The Boat House

by Stephen Gallagher

  Nothing was hanging together right any more. Everything seemed to be falling apart. You could even sense it in the village, ever since those two kids had been drowned; business was running as usual, but the spirit of the place somehow wasn't quite the same. Most people probably noticed nothing but Amis, perhaps because he was an outsider, could feel it like a pulse. Sometimes he thought that he'd have liked nothing more than to be like Michael of the tarmac boys, gap toothed and thick headed and with no greater concern than that of pissing his money away at a speed roughly equal to that at which he made it, but he had to make do with the hand that he'd been dealt — thin-skinned and solitary, one of nature's observers.

  The lights went out on him.

  Damn.

  Well, it was late — the simplest answer would be to drop the book on the floor, throw off his T shirt and his jeans, and crawl under the covers and go to sleep. But it wasn't that late, and he wasn't particularly tired, and he knew that he'd do little more than lie there on the hard mattress tormenting himself with thoughts of that waitress. It had been fun, for a while, but he was too old to be entirely at ease with such fantasies. They were for teenagers, looking ahead to a life where anything wonderful could happen. At Amis's stage of existence, the options were narrowing fast and he knew that out of all the possibilities, wonderful was hardly the most likely.

  He'd spoken to her often enough. For a while, there, he'd as good as haunted the place in the late afternoons… but then the van had broken down and getting into town hadn't been so easy, and besides the restaurant had become so damned busy that he'd become just another face in an ever-changing crowd. It didn't seem hopeless. It was hopeless, and he knew it.

  He tossed the book aside and swung his legs off the bed, reaching underneath for the flashlight that he always kept handy. The generator itself was around the back of the reception block, protected from interference or vandalism by a welded metal walk in cage inside a lean to shed. Amis never bothered to close the cage door; he had enough keys to lug around and remember, and didn't want to add to them.

  The night was warm. He could see stars. He'd never seen stars like he'd seen them around here, cold and diamond-sharp and so many. He walked barefoot around the reception building, on the new tarmac for the first few strides and then onto the beaten earth pathway that would lead to the back, his flashlight beam ranging over the ground as he moved. There was silence, no regular chug chug chug of the working generator, which meant that it had to have stalled. In the silence he was aware of the woodland, standing just out of reach. Sometimes he could feel as if this were a frontier post, with everything out there just waiting and passing time until the opportunity came to grab the territory back.

  Well, it wouldn't happen. Too much money had gone into the place for that, now. Pity that it hadn't extended to something better than this undersized diesel driven power supply. Mains electricity was supposedly going to be brought in at some stage, but God only knew when that would be.

  Once inside the shed, Amis entered the cage and cast around for the big wrench that he'd taken to keeping in here. When he found it, he tapped along the feed pipe at random and then gave a couple of good, square bangs on the connectors before he tried the starter button. The generator caught immediately, coughed once, and then ran on smoothly.

  He switched off the flashlight as he came back around the dirt path. The big lights were on again now, and he wouldn't need it.

  Someone was waiting for him.

  He stopped, and she turned.

  It seemed as bright as day out on the newly laid forecourt and it was as if she'd been caught by the lights, trapped and dazed like a rabbit on a long country road. He tried to speak, and all that he could say was, "Where did you come from?"

  And Alina said, "Is that what you call a welcome?"

  For a moment, he couldn't move. There was no way of explaining this, no parallel that he could reach for other than to say: that he'd once made a wish, and the wish now appeared to have come true.

  And then he took a step toward her, the dead flashlight still in his hand, and he said, "I'm sorry, you gave me a scare. How did you get here?"

  "I walked." He must have looked disbelieving, because she went on, "I walk a lot at night, on my own. It's a good time for thinking things over."

  "But it's miles."

  "Not so many. And at this hour, I have all the time that I need." A sudden realisation seemed to trouble her. "Were you sleeping? Did I come too late?"

  "Sleeping? No," Amis reassured her, hurriedly. "Just kind of… lazing around."

  She nodded, as if this was what she'd been expecting, and then she took what was probably her first real look at her surroundings.

  A designer village, was the intended effect; sidelights along the pathways, mauve tinted floods on the buildings, and a mini spot on each of the directional signs wherever two paths joined. When the place was up and running, with guests in all the woodland chalets and the cafeteria open until late, it would feel safe at any hour; and now that he was no longer alone here, it seemed that way now.

  She said, "So this is where you've been working."

  "Yeah," Amis said. "Want to take a look around?"

  His head was spinning as he led her into the reception building. What was he going to say to her? And why was she really here? All that he could think of was to show her his work on the counter and the panelling, which was probably as good as anything that he'd ever done. For a moment, when he'd first stepped back from it, he'd experienced the satisfaction of the true craftsman. By comparison, what he'd been doing in the cafeteria block was mere journeyman stuff. He'd show her, and even if she didn't appreciate the work it would perhaps give him a moment to think, to recover his poise.

  She said, "Did I really scare you?"

  "Surprised me, that's all. I don't see many people up here."

