impossible speed, surging over the little waves and seeming barely to hold to the surface. His hands on either side were gripping the bench so hard his fingers had begun to ache. Delahaye, satisfied that everything was set just so, pushed past him, going towards the back of the boat, and Davy caught his smell: salt, sweat, aftershave, and something else, something sharp, sour, bitter. He sat down at the tiller and Davy turned on the seat to face him. The peak of Delahaye’s cap still hid his eyes. What was he thinking? Davy was suddenly afraid of more than the sea.
What was the point of sailing? Davy did not know, and had never dared to inquire. Sailing, doing things in boats, was as natural as walking among the Delahayes. The Delahaye twins, Jonas and James, were champion yachtsmen, and had trophies to prove it; one year they had crewed on some millionaire’s boat in the America’s Cup. Even their Aunt Maggie was an expert sailor. Davy’s father had tried to get Davy interested, and Davy had done his best, but it was no good; he could not overcome his aversion to that uncanny, treacherous realm, the main aim of which, as far as he was concerned, was to drag him under and drown him.
“You all right?” Delahaye growled, startling him. He nodded, trying to smile. He still could not see Delahaye’s eyes under the peak of his cap but he knew he was watching him. What, what was he thinking?
Davy looked back; the land behind them now was a featureless dark line. Where were they going? The horizon in front was empty. They were headed south, there would be no land now until-what? — Spain? Surely there would be a marker, a buoy or something, to tell them where they should turn around and start back. But on they went, and with every mile-every league? — they traveled the sea deepened under them; he thought of it, the coastal shelf falling away steadily into silence and utter dark. He shut his eyes again, and again felt dizzy.
Delahaye was saying something about Davy’s mother. “Did you see her, this morning, before we left?”
Davy did not know how to reply. It sounded like a trick question, but what could the trick be? “Yes,” he said warily, “yes, I saw her. She made breakfast for me.” Queasily he conjured up again the rashers of bacon, the fried bread, the egg yolk leaking across the plate. His eyes closed this time of their own accord. His mind swam.
“Good,” Delahaye said. “That’s good.”
Davy waited, but that seemed to be the end of the subject of his mother. He looked behind again at that thinning line of land. Should he suggest turning back? Should he say he had an arrangement to meet someone? It was half past ten. He could say he had an appointment, a date, at half eleven. But even as he heard himself say it in his head, it sounded wholly implausible. Yet they could not just keep going like this, towards that bare horizon- could they?
“Do you talk to your father?” Delahaye asked suddenly. “Do you and he… discuss things?”
Again Davy was baffled. What new line was this, and where was it headed? “We have a pint together, now and then,” he said.
Delahaye made a dismissive grimace. “No, I mean, do you talk? Do you tell him about your life, what you’re doing, what your plans are, that kind of thing?”
“Not really, no.” Despite the cool breeze in his face, Davy realized he had begun to sweat, and he could feel the dampness at his wrists and between his shoulder blades. “My old man and I, we’re not…” He did not know how to finish.
Delahaye pondered, nodding slowly. “No,” he said, “fathers and sons, they don’t really talk, do they. I don’t talk to the boys, the twins, not much, anyway. I did when they were young, but now…” With the hand that was not holding the tiller he fumbled a packet of Churchman’s from a pocket of his slacks and got one into his mouth but did not attempt to light it. Davy wished he could see his eyes; there was the glint of them there, under the cap’s peak, but it was impossible to guess at their expression. “My father in his day didn’t talk much to me,” Delahaye went on. He chuckled grimly. “And these days, of course, we don’t talk at all.”
There were two white birds now, diving for fish; they would fly up steeply in a fluttering, corkscrew motion and then flip themselves over and draw back their wings and drop like blades, making hardly a splash as they entered the water.
Davy made a show of consulting his watch. “I wonder-” he began, but Delahaye was not listening and interrupted him.
