Mad Cows (30 page)

‘I bet he was a dud lay,' Maddy disparaged. ‘Aussie blokes think the Kama Sutra is some kind of Indian take-away.'

‘Hyperbaric chambers, you know those tanks which are used to reduce pressure after diving—?'

‘I know what they are!' Maddy irritably handed Jack up to Gillian on deck.

‘— significantly reduce testosterone levels. Studies of Australian abalone divers and navy frogmen in Sweden showed fewer male offspring than average.'

‘What was his idea of foreplay? Did he ejaculate into a mate's sandwich just for fun?' Maddy jeered. In the hair-brained preposterousness stakes, Gillian's plan was the first-past-the-post. ‘Lace a groom's drink with laxatives? Did you need sub-titles to decode the grunts he uses for language?'

‘That's me all right,' drawled a laconic voice from above. ‘Completely inarticulate. Communicate via the vibrations of my testicles.'

Maddy was eye level with a pair of muscly, leathery legs. She looked upwards into the weatherbeaten face of a forty-ish man, wearing a peaked yachting cap without irony. A hand of similar sun-tanned texture thrust downwards to haul her aboard.

‘This is
him
?' asked Maddy.

‘Hey . . . if I'd known I was going to live this long, I'd have moisturized now and then,' he replied, impiously. He offered Maddy a card. Her eyes strained to read the embossed lettering through the gloom. ‘Skip', it said, simply. ‘Expert'.

‘What in?' Maddy asked, trying to camouflage her embarrassment. ‘Eavesdropping?'

‘Parallel parking for one,' he replied, laughingly.

‘I wasn't driving,' Maddy said, flustered. ‘
She
was . . . Anyway, what's it to you?'

‘Come on down,' he invited, leading the way into the galley where he flopped into a leather banquette, indicating for the women to follow suit.

‘I've cleared Customs. We leave in the hour. The guys; Bristoe, he's the galley-hag; the ginger-beer – engineer; and the two deckies – the lowest form of marine life – aren't all that chuffed about it. Women are bad luck on board. Sexual roulette, you see. We only spend three months in dry dock, the rest of the year, cruising. Bloke gets barnacles on his balls, savvy? Believe me, the second bang you hear when we hit port is the door closing. Sleep with one of the crew and the others get toey. But as I'm the window watcher,' –
the
two women looked at him perplexed – ‘the boat aimer.' They still didn't comprehend. ‘The
skipper
,' he finally deciphered, ‘tough shit. So here's the rules. No nooky. We hit the fart-sack by ten. And no red emperors in the head. Tampons,' he generously decoded, ‘in the toilet.'

‘What's in it for you?' asked Maddy, suspiciously thinking of his barnacled balls. ‘Some kind of sexual keel-haul?'

The skipper winked. ‘A bottle of whisky at the other end,' he said breezily.

‘I don't even know why we're having this discussion. Like I said, you've lost the plot, Gillian. Senile dementia's set in. There's no frigging way I'm going to sea, got it?'

‘Dah-ling, I may have a grey pube, but
you're
stupid and I can pluck.'

‘I have a baby! You can't take a baby to sea. It may have escaped your notice, Gillian, but sailors and babies, you know, they don't have a lot in common.'

Jack was holding his bottle skyward, like a triumphant trombonist, improvising a silent rift. He dropped the bottle, belched magnificently, then plunged unceremoniously into sleep.

The captain grinned. ‘Hey, my type of guy,' he said.

Maddy tried another conversational tack. ‘But I don't want to leave England. I love England.'

The Skipper's forehead creased incredulously. ‘Come again?'

‘I do! The beautiful buildings, the leafy squares, Dickens and Doctor Johnson. The quirky little umbrella shops and ornate little theatres and—'

‘England's the reason God invented the Greenhouse Effect,' Skip philosophized. ‘This sucker's gunna sink.'

‘To be tired of London,' Maddy parroted, undaunted, ‘is to be tired of—'

‘—Traffic jams, dog shit, water-logged leggings, the Hammersmith flyover, the haughty, child-hating, class riddenness,' Gillian surmised. ‘Thanks to the Luftwaffe, the London you colonials talk about, the architectural genius of Wren and Nash, has been trans-bloody-mogrified into an arid waste of tower blocks full of people who end up in documentaries about chain-smoking.' She shuddered.

‘OK,' Maddy conceded, ‘but Hitler didn't do anything to the people. Your dry wit. Your self-deprecating sense of humour.'

