Blackwatertown by Paul Waters

Author:Paul Waters [Gudgion, Geoffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781789651065
Publisher: Unbound

III: JACK

It took Jack some time to feel at ease with Draca as they sailed back. He’d checked out the sleeping cabin right after George had freaked, and again while he was making coffee. Nothing, of course. Just the faint smell of seaweed and salt as he secured the scuttles for sea. But George had clearly believed there was something there, and it rattled him a little, especially after the previous day’s incidents. There had been times when it felt as if Draca was alive and showing a mean streak. So he sat with his hand on the tiller, half expecting problems that never came. Draca behaved herself all the way, taking them to the harbour channel in a single beat into the wind. By the time the edge of the sun gilded the haze on the horizon, he knew that the life he felt through the tiller was natural, the dance of wood and sail with sea and wind, and the night’s fears seemed absurd.

George caught him looking at her, once. She was huddled in the corner where she’d slept, clasping a mug of coffee, with her face puffy and smudgy-eyed with too little sleep. She stared aft down the wake to where white cliffs marked the eastern end of the great bay, rising nearly twenty miles across the water from Anfel Head as the gull flies. The line of chalk slabs shone like a gap-toothed smile in the dawn light. They were still shadowed at their base, so they seemed not to be connected to the sea but floating above it. George was shapeless inside her foul-weather jacket and life vest, and her hair was tangled with salt, but something inside him turned a small but troublesome cartwheel. What was it about him and gay women? At that moment she looked at him and smiled in a way that lit up her face, then blushed and turned away as if she’d read his mind.

Jack didn’t like this idea that she could see things about him. He believed her, or at least he was sure that she believed that she could. But he wasn’t comfortable enough with himself to want to be known too well, and he certainly didn’t like the idea that she might be able to see what was going on in his head. If she’d been able to do that the day before, when she had her back to the mast, they’d both be embarrassed.

Some women wear their sensuality consciously, like a designer dress. Jack saw it in the way they held themselves, always thinking of how they might appear. Charlotte was like that, aware of herself, living the pose, even wearing make-up to the gym. George was short and a little broad-shouldered, but she had a natural allure that shone from deep within her. Jack shifted on the bench. A married man shouldn’t feel like that. And no way did he want to fall for another gay woman.

‘Charl said you won a medal.’ George broke an easy silence that stretched far back along the wake.

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