IT WAS NEARLY NOON before I could drag myself from the sleeping bag and force myself to face the mess at hand. I ate a makeshift breakfast while gazing absently through a port at the day outside. It was raining steadily. Trust the Irish summer to produce what the Irish call “A fine, soft day.” Just the sort of day to stay in bed with my cold.
Finally, I stepped from Toscana aboard the big boat and hurriedly unlocked the hatch, hunching my shoulders against the rain. The reality in the dim, green light below was even worse than my memory of it. Chaos would have been too polite a word. Thousands in electronic gear was jumbled together with thousands in other, more mundane equipment. It took me twenty minutes of shifting before I could even get a floorboard up to check the bilges. She was still taking water. I checked the softwood plug under the galley sink and gave it a couple of whacks with the mallet for good measure. It was leaking, but not fast enough to account for all the water she had taken. I laboriously pumped the bilges, thinking all the while that somewhere in the jumble of gear there was an electric bilge pump that could make my life a great deal easier. It would be first on my list of installations.
That done, I decided that neatness would help; just putting the boat in reasonable order would make my task seem easier and give me cause for optimism. Besides, sorting and cleaning didn’t require much thinking. I wasn’t ready for thinking yet. I would have liked to put everything on deck and start from there, but the rain prevented me. Instead, I had to rummage for things that could safely get wet, shove those on deck, and leave the rest below. It was slow going. By the end of the day I had separated much of the gear, but had stowed or connected nothing. My cold sapped my strength and slowed me down.
That evening I went into Cobh, found a telephone, and called Annie in Plymouth.
“He was in surgery for six hours,” she said. “They did a lot of very delicate work, and the doctor says that all we can do now is wait for the healing. The leg will be in plaster for about three weeks, and they won’t know until it comes off whether the surgery has been as successful as they hope. If everything is all right at that time, then Mark can begin physiotherapy to regain use of the leg.”
“It doesn’t sound as if there’s a prayer of his doing the Azores race, does it?”
“No,” she said, “not for an ordinary person, but then, Mark’s not ordinary. He was still pretty groggy when I left him, but he was talking about the race. I know this sounds mad given the circumstances, but he just might make it. I think Mark must have the greatest recuperative powers of any human being who ever lived, Jesus Christ only barely excepted. But he has to have something to aim for, something to keep him going. That’s why what you’re doing with the boat is so important. Call him tomorrow, if you can. It’ll boost his spirits.”
For three days it rained steadily, inhibiting what I already considered an impossible task. I talked with Mark twice, and he was full of helpful ideas and suggestions, but I told him that my circumstances made it difficult for me to call every day. I wanted to have progress to report when I talked with him. On the fourth day it stopped raining, and I made better progress. At the end of the week my cold had improved, and I had everything sorted and had made a list of the location of every piece of equipment and where it was to be installed.
The next morning the cold that I had thought was healing had degenerated into something awful. I took to my bunk, and it got worse. Everything went wrong; I couldn’t keep anything down or, for that matter, up. I grew very weak and was obviously running a high temperature. I drifted in and out of sleep, too sick to fix myself much to eat or even to think about going into Cobh for a doctor. Even when I began to come out of it some days later, I was so weak that I couldn’t sit up. It was another couple of days before I could move about without fear of falling, and by the time I felt like thinking about work again, ten full days had been lost to whatever bug I had had. I checked the calendar; I had just about four weeks before I would have to sail away from Ireland in order to be in Plymouth in time to provision the boat and make her ready for the race. And nothing had been installed yet.
Now that I was recovering, I was starving, too, and I had eaten absolutely everything aboard. I gathered up my dirty laundry and sweat-soaked sleeping bag, staggered to the van with the bundle and drove into Cobh. I found a fish-and-chips place and gorged myself, then left the laundry in a coin-operated washing machine and went grocery shopping. My packages in the van, I went back to the laundry and got everything into the dryer. Then I nearly fainted. I sat down heavily on a bench, alone in the place, sweat pouring off me. I reckoned I had made my outing a bit too soon. Shortly, I found a bucket and threw up the fish and chips. Dizzy and lightheaded, I began to hallucinate, thinking I could hear the sound of children singing. Then the door opened and a moment later a voice said, “Mother of God, Will, what’s wrong?”
I didn’t answer; it was clear to me that this was a part of my hallucination, along with the singing children.
“Is this a friend of yours?” another voice asked with obvious distaste.
“Yes, sister. You go on with the girls, I’ll join you in a minute.”
I put down my bucket and sat back. The sound of the dryer going round seemed calibrated to the spinning of my head. I was almost certain Connie Lydon was standing in front of me.
“Are you ill?” she seemed to ask.
Then the spinning stopped, and I saw that she really was there. “Hello,” I said, “What are you doing here?”
“We’ve brought the girls over on their end-of-term outing,” she said. “I asked if you’re ill.”
“I’ve been ill,” I said. “I thought I was over it.”
“Are you all right, now?”
I nodded. “Oh, yeah, I just need to rest for a minute.” Then I thought, what am I saying? If I’m all right, she’ll go away. I leaned against the wall and groaned slightly. She took my arm and led me back to the bench.
“You look awful,” she said.
She was right, of course. I hadn’t shaved in ten days; my hair was matted and hadn’t been cut for weeks, and my filthy clothes hung on me. My belt was two notches tighter than usual. I stole a glance at my reflection in the soap machine; there were dark circles under my eyes. Perfect. I wiped my sweaty forehead with my sleeve. “I’ll be okay,” I said, as unconvincingly as possible. “I just need to get back to bed.”
“What are you doing in Cobh?”
“I’m … uh, staying over here, temporarily. Really, I’ll be okay, I’ll just get my laundry in the van and get going.”
“You stay right here,” she said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
She left the shop. I ran to the window and saw her having a discussion with a nun next to a schoolbus full of little girls. The nun nodded and got aboard the bus; it pulled away. Connie started back to the shop. I ran for my bench.
A few minutes later, I was directing her down the dirt lane toward where the two yachts were moored. “Stop here for a minute,” I said. She stopped the van. “I’m going to have to have your promise not to tell anyone what’s down here. If you don’t think you can keep quiet about this, I’ll drive you back to town right now. I’m feeling a bit better.” I wiped my forehead again for effect. She gave me a disgusted look and continued to drive. From her expression, I thought my plan was working.
Then she saw the two yachts and stopped again with a gasp. “What is going on here? I heard that you and Mark had left the country with the boat.”
“Mark has left the country,” I said. “He’s in a military hospital in England. And you’re the only one who knows that the boat and I are still in Ireland. I hope I can trust you, Connie.”
I woke late that night and looked about me. Toscana was spