The Sea and the Sand

by Christopher Nicole

  It was the smile she welcomed most, although at this moment it was directed at Toby rather than herself.

  ‘Father!’ Toby jumped down, tethered the horse, and then turned to lift his wife down; the dog licked her hand.

  Harry McGann looked over his shoulder. ‘Liz!’ he bellowed. ‘Liz! Toby’s home.’ He limped down the stairs. ‘By God, boy, when last I heard, you were setting off to walk across the Libyan desert. We had given you up for lost.’ He squeezed his son’s hands, at the same time cautiously glancing at Felicity.

  ‘No risk of that, Father.’ Toby placed Felicity’s hand in that of the older man. ‘This is Felicity.’

  ‘Felicity?’ Now Harry was frowning.

  ‘Felicity McGann. My wife.’

  ‘Wife?’ Harry’s brows grew even closer together, and her knees became weak, as Toby suddenly released her hand and went running up the stairs to greet the tall, blonde woman who had come out of the house. ‘Ma! Oh, Ma!’

  ‘Toby!’ They embraced, a long, loving hug, accompanied by a succession of kisses, leaving Harry and Felicity to gaze at each other.

  ‘I am sorry to be sprung on you like this, Captain McGann,’ she said. ‘But we knew we would travel faster than any letter.’

  ‘You’re English,’ he accused.

  ‘Why, so she is,’ Elizabeth McGann agreed, coming down the steps. ‘And that is at least admirable. But your wife, Toby? Is this not rather sudden?’

  ‘We have known each other for five years,’ Toby explained.

  Elizabeth raised her eyebrows. ‘And never a word to your parents? There is a mystery here. But you are welcome, my dear girl, so welcome.’ She held Felicity close, looked into her eyes. ‘If you make our Toby happy, oh, you are welcome here.’

  ‘Mystery?’ Harry McGann boomed. ‘What mystery?’

  Felicity looked at Toby, who sighed and nodded. ‘One which is best recounted as soon as possible, Father. Shall we not sit down and have a jug of whisky, and talk?’

  As Toby told their tale, the sun sank into the trees west of the farmhouse. Occasional mosquitoes whirred out of the gloom to be slapped, and whip-poor-wills cried in the trees while the evening breeze brought the hemlock pods clustering on to the steps. Soon it would be autumn, with all the menace of winter to follow, but on these late summer evenings Long Island was at its most beautiful. He had to remind himself of this, to reassure himself that it was possible to be happier here than anywhere else in the world, with Boru lying at his feet, his parents to either side, the jug of whisky being passed round and round — and his wife close by. No man could ask for anything more.

  That, too, had to be constantly remembered. Just beyond the trees was the Sound. He would walk down there tomorrow to look at the water where he had learnt to sail. He would enjoy taking Felicity fishing on the Sound, he thought. He would enjoy doing so many things with Felicity, could he possibly feel that she did anything more than accept him, because there was nobody else. Sometimes her quiet acquiescence in all his moods, her ready acceptance of all his likes and dislikes, all his desires, near drove him to despair. But no, he thought, she did not acquiesce in all his desires, because she did not know all of his desires. It was he who kept those locked away, for fear of reawakening those memories which must be so dreadful to her, even if his instincts warned him that they could never truly be married until those memories had been exhumed, and washed clean in the purity of their love, and then reburied, forever.

  But that supposed they loved. That she loved. He did not doubt his own. Every time he looked at her he thought he fell more in love with her. But it also supposed that he could unlock her mind, that her hateful brother was not quite right, and some part of her senses been damaged beyond repair by Moorish mistreatment. But that was another reason for holding back; he did not really wish to find out.

  And that was certainly for the future, at this moment. There were more important matters to be dealt with.

  ‘You poor girl,’ Elizabeth cried when he finally ceased. And flushed. ‘There’s an inadequate statement. To have survived so much … you must possess a rare amount of courage and determination.’

  ‘I waited,’ Felicity said simply. ‘I knew someone would come for me one day. I even supposed it would be Toby, in my dreams.’

