Crackdown (17 page)

“And did learning about it mean trying it?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“And thus you discovered euphoria?”

She nodded again. “And it’s the euphoria that’s so addictive, because you’ve been to heaven, and the real world seems a very dull place afterwards. So you begin to take more cocaine, and quite soon you need more and more cocaine to unlock the gates of heaven, and once you reach heaven you don’t want to leave it and so you take still more cocaine, but by then it isn’t working.”

She stopped abruptly, perhaps fearing that she was boring me. I turned the wheel a fraction, waiting for her.

“The catch in this heaven,” she went on, “is that the brain has only got so much dopamine to offer, and once the cocaine has used it all up, then that’s the end of the pleasure. Except the brain is screaming for more dopamine, so you overdose because you can’t accept that the drug isn’t working any longer, and it’s then that cocaine starts doing its other things to you. It shrinks the arteries, and that’s what blinded Rickie’s left eye.”

I really had nothing useful to say, so I responded with a sympathetic noise that only made Robin-Anne shake her head impatiently. “There’s worse,” she said, “far worse.”

“You mean a heart attack?”

“No...” She drew the word out, so that I heard in its simple syllable all the pain and hurt of the drug. Robin-Anne had been staring at the dark sea, but now she turned her big eyes back to me. “The worst thing about cocaine is that once it has exhausted all the dopamine from the brain, then what’s left is a black hole of depression so big and so awful that not all the misery in the world can fill it. People try to beat that misery with barbiturates, but nothing can cure it because you’ve taken away from yourself all chance of feeling pleasure. The doctors have a word for that misery; they call it anhedonia, which only means an inability to feel enjoyment, and that’s what it is, but it feels like hell, like true hell, and it’s a hell you can’t even escape from in sleep because overdosing on cocaine gives you chronic insomnia.”

Hell was being without God, I thought, but I said nothing, just stared instead at the white wash of cabin light on the rushing water, and I wondered why some people could take cocaine and just walk away from it, while others ended up in hell, or in a peep-show which was probably the same thing.

“Of course,” Robin-Anne went on, “the brain eventually manufactures more dopamine, so after a day or two the cocaine can work again, and you go soaring up from hell into heaven. It’s a roller-coaster, Mr Breakspear, up and down, up and down”—her thin white hand suited the action to her words—”from heaven to hell and back again, and if heaven is euphoria then let me assure you that hell is a terrible place.”

“So remember the hell,” I said, as though I really could help her with my tuppence worth of cheerful encouragement, “and perhaps that will stop you ever going back to it!”

“But there’s another kind of hell,” Robin-Anne’s voice was dulled, as though my cheap optimism had depressed her, “which is remembering the euphoria, and having to surrender the means of creating it. That hell is giving up cocaine. I’m in the easy stage, the first few days when you just sleep and eat, but quite soon I’ll be in the hell of denial, Mr Breakspear.”

I looked past Robin-Anne to where the moon’s path gleamed on the long waves, and then I glanced forward and saw another belt of silver, but this one diffuse and hazy, showing where the first crepuscular light seeped over the world’s grey edge. “Dawn,” I said in a hopeful voice.

But Robin-Anne did not react, and I looked down to see that she was not watching for the new day, but was crying. I did not know what to say or do. I should have knelt beside her and put my arms around her and promised her that she would be freed from the hell of anhedonia, and that there really was a God and that she did have the strength to tear herself free from cocaine, as others had freed themselves, and I should have assured her that there was true happiness without a drug, but I did not know her well enough to embrace her, so I just let her weep as the sun streaked up in glory from the east.

Thus
Wavebreaker
sailed towards the light, carrying her passengers to hell.

I rousted Thessy out of his bed with a cup of tea, then went to my own bed as he took over the wheel. I slept, dreaming of
Masquerade
sinking through waves of steel into torrents of fire.

I woke just before lunchtime to find
Wavebreaker
still sailing eastwards. Ellen was showing Rickie Crowninshield all the elaborate electronic toys that only Ellen wholly understood; the radios, radars, weatherfaxes and satellite receivers, and Rickie was being surprisingly attentive, but as soon as he saw me he scowled and clamped a pair of headphones over his ears as though to make sure that he did not have to hold any kind of conversation with me. Ellen shrugged at his rudeness.

