Draca

by Geoffrey Gudgion

  ‘Once, I thought that we’d be like that.’ Still on his feet, Jack watched the father and children next door. ‘You know, the nuclear family, two kids and a mortgage, all that stuff.’ He kept his voice low, for her ears only.

  ‘Us? Yuppies with puppies? Nah. I don’t fancy you with a muffin top,’ she poked a finger into his stomach, ‘and I could never see me wiping bottoms.’

  ‘We never spoke much about homebuilding, did we?’ Jack spoke in the past tense without thinking.

  ‘You were always going away. Now you’re here.’

  ‘But you don’t seem particularly keen to change that.’

  Charlotte shrugged. ‘I have my career, you have your boat.’

  ‘So is this how we’re going to be, weekend friends who have sex once a quarter?’ Jack was a glass ahead of her, enough to be blunt.

  ‘I told you once before; our problem, chum, is that we don’t love each other enough to change it, and we like each other too much to end it.’

  ‘But one day, one of us will meet someone.’

  ‘And I’m sure we’ll stay friends afterwards.’

  The setting sun reached under the clouds, making an upside-down landscape of greys and peach. Jack looked down, swirling his wine, wondering if and how to ask an important question. The lightening of the mood encouraged him. ‘Lottie, I’d like to be free to look for that someone.’

  The garden was very still. Even the football game faded into insignificance. When she didn’t speak Jack looked at her, and she was staring at him with eyes that seemed more calculating than angry. Slowly, carefully, she put her glass on the ground, stood and kissed him on the lips.

  ‘Dear Jack. I haven’t been very fair to you, have I?’

  ‘And I haven’t made it easy for you, since I came back.’

  ‘It just seems a bit final, that’s all.’

  ‘I don’t think I’m cut out to be celibate, Lottie.’

  ‘Let’s think about it for a few days.’ She sat down and reached for her wine. ‘I’ll stay over. Work from here on Monday. You could take me out in Draca and show me the ropes.’

  The tide was flooding. Draca pointed towards the sea.

  ‘I need a crew. Someone with a bit of experience.’

  ‘Then ask George. She has Mondays off.’

  Jack was used to the idea of Charlotte and George, though it wasn’t a comfortable one. Him and George, that had seemed to work, maybe too well from his perspective. But him, Charlotte and George, all in one boat? The idea was awkward.

  ‘I don’t know if she’ll come. She thinks Draca is haunted.’

  Draca swung to her mooring, her new, royal blue enamel moving like silk in the reflected ripples.

  ‘Seriously?’ Charlotte sounded incredulous.

  ‘She had a bad experience when we were at anchor.’

  Jack heard disbelief in his voice. Draca looked sleek and professional, an impossible location for spooks.

  ‘What is it about this place? George thinks there are ghosts in the boat. You saw something under the trees. Old Eddie wrote about ghosts in the garden.’

  Jack was still on his feet, and kept his back to her, staring down the lawn towards Freshwater Bay.

  ‘Grandpa was a bit deranged, towards the end. And I’ve slept well in the boat.’ And his ‘sightings’ had only been a couple of times, after all. He’d had nightmares but no other incidents, not even shadows since that night when he’d run into the garden waving his sword like a lunatic. In fact he was sleeping better than ever.

  ‘How exciting, though. I must ask George all about it.’ Charlotte sounded as if she’d just learned a delicious snippet of gossip.

  ‘Tread carefully. She was pretty shaken up.’ Jack hadn’t spoken to George for a couple of days, but she had a way of being on his mind.

  ‘The poor thing!’

  Jack sat down beside her, angling his chair so he could watch Charlotte’s face. ‘You’re fond of George, aren’t you?’

  ‘She’s sweet. Wonderfully compact.’ Charlotte gave him one of her teasing, provocative looks. ‘And totally fit.’

  Jack gulped wine.

  ‘Are you two an item then?’

  The football smacked into the fence again.

  ‘Jack, you’re not jealous, are you?’

  ‘Because if you’ve found someone special…’ Jack swallowed. ‘I mean…’

  ‘I like George a lot. I think she likes me too.’

  Charlotte kept her eyes on Jack’s and let the tip of her tongue show, a moment of feline pinkness.

  ‘She’s a natural blonde, too. Has the cutest little tuft of golden fluff.’

