On the third roll, somebody below Dorrie’s feet struck the wrong chord and kept going.
The ferry had cleared the southern point. Ahead, the western face of the island stood dark against the afternoon sky, and beyond its northern head lay the sheltered water where they meant to spend the night. Dorrie could still make out trees on the ridge. At this distance they looked no larger than the hairs on Mal’s wrist.
“They’ve started without you,” she said.
Mal stood in the wheelhouse doorway, peeling an orange in one long strip. He listened. The chord came again, more confidently wrong.
“That’s my part.”
“They seem to manage.”
He gave her half the orange and ate the rest. Aude, at the chart table, looked up hopefully. Mal had already filled his mouth. He searched his pocket and produced a second orange.
There had been no oranges for seven months. They had acquired a crate that morning from a sailing boat whose crew wanted diesel and a night of sleep without having to tend their sails. The crate was now guarded by a woman who had once managed a sweet shop and regarded any fruit beyond the agreed portion as shoplifting.
Dorrie put her half beside the compass. It slid. She caught it, ate a segment, and turned the ferry a little farther away from the shore.
Forty-six people lived aboard the Mallow. Before the flood she had carried a hundred and twenty passengers at a time, with parcels and an occasional small car. Now the saloon held curtains, bunks and an upright piano. It was secured against a bulkhead. Its owner had bolted the bench to the floor, too close for the woman who now played it. She spread her knees around it and refused to let anyone else try.
For three years they had lived among what had been hills. Most of the world Dorrie knew was underneath them. The Mallow moved between four anchorages and a repair dock, exchanging work and the stores she carried for fuel, water and food. Her old destination board still offered three ports, all drowned.
Mal wiped his thumb on his trousers.
“Aude has the approach?”
“When we’re round the head.”
“I was going to take it from here,” Aude said.
She had brought her own mug up. It sat beside the chart, full and untouched. Dorrie had taught her the Mallow’s responses over two years, although Aude had worked on harbour tugs before that and sometimes taught things back. During the first winter Dorrie had been the only qualified deck officer aboard. She still woke whenever the engine note changed, even with Aude on watch.
“There’s a cross sea farther up,” Dorrie said.
“I’ve seen it.”
Mal leaned against the doorframe. He and Dorrie had ended their marriage the previous winter, without ending their work together. He lived in the forward saloon and had discovered singing. She had discovered that she could leave a cup anywhere she liked and still be annoyed to find it there later.
He looked at the chart, not at her.
“I’ll be below,” he said.
“Try to stay in tune.”
“No promises.”
He was halfway down the ladder when the wheel ceased to answer.
Dorrie had put on a little helm to meet the next swell. The wheel moved. The rudder indicator stayed where it was.
She checked once more, then brought the engine back. Aude was already at the internal telephone.
“Steering failure,” Dorrie said. Mal looked up from the ladder. “Bridge control’s gone.”
The ferry lifted her bow, held it there, and let it fall. The orange rolled against the window. Downstairs the piano stopped.
“Going aft,” Mal said. “Ring the station.”
He went down quickly, holding both rails.
Dorrie tried the reserve bridge switch. Nothing. She left it alone.
To starboard, the island had acquired detail: a pale seam of rock, bushes twisted flat near the water. The west wind was pushing them toward it. They had room yet. She watched the shore while Aude used the saloon loudspeaker to tell everyone to stay seated and keep the passages clear.
The aft telephone rang for nearly a minute before Mal picked it up. In the weekly drill he complained about the height of the steering-compartment doorway. Today he began with the machinery. Aude passed the handset to Dorrie.
“Pump’s running. Changing to local control.”
Dorrie gave him a small rudder order. He repeated it, made the movement and reported the angle. She watched the indicator follow.
“Back amidships.”
He repeated that too.
The ferry’s bow dipped. A wave struck forward and came apart in a rush of white along the windows. Dorrie brought the engine ahead enough to regain steerage, watching the bow respond to Mal’s next movement below. Aude kept her eyes on the shore.
“I’ll take the phone,” she said.
“I’ve got it.”
“Then I’ll take the conn.”
Dorrie turned toward her. The island moved across the window while she looked away.
