A Heart in Port, Part 2 of 3
By Nexis Pas
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Part 1 can be found at http://www.abctales.com/story/nexis-pas/heart-port-part-1-3
Mark fretted throughout the next hour. His mother had pushed everyone into the front lounge. In a departure from their usual practice, his parents were sharing the couch instead of sitting in their customary chairs. Both sat upright and close together, their hands in their laps and their feet planted solidly on the floor. His father had made Luan take the chair next to the fireplace, facing them. Mark took one of the window seats, as far from the others as he could. Through the open window, he could see down the hill to the bay, but the boat was hidden from view by the house. Brian had sat down briefly but soon stood up and began pacing about the room. When their mother had invited him to sit, he said that he needed to walk about. His path took him behind the sofa, forcing their parents to look around whenever they spoke to him.
The four adults seemed not to know what to say to one another. One of his parents might inquire yet again about the trip, only to be told once more that it had gone smoothly. Then all of them would take a sip of tea and look out the window rather than at any of the others. Mark couldn’t see why if they had nothing to say that it was necessary for them to sit politely pretending to have a conversation. Everyone was tense, a situation he attributed to the presence of Luan. The stranger was keeping Brian from being his usual self.
After Mark had looked pointedly at the clock several times, his brother said to him, ‘Why don’t you take Luan down to see the boat? He’ll help you get it ready. I’ll be along in a few moments.’
Mark looked uncertainly at the intruder. ‘Does he know what to do?’
‘He has a name, and you can talk to him directly. Can you try not to be so rude!’ Brian spoke sharply. ‘And yes, he knows what to do. He was sailing before you were born.’
‘It’s all right, Brian.’ Luan looked embarrassed at being the cause of a fuss.
‘No, it’s not all right. He’s fourteen years old now. He should know how to be polite.’
Brian’s sudden explosion of irritation snapped Mark to attention. ‘I was just asking.’ Brian had reacted so angrily to his question. For the first time in his life, his brother had taken someone’s else side over his. It was one of the few times Brian had criticised him. It was as bad as if Mark had slapped his face in front of his friends.
Brian covered his eyes with a hand and took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry, Mark,’ he said in a weary voice. ‘Could you just show Luan the boat? I need to talk with Mam and Da privately for a moment. Then I’ll come down.’
‘Let me get my jacket and shoes from the car, and I’ll be ready. Thank you for the tea.’ Luan quickly stood up, obviously thankful to have an excuse to leave, and walked out.
Mark looked uncertainly from his parents to his brother. None of them seemed to want to look at him. Finally his mother said, ‘Mark, please do as your brother asked. I’m sure that in any case both of you would rather be out on that damn boat than talking with your parents.’ She slammed her teacup down on its saucer and stood up. She strode over to a window and looked out, her back to the room. ‘Your brother wants to speak with us, and his “friend” needs attention. You haven’t done anything since we came here but worry about that boat. We don’t ask you for much. You can at least entertain Mr Cusack for us for a few minutes.’
Mark slid out of the room, half-relieved that he was allowed to leave and half-frightened by his parents’ and Brian’s unaccustomed displays of anger. The house was heavy with their unease. And he didn’t understand the reason for it. As he stepped out the door, he heard his mother say in a cold voice, ‘I believe you have something to tell us.’
Luan stood beside his car. He had put on a yellow cagoule and held a pair of plimsolls with one hand. He looked uncertain of his welcome. Mark wasn’t in a mood to be pleasant. ‘It’s down this way. We’ll have to walk. We’ve only the one bike here.’ He hurried on, not stopping to check if Luan was following him. When they were halfway down the hill, Luan broke the silence. ‘Brian tells me that An Ghaoth Gheal belonged to your grandfather.’
Mark nodded, without turning around. If he could, he would have walked even faster. The only thing that kept him from running was a fear that Brian would not forgive that rudeness. He had been instructed to ‘entertain’ Luan. No one had ordered him to pretend to be happy about it.
‘It’s such a beautiful name. An Ghaoth Gheal—that means “The Bright Wind,” doesn’t it?’ Luan said each syllable of the Irish name separately rather than running them together, as if he had learned Irish in school and never spoken it. Mark’s ears resented even that slight proof of difference. It was a sign of Luan’s foreignness, the cause of the unhappiness in their house. He didn’t bother to correct Luan’s pronunciation.
Luan suddenly came up beside him. ‘You’re a sturdy walker, as me mum would say. How often do you get out? On the water, I mean.’
Mark shrugged. Conversation seemed unavoidable now that Luan had caught him up. Besides there were things he wanted to know, and he couldn’t find them out if he kept quiet. ‘I’m not allowed to go out on my own yet. Da will go with me once or twice a week, if I pester him. But he doesn’t really like it. He didn’t start sailing until after he married mam.’
‘There’s no one else?’
‘There’s Jimmy Innley. That’s their house there, the one with the pile of wood for the bonfire tonight. But he’s only interested in going fast. He’d be happiest if the boat capsized or ran aground. That would be a lark for him. Sometimes one of the other owners will let me crew for him, but the only practice I get steering is with Da and Jimmy.’
‘Brian and I have the same problem. We’ve met some people in London who keep a boat at the Isle of Wight. They let us crew for them, but we’re just the help then. We tried renting a boat one weekend, but it was a tub. Had no lift at all. And the Channel is too tame if you’re used to the North Channel.’
‘What sort of boat do you have at home?’ In spite of himself, Mark was curious about this stranger, this “friend” Brian had brought into their midst.
‘You mean in Belfast? We have an old Hunter Sonata.’
‘Not too different from An Ghaoth Gheal then. Same rigging but a couple of feet longer.’
‘Brian says the Sonata’s too sluggish.’
‘Brian’s sailed on it?’
‘Yes, we go out every time he visits. He’s been on it several times now.’
‘I didn’t know. He didn’t tell me.’ The knowledge that Brian had been so close without coming to see him stung. Mark suddenly looked several years younger, the boy he had been a few months before peeping out behind the teenage face with its hints of the adult he would become. He seemed to shrink inside his clothes. He felt betrayed--the most important person in his life had developed other loyalties. The day was bringing too many surprises, and none of them welcome.
‘You’ll have to visit next time we’re in Belfast. We’ve some great sailing. And we would be pleased to have you.’
Mark shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It can’t be any better than our coast.’
‘You’re just like your brother then. He says the waters in the Irish Sea aren’t as challenging as those off the Donegal coast. And he complains that he can’t feel the water against the tiller in the Sonata the way he can in your boat.’
‘He’s always on about that. Feeling the water against the boat and seeing the wind ahead in the waves.’
‘He says you’re a natural at that. The best he’s ever seen.’
‘Nyah.’ Mark flushed with pleasure. The unexpected praise found a warm home inside his chest. ‘That’s wrong. He’s the best.’ He looked directly at Luan for the first time. ‘Did he really say that?’
‘Yes, several times. He said he had to work to learn what he knows. But you just knew it.’
‘That’s because he was always talking on at me about it. He made me sit beside him and hold the wheel as he steered so that I could learn what it felt like to sense what the wind and the water were telling you. By the time he let me try steering by myself for the first time, I already knew what it would feel like. I used to practice on my bed, at night.’
‘He’s very proud of you, you know.’ Luan stopped suddenly, forcing Mark to face him again. ‘You mustn’t mind what he said just now. He’s tense about this visit and then the one to my parents. Although my parents will be worse than yours.’
Mark had to fight a momentary urge to defend his parents and insist that they were much better at being much worse than Luan’s could possibly be. Instead he asked, ‘What’s happening? No one will tell me.’
‘Brian will explain it to you. He wants to do that.’
‘He’s not ill, is he? It’s not cancer.’
‘No, no, nothing like that. You mustn’t worry about that.’ They rounded the final corner in the path to the dock. ‘Oh, is that An Ghaoth Gheal? What a beauty. How old is it? Nobody uses wood like that now. It’s all plastic resins and fibreglass now.’
‘My grandfather had it built in the early 1970s. In a yard in Belfast.’
‘If Brian doesn’t come soon, we’ll leave him ashore and go out by ourselves.’
It felt good to be working alongside Luan. He moved about the boat efficiently, getting it ready to sail. Mark watched him carefully for mistakes, but there were none. Perhaps he did know something about sailing after all. And he didn’t seem a bad sort. Brian appeared just as they were finishing their preparations.
‘Mam says we’re all to wear life vests. She doesn’t want to add our deaths to her troubles.’ Brian looked a bit haggard. For the first few minutes his mind was on other things. After they cast off, Mark manoeuvred the boat away from the dock using the small electric motor. When they reached deeper water, he motioned to Brian and stepped away from the wheel.
