Shining Sea (16 page)

“Friendly,” Ghislaine says, puffing a little as she wields her oars in the current.

The seal slips off his rock to swim up beside the boat. He stares down into the animal's soft black eyes.

“Can see,” he says, “why people—”

“Starboard!” Rufus shouts.

Which is starboard? Ghislaine is pulling with her left arm. He'll pull with his left too, then.

“—made up selkies,” he finishes, once they are safely away from the rock. “Those eyes, those little hands.”

“Made up?” Katie says.

“Do you believe in selkies, Katie?” Rufus says in between pants.

The seal slips away. Katie harrumphs. It's impossible to tell whether it's a sign of assent or disgust.

“Watch out for that rock,” she shouts. “There. Leeward.”

They row as hard as they can, washing up and down in the break of the water. Another skerry, thick with nesting birds, comes up fast. They pull around it.

Once the tide is no longer aiming them against rocks, they take a collective breath. In unspoken agreement, they lighten up on their oars.

“Do you like fairy tales, Francis?” Ghislaine says.

He wipes his forehead against his forearm. “They're okay.”

In his plastic barrel is the book of mythology his aunt sent them for Christmas many years ago. All these years, he's carried it around with him. He's not even sure why. When he left Phoenix for LA, he put it in his trunk. When he left LA for Europe, he stuck it in his pack. Every once in a while, he opens it up, reads about another long-ago hero.

The sun has fully risen. They've been rowing for over an hour, maybe two. His back and underarms feel hot and damp beneath his life preserver, and he
really
wants a drink of water now, even more than he needs to relieve himself. But a shout from Katie lets them know new rocks are sticking up ahead. They're a team. He can't just stop because he wants to.

“Let's move westward,” Rufus calls out.

“See that?” Katie points to an ugly round black rock with a lighthouse perched on top of it about a mile off in the direction of the horizon. “They built that one hundred years ago efter twenty-four boats went doon in the course of twenty-four hours in the waters here. Stop alang the Torran Rocks, my arse.”

They row until the Torran Rocks are finally safely and entirely behind them, and Katie can put the steering oar away. The sea becomes smooth and oily again, and, to his relief, drinking water gets passed around.

“Who has to use the bucket?” Rufus says. “Come on. Just get up and do it.”

Once everyone has both drunk and peed, they return to rowing. Hours of open sea still lie between them and the Isle of Colonsay. “Perfect conditions!” Rufus exclaims from time to time. Small islands, long and low in the water like the backs of submerged cattle, dot the sea. A little farther, the bigger islands—Mull to the north, Jura to the southeast, and Colonsay directly south—shimmer. The sky becomes brighter as the sun climbs higher.

More drinking water gets passed around. They grab egg sandwiches from their plastic barrels and wolf them down between strokes. They row.

His arms become machines. His body hums alongside the others. Toward late morning, the wind picks up. Low, white rolls of wave skate toward them over the sea's surface, rocking the boat in a constant urgent rhythm. The egg sandwich in his stomach starts to turn on itself. He wills himself to ignore it.

The wind dies down again.

Still, they row.

The morning grows long. Katie switches places for a time with Ghislaine. The sight of her thick back in front of him throws him off, and he has to recall the song that gave him the rowing rhythm.

Still, they row.

Hours upon hours later, tired, salty, sweaty, they round the northern tip of Colonsay.

Terra firma beneath his feet, he strips off all his clothes but his briefs and throws himself back into the water. Kittiwakes circle above in a needling chorus of protest. The others watch him from the empty white-sand beach, looking half bemused and half amused. He turns away. He doesn't care if he's showing off his naked skin, that smooth hairless chest that has over the years drawn so much comment. He doesn't care, either, that the water is so cold it burns. This was the longest day of rowing, and he made it through as though he were one of them. Something opens up inside him. Maybe Rufus isn't so crazy. Maybe this journey is doable. And he will be able to see it through.

“What a great first day!” Rufus shouts happily, over the cry of the kittiwakes. “We've got a nice stretch of sea behind us now.”

