After the Storm (6 page)

‘Food tastes so good on a boat,’ Rob said when he had cleared his bowl. ‘And I guess meals become more important too, a real highlight of the day.’

‘Watermelon for dessert,’ Kim said. ‘I’ll go slice it.’

She came back with a piled plate and they passed it around. The only sound was them sucking on the red watery flesh of the fruit and spitting out the black pips.

When the moon was high and bright in the sky Owen rolled a joint and he passed it first to Anna.

‘No thanks.’

‘Don’t you smoke weed?’

‘No, it does nothing for me.’

‘Helps me to sleep,’ he said, ‘Sometimes…’

Anna handed the joint to Rob who took two deep draws on it and then handed it to Kim.

‘Rob told me he’s a brewer. What’s your work Anna?’ Owen asked.

‘I’m a speech therapist.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yes, I work in a health centre in London, mainly with old men who’ve had strokes and can’t talk very well, or sometimes not at all.’

‘Sounds kinda tough.’

She nodded.

‘It can be, especially when the stroke is severe. It’s a very frightening experience for them and a long journey back into speech.’

‘Anna loves her old men,’ Rob said affectionately.

‘I do. It’s such a triumph when they start to be understood again.’

They got to talking about whether it would be a good thing or a bad thing to have loads of money, so much money that you would never need to work again.

‘A bad thing, I think,’ Anna said.

‘Why do you say that?’ Kim asked.

‘Because having to work gives you a purpose and it’s good to have a purpose in life isn’t it?’

‘Well yeah, but being short of cash is no joke,’ Kim said.

‘Poverty’s no fun at all,’ Rob agreed.

‘But waiting for things, saving for things, it makes them more special doesn’t it?’ Anna persisted.

‘It does,’ Owen said. ‘I had to save for years to buy my boat. And I sure have met some fucked up Trust kids over the years, with more money than sense. A bunch of them chartered the boat once. They were slumming it of course.’

‘Would you like a lot of money?’ Rob asked turning to Kim.

‘Oh yeah, then I could open my restaurant in style. I’d love having the cash to splash and I’d make it the best place in town.’

After a second joint Rob and Kim got a fit of giggles over a blocked heads situation that had happened with some folks who’d stayed on the boat the year before. They were both crying with laughter as Kim described the lengths the guests had to gone to disguise the blockage and the difficulties Owen had had unblocking it. Owen grinned at the tale but didn’t join in the telling. Anna sat there feeling awkward because she wasn’t stoned and it didn’t seem that funny, and anyway all she could think of was that come what may she must not block the heads.

Later, lying in their cabin, Rob and Anna had another whispered conversation.

‘Kim told me tonight that Owen had a falling out with his family and doesn’t like to talk about them,’ Rob said.

‘When did she tell you that?’

‘When she was cooking the fish and I was down there.’

‘Must have been a big falling out if he won’t talk about them?’

‘I think so. She was kind of awkward about it.’

‘I’m glad you told me. I was going to ask him about his family. I nearly did tonight.’

‘Don’t Anna. It’s best not to enquire too deeply into people’s lives.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘We’re living in such close quarters with them. It’s better to keep things a bit impersonal. Mum taught me that when we were living in the commune.’

Rob had spent his early childhood in a large commune in North London with his mum and a group of environmental activists. He had learned the hard way that sharing intimate information nearly always got you into trouble. He knew that Anna was interested in people and liked to know their life stories. He hoped she would follow his advice as he loved being on this old wooden boat and he wanted it to work. He could sense already that Owen was a man who needed people to respect his privacy.

Kim was lying awake on the settee berth in the saloon. She could hear Owen up on deck moving around, another sleepless night. Was his insomnia getting worse? He rarely had an undisturbed night and he hardly ever slept by her side any more. She longed for more physical contact with him. At the beginning, when they were living in that duplex in Clearwater, they had taken such pleasure in sex. He loved that she was a small woman and he would lift her onto him several times during the night. Sometimes during the day he’d carry her around their sitting room and they’d make love against a wall, her legs wrapped around his long torso. It was wonderful. Now their couplings were infrequent and it made her sad.

