Only the Ocean

by Natasha Carthew

  ‘So you dint see no towers come down?’

  ‘I know what I heard.’

  ‘What do you reckon?’ Rose asked Kel.

  ‘Probably just lootin got out of hand, you know what folks is like, if you can’t have it burn it.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Rose looked at her and raised an eyebrow and Kel looked away and she wished she had a way with words that was settling but instead she looked at the man and asked him straight if they were hostages because she felt like they were.

  He laughed. ‘You int no hostages.’

  ‘So we can head out then, if we want.’

  The old man ignored her and he told them he’d known something bad was going to happen. ‘Somethin in the air, way the fog tasted on me tongue and the movement of the tides, they was all wrong. Kept seein things then not seein em.’ Then he asked if they had felt the water.

  ‘What water?’ asked Rose.

  ‘Seawater, you felt it?’

  Kel nodded, she had wondered about it every time she put her hands into the water to soothe her blisters.

  ‘It’s warm,’ he continued. ‘Tepid, now you tell me why the ocean’s gone tepid.’

  ‘No idea,’ said Kel and she leaned forward to see if she could spot the gun. She could feel her patience slipping. ‘You gonna let us go?’ she asked.

  ‘Spose things have changed forever now,’ he continued and he looked down below deck toward the baby that slept against Rose’s back and then he caught Kel’s eye, ‘but if you wanna go then go. I int stoppin you.’

  Kel glanced at Rose and saw that she was looking back with a face that pleaded with her to stay one night.

  ‘No,’ Kel whispered.

  ‘But he looks sad,’ said Rose.

  ‘All the more reason to get gone.’

  ‘Sad and lonely.’

  ‘Sad and crazy.’

  ‘You kids got a fancy for crackers?’ the man asked and he let himself fall into the hatch. ‘I got a fancy for crackers.’ He picked himself up off the floor and went limping toward the back of the upturned cupboards to rummage.

  ‘Couldn’t we just stay one night?’ asked Rose. ‘He’s got blankets and don’t forget the food.’

  Kel wanted to say that she was planning to take the food with them anyway, maybe even the blankets. She looked at the man and stood suddenly, her heart stopped in her mouth. ‘Hey, that’s my gun,’ she shouted.

  ‘What this?’ He swung the rifle that was on a strap around his shoulder. ‘Tis mine now.’

  ‘Don’t reckon.’

  He held the gun lightly in his hands and told her to sit back down and reluctantly she did.

  ‘So just you two is it?’ he asked. ‘And that baby of yours.’

  Kel nodded, obviously.

  ‘All alone on the big blue?’

  ‘We’ve got each other,’said Kel, ‘We’re fine.’

  ‘Looks like you could do with another pair of hands, help you row or whatever.’

  ‘We’re good thanks.’

  ‘Is that right.’

  ‘How big’s your dinghy?’ Kel asked. ‘Maybe you could live on that for a while?’

  ‘Bout same as yours I’d say.’

  ‘Tiny then?’

  The old man shrugged.

  ‘Why don’t you pack up and set off same as us, take your chances, leave this boat behind.’

  ‘Where you goin?’ he asked.

  ‘Dunno yet.’ Kel looked at Rose for the shut-up. ‘What about you? Where were you goin before you crashed?’

  ‘I was headin Land’s End.’

  ‘You plannin on stoppin there?’

  ‘No chance, there’s nowhere to land the boat, I was hopin to swing around the headland and back up the north coast.

  ‘It’s the lack of company that gets me down,’ he continued, ‘since me dog passed and all.’ He looked at Rose and smiled and Kel knew it was because he sensed weakness there. Then he laughed and offered up the crackers.

  ‘What about your daughter?’ asked Rose. ‘Maybe you could pay her a visit?’

  ‘Me daughter? I int spendin more time than I have to with her, spanner short of a tool bag that one, despite only being a teen.’

  ‘Time to go anyway,’ said Kel. ‘If we int hostages.’ She stood and looked at Rose to do the same.

