The Heart of the Sea

She walked out of the air-conditioned airport and the dry furnace heat halted her in her tracks. She suddenly felt grit between her teeth. She squinted into the breathless haze. There was not the slightest hint of a breeze. Groups were gabbling in Spanish while they clambered on to coaches or waited for a taxi. She clutched the handle of her wheeled-suitcase and stepped out into the sunshine. She immediately felt her brow moisten. Her clothes felt tight and clammy after only a few minutes' walking around the airport's perimeter. A narrow, disused road led her to a wide, sand-blasted expanse of scrubby beach. The sounds of the jet-planes were far behind her.

She began to doubt her instructions but she continued along the deserted road until she came to some wooden walkways that stretched off into dunes. Her suitcase bounced awkwardly on the planks and she cursed it at every snag. By the time she reached the beach she was an over-cooked mess. She wiped her face on her arm, the material of her sweatshirt was soaked dark. She looked around with a growing dismay. Sweat stung her eyes. Her hands tried to shield the worst of the tyrannical shine from her vision, 'There!'

A discordant speck of colour in the beige and blue landscape stood out some distance away. She walked towards it. Her feet sank into the beach and sand began to fill her shoes. The damned suitcase was such a bitch to drag that she considered abandoning it. She traipsed clumsily closer to what she could now see was a dinghy on the shore. A man was lying in the dinghy with a battered sun-hat over his face. She tried to speak but she was spitting fire.

She gathered some saliva up her parched throat, licked her lips and croaked, "Er, hi? Excuse me?"

The man didn't stir. She snorted through her nose and wished devoutly that she'd never been offered this hare-brained chance of a free vacation. She kicked the surprisingly robust dinghy and hurt her toes, "Excuse me!? Hello?"

The man grumbled awake then rolled out of the dinghy and up on to his feet. He took off his hat and removed his sunglasses and there he was, her grandfather. She only half remembered him from when she was very small but here was the same sardonic smile from her mother's photographs. Nobody had seen him in the flesh for over a decade and he was almost mythical in her memory. He was tall, unshaved and unkempt but he looked agile despite his advanced age. He ran his fingers through his wiry, almost-white hair, "No fuckin' way!"

Her brain was frazzled by the incandescent heat but she hadn't foreseen him saying that. He chuckled, surveyed her up and down and repeated, "No fuckin' way!"

"Sorry?"

"No way you're lil' Betsy."

She held out her hand, "I go by Elizabeth now. How are you, Grandp-"

He pushed her hand away and embraced her, lifting her off her feet. His clothes felt rough as she was squeezed against him, the stiff point of his collar stabbed her neck. His muscles were hard under his shirt. He was laughing, "Lil' Betsy! No way."

He released her and picked up her suitcase, "Holy guacamole, this thing weighs a ton. Bet it was hard draggin' it here."

All she could do was croak an incomprehensible assent.

His green eyes twinkled as he chuckled, "I knew you wouldn't be the same snot-nosed brat I remember but I wasn't expecting... this."

She frowned, "This what?"

"You're a grown-ass woman!"

He punched her playfully on the arm, "S'great to see you girl," then helped her step into the dinghy.

"Hold tight," he barked then shoved the boat off the sand into the shallow wash. He waded out until he was waist deep then he pulled himself up with a practised ease and yanked the outboard motor into life. The sudden sputtering mechanical cacophony shattered the peace. As they bounced along, skimming the surface at an alarming speed, her grandfather grinned and yelled above the noise, "I guess your brothers didn't want to waste their summer with their borin' old grandpa, eh? I'm glad you did though. It's so good to see you, Betsy."

She smiled at him as she dug around in her suitcase for her water bottle. She drank the warm liquid down in one long gulp. They rounded a bend in the coast and a busy marina came into view. Boats of many sizes were moored up at a series of jetties that prodded out into the sea. The town looked prosperous and nautical but not in a trashy, touristy way. Her grandfather slowed their approach until they glided calmly to bump against the back of a large yacht.

"This is mine," he said.

He helped her up the steps and she was astonished at the yacht's grandeur. It was luxurious but it was obviously no plaything; it looked like it meant business with a sleek, piratical efficiency. Her grandfather walked over to a hand-crank and began to winch up the dinghy.

"It's, it's just beautiful," she said.

"She's beautiful," he corrected, "but yeah, she's a beaut alright."

"I thought you'd have a small sailing boat. In my mind..."

"You're probably rememberin' my first boat. Named Caitriona, after your grandmother. I had her for, ooh, about twenty years or so. I traded up."

