After the Storm (5 page)

She wanted to wash her hands so her next task was to unbolt the small washbasin. She inched it out as gently as she could. Then she had to use the foot pump to get the water to wash her hands. This wasn’t so noisy thankfully. She remembered to push the basin back and to secure it. She felt her way back into their cabin and got up onto the platform. She had woken Rob up.

‘You OK?’ he asked.

‘What a palaver to go to the loo,’ she whispered back as she wriggled under the sheet. ‘My stomach was cramping badly. I hope I’m not getting the runs. That would be desperate.’

It was still dark when Owen woke from the hateful dream he often suffered. A brutal crime was taking place in his home, in his kitchen, right in front of his eyes. Two people were being battered to death with a shovel by a man with the whitest skin you ever saw; a bloodless man. He didn’t know who the two people were and he was a helpless onlooker as he saw and heard the killings in hideous and graphic detail: the crunch of their bones as the edge of the shovel was used as a blade to sever their limbs, and the blood, so much blood, how could there be so much blood? He couldn’t look at the pooling dark liquid on the kitchen floor which was running into the cracks between the floorboards. Now the killer was burying the bodies under the floor, grunting with the exertion of jemmying up the floorboards. The white-faced killer turned. He walked towards him holding his bloodied shovel. Owen crouched in the corner trying to make himself smaller by hiding his head on his knees and holding his hands over his bowed head, paralysed with terror.

He woke with a dry mouth and the familiar feeling of sick dread. It always took him a few minutes to shake off the terror. His blanket was twisted around him as he had thrashed around while he dreamed. He sat up and unwound the blanket from him. Everyone else was asleep below. He stood up and steadied himself by holding onto the mast of his boat and he waited for the sun to rise.

Rob pulled the curtain open and their porthole became a brilliant rectangle which filled their small cabin with light. He felt joyful and full of energy.

‘Wake up sleepy head,’ he said.

He kissed Anna, sat up and rummaged for his shorts in the tight space of their cabin.

‘How’s your tummy?’

‘Feels OK at the moment thanks.’

She stretched fully, pointing her toes. Her outstretched arms touched the walls of the cabin on either side.

It was their first full day on board and Owen spent the morning teaching them about the boat. He had checked the barometer; it was a calm day and would present few challenges. He explained the function of the two sails, the mainsail and the smaller foresail. The foresail was clipped onto the forestay at the front of the boat. The main sail had to be winched up a track in the mast and he got them both to do this. He showed them how you steered the boat with the tiller. He moved nimbly across the boat hardly needing to hold onto anything whereas Anna was clinging to the lines, worried she might pitch into the water at any moment. She transmitted her nervousness and Owen was patient with her. Rob looked altogether more comfortable and had taken to the sailing at once.

Kim left them to it for most of the day, only joining them at lunchtime when she brought up plates of tuna salad for them.

‘This tastes great, again,’ Rob said.

‘I make this special dressing for the tuna, the zest of a lime and one teaspoon of wasabi powder in soy sauce. Kinda zings it up, doesn’t it?’ she said.

‘I’ll say.’

After lunch their task was to make the sail to Home’s Cay. It was a short distance to cover and a place where Owen and Kim had moored before. Owen kept an eye on them but let Rob and Anna do the sailing. As the
El Tiempo Pasa
approached the Cay he explained that the length of the anchor chain needed to be four times the depth of water where you were anchoring. Rob fed the chain out. They headed into the wind and dropped anchor as the boat backed up and the anchor bit. Owen watched them drop the sails.

‘You both did fine. Now rest and relaxation for what’s left of the day,’ he said.

Home’s Cay was a tiny island with a few yards of sand, thirty palm trees, a lone wooden shack and a dozen mangrove plots that had rooted in the mud at the perimeter.

‘I’m intrigued by that little shack. Who does it belong to?’ Anna asked.

‘One of the fishermen will have built it. May still use it from time to time,’ Owen said.

Kim came up from the saloon.

‘Why don’t you guys take the dinghy and explore the island. Owen and I did that once.’

‘Great idea, we’ll do that,’ Rob said.

