‘My hero,’ said Sally.
Gaskell went into the cabin and looked in the cupboard by the stove. ‘And another thing. We’ve got a food problem. And water. There’s not much left.’
‘You got us into this mess. You think of a way out,’ said Sally.
Gaskell sat down on the bunk and tried to think. There had to be some way of letting people know they were there and in trouble. They couldn’t be far from land. For all he knew dry land was just the other side of the reeds. He went out and climbed on top of the cabin but apart from the church spire in the distance he could see nothing beyond the reeds. Perhaps they got a piece of cloth and waved it someone would spot it. He went down and fetched a pillow case and spent twenty minutes waving it above his head and shouting. Then he returned to the cabin and got out the chart and pored over it in a vain attempt to discover where they were. He was just folding the map up when he spotted the pieces of Scrabble still lying on the table. Letters. Individual letters. Now if they had something that would float up in the air with letters on it. Like a kite. Gaskell considered ways of making a kite and gave it up. Perhaps the best thing after all was to make smoke signals. He fetched an empty can from the kitchen and filled it with fuel oil from beside the engine and soaked a handkerchief in it and clambered up on the cabin roof. He lit the handkerchief and tried to get the oil to burn but when it did there was very little smoke and the tin got too hot to hold. Gaskell kicked it into the water where it fizzled out.
‘Genius baby.’ said Sally, ‘you’re the greatest.’
‘Yea, well if you can think of something practical let me know.’
‘Try swimming.’
‘Try drowning’, said Gaskell.
‘You could make a raft or something.’
‘I could hack this boat of Scheimacher’s up. That’s all we need.’
‘I saw a movie once where there were these gauchos or Romans or something and they came to a river and wanted to cross and they used pigs’ bladders.’ said Sally.
‘Right now all we don’t have is a pig,’ said Gaskell.
‘You could use the garbage bags in the kitchen,’ said Sally. Gaskell fetched a plastic bag and blew it up and tied the end with string. Then he squeezed it. The bag went down.
Gaskell sat down despondently. There had to be some simple way of attracting attention and he certainly didn’t want to swim out across that dark water clutching an inflated garbage bag. He fiddled with the pieces of Scrabble and thought again about kites. Or balloons. Balloons.
‘You got those rubbers you use?’ be asked suddenly.
‘Jesus at a time like this you get a hard on,’ said Sally. ‘Forget sex. Think of some way of getting us off here’
‘I have,’ said Gaskell, ‘I want those skins.’
‘You going to float downriver on a pontoon of condoms?’
‘Balloons,’ said Gaskell. ‘We blow them up and paint letters on them and float them in the wind.’
‘Genius baby.’ said Sally and went into the toilet. She came out with a sponge bag. ‘Here they are. For a moment there I thought you wanted me’
‘Days of wine and roses,’ said Gaskell, ‘are over. Remind me to divorce you.’ He tore a packet open and blew a contraceptive up and tied a knot in its end.
‘On what grounds?’
‘Like you’re a lesbian,’ said Gaskell and held up the dildo. ‘This and kleptomania and the habit you have of putting other men in dolls and knotting them. You name it, I’ll use it. Like you’re a nymphomaniac.’
