something that was nearly an orgasm, she shouted and retched and kicked. Felt coldness close instantly over her head, screamed and fought for air.
And there were voices ahead, a confusion of sounds and orders; the shape of the Boat changing again as she turned back into the wind.
There were hands on her shoulders and arms; something grabbed in her dress, the fabric tore, she went under again gulping at the sea. She wallowed, centred in a confusion of grey and black, white of foam, glaring red. Was hauled out thrashing, landed on a sloping deck, lay feeling beneath her opened mouth the smoothness of wood. The voices surged round her, seeming like the lap and splash of the sea to retreat and advance. ‘That one…’
‘Bloody fisher-girl…’
The words roared quite unnecessarily in her ear, receded in their turn. She stayed still, panting; water ran from her; she sensed, six feet beneath, the grey sliding of the sea. She lay quiet, numbly, knowing she had done a terrible thing.
They fetched her a blanket, muffled her in it. She sat up and coughed more water, hearing ropes creak, the slide and slap of waves. Her mind seemed still dissociated from her body, a cool grey thing that had watched the other Becky spit and drown. She was aware vaguely of questions; she clutched the rough cloth across her throat and shook her head, angry now with herself and the people round her. The movement started a spinning sickness; she was aware of being lifted, caught a last glimpse of the black land-streak miles off as the boat heeled to the wind. One foot caught the side of the hatch as they lowered her; the pain jarred to her brain, ebbed. She was aware of a maze of images, disconnected; white planking above her head, hands working at the blanket and her dress. She frowned and mumbled, trying to collect her thoughts; but the impressions faded, one by one, into greyness and silence.
She lay quiet, cocooned in blankets, unwilling to open her eyes. Soon she would have to move, go down and rake the stove to life, set the pots of gruel simmering and bubbling for breakfast. The house rolled faintly and incongruously, shivering like a live thing; across beneath the eaves ran the chuckling slap of water. The dream- image persisted, stubbornly refusing to fade. She moved her head on the pillow, rubbing and grumbling, fought a hand free to touch hair still sticky with salt. The fingers moved back down, discovering nakedness. That in itself was a sin, to tumble into bed unclothed. She grunted and snuggled, defeating the dream with sleep.
The water made a thousand noises in the cabin. Rippling and laughing, strumming, smacking against the side of White Boat. Becky’s eyes popped open again, in sudden alarm. With waking came remembrance, and a clawing panic. She shot upright; her head thumped against the decking two feet above. She rubbed dazedly, seeing the sun reflections play across the low roof, the bursts and tinkles and momentary skeins of light. The cabin was in subtle motion, leaning; she saw a bright yellow oilskin sway gently, at an angle from the upright on which it hung. Perspectives seemed wrong; she was pressed against a six-inch wooden board that served to stop her rolling from the bunk. The boy was watching her, holding easily to a stanchion. The eyes above the tangle of beard were bright and keen, and he was laughing. ‘Get your things on,’ he said. ‘Skipper wants to see you. Come up on deck. You all right now?’ She stared at him, wild-eyed. ‘You’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘Just get dressed. It’ll be all right.’ She knew then the dream or nightmare was true.
Tiny things confused her. The latches that held the bunk board, she had to grope and push and still they wouldn’t come undone. She swung her legs experimentally. Air rushed at her body; she scrabbled at the blankets, came out with a thump, took a fall, lost the blankets again. There were clothes left for her, jeans and an old sweater. She grabbed for them, panting. Her fingers refused to obey her, slipping and trembling; it seemed an age before she could force her legs into the trews.
The companionway twitched aside to land her among pots and pans. She clung to the steps, countering the great lean of the boat, pulled herself up to be dazed by sunlight. And there was no land. Just a smudge, impossibly far off across the racing green of the sea. She winced, screwing her eyes; the boy who had spoken to her helped her again. The skipper sat immobile, carved it seemed from buttercup-yellow oilskin, thin face and grey eyes watching past her along the deck of the Boat. Above him was the huge steady curving of the sails; behind the crew, slinging in the stern, watching her bold-eyed. She saw bearded mouths grinning, dropped her eyes, twisted her fingers on her lap. Before these people she was nearly dumb. She sat still, watching her ringers twine and move, conscious of the nearness of the water, the huge speed of the boat. The conversation was unsatisfactory, Skipper watching down at the compass, one arm curled easy along the tiller, listening, it seemed with only the smallest part of his mind. The faces grinned, sea-lit and uncaring. She had jammed herself into their lives; they should have hated her for it but they were laughing. She wanted to be dead. She was crying.
