Cove
Page 4
I have slipped off the world, he thinks.
I see you stand, at the edge of the shore, watch a man get into the water. You think, for a moment, as the boat floats behind, he is bringing news of me.
You brush a strand of hair from your face and feel sick when he takes off his gloves to talk, sure now the news will come.
The lick came into the waves late afternoon and with it a wide swell to the water. The clouds now were an intentful dark strip on the horizon and they were incoming and the breeze came before them, brushing the crests of the waves, bringing patches over the water like a cat’s fur brushed the wrong way.
The handle of the frying pan was sticky from his bleeding hand. He had continued to paddle on and off. Had thrown up after eating the second piece of fish and that had affected him.
There was a thin bare moisture in the breeze and every now and then he opened his mouth to it. The small area of his body was acting as a sail and the boat had picked up speed. And gradually he neared the land. The colors now distinguishable.
It was less easy to bear, having the land in view. He did not think, “If I die you must find someone else”; he could not think that. He felt a massive responsibility.
He wanted to make sure she knew how to reset the pilot light on the boiler. Pictured a coffee cup, never moved, the little left liquid growing into a ghost of dust. The note: “Pick salad x.”
Get to the land. That’s all you need to do. They will find you. Or you could wait until your arm is better and get home.
Stay close to shore. There will be a harbor. Sooner or later.
Or get to a buoy. Get to a buoy and hang until they come to check the traps.
Don’t think of the water, just the surface.
He runs his good hand over the pattern, his broken veins. The burst lace inside him. A force gone through him.
It does not matter how far it is. If you stayed close to the shore. Use the buoyancy aid, and kick. It would be like walking. Lie back, and kick into the water.
You have to just trust the float, he thinks. The chute will open. The rope will hold. It is a jump from space.
They will find you, if you stay close to the shore.
When he saw it he thought it was a bag or sack floating stiffly in the water. It was a fence banner. He turned the boat frantically, the handle of the pan rattling and worked loose now.
Seaweed and algae had grown on the banner so it looked somehow furred, like a great dead animal on the surface of the water.
He pushed at the fur of algae and it slid easily, giving out a strange warm water, uncovered a bright picture of a family car.
There were metal eyelets in the corners and along the edge of the plasticked canvas, swollen and rusted in the water, and as he lifted it into the boat the banner caught and bridled in the breeze, the car rippling.
The plane of the water surface had changed now and as he scraped the bigger patches of algae from the banner with the back of his knife the kayak tilted forward and ran, then stalled; then its back sank a little and it bobbed; then it happened again, a slow hefting on the wave.
He doubled the fishing line and fed it slackly through an eyelet of the banner and brought it back, tying it to the cleat where he clipped his seat. He did the same at the other corner.
Then he cut the toggle away from one end and took the drawstring from the hem of the windbreaker to give himself a cord. With that he tied the other corners of the banner around the carry handles of the boat.
When he put his feet to the banner and lifted it aloft, the wind caught it with a snap.
He had the idea of the land as a magnet. If he could get close, it would draw him in.
The light dropped prematurely with the rain. At first thin, persistent gray drizzle. Even after all his time at sea, the rain seemed to bring a fresh smell of damp salt.
He cut the top from the bottle and filled it where the rain ran down the sail of banner. His skin loosened. His eyes stung with salt that the rain washed into them. Every so often he bailed out the boat.
It was a light, saturating rain that pattered sharply on the windbreaker he had put on. Through it the land was visible and gray. Very sparsely, lights appeared.
The wind now brushed the crests from the waves and it filled the sail, blew a light spray into the boat.
In the falling light it seemed that a shadow lifted up from the water, and something went past him. Bat-like, implications. A low whirr of shearwaters. A ghost.
He thought then, for the time he had been drifting, how he had not seen other birds. He had not seen a plane.
What if this is it? What if there has been some quiet apocalypse? Some sheet of lethal radiation I somehow survived. Some airborne plague.
He thought of the sunburn on his body, a momentary scald. Of the sunfish, the butterfly. A sect, drowning themselves in the water. The heat, liquid. Sluicing from the air.
Partly, there was relief in the idea. That he would not hurt them if they were already gone.
