The Boat

by Clara Salaman

  From the saloon Cat Stevens sang about first cuts and bad luck on the car cassette-radio that was rigged up to two speakers.

  ‘So you’ve done a bit of sailing, have you, Johnny?’ Frank said.

  ‘Mainly dinghy… but I’ve done a couple of crossings.’

  ‘Crossing what?’ Frank asked, looking up from his tea-stirring.

  ‘The Atlantic.’

  Frank paused, spoon and eyebrows raised, nodding his head, impressed.

  Johnny rolled himself a cigarette and Frank chucked him the lighter and they sat in silence for a while looking at the women, the sea and the scenery, sipping their drinks. Johnny was never happier than on a boat. Something changed inside him when he was on the water. It felt fundamental, as if there were shifts going on at a cellular level. He had always felt far more comfortable on the sea than on land, ever since his dad had taught him how to sail the Mini-Sail down in Cornwall when he must have been about Smudge’s age.

  Johnny sighed, put his feet up on the cockpit seat and stretched out, thinking that life was good, that this was the best way to travel by far; they’d get off at the next place, hitch a ride and go wherever the driver was going as long as it wasn’t back to Bodrum. He scanned the water for evidence of wind, itching for Frank to get the sails up. It would be a shame to be on a sailing boat and not get a bit of sailing in.

  The sun was shining brightly now; it had swallowed up all the haze. Johnny was watching the little girl pouring way too much suntan lotion on to Clem’s back, getting the white liquid all over her yellow bikini straps. Her mother was clearing up the mess, scooping handfuls off Clem’s back and rubbing it into her own body. It always intrigued Johnny to see how free and easy women were with each other’s bodies; the three of them were like grooming primates.

  He sipped at his tea watching Clem shift around, lying down on her tummy. Annie began to smooth the extra lotion into Clem’s thighs and up the steep rise of the start of her buttocks and he could feel himself getting hard. He looked away briefly but when he looked back, Annie had put down the bottle and to his great surprise, pulled her T-shirt clean off over her head and was sitting there bare-breasted looking out to sea, rubbing the remaining lotion into her chest. The tea hovered at Johnny’s lips. It was unignorable: she had unexpectedly glorious tits.

  He stared for a little too long and then turned away just so that it didn’t look as if he was staring and he put all his energy into being fascinated by several large birds flying fast by the boat, almost skimming the surface of the slate-grey waves in their search for fish, swooping and lurching inches above the water.

  ‘Wonderful, aren’t they?’ Frank said, putting the cup to his lips. ‘Boobies.’

  Johnny turned sharply and looked at Frank. ‘The birds, I mean,’ Frank said, looking back at Annie. ‘They’re called boobies!’ Then he threw back his head and roared with laughter; they both did. Frank laughed so much he had tears running down his cheeks.

  ‘They’re pretty wonderful too,’ Johnny said, because they really were but then he wondered whether he’d gone too far. However Frank was laughing so much that Annie and Clem were looking round at them wondering what the joke was.

  All afternoon they motored on with barely any wind at all. They passed no signs of civilization and Johnny went down below deck to examine the chart again. There was a small town, possibly a village, at the innermost point of this small bay but it appeared to be quite a way inland so that was no good. He went back out with the binoculars and scanned the hillsides: miles and miles of nothing, barren scrub dotted with the occasional goatherd or shack. He watched skinny black beasts ambling up and down the hills. He swung the binoculars back round and took a surreptitious look at Annie’s tits again. He refocused and moved the binoculars down her body. She was powerfully built, strong and fit. She had her legs up and he zoomed in on a series of small white scars along the inside of her thigh. He lowered the binoculars, turned around and leant back against the coachroof and found himself drifting in and out of sleep, dozing in the warm sunshine, his mind ablaze with breasts and legs.