"This looks very expensive, Grandpa. Are you like a drug smuggler or something?"

Her grandfather laughed loud as he secured the dinghy and hauled out her suitcase. He showed her to the master bedroom and showed her how to work the shower then left her to her own devices. She salivated at the thought of a cool shower rinsing off the draining, debilitating cocoon of sweat. She stripped out of her soggy clothes then had a moment of naked panic as she realised she was extremely vulnerable on the other side of the world in the power of, what was effectively, a stranger. Some strange man she barely knew. She felt the boat tremble; mechanical vibrations carried up her bare soles then the boat moved with a curious sensation of weightlessness. She decided she was light-headed and exhausted. Excitement overtook her caution and worries, 'I've never had a shower on a moving boat before. This should be fun!'

*******

She awoke to darkness. She was sprawled on the large bed, draped in her towel. Her head was fuggy, her limbs weighted by fatigue. She was motionless, figuring out who she was, where she was. Her thoughts coalesced, 'Shitfire, jetlag's a bitch!'

She shook her head to dislodge the cotton-wool clouds and sat up. The shower beckoned so she hauled up her body and spent a dozen hours under its strongest, hottest setting. Freshened and starving, she dressed and went up on to the deck. They were moored in another marina. Jingling harbour-lamps lit a warm night. She looked out over a small town with bars and restaurants aglow with evening life. Her grandfather wasn't to be seen so she climbed down and stood on the dock wondering how to find him. A few people were aboard their own yachts and boats in quiet, civilised parties. She turned and looked out to sea. She breathed and listened. Faint sounds of life carried over from the town. The slight wind jittered sails and ropes against masts. Footsteps on the dock made her turn to see her grandfather approaching with three boxes. Behind him were four men all similarly carrying columns of boxes.

"Hello shipmate," he said, "Thought you were gunna sleep for a fortnight!"

"What's all this?"

"Oh? Just some booze and smokes and things," he nodded to the men, "Allez les gars, allons chercher ça, hors de vue."

One of the four men was a teenager, he chewed gum and grinned lasciviously at her when he passed. Her grandfather climbed up on to his boat then the men began passing up the boxes, "I'll just get these stowed away then we'll get some dinner, okay?"

"Sounds great."

She watched the boxes disappearing into a hidden hold in the depths of the boat. When the teenager was free he sidled over and spoke to her in a French she'd couldn't comprehend; she'd learned French in high-school but his was a guttural slur. His friend walked over to translate, "He is wondering why you, the sexy young woman, is with the old man. He says you should come with us to Marseille. We'll show you the good time, eh? Nightclubs, the dancing, eh?"

"Merci, non. I just want to have dinner, thanks."

"Course you do," her grandfather said, climbing back down, "You must be Hank Marvin by now."

Her grandfather haggled with the men and was handed over a wad of money. They haggled a little more aggressively and some more notes were counted out into her grandfather's palm. They slapped each other on the back and the men walked off. She watched him double check the amount and then roll the notes and shove them into his jeans pocket.

"You ARE a drug smuggler," she wagged her finger at him, " I knew it!"

He laughed and took her arm and they walked into the town. They walked through a restaurant and out into a pleasant rear garden set with tables and chairs. Coloured bulbs hung from the pergola above them. Couples and small family groups were eating and chatting. A waiter came over and her grandfather ordered. She frowned when the waiter walked off, "How could you possibly know what I'd like?"

"Any restaurant you go to, you always ask for what's fresh, what was caught today. Else they mug you off with some old cack they wanna get shot of. You'll love it, trust me. And if you don't, we'll get you somethin' else."

He was right, she loved it. She couldn't identify the fish but she wolfed it down and had to severely resist picking up her plate and licking it clean. She ordered two desserts and finally sat back with a rounded belly to sip her post-prandial liqueur and evaluate her grandfather.

Dressed in a clean shirt and with his wild hair tamed, and under the restaurant's theatrically romantic lighting, the years appeared to fall away from him. She smiled at how easily her grandmother must've fallen for him, so many years ago. He had an easy chuckle and a relaxed, confident charm. Not the overconfidence of a man in his twenties, aglut with unwarranted self-worship but a man who knew his worth and capabilities and was happy, 'That's it! That's what's been bugging me. I've been wondering why he seems so different to every man I've ever known. He's happy! Just happy being who he is. Not wracked with doubt and envy and disappointment and needing to torment another person to alleviate their inferiority. I wish I could learn his secret. I wish I could be happy.'

"Okay, Julien," using her grandfather's name showed she was in no-nonsense-mode, "What was in all those boxes before? What am I getting myself into?"

He laughed, "I told you, just booze and cigarettes. Some chocolate. I'm goin' to deliver it to a friend. It's a tax dodge thing."

"Bullshit. A few bottles of wine and some Toblerone won't buy you a yacht like yours."

"I told you that too. I traded up."

"Bullshit."

"You've seen pictures of Caitriona, my first boat? Well, when me and your grandmother split up and I retired, I sailed that ol' jalopy down the coast and bought a better one in Monterey Bay, Californ-eye-ay. I went down to Mexico for a while, I made some improvements and sold it at a profit and bought another. I did this again in Guatemala and then in El Salvador, then I got a hankerin' for a taste of The Old World."

He finished his coffee and summoned the bill, "We'd been to Italy on vacation but I'd always promised myself time to explore properly, you know? So I cashed in my chips and flew over and started again. I bought a lovely sailboat in the Bay of Cardiz, that's in Southern Spain. I sailed on through the Pillars of Hercules and never left."

"The what of Hercules?"

"Where Africa and Europe almost touch? A few years ago I started feelin' my age and bought a motor-sailer, that's a boat with both an engine and sails. So you're quite safe, Betsy, I'm not much of a mechanic but give me a pole and a sail and a breath of wind and I can get her goin'."

"Hmmmm, sounds plausible," she eyed him suspiciously, "But I got my eye on you, buster."

"Right back-atcha, kid," he grinned.

*******

She awoke, showered and dressed while feeling proud that her sea-legs had naturally adjusted to the perpetual buoyant bobbling, 'It must be in the blood.'

She poked her head up into the open air and discovered the boat was skipping along like a skimmed pebble. She had felt no rumbling motor underfoot, the sails were unfurled and they caught the breeze in a pregnant bulge. She found her grandfather at the controls, singing to himself, master of his own little world.

"Ah, there's my crew," he said, "Take the helm, will you? I want to see to somethin'."

"What? What! You can't expect... You can't just leave the cockpit while we're moving, can you!?"

Her grandfather shouted back from down the boat, "Don't call it a cockpit, girl! That's aeroplanes! I'll be back, I just want to re-tie the jib-head."

Her panic quickly subdued once she realised that she wouldn't immediately steer the vessel into a waiting whirlpool of death. She relaxed her grip a little and enjoyed the immense power under her fingers. Her grandfather returned but he sat down and watched her steering rather than reclaim the wheel. After a few minutes he asked, "How does it feel?"

She considered the question, "Free."

"Hah! Exactly. Free, yes. You and I, we're of one mind, Betsy."

They watched silently and sightlessly as the universe sped by, revelling in a zen-like peace.

"Feels like," she concluded, "All your troubles are behind you. And there is nothing ahead but sunshine and the open sea. And you can just go where-ever the hell you want."

He laughed, "You hit the fuckin' nail on the head there, girl."

"Er, where are we going though?"

"Well, I thought that you'd want to live it up with people your own age rather than knockin' about with this old codger. So I thought I'd take you to Ibiza."

She wrinkled her nose, "Ibiza?"

"Yeah, you know? Sex and raves and drugs and what-not."

"I couldn't think of anything worse, Grandpa."

"Oh. Right."

"I hate dance music."

He ruffled his hair, "Where would you like to go then?"

"To where-ever is the opposite of a crowded filthy hole filled with drunken idiots."

"Okeydokey. We'll set controls for the heart of the sea!"

Her grandfather stood up behind her, his body touching hers. His arms came around her waist and he gently placed his hands on hers. His palms were rough, scored by the salt sea and a lifetime of manual labour, unlike the soft-handed wussies she knew. She felt tingles of intimacy course through her. He guided her steering, "That's it, just there. You have the touch, Betsy."

He spoke softly, just behind her ear, and she was surprised at her inappropriate tingles.

"Try to keep that needle pointed in-between the forty and the fifty-five for a while, okay?"

"Which needle?"

He tapped the glass of one of the many dials then sat back down. She was blushing and conscious of his observation. She watched him watching her and he smiled, "You know? Sometimes, when you turn a certain way, just for a moment, you look exactly like your grandmother. Just for a second, then it's gone. Genetics is a weird thing."

"What happened with you and Gran?"

"Whaddya mean, 'What Happened'?"

"You said that you split up, why did you leave your wife?"

"Erm, well, I, er, I should get some lunch cookin'."

