‘Hey, George.’ She got a hug, a good one like she was his sister, and a kiss on the cheek. ‘Can you sell me some fuel and water?’
‘Sure. It comes with free coffee. Special offer this week.’
Jack’s face brightened, but he’d gone a long way down. You could see it in his eyes.
‘Doing any sailing?’ George didn’t ask about Charlotte. She didn’t know if Jack wanted Chippy to hear they’d split, and she wasn’t going to let on, even to Chippy.
‘Nah. Need a crew.’ He tapped his hand against his bad leg, but his eyes were on George. ‘Can’t trust my balance under sail.’
He didn’t need a crew, he needed rescuing, maybe just from himself, but George was sure it was something more. She took a deep breath.
‘I’ll crew for you, if you like.’ Something inside her said ‘Feck, what are you doing, girl? In that boat? You forgotten what happened?’ George suppressed the inner voice and qualified her offer. ‘Provided it’s a day trip, and we’re back before dark this time.’
She’d have risked another night talking in his cockpit, but no way was she going to sleep below deck.
Jack grinned and some of the care fell from his face. The old Jack was still in there, somewhere. He sniffed the air.
‘Good. As soon as we have a wind.’
He was dead on his feet, as if all his energy had been sapped. He stumbled on his own deck as he pulled the water hose to the tank inlet. When their eyes met, he’d smile, but otherwise he stood, gripping the stay for support, and blinking at the morning while he waited for his tanks to fill. He reminded George of a boat that needed a tow, wallowing in the waves, drifting towards the rocks.
But Jack didn’t know how close the rocks were, and George had no words to warn him. She wished she had a way of getting him off that boat, because every instinct in her body said it was dragging him down, but if she told him that, he’d just laugh. She’d seen that darkness before; that way someone’s brightness fades and when she shuts her eyes all their colour becomes grey, and the grey grows heavier and blackens.
She’d seen it around Eddie Ahlquist, the last time he visited the yard, and George had known what it meant. It was sad, but he was an old man. It happens. Now she saw it growing around Jack, even without closing her eyes, and she almost wished she was as blind as everyone else.
At the end, the last and only colour is black.
VI: JACK
‘Power dressing’, Charlotte used to call it, somewhere between ‘business casual’ and a cocktail party in the officers’ mess. Hair pulled back to make her face more severe. Dark, outsized shades that totally obscured her eyes. A cream linen jacket that was all shoulders and waist, a plunging V over a loose chemise. It was the kind of outfit that revealed little but hinted at lots. Her greeting in front of the cottage was perfunctory; Jack’s was cautious. She held back in a way that said ‘Don’t even try to kiss me.’
‘There are cases in the car.’ She popped the boot of her BMW remotely and strode towards the cottage, carrying just her shoulder bag.
‘It’s a bit late for you to be moving in, Lottie.’ There were two large cases, and they looked heavy.
‘I’m not.’ Charlotte turned on the doorstep. ‘Since you insist on splitting up, you’re moving out. That’s the rest of your stuff from the apartment.’
She waited for him in the front room, still standing, still wearing her shades. Jack stared at her from the door, the cases dumped behind him in the hall.
‘You didn’t return my calls.’ Her shades glared at him above a mouth set in an unsmiling, immaculately lipsticked line. This distant ice-woman persona set his mental alarm bells ringing.
‘You were coming here anyway.’ And he was still ticked off with her.
‘I’ve appointed solicitors. You’ll be hearing from them next week. I take it you’re not going to contest the grounds of adultery?’ Charlotte delivered the words like a prepared text, without any preamble.
‘I’m going to make some coffee.’
Jack left her standing there, although he didn’t think she’d finished her speech.
He took a tray outside and they sat opposite each other at the outside table, she with her back to the view. A summer ago he’d stared at his father in the same place, and defended her. Today she wiped the wood with a cloth before she put the pristine sleeves of her jacket anywhere near it.
‘Won’t you take those ridiculous shades off? At least do me the courtesy of looking me in the eye.’
