The Boat

by Clara Salaman

  ‘Clemmie?’ Johnny called again. She was probably snooping around like him. He opened a door to his left and the décor hit him right between the eyes. He found himself in some kind of safari theme park. A zebra skin complete with head gaped up at him from the floor; a leopard-skin throw had been tossed with careless precision over a leather sofa stretching across the beam of the boat. To his side a galloping wooden giraffe chased by skinny wooden men with spears was glued to the floor and above the fake log fire hung a large oil painting of a herd of elephants traversing the African plains.

  He found her in a room marked ‘Emperor Suite’. He opened the door and would have whistled had whistling not been bad luck on a boat – his lips made the movement without the sound. The cabin was enormous, acres of fluffy white carpet leading to an emperor-sized bed covered in an army of red satin pillows. Clem was lying spread-eagled on the satin covers. The only reminder that they were actually on a boat and not in a hotel room was the swaying view of the harbour through the porthole above the bed.

  He walked across the room, leaping to her side, landing face down on the pillows

  ‘Oh! Yes!’ he sighed, his voice muffled. ‘A proper bed!’ It had been a long time since they’d slept on a bed. The grass underneath their sleeping bags in the tent had long since been squashed flat and the sweltering canvas had lost its cosy romance a while ago.

  Johnny kicked off his trainers and rolled on to his back. For a minute or two it seemed as if they both might fall asleep there and then, but he could never resist her for long. He ran his hand along the curve of her hip and up her arm, the hairs bleached bright white by the sun, her skin a honey tan that he was convinced no other human being possessed.

  ‘One of the boxes…’ she said, lifting her legs up into the air and pulling off her jeans and her knickers in one swift movement, ‘… had a dress in it with a price tag on for three thousand dollars. How can someone spend three thousand dollars on a dress?’

  Johnny helped her with her shirt, gently brushing his lips against the softness of her nipples. ‘Think of what we could get with that money,’ he said. ‘We’d get our boat… the gorgeous, double-ended, teak-decked, sixty-foot ketch. We’d cross the Pacific, go wherever we fancied… whenever we fancied…’

  She looked down at him and smiled. Sometimes her heart ached with all the love she bore him; she’d had no idea that it was possible to love another person this much. Sometimes their love felt so infinite, so boundless, she felt like an astronaut floating in it. She gently kissed the top of his head and ran a hand through his hair, which was standing up in tufts from all the salt water.

  ‘I’d catch fish for you,’ he said, pulling himself up and kissing her lips. ‘I’d dive for you. I’d get pearls or sponges…’

  She was used to being adored by him; it was just the way things were. Life before they got together now seemed vague and unimportant. Ever since that night they’d spent kissing in the police cell in Barnes after Johnny got arrested, they had been inseparable. To her mother’s dismay she’d moved in to his squat in Roehampton on her sixteenth birthday. Her mother had never approved of Johnny; she thought he was a waster, that he’d never get a proper job and earn a decent living, which meant that she was missing the point entirely: those were the precise reasons why Clem loved him. Her mother had never understood her; ever since Clem could remember she had looked at her with a kind of bewildered disappointment in her eyes. And though it made Clem feel treacherous to admit it – because after all, her mother had been the only constant in her life – she was frequently embarrassed by her: her lack of imagination, her conventionality. Sometimes, especially when they were all together at the Loves and her mother would make some banal comment about the weather or the tea, she actually felt ashamed of her. However, since travelling, she had noticed a change in her own heart; with the distance, the irritation had been replaced with a fondness, from a thousand miles away she could actually appreciate her mother. She promised herself that she would try and behave differently towards her whenever she got home again. The truth was that Johnny’s family had become her family; she adored them and they had embraced her in the same way they embraced life. When they stayed in Putney, Johnny’s dad would come into their bedroom in the morning bearing tea and reciting sonnets, pulling open the curtains with an ode or two. ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day,’ he’d say to the summer’s day. He employed them at his building company and if they weren’t earning money doing that they were usually to be found in bed in the tower block in Roehampton. They’d heaved a huge mattress right up to the window so that they could look out over Richmond Park. They didn’t have sex all of the time; sometimes they just lay there for hours on end staring into each other’s eyes as only lovers or loonies can do, in sheer amazement, always reeling from the miracle that two parts of the same thing had united and become one. Clem pulled away from Johnny’s lips. ‘Isn’t Mr Magnate’s friend going to be furious? When he finds out that all his stuff has been dumped at Kos when he thought it was going to Fethiye?’

