Bitter Waters Page 2

  “No,” he said, “I meant, aren’t you scared of the Sirens?”

  “Would you be?”

  He shook his head, grinning, suddenly all cocksure boy. And then someone else came into the room, and we had to move or else stop talking. He helped me carry all those papers across the corridor to where there was a larger table and permission to speak, and somewhere in the shift and flurry of it all either he begged or I offered, I truly can’t remember which. Either way, a day’s sailing was the prize.

  “Not without your parents’ permission, mind.”

  “They won’t care.”

  “Even so, I’d better come and meet them.”

  Another shake of the head, this one quite urgent. “Talk to Grandad. Next week, if he’s better. He’ll be in.”

  He was better, he was in; we did speak. In the Silence Room, naturally. When sin slides into habit, that’s when you’d best beware. Careless talk costs lives.

  I said, “I’ll just give him a day’s run, see if he likes it. I’ll undertake to bring him back wet, cold, filthy, smelly, starving, exhausted and intact.”

  That was good enough. The following Saturday I found Matthew waiting by the kerb outside his house, chewing his nails with doubt of me. He brightened in a moment, jumped into the car and said, “Did you bring any wax?”

  “Wax?”

  “For the Sirens.”

  “Oh. No, not today. We’re not going near the Silences.”

  “Aren’t we? I thought…”

  He’d thought we were heading for adventure, danger, high risk on the high seas. I disabused him.

  “Today, we sail in circles. Well, triangles, largely. Way out, where we can’t hit anything. You’ll learn the ropes, you’ll learn to say ‘aye aye, skipper,’ you’ll make mistakes by the yard, and by the time I bring you back, you’ll have learned how to sail. Next time we go out, you’ll still make mistakes, but at least you’ll know what they are.”

  I was deliberately making it sound like school. He sulked, a little, but that blew away as we came down into the marina.

  “Which one’s yours?”

  “There.” I pointed along the floating jetty. “Sophonisba.”

  “She’s enormous,” he said, in the tones of someone who’d been looking for disappointment, and hadn’t found it. I hid a smile and said, “Big for one, certainly.”

  “I really will be a help, then?”

  “Oh, yes. You really will. Not today, though. Today you’ll just be a nuisance.”

  He grinned contentedly and followed me as I opened her up and showed him over, stem to stern. Then I tossed him my spare waterproofs and said, “Turn off your mobile, before you zip them up. Sailing’s about getting away from all of that, being out of touch.”

  “You mean it’s about the silences,” he said.

  If he thought that, he’d never been to sea without an engine, but I knew that already. He had a whole new world of sounds to learn, from the creaking song of rigging under strain to the slap and hiss of waves against the hull to the half-human cry of a gull over deep water.

  Me too, though, I had my own learning to do that day, my introduction to the teenage wall of sound. The groans and curses I’d expected, but not the sudden yelps and whoops, nor the singing in a breathy monotone, nor the jokes, the jabber, the utter inability to keep quiet.

  We tacked back and forth until he was comfortable with the sheets and stays and winches. Then I let him take the tiller, while we went around again. He didn’t raise a protest when I decided that was enough, and turned for home; he saved that for later, once we’d moored, when I introduced him to the mop and bucket.

  I took him home in the state that I’d promised, drained and overloaded both at once. As he stepped out of the car I said, “Next weekend, then? Up for it?”

  “You bet,” he said, with as much relief as anticipation. “Thanks, skipper.”

  Saturdays, we played chess and sailed; Sundays we sailed and played chess. After a month I decided he was ready, we were ready, captain and crew. Next week, the Silences.

  We started early, in perfect weather, a steady offshore wind and a smooth, swift sea. I offered Matthew the tiller; as he came to take it I saw wires dangling from his ears, disappearing into a pocket.

  “What are you listening to?”

  “Oh—my new phone. Birthday present. Doubles up as an MP3, it’s brilliant.”