  She looked out of the big foyer window, which ran from the floor almost to the ceiling, at the empty pathways and the silent buildings outside. She said, "It's quiet. I think I could like it here."

  "So did I. The feeling wears off."

  She stared out for a moment longer, and then she turned her attention back inside. She gave him a brief smile, and a thrill ran through him like a low current of electricity. She moved over and touched the polished wood of the counter.

  She said, "How much of this did you do?"

  "All of it," he said. "All of this, and the panelling, and all the carving. Are you really interested?"

  "Of course," she said, and then she looked at him. "You always work alone?"

  "It's what I prefer."

  "And there's no one else here."

  "No."

  She let her hand fall from the counter, her eyes still on him and seeming to see deeper into him than was immediately comfortable. She said, "And are you happy?"

  She'd caught him off guard again, because this wasn't what he was expecting. It was a serious question. But he couldn't bring himself to give it a serious answer.

  "Well," he said, "What's happy, anyway?"

  But she wouldn't be put off. "I know what you're feeling," she said earnestly, "that's why I came." She took a step toward him. "I think I can help you."

  Oh, wow… but now, inexplicably, he felt an urge to back away, to turn and run from her. Still trying vainly to keep it light, he said, "Thanks for the thought."

  "I mean it," Alina said, her gaze so searching now that Amis couldn't break contact or look away. "I know what it's like. You sit up here alone and you think of all the friends you made, and lost. You think of women you've known and wish you'd known better, and you wonder what they're doing now. You look at your life, and it's like all the good things you ever wanted are loaded up onto a train that you didn't run quite fast enough to catch. And you know what you miss most of all?"

  He tried to crack a grin, and his face felt like breaking plaster.

  He said, "Why don't you tell me?"

  "You miss having someone you can trust enough to
tell them about it. You think that you'll die without there being anyone who's ever seen who you really are. Now, tell me if I'm wrong."

  "What do you expect me to say?"

  But her gaze was beyond words; even if he said nothing at all, she could read him with ease.

  "Look," she said, "I can give you what you need."

  "Really?" One simple word, and his voice caught on it and gave him away.

  "Turn around," she suggested, her hand on his arm as she steered him to face the big window. "Look outside."

  The lights out there were flickering again, probably getting themselves ready for their second failure of the night. He'd be alone, in the dark, with Alina.

  He said, "I thought about asking you up here, sometime. I thought about it a lot."

  "I know," she said. "Hold your breath."

  "Why?"

  "Don't speak, just listen."

  By now, he was ready to do anything that she asked. She stood on tiptoe and reached up to cover the lower part of his face with her hand. To do this, she had to press against him. He was putty, she was the sculptor.

  She whispered softly into his ear, "Do you see the lake from here?"

  He couldn't speak because of her hand, but he made a negative sounding grunt. This wasn't exactly comfortable, but he could stand it for a while longer.

  "It doesn't matter," she went on. "Try to think about it. And think about this. When I first came here, I was like you. An outsider. We're all outsiders in our way, but for me it was even worse than most. But then I finally stopped resisting and found that there's a life in the land beyond the life of any one person, Thomas; the lives of the people only stand in the way."

  He didn't want to push her away, but he was getting close to his limit; his blood was starting to pound in his ears and he was seeing haloes around all of the lights outside.

  "Join us," she whispered, and then two things happened; there was a sharp pain, almost as if he'd swallowed broken glass, as she started to take her hand away, and in that same moment the generator missed another beat and caused the lights to drop for barely a fraction of a second. The blip of darkness seemed to sweep around the site like a wave. The glass before them became like a mirror for the briefest time but it was a distorting, ghost train mirror, more shadow than substance with his mind adding hallucinatory details to the little that he could see. He saw not Alina, but something with eyes of blazing green; her hair a long mane strewn with weeds, her dress a dripping shroud, her teeth sharp, her skin pale and scaly as a snake's.

  It was over as soon as it had happened, and as he turned in panic he could see that in reality she was exactly as before… except that she was looking at him now in a way that was more detached, stepping back as if to observe whatever he was going to do next.

  He took a breath.

  But nothing happened.

  He tried again, but the air simply wouldn't come. He looked at Alina, wanting to ask her what she'd done; but she was standing just out of his reach, and watching him with something that looked like compassion. He was straining hard now, and still nothing was happening; everything had gone a couple of shades darker, and the roaring in his ears drowned out everything else. He put his hands to his throat, anything to ease the pain and help him to get just a little air…

  To find that she'd pinched his windpipe shut.

  It must have been in that one moment of darkness, as she'd been taking her hand away. He couldn't believe the strength that it must have taken.

  But he had to.

  Why? Why had she done this to him? His chest, his entire frame, were like a fire walker's bed of coals. But he wouldn't give in to it. Oh, Christ, just for one breath! He turned from Alina, trying to retch but with his clogged windpipe preventing even that; he threw himself toward the doors, trying to get out into air, air that he couldn't quite reach.

  He burst out into the open. His tools were all over in the cafeteria, there had to be something that he could use to open himself up. He'd saw his own damned throat open, if he had to, but he wouldn't let this happen.

