Chatham Air was the first of a number of options for getting to Chatham Island considered over beer and cigarettes in the lounge that evening, but Albert didn’t want to fly. He wanted time to think. Time to be alone. It was Mr. Sweetman who, consulting a recent copy of the Shipping News, produced an acceptable option. The mail boat cum supply ship that served the island on a quarterly basis would be leaving Thursday—the day after tomorrow, and the voyage took three days and two nights. Yes, they took passengers, though accommodation was—the notice said—“spartan,” and the food, “nourishment.”
“Sea Queen, pride of the Cunard Line,” said Angela facetiously, perusing the article over Albert’s shoulder. “Can I come?”
“Count me out,” said Jeremy Ash. “Ships and wheelchairs don’t mix.” He pantomimed rolling overboard from a pitching deck.
“Me, too,” said Wendell, without being asked. “Morori off my diet.”
Jeremy Ash looked at him sidelong. “Folks tend to become unfriendly if you try to eat them.”
Wendell shrugged but, perhaps in response to some atavistic impulse, moistened his lips with his tongue.
“You and me, then,” said Angela, draping her arms around Albert’s neck and speaking into his ear, where the words were translated into liquid lightning. “Alone on an enchanted cruise to an exotic south sea island. Romantic.”
Except that I would be there, thought Albert. His body sizzled with corpuscles running around trying to put the fire out but succeeding, for the most part, only in setting one another alight. “I think I should go alone.”
“Nonsense,” said Angela. “What time does it leave, Mr. Sweetman?”
The landlord provided the necessary particulars and, the next morning, Angela called to make arrangements. “Yes, you can book passage,” said the woman at the shipping company.
Angela put her hand over the receiver and conveyed the information to Albert. In impending peril he saw a lifeline of sorts. “I’ll go,” he said. “You stay here. Safe.”
“And leave you all the fun?” said Angela. “I think not.” She removed her hand from the phone. “I’d like to book two cabins.” Pause. “Pardon?” Pause. “Oh, well . . .” She studied Albert briefly. He looked like he’d just signed up for a cruise on the Mary Celeste. “That’s okay. We’ll share.”
“Share?” said Albert, when she’d hung up.
“They only have two cabins, and the other’s taken,” said Angela airily. “Bunk beds. I’ll take the top.”
Albert no longer wanted to go to Chatham Island. He no longer wanted to be in New Zealand. Or the South Pacific. Or the Southern Hemisphere. Or on the planet. “I . . . we . . . you . . .”
“Keep up at that rate,” said Angela, “You’ll soon run out of pronouns. Don’t worry.” She ruffled his hair. “I don’t snore.”
Albert’s hair stood on end, and why shouldn’t it? Everything else was. Not one accustomed to much control over his life, he hated the sensation of the torch-bearing corpuscles of his blood swarming the quaking Bastille of his will—not a well-tended edifice at the best of times. If her breath in his ear could cause such biological chaos, the damage done by days and two nights of close confinement would be irreparable.
“We need to be at the dock by 8:30 in the morning,” said Angela. “I’ve never been on an ocean voyage!”
If only, ten years hence, thought Albert, he could say the same thing. Fate had other plans—and they’d been announced by his own tongue.
“I’m going to bed,” he said, and went to bed.
“You’re going to give him a heart attack if you keep that up,” said Jeremy Ash.
Angela draped herself over a chair. “Keep what up?”
“It’s not nice, you know,” said Jeremy Ash, ignoring the question. “He’s been good to you.”
“Am I supposed to know what you’re talking about?” Angela said defensively, though, of course, she was perfectly aware the effect she had on her benefactor. The power she had over him. She cast her eyes down, threading her fingers.
“You’ve got to live with yourself,” said Jeremy Ash. “I’m going to bed. Give me a hand, Otis?”
Angela watched after them as they left.
“It’s not on,” said Sweetman who, hitherto, had seemed lost in his own thoughts. “Teasing the man like that. Very upsetting to him, I’m sure you see that.”
“I don’t . . .”
Sweetman held up his hand. “Don’t bother, young miss. You do, and no amount of saying you don’t will change the fact. You’re a beauty, if you don’t mind an old man making the observation.”