  ‘Not our problem, Clem,’ Johnny said, rather wishing that just occasionally she would concentrate on one thing at a time. He breathed in her lovely teak-decking smell and pretty soon they found themselves making love on the millionaire’s slippery red satin sheets.

  They didn’t hear him come in. Clem saw him first; she sat up very slowly, not bothering to cover herself up and she tapped Johnny on the shoulder. He turned around to see Charlie Potts holding the door wide open staring at them.

  ‘Oh, there you are,’ Charlie said, seemingly not noticing that they were mid-coitus, showing no signs of embarrassment or backing out. ‘If you’re going to do that sort of thing I would rather you didn’t do it in here. There’s a room on the lower deck available for breeding purposes.’

  Johnny ran a hand through his hair. They certainly weren’t breeding – she was on the Pill.

  ‘Anyway, there’s no time for any of that…’ Charlie said with a brisk click of his heels, walking right into the room and over to the bed and handing Johnny a sheet of blue paper. ‘It’s a telegram from the boss,’ he said, keeping his eyes exaggeratedly averted from Clem’s bare breasts. Johnny held the telegram in his hands and Clem leant in close to read it: ‘SINK ALL POSSESSIONS STOP IN INTERNATIONAL WATERS STOP’.

  Both Clem and Johnny laughed and looked up at Charlie but his expression was deadpan. ‘He’s not serious?’ Johnny asked, wiping the sweat from his glistening forehead.

  ‘My boss is not known for his jocularity.’ This fact could be backed up by one glance at his photograph.

  ‘Won’t they take it here?’ Clem asked.

  ‘Have you seen customs? It’s the size of a sentry box.’

  ‘He wants you to chuck all those things overboard? The piano? The furniture? The gold mirror?’ Johnny asked. ‘Into the sea?’

  ‘Affirmative. We’ll do it tonight and then we’ll go on to Fethiye. I’ll pay you an extra fifty plus your fare home. Does that sound satisfactory?’

  ‘But if he knows we’re going to Fethiye he’ll be there waiting, won’t he?’ Johnny said despite himself; he didn’t want to talk himself out of the money.

  ‘Be that as it may. If there’s nothing on board, there’s nothing on board.’

  Johnny and Clem looked at each other. It was a no-brainer. ‘All right,’ Johnny said, looking up at Charlie. ‘Let’s do it.’

  Charlie nodded curtly. ‘And now I would suggest you either bring your extra-curricular activities to a halt or finish it off quickly and get yourselves ready for some hard work.’ With that he double-clicked his heels, turned around and walked out of the room.

  The Old Rangoon pulled out of Kos marina, the sky behind a streaky pink. Clem couldn’t resist a little tinkle on the ivories. She sat down at the Steinway and commenced a rather complicated Beethoven sonata, aware that Charlie was watching her. She could play the first twenty bars or so of quite a few impressive tunes rather well and then would feign distr
action or indifference and the playing would conveniently dwindle out just as she got to the tricky bit. It gave the illusion of brilliance that she liked. Johnny was on to her even if no one else was.

  Charlie stood on the upper deck He was keeping an eye out for boats, bending over into the microphone every so often to impart some instruction to his young crew on the stern deck. His voice came out clearly and efficiently through a speaker beside Johnny, who stood there bare chested and sweating, surrounded by lumpen duvet bags loaded with goods, still not quite believing that they would shortly be throwing nigh on a million quid’s worth of belongings into the sea. He kept half expecting a boat to pull up with a message from the boss saying that he wasn’t serious, that it had all been a joke. One crate in particular was causing Johnny concern. It contained a brand new ship’s compass and satellite-navigation system, worth a small fortune. He’d pointed it out to Charlie who’d said, ‘Marvellous. That’ll sink a treat.’ And when Johnny had persisted, Charlie had looked calmly at him and said, ‘All possessions, Jonathan. You read the telegram. The police will be in Fethiye waiting for us. I assure you that Turkish police are not much fun. Have you seen the film Midnight Express?’