Somebody had an arm round her shoulders. She noticed she was shivering; they fetched an oilskin, wrestled her into it. She felt the hard collar scumble her hair, scratch at her ears. She must go with them, they couldn’t turn back; that much she understood. That was what she had wanted most, a lifetime ago. Now she wanted her father’s kitchen, her own room again. Shipbound, caught in their tightly male and ordered world, she was useless. Their indifference brought the welling angry tears; their kindness stung.
She tried to help, in the little galley, but even the meals they made were strange; there were complications, nuances, relishes she had never seen. White Boat defeated her. She crawled forward, away from the rest, clung to the root of the mast with one arm round the metal hearing the tall halyards slap and bang, seeing the bows fall and rise and punch at the sea. Diamond-hard spray blew back; her feet, bare on the deck, chilled almost at once. The cold reached through the oilskin; soon she was shivering as each cloud shadow eclipsed the boat, darkened the milk green of the sea. The dream was gone, blown away by the wind; White Boat was a hard thing, brutal and huge, smashing at the water. She could work her father’s little cockleshell through the tides and currents of the coast; here she was awkward and in the way. A dozen times she moved desperately as the crew ran to handle the complication of ropes. The calls reached her dimly, stand by to go about, let the sheets fly; then the thundering of the jib, scuffle of feet on planking as White Boat surged onto each new tack. Changed the angle of her decking and the flying sun and cloud shadows, the stinging attack of the spray. The horizon became a new hill, slanting away and up; Becky looked into racing water where before she had seen the sky.
They sent her food but she refused it, setting her mouth. She was sulking; and worse, she felt ill. She needed cottage and bay now with a new urgency, an almost ecstatic longing for solidness, for things that didn’t roll and move. But these things were lost for all time; there was only the hurtling green of the water, fading now to deeper and deeper grey as the clouds grew up across the sun, the endless slap and tinkle of ropes, the misery at the churning pit of her stomach.
They offered her the helm, in the late afternoon. She refused. White Boat had been a dream; reality was killing it.
There was a little sea toilet, in a place too low to stand. She closed the lid and pumped, saw the contents flash past through the curving glass tube. The sea opened her stomach, brought up first food then chyme then glistening transparent sticky stuff that bearded her chin. She wiped and spat and worked the pump and sicked over again till the sides of her chest were a dull pain and her head throbbed in time it seemed with the thumping of the waves. The voices through the bulkhead door she remembered later, in fragments, like the recalled pieces of a dream.
‘Then we’ll do that, Skipper. Hitch a few pounds of chain to her feet, and gently over the side…’
The voice she knew. That was the boy who had helped her. The angry rising inflexion she didn’t know; that was the voice of Wales. Something unheard.
‘How can she talk, man, what does she bloody know? Just a bloody dumb kid,
see…'
‘Make up the log,’ said the skipper bitterly.
‘Don’t you see, man?’ ‘Make up the log…’ Becky leaned her head on her arms and groaned.
She couldn’t reach the bunk. She arced her body awkwardly, tried again. The blankets were delicious heaven. She huddled into them, too empty to worry about the afterscent of vomit on her clothes. Fell into a sleep shot through with vivid dreams; the face of the Christos, Father Antony like an old dried animal, mouth champing as he scolded and blessed; the church tower in the pre-dawn glow, the gargoyle ears. Then flowers dusty in a cottage garden, her mum bawling and grumbling before she died, icy feel of water round her groin, shape of White Boat fading into mist. All faint things and worries and griefs, scuttling lobsters, tar and pebbles, feel of the night sea wind, the Great Catechism torn and snatched. She moved finally into a deeper dream where it seemed the Boat herself talked to her. Her voice was rushing and immense yet chuckling and lisping and somehow coloured, blue and
