Full English

by Rachel Spangler

  Emma pondered the question, still watching the water, and the jagged point of gray rock jutting isolated and proud out of the vast, shimmering plane. “I think I have to believe in magic. I’m not sure I could trust myself if I didn’t.”

  “Good,” Brogan said, and with a sharp, strong pull on the rope in her hands the sail flew up the mast and caught hold of the breeze.

  They were off, not at a breakneck speed, but a steady pace, gliding more than flying across the water, with a feeling of weightlessness Emma’d never experienced before. After months of carrying invisible weights on her shoulders, the sensation was gloriously freeing.

  “Would you take the tiller, please?” Brogan asked.

  She froze. “The what?”

  “The tiller. The bar I was using to steer us,” Brogan explained calmly, as she tied off the rope she’d used to hoist the sail.

  “Take it where? How?”

  “Steady us as I raise the jib.”

  She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to have any responsibility for their trajectory, or safety, but Brogan had already turned her back and walked toward the front deck. If Emma wasted precious seconds arguing, it might be too late for them. Sliding over, she willed her hand not to shake as she placed it on the smooth, wooden handle and noted the residual warmth of Brogan’s grasp.

  “Like this?” she called.

  “Perfect,” Brogan answered, as she unfastened another rope.

  “You didn’t even check to see what I’m doing.”

  “I don’t have to,” Brogan explained. “I can feel your movements. You’re steady.”

  Emma snorted softly. She was not steady. She had been once upon a time, and it’d cost her too much. Now she wasn’t steady anymore, and she might wreck them both. As with many things in her life, she never seemed to have what she needed when she needed it most.

  Brogan gave a pull on the new rope and sent a second sail up the front of the mast. Emma tightened her already firm grip on the tiller, expecting the boat to list or lurch, but no sudden movements rocked their base. In fact, Emma didn’t feel anything more than a slight tug while Brogan tied off her line and headed back toward her. She moved assuredly, her jacket open and a slight breeze pushing her hair off her forehead. She wasn’t quite pirate-level rakish, but she played the part of seasoned sailor with ease. Emma’s heart rate did a little two-step, as if she couldn’t decide whether Brogan’s approach should bring calm or something more thrilling. Ultimately, she settled on relief at being relieved of her steering duties. However, when Brogan hopped down from the cabin onto the lower deck, she didn’t take the tiller again. Instead, she sat down on the bench to one side and extended her long legs.

  Emma stared at her, waiting for something more, some action or task or explanation that never came.

  “It’s good to be out here again.” Brogan angled her face toward the sun and closed her eyes.

  Emma stared at her, willing Brogan to take the tiller again. She didn’t trust herself nearly as much as she trusted this woman she barely knew. She had enough self-awareness to realize there were likely some issues with that, but open water wasn’t the place to examine her inadequacies.

  “So, your grandmother immigrated to America from here?” Brogan asked without even peeking at her.

  “She, um . . .” Emma scanned the vast horizon, looking for danger, but seeing none, she considered the question she’d known the answer to since she was old enough to internalize stories. “She grew up here but fell in love with a French soldier when she was just a girl. He whisked her off to Paris on a grand adventure. She left home before they married. The way she told it, they were quite a scandal for the stodgy village residents, who were too old-fashioned for his libertine sensibilities.”

  Brogan snorted. “I bet.”

  “Her parents weren’t pleased, but my grandmother was stubborn and in love. She never hesitated. Paris in the ’30s was a world she couldn’t have imagined, and then couldn’t imagine ever wanting to leave. Then everything changed when World War II began. Heaven turned to hell, but Louis Volant was a solider. He couldn’t leave when his country needed him most, and he couldn’t let his young wife risk her life for his. He sent her back here to keep her safe with a promise that if he survived the war, he’d carry her across the sea to a place no one could ever threaten them again.”

  Brogan sat forward, interest etched in her features. “And did he?”

  Emma smiled in spite of her lingering nerves. “He did. He lost his left leg from the knee down in the process, but he earned commendations with the French, British, and American troops he helped to navigate the French countryside, and he earned their passage to New York in 1946. My father was born in 1947, the first American Volant.”

  “Did your grandmother ever come back?”

  She shook her head. “My grandfather was proud of what he’d done, but she said he was never quite the same after the war. He never wanted to go back. Paris was in ruins and full of ghosts, but the English countryside felt like a step back, a reminder of his failure to hold his family together on his own. America was new, unspoiled, something he’d given his family that made what he’d been through worthwhile. She never said so, but I think she worried that asking to go back would hurt his feelings. So, instead, she filled my childhood with stories of running barefoot along these beaches, or building bonfires on cool sand, or climbing the green hills overlooking the village. She talked of stone walls and pastures dotted with sheep, of fog rolling in from the sea to soak her skin, and warm kettles and open fires.”

  Brogan smiled. “She passed the memory of a place she loved to the person she loved.”

  Emma nodded and worried she’d been too sentimental, too soon. It wouldn’t be the first time. “Does it seem silly to be homesick your whole life for someplace you’ve never seen?”