  Jack stood up, fast enough to turn heads next door, and spun round, glaring at her. He was too shocked to shout. Charlotte grinned back at him, mischievously.

  ‘Oh, it’s so easy to wind you up. Like pressing a button.’ She grinned at him as if it was all part of some big tease.

  As Charlotte’s admission sank in, Jack felt sadness growing inside him, not anger. A delicious, illicit abstract had been building in his mind, born in shared laughter and physical teamwork, in a moment of weightlessness at the top of a wave and in the image of George, tousled, blinking at the morning and cradling coffee, with distant cliffs shining astern. Now Charlotte had shown it to be an impossible fantasy. He took several deep breaths before he emptied the dregs of the first bottle into their glasses, and wrung the neck of another.

  ‘Like you just said, Lottie. Don’t you think you’re being unfair?’

  Charlotte held her glass ready, but spoke towards the view.

  ‘She’s very beautiful. You must be very fond of her.’

  Jack froze, fresh bottle in hand, staring at Charlotte. She did a double take at his face and laughed.

  ‘Draca, silly!’ She pointed down the garden towards the water. Her laughter died as she watched him. ‘Good God, you fancy her!’

  ‘Have some more wine.’

  ‘You do! God, you’re blushing!’

  ‘No I’m not.’ Jack sat back in his chair and swigged.

  ‘You’d like to fuck her!’

  ‘Lottie, please!’

  ‘Can I watch?’

  The garden seemed suddenly very silent. Birdsong, children playing, footballs, everything became irrelevant and outside the bubble that was Charlotte and Jack.

  ‘That’s sick.’ Jack swallowed.

  ‘Go on, tell me you haven’t thought about bedding her.’ She leaned towards him over the arm of her chair, with a seductive, half-smiling look on her face.

  ‘Lottie, please!’ If Jack had tried to lie, she’d have known. He stood up again, turning his back on her. The father in the garden next door waved as he ran for the ball. Charlotte stood behind Jack and lifted her glass at the neighbour. She let the other hand cup one cheek of Jack’s backside.

  ‘I think it would be awesome to watch George being fucked.’

  ‘That’s not funny.’ Jack was horribly aware that Charlotte wasn’t joking.

  ‘Sorry.’ Charlotte sounded mischievous, not sorry. She rested her face against Jack’s shoulder, watching the children next door tackle their father for the ball. Her hand stayed on Jack’s backside with her thumb slowly stroking over his crack.

  ‘Do you think she’s a screamer?’

  II: Diary of Edvard Ahlquist, Volume 39

  20 th April. NE, 4, Fair, cool.

  The closer I get to death, the better I see him.

  The dragon saw him first, tonight. He sort of tensed up like he was alert and watching, and I peered to see what he was looking at. Couldn’t see anything, at first. It was the middle of the night, a few stars but no moon. I’d only gone out there because I couldn’t sleep. The warm snap is over but I couldn’t be bothered to light the stove, just pulled on a sweater and an overcoat, and sat there in the dark. I didn’t mind the cold. Cold is clean. You have to be alive to feel cold and smell salt.

  So I was sitting there in the dark, shivering but alive, letting my eyes adjus
t. The sky was a bit paler than the land, like charcoal in the stove, and in a while I could just make out the hump of Witt Point. After a bit more I could see the trunks of the pines because the water beyond them reflected the sky.

  Then the whispering started and the dragon shifted, just a creaking of the wood, but he was watching. He knew before I could see anything, and then there was movement that I could only see if I looked away, at first, but I kept very still and then there was this warrior in his war glory, chain mail and helmet and all.

  I was so scared I had palpitations and sucked oxygen, thinking I was going to die of fright before the cancer got me.

  Now I’m sure. The dragon and the warrior belong together. I’m keeping them apart.

  I think they want to join their friends off Anfel Head.

  III: JACK

  Jack knew Sunday lunch was a bad idea as soon as he saw Harry climb out of his car.

  When Harry was in control, he was all affability. He’d sound so bloody reasonable as he told Jack why he was in the wrong. When anyone went against Harry, and he still thought he was in control, the rages could be terrifying. And when he knew he wasn’t in control, he had a way of radiating silent disapproval. At a distance, like when he was climbing out of that flash Jaguar of his, it showed in a rounding of the shoulders, so that he seemed shorter and more hunched. Close up, Harry’s face was slack and his eyes were half lidded into a blank mask, a dumb refusal to engage.

