The Boat (18 page)

‘He can’t even swim!’ she said. There was something mocking, unkind in her tone.

Johnny put down the sextant and sat down. ‘He can’t swim and he can’t sail?’ he asked. It felt naughty talking about him. ‘Are you masochists? Why the hell didn’t you buy a house instead of a boat?’

She looked down at her hands and vigorously swiped at the potato. ‘No one can find you on a boat, can they?’ she said. Then she flashed another look down below, wiped her face with her sleeve and got up, as if she’d said too much.

Shortly Frank appeared from the forepeak in his shorts and Johnny watched as he pottered about the saloon, his large, tanned frame, the row of dents on his back, the broken shoulder blade. Clem said he’d been hit by a truck. It looked like he’d been run over by a tractor.

Much later, when the pleasant analgesic of alcohol had helped change the atmosphere to something more united, after they’d moored in yet another deserted bay and eaten their supper, after the sky had gone pink and the Earth had turned its back on the sun, after the girls had read bedtime stories to Smudge and were playing hippie music and dancing in the galley, and Frank and Johnny were drinking a bottle of red in the cockpit, the night sky put on the most spectacular display for them. Something big was happening up there: the sky was full of shooting stars wherever you looked. It had been going on for hours.

Frank was lying along the stern seat, his legs dangling over the tiller, his eyes watching the sky as he quizzed Johnny about his sailing experiences. Johnny was telling him about the one and only time he’d been in a full-on storm, where the wind was blowing a steady sixty gusting up to eighty in the Bay of Biscay. He and Rob had got caught in the force ten in a thirty-two-foot wooden yawl. The sea had been white; dense streaks of foam zigzagging across it. They’d dropped all the sails, harnessed themselves on and hoped for the best. He remembered clearly being down at the bottom of a freakishly huge wave and looking up to where it was breaking and all he could see was a tiny handkerchief-sized patch of sky, the rest was a living mountain of water about to come crashing down on them.

‘Jesus,’ Frank said, turning his whole body round to Johnny. ‘And what was going through your mind?’

‘I was just hoping the boat could take it.’

‘Ah! But then you were born in the caul, let’s not forget,’ Frank said, swirling the wine around in his glass. Johnny laughed.

‘Did you feel fear?’ Frank asked and Johnny was pleased to see how impressed Frank was with him. He glowed a little, despite himself.

‘Fear, excitement… It’s much the same thing, isn’t it?’ Johnny said. He wasn’t trying to sound flash, it really was true: the only thing he truly remembered feeling at the bottom of the wave was pure exhilaration.

Frank laughed. ‘I like the cut of your jib, Johnny.’ He sat up and tapped out a fag and leant back, one leg up on the seat, blowing the smoke up into the sky, tapping his foot in time to the music, eyes set on Johnny, looking at him in that intimate, almost sexual manner. It made Johnny uncomfortable in a not entirely unpleasant way. A dark and peculiar thought struck him: if he were a woman, Frank would be exactly the sort of man he could imagine falling in love with.

Frank was staring at him. ‘I think I’ve been waiting a long time for you, Johnny. I think our paths were meant to cross.’

Johnny felt himself flush. He had never sought anybody’s approval like this before. He tried not to be flattered, he tried to be cool but as he sipped his wine and looked up at the sky above, somewhere inside he was shining.

‘I don’t believe in coincidences,’ Frank said, looking at him oddly as if he were seeing him for the first time. ‘It’s just opportunity and preparedness coming together.’

This was all new to Johnny, the whole idea that things happened for a reason. His mother used to talk like that and he had always liked it but since she had died he had become totally rational. You live, you die, and that’s that. He sucked on his cigarette and listened to the comforting crackle of the burning tobacco.

‘You like a bit of danger, don’t you, Johnny?’

Johnny wasn’t sure what he meant. He leant back a little, resting his head against the coachroof, and thought about the question. High up above a meteor shot through the Earth’s atmosphere. ‘I think I do,’ he said.

Frank’s voice was quiet. ‘Did that feel dangerous today?’

‘No, that was barely a five.’ He blew out his smoke, slowly, and watched it disappear into the night.

‘No, not the sailing,’ Frank said, his voice still low. ‘Up on the hillside… touching my wife.’