He and Anna got into the dinghy and rowed over to the island. As they moved out of earshot Anna said:

‘You do realise we’ve left all our money and all our possessions on the boat and they could just sail away.’

‘They could but they won’t. They need their dinghy right?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘And they probably want some time on their own. Maybe they want sex. Come on give me a hand.’

They pulled the dinghy onto the sand.

‘Owen was patient with me today. He didn’t say much though. Did you notice that?’

‘No, not really…’

Rob was tying the rope from the dinghy to one of the palm trees.

‘He was so talkative that first night, when he was doing his sales pitch.’

‘You’ve got to stop being so suspicious Anna. You won’t enjoy this if you’re suspicious all the time.’

‘I’m not sure about Kimberly.’

‘Because she took a couple of magazines?’

‘No that’s not the reason, but I’m not sure about her. And he seems a troubled man to me.’

Rob loved the fact that Anna was straight as an arrow and had bags of integrity. It was one of the things that had attracted him so strongly to her. It did mean though that she held everyone to impossibly high standards. He remembered the recent incident with her smart phone. She had just received her new state-of-the-art phone and five days after getting it had dropped it and cracked the screen badly. She’d been upset at the damage particularly because she hadn’t had a chance to insure the phone. He told her to take out insurance and then, in a month, claim for a new phone. She had been insistent that she could not possibly do that. No, she said, the cracked phone face would be a reminder to her that she should be more careful with her things. It was her fault and she would live with it. He was reminded that Anna’s moral compass was calibrated more exactingly than his. Her high-mindedness could be off-putting if you didn’t also know that Anna had generous reserves of patience and compassion when she was dealing with vulnerable people in her job.

‘Come on, I’ll race you to the shack,’ he said running ahead. She ran after him and they peered into the meagre hut. There was nothing in it except a pile of driftwood that had been stacked in there for future use. There was a hole in the roof and some bird shit on the floor. They chased each other around the tiny plot of the island until they were breathless and dropped down onto the warm sand. Rob found a ripe coconut on the ground.

‘We can take this back with us.’

He spotted a procession of tiny hermit crabs walking away from a coconut they had been eating.

‘Come look at this.’

She rolled over and watched as the tiny crabs moved quickly and in unison over the sand. Then they both sat up back to back supporting each other, a way they often sat so that each had a different view in front of them. They sometimes played a game where they had to describe what they saw in front of them with each trying to outdo the other in their descriptions.

‘I can see a tall palm tree and its trunk is like the hide of a very old and very wise elephant,’ Anna said.

The first time Rob saw Anna she was sitting on a London tube heading north and she was totally absorbed in a text book on speech development. He was sitting opposite her. As she sat there reading he noticed that a thin trickle of blood was coming from the side of her mouth. She seemed oblivious to this. He sat and watched fascinated as the blood moved down her chin. Then he leaned forward and offered her a clean tissue from his pocket. As he touched her arm gently she jumped.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.’

She had large grey eyes and a mole on her forehead just above the space between her eyebrows. This defect was strangely beautiful as it had the effect of drawing even more attention to her eyes. He explained that she had blood on her chin. She touched her chin in the middle.

‘To the side…’ he said indicating the right side of her face.

She touched that side and looked at her fingers which had blood on them.

‘Oh…’

She took his tissue then and dabbed at her mouth and chin.

‘Been to the dentist, wisdom tooth out, my face is frozen,’ she said thickly, her tongue was having difficulty forming the words.

He nodded.

‘Has the blood gone? I haven’t got a mirror.’

The people sitting next to them on the tube were watching them now.

‘Yes, all gone.’

The tube drew into Tufnell Park. This was his stop but he didn’t intend getting off. He wanted to see where she would get off. The tube moved off towards Archway.

‘Just the one wisdom tooth out?’ he asked.

‘Yes, that was bad enough.’

‘I remember. I had to go to the dental hospital and have all four out at the same time.’

‘How awful…’

She looked at him sympathetically and he thought she had the most wonderful eyes.

‘I’m Rob…’

‘Anna. Thanks for the tissue. And for telling me,’ she said thickly.

