The Boat

by Clara Salaman

  She smiled. She couldn’t help herself; she needed that support. She watched the way he prodded the fire gently, the way the sticks caught light and spat hot sparks on to his skin, how he didn’t flinch, how he just flicked them off at his own leisure. ‘No, really,’ he said, turning his head to make sure he had her attention. ‘It’s a pity that he doesn’t know the wonderful young woman that you’ve become.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ she said, embarrassed but loving it.

  ‘Well, I do,’ he said. ‘You’re intelligent, curious, open-minded, kind, positive, loving, good-natured. All the things a father could hope for. Oh, and you’re not bad-looking either.’

  His words made her dizzy; she wanted them written down so she could remember them for ever, so she could take them out and look at them whenever she chose. She could show them to him, Jim, her father. Proof.

  She sieved the sand through her fingers and examined the grains, the broken colourful shells, crushed over millennia, but she soon found herself looking back up at the horizon where all the unremembered things seemed to lurk. ‘When I was Smudge’s age I thought he was the most amazing person in the world,’ she said, laughing and then not.

  ‘Disillusionment with one’s parents is utterly normal.’

  ‘I can’t imagine Smudge ever being disillusioned with you.’

  He looked over at his daughter, who was standing, poised, stock-still in the shallows with her spear raised, looking like a savage. ‘She will be. I must accept that.’

  ‘They let me think everything was fine. People should shout and argue before they split up. It’s only fair.’

  He was leaning back with his ankles crossed. ‘Maybe everything had been fine,’ he said.

  This thought had never occurred to her. The memory of those first eight years had always been tainted by his betrayal; his final action had negated all the previous little happinesses. Even now, whenever she or her mother recalled things from those days their sentences always seemed to trail out into an emptiness.

  ‘Sometimes people have to leave the people they love,’ he said. ‘It’s just the way it is. You can’t change what happened, Clem, whatever he did or didn’t do. But you can change how you feel about it. You really can.’ He was smiling at her. ‘It’s his loss. He’ll know that. You should pity him – in the true sense of the word, you should have compassion for him.’

  She felt as if she was going to cry. It was as if she was being given permission to love her father, a feeling she had not indulged for years. Everyone around her seemed to despise Jim; how nice it felt to allow the love back in. It took her by surprise, this tightening of her throat, this sudden stinging in her eyes. She was glad that Frank looked away, sensing her fragility. Briefly he reached out his hand to brush her knee. Then he got up to tidy up the camp and he busied himself with the Thermos, pouring the coffee into cups. It wasn’t a bad feeling, the tearfulness; it was quite a relief. Besides, it passed as quickly as it came.

  She looked over at the dinghy. Johnny was rowing Annie back now, only they seemed to have stopped; the oars were high in the air. She wished Johnny could be himself again. She liked sitting here with Frank. She liked everything just how it was. He passed her a coffee and sat back down next to her, both of them watching the others.

  ‘Are things all right with Johnny?’ he asked.

  There was no point in lying. She didn’t think she could ever lie to him. ‘He’s jealous of you.’

  He paused for a moment, the coffee cup at his lips. Then he put it down and rearranged some of the sticks before taking his cigarettes out of his pocket. He tapped one out and turned to her, his expression thoughtful, puzzled. ‘Why should he be jealous of me?’

  She held his gaze for just a second and then she had to look back at the fire in case her eyes gave something away. She pulled her knees up to her chin and watched the flames as they whipped about noisily in the newly charged atmosphere. ‘I suppose he thinks I might have feelings for you,’ she said and although her eyes were now firmly fixed on the fire, her heart felt as if it were dangerously suspended, hanging in the air, exposed and raw, ready to be scorched just like the chicken over the flame.

  ‘Well, he shouldn’t be jealous of me. He’s the one that’s going to have your babies.’

  She hugged her knees a little tighter and both the fire and her heart crackled loudly. Frank lit his cigarette and then he smiled at her in that calm, private way he had.

  ‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Clem – having feelings for me,’ he said in his rumbling, effortless voice. ‘That’s a beautiful thing.’

  Then he stood up and went off to get more wood.