  Brogan pondered the question for a minute. “I don’t know. I’ve never had an occasion for homesickness, but I know what it’s like to feel a kind of pull you can’t explain. The way my bones ache to get on the water every spring. Or the way sometimes I wake too early in the morning and know I’ll find my dad or a sibling walking on the beach. It’s like there’s something pulsing in our DNA that connects us to something we can’t see. Sense memory, or the ghosts of our ancestors, or . . .”

  “Magic,” Emma whispered.

  “Magic,” Brogan echoed with a grin, and Emma didn’t feel so silly anymore. She also didn’t feel as nervous. The stories her grandmother had used to soothe her as a child served the same purpose now, and in asking her to tell them, Brogan had anchored her to something familiar in the midst of something new and frightening. The emotions associated with the former had overtaken the latter.

  Exhaling slowly, she took in her surroundings again. The village seemed smaller from this far out, but the island that drew almost level to their right didn’t feel nearly as lonely or distant. She could even make out little black dots bobbing in the waves near the rocks.

  “Puffins,” Brogan said, following her gaze. “They’re kind of a big deal around here. Veer right and we’ll get a little closer.”

  “Veer right?”

  “Pull the tiller toward your body.”

  “Isn’t that left?”

  “Counterintuitive, I know,” Brogan said evenly, “but it’s sort of a mirror system. Pull the handle left to angle the boat to the right, and vice versa.”

  She waited for the panic to rise again, but when it didn’t, she asked, “How far?”

  “You’ll know.”

  She did. As she pulled the tiller slowly toward her, the keel responded in micromovements. A few degrees at a time, their course shifted in a gentle arc, and the sails gave a few flaps in the breeze as the canvas adjusted to the new angle straining the seams.

  “Nice,” Brogan murmured. “You’ve got a light touch.”

  “Is that good?”

  “Today it is.”

  “What about on other days?”

  “You might
need to move quicker or hold stronger, but the concept’s the same. A good sailor knows doing something faster doesn’t mean you’re doing something different.”

  “But what if the wind turns against you? How do you fight it?”

  “You don’t. That’s the secret. Sailing isn’t about fighting the wind. It’s about channeling it, literally. The wind doesn’t work for you or against you. The wind goes about its own business. You can curse it, or you can adjust your sails. The choice is yours, but either way, the wind doesn’t care.”

  There was a poetry to it all, and probably some life lessons, too, if she’d had the time or inclination to ponder them. Instead, she pulled the tiller a little closer to her side and tightened their arc around the island.

  “There.” Brogan pointed to the rocky incline around the back side of the island, and sure enough, they were now gliding close enough to see each crack and ledge crowded with the small black and white birds.

  “They’re adorable,” she exclaimed in spite of herself, “like squat little penguins.”

  “They’re playful, too,” Brogan said as several of the birds hopped off the rocks and into the water. They popped up a few feet away and flapped their wings.

  “Are we disturbing them?”

  “No, they’ve just returned from their winter migration. They don’t have much in the way of nests, and no eggs yet. Later in the season they’ll puff themselves up to ward off any threats against the young, but right now they’re mostly filling their bellies. Like that.” She pointed to a tiny puffin who had surfaced with a fish in his curved, orange beak and flapped his wings to take flight away from the others who moved toward him mischievously.

  Emma marveled as he managed to gulp and glide at the same time, his wings wide and graceful as he skimmed along the surface of the sea just to the front of their bow. Two of the other birds followed suit, and soon they swooped back around toward the island, never rising more than a foot above the gentle waves. “They’re so smooth.”

  “I never get tired of watching them fly,” Brogan admitted. “There’s something joyful to it, like your heart can’t help but soar a little bit with them.”

  Emma smiled at her.

  “What? You don’t think so?”

  “No, I do. You described what I was feeling perfectly before I could form the words. Maybe you’re better suited to being the writer.”

  Brogan laughed. “If so, then we’ll have to switch roles entirely, because you’re a natural sailor.”

  Emma shook her head. “Not at all. You’ve been very generous, but the highest form of mastery is being able to teach someone else. Anything I’ve done was under your instruction.”

  “Are you sure?” Brogan asked. “Because I haven’t told you anything other than how to turn using a tiller, and somehow you’ve seamlessly carried us from the mouth of the river, around the island, and nearly made the turn back toward home.”

  Emma checked the horizon again to confirm they’d made a half circle, and the slanted roofs and spire of Amberwick stood sweet and proud directly ahead. Marveling at both the accomplishment and the pride she felt about achieving it without panicking, she whispered, “I did it.”

  £ £ £

  Brogan flipped up the collar of her wool pea coat against the mist settling over the village. The sun hadn’t quite got through enough to burn away the sea haar for today, and the chill clung to her skin like the gray that saturated the air. The weather wasn’t unusual for this part of the country this time of year, but it felt particularly cruel after several days of sailing weather, as if the sunshine and fair winds earlier in the week were only meant to serve as reminders of what she wasn’t quite entitled to expect yet.

  She hunched slightly forward and lowered her eyes to the cobblestone-paved alleyway along the side of the Raven, which was why she saw their feet first, five pairs of them, all in well-worn boots or mud-splattered wellies that certainly didn’t belong to tourists.