‘You did look like a rather beautiful vampire,’ he said.

She gave a lopsided smile. They had passed through Archway and Highgate and were approaching East Finchley.

‘This is my stop,’ she said, putting her text book into her bag.

‘Mine too,’ he said.

They got off the tube together. As they came out onto the street she said:

‘I go this way, thanks again.’

She was turning left and he was thinking quickly. He didn’t want her to go.

‘I’m going that way too.’

He had remembered that the Phoenix Cinema was a little further up the road.

‘I’m going to the Phoenix,’ he said.

‘That’s a great cinema. I go there a lot.’

As they reached the Phoenix he looked up at the board that ran along the façade of the cinema. It was the Easter holidays and there were a lot of animation films listed, clearly aimed at children. He saw Anna look up at the list of films too and he wondered if she had seen through his subterfuge.

‘I’m early. Do you have time for a coffee or a drink?’

She nodded shyly and he felt absurdly pleased. They sat over several cups of coffee for over two hours and he said that he was happy to miss the film. He would come back another day. He learned that she was completing her training to be a speech therapist. She was not a Londoner and it had taken her a while to like London. He did most of the talking, encouraged by her large grey eyes and sympathetic way of listening, and he found himself telling her that his father was an American musician he had never met. His mum had got involved with another musician when he was eight. He had left home young and shared a flat with two mates and they were setting up a company to brew specialist beers. She was not musical at all, she said. Her father was the musical director at a church school in Canterbury. Her two younger brothers were the star turn in her father’s choir. Not her, she was a croaker. When they parted she agreed to see him again. It was clear to him that they had had very different upbringings and that she was what he needed.

The sun was low in the sky when they rowed the dinghy back to the
El Tiempo Pasa
. Kim was sitting on the deck on her own.

‘Owen’s catching up on his sleep down below,’ she said keeping her voice low.

She helped them tie up the dinghy and get on board.

‘We swam round the island,’ Rob said keeping his voice soft.

‘Good job. A fisherman went by and I bought some grouper. We’ll have it tonight.’

Six fish lay on the deck next to her. She unzipped her woven money belt and took out a small case. Inside the case was a small sharp knife. She cut the heads off the fish and gutted their insides working fast and expertly and threw the heads and bones over the side of the boat. Then she placed the gutted fish into a pan she had put near her.

‘Looks like you’ve done that a few times,’ Rob said with admiration.

‘I surely have.’

She used a wet cloth to clean her knife thoroughly before she wiped it dry, put it back into the case and zipped it away in her belt. Rob was intrigued. How clever of her to carry the knife like that in her belt so that she always had it to hand. She struck him as a capable woman who understood and managed the challenges of life on board.

The plan was to anchor at Home’s Cay for the night. Later, Owen joined Anna in the cockpit. She was watching three pelicans sitting on the mangroves of the Cay. Kim had gone below to cook the fish and Rob had gone down to make a coffee.

‘They don’t look at all comfortable, do they,’ Anna said. ‘Those great big beaks look too heavy for their bodies and the mangroves look flimsy to me.’

‘You should see a pelican land on a mangrove. That’s quite a sight,’ he said.

The sea was turning that particular shade of palest, silvery blue that only happens at sunset. They sat in companionable silence watching the still scene in front of them.

‘I could sit and watch all evening,’ she said finally.

‘Me too, nature doesn’t let you down, does it,’ he said.

She glanced over at him.

‘That’s what I always say,’ she replied.

A large pelican flew into sight and approached the Cay. It landed on the squat mangrove which bounced deeply under the weight of the bird. The pelican sat on unperturbed and stately as a judge as the branches rocked up and down. Anna laughed out loud.

‘Oh that’s priceless.’

Owen grinned over at her.

‘See what I mean? And you should see them crash dive too.’

The sun set quickly and it was dark but still hot. Rob and Kim came into the cockpit carrying four bowls with the fried grouper and potatoes and some salsa Kim had made. The four of them ate in silence relishing the taste of the fresh fish and the tanginess of Kim’s salsa.