A farmer appears on top of the dune, edging the beach. While Rufus and Ghislaine climb up to greet him, he stands spread-armed by the shore under the June sun, his face tipped toward its rays. It's still early afternoon. Although the air isn't warm, he feels barely chilled.

“Put yer pants on, man,” Eamon says, betraying a heavy Northern Irish staccato.

It may be the first time he has heard Eamon speak.

“What's your story, Eamon?” he says.

But Eamon has turned away, busying himself with the oars. Katie is settled on a boulder nearby, her face back to being as inscrutable as it was in the shop.

He grabs his pants and pulls them on over his damp legs. He can hear snippets of Rufus up above, explaining their mission, while the farmer nods his head and fingers the collar of a thick gray wool sweater. By the time he's dressed again, Rufus has won an invitation for them to spend the night in an empty byre beside the farmer's house; it turns out, with all his planning, Rufus didn't arrange a place for them to sleep at each stop.

The farmhouse lies about a quarter mile up over the rocky, eruptive hillside. After they've met the farmer's pretty young wife and parked their gear in the small stone shed, Rufus says, “If the plan is to spread the word, it's time to start talking. How far is the walk to the village?”

“I'll take you,” the farmer says.

“You go ahead,” he says. “I'm going to hang out.”

Rufus glances at the farmer's wife. “Not a chance, my man. You are coming also.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“You're part of the team, Francis. We stick together.”

For fuck's sake. Just because he's popular with the ladies doesn't make him some sort of predator. “I'm not part of anything,” he says. “I'm just along for the ride.”

He turns to the farmer. “Do you have a bicycle I can borrow?”

He rides across wide green fields. Fulmars and guillemots fly overhead. Cicadas buzz and saw. At the top of a hill, he leans the bike against a mossy cairn. It's an old bike, two-speed, with no kickstand, curiously similar to the one he had as a kid: green, with a curved upper crossbar, like the lid of an almond-shaped eye. A hand-me-down from Luke, one of the last hand-me-downs he ever had from his older brothers. By the time he was thirteen, he was as tall as Mike and Luke; in retrospect, it's nothing less than a miracle that his mom managed to keep him in shoes and pants and a decent bicycle. Eugene's was a one-speed, with a rusty chain that kept slipping off.
It don't matter. With your asthma, you can't go pedaling fast anyhow,
Eugene's mom said.

The wind has risen, bringing the smell of algae and salt, and fat drops of rain begin to fall. Two black cows amble down the hill below him to another large and sandy beach. Even in the clouding air, with his remarkable eyesight—
Don't tell anyone about that, buddy,
Luke warned him before he was shipped out,
or when your time comes up they'll have you on the first plane out
—he can make out seals on this beach, one flipping a fish back and forth in its mouth. He's pretty sure he sees an otter.

He stands the bike upright and starts pedaling.

After an early dinner of nettle soup, oysters, soft crowdie cheese, warm brown bread, and a slice of sponge cake with marmalade, washed down with ale, he falls asleep as soon as he's pulled the zipper up on his sleeping bag. He wakes a few hours later, his body heavy and a little sore, to find another bag pushed up beside his—he can't tell whose. With the door to the byre closed, it's pitch-black.

His first thought is of Katie. He gives the bag a shove.

“Mais quoi…”
comes Ghislaine's sleepy voice.

He rolls over and tumbles back into sleep.

He wakes next to the sound of Rufus's tiny portable alarm clock. Eamon, closest to the door, pushes it open. A gust of wind, dense with raindrops, blows in over them. Eamon pulls the door shut again.

There'll be no getting back on the sea today.

“It's okay. We'll make use of the delay to visit Colonsay's school,” Rufus says. “And there's a radio broadcast from the island. We'll make an announcement.”

He hangs out on the farm, lending a hand as he can, until the others return. Toward evening the clouds open, leaving a violet wash above the fields. Rufus studies his tidal charts. “Good news for you lazy buggers. No hurry heading out tomorrow morning. We'll hit the northern end of the Sound of Islay, then wait until the day after tomorrow to catch the ebb tide to move on to Port Ellen, at the bottom of Islay.”

