1
Bloody Boats
February
London
RĂłisĂn Kennedy â thirty-three, observant, clever, a slight rockabilly look to her (blue-tipped hair, at the moment, and a little fringe) was feeling good in the pale sunshine of the gastropub garden. She and her fiancĂ© Nico Triandafilides â thirty-six, nicely shaved, clean white shirt, quite the lad even on a Saturday lunchtime â hadnât seen much of each other that week. Heâd been working nights and sheâd had a deadline in the editing suite. They hadnât been getting on that well: for three months theyâd been on a promise to discuss whether or not they wanted to have a child, though it was something neither of them actually wanted to talk about. They each thought that the other felt differently about it to them and was secretly upset. They were both wrong, and therefore they were both, secretly, upset. So this long-weekend morning of unexpectedly hot sex and breakfast out was bloody lovely.
It was the first sunny morning of springtime: too early for the crocuses, but the unmistakable secret sign had gone out. The light was a breath lighter; even Londonâs sooty black walls and spit-raddled grey kerbstones had an air of imminence. When the breeze lifted your hair, the sun was almost warm on your skin. The swans in the park had started with the neck-coiling; there was mimosa on the flower stalls. She was having avocados and stuff; he was going the full English, with triple espressos and extra black pudding.
âFunniest thing this week?â she cued him, their old habit, a guaranteed mood-enhancer â mood-changer if need be â and that started up the run of stupid jokes. Her sister Nell had pointed out that the term Leiderhosen â like Lederhosen, the well-known and arguably regrettable dungaree-style Alpine leather shorts, only with an extra âiâ â meant, in German, literally, âregrettable trousersâ. This alone provoked some hilarity. âYeah, Iâve had a few pairs of them in my time,â Nico said, and they remembered one brown tweed suit which had made him look like a confused sheep farmer.
âOr an Irish intellectual,â RĂłisĂn had said, kindly.
âIrish!â Nico squawked, which was fair enough as he really couldnât have looked more Greek, from his brown eyes and hairy chest to his quizzical mouth and not-very-secret desire to have a moustache like his granddadâs.
âSo does that make Lieder-hosen trousers for singing classic German folk songs in?â Nico said, and it went downhill.
Lido-hosen, she suggested, for urban swimming.
âYou could wear them when you go to Crouch End,â he said. âWith Lilo-hosen to change into, for wearing on your lilo. Inflatable, maybe.â
Lipo-hosen, she suggested, which make you thinner.
âWe donât need them,â he said. âLager-hosen, for drinking beer in! Indistinguishable from the original Lederhosen.â
âLuger-hosen,â she said, âwith a built-in holster.â
Wader-hosen, with long wellies attached for fishing. Gaydar-hosen, Yoda-hosen, Data-hosen, Gator-hosen, and make it snappy. Hater-hosen, for Twitter trolls; Mater- and Pater-hosen for Latin teenagers to address their parents; Straighter-hosen, if youâre going for the skinny-leg look. They were in such hysterics by then that people turned to look. All those couples with nothing to say to each other after fifteen years, glancing across at the couple in fits of giggles. It wasnât because the jokes were that funny, because obviously they werenât. It was just that they were having such a lovely time. Heâd even rolled up his sleeves, pretending they were by some sunlit blue bay in Ithaca, at Frikes in the morning sun, with bitter coffee and baklava â God, summer, so far away â and then something in the sound of his laughter changed and she was calling out.
Twenty-one minutes while she and the barmaid took turns giving him CPR, till the ambulance came. Paramedics who didnât know that he was one of them. But everybody knew that it was too long. Her eyes were still full of the tears of laughter heâd reduced her to. She didnât feel it was right for him to die while her hair was this stupid blue. She wanted to kiss him but once the pros arrived, she couldnât get near him for kit. CPR, our last kiss.
After a while, alone and almost furtive by the trolley in A&E, she took her fatherâs wedding ring from her forefinger and put it on his finger, third finger, left hand. And she took his stupid rock ânâ roll silver skull ring, and put it on her own.
âI do,â she tried to say. âYou do too.â
Theyâd been going to. Heâd actually proposed the day they met: in the mudbath of a Glastonbury crowd bouncing around to The Fratellis. Nico had intervened when a drunk stranger was being difficult during âChelsea Daggerâ (âListen,â heâd said. âGo awayâ), and the resultant joshing ended up with him proposing to her. A year later heâd given her a diamond. No mud. But theyâd never got round to the actual wedding. It seemed absurd, actually getting married. But a romantic revelation had crept up on them. This was love. This every day. This supporting each other. Me supporting him, mostly, she often thought, but you know. The diamond fitted snugly now with the skull, like a tiny flower behind its ear. Holding it on.
*
She stood on the deck of the launch in the black and white Dalmatian-print fake-fur coat she had decided was just the thing for the occasion. Well, what the hell do you wear? she thought. To denote courage, devil-may-care desperation, determination, Iâm going to make it through today, I am, itâs required.
Sheâd cut her hair, because she didnât know what to do: slaughtered the peroxide strands with the blue tips and the little tumbling fringe; sent it to the cancer charity for children. Her head now wore a soft fuzz of its natural dark brown and sheâd a feeling she looked like SinĂ©ad OâConnor back in the day. SinĂ©ad was a lovely-looking woman, but it wasnât what she wanted people to be thinking about when they were shouldering his coffin to the boat. Still, sheâd done it now, so.
To the north-east she saw the red and white lighthouse of the Needles standing proud against blue sky. South-west was the wide horizon down to the Atlantic. Behind her, a hundred people on a bright, terrible, unseasonably sunny morning out on the Solent in boats, all saying âI had no idea he wanted to be buried at sea!â But thatâs the good thing about dying young. Lots of friends still around to come to your funeral. Look, darling, they all came! And theyâre all in bloody boats!
Who knew!
Sheâd let his mum arrange it all. She was hardly going to make a fuss when Marina was ringing her wanting to know if she thought it would be all right, as there was no grave in the earth, to ask the sea-burial people if they could throw the grains of wheat into the sea, or should they just do it without saying anything? RĂłisĂn had no opinion about that.
Nobody knew where his will was.
Lots of his family were there, lighting candles in loaves of bread, and keening. Twenty-three of hers. Declan with the good voice sang âThe Parting Glassâ; Dmitri with the even better voice sang the one about âI gave you rosewater, you gave me poisonâ. The works. He died. Damn you, you utter bastard darling â Cavafy was recited, of course: âIthakaâ. Kind of compulsory. Donât hurry the journey at all, better if it lasts for years ⊠She hardly heard it; there was nothing in her to consider how inappropriate that was. And Tennyson: Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea ⊠The kind men in uniform put the lilies aside and flicked the flag away. Nicoâs coffin â plain new wood, heavily weighted â had been drilled through with more holes than she had expected. It was so quick! The men tipped it into the sea, green and choppy here, mercury-silver in the distance, bloody sea, you canât trust it, and it sank. She wasnât crying, because she didnât want to set people off, to raise the water level. She watched the bubbles swaying as they rose. Goodbye. AÎœÏÎŻÎż ÏίλΔ ÎŒÎżÏ
. SlĂĄn.
Everyone else cried anyway, friends and relations, throwing flowers on the water. Gulls appeared from nowhere and wheeled beautifully among them. The boat circled, and for a moment she thought she felt a hand on the back of her neck. She jumped â but there was nobody.
Someone put a glass of whiskey in her hand. She hurled it overboard, towards him.
Why did you die? But she knew why he died. Dying is what people do, who drink and smoke and argue and work all the hours God sends and, it turns out, have an undiagnosed heart condition. And anyway it was her fault. Making him laugh so much.
Even she realised that was stupid. Itâs normal to think itâs your fault but that really is stupid.
*
RĂłisĂn lay in bed on her back. No position comfortable. Her body had knotted itself up in response to the absence of his. âWhere are you?â she cried. âFor Godâs sake, Nico, where are you?â
She did the usual human things. She lit candles, so his spirit if it was wandering about would have a light to see by. She went to Mass! Which wasnât like her, but thereâs nothing like death to turn you to religion. The Hail Mary hadnât looked so attractive for decades. Pray for us now and at the hour of our ⊠She stood in the aisle of Sainsburyâs on Fortis Green Road, staring at the bottles of San Pellegrino she used to get for him when he was cutting down on booze, and at bottles of ketchup she neednât buy any more because it was him that liked ketchup. Supermarkets were comforting. She came out with three kinds of cream cheese and no washing-up liquid.
