Saltskin (7 page)

'Did you read that in a book?' Angelo had the sensation
his own head was too round, too large.

'Life
is
a book. This lass of yours — does she know you
fancy her?'

'No.' But she
does
, he thought, for he believed he could
conjure her into existence with the wishing of it alone.

'You mean to turn her head in some way?'

'I mean to turn her heart and mind.' Angelo nodded
sluggishly, his head loose on his neck.

Unexpected tears welled in Angus's eyes. 'What is a man
without a woman but merely half a creature. Blooming
useless! A man must seek his counterpart and love her like
no one has ever loved her.' He stared, drunk and earnest,
into Angelo's face and they clinked their mugs clumsily. 'If
I had my time again I would not let love slip away. I'd grab
my Lorelei, my Lilith, and make her my own.'

'I will find her,' wailed Angelo, his tongue thick in his
mouth, a string of saliva stretched from one side to the
other.

'You said she was here?'

'I heard she was sighted in the South Seas. It was years
ago but I just know she is here still — or one like her.' His
hands sliced the air for emphasis.

Angus felt the hairs on his neck stand up. His heart
skipped a beat and took up a new tempo. He had a sense of
foreboding. 'Well, why don't you put up a notice? I'm not
bad with a bit of charcoal and paper — I could draw her if
you describe her,' he said carefully, his eyes keen.

'I know every inch of her,' said Angelo soulfully, 'but
I cannot, for everyone will want her and she's mine.' He
stood abruptly, but his legs were as frail as a spider's and he
slumped back down in the chair, his head in his hands.

Angus reached out and ruffled his hair, surprised at
how soft it felt, like a bairn's. 'So that's why you're here.'
He smiled. 'The world is divided into those who are loved
and those who are not. I like you,' he added.

Angelo smiled, for it felt like a pledge, and one he
accepted, but he was having trouble staying awake. His
bung eye softened and lost its pinched look, his smile
slipped, and he fell asleep, with the smile of friendship
dangling there.

Angus observed Angelo. What was he to do with this
broken man so ambitious for love? A man who had caused
another to drown? A man who did not want to stay on
the
Unicorn
and was therefore casting himself outside the
protection Angus could offer, out into the wilderness of
a land where choices were more chance than design? His
chest heaved with a kind of paternal feeling, and he smiled
softly at the sight of Angelo's freckle-specked skin, the
incongruous beauty spot on a face that could be called
ugly. Angus grimaced for the naïvety of Angelo.

Gilda had not been out of London since her arrival some
months earlier on a visitor's visa that had since expired,
and now here she was on her way to Ramsgate at the early
onset of a hot spring.

Through the rural meadows the train hummed along,
smooth as silk stockings. Gilda recalled riding her bicycle
on the surface of the tennis court, the way the velvetiness
of the tarseal went through the steel of the bike and into
her body. Houses, like sugar cubes, dotted the valleys and
green English hills. Trees close to the track whizzed and
warbled by with the speed of snowflakes spiralling into a
windscreen. She tried to recall what Einstein had said about
travelling and time and atoms, but her brain and heart were
filled with a headiness that made that mind-bending topic
too slippery to hold on to. All she could think was that she
was finally going to see him. Him. Her belly fluttered with
the conflict of anticipation and dread.

For the umpteenth time she withdrew her antique gold
compact from her bag and held the mirror to her face.
As the light filtering into the carriage ebbed and dappled
through the changing compass of the train, the fleeting
buildings and forest, so did her opinion of her appearance:
now satisfied, now horrified. Her makeup went from dewy
to dry and flaky. It was impossible to know how she would
appear to him. She kept checking the mirror in the hope
of seeing a confident, fresh-faced young woman instead of
the stressed-out, dry-skinned, overly made-up female who
stared back at her. She snapped it shut and stared out the
window.

She feared she would miss the stop, for how was she to
know which one was Ramsgate when so many of the little
stations had no sign and the sound system announced all
the destinations in a litany and there was no map above
the window like on the underground? Signs, she thought
to herself and sighed. Have you seen the sign that says:
Stop looking for signs? Gilda compulsively rechecked
her mirror. She glared at her reflection and snapped the
compact shut again. What could she do about how she
looked now, anyway? She refused to treat this as anything
other than an adventure — for better or worse.

The train approached a town of bleak industrialisation
and she hoped it wasn't Ramsgate. It didn't look pretty
enough; in fact, it appeared sinister. She did not move
in her seat, as if her being a statue would make it not
Ramsgate. Barely giving a passenger a chance to jump
on board, the train pulled away, chug-chug in time with
her heart. Gilda had started to wonder of late if the heartpounding
she experienced when she first met him was not
excitement but fear — a premonition. Her hand flew to
her chest. What if that was Ramsgate and she had missed
it? She stretched her mouth, moved her tongue, trying to
moisten the dryness.