  Later in the afternoon Frank asked him to take the helm while he took Smudge down for her afternoon nap. Johnny and Clem played cards with Annie by the tiller. She taught them how to play Five Hundred, an incredibly complicated game, like Bridge but even more confusing, where the two of diamonds was the big bad trump. It involved partners, bidding and dummies. He noticed the scars again as she dealt the cards; they were all over both thighs, fine white lines like little caterpillars crawling up towards her crotch.

  The breeze did come in the late afternoon but Frank preferred for them to find a bay and hunker down for the evening. Johnny would have much preferred to have got the sails up now that the wind had arrived, he loved night sailing, but it wasn’t his boat and another night on board sounded just fine to him. The further away they got from Bodrum the better. They were bound to come across somewhere tomorrow. Even if they found a house with a car they could pay for a ride; they still had all Charlie’s money.

  So the Little Utopia chugged in closer to the coast and nosed about for a suitable harbour as the sun slunk down the sky. It didn’t take long to find one. They motored in, the vast mountainous scrub sheltering them from the wind. Johnny and Clem stood at the bows checking the depth of the water with Captain Hook pointing out fish. The bottom was rocky with sandy patches and when Johnny dropped the anchor it caught quickly and the boat swung round, nose to the breeze.

  When Frank at last turned the engine off the sudden peace was blissful. Johnny forgot how much he hated engines; people had managed for hundreds of years without them and somehow they had now become indispensable. A couple of years ago, Rob, Clem and he had delivered a boat from Gibraltar to Falmouth without an engine in it at all. It was such a rare event that they used to get rounds of applause as they sailed into harbours.

  For a while the four of them stood about the boat, silenced by the silence, just staring out at this stunning piece of nature they had found themselves in, listening to the breeze rippling on the water, the waves lapping against the boat, the occasional cry from a bird of prey on the sloping golden mountains. They were in the middle of a beautiful piece of nowhere, the sinking sun on their backs, their shadows long and lean reaching over the water, up the rocks to the foothills.

  There was a general clearing up of the cockpit and the deck and Captain Hook had a tantrum at the removal of her grubby pirate jacket and the attempt to put other warmer clothes on her naked goose-bumping body. Johnny managed to distract her with the very important job of looking out for the ‘green flash’, the mythical moment when the sun disappeared below the horizon and a green light shot up into the sky. He told her how he had spent his whole life looking out for it but had never seen it because his eyes weren’t clever enough. Smudge had stopped crying then and climbed on to his lap and stared at the sun with wide eyes, trying hard not to blink while Annie had put some warm clothes on underneath the Captain Hook jacket, brushing a hand through Johnny’s hair in thanks.

  The sky became streaked with pinks and purples that spread out like long, tapering fingers over their heads towards the east where the first stars were already out. Frank and Clem, bearing thick jumpers and tumblers full of red wine, joined them in the cockpit and the five of them sat and waited for the green flash as the red ball sank down the sky. Captain Hook was the only lucky one – she saw it several times, she said, when the others must have been blinking. She described it in some detail, how the colours of the rainbow flashed as well, how very clever her eyes must be. But for the rest of them the sun kissed the horizon and slid out of view without a hullabaloo.

  As the stars prickled the sky and the moon got into its swing, they ate pasta on plates on their laps. Annie put Captain Hook to bed; she fought it briefly, they could hear a tired protestation from the forecabin but shortly Annie joined them again with fresh supplies of wine. Clem made room for her, getting up to join Johnny on the other side of the cock
pit, lifting his feet and placing them on her lap, her knuckles gently massaging the balls of his feet. Frank was sitting next to Clem at the stern, his legs hanging over the tiller, his eyes looking up at the heavens, his finger following the trajectory of the orbit of the stars in the galaxy. It was impossible not to talk about the tiny scale of their little lives on Earth. If Betelgeuse, visible over there, was the size of an orange, he said, planet Earth was smaller than a pinprick. Clem was leaning in close to see exactly which star he was pointing at. She was wearing Johnny’s polo neck and her hair was caught down the back of it, with just a few coils springing out around her face, and Johnny was thinking how much he’d like to have sex with her right now. He even thought of getting up and taking her hand and saying, Excuse me, guys, I’m going to go and have sex with my wife, won’t be long. He was pretty sure no one would mind. He drank from his glass and saluted Annie who was topping up her own glass in that quiet way she had. Their silences were comfortable; they sipped at the warming red wine listening to the waves lapping at the boat.