“Well, thank you, but . . .”
“It’s not a compliment,” said Sweetman. “Just a statement of fact. You’re beautiful like Wendell is fat, or young Master Ash is legless. Or I am old. Nothing you can take credit for. A gift, of sorts, if you will, but a dangerous one, capable of laying the world at your doorstep and consuming you at the same time, like any corrosive substance. Wield it with more discretion, would be my advice, before you hurt someone.”
With that Sweetman stood, tossed the magazine he’d been reading onto his chair, and left the room, switching the light off on his way out.
Angela was left alone, the fire playing shadows across her face that mimicked those in her heart. She hadn’t for a moment intended to hurt Albert by flirting with him. But did that excuse her for the effect it had upon him?
Corrosive beauty? A weapon? A responsibility?
Wendell came in the next morning to stir the fire and was surprised to find Angela there, curled up on the carpet in front of the fireplace cradled by pillows. He stepped over her, poked at the fire, and added some kindling to it from the nearby basket.
Angela woke, and stretched, and pulled Wendell slowly into focus. “Wendell?” She looked around, seemingly surprised to find herself on the floor. Then events of the previous evening tumbled into place. She sat up quickly. “What time is it?”
“Just gone six,” said Wendell.
“Oh, good. Six. Good,” she wiped her eyes, held her hand over her mouth, and yawned. “Oh, my goodness. My breath could peel wallpaper.”
“Yes,” said Wendell. “I noticed that.”
“Thank you very much,” she said, gathering herself to her feet. “Is Albert up?”
“No.”
“I’ll go wake him.” She started up the stairs.
“I’ll do that,” said Wendell. “You should brush your teeth.”
When she came downstairs thirty minutes later, showered, scrubbed and tooth-brushed to a healthy glow, everyone else was at the table, finishing breakfast.
“Sorry I took so long,” she said. She spread her napkin in her lap. “Where is everyone? Is Albert ready?”
“He’s gone,” said Jeremy Ash.
“Gone!?”
“While you were in the shower.”
“But I told him . . .” Angela rocketed from her chair.
“Maybe that was your mistake,” said Jeremy Ash.
Angela deflated slowly. “But . . .”
“Wendell took him.”
“In my car,” said Mr. Sweetman.
“Wendell’s going with him?”
“Only to the harbor.”
Angela glanced at her wrist, where there was no watch, to Sweetman’s, where there was. “There’s still time. I can call a cab.”
Flattening the placemat with the palms of his hands, Sweetman lowered his eyes, shook his head slowly side-to-side, and said, “I don’t think that would be wise, miss, if you don’t mind my saying.”
“But we agreed . . .”
“Takes more than one to agree to somethin’,” said Jeremy Ash. “Leave him alone, if he wanted one of us along, he’d’ve waited.”
“Yes, but . . .”
“Just leave him be.”
She cast an appealing glance at Mr. Sweetman, but came up empty.
“He’s alone,” she said softly.
Chapter Eight
March 2, 19
87
Albert was alone. Wendell had left in Mr. Sweetman’s car, laughing to himself about some comment having to do with his enigmatic parting words, which were: “Wouldn’t go to Wharekauri without a fork.”
The sky was low and gray and the nip in the air was more Fall than Spring which, in these latitudes, it was. Seagulls rode a network of invisible roller coasters in the air, calling loudly to one another, feathered kids on an aerial playground.
The boat, about which he’d entertained no preconceptions whatsoever, was, nevertheless, about what he’d have expected had he had any. It was made of some kind of metal, and the middle part was long enough to reach from the stern to the bow, and wide enough to keep the sides apart.
The hull was black. Or possibly dark gray. Or green. Very dark green. Spruce tree green. The most recent passengers, judging from the smell, had been quadrupeds. These had apparently come from the island, as none were being loaded aboard the ship, the Sea Queen, for the outward voyage. Instead, the bulky shipboard crane was swinging large cylindrical containers marked “Flammable” in bright red letters superimposed on a yellow triangle, onto the deck. There were also pallets bearing rows of large boxes labeled, for the most part, dry goods. Why couldn’t everything be labeled that clearly? Then again, what “dry goods” might be was anybody’s guess. It seemed a fairly broad category to which anything that wasn’t wet might belong, himself included, most of the time.