  “Not on my boat, if you don’t mind.”

  “Well, but it’s too early to talk. And I can still hear you…”

  “Even so. Turn it off, please.”

  His face was foul, but he did as I asked. And took the tiller, checked the course, did everything he ought to. Best leave him to it, I thought, show some confidence and let the wind blow the temper out of him. I made my way forward, settling into the bows where I could watch for trouble and eventually for the Silences.

  At last there were nubs on the horizon that were not other yachts’ sails. I called out and pointed.

  “Where?” he asked, trying to peer past the mainsail.

  “Fine off the starboard bow. Come see; I’ll take the helm.”

  “Aye aye, captain.”

  I watched him scurry forward, then came about onto the other tack. We’d sail by on the seaward side, to give us both a good look, before we came back inward.

  As always, the breakers were easier to spot than the rocks themselves, a sudden stitching of white water in a grey swell. The Silences lay low in the water, but there were no savage currents to beware of, no tidal suck; it was hard to understand their reputation. I took plenty of sea-room none the less, running no risks with my beloved Sophonisba. We’d need to be closer on the return leg; at this distance I could barely distinguish rock from spray.

  I murmured as much to Matthew at my side. And turned my head for his reaction, and of course he wasn’t there, he was all the way forward. I felt as though I had fallen through an unseen door. There was no one in the cockpit with me—and yet for a moment there had been no question about it, an absolute presence.

  I couldn’t recapture that brief certainty, any more than I could understand it. Let it go, then; stranger things happen at sea. I glanced forward, and saw Matthew coming.

  Matthew frowning, puzzled, a little upset. As he jumped down beside me, I saw those earphone cables again.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. Sorry. But I was on my own up there, just looking, and—well, I thought it needed a soundtrack, that’s all. It’s no good without music. Listen, though, just listen…”

  I thought the world made its own soundtrack, but I wasn’t sixteen. He held out one of those earphones, gesturing, impatient for me to share. Reluctantly, I listened.

  Nothing.

  Or no, not nothing: white noise. A steady swish and slurr of interference, the echo of God’s heartbeat.

  “I think your gadget’s broken.”

  “Only it’s new, and it was working fine, and then it just went…”

  New toys do just go, sometimes; but I looked at him and remembered what he was clearly remembering, something I’d said before.

  “Take the tiller, I’ll go and see what’s what.”

  Down in the cabin, no little lights glowed on any of my expensive equipment. No GPS, no radio, no radar.

  No warnings, and no way to cry for help. We were on our own.

  On our own in clear weather, open water, not a worry in the world. I glanced back out at Matthew and saw him startle as he looked aside, as though he was looking for someone he knew was there and then not finding them.

  I did that, I thought.

  “Not your phone,” I told him. “It’s all out, all the electronics.”

  “You said, that’s what GPS does around here.”

  “I know I said it. That doesn’t mean I believed it. Are you happy to go on?”

  He shrugged. “You’re the skipper.”

  That meant yes, for God’s sake, why not? with a subtext of I don’t suppose you will. I surprised him, then; I didn’t let him down. I just nodded, and took the tiller.

  Sophonisba was still sailing sweetly, over a sea like glass in motion. The Silences were a presence, but no threat; I wanted to be closer, to see them better, to sketch their profiles from the seaward side. Half a dozen times I caught myself letting her drift in towards the rocks, half a dozen times I nearly sent the boy for a pad and pencils. Each time I checked the motion, checked the words before I was committed to them. In honesty, I didn’t want to speak. There was a hush to the air, to the moment, that words would only spoil.

  A moment stretched, not ended, becomes momentum. A word not spoken gives us impetus. We ran by the rocks, and it was the easiest thing in the world to throw the tiller over, to gybe, to let her headway bring her around and all the way around, until the sail could catch the wind again and take us back down inside that line of rocks. Sailing can be like that sometimes, where wind and water seem to be unusually willing. Here there might have been currents after all in air and sea together, circling the Silences as a storm circles its dead centre, drawing a path that we could follow.

  Between rocks and coast there was room to tack and turn, there was water enough beneath the keel, but a good sandy bottom within the anchor’s reach. Now we weren’t sailing, we were surveying. We dropped anchor half a mile off the northernmost rock, and established our position as best we could by landmarks and estimate, by telescope and eye. Then we turned towards that chain of rocks and I took bearings on each of them with an authentic period compass, calling the numbers for Matthew to write down.

  Surveying by running traverse is a technique as old as the compass rose, and we had practised it up and down the coast till we could do it without thinking. Suddenly, though, it was hard to keep focus. Water sang past the hull, urging us to movement; wind whispered in the shrouds like a summoning, like a question, why the delay?

  Only the rocks were patient, and they needed to be. Perhaps they could afford to be. My eye kept shifting, caught by a spume of water flinging high or the eerie stillness in the lee of a rock. My mind drifted another way, into fancies. I thought I heard footsteps aboard Sophonisba, out of my sight. I thought I heard cries on the wind, greetings and questions, as one sailor might call to another across a gulf of sea. There were other boats in the corners of my vision, that were only gulls or clouds or nothing when I looked. I could see the same effect in Matthew, the way he shied suddenly and stared around and couldn’t concentrate.

  I didn’t talk to him about it. I didn’t want to talk at all. My own voice sounded harsh and alien here, calling numbers; his was an untuned string, a dull vibration, flat and grating.

  At last we were done here. We could weigh and set sail, reckoning speed against the clock to know how far we went before we let the anchor go again at the southernmost point of the Silences. That was hard; there was such a temptation to let her run, to come about on that helpful wind and work up the seaward side again, closer in this time…

  But I turned her head into the wind, all the air spilled from her sails, Matthew dropped the hook and we were there, with all the work to do again, bearings to be taken on the same rocks from this new position. Later I could mark those two positions on a chart, draw in all the bearings, and where each pair crossed should be definitive, this rock stands here.

  Find the rocks, take the reading, cry it out. Listen for the boy to call it back—but how much more you hear in the emptiness behind his voice, how hard it is to care for what you tell him, or for what he says…

  Was it him who moved to draw the anchor up, or did I send him to it? Were we finished, had I checked my figures, or did I skimp the work?

  Did we have an argument, or did I dream it later, whether we should sail round those rugged rocks again? She was my boat and I was captain, but did he win against the odds, to take us southerly, homeward, away?

  I don’t know, I can’t remember. I know that the sun was setting and I was on the tiller, I could see the city’s lights tainting the sky ahead which meant that it was later than I liked, later than I could understand. He was trimming the sails, quiet and confident; on that thought he glanced back at me in the cockpit and said, “So when do I get to go solo, skipper?”

  “You don’t.”

  “Oh, why not? She’s built for one to handle, and I can do it, you know I can…”

  “The insurance is in my name. She can’t go to sea without me. Sorry.”

  He groaned and sighed and made faces, as he ought; and then he said, “So how’s about that night sail you promised?”

  He was right, I had promised him stars and moonlight and the extraordinary potency of the sea at night. We settled on the following weekend; then he dropped onto the bench beside me. “What happened back there, that was really weird, wasn’t it? Or was it just me…?”

  “Not you,” I assured him. “I think you coped better than I did.”

  He shrugged. “They are haunted, those rocks. The old sailors knew. We should’ve listened.”

  “We did listen. Once we got there. But I think the Silences listened back.”

  That was how it felt, at least to me: that they were attentive, interested, listening. I thought he was wrong, though, it wasn’t the rocks that were haunted. The rocks just were. It was the water, the wind, the liminal world about them that held more than it ought to. If there are ghosts, that’s where they abide, in the shift between state and state, that blur where you can’t say this is water and this is air or this is life and this is death, that was then and this is now…

  I didn’t say any of that to Matthew. We were better being quiet, I thought, each of us finding our own place to stow what had happened for mulling over later. Or for rejecting later as a fancy of the day, the rocks’ reputation, a desire to be impressed. Strange things happen at sea, but they happen inside our heads as much as they do on the water.