She went over to the Ladiesâ Pond on Hampstead Heath for her usual Sunday swim, no Nico at the Menâs Pond, no coffee together afterwards, put on her little neoprene socks and gloves and her woolly hat, all so black against her white, white skin, and prepared to slip into the cold, forgiving water. But the ponds drain to the river which goes to the sea ⊠She dived in off the steps and thought about staying there, underwater, in the murk; the natural animal feeling of it, and the strange gleams of Old-Testament light.
As she came up, a robin made a side-head special-face at her from the fence.
In the changing room she stared at herself in the mirror. Her face so round and pale, her eyes so round and blue, her little mouth. Everything was normal, except for everything.
Her friends were being fantastic. Her sister Nell rang five times a day. âYou canât live on alcohol and marzipan,â she said. âYouâve to eat vegetables. Vegetables. In soup or something.â Vegetable soup made RĂłisĂn cry.
âHow are you doing?â Nell asked. âWhatâs going on?â
âDame Helena Handcart has introduced Monsieur Shit to Madame Fan,â RĂłisĂn said.
âOhhhh,â said Nell.
âI looked up what happens without the will and guess what it said? It said: âThe following people have no right to inherit where someone dies without leaving a will: unmarried partnersâ.â
âItâll turn up,â said Nell.
âMaybe,â RĂłisĂn said faintly.
She didnât do anything about it. It was surprisingly easy. For a bit. Then at four in the morning sheâd wake up terrified.
At work, her kind colleagues made sympathetic side-head at her like the robin. Thereâd been white envelopes on her desk, like for a birthday or when you leave. One card at home had a mauve iris on it, and glitter. At first sheâd opened them, because she wanted to read the nice things people had to say about him. Sheâd laughed at how theyâd found nice things to say even though he could be a difficult sod. âNico was one of a kindâ; âSuch a characterâ; âI never knew anybody quite like himâ. Just as well, in some ways, sheâd thought.
It turned out lots of people had suffered heartbreaking loss. The most surprising people! The very nerdiest of the IT boys who worked downstairs came shyly to her with a small book of Poems to Save Your Life, and told her about his boyfriend Anwar at school. Sheâd had no idea there was so much death around. You too, huh. Her boss Ayesha brought her a cup of tea and said, âYou take your time.â RĂłisĂn remembered the cup of tea the nurse had brought her. She went home.
*
âNell,â RĂłisĂn said on the phone. âYou know how heâd always text me, all day, whatever was going on, and now he doesnât â so I think somethingâs happened to him, even though something has happened to him, I know that perfectly well, but my thoughts are just ⊠are just ⊠so am I being an eejit?â
Her sister said, âYouâre in bits still. Have you had something to eat yet today?â.
âMarzipan âŠâ RĂłisĂn murmured. She felt she was boring her friends and her family with her grief; that they would like her to start getting over it. âMam wants me to come home for a bit.â
âDo you want to?â
âNO!â RĂłisĂn yelped.
âDonât, so.â
It wasnât that she didnât love them. But at least five of them would talk in front of her about how terrible it was their brother-in-law dying. She wanted peace. Nell would come up from Hastings at the drop of a hat. Already had done. Several times.
âWhat you need to do,â said Nell, âisâ,â
âI donât want a counsellor,â RĂłisĂn said.
âA counsellor would be good for you,â said Nell. âBut I wonât be dragging you. No, what you want is to meet people in the same boat as you. Have you looked up those bereavement support groups?â
âFuck off, Nell,â she said. âWould you kindly.â
*
She had a sense that he was looking over her shoulder, was just in the other room. There were dreams: one where heâd been putting a small child in the boot of a car. One where they had a glorious adventure running around in ruined cities, jumping off things on lianas, dancing, ending up in a dive bar with Johnny Cash; one where they were kissing on a shining cloud while tiny fish darted around like dragonflies over their heads, and just before she woke, he shrank, tiny, and ran towards her just at the level of her heart, and opened a door in her chest, and walked inside, waving up to her cheerily as he went.
She bunked off work one day because she heard, she swore she heard, his voice saying âCome here to me now, I want youâ, so sheâd jumped on a train and taken the ferry to the Isle of Wight with an armful of hyacinths, in the rain, and sheâd thrown them overboard mid-channel, thinking about him, waving in the weeds, those are pearls that were his eyes â theyâd make terrible pearls, an awful colour for a pearl, worse than those shiny purplish ones youâd see on stalls at a craft market that looked like blood blisters, o...
