The Backpacker (23 page)

ONE

None of us went to sleep that first night. Dave was like a cat on hot bricks, flying about from the mast to the deck: first running up to the bow, to lean over and watch the waves as we chugged through the inky water, and then skipping along the sides, whooping and hooting his way to the stern.

Every time he reached the rear, Rick would say something to him to check this, or look over that and he'd bolt off down the hatch like a rabbit, only to come up a minute later, beaming, both thumbs held up. He handled the motion of the boat beautifully, much the same as Rick, while I held on to everything and anything within arm's reach to steady myself.

I could barely contain my level of excitement, and because I was restricted physically (I didn't want to pull the wrong ropes) the energy and enthusiasm eventually worked its way out of my system verbally. All of the things that I'd told myself not to voice through fear of appearing idiotic came out in a torrent. I may not yet have had the sea legs to sprint about like Dave, but I matched him word-for-step.

‘Why don't we put up the sail, Rick?' I'd shout, while hanging on to the rigging.

‘We don't want–'

‘What's this stuff do?' I'd ask impatiently, cutting him off in mid-reply.

‘That's for when we–'

‘Which direction are we heading in; north, east, south or west?'

‘Well at the moment we should be–'

‘Can I have a go at steering?'

‘Fooking hell!'

I don't think I kept quiet for more than a minute that first night. Looking back now, I wish I'd taken some more time to quietly reflect on what was going on around me. In fact my whole time aboard that boat now seems more like a snapshot than an adventure lived. It's like it happened to me, but because it was so new and exciting, and because I didn't allow my eyes or brain time to take it in and store it properly, the memory of it isn't as clear as it should be.

In contrast, Rick, characteristically, took it all in without a word. I do remember standing on the boom that first night, clinging to the mast and looking back at Rick holding the wheel, and thinking: so young and yet so wise.

After a few hours, I don't remember how many but it was before sunrise, we cleared Singaporean waters and Dave let out the main sail to a cheer from all of us. He then went down below again and cut the engine. The silence was deafening. The flapping sound of the canvas turned into a loud
crack
in the swift breeze as the wind filled the sails and we picked up speed.

Abruptly, Rick spun the wheel through his hands and we changed direction. Dave shouted something from below, and Rick adjusted the wheel accordingly. ‘South-south-east, right?' he called to Dave. There was another brief exchange which made little sense to me, and the two of them quickly changed positions. Two minutes later they changed back again, obviously a check to make sure there were no mistakes on Dave's part. Pretty shrewd, I thought.

I jumped down off the mast and went to Rick's side. ‘What's going on? Where are we?'

He leaned forward and shone the Maglite at the compass, pushing his billowing hair out of his face. ‘Heading south-south-east. We're more or less in the South China Sea.' He thumbed over his shoulder. ‘That was the Singapore Strait, and over that way's Borneo. Ahead of us is... ' he leaned over to one side and looked down at the chart I was standing on. I moved back slightly. ‘Nothing really.'

I glanced around and noticed a huge land mass to our right. ‘Isn't that Singapore over there?'

He shook his head. ‘Bintan. Part of Indonesia. The way I see it we'll keep going until... Pass me that chart, John. Thanks. Until... Kep' Lingga, and stop off for some decent supplies. If there's fook-all there we'll just keep going until we get to a place called... Dang... something, on the island of Bangka. There.' He pointed at the map with his torch beam. ‘We've got fishing gear and a big bag of rice, so we won't go hungry.'

‘I've got thirty tins of sardines in my bag,' I said enthusiastically.

‘Ugh, I hate sardines. You should have bought tuna.'

So much for my contribution to the ship's rations. There was a pause, and I said, ‘Not much about. Ships I mean.' It seemed odd, apart from the occasional tanker that we spotted as a black rectangle on the horizon, we hadn't passed a single vessel.

He switched off the torch. ‘Busiest shipping lane in the world, this. Lots of pirates around.'

‘Pirates?' I exclaimed. ‘Come off it, not in this day and age.'

