Authors: Laura Elliot
I
’m cocooned in ice
.
That’s how I feel when I stand on the deck of
Eyebright
and look outwards towards the glittering walls.
They seem unbreakable until a deep fissure sends an icy shoulder cascading into the sea.
At times I want to pinch myself.
Is this really happening?
Whales surfacing in a torrent of water?
Sea lions basking on rocks?
Magnificent white cruise liners reducing our boat to toy-like proportions?
Daveth Carew, the owner of
Eyebright
, is perfectly at ease among the shimmering ice sculptures.
He looks older than his forty-five years, his skin tanned and seamed around the eyes from squinting at new horizons.
He specialises in tours for small groups who prefer a more intimate cruise than the ones offered by those massive floating cities.
Eyebright
caters for eight people.
It’s spacious with just the three of us on board and easy to manoeuvre.
My duties are light, the boat easy to maintain.
I email and Skype the family when we dock at night.
I’ve had no contact with Jake.
Eleanor rings one morning, nighttime at home, and asks why I ran away from my children?
I suspect she’s had a glass or more of wine.
‘Jake won’t tell me anything about you,’ she says.
‘I’ve absolutely no idea what you’re doing.’
‘What’s there to tell?’
I reply.
‘One iceberg is much the same as another.’
‘An interesting observation, Nadine, but quite untrue.
Even snowflakes have unique characteristics.
This man Daveth… you’re not –’
‘No.
We’re
not
.
Goodbye Eleanor.’
Ali phones regularly and talks about Barnstormers, the drama group she joined.
Cutting edge, she says.
Avant garde and experimental.
The artistic director is amazing.
She mentions Mark Brewer too many times for objectivity and shrieks in denial when I ask if he has stolen her heart.
‘It’s nothing like that, Mum,’ she insists.
Mark Brewer is simply an inspirational director who understands the interior of her soul and how she must use it for dramatic effect.
They’re definitely in a relationship.
‘Dad sounds weird when he rings,’ she says.
‘Weird as in?’
I ask.
‘Like he’s trying to walk through quicksand.’
‘I can assure you that your father is on dry land and in no danger of sinking.’
I resist the urge to add, more’s the pity.
Brian rings to tell me that Shard have finally got their act together and have set a date for their comeback gig.
He’s curious but reluctant to probe too deeply as to why I’m staring at whales instead of selling double page spreads for
Lustrous
.
The twins continue to run around tracks and concentrate on improving their personal best.
They were born self-contained and focused.
No reason for them to change simply because their mother has run away from home and their father is snatching back his dream.
I’ll visit them in California when my Alaskan adventure is over.
This evening we’ve anchored in a small, sheltered slip in Funter Bay.
I serve dinner on deck.
Daveth eats with relish, king crab legs and halibut but Stuart is unable to finish his meal.
His complexion has a waxy sheen that worries me.
I’ve been uneasy about his health since the trip started.
Initially, I put his bouts of nausea down to seasickness.
I, too, hung over the side of
Eyebright
on a few occasions before I found my sea legs.
Any questions I ask about his health are batted away.
We’re finishing our meal when the water surges off shore and a pod of whales surface.
I grab my binoculars.
Stuart steadies his camera.
We watch their tails fanning the air before they sink again into the heaving sea.
This sight invigorates him, as if he draws strength from the sheer bulk of these enormous mammals.
His colour is better but he staggers when he stands to go to his cabin.
He steadies himself and makes his way downstairs.
I allow him time to undress then tap on his door.
He’s sitting up in bed, examining the photos in his viewfinder.
‘How are you feeling?’
I sit on the edge of his bunk and take his hand in mine.
Without his bulky jumpers he looks so much thinner.
‘I’m good,’ he replies.
‘Are you ill, Stuart?’
‘Just a bit tired.
Don’t fuss, Nadine.
I wouldn’t have undertaken this trip if I couldn’t cope with it.’
He checks the viewfinder again and shows me the photographs he’s taken since the trip started.
I understand that it’s his way of avoiding any further discussion about his health.
I respect his decision and hold back on the anxious questions.
I make my way to the deck where Daveth is relaxing with a drink.
‘Come and sit for a while.’
He hands me a bottle of beer.
‘I could do with some company.’
A boat pulls into a nearby slip.
Figures stand motionless on deck, sculpted against the serried backdrop of pines.
Like me, Daveth is worried that Stuart is finding the trip too arduous.
We’ve two more weeks at sea before we move into the lodge he’s rented.
‘Stuart says you’ve been doing these tours since you were a teenager,’ I raise the bottle and take a tentative sip.
The beer is gassy but not unpleasant.
‘On and off,’ he says.
‘I worked initially for one of the ship builders.
I built
Eyebright
after I married and have been organising these tours ever since.’
‘Does your wife ever come with you?’
