Hope drove back into New York and made a stop at Grand Central Station. He found the platform from which he would have seen off Alice Fontaine on her journey back to Kentucky - if she had wanted it that way. He watched the train at rest taking up the last of its passengers. The smell of burning coal was heavy in the air.
With whistles from the station attendant and the locomotive’s powerful reply, the heavy wheels inched into movement. Those people remaining behind on the platform waved and blew kisses. Although Hope wished he could have joined in waving and blowing kisses to his parting memories of Fontaine, he knew he would need to do better if he was to see them on a similar journey out of town.
After the train was gone he returned to his car; on the way he relieved a newspaper stand of its last, rather tired looking copy of the Brooklyn Chronicle. The Buster and the Treatment had all but acquired a permanent column in the crime section and Hope enjoyed the way in which Donovan Black wrote it up with all the dignity of a car crash.
The paper got tossed into the backseat where there may have been one or two just like it. He drove for a solid hour, enjoying the lack of company on the roads, which was exactly what he would have been seeking in whatever bar he might have wandered into if not for being here.
The roads he finished upon were jarringly uneven. His Ford, however, had taken the journey intact often enough in the past, so he had faith it could handle it now just as long the holes were part of the road proper and not a straying into the ditches alongside it. The occasional light flickering amongst distant farmhouses were the only signs of life. The air inside the Ford was invigorated by the salty sea breeze, telling him how close he was to his destination. He greedily filled his lungs and went harder at the accelerator. The headlights came upon the grove of sycamore trees which marked the end and he braked and killed the engine and listened to the sounds of waves thumping ashore. After a time he took to hand his flashlight and went that way: he entered onto a sandy dirt track and directed the light at a crooked sign that had been hammered into the ground with all the care of a stray rake. The sign read “Featherton Boat Builders”. Behind it was a house and workshops, their shadows thick and dense like a hand being held up to conceal a face.
The dirt path passed them with a gradual hardening from damp soil into gravel; then it came to a flight of wooden steps that plunged through prickly foliage into darkness and the thumping shoreline.
Hope clutched onto the handrail as his path continued. The stairs reached a wooden walkway that wound a course around and over the rocky outcrops of the shore line until it culminated in a wooden jetty. A small dingy was tied to it and small waves were restfully lapping against its hull. The jetty’s floorboards creaked as Hope walked out to its end. He shone the torch out to where a thirty foot schooner lay moored. He stayed the beam there. The schooner was a beautiful craft in immaculate condition. A proud red hull, sitting light in the water. Polished oak decks aglow. Superbly sleek contours from bow to stern. Athenia was emblazoned in bold gold lettering.
‘Sleep walking, Mr Hope?’
The voice caught Hope off guard. He had been entranced by the vessel to the exclusion of the rest of his surroundings. He turned sharply to see that the new arrival onto the jetty was moving freely without a flashlight. A tall, confident shadowy figure.
‘Sorry to startle you,’ the voice added. ‘It’s Alistair Plonker. The assistant boat builder.’
Hope restricted the temptation to put the flashlight onto his face: on a dark night such as this it would require minutes for his vision to uncloud again.
‘Oh, hello there,’ he replied evenly. ‘Not at all. But how could you possibly know it was me?’
‘Actually, I couldn’t make out your face. The way you were looking out at the Athenia was what gave you away. Too wistful to be a burglar. Much more like a proud owner contemplating a long journey.’
Hope let the torchlight beam rest down at their feet. ‘You might be right. Did I get you out of bed?’
He looked for any traces of sleepiness in the young man’s face but what he found on the contrary was a fresh active gaze and an easy smile. In fact, he looked no different than when he normally dropped in this way for a weekend afternoon sail.
Despite his youth, Alistair had journeyed around the world more than once on one vessel or another and had imparted on Hope a good many lessons on the art of sailing and how to get the most out of the Athenia.
Hope liked how he transformed from a somewhat gangly, awkward soul on land to supremely assured and agile from his very first step onto anything with a hull and rudder.
‘I always sleep with one ear to the sounds outside the cabin,’ said Alistair. ‘A habit of the sail. It is true, however, that there are not many cars in these parts so late at night. It’s different in New York, right? The city that never sleeps.’
‘Never sleeps. That describes a lot of the residents. Maybe that’s why they have been known to get somewhat cranky from time to time.’
‘Is that what has brought you here? Have you had enough?’
Hope paused. ‘I was wondering that myself.’
‘There are folks from the city who never set foot on their yachts. Just knowing they have something moored in some picturesque bay ready to take them away when life gets too hard is all the peace of mind they need. Not that I’m assuming that’s you. But I always have the Athenia prepared. Just on the off chance your life really might get too hard.’