  ‘Annie?’ Johnny called as he approached the Little Utopia in the shabby old rowing boat. He rested one oar in its rowlock and balanced the other inside the tender, one hand reaching out to grab the toe rail of the bigger boat. ‘You ready?’

  She came out with a pan in her hand and passed it underneath the guard rail. He glanced at her briefly, not expecting eye contact now, and took the cake from her hands. She looked dishevelled. She reeked of alcohol, that sweet, sickly smell of whisky. He hadn’t even known that they had whisky on board. He put the cake down on the floor between two bungs. It looked more like a paste than a cake, but then she’d had to make do without an oven. She’d stuck five candles in and dusted it with icing. She stepped over the guard rail and climbed down into the tender with another bag over her shoulder and sat down opposite him. She picked up the cake and held it in her lap as he pushed them away from the Little Utopia with one oar. They drifted out into the water.

  For a while they couldn’t see the others on the shore as they rounded the bigger boat. He was watching her, waiting for her to acknowledge him, but her eyes were downcast. She looked old and tired; even the holes in her ears where her hooped earrings hung were dashes rather than dots. Life had taken its toll. He wondered what he had ever seen in her: she had big dark freckles on her hands like an old person, her dress was covered in chocolate, her hair was all matted, she had downward lines around her mouth and broken dark veins on her thighs; she was drinking whisky in the morning, for God’s sake.

  They were still floating around the bigger boat, the oars out of the water, resting in their rowlocks, dripping on to the faintly rippled surface. She was staring at the cake and when she at last did meet his eye, hers were weighty with misery.

  ‘I told you I was a bad person…’ she whispered.

  He stared at her, his hands tightening around the wood as he placed the oars flat beneath the water.

  ‘Now you know,’ she said, taking urgent little glances shorewards where the others were still obscured by the hull of the Little Utopia.

  ‘Now I know what?’ he said, clearing his throat.

  ‘I saw you. You know…’

  He stared at her, the oars hovering above the water.

  ‘You want me to spell it out? ’ she said, her voice weak and shaky. His mouth went dry. He watched as several fat tears spilt from her eyes on to the dusted whiteness of the cake.

  ‘Spell what out?’

  It was her silence that spoke to him, slowly shining its light into his darkest places. He felt sick.

  ‘Please don’t hate me,’ she whispered. He watched as she rummaged about in her bag and brought out a small bottle of Johnnie Walker. She unscrewed the top and drank thirstily.

  ‘Say something!’ she said.

  But he couldn’t.

  ‘Johnny, say something!’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I used to be just like you,’ she whispered as if they might be able to hear her from the beach. ‘I was just like you. I thought it was awful when he first suggested it…’

  ‘Shut the fuck up!’ he said with a fierceness that stopped her.

  She nodded eagerly, as if she liked his ferocity, as if she wanted more, for him to shout abuse at her, to punish her. ‘But he taught me how to see things different
ly…’

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ He was trying to shut her up; he didn’t want to know any of this. He would rather be anywhere else in the world right now than here, listening to her. He dipped the oars in the water and took a long, deep stroke, as if he could get away from her. ’

  ‘We never hurt her. We would never ever hurt her!’

  ‘For God’s sake shut up!’

  ‘She likes it. She enjoys making love.’

  And then quite suddenly he stopped rowing and leant over the boat and vomited into the water, the oars dropping with a crash against the sides as he heaved into the blue. He drooled and spat and wiped his mouth then turned to her. Her eyes were as blue and piercing as the sky behind. He shook his head with horror.

  ‘You’re not fit to be a mother. You’re not fit,’ he said, his voice breaking with a kind of sob. ‘You don’t fucking deserve her.’

  ‘No,’ she said and she hung her head.

  Johnny gripped the sides of the boat, his eyes scanning the horizon looking for a way out of this nightmare, but there was nothing but glassy stillness everywhere. ‘Why, Annie? Why?’

  ‘When I saw your face it took me back. I remembered,’ Annie whispered, looking up at him from underneath her skew-whiff fringe, her face contorted into a pathetic plea. ‘Will you save her, Johnny? Will you take her with you?’

  He stared at her with disbelief. ‘Are you serious?’ he said. He turned away, cupping his hands in the water, washing his mouth out, splashing water on to his face. ‘No, Annie. This is not my problem. Clem and I are getting out of here.’

  Annie nodded then opened the bottle again and took another mouthful; then she scrabbled around in her bag for her cigarettes; a tangle of addictions. She struck the lighter a few times in a panic before it worked. She inhaled deeply, like a junkie.

  Johnny wiped his face on his shirt and looked towards the shore. The others had slipped into view again, the dash of red of Captain’s Hook’s coat, the turquoise of Clem’s shirt, Frank’s larger, darker frame.

  ‘Just leave him!’ he said, because he wanted to help her. But he couldn’t.

  She let out a sort of laugh. ‘Oh, Johnny,’ she said as if he had no idea at all. ‘You think he’d let me leave him? Let me take his daughter?’ She sounded hollow and empty, all scooped out. She rested her head on her knees, facing out to sea, letting her hand trail in the water, lost in some unlovely reverie.

  When she spoke it was as if he wasn’t even there. She seemed calm and remote. ‘I met him in a pub in Islington. He came in with six others, all in plain clothes, shouting and knocking things over, looking for someone. They were on a raid. Everyone was running about getting out of there but I just stood there and I stared at this man. It was as if I already knew him. And he stopped what he was doing and he looked right at me and I thought to myself, You’re the man I’ve been waiting for.’ She laughed and turned her face to Johnny. She had transformed like she always did when she laughed and he saw her then as a young woman in that pub in Islington.

  ‘I can’t leave him, Johnny. He is my destiny. I could never leave Francis Goodman. I love him.’

  ‘Despite what he does? What he makes you do?’

  But she wasn’t listening. ‘He wasn’t just any old copper. He was brilliant. And he chose me, Johnny. Francis Goodman chose me. He could get confessions out of anyone, anyone at all. They put him on all the big, famous cases. All the IRA hard nuts, he’d have them crying like babies, crapping themselves in their cells.’ She sat up and inhaled deeply, just like Frank, sucking the life out of the cigarette. ‘They used to call him the Samaritan – because he killed you with kindness.’

  She paused, those heavy, sad eyes back to looking inwards now. She tipped her ash into the water and Johnny watched it float downwards like a column collapsing in a quake. She drank more whisky and then offered him the bottle. He took it, resting the oars in the rowlocks, watching them rise up like wings high into the sky. He rubbed his forehead with the fleshy part of his palms, massaging his own head, trying to iron everything out. He looked over at Frank on the beach. He’d lit a fire; the smoke was going straight upwards, hovering above their heads, being blown nowhere for there was no wind. Over in the dead calm by the rocks, a fish jumped.

  ‘There was a ring of them, you see,’ she said, her words lingering in the air like the smoke. ‘At the Met. They were all the same. Photographing themselves, making films with children, watching each other, one-upping each other. But they were careless. Someone found out, someone with a score to settle. Two of them were killed outright by these vigilantes, thrown from the tops of buildings. But Frank, the ringleader, they saved. They kept him for three days in a room. They used electric probes; they cut him up; they stuck things into him; they beat him with lead pipes, smashed in his skull, his back, his legs. They left him for dead.’

  Johnny couldn’t row any more; the strength had seeped out of him. He knew then that the sickness sitting inside him would not ever leave. It was too heavy to pass through. He looked over at the shore where Smudge was up to her waist in the water, spear poised above her head. He could see Frank moving, wandering around on the shore, bending to pick up wood. The limp that wasn’t so obvious on a boat where there was nowhere to move was now quite evident. He was crooked to the core. He wished those men had finished him off.

  ‘I was pregnant with Smudge at the time. I kept praying for a boy, I knew what his preferences were…’

  Something about what she was saying didn’t make sense. He tried to work things out in his head. Clem had told him that Frank was in hospital for six months. If she was pregnant then, how could she have given birth on the Little Utopia six months later? It didn’t add up. ‘How could you do it, Annie? How could you stay with a man like that?’

  ‘Someone like you would never understand. You with your easy confidence. I bet life just rolls out for you. My life was nothing when I met him, I was nothing. I had more trust in him than I did in myself. He gave me everything. He taught me to believe in myself, Johnny. He taught me how to think. He showed me how to love, how to express my love. You have to understand I’m nothing at all without that man. Just nothing.’

  She started to cry then. Those big fat tears fell down her cheeks. He was going to deny it, say it wasn’t so, but he wasn’t so sure. He thought of Clem. He was nothing at all without her. You couldn’t wander around for the rest of your life being just a remnant of a person. ‘What did the Met do?’ he asked. ‘Turn a blind eye, get you out of the country and give him a nice pension?’

  She shrugged and looked up at the sky, her head hanging backwards. He could see the pale creases on her neck where the sun hadn’t reached. Her voice was small and faraway. ‘I know it’s wrong, Johnny, what we do. I know I am a shameful, worthless human being. But he’s different. He’s proud of what he is. He’s always been that way; which makes me so much worse than him.’

  Despite the terrible things that she had done, he felt pity for her then. He wanted to reach out and touch her, to try and give her some comfort. But he didn’t.

  All he had to do was get through the next twenty-four hours and tomorrow they could get away from all this.

  ‘Annie,’ he said and slowly she lifted her eyes to meet his. ‘I don’t want Clem to know any of this. Do you understand? I don’t want this… sick stuff… anywhere near her.’

  Annie nodded and took a drag of her cigarette, blowing the smoke out in a weak, steady stream towards her bare feet. She looked as if she understood. As if she knew that Clemmie’s innate sense of goodness and trust in the world must not be sullied by them.

  ‘I don’t want you ever to touch her again,’ he said. ‘Do you get it?’

  She nodded again and when she looked up he saw the fear back in her eyes. ‘But don’t you see what he’s doing, Johnny?’ she said and Johnny felt the dread rise up in him. ‘He’s preparing you. He wants to share Smudge with you.’

  He stared at her. Then his focus slipped b
ehind her, to the flat, glassy water, almost indistinguishable from the cloudless sky. He looked over at Clem by the fire, at the upright smoke. There was not a breath of wind anywhere, from the curve on the edge of the world to the heights of the deserted, barren mountains. He wanted to lose himself in the stillness.

  He picked up the oars and rowed the last twenty yards in silence. They both got out of the dinghy, Annie juggling the cake and the bag while Johnny pulled the tender up on to the beach. Annie went to join Frank and Clem on the blanket. They were drinking coffee from the Thermos and reading their books. Johnny walked towards them slowly; he had no appetite. He was watching Frank, pinning the new information he had about him on to the man he didn’t know at all. He felt as if he were locked outside of himself, as if he were observing himself from somewhere else while his husk of a body went through the motions, made pleasantries, sat down on the blanket, carefully placing himself between Frank and Clem; he stretched his legs out, took the coffee that Clem passed him, smiled at her, admired the fire and the spit and swallowed the tasteless hot liquid. He did not behave at all how he might have imagined he would; there was no anger, no rage, no fighting because he felt derelict inside. He heard himself laugh a little when Frank made a joke; he could feel an idiotic grin stuck on his face. When he needed to remind himself that he wasn’t a shell, that he was flesh and blood, he got up and went down to the water’s edge and put his feet into the coolness. He wondered fleetingly what time of year it was, he’d temporarily forgotten; the air was warm but the sea was cold. It was still March, or was it April, he had no idea any more. He wondered how long they’d been on the boat – it seemed like a long time. He felt like a different person altogether from the old Johnny. The water felt good, bracing against his skin. He wanted to be swallowed up by it. He found himself going in, up to his knees, his groin, his waist, his chest, and he kept on going. Clem would be amazed if she was watching – which had begun to seem unlikely; she hadn’t been watching him very much that day. He walked until he was out of his depth and then he dropped down under, at last finding some refuge beneath the surface, immersed in the coldness. He kicked his legs and let his body float up, head down. He opened his eyes and blinked into the green at the rocks beneath and once again he thought of all those things they’d chucked into the sea lying peacefully at the bottom somewhere never to be found and the thought of such undiscovered stillness gave him comfort. It was good to see the world from another perspective, to block out their voices, their existence. He rolled over, breathed out and looked up into the sky where, high above, a flock of tiny birds flew by, black against the blue, free to go wherever they chose.