Archipelago: A Novel by Monique Roffey

Author:Monique Roffey [Roffey, Monique]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Adventure, Dogs, Fiction, Literary, Maritime, Travel
ISBN: 9780143122562
Google: T-aQkQEACAAJ
Amazon: B00AEDDR5S
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Skipper leaving for Cartegena in the next week or two. Single-handed sailor with child and dog on board. Need crew/night watch for three days’ blue-water sail. My boat is Romany, opposite the casino.

He enters the shop and pins his note to the board.

What’s that, Daddy?

It’s a note.

Why?

Well, we are going to need help to keep on sailing west.

Help?

Another sailor, another man, like me.

On our boat?

Yes. He would be a guest. Just for three days or so. It would be fun.

I don’t like guests.

We might need one.

If we have to have a guest I hope he is a small man.

Well, I’ll try and find one.

They walk back through the arcade. A loud crack in the skies startles them, followed by a brutish groan. Suzy whines and he reaches down for Océan’s hand.

Come, now, he says and they dash across the grass and along the jetty as the first raindrops bomb the planks. They reach Romany as the sky tears and yards of silver water unravel like bolts of cloth. He lifts Océan over the rails, then Suzy, then the bags, and hops over himself, noticing it is easier now for him to negotiate rails.

They cower below deck, in their home, now so pungent with child and dog and sea and maccy cheese that it is a carnival of stinks. He puts the kettle on and starts to unpack the bags and organise the galley. Suzy and Océan sit on the bench and watch him, both damp, both expectant. He wipes them down with a towel and both seem to wag their tail. Proper rain, rain like in Port of Spain. Rain like the rain that hurt them, gushing from the sky. Deafening rain, hurricane rain, so bad the boat rocks, so bad he has to shout over it. Océan sits, but says nothing. She doesn’t cry, she doesn’t fit.

He puts on a CD of Christmas carols, turns the volume up and starts to sing Jingle Bells loudly.

Océan laughs. Suzy barks.

Jingle bells, Batman smells, he sings.

Batman smells, sings Océan.

Robin’s on his way.

The Batmobile . . . has lost one wheel.

They sing over the rain and Océan jumps up and down and dances to all the disco carols, and it rains on and off for the rest of the afternoon and early evening.

Christmas Eve and they’ve been gone a month. They’ve sailed over five hundred nautical miles, and this is the Point of No Return. To go back, east, would be a heavy slog across into the face of rough seas, wind straight in their sails. To go forward, west, is equally a leap, the biggest yet, more serious than leaving Port of Spain: high clashing winds, unknown open water. But then there is his old haunting dream. He dares not talk of it, has never spoken it aloud. When Océan falls into a sudden profound sleep in the V-berth, he writes down his dream under remarks in his logbook:

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