Lindsay Armstrong: From Waif To His Wife

Right here under her nose all this time, she marvelled, because she knew the Mary-Lue . It was moored on the same finger as her parents’ boat in the marina. Or, at least, she’d seen it there once and stopped to admire its sleek, green-hulled beauty. But was it still there, and was it the same Mary-Lue?

It was too late to do anything about it that night but the next day, after she’d picked up her car, she went down to the marina, ostensibly to check out the Amelie ; start the motor and run the bilges.

As usual-she did it regularly-it broke her heart to be reminded of the happy days she and her parents had spent on the yacht, sailing the bay. She knew the time was approaching when she’d have to make a decision about the Amelie -keep it or sell it. Along with a whole lot of other decisions…

But she steeled herself and after doing her checks, she strolled down the finger in the wintry sunshine.

The Mary-Lue was still there in all her fifty-foot glory. Not only that, but there was also a gas bottle bearing a paper label beside it on the finger.

She glanced down to read the writing and saw that it said ‘Deliver to R. Sanderson, Mary-Lue, RQ H29.’

Bingo, she thought with her heart suddenly beating heavily. RQ was the affectionate acronym of the Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron and H29 was stencilled on the pier pole indicating the berth number.

Then she had a further stroke of luck. The young lad who helped the marina manager in the school holidays stepped off the Mary-Lue and greeted her cheerfully.

‘Hi, Maisie. Going sailing?’

‘No, Travis, I’ve just done my usual checks and balances,’ she replied. ‘I thought I’d wander down the finger and see what’s new.’

‘Well, this gorgeous girl is going out.’ He patted the Mary-Lue’s hull. ‘First light tomorrow morning, which is beaut because he hasn’t had the time to take her out for months. Such a shame.’ Travis, Maisie well knew, was mad about boats and sailing.

And as he hefted the gas bottle on his shoulder and climbed up to stow it on board, she called up, ‘Maybe you’d like to come sailing with me one day, Travis?’

‘You just name the day, Maisie,’ he called back. ‘See you.’

Maisie walked back to her car with a very strange sensation in the pit of her stomach.

Now that it was almost upon her-and she would do it, she knew-how was she going to feel about confronting Rafe Sanderson?

It was four o’clock the next morning when she let herself onto H finger again. She wore a navy tracksuit, deck shoes and a beanie-it was overcast, no moon or stars, and colder than she’d thought it would be. Sunrise wouldn’t be for another two hours.

She made her way down the jetty finger between the boats and she sighed with relief to see the Mary-Lue still there, but with no sign of lights or life.

Then she almost immediately saw difficulties. What was she going to do with herself until he arrived?

There was no one about in the dark chill of a very early morning and it was tempting to climb aboard the Mary-Lue and make herself comfortable in the cockpit until he arrived, but that was hardly ethical.

On the other hand, how ethical was the Mary-Lue’s owner?

She stuck out her chin and swiftly climbed aboard.

The cockpit was comfortably lined with padded seats with waterproof covers, but it was also freezing.

Perhaps you needed to think this out a little better, Maisie, she told herself, and tried, quite sure it would be locked, the door that led down to the yacht’s main cabin.

It wasn’t locked. She hesitated. This could definitely be putting her outside the law, but what was the worst law she was breaking-trespass? And she could always explain.

A patter of raindrops decided the matter for her. She eased open the door, slipped down the companionway and found herself in a dimly lit cabin of sumptuous comfort, from what she could see. It was also warm.

She sat down on a built-in couch. She ran through everything she planned to say to Rafe Sanderson and how she planned to say it. She heard the eutectic refrigeration click in from shore power a couple of times. She yawned.

She hadn’t been able to sleep at all because of the mixture of dread and uncertainty that was building within her, but she did everything to keep herself awake bar prop her eyelids open with matchsticks. She wasn’t even aware of gradually toppling over, pulling a scatter cushion beneath her cheek and falling asleep.

She was to think later that it was being used to boats and the noises they made, on top of a wakeful night, that saw her sleep like a baby through what followed.

It had never occurred to her that Rafe Sanderson would sling a bag on board, that he would loosen his lines and the electricity cable and toss them on board then climb aboard himself. That he would start the motor and, when it fired, expertly un-loop the last rope holding the boat to the jetty and reverse out of the berth without coming down to the cabin first.

In fact, she only woke when he’d steered the Mary-Lue out of the harbour and into the channel, and what woke her then she could never afterwards recall.

She sat up with a suddenly pounding heart and a dry mouth to see patchy sunlight coming through the portholes, and to feel the unmistakable motion of a boat underway, to hear the purr of a motor.

She closed her eyes in horror. Then she jumped up and climbed the companionway and catapulted out of the door at the head of the stairs that she’d closed so carefully to keep the cold out.

The next few minutes were chaotic. Rafe Sanderson had abandoned the wheel, put the steering on autopilot and, it appeared, had climbed up to set his mainsail.

Her unexpected arrival in the cockpit took him completely by surprise; the boom, which he’d just released, responded to the fluke breeze and hit him in the midriff and with a yell he slipped sideways, and toppled overboard.

Maisie stared in round-eyed horror this time. Then she came to life. She scrambled up and secured the boom to avoid decapitation. She hopped back down into the cockpit, studied the controls for a moment then put the motor into Neutral.

Finally she looked around wildly, spotted an orange lifesaver buoy, untied it and threw it with all her might at Rafe Sanderson’s bobbing head as he swam towards the boat.

It hit him on the head-fortunately the buoy was the soft variety-but, although he grabbed it and hauled himself in, it seemed to be the final insult added to injury for him. There was no doubting it was a murderously angry, dripping man who hauled himself over the transom.

A couple of strides brought him up to her, where he took her by the shoulders and proceeded to demonstrate that he’d like to shake the life out of her.

Maybe that was what he would have done if they both hadn’t frozen at the sight of a channel marker passing by on their port side, uncomfortably close.

He swore, released her and grabbed the wheel at the same time as he flicked the autopilot off.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he demanded furiously as he put the power on and steered the boat into the middle of the channel. ‘Who the hell are you and how did you get on board?’

‘I-I,’ she stammered, ‘I needed to talk to you, but it was freezing so I went down into the cabin to wait for you, that’s all. I must have fallen asleep.’

‘You mean you broke into the cabin!’ he fired back at her.

‘I didn’t! It wasn’t locked, so-’

‘Oh, yes, it was!’

‘No, it wasn’t,’ she insisted. ‘Do I look like the kind of girl who goes around breaking locks?’

‘You look like,’ he paused and scanned her, ‘heaven knows what! How on earth could I tell…’ He stopped impatiently then frowned. ‘Maybe not. You look about sixteen but I suppose you could have taken to a life of crime early!’