“What a godforsaken place,” David said in horror.
I was thinking of Nicole living in this godforsaken place, and so said nothing. The settlement seemed deserted, the only sign that anyone lived in this awful place was the smoke from the stone chimneys. Nor was there any sign of the catamaran Erebus, renamed Genesis, though on the southern side of the bay, moored alongside an ancient stone quay, there was an equally ancient looking fishing vessel that was painted a lurid lime-green and had a high bluff bow, a low gunwale amidships, and a stubby wheelhouse astern, from which a tall dark chimney stuck skyward. For an ensign the fishing boat had a pale green scrap of cloth like that I remembered from the day when Nicole had sailed away. The trawler’s name, like the renamed Erebus, was Genesis and had been painted in black untidy letters on her bows. The only other boats I could see were a slew of sea kayaks drawn up on the beach.
I throttled back Stormchild’s motor as the depth sounder betrayed the bay’s steeply shelving bottom.
“We could berth alongside the fishing boat,” David suggested.
I shook my head. “I’ll anchor and row ashore. You’ll stay here?”
“Gladly.” David shuddered at the decrepit, uninviting appearance of the settlement. Now that we were closing on the land I could see a row of odd concrete tanks embedded in the sloping lawn in front of the house. David had also noticed the ugly containers and was examining them through his binoculars. “Fish tanks?” he ventured the guess, then gave me the glasses as he went forward to stand beside the main anchor.
I waved to him when the depth sounder showed we were in thirty feet of water. The chain rattled and crashed its way through the fairlead as I killed the engine, then there was a wonderful silence as the chain at last stopped running and as Stormchild’s small forward motion dug in the anchor flukes. She tugged once, then gentled as we swung round so that our stern faced the apparently deserted settlement. We were just fifty yards from shore, while the house was another hundred yards beyond the small beach.
“As a garden of earthly delights,” David said, “it lacks a certain lighthearted elegance, wouldn’t you say?”
“It lacks people, too.” I unlashed the dinghy that had been stored on the after coach roof, then splashed the small boat over Stormchild’s stern. I did not bother with the dinghy’s outboard motor, but instead just lowered myself overboard with a pair of oars and rowlocks. I also took a handheld VHF radio which David would monitor on Stormchild’s larger set. He asked if I wanted to take the second rifle with me as well, but I shook my head. “I don’t want to antagonize anyone, if anyone’s there at all.”
“White man come in peace, eh?” David said with a jocularity designed to hide his nervousness, yet there was a hint of truth in his jest, for we both felt like explorers touching a previously unknown shore in an effort to make contact with some elusive and mysterious tribe.
“Wish me luck,” I said, then pushed away from Stormchild’s side. It was odd to look back at my boat. She had become my carapace, my security, and it was almost unsettling to be rowing away from her sea-battered hull. The woodwork of her cabin roofs looked faded, and her paint was grimed with salt, yet there was still something very lovely about the big yacht as she sat in that unnaturally placid bay with its long view of the Desolate Straits.
A flurry of flightless steamer ducks fled from my dinghy as I neared the shingle beach. My heart was thumping and there was a nervous sourness in my belly. I had thought that my long solo journeys around the world had cured me of helpless fear, yet now I felt a kind of craven panic because I really was rowing into the unknown. I felt a temptation to return to Stormchild and let Genesis come to us, but instead I tugged hard on the oars until the dinghy’s bows grated at last on the beach. I stepped out and dragged the small boat safely above the tide line. The beach was edged by a seven foot high bluff of stony earth, up which someone had once built a flight of sturdy wooden steps.
I climbed the weathered stairs with a growing sense of unreality. I had sailed ten thousand miles to what? To nothing? To a blast of gunfire? To Nicole? To tears of reconciliation? Or perhaps, if my daughter and I both behaved with true British reticence, to an awkward embrace and an embarrassed conversation.
I reached the top of the wooden steps and started across the springy, short-grassed turf, where I was at once assailed by a stench of manure so overpowering that I almost retched. At first I thought the smell might be coming from the concrete tanks, which I now assumed were sewage settlement chambers, but when I reached the odd tanks I saw that one half were empty while the other half held malodorous and curdled mixtures of oil and water. The smell, distinctly that of sewage, did not emanate from the tanks but from the fields on either side of the house, and I realized that the Genesis community must recycle their own sewage by spreading it as topdressing on the settlement’s vegetable plots.
I walked toward the house’s central doorway which was framed by a flimsy-looking wickerwork porch, a domestic touch as odd as the strangely festive gazebo. It felt weird to be ashore. The land seemed to be rocking like a boat. I was nervous, yet still no one challenged me, indeed no human sound disturbed the day’s peace. A gull screamed, startling me. Then, just as I reached the conclusion that the settlement must be deserted, the double front doors of the house burst open and two bearded men, both wearing identical green garments, emerged into the sunlight.
For a moment we stared at each other. I suddenly felt happy. I was going to see Nicole! And in my happiness I felt an absurd urge to offer the two men a deep bow. “Hello!” I called out instead.
“Go away,” one of the two men replied. Both men looked to be in their thirties and had springy, bushy beards. The one who had spoken sported a black beard, while his companion had a brown beard streaked with gray. Neither man appeared to be armed, which was reassuring.
My happiness ebbed as swiftly as it had bubbled up. I started walking toward the two men and an unseen hand immediately slammed the doors of the house shut. I heard bolts slide into place.
“Go away!” The man with the black beard said again.
“Listen,” I said in a very friendly tone, “I’ve just sailed ten thousand miles to see my daughter, and I’m not going away just because you’re feeling unsociable. My name’s Tim Blackburn. How are you?” I held out my hand. “I’m looking for Nicole Blackburn. Is she here?”
They ignored my outstretched hand. Instead they stood with arms akimbo, daring me to push past them.
“Perhaps you didn’t hear me?” I suggested politely. “My name is Tim Blackburn and I’ve come here to see my daughter Nicole.”
“Go away,” the man with the black beard said again.
I went to walk round them and the second man raised a hand to push me back.
“Touch me,” I told him, “and I’ll break your fucking skull.”
My sudden hostility made the man skitter out of my path like a frightened rabbit. I walked past him to the odd porch, where I tried to open the front doors that proved to be very firmly bolted. I turned back to the bearded men. “Is Nicole Blackburn here?” Neither man answered, so I peered through the window nearest the door. The glass panes were very grimy, but I could just see into a room that was almost empty except for a bare trestle table on which hurricane lamps stood unlit. The stone window ledge was thick with dead flies. More ominously I noted that the window had stout iron bars set into the stone ledge.