‘What are you doing?’ Brian looked surprised.
‘Don’t you want the wheel?’
‘No. I’m a tourist today. You have to do the work. I’m just along for the ride, brother. And it’s a test. If you do well, I officially turn An Ghaoth Gheal over to you. Prove to me that you deserve it.’ He grinned and began raising the mainsail. Luan stepped forward to handle the foresail. The canvas began flapping and then stretched taut as the sails filled with the wind. An Ghaoth Gheal quickly picked up speed as Mark steered the boat into a beam reach and it began to move northward, toward the mouth of Sheephaven Bay.
For the most part, Brian and Luan sat on the railing forward of the wheel, midway along the hull. They faced outward, their legs dangling over the side of the boat, shifting into action only when Mark changed course. The two of them talked quietly. Except for an occasional word, Mark couldn’t hear what they were saying. From time to time Brian would point to some feature of the bay. And Luan would nod, and then the two of them would resume their conversation.
Brian had changed since the last time Mark had seen him. He had grown older, but more in manner than in years. Brian acts more like a man now, thought Mark. The last of his youth had been shed. And he seemed happier. Whatever had troubled him earlier was quickly forgotten once they were on the water and he was talking with Luan. Occasionally when Mark manoeuvred the boat, Brian would look over his shoulder and smile and hold a thumb up in approval.
Mark soon gave his full attention to the boat. He could sense the ebbing tide moving north beneath the hull, pulling the boat along with it, and what his grandfather had called the echoes of the waves against the shore, the reverberations of energy that flowed away from the land as the water shoaled. As he had been trained, he watched the water ahead, alert for clues to sudden shifts in the direction of the wind. ‘Watch the light dancing on the water ahead. That will tell you where the wind is and what it’s doing.’ Brian had schooled him in that over and over--to read the ‘bright wind’ that lent its name to An Ghaoth Gheal.
As they neared the mouth of Sheephaven Bay, he felt the water under An Ghaoth Gheal grow quiet as the movement of the ebbing tide slowed and then ceased. Mark waited for the moment that would soon come. He was vaguely aware that Brian and Luan had stopped talking and were watching him, but he ignored them, focussing totally on what was happening around him. And then there came a hint of a motion against the boat, the gentlest push against the keel, as the tide began to return to the bay. ‘I’m bringing it about,’ he shouted above the wind. Brian and Luan leaped up as Mark began turning the boat in a broad arc. The sails began to luff noisily as the boat briefly came head to wind. Luan backed the jib as Mark moved the tiller in the same direction. In unison, Luan lowered the foresail and Brian sent the spinnaker ballooning aloft. An Ghaoth Gheal leaped forward as if that were the moment she had been awaiting.
Brian gave a great shout, of joy, of triumph, as the boat sped down the bay. The three of them were flushed with the satisfaction of a perfectly executed manoeuvre. Mark felt a renewal of comradeship with his brother. And Luan was no longer a stranger--they had shared too much for that. He never knew how to describe the feeling, even to himself. But when he was sailing and the boat was running perfectly, he was taken out of himself. It wasn’t freedom exactly because the boat still depended on the water and the wind, but it was as if all the forces of nature were working together and his spirit had soared into the sails, raising the boat out of the water and sending it flying on the wind.
When they had docked and were securing the sails, Luan turned to him and said, ‘Thanks. That was great sailing. It felt as if the boat were alive.’
Brian growled at him. ‘Not just great. It was perfection. And if the boat was alive, it was Mark’s doing.’
Luan laughed. ‘I pity people who never experience that.’ He turned to Mark. ‘We work with some people who can’t understand why we sail every chance we get. They can’t imagine anything better than clubbing and drinking. They think we’re fools to want this.’
‘A heart in port,’ said Mark.
‘Oh, I haven’t heard that in years.’ Brian stopped what he was doing and stared at a memory.
Luan waited for an explanation from one of the brothers. When none was forthcoming, he asked, ‘What’s that?’
‘It’s a line from a poem our grandfather used to quote,’ said Brian. “Futile the winds to a heart in port. Done with the something, something.” Can’t remember the rest of it.’
‘ “Futile the winds to a heart in port. Done with the compass. Done with the chart. Rowing in Eden.” ’ Mark finished the quote. ‘He always said that would be the worst thing for a sailor--to be condemned to row a boat on a calm lake in paradise.’
(continued at http://www.abctales.com/story/nexis-pas/heart-port-part-3-3)