am I?’ he asks, before grasping that he is alone. He thinks he must be in the spare room, but everything feels wrong. Then he thinks he might be in his second-hand bed at the new flat but that does not seem right either. Finally he realises that he is on the ferry. He is on holiday, he thinks, that’s all, he is going on holiday, and he goes back to sleep.
He and his father had a daytime crossing to Europe. As well as taking him to the cinema and letting him have popcorn, his father bought him sweets in a mug from the duty-free shop and too many packets of peanuts at the bar and Futh felt sick in the car all the way from the ferry to their hotel in Germany.
Their hotel room had two single beds and a small bathroom. At bedtime, when Futh wanted a night light, his father put the bathroom light on and left the door ajar, and then said, ‘Go to sleep now.’ But Futh lay awake, turned towards that crack of light, watching in the big mirror behind the sink as his father changed his shirt and combed his hair and brushed his teeth and then – Futh quickly closing his eyes and trying to breathe like someone sleeping – he left, the door clicking shut behind him.
In the morning, his father would be there, in the other single bed, dozing with his mouth open, the odour of alcohol seeping out. When Futh got out of bed to go to the bathroom, his father would stir, asking, with eyes narrowed against the daylight, what time it was. Futh would tell him, and his father would be surprised by how late it was. He would say to Futh, ‘You slept well.’ And Futh would say nothing about when, disturbed in the early hours, he saw the bedroom door opening, the light coming in from the corridor, his father returning with a woman, a different woman every night. When the door shut behind them, his father and these women felt their way through the bedroom still dimly lit by the light from the bathroom into which his father took them, the bathroom light briefly flooding the bedroom before the door was again closed leaving only the narrow gap through which Futh watched them in the mirror. And Futh, who had not slept well, stood in the bathroom in the morning, not wanting to touch the sink area, not wanting to look in the mirror.
He said nothing to his father about having woken up to find himself wetting the bed. He pulled his blanket over the wet sheets and got ready to go out, knowing that it would all be made clean in his absence.
Futh opens his eyes in the dark and hears a woman speaking to him loudly in a language he does not understand. He squints in the direction of his travel clock, trying to make sense of the position of the luminous hands. He can’t see the underside of the bunk right above him, and he reaches out and touches it to reassure himself that he is where he thinks he is. Then, feeling for the switch on the wall, he turns on the light.
It is morning and the ferry is arriving into the Hook of Holland. Futh gets up.
In the shower, in an apple-scented lather, he thinks about Angela. He wonders what she did with her Friday night and what she is planning to do with her Saturday. They have spent most of their Friday evenings on the sofa watching television. Now, early on a Saturday morning, he imagines her barely home from a night out, or in bed asleep, or not asleep, with another man. It is more than fifteen years since he was with anyone else.
Turning off the shower and stepping out of the cubicle onto the non-slip floor, he finds himself still thinking about his father and the women in the hotel bathroom. He leans against the sink area, wipes his hand over the steamed-up mirror and looks again at his reflection. He does not see his father in himself.
Back in the bedroom, he dresses, returning the silver lighthouse to his trouser pocket. He goes around collecting up the complimentary items – a Biro, sachets of coffee and sugar and individual portions of UHT milk, the remaining toiletry miniatures, a shower cap, the plastic cup – and packs them in his overnight bag. He can make use of all these things in his new flat.
He leaves his cabin, taking his bag and his anorak with him, not wanting to have to come back. He goes to look for some breakfast, but when he is standing at the edge of the restaurant, eyeing the queue and smelling the warm egg, the warm meat, he changes his mind. Instead, putting on his anorak and shouldering his bag, he heads for the outer deck.
It has been raining and is still raining behind them, mizzling into the sea. The metal steps are slippery and he has to go carefully. The sky overhead is a pale grey but it is clearing up over Holland as they draw near. He stands with his hands on the wet railings, watching the ferry’s arrival into the Dutch terminal, and on the other side of the deck, the man in the raincoat who lost his hat does the same.
Futh moves his watch on an hour. Now he will go down to the car deck. When he is waved forward, he will drive out onto the continent, behind the wheel in another country for the first time.
‘Not long now.’
Futh turns and finds the man standing beside him.
‘Where in Germany are you going?’ asks the man.
‘Hellhaus,’ says Futh. ‘Near Koblenz. It’s quite a long drive.’
‘Oh, it won’t take you long,’ says the man. ‘A few hours.’
‘If I don’t go wrong,’ says Futh, picturing the pristine European road atlas on his passenger seat. Angela has always done the long-distance driving and is also the better navigator.
The ferry is docking. ‘We should head down to the car deck,’ says Futh.
‘I’m on foot,’ says the man.
‘Where did you say you’re going?’
‘Utrecht. It’s not far from here. You’ll go right past it on your way to Koblenz. You should stop there for coffee if you have time.’
Futh looks at the man’s damp coat, smells the rain trapped in its weave. He looks at the residue of rain on the man’s eyelashes, on his eyebrows, on his bare head. He imagines this man in his passenger seat, reading the map and knowing the roads. He says, ‘Would you like a lift to Utrecht?’
The man beams. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘if you’re going there anyway, that would be very kind. You can have coffee at my mother’s house.’
‘I’d like that,’ says Futh, ‘very much.’
The man holds out his hand and says, ‘Carl.’
Carl’s hand is big and tanned and, Futh finds as he takes it, warm. Futh’s own hand – slim and pale and cold – seems lost inside it. ‘Futh,’ he says in reply. Carl leans closer, turning one ear towards him as if he has not quite caught it, and Futh has to say again, ‘Futh.’
The two men turn away from the railings to head inside together. The boat’s wet surfaces gleam in the early morning sunlight, and Futh wonders how long the ferry will stay in the brightening port before turning around and going out again, back out into the cold, grey sea.
CHAPTER TWO
Breasts
Ester gets herself comfortable on her high stool at the bar and removes her rubber gloves. She adds a little tonic to the shot of gin in front of her and drinks it down. She likes to have her first drink of the day when she finishes the downstairs rooms.
It is just after eleven. It is always quiet at this time, just before lunch. There is only herself and the new girl and one customer,