  ‘This has been the most unexpected and wonderful day,’ Clem said to no one in particular.

  ‘The best kind of wonderful day,’ Frank said to her, his eyes still on the sky.

  She sighed heavily, pleasurably, and hung her head back, looking out at all the millions of stars above them. ‘I suppose one day mankind will discover all the mysteries of the universe,’ she said, her fingers pressing into the arch of Johnny’s foot. ‘Even work out what black holes are.’

  Frank made a quiet sound of agreement, ‘Hmmm,’ as did Johnny, but his was to do with the massage.

  ‘When we do know all the answers, that’ll probably be it – the end of the world,’ she said.

  ‘I bet you we already know the mysteries of the universe,’ Frank said in his low soothing voice. ‘They’ll be staring us in the face.’

  She repeated his sound of agreement: ‘Hmmm.’

  ‘I think that’s the divine joke,’ Frank said. ‘That we actually know all the answers already.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said, not convinced, pausing in her massage, as if it were too much to listen and rub at the same time. Johnny wriggled his toes a little to remind her. ‘Or we once knew them and then we forgot them.’

  ‘Yes,’ Frank said, turning his head to get a better look at her. ‘Exactly! Perhaps our whole purpose here is to rediscover them.’

  ‘Or maybe we don’t have a purpose,’ Johnny added and heard Annie chuckle.

  ‘Oh, Johnny,’ Clem said, pressing her knuckle hard into the sole of his foot. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, of course we do. Otherwise what’s the point?’

  ‘Ah, we agree on something, Clem.’ Frank flashed his straight white teeth in a smile.

  ‘What do you think the point is, Frank?’ she asked. ‘You said “divine joke” a moment ago. So you do believe in God?’

  Frank was looking up at the sky as he spoke, picking each word as carefully as if choosing a particular chocolate from a superior selection. There was something about the way he spoke that made you have to listen, not to miss a thing. Frank would have been a great teacher. If schools had had teachers like him, Johnny might have paid a bit more attention.

  ‘I don’t believe life is pointless,’ he said slowly. ‘I don’t believe in God as such but I do believe in a universal force, that there is an order to the chaos.’ He was looking at Clem but including them all. ‘And I most definitely have faith that one day human civilization will return to a second Golden Age.’

  Clem picked up his cigarette packet. With the slightest tilt of her head, Johnny saw her asking whether she could take one of the cigarettes. Frank must have signalled yes but it was too dark for Johnny to see, because she took one out of the packet and Frank twisted his body round and lit it for her. He looked surprisingly old in its red flame; his brow fell in creases over his eyes and Johnny wondered whether Clem had noticed that.

  ‘What is the Golden Age?’ Johnny asked him.

  ‘Ahh!’ Frank said, as if recalling a fond memory. He swung his legs off the tiller and pushed himself upright. He picked at the cuff of his holey old jumper. ‘According to many ancient texts it was a period in history where we human beings lived in accordance with the Natural Laws.’

  Clem was listening attentively, inhaling her cigarette. She had become an elegant smoker over the years, like a twenties’ film star.

  ‘A time when bliss and harmony reigned supreme – man in utter harmony with nature,’ he continued.

  ‘What’s a Natural Law?’ she asked.

  ‘A Natural Law is a law set by nature but whose ramifications exist in everything.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Like what?’ she said.

  ‘Well, probably the most obvious one…’ Frank replied slowly in his low, gentle voice; Johnny had to strain a little to hear, he didn’t want to miss a single word, ‘…is that we are all part of the same thing. We, us, planet Earth, the universe, are all made up of the same chemical elements. There is the same potential in you as there is in a star being born trillions of miles away up there.’

