The Boat (25 page)

Johnny felt it in his dream: a light movement along the skin of his arm, the caress of a breath. He felt it again and went from sleep to wakefulness in one swift movement. He sat bolt upright. He looked about him. He saw it on the water, in the clouds; he felt it on his face, in his hair.
Oh my God!
His prayers had been answered. They had wind! Yes! There were cotton-wool clouds tiptoeing along the horizon, white wisps above him now. He leapt to his feet to feel the breeze against his chest. It was there, warm and faint. He couldn’t remember ever feeling such joy at the arrival of wind. They were saved. They would soon be free, away from all this ghastliness. He could already feel it slipping away from him, the weight of
them
easing. He and Clem were moving on.

‘Clem, Clem!’ he cried, crouching down over her sleeping form, nudging her awake, whispering into her ear. ‘Oh, Clem. My Clem. We’re out of here! We’re leaving. We’re off. We’ve got wind!’ He kissed her cheek again and again. Sleepily she stirred. She opened her eyes and pulled herself up to sitting and smiled at him. She didn’t get up and dance with joy as she might have done a week ago. Everything had changed from a week ago and for a moment he wondered whether she even wanted to get away from this place at all.

‘Frank!’ he cried, running over to the tree where they lay. ‘We’ve got wind! Let’s go!’ Frank and Smudge shook themselves awake. But no one leapt with joy; he was alone in his jubilation.

‘We haven’t had the cake yet!’ Smudge said, not remotely interested in the wind, rubbing her eyes sleepily. She wandered over to the blanket to look for the cake while Johnny ran down to the water’s edge, looking out. The wind had transformed the water: no longer the flat sky-coloured calm, now a dark, rippled blue, the life blown back into it, the wavelets noisily throwing themselves on the shore. It had body and strength again. While they had slept, nature had woken up. The
Little Utopia
had stopped swinging in lazy circles and was now held fast by the anchor rope, nose to the breeze, bobbing about on the surface, ready for action, just like Johnny.

‘We have to get Mummy for the cake!’ Smudge said, tugging at his hand, pointing at the boat. He looked over at the cake on the blanket, melted now, more of a brown sludge dotted with sunken wonky candles like the old woman’s teeth.

‘We can have it now,’ he said. ‘We can take Mummy back a piece.’

‘No,’ she said, stamping her foot in the sand. It was her birthday after all. The wind had softened him, smoothed the rough edges.

‘OK,’ he said, ruffling her messy hair, running over to the dinghy, wanting to waste no time. ‘I’ll go and get her.’ She must have slept herself into sobriety by now. They’d eat the cake and then they’d leave and sail through the night. By the morning they might have found a village.

‘Get a knife while you’re there!’ Clem called out to him.

He pulled the tender back down into the water and jumped in, pushing off from the shore. He rowed towards
the
Little Utopia
listening to Smudge’s excited cries as she laid the plates out on to the blanket. The wind had lifted his heart; he could put up with anything now that he knew they would be moving, getting out of this awful place, away from these people. He closed his eyes, face to the breeze and felt the steady, warm air on his eyelids. He could feel his love again. They could forget all this, the damage that had been done. Everything was reparable now.

He rowed long, even strokes, keeping the blades at just the right angle for maximum speed. He was always after speed, he realized. He squinted as the sunlight bounced blindingly off the water. He got to the
Little Utopia
as fast as he could, dragging one oar and swinging round to her stern. He could hear the faint white noise of the tape deck being left on: a background scratching. He tied the tender to the stern with a one-handed bowline and climbed on board. She’d left the cockpit doors wide open and he peered down into the saloon. She wasn’t in there and the heads door was shut. She’d be passed out on the bed. He went down the companionway steps.

‘Annie?’ he called, rolling himself a cigarette. ‘It’s time for the cake. We’ve got wind. We’ll be leaving soon so we’ve got to have it now.’ She didn’t respond so he went through the saloon and knocked on the forepeak door.

‘Annie?’ he said, licking the glue strip of the paper. ‘We’re going to light the candles.’

He tried the handle but it wouldn’t budge so he pushed his weight against the door and it opened slightly, revealing a glimpse of naked flesh. She was crashed out in a crumpled heap beside the toilet.

‘Annie?’ he cried, now really pissed off with her that she couldn’t hold herself together at all, if only for her daughter’s sake. What sort of a mother was she? What did he even care any more? What concern was it of his? The wind was here and he and Clem were on their way. He went back out through the saloon and up the steps, glancing back at the others, at the mountains, at an eagle rising in a thermal, as happy as him to have wind again. He went down the deck and lifted open the forehatch and stuck his head through.

‘Annie?’ he called. ‘Get up! Cake time!’ She was crumpled up on the floor,, her back to him, wet and naked, unmoving. Then he saw the blood.

He slid through the hatch head first and on to their bed and crawled forwards, falling off the bed on to the floor, reaching for her shoulder and turning her towards him.

‘Annie?’ She rolled over heavily, a terrible red stripe down the whole left-hand side of her legs, her face white and drained, her eyes rolled back into her head. She was holding the large kitchen knife in her right hand and her left wrist had a deep gash across it. Blood was spilling out in a steady stream, pouring on to the floor and spreading around her body.

‘Jesus Christ! Annie! Jesus fucking Christ!’

She moaned. She was still alive; she was still conscious. He grabbed a shirt and, slipping in the warm wetness of her blood, heaved her body up on to his and wrapped the shirt around her wrist, trying to stem the bleeding. ‘It’s her fucking birthday,’ he kept saying. ‘It’s her fucking birthday.’

He lifted her up in his arms and put her on the bed, put a pillow under her head. She moaned and opened her eyes slightly and tried to focus. When she saw him her face puckered a little, as if she was about to cry but lacked the strength. Her lips were trying to form words that he couldn’t make out.

‘I can’t understand you, Annie,’ he said, panicking, pressing his forehead to hers, looking into those dazed, weak eyes. He could taste blood on his lips, rusty and rich on his tongue. ‘Just hang on, Annie. Just hang on.’

‘Heads…’ she whispered. ‘Cabinet…’ He got off the bed and stepped back into loo area and opened the cabinet door.

‘In here?’ he asked but she didn’t respond. There were two medicine tins in the cabinet. One was locked. The other was the tin they had used on that first night. He pulled it out and put it on the bed. She was moaning now, shaking her head, her eyes rolling back in their sockets. ‘Nooo…’ she cried.

‘Come on, Annie,’ he said, holding her head up, utterly terrified that she was going to die on him. ‘Stay awake, please. Don’t give up… You’re not a bad person… Think of Smudge… You’re not a bad person…’

Then something inside him switched. The panic took a back seat. He became clinically practical. He moved about the boat efficiently trying to mend her. He bandaged up her wrist. He put a blanket around her. He propped up her arm on a pillow. All the while she was moaning and crying out with the pain. He crushed up four aspirins and made her swallow them with some water. He tried to tidy things up. He didn’t really know why he was covering up for her; it wasn’t the sort of thing you could hide but he felt he had to do it for Smudge. A child should never see her mother in such a state.

He cleaned the knife and chucked it in the cockpit. He used towels to mop up the blood from the floor and put them in a bin bag. Then he cleaned up himself, wiping her blood from his own body, scrubbing his hands clean in the sink. When he came back through to the forepeak, she was lying there, propped up, her glazed eyes staring out through the hatch at the small patch of sky.

‘Annie?’ he called but she wasn’t listening. She was lost in the sky, perhaps in the wind that might have taken them with it. He told her not to move, but it was perfectly obvious that she wasn’t going anywhere. ‘I’m going to go back for the others, OK?’ She didn’t respond. ‘I’ll be back soon.’

He closed the door and went back through the saloon up into the cockpit, picked up the knife, dropped it into the tender and climbed down on to the transom and into the dinghy. Only then did he notice that his legs and hands were shaking so much he could barely hold the oars.

He rowed, his eyes locked on the knife; he’d missed a bit of blood on the wooden handle. He glanced behind at the shore. The three of them were standing at the edge of the water, shading their eyes from the sun, watching him row back, presumably wondering why Annie was not with him. He gripped hard and carried on rowing until the bottom of the boat ground to a halt on the sand. His knees were shaking so much he could hardly climb out of the boat. He kept his back to them as he pulled it up on to the dry sand.

‘Where’s Mummy for the cake?’ Smudge asked, running over to help him.

‘She’s not feeling good. She’s lying down,’ he said, not looking at anyone. And they all believed him, not noticing the fact that his whole being trembled.

