open it up, wait for the cleaner, give her a note to give to Sarah telling her to do everything the best she can until lunchtime when I was planning to be back, and to ignore Herman’s note that had been waiting for me in the door like a fucking German’s beachtowel claiming the space and to just head for the jeep and then head off, away from the marina and inland, up the side of the mountain towards the villa at Paguera.
An enjoyable drive, almost an hour I recall, enjoyable up to a point, that point being when I arrived. I had never made the trip at this hour; the road was curiously quiet and slow, it was the hordes of cyclists who were responsible for the latter, middle-aged Swiss pumping their way up the incline in their Lycra shorts and gaudy jerseys. A surreal vision, bankers and credit managers acting out their fantasies of being tour professionals. I smiled for them and turned the car’s music system off. The windows were down and the air blowing in seemed to be making a better job of clearing my head than the cold water had earlier. I tried to take in the colours and impressions of the island as the bikers would have been seeing them if they had not been so intent on exhausting themselves; the sweeping verdant hills and narrow valleys filled with wild olive, pine and dwarf palms; up in the higher, drier stretches the scatterings of carob trees standing defiantly and incongruously green under the Balearic sun’s strongest rays, a hazel carpet of carob pods covering everything at ground level, insulating the earth from the heat. I passed auburn-coloured hamlets and cottages in amongst the growth as the winding route led on to Camp de Mar and Andraitx. If I stare and stare I am reminded of why it was I came to live on this island, or rather why it was I came to stay.
I turned off and headed sharp left, a new road taking the jeep uphill towards another plateau and another scattering, this time of villas, built within the last five years, built for privacy, to accommodate new wealth. The last of the three, with its iron gates and driveway pointing to the heavy wooden porch doors is the one I draw up outside. There is no other car here, I can change clothes in privacy. Then I notice the gates are unlocked and I’m annoyed, they shouldn’t have been left like this; if the house alarm has not been set I’ll be seriously pissed off. On the doorstep itself I’m relieved to see that it has; I punch in the code, find and use the key and I’m inside, walking into the cool air and on to the tiles of the open-plan hallway and lounge. Right away, I notice that something is missing, not in the sense of stolen missing that would reduce me to a panic, but missing as in not there, the things that would give this home its normal atmosphere. Yes, it’s the atmosphere that’s not here – the mess of child’s toys on the floor, the pictures above the fireplace, gone. Into the kitchen and there is no food, no fruit in the bowl or bread lying out on the carving board. Walking slower now, into the bedroom, I open the wardrobe, no clothes hanging, other than mine. I sit down on the bed and contemplate the weight of the evidence, it’s back to the dream about water and the heavy certainty of knowing events are closing in, the heaviness that could drown me then and there in this room on a mountainside. My wife has left me. My wife and child are gone.
The storm woke him from his sleep in the dead of night. Not that this had come as a sudden shock. If anything the swerving climb and pitch of the bow had imparted an almost agreeable rocking motion to the cabin and his hammock, one that comforted him in his slumbers, worming its way into his dreams and the fleeting visions of a childhood spent in churches, idling away the moments during prayer meetings. So deep was his surrender to fatigue and the serenity of his reveries that when the roar from outside finally erupted into his consciousness and brought him so sharply back into the present it took almost a minute for him to gather his wits and realize where he was. He woke alone. To be fair, there were more than a few disconcerting factors which stood in the way of a ready understanding. The first was the dark, the pitch-black which greeted his eyes. Second were the noises that he found impossible to identify: the strange sound the wind made as it toyed with Anne upon the waves, a shrill howl recognizable only to those sailors who had heard it before. To this was added the percussion of the men vomiting on the deck, retching as if in arranged sequence, bells being rung in a tower. Then, more ominously, the stirrings of the cargo in the holds, groaning like anguished souls, then thudding like the anarchic drums of a marching military band.
Martin moved to seek his breeches in the gloom, something telling him that he should be on deck alongside the officers though he knew there was little he would be capable of or expected to do.
They were three days from Tenerife, or so they had told him, progress had been swift, the tempestuous regions of the Arab waters successfully behind them. He cursed himself for believing such assertions as he fed his legs through the seat of his pants. The ship suddenly lurched to starboard, sending him falling into a collision with his books now stacked in a growing sprawl on that side of the cabin. He let go of the waistband as he steeled himself in an instant for impact with the wall and floor but his legs were trapped, as securely fastened at the ankles as if in a pair of leg-irons. He hit the floor with a whiplash force, tasting blood in his mouth immediately, before the force of the ship correcting itself sent him rolling back to the middle of the floor. To his astonishment he could now taste salt on his lips, sea-water salt – the waves had reached high inside the Anne. Everything was awash. Another curiosity. Should he live it had to be worth questioning the captain on this too.
He did not wear a hat, though it did not stop him instinctively reaching for it as the full force of the gale hit him once he emerged from the cocoon of the cabin in the quarterdeck. He smiled momentarily, realizing that to an observer it must have appeared as if he were trying to secure his very head against the might of the elements. A preposterous notion, it was as well they were all preoccupied with more pressing matters, huddled against railings, posts and the helm. Nobody stood erect, everyone crouching to present a smaller target to the angry blusters that would have them over the side.
He wanted to join them, to find out what it was they were doing, to offer his help. For weeks he had felt the outsider, the interloper with no legitimate place on board. Suddenly, with the white spray of the water lashing every inch of him he felt an exhilaration that verged upon delirium, as if the ship had been thrown into a realm of opposites where he belonged and they did not. He was calm, invisible, and comfortable in his mind for some reason that the vessel would not sink, that the waves had no quarrel nor place for her. He felt an urge to seek out the captain, to offer his services for whatever the emergency demanded. He wanted to show that he felt no fear, not of the storm, nor the captain himself, or any physical challenge that might have to be met before the night was out. As the ship fell deep into the chasms that yawned open between the rolling waters he felt the gravity keeping his boots on the timbers of the deck grow lighter, so much so that he might be left behind whilst everything else plummeted downward. Again he suppressed a laugh at the oddity of it all, wondering also in that moment if his amusement was that of a madman, for whilst he could not see the expressions on his shipmates’ faces, he could be sure that mirth would not be shared amongst them. Had he finally gone insane?
Another thunderous wave smashed into the boat on the starboard side, punching in like a left hook from a vicious opponent who had already set the target up for the hit with a delicate series of jabs to prime it into position for the final blow to strike with full force. It felt as if the Anne might topple over, might give up the fight and fully immerse her deck and masts in a desperate bid for inverted stability. Martin looked up and saw the sea above his head, the floor that was once the deck now vertical, like a wall. One more inch and she might have been tempted to revolve the full way but no, the stubborn and spirited nature of the craft suddenly asserted itself as she swung back to reverse herself with an urgency that spoke of an anger at the indignity she had suffered by baring her belly to the air. Martin slid back the full width of the bow, the momentum of the shift lifting him back on to his feet as he came to a halt. He landed right in front of a cowering nest of crew-men clinging to a rail, appearing before them like an apparition that had materialized out of nowhere. There were six of them: Wells, the first mate, Fotheringham the purser, and four deckhands in their sodden rags. They looked as one up to his figure, standing tall, unblinking, traces of a smile lurking somewhere about his eyes.
‘Good evening gentlemen,’ he said, in a voice they would recall as sounding as if he
