The Boat (21 page)

‘Hot spots?’ Annie asked.

‘The parts of your body that are burning with heat,’ Clem said.

‘What parts?’ Annie asked. She was being flirtatious; they all knew it. Clem locked eyes with Johnny and he smiled at her, genuinely. She slowly took out her thumb and placed her fingertips on Annie’s temple.

‘See? Your temple is warm. It’s always warm, by the way. That’s why it’s a hotspot.’

‘What a sensualist you are,’ Frank said to her, dealing the cards slowly and deliberately. Johnny knew what was coming now. He could feel the electricity in the air. There was something alarming about it and yet intoxicating, irresistible. His body felt it first: a tingling in his groin. His brain had to play catch up. Moment to moment.

‘I like it,’ Annie said, placing her fingertips on Clem’s temple. She always seemed to be the instigator and before Johnny knew it, there was only one thing on his mind. Clem surprised him; she was so able, so confident. She could turn it on so easily. He watched her and Annie touching each other’s faces, softly, tenderly, with their fingertips. Frank had put down his cards and leant back, one arm on the couch behind Johnny, who, for want of something to do, pretended to study his cards; he wanted to delay the sexual game a little, to eke it out and prolong the excitement. He raised his glass to his lips and drank slowly, snatching a look at the girls.

‘The best one…’ Clem said, meeting his eye, making sure he was up for it. ‘… is this,’ she said. He watched her undo the top two buttons of Annie’s shirt and slip her hand on to the far side of Annie’s breast, almost under her armpit. He was hard now.

He felt Frank’s hand behind him, down the back of the cushion; he could feel his fingers brush against the base of his back and was unsure whether it was deliberate or not. He preferred not to know. His eyes were fixed on Annie’s breast where Clem’s fingers were, his breathing getting high and shallow; he didn’t want Frank to remove his hand. Glancing down he could see that Frank was hard too. He could feel the sex in the air. He looked down at his cards open in his hand. Shit, what a time to get the two of diamonds.

‘You have to shut your eyes,’ Clem said to Annie.

‘Oh, yes. I can feel it,’ Annie said. Johnny could actually see her tits now, through the open shirt. ‘Let me feel yours,’ Annie said, taking the reins from Clem, leading the dance, opening her eyes, not waiting for a response, undoing the buttons of Clem’s shirt. Clem looked over at Johnny again as Annie slid her hand inside and then shuffled back slightly and bent down to take Clem’s brown nipple in her mouth, sucking at it gently. Johnny laid his cards flat on the table, abandoning all thoughts of the two of diamonds. He watched them sucking at each other and wanted to undo his flies and get out his cock without moving away from the touch of Frank’s hand.

Johnny jumped when he heard the cry. It was brief but high-pitched coming from the forepeak. He’d completely forgotten about Smudge, the fact that they had a child asleep next door. The cry killed the atmosphere immediately. He felt his prick softening. How could he have forgotten she was there? He sat upright, brushing himself down, glad he hadn’t undone his flies. But no one else seemed to have heard her, not even Frank, who was closest to the door. Then Smudge cried out again, louder this time, and Clem heard; she pulled herself away from Annie and started quickly doing up her shirt.

‘Frank! Smudge is awake,’ Johnny said, nudging him on the leg and looking over at Annie, who was making no attempt to do up her shirt. Her breasts were out, her eyes on her husband. Frank cocked his head listening out for Smudge and slowly he withdrew his arm from behind Johnny and pulled himself upright. Johnny knew then that his hand had been there deliberately.

But nobody went to Smudge. Frank sighed, pulled the cork out of a new bottle and refilled their glasses. He turned to look at Johnny and said, ‘Just as we were getting started.’

‘Lucky we heard her,’ Johnny replied, reaching for his tobacco. ‘There might have been some explaining to do.’

‘You don’t need to worry about Smudge,’ Frank said, his face losing its flush as he rolled the soft packet of cigarettes backwards and forwards in his hand. ‘She’s used to all this,’ he said, his other hand waving across the table to including the cards, the booze, the sex, everything.

‘What, just debauchery in general?’ Johnny said as he sat back against the cushions, wondering whether they would be playing cards again but not wanting to appear too keen because then everybody would know that he had the two of diamonds. Smudge cried out again, a sleepy, dreamy moan as if she was going back to sleep now. Still nobody went to her.