  He was lying at the bottom of the steps where he'd fallen, pulling up into a near foetal curl that he couldn't prevent. He was being drawn into that single point of pain that burned like a hot light. He was only dimly aware of Alina coming down the steps toward him, only dimly aware of her crouching by him to smooth the hair from his forehead. He started to shiver, completely out of control now. He could see the end coming, and it was just as she'd said; the friends he'd made and lost, and the women that he wished he'd known better.

  "There, there," he heard her say. "It'll soon be over."

  And it was.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  "You're looking tired, Peter," Alina said when Pete came through to breakfast the next morning. He'd heard her moving around and had almost panicked, thinking that he was late; but then he'd checked his old wind-up alarm and realised that he wasn't, and so then he'd used the spare fifteen minutes to stand under the tepid shower in an attempt to shock himself awake.

  He said, "That's no surprise. The yard's having its busiest season in ten years, and two of us are handling it all."

  This was hardly an overstatement. The yard staff presently consisted of Pete himself and Frank Lowry, with very little practical help from its owner. Business had started to pick up with a May heatwave that had brought out the sun umbrellas and the city hordes. The umbrellas were on the Venetz sisters' restaurant terrace, and the hordes were under them and everywhere else. They jammed the roads with their trailers and caravans, they turned up in shorts and sandals and herded in the village centre looking for postcards and souvenirs, and they crowded the inshore waters of the lake with dinghies and windsurf boards and dangerously cheap inflatables. They sat on blankets on the shore, they dropped ice creams on the promenade, they tried to fly kites, they argued. They pulled into the passing places on the narrowest roads and treated them as laybys, setting up a whole living room's worth of furniture by the open tailgates of their cars.

  And when those cars broke down — which, many of them being underserviced and badly prepared, they tended to do with an inevitability that amazed only their owners — they demanded instant service from the staff of an auto marine yard that was already being run under the strain of some of the heaviest lake traffic that it had ever experienced.

  He hefted the old tin kettle. It was half full, and still warm. He set it on the stove to heat up again.

  "How do you do it?" he said, picking up the cereal boxes and shaking to see which was the least empty.

  "Do what?"

  "You work longer hours than I do, you walk all the way there and back, and you don't even sleep at nights. I'd really like to know what's keeping you going."

  She gave a slight shrug. "I don't even think about it," she said. "Why do you mention it now?"

  "Forget it," he said, and he gathered up the cereal box and a bowl and everything else and headed out through the house to breakfast alone on the covered terrace.

  She appeared after a couple of minutes, and set one of the cabin's old china mugs alongside him.

  "I made your tea," she said.

  He looked down into the mug.

  "You always make it black," he said.

  "Only because you took the milk," she said.

  He looked at her. He'd never seen her looking better; her eyes were bright and her hair shone and her skin glowed like a small child's. Pete, by contrast, was feeling as if he'd been broken into pieces and badly reassembled.

  He looked away.

  He hadn't intended to sigh, but he did it anyway.

  "What's the matter?" she said, moving around him and half-hitching herself onto the wooden rail so that he couldn't avoid her again; and Pete felt embarrassed, because he knew that he was acting with just a touch of stupidity.

  "Nothing," he said. "Really, nothing. I'm sorry. It's just the pressure of the work, I think it's wearing me down."

  But he knew that this was only a part of the answe
r. Late at night, when Alina was out and he was unable to sleep, he'd find himself thinking that maybe — just maybe — he could pick up a phone at this hour and dial the old number, and his mother would answer the same as always. Not at any other time, but only then; that particular hour of the night when the rest of the world seemed to have closed down and the morning stood at a distance almost beyond imagination. But he'd no phone in the house, and to leave the house would be to break the spell; and so he'd lie there, and after a while he'd be further twisted by the certainty that she was waiting somewhere, waiting on the other side for a call that would never come.

  That had to be it, didn't it? For what else could have bypassed his defences, what else could have burrowed so far under his skin?

  "I know what you need," Alina said.

  "Really."

  "Yes, really. Listen to me, I'm serious." But she was smiling, so it was that kind of serious. Behind her was a backdrop of Spring woodland, sunlight and shade moving in a gentle morning breeze.

  She said, "You've been on your own for too long. You need someone. I don't mean someone like me, just being around, I mean you really need someone to be close to. People who've lost, they become vulnerable. Believe me, I know."

  "What are you leading up to?"

  "Mrs Jackson. From the Estate. I heard how you danced with her on the night of the party. She'd be perfect for you, Peter."

  He could only stare.

  She said, "Doing what I do, I hear all kinds of things. About everyone. She had a husband, they say he used to 'knock her around'. If that means what I think it means then she needs someone like you, too. You're one of the kindest people I ever met. I know that probably embarrasses you, but it's true. You ought to give her a chance to see it in you. That's my idea, I can help it to happen if you want me to. What do you think?"

  Pete said nothing for a moment.

  And then he stood up.

  "For Christ's sake," he said, and he stalked back into the house leaving everything behind.