The Boat

by Clara Salaman

  A smattering of small boats littered the water and through the darkness a few white houses stood out along the shore. There was only one light on in the entire bay, a warm yellow glow shining from a small boat moored by a short jetty not fifty yards away, bobbing about in the choppy water. The boat was stern to with the cabin doors ajar, light spilling out on to the cockpit dancing a zigzag across the choppy water to their feet, illuminating the slicing rain between them.

  It was from this boat that the mermaid sang, her voice pouring out like rays of sunshine, touching them with its warmth.

  Her voice had been joined by another. The second was the voice of a child and together they sang in perfect harmony about that bad moon on the rise.

  Now that Johnny and Clem could see properly with the light of the boat to guide them the rocks seemed less slippery despite the relentless rain; their feet found it quite easy to grip. It poured harder and the thunder rumbled closer. They heaved themselves up from the rocks on to the pier and walked twenty paces or so to the beginning of the little wooden jetty, the voices fading a little now that the boat was beam to. Johnny adjusted the sail bag on his shoulder and took Clem’s hand. They stepped on to the jetty, their sodden shoes making no noise as they slowly moved down the planks towards the boat, stopping right at the stern. Written on the transom in curled looped lettering was the name Little Utopia.

  That was exactly how it seemed to them: a heavenly place full of warmth and light and music.

  3

  The Little Utopia

  The Little Utopia was a small boat, not much more than thirty feet in length. The wooden sliding hatch was pulled across to stop the rain coming in but the cockpit doors were slightly open, for the rain was pouring from the other side, the starboard bow. Above Johnny’s head, hanging from the backstay, was a Union Jack transom flag flapping wildly in the wind. They stood there motionless, hand in hand, soaked to the bone yet oblivious to the weather, quite transfixed by the light and sounds from within. The angel’s voice had brought them here. The song was coming to an end and despite the wet and the cold neither of them wanted it to stop, for the mermaid to become human. Right now just the promise of safety was enough.

  When the strumming of the guitar ceased and the rain took over the night again, Johnny cleared his throat. ‘Hello?’ he called out above the cacophony of the elements. A bolt of lightning flashed above them.

  A moment later the hatch was pulled back and a man stuck his head out. He was a big, fine-looking man, dark and unshaven, almost bearlike. He shielded his eyes with both hands from the light within to see them better.

  ‘Hello?’ he replied, stepping out into the cockpit. His T-shirt was dry and pale and the rain darkened it almost immediately in 45-degree stripes across his chest.

  They watched him take them in, his expression changing from caution to concern. Johnny realized how desperate they must look. He turned to Clem and in the light from the saloon he saw how her chin was cut and the blood had run down on to her shirt, a mess of red smeared across her chest. She’d lost a shoe and her hands, feet and ankles were covered in grazes. Underneath the wetness and the blood she looked barely more than fifteen years old. He knew that he himself didn’t look much older.

  ‘Jesus. Are you all right?’ the bear man asked but neither of them could think of anything to say. It seemed quite evident that they were not all right. The man glanced down the quay towards the shore as if there might be more of them. Johnny too looked around him but the bay was deserted, the other boats all empty. Another growl of thunder rumbled across the sky above them.

  ‘Please,’ the bear man said, gesturing. ‘Come in out of the rain!’ He offered his hand and Johnny passed him the soaked sail bag and turned to Clem. She was unable to move, her limbs locked frozen.

  ‘It’s all right, love,’ the man said to her, helping her carefully on to the boat, taking her hand in one of his giant paws and her carpet in the other. ‘You’re safe here.’

  She looked up at him and suddenly the kindness of a stranger proved too much and the tears spilt freely from her eyes.

  ‘Come on now,’ he said gently, opening the cockpit door with his foot, putting the soaking sail bag over his shoulder. ‘Get yourselves inside and let’s get you warm.’