  Jack thought they were going to shake hands on the doorstep, but Harry turned away to snap at his wife while Jack’s hand was still lifting from his side. Harry hadn’t made eye contact.

  ‘Get over here, woman.’

  Jack’s mother stood by the car, fussing away some imaginary imperfection in a bunch of roses. Harry stayed on the doorstep, his tweed-jacketed shoulder stiff in front of Jack’s face. They’d both dressed up for the occasion, Harry in a jacket and tie, and even a waistcoat, and Jack’s mum in the kind of outfit she could have worn to a wedding. Charlotte stood in the hallway in jeans and cashmere, squeezing Jack’s arm in reassurance.

  At Harry’s command, his wife scuttled over the gravel, slightly bent over the blooms, talking in tight, bright, false-happy bursts as she came.

  ‘Starting to rain. That’s unkind. Hello, dear. And Charlotte. Bought these for you. They’re going over a bit but they’re all the garden centre had.’ She pushed the blooms at Charlotte in a way that fended off a kiss, but Charlotte managed to plant one anyway as Jack’s mother squeezed past her in the narrow hallway, still talking. ‘Let me find a vase. I know where they are.’

  ‘Let me do that, Mrs Ahlquist…’

  Charlotte followed her towards the dining room, a bemused look on her face.

  ‘Old Eddie had one in the sideboard.’

  ‘Please let me do that later…’

  Harry filled the space in the narrow hallway. Jack had to back against the wall to let him through, and another moment passed when they might have shaken hands. Harry walked into the front room without speaking, and enthroned himself in the armchair in the window. As Jack stood in the doorway, Harry looked around the room as if inspecting it for changes.

  ‘Drink, Dad?’

  The rattle of crockery came from the dining room next door. ‘I’m sure he had one here…’

  ‘Beer.’

  ‘Maybe in this cupboard?’

  ‘I believe Tilly took a lot of stuff.’ Charlotte sounded so polite she was almost patronising. ‘We haven’t replaced it all yet.’

  Charlotte met Jack in the kitchen, and swigged wine with a God-I-need-that look on her face. Jack whispered ‘happy families’ at her and sucked a mouthful of his own wine before taking Harry his beer.

  The silence in the front room was a palpable, winter-chill entity centred on the chair in the window. Harry sat with his eyes fixed on a point in the middle of the carpet, his face hanging like an empty sack and his beer untouched at his elbow. Charlotte joined them, wearing her best sales executive smile, and took one of the remaining armchairs tentatively, as if she half expected a hidden whoopee cushion. The smile faded when Harry didn’t look up. Chopping noises came from the kitchen and Jack raised an eyebrow at Charlotte.

  ‘Your mum’s arranging the roses.’

  ‘Always best to bash the stems.’ Jack’s mum arrived, bearing the vase before her. ‘There we are. Now where shall we put them?’ She tried to reach past Harry to put them by the model longship, but almost tripped on his feet and earned herself a scowl.

  ‘Sit down, woman.’

  ‘Maybe on the mantelpiece? No, the vase is too big. Desk, then. ‘Scuse me, dear.’ Jack had taken the desk chair to leave the three armchairs free. He resisted the urge to take her bloody flowers and hurl them out of the window. He almost had to prise them out of her hands and lower her into the remaining chair. She sat on its edge, knees together, clasping a glass of sweet sherry in a genteel pinch grip, holding it as high and central as a fencer in the en garde posture.

  ‘Well, this is nice.’ Jack’s mum sipped her sherry, a tight little smile nailed to her face.

  ‘The roses are lovely, Mrs Ahlquist.’ Charlotte sat interview-straight in her chair, panic starting to show in her eyes.

  ‘Did you have a good journey over?’ Jack made an effort.

  ‘We know the way,’ Harry growled.

  The silence stretched. Jack’s mum’s eyes darted from side to side behind her sherry glass. Now she reminded Jack of a recruit hiding behind his rifle in a gun pit, wondering where the next attack is coming from.

  Charlotte sighed and unfolded herself from her chair. ‘I’ll finish the vegetables.’

  ‘Let me help, dear.’ Jack’s mother jumped up fast enough to spill sherry on her fingers. ‘Oops. Silly me.’ She licked her fingers and fumbled for a hankie. ‘Messy puss.’