The carriage was empty but for her, and she was grateful
for the privacy. She needed to get ready. Be ready. She
imagined the scene soon to come. Seeing him again, for
him to actually be there waiting. Maybe that was all it
would take — for him to see her and for her to see him.
This was the last chance she was giving him and maybe the
old magic might resurface — he might feel again what she
had always known. They loved each other.

She opened her book and tried to read, but the words
lifted off the page and danced about, forming themselves
into new sentences, clever and mocking. She was going
mad. Again. She shut the book, rummaged in her knapsack
for her comb and roughly dragged it through her hair. It
jagged on her curls, turned waves to knots.

Twenty minutes later a picturesque seaside town with
sailboats in the harbour, red doors and thatched roofs on
white stone cottages came into view. This is it, she thought.
She stuffed her book, mirror and comb in her bag and sat
forward on the edge of her seat.

The train arced into the sun and a blaze of light hit off a
white tin sign in a meadow: Ramsgate.

They had married in a ceremony planned in twelve hours.
He had proposed in a pub toilet with the words: I'll give
you me if I can have you. She had believed him. She
arrived in a horse and carriage and a magenta velvet cape.
They drank Roederer champagne. They had rings made
that day and presented on soft pink rosebuds. And a little
over three months later it was over. He left the country in
the dark of night.

But worse, her love would not die. The dream would
not die. Why hadn't it worked? Why had her one love
abandoned her? Her grief was more seductive than joy.
How to get that out of her system? She could not fathom it;
her heart broke and everyone heard the snap. Her anguish
was too terrible to watch.

When her love letters were returned unopened, when people stopped
listening to her, when they feared for her mental health, when she understood
she would never be the same again, she realised she had to save herself and
she flew to England and here she was. He had agreed to see her.

She stepped from the train into an ornate station in 1930s-style
pale yellow, mint green, blood red, enamelled cream.
She walked expectantly into the foyer. Her limbs moved in
a jerky motion over which she had no control. Her hands
and feet fizzed and her belly was jelly, her balance off. She
looked around; even her vision was warped. He must be
outside. She walked out the front into a blaze of sunshine.
The heat hit her hard and sweat sprang in every pore and
crevice. Gilda resisted peering into her compact and instead
searched the platform for him. She checked her mobile for
a message. None.

But she wasn't going to give up hope; not now. For
hope had been her food, ever since the day when he
stopped looking at her and stopped kissing her. Hope had
been her life. He was her husband, yet rejection loomed
and followed close on her heels, blooming like a shadow.

She feigned confidence in case he was watching her
from a car, or over by the cafeteria, or somewhere else.
She didn't want any of the other people milling around to
think she had — heaven forbid — been stood up.

Snippets of lost conversations came to her.
We are family
now. You would make me the happiest man in the world if you
agreed to be the mother of my babies
. Why had she hesitated?
Why did his face fall so utterly, like a collapsed circus tent,
with all the disappointed children smothered inside?
Tears
before bedtime
, a drunk at the wedding had hee-hawed into
the night.
He's a wet rag
— her Aunt Maggie's words.
Plenty
more fish in the sea. Forget him
. Forget him, was her cousin
Martha's refrain.

He used to sleep with his arms and legs wrapped tight
around her, as if he feared the ending. He'd play the piano
in all its Gershwin glory, just to pull her from her task, to
draw her to him like the Pied Piper.
My wife will have
. . . he
exclaimed in restaurants and ordered for her, and ordered
her to be a lady.
Be a lady. Sit like this
. And she would,
for she liked to please, and her luck had changed, and he
pleased her simply by being alive.

She wondered how she could have been so stupid. She
should have known better. Known it was too good to be
true.

Gilda hailed a black cab, hesitating for only a second
when she saw the driver, pasty-skinned, covered with such
an abundance of hair it could pass for fur. He looked
growly.

No voice across the parking lot —
Wait, I'm here!

She got in the cab. She knew where to find him.
Anywhere near boats.

'Where to, love?'

'To the marina,' she said, and wound down the window.

Despite the disappointment that he wasn't at the station,
Gilda refused to succumb to defeat just yet. After all, it was
an adventure. No expectations. No matter what, at least
she had followed her heart. She knew that happiness was
linked with doing the right thing. She told herself a dark
mood was not going to help anyone, never had, so she
stuck her head out the window like a dog on its way to a
picnic, and gulped in the salty air.

Even so, she had never felt less confident or more
scared in all her life.