It went quiet on deck and she listened intently. She was often gripped by a dread that Owen had rolled himself over the side of the boat and into the ocean. She knew how much he loved being in the sea. He had told her it was the only place he felt completely safe. That would be the way he would choose to die. To slip into the water at night while everyone slept. On many nights she had made herself get up, even though she was so tired and sleepy, to check on him. She was checking on him the way a mother checks that her baby is still breathing. Tonight she lay and listened and after a long time she heard some reassuring creaks from above, Owen turning over, wrapped in his blanket, trying to get comfortable. She fell asleep then.

Because he slept on deck Owen would usually wake at sunrise. He would fetch his hat from the cockpit and sit and watch the track of light stretching over the ocean. The sea was never still. This morning he saw a crowd of tiny fish leap in a perfect arc out of the sea into the dangerous air and back into the water.

Kim joined him soon after and they got the boat ready for the long sail ahead. They had brought the dinghy onto deck and lashed it down on the foredeck. Owen sat at the chart table and tracked their course while Kim made them a big breakfast of omelette stuffed with onions and red peppers.

For the first ten hours the weather was fine and the sailing was good. They reached Glover Reef at the time Owen had estimated. The high point of their day was after lunch when six porpoises followed them as they sailed along. The porpoises seemed to be surfing in the bow wave created by the forward motion of the
El Tiempo Pasa
. Owen said the bow wave gave the porpoises something of a boost. They watched them leap playfully into the air and swim around the boat for nearly an hour.

Owen had been checking the barometer regularly and had noticed that over the last three hours it had dropped. That generally heralded the onset of bad weather. He discussed this with Kim but said nothing to Rob and Anna. Around five in the afternoon from a clear sky Anna saw what looked like black fingers of smoke on the horizon. The black fingers grew and spread and within a relatively short time the sky was a sulphury yellow criss-crossed with thick black streaks. The sea was getting rougher too. It was all so sudden and she found it rather alarming. She went down to the saloon to use the heads. Then she put the kettle on to make tea. As she waited for it to boil she noticed there were a lot of books tucked behind the glass locker in the saloon. She looked at the authors: Ernest Hemingway, Saul Bellow, James Baldwin and Annie Proulx. Someone was clearly a reader, a serious reader. Owen? She saw there were a couple of Stephen King novels too including his epic
The Stand
which she had read. Next to the books was the framed photo of Moses. She took it out. He wasn’t a particularly handsome cat. He had chewed ears, small eyes and looked a bit of a bruiser. Her parent’s cat, Plum, was a dark grey Burmese beauty with golden eyes. She put the picture down on the table and poured boiling water onto a teabag. She had remembered to put the mug in the sink as Kim had shown her. The boat pitched forward strongly and the picture of Moses flew off the table, hit the floor and the glass in the frame shattered.

‘Oh no!’

She felt stupid and guilty. Kimberly had told her everything had to be stowed away when sailing. She tried to remember where they stored their brush and pan. She opened the locker nearest the sink. No brush and pan. She pulled open the bottom drawer under the sink and saw the two stolen magazines lying in there. The boat lurched again and the shards of glass moved across the floor, with some going right under the stove. Shit! Anna lifted the washboard and called out for Kimberly.

Kim heard Anna calling her in an anxious voice and she skipped nimbly across the deck and down into the saloon. Anna was breathless with her apologies.

‘I’m so sorry. I was looking at Moses and the boat moved fast. I couldn’t find the brush.’

Kim reacted quickly. She grabbed a brush and pan from one of the other lockers.

‘Let me…’ said Anna. ‘I caused the damage.’

Kim said nothing. She seemed to be terrified of the shards of glass. She picked the larger pieces up gingerly and wrapped them again and again in sheets of kitchen roll. Then she started to sweep up the smaller pieces, her face set.

‘Some went under the stove,’ Anna said in a small voice. ‘I’m so sorry. I’ll buy you another frame.’

Kim got onto her knees and swept under the stove and searched for any fragments of glass on the higher surfaces. Then she wrapped the glass sweepings in kitchen roll too.