He shook the thought away.
The premature evening stars. How she stuck glow-in-the-dark dots to the ceiling of the nursery.
When it was beyond doubt that the land was nearing he had wept quietly. The tears had gone into his mouth.
He lifted the banner a little at the end of his feet and saw the growing details of the land. Then he rested, looked at the picture of the bright car. He could not get it from his mind that she would be waiting on the beach; the bell of her stomach.
It was only then he recognized the danger, staring at the car, the car leaves the road. I have no way to steer. The land now is a wall.
The light is going. The storm is coming.
He felt it in the water first. A kind of filling, like a muscle tensing.
The sea is getting up.
I’m better off farther out. If I can stay in the boat. If I can stay on it. Ride the storm out.
The water would get harsher as he neared the land. The shallower water and the shore could kill him.
He could hear now, distantly, the boom of water hitting cliffs. A low echo. The first sound of land.
Hold out. All you need is daylight. You could go in on your own if you could see. Trust the buoyancy aid, trust the float. Just swim yourself in.
He turned, tried to look back out to sea. A dark wall sliding in.
You have to get away. Get out from the cliffs.
He leaned frantically and tried to draw the kayak around, the scream of his finger a white noise. Helping him.
The sea seemed to swell. Tauten. Refuse. An intent coming to the surface. But it seemed impossible to go voluntarily into the water.
How can I stay out here? You cannot take the kayak into the run of the storm. You don’t have a way to.
All this, waiting, and now.
He sensed the shore, like the cold air at the mouth of a cave.
The squall came in like a landslide, with a physical force.
It cracked into the sail and drove the nose down and he struggled to keep the boat level, the cockpit filling and spewing.
As the sea picked up he knew it was useless. The sign sang and hissed and seemed to bolt from him. You feel the strike, he knew. You feel the strike coming.
He cut the cord, sending the banner out like a kite. A bird flapping after being struck. Then the line snapped and it ripped free, skimmed off over the water. A car out of control.
He held the carry handle, tried to jam his useless arm behind the seat.
You should have kept the banner. You should have kept it as a sea anchor. It might have kept you on to the waves.
His father was everywhere now, as if he had entered the sky.
There was no control. There was a randomness to the water. As if a great weight had been dropped into it. He was horrified, tried to persuade himself they could not see him, they were not watching.
The back tipped, tipped him, plunged with the whole body of the kayak shuddering.
In the half-light it was as
if the boat had been driven into a dark rut.
He tried to press the kayak into the water, to cling on, as if to the flank of some great beast. Tried to lean the kayak into the waves. But the boat went around. The sea was up now. An uprushing ground.
He thought of the land, the rock. He was gone now beyond any sense of danger to a blank expectant place as he undid the paddle leash and the world seemed to go from underneath him.
I do not want the boat to come with me. It would be like a missile.
Trust the float now. You have to trust the float.
If a bird the size of a wren can survive in the jaws of a cat.
He locked eyes with her. The doll was gone.
He knew he was going then. He knew.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to the crew on both shores. To Catapult and all at Granta Books, and A. M. Heath. Thanks also to Cressida Leyshon.
Author’s Note
In the early stages of writing this book I looked into talismans held to keep a sailor safe at sea. I had written the wren feather in before this.
A wren feather, it turns out, was said to save a man from shipwreck.
Later I discovered Celts believed the wren to be the bearer of celestial fire. Its feathers gave protection against lightning.
© Bernadine Jones
About the Author
CYNAN JONES was born near Aberaeron on the west coast of Wales in 1975. He is the author of five novels: The Long Dry; Everything I Found on the Beach; Bird, Blood, Snow; The Dig; and Cove. His work has been published in more than twenty countries and his short stories have appeared in publications including Granta and The New Yorker. He has won a Betty Trask Award, a Jerwood Fiction Prize, the Wales Book of the Year Fiction Prize, and the 2017 BBC National Short Story Award. He has been long-listed for the Kirkus Prize, the Warwick Prize, and the Europese Literatuurprijs, and short-listed for the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award.
Table of Contents
Also by Cynan Jones
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
Part I
Part II
Acknowledgments
Author's Note
About the Author