Draca

by Geoffrey Gudgion

  The muscles in Jack’s jaw and neck tightened until they stood out like his boat’s rigging. He went below and worked whatever ritual he needed to make the motor go. It coughed and fired on about the fourth heave.

  ‘I’ve a lot of anchor chain to bring in.’ He made his way forward and sat by the windlass. It was an old, manual device, with a cog-like pawl that held the links in the anchor chain. A side lever hand-cranked the chain over the pawl before it dropped through a hole in the deck into the locker below the fo’c’s’le. Jack sat with one leg either side of the chain, rocking backwards and forwards as he worked, hauling thirty tons of boat into the wind. Each backward heave brought in about three links, say four inches, and at a rough guess he had about forty fathoms, eighty yards of chain out. Anger crackled across his back with each heave, and each time he bent forward she could see the back of the dragon, its mouth gaping like it was laughing its evil head off.

  It took a long while, even with George nudging the boat forwards with the motor to help. When they were under way and Jack came back to the cockpit, he settled into a brooding silence that worried her. It was like he had something festering inside him that was going to explode. When they were hauling up the mainsail, George suggested taking in a reef so she’d be easier to handle in strong winds, but he just glared at her.

  ‘You want to get home, don’t you?’

  They’d never argued before. Nothing serious, anyway. They were in the dragon’s territory and she was losing the fight.

  George watched him, once they’d settled onto a course. In the morning, they’d sat together, thighs touching, already making love in their minds. Now they sat diagonally opposite each other: Jack on the windward bench, hand on tiller, staring into the wind, and George on the downwind side, curled in the lee of the cabin. She could read the hunger in him. Hunger for food, hunger still for sex and probably hunger for booze as well. Why couldn’t he sense the thing in his boat?

  It owns him, her mind replied. It needs him. And it didn’t want her to take him away. You threaten it.

  Why does it need him?

  She closed her eyes to think, and in her mind’s eye the darkness came up from the cabin to hang between them, distorting everything so that an ugly version of Jack was at the helm. That frightened her, and after that George kept her eyes open so she could see the real Jack, rugged, still so very fuckable, but dangerous.

  That eyes-shut, mental glimpse of another Jack made her think of a time when she was a kid, and her mum had used weedkiller in whatever scrap of garden they had had at the time. For a while the dandelions still grew, but they grew distorted and all misshapen before they shrivelled and died. That had been Jack: dark and twisted like a bad cartoon.

  It got worse.

  The first tack took them well out to sea until the land was a grey smudge along the horizon and the waves were coming at them in steep, bruising growlers whose tops crumbled white. Jack was in his element, keeping Draca close-hauled into the wind so that the boat shoulder-charged the sea. From time to time a wave would thump against the bow hard enough to send drenching sprays of water over them. Jack didn’t seem so angry any more, but there was a mood about him that showed in the set of his jaw, and made George stay in her corner.

  Jack tacked early, turning back towards the land long before George would have altered course.

  ‘Keeping clear of the sea lanes’ was his explanation when she challenged him.

  ‘You’ll be heading into The Race.’ George knew these waters well enough to know they wouldn’t clear Anfel Head on this tack.

  ‘The tide will help us.’

  But the wind was against them. To have the tide flowing fast in one direction while the wind tried to push it back the other way would make steep, vicious seas. The closer inshore they came, the lumpier and more unpredictable the waves grew. At the top of a wave, the wind could catch them and blow them almost onto the beam, forcing George out of her corner to stand on the lockers on the downwind side of the cockpit, or to crawl up the sloping deck to hang onto the windward coaming. Soon the seas were breaking over the bow all the time, so the dragon seemed to bite the waves and rise with water streaming from its jaws. Small torrents would come sheeting aft to burst against the skylight and the doghouse hatch over the companion ladder. Sometimes they’d even break over the cockpit coaming in brief waterfalls.

  Jack pushed the boat too hard, but George didn’t say anything for a while. It was his boat, after all, but it was starting to get dangerous. They should have reefed.

