‘Oh.’
‘There she is.’
He pointed ahead. The boat was called Tara’s Dream. Robert provided a lot of statistics and details, but all Graham took in was that she was about twenty foot long, had four berths, but was ‘quite a nippy little mover’.
Neatly Robert rowed up to the stern. ‘You hang on, make her fast, I’ll just open up.’
He leapt nimbly from the dinghy into the well of the boat, while Graham clung to the transom. The combined motion of the two vessels compounded his queasiness. Water splashed up in little spouts between them. Graham struggled to bend and tie the stiff nylon painter round a rail.
Robert, steadying himself against the lashed boom, moved forward to the cabin entrance. He reached into his pocket for a bunch of keys, selected the right one and opened the padlock. With a flourish, he pushed against the top hatch, which rattled on rails away from him, opening a little cockpit. Then he lifted out the vertical board and entered the cabin to stow it.
His torso emerged from the opening and he waved.
‘Come and have a look at her.’
Graham didn’t enjoy the leap and scrambled into the boat. He felt absurdly unstable standing up in the dinghy, and not much better on the boards of Tara’s Dream.
‘Surprisingly roomy, isn’t she?’ said Robert as his guest lurched into the cabin.
It didn’t look roomy to Graham. Claustrophobia added to his unease. In the forepart four bunks were somehow crammed, shut off ‘when required for privacy’ by a thick curtain. The rest of the space, barely enough, Graham thought, for the two of them to turn around in, was ‘galley, dining area, everything else’. He was shown folding tables, seats that doubled as storage lockers, more overhead stowage and neat double gas rings behind a curtain recess. ‘Calor,’ said Robert, revealing the blue cylinder. ‘Hope the boatyard checked it was full. Tara’s cooked some wonderful meals here, you know.’
Graham gave yet another nod and grunt of apparent interest. He didn’t like it at all. The cramped conditions reminded him of a holiday with his parents when they’d rented a caravan near Hunstanton. He had been in his teens, too large for such enforced proximity. The holiday had been another example of Eric Marshall’s penny-pinching, and Graham remembered he had made a vow at the time that, when he had the freedom to choose, all his holidays would be in luxury hotels.
But the caravan hadn’t suffered from this awful rolling motion. With shame, he realised he was desperate to pee again, and had to disturb Robert, who was checking the free-running of a halyard, to ask what he should to about it.
‘Head’s in there.’ Robert pointed to what looked like a cupboard. ‘Easier if you just go over the side. Not into the wind, though, or you’ll get your own back.’ He laughed coarsely.
Graham felt exposed and ridiculous as he faced the picturesque frontage of Bosham and peed. The beautiful row of houses looked somehow formal and disapproving. No doubt full of retired admirals and other sailing hearties armed with binoculars. A huge picture window on the end house seemed to gaze at him with particular disapprobation. When he had finished, he slunk back into the cabin, hearing Robert’s feet booming overhead as their owner went through an interminable sequence of checks on the deck.
Graham looked out dismally at the shifting rectangle of daylight visible through the hatch. The tiny high windows of the cabin were curtained and let in little light. The rigging chattered incessantly. The boat creaked and lurched in its endless irregular rhythm. He looked up at the grooves along which the top hatch ran, and longed for it to be closed. He looked at the Robson’s padlock on the vertical board and longed for it be locked up again. He longed to be on shore.
Eventually Robert Benham’s grinning face appeared at the opening. ‘They’ve done a good job. Usually do, but I have to check. Have to rely on the boatyard more than I’d like to. Don’t have the time myself.’
And at last the words Graham had been longing for. ‘O.K., let’s be on our way.’
The sensation of incipient nausea stayed with him through the evening, which was a pity, because Tara’s Chinese cookery matched her other accomplishments. Graham could not do justice to the perfect Peking duck or its spicy accessories, though he managed to keep up consumption of the excellent red wine Robert had produced.
He also had a couple of brandies, refusing Robert’s offer of a small cigar. ‘I enjoy one every now and then,’ his host asserted, as usual making his habits sound definitively correct. When the cocaine was again produced, Graham said he felt tired and went up to bed. Under the duvet, his last thought was of being threatened. There had still been no talk of work.
He was in a deep sleep before any creaking the others might set up could disturb him, but he woke at three with the sour taste of vomit in his mouth. He wasn’t actually sick and gradually the nausea passed, but he was left with that naked wakefulness that offers no hope of real rest for the remainder of the night. His mind became a corridor for a cavalcade of unwelcome thoughts.
He must have slept again eventually, because he was woken by a hearty Aran-sweatered Robert at seven. They needed an early start, the guest was reminded, because of the tides, and because Tara had a plane to catch in the afternoon; so if they were to get any time on the boat, they’d better move.
To Graham’s surprise, the actual sailing was enjoyable. Robert displayed no impatience with his guest’s ignorance of the sport; indeed he showed great generosity, constantly offering the tiller, flicking loose sheets which his guest had jammed, or calling warnings as the boom swung across. There was no attempt to score points or to crow about his and Tara’s practised expertise. Graham almost wished there had been. Cockiness from Robert would have given him a moral lever; generosity left him completely unmanned.
Tara had provided a picnic up to her usual standards and Robert supplied two bottles of crisp Sancerre from the cool-box. They finished up with coffee made on the little gas ring. The early April day showed promise of summer and his idyllic surroundings only made the meanness of Graham’s thoughts seem the more reprehensible.
Back to the cottage by three. Miraculously the other two had already packed and had to wait while Graham snatched his belongings together.
Then in the Scirocco fast but safely to Gatwick. Tara had contrived to compress everything into hand-luggage, and they arrived just as her flight was called. She kissed Robert in a casual way that implied deep trust, and disappeared, turning a few heads of television enthusiasts, through the departure gate.
Robert and Graham walked back to the car, parked illegally but unmolested, on double yellow lines. Now, thought Graham, now it comes. Now we get on to work, now I find out the purpose of the weekend.
But it didn’t come. Robert talked affably of irrelevancies, showing interest in Graham’s life, asking about his house, his family. Graham answered warily, waiting for the bite.
There was no bite. Robert parked the Scirocco outside the house in Boileau Avenue just before seven and refused the invitation to come in for a drink. ‘No, no, I’ll leave you to your family,’ he said, making the word sound subtly like an unfortunate physical handicap.
Graham stood on the kerb, suitcase in hand.
‘Well, um, thank you for. .’ No, he mustn’t say ‘having me’, that sounded too like a schoolboy.
Absurdly, he felt as if Robert was about to tip him, with an avuncular wink to shove a fiver into his hand. Thank you for a great weekend.’
‘My pleasure. You must come again.’
And the Scirocco was gone.
Confused, Graham walked slowly towards his front door. He felt obscurely shamed. Patronised. Put in his place.
And as he unwillingly reached for his keys, he realised that making him feel like that had been the object of the exercise.