The Boat

by Clara Salaman

  Eventually she said in a quiet, knowing little voice, ‘Is there a picture of him?’

  Johnny frowned, not understanding what she was asking.

  ‘Is there a photograph of him in the book?’ she repeated. Then she smiled. ‘There’s not, is there? Of course there’s not. Pictures don’t prove anything, Johnny. Annie set him up like a fool and you fell for it.’

  He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said. ‘He’s really got you, hasn’t he?’

  ‘And she hasn’t got you? You think you’re some knight in shining armour rescuing her?’

  ‘She tried to hack her hand off, Clem.’

  ‘It was just a cry for help.’

  ‘Well, I was fucking listening, wasn’t I? Annie got some fucking help!’ He was shouting at her now. He had never shouted at her before.

  ‘Annie, Annie – it’s all I hear from you. It’s not up to you to dispense with her husband.’

  ‘What would you have done then? Tell me! Reported him to the police?’

  ‘It’s not true!’ She was blocking her ears trying to drown him out.

  Johnny could feel the blood vessels in his head filling with a pure white-hot rage. He was screaming now. ‘Who would I report him to? Who gives a shit? There are no laws here! Don’t you get it? He can do what the hell he wants. That’s why it’s called the Little fucking Utopia!’

  Then he punched the crappy wooden panel so hard with his fist that the wood caved in with a crunch and his knuckles went from white to pink and started to bleed. He caught her eye then and they stared at each other, reeling in horrified wonder at what they had become, how everything had got so wrecked so quickly. He turned around and leant his elbows against the companionway steps, hanging his head in his hands, trying not to cry, trying to regain control of himself. Neither one of them dared to speak. He looked up at the night sky, at the vast, aching emptiness around them.

  The kettle screamed. He turned and slowly, with meticulous care, he made the coffee, scooping up the grounds as if his whole life depended on these two cups of black stuff. He stirred in the sugar and brought them over to the table. Clem was still sitting there staring blankly ahead, her face drained of all life. He sat down next to her and placed the coffees in front of them on the table, both of them watching the swirling vortexes. They sat like that for a long time.

  ‘I want to go back home,’ she said in a small voice.

  Home. He hadn’t thought of home at all. He looked up at her. He remembered her then, from before, from home, them together. It seemed another world away. He remembered her as a child, back-flipping off the sand dunes, their first date at the Blue Anchor, her in that white shirt and jeans, putting songs on the jukebox, how much he had loved her, did still love her. But he couldn’t quite reach that love any more. He couldn’t reach anything any more. The core of him was numb and the edges were jagged and frayed.

  ‘Yes,’ he said in answer to a question no one had asked. ‘I’ll take you home.’

  ‘How, Johnny?’ she said. ‘We’ve got Smudge.’

  ‘We’ll take her with us.’

  She paused and looked up at him, her dark eyes puffy and swollen. ‘How could we ever explain that?’

  She was right. They couldn’t go home. ‘Let’s live somewhere else then,’ he said, holding her gaze.

  She nodded, but tears started to spill from her eyes. ‘But I want to go back home, where everything is familiar,’ she said.

  ‘Please,’ he said, hanging his head, sighing, rubbing his forehead in his hand – he was so phenomenally exhausted. ‘I can’t do this on my own.’ They sat there for a while listening to the waves lapping the boat, eyes on the ghost vortexes now swirled into stillness.

  He looked around the boat as if he was only just seeing where they were: the dented wood, the ugly municipal carpet on the floor, Frank’s history books, Annie’s trashy novels, his pens and gadgets, her bits and bobs of crap, behind the door their sleeping child. They were gone and Johnny and Clem had stolen their life.

  12

  The Ending

  The wedding had not gone according to plan at all. It was a small affair, there were only about twelve of them waiting at the church in St Mawgan – the same church where Johnny’s parents had got married twenty-five years before. Rob had given Clem a lift on the back of the old Tiger Cub because she had insisted they went separately; she was having a hard time keeping to all the superstitions and was picking and choosing along the way. Some were just absurd, like not seeing each other on the wedding morning – nothing would ever induce them to spend a night apart. She did the ‘something borrowed, something blue’ bit. The dress was borrowed – kind of – she planned on returning it to the charity shop. Sarah had found it in Barnardo’s in Newquay in the nightwear section. But it looked like a wedding dress, although it had little blue flowers on it, it was figure hugging and shiny white with long virginal sleeves. She’d also found Johnny a three-piece suit, so they looked the part. No one seemed to have much idea how weddings were meant to be run and Clem had allowed her mother no part at all in the arrangements. She would have wanted everything the traditional way: unknown relatives and flower arrangements, conversations with the vicar and caterers, table names and hired cars until Clem had explained to her that that just wasn’t the way things got done with the Loves. So her mother had watched bemusedly as they picked holly and ivy for Clem’s bouquet, and bought kegs of beer from the Riv pub. She’d found it hard to conceal her disappointment, especially when she’d found Sarah painting the old Tiger Cub with white emulsion.

  It was November and the weather was trying to be everything in one day; a rainbow had even looped the hills earlier on, which Clem had taken as a sign – though she wasn’t quite sure what of. She’d hung on tightly to Rob, her knees gripping the bike, her dress hoiked up beneath her, her curls stuffed up under the helmet, letting her body go with the flow, letting Rob’s body be her guide as they wound around the country lanes. He was shorter and broader than his brother but otherwise there was a cosy familiarity about him. They smelt similar. She rested her head against his back and her heart seemed so full it might burst. The whole world seemed to be shining in her reflected happiness. When they’d set off from the cottage down the hill, she thought she had never seen the water so blue and the surf so white, the cliffs so sheer and the grass so green. Everything had been intensified for this, their wedding day; nature was putting on a show especially for her – she’d never been able to entirely shake off those childish suspicions that the world had been constructed purely for her benefit.

  The weather didn’t hold though; as they headed up the hill, the sky darkened dramatically and the heavens opened and it had started to bucket down. She could feel the rain slipping down her neck where the helmet and jacket didn’t meet, hear the smacking sound of the rain on Rob’s leather jacket, and see the stream of white paint they were leaving behind them – it was coming off all over the road, all over her legs, all over Rob’s suit.

  The trouble didn’t really start until they reached the church where it became apparent that someone else was also having a wedding that day – someone else with a hundred friends. She and Rob had got off the bike and run up the path under the arch to join Johnny and all of their party huddling in the porch out of the rain while, to her bewilderment, hearty singing, coughing and wedding noises were coming from inside. They waited until the other service was over and the multitude had drifted off round to the other side for photographs – something else that they’d forgotten to organize – then they cornered the vicar. He seemed most surprised to find another bride at his church. He said he couldn’t possibly marry them, they hadn’t confirmed the booking and the banns hadn’t been read out, aside from anything else. This was puzzling, not least because they had no idea what banns were. Clem suggested to the vicar that the banns might be read out this very minute. There was much kerfuffle and pleading but the vicar was adamant: no banns, no wedding. Then there wa
s the other business of Clem’s dad not turning up. And Rob had left the ring on the kitchen table. So in the end instead of a wedding the lot of them had gone across the road to the Falcon Inn for a pint or five before Johnny’s dad had had the brainwave.

  The weather had turned again. By the time they got to Padstow harbour, the dark blanket of cloud had slowly slipped off the edge of the sky leaving a chilly sharp blue in its place. The wind was light but biting and the low winter sun cast long shadows across the oily harbour water. Their wedding clothes were now tucked into wellington boots and covered by jumpers and scarves and mismatched oilies that they’d found in the boathouse box. The five of them stood on the steep slope of the jetty ready to launch the old wooden Fireball off the trailer and into the rising tide, its rigging tinkling excitedly in the wind. Sarah and Rob were on one side standing in the freezing shallows and Johnny and Clem on the other while his dad wheeled the trailer back up to the boathouse. Clem hopped into the boat, her white skirt sticking out over the wellies, her make-up fallen in streaks down her face from where she had been crying earlier in the pub. Nobody mentioned it. Everyone pretended they hadn’t noticed her crying because it had seemed too callous to point out the reason – but they all knew exactly what it was. And it wasn’t the fact that the wedding hadn’t happened – they could get married any time – it was the fact that her own father hadn’t turned up. Just this once, he might have pulled out the stops. Johnny was so livid he couldn’t even say his name. She had been so thrilled when Jim had said yes, that he’d be delighted to give her away and Peter and Tim could definitely do page-boyish things. She had leapt about the flat doing naked dancing. And now the bastard hadn’t even shown up. Johnny saw how Clem would not accept the truth – even two hours in she was still making excuses for him, said he’d probably got lost and then later when he still wasn’t there she’d gone on about how incredibly busy he was at the moment with his new job. But Johnny saw how every time the Falcon door opened she turned around expectantly and how later she pretended she had something in her eye when it finally dawned on her that he wasn’t going to show up.

