The fog sat so thick on the deck that when you walked across to the stern it felt like your legs were moving through treacle. It was a deceptive fog, a mirror-maze fog, which wreathed the boat in green like a Christmas garland and made it impossible to see the horizon. Still Carla stared.
When she’d taken her briefcase to the Proctor he’d laughed in her face.
“Going to Isla dei Cachi at this time of year is suicide. The storms are too frequent – any boat that crosses the Strait will get crushed to matchsticks on the rocks. I can’t allow any of the citizens to accompany you on a ferry.”
And, true to his word, she had found herself an unwelcome guest in every bar in town. She would walk in and people would turn to look at her, nudge their neighbours and point with their chins. She had spent a month trying her utmost to get to know the sea-hardened people of the town; had eaten with them, prayed with them, knew to ask after so-and-so’s husband or so-and-so’s children. But within a day it changed completely. A stranger to the town might be entertained with warmth but at the end of the day they kept to their own.
She had despaired, for a while. Spent a long time standing on the dock looking at the Isla shimmering on the horizon, holding out one arm to pinch it between two fingers, not quite able to believe she’d made it this far only to fail. Thought about smashing the briefcase on the harbour wall and flinging it into the sea.
Then she turned and walked back through the town, through the mariners’ district and uphill until she reached the English Quarter.
The English Quarter was little more than a couple of streets with quaint, geographically-confused names like Winchester and Sutton. Long ago it was where the English – and a few Dutch, and even a Swede – had settled, hoping to ply their skills at hull-repairing and knot-tying. It was near to the glue-factory and the tannery and far from the port. Nobody would live there if they had a choice. But still the English built their little corner of forever England there, with a school and a Protestant chapel (begrudgingly tolerated) and a small plot that they called Regent’s Park but which also doubled as their cemetery.
Then the Fascists had come, and the English Quarter had emptied; slowly, like water circling down the drain, as people came to understand one by one that it was not safe for them here, but before too long the place was deserted. The homes and shops were looted – things were scarce in those days so it was really just a sign of respect – until all that was left were empty cupboards lined with pages from The Times of London and nailed to the wall framed portraits of the King (somewhat defaced). After that many of the homes were used by Italian children for soldier’s games, occasionally with live ammo begged and borrowed from the garrison, which smashed the windows and punched holes in the walls and made the parents of the town lean over to whisper in their children’s ears, Don’t play in the English Quarter – they left booby-traps, you’ll have the roof fall in on your head and you’ll die. Which, as you can imagine, led only to greater interest in the place.
Eventually, as all things change, people started to move back in. For the most part they were the outcasts, the disinherited, the insane; and occasionally a reclusive poet or a mad scientist bent on some arcane quest. It was there that Carla went clutching her briefcase, on a final last-ditch attempt.
She knew a little of the English, or at least she knew what the Italians had told her, which was that they kept to themselves and didn’t like to be approached or solicited; you had to set a trap for them and lie in wait instead, as it made them feel more in control of the situation. She sat on a bench in Regent’s Park between the gravestones of a Rev Louth and a Mrs Hardholme and took out a piece of cardboard and a pen. Clutching the lid between her teeth she wrote, in her best English:
I NEED TO BOAT FAST ISLA DEI CACHI. WILL PAY €€.
Within a few minutes an elderly woman sat next to her. No, not elderly – at most in her fifties, but with the creased, sun-lined face of one who has worked all their days outdoors. “Dear, have you tried the ferries at the port?” she said, in Italian. “You don’t want any of the amateurs and charlatans you get up here.”
Carla nodded politely at the advice but didn’t say anything. The woman talked at her about the economic situation for a while then left.
Next came a child of indeterminate gender and around five or seven years of age, which spoke in a melange of Italian and English. “You can go on my boat. It’s allegretto. It has a pirate flag on top and fifteen cannon, six on either side and three astern. Look!” The child waved its hands and showed Carla a toy pirate ship with a battered hull.
“Now, Rita, don’t be pestering the lady – you can see quite well she won’t fit if Lion Leopold and Gary Giraffe are going too.” Carla looked up. A man was standing over her with his hands on his hips. He had long black hair cascading down his back, making him look for all the world like a corsair from the movies.
“You stop ruining other people’s fun, Dio Surat!” cried the child, but it fled all the same. The corsair extended one hand.
“You want passage to Isla dei Cachi but the Proctor has denied you passage, is that right?” He spoke Italian with an English nasal lilt and perhaps something else underneath – she guessed Indian. “He is a petty man. It can be a bad idea to go around his back.”
“Can you get me there or not?” said Carla. She took his hand and instead of shaking it pulled herself up and set the sign down on the bench.
He looked surprised but recovered quickly. “I can. My craft is the Mary Cecily and she’s moored to the east of town in a cove. But at this time of year, with the storms…”
Carla cut him short. “I know, you need reimbursement for the risk, yadda yadda. I’ll pay you well and fairly. And extra to ensure the Proctor doesn’t know.”
Surat looked around the square. “I must confess, since you’ve just spent a morning sitting in a public place with a sign saying ‘I don’t give a damn about what the Proctor says! I’ll pay you!’, it may be a little late for discretion.”
“Fine,” said Carla. “In a few minutes I’ll shout at you and storm off. Then I’ll go to the central kiosk and buy a bus ticket out of town. I’ll catch the bus as far as the eastern boundary then disembark and walk to the cove to meet you. By the time the bus driver gets back in to gossip, it’ll be next week. So we’d better come to a deal about price before I have to storm off.”
