Follow a Star (6 page)

Bill directed his attention back to making breakfast. Last night, it had taken another hefty dram for his blood to redistribute itself and he certainly wasn’t about to risk any sudden movements now. Not when there was hot fat spitting on the two-ring gas burner.

‘Sausage?’ he asked.

May blinked then nodded.

‘Beans? Bacon?’

‘Wow! Do you always look after your crew this well?’ May asked, scanning the table and searching round for cutlery.

‘In a plastic box in that locker,’ he said, indicating the direction with a nod of his head. ‘It’s going to be a long, demanding day, so we need to keep our strength up.’

The gas burners were making it warm in the cabin. May fanned her face and unzipped her fleece just enough to throw his good intentions to the wind. ‘How do you like your eggs?’ he asked, before he could re-engage his brain.

He was sure he heard her snigger, but she quickly covered it with a cough before replying and setting out knives and forks.

‘All right,’ he said, when they were sitting down to eat. ‘Some dos and don’ts before we set sail.’

‘I thought we’d been through all the safety checks and distress calls.’ May took a sip of tea.

‘This is more about sharing a small space,’ he began.

‘Size isn’t everything, it’s what you do with it,’ May surveyed him innocently over her mug. ‘We’re grown-ups, aren’t we? Provided we respect each other’s need for privacy at crucial moments, we’ll be fine. Hey, at least you can pee over the side which is more than I can.’ She returned to her breakfast and tucked into a mouthful of sausage.

‘You mentioned sleeping tablets,’ he said, trying not to let his attention wander. ‘As skipper, I need to know if you’re on any other medication so I know what to do if anything goes wrong.’

She laid her knife and fork down. ‘Thank you for your concern, Bill. But, I’m perfectly sane, if that’s what you’re asking. I might, when I’ve had a lot on my mind, occasionally take a short course of herbal sleeping pills just to break the pattern until I’m sleeping normally again, but I understand your concerns and I promise not to use them on this trip. And I didn’t reply to your uncle’s ad because I was daft, as you put it, but because I needed a complete change of scenery. Nothing wrong in that, I take it?’

Bill shook his head, though he was longing to ask what scenery she was so keen to take a break from.

‘The only thing you need to know,’ she went on, picking up her cutlery, ‘is that I’m perfectly fit and well. Anything else is none of your damn business.’ She stabbed a fork into her bacon and he winced.

‘May, I wasn’t asking for a GP’s report,’ he tried to reassure her. How to explain without giving away exactly what he was feeling – like telling her that he was a strong man but regular viewings of her wet T-shirt might have him taking bites out of the timber hull? ‘Look, all I’m trying to say is that it’s easy enough to be pleasant and polite to each other when conditions are calm—’

‘—but you want to know if I’m a crazy banana who might turn psycho on you when the going gets tough,’ May scoffed. ‘Don’t worry. You don’t need to hide the flares and the harpoon gun.’

Bill held up his hand. ‘All I’m saying is that when you’re dealing with the unpredictability of the open sea and everything the elements can throw at you, feelings can run very high. We should both be aware of that. It’s better to let those emotions out so we can deal with them as they arise rather than keeping them bottled up.’

Her hair had fallen across her face as she concentrated on her breakfast. Since he couldn’t read her expression, he hoped this was a sign of assent.

‘At the same time,’ he began carefully, ‘being shaken around in a small boat together can create, erm, an unnatural sense of intimacy. When you’re sharing such an intense experience, it inevitably brings you close. But it would be a mistake to compare those heightened emotions for anything that would feel the same on dry land. Not, of course, that you’re unattractive – far from it – all I’m saying is that we should be able to share our thoughts without prejudice. What happens on the boat, stays on the boat.’ And hopefully that would cover an uncontrollable boner or two as well.

He paused but only heard the sound of May chasing a forkful of baked beans round her plate.

‘Excellent,’ he rounded off. ‘I simply want to get this boat round to Cecil. I don’t need any complications and neither, I strongly suspect, do you.’

‘No problem,’ said May, her flushed face bare of make-up and devoid of guile. ‘Is it me or is it roasting in here?’ She stood up to throw off her fleece and Bill was relieved to see that she was wearing a thick enveloping T-shirt. And no bra, a deliciously slow-mo suggestion of wobble told him as she sat down again.