She folded them onto the coffee tray. ‘You look like shit, Jack.’
So it was ‘Jack’, today, not ‘chum’.
‘Thanks.’
They stared at each other. Charlotte took two, refined sips, as elegantly as an actress on a shoot.
‘So you’re making a pre-emptive strike. Put the blame on me, and save yourself embarrassment with your homophobic family.’
She shrugged.
‘Adultery,’ he prompted.
‘That’s right.’
‘Don’t you think you’re being a bit hypocritical? Not so long ago you wanted to watch me fuck George.’
‘That’s different. I’d have been part of it. Have you?’
‘Have I what?’
‘Fucked George. She fancies you, you know.’
‘Absolutely not!’
‘So there’s just your physiotherapist.’
‘We had this out months ago. I strayed. I’m sorry and I’m ashamed, but I came back. You were simply the first of us to have evidence.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘Meaning your girlfriends don’t count?’
For the first time, she was off her guard. A light sheen of perspiration formed across her forehead.
‘Prove it.’ The words were belligerent, but she wouldn’t meet his eye. She examined her fingernails where they lay on the table top, perfect ovals of varnished pink on sun-bleached grey wood. ‘Anyway, even if you could, my solicitor says that same-sex relationships don’t count as adultery. Not in English law.’
‘How very convenient for you. Interesting that you take legal advice in case I have evidence of something you’ve never admitted.’
‘Can you?’ Her thumbnail traced the whorl of a knot. ‘Prove it, that is?’ She kept her eyes lowered.
Jack let the silence hang. She wasn’t telling him everything. Her left hand curved around her coffee cup, cradling the bowl with long, elegant fingers. There was a faint band of paler, slightly indented skin where her wedding ring had been.
‘Lottie, why can’t we put the legal posturing to one side for a moment and talk as friends?’
Charlotte tapped the table as if she’d grown bored with playing with the grain. Her eyes flickered upwards, and dropped again.
‘Can you? Prove it, I mean?’
This was important to her. Legally important, whatever she said about the definition of adultery. Jack stared over her shoulder at Witt Point to calm himself. High, thin cloud robbed the sunlight of its shadows, though the trees seemed to droop in the heat. A late-summer storm was brewing, and by that criterion Charlotte had arrived about two days early. They should be having this argument to the crash of thunder, not in the clammy prelude.
‘No.’ What’s more, he didn’t have the will or energy to fight her.
‘Then it’s your adultery.’ Charlotte visibly relaxed, though she still spoke towards the table, as if embarrassed.
Some wounds go so deep, so unexpectedly, that their significance can take a while to have its full effect. A marine with a severed artery may fight on, unaware that he’s dying. The anger within Jack surfaced long seconds after the words were said, erupting in a fist into the table top that made Charlotte flinch and recoil, her eyes flaring. A bone-china cup danced, then rattled in quarter circles on its side in a saucer of spilled coffee. Jack flexed his shoulders, feeling a trickle of sweat on his backbone as they glared at each other across the wreckage of cups and spills. Slowly, the mood deflated as their marriage bled
out into Grandpa’s garden. Charlotte dipped a handkerchief in a glass of water and began to dab at a spot of coffee on her cuff.
‘It was always George, wasn’t it, Charlotte? The reason you came here? Not about being with me.’
‘You’re no fun any more, Jack. There’s no social life, no mess life, no glamour.’
‘Have you spoken to her?’ Jack needed to know if Charlotte and George were still seeing each other. Accidental encounters would be raw for a while.
‘A couple of times. She’s been too busy to give me a lesson since we all went out.’ Charlotte surprised Jack by reaching over the table and touching his hand. ‘Jack, let’s just accept that it isn’t going to work, and part as friends. Sailing all day and getting pissed at night doesn’t do it for me.’
‘I thought you enjoyed sailing.’ Jack was going through the motions.
‘But not all the time. Not in a howling gale. Not in the wet.’
‘I haven’t taken you out in a gale.’
