by Julie Cohen
He looked sad, and she’d never seen him sad, so she kissed him on the cheek.
‘Whatever you’re doing in there,’ called Dennis from the main cabin, in his flat drawl, ‘it’s not getting these eggs cooked. Also, Bob, I saved bilge in the engine room for you to clean out since you’ve been gone for the past three days.’
‘He always likes to spoil my fun,’ Robbie muttered, kissing Emily swiftly on the cheek in return and disappearing back up the ladder.
‘I’ve never cooked on a boat before,’ she told Dennis, who was leaning against the worktop with a box of eggs in his hand, waiting for her. ‘This kitchen is pretty impressive, though.’
‘It’s called a galley. And the bathroom’s called a head. You can find all the stuff you need for cooking in the cabinets. Bud has the thing tricked out like a gourmet’s dream, though we rarely eat anything fancier than Boston baked beans on board.’
She opened cabinets, revealing pots and pans and cooking implements, all held in place by wooden dowels and mesh nets, presumably so they wouldn’t rattle around in rough seas. She found a bowl and began to crack eggs. Dennis settled into a seat and watched her with the air of someone who wanted to make sure he was getting his money’s worth.
‘Does Robbie often bring girls on board?’ she asked, tentatively.
‘Bob? Never. He’s got a girl in every port, if you don’t mind my saying – sometimes two or three – but you’re the first he’s ever brought on board.’ He pronounced the last word as ‘boar-award’.
‘That’s because I’m going to marry this one, Dennis,’ called Robbie from above. His face appeared in the hatch, backlit, grinning.
‘I don’t give a tinker’s cuss who you marry as long as you fix that pump and I don’t float away in my sleep,’ replied Dennis, making himself more comfortable in his seat.
Art returned before she’d actually started cooking, with a wheelbarrow full of boxes of supplies, and like Dennis, he accepted Emily’s presence without much comment. He was ridiculously slender, looked about twelve, with red hair and a face that was more or less one big freckle from the sun. Emily helped him stow away the food he’d brought, following his instructions: everything had its place, and was arranged for ease of access according to frequency of use. As Dennis had said, the pantry’s contents were skewed rather radically towards baked beans, but there was fresh food too, to be packed carefully in the icebox.
She managed to make cheese omelettes, toasting bread under the gas salamander, and they all ate lunch together below, around the polished table on plates that had rubber attached to the bottom to make them less slippery. Robbie opened a bottle of beer for each of them and the three men performed like a triple act, teasing each other and regaling Emily with stories about their sailing trips that were sometimes incomprehensible because of the amount of jargon in them. Sometimes they finished each other’s sentences. When they were through eating Dennis got up to make coffee and Art started doing the washing up as though this were their habit after every meal.
Robbie held out his hand to her. ‘Now, since Dennis and Art have volunteered to do the rest of the prep for tomorrow, you and I can go have some fun.’
‘I didn’t volunteer—’ Art began, but Dennis elbowed him, slopping water out of the sink.
‘She cooked for you, now hush,’ he said. He held out his hand to her again. ‘It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Emily. I hope to see you again.’
‘You will,’ said Robbie, and after she had also shaken Art’s distinctly wet hand, they climbed the ladder on to the deck.
The sunlight dazzled her for a moment. As Robbie had predicted, all the fog had burned away, leaving her with a view of boats clustered around wooden pontoons. Nora Mae was one of the largest, but there were sailboats and motorboats, some with people working on them.
‘They liked you,’ Robbie said, helping her off the deck and on to the pontoon.
‘I liked them.’
‘You can see why I can’t leave them in the lurch. They could manage with two of them, but it’s easier with three.’
‘Yes.’ And she liked him better for it. She liked that he was the type of person not to let his mates down. ‘You’re all good friends.’
‘It helps.’
‘Even in such a big boat, you still must be on top of each other all the time.’
He shrugged. ‘You get used to it. You learn to be aware of each other so you can work together, sometimes without talking about it. But you learn to ignore each other, too, when you need some space.’