  Johnny led the way down the companionway steps and stood there dripping water on to the floor of their dry warm boat. A woman, presumably the mermaid, was sitting on the port side of the saloon, a guitar on her lap. Next to her was a young child, not more than four or five years old. She was the spit of her mother but with her father’s dark colouring. Neither of them said anything; their identical unblinking eyes stared at the strangers from underneath their identical skew-whiff fringes. The child’s gaze swung solemnly from Johnny to Clem and down at their bleeding, torn legs.

  ‘Why’s that lady crying?’ she asked her mother.

  ‘OK. Bed now, Smudge,’ the woman said, standing up, taking the child’s hand. The girl wriggled free and scurried away from the strange new arrivals into the forepeak, her big, dark eyes peering from behind the door as she slowly closed it.

  ‘Annie, get the first aid,’ the bear man said to his wife, his voice low and soft. Then he turned to Johnny.

  ‘Do you speak English?’ he said.

  Johnny nodded. ‘We are English,’ Johnny said.

  ‘Were you attacked?’

  Johnny shook his head. The man nodded and began to wash his hands in the galley sink. ‘You better get your wet stuff off.’ He leant into the berth beside the chart table and pulled out a bundle of towels before approaching Clem and raising her chin with one of his giant fingers. He stooped down to examine her cut.

  ‘That’s nasty,’ he said, his mop of dark, curly hair falling over his eyes.

  She nodded. ‘I fell on the rocks,’ she said as he dabbed at her chin with the towel, his eyes flicking up to hers but flicking away again when no explanation was forthcoming. It was hard to know where to begin, so instead she stared at him for she was quite stunned by the course of events. A part of her was still standing outside in the pouring rain, wretched, not knowing where to go.

  ‘There is a road, you know,’ the bear man said with a wink. She was studying his face; he was old, in his late thirties, his eyes were very dark, his skin was weathered and his jaw unshaven, but it was his smell that struck her most. He smelt of something familiar: her father. He used the same soap that her dad used to use. She shut her eyes and let him tend to her.

  Johnny peeled off his clothes. His drenched jeans and shirt sat in a pile on the floor. He was standing there in the galley stark naked, rubbing himself dry with a towel when the woman and the little girl came back into the saloon. ‘Oh, sorry,’ he said, covering himself up.

  ‘Nothing we haven’t seen before,’ the woman said with a smile as she put the medicine box down on the table. There was something quite striking about her when she smiled; her face seemed to transform. The little girl placed a pile of clothes beside the box and the woman said, ‘You can find something in that lot.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Johnny said to the little girl, who hid behind her mother’s legs, those unblinking eyes never leaving his as he started to go through the clothes.

  ‘Back to bed, Smudge,’ the bear man said and the girl just stood there staring.

  ‘Do what Daddy says,’ the woman said, rubbing the girl’s dark hair. She scurried off and the woman opened up her medicine box, inside of which appeared to be every remedy known to mankind. The bear man rifled through it and began applying one thing after another to Clem’s grazes.

  ‘You all right, love?’ he said to her in his soft, low voice. She opened her eyes and nodded, watching as he turned back to the tin, his large but delicate hands putting a lid back on a tube. She noticed then that the tips of two of his fingers on his right hand were missing.

  ‘Well, that should do it,’ he said, dabbing at her and giving her a smile, revealing even white teeth. ‘You’d better get your wet stuff off!’ />
  Johnny was already in some dry clothes, a pair of enormous shorts with a belt tied in a knot and a huge sweat shirt belonging to the bear man. Clem did exactly as she was told and peeled off her soaking trousers, staring at her own gashed legs as if they belonged to someone else. Thin brown sea urchin spines stuck out of her ankles and feet. Slowly she undid the buttons of her shirt, took it off and handed it to the woman, who picked up all of the wet clothes and took them though to the wet locker. Clem stood there naked but for her knickers, which left nothing to the imagination, gazing at her blood-stained body. Johnny covered her in a towel and began to carefully rub her dry.

  ‘We can get those out,’ the woman said, looking down at Clem’s feet, pulling out a pair of tweezers from the box. ‘Put this on!’