  ‘Company’s everythin though innit?’ he said, as if he hadn’t heard. ‘Now the world’s gone imploded, it’s kind of the end I reckon?’

  Kel ignored him and she thanked him for his hospitality and added that if it was any consolation she didn’t think the world had blown away with bedlam, except perhaps Cornwall, and even then it was only the part they had seen. And maybe the fires would have dried the juice out of the swamp earth just a little.

  ‘Two young girls out there on their own. You can take care of this one can you, plus the baby?’

  Kel was already at the hatch when she realised the man had placed himself between them and was asking Rose a question.

  ‘I reckon she can just as well look after herself,’ Kel said. ‘Bein a girl’s the same as bein a boy or a man or a woman. Now what’s it gonna take to get you to part with some food?’

  The man look down at his hands. ‘This gun,’ he said coldly. ‘This gun and all the ammo you got stashed.’

  Kel nodded the deal done, she preferred knife protection in any case. They filled a plastic sack with unopened packets of rice and pasta and carried it to the boat whilst the man looked on and Kel thought how pathetic he looked, the gun in his hands and not once did he think to use it to chase them from the boat. He could have kept everything, except the one thing he wanted, company.

  ‘You’re not so nice are you,’ said Rose as Kel took up the oars.

  ‘He was a weirdo,’ said Kel.

  ‘He weren’t weird, just lonely is all.’ Rose unwound the baby from its binding when it started to shout hunger and passed it to Kel and Kel turned to feed it and then returned it to the centre of the boat.

  ‘He had weirdo elements sparkin all ways inside him,’ continued Kel. ‘He was odd, had his eyes up and down you like paint stripper.’

  ‘No he didn’t. What happened to you to make you so damaged?’

  ‘What you mean?’

  ‘You think everyone’s about to bite or burn you.’

  ‘Life,’ said Kel. ‘Life’s what happened to me.’ She looked at Rose through the coming light of dawn and shrugged. It was life and everything in it that meant existing.

  When morning crept up on them it wore a shroud of heavyweight fog. It filled the boat like rolling-rock gravel and it stuffed their hearts the same. They sat with big bags of misery lying low in their chests and Kel watched Rose for sparks and Rose watched Kel the same. Their happening upon the trawler and the food and company besides had entertained them and distracted them into complacency, but now they were back in the boat the reality came crashing back. And now they were gunless.

  ‘What now?’ asked Rose and she said she knew Kel had a plan but maybe she had forgotten it.

  ‘We keep goin the way we bin goin,’ she said. ‘To the end of the Channel and up around to the north coast.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Positive, we’re not far from land. If it wasn’t for these stupid oars we’d be home and dry by now.’

  ‘OK,’ said Rose, ‘if you say so.’

  Kel sat forward and looked at Rose. It was as if the girl was waiting for her to fail. ‘I seen the stars last night, just got to keep goin forward.’

  ‘Isn’t everywhere forward?’

  Kel ignored her. Instead she emptied the last of the collected water into her bottle and drank and then she passed the bottle to Rose.

  ‘I’m not thirsty,’ Rose said. ‘Just had tea.’

  ‘You need to keep drinkin in any case.’

  Rose lifted the bottle to her lips and took a small sip. ‘Tastes like plastic.’

  ‘That’s cus it’s off the creases in the boat and the raincoat mostly.’ She wished she�
��d remembered to barter water.

  ‘It won’t kill us will it?’

  ‘Course not. Anyway, it’s more or less what you’ve been drinkin last two days straight – where you think I was gettin the water topped up from?’

  Kel knelt to check the lines for a possible catch and she was careful to pass it from hand to hand so as not to scare the fish.

  ‘Anything?’ asked Rose.

  ‘Nothin.’

  ‘It’d be nice to have something fresh for breakfast. We can’t eat the rice or the pasta until we can light a fire.’

  ‘Least we’re full, for now.’ Kel continued to reel in the line she had threaded through her fingers and she rested her stomach on the side of the boat and looked deep into the grey-green churn of ocean. It really was quite warm, now she thought of it.