  Clem sat herself near the mast at the bows of the Fireball, her heart racing with excitement. She zipped up her jacket to the neck and pulled her cuffs down over her fingers. It was colder on the water. Johnny took off his woolly hat and chucked it to her across the boat. She pulled it on and looked up towards the boathouse. Her mother was standing there waving down at them, incongruous in her high heels and puffy blue dress and the yellow oilskin Johnny’s dad had given her to keep warm. She was too polite to say no but Clem could see she didn’t want to spoil her outfit. But she looked good in it; she looked as if she was part of them all now. She wanted her mother to see how magical life was with the Loves; something had struck Clem that afternoon when her father hadn’t turned up: she had taken for granted the only person who had always been there in her life. She blew her mother a kiss just as Sarah rolled into the boat awkwardly, laughing, and the Fireball rocked from side to side. Johnny’s dad jumped in next and Rob and Johnny gave the boat a final shove into the water before neatly stepping on board themselves, Johnny having managed not to get wet at all. After much shuffling about and rope pulling and manoeuvring and leaning out and ducking down and pushing off and fast tacking, the Fireball smoothly slipped along the water and out of the harbour mouth into the estuary beyond, the wind a gentle south-westerly, the sun sharp and golden on her sails. Clem looked back and saw her mother still waving from the harbour wall. She waved back.

  They sped through the water, Puffin Island on the sharp horizon ahead, past the cottage on the grey, craggy shore, the sun hiding behind the hills. Despite the squash and the weight the Fireball moved at a lick through the chilly November air. Johnny had Clem wrapped in his arms on the starboard side, kissing her cheek, one eye as always looking up at the sails despite the fact his dad was at the helm. Sarah was shivering, looking up at the sky and Rob was leaning out beside her. They changed tack and Sarah looked at her father. ‘Can you get on with it, Dad, it’s freezing,’ she said.

  ‘Oh yes, sorry. Got carried away. Such a beautiful day! Ready about…’ he said. They were almost parallel with the headland now, sheltered a little by the hills. ‘Lee ho!’ He tacked again; they ducked and the sails shook briefly as they snapped into their new positions. He bore away and the wind took them from behind on to a nice calm, balanced run.

  ‘As captain of this vessel,’ Johnny’s dad said in his booming voice that both Johnny and Rob had inherited, peering beneath the sails as he spoke in case some other lunatic might be out pleasure sailing today, ‘I am about to perform a marriage ceremony.’

  ‘Is it legal, by the way?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘Of course it’s legal,’ he said, looking up at the sail. ‘It’s more than legal. It’s elemental. Now, Sarah, you and Rob are witnesses. Clem, Johnny, you need to be either side of me. Have you got the ring this time, Rob?’

  He was a man of eccentric authority. All eyes were on him. He fell quiet for a moment – he often forgot completely what he was talking about and they were all wondering what he was doing when he took his gaze up to the sky. ‘I wish your mother was here,’ he said. ‘She’d know how to do this properly. I can’t even remember the vows. I’m going to have to make them up.’

  He brought the boat slowly up into the wind and backed the jib to heave to. He cleared his throat. ‘Here goes. Jonathan Love,’ he boomed above the flapping mainsail. ‘Are you crazy about this woman?’

  Johnny smiled, looking straight across his father at Clem. ‘I am.’