‘Don’t be obtuse. You’d like to. Maybe it’s a man thing. Fight the elements, and all that. I wouldn’t mind sipping a chilled glass off a tropical beach, in the sunshine, but not all that yo-ho hearty stuff getting there.’ She half stood and leaned over the table to kiss him on the head. Her chemise hung clear of her body, and Jack registered her figure with as much emotion as he might a model’s photo in a Sunday supplement. It caught the eye but for once provoked no response.
‘You said you wanted to be free to find a ‘significant other’.’ Charlotte straightened until they could look each other in the eye. ‘Think of this as giving you that freedom. Now I’m going to gather my stuff from upstairs. There’s not much here.’
Jack heard her turn on her way to the kitchen door.
‘I think you and George would make a good couple.’
Jack snorted. There was only one thing worse than getting together with a woman on the rebound, and that was getting together with a gay woman on the rebound. He felt surprisingly calm, now that flash of anger was spent. Perhaps a bit numb, but there was even a growing sense of release; Charlotte had taken the decision for them. After a while he pulled a bottle of white wine out of the fridge, wrung its neck and poured two glasses. He stared at the condensation frosting the glass below the level of the wine, and when Charlotte didn’t return he swigged. Tiny tears of wine trickled down the inside of the glass, kissing and retreating from the surface, until there was movement behind him at the kitchen door.
‘Join me? Toast our futures?’
‘I’ve got to drive.’ She stood beside Jack until he realised she was waiting to say goodbye. As he climbed to his feet she pointed at the bottle and glasses. ‘Jack, you’ve got to cut that out. It’ll kill you.’
‘And today will really help me.’ That was unfair, and he regretted the words as soon as they were spoken.
They hugged briefly, awkwardly, neither at arm’s length nor close, and she was gone.
She was right about the booze though.
Tomorrow.
VII: GEORGE
On the day that Chippy Alan hurt his back, George took the workboat over to Witt Point, though it was evening before she could finally lock up the office. The workboat was a lot faster than cycling all the way round, and she told herself she was on boatyard business. Maybe she and Jack could do each other a favour. As George rounded the point, Jack was at his jetty, stacking shopping bags ready to load into Draca’s dinghy, and George had a stupid flutter at the sight of him, enough to wonder if this was a good idea after all, but it was too late to turn back. Jack had seen her, and waved. He stood waiting to take her line, and shouted across the water.
‘Tide’s on the ebb. What do you draw?’ Jack pointed at the workboat’s hull, and George understood that he was thinking about the risk of her grounding.
‘Just over half a metre.’ The workboat was shallow draught, designed for inshore chores like pulling a line of boats or carrying the judges for competitions in the harbour. ‘But a metre under the screw.’ She was so flat bottomed that as George throttled back the boat rocked in the wavelets of her own wake.
Jack grabbed the line, wrapped a turn about a cleat and stood with his weight on his good leg, the other slightly bent at the knee.
‘Then your screw will be deep in mud at low tide. How long are you planning on staying?’ He stared at the outboard, a beast powerful enough for the workboat to be used as a rescue boat for dinghies in trouble. It was a practical question that George didn’t take personally. Jack’s jetty was a ramshackle affair that went just far enough out into the channel to allow a small dinghy to tie up at most states of the tide. It wasn’t designed for eight-metre powerboats.
‘Maybe an hour, if you’re free? I’ve an idea I’d like to float by you.’
God, he looked tired. Tired and bent over, like he was carrying too much weight. George could have reached out and touched the shadow around him.
‘Let’s talk on board Draca. You won’t have to watch the tide, out there.’
It was still daylight. That suited George.
Storing a boat is five times faster with two people. One in the dinghy, passing up bags, one in the cockpit. One in the cockpit, passing down bags, one in the saloon. They worked in companionable silence until everything was below decks, when George sat on the top of the companion ladder and watched him stow. Any seagoing boat has a complex arrangement of small lockers, often in obscure places, and the task of stowing provisions is best left to the one who will have to find them.