  As the sun set leaving dark purple scratch marks across the blue, they sorted everything out by weight. Gold was good but marble was better. Silver was OK. And wood was useless. They filled a fridge freezer with crockery and cutlery, they attached the ship’s compass and a garden statue to the mahogany table, they rammed the brand-new outboard motor into a wardrobe, tying it down with various garments including the three thousand-dollar dress which turned out to be made of a useful stretchy fabric. They worked quickly and efficiently for hours, filling Harrods duvet covers with all the leftover junk-like jewellery, vases and perfume bottles. They worked until their limbs ached and their hands had callouses and now they were just awaiting Charlie’s word to begin dumping it overboard.

  It was pitch dark by the time his crisp, curt voice came out of the speaker to their side, two small electric bulbs shining on to the deck. ‘Radar’s off. Engine’s off. Navigation lights off. No other vessels about. Action stations!’

  A blast of sinister choral music burst from the speakers and they both looked up at him with surprise. ‘Verdi’s Requiem,’ he said over the speaker and gestured in the dim light for them to get a move on. The boat was swaying to and fro on the water. Johnny unclipped the wire at the stern between the two wooden guard-rail posts and went back for the first weighted sack. It contained the boat engine and most of the jewellery and the heavy gold mirror – there was no way it would float. They heaved the sack along the deck holding two corners each, dragging it to the edge of the stern.

  ‘OK, Clem,’ he said and slowly they heaved the sack up and began to swing it between them, higher and higher, rising with the crescendo of the music. ‘One… two… three…!’

  They let go and watched as it flew clunkingly through the air, a disfigured swollen white shape, landing inelegantly in the water. They both darted forward to the edge and leant over the guard rail watching the white mass float for a moment before the sea slowly consumed it, sucking it down into the darkness, gobbling up a good twenty grand in one salty mouthful.

  They stared at each other, appalled and elated at the surreal situation they were in.

  ‘And again!’ she said. ‘Let’s do it again!’

  So they continued with the next sack, this time weighted with a large marble lamp and all the silver candelabras. They lifted, swung, counted and threw. They rushed to the edge to watch it sink. What with the Verdi playing at top volume and the wind blowing and the boat rolling in the choppy water in the moonlight and the sheer insanity of what they were doing, their strength knew no bounds. One, two, three and over the sacks went; over went the four poster, the wardrobe and chest of drawers, the moose’s head sticking out of the duvet, his glassy eye catching the light from the bulb as he floated for a moment before sinking. Ultimately everything was just stuff – priceless junk headed for the murky depths of the Mediterranean. They worked until the stars had followed their course halfway across the sky, Verdi had long since ceased and the yellow fingernail moon had clawed its way up the sky

  They left the piano until last, the largest object deserving top billing. Charlie himself came down to help with the Steinway. Clem ran her fingers along the keys, the notes jammed and jarring. The three of them wheeled it to the back of the deck, got behind it and pushed it as fast as they could forward. It tipped over the edge of the deck, landing gently with a strangely melodious chord, floating for a while before taking a lopsided dive into the deep.

  For a moment the three of them stood there on the empty deck, quite still, staring out into the sea. Everything had gone without a trace as if it had never existed. Not a single piece of bubble wrap left as evidence of what they had done.

  ‘Mission accomplished,’ Charlie said. ‘Now get some rest, chaps. I’ll wake you when we get there.’ And he climbed the steps up to the wheelhouse two at a time and disappeared.

  They lay on their bunk in a small berth near the stern in the crew’s quarters, nose to nose, eyes locked, reeling as if drunk on what they had just done, on the glimpse they’d had into this beautiful upside-down world, on the sweet taste of release. They were so physically tired they could barely move. ‘Charlie says if they ask us, which they won’t, we tell the police nothing. We act completely innocent. We never unloaded any truck. OK, Clem?’