  “Did I miss the memo on new bar hours?” she asked, as she fished the keys from her pocket.

  “Hey, the customer’s always right, and right now this customer needs a pint of cider,” Tom groused as she pushed open the door. “We’ve been standing out here for ten minutes in this haar getting soaked through.”

  “Well, why’d you do that?” Brogan asked, flipping on wall lamps that didn’t do much to lighten the dark, wood interior of the pub. She headed straight for the bar since the others were already pulling chairs and stools down from the table tops and arranging them to their liking.

  “You’ve had the women,” he said, looking pointedly at his wife and sister-in-law, “in a right tizzy all week.”

  “Not a tizzy,” Diane said. “You sparked our interest, and we didn’t want to bombard you when you had customers, so we came in early to talk about the new developments before the cooped-up tourists mob the place. Come on, out with all the details.”

  There were so many things to question in the sentence, she didn’t even know where to start except for they all apparently knew something she didn’t, but the way they stared at her, she would’ve thought the situation reversed. “Me?”

  “Yes, you,” Esther huffed. “I’ve been waiting all week. You’d better make it good.”

  Brogan turned to Charlie, who was still standing by the doorway, arms across his chest, a big grin on his face.

  “You took Emma Volant sailing,” he said, “and apparently the whole village saw you.”

  Brogan rolled her eyes. “That was days ago. You’re just now telling me?”

  “I could say the same to you. Why did I have to hear it from Helen at the post office this morning?”

  Brogan groaned at the idea of locals discussing her social life at the post office. “Because there’s nothing to tell.”

  “No,” both women said at once. “None of that. You took the most eligible lesbian in Amberwick on a private puffin tour.”

  “And Helen said you were awful cozy sitting close to one another on your way back into the estuary.”

  “I showed her how to work the throttle on the outboard motor.”

  Tom snorted. “Is that what they’re calling it these days?”

  “I’m here.” Ciara pushed through the door, already unraveling her scarf from her neck. “Did you start without me?”

  Brogan sighed. “Not you, too.”

  “Yes, me too, and don’t try stalling. Also, gimme a glass of white wine, please. I had a pisser of a day. You can pour and talk at the same time, right?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, pour, then talk.”

  Brogan ground her teeth together, but she used the momentary reprieve to gather herself. It didn’t take much to figure out the entire town had been talking about her and Emma all week, and the story had likely got bigger every time it’d gone around. She wished she could laugh them off, but the knot in her stomach wouldn’t let her, because she worried she’d done the same thing.

  She’d spent an inordinate amount of time basking in the warmth of her memories from such a small number of minutes in the sun with Emma. At least she’d had the good sense to chide herself every time she’d caught her imagination starting to run wild, though. She wasn’t full-on crushing on the woman. She enjoyed her company and found her attractive on multiple levels, but she hadn’t had the urge to jump into bed with her or start naming their unborn children.

  What drew her to Emma felt different from an infatuation or the lust-fueled electricity she was used to in her weekend rendezvous. The attraction went deeper than the mix of libido and boredom that usually drew her to women. And their time together had been different, too. Emma was more than someone to fill space or silences. When she talked, she offered more than the conversations about movies or sports Brogan had grown used to, and yet she got the sense there was much more beneath the surface. She loved to see the moods roll over Emma’s features the way sunlight and shadows rolled over the hills between the clouds. That was probably the thing she’d thought abo
ut most since their time on the boat, the way it’d felt to watch the nerves and uncertainty give way first to reminiscence, and then contentedness, interest, and pride. She would’ve given anything to have kept Emma talking, to have kept her smiling, to have kept her present in that moment.

  She shook her head at the thought. It scared her. She focused back to pulling a pint of Tom’s favored ale from the tap. She’d already given too much mental time to Emma and the various things she’d like to show her, or ask her, in order to see her blue eyes shimmer with happiness. She didn’t usually work that hard with the women she dated. She generally only invested her emotional energy in people who would be around for a long time, family or close friends.

  Maybe that’s it, she thought, as she passed glasses to the table of locals she’d known her whole life.

  Friends.

  Most of her friends from school had left the area, either for work or to get married and start families of their own. And as much as she loved her siblings, sometimes she could still get lonely, even at their big family dinners. Everyone had their own lives, their own priorities, their own jobs and relationships. Not to mention the fact that they all knew each other, so there wasn’t much to be intrigued or surprised by anymore.

  Emma had new stories to tell, and Brogan had new things to show her. They hadn’t had any trouble making conversation. Emma had the makings of a good friend if Brogan could manage not to mess it up by letting herself even think about something more. Something like the way Emma’s hand felt in her own when she’d steadied her in the rowboat, or the way Emma’s eyes were the same color as the skies they’d sailed under. Just because she noticed those things didn’t mean she had to let them dominate her thoughts, did it?

  She supposed she could ask the people staring expectantly at her for advice, but she didn’t trust them to offer unbiased answers.

  “Come sit with us,” Diane commanded, and patted the stool next to her for emphasis.

  “I’ve got to get ready to open.”

  “You’re open,” Will said.

  “I have to get ready for customers.”