Johnny froze. He turned to Frank in the darkness, the music from down below blaring inanely, aware of the sudden thumping rhythm of his heartbeat, the tightness that seemed to have taken hold in his chest.

‘Was it exciting?’ Frank whispered.

Johnny sat up and leant forward. ‘She told you?’ He was whispering too.

‘She tells me everything, Johnny.’

Johnny could only stare. He swallowed, trying to release the tightness around his neck. He glanced down below deck. Annie and Clem had stopped dancing around in the galley and were crouched over some book. Johnny shuffled forward along the seat. ‘I’m so sorry, Frank. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened… I don’t know what I thought I was doing…’

‘Hey,’ Frank said, moving in a little closer. He placed his big hand on Johnny’s shoulder. ‘Relax. I don’t mind. It doesn’t matter.’ He waved it away as if it was of no importance at all.

It doesn’t matter
. He felt Frank’s huge fingers kneading his shoulder, relaxing him, absolving him. It didn’t make sense.

‘It’s the “danger” that interests me,’ Frank said, sitting back, sucking on his cigarette. ‘Besides, Annie can do as she pleases. I don’t believe in repressing people. We mustn’t censor ourselves. We must be what we are.’

Johnny stared at him, confused. ‘Really?’ he said.

‘Denial is against all my principles,’ he said, serious yet with a glint in his eye.

‘You’re something else, Frank.’

Frank offered him a cigarette, which he took, his hand shaking a little.

‘We have to be free to be ourselves, Johnny. This is life. There’s no point otherwise!’

‘You won’t say anything to Clem?’ Johnny asked, looking up at him, leaning in as Frank lit his cigarette for him, his face lighting up in the flame, dark and rugged.

‘Not if you don’t want me to.’

‘Will Annie tell Clem?’

‘What are you so afraid of?’ Frank asked, letting the flame go out, his features retreating into the darkness. ‘I thought fear and excitement were the same thing?’ he said, smiling, ruffling Johnny’s head as if he were a schoolboy.

Then he was still for a moment before leaning forward again. ‘Fear has no place in love, Johnny.’ Johnny stared at him, wanting to understand. Sometimes Frank made him feel as if he’d been looking at the world upside down for his entire life. ‘You must see that! ’ He tapped the side of Johnny’s head slowly with his big knuckles. ‘You need to start changing the way you’re thinking.’

Johnny wanted to change; he wanted to see the world the way Frank saw it; he wanted to look out of the same window that Frank was looking out of.

‘Fear is just the unknown, Johnny. That’s all.’

Johnny nodded; he thought he understood that.

‘Do you want to know how to get rid of the fear?’ Frank whispered, smiling now.

‘Tell me.’

‘You embrace the uncertainty.’

Johnny didn’t get it; he watched as Frank crossed one leg over the other and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘Why are you so scared about Clem finding out?’ He wasn’t expecting an answer. He carried on, his voice low, aware of the girls down below. ‘You’re worried about what? Some bullshit you’ve made up, like hurting her, upsetting her. So you lie, or you don’t tell the truth. You protect her. Is that right?’

Johnny nodded.

‘Well, that’s fine, Johnny, but sooner or later, you’re going to understand that the only life worth living is a
free
life. That’s a life without lies, half-truths, censorship and misunderstandings. You touched Annie because you wanted to. There’s nothing wrong with that.’

‘Isn’t there?’ Johnny asked, because he was pretty sure that there was.

‘No.’

‘But it would hurt Clem if she knew.’

‘Yes,’ Frank said, his eyes shining. ‘Because at the moment the pair of you are living in the prison of your past conditioning. You’re still living with old thought processes, old values. There’s no evolution in that, only stagnation and decay. You need to evolve, Johnny.’ He made evolving sound like the most wonderful thing in the world. ‘Real love has no limits,’ he said. ‘No boundaries.’

Johnny stared into Frank’s eyes. He could feel something new fizzing away inside of him now, a glimpse of what life could be like, an absolution of any darker desires; he could sense all the potential that was lying in wait. He wanted to
evolve
. That had to be the point of it all – if there was a point – which he was now pretty sure that there was. As a species, evolution had to be our primary purpose.

‘I tell you,’ Frank said, flashing his white even teeth at Johnny. ‘As soon as you accept uncertainty with an open heart, as soon as you step into the unknown, life is bloody magical. It’s a blast, not some of the time, but
all
of the time.’