  She handed her a large T-shirt dress and helped her into it, wrapping a cardigan around her shoulders. Clem sat down at the table with Johnny at her side, watching in silence as these strangers quietly passed each other scissors and plasters and various implements and set to work on her feet and ankles.

  Johnny’s body began to prickle as the warmth seeped through his skin. He leant back against the saloon seat and listened to the rain beating down against the coachroof above them and he actually thanked Clem’s god and her prayer mat for delivering them to these people. He watched them working away. The woman had a frown of concentration set on her brow, her top lip biting the underneath one. She was probably the same age as his mother had been when she died. Her eyes were a pale blue and sloped downwards at the edges, giving her face a peculiar sadness. She looked up and caught him staring and smiled. Once again he was quite taken aback at how quickly the sadness seemed to dissipate, how she looked like an entirely different person when she smiled.

  ‘All right?’ she said to Clem, wiping her tweezers and putting them back in the medicine box. ‘That’s the worst of them out.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Clem said. She was warm now and mended. She felt blessed. Her prayer mat had worked. These people had saved them. She reached out and took Johnny’s hand in her own and kissed his fingers one by one, both of them watching as the man took out some tumbler glasses from a cupboard in the galley above the hob. He wiped them on a tea towel slowly and thoroughly in his great big hands, put them on the table then leant over the woman, his huge tipless fingers resting on her shoulder. He grabbed a large bottle of raki from the shelf behind them, slid open the coolbox and pulled out a bottle of water.

  It was exactly what they needed. They watched him pour out the raki into the glasses and add the water so that the cloudiness swirled around the glasses like smoke in the air, releasing that sweet aniseed perfume.

  ‘Get this down you!’ he said, taking a seat next to his wife, pushing the glasses across the table towards them. They picked them up, raised them and knocked back the raki. Johnny felt it burn down the sides of his throat, a shaft of flame soaring down into his gut, into his centre. The bear man topped him up immediately.

  ‘Thank you,’ Johnny said, sucking in a quick breath to cool his palate. ‘We owe you an explanation.’

  The bear man looked up at him, his dark brown eyes twinkling. ‘You don’t owe us anything,’ he said, reaching behind him on to the shelf for his cigarettes. It was a soft packet and he tapped it hard at the bottom and caught the cigarette in his lips. He tilted his head to the side and lit the cigarette quickly, smiling, chucking down the lighter on the table, watching it slide across the wood towards Johnny.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ he asked. Not waiting for a reply he stood up with bended knee, as did his wife, and from the seat beneath them pulled out a large bag of crisps and tore it open in his giant hands. He laid it open on the table, gesturing for them to tuck in while he himself picked up the guitar at his side. It seemed to Johnny that the man was in perpetual motion, his fingers now strumming chords in an easy, relaxed way, as if the tune would eventually and organically materialize of its own accord.

  Johnny and Clem were ravenous. They devoured the crisps while the man and his wife went about their business as if having bleeding, needy strangers turn up in their company was an everyday experience. He played his guitar while she sewed a button on to a garment on her lap. Johnny paused in his eating when the woman began to sing again, at once mesmerized by that voice. He put his hand on Clem’s thigh and she smiled. See! his eyes said. We always get out of our scrapes. He really believed it. He would never ever let her down. She smiled, happy now that she was warm and safe. She knocked her glass against his and made herself comfortable, tucking her feet up under her knees to listen to the bear man strumming and the woman singing and the waves bashing against the hull and the rain pounding the decks.

  ‘We thought you were a mermaid,’ Clem said when the woman stopped her singing.

  She looked up from her sewing, laughter transforming her features.

  ‘Or an angel. When we heard you from the rocks,’ Clem said, ‘you sounded like an angel.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘I thought you were an angel.’

  ‘I assure you, I’m not,’ the woman said, her face losing its lightness. A frown creased her brow as her attention returned to her needle and thread.

  ‘But you do have the voice of an angel,’ the bear man said, looking at his wife as he strummed.

  ‘Yes, but I’m not one, am I?’ she replied, her pale sloping eyes holding his gaze. She picked up her glass and knocked back the rest of her raki.