‘Not anymore.’
He remains silent for a while.
I wait until he’s ready to speak.
Time seems slower here and silence is an easy companion.
‘Olga died three years ago,’ he eventually says.
‘I’m so sorry, Daveth.
I’d no idea.’
‘Why should you?’
He drains the bottle and rubs his hand across his mouth.
‘I usually keep my personal and business life separate.’
‘Thank you for telling me.’
It’s almost midnight and the sky is still bright.
Boats clang and clatter together, like they’re conversing port to starboard.
I’ve seen her photograph in the galley and had assumed she was waiting at home for his return.
A sprinkling of freckles, tanned skin, windblown brown hair, Olga Carew must have loved the outdoors.
‘We knew our time together was limited,’ he adds.
That kind of knowledge concentrates the mind.
We made every moment count.’
‘You must have wonderful memories of her.’
The wind is stronger now and adds an unearthly keen as it blows through the riggings.
I think about banshees, how they are supposed to haunt certain families at the time of death.
Anything seems possible in this raddled, icy terrain.
I wonder if he has children.
I suspect not or I would have seen their photos somewhere on the boat.
‘The blood disease she had was hereditary.’
He picks up my thoughts.
‘She didn’t want to risk passing it on to another generation so we never had children.’
He uncaps another beer and passes it me, shrugs aside the enormity of what he’s revealed.
‘Everyone has a story.
What’s yours?’
‘One marriage on the rocks and four grown-up children.’
It’s possible, it seems, to condense my life story into a single sentence.
‘You must have married young.’
‘Seventeen.’
‘That
is
young.
What made you decide to end it?’
‘What makes you think it was my decision?’
I ask.
‘I can’t imagine it was the other way around.’
He raises his bottle in a salute to me and waits in the stillness that settles between us.
I feel mildly flattered by this assumption.
But who did or did not end our marriage is no longer important.
What matters is what followed.
Lies of intent.
Lies of omission.
Daveth’s hands are blunt and strong.
I imagine them on my body, trailing, stroking, probing, the glide of his lips between my breasts.
This longing is sudden, shocking in its intensity, and gone just as fast.
I lean over the rail of
Eyebright
with its bright, fluttering bunting.
There should be room here to lance my memories.
To fling the past into the frozen depths so that it can never again reflect back at me.
Time passes.
I feel the light touch of Daveth’s hand on my back.
‘It usually happens on a trip like this,’ he says.
‘Whatever we’re running from catches up with us sooner or later.’
‘You’re right.’
My eyes feel heavy, the skin puffed and red.
I think of his wife, that vital force stubbed out so young.
How did he cope with her death?
Did he run towards the first woman who opened her arms to him, as my father did?
I doubt it.
He survives on the good memories whereas I’ve focused on the bad ones, used them as my defining touchstone.
‘I’d better turn in,’ I say.
‘We’ve a long trip ahead of us tomorrow.’
‘See you in the morning then.’
He gathers the empty bottles into a refuse bag and allows the starless night to close around us.
Float planes glide low over the harbour.
The sky is too bright to view the northern lights.
I’ll have to wait until later if I want to see them.
Will I still be here?
The vastness of the scenery bears down on me.
The rocky permanence seems eternal but time has a chisel that never stops chipping.
I’ve no idea how my life is going to change, only that it must.
It always does.
I can’t sleep.
There was a moment with Daveth when everything could have changed.
He knows the preciousness of moments.
He could have been my bridge over loneliness.
Why did I let it go?
My breath deepens as my hand slides downwards and comforts me in this narrow bunk.
Relief is swift, sharp, unsatisfying.
And Karin Moylan remains a mind flash… flash… flash… framed within glass.
A tableau I can’t banish.
Jake’s shirt draped like a wanton veil over her arms.
The bloom of sex on her skin.
T
he Bare Pit
was a popular place to hear new bands.
Reedy and Feral had attracted a sizable number of fans, and there were fans from the young Shard days.
Couples in their late thirties, early forties, babysitters organised for the night.
The support act was concluding, the crowd swelling.
Soon Shard would be on stage.
Jake rocked on his toes, wiped sweat from his forehead.
How could he have forgotten the fear before each performance?
He read texts from Ali and the twins, wishing him luck, and spoke briefly to Brian, who had arrived with Peter Brennan, his one-time next door neighbour from Oakdale Terrace.
He thought about Nadine.
Phantom pains.
She asked him once if they would suffer from them.
He had not heard from her since she left for Alaska but he had seen the photos on the
Eyebright
website.
Three of them in short sleeves and sunglasses, standing on the deck of the
Eyebright
, bunting fluttering above them as they headed down the Gastineau Channel.
Nadine’s red hair was hidden under a bandana and Stuart, looking lean and fit, had his arm around her shoulders.