Annie stuck her head out into the companionway, holding out two tumblers. ‘Hey, you two. Pour us some!’ She’d washed her hair and looked clean and shining. Frank took the cork out of the bottle and poured the red wine into the glasses. ‘Get yourselves out here,’ he said. ‘There are shooting stars all over the place. All our wishes can come true!’

‘Smudge asleep?’ Johnny asked, noticing that he could look Annie in the eye again now.

‘Eventually,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to move Granny. She’s sleeping on the pillow.’ She looked up at the sky for a moment and squeezed shut her eyes to make a wish. ‘Fresh eggs for Thursday please,’ she said, opening them again. ‘We were just looking up cake recipes for the birthday girl.’

Annie turned back round into the saloon. ‘Turn the lights off, Clem. Pass the guitar!’

Clem and Annie came out into the dark of the cockpit and sat down together opposite Johnny; the starlight and their cigarettes the only light. Annie began to play along with Fleetwood Mac, only it sounded entirely different when she sang it. Clem lay back, next to her, her body close to Frank’s, her feet on Annie’s lap and the four of them listened as Annie sang about the songbird while the meteors hurled themselves through the Earth’s atmosphere and Johnny felt extraordinarily lucky to be alive.
This, here, now is magic
. He got it then, the power of uncertainty, true freedom, and it felt just like love to him. He was drunk, but that was irrelevant.

Annie’s voice took them somewhere else as it always did and they followed it willingly; they went wherever she took them and she kept on singing and the stars kept on shooting. Eventually Johnny reached for the bottle and poured the dregs into Frank’s glass. He was drunker than he thought and the empty bottle slipped from his fingers. Annie went to catch it with her legs but knocked it into a spin in the centre of the cockpit floor. It whirled around in a blur of darkness.

‘Oh, yes!’ Annie said, leaning forward, her fingers ceasing their strumming, resting her chin on the guitar. ‘Spin the bottle…’ She looked round at them all, one eyebrow raised. ‘Who do I get to kiss?’

They laughed at first, but then gradually, one by one, they leant forward to watch it spin, all of them wondering, all of them quiet now. It seemed to take forever to slow down, for its bottle shape to re-emerge from the blur. Johnny was thinking about kissing her now, how he had wanted to up on the hillside, how he had wanted to press his face into those breasts. But this time, he didn’t feel bad about it; he just let himself be free, he stopped the judgements, he wasn’t going to think like that any more. The bottle began to slow down, slower and slower; round and round it spun, taking all his hopes around with it.
Step into the unknown
. The bottle stopped indisputably at Clem.

Clem leant back. ‘Oh,’ she said, surprised. ‘It’s me.’

She glanced across at Johnny; he could see the expectation in her eye: she wanted him to tell her what to do. He smiled and shrugged his shoulders, giving his consent, but Annie had already put her finger on Clem’s chin and turned her face to her own. She leant forwards and kissed her tenderly on the lips. He could see that Clem was surprised; she had never been kissed by a woman. But he noticed that she didn’t pull away so, after a moment or two, Annie kissed her again, so gently at first that Johnny could almost feel the softness of their lips. They began to kiss properly then, a real, deep, passionate embrace and he became so stiff he would have to undo his jeans if this carried on. He saw Frank lean back against the stern and spread his arms across the transom but it was too dark to read his expression.

‘Your turn!’ Annie whispered as she pulled away. Clem was a little breathless, her lips parted and moist. She was turned on, just as Johnny was, just as they all were. She briefly caught his eye and then bent down and flicked the bottle into a spin. They all watched it turning, the dark whir on the cockpit sole. It bounced off the side of the cockpit seat and came to a fast halt pointing towards the bucket tied to the stern. The only person sitting at the stern was Frank. Johnny could see her profile in silhouette: her mouth was open, her tongue on her lips and he knew that there was a light in her eye.

‘Don’t worry, Clem,’ Frank said gently, his words low and soothing in the darkness. ‘You don’t have to play these games.’

She stared at him, motionless.

‘No, go on,’ Johnny heard himself say. ‘Kiss him, Clem…’

And he watched as his wife stood up and bent down to kiss Frank; he heard the wet soft noises of them kissing, saw how his gentle giant hands held her head with such tenderness, the way those hands moved slowly down her back and how she pressed her body into his, giving herself to him.