by Paul Watkins
Which, eventually, we did.
I didn’t find out until the plan was already underway. The first I saw of it was when the captain burst out of the wheelhouse, staggered through the galley and out onto the deck, where he leaned over the side and vomited. For a long time, he hung there, gripping the cables while he roared his guts into the waves. Within an hour, he was back on the floor of the wheelhouse, too sick to stay on his feet.
The cook had poisoned the captain’s food, not enough to kill him, but enough to make him think he might be dying. Finally, he gave the order to come about and head for port.
By then, it was New Year’s Eve. I sat in the galley with the rest of the crew, watching the festivities on a little television set. We were tuned into a Connecticut station, which was covering a party taking place among ice sculptures on the New Haven Green. There, through a haze of poor reception, I saw classmates of mine from Yale, wearing tuxedoes and dancing in a conga line. I knew that within a few days, I would be back in class among them.
Nobody else on the boat knew where I went to university, or even that I was in school. I kept that to myself and no one asked. The only past you ever learned about the fishermen with whom you worked was what they chose to tell you. We reached Newport at three in the morning on New Year’s Day. The snow was knee-deep in the streets. After carrying the captain to his bunk, the rest of us took a walk down Thames Street, through the pooled and yellow light of street lamps. We peered into shop windows, threw snowballs at each other and lay in the middle of the road, sweeping our arms and legs back and forth to make snow angels.
Everything I saw and touched and smelled that night seemed conjured out of some fantastic dream. There was even a moment when I wondered if it really was an illusion, and whether, at this very moment, I might be drowning at the bottom of the sea.
Later that day, after unloading the catch, I collected my pay and went home on the bus. As we rode over the Newport Bridge, I wiped away the condensation on the window and stared out at the grey sea in the distance. In that moment, I suddenly realised that I’d made my last trip. I had used up all the luck I had coming to me as a crewman on a deep-sea boat.
Now I am exactly twice the age I was when I sat down to write the book that you’ve just read.
If I look at my hands, I can see the white lines of old knife cuts from those times when I misjudged the butchering of monkfish out on Block Island Sound. Running my tongue over my back teeth, I feel the porcelain and gold which took the place of the molars which got smashed when I was hit by the dredge while climbing out of the ice room hatch during my first summer as a fisherman.
Those are the physical things I will always carry with me.
But there are also memories.
I still have dreams of being on the ocean, but none of them are as clear to me as the recollection of that night I walked down Thames Street in the snow. Everything that’s happened to me in all the years since then has been balanced against that memory. I no longer worry about the little things, the way I often did before that night. Of the changes I have undergone as a result of those years as a fisherman, that is the one which matters to me most.
Once you become aware of the luxury of drawing in breath, even the most ordinary day becomes a miracle.
New Jersey, March 2012
About the Author
Paul Watkins was born in 1964. He wrote his first novel, Night Over Day Over Night, at the age of sixteen and attended the Dragon School, Eton and Yale. Calm at Sunset, Calm at Dawn was his second novel, and won the Encore Award in 1989. It is based on the six years he spent working as a crewman on a deep-sea fishing boat off the coast of New England. He has written many other novels including The Forger, The Story of My Disappearance and In the Blue Light of African Dreams, along with a bestselling memoir of his experiences at public school, Stand Before Your God. He also writes the Inspector Pekkala detective series under the pseudonym Sam Eastland. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages.
Also by Paul Watkins
FICTION
Night Over Day Over Night
In the Blue Light of African Dreams
The Promise of Light
Archangel
The Story of My Disappearance
The Forger
Thundercloud
The Fellowship of Ghosts
The Ice Soldier
NON-FICTION
Stand Before Your God
Copyright
This electronic edition first published in Great Britain in 2014 by
Daunt Books
83 Marylebone High Street
London W1U 4QW
First published in Great Britain in 1989 by Hutchinson
Copyright © Paul Watkins 1989
The right of Paul Watkins to be identified as the author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, copied or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission from Daunt Books, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
Ebook ISBN 978–1–907970–24–5
www.dauntbooks.co.uk
