Free The Boat by Clara Salaman

turned to Johnny.
    ‘Do you speak English?’ he said.
    Johnny nodded. ‘We are English,’ Johnny said.
    ‘Were you attacked?’
    Johnny shook his head. The man nodded and began to wash his hands in the galley sink. ‘You better get your wet stuff off.’ He leant into the berth beside the chart table and pulled out a bundle of towels before approaching Clem and raising her chin with one of his giant fingers. He stooped down to examine her cut.
    ‘That’s nasty,’ he said, his mop of dark, curly hair falling over his eyes.
    She nodded. ‘I fell on the rocks,’ she said as he dabbed at her chin with the towel, his eyes flicking up to hers but flicking away again when no explanation was forthcoming. It was hard to know where to begin, so instead she stared at him for she was quite stunned by the course of events. A part of her was still standing outside in the pouring rain, wretched, not knowing where to go.
    ‘There is a road, you know,’ the bear man said with a wink. She was studying his face; he was old, in his late thirties, his eyes were very dark, his skin was weathered and his jaw unshaven, but it was his smell that struck her most. He smelt of something familiar: her father. He used the same soap that her dad used to use. She shut her eyes and let him tend to her.
    Johnny peeled off his clothes. His drenched jeans and shirt sat in a pile on the floor. He was standing there in the galley stark naked, rubbing himself dry with a towel when the woman and the little girl came back into the saloon. ‘Oh, sorry,’ he said, covering himself up.
    ‘Nothing we haven’t seen before,’ the woman said with a smile as she put the medicine box down on the table. There was something quite striking about her when she smiled; her face seemed to transform. The little girl placed a pile of clothes beside the box and the woman said, ‘You can find something in that lot.’
    ‘Thank you,’ Johnny said to the little girl, who hid behind her mother’s legs, those unblinking eyes never leaving his as he started to go through the clothes.
    ‘Back to bed, Smudge,’ the bear man said and the girl just stood there staring.
    ‘Do what Daddy says,’ the woman said, rubbing the girl’s dark hair. She scurried off and the woman opened up her medicine box, inside of which appeared to be every remedy known to mankind. The bear man rifled through it and began applying one thing after another to Clem’s grazes.
    ‘You all right, love?’ he said to her in his soft, low voice. She opened her eyes and nodded, watching as he turned back to the tin, his large but delicate hands putting a lid back on a tube. She noticed then that the tips of two of his fingers on his right hand were missing.
    ‘Well, that should do it,’ he said, dabbing at her and giving her a smile, revealing even white teeth. ‘You’d better get your wet stuff off!’
    Johnny was already in some dry clothes, a pair of enormous shorts with a belt tied in a knot and a huge sweat shirt belonging to the bear man. Clem did exactly as she was told and peeled off her soaking trousers, staring at her own gashed legs as if they belonged to someone else. Thin brown sea urchin spines stuck out of her ankles and feet. Slowly she undid the buttons of her shirt, took it off and handed it to the woman, who picked up all of the wet clothes and took them though to the wet locker. Clem stood there naked but for her knickers, which left nothing to the imagination, gazing at her blood-stained body. Johnny covered her in a towel and began to carefully rub her dry.
    ‘We can get those out,’ the woman said, looking down at Clem’s feet, pulling out a pair of tweezers from the box. ‘Put this on!’
    She handed her a large T-shirt dress and helped her into it, wrapping a cardigan around her shoulders. Clem sat down at the table with Johnny at her side, watching in silence as these strangers quietly passed each other scissors and plasters and various implements and set to work on