“Not yet.”
Aude went back to the chart.
They worked out into wider water, at reduced speed. Every turn now travelled down a wire to a man who could not see the sea. Mal read back the order; the rudder moved; the ship took her time. Dorrie knew that time well enough from the wheel. She had not known how long it could seem with a voice between her hand and the water. Once she gave a correction while Mal was still reading back the order before it.
“One at a time,” he said.
She waited, watching the shore.
After ten minutes Mal asked where they were going.
“Repair dock.”
Aude looked up.
The dock lay in a narrow notch along the island’s western side, less than a mile ahead. A team there could work on the steering. Its entrance had two close turns between rock shelves. Dorrie had brought the Mallow through them many times, usually with Mal leaning beside her and saying nothing at all.
“I’d sooner go round,” he said over the telephone.
“You’ll have longer down there.”
“Yes.”
“The dock will have someone to look at it.”
“I’m not asking to repair it now.”
Aude put a finger on the northern headland. Beyond it, on the other side of the island, their planned anchorage opened wide. They had sounded its sand bottom themselves. It gave them room to swing and shelter from this wind. There was no berth to hit, no narrow entrance.
It also meant another two hours with the island on their right and the sea coming at their left.
“We can do the dock,” Dorrie said.
Mal did not answer at once. She could hear the pump behind him.
“Do you want me to tell you what I can do,” he said, “or what you remember?”
For an instant she heard the voice from their kitchen years ago, when a question about a journey could turn into an argument about the rest of their lives. Her grip tightened on the handset.
Then he said, “You gave the last order before I’d finished the one before it. In the cut, you’ll need me quicker.”
She looked at Aude.
“We have time out here,” Aude said.
Another swell arrived. Dorrie bent her knees with it. Her shoulder ached where she had fallen against a cupboard the previous night. She had been awake for most of that night, listening to a wind she had asked Aude to listen to for her.
Through the glass she could see the mouth of the cut. From this angle the inner turn was hidden. The slit in the island looked scarcely wider than the bow.
“Call the dock,” she told Aude. “Tell them we’re passing. Ask whether they can send somebody round to us when it’s quiet.”
She lifted the telephone again.
“We’ll keep going north.”
“Right.”
“How long before you need relief?”
“Soon. Send Evin. He knows the station.”
He did. Mal had taught him. In the drills Evin always took a moment to answer, but never moved anything until he had repeated the order correctly.
Aude called the saloon for Evin, then raised the dock by radio. Nobody there could come that afternoon; their launch was out. In the northern bay, the skipper of a fishing boat reported that the outer sand was clear and the water behind the head quiet. She would keep a radio watch for them.
Evin came up from the saloon wearing his lifejacket over a cardigan. He was sixty and had a scrap of orange pulp on his jaw.
“Mal wants you aft,” Aude told him.
“I know. The pianist came and got me.”
He took two biscuits from his pocket and held one out to Dorrie. She shook her head. He gave it to Aude, who ate it in two bites without taking her eyes off the water.
At the steering station Evin repeated Mal’s explanation in his own slow voice. Mal corrected one thing, asked him to show it, and stayed while Dorrie made two small course adjustments. Then he came forward.
His face shone with sweat. He smelled of warm oil and oranges.
“Evin’s all right,” he said.
“I heard.”
“Did you?”
She would have answered sharply if he had said it with any satisfaction. He sounded tired.
Aude moved her mug out of his way. He drank from it without asking and made a face.
“What is that?”
“Chicory.”
“Is it meant to be?”
She took it back.
Mal went to check the saloon. Dorrie could see his bent head through the ladder opening as he spoke to somebody below. A moment later he was down on one knee, holding a basin while a woman was sick. Her husband tried to wipe her face before she had finished. Mal moved his hand away gently and waited.
Dorrie had been imagining Mal alone in the hot steering space, enduring something she had put him through. She found his silence easier to bear when she could see what he was doing.
For the next hour Evin’s slow answers came steadily up the wire. Aude checked their progress, spoke to the fishing boat again, and worked out the wide approach behind the head. She laid the course beside Dorrie without reaching past her to the controls.
The northern head grew broader in the window.
