We had a decent day for the sailing. Earlier it had been cold enough for my breath to make clouds when I had taken my bottles and newspapers down to the recycling bins but it had warmed up a few degrees, and the sky was the crisp blue which faked summer. I’d felt anxious all week at the thought of today. The idea of it alarmed me in the same way that supper at Chris’s had, with its sudden and strange leap in intimacy. I was determined not to make an idiot of myself today, though, and determined, too, not to let my nervousness show. It was kind of him to offer the trip and it would be another chance to try to get the measure of him. I wanted to see if he would mention Alice. Since Richard’s emails had started, I’d spent less time thinking about her and I felt almost guilty about that, as though I was letting her down, starting to forget.
It was ten o’clock and several cars passed while I stood on the pavement, people who’d been into Yarmouth for Saturday morning shopping. Another one turned in at the top of the road now, an old silver BMW. The driver was wearing shades against the low sun and it wasn’t until he pulled in at the kerb that I realised it was Peter. He reached over and opened the passenger door from the inside.
‘Hop in.’
I folded myself down, the seat lower than I’d expected. I turned to look at him, slightly wrong-footed by the sunglasses, unsure whether I should try to make out his eyes behind them.
‘Sorry,’ he said, pushing them back off his face. ‘This low sun really gets me. Ready to go?’
He pulled off and I put my seatbelt on, glad to have a couple of seconds to think of something to say. The radio was on – the news on Radio 4, a male voice that rumbled with a story about missile attacks on the Pakistani border, just loud enough to break the silence.
‘Good week?’ he asked.
‘Yes, not bad. We’re a bit busier at the café though I’m feeling a bit funny about that.’
‘Why?’
‘Not about the café itself, that’s fine, but it’s time I got another book to translate, I think. Working there feels like playing.’
‘Nothing wrong with having a bit of time off. That’s the only thing I regret about being self-employed. I would have liked to have gone away after . . .’ he stopped.
There was a moment’s silence. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I don’t know what you do.’
‘We make a system for containing oil-slicks. Basically, it’s a series of long air cushions that lie on the surface of the water round a slick and keep it from spreading.’
‘Like a bolster down the middle of the bed?’
‘Exactly.’ Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the side of his mouth lift.
I turned to look out of the window as we went along the top of the common. The Solent was glittering with the hard light today, the view of the mainland so precise it looked closer than I’d seen it before; I could make out the occasional house up the coast from the Lymington River, even individual trees. I thought of Richard over there; he really wasn’t far away. What was a couple of hours in the car and half an hour on a ferry? The distance was all psychological, hardly an obstacle at all. For a moment, staring at the strip of land, it seemed to shimmer with the potential energy of his presence. I blinked hard and looked away.
Peter took his hand off the gear-stick and turned up the radio. ‘Do you mind?’ he said. ‘I’m a bit of a news addict. It’s nearly finished.’
‘No – of course.’
We were out of Yarmouth now and along the stretch of road bordered on both sides by the old natural wood. He slowed right down all of a sudden to avoid a pair of kamikaze rabbits that flung themselves into the road at our approach. I glanced sideways at him. His forehead was furrowed as he frowned at them, the lines at the corners of his eyes deep where they were visible at the edge of the sunglasses. There was something Slavic about the height of his cheekbones, I thought; they gave his face an elegance that otherwise it lacked. The sleeve of his navy jumper was pushed up, revealing a muscled forearm covered with dark hair. His hands were large with long straight fingers, the nails cut short.
I’d driven through Shalfleet lots of times but I’d never been down to the river. Peter took a left and we went along a narrow lane between the New Inn and a couple of pretty stone cottages. A few hundred yards on, the tarmac road ran out and we came on to a shingle track whose potholes the heavy rains last month must have done nothing to improve. On our right beyond a long grassy bank rimmed with scraggy hawthorns was what looked like the top of the river, not more than forty or fifty feet across. A great number of Canada geese obscured the surface in a moving, honking carpet of black and brown and white. Even where the water was visible, it wore a layer of feathers.