“He was a great one for self-reliance, my father,” he said. “Self-reliance and loyalty. A man is not much if he can’t depend on himself, he used to say, and nothing if others can’t depend on him.” He took the unlit cigarette from his mouth and rolled it between his fingers. “I remember one day he took me into town in the car. I was-oh, I don’t know-six? seven? Young anyway. We were living in Rathfarnham then. He drove all the way across the city, out to Phibsborough, or Cabra, somewhere like that, and stopped at a corner shop and sent me in to buy an ice cream for myself. I don’t think I’d ever been in a shop on my own before.” He was leaning on the tiller now, relaxed, it seemed, and smiling thinly to himself, remembering. “Anyway, he gave me the money and I went in and bought a wafer of ice cream-you know, a penny wafer? — and when I came out he was gone. Just-gone. No father, no car, nothing.”
He stopped, and there was silence save for the beating of the waves against the prow and the shrieking of the seabirds. Davy waited. “What did you do?”
Again Delahaye seemed not to be listening. He tossed the cigarette backwards over his shoulder and the churning wake swallowed it. “Funny feeling, I remember it, as if the bottom had fallen out of my stomach, my heart thumping. I must have stood there for a long time, outside the shop, rooted to the spot, because the next thing I was aware of was the ice cream dripping on the toe of my sandal. I can see it still, that corner, the curb painted in black and white segments and a hardware shop across the road. Strange thing is, I didn’t cry. I went back into the shop and told the shopkeeper my daddy had gone away and left me. The shopkeeper went out to the back and fetched his wife, a big fat woman in an apron. They sat me up on the counter where they could get a good look at me, to see if I was fibbing, I suppose. The woman took what was left of the ice cream from me and wiped my hands with a damp cloth, and the shopkeeper gave me a barley-sugar sweet. I could see them looking at each other, not knowing what to do.” He shook his head and chuckled again. “I can still taste it, that sweet.”
When Davy tried to speak, his voice did not work the first time and he had to clear his throat and start again. “What happened?” he asked. “I mean-did he come back for you?”
Delahaye shrugged. “Of course. It seemed like hours to me but I suppose it was no more than ten or fifteen minutes.”
“Where had he been? — where had he gone to?”
“Just round the corner. He took the shopkeeper aside and spoke to him, and gave him a pound. The woman looked as if she was going to spit on him, and marched back in behind the shop where she had come from and slammed the door. Then we went home. Here, take the tiller, will you?”
He stood up and they exchanged places. The arm of the tiller was damply warm where Delahaye had held it. Davy’s palm was wet. He was still sweating, but he was cold, too, in his shirt, and wished he had brought a windbreaker. It struck him with renewed force how absurd a thing it was to be out here, skimming over God knew how many fathoms. And people sailed for fun and recreation!
Delahaye was gathering in the sails, first the smaller one at the front and then the bigger one. “Self-reliance, you see,” he said, “a lesson in self-reliance. You got a sweet out of it, didn’t you? was all my father said. And I bet the woman was all over you. And you didn’t cry. That was the most important thing-that I didn’t cry.” He had folded the big sail expertly and was lashing it now to the horizontal part of the mast with salt-bleached cord. The boat faltered and seemed puzzled as it felt itself losing momentum, and dipped its nose and settled back with a sort of sigh, wallowing in the water, and for a second or two all sense of direction failed and the sea around them seemed to spin crazily on its axis. The sudden hush set up a buzz in Davy’s ears. Delahaye, wiping his hands on his trousers, sat down on a big oak trunk set lengthways down the middle of the boat and leaned his back against the mast. He seemed weary suddenly, and lifted his cap to air his skull and then put it back on again, but not so low over his eyes as before. “What I couldn’t help wondering, even at the time, was: where did loyalty figure in this lesson I had been taught?” He looked directly at Davy now with an odd, questioning candor. “What do you think?”
Davy’s fingers tightened on the tiller. “About what?”
“Loyalty. You’re a Clancy, you must know about loyalty-eh? Or the lack of it, at least.” His eyes were of a curious glittering gray color, like chips of flint. Davy could not hold their steady gaze, and looked away. “Come on, Davy,” Delahaye said softly, almost cajolingly. “Let’s have your thoughts on this important topic.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Davy said. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
Delahaye was silent for a long moment, then nodded, as if something had been confirmed. He stood up from
