squirmed away from him, with her mind lurching between possibilities. Not Jack. No way anyone else could have come on board. Maybe a dream. Can you smell a dream? But she’d felt the breath, heard the breathing and smelled the rot after she was awake. George didn’t know which was worse: the idea that she’d nearly been fucked by a ghost, or that she’d enjoyed it enough to get wet. She began to shiver, maybe with cold, maybe with shock.
‘Could you bring my clothes, please?’ The calmness of her voice surprised her. It was still down there. She had nowhere further to run. ‘I don’t want to go below any more. And a towel?’ She either had to face this one out or jump overboard. George stared along the ribbon of moonlight that lay across the sea, watching how it fragmented and reformed out of the blackness. It was pure. She wanted to shower, or bathe. Wash her whole frigging body.
Jack put her bundle on the other bench without a word, and retreated into the cabin. He shut the hatch behind him completely, noisily, as if to emphasise that she had this space to herself, and she was grateful for that.
She lowered a bucket into the sea, and used one end of the towel to wash. Everywhere. Particularly the places where she’d dreamed she’d been touched. Jack was between her and it, which was some comfort, and if the night hadn’t been so frigging cold she’d have stood there naked for longer, letting clean air brush over her skin. When she was dressed she threw the knickers overboard and slid back the hatch.
Jack arrived with mugs of hot, powdered chocolate, and settled himself back into ‘his’ corner of the cockpit. He’d dressed too. He waited for her to speak, and the silence was like waiting for thunder. George blew steam off her drink and sipped. The mug rattled against her teeth but the warmth slipping down her throat was almost as good as a hug.
‘Jack, either I’m hallucinating or your boat is haunted.’
She told him. Not everything, not the sexy bits. Well, not all of them. She told him about the breathing and the smell and the touch on her throat. She didn’t say she’d thought it was him. And she certainly didn’t say that she’d wanted him. But talking about it made her relive it, and the shivers turned into shakes until she wanted him in a different way. She needed Jack to put his arms around her like her mum had held her when she was hurt and little, and for him to tell her everything was going to be OK. But he got up and went into the cabin, and she felt abandoned until he came back with the duvet from her bunk and a pillow, and tucked them round her in the cockpit. Then he fetched his own bedding and made a nest for himself on the other side, and she had to be content with that. At least she had someone with her, someone who listened and didn’t tell her she was being stupid.
‘You told me you were psychic,’ Jack interrupted her when she started to repeat herself. ‘Perhaps you’re sensitive to things other people can’t
see.’
Which was a gentle way of telling her that no one else had had this problem. Not that he didn’t believe her, just that he’d never heard of it before. At least he wasn’t laughing at her.
‘You said you saw something in your garden.’
‘I may have done. It might have been… more like a memory.’
A memory he wasn’t going to explain. The silence stretched and George cradled her mug, even though there was only a cooling sludge in the bottom. Up here, all was pure, but she felt as if she was sitting on the back of something nasty, and only Jack’s presence was protecting her.
‘George, how is it you can see things about people’s characters?’ The question came out of the darkness. His tone was neutral, like ‘I’m interested but I don’t want to say I believe it.’
George thought long and hard before she spoke. No good had ever come of telling people before.
‘Some colours seem to fit people, when I think of them. Maybe colours are just my brain’s way of painting intuition, and the intuition comes from the stuff I see. Body language. Faces. Eyes, especially eyes. I dunno.’ Now that she’d started, it was easier to talk in the dark. ‘I’ve learned to link the colours with the way people are. They hardly ever lie, but they can mean different things.’
She forced herself to talk. Sitting beside the hatch was like sitting at the entrance to a cave, knowing that some vile reptile lurked within.
‘Like what?’
If she reached out her hand towards him, across the blackness, it might be there, on the steps, within touching distance…
‘Well, if I think someone fits with green, it could mean they’re a healer, or it could mean they’re jealous.’ She didn’t sound calm any more. Brittle-bright. Trying so hard to be normal that she was like a bad actor.
‘As in ‘green with envy’.’
‘Right.’ Keep talking. Fill the night with words. Just don’t start thinking about the sleeping cabin. ‘Reds show strength or anger, but also sex. The colours are just a mental picture though, never for real.’ Not since she was a kid, anyway. ‘Once, years ago, I saw a holy man, and when I thought of him he was almost pure white.’ The memory of that old man was suddenly very strong, and she clung to it. One set of foster parents, the Christian ones, had taken her to Lindisfarne, where this old monk had looked at her with eyes that were kind and wise and peaceful. Afterwards her image of him was white, like his hair, with just a hint of violet round the edges. Only time she’d ever seen that.
‘And white’s good?’
‘I think you only get to white when you’ve conquered everything else. I dunno. No one’s ever told me why I see them or what I’m seeing. I don’t look for them, don’t really want them, they’re just there.’
‘So what do you ‘see’ in me?’
‘Tell you some other time.’ When she hadn’t just told him what reds meant. ‘But at least you don’t have as much brown as your father.’
‘Brown?’
‘Browns tend to be self-centred and have strong opinions.’
Jack laughed. ‘That fits.’
‘And your mum has a lot of pink. Pink means love. And greys. She’s tired.’
He was silent at that.
‘It was stronger when I was a kid. Got me into all sorts of trouble.’ The talk was doing her good. Words fell out of her mouth without thinking. Anything to keep her mind away from what had happened below. Besides, it was friendly, wrapped up in a duvet, with the stars above them. It was frigging cold but she was sort of warm inside because he was giving up his sleep to stay with her. This was the gentler side of Jack, inside the shell.