‘That’s better,’ she smiled at him. ‘So. Got something you need to get off your chest?’

Bill swallowed and desperately tried not to think about what he would like to get off hers. That T-shirt, for a start. He dragged his gaze back to the table more grateful than he had been for anything in his life that it was there. If it started to collapse now there was every chance he could keep it up all by himself. And without using his hands.

‘Clear!’ May shouted from the pulpit, the safety rail at the front of the boat, as she let go of the mooring lines and watched the yellow buoy slip away. Bill, at the helm, gave her a thumbs up. She paused for a moment to catch her breath before making her way back to the cockpit. No turning back now; they were stuck with each other for better or worse. At least she didn’t have to worry about driving Bill crazy with desire. Not unattractive indeed. Talk about faint praise. He probably, like Aiden, had taken one look at her without her make-up and noticed how piggy her muddy hazel eyes were and that her mouth was too wide. An acquired taste, Aiden had called her once, but not one, Bill had made it crystal clear, that he was willing to try.

A choppy, unsettled tide meant that what should have been a straightforward exercise became a frustrating thrash as they motored slowly towards the narrow mouth of Portsmouth Harbour. ‘Wow! Look – HMS
Victory
!’ May couldn’t help exclaim, catching sight of the tall rigging of the famous old warship beside the historic dockyard. Seven hundred large oak trees, each of them about one hundred years old, were supposed to have gone into its construction. ‘And
Warrior
too!’ This was where Henry VIII’s flagship,
The Mary Rose
, was constructed, the place Admiral Nelson left to command the fleet that won the battle of Trafalgar! Gosh, she really was part of maritime history now.

‘Never mind that,’ Bill shouted, steering into what felt like a marine rush hour, ‘just keep an eye on what everyone else is doing, will you?’

The trouble was that with huge freight ships, passenger ferries, military vessels and a variety of small crafts all funnelling towards what was beginning to feel like a very small exit, May was running out of eyes.

‘Bill!’ she shouted, straining to be heard above the commotion as she gesticulated at the ferry bearing down on them.

‘I’m trying to get out the way!’ Bill roared back. ‘Ideally I’d like to get close to the western bank where the current curls back on itself so we’re not punching against it.’

‘So? Go a bit faster, then.’

‘This is as good as it gets,’ Bill said, with a quick look over his shoulder. ‘It’s a sailing boat, remember, not a motorboat. This engine’s not built for speed.’

No, it was apparently built to chug along at a rate of acceleration so stately that even little old ladies shopping at nearby Gunwharf Quays could easily outpace it. Now May remembered that the
Mary Rose
had sunk here, almost in this very spot, and that Admiral Nelson was mortally wounded in his fight to confirm his country’s naval supremacy and received a hero’s funeral for his achievements rather than a hero’s welcome. Great! She didn’t actually want to be part of maritime history that much. She closed her eyes as the ferry slid past them, its stern wave sending them bucking wildly as
Lucille
crabbed westwards.

In a minute, she told herself, waiting for her head to stop spinning, the motion would get better. It was fear making her feel queasy, wasn’t it? Worrying that you were about to be sunk without a trace or that your vessel might take out a smaller craft wasn’t good for you. No wonder her legs were shaking and her palms were clammy. But even when they finally made it out of the hectic harbour and into the comparative calm of the Solent, she needed to concentrate. The slim strait, separating the mainland and the Isle of Wight was, after all, a busy recreational area for water sports in addition to being a major shipping route. It was also, she was beginning to realise as
Lucille
started rolling on a wallowy sea left over from the storm, subject to some complex tides.

May’s stomach started rolling along with the boat, and her face, she was sure, reflected the green waves. Bill frowned at her, but it was impossible to say anything to reassure him since she was too afraid to open her mouth. Unzipping her jacket, she took great lungfuls of sea air and tried to let her body go with the flow. It duly did, although not in quite the way she hoped. It was all very humiliating and not, she thought, given Bill’s earlier observations about her, exactly guaranteed to send him suddenly crazy with desire.

‘Here,’ he said, passing her a bottle of mineral water.

Having sluiced out her mouth and wiped her face she felt marginally more human. ‘Let me steer for a bit. I’ll be all right now.’