  ‘You know the old saying, Jack?’ It was the first time either of them had spoken for some time.

  ‘What?’ The word was crisp as a slap.

  ‘Any fool can carry sail, but it takes a true sailor to know when to bring it in.’

  That stung him, but he gave in, with little grace. It meant George had to go forward to lower the gaff, the upper spar that braced the sail, then take three rolls of sail around the main boom. It was a rough, dangerous job on an unpredictable deck, and by the time she got back she was cold, wet and miserable.

  ‘You should have done that earlier!’ George had to shout to be heard over the wind.

  ‘Nah. She’s loving it! Can’t you feel it?’ There was a hard edge to Jack’s question and George didn’t answer. The wind wasn’t the problem; it was strong, maybe force six, gusting seven, but it was pushing against the tide to build steep, angry seas and the combination was brutal. As they approached Anfel Head, they launched off the crest of one wave, with the hull probably clear of the water for half its length, and crashed down into the face of a huge growler, sending spray and water over them so thickly that George felt the tug of it round her body, pushing her aft. If she hadn’t had a grip on one of the rails by the hatch, she might have been swept overboard.

  Jack whooped as they broke the surface, still ploughing into the weather. He had a manic grin on his face, water streaming from his hair, and was laughing in a way George didn’t like. She’d never punish a boat of hers like that, especially an old lady like Draca. Jack deserved to suffer damage.

  ‘How’s your ‘Man Overboard’ drill?’ George was half expecting their life jackets to have auto-inflated as the wave broke over them. They should have had safety lines rigged and been wearing clip-on harnesses if he was going to sail her this hard.

  ‘Don’t worry. She’ll look after us!’

  She might look after Jack. George wasn’t so sure about herself, but she didn’t push the point. She could see the inshore edge of The Race, with the cliffs of Anfel Head looming through the weather. There was deep water quite close into the cliffs, but the wind can do strange things there. It goes upwards, for one thing, or even downwards, and you find weird eddies that can spin a boat or catch you from unexpected directions, so you can lose control while the tide is still pushing you onto rocks. There’s sometimes a narrow, calm passage between The Race and the cliffs, but George wouldn’t want to risk it. One mistake and even a big, heavy boat like Draca would be matchwood before you could shout ‘Mayday’.

  ‘Are you going to turn?’

  Jack didn’t answer. It was George’s turn to get angry, and she hit him on the arm hard enough to demand his attention.

  ‘Look, you can play silly buggers with your own life, but don’t take me down with you.’

  Jack looked a bit grim at that, but said ‘ready about’ and put the helm down to tack, but he did it with a supercilious air that told George he thought she’d wimped out.

  But Jack had a fight on his hands. That ship didn’t want to turn. They hung there, caught in stays with their head to the wind and the helm hard over. Once the ship had lost way and lay dead in the water, the tiller was useless anyway. They just lay there, tossed about and waiting for a big wave to roll them over. Draca would be unlikely to sink, but it was a shitty place to be out of control. George felt it was almost as if the ship wanted to self-destruct under Anfel Head.

  ‘I’ll go forward,’ George shouted. ‘I’ll br
ace the staysail out.’

  She crawled out onto the foredeck, underneath the flogging foresails, and used her body to force the staysail outboard so the wind could push the bows round. She hung there, knees on the deck, arms and body out over heaving grey water, and only saved from falling overboard by her grip on the sail and the pressure of the wind. Slowly, she watched the panorama of cliffs slip past beyond the dragon’s jaws as the bow began to turn. It felt like a very personal battle, and as the bowsprit steadied towards the open sea she let the sail fall back into position, and screamed her triumph at the figurehead.

  ‘Not this time, you bastard!’

  Jack’s nod of respect when she fell back into the cockpit was his first sign of warmth for hours, but they had a major fight on their hands to bring her back through The Race. Nothing would now convince George that Draca didn’t have a mind of its own, and that the seas under Anfel Head were where it wanted to be.

