I can't think of a title for this...All crossings were suspended when I arrived at the terminal. This reinforced what I already knew: the journey had been awful and it wasn’t over yet. The train to the harbour had taken four hours where it would usually take just an hour and a half. Disgruntled and disbelieving, I turned from the reception desk to look at the boarding gate. Instead of skimming to-and-fro across the short stretch of water, a stationary catamaran sat bobbing on the waves, snug against the harbour’s wall. Its radar was motionless where it should have been rotating, waving passengers aboard.
Crossings were suspended because of high winds and heavy seas; my half-hearted protest was met with “Sorry. Circumstances beyond our control”. And they were right – the weather was nobody’s fault, nobody’s oversight. It would have been futile to continue complaining to powerless staff wearing stiff uniforms on a dreary Sunday afternoon. After a few moments acclimatising to the idea, I realised I didn’t really mind. The ‘big boat’ had more romance to it. The crossing took longer and it felt like striking out properly from the land. The robust, rusting car ferry was substantial as an aging, gone-to-seed Bentley compared to the catamaran, which cut through the water like a moped through traffic. I boarded a coach with some other passengers and five minutes later we were set down at the docks. We trudged up the foot-passenger ramp, mute as cattle boarding a truck.
During the crossing, I ordered and drank some coffee in the lounge before heading for the open deck, still holding the empty cup. Downstairs, the boat had been swaying, melodramatically. This had given me the incentive to go outside to look at the swirling water. Downstairs, amid the stale air, worn upholstery and oppressive heating, the swaying was most noticeable when looking out through a small, grubby window towards a cross-channel ferry. The bigger ferry had seemed stable when we were in a calm stretch, but, from time to time and framed within the square window, it had seemed to veer wildly across the angry patch of sea. A handrail in the passenger lounge tilted to and fro, so that first the right-hand side and then the left formed a sharp diagonal across my line of vision.
Inspired by the momentum of the boat and the obvious turbulence of the water, I headed for the open deck. There were occasional swells and foaming crests on the waves. While I stood at the side of the boat looking out to sea, I had a whimsical urge to throw the empty cup. I recalled one of D’s stories. He’d told me about someone, probably him, in fact, who used to work on a sightseeing boat on the Thames. Employed to wash the pots, if any pieces of crockery were filthy or had particularly dried-on remnants of food, he would casually slide them into the river. I toyed with condemning the cup to a similar fate. I imagined it: falling down to the sea bed, rocking gently from side to side on its drifting descent through the vast gloom. I wondered how long it would take to reach the bottom, and how far the boat would have moved on by such a time. The smooth, curved sides – more uniform than any stone or shell – would appear stark and miraculous on its inevitable journey. I wondered what the cup would pass as it sank through the water, and thought of cartoon bubbles and fronds of greasy seaweed. I imagined it landing softly on the seabed with a bump, presumably right-side up. Would any curious crustaceans scuttle inside to investigate? Would the cup fill with sand after a few tides, becoming buried beneath sand and sea, to be lost for ever and all time… Or would it be washed up a few days later, further down the coast?
I decided to throw the cup. I wanted to hurl it like a shot put through the air, translating thought to action. Part of the allure was that, as soon as it dipped beneath the surface of the waves, its sinking would be unseen. Not even I would see it sink – yet I would know, and this pleased me in a childish way. The act would enhance my ability to imagine, and so I wandered around the deck in pursuit of a sufficiently private spot. Only two places were not overlooked and I felt ready. Looking down directly at the water, I realized the true extent of the plunge. It was a good 40-foot drop from the top of the boat. Compounding this was the ferry’s motion – it ploughed on at considerable speed through the water and through the exceptionally strong wind. The decision had now been complicated. Did I dare to throw the cup? It was such a simple act, after all, and hardly the most rebellious feat. I realized I was standing alone on an open deck in the darkness of mid-winter, getting wetter and colder by the minute, earnestly wondering how to throw a trivial object from a commercial ferry. I also realized that if asked to explain myself, it would be a very difficult act to justify.
But now it had become important to throw this cup. I wanted to watch its trajectory and witness its vanishing. If I threw it from this solitary spot, out and away from the boat, the wind could grab it and toss it back, slamming it against one of the windows of the passenger lounge, fifteen or twenty feet below. I knew the weather must be severe for the catamarans to be suspended and there was a real danger of misjudging the windspeed out at sea. If the window cracked or shattered, the boat would be damaged and the unsuspecting passengers shocked or even injured. I had to rule it out from that part of the deck.
I was still determined. Having got this far with the line of enquiry, it seemed a shame to give up. The urgency had decreased but the desire remained. I’d planted the idea in my mind and felt the need to see it through. At this stage, I was daring myself. It reminded me of a particularly foolish whim I’d hit upon many years ago as a pre-school child aged about three or four. While out in the city centre, holding my mum’s hand on pavements with dropped kerbs, I would will myself to extend one of my tiny feet under the wheel of a passing car, just to see if, and how much, this hurt. The proximity of the cars and ignorance of their weight had tempted me. Looking back, it had been similar to the cup. I’d wanted to do it because it was possible – because I could. Fortunately, I never did. I cringed at the memory, remembering how close I’d been, at times, to sticking my infant foot under the fat black tyre of a passing car.
Back on the boat, I found another spot from which to launch the cup. From the rear of a forward-moving boat seemed the logical place – here, there could be no danger of accidentally striking a person or window. I was poised for action. I put my bag down on the wet wooden decking and swapped the cup from my left to my right hand… then realized another obstacle: the car deck. It formed the base of the boat, a long way down and immediately on the water. It was much longer than the exposed deck where I stood. This ‘rear ground’ level tapered in a long V-shape that made the ferry efficient and buoyant, but the space was full of empty cars and lorries. It was too easy to imagine the cup clattering through a windscreen. I assumed that if this happened and I were identified as the culprit, it would be seen as a willful act of vandalism that no account would properly explain. I’d have to pay for a new windscreen, would receive a lifelong ban from travelling on the operator’s ferries and – worst of all – my name would probably appear in the local paper. Any of our names appearing in the same sentence as ‘Court’ or ‘caught’ was one of my mother’s worst fears. The County Press, written by second-rate local journalists and full of provincial gossip, was read once a week by every literate person on the island. I couldn’t take the risk.
The cup’s long, slow, inevitable fall to the seabed, unseen by anyone, was still on my mind, but I felt defeated. The 40-foot drop could’ve been overcome by walking down several flights of stairs to the car deck. It would make more sense to throw the cup from there, where there would be no danger of striking anything other than the accommodating sea. Although practical, this defeated the point. The attraction was hurling it from a distance of several storeys, of watching the teacup become a textbook abstraction, ‘describing a curve’ before disappearing for good. So there I stood, gazing out to a stormy sea in darkness. I probably resembled a lovesick thinker pondering something profound or romantic. I was only trying to summon up some pluck. I urged myself on. I told myself to throw the cup on the count of ten, counted to ten and then started again anyway. The rain returned in earnest with raindrops sudden, fat and abundant. In the time it took to retreat to the shelter of the boat’s warm interior – and it required all of my strength to open the heavy wooden door against a gale-force wind – I had been thoroughly soaked. My hair was soggy, and strands of it stuck to my face; rainwater slithered across my cold bare hands. When I returned to my seat, it pleased me to see a small puddle of rain nestling within the cup.
(Like the hair-pulling tot on the bus, on a boring journey one has to make one's own entertainment)