‘Sure?’ He stood beside her, showing her their course and waiting until she was comfortable before sitting down.

‘I’m sorry about that,’ she mumbled.

‘Don’t apologise. Lots of sailors are sick before they get their sea legs back. It puts a lot of would-be yachtsmen off for good. You’re brave to come back for more.’

May was relieved to use her nausea as an excuse not to respond to that one. Bill probably didn’t want to hear that she hadn’t really been at sea enough times to find out how prone she was to seasickness.

‘You’ve got guts,’ he told her, sounding impressed.

‘Yes, mainly over the side decks.’

‘May! Don’t you know how to take a compliment?’

He was so near the mark that, for a horrible moment, she was afraid she would cry. ‘Try a few more,’ she said, hoping he would put her watery eyes down to the aftermath of barfing over the side. ‘I’ll see how I get on.’ Risking a quick glance in his direction, May found that for once he was smiling. Simultaneously she noticed the sun had come out; why else would the day seem suddenly brighter?

By mid-afternoon it was so hot that May, sweltering in her jeans, had swapped them for shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt. Hair piled up under a baseball cap, she stood at the helm guiding
Lucille
over the undulating green sea. There wasn’t a breath of wind in the sky, just the occasional wispy cloud trailing past the mast. This is what she had come for: to be away from land, to watch the waves turning over like molten glass and not let herself think about …

‘Beachy Head,’ said Bill, pointing out the chalk headland that was a notorious suicide hotspot just when she was trying to let go of all her negative thoughts. Even on a beautiful, benign day like today, there was a sense of despondency about the place. She’d read somewhere that the top of the cliff was studded with fingernails where suicides changed their minds seconds after jumping. It was an image that was hard to shake off. Shuddering, she looked away to where a recent landfall had created a chalk pier stretching out to sea, but even that felt, to her, as if the cliff had thrown itself at the lighthouse, unable to take any more.

‘It crumbles at an average of a metre a year,’ said Bill nodding towards the towering headland.

Rather like her with Aiden, thought May.

‘The sea attacks from the bottom and ice from the top until the chalk comes away in great chunks. That white face is actually caused by constant erosion.’

Yes, she knew how that felt too.

‘But of course it makes the most wonderful reflective surface,’ Bill went on. ‘Ghostly grey in the moonlight, blood red in the sunset or, like today, brushed with golden light. We’re lucky to see it from the sea like this, not many people do.’

Those unhappy times could be sloughed away, May told herself firmly, and with them her previous life. Here, at sea, she could breathe freely.

‘… just as not many people know that I quite like talking to myself.’

‘Bill! Sorry, I
was
listening.’

‘Come on, it’s not too far to Sovereign Harbour now,’ he said, touching her lightly on the shoulder, bringing her back to the present. ‘You’ve done enough for a while, I’ll take over.’

Stretching her stiff back against sun-warmed wood, she sank back gratefully and studied him from beneath her peaked cap. ‘Was it difficult for you to drop everything to do this?’

‘I cleared my diary when Cecil was taken ill. I’m self-employed so all I’m losing is money.’

May congratulated herself on her supreme lack of tact. An unpalatable thought crossed her mind. ‘But what about your wife and six children?’

‘My wife divorced me because she didn’t like the hours I was putting in setting the business up. We never got round to having children,’ he said lightly.

Tipping the peak of her cap a little lower, May closed her eyes, lifted her face up to the sun, giving all the outward signs that she was relaxing so that Bill would let her off the hook and not ask about
her
private life or the sudden interest in his. She had, after all, just been making conversation. What was it to her if Bill was married with ten children or single and fancy-free? Even so.

Their stay in Sovereign Harbour, if May didn’t include the scary lock at the entrance to the marina, passed uneventfully. After fifteen hours at sea both she and Bill had been glad to eat a hasty meal then retire to their respective bunks. Now, after another long day at sea and another night in a harbour, May came to with a start and it took her a few seconds to remember where she was.

The first part of the passage from Eastbourne had passed smoothly enough, but the next twenty miles had felt like an eternity of punching against the tide. Progress had been punishingly slow and the elements unkind with sudden squalls that had them hastily donning wet weather gear. The forecasts had warned of a ‘bit of a blow’, but an unseasonal gale had arrived from nowhere, along with a couple of tsunami-like waves. May had been relieved when, after negotiating some of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, they managed to slip into Ramsgate just before the wind rose.