‘You planning a trip, Jack?’ He was kneeling on the chart-room’s deck, pushing tins into lockers. His shoulders would stretch as he reached into a bag, and then his bum would go a bit higher in the air as he crouched and found corners for food. The bags left on the bunks in the saloon bulged with fresh fruit and bottles.
‘I thought I might go away for a while.’
George was glad his head was down when he said that. Her face would have given her feelings away. She swallowed.
‘Single-handed?’ She wouldn’t want to sail Draca on her own, even with two good legs.
‘I’ll take it easy. Short hops between ports. Stay in harbour if there’s a blow forecast.’ Jack rocked back on his heels and glanced up at her with a look on his face that was so lost and hurt that George wanted to give him a hug.
‘What about your engine?’
‘It hasn’t let me down since that night we anchored.’ He was hunched, all defensive, like he knew it was a bad idea.
‘What’s happened, Jack?’
He grabbed another armload of provisions and bent forward again, hiding his face.
‘Nothing that won’t be sorted out by a good divorce.’ He spoke into the deck, and pushed a bottle of wine into the locker with enough force to rattle the jars and tins inside. George didn’t know what to say. Jack needed a hug, not platitudes. When she didn’t speak he looked up to see if she’d heard.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ she asked, as their eyes met.
‘Not particularly.’ Jack reached into the bag and pulled out the next bottle. For a moment he stared at it as if surprised to see it in his hand.
‘Sod it. Let’s open one.’
George followed him into the saloon cautiously, eyes probing the corners, ready to back away. Again, she that sense of trespass, just faintly at the edge of her senses, not yet enough to be threatening. They sat at the table, George nearest the door to the chart-room, sipping wine from shatterproof ship’s glasses. Or rather, George sipped and Jack gulped. He’d slumped backwards into the bench so that his neck rested against the top of the cushion and his eyes stared upwards through the skylight.
‘You know, I don’t think I mind about Charlotte, not really.’ Jack did need to talk. All George had to do was sit there and listen.
‘Looking back, I don’t think we were ever in love.’
He was fooling himself about not minding. George could see it in his face. When she shut her eyes his colours were mute,
and around them was that swirling darkness that made her want to hold him and pull him back towards the living.
‘And I’ve been a bastard since I came back.’
He tilted his head forward and took another gulp. Across the chart-room, the cockpit hatchway framed the top of a pine tree on Witt Point, moving slowly with the boat against a flat grey, early-evening sky. Already the nights were drawing in. Autumn was coming.
‘People who feel bad about themselves do shitty things, and that makes it worse. It’s a downward spiral.’
Shadows were forming in the corners of the saloon. Not yet dark enough to hide anything, but enough for George to wonder how long she could stay. She waved away another glass of wine. Jack splashed liberally into his own glass. After a while, his monologue looped back to his planned voyage.
‘So I thought I’d head west along the coast, or maybe south to the Channel Islands. I need to get my head clear.’
Maybe that was what the darkness was all about. If he went now, he’d die out there. George fiddled with her glass, wondering if and how to say ‘Don’t go’, or ‘I’ll miss you’, but the gentle rub and thump of the workboat against Draca’s fenders nudged her to leave. In the sleeping cabin, away from the skylight, it would be dark already.
‘You need a crew, Jack.’ He looked at her, and for a moment he brightened and his face softened.
‘You volunteering?’
George shook her head. She hadn’t meant to mislead him, just remind him what a crazy, dangerous idea it was.
‘Sorry, I’m swamped at the yard. Chippy Alan hurt his back today.’
‘Badly?’
‘Slipped disc. He was cranking the hand winch we use to haul boats up the slipway. He’ll be off for several weeks.’
‘Poor sod. Send him my best, when you speak.’
‘Sure. But it’s a lousy time for me. Public holiday on Monday, last weekend of the season. Next week, all the clients will go back to the smoke and expect us to do the maintenance on their precious toys.’
‘So what will you do?’
‘I spoke to the boatyard’s owners. Told them I’d have to hire someone to cover. They were more concerned with whether Chippy could sue them under Health and Safety regulations.’
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