‘How come?’
‘Well, for a start I could tell when grown-ups were lying. That really pissed off my teachers.’ She hadn’t opened up like this to anyone for years. And he sounded interested.
‘Seriously, George, what do the colours tell you about me?’
She thought for a while, wondering how to answer.
‘There’s the kind of blue that means moods, but can also mean kindness. Right now, there’s a lot of blue and it’s a good, kind blue. There’s grey, a darker grey than your mum’s. Something beyond tiredness. Sadness, even depression.’
Jack grunted.
‘And a lot of red.’
At that she shut up and turned away from him, hoping he hadn’t thought she was flirting.
She didn’t think she had slept. Now that she wasn’t talking, the memories came back and she squirmed, feeling dirty. Small draughts of cold air would find their way under the duvet, no matter how much she tried to make a cocoon of it. If she lay facing the hatch, its darkness gaped like a mouth and she didn’t want to close her eyes for fear of what might come through it. It was worse if she turned away. In the end she lay on her back, half sitting so she could look over the cockpit coaming at a world beyond. Above them, patches of stars showed where there were gaps in the clouds, and if she hadn’t felt so wretched it would have been beautiful. Out in the channel a navigation buoy pulsed red, hypnotically, and she fixed her eyes on it, hoping it would send her to sleep. In time it began to drift across her vision, sliding away as the boat turned. Slack water.
A hint of paleness came into view where the buoy had been, just the faintest definition of a horizon, which slid aft as the boat swung, until it lay across the stern. On the other side of the cockpit, Jack stirred, turned over and settled back into sleep. George felt safe with him there, like she was anchored to him. She wished they knew each other well enough for him to hold her.
He woke when the seagulls began screaming at each other on the spit. It was just light enough to see him look round, fixing the boat’s orientation.
‘The tide’s turned.’ Jack’s voice was an early-morning, too-much-whisky growl. George grunted, fidgeting under the duvet with the need to pee, but there was no way she was going below in the dark.
‘I need coffee.’ Jack stood and stretched, a darker outline filling the space beneath the boom. George winced as he snapped on a torch and the cockpit filled with a dancing beam of light.
‘You OK?’ She liked the way he asked that. Gentle. Concerned.
‘Coffee sounds good.’
George slid the hatch shut behind him and used the bucket.
Putting to sea always lifted her mood. It even worked after a night like that. Feck, especially after a night like that. There’s a sense of anticipation about cranking up an anchor, pumping the hand winch on the windlass and watching the chain come up glistening in the light of a torch that she held in her teeth. Already they had that thin, grey light of early dawn, but not enough light to work effectively and thankfully not enough to see the dragon against the sea. The ghost light, she used to call it. Maybe she’d have to find another label. They’d already hoisted the sails and they flapped and cracked behind her. A new day. Salt smells and seagulls, and a sense that they could go anywhere the wind took them, as if there was somewhere calling from beyond the horizon. Leave the crap behind. George had insisted on doing the heavy work on the foredeck, wanting to purge herself with exercise. Besides, she wasn’t sure about Jack’s balance in the dark, and he had the trickier task of navigating them out of the anchorage under sail alone.
‘Up and down!’ She called over her shoulder to let Jack know that the anchor was almost aweigh. Any moment now her bow would come off the wind and she’d start sailing, and George would have to crank like crazy to bring the anchor up before it grounded again.
‘Hold on, George. I want to try something.’
She heard the metallic clank of the starting lever.
The frigging engine fired at the first turn.
III: JACK
It took Jack some time to feel at ease with Draca as they sailed back. He’d checked out the sleeping cabin right after George had freaked, and again while he was making coffee. Nothing, of course. Just the faint smell of seaweed and salt as he secured the scuttles for sea. But George had clearly believed there was something there, and it rattl
ed him a little, especially after the previous day’s incidents. There had been times when it felt as if Draca was alive and showing a mean streak. So he sat with his hand on the tiller, half expecting problems that never came. Draca behaved herself all the way, taking them to the harbour channel in a single beat into the wind. By the time the edge of the sun gilded the haze on the horizon, he knew that the life he felt through the tiller was natural, the dance of wood and sail with sea and wind, and the night’s fears seemed absurd.
George caught him looking at her, once. She was huddled in the corner where she’d slept, clasping a mug of coffee, with her face puffy and smudgy-eyed with too little sleep. She stared aft down the wake to where white cliffs marked the eastern end of the great bay, rising nearly twenty miles across the water from Anfel Head as the gull flies. The line of chalk slabs shone like a gap-toothed smile in the dawn light. They were still shadowed at their base, so they seemed not to be connected to the sea but floating above it. George was shapeless inside her foul-weather jacket and life vest, and her hair was tangled with salt, but something inside him turned a small but troublesome cartwheel. What was it about him and gay women? At that moment she looked at him and smiled in a way that lit up her face, then blushed and turned away as if she’d read his mind.
Jack didn’t like this idea that she could see things about him. He believed her, or at least he was sure that she believed that she could. But he wasn’t comfortable enough with himself to want to be known too well, and he certainly didn’t like the idea that she might be able to see what was going on in his head. If she’d been able to do that the day before, when she had her back to the mast, they’d both be embarrassed.
Some women wear their sensuality consciously, like a designer dress. Jack saw it in the way they held themselves, always thinking of how they might appear. Charlotte was like that, aware of herself, living the pose, even wearing make-up to the gym. George was short and a little broad-shouldered, but she had a natural allure that shone from deep within her. Jack shifted on the bench. A married man shouldn’t feel like that. And no way did he want to fall for another gay woman.
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