“Ready to take your life in your hands?”
The woman who spoke may have been standing beside him for minutes. Maybe not. She was there now, and ready to engage in fairly deep conversation without preamble. “I . . . I was . . . it’s . . .”
She wasn’t looking at him, but at the Sea Queen. “That’s it in a nutshell, as they say. Lots of people feel that way when they see ’er.
“Committed, are you?”
“?”
She nodded at the ship. “Got your ticket?”
Albert had the ticket in his hand, where Wendell had put it. He held it out.
“Oh, not for me, cherub,” said the woman. “They’ll take it aboard, if anyone thinks to. Not much accustomed to passengers, this crew. You’re a novelty.”
“I . . . thought . . .”
“Oh, she takes ’em. Too right. Technically. Just not too often. More in the sheep and cattle line, this. Most folks fly out to Chatham these days.”
“Are you . . .?” said Albert, realizing that he was speaking mostly in ellipses. “Are you taking the boat?”
“For my sins,” said the woman. “I’ve set up shop out there. Fisherman’s Friend. Café. Restaurant. Whatever you want to call it. Just picked up a new range, fridge and a few other necessaries here on the mainland, and I’m coming along with ’em so this lot,” again she nodded in the direction of the ship, “doesn’t go losin’ ’em overboard. Frenchie’s the name.” She held out her hand, which Albert took, and shook, and returned to its owner.
“Albert,” he said.
“Well, Al, what brings you to the end of the world?”
“Chatham Island?”
“By name, yes.”
Good question. He adjusted his horn-rimmed glasses, as if to draw an answer from the horizon and bring it into focus. The circuitous process that began with finding the girl on the beach and now drew him to Chatham Island didn’t lend itself to easy explanation. “Just curious,” he said at last.
“Well, you’ve got enough curiosity to put a cart load of cats to shame if it drags you out there.”
“Is that where you’re from?”
“Me? Not by half. I’ve drunk the Kool-Aid, though, as they say. Totally besotted with the damn place, and can’t take the cure.”
“Besotted,” Albert repeated. It was neither a question nor a statement. Just an echo. He’d never said “besotted” before, and he rolled it round his tongue as he said it again, parsing it into a triplet in C or C#. It was hard to tell with the wind rising. “Be-sot-ted.”
“Totally,” said Frenchie, regarding him a little more closely than she had been. “You’re American?”
He nodded.
“On holiday?”
“Holiday,” Albert echoed.
“Mmm.” Frenchie was, by rapid degrees, coming to realize that she was not speaking to an occupant of the same dimension. “Not many go out to Chatham on holiday. You got a place to stay?”
Suddenly Albert questioned having left Angela behind. That’s the kind of thing she would have thought of. Of course, she’d also thought they could somehow share a cabin on the boat. He had acted wisely, after all. There’s always a fifty-fifty chance. “No.”
“Stout soul,” Frenchie said. “Well, there’s but one hotel on the island, the Chatham Inn, and I don’t guess they’re overbooked this time of year.” She leaned toward him. “Nor any other, for that matter.” She laughed and Albert smiled. He liked her laugh; it fell from an F two octaves above middle C to B flat just below. An impressive range. “Milly Mittlebirch is chatelain there. She’ll see you right.
“Why the boat?” she said as the laughter settled in her chest.
“?” Albert said again.
She nodded, taking a cigarette from behind her ear and lighting it. “Most sane people fly.”
That would explain why he was taking the boat. He inhaled deeply of her second-hand smoke and thought for a minute, tracing the plan to its genesis. “Mr. Sweetman read about it in a newspaper.”
“Mr. Sweetman? And who’s he, when he’s to home?”
“He owns the house where we’re staying.”
“We?”
“Angela and Jeremy Ash. They’re with me.” This is where he always ran into trouble when talking to people. At what point did a casual exchange of irrelevant information become a conversation? Had they reached that point? If so, how much was he responsible for? How much to divulge? He stepped out onto the ice. “She’s from England and used to be Heather. He doesn’t have any legs.”
