An Irish Country Wedding (36 page)

“Wake up, crew,” John roared.

Barry was dragged back to the present by the sharp command and the flogging of the sail. Now that Dennis’s dinghy had passed, John had put
Glendun
on course again so she could pick up speed, but for her to do that her foresail must be properly trimmed. By Barry. “Sorry, John.” Barry hauled on a rope and as he did the sail flattened and stopped flapping.
Glendun
heeled and moved forward.

“Five minutes to start,” John called. “On your toes, everybody.”

Barry looked ahead, but from where he sat,
Wave Dancer
—and Sue Nolan—were hidden behind the sails. It might be hackneyed,
he thought, but the old expression “ships that pass” seemed singularly appropriate. Just nine days ago, he’d been wondering
aloud to O’Reilly about whether he meant as much to Sue as she was starting to mean to him. He’d planned to get an answer that night over dinner, but her refusal to forgo a bloody CSJ committee meeting— He shook his head. He’d said he’d call, but he’d been hoping she would take the lead and call him. She hadn’t and now
he was beginning to realize that he probably wasn’t ever going to be more in her life than a friend. A friend whose company could be enjoyed—unless something more important came up.

The wind whipped John’s next order away, but there was still lots of time to the start. Barry let his thoughts return to Sue Nolan. He’d not, as he’d hoped, seen her in the clubhouse earlier today and might not get a chance later. He sighed. Ships that pass—and perhaps it was better this way? He could cut his losses before he became any more involved. He ground his teeth. As with a patient in limbo before getting a definite diagnosis, it was the uncertainty that was the killer.

“Barry,” John roared.

Bugger. Barry had missed the order to change course and hadn’t let his sail cross the boat. Now the helm was telling the boat to go one way and the sail was demanding she go the other. The opposing forces had stalled the yacht, which was beginning to drift backward.

Bang
. That was their start gun. Shite.

By the time the manouevrings were finished to get
Glendun
on course and across the start line, the other six Glen class yachts all had a five-minute lead.

Barry was furious that his preoccupation with the young woman had cost his crew a good start and blunted his enjoyment of what would be his last day’s sailing for some time. He did not know if what he felt for Sue was love, let alone true love, but he did know that whatever it was that he was feeling, its course, like
Glendun
’s, was not running smoothly.

*   *   *

An hour later
Glendun
’s crew had worked the boat to her limits, but because of Barry’s early inattention had not managed to catch up. They were trailing behind their competitors and were the last keelboat heading for the finish and home.

On the final leg, the wind freshened. The big boat carved
through the waters, making an audible hiss as water streamed along the hull. Barry, legs spread wide, had to jam his feet against the side of a deck hatch.
Glendun
was heeling so much the mast was at thirty degrees to the sea and he was nearly vertical. The wind combed through his hair, standing it on end, and he had to duck as a wave broke into the cockpit. He came close to whooping his exhilaration out loud.

He looked ahead to the dinghy fleet speeding past their slower big sisters. That had been fun, he thought, when I used to do that. The small boats had started later than the keel boats, and unlike yachts with fixed keels could, if the wind and seas were favourable, plane on their flat bottoms like surfboards with sails and reach amazing speeds.

A voice followed by a deep laugh came over the water. Dennis Harper’s red-hulled
Wave Dancer
was tearing past. Her skipper proffered the end of a rope. “Need a tow, John?”

“Bugger off, Dennis,” John roared back with a grin. “See you in the clubhouse. You can buy my crew a round.”

Sue Nolan waved and Barry hoped it was at him. He waved back. He knew the course well. At their present rate of sailing, an hour should see
Glendun
across the finish line, at her moorings, and her crew taken off by the club launch to go ashore. The dinghies would be home even sooner, but at least as John had now arranged to meet Dennis, there was a chance Barry would see Sue. Would he get a chance to talk to her alone, and if he did, what was he going to say? He’d an hour in which to make up his mind, but, damn it all, he wanted to know for sure whether he was wasting his time with this vivacious, very lovely schoolmistress. Would it be worth trying to put their differences about politics behind them and see how deeply their feelings went for each other? Give things another chance? He smiled. Maybe he’d have to become more of a political activist if that was what it would take to win her back. Maybe—