  Toby sighed with relief. But less at her words, than at his mother’s acceptance of her. He had not shirked this confrontation, any more than he had shirked the confrontation with the Navy Board: he had never doubted for a moment that his every action had been dictated by all the ideals both his mother and his father had instilled in him long before he had taken the oath of allegiance. Equally, he had always looked to his mother for his surest support … but presumably a white girl taken and held by the Moors was not very different from a white girl taken and held by the Red Indians — and there were few American families prepared to welcome one of them back.

  ‘But to be forced to resign the Navy?’ Harry McGann growled. ‘A McGann? That is preposterous, Toby. And after such a feat of arms as taking Tripoli virtually singlehanded.’

  ‘Now, I never claimed that, Father,’ Toby protested. ‘There were several hundred good fellows at my back, and Bill Eaton was the finest of them all.’

  ‘Nonetheless,’ Harry declared. ‘I’ll not stand for it. I’ll travel to Washington myself, by God. I’ll knock some sense into those blockheads.’

  ‘No, Father, please,’ Toby insisted. How to tell the old man that no one in Washington even remembered what he looked like? He was only a name in a history book, like his even more famous friend John Paul Jones, with whom he had played so glorious a part in securing the independence of this country. ‘What is done, is done. I’ll not go crawling back.’ He forced a smile. ‘And what purpose would there be in pursuing a naval career? Congress has given best to the Barbary pirates, settled its differences with France — there is no one left to fight.’

  ‘You have Truxton’s intransigence,’ Harry commented. ‘And as you have no ships to sail, what do you propose to do with yourself?’

  ‘Why, can you not use another pair of strong arms about the farm?’

  ‘You’ll stay here? Oh, Toby!’ Elizabeth cried, clapping her hands and then leaving her chair to embrace her son. ‘Oh, Toby, that would make me so happy.’ She looked above his head at Felicity. ‘Promise me that he means what he says, Felicity, and I will love you like the daughter I never had.’

  *

  ‘That’s a squall,’ Toby commented, pointing up Long Island Sound to the north-east, where lowering black clouds were starting to fill the afternoon sky. ‘Maybe more than that. There were those mare’s tails last night. We’d best put back. Take the tiller now, and keep her steady.’

  Felicity, seated beside him on the transom of the twenty-foot long open boat, tucked her skirts beneath her — they were inclined to fly in the breeze — and obediently grasped the heavy wooden spar, while he made his way forward to trim the sheets of the gaff mainsail; the boat was cat-rigged, that is, she had only the single large sail, with her mast mounted in the very bow.

  ‘Starboard your helm,’ he called over his shoulder, and she pulled the rudder up against her stomach, causing the boat to turn to the right, towards the shore, perhaps a mile away, as Toby hardened the sheets.

  ‘Shall I take in the line?’ she called.

  He shook his head as he belayed the sheet. ‘Let it trail awhile; there’s no fish in this sea anyway, I’ll be bound. We have entirely been wasting our time.’

  Yet he was happy, even with an open boat to command, and her as his only deckhand. She loved to watch him handling the sails, caring for the brightwork, scouring the tiny foredeck just forward of the mast. This truly was his metier, the sea and a ship. Just as every time she watched him being happy, she felt the misery churning inside herself. He should be at sea all the time, wearing that uniform of which he was so proud, and which now hung and gathered mould in his closet.

  She could still remember the expression on h
is face, two years ago, and indeed in the very autumn after their return to the farm, when news had been received of a great sea battle off that very Cape Trafalgar abeam of which they had been married, between the British fleet, commanded by Admiral Nelson, home from his chase to the West Indies, and Collingwood, and the combined fleets of France and Spain. The British had won a shattering victory, and Nelson had set the seal on his remarkable career by dying in the moment of victory.

  Toby had turned his back on any such achievement for her, even if she dreaded every post, which might bring news of a war in which the United States Navy would be engaged, and which would further tug at his heart strings.

  What had she given him in return for such a sacrifice?