  With the arrival of the fog a new wet cold had come into the air and it pricked their skin goosey and pinned them rigid to the boat. The weather had angles and shadows pushed through it that weren’t there before and Kel worried that it had changed for good. She could see the waves moving all around them and felt their curl in her gut as they grappled for the hold beneath the dinghy.

  The idea of drowning came to her suddenly and it was both ridiculous and realistic. It could happen and in all honesty would happen, but until that moment the horror of suffocating in water was so huge she was unable to think about it head on. Kel sat back into the dip of boat and she pulled her jacket from out of her bag and put it around her shoulders and she placed the rain mac across the baby.

  ‘Don’t like this fog,’ said Rose. ‘Don’t like it one bit.’

  ‘What int to like bout ridin the ocean and all time your own?’

  Rose tried to laugh but Kel knew she was feeling it. After the trawler and basic eating and walking around like normal the girl was feeling it. The fog was in her and Kel knew this well enough because it was in her too.

  Kel offered more water and checked the last of the lines and she wished she could say something to make light of the situation to keep them from it, but there was nothing to say and nothing to do but wait for the fog to lift and the day to pass and a bright starry night to strike out so they could get back on course.

  ‘Are you sure we’re heading in the right direction?’ asked Rose.

  ‘I’m sure enough.’ said Kel.

  ‘It’s cold isn’t it.’

  Kel nodded.

  ‘Damn cold like winter,’ Rose continued. Cold and foggy and god knows what. Did I tell you I get claustrophobic?’

  ‘No but that’s fine out here innit?’

  ‘Not really, the fog’s the worst of it, I can’t see anything but an orange rubber ring and you just about.’

  ‘That’s somethin then.’

  ‘I hate orange. Why can’t they make these rubber boats pink?’

  ‘I’d say most fisherfolk int into pink.’

  ‘I really don’t like this at all.’

  Kel looked at the girl and the fear that flashed there and she told Rose to look at her. ‘If you look at me you’ll see I’m fine and then you’ll know that things are fine.’

  Rose pushed forward to the centre of the boat and Kel could see her eyes stretched wide with the miasma cloud pressed to them and she told her that things would turn out right and for once the girl did not argue.

  When Rose asked her to tell something from her past that might resemble story Kel had to think hard and she rummaged through everything that was etched there and she told the girl that she had nothing of any worth.

  ‘You must have something,’ said Rose. ‘For all your wild living and whatever else.’

  Kel shook her head.

  ‘Please, give me something to take my mind off this.’

  Kel scratched her head to put thinking into it and she turned her mind to the swamps and her father’s shack but found nothing of entertainment there.

  ‘What about your childhood?’ asked Rose.

  Kel looked out to sea and she wished she had the nerve to say truthfully what weight swung there but the girl was looking for some kind of cheery.

  ‘Can’t remember,’ she said.

  ‘You can’t remember your childhood?’

  Kel shrugged and she looked at the girl and a part of her hoped Rose saw the pain and confusion that was in her so she would not have to explain the intricacies of a life lived on the edge and slipping.

  When the baby made like it was about to cry they moved forward and the distraction was welcomed.

  ‘Might not come to much,’ said Kel finally. ‘The storm or whatever might just blow out or past and we might just be thinkin on somethin too much.’ Kel said this, but she wasn’t sure what she believed. The waves were getting higher, she could see the white caps of foam as they broke against each other and joined forces turning toward the boat. Each wave that hit them bigger than the one before, faster.

  She peered beyond the waves. Out there somewhere were rays of light and at some point they would fan and pool into the boat and show them the way, she told herself to believe this and she believed it enough to settle her own nerves. Their fate had just got muddled in the shroud a moment, somewhere in the dull grey fudge of patient waiting.