  ‘OK,’ she said with a yawn. Her whole body ached.

  Johnny gently stroked her hair back behind her ears until she fell asleep. It wasn’t long before he closed his eyes and they both slept a deep and dreamless sleep.

  The strange thing was that the police weren’t waiting for them in Fethiye. The Old Rangoon arrived just after dawn and customs came on board in their fluorescent jackets and their big moustaches, smoking their filterless cigarettes and flashing their torches. They mooched about a bit, asked no questions, got Charlie to sign a few papers and then left.

  The trouble didn’t start until they got back to Bodrum.

  It was late by the time the dolmush pulled in at the bus station. Stars were scrawled across the sky like spilt paint and a wind was blowing wildly from the sea, swirling bits of litter into the air and ballooning the men’s long shirts as they rushed to the mosques, called to prayer from the tower. The floury waft of baking bread mixed with the pungent sweetness of flowers whipped past their noses as they stepped off the bus. The town no longer felt alien to them; their arrival seven weeks earlier on the little fishing boat from Naxos felt like a lifetime ago – the yellow lights of the harbour winking out at them through the darkness from miles out long before the small white buildings and the castle became visible, the call from the mosques luring them in. Only later did it strike them that they were actually out of Europe, on a different continent, in a Muslim country. Apart from the man in the kebab shop in Hammersmith and the old bloke in the tower block who wouldn’t use the lift, neither of them had ever knowingly even met a Turk before. But now, getting off the dolmush, Bodrum felt like home.

  They had decided that with a little money in their pockets for once they would treat themselves and stay in Genghis’s guest house for a few nights before finding more work in the boatyard; they’d save a few bob, pack up the tent and start heading east in the next few weeks.

  Johnny flung the big red bag over his shoulder and stepped off the bus; it was half the weight it normally was as the majority of Clem’s stuff was still in the tent. It contained only their sleeping bags, some of her junk and a change of clothes. If it was down to him they would always travel like this.

  Clem was in high spirits after her little purchase in the dolmush. Somewhere during the first hour on the bus the driver had stopped at the side of the road to pick up a pile of carpets. Johnny had watched through the window as the pile stood up and climbed on to the dolmush all of its own accord. It came up the steps and made its way down the aisle of the bus to the
back where they sat. His heart sank; as tourists they were like beacons to salesmen. The bus had been pretty much empty, save for two old women and a pervy old bloke a few seats further down. The pile of carpets stopped and sat down right next to Johnny in the back row. He caught a glimpse of a weathered old hand and a dark creased eye somewhere in amongst the fabric. Here we go.

  ‘Eenglish?’ a voice came from within as the vehicle lurched forwards along the bumpy road, the undercarriage clanking loudly. Johnny pretended not to hear him.

  ‘American?’ the voice said. The carpets were rubbing against Johnny’s arm; they smelt musty but not unpleasant. Johnny shook his head without looking up from his book.

  ‘English,’ Clem confirmed across Johnny’s lap, her hand reaching out to touch the fabric of a blue and red carpet halfway down the pile. Johnny looked at her aghast. He knew, just as the carpet man did, that he had a taker. The blinking eye went berserk and the weathered hand tugged at the carpet.

  ‘Beautiful, hand-made, one hundred per cent natural dye… prayer mat…’ he said, the words tumbling out.

  ‘No lira,’ she said to him.

  ‘God hears your prayers on this carpet… magic carpet… Sterling?’ he said, the eye glinting excitedly at the mention of money. ‘Sterling good,’ he said. ‘For you special price… only four hundred pounds this carpet, very special.’

  Clem laughed and shook her head. ‘Four hundred pounds? You’re joking!’

  ‘Three hundred ninety… come quickly.’ The hand flapped beckoningly at them as if it wouldn’t be offering this crazily good price for long. But time was the one thing they did have. He sat next to them for six hours and he didn’t stop selling for one single second. They ignored him, politely at first and then plain rudely: they talked between themselves and then later Johnny rolled up bits of tissue and stuffed them into his ears and dozed off for a while, only to discover when he awoke that the man was still gabbling figures at his side.