Authors: Sarah Bilston
He went back behind his newspaper. Jeanie put down her waffle carefully, and turned to me.
“Q, love, I think I will come today, in spite of everything, because you look very tired, and I came here to help.” She wiped her sticky mouth on a napkin, and smiled virtuously at me. “And I promise you I will keep all
my deeply held
political ideas to myself today, you don’t need to worry. I would
never
embarrass you with your friends.”
I thanked her faintly as I slithered into a chair and helped myself to some breakfast. Paul glanced up over his newspaper, folded down a corner, and looked at her with his head on one side. I wondered what he was going to say, but then—“you’ve got some syrup on your face still,” was all he remarked, coolly, and, reaching out, he wiped Jeanie’s cheek with a deliberate finger.
Jeanie
I
love sailing. I am
brilliant
at sailing. Paul told me so.
Dave would probably have been horrified if he’d seen me speeding across the Atlantic with a man who wore a gold signet ring on his pinky and designer linen shorts. But Dave wasn’t there, and I felt I was allowed some fantasy time before I settled into life as an eco-warrior’s spouse.
It was a fantasy day. I could almost believe I’d imagined it, except for the sunburn on my shoulders and the fact that the sitting room was rocking beneath my feet for hours.
Q turned out to be surprisingly amenable to the idea of a trip along the coast followed by a sail (“Don’t know what Samuel will make of it but I’m bored to death of sitting in the dark”), so at eleven a.m. we bundled ourselves into Paul’s huge olive-green SUV, a boat attached to the back, and drove fifteen miles along the coast to a small peninsula. Just as the road seemed set to end in the Atlantic Ocean itself, Paul took a winding, pitted dirt track that led across rocky ground, past clusters of sparse pine trees, to a set of stone gateposts; at the end of a short driveway a huge modern house reared up against the rock, with vast glass windows overlooking the ocean. Adjile (made millions in his dot-com start-up, retired at twenty-nine) greeted us at the front of the house, dressed in oil-stained clothes with a very charming smudge on his nose and fabulous manners. Mrs. Adjile
(her name’s actually Lily) emerged after a few minutes dressed in similarly stained shorts and a tight ruby-colored tank-top. “I’ll get onto Ricky about ordering new spinlocks,” she told Adjile briefly, before reaching up to give Paul a big hug. As she turned to us with a warm smile, I discovered with a sense of shock that she had
gold
eyes—literally, gold eyes, set beneath high-arched brows. Other than that she was quite normal-looking—tanned skin, muscly legs, narrow shoulders, and a wide chin—but still,
gold eyes!
Paul, Tom, and Adjile vanished off to attend to Paul’s boat while Lily offered us lunch on a long, hot cedar deck strung across the rocks. We watched the green waves bubbling beneath us while slurping seafood with wholegrain bread and fresh white butter served on ice. Tom and his friends reappeared after an hour or so with the satisfied air of men who have wrestled with machinery and won.
I’m a practical English girl, but I was in serious danger of losing my head. If only Una could see me now, I thought, as I flicked out my white damask napkin and sipped at my flute of sparkling rose-colored wine.
After lunch, Adjile and Lily took us down a steep rocky path, then across the beach to their dock, a long wooden walkway with eight boats bobbing gracefully beside. The air was filled with the noise of their creaking and flexing as the water flopped lazily against the barnacled posts of the dock. The boats were a range of sizes and shapes, and Tom and Paul spent a few minutes exclaiming excitedly over Adjile’s new purchase, a “Tornado catamaran” (which looked nothing like a boat to me, but still). Adjile, Lily, and Paul had a quick discussion about which “craft” Paul should take, finally settling on something called a Flying Dutchman. I was pleased because it was, in my opinion, by far the prettiest, a picture postcard of a sailing boat with a gleaming mahogany deck and bottom and a long, attenuated prow. Adjile unlooped the boat’s mooring rope from around a big cotton reel affair while Paul rummaged about in a wooden chest
on the dock for life vests. “Who’s coming first?” he asked, when he finally emerged, laden with fluorescent padding.
Tom grinned, bursting with childlike pleasure, and raised his arm. “Me, me, pick me!”
Paul laughed. “Okay, of course you’ll come, Tom, but I can take one more—”
“Go, Q, go,” I said, smiling, “I’ll take Samuel,” and I pushed her gently toward the boat. She looked back at me. “If you’re sure…” she said, with a tiny show of reluctance. “Of course I am,” I replied briskly, removing the wriggling bundle from her arms. “Samuel will be fine with me. Have a wonderful time!”