The little village was quaint, in the way it probably had
been for years. Cobblestones, whitewashed walls, little malls
and tiny avenues, boutiques selling chocolates, patchwork
aprons and potpourri. The sun was hot as hot could be, for
England was in the grip of a fierce heatwave. The sea and
sky blurred together on the horizon. Gilda's nervousness
made her want to laugh, but she knew that if she started
she might not stop, and smiled at the thought of herself
rocking uncontrollably while a doctor stood over her with
a handful of pills. Oh no, she was going to laugh.

The taxi driver pulled the cab up to the marina, where
the yachts and sailboats lilted. He turned and opened the
divider between them. She was struck by his kind eyes and
instantly they almost made her cry.

'O'right, love? Best you put a sunhat on, or your freckles
will be blisters,' he said kindly.

She nodded, peeled her thighs from the seat and
stepped out of the car.

One of Gilda's idiosyncrasies was that she could not
stand heat. She slept nude with just a sheet in all seasons,
and as a child she could lie in a cold bath in her snorkel and
flippers for hours. She would swim in the winter sea. She
was cold-blooded, and it was stinking hot, and she just knew
without looking in her mirror that her makeup was running
down her face in clay-coloured streaks. She didn't usually
wear it and her application was amateur; she had piled it
on like the protective camouflage of mud on a soldier. It
didn't suit her. She glanced about her, then ducked and
used the underside of her skirt to blot her face.

Her outfit was all wrong. Usually Gilda concealed
rather than revealed, for her presence caused waves that
overwhelmed her with unwanted attention. Her energy
magnetised people, male and female. Why hadn't she worn
shorts? She grimaced. Overdressed, overstuffed. A red
velvet dress, for God's sake. Too flashy even for the opera.

The suddenness of his agreement to meet her and her
uncertainty about his feelings had infected every simple
decision. Too late, can't do anything about it now, she
admonished herself, and headed down the stone steps to
the marina. The steps, steep and shallow, had no rail and
had been built into the stonemasonry of the retaining wall
hundreds of years ago. They were worn in the middle and
it was an awkward descent in her ridiculously high boots.

The wharf was serene and the fresh sea air lifted her
spirits. She envisioned — willed — what a wonderful day it
would be if only he were here somewhere, but deep down
she could feel the truth like silt in a river. She knew he
probably wouldn't show, but she had to go through the
motions.

The marina was locked and a guard stood in a cubicle.

'Hi,' she said to him. 'I'm meeting someone here.
Perhaps you know him — he has brown eyes and probably
a nice tan and he's taller than me. I met him a while ago
in New Zealand and I'm here just for a bit and he said he
would meet me.' The old shame showed in her face, the
inferiority of the jilted.

'Oh aye, and what's the vessel's name?'

'Um, I'm not sure. Perhaps you know him through his
name: Allan Hyde?'

The guard shook his head. 'Nope, but look, I'll give
you the gate codes and you can go in and have a look.'

'Oh, thank you,' she breathed. He handed her a note
with digits on it. She smiled and hitched her knapsack on
her shoulder. Inside it had toiletries, flash knickers and
other paraphernalia a young woman might carry if she
expected to see her estranged husband, whom she loved
dearly, for the first time in a year.

She searched for him among the masts and flapping
sails, feeling conspicuous and too tall. This was the scene
in which she imagined them living as a couple. That had
been the plan. They would sail the seven seas, her taking
photos and raising babies to swim before they could walk
and pepper their speech with foreign words. Their children
would eat olives and garlic-covered snails without batting
an eyelid. They would be gorgeous.

Her heart started to race. Was that him? Could it be?
She moved closer to a super-yacht where a man on deck
was winching down a sail. Was that his back, his adorable
caramel back? Just as she raised her hand the man on the
deck turned and she saw it wasn't him. She felt foolish and
— something else — relieved? She realised that part of her
didn't want to see Allan. That all she wanted was for him
to want her, to relieve the pressure, to vindicate her. Too
much had hinged on her getting married.

She knew it was time to end the saga. She wanted to be
free. The last few months in London had been great: new
perspective, new city, new experiences, new lovers. Gilda
had discovered she wasn't as broken as she had thought, or
maybe she had mended.

She walked a little further along the dock, past the white
and blue yachts with their tinted windows and plush décor.
She wandered in a circle as if she were lost in the bush, and
eventually came back to the man at the guard gate.

'Any luck?' he asked her while he wound a rope around
an iron bar set in the wood of the pier.

She shook her head. She knew Allan wasn't going to
show, and she felt oddly all right with it. At least I got to see
this quaint village, she thought, and smiled in a relaxed way.

But he still might show . . .

She shaded her eyes from the sun and her bag rang.
Gilda dropped it, crouching inelegantly as she searched
for her phone, willing it to keep ringing. Her black lace
knickers and toothbrush spilled to the ground.

'Hello?'

'It's me.'

'Allan?' Gilda's muscles turned to liquid and her heart
raced, in 'flee' mode. Sweat sprang.