‘Dennis said . . . he said you’d never brought a girl on board before.’
‘Nope.’
‘And you said it was because you were going to marry me.’
‘Yup.’ His eyes twinkled in the sunshine.
‘You should probably ask me before you start telling your friends.’
‘Oh, I will. But we have to sort out a few things first.’
‘Such as?’
She was flirting hard, in a very uncharacteristic way, and her heart was pounding like crazy. And of course she had no intention of marrying him. She’d known him for no time, and he was going away tomorrow. But Robbie had something that made her feel as if she had stepped slightly out of her real world, into a world where things were sharper and riskier.
‘Well, for one thing,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t matter how clever and beautiful she is; I could never marry a girl who didn’t know how to sail.’
They’d stopped walking, because they were at the end of the pontoon, and Emily started to turn around, but he stopped her and pointed to the boat moored on the end. It was a little sailboat, toy-sized, compared to the yachts around it, wooden, with two seats, a tiller, a single mast. The name painted on the bow was Serendipity.
‘I’ve borrowed her for the afternoon,’ he told her.
‘You’re going to take me on a sail?’
‘No, you’re going to take me on a sail. I’m going to teach you. I told you, I can’t marry you unless you know how.’
‘You can’t marry me anyway, Robert.’
‘If you don’t learn how to sail, we’ll never find out, will we?’ He hopped lightly into the boat, which hardly rocked as he landed in it. ‘Come aboard.’
It tilted when she stepped on, and she would have stumbled if he hadn’t been holding on to her. ‘I can’t sail this.’
‘I’m going to teach you.’
‘I don’t even know what all the ropes are called.’
‘They’re called lines, not ropes. And this is a catboat so there are only two: the main sheet and the mooring line.’ He pointed to each in turn. ‘You only have to worry about the main sheet. This is the mast, this is the boom, this is the tiller. The front is the bow and the back is the stern, left is port, right is starboard. That’s pretty much it.’
‘I can’t be in charge of a sailboat, Robbie.’
‘Of course you can. I’m going to show you exactly what to do.’
‘I’ll run us aground, or into a container ship or something. I’ll sink us.’
‘No, you won’t. I have complete faith.’
‘When we met I was dangling from a punting pole!’
‘And you looked adorable.’ He kissed her forehead. ‘Don’t worry, Em. I’ll get us out of the harbour, and once we’re in open water there’s nothing you can hit.’ Deftly, he unwrapped the line tethering the boat to the pontoon. ‘Help me raise the sail, and then you’ll learn how to do it.’
Raising the sail, at least, was easy. But Emily had time to get nervous as Robbie navigated the little boat with ease out of the marina, up the narrow strip of water into the manmade harbour, formed by a jetty made of stone blocks. The air had been still and foggy this morning, but now, with the sunshine, there was a breeze even in the shelter of the harbour. A fishing boat passed them coming in, its engine loud, stinking of fish and followed by
a cacophony of gulls. Robbie waved to the captain who waved back.
‘What if I crash into one of those?’ she asked.
‘You won’t. And anyway, for your information, a craft under sail has right of way over a motor craft.’
‘What if they don’t know that?’
‘They do.’ Robbie handled the line, sail and tiller as if they were extensions of his own body. As if he’d been born to do it. And she liked this about him, too: his self-assurance here was well earned. He built boats, he sailed them, he lived on them. This was his world, as, she supposed, hers had been Cambridge and Bach and heavy textbooks. When you met a person you only saw the flat edges of them, their appearance and the scant facts you could glean from conversation. You never really knew them until you’d entered the sphere where they lived and been surrounded by it.
And this was her chance to touch Robbie’s world, the whole rounded swell of it, if only for an afternoon.
Outside the jetty, the wind was stronger, and the water dipped and waved the little boat. Her hair whipped around her face and she wished she’d brought a scarf. Looking towards shore, she could see the sandy beach with its layer of shingle on top, and the buildings of Lowestoft behind in colours of brick red and white. It looked very far away.