“Is Islay close?” he asks.

“Closer than Iona was. It'll be an easy row.”

With Rufus, that could mean anything.

Sleeping is more difficult this night. He is less tired, and at the same time his body feels stiffer. The floor of the byre is unforgiving. The breaths of the others fill the small, darkened space and trap him in their dreams. He's almost glad when Rufus's alarm goes off at 6:30 a.m.

The rain has ended, but the sea remains heavy. They zip up their rain gear, tie on their life preservers, and drag the boat out into the waves. The air is a veil of mist; the wet is everywhere, not falling but floating. Underneath his fingerless gloves, his chafed hands grip the oars uncomfortably.

They navigate out of the shallow bay, down past the main port of Scalasaig. Two men and a woman standing on the dock, waiting for the ferry or mail boat, wave. They reach the bottom of Oronsay, cut off from Colonsay by the tide.

Ghislaine points at the dark sky. “When clouds look like black smoke, a wise man will put on his cloak,” she says.

“That's all right, then. We're all wearing our cloaks already,” Rufus says.

Rufus's endless cheer is maddening. “Ghislaine,” he says, “how come you speak English so well?”

“My mother is from Dorset. That's why I went to school in London.”

He knows nothing about these people he's been sitting in a boat with for hours, sleeping alongside in a barn. “You went to school in London?”

“Of course. That's how Rufus and I met.”

“You were in class together?”

Ghislaine laughs. “No. I read psychology. Rufus read economics. We were both in the rowing club.”

“At Oxford?”

“Didn't I just say in London?”

“Imperial College London,” Rufus says. “Best rowing club in the country.”

“I used to get up at five thirty, five days a week to train,” Ghislaine says.

“Only five days?” Rufus says. “When I was captain, we were on the water six days a week.”

“We weren't there at the same time,” Ghislaine explains. “We met through the club after we'd both graduated. Which it sounds as though might have been lucky for me.”

Rufus laughs. “Oh, you would have gotten used to it. There still was a day off.”

“I wouldnae want to live in London,” Katie says.

Ghislaine's oars send a tiny flash of water against his cheek. “No?” she says. “It's fun for a young girl. I had fun.”

Katie looks markedly worse for wear, her broad, fair face stained from the sun and wind of being on an open boat, her hair matted from the salt. “I wouldnae have fun. Too many cars. Too many people. Everyone tryin' to steal somethin' from everyone else. Boys who are liars.”

“It's not like that,” Rufus says, laughing. “When we're done, if your father agrees, you can come down to visit. My mother will show you around.”

“Look,” Eamon says.

A minke whale loops through the dark gray-blue water, his back an almost matching color. The beast glides beside them, his dorsal fin slicing the sea, disappears, then rises again, creating another loop through the water.

“He wouldn't go under the boat?” he says.

Everyone laughs at him, but good-naturedly. There's a good feeling in the boat this morning.

“You want to start a song for us, Francis?” Ghislaine says.

The wind is growing stronger.

“I've done a bit of singing in my time,” Rufus says. “I even was a choirboy.”

“Start us off, then,” he says.

Rufus launches into the Eddy Grant hit “Electric Avenue,” affecting a reggae-style accent so confident that everyone loses his or her stroke. He joins the laughter. And then they get their oars going again and all sing along. Even Eamon hums. The wind carries their voices away, across the sea. They share a few more songs as the water swells beneath them but eventually fall into silence, focused on the dancing waters. The boat bobs, slapped by the sea. It rocks them from side to side.

He pulls his oars in, leans out of the boat, and throws up.

“See, that's one of the beauties of the currach,” Rufus says. “No matter how heavy the seas, the waves rarely get in. The sides are too high, and the currach rides too high on top of the sea. She just bounces along on top of the waves. It's almost impossible to knock her over.”

He wipes his mouth and takes a drink of water before picking up his oars again. “What's that for, then?” he says, nodding at the plastic jug tied to Katie's bench.

“No boat, not even a whaler, can resist everything the sea has to offer,” Rufus says. “This is just a little swell. It's a nice breeze, though. Time to put the sail up.”