It seemed suddenly perfect, this golden day in the golden light of the hot wooden dock, my tummy full of pink wine and fresh bread and salty fish. Samuel blinked and lifted his head unsteadily as I pulled him toward me, then settled down on my chest with a long sigh. The water began to lap vigorously against the dock as Paul sprang onto the boat. Tom and Q strapped themselves into their life vests, then Tom helped Q maneuver herself gingerly onto the deck to join Paul. After a quick conversation about who should steer (“You wanna go first?” “No, that’s okay, I’ll take us home”), Paul settled himself at the stern and took the tiller while Tom started winding and pulling at things energetically; three blinding white sails flew up the masts. They flapped and cracked excitedly in the warm, sandy wind; Tom tugged on something blue, and obediently the sails smoothed into an elegant curve. The boat slipped away from the dock in a frothy emerald-green trail.
We watched them go, then Lily turned to me with a smile. “Would you rather come up to the house or wait on the beach for your sister?” she asked, shading her sparkling golden eyes against the sunshine. “You’re welcome to come inside if you’d like, and we can help you with Samuel, if there’s anything we can do for you—”
Now, I rather fancied poking about in their architect-designed
house, but in the end I decided to wait on the beach. A private beach, of course. Officially, I disapprove of private beaches. Natural phenomena should be for everybody to enjoy. Unofficially—don’t tell Badger!—they’re rather nice. So I followed Lily back along the dock, down a small flight of uneven stone steps and along the beach to a pair of brightly striped and padded chaise lounges beneath a pink beach umbrella. Lily disappeared, then came tripping through the dunes a few minutes later armed with a bowl of warmed pistachios and a glass of something orangey with lots of ice in it and a large slice of mango. It might or might not have had alcohol at the bottom. I sipped at it while Samuel investigated my necklace, and watched the bright white boat slipping simply and easily through the greenish-gray crests of the ocean.
They were out for over an hour, during which time Samuel dozed, pulled my hair, filled his nappy, and generally behaved himself remarkably well. Then, just as he was starting to whimper and root hopefully at my breast, I discovered I could see Tom’s shock of dark hair and Q’s auburn curls. The boat was getting closer; Tom was bringing them in.
I crunched back along the sand and arrived in time to see Paul helping Q jump over the side of the boat at the end of the dock. She tumbled out laughing; it had been years since I’d seen her so happy. She took Samuel with a broad smile on her face and a little bit of sunny warmth in her skin, freckles popping on her cheeks and arms. “You had a nice time, I take it?” I asked her with a grin.
“It was
fantastic
—so much fun. You go out now, Jeanie,” she said breathlessly, nodding back at the boat. Paul was waiting with the sails lowered, holding on to a boat hook thrown onto the dock. “Yup, it’s your turn,” Tom agreed. Like Q’s, his clothes were drenched. “We’ll take Samuel, have a great time!” he added, brushing the fine sandy grit from his legs.
I looked at them uncertainly. “But Tom, you can go out again, or at least come with us,” I began, thinking, oh God, me and Paul
on our own on the sea, how embarrassing, I barely know him, I’ve hardly made eye contact since he saw me posed like something out of a Degas painting. What on earth would we find to talk about? “You love sailing!”
“I’ve had my fix for today,” Tom explained peaceably, watching Samuel nuzzling at Q’s breast. “And Adjile has invited me to come up here any time I want to sail. I think I might take him up on the offer.”
“So it’ll be nice for us to have some time to ourselves now,” Q added cheerfully, setting off toward the beach. “Wait; no that sounds awful, I don’t mean—” She stopped and turned around, looking confused. “Oh God, I’m sorry, Jeanie, if you really want one of us to come of course we will…”
“No, no, it’s fine,” I said hastily, picking up Q’s abandoned lifejacket from the wood planks. I took a deep breath. Fine, I thought, strapping myself into the slab of purple and lime-green, I can do this. I can sail a boat. I can spend an hour with pig-man Paul on my own.
Paul watched me as I approached. “Just you this time, is it? Okay,” he called coolly. “I think we can manage. Climb aboard.”
Now that I was actually about to get into the boat, it looked unexpectedly large; I could swear it had grown. For the first time, too, I noticed all the baffling ropes in every hue from cherry to sunflower-yellow, not to mention the clamps and hooks and other strange instruments dotting the boat. What on earth did they all do? Was I supposed to know? I investigated the bobbing surface of the deck dubiously, then, holding onto a dock post, reached out a cautious leg.
At that moment the sea seemed to sort of suck the boat down and away. There was a loud
flub
sound; the boat creaked protestingly, and my leg landed in space. I threw my weight back onto the post, and looked distrustfully at Paul. “Sorry, sorry, I’m
trying
to hold it,” he said, grinning, the muscles in his forearm flexing. “Come on, hurry up!”
Holding on even tighter to the post, I reached my leg out again and then, half-closing my eyes, threw myself into the boat. I landed on the deck in an ungainly red heap, limbs sprawling, one foot in a bucket, and my face (why, God, why?) smooshed into his lap. “Well, that’s one way to do it,” a voice murmured above me. I felt a wet, gloved hand in my armpit, and Paul hoisted me up; his soft gray T-shirt smelled of salt and sun. “All right?” he asked, and I nodded, the blood filling my cheeks. “Okay, good,” he said, as if ladies precipitated themselves into his lap on a regular basis. “Sit over there on the starboard, that’s right, a little further back, ass over the side—perfect,” he explained, releasing the boat hook, and immediately water opened up between us and the dock. “Now, look up there. Do you see that triangular-shaped thing above your head? Hang on to that as we go. I’ll do the rest.” His muscular legs were burned dark, I noticed, as he arranged himself at the tiller once more.
He pulled on some ropes, the sails rose and swelled, and suddenly the boat was moving; I barely had time to make myself comfortable before we began to really pick up the pace. I hung on to the triangular handle nervously, my shoulder tight and strained. A sudden spray filled my nose and my eyes; the boat was thumping across the water now, speeding out to sea in an exhilarating fizz of salt water and wind.
“Ready to come about?” he called after a few minutes, craning forward, brown eyes glinting in the sun, to make sure I could hear above the noise of the sails. I looked back at him, doubtfully. “We need to turn the boat all the way through the wind, make a ninety-degree turn. I’ll say ‘prepare to come about,’ then you duck right down, keeping your head clear of the boom—this thing—and get over onto the other side of the boat, same position as you’re in now, okay? Prepare to come about—
About!”
I ducked my head down beneath the boom as it swung sharply over, then (as elegantly as I could) scrambled up onto the opposite side of the boat. I’m not quite sure what was happening while I was
tangled up on the gritty bottom of the boat but suddenly we were setting off in a completely different direction, out toward the open sea (on the first tack, we’d been heading toward a cluster of small islands a few miles off shore). Getting comfortable on my new perch, I peered under the taut white sail. There was nothing out there, no boats, no islands, nothing at all; just sea, sea, sea. The horizon stretched before me, endless blue passing into endless blue.
“It’s beautiful out here, isn’t it?” he called suddenly to me, and, forgetting everything, I nodded, laughing for sheer delight as the wind whipped my hair out of its ponytail. “This is my favorite way to spend a weekend, just me, the boat, the sea…cheesy but true,” he explained, leaning through the breeze toward me. “I’m a stereotype from a Hemingway novel, I know. But I love the views, the sound of the boat, figuring out how to use the wind. What do you think?”
“I love it. I just love it!” I admitted, and he grinned, satisfied.
The water had an extraordinary effect on us. We sailed for another forty minutes, chatting about—I’m not sure really; things we like to do on weekends, countries we want to visit in the future, that sort of thing. The kind of conversation you have with a stranger when you sketch your personality for them, with a little bit of innocent exaggeration and some judicious gaps. Jeanie: fun-loving twenty-four-year-old. Paul: adventurous thirty-year-old. Speeding through the waves, watching the wind in the sails, neither of us made the slightest effort to tell the other one anything more. But we laughed a lot.
After a while Paul asked me if I wanted to take on some of the real work of the boat, keeping the sail taut in the wind, for example, by manipulating one of the cherry-and-white-colored ropes. And then (for ten glorious minutes) he let me take the tiller as well. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so powerful. The boat was quick and responsive in the water, sensitive to the slightest movement. At one point I was distracted by a swift gust of wind and tightened the rope in my hands; for a second, I found us up in the air, the sail almost
horizontal beneath us, and I wondered for a shocking moment if we were about to go over. Almost by instinct, I let go of the rope and felt the boat lurch back down to the swelling surface of the sea. A great rush of water splashed over the boat; I tasted salt on my lips, and pushed the dripping dark hair out of my eyes. I realized I was laughing, and Paul was laughing up at me too, although with a faintly quizzical expression. “A bit close that one, Jeanie, not too close, but still—” he yelled above the wind. “Just pull the sail in enough so it stops flapping, okay? I wouldn’t enjoy telling Adjile we’ve capsized the thing, and it’s a long swim home.”