‘Bloody things,’ he said, noticing me looking. ‘They’re thugs – huge gangs of them intimidating other birds, eating all the vegetation.’
The track led past a garden bordered by oak trees. In it I could see a green wooden hut with sun-leached curtains at the window and three caravans – one with the rounded shape and windows of the 1950s – that seemed to be shrinking back into the woods behind them. There was another caravan, this one dilapidated to the point of near collapse, at the end of the boatyard in which Peter pulled up and parked the car. Its door was open and he said hello to the men in overalls sitting inside having a tea break. Their ‘morning’ came back rich in the Island accent that I recognised now, with its elongated rural vowels.
I looked around while Peter took an outboard engine from the boot of the car. The yard was full of boats on struts for the winter, their decks covered by tarpaulins on which pools of rainwater and a scurf of dead leaves had collected. Beyond the yard was a stone-built quay, the top covered in shingle, with a small slipway and ladders to the water. There the river was broader and there were boats on moorings. Gulls rode the breeze-chequered surface. On the other bank, the land lay low and flat, punctuated here and there with trees whose growth was stunted by the salt-poisoned earth. Oddly, it reminded me of pictures I’d seen of Africa, the same palette of mustard yellows, faded greens and browns.
Peter carried the outboard to one of the small wooden dinghies pulled up on to the strip of grass and turned upside down to stop it filling with rain. He righted it and dragged it down to the water, then got in and connected the engine. I passed him the petrol can and the bottles of water he’d brought.
I pushed us off, then sat on the thwart in the middle to balance our weight. The noise of the motor made conversation difficult so instead I watched our wash as it fanned out on the river behind us, a widening white V. We passed a large area of marsh extending down from the quay to the opening of another branch of the river, isolated mud stacks topped with blowing grass and sea heather. In the foot or two of mud which the incoming tide had yet to cover, a tern picked busily, the feathers at its wing-tips ruffled by the breeze. The air was rich with the smell of salt and seaweed and the chemical tang of petrol. We passed more boats, their size gradually increasing as the water got deeper, and a barge-like platform with an industrial clutter of ironwork on deck.
‘For laying buoys,’ he shouted.
A few minutes later and we were down the river enough to see the Solent. Something moved fast on the periphery of my vision and, turning quickly, I saw a scow cutting behind us, its blood-red sail tight with wind. Immediately I thought of Alice. Had she sailed Vespertine in the river here? She must have been here hundreds of times with Peter. Presumably she’d been in this dinghy, had sat just where I was sitting now. I pushed that thought away, unnerved by it. The scow tacked sharply to avoid a muddy promontory and as it zipped in front of us, I saw the boy at the helm was no more than eleven or twelve, his curly ginger hair blowing bright in the wind.
A minute or so later, Peter throttled down the engine and we came alongside a white-hulled wooden yacht. Beatrice was written on the stern in black italics. He tied us on and then stood and swung himself up on to the deck. I passed the things and then he pulled me up next to him.
‘Have a seat in the cockpit while
I get a few things organised.’
It was an old boat, I thought, the fittings on deck all wooden and brass, not steel and chrome like a lot of the modern yachts I’d seen tied up at the quay in Yarmouth. It was a good size but not big; a boat to use rather than a status symbol. For such a tall man, he was surprisingly light on his feet. I noticed the unhurried but efficient way he moved around, taking a long hook out of the locker opposite and retying the dinghy to the mooring buoy at the bow, bringing in the fenders. He slid the hatch back and went down into the cabin.
‘Shall we have some coffee before we go?’ he called up from below.
I climbed carefully down the wooden steps to join him. He was lighting a ring on a gas stove and filling a tin kettle with water from one of the bottles.
‘It’s lovely – the boat.’
‘Do you like her?’ He turned and smiled at me suddenly. ‘I’ve had her five years. I always wanted a wooden boat, an older one. She was built in the fifties.’