  George was tightening the foresail, heaving at the sheet to bring the sail closer to the centre-line, when she saw the outline on the foredeck. At first it was just a suggestion out of the corner of her eye: a burst of spray that hung in the air, forming a shape in the instant before the wind blew it away, a vague outline that might have been a man. George secured the sheet and gripped the hatch, not believing her own eyes while she waited for another wave to hit.

  The next burst was lower, rising only to waist height. Enough to show what might have been legs astride the bowsprit, as real and as insubstantial as if you’d thrown a bucket of water over a glass statue.

  ‘Jack, look! On the foredeck.’

  ‘What?’

  Another wave, higher this time, enough to suggest a head, a torso and an arm raised high above the shoulders as the bow soared.

  ‘Don’t you see it?’

  ‘See what?’

  George looked over her shoulder at him. His face streamed water but he wasn’t worried. He hadn’t seen. Behind him, Anfel Head was fading into the twilight gloom, a mass of darker grey with a line of paler surf at its base.

  ‘There’s something there…’

  ‘What am I looking for?’ He wasn’t denying it, he just wasn’t seeing it.

  The next burst scattered, empty. So did the next. Streamers of water ran from the bottom of both the staysail and the jib, and were whipped away on the wind.

  ‘Nothing. S’gone.’ Jack’s face told George it wasn’t worth trying to explain. She huddled into the corner of the cockpit, no longer sure what she’d seen, only sure that it had frightened the hell out of her. And she’d just been down there, on her own, to help them round.

  She’d had enough long before they slipped into the calmer waters of the harbour. By then it was dark. She had so much water running down the inside of her foul-weather gear that trickles were changing directions down her back as she moved. Jack had kept hold of the helm, and George wasn’t going to go below even to make a cup of tea, so they both stayed hungry. They tied up in silence and George squelched away along the jetty without a word or a backward glance, leaving Jack to stow and tidy up on his own. She was shivering, fed up and didn’t want to see Jack-frigging-Ahlquist ever again.

  IV: JACK

  Jack found George’s overnight bag in the saloon. She’d probably known it was still there, but she’d developed this thing about going below, and Jack guessed that by the time they came alongside she was in too much of a huff to ask him to get it. God knows what had got into her. He’d never known a woman change so quickly. One minute she was really up for it, the next she was screaming and wanted to go home. It was only the anchor chain, for God’s sake. Loud enough to stop even Jack in his tracks until he had realised what it was. The only weird thing was how the hell it came to disengage from the windlass and run out. He needed to test the mechanism before he sailed again.

  Jack took George’s bag back to her office the following morning. Chippy Alan sat at George’s desk, and climbed to his feet in a way that kept his back vertical, as if someone was pulling a string that ran from the top of his head. He shook hands without bending.

  ‘George around?’ Jack asked, once Chippy had debriefed him on the progress of his back and expounded his views of the current state of the Health Service.

  ‘Thought she’d be with you. Took a day off, didn’t she? Something go wrong?’ Chippy sounded protective.

  ‘We came back early. George doesn’t like Draca.’

  Chippy waited for Jack to say more, but Jack let the silence hang until Chippy lowered himself back into his seat.

  ‘Bit of a blow yesterday.’ Chippy was still probing.

  ‘About force 7, but Draca was brilliant!’

  Jack wasn’t explaining this too well. All logic said that it was the kind of experience you didn’t want to repeat, but it had been one hell of a buzz.

  ‘And what did George think?’

  Jack dumped George’s bag. ‘I think she was a bit fed up at the end. Thought I’d taken a few risks.’ Chippy had managed to get it out of him anyway.

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘Maybe, just a bit. But George always struck me as being a bit more, well, robust.’

  ‘She’s a good sailor. Very good.’ Chippy wore his disapproving look, rather like a girl’s father. ‘And where did all this happen?’

  ‘In The Race, off Anfel Head. Wind over tide, but Chippy, you should have seen Draca! It was like she was saying “Bring it on”!’

  Chippy stared at him. Now the look was blank, disapproving, even calculating. It was time to leave.

  ‘That storm taught me one thing though, Chippy.’ Jack paused with his hand on the door. ‘I could sail Draca single-handed. She’d look after me.’