  Because he had given her so much more than a sacrifice. She had not supposed it could be possible for her ever to be happy again. Fate seemed to have set its face firmly against such a dream. Yet how could she not be happy in such surroundings, and with such people? Harry McGann, gruffly confident, gruffly contemptuous of modernity and the soft-spirited children he claimed it had produced, whose eyes twinkled whenever he looked at her. Elizabeth, so warm and gentle, and yet so strong, physically as well as mentally. Aunt Jennie, Harry’s sister, and Uncle John Palmer, her husband, Sally Canning, their daughter, and her husband Jason. Boru, the dog … She understood that there had been several Borus, stretching back to Harry McGann’s childhood. Here was a happy, independent, self-sufficient clan, who existed for each other, and for whom even a journey to New York was a venture into a foreign country, who viewed the slowly spreading town, which now encompassed both sides of the East River, with suspicion.

  And into whose hearts she had been taken, with never a word about her unhappy past. Of them all, she loved Elizabeth McGann most. Because they shared an unspoken bond: Lizzie had also abandoned family and friends and background to be a McGann, and if her experiences before finding this haven had not been quite so unspeakable, yet had she once been married to a harsh and violent man, perhaps even worse than Mohammed ben Idris.

  Elizabeth had sought a shared intimacy with her daughter-in-law, a long awaited luxury, Felicity knew. Elizabeth’s was an entirely masculine world; she had little in common with Jennie Palmer. However, they presented a united front to the world and rallied to each other’s side at the slightest call for assistance, and she had no daughters of her own. But now she not only possessed a daughter, but an English daughter with a social background very like her own. Felicity knew she had it in her power to make Elizabeth McGann the happiest woman in the world. But it was not a power she could exercise. Because she had first to make Toby the happiest man in the world, and that accomplishment was totally beyond her.

  That first night had been a disaster. She knew it was a miracle she had not again found herself cast out into an empty world. And it had set the pattern for all the nights since. She had allowed him no more than a glimpse into the life she had lived for four years, and he had been at once fascinated and repelled. He could not resist her body … but was that love, or a distorted imagination seeing her at the mercy of the Moors? It had to be a distorted vision, because he knew nothing of the truth. He had not sought, and she could not tell him until he did seek. She did not know she could, even then.

  The tragedy was that he was afraid to probe even into her mind, her present personality. In the beginning, she had been grateful for that. Now she was desperate to share some part of herself with him. Instead, she took from him all the time, by endeavouring to fit herself into his life. She would have chopped wood beside him, or managed the plough, had he been prepared to allow her. But as her labours were confined to the house, which Elizabeth thought sufficient for a woman, she could only share his leisure moments as best she could, always aware that she was a total novice at the things like fishing or shooting or handling a boat which he did instinctively.

  All could be put right were she to have a child. This she knew. She was not sure if Toby gave a great deal of thought to the subject, but Elizabeth certainly did. But as she had not conceived for Mohammed ben Idris, so it seemed, even after two years, that she could not conceive for Toby McGann. She was an utterly useless hulk of femininity, she supposed. Sad to think that Jonathan had been right all along, and she was good for absolutely nothing, tarnished in both mind and body. She wondered where Jonathan was now. Or her mother and father. She had heard nothing from them throughout the two years since leaving Gibraltar, either. To them, she was as dead as if she had remained in Tripoli.

  Toby came aft to sit beside her and take the tiller. She looked at the approaching storm. ‘Will we make it?’

  ‘Oh, aye,’ he said. ‘We’ll be at the beach in ten minutes, and that wind is at least half an hour away. What’s that?’

  The line had suddenly tightened.

  ‘It’s a bite!’ she screamed in excitement.

  Toby seized the line and gave it a quick jerk, felt the powerful strength at the end of it tugging away from him. ‘A big one.’

  ‘What can it be?’ She turned to kneel on the transom.

  ‘Could be anything. We sometimes get sharks down here. But it’s more likely to be a bluefin tuna. Now there is a fish. Got you …’

  He managed to haul in two or three yards of line, and took a turn round a cleat. Immediately the line hardened again as the fish fought to get free, and now the force dragging on the stern was causing the boat to yaw about from side to side, and the sails to flap as the wind was spilled from them.