‘Are you talking about a certain boxing match?’
Alistair replied warily. ‘I keep in touch, Mr Hope. New York is like a storm on the horizon, and you know how transfixed sailors are by the weather.’
‘Well, if you’ve got anything left in the bottle of your stiffest winter whiskey, you might loosen my tongue.’
Hope’s eyes had become accustomed enough to the light now that the reticence in Alistair’s eyes was easily discernible.
‘You know I would invite you in, it’s just that the Captain is asleep and it wouldn’t be a pleasant experience to disturb him.’
Hope studied his eyes for anything more than reticence and replied, ‘It’s funny that I have never met the Captain in all the times I’ve been here. You call yourself the assistant yet it seems to me you have complete control of all that happens in the ship building yard.’
‘Except when it comes to deciding how late is too late to pull the cork off a whiskey bottle.’
His reply was somehow less than convincing and his eyes were shying away; Hope, nevertheless, was not about to harp on the subject. There may have been a drunk captain on the floor, or a secret love behind the door; no matter what, all Hope and Alistair had ever needed for their friendship was this jetty and the yachts around it.
‘Never mind,’ said Hope. ‘For you now at least, I’m just another New Yorker getting by on the glimpse of a boat. And I’d better be getting back. No time to weigh anchor just yet. I’ve got an early start tomorrow.’
‘Then I’ll walk you to your car.’
‘It’s quiet in these parts at night, isn’t it?’ said Hope as they walked slowly together up the creaking steps of the boardwalk.
The considered reply was a long time coming. ‘The whole world is quiet at night. It is man who messes it up with noise. His most noble creation was the sound of wind against sails. He should have left it at that.’
‘But he didn’t. He used those sails to seek out and conquer new worlds like this one.’
‘And now the human screams can be heard in every corner. And I have heard it. Though I haven’t heard it here. To be honest, however, I see it in your face.’
Hope was startled. ‘Is that so?’
‘Yes. Screams of yours mixed with those of people who have wronged you.’
‘I have not screamed.’
‘Well, they have turned into lines upon your face. And until they are erased, the sound of wind on sail will never do.’ Alistair turned quickly back.
‘The Amazon is upon my face.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘My first trip into the Congo with an expedition looking for gold. Deep into the jungle. Upon the banks of the Amazon we stumbled into a tribe. They seemed friendly and with their fragments of English and Spanish they had acquired from missionaries they offered to take us in for the night and feed and shelter us. They did as they promised and we feasted on snakes and wild berries. It was, however, to be our last meal.
‘As it turned out, our guide had recently lost his brother to a gunshot wound inflicted by a European and he was intent on revenge. The tribe he had delivered us to took the white-man to be the earthly form of their gods and by ingesting them was the only respectable means of prayer.’
If not for the gravitas in his voice, Hope would have been certain he was telling a tall story. ‘So they started eating you?’
Alistair waited until they were at the top of the stairs before he spoke again.
‘They took four of the party on the first night. The sounds and smells of the feast I will never forget.’ He shuddered. ‘They left us survivors bound, blindfolded and gagged in a filthy stinking hut. The fiendish tour guide would come in and taunt us, saying that our fate would be sealed in the same manner in the next night. Of course, with our blindfolds we would not know what time of day it would be. Long, agonising torture.’ He took in a long steadying breath. ‘I started praying to God for a helping hand. In fact, I must have done it for many hours before it occurred to me it was wrong and selfish of me to try calling God into such a heathenish place as the one I was in. It was no place for Him. No place at all.’ He slapped and folded his arms. ‘There was only one entity I could call, one entity who was at home and would thrive amidst such grotesqueness: The devil himself. I called him and called him.’ His voice turned to ice. ‘And then he came. The hand slips from its bindings in a manner only the devil himself could achieve. And the devil does not release its hold with that. It is their as the guards outside the hut are taken and killed. But you welcome him. Because their gods would claim your soul on their behalf. You hold him close as you flee through the jungle. He is comfortable with the taste of schnapps and the sting of swarming bugs. He enjoys the illness tearing your insides apart. He does not let you die because he is the pain coursing through your veins.’
‘I think I understand,’ said Hope.
‘I was the only one to make it back to the coast. I suppose the devil was particularly comfortable in my skin.’
‘Is that why you live out here as a recluse?’
Alistair paused. ‘The devil is like malaria, but so much worse. And a relapse could happen at any moment.’
Hope walked the remaining distance to his car and looked back.
Alistair had stopped a few steps short. He was staring out from the darkness and he said, ‘I learnt that God is not omnipresent. There are places He will not go. But there are friends.’