I sat on the step while we waited for the kettle to boil. The cabin was much larger than it looked from the outside. To the left there was the galley with the stove and a small square sink and on the right a sloping table for charts. In the middle of the cabin, illuminated by the daylight coming through round portholes, was a fold-down table with bunks on either side. There was a rich smell of damp and diesel.
When the kettle whistled, he made coffee in two enamel mugs and we went back on deck to drink it. The breeze felt newly cold having been out of it for a few minutes but the air itself was mild, especially for the end of February. A pair of swans swam up, their legs powerful beneath the surface. I watched as they arched their long smooth necks to dip their beaks into the water, their feathers white as angels’ wings, their black eyes assessing.
The motor started with a wheezy cough and chugged under the floor beneath my feet. Peter let us off the mooring and came back to the cockpit. A cloud of blue diesel smoke hung over the water behind us. A couple sitting out in a boat further down the river raised their hands to greet him as we passed. There were more marshes on our left and then the channel took us out between a pair of beaches that guarded the mouth of the river like cats’ paws. The one on our right had signs prohibiting landing.
‘It’s a nesting area for seabirds,’ he said. ‘It’s to stop people disturbing them or collecting the eggs.’
When we reached clear water beyond the river, he started to put up the sail. The sound of waves moving round us and the breeze in the rigging was loud in the abrupt peace when he cut the engine. I watched while he hoisted the sail and then paid out the rope so that it filled with wind. The boat leaned with it.
‘Come and sit over here,’ he said. I moved across and braced my feet against the lower seat as he pulled the sail tighter and our angle deepened. The water bubbled and raced past us, suddenly close.
I measured our progress against old posts and trees, and the shore slipped past at a surprising rate. Beyond it, the body of the Island rose in a gentle swell, richly green. The breeze blew my hair round my face and occasionally we hit a wave that sent up spume I could taste in the air. I shot surreptitious glances at Peter. He was sitting at the back of the cockpit, his hand resting lightly on the wooden tiller, the adjustments he made to our course every now and again almost imperceptible. Even behind the glasses he was squinting into the sun, forehead furrowed again. His right leg was tensed to stop him sliding, the muscle in his thigh curving under the denim.
A seagull floated above us, angling to ride the breeze with an elegance it could never own on land. The mildness of the weather had brought out more boats than I had expected and the Solent was dotted with sails that were white against the water like pointed teeth. I’d dreaded the thought of long silences and awkward conversation but in fact there was something easy about the lack of constant talking. He was undemanding; I was free to look around and watch and let my thoughts wander. To my surprise, I felt myself relaxing.
He took us up until we could see Cowes and then we turned around. I swapped sides and faced the mainland instead. There was a cargo ship between us and the shore, the containers on deck stacked like Lego. ‘I thought we could go up the Beaulieu River for lunch,’ he said. ‘Would you like to steer for a bit?’
‘I’ve never done it before.’
‘I’ll show you.’ He moved over and I sat next to him, careful not to get too close. ‘You want to get near to the wind without heading directly into it. You feel where it’s coming from? No sudden movements. That’s it. If you think you’re going too fast, just broaden the angle a bit, spill some of the wind out. It’s all about physics.’
‘That doesn’t augur well for me, I warn you.’
He took his hand off the tiller and let me have it. The sail tightened above us again, the tension lines that he pointed out returning. The shore of the mainland began to move past us more quickly. The sail was no longer blocking the sun; it shone on my face so that I had to screw up my face like he had.
‘Do you want my sunglasses?’ he said, noticing.
‘No, I’m OK. Thanks.’ The tiller felt good under my hand. He looked away, watching the progress of a larger yacht ahead of us, and I took it as a positive sign that he didn’t feel he had to keep a hawk eye on me. Almost as soon as I’d had that thought, though, I hit a wave with a real thump on the bow, and spray came flying back at us. I heard myself laugh out loud and when I looked at him, I saw that he was smiling, too.