  It was full dark before we berthed in the marina. When we were done cleaning up, Matthew reached into his pocket with a half-smile that might have been wider if the day hadn’t been so pressing. Still, he was a boy, he’d prepared this, he loved it; he said, “I’ve got a present for you,” and handed me his old mobile phone.

  I gazed at it blankly. “I don’t use these things.”

  “I know, but you should. I want you to. Look, we can play chess,” and he touched a key and the panel lit up, already primed, P—KB3. “We can text moves to each other, see? I’ll show you how. And if you never tell anyone the number, then you’ll know it’s me, every time it rings.”

  And clearly he wanted me to think this was a good thing. I thought his loneliness was showing, brighter than I’d seen it before; so I let him teach me how to text, and how to make a call and answer one. Then he gave me the charger, jumped on his bike and was gone. I sent a message after him—P—QB3—to await arrival, and locked the boat up. Checked the spare key was still hanging on its line below the water—and no, I didn’t really think the ghosts had taken it; I always check, it’s a neurosis—and then I headed home. Thinking about ghosts, already finding ways to rationalise.

  Halfway back, the phone beeped. In Morse, SMS, twice. I ignored it. Five minutes later it rang properly. I sighed, pulled over, picked it up.

  “Hullo, Matthew.”

  “Did you get my text?”

  “Yes.”

  “Only you haven’t sent your next move. Aren’t you going to bring the queen out? You always bring the queen out.”

  “One of these days I’ll surprise you. But right now, I’m driving.”

  “Oh. Right. Sorry…”

  It wasn’t just a lesson in his loneliness, it was a lesson in his youth; at a guess, no one else he might call would have a licence, let alone a car.

  When I got home, I sent him the move he expected. And spent the rest of the evening answering his texts, his moves, at five minute intervals. When I wanted to go to bed, I realised that he hadn’t told me how to turn the damn thing off. I phoned him to ask; he just giggled, and said goodnight.

  A couple of nights later, I did have a good night, I had a really good night. Until that damn phone started up. I apologised, didn’t answer it, promised to leave it at home in future. Presumptuous of me, she hadn’t promised me a future; but she only quirked an eyebrow, and asked if I couldn’t turn it off.

  “I don’t know how,” I confessed. “He won’t tell me.”

  So then of course I had to explain, and she pealed with laughter and took it from me and nor would she tell me how to turn it off, but she did switch it onto silent running.

  “Vibrator effect,” she said. “So you’ll know, but it won’t bother me.”

  And a couple of nights after that, I had to phone Matthew and cancel our night sail on Saturday.

  “But you promised…!”

  “I know I did, and I’m sorry, but something’s come up.”

  “Well, get out of it.”

  “I don’t want to.” I might have lied, of course, but it was just too much trouble. “This is too good to get out of.”

  “Oh, what is it, then, a woman?”

  “Yes.”

  That silenced him, but only momentarily. He was passionate, he was furious, he was almost tearful and pleading; mostly, I thought, he was jealous. Deep-down, fiercely jealous. He would not be placated, I would not be moved; we both said some harsh things before I hung up on him.

  I regretted that, of course, the way you do. Not enough to call him over the next few days, but enough to keep the phone charged up and close at hand. It was still and silent all week, until the Saturday. Saturday evening, when for him we should have been out at sea already, watching the stars appear and hoping for the Northern Lights; when in fact I was in my bedroom, trying to decide what to wear.

  I was running late already, I didn’t want another confrontation; it was my turn to be resentful, that he should try to elbow his way into my evening. I threw the phone onto the bed, and ignored it.