“How’s the weather?” I asked her.

“No change.”

I squinted through a porthole and saw the sky was scraped blue and bright above an empty sea. “You faxed a chart?” I asked Ellen.

“Sure did.” She handed me the sheet of grey paper with its synoptic chart which had been transmitted from Florida just a few moments before. I pretended to despise such modern aids, but that was really a defensive reaction because I knew I could never afford such frills for
Masquerade.
I saw that there was not even a ripple of low pressure off to the east, which was the reassurance I wanted, for a depression to the east could swiftly twist itself into a full-blooded storm.

“Good morning, Rickie,” I said loudly, wanting to demonstrate that I held no grudge for his behaviour in the night.

“Yo.” His voice was surly, but suddenly he twisted round to face me and took off the headphones, and I thought he was going to apologise for his rudeness of the previous night, but instead he demanded to know if it was true that we were out in the open ocean and were not planning to make a landfall for some days.

“That’s true,” I said.

“But I wanted to do some scuba!” he said in outrage.

“There’ll be a chance, I promise.”

“Jesus!” he said in exasperation, then turned abruptly away. I waited to see if he would say any more, but he evidently did not want my company. I grimaced at Ellen, then went topsides where I found the ship being steered by its automatic pilot and Thessy and Jackson Chatterton perched halfway up the mainmast with reels of rigging wire from which Thessy was fashioning a parallel set of starboard shrouds. I wanted to double up all
Wavebreaker’s
standing rigging, just in case we did try to take her across the ocean. There was no sign of Robin-Anne who was presumably asleep. Chatterton climbed down to the deck and told me that Robin-Anne had eaten a huge breakfast.

“What about Rickie?”

“He just played with his food,” Chatterton frowned, “and that means he must be over the crash period, which means his behaviour’s going to be difficult.”

“Even more difficult?” I asked with dread.

The big man laughed. “Nick, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

It seemed that Jackson Chatterton was right, for we were all witnesses to a dreadful metamorphosis in Rickie. When he had joined the ship he had been nothing but eagerness and smiles, romping about like a new puppy, but now he had turned unrelentingly morose. At lunchtime he scowled at his sister who, wrapped in a dressing gown, fell on the sandwiches as though she had not eaten in weeks. “I’m famished!”

Rickie would not even try a sandwich, but instead pushed his plate away and lit a cigarette. He sipped at his can of diet soda and grimaced at the taste. “Have we got any beer on this boat?” he suddenly asked.

“No,” Ellen said placidly. “Doctor’s orders.”

“Fuck the doctors.” No one responded, which merely annoyed Rickie. He stared at his sister whose pale face was made even paler by the sun-block ointment she had liberally smeared on her skin. “You like this shit-for-drink, Robbie?”

Robin-Anne nodded, but was too busy eating to take much notice of her brother, though she did manage to mumble that she thought the diet soda was really kind of good.

“I think it’s really kind of crap.” Rickie turned his truculent gaze on me. “You must have some liquor aboard, Nick?”

“Not a drop,” I lied.

“That’s very un-British of you.” He attempted an atrocious imitation of my English accent. “I thought all British ships were fuelled by rum, sodomy and the lash. Isn’t that what they say?”

“That’s what they say.” I kept my voice friendly, for I was determined not to be drawn by his provocation.

“Are you gay, Nick?” Rickie suddenly asked me in what purported to be a tone of serious enquiry. I did not answer, while everyone but Robin-Anne, who was too busy eating, seemed embarrassed. Once again the lack of response infuriated Rickie who, seeking some other means of provocation, hurled his can of soda across the deck. “Shit-juice!” he shouted.

Ellen caught my eye, and we stared at each other for a sympathetic fraction of a second, then I looked away to see that the sticky liquid had sprayed across the teak planks. “Clean it up,” I said mildly.

“Rum, sodomy and the lash!” Rickie chanted at me with a sudden and extraordinary vindictiveness.

Jackson Chatterton stirred as though he proposed to clean up the mess himself, but I waved him down and kept my eyes on Rickie. “Clean it up,” I said again.

“You clean it up. This is our vacation! I didn’t suggest coming on this heap of a boat to work like a house-servant, isn’t that right, Robbie?”

Robin-Anne just went on eating.