  ‘Louder! We all need to hear. The sky, the sea, we are your witnesses.’

  Johnny raised his voice. ‘I am!’

  ‘Do you love her more than anything in the world?’

  Johnny laughed. ‘More than the world,’ he said and reached out and took her hands in his.

  ‘Do you promise to cherish, protect and worship her?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘In sickness and in health?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘In plain sailing and stormy weather?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Because life is hard, Johnny. Staying together is bloody hard. Walking out is easy.’

  ‘Yes, Dad,’ Johnny said, throwing his father a quick glance and then looking back into Clem’s beaming dark eyes. ‘I’m never walking out, I swear on my life.’

  ‘Where’s the poetry in you, lad? A woman needs poetry.’

  Johnny smiled. ‘I love her. What more do you want?’

  ‘I’ll go to the next bit then,’ his dad said. ‘Do you take this wonderful woman as your wife?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Excellent. And you, Clemency Bailey?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, leaning forward and kissing Johnny’s lips. The make-up was running down Clem’s cheeks again in black streams but this time unplugged by happiness.

  ‘No, wait,’ his dad said. ‘No kissing yet. I have to ask you first. Do you love my son, Jonathan David Love?

  ‘I do.’

  ‘A lot?’

  ‘Dad… get on with it.’ Johnny said.

  ‘I love him more than I can bear. I ache with love for him.’

  ‘You say that now, Clem, but are you going to love him when things aren’t so rosy? Are you going to love him when life throws slings and arrows at you?’

  A shadow seemed to pass over her for she had never considered such an idea. It was inconceivable that anything life could throw at them would ever damage their love. It was indestructible. ‘Yes. Oh yes, I am,’ she said and turned to his dad, serious and intense. ‘I’ll love your son until the end of time, until the world has stopped and the sun doesn’t rise, until all the stars have gone out. You’ll see!’

  Johnny squeezed her hand in his; he could feel a kind of burning in his chest and a lump in his throat.

  ‘Oh, I like that,’ his dad said. ‘That’s much more like it. Until all the stars have gone out. Clemency Bailey,
do you take this man as your husband?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Ring, Rob?’ Rob leant forward and passed Johnny the ring and he slipped it on to Clem’s frozen finger. ‘Then I pronounce you man and wife! May the heavens shine on you now and forever!’

  The heavens did. At that moment the golden sun peered out over the dip in the hill and lit up the boat. There was a quick little cheer and clap before Sarah said, ‘Right, can we go now? I’m frozen solid,’ and Rob was quick to grab the jib sheet. But neither Johnny nor Clem moved; they weren’t cold at all, they were lit by the same fire from within. They stared at each other. They were married now.

  When they got back to the quayside and were pulling the heavy Fireball out of the water, all of them trembling with cold but full up with new warmth, Johnny was surprised to see Clem’s father up by the boathouse leaning on a car, smoking a cigarette and waiting for them. He was wearing a brown shoulder-padded suit. Johnny had hold of one of the trailer handlebars and Rob had the far side and the others were pushing up from the rear. Jim was watching them. Johnny turned to see whether Clem had spotted her father but she hadn’t; she was at the back, head down, pushing with all her might up the slope. He took a deep breath. Nothing was going to spoil this day. No one was ever going to make his wife unhappy again. He could sense Jim moving towards him but he didn’t acknowledge him. As they swung the trailer round back on itself along the quayside, towards Jim and then away from him, Johnny glanced quickly at him as they approached. ‘What took you so long?’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, so sorry about that,’ Jim said, smoothing his hair, hovering, taking a drag of his cigarette. ‘Peter fell off the climbing frame and we had to take him to A and E and then…’

  He never got the rest of the sentence out. Johnny’s right fist came out of nowhere and smacked Jim right between the eyes without his feet missing a single step. The accuracy and ferocity of the punch took even Johnny by surprise. It was so quick that the others, except for Rob, seemed to have missed it altogether and they all just carried on heaving the Fireball up into the car park with their heads down, not one of them noticing the man in a flash suit lying on the cobbles with a bleeding face.