‘Did you bring the knife?’ Clem asked and he looked up at her, momentarily unable to fathom her meaning. She saw it in the boat and bent to pick it up, the sunshine glinting off the wrist-slitting blade. He followed them to the blanket and shortly found himself standing round the cake with its five flaming candles mouthing the words to ‘Happy Birthday’. He had no voice. His body juddered. He couldn’t eat. He must tell Frank. Up in the sky there were wisps of cloud being blown above his head. There was wind but he was static.

‘We must go,’ he said. ‘We must get moving.’ Then he wondered whether he’d said it out loud because no one seemed to have heard him. There was a commotion going on: Smudge was crying, Clem and Frank looking anxious. They knew. They’d guessed. But no, Smudge had lost Granny.
Please stop crying.
They were all running about looking for a tortoise when Annie lay bloodless on the boat. He wanted to reach out and pull Frank back but still his body wouldn’t move. He saw Clem and Smudge sprint off and Frank searching around the little tree while he himself stood at the water’s edge looking out at the
Little Utopia,
his quivering fingers trying to roll a smoke, unable to comprehend how on earth everything had gone so horribly wrong, how he had not seen any of this coming. It made no sense. Frank’s words tumbled about inside his head:
psychotic, delusional, schizophrenic, insane, a mythomaniac…

He became aware of Frank standing at his side. ‘You’ve got blood on your arm, Johnny.’

Johnny turned sharply, twisting his body to examine his arm; it was true he had a great smear up the back of his left forearm. ‘We have to get back to the boat,’ Johnny said. ‘She cut herself, Frank. She needs a doctor.’

Frank seemed neither surprised nor upset. ‘Where did she cut herself?’

‘She’s OK,’ he said even though Frank hadn’t asked. ‘Across her wrist. She slit her wrist, Frank.’ It felt good to tell him, to share the burden. His mouth was so dry the words stuck on his tongue. He thought he was going to cry or scream.

Frank squinted out to sea at the
Little Utopia,
annoyed. ‘On her birthday? It’s her fucking birthday, for Christ’s sake.’

Johnny was glad Frank said that, glad he was angry. He’d felt just the same. ‘Why would she do that?’ Johnny said, running a clammy hand through his hair, eyes fixed on the boat.

‘Vertically or horizontally?’

‘What?’

‘Her wrist.’

‘I don’t fucking know, Frank. I’ve bandaged it up.’ His knees were shaking so badly it was as if they were trying to escape. ‘Diagonally, maybe.’

‘I’m so sorry, Johnny. I should have told you earlier,’ he said with a sigh.

‘She’s fucking crazy…’ Johnny said. His words came out in breathy snatches; he couldn’t control them. Then very tenderly Frank put his arm around Johnny’s shoulder and pulled him in. Johnny couldn’t help it. He didn’t pull away; he wanted the comfort. He rested his head against Frank’s great chest, needing the support of Frank’s big, capable bear body to hold him up. They stood there, Frank rocking him gently.

‘I’m so sorry you had to see that. I should have gone to get her. She does this from time to time, Johnny. Don’t worry. She knows just how far to go.’

Johnny pulled away, trying to regain himself, nodding, taking a drag of his fag. ‘I think she might need a doctor. I don’t know. I’ve stopped the bleeding.’

‘You’re a good lad. I’ll go to her,’ he said, rummaging for his soft packet of tabs in his back pocket, but going nowhere.

‘I’ve cleared up the mess. Just keep Smudge out of the forecabin.’

‘Thanks, Johnny.’ Frank tapped the packet and caught the cigarette in his customary manner. It seemed somehow inappropriate. ‘I presume she told you all those scratches on her thighs were from falling through a glass roof?’

Johnny looked out at the horizon; there were more clouds now. The wind was getting on fine without him. He had a low foreboding feeling that he would never catch it now. He breathed in the faint scent of pine trees that the wind carried: the promise of other things and other times. He shut his eyes and let it wash over him. Annie had indeed told him about falling through a glass roof. He hadn’t thought to question her.

‘She’s always been this way,’ Frank said, tapping about his person for a light. Johnny got out his own lighter and passed it to him, still with a faint tremor in his fingers. Frank took Johnny’s whole hand in his and pressed it firmly between his own, trying to press the fear out of him. ‘She’ll be all right,’ he said.

They stood there in silence, looking out at the boat, Johnny’s trembling hands calmed once Frank had let go. The waves were breaking on the rocks. He listened to the sounds of the sea, at last a language he understood. It calmed him.