From somewhere nearby, a fishing vessel was playing Dutch radio full blast, featuring many hits that really should have been buried in history. With her luck, she was only seconds away from hearing
‘
Chillin’ in the Park’
,
the single that would haunt her for the rest of her days. But for now, she realised, sitting up in her berth, she was free of all those associations. Who, round here, would ever link the woman she was now to the girl she was then? A glance in the mirror showed that, if anything, she had travelled forwards, not backwards, in time. A pillow-crumpled shiny red face framed by wild hair peered back at her. Feeling like her own granny after a bad sunbed treatment, May went up on deck just in time to bump into Bill, who was fresh-faced and sweet smelling from a trip to the showers.

‘Feeling better this morning?’ he asked perkily. ‘You were a bit subdued last night, but – see? – we made it before the storm. Although how soon we can leave remains to be seen.’

It wasn’t fear that had crushed her, not of the elements anyway. What had really made her stomach churn was the menacing tone of Aiden’s latest text. They were so hard to ignore once she knew they were there, but so far she’d managed to resist the compulsion to respond.

Conscious of exuding a mephitic cloud that would shame the most unsavoury drunk, May brushed aside Bill’s all’s-right-with-the-world offer of tea and grabbed her shower bag and change of clothes. Lowering herself on to the pontoon, her suspicion that she couldn’t look anything less like a pop princess was confirmed when, even though they had been at sea for goodness knows how long, none of the men working on the fishing boat looked up until she skidded on a bit of fishy debris and narrowly saved herself from a cold plunge.

Looking behind to see if anyone else had noticed, she saw Bill standing with a small band of gale-bound sailors on the pontoon, all hoping, presumably, that their yachts wouldn’t disintegrate before their eyes whilst they dodged ten foot walls of spray and tried to rustle up some Dunkirk spirit. Behind them, May suddenly saw, her eyes widening in alarm, several small boats reeling into the harbour to escape the gale were also being forced to take cover from a massive, top-of-the-range luxury yacht named
Valhalla
roaring in and rapidly running out of marina.

On board the smaller yachts, once their owners knew they were out of danger, white faces lit up with ghoulish interest at the prospect of seeing several hundred thousand pounds’ worth of yacht smash into unyielding concrete. In contrast to open-mouthed spectators standing idly by, there was great activity on board
Valhalla
. Figures in expensive matching Henri Lloyd wet weather gear jumped about frantically flinging ropes over the side whilst their skipper barked expletives and steered straight at the pontoon.

‘Over here!’ bellowed Bill.

May froze as he raced to catch a wildly thrown line then braced himself to take the impact of the still speeding yacht. ‘Let go!’ she screamed. If he didn’t drop the line now he would either be dragged between the yacht and the pontoon like a human fender or lose his fingers trying to hold the rope. ‘Please, Bill! Don’t be a hero!’

Jerked out of their inertia by her cries, some of the men standing round sprang forward to help. There was a heart-stopping moment when their efforts seemed set to fail, but with the very tip of its nose about to be kissed by concrete, they managed to drag the line round a mooring cleat and
Valhalla
shuddered to a halt.

The exhausted men sank to the ground and May made a beeline for Bill. ‘You idiot!’ she told him, taking his hands and turning them over to examine large weals across his palms. ‘Fancy putting yourself at risk like that for morons with more money than sense. They probably won’t even thank you for it!’

‘On the contrary, darling,’ came a breathy voice from behind her. ‘The skipper is very grateful to you for saving his new toy. And if the skipper is happy,
I’m
happy.’

They looked up to find one of the expensively liveried crew next to them. Bill seemed about to brush aside any thanks until the bright red storm hood was drawn back to release a curtain of glossy mahogany-brown hair which made May even more self-conscious about her own unkempt locks. Wide blue eyes under sweeping lashes gave the other woman an air of innocence which was somewhat at odds with the predatory curve of her lips. She was also surprisingly strong as she elbowed May out the way. Evidently she had decided that Bill was weak with shock and needed reviving, since she proceeded with some very thorough mouth to mouth. Ooh! Bill would hate being shown up like that!