  A look of pain flickered across Charlotte’s face. Serve her bloody right.

  *

  It was only a question of which one of them would erupt first, but Jack hadn’t expected it to be Charlotte. Afterwards he felt bad that he hadn’t challenged Harry earlier.

  Charlotte had been a trooper through the meal, exchanging inanities with his mum while Harry glowered his resentment towards the tablecloth. A gilt-framed mirror hanging over the sideboard reflected the thinning patch on the back of his head. The dining room still had traces of a woman’s touch: floral wallpaper, framed landscape prints, a cut-glass bowl on the sideboard that Tilly couldn’t fit in her car. All hints of the grandmother Jack had never known.

  ‘Lovely casserole, dear. What’s your recipe?’

  ‘Ready-frozen I’m afraid, Mrs Ahlquist. Tilly took all the pots and pans, but she left us the oven. Still, it’s better than I could make it, and it leaves more time to talk. Much better to chat, isn’t it, Mr Ahlquist?’

  Harry grunted and tapped his now-empty beer glass on the table. Jack would let him ask, if he wanted more. At least then they’d get some words out of him. Pointedly, he topped up his own wine, and Charlotte’s.

  His mum filled the silence, again. ‘And were the peas frozen too?’

  Charlotte looked at Jack in wide-eyed desperation.

  Jack knew what was happening. Harry would be formulating words in his head, feeding off his own anger, so that when the explosion came he’d be quite articulate. When he was in one of these moods, Jack had learned to ignore him. Harry’s victory would be in making everyone nervous, and then tongue-lashing them for their failings. The best defence was to ignore him, let him sulk, and not to provoke the outburst. Success would be sending him home with it still bottled up inside him. Charlotte didn’t know that, but then she hadn’t had to grow up with him. As she gathered the dirty main-course plates, she laid her hand on Jack’s mother’s arm.

  ‘We do have a pudding, Mrs Ahlquist, but I think it’s time for you to take Mr Ahlquist home.’ Oh, clever. Talk about him as if he wasn’t there. Now brace yourself. ‘He’s clearly not enjoying himself.’

  Jack
inhaled, touched Charlotte on the back in support and waited for the lit fuse to reach the charge. The fisted beer glass lifted off the table like the hammer of a revolver, and struck down, gunshot-loud.

  ‘Two years, woman. Two years it has taken you to invite us.’

  ‘And it might be a little longer before I try again, Mr Ahlquist.’ Good girl, she was even smiling.

  ‘Dad, don’t call Charlotte “woman”. It’s not respectful.’

  ‘Two years.’ Harry almost spat the words at her.

  ‘As I recall, Dad, you told us to “go to hell”. Your words, not mine. Don’t blame us for taking you at your word.’ Jack swigged wine.

  ‘Don’t drink so much, dear. It’s bad for your liver.’

  Jack took another gulp.

  ‘Mr Ahlquist, I thought it was about time we at least tried.’ Charlotte was still calm. ‘Perhaps I was wrong.’

  ‘For God’s sake, woman!’

  ‘Dad, use that word again and you’re out. Straight away.’

  ‘Can you imagine what it’s like to be invited into my own family home by, by…’

  ‘Don’t, dear.’

  ‘By what, Dad?’ Jack felt his own safety catch slip.

  Harry breathed like a bull, nostrils flared. ‘By someone who’s driven a wedge through this family.’

  ‘Actually, today was Charlotte’s idea. She wanted to build bridges.’

  ‘Maybe she wanted to gloat. Rub it in that you got the house.’

  ‘Only you could have thought like that. Actually I wanted to spare her this kind of scene. Better the abstract than the insufferable reality.’

  Jack’s mother picked breadcrumbs off the table, one by one, and dropped them onto her side plate. She was blinking back tears. ‘Please, Harry. Stop it.’

  ‘She wouldn’t even tell us when you had your leg blown off.’

  ‘I wouldn’t let her. I needed to be strong before I could listen to your put-downs.’

  Harry stood, suddenly enough for his chair to overbalance and hit the sideboard on its clattering way to the floor. ‘We’re going.’ He glared down at Charlotte, who swirled her glass on the table and watched it as if it held particular fascination. ‘I hope you’re satisfied, young woman. You’ve cost us our son.’