‘Crikey, the English have so little
joi de vivre
,' intellectualized their cavalier host, ‘they ain't even got their own word for it.'

‘Who asked you?' hollered Maddy. ‘I didn't know your testicles vibrated in French also, Jeez.'

‘I can't see that there's a choice.' The captain knotted his nut-brown hands behind his head and leaned back on his digital pillow. ‘A bunch of perfidious Poms or a—'

‘—Rod-walloper like you,' added Maddy sourly.
Perfidious?
Cripes. These were the best-read testicles she'd ever encountered.

‘Well, make up your mind.' Skip pushed up on to his undone docksidered feet. ‘We're throwing the strings off now-ish.'

Maddy got up also. She made for the deck. At the top of the stairs, as the cold hit, Jack's little body went rigid. He let out a wail with the audial appeal of a guitar solo by Sid Vicious.

‘You see? Can you imagine
that
for three whole weeks?' Maddy justified, tossing the comment back down the stairs.

Skip shrugged. ‘You'd cry too if you only came up to beer-gut level on adults; had to look up people's nostrils all day; couldn't speak the local lingo and were financially dependent on a moronic mother who doesn't know when she's being given the break of a bloody lifetime.' His eyes were ice blue; clear but not cold. ‘From what I hear, it's your only way out.'

Gillian reached up and tugged on the cuff of Maddy's jeans. ‘I have one thought for you,' she said, succinctly. ‘
Jack and Edwina Phelps in matching mother-and-son outfits
.'

Miraculously, Maddy's head cleared in an instant. It was only three weeks, after all. From the Caribbean she could hitch another ride, south, to the Galapagos Islands, Tuamotu, Tahiti, then on home via Samoa, Fiji, New Guinea. Maybe it would be good to give her enemies some latitude. The truth was that a birth, a
broken
heart, and a nervous breakdown or ten had left her too drained to go against the tide. She retraced her steps into the galley. ‘What about you?' Maddy seized Gillian's arm. ‘You're coming too?'

Gillian cringed, breaking free. ‘In, out, in, out, all night.'

‘Who?' Maddy asked.

‘The
sea
. In, out, in, out, that's all it does, dah-ling. When I met Skip, we went for a walk up to the cliff – do you remember, sweetie? We finally reached the wretched summit. And there was nothing there. Just
down
. And again with the in, out, in, out. Ugh.'

‘But, Gill, Australia, it's such a—' On the whole Maddy thought it best to avoid clichés with a ten-inch pole, but this was an emergency, ‘– well, such a young country. You could start all over again.'

‘No need, dah-ling. I have recently ascertained the secret of staying young.'

‘What? Sperm facials?'

‘Lie about your age.'

Leaving Jack toe-sucking on a berth (according to Gillian, since he was Maddy's progeny, a pre-disposition to putting his foot in his mouth was only to be expected) the two women returned to Gillian's overflowing car.

‘Now, don't forget to keep up the flash cards,' fretted Gillian, trotting after Maddy. ‘And don't de-gunk his ears with Q-tips; you can perforate the drum and—'

‘Stop! As far as motherhood's concerned, I've amputated the old Guilt Gland, okay?' In a daze, Maddy selected essentials – bottles, nappies, rattles, rusks, enough powdered milk to sink a battleship – an image she briskly discarded.

‘Oh. Well, just don't amputate it too quickly. You've got a hazardous journey coming up.' Gillian fussed, the confidence sapping from her voice. ‘Wean yourself slowly. Only one neurosis at a time, dah-ling. Promise?'

They were facing each other, beside the Baretti. An uncomfortable self-consciousness stole over the old friends.

‘Hey, um, I didn't mean it. What I said about the jeans.'

‘I didn't mean what I said about you being stupid. Or a hopeless mother.'

‘Yeah, I mean, Mowgli survived, right?'

‘Exactly, dah-ling. Azaria is probably out there somewhere right now, being brought up by dingoes.'

It was more of a collision than a kiss.

‘Are you sure?' asked Maddy, staunchly, one foot on the rung.

‘Dah-ling,' – Gillian slapped her abdomen – ‘I have a battery-farm to run.' Though waving exuberantly, Gillian hurriedly shoved on a pair of designer sunglasses; not exactly requisite clobber for an English midwinter at ten below.

Maddy ascended. She did not look back. Slipping
below
decks, she gave a very good impression of a duck's back.