‘Ready?’ Robbie asked her.
‘We’re in open water. I don’t think this is a good idea. Maybe we should go back to the harbour, where it’s safer.’
‘It’s safer out here. There’s less to hit. And the wind won’t be swirling so much.’
‘Don’t you think it’s a little windy for a beginner?’
‘I think it’s perfect for a beginner. Come here.’
He scooted back on the bench a little bit and patted the seat in front of him, between his legs. Reluctantly, holding on to the side of the boat, she staggered to the back. She meant to sit down daintily, leaving space between her body and his, but the movement of the boat ruined her balance and she ended up practically falling into his lap. Robbie laughed and put his arms around her.
‘You’ll get your sea legs soon,’ he said into her ear. He took her right hand and put the rope into it, and then put her left hand on the tiller handle. ‘We’ll do it together until you get the hang of it.’
She kept her hands loose and let Robbie do the work. ‘OK,’ he said to her. ‘We want to tack now. That means we’re going to turn the boat. Ready about?’
‘What?’
‘That’s what I say to warn you I’m going to tack. So that you don’t get hit by the boom as it swings around. Loosen up the main sheet – keep it around that cleat just once so it doesn’t fly out of your hand, that’s right – and steer the boat into the wind.’
‘Where’s the wind?’
‘Look at the sail. See the way it’s bellied out now?’
‘I think so.’
‘Then the wind’s coming from the direction to fill it. Go ahead and do it. Hard a-lee.’
‘What?’ she said, half-panicked, but she pushed the tiller anyway in the direction Robbie had told her. The sail flapped, losing the wind.
‘Take the line off the cleat now,’ he said. ‘Watch out for the boom, sweetheart. Lean back to let it pass. Good. Now – see how it’s catching the wind on the other side? Tighten up the sheet again on that side. Here.’ He helped her tighten the rope and secure it to the cleat. They were now going more or less at a right angle to their course before.
‘Good work.’ He beamed at her.
‘But what if I want to go that way?’ She pointed along the coast. ‘Can’t I?’
‘You can, eventually. But in sailing, the distance between two points is rarely a straight line.’
‘What do I look at? The sail, or around us, to make sure we don’t hit anything?’
‘You watch the sail to learn how it behaves. I’ll keep a lookout where we’re going, though it’s not like driving. We have all the space in the world. Just keep it nice and loose, feel the boat and where she wants to go.’ He kissed her cheek and she became aware of what she’d been too panicked to notice before: his thighs on either side of hers, his arms embracing her. The strength of his body behind her. Protecting and guiding her.
She’d have thought that sailing would be windy and noisy, but it was almost entirely silent. She heard the liquid sound of the bow cutting through the waves, the flap of the sail, a distant gull, Robbie’s calm, quiet explanations of what they were doing. They tacked twice, each time her movements getting smoother. Despite the flimsy boat, the vastness of the ocean, the mystery of the wind, Emily felt herself relaxing back into Robbie’s arms. She felt . . . safe.
‘Very good,’ said Robbie. ‘You’re doing great. Now it’s your turn. Keep it nice and loose, just like that. Let the boat tell you what she wants to do.’
He released her hands and scooted out from behind her, nimbly resettling himself in the passenger seat.
Emily’s hands tightened up on the line and jerked the tiller. The sail flapped loose, windless.
‘What do I do?’ she cried. ‘Robbie? What’s it doing?’
He leaned on the side of the boat, unconcerned. ‘Let her show you, Em. Trust the way she makes you feel.’
The boom swung towards her head and she ducked, but then it swung back to where it had been. ‘How do I get the wind back?’
‘It hasn’t gone. It’s waiting for you. Just find it, sweetheart.’
She watched the sail. And all it once, it happened. The sail bellied out in a perfect taut white curve and the tiller steadied, she tightened the sheet and they were flying over the blue water, flying faster than the sun sparkling on the waves. The boat was alive beneath her, the tiller an obedient animal.
Emily laughed. She felt the wind in her body. The sea was vast and endless, all possibility and freedom.
She caught Robert’s gaze and he was laughing, too.
And, just like that, she was in love.
Later, hours later, they returned the boat and sat on the beach with their shoes off, eating ice creams.
‘I can’t write you a poem,’ he said to her, ‘but I’ll build you a boat. Something small that you can sail yourself, but big enough to sleep on for a night or two. And I’ll write the name of it in gold.’
Emily wiggled her toes in the sand. She could feel that her nose and cheeks were burnt by the sun and the wind, and her hair was pretty much a snarl. The ice cream melted on her tongue and she thought, This moment can’t last, but that doesn’t make it any less real.
‘Don’t promise anything,’ she said to Robbie. ‘I don’t need promises. This is enough, right here.’
Robbie finished his ice cream and licked a drop off his hand. ‘That’s what I was saying to you last night, wasn’t it?’
‘I didn’t understand it then.’ She tipped the last melted bit of vanilla into her mouth, crunched the tip of the cornet, and leaned against him. In front of them, the sea stretched endlessly. Tomorrow Robbie would sail across it towards Italy and away from her, possibly forever.
He lay back with her on the sand and she rested her head on his chest. He ran his fingers through her hair and his heartbeat sounded as familiar as her own name.
‘I want to stay with you tonight,’ she said to the cloudless sky.
They checked into a hotel on the seafront: an Edwardian brick building with wide, tall windows. Emily kept her left hand tucked in her skirt pocket as Robert signed the register Mr and Mrs R Brandon, Cambridge.
‘Only visiting for one night?’ asked the desk clerk, and Emily was uncomfortably aware of their lack of suitcases, her tangled hair and sunburnt cheeks.
‘I’m sailing out tomorrow; early start,’ said Robbie, insouciant. ‘We thought the extra hours together were worth the price of the hotel. Newlyweds,’ he confided, winking.
‘You’ll want an en suite, then? We have one, sea view. It’s o
ften used by honeymooners.’
‘We want the best,’ said Robbie.
He paid for it and they went up the stairs together, Robbie holding the key. Emily’s heart was pounding, her hands damp. This is 1962, she reminded herself, no one is going to force you to wear a scarlet A for being unmarried and checking into a hotel with a man.
Then she thought of what her mother would say, and thought she would probably prefer the scarlet letter.
The corridor was long and silent, lined with doors. ‘You’re a worryingly good liar,’ she whispered to Robbie.
‘It’s not a lie. It’s the truth, only told too early.’
He unlocked the door to room number eleven and opened it for her. Emily had to take a deep breath before she went in.
But once he’d shut it behind them, and they were alone in the room with the double bed, the pink ruffled bedspread, and the view through the window of the sea, she turned to him. ‘You have to stop talking about marrying me,’ she told him.
‘Why?’
‘Because you don’t mean it.’
‘I do mean it.’
‘Nobody decides to marry someone else after only just meeting them.’
But then she remembered that feeling on the sea, her heart lifting with love, keen and dizzying.
‘I mean,’ she amended, ‘people do, but it’s not a good idea. I can’t get married anyway; I have to finish my degree and my training before I can even think about something like that. It’ll be years. And that’s not why I’m here, Robbie. You don’t have to promise me anything.’
‘Emily,’ he said, and took her into his arms. ‘I don’t have to promise it to you. I’m going to prove it. There’s something special about you. I never thought that I would ever want to get marr—’
‘Stop,’ she said. She put her hand on his mouth. ‘Stop it. I told you, I don’t want promises of the future or anything. I can’t worry about your sincerity or whether you mean what you say right now and that you might change your mind later. And I don’t want to marry you, anyway. I just want right now, the two of us, here.’
She stood on tiptoes to kiss him on the mouth.