Frank caught a cigarette in his lips. He chucked down the lighter and it slid silently across the table. ‘It’s a small boat,’ he said scrutinizing Johnny’s face.

‘Yup,’ Johnny said. ‘Not a lot of privacy for nooky-making.’

‘That’s right,’ he said, taking a tip-glowing suck. ‘Besides, she doesn’t like to be left out of all the fun.’ He tapped his non-existent ash into the ashtray, smiling as he did so. ‘Who does?’

Frank blew the smoke out from the corner of his mouth in a steady stream and Johnny watched it slip out through the hatch above their heads. Both Annie and Clem picked up their cards. Then slowly Frank raised his hand and put his arm around Johnny, resting his hand on the back of his neck, cupping him gently, those warm, tipless fingers against his skin, their faces close. Frank’s pupils were indistinguishable from his iris, like two black holes.

‘Fate brought you to me, Johnny. Like attracts like. This is no coincidence that you should come to us now, right at this moment in time.’

An uncomfortable silence filled the saloon. Johnny swallowed. His throat was dry and rough. ‘What moment in time?’ he asked.

Behind Frank, the forecabin door creaked open and they all turned to look. A very sleepy Smudge stood there naked beneath her Captain Hook coat, rubbing her eyes, her skew-whiff fringe standing upright, Gilla dangling from her arm. Frank let go of Johnny’s neck and slowly leant forwards and picked up his daughter and sat her on his lap. She leant against her father, mumbling sleepily. Johnny stared at them, watching the caress of those tipless fingers against her skin. Not a moment before he had wanted that touch on his own flesh.

Something wasn’t right. He felt a chill enter the saloon. It slipped beneath his skin and stole across his flesh making all the hairs on his body stand on end.

He looked across at Clem. She was sorting out her hand of cards, oblivious to anything else. He looked over at Annie and she was looking right back at him, her eyes flicking from Frank’s hands to Johnny’s face. She knew what he was thinking; he swore he saw a kind of thrill in her eye. He wanted to say something but his tongue lay heavy in his mouth while the rest of his body began to take on a weightlessness – he had the strange sensation that he was floating above the table, out of the saloon, that he was leaving, going somewhere else, the connections inside him closing down like lights going out in a building, leaving him fumbling around in the darkness. An unprecedented claustrophobia had taken hold of him; the sides of the boat were caving in on him. He felt nauseous, as if he was falling downwards from a great height. He had to get out of here. He stumbled to his feet, knocking the abandoned cards off the table, watching as the two of diamonds floated down to the floor. He turned, mumbling something about ‘air’ and made his way up the steps out into the pitch blackness of the night. He shut the companionway doors behind him and snatched lungfuls of the cold night. He looked out but saw nothing: 360 degrees of darkness. They were in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

He staggered blindly out of the cockpit and down the deck to the bows, hanging on to the forestay, still reeling, feeling as if he had just had the shit kicked out of him. He blinked, his eyes trying to adjust to the darkness. They were moored about two hundred yards out in the heart of a small bay surrounded on three sides by mountains. He could just make out strips of starlight over the water on the horizon and he wanted more than anything to be over there, off this boat. He sat down, back to the mast, hanging his head in his hands, trying to sort his head out as the air spun about him. Frank was a good man, an exceptional man, a man full of worthy longings, a man whose spirit soared higher than other men’s, whose mind dug deeper, a man who saw through things, a truth-seeker, a philosopher, a lover of mankind; he was blessed, he had touched Johnny in a way no other human being ever had; he had opened him up and turned him on to the world, taught him to look at it, to accept instead of struggle. Johnny’s gratitude had known no bounds; he would have done anything for him – he
had
done anything: he had given him his most beloved gift – Clemency Bailey. Johnny thought of him like a father, like a teacher, had even wanted him like a lover. But now the only impresion he had in his head was of Frank’s fingers kneading Smudge’s thigh.
My daddy should be locked up and they should throw away the key.

He pressed the back of his head hard against the mast until his neck hurt, needing to feel some physical pain, needing to press the thoughts out of his mind; he clenched his fists into his middle, feeling a sickness sitting in his stomach like a stone.

He heard the companionway doors opening and turned to see Clem looking around for him, cupping her eyes, trying to block out the light from inside.
They
were spoilt; everything was tarnished; their love, she and he, it had all been tainted by him. She walked slowly down the deck towards him, pulling her cardigan tight around her body.