  ‘We’re Frank and Annie, by the way,’ the bear man said.

  ‘Johnny and Clem,’ Johnny said, saluting him with his glass.

  A roar of thunder cracked so loudly over their heads all four of them jumped.

  ‘Christ Almighty!’ the man said as the lightning flashed on and off like faulty wiring. He got up and moved to the companionway, pushing open the cockpit door. Johnny thought he noticed a slight limp as Frank climbed the steps. He was wearing long, baggy shorts and his legs were strong, covered in a fuzz of dark hair; a long scar ran down the inside of his calf. He leant out into the cockpit and looked up towards the mast.

  Johnny turned around to look out of the Perspex window behind him. Fork lightning jabbed at the hillsides, lighting up the bay. There were other boats bobbing about, mainly fishing boats, getting pounded by the weather. But none of them were occupied; there wasn’t a soul out – there was nobody looking for them, he felt certain of that.

  ‘Quite a storm,’ the bear man said, closing the doors behind him and sitting back down at the table, picking up the guitar again as his wife continued with her sewing. They were quite comfortable without conversation and that felt like a relief. Johnny could enjoy the wonders of the raki in peace; he loved the way it clouded his mind with its pleasant aniseed fog. He looked about him then, taking in every aspect of the boat. He was always puzzled by charter boats, their tubby ugliness, their lack of elegance, their uniformity. They were practical and buoyant, floating blobs of functionality. All the interior woodwork looked as if it were made of 2-mm ply.

  ‘Are you holidaying?’ Johnny asked the man.

  ‘Holidaying?’ he said, pausing mid-strum. ‘No, no. We live on her. The Little Utopia is our home.’

  ‘Oh,’ Johnny said, quickly rearranging his features into an impressed expression. He swigged back another mouthful of the firewater, feeling it ease over any faux pas. The man strummed again and began to sing in his low, soothing voice, seemingly making up the tune as he went along.

  ‘Clem,’ Annie said as if hearing the name for the first time. ‘What’s that short for?’

  ‘Clemency,’ she said. ‘But no one calls me that.’

  ‘Like Smudge. Her real name’s Imogen. But we don’t call her that either.’

  ‘Where are you from?’ the bear man asked them.

  ‘London. Putney,’ Johnny replied.

  ‘We’re from the other side. Kentish Town,’ he said.

  ‘How long have you been living on the boat?’

  Frank rested the guitar on his la
p, his forearm lying on the curve. Johnny was thinking how smooth and clean the bear man’s hands were for someone who lived on a boat; his own were gnarled and ingrained with grubbiness no matter how hard he cleaned them and this guy had almost twenty years on him. Then Johnny too noticed the missing fingertips on his right hand.

  ‘Six years…?’ the man said, looking at his wife.

  She nodded.

  ‘We’ve been coast-hopping all that time,’ he said. ‘Started off in France and here we are.’

  That sounded like heaven to Johnny – though on a classic boat, of course. Not a pile of plastic like this.

  ‘We never spend more than a week in one place, if we can help it,’ the man said. ‘You were lucky to catch us tonight; we would have moved on if it wasn’t for the weather.’

  ‘Where are you heading?’ Johnny asked.

  ‘We’re travelling round the great Turkish bay and then onwards. At least that’s the plan.’

  Johnny and Clem caught eyes briefly, both of them hearing the same thing: a lift out of here. Johnny pulled out his tobacco and took the packet of Rizlas from the pouch. The papers were soaked and came out in a long white stream. The bear man pushed his soft cigarette packet Johnny’s way.

  ‘Have one of these,’ he said. ‘I imagine you’ll need somewhere to kip tonight… This turns into a double.’ He nodded at the berth he and Annie were sitting on.

  ‘What about your daughter?’ Johnny asked.

  ‘She’s fine. She likes to sleep in with us.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Johnny said. ‘Thank you so much.’ He tapped out one of Frank’s smokes. He felt Clem poke his leg with her finger. ‘Sorry to be cheeky,’ he said. ‘But is there any chance you could drop us off at the next place down? The next village or the next town?’