  But when she closed her eyes momentarily and put her nose to the wind she recognised the heady earthen tang of autumn rain journeying across the ocean and she knew it was pitching their way. She looked at the girl and saw without doubt that damaging dread had set in and she picked up the bubbling baby and held it to her and she told the girl to lie down and get some rest and that was what Rose did.

  ‘I’m goin to anchor down, we int goin nowhere tonight.’

  Kel settled the baby in her lap and reached for the anchor that hung from the back of the boat and was careful to unwind the rope and let it sink into the sea. She sat back and hid the baby from the wind and when the rain came hammering she hooked the raincoat over its head and tented it to shelter. The storm could try its best and worst and they would pretend all was well and good-time coming.

  If Kel could just hold the baby down to sleep then she might sleep the same, tumble partway toward calm and fill the empty void with the promise that everything would be OK. To briefly hide was to loop a little hope up close and closing, zip the water world from her eyes and all things she should have known as threat and everything she should have seen coming.

  They were not alone on the ocean in any case. When sleep for resting’s sake refused to come Kel lay with her head turned sea-surf looking.

  At first the tiny blot on the horizon was just that, a blot and a smudge of large looping wave and Kel made a note of it and marked it as nothing worth bothering and instead she watched the water world snake and coil into a vortex where at any moment they might fall. Everything the same and same again. But then her eyes stumbled back upon the blot that grew like an ink-stain crawling toward them.

  Kel sat up a little and she blinked and blinked again and she rubbed the rain from her face so she might see the thing on the horizon: it was a boat and it was heading straight for them.

  ‘Rose,’ she shouted. ‘Rose we’re gonna be rescued.’

  Kel stood and waited for the vessel to get closer but it happened so fast she didn’t see the winch until too late, didn’t have time to jump out of its way and its weight hit fully against her forehead and knocked her clean out.

  Chapter Eight

  Whatever was and whatever wasn’t everything moved in a blur of colourless comings and goings. Kel lay huddled somewhere in the forever dark of ocean night and occasionally she made out the rhythm of sentences as they scattered like broken glass around her but nothing made any kind of sense. She had been swinging in and out of consciousness for what seemed like hours, the pitch black of the room she was in made it impossible to determine the time of day or night.

  Voices on the deck above her head were kept low and guarded, whispered words chewed and spat into the wind, wondering.

  Kel could feel pain pulsing in her head and she put a
hand to it to feel the bump of bruise rising from her skull above her eye.

  She had no recollection of how she came to be on this stranger’s boat but knew it was not the crazy old man’s vessel because she could feel it steaming forward. She remembered the crane and the swinging chain that hit the back of her head and guessed she had been knocked out, by hand or by accident she didn’t know or best case she had passed out. She tried to untangle her wrists from the itching rope that bound them and when for the hundredth time she failed then anger took hold and she shouted out Rose’s name and heard nothing but laughter returned.

  Kel wondered where Rose and the baby were, wondered where they’d been hidden or put and she held back from thinking the worst. She sat up and kicked into the black until her toes touched the side of the room and she moved best she could toward the iron wall so she would have something to lean against. The room’s smell was akin to alcohol spilt and dried and spilt again. A room that was meant for storing and preserving fish but which had long since been retired, she guessed. The rancid scent spun Kel further into thinking on things that might or might not have been there.

  She put her head back against the cold steel to make something of where she was and what she might do to escape but nothing came to mind and she knew nothing would. She had been defeated and she knew from experience that there would be no way back from the thing. If somebody had got the upper hand enough to knock the spark out of her there wasn’t much left to be done except wait.

  The ocean had become a dangerous place, same as the mainland just about; a place where once perhaps a handshake ruled had now become a realm without rules complete. The water world was run by pirates and Kel knew this well enough, even before the door opened and the light lit up her face and in passing flagged up the crates of bootleg at the room’s far end.

  She looked into the oil-lamp light and at the kid that held it and she knew the kid was waiting for her to speak and Kel waited the same.

  ‘You’re awake,’ said the lamp-bearer suddenly. ‘Now maybe you can tell us who you are, where you’re goin.’