‘I couldn’t see you. You OK, Hoody?’ she said, crouching down at his side, her hand on his thigh. He couldn’t say anything; he didn’t know what to say, how to express himself.

‘I thought you wanted to…’ she said, getting it all wrong. ‘I thought it was all right.’

‘We have to get off the boat,’ he said, wiping his mouth.

‘We will, as soon as we find somewhere.’

‘I really need us to get off the boat,’ he said and she heard his desperation. He wanted to get in the dinghy and row right now. He didn’t care where. He’d rather stumble around on the land than be here.

‘I know,’ she said. But she didn’t. She didn’t know anything. She was ignorant and innocent and he wanted her to stay that way. There she was with her hand on his thigh, touching, together, but he felt miles away from her. He had to try and close the gap, to explain himself, but words fell short.

‘I think something’s going on’ he whispered. She turned her head and looked him the eye.

She was, shaking her head, wanting to understand. ‘What do you mean?’

What
did
he mean? He could feel her eyes burning into him, waiting for him to explain himself. He had to calm down. He looked up at the stars softly twinkling over there on the edge of the world and he wiped his mouth carefully. He’d try a different tack. ‘What did you think of Smudge’s dance today?’ he asked.

She looked at him, puzzled by the change of subject. ‘What do you mean,
what did I think of it
?’

‘What did you think?’

‘It was funny.’

‘Yes. That’s what I thought,’ he said, looking back out into the darkness. ‘But I don’t think we should have been laughing.’

‘Why not?’

He turned to her. ‘I don’t trust Frank.’

She stared at him for a moment and then she blew out her disdain in a sigh. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Johnny. I’m getting so sick of this.’

‘There’s something about him, Clem… I don’t want you alone with him.’

‘What!’ she said, turning on him, annoyed. ‘Why are you doing this? Why are you so jealous? It’s just so boring.’

It was horrible to see her look at him that way; there was no love there at all. She wrapped the cardigan tight around herself again. ‘I thought you were bigger than that,’ she said and he heard the disappointment in her voice. ‘I didn’t think you’d be so… so…’ She couldn’t find the right word, but whatever word she looking for had a bad taste, he could see that. ‘… small-minded.’

She got up without even looking at him, shooing him away with her hands and he watched her go back down the deck.
Small-minded.
He really hoped that she was right, that the only problem was his small-mindedness. He peered through the saloon hatch and caught glimpses of Annie and Frank moving about inside, putting away the table, Clem joining them, picking up the fallen cards,and carrying on just the same as they always had. He stayed up there, watching the sky for hours, waiting and thinking, listening to the wolves over on the mountains howling into the darkness. He kept his eyes on the horizon waiting for their only salvation: wind. He listened to the waves. Every now and then an impotent anger churned about inside him, rose up and then subsided in a fog of confusion. At one stage he saw the port lights of a boat crossing the horizon and he wondered who was in it, what they were doing, what they were thinking. He envied them their everyday worries. The night seemed eternal, as if the sun was refusing to shine on the
Little Utopia.
But at some hour the wolves stopped their howling and the fingers of dawn crept slowly across the sky giving colour to the world, to the deserted, scrubby, mountainous backdrop behind, yet he could see no beauty in it. But with the light it seemed that all the demons of the night scurried away back into the darkness and he wondered whether the sea madness had started to get to him.

Johnny had not thought he would sleep but evidently he had. Someone had put a sleeping bag over him, a tender gesture he appreciated, whoever it was. He had a moment’s calm before the shameful thoughts slunk into his mind, like sewage into the open sea. The certainties of last night had lost their edge, were now just fuzzy, indistinguishable shapes. In the glaring light of day they seemed absurd. He sat up and looked over the flat, windless water at the white-gold morning sun, pulling the bag around his shoulders.

All he and Clem had to do was get off the boat and everything would be fine. They would come across a village or a town, maybe even today, and there they could say farewell and disembark
.
That sense of urgent panic, of need for escape that he had felt last night, had abated. It seemed ridiculous now to think of himself rowing the dinghy out into the darkness, stumbling about in the wilderness. He was going stir crazy. Clem was right. This jealousy was new and he didn’t like it. He had never felt inadequate before. He closed his eyes and felt the warmth of the sun caress his eyelids.