He’d apparently given Frenchie a lot to consider, as she fell to smoking in silence for a full two or three minutes, during which she looked at him often, which he perceived in the periphery of his vision.
Eventually a new question arose from her deliberations. “And what do you do, Al?”
The last time he remembered having answered that question, in Tryon, North Carolina, he ended up teaching piano to a retarded little girl named Maylene—primarily My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean and The Volga Boatman. He’d also been beaten up by a man named Jimbo and nearly burned alive in a tunnel beneath Judge Antrim’s house. It was, he considered—or at least may have been, the universe being what it was—his response to that seemingly simple and innocuous question that had precipitated that whole chain of events.
He decided to be more specific. “I’m a pianist,” he said. “And I do . . . I play concerts.”
“That’s it!” said Frenchie. “You’re . . .!” And she told him who he was, and he was. “I knew it! Well, no. I lie. I didn’t know it. But I knew there was somethin’ familiar about your face. I had this feeling that if we talked long enough it would come to me. So, you’re him!”
He was.
“Well, that explains a lot,” said Frenchie. Then, upon reflection, she changed her mind. “I mean, it explains—well, knowing who you are helps. . .” It was Frenchie’s turn to speak in ellipses. “But not why you’re going out to Chatham. I mean, you could go anywhere in the world! Paris. London! New York. Kentucky!”
“I’ve been those places,” said Albert, just a decibel or two above the wind. “I’ve never been out there.” He raised his eyes toward the horizon and, following Frenchie’s example, lit a cigarette.
Frenchie laughed again. “Well, I guess if you’ve been everywhere else, Chatham’s the only place left. Except for Pitt, of course.”
“Peet?” said Albert, pronouncing it as he’d heard it.
“Yes. Little bump on the planet’s backside, not fifteen kilometers off Chatham. Not more than twenty or thir
ty people live there. And several million sheep.”
Albert wondered if, were he to go to Pitt Island, he’d discover there was yet another, smaller island, just a few kilometers away, and another beyond that—a chain of Russian doll islands by which one could hopscotch around the world. It wasn’t really a very good analogy, he decided, Russian dolls being dolls within dolls, but for someone who wasn’t an analogist and only a pianist, it wasn’t bad. He smiled.
“Don’t know anyone out there, I don’t suppose?”
“I know you,” he said. “Frenchie.”
She laughed again, just missing the high F this time, but still ending on the B flat below middle C. The sequence was, of its own volition, forming a phrase in the musical apparatus of his brain.
“So you do! So you do.” She flicked her cigarette, in the very same way Paul Mc-Freakin’-Cartney had done in London and, though its trajectory took it into the teeth of the prevailing wind, sent it successfully over the edge of the wharf.
Albert would practice this when he was alone on Chatham Island, and far from any combustible materials.
“That’s a thing about Chatham,” said Frenchie. “You know one of us, you pretty much know us all—whether you want to or not. You’ll not be out there ten minutes before everyone knows it; word travels that fast. It’s in the wind, I think.”
A deep-throated whistle blew aboard the ship.
“That’s us,” Frenchie announced. She picked up a bag that had been sitting on the ground and flung it over her shoulder. “You get seasick?”
Another good question. “I don’t know.”
“Well, you soon will.”
Whether, by that, Frenchie meant he’d soon be seasick, or he’d soon know whether or not he was prone to seasickness, was left for time to tell.
Albert picked up the suitcase that Jeremy Ash had packed for him and followed Frenchie up the gangplank.
As with the ship itself, Albert had had no preconceptions about his accommodation for the voyage, and therefore was indifferent to it. There was, as advertised, a bunk bed, and the mattresses seem to have been recently made. The sheets were sufficiently clean and crisp that Mrs. Gibson would have approved. There was a metal object affixed to the wall with brackets with two drawers in it, and a flat top around which was a little ridge, also metal, that, presumably, would keep anything left there from falling off. He put his cigarettes and lighter there, and the little wad of money with a rubber band around it that Jeremy Ash had given him. “A man your age needs a wallet, A,” he’d said as he tucked the money into the pocket of his coat.
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