Surat looked completely taken aback. Then he laughed.
“You really do have this all planned out, don’t you! You aren’t going for a picnic. What is in your briefcase, I wonder…? Fine.” He named a price. She haggled, but only half-heartedly. Eventually they reached a number that was twice what she would have paid a town citizen in high season. But only twice.
Instead of shaking on it, Carla raised her voice.
“You hag! I finally see why the English are hated so much! If you can’t even promise to get me there, why are you wasting my time? I’ve had it with this town. Had it up to here!”
And she strode out of the park, leaving Surat along amongst the gravestones. She didn’t turn to see his face.
The sun was setting as she clambered down to the cove. There was no path she could see. Instead she scrambled hand over foot over the rocks and scree, holding on to the stems of woody-stemmed shore plants. She still couldn’t see the ship, which as she got closer to the shore started to worry her. Was he really a Captain Surat or merely a captain of thieves?
Eventually she stepped out onto the beach and saw it tied to a buoy. She hadn’t seen it before because it was nestled between some rocks in such a way you couldn’t see it until you were practically on top of it. This was easy to do, because the boat was tiny. It had a little outboard motor which looked like an antique. The hull was battered and had been repaired in many places with material of a different colour. There was no cabin, only a windshield.
It didn’t look fit to cross the harbour, let alone the Strait.
Carla clasped her briefcase tightly, then slipped off her shoes and and stepped into the surf.
When the water was knee-deep she reached the boat. Surat was on board tinkering with the engine but he stopped to help haul her up. “You’re early. I’ll need some more time to get her sea-worthy.”
She nodded, already feeling the motion of the boat beneath her. “I’ll wait.”
“Do you want to wait on the shore, or…?”
She blinked at the beach, which tossed and turned alarmingly. He may leave without me, she thought. “I’ll wait here.”
“Fine. Make yourself comfortable. Best place is probably by the stern.”
Carla settled in, huddled over her briefcase as though to protect it from the waves. It wouldn’t matter if it got a little wet but for a moment she felt as though it was going to try and wrestle itself from her grip and fling itself overboard. She thought about Luca and heard his voice saying, ‘God, not another big one, you’re going to get drenched!’ And laughter.
She awoke by her shoulder being shaken. “We’re ready,” said Surat.
It was fully dark now. Surat held a torch – “but I’ll need to switch it off as we leave,” he said, “otherwise we’ll make a pretty light show for everyone on land to see” – and shone it onto a seat behind the windshield where she would sit.
Outside the boat was pure blackness. The wind had died down and with it the waves, but in their place a murky blackness was pressing on the boat from all sides. The sky had clouded over and obscured the moon. This, together with the shadow of the cliffs, gave the impression that the boat was a tiny pool of light in the middle of a vast ocean of darkness which threatened at every moment to pull them down.
“Hold this while I start the engine,” said Surat.
She held the torch. He took four tries to get it going, but then it spluttered into life. It had a dreadful diesel smell which mingled with the salt.
“How long will the passage take?” said Carla.
Surat wound the guy rope around a post. “Around six hours. This isn’t a fast cruiser, you know. Settle in.” He gunned the engine and they started to move.
“How will you know where we’re going? It’s so dark.”
“I do have a compass, you know. Switch off that torch, now.”
She did and the boat was cast into darkness. “But the currents?”
“I’m not a complete amateur, Ms Unknown Lady,” said Surat. “There are ways. We’ll stay true.”
Carla fidgeted. “It’s Carla.”
“Hm?”
“My name is Carla. I didn’t tell you earlier. Sorry.”
“I just assumed you didn’t want to say.” They went in silence for a bit, the only sound the engine and the lapping waves. “Wait, are you… Carla Azuni? That Carla?”
She sighed. “I am, yes.”
Surat whistled long and slow. “Wow. Our very own pirate celebrity. I wondered why the Proctor was so averse to having you around.”
“He told me there’d be storms.”
“Sure, but the ferrypeople know what they’re doing. If a storm comes, they can tell before they even set off. We should be fine for tonight. Carla Azuni!...”
From there the journey was quiet. Surat gunned the engine when they were half an hour from land and out of earshot, and they accelerated. Carla’s eyes started to discern shapes in the darkness, the hint of a horizon and the bright surf in their wake. But over time those faded and her eyes started to hint at things which couldn’t have been there. Vast shapes loomed which looked like huge rocks floating above the water, or an oncoming train. She thought she saw a ring of dancing figures turn around a maypole beneath the sea, though all she could hear was the surf.
As the night passed and the sky began to brighten she realised why.
“Fog,” said Surat. “Bad fog too.”
It was the thickest fog she’d ever seen. “The English call it pea-soup,” said Surat. He was right – it felt like if you opened your mouth you could take a bite out of it. But instead it vanished and your jaw closed around only air.
“How much longer?” she asked.
“Not far. But no faster when you ask about it.”
And then – out of nowhere – another mirage, grand and terrible in the half-light; but soon she realised it was no mirage, but a jutting precipice of rock with waves crashing around it and kelp clinging. Behind it other rocks fell away into the mist; but as they grew closer the rocks seemed to align themselves into a pattern, pointing the way further down, until with a scratching scraping sound the boat came to a halt (almost throwing Carla out of her seat) and she realised they were on a beach.
“We’re here,” said Surat.