Rossiter Grove hadn’t prepared Gaskell for the situation he found when Sally woke him with ‘Noah baby, it’s drywise topside, Time to fly the coop.’
He opened the cabin door and stepped outside to discover that Eva had already flown and had taken the airbed and the lifejackets with her.
‘You mean you left her outside all night?’ he said. ‘Now we’re really up Shit Creek. No paddle, no airbed, no goddam lifejackets, no nothing.’
‘I didn’t know she’d do something crazy like take off with everything,’ said Sally.
‘You leave her outside in the pouring rain all night she’s got to do something. She’s probably frozen to death by now or drowned.’
‘She tried to kill me. You think I was going to let her in when she’s tried to do that. Anyhow it’s all your fault for shooting your mouth off about that doll.’
‘You tell that to the law when they find her body floating downstream. You just explain how come she goes off in the middle of a storm.’
‘You’re just trying to scare me,’ said Sally. ‘I didn’t make her go or anything.’
‘It’s going to look peculiar if something has happened to her is all I’m saying. And you tell me how we’re going to get off here now. You think I’m going swimming without a lifejacket you’re mistaken. I’m no Spitz.’
‘My hero,’ said Sally.
Gaskell went into the cabin and looked in the cupboard by the stove. ‘And another thing. We’ve got a food problem. And water. There’s not much left.’
‘You got us into this mess. You think of a way out,’ said Sally.
Gaskell sat down on the bunk and tried to think. There had to be some way of letting people know they were there and in trouble. They couldn’t be far from land. For all he knew dry land was just the other side of the reeds. He went out and climbed on top of the cabin but apart from the church spire in the distance he could see nothing beyond the reeds. Perhaps they got a piece of cloth and waved it someone would spot it. He went down and fetched a pillow case and spent twenty minutes waving it above his head and shouting. Then he returned to the cabin and got out the chart and pored over it in a vain attempt to discover where they were. He was just folding the map up when he spotted the pieces of Scrabble still lying on the table. Letters. Individual letters. Now if they had something that would float up in the air with letters on it. Like a kite. Gaskell considered ways of making a kite and gave it up. Perhaps the best thing after all was to make smoke signals. He fetched an empty can from the kitchen and filled it with fuel oil from beside the engine and soaked a handkerchief in it and clambered up on the cabin roof. He lit the handkerchief and tried to get the oil to burn but when it did there was very little smoke and the tin got too hot to hold. Gaskell kicked it into the water where it fizzled out.
‘Genius baby.’ said Sally, ‘you’re the greatest.’
‘Yea, well if you can think of something practical let me know.’
‘Try swimming.’
‘Try drowning’, said Gaskell.
‘You could make a raft or something.’
‘I could hack this boat of Scheimacher’s up. That’s all we need.’
‘I saw a movie once where there were these gauchos or Romans or something and they came to a river and wanted to cross and they used pigs’ bladders.’ said Sally.
‘Right now all we don’t have is a pig,’ said Gaskell.
‘You could use the garbage bags in the kitchen,’ said Sally. Gaskell fetched a plastic bag and blew it up and tied the end with string. Then he squeezed it. The bag went down.
Gaskell sat down despondently. There had to be some simple way of attracting attention and he certainly didn’t want to swim out across that dark water clutching an inflated garbage bag. He fiddled with the pieces of Scrabble and thought again about kites. Or balloons. Balloons.
‘You got those rubbers you use?’ be asked suddenly.
‘Jesus at a time like this you get a hard on,’ said Sally. ‘Forget sex. Think of some way of getting us off here’
‘I have,’ said Gaskell, ‘I want those skins.’
‘You going to float downriver on a pontoon of condoms?’
‘Balloons,’ said Gaskell. ‘We blow them up and paint letters on them and float them in the wind.’
‘Genius baby.’ said Sally and went into the toilet. She came out with a sponge bag. ‘Here they are. For a moment there I thought you wanted me’
‘Days of wine and roses,’ said Gaskell, ‘are over. Remind me to divorce you.’ He tore a packet open and blew a contraceptive up and tied a knot in its end.
‘On what grounds?’
‘Like you’re a lesbian,’ said Gaskell and held up the dildo. ‘This and kleptomania and the habit you have of putting other men in dolls and knotting them. You name it, I’ll use it. Like you’re a nymphomaniac.’
‘You wouldn’t dare. Your family would love it, the scandal’
‘Try me,’ said Gaskell and blew up another condom.
‘Plastic freak.’
‘Bull dyke.’
Sally’s eyes narrowed. She was beginning to think he meant what he said about divorce and if Gaskell divorced her in England what sort of alimony would she get? Very little. There were no children and she had the idea that British courts were mean in matters of money. So was Gaskell and there was his family too. Rich and mean. She sat and eyed him.
‘Where’s your nail varnish?’ Gaskell asked when he had finished and twelve contraceptives cluttered the cabin.
‘Drop dead,’ said Sally and went out on deck to think. She stared down at the dark water and thought about rats and death and being poor again and liberated. The rat paradigm. The world was a rotten place. People were objects to be used and discarded. It was Gaskell’s own philosophy and now he was discarding her. And one slip on this oily deck could solve her problems. All that had to happen was for Gaskell to slip and drown and she would be free and rich and no one would ever know. An accident. Natural death. But Gaskell could swim and there had to be no mistakes. Try it once and fail and she wouldn’t be able to try again. He would be on his guard. It had to be certain and it had to be natural.