  Chippy sniffed. ‘Don’t be so sure. And get your engine fixed first.’

  But Jack was still on a high. He’d felt balanced, at one with the boat, heart and hand as if they shared one soul, and together they were eating the gale. Why couldn’t George see that?

  *

  Later that morning, Jack knelt on Draca’s foredeck with the windlass’s mechanism spread out on an oilskin. It was one of those low-grade tasks that allow a lot of time for thinking. He’d promised George that if she couldn’t cope with Draca, he’d sell her. But after that sail, would George still want to hold him to that? Would he still have to make the choice between them? OK, so he’d pushed his luck in The Race, but Draca had performed so brilliantly that Jack didn’t know whether he wanted to make that decision any more. And had they had an argument or a rift? Maybe Jack really could sail her single-handed. Rounding Brittany into Biscay would be a blast.

  George. Jack didn’t know whether to call her, or let her cool off. For a moment an echo of regret, even guilt, passed through his mind, like a half-remembered melody. Her face as she’d trudged off down the jetty hadn’t just been angry, she’d looked almost lost. What had he done? Jack straightened his back, still on his knees. Soft rain moistened his face and coated the figurehead with a sheen of moisture that reflected the grey, oil-filmed water below. Its neck arched away from him and he reached out to touch its scales, drawing a darker line through the wet.

  ‘What do you think, my friend?’ Draca moved to the wash of a passing boat and the light shifted on the dragon’s cheek, emphasising the gaping mouth and giving life to the eye. ‘Shall we sail away together, just you and me?’

  The slight rocking shifted parts of the windlass mechanism against each other with a faint, metallic clink and Jack dropped his hand. There was nothing wrong with the bloody windlass. Jack swore and began to reassemble it, still thinking about Draca and George. George and the dragon. That thought made him laugh, even if the laughter was a bit manic.

  ‘Does Saint George want to kill you, my friend?’ Jack was still chuckling as he reached for a spanner and noticed a pair of legs standing on the jetty near him. He looked up.

  Jack didn’t know how long George had been there, watching him with a sad, wide-eyed look that could have been fear or pity.


  V: GEORGE

  At first, George had thought she’d let Jack stew. But she’d woken up in the middle of the night, alone in her bed, and sniffled like a teenager at the thought of their plans to curl up together in some anchorage. Then she remembered the times he’d woken up shouting in the night, and she thought maybe she’d cut him some slack.

  Chippy called her in the morning, to see if she was OK. Apparently, Jack had been in the office and had admitted that he’d taken risks. ‘It’s strange,’ Chippy had said, ‘that I fell out with his grandfather in the same spot, for the same reason.’

  That started her thinking again. It was like there were two Jacks: the Jack on the hillside, the laughing hero she’d fallen in love with, and the one she’d seen in Draca’s cockpit, dark and twisted. Possessed.

  Possessed. That was a good description. George knew Jack well enough to be sure that the man she’d seen off Anfel Head was not natural. That boat had a hold over him, and unless she got Jack away it would kill him.

  Jack was kneeling on the foredeck and didn’t see her coming, but that unguarded moment showed her what she was up against. He had the windlass mechanism spread out in front of him but he was talking to the figurehead, almost like he was praying to it, and the figurehead seemed darker and more solid than ever, an iron-black silhouette that sucked light. George closed her eyes for a moment, and in her mind the darkness reached from the carving to Jack like he was a dog on a leash. When he looked up, his eyes moved from side to side as if his mind was elsewhere and she was intruding on his private world.

  ‘Can we talk?’

  ‘Sure.’ Jack waved his arm in invitation. ‘Come aboard.’

  ‘Not here.’ Nowhere near the dragon. ‘Let’s go find a coffee.’

  There was a cafe near the marina, the kind of place that has chrome tables on the pavement that would be packed with yachties in the season. That day, the rain had pushed everyone inside, where the steamy fug was coffee-scented and full of young mothers shushing screaming kids in buggies. They took their drinks outside and sat under an awning, where they could talk quietly.