coming out of the gas station. He feels his life returning, the blood and marrow of it, the comfort of family.
The girls get back in the car and Freya shows him the gator foot she now owns.
‘Freaksville!’ she says, making Judy laugh. ‘Drive, Dad.’
He pulls out of the station, all of them in good spirits, in the same car, in the same seats, but a little closer to one another now.
Judy reaches for the radio, tunes in to a selection of local stations, before settling on something which turns out to be Seminole Nation radio. It’s full of gaming adverts for the casino, then more adverts for airboat trips.
She switches it off. ‘Want a song?’ she says.
‘Yoo-betcha,’ Freya says, enthusiastically.
Judy undoes her belt and half turns in her seat:
‘Before you were born, Freya - in fact, before this man was in my life too, I had a boyfriend in Amsterdam. I used to get the coach to Harwich and cross the North Sea on a ferry - waste of time that was, as it turns out. But I did it a lot - he’d never come to England, never did in fact.
‘But the best thing was coming back, for me, on that ferry. It was a night crossing and I used to stand up on deck, whatever the weather, crossing the sea and waiting for the moment I smelled the shore. I used to smell it before I saw it. So this is the song I wrote, about standing on the deck of a ferry, crossing the North Sea from the Hook of Holland to Harwich, one night. This is how it starts:
On a windy quayside, in a warm rain
The smell of cigarettes and leather
Never
Leaving him.
He has the look of a man
In another man’s jacket,
He’s frayed at the edges.
Never
Leaving him.
He has the smile of a man
Who leans on the railings.
Looks down at the rain on the water
Ought to be
Leaving him.’
Guy leans back in his chair, humming Judy’s tune. The cabin is silent. It’s late, and his shoulders and back ache with the writing. Night-time ferries, even now, crossing the seas in a blowing gale, lonely figures standing on deck by the ship’s rail. Right now.
He never did know much about Judy’s ex-boyfriends, other than there were quite a lot of them. The Amsterdam boyfriend - Allan his name was - he used to surface from time to time, but Guy didn’t learn much about him. She had no pictures. He has some ideas of how it must have been, Judy so young her skin was thinner, bluish-white below the eyes, a creamy shine at the top of her cheeks, her hair shorter, sitting in a suede jacket smoking roll-ups in his flat in the Grachtengordel. Good sex probably, plenty of it, it would have taken a lot to go through that sea crossing so often. He wonders whatever happened to him? What happens to those ex-boyfriends, those impossibly cool guys living in loft spaces, with their leather jackets and their pockets filled with the right brand of cigarettes? Maybe Judy, or the girlfriend who replaced Judy, or the girlfriend who replaced that girlfriend, maybe they all told him to grow up, and now he has, encouraged to do so by all those rejections. Maybe he’s boring and middle-aged now. Maybe he fell in a canal. The point being, Judy had been Allan’s, Judy became his, Judy is someone else’s now. It’s clear. We borrow.
Suddenly the Flood is rocked, violently, and as Guy bolts up the ladder to the wheelhouse the boat is rocked again, throwing him against the side of the hatch. Immediately he knows what has happened. A ship has passed, nearby. Too close. Through the windows he can see the wide streak of its wake in a pale scar across the sea.
Going on deck, he realizes the Flood has drifted into the shipping lanes off Harwich and Felixstowe, where the heavy cargo ships have to snake in a single deepwater cut between the sandbanks. He can see freighters and container vessels and ferries, illuminated with their own constellations of lights, their superstructures bathed in cold white fluorescence, sliding magically across the dark.
From the line of marker buoys he can tell the Flood
The girls get back in the car and Freya shows him the gator foot she now owns.
‘Freaksville!’ she says, making Judy laugh. ‘Drive, Dad.’
He pulls out of the station, all of them in good spirits, in the same car, in the same seats, but a little closer to one another now.
Judy reaches for the radio, tunes in to a selection of local stations, before settling on something which turns out to be Seminole Nation radio. It’s full of gaming adverts for the casino, then more adverts for airboat trips.
She switches it off. ‘Want a song?’ she says.
‘Yoo-betcha,’ Freya says, enthusiastically.
Judy undoes her belt and half turns in her seat:
‘Before you were born, Freya - in fact, before this man was in my life too, I had a boyfriend in Amsterdam. I used to get the coach to Harwich and cross the North Sea on a ferry - waste of time that was, as it turns out. But I did it a lot - he’d never come to England, never did in fact.
‘But the best thing was coming back, for me, on that ferry. It was a night crossing and I used to stand up on deck, whatever the weather, crossing the sea and waiting for the moment I smelled the shore. I used to smell it before I saw it. So this is the song I wrote, about standing on the deck of a ferry, crossing the North Sea from the Hook of Holland to Harwich, one night. This is how it starts:
On a windy quayside, in a warm rain
The smell of cigarettes and leather
Never
Leaving him.
He has the look of a man
In another man’s jacket,
He’s frayed at the edges.
Never
Leaving him.
He has the smile of a man
Who leans on the railings.
Looks down at the rain on the water
Ought to be
Leaving him.’
Guy leans back in his chair, humming Judy’s tune. The cabin is silent. It’s late, and his shoulders and back ache with the writing. Night-time ferries, even now, crossing the seas in a blowing gale, lonely figures standing on deck by the ship’s rail. Right now.
He never did know much about Judy’s ex-boyfriends, other than there were quite a lot of them. The Amsterdam boyfriend - Allan his name was - he used to surface from time to time, but Guy didn’t learn much about him. She had no pictures. He has some ideas of how it must have been, Judy so young her skin was thinner, bluish-white below the eyes, a creamy shine at the top of her cheeks, her hair shorter, sitting in a suede jacket smoking roll-ups in his flat in the Grachtengordel. Good sex probably, plenty of it, it would have taken a lot to go through that sea crossing so often. He wonders whatever happened to him? What happens to those ex-boyfriends, those impossibly cool guys living in loft spaces, with their leather jackets and their pockets filled with the right brand of cigarettes? Maybe Judy, or the girlfriend who replaced Judy, or the girlfriend who replaced that girlfriend, maybe they all told him to grow up, and now he has, encouraged to do so by all those rejections. Maybe he’s boring and middle-aged now. Maybe he fell in a canal. The point being, Judy had been Allan’s, Judy became his, Judy is someone else’s now. It’s clear. We borrow.
Suddenly the Flood is rocked, violently, and as Guy bolts up the ladder to the wheelhouse the boat is rocked again, throwing him against the side of the hatch. Immediately he knows what has happened. A ship has passed, nearby. Too close. Through the windows he can see the wide streak of its wake in a pale scar across the sea.
Going on deck, he realizes the Flood has drifted into the shipping lanes off Harwich and Felixstowe, where the heavy cargo ships have to snake in a single deepwater cut between the sandbanks. He can see freighters and container vessels and ferries, illuminated with their own constellations of lights, their superstructures bathed in cold white fluorescence, sliding magically across the dark.
From the line of marker buoys he can tell the Flood
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