The man on her other side was a forty-something with a sturdy, muscular frame and a ruddy, outdoors complexion.
She was right about the phantom pains.
They were bound to happen, especially on a night like this.
His nerves disappeared when he began to sing.
It was like riding a bike, like sex, like everything that, once learned, brought instant recall.
He was sweaty and hot, fevered with the thrill of playing before a live audience.
Like the pre-performance nerves, he had also forgotten the magic of the adrenaline rush.
He noticed Mik Abel among the crowd.
He grinned widely and gave Jake a thumbs up.
The odds of Mik remembering five strutting teenagers he once managed had been remote, or so Jake thought when he contacted him with Shard’s demonstration disc of
Collapsing the Stone
.
It turned out to be a wise move.
Not only did Mik remember the band but he had produced
the album.
The ‘Collapsing the Stone’ video flashed on the screen behind the band.
Maggie Doyle-Childe, Feral’s wife and a music video maker, had filmed Shard on a ghost-estate.
The band looked grim and menacing as they stood among abandoned sewage pipes and cranes, the smashed windows of half-finished houses staring outwards like blank, reproachful eyes.
The audience stood around the stage or sat on high stools as the night club reverberated to the music of Shard.
Karin Moylan, in black jeans, tight and satiny, moved from the midst of the crowd onto the dancefloor.
Her see-through blouse had loose fluttery sleeves and the cropped-top she wore underneath moulded her breasts in a swirl of blue.
As she moved in and out of the flashing laser beams she looked as if she was preparing to fly.
A man joined her on the floor, his snake-like dance movements contrasting with her fast, almost frenetic steps.
Each time the music stopped she rested her head against his shoulder.
She seemed oblivious to Jake yet she was there as a taunt, each move designed to trigger memories of the hot, sex-drenched nights they once shared.
Each gesture designed to show she had lost no time replacing him.
He must focus on the music.
Tonight, Shard was all that mattered.
The audience applauded, whistled, stamped their feet, roared for more.
After three encores, when he was finally free to leave the stage, he ordered a drink at the bar.
People slapped his back and congratulated him.
Karin was nowhere to be seen.
His mood slumped, the shock of her appearance finally hitting him.
Brian and Peter told him the gig had been fantastic then hurried off to party elsewhere.
Mik Abel sat beside him and discussed the tours he hoped to line up for the band.
The club was almost empty by the time Mik left.
The other members of Shard had also gone home when Jake went backstage to collect his guitar.
‘How are you, Jake?’
She was waiting for him when he emerged from the storage room.
The plume of perfume was instantly familiar, her voice hesitant and low.
‘I couldn’t leave without telling you how brilliant Shard was tonight.’
‘I’m glad you enjoyed it.’
He had kept busy since she left, forced himself to stop checking his phone in case there was a text, a missed call.
What would he do if she contacted him?
His mind had swung between one scenario where she rushed headlong into his arms and another where he resolutely turned his back on her.
Now, standing before her, he had absolutely no idea how to react.
‘You never contacted me,’ she said.
‘Did you really expect me to...
after the note you left?’
‘We both said hurtful things to each other that night.’
‘That’s true.’
‘You accused me of deliberately causing trouble between you and Nadine.’
‘You certainly did that.’
‘But
not
deliberately.
What happened was a dreadful accident.
I’d switched on the light without thinking… and I’d never have asked to go back to your apartment if I’d thought for a minute that she’d be home so soon.’
‘She didn’t arrive too soon.’
‘That was Liam’s fault.
He said Monday, not Sunday.’
‘It doesn’t matter now.’
‘It matters to me.
Nadine used to be my friend.
Did you really believe I’d go out of my way to hurt her?’
‘I didn’t know what to believe.’
‘I forced you to choose between us.
I’d no right to do that…’ She paused, touched his arm.
‘That’s why I’m here.
To apologise for making such a ridiculous scene that night.
I should have contacted you the following day but I didn’t think you’d want to hear from me again.’
‘You should have allowed me to be the judge of that.’
‘You’ve no idea how much I’ve missed you, Jake.
Can you forgive me?’
‘That guy with you…’
‘Liam.
We’re friends, nothing more than that.
He told me Nadine is in Alaska.
Was I responsible for her leaving?’
‘No.’
He shook his head vehemently.
‘I’m responsible for driving her away.
I didn’t want to hurt her.
But I did.’
‘It’s impossible to go through life without hurting someone,’ she said.
‘She hurt you when she decided to end your marriage.
I hurt you when I left your apartment that night.
You hurt me when you followed her.
I could go on and on.
Hurt’s a thread that needs a sharp snap every now and then.
Will you hang up on me if I ring you next week?’
‘There’s only one way you’ll find out,’ he said.
Was he mad to restart something with so many echoes, so many unasked questions?
He knew the answer.
He had written his name on her arm once but she was the one who had branded him.