‘I’m an idiot for not putting the picture away securely,’ Anna said.

It was as if it was only then that Kim became aware of her.

‘It’s OK. You just have to be so careful of broken glass in a boat.’

The boat lurched again and Kim picked up the ruined frame and tucked it away in a locker.

‘It’s getting rough and I’m needed up above.’

‘I’ll come too.’

Anna poured her tea down the sink with a heavy heart. She was so clumsy and inept in this setting. Kim picked up the bundled glass and as Anna followed her up the steps to the cockpit she saw her look over to where Owen was on the foredeck. He was checking the lashings on the dinghy and had left Rob on the tiller. Kim dropped the kitchen roll bundles of broken glass over the side of the boat. She said nothing to the others about the accident, for which Anna was grateful.

The waves were getting bigger and visibility was becoming worse. Owen now warned Rob and Anna that a storm was on its way and he gave each of them an oilskin to wear. They put their lifejackets back on over the top of the oilskins as large waves started to smash against the boat.

‘Go below if you want to, but I reckon you’ll be more comfortable up here,’ Owen said above the rising roar of the wind.

He and Kim reefed the mainsail, moving it down the mast and securing the bottom to make a smaller sail area against the driving wind. For the next hour they sailed into the headwind, trying to keep to their course. The bow was rising then crashing down into the waves and sea spray was hitting them all in the face again and again, making their eyes sting from the salt. The boat was taking a pounding and they were making no headway at all.

‘We best drop the sails and run off downwind don’t you think?’ Owen said.

‘As long as there’s enough open water,’ Kim said.

‘Plenty of water, we’re miles from land.’

They took the sails down.

Owen went below and came up with a bottle of rum and sat with Anna and Rob in the cockpit. He offered them the bottle.

‘We’ve hit a rough patch and it looks to me like this will go on all evening, maybe all night. This is what we’re gonna do. We’ll work in three-hour watches: Kimmie with Rob and Anna with me.’

‘You took the sails down?’ Rob said.

‘Yep, we’re running bare poles, going with the wind. Means we’ll be blown off course. Not much choice really…’

‘But we’re safe?’ Anna asked, her fear getting the better of her need to appear brave.

‘We’re fine. Just need to sit this storm out. Kimmie and Rob you rest now and I’ll do the first watch with Anna.’

They did as he said. As they lifted the washboard to go down into the saloon a big wave washed into the cockpit and flooded into the cabin.

‘Aww hell,’ Kim said as she pushed the washboard back into place.

‘Wet below already.’

She folded the table down and made up the two berths on either side of the saloon and secured the hammock-like lee-cloths that would stop them from falling out of the berths as the boat pitched and rolled.

‘Lie down with your eyes closed Rob. It should help against any seasickness.’

She stretched out on her berth and shut her eyes. He followed her example.

Up above Owen clipped a lifeline to the harness of Anna’s lifejacket and clipped this to a ring in the cockpit. She felt that was ominous. The boat was now being driven through the water by the wind. She looked out and all she could see were heaving masses of water. The waves were fifteen, maybe twenty feet high, she couldn’t tell but it looked like a wall of water. The boat rode the waves down and then up the other side. The riding down was terrifying as the sea opened up before her like a valley. The boat rode up and a great wave washed over the foredeck.

‘The waves seem awfully big.’

Her voice came out all squeaky and childish.

‘The boat can take them. She’s been through much worse storms than this,’ he said.

She took another swig of rum from his bottle, which he was keeping in the pocket of his oilskin. He had his hand on the tiller and his face was impassive as they were battered by the waves. He had a striking profile, she thought, because of his high cheekbones and long straight nose. He looked composed as the boat rode another big wave. No, he looked more than composed; he looked unconcerned as if he had no fear about what might happen to them, as if he was strangely detached from any sense of danger.

Then the rain started. It was a torrential downpour that reduced their visibility to nothing. She heard what sounded like a deep thump, right out in the middle of the ocean. Why was the sea thumping like that? What did it mean? She was wet through to her skin. She could put up with that. And she didn’t feel sick, which was a blessing; but what plagued her were her fears.