  ‘Maybe we should let it go,’ Felicity suggested, looking at the black clouds, which were steadily approaching down the Sound; now she could make out the flurry of whitecaps driven up by the wind.

  ‘Not this one,’ Toby muttered, managing to haul in some more line and secure that as well; the fish, whatever it was, was only fifty feet astern now, and suddenly Felicity saw the fin, sharply triangular.

  ‘It’s a shark!’ she cried.

  ‘Aye. There’s a gaff forward. Fetch it aft.’ She started to obey without hesitation, then checked. The squall was very close. So was the land, not more than a hundred yards, but the boat was not moving at all. ‘Let him go, Toby. What’ll you do with a shark?’

  ‘I reckon it’s a mako,’ he explained. ‘That’s good eating. And he’s a big one, six feet, maybe. There’s a lot of food. Anyway …’ He gave one of his tremendous grins. ‘I mean to mount his head over the mantelpiece. His jaws, anyway. Fetch the gaff.’

  He took in some more line, while the water astern of the boat boiled as the angry fish sought to free itself. Felicity crawled forward, reached beneath the short foredeck to find the iron gaff, and heard the whistle of the wind rising above even the tremendous splashing from astern. She turned to look aft, saw Toby with both hands on the fishing line, the tiller wedged against his stomach, while the sails filled and the little boat heeled to the gust.

  ‘Toby!’ she screamed. She knew nothing about boats, but she knew something was wrong.

  Toby turned his head as the boat continued to list. He released the fishing line and grabbed the tiller, pulling it against him to turn the bow up into the wind and spill the force from the sails, at the same moment as he released the sheets. But fast as he moved, he was too late. The little boat had heeled far enough for the leeward gunwale to dip into the water, which now came pouring over the side.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ Felicity screamed, as she felt herself being thrown across the thwart and thence farther, water already surging round her waist. ‘Oh, my God!’ Desperately she clutched at the sheets, but the rope slipped from her grasp.

  The wind was increasing in force all the time, and although Toby had now freed the sheets, the boat was already on her beam ends, and going over. Felicity struck the surface with her hands, flailing the water with impotent urgency. She had never told Toby she couldn’t swim; it had not seemed important. ‘Help!’ she screamed. ‘Toby!’

  She felt his fingers grasp her shoulder. ‘Easy, now,’ he said. ‘Easy.’

  Sh
e spat water from her mouth and panted, her reassurance at his touch being tempered by her fear. ‘The shark … ?’

  ‘Has problems of his own.’

  He was on his back, propelling himself with his feet while he held her shoulders with his hands, keeping her above the surface as he made for the shore, which had disappeared beneath the blanket of teeming rain which had followed the wind, and through which the thunder sounded like hammer blows and the lightning cut like a series of knife thrusts.

  Felicity turned her head from left to right, saw the mast of the boat disappearing beneath the wavelets whipped up by the squall, saw the fin of the shark behind it, the big fish was still hooked and unable to free itself from the sinking vessel. Then Toby laughed as his feet struck the bottom, and he scooped her into his arms and waded through the water, rain drops bouncing off his head and slashing into her face, the lightning carving vivid patterns across the afternoon around them.

  ‘The boat!’ she gasped.

  ‘Is gone. Sunk by a shark, by God!’ He gave a bellow laughter. ‘And my own carelessness, to be sure.’ He splashed on to the beach as a streak of lightning sizzled into the trees before them and they heard the splintering of wood.

  ‘We’d best not shelter beneath those,’ he said. ‘That’s the way to get struck.’ He set her on the sand, and when her knees gave way, caught her round the waist.

  ‘But if we stay out here …’

  ‘We’ll get wet,’ he shouted, giving another roar of laughter, as the water ran out from her hair, dripped from her sodden gown, rolled down her legs. ‘Take it off.’

  She stared at him.

  ‘What’s the use of it? It’s soaked through.’ He tore off his own shirt, dropped his breeches.

  Her heart began to pound. There was something about the storm which had touched off a mood in him … a mood she was desperate to share. She gathered the gown and raised it over her head, threw it on the beach, threw her equally wet shift behind it.