Free The Boat by Clara Salaman Page B

woman stopped her singing.
    She looked up from her sewing, laughter transforming her features.
    ‘Or an angel. When we heard you from the rocks,’ Clem said, ‘you sounded like an angel.’
    ‘Did I?’
    ‘I thought you were an angel.’
    ‘I assure you, I’m not,’ the woman said, her face losing its lightness. A frown creased her brow as her attention returned to her needle and thread.
    ‘But you do have the voice of an angel,’ the bear man said, looking at his wife as he strummed.
    ‘Yes, but I’m not one, am I?’ she replied, her pale sloping eyes holding his gaze. She picked up her glass and knocked back the rest of her raki.
    ‘We’re Frank and Annie, by the way,’ the bear man said.
    ‘Johnny and Clem,’ Johnny said, saluting him with his glass.
    A roar of thunder cracked so loudly over their heads all four of them jumped.
    ‘Christ Almighty!’ the man said as the lightning flashed on and off like faulty wiring. He got up and moved to the companionway, pushing open the cockpit door. Johnny thought he noticed a slight limp as Frank climbed the steps. He was wearing long, baggy shorts and his legs were strong, covered in a fuzz of dark hair; a long scar ran down the inside of his calf. He leant out into the cockpit and looked up towards the mast.
    Johnny turned around to look out of the Perspex window behind him. Fork lightning jabbed at the hillsides, lighting up the bay. There were other boats bobbing about, mainly fishing boats, getting pounded by the weather. But none of them were occupied; there wasn’t a soul out – there was nobody looking for them, he felt certain of that.
    ‘Quite a storm,’ the bear man said, closing the doors behind him and sitting back down at the table, picking up the guitar again as his wife continued with her sewing. They were quite comfortable without conversation and that felt like a relief. Johnny could enjoy the wonders of the raki in peace; he loved the way it clouded his mind with its pleasant aniseed fog. He looked about him then, taking in every aspect of the boat. He was always puzzled by charter boats, their tubby ugliness, their lack of elegance, their uniformity. They were practical and buoyant, floating blobs of functionality. All the interior woodwork looked as if it were made of 2-mm ply.
    ‘Are you holidaying?’ Johnny asked the man.
    ‘Holidaying?’ he said, pausing mid-strum. ‘No, no. We live on her. The Little Utopia is our home.’
    ‘Oh,’ Johnny said, quickly rearranging his features into an impressed expression. He swigged back another mouthful of the firewater, feeling it ease over any faux pas. The man strummed again and began to sing in his low, soothing voice, seemingly making up the tune as he went along.
    ‘Clem,’ Annie said as if hearing the name for the first time. ‘What’s that short for?’
    ‘Clemency,’ she said. ‘But no one calls me that.’
    ‘Like Smudge. Her real name’s Imogen. But we don’t call her that either.’
    ‘Where are you from?’ the bear man asked them.
    ‘London. Putney,’ Johnny replied.
    ‘We’re from the other side. Kentish Town,’ he said.
    ‘How long have you been living on the boat?’
    Frank rested the guitar on his lap, his forearm lying on the curve. Johnny was thinking how smooth and clean the bear man’s hands were for someone who lived on a boat; his own were gnarled and ingrained with grubbiness no matter how hard he cleaned them and this guy had almost twenty years on him. Then Johnny too noticed the missing fingertips on his right hand.
    ‘Six years…?’ the man said, looking at his wife.
    She nodded.
    ‘We’ve been coast-hopping all that time,’ he said. ‘Started off in France and here we are.’
    That sounded like heaven to Johnny – though on a classic boat, of course. Not a pile of plastic like this.
    ‘We never spend more than a week in one place, if we can help it,’ the man said. ‘You were lucky to catch us tonight; we would have moved on if it