‘That’s how not to do it,’ he said.
The moorings at Beaulieu were all taken so he dropped the anchor instead, the heavy chain rattling out and out until it hit the bottom.
‘Thanks for bringing all this,’ he said, as I handed him one of the Cornish pasties I’d bought at the delicatessen earlier.
‘Thanks for inviting me.’
‘Here.’ He put out his hand. I passed him the bottles of beer and he took the tops off with his penknife.
‘You know, this is the closest I’ve got to the mainland since November,’ I said, looking at the marshes nearby, the grass blowing this way and that.
‘You haven’t been back at all?’
‘No need, really.’ I shrugged and looked away but not before I’d seen the question on his face. I was annoyed that I’d brought it up; I didn’t want to think about Richard now. For the first time in days, I’d felt the dread receding a little.
‘Doesn’t the quietness drive you mad, after London?’
‘Sometimes, especially when I first got here. But I’m getting used to it now. I still feel like a total outsider, though.’
‘Give it two hundred years and the locals will start to warm up a bit.’ The sunlight caught his eyes and made them sparkle.
‘Are you an old Island family?’
‘No, only third generation.’ He took a sip of beer. ‘My grandparents came over before the war. To some people I’m still an overner.’
‘Overner?’
‘It’s what the Islanders call people from the mainland. Like foreigner – and said with the same sort of inflection.’
‘Have you ever lived on the mainland?’
He shook his head. ‘I was going to go to London – I had a place at university – but I didn’t in the end. I’d give that to the gulls if you’re not going to eat it,’ he said, indicating the crust of the pasty which I’d put down. ‘Go to them before they come to you – best policy.’
I broke it into several pieces and threw them over the side. They’d barely touched the surface of the water before several gulls materialised. ‘They were lying in wait,’ I said.
‘They’ve probably been tracking you since you left the shop.’
We sat without talking for a minute or two. The water was calmer than out in the channel and we were in the lee of a bank of sedge but the boat still rocked gently. I leant against the cabin side and listened to the waves lapping against the hull. Peter went below and I heard the sound of a pump and then water in the sink as he washed the mugs from ear
lier. I wished I could just come out and ask him about her. There was so much I wanted to know. One thing, however, was clear to me: I was becoming less suspicious of him. Something had happened with Alice, yes, but I was no longer certain that he was at the root of it, as I’d once been convinced. Nonetheless, a small voice cautioned me that I was no judge of character.
After lunch, he lifted the anchor and we motored out from Beaulieu into the Solent and put the sails up again. We went down to Lymington, then crossed over to come back to Newtown on the Island side. The sky was beginning to cloud over, turning the water a greyer shade of green, and the wind seemed to bite a little harder but I could have stayed out for hours regardless. Like I did when I was rowing, I felt different, somehow more alive. I thought of Alice again and the two women I’d overheard in the Mariners, months ago, before I’d even met Peter. Hadn’t they said that she went out in her boat all the time, in all weathers? She’d told me that herself, how she’d thought it was the only thing that kept her sane.
Peter let me take the helm again and I got better at working out where the wind was and steering smoothly. I felt a strange sadness when we came back into the river and he took the sails down, as if the access to something wonderful and otherwise out of my grasp had been shut off again.
On the mooring, I packed up the lunch things while he put the sail covers back on. Then he replaced the hatch-boards and locked them, and we got into the dinghy and motored back up the river to the quay. The light was softening and the tide which had been coming in this morning was now hard away, leaving greater and greater expanses of exposed mud. My nose was beginning to run with the cold.
‘That was a good day,’ he said, when we were in the car, weaving round the potholes on our way back up to the village.
‘I loved it – thank you.’
‘You’ll have to come again. Come next weekend if you haven’t got anything else on. Oh, and it’s Pete, by the way. No one calls me Peter except Chris.’
The Bed I Made Page 21