In the unlikely event of a conscientious Customs officer boarding to check the bonded stores, the captain stowed Maddy and Jack in the engine room until they cleared port. It smelled of salt, fish heads and diesel fuel which throbbed through the engines like blood in a temple. Soothed by the motorized pulse, Jack suckled contentedly. Maddy curled around him like a mother cat. They dozed, Cleopatraed in milk, until the Skipper appeared with the all-clear.

On the bridge they sat in silence, watching the lights of Maddy's beloved England fade. Skip pulled off a hunk of bread, slathered it in butter and strawberry jam, dipped the crust in piping hot tea and handed it to Maddy. She realized with a twinge that she hadn't eaten in twenty-four hours and hoed in with relish. Improvising a little party, Skip poured a nip of whisky into the purple plastic top of Jack's bottle.

‘Ah,' he exclaimed, post swig. ‘Like angels pissing on yer tonsils. Go on,' he urged, offering her the plastic vessel. ‘You could get work in the Caribbean,' he suggested. ‘Or hitch a ride south. I've got a mate heading down through Micronesia.'

‘Maybe I'll work a little first.' She caught her breath as she briefly espied Alex's roguish, impudent expression echoed in Jack's sweet face.

‘A career and family juggler, eh?'

Maddy looked again and it was gone. ‘Yeah. Do tend to drop a lot of hubbies, though.'

Skip shrugged. ‘Baby kangaroos live in single-parent homes and they're pretty okay. Unless you miss the bastard, that is.'

‘Miss him?' snapped Maddy, defensively. ‘I'm as nostalgic about Alex as I am about the stitches in my perineum. I fell in love with a man with a high IQ,' she found herself confessing, ‘but no brains – you know?'

Skip fiddled with instruments and logged charts before handing her another nip of whisky. ‘Gillian didn't tell me much and I'm not stickin' me nose in, but it's taken a lot of guts what you've been through.'

Maddy felt liquidized by exhaustion. With Jack nestled in her arms she sank back, the leather up-holstery signing. ‘Not really.'

‘Don't reckon I could have done it. Mind you, I was gunna get me ear pierced, but I squibbed it.'

‘Why?'

‘The pain! Haven't been to the dentist for twenty years.'

‘Er. Remind me not to tongue kiss
you
then.'

‘Well, if you
do
, check my upper left molar, would ya?'

Maddy laughed warmly. Jack, his four hair strands combed horizontally over his head in a fashion favoured by gerontophile newsreaders, was giving her a funny look; the look her father used to give her if she was wearing too much lipstick. But Jack had no competition. The only grand passion in Maddy's mind
was
between her and her small son. She touched his angelic little face, amazed. She kissed his warm head, over and over. Jack babbled back at her. She didn't know what he was saying, but he was talking in exclamation marks, punctuated with peals of silver laughter. Maddy felt a tremendous joy squeeze into her bone marrow. She knew then that this was the greatest love affair she'd ever have. For life. Unconditional . . . Although, on second thoughts, there
were
a few conditions: no more nursery rhymes dipped in disinfectant, crèche courses, nor was poo ever again to be considered a decorative option.

The sails of passing boats sucked in their cheeks to the wind. Water lapped at the bow like a cat. Take Two on the convict scenario, thought Maddy. Just like her ancestors two hundred years before, she too was making an inglorious, aquatic exit from the Motherland. England had lured her; a geographic love letter, unscrolling from Jane Austen to Vita Sackville-West; from John Donne to Alexander Drake. And Jack was its precious postscript. This was the Motherland which mattered to her now. The trouble was, she'd believed a sanctified, disinfected myth of the Perfect Mother. She'd climbed – no, pole-vaulted on to that pedestal. But like anything on a pedestal, real life flows on past, leaving you lonely, exposed, and covered in bird shit.

England was groaning beneath weighty statues of mouldy old Admirals and long-forgotten prime
ministers
. What Maddy wanted to see were statues to ‘The Unknown Soldier – a Mother of Five'. She wanted an inscription which read ‘A Toddler
and
a Day Job'.

On and on bishops and cabinet ministers droned about Traditional Family Values. But Maddy couldn't actually remember ever experiencing them. Not on the poverty-stricken estates. Not with the Stepford Mums in the Mother and Baby Groups. Not amongst the boarding-school-bred, nanny-dependent middle classes. The truth was that the ‘traditional family' was nothing more than a psychological theme park which politicians and Baby Book gurus visited occasionally, but in which nobody actually lived. Bloody hell, mused Maddy, uneasily, that sounded almost wise. Wisdom. Huh! She slurped at her whisky. Wisdom was the bikini Fate gave you, post-birth, when you had stretch marks, cellulite and acres of thunder thighs.