“I’ll keep the telephone,” she said to Aude.
Aude stood still.
“You have the conn.”
Aude moved beside the engine control. They exchanged course and speed, the traffic report, what Mal had found and what they still did not know. Dorrie had made thousands of such handovers. She found herself mentioning the dead bridge switch twice.
“I’ve got it,” Aude said.
Dorrie took one step back.
They were level with the head now. Beyond its black shoulder the sky looked no different, though the sea was sheltered there. Aude asked for their first alteration early, using the open water to make a wide turn. Dorrie relayed the order. Evin repeated it. The ferry began to swing.
There was a long interval in which the rock appeared to be coming toward them.
Dorrie could feel the order she would have given rising in her throat. More helm, a little more, hurry the head past the window. She looked at the heading. It was changing steadily. Aude watched the point and the water beyond it.
Aude called for less rudder. Dorrie passed the order down. Evin repeated it, then reported the new angle.
The swell struck them at an angle and rolled the wheelhouse far enough for the orange to leave the compass shelf. Dorrie caught the telephone against her chest. Downstairs a crockery cup broke. Someone swore loudly enough for every word to come through the floor.
Aude kept her feet. The dark shoulder slid aft.
For a while they had both seas: the old swell lifting under them and small, confused waves coming back from the rock. Dorrie held the handset to her ear. Evin asked her to repeat an order, and she did, more slowly. He acknowledged it. The bow continued to turn.
Then the water changed.
The ferry rose once more, but came down softly. Aude eased the engine. To starboard, the headland lengthened into a wall between them and the wind. Ahead lay the fishing boat, small and brown, her bow turning gently about her anchor.
From below came the sound of somebody sweeping broken china into a pan.
They anchored well clear of the fishing boat, where the latest sounding sheet showed sand and enough water. Aude watched the depth and the shore marks while the trained hands forward worked the anchor. They let the vessel settle and checked that she held. Mal went aft to speak to Evin before bringing him back.
Evin appeared at the wheelhouse door carrying the remainder of his biscuit.
“Couldn’t finish it,” he said. “I thought you might talk while I was chewing.”
He ate it now.
Dorrie went through the radio messages with Aude. The dock would send a mechanic in the morning if the wind eased. The fishing boat offered to come over after supper with a box of electrical parts. Mal said not to send anyone yet; he wanted to trace the fault before they opened somebody else’s box.
The wind was to stay in the west through the night. They would keep an anchor watch. Dorrie checked the fuel and water figures, then put them away.
Mal came up as Dorrie was writing down the last message.
“Evin wants to know if he was slow.”
“He was steady.”
“Tell him.”
She turned to Evin, still standing beside the door. “You were steady. I hurried Mal. You can tell me to wait.”
“I did,” Evin said. “When I asked you to say it again.”
She nodded. He seemed to be considering something.
“Next drill, can we do it while we’re moving?” he asked. “It feels different.”
“Yes.”
“And Aude can give the orders,” Mal said.
Aude looked at him. “I was planning to.”
“That singing,” Dorrie said. “Was it meant to be a hymn?”
“Started as one.”
“What is it now?”
“They’re still deciding.”
He left. At the foot of the ladder someone asked him to move a bench. He said he would after he had eaten.
Aude filled in the next watch beside her own name.
“Go down,” she said.
“Wake me if the wind shifts.”
“I will.”
Dorrie stayed long enough to hear the fishing boat call. Aude answered, gave their position within the bay and asked about the current after midnight. She did not look toward Dorrie while she spoke.
Dorrie went below.
The saloon smelled of soup, wet wool and orange peel. Someone had hung a clean curtain over the passage where the sick woman lay. Three people around the piano were singing different beginnings to the same tune. Mal sat among them with a bowl balanced on his knees, silent for once because he was eating.
Dorrie took soup to her berth. She ate half of it sitting up. Above her, a chair scraped across the wheelhouse floor. Aude preferred it on the other side of the chart table. Dorrie had moved it back every morning for a week.
She listened to it settle.
The spoon slipped from her hand into the bowl. She fished it out, put both on the floor, and lay down before the singers had agreed how to begin.
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