*******

They ate a pleasant meal of grilled chicken and fresh salad vegetables; out on the open sea it all tasted to Betsy so wondrously amplified and accentuated. Life sure is better, down where it's wetter, she sang to herself as she tidied up while her grandfather navigated the final distance.

She watched him drop the anchor and roll up the sails. He danced across the pointy-smooth-round bit as sure-footed as a mountain-goat. She had taken to teasing him by purposely not remembering all the silly names of the boat's parts, deliberately getting them wrong to enjoy his exasperation.

"It's cute," she said, "How all the sheets and sticks all get packed away, everything has its own neat little place."

"Sails," he growled, "Sails and masts, not sheets and sticks."

"Tomayto, tomahto," she shrugged, smiling inwardly at how much it irritated him.

"And it's not cute, " he insisted, "A boat is not cute."

A small part of her was anxious about this enforced companionship with a man she hardly knew; she was helpless, utterly within his protection. Her teasing of him was a stab at tenacity, a bonding, establishing a little dominance of her own. Her grandfather took it all with a chuckle of annoyance, 'Not like the fucking immature dweebs I know! They're all so fucking insecure they can't even take a joke.'

She stood gazing out in every direction. The blue sky melted into the blue sea. There was a disconcerting continuance of red-hot azure and she was spinning at its centre. She felt like she was a tiny figurine inside a snow-globe ornament. It seemed unreal. She felt unbalanced but not because of the roll of the waves, "Grandpa, we are literally in the middle of nowhere. There's literally, like fucking literally nothing out here. What if something went wrong? There'd be no one to help us!"

She began listing breathlessly all the disasters her imagination could conjure. She fantasised about the lack of any possible rescue. Suddenly her grandfather was cuddling her. His salty shirt was open slightly and his chest hair tickled her nose. She took a breath. His skin had a faint trace of an elegant cologne.

He asked, "Are you panickin'?"

She looked up at him, "Little bit, I mean, jeez-louise, anything, just anything could happen out here! Tornadoes, whirlwinds, sharks!"

"Shhh. We aren't in the middle of nowhere, it just seems that way. Look out there," he turned her around, "See that smudge of dark on the horizon?"

"Yeah, I guess?"

"That's Africa."

"No, really?"

"Uh hum. Ras Bougaroun, or the Horned Cape. It's actually quite beautiful. Verdant is the word, I suppose."

He turned her again, "And just over that horizon, is Sardinia."

"Where sardines come from?"

He laughed, glad that he was calming her, "And just beyond that, is Corsica. S'where we'll be goin' next."

"For the big anniversary party you talked about?"

"No, that's in Termoli. In Italy. But I wanted to show you some of my haunts first."

He turned her to face him, "We have radio and a satellite phone. I'm actually surprised we haven't seen another craft goin' by. It's a busy lane usually. So, it just feels isolated to you, okay?"

She nodded.

"Betsy, I would never let anythin' happen to you."

She nodded.

"I think I should get you out of the sun. I have a gift for you."

Under the seat cushions was a hidden storage area, he lifted out a parasol and his battered sun-hat and a box. He handed her the box and then began to arrange some shade. She sat and opened her gift, a wide-brimmed, stylish summer hat.

"Grandpa, it's lovely."

"I saw it in a boutique in Port Vendres and I thought, that's got Betsy's name written all over it."

He dug around in bag and came out with an ancient, large squeezy-tube of sun-screen. He gave it to her, "And you mustn't forget, you don't feel the sun because of the wind chill factor, but it's there, burnin' you to a crisp on the sly."

"Do you use this?"

"Course I do. How do you think I maintain my boyish good looks?"

Today was the first day Betsy had not worn baggy, indistinct clothes and he had immediately noticed her fine, young figure. She was wearing a vest top that clung to every curve of her voluminous breasts and a tight pair of jeans with holes in the knees. He liked the way her tiny roll of belly podge made the jeans strain at the button. 'And that ass! God, that ass is to die for.'

He'd had a few women aboard his yacht before, older ladies and all very attractive in their own way, but this lithesome, glowing, fresh-faced gorgeousness reclining in front of him was enough to make him think that he could never again return to their wrinkled arms, cellulite-speckled thighs, saggy bosoms, saggy bottoms, thin lips and turkey jowls. A young woman is especially enchanting and Betsy was a fiction from his fetid masturbatory dreams. But every time he found an emergent thrust of lechery stirring his loins he had to remind himself that she was his daughter's daughter and slam down the shutters on his indecent longings.