A Boat Trip
From the vantage point of a boat, the land, where so recently we walked, took on a lighter shade of daylight. It was an exquisite day for a trip out to Roche’s Point, Jordi’s word not mine. I cracked the tops from two bottles of beer and handed one to my guest. It was a lovely day for a trip. We passed a house on a promontory from where you could see the tide coming and going. I want to live in that house, I said. I gazed at the baroque balcony, imagined a sparse white-painted room with an iron bed facing the sea.
I’d sit inside the bay window watching the moon orchestrating the ebbing and flowing tide. I drank the beer almost in one gulp as I spilled this dream to Jordi.
He laughed and cracked the tops from two more beers. I raised my bottle to the ancient waters of the Celtic Sea and Jordi informed me that the Mediterranean, from whence he’d sprung, was about five and a half million years older than him. I glanced across the surface as the sun broke through and a gust of wind from the east gave an evil lick over the mouth of the harbour. Gulls called from on high, obliterated by the light or being too white. Then we saw them, diving into the herring shoal and into the mackerel, tumbling down at breathtaking speed. Blind insects from the inner harbour lay smashed against the windscreen of the motor boat. A grey dingy bounced past us at an impressive rate of knots, its occupants waving as we slipped behind. The wind ruffled a young girl’s fine, long hair. The soft labia of the foam opening before our bow was the mouth of the first girl I kissed, under a palm tree in moonlight. The memory was tossed into a cloud by the mercenary wind. The green speed boat turned ahead and danced back towards us. The girl waved again and her hair was mad. This time the boy at the wheel, didn’t even look at us but kept his gaze straight on.
The mist cleared from the hills as we headed home. The sun burned through onto the sparkling water. A Ferry boat entered port, another left. A ships’ siren cracked the air. The cranes in the Dockyard dangled against the skyline. I thought of Mr. Horlocks next door. Demonic eyes scowled my way as he walked up his path in his pin-striped suit. The garden weeds sprouted from his hedge with something of his head about them. He slammed his door with a grimness that sent him tumbling naked like a priest of the occult into his Stygian crypt. I don’t want to go home, I said to Jordi. I think that place is driving me mad.
A week and seventeen years has passed since that boat trip. I’m now in a room watching a fly. I watch his flight pattern, along the wall, onto the ceiling, back along the wall, onto the ceiling again. I’m looking through eyes blackened by tarmacadam, the road coming up, the road going behind. And nothing else. The road rises, the road falls behind. So many years, so much time. The house is about thirty years old, there is no bay window, no baroque, plaster balcony. There is an iron bed on which I lie gazing at a wall with a fly on it.
Edward Mc Whinney lives with his wife and son in Cork, Ireland. He has had stories published online, most recently at Contrary Magazine where there is an index of his work. He also has stories in Juked, Fiction on the Web and Word Riot.