  Johnny began rolling a cigarette, slowly as he always did, nice and thin, the tobacco evenly distributed along the paper, tearing himself a little cardboard from the Rizla packet for the perfect roach. What Frank was saying was perfectly obvious really, that there were a finite number of elements from which the universe and everything in it was made, but it was the way he said things that made them sound original and fresh. Johnny felt glad that they had this extra night on board; he wanted to hear more. He also rather wanted Clem to start massaging his feet again but she appeared to have forgotten about them; her attention was now entirely on Frank.

  ‘Think of an acorn!’ he was saying, leaning forward, looking at them now. ‘In that tiny little seed is the capacity to become the mighty oak tree. Surely life is just the realization of our potential, the unmanifest becoming manifest.’

  Both Clem and Johnny were quite still. He had entranced them. He was looking into their eyes, his own lit up by some internal fire. ‘Or think of it like this: deep inside each of one of us is a mine full of precious stones. All the riches of the Earth are available to us. Perhaps our duty as human beings is to excavate those mines, bring those diamonds out into the light. It might be perfectly possible to live in a state of sparkling bliss all of the time if we so chose.’

  ‘How do you get down there?’ Clem asked him, her voice breathy with wonder.

  ‘Simple. You tap into your potential.’

  ‘And how do I do that?’ she asked, suddenly tiring of the weight of Johnny’s feet altogether, pushing them away and tucking her knees under her chin. Frank sighed a sigh full of unknowable longings and shifted his body slightly towards her.

  ‘You have to follow all of the other Natural Laws and it will happen automatically. The first thing to understand is that you are in control of your life. You are not a victim. The world is what you want it to be. I always tell Annie that. Don’t I, love?’

  He wasn’t expecting an answer; he didn’t even look at her. Johnny did. She was knocking back the wine as though she’d heard it all before. There was an attractive feistiness behind that sorrowful façade that he was warming to. But Johnny hadn’t heard it all before and he wanted to hear more. In all his life he had never heard anyone talking in this way.

  ‘You have to start taking responsibility for yourself and by that I mean for all your responses to life and to do that you have to break down your own defences.’

  ‘I can’t control my responses to things, I just respond,’ Clem said.

  Frank laughed and sat back. ‘You’re absolutely wrong. Of course you can.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Just try witnessing the choices you make as you make them.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He sat still, leaning forward again, his legs apart, his fingertips and the two stumps tapping together as he thought. Then he looked at her, straight in the eye – they were close
. ‘I mean this quite sincerely, Clem,’ he said and then paused. Both Clem and Johnny leant forward a little more. ‘You are one of the most beautiful women I have ever come across,’ he said, not taking his eyes off hers.

  There was a hiatus, a tiny moment when Time’s pendulum hovered. Johnny noticed the way Clem tried to hide her delight; the corners of her mouth tightened a little and she looked away from Frank, her eyelashes fluttering. She tossed Johnny a careless glance as if she were embarrassed. If there had been daylight he would have seen her blush. And Johnny himself felt a wave of something new and bitter wash through him.

  ‘OK,’ Frank said, pulling out his packet of cigarettes. He tapped one out and caught it in his lips and lit it in that snatched, hurried but easy way. ‘You chose to be flattered,’ he said as if it had been nothing but an experiment, the compliment false. He lit the cigarette, leant back and blew out a steady stream of smoke. ‘It was a choice you made. You could have chosen to be insulted by that remark.’ He turned to Johnny. ‘And, Johnny, you too, your ego might well feel dented by another man calling your wife beautiful.’ He paused. ‘But it is still a choice.’

  Johnny didn’t want Frank to think that he was like other weaker men whose egos were easily bruised. He wanted to be better than other men. Clem was beautiful, that was a fact, and Johnny wanted other men to think her beautiful: he revelled in it. He chose to forget about that wave of bitterness and the moment he made the decision he could feel it subside. He chose not to be offended. It felt good. He felt in control. He suddenly understood what Annie had meant when she said that Frank could see things. He looked over at Annie; she was slumped, her hair fallen over her eyes.