Jonathan Raban - Foreign Land - A Novel

The tide was high and the end of the breakwater felt as if it was afloat. George leaned on the rail to steady himself as the sea moved all round him, lapping at his feet, busy, noisy, comforting. He liked the taste of salt spray on his lips and the dizzying sensation of being back aboard ship, feeling the bows lift to the waves and sink suddenly back.

On watch again, he studied the water. There was something very English about it, this thin, light-starved water which fizzed and splashed so much more quickly and nervously than the slower seas he had grown used to. In Bom Porto, the Atlantic was milky green, thick as soup. At this time of year it swarmed with plankton, and in certain lights you seemed to see the sea wriggle with life. It was easy to imagine the first things crawling out of it and starting in on their colonial adventure. This northern sea was different, more coldly sophisticated. If you thought about the things that came out of it, they weren’t innocent. Celtic saints with prophecies … shipwrecked sailors … wartime mines. The tidewrack that nudged and bumped against the harbour wall was full of broken fish crates, shapeless chunks of polystyrene, limp condoms like giant white tulip flowers. Well, in that respect the sea was like most things. You got out of it pretty well exactly what you put in: it returned Montedor to Montedor, England to England, as automatically as any mirror. George, watching its flecked and ruffled surface, saw too much confusion there for comfort, and turned his back on it.

Halfway along the breakwater, he stopped to look at the boats. Their mooring lines were slack in the water and they’d floated out from the quay, their hulls knocking gently together, fender to fender. They were very lightly attached to the land. The half dozen yachts were just big plastic toys; it was the fishing boats that interested him, with their scabbed paint and tangles of gear. They had good names— Excelsior, Harmony, Mystic, Faithful, Harvest Home . There was an open-hearted frankness in these names. Each one was a confession. When you were at sea you really did think about abstract, religious things — things that you never admitted to ashore. You dreamed a lot. You found yourself believing in fate, or God or a girl.

The naval ratings on Hecla , for instance. In Portsmouth, Cape Town, Mombasa, they stormed each port like Apaches. It had been a terrifying task to round them up, sodden and cursing, from the bars and brothels that they always discovered, by some instinctive radar system, within hours of docking. George, a sub-lieutenant fresh out of the Sixth Form, felt like an infant beside these hardened libertines of nineteen and twenty. Yet on night watches, ploughing up the Indian Ocean, it was the ratings who were childlike. He was touched and astonished by the questions they set him when he made the rounds of the ship.

“Do you reckon Jesus was real, sir?”

“My mum’s in Pinner. They won’t bomb Pinner, will they, sir?”

“Billington saw a ghost once, sir. Have you ever seen a ghost, sir?”

They wore St Christopher charms round their necks. Whenever the papers came on board, they raced to look up their fortunes in the stars. They spent many of their off duty hours staring at the sea with wonder in their faces, counting flying fish and looking out for monsters.

The names of the boats struck the same wondering note. George found the village itself oppressively safe and dull, but the fishing boats held out the teasing promise of another world, just around the corner from St Cadix — a realm of solitude, of meditation, of danger. He watched them crowding at their moorings: Excelsior brushed lightly past Harvest Home; the tide caught at the stern of Harmony and it sashayed across the water, its ropes lifting clear, its bow going on a private abortive quest for open sea.

“Oh, hullo there! So you’ve found Wingco’s boat!”

It was the woman from the Walpoles’ party — the one who’d known his mother. Betty-something, he thought, but wasn’t sure. Her miniature dog was squeaking and snuffling round his trouser ends.

“Stop it, Timothy! Silly dog! No! Just kick him if you want to-”

“Hullo,” George said. “Nice to see you.” She must have been following him.

“Well, what do you think? Interested?” Her birdsnest of thin hair looked as if it had been fried. It was impervious to the squalls of wind that raced across the breakwater. Beneath it, Betty Thing was as round and pink as an old-fashioned powder puff.

“Sorry — I’ve no idea which boat you’re talking about.”

“Calliope . That one there. The ketch.”

He’d taken it for a fishing boat. It was tubby, varnished, high in the bow, with a wheelhouse posted near the stern like a sentry box.

“Oh, yes,” George said. “She’s rather pretty.”

“Jolly good seaboat. Of course Wingco’s hardly used her, but when the Tremletts had her they used to take her down to Spain almost every year—” Betty Thing’s voice was drowned out by two long blasts of a ship’s horn. A coaster — Finnish, George saw — was surging downstream on the ebb tide. She was in cargo and sitting low in the water, several inches below her Winter North Atlantic line. As the ship passed, the moored boats lurched on her wake and the sea slopped over the edge of the quay.

Betty Thing said: “I believe old Mr Toms at the boatyard has the keys, if you’d like to see inside …”

“Well, actually, it really hadn’t crossed my mind to—”

“She’s solid teak and mahogany down below.” Coquettish in flamingo ski suit and poncho top, Betty Thing followed each exclamatory sentence with a little puff of breath like a blown kiss. She twinkled at George, then twinkled at the boat. “Such a waste, don’t you think? She hasn’t moved from the river in two years, poor thing. Oh, do get the keys from Toms and give her the once-over!”

“Are you on a percentage?” George said, smiling carefully to take most of the sting out of the words.

“Oh …” her face went suddenly vague. “I’m sorry. It was just an idea. You seemed such a likely person. I suppose you must think I’m a frightful busybody. I don’t usually go in for this sort of thing — that’s probably why I’m so bloody at it.” The boat drifted into the quay; its fenders sighed as it touched, then it floated out again. Betty Thing watched it as if she was wondering how to send it to the bottom.

“It’s Cynthia we all mind about. She’s had the most awful time. They haven’t got a cent left. Just … that boat. Wingco won’t hear of having her put up for sale, but if only someone came along … like you … you see?”

“What’s his real name?”

“Oh … Roy. But for godsake don’t call him that. He hates it.”

“Why’s that?”

“He’s chippy,” she said, as if it explained everything. Her dog crouched beside her, its eyes glazed with contentment as it delivered itself of a long, khaki, helical stool. George lifted his own eyes, in embarrassment, to the horizon. “My pa was a Navy man. He used to swear that some of the best officers he knew had come up through the ranks. Except that Wingco didn’t, of course, but you know what I mean—”

Through the wheelhouse window, George could see the compass, swaying slightly in its gimbals, a yellowed Daily Telegraph , the circles of tarnished brass on the wheel.

“There must be someone who wants it—” Betty Thing said.

“I thought you said the man doesn’t want to sell.”

“He has to sell. He knows it, too — it’s just his silly pride that stops him. He’ll never go out in it again. He can’t afford it. He’s ruining Cynthia’s life. We have to give her clothes on the sly, or she’d be walking round in rags.”