Free Sea Change by Jeremy Page Page A

wake.

Position: Moored. 52° 01’.15N 1° 21’.36E. Anchorage off the Rushcutter’s Arms, in the River Deben estuary
    Soon after daybreak, as soon as it had been safe to steer, Guy had brought the Flood into the River Deben estuary. The low coast had reached out to sea in the shape of two embracing arms, welcoming him back, it had seemed, to calmer water. Water that smelled of water, rather than the sea. He hadn’t slept much, and had been glad to see the familiar river landscape of woods, fields and damp brick houses. An estuary, like his own, but not his own.
    He’d been to the Deben before, though not by boat, so he had had to steer carefully through the wide stretches of the estuary where the channels and gravel banks unbraided in long ribbons, the river becoming undone by the sea. But although it was new to him, he had an overwhelming sense of recognition - the glass-flat water of the high tide bringing him in, stiffened by the breeze along the deeper channel, the thick mats of saltmarsh in complicated blocks on either side. It had the texture and deep rich smell of his own estuary, forty miles to the south, but where his estuary curved along the quayside of the Tide Mill anchorage, here it had narrowed and, where there is the long strand of the oak wood at his own mooring, here was the Rushcutter’s Arms, the pub where he came ten years ago, with Judy and the other members of their band, Fergus on the fiddle and Cindy at the drums and Phil on guitar. There, that spot on the slope of the pub car park, where they unloaded the gear, Phil in some ludicrous cowboy shirt the rest of the band hadn’t sanctioned.
    ‘Do you think Phil’s gonna piss about all day?’ Judy had said, as they watched him unzipping his guitar case in the car park and pretending to shoot the gulls with it, machine-gun style.
    ‘Probably,’ Guy had replied, ‘he’s good at it,’ and on seeing Judy’s surprisingly genuine concern he added, ‘He’ll be fine, once his nerves are gone. He plays the guitar well and that’s what he’s here to do. Play.’ She needed this kind of assurance, every so often.
    They’d only known Phil a few weeks - he worked in a music shop near Fergus’s work, and had only just agreed to join the band after impressing Fergus with his guitar skills one lunch time. Judy had thought he was a prat and didn’t want him in the group. She thought he didn’t really share their country-folk taste and was probably in it for reasons she hadn’t figured out yet. That’s ironic, considering how it would all turn out.
    ‘Have you seen his shirt?’ she’d said.
    ‘Yes. I’ve seen the shirt.’
    They’d looked at the others through the windscreen: at Fergus holding his fiddle case, standing huge and bearded and slightly bow-legged on the gravel, rubbing his stomach when he laughed, with one of his shapeless cable-knit jumpers on, and Cindy, his wife, as thin as a reed, with long sensitive fingers and eyes the colour of browned apples.
    ‘What are we doing here?’ Judy had said, mischievously. ‘I don’t think we belong in a band.’
    ‘Just what I was thinking,’ Guy had replied.
    ‘I’m just a bank manager’s daughter,’ she had said.
    ‘Well - that’s as good a reason as any for joining a band.’
    He’d smiled at her, before looking up at the pub sign - a picture of a brawny man gathering reeds by the water, a long curving scythe across his arm, and Guy looks at the same sign now, over the estuary, moored at last.
    Without the sound of the engine, the relieving silence rises up through the boat, the gentle swell of the estuary, the cubes of empty space in his wheelhouse, his cabin, the saloon.
    ‘ One two three four ,’ Judy whispers into the mic, alarmingly close now, from the stereo speakers in the wheelhouse. He’s playing the rehearsal CD his band recorded, ten years ago, as practice for their gig here at the Rushcutter’s. He hasn’t heard Judy’s voice for a long time. It’s so lovely.