“Clean it up,” I told Rickie again.

Rickie seized Thessy’s can, pulled open its top, and hurled it messily after the first. “Now what are you going to do? Flog me?” He suddenly laughed, then looked at Ellen whom he perceived as a possible ally. “You can never tell with a Brit, can you? It’s either a flog or a fuck.”

Ellen said nothing to encourage him. Robin-Anne ate stolidly on, while poor Thessy looked terrified. Only Jackson Chatterton seemed comfortable with Rickie’s display of petulant temper. “The man said clean it up,” Chatterton said calmly, “so clean it up!”

But Rickie was long beyond sense. “This is a vacation!” he screamed at me, “so why are we out here? I want to see a beach! A beach, you know what a beach is? Sand? Surf? I want to go board-sailing, maybe do a little water skiing. I want to do some scuba, for Christ’s sake!”

I ignored him, fetching instead a mop and bucket from one of the big stern lockers. The bucket had a rope attached to its handle and I skimmed it over the stern to haul up a gallon or so of sea-water which I slammed down in front of Rickie. “The deck needs cleaning, Rickie, so do it.” I threw the mop at him.

He ignored the mop, just staring at me, and I saw him take a breath ready to defy me so I spoke before he could. “Either you clean the deck, Rickie, or I’ll scrub it with your hair.”

He began to weep. Robin-Anne glanced at him, then smeared mustard on a roast beef sandwich. “It’s real good food,” she said enthusiastically.

“I’ll help you,” Ellen said to Rickie, then she took his hand and placed it on the mop handle. “Come on,” she said gently.

Thus, as Rickie feebly dabbed at the deck and as his sister ate, our happy ship sailed on.

W
hen, before we had sailed, I had tried to anticipate the cruise-cure, I had naively foreseen it as a difficult but intrinsically rewarding experience. I had fondly imagined that the Crowninshield twins, repentant and eager, would work about the ship by day and, exhausted by sea air and honest labour, would sleep all night. I had imagined them as willing partners in our efforts to help them, and I had been encouraged in that optimism by the knowledge that Rickie himself had suggested this drastic therapy of isolation from drugs by going to sea.

Yet, in the event, I was right about only one thing; it was difficult. We spent aimless days beating up and down the endless wind, carrying our cargo of resentment and despair, and though I worked to strengthen
Wavebreaker’s
rigging for a notional crossing of the Atlantic, in truth I was rehearsing the arguments I would use to convince Senator Crowninshield that the cruise-cure could not ever work.

At least not for Rickie, for Rickie was my problem. The cruise-cure might have been his idea, but now that he had embarked on the experience he had no wish to co-operate with it, and instead his moods veered between a cringing self-pity and a vituperative defiance. His weapon of choice became the tape deck on which he played an appalling cacophony of rock music at a level well judged to be loud enough to annoy, but not quite loud enough to provoke me into open hostility. Jackson Chatterton asked me why I simply did not disconnect the tape deck from the boat’s electrical supply, but I suspected that such a move would merely persuade Rickie to transfer his battle to another piece of the boat’s equipment, and one which, unlike the tape deck, might be necessary to
Wavebreaker’s
survival. I asked Chatterton how long we could expect Rickie’s antisocial behaviour to last, and the big man smiled. “For ever, Nick.”

“For ever?” I sounded appalled.

“I think he’s just being himself,” Jackson Chatterton said sourly, “an eternal jerk.”

“And his father might become President,” I said sourly.

“Glory be!” Chatterton said mockingly, and began to laugh. “I tell you, Nick, if that man’s serious about winning the jackpot, then the sooner he puts Rickie in a straitjacket, the better.”

Yet Rickie did have better moments when he seemed to realise just what a jerk he truly was, and in those moments he would ineptly try to help with the working of the ship, and he would even apologise for his obnoxious behaviour, though the apologies were usually addressed to Ellen, Chatterton or Thessy, and rarely to me. I suspected that there was something inherent in my character or appearance that irritated Rickie, because I noted how even in his lucid and calmer moments he took care to avoid me. Only once did he deliberately seek out my company, and that was when he fetched a chart up to the cockpit and asked me to show him where we were. I pencilled a cross to mark our estimated position and showed him how we had been beating up and down in the open ocean, parallel with the islands but always out of their sight.