‘South China Sea is the most notorious stretch of water in the world for piracy.' Rick took his hands off the wheel to light a cigarette, speaking with it hanging from his lips. ‘Forget cutlasses and all that shit, this is modern stuff. These guys go around in power boats.'

‘Doing what?'

‘Ripping off expensive yachts like this one.'

‘Great! You never told me that before.'

‘Didn't want to scare you.' He cupped his hand over the match to light the cigarette.

‘Well you just have. Cheers.'

‘Heh heh, don't worry, we'll only take a week or so to get to Bali at this rate. These trade winds are pretty constant.'

‘I thought we were going to sail around the fourteen thousand islands of Indo for ever and a day?'

‘Yeah, I've been thinking about that,' He flicked the match into the air directly above his head and the wind carried it away.

‘And?'

‘And I think we should get to Bali before we do anything else. At least then we'll have a proper base, and we can decide which islands we want to visit: Indo, Philippines, whatever takes our fancy.'

A spark from his cigarette flew into my face so I went around to the other side. ‘Why don't we just do that now? Stop in that place we just looked at on the map, and start from there.'

‘Too close to Singapore John. We can't afford to hang around here. Even if the owner of this boat doesn't use it, chances are Chan-the-boatman's going to notice something's afoot.' He drew on the cigarette and released the smoke, giggling. ‘Can you imagine his face when he wakes up tomorrow and thinks, "Eh? I'm sure there was a yacht there yesterday!"?'

‘I doubt if he even cares. The way he spoke the other day I reckon he'd be pleased if someone took it. Get his own back on the owners.'

As we sat there looking up at the stars, there was a noise down below and Dave climbed out of the hatch, bounding down the deck towards us.

‘Hey, you two,' he said, ‘we're bang on target, the wind's force four, according to the radio, and we are mooo-ving. Yee-hah!'

‘You're more excited than I am Dave,' I said. ‘You should be used to this sort of thing by now.'

‘John,' his arm went around my neck, ‘once it's in your blood, you never get tired of it. Am I right Sir William?'

Rick nodded.

‘This is
living
,' he grinned, sitting down beside me. ‘We've got everything we need to sail this mother around the world if we wanted to.'

‘Mm, what we need now is a nice cup of tea,' I said. ‘Get us nice and relaxed just before sunrise.'

Rick narrowed his eyes in delight. ‘Good idea, John. Did you bring the tea bags?'

‘Don't look at me, Dave's the essentials man. Dave?'

Silence.

‘Dave?'

He pinched his nose. ‘Oops.'

TWO

Sunrise was beautiful, and unlike many of the days we'd spent in Singapore, the sky had cleared of haze, leaving the sun to add or take away different colours as it moved through the sky. A sliver of orange lined the horizon first, while the sky and the sea remained a dark blue-black. Then, when the top curve of the orange disc peeped over the horizon, the sky went purple and the sea, as though in competition, started to change to a deep, dark green.

The sun was like the conductor to an orchestra of light, dictating to the elements which colour at what time. The earth turned and presented yet more of herself to the fire in the sky, like a stripper slowly revealing herself through her fancy plumage. Five more minutes went by and the horizon was a cord, slicing through the sun. At these times the sun is never a sphere but a disc, and it's impossible, even while watching, to imagine a ball of fire.

Purples went to blues, while, not to be out-done by the sky, the sea followed suit as the sun made that last bit of effort and pulled its bottom out of the sea. Borneo, too far away to actually see, was enjoying every second of the show a few minutes before us, and, west of that, a few other Indonesian islands had watched the same show an hour earlier.

The boat dipped into the water, momentarily breaking the spell, and I looked at the two faces beside me, glowing orange against the sunlight. Their eyes squinted, making the bags underneath vanish temporarily, their neck muscles standing out through their skin where their heads were turned to face east. Their faces were as beautiful as the sunrise, picked out against the dark backdrop of the sea that raced away behind us.

Rick gulped down the last dregs of coffee, a puff of steam emitting from each side of the rim as he drank and breathed at the same time. He noticed me and smiled before looking back at the sun. Typical, Rick would never speak during such moments, preferring instead to reflect on the momentous events that were going on around us. He swept the hair from his face and looked down at the compass, before poking Dave in the ribs and tapping his wrist.

Dave jumped, looked at Rick, and without a word passing between them, he hurriedly drank his coffee and went down below. The question, ‘What's going on?' came into my mind, but got no further; my voicebox had orders from my heart to keep quiet, and I wasn't about to disobey them just because my brain was impatient.

Rick shot a look towards the hatch and I followed. Dave's dismembered top half popped up like a jack-in-the-box, gave the thumbs up, and went down again. His heavy footsteps thudded through the hull towards the bedrooms and I followed his progress in my mind's eye, counting the paces and minutes.

Exactly two and a half minutes later the footsteps went back the other way and his whole body came up through the hatch. As soon as his head emerged, the wind caught his afro and the whole thing moved en masse, as though it would lift off his head. ‘Almost missed it,' he gasped, climbing out. He walked over and sat beside Rick. ‘We're on it now.'

I looked at Rick inquisitively. ‘On what?'

Rick cupped the compass with a hand to shield it from the angled sunlight, then leaned back and nodded. ‘The Equator,' he said, and turned to Dave. ‘Did you check the GPS?'

‘Yep. Zero degrees.'

‘Long?'

‘Hundred and seven.' Dave held up his clenched fist revealing the twiddled tops of three joints. ‘This,' he said, holding out his arm like the statue of liberty, ‘is a moment we ain't never gonna forget, boys.'

‘Three joints rolled in two and a half minutes.' I raised my eyebrows, ‘Impressive.'

‘On a rolling boat too. Not bad huh?'

I grinned so broadly it hurt my cheeks.

We took one each and I counted us down before we lit. ‘Three, two, one, ignition!' All three of us put our heads up my shirt to shield the flame from the wind, there was a moment's puffing in silence, just the sound of the Rizla buckling as we drew on the flame, and we each sat back with a sigh of satisfaction.

During the five minutes of silence that followed (or it could have been an hour, it's hard to tell with dope) we each retreated into our own private worlds. Personally I remember frowning a lot. Frowning and blinking, partly because of the wind and sea spray, but also because of my chosen subject of reflection: I started to think about our tiny little boat on the earth.

Now I'm not going to start waffling on about how surreal the moment was, or how insignificant I felt on a planet that's two-thirds ocean, but I did start thinking about ‘the compass' again. I kept getting images of a papier maché globe I had once made at primary school.

It was the usual thing that everyone does in a school art class: blow up a balloon, smother it with wet paper and let it set, come back a week later, cut the ball in half and paint a face on it. Yipee. Only I had decided that I would make a globe instead, and with the teacher's encouragement I set about painting it: green powder paint for land, blue for the sea. I had no idea what the countries looked like, or even which continent was America and which was Africa, I just copied it from a library atlas.

When I'd finished the globe I decided the sea needed a boat on it for added realism, so I stole the relevant playing piece from my sister's Monopoly set, sticking it in mid-Atlantic. The finishing touch was a compass with sixteen points that I drew on the Pacific with a felt-tipped pen. The lines were a bit wonky because of the undulating surface but that didn't matter.

With the teacher's permission I hung it from a piece of string above the blackboard in the classroom and everyone admired it. I can still remember the headmaster's words when he did his weekly rounds: ‘Well,' he said as the teacher introduced the perpetrator to him, ‘looks like we have a future globetrotter among us.' He said some other crap as well, the usual sarcasm something about drifting continents on my globe, ha ha, but I choose to forget that.

Anyway, the point is that the more I thought about what Rick kept saying about compasses, the more sense it all made. I felt not only that my dick was a needle, directing me to go here or there, depending on the availability of loose females, but that on a larger scale my body was a needle. And so on: the boat on the sea, the earth around the sun.

I tried to focus on my toes, looking for answers to the questions swirling around in my head, wondering if my reasons for travelling were the right ones, whether I shouldn't be at home doing a job like everyone else I knew. But the more I thought about it, the more ridiculous all the money-chasing seemed. I had very little cash, none of us had, but we were the three happiest people alive; we hadn't stopped grinning since we'd met. Every day was different, often spent with different people from every conceivable background, and usually in a new place, which I loved.

You get that same buzz when you're introduced to someone you fancy for the first time. It's addictive, I couldn't get enough, it's like the best Friday night you've had, when everything clicks; people and chemistry, mood, drink – except suddenly it's every day. Freedom, in its absolutely purest form, freedom from any ties whatsoever.

It's the compass; not just little head ruling the big head, though that's part of it. It's the natural instinct of following your heart, your eyes, to move from place to place, country to country, and do what you feel inside, to
find out
what you feel inside. How can you find yourself if you stay in your country of birth? It's important, vital, to stand aside and take a look from a different angle, to look with a fresh pair of eyes. As a friend of mine said from the safety of his office in Greenwich, when I'd called him from Hat Rin, ‘Go for it, John. You only live once, and when you're dead, you're dead for a very very long time.'

Whoosh
. A sudden wave of the drug hit and I couldn't concentrate properly, couldn't fix squarely on those toes at the end of someone's feet. Were they mine?

Paranoia. Beads of perspiration and sweaty palms. Did I lack a certain direction in life? Do people like us turn into people like them; washed up down-and-outs, street people with no one to love them and no one to love. Shit, did anyone love me? I knew that my philosophy was right, that we should live each day as though it's the last, that every day should be burned, lit at both ends, shouted at, but I couldn't keep the negative thoughts out, however hard I tried. I began to feel like a boat without a rudder.

I shook my head, unable, or unwilling, to carry the theme too far. Trying to focus on something solid was suddenly a big problem. I'd never been stoned on a boat before, and as soon as I brought my eyes back from the thousand-yard stare and looked at Dave, I felt sick.

Dave was lying down, looking up at me, his hair set in a lopsided wedge from the wind's buffeting. ‘John, man, you've stopped smiling.'

‘Nggh!' was all I could say before jumping up and throwing my head over the side of the boat to vomit. There was a chuckle from Rick, and Dave said, ‘John, don't pollute the ocean.' Not very funny or original, and I told him so in between retches. Luckily the wind wasn't from the side so we were spared a shower of cold coffee and amino acid.

When I'd recovered, having washed my face in sea water because we couldn't waste the bottles of mineral water, I started to feel tired. The adrenalin that had kept me going through the night was beginning to desert me; Rick and Dave seemed fine, but that was probably because they had responsibilities.

‘Are we going to pull over anywhere?' I asked, unsure of the correct terminology.

‘Pull over?' Rick looked at the map and shook his head. ‘You tired, Dave?'

Dave rolled his head to one side. ‘Not really.'

‘Neither am I. I think we should press on. Kep' Lingga's over there; we've already passed it so we may as well keep going to that other place. At this rate we'll be there by nightfall, easy.'

‘Easy,' Dave agreed, stretching and yawning. ‘You can get some sleep if you want, John, Rick and me'll take it in turns.'

Gingerly letting go of the steel handrail that ran around the boat, I said, ‘What bed d'you want?' before quickly grabbing it again.

‘Cabin, John. Doesn't matter, we won't all be sleeping at the same time so take your pick.'

I nodded wearily, turned and staggered below deck, still holding onto rails and walls as I went. The boat seemed to be pitching and rolling a lot more than it had been during the night and some of the steps I took, just as the boat dipped, left me in mid-air for a second before landing heavily.

After a quick check in both bedrooms to see which one was the best, I settled for the right-hand side because less light came in through the porthole window. A glance out at the sea to make sure we were still heading in the right direction was all I could manage before collapsing onto the bed and falling into a dream.

I dreamt about fairground rides, and in particular the Jolly Roger: a huge swinging boat that holds fifty puking people at one time. I was at the front.