Barry had to clutch a winch as a sudden gust made
Glendun
heel away from him until her masthead seemed as if it might scrape the water. He tingled. With the weight of the keel, there was no real chance of capsizing. But the yacht should be brought up to a more vertical position. Another wave broke green over the bows. Barry ducked, but felt the chill water trickling under his oilskin collar and down his back. He needed no bidding to slacken sail. “‘A life on the ocean wave / a home on the rolling deep,’” Barry sang off-key. This excitement, the sudden rush of fear that was mastered, wind in the rigging, water tearing past the hull, this was why he loved to sail. He filled the yacht’s canvas as the gust passed. “‘Give me the flashing brine / the spray and the tempest’s roar
—
’ Oh, shite.”

Ahead, that same strong gust of wind had caused the smaller
Wave Dancer
to shudder, and rear. Helmsman and crew hurled themselves backward, straining to lever the dinghy upright, sails thrashed in a desperate attempt to spill the wind and reduce the pressure. But Barry knew, because he’d done it before, that the little boat was capsizing. “Man overboard,” he yelled, and waited to obey John’s orders as any thoughts of racing were banished. The skipper immediately began to set
Glendun
to bring her alongside the capsized vessel in case they needed help.

“Everybody,” John yelled, “man overboard drill. You all know what to do. We’ve practised often enough.”

Glendun
began to come abreast of
Wave Dancer
.

The dinghy’s sails were flat on the water. Dennis had clambered onto the side of the hull and was clinging on, already trying to right the boat. But where was Sue? Barry scanned the water carefully. Where was she? The dinghy was slipping downwind, away from where she had capsized. Where the hell was Sue Nolan?

Ten yards away from where the boat had originally been overturned, Barry spotted a commotion in the water. Arms thrashed. Spray whipped away downwind. A head appeared and borne on the wind was a reedy “Heeelllppp.”

She couldn’t swim.

“Ted,” Barry called, as he pulled off his sea boots and threw aside his oilskin jacket and his sweater, “take this line.” He handed over the end of the rope controlling the jib, grabbed his life jacket from where it lay beside him, stood up, and ignoring John’s yell of “Don’t do it,” cleared the guard rail, going headfirst overboard in as shallow a dive as he could manage. Before he hit the water he glimpsed Sue resurfacing ten yards away. He knew well enough that the golden rule was
Never leave the ship for someone in the water
. But that was a rule for sailors, not physicians. He’d forgotten how cold the waters of Belfast Lough were. Already he could feel the icy fingers clawing at him. They’d probably not have to be in the water for more than half an hour, but early hypothermia would already be starting by then. Didn’t matter. Even if it was a stranger out there drowning, Barry must try to help, and besides, who else but him knew about mouth-to-mouth resuscitation? And it looked like it was going to be needed long before the crew of
Glendun
could pluck Sue Nolan from the water.

Barry surfaced, hauling air into starved lungs. He coughed when a wave slapped in his face and he inhaled spray. He kicked both legs hard and forced his head and trunk upward so he could see over the intervening waves. The spray of Sue’s next resurfacing was a beacon. The seas were too much for Barry’s preferred freestyle, so he set off with a dogged breast stroke hampered by the life jacket, but he refused to let it go. He sensed the bulk of Glendun as she went past. Come for us soon, John.

Barry ploughed ahead, breath burning in his lungs, fingers and toes growing numb, muscles aching. He crested a wave and there in the trough, beneath the surface, he glimpsed something copper.

Two more strokes and he was over the spot. Barry exhaled so over-full lungs would not impede his descent and used the strokes of one arm to make himself sink, holding the waist-tie of the life jacket in his other hand. He was at the fullest extent to which he could submerge without letting go when he clutched something fibrous. With what felt like the last of his strength, Barry kicked toward the silver above, following the last of his own racing bubbles upward.

His head broke the surface and he inhaled a great breath to the depths of him before dragging on Sue’s tresses until her head broke water. He wrestled one of her arms through a loop of the life jacket and, ignoring the second loop, simply tied the waist strap tightly to her other arm across her chest so she’d float face up.

As they bobbed together on the waves, Barry could see
Glendun
’s mast and sails starting to come back. It took time to turn a big keel boat.

