The boys sat up at the front at an angle, legs hanging down and feet drenched in the irregular buffeting of the waves as they picked up speed; Johnny’s father standing behind them with his hand on the mast, and a feeling too subtle to be explained that he was pleased with him, and forgiving of Bastien, and somehow protecting them both, while Clifford drove the boat. Bastien’s shirt and jeans blew like some makeshift signal from above their heads. Johnny looked round and up at his father, watched him as he turned and went aft balancing himself at each sure stride, and dropped down on to the square of the deck. Pendennis Castle was riding in then out of view as they came in close to the headland, the castle set back, not big, but with the magic of any keep or tower to Johnny, who made Bastien crane round to look at it just as it disappeared. Clifford seemed concerned about a chart, said something inaudible in the bluster to Johnny’s father, who perhaps was looking for it. Now the top of Pendennis appeared again, round and squat, above its low circular wall, no flag on the flagpole, no cannon between the battlements, but Johnny was fixed on it – far more rode on it than he could express or the others would understand. And it would be so easy to go there – he almost wondered if they could land now and clamber up over the rocks and climb through the woods. He got up carefully and saw the engine had been left on a set course while Clifford spoke with his father in the cabin. He scooted aft, glancing up at the castle, and down into the little sunken deck. At some point the two men had dealt with the fish, which lay, dead, gleaming, striped like moving water itself, and seeming, with the thrum of the engine, still to shudder with unrelinquished life on the wet boards below. Perched on the edge of the boat Johnny peered down into the cabin. Clifford and his father were looking closely at something on the table: Johnny couldn’t see their faces, but in their hunched figures there was a sense of something nice being planned after all, a surprise it might be a shame to spoil. His father’s right arm lay loosely across Clifford’s shoulders as they bent forward. ‘Where are the lads?’ said Clifford.
‘Both up front, I think,’ said his father.
‘That French kid’s a piece of work,’ said Clifford.
Was it ‘Difficult age . . .’ his father murmured, as he leant over, some private joke, odd bit of grown-up clowning, which made Clifford suddenly grip him round the waist, white hand on brown flesh, in a little rocking tussle, his father distantly amused and turning his face close to Clifford’s as if thinking of something, as Clifford said, ‘Now, now,’ and tapped him lightly on the bum.
‘Dad!’ said Johnny.
His father tensed, annoyed as always by a childish interruption. ‘Yes, what is it, old lad?’
‘I just thought, can we go to Pendennis Castle?’
‘Oh . . .’ He stood back, stood up straight. ‘Well, we’ll see. You’d better ask your mother.’
It was nearly good enough. ‘Oh . . . OK,’ Johnny said.
His father was suddenly restless. ‘We’d better get them back home now, hadn’t we, Cliff?’
Clifford turned, with a tart little smile that bunched up his moustache. ‘Yes, no castles for you today, I’m afraid, young man,’ he said. He leapt up and took his place by the tiller, flash of tightly clad backside and bare thighs, little ouch, adjusting himself, as he sat down. In five minutes they were cutting their wash as they came in past the town again.
*
‘Ah, look who’s there,’ said Clifford drily.
But Johnny had made them out already, his mother and Norma, among the stretched weedy cables at the top of the slipway. He waved confidently, and had to do it again before he got a response, Norma a moment later, as if reluctant. There was a sense, as they stood talking, his mother with her arms crossed, Norma lighting a cigarette, that they’d come down to tell them something was wrong. The muffled greeting was a preparation for it. Then they were hidden from view by the silent and secretive blue-and-white bulk of Aegean Queen. It took a while to get Ganymede moored, the sails fully furled and bound, the decks sluiced clean of blood and guts – ‘The scene of the crime,’ his father said, naturally orderly, Clifford worrying about Leslie Stevens, double-checking everything. Bastien hunched in the cabin to pull on his jeans, and button up his damp shirt, watched obliquely by Johnny. Then the boys climbed into the tender, the food box and then the engine and then the two threaded clusters of mackerel were passed down, with the other fish, which Clifford said he thought was a pouting. ‘A what, Cliff?’ Johnny’s father said.
‘I will . . . how is it? . . . ramer?’ Bastien said. He didn’t get through at first, seemed to be fighting for some unknown reason with Johnny’s father who was holding the little oars. ‘I,’ he said.
‘You’re going to rammy, are you, laddie?’ said Clifford. ‘Well, well.’
Bastien took a few strokes to get used to it, skimming, unbalanced, under the sceptical scrutiny of the rest of them; they were a heavier lot than he’d expected, but he got the hang of it, the kind of pull it needed. Johnny watched and called out to steer him through the other craft in the way. He came in fast for the last bit till Clifford shouted, ‘Christ! Look out . . .’ and they were nearly aground, he stopped abruptly, let both oars go with a splash and looked round with a grin at Johnny’s mother.
‘How did it go?’ she said, as Johnny ran up to her and unexpectedly flung his arms round her. He wanted to say Bastien fell in the water. ‘How far did you go?’
‘Right out past . . . there’ – Johnny gestured, but from here, in the shelter of the estuary, the vast windy curve of the globe they’d been bouncing across was completely hidden. ‘Bastien fell in the water.’
His mother looked at him narrowly. ‘He had his life jacket on?’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Johnny. ‘He was fine’; and it was another lesson of the day, the dark underlying fact that his mother and father were wholly responsible for Bastien, however much they thought him a pain in the neck.
‘What did Dad say?’
‘Dad and I pulled him in, it was fine.’
She smiled narrowly, ‘You make him sound like a fish.’ A few moments later Bastien himself came up, with a serious, almost shy look, and presented her with the mackerel. ‘For you, Madame.’
‘Good God . . .’ – she laughed, put her hand to her throat.
‘I catch them all for you.’ He looked at her earnestly. ‘We eat for dinner.’
‘We’ll be eating these all week. Look at them, Norma.’
‘I know,’ said Norma, standing back.
‘And what about your clothes?’ – she patted his shoulders, and he held his arms out with a smirk, still holding the dead fish.
3
‘Is he getting up?’
Johnny sprinkled sugar on his cornflakes. ‘I shouldn’t think so.’
His mother moved round the kitchen, tied the apron over her pink cotton frock as the tap filled the washing-up bowl. ‘We’ll just let him stew, then, shall we? It is meant to be a holiday.’
She was sunny, but after a moment Johnny said, ‘Sorry, Mum.’
‘Well . . .’ – she looked down at him frankly for a second: ‘I don’t think you’re having much fun, are you.’