“Sue.
Sue
.” Not a sound. Her eyes were closed. Water trickled from a corner of her mouth. Barry forced her mouth open and let more water out, took a deep breath, pinched her nose, put his mouth over hers, and blew out his breath. Then he squeezed her chest as best he could and inwardly blessed the American doctors who had publicised their findings in 1960 about the value of direct artificial respiration. The Holger-Neilsen method he’d learnt in the Scouts and that had been taught to all other sailors in the club would have been useless here in the water. He repeated the process, his own lips as cold as hers. Again and again, the waves tossed them up and down, spray breaking over them.

He knew he was getting weaker, but then he saw a flickering of her eyelids. Her eyes opened and when she tried to inhale she collapsed in a paroxysm of coughing, but then managed a real breath.
He tapped a new reservoir of strength. Thank goodness she was breathing on her own. After his resuscitative efforts he was winded.

The sun was blotted out by
Glendun
’s hull. Ted was leaning over the side bawling, “Grab this.” A rope splashed into the water and Barry clutched the loose end. He struggled, had to let Sue go, dived and surfaced, having succeeded in running the rope under her armpits. He paused, caught his breath, then somehow, fingers trembling, managed to tie a bowline.

A second rope splashed beside him. “Grab on to that,” Ted bellowed.

Barry let Sue go now that she was securely attached to the boat, and wrapped the rope round his waist. “Get her on board,” he yelled. “I’m fine.” He tied a knot and watched as Sue was hauled aboard like a drowned calf, water streaming in a cascade from her copper hair.

Barry waited for his turn. Dear God, let her be all right. He felt the rope tighten around his chest and bite into his armpits. He put both hands on it as he was dragged up the yacht’s side and lowered
into the cockpit beside where Sue lay, eyes wide, hair spread round her in a fan, chest heaving as she pulled in lungful after
lungful of air.

He instinctively took her pulse. A hundred and ten, too fast, but regular and beating strongly.

He looked up.
Glendun
’s mainsail had been dropped. John was helming, Barbara handling the lines as the foresail filled and John pointed the yacht for home. “Where’s Ted?” Barry asked.

“Below getting towels and blankets and putting the kettle on,” John said. “We’ll hoist the mainsail again when he’s back on deck. I want to get you two ashore.”

Barry looked ahead to where the red dinghy was scudding for home under mainsail alone. Dennis, as an experienced dinghy sailor, had been able single-handedly to right the small craft, but with less crew had reduced sail.

Barry saw Sue looking up at him. She mouthed, “Thank you, Barry.” He smiled back and despite the chattering of his teeth, his heart swelled and he was warmed inside.

Ted appeared on deck. He held on to a couple of blankets and handed a bath towel to Barbara. “Get Sue out of her wet clothes, dried off, and wrapped in a blanket. Barry. Here.” He handed Barry a second towel.

As Barbara worked on Sue, Barry peeled off his sodden clothes, no time for modesty, towelled himself dry, then accepted and gratefully snuggled into the folds of a heavy blanket.

By the time he was sitting on a bench opposite a blanket-
swaddled Sue, the crew had hoisted sail and
Glendun
was well under way for home.

Ted, who’d vanished below, reappeared carrying two steaming mugs. He handed one to Barry and one to Sue. “Tea,” he said, “with lots of sugar. Get that into you.”

Barry sipped. God, but the drink was wonderfully warming. He raised his mug to Sue. “This is good stuff,” he said, “but when we’ve got ashore and into dry clothes, Sue Nolan, I’m going to prescribe the O’Reilly cure.”

“What’s that?” John asked.

“Large hot whiskies for two.” And, he thought, to be taken somewhere in privacy now he’d fulfilled his Hippocratic obligations and was simply a young man who wanted to know where he stood with this young woman.

Sue managed a weak smile and a laugh. “Whatever you say, Doctor.”

“Good.” Barry wanted his nagging question answered.

“And Barry,” she said quietly, “thanks again.”

She was regarding him solemnly with those emerald-green eyes, and her copper hair was starting to dry into long, wavy
plaits. He wanted to be alone with her, to have her accept another invitation for dinner or lunch this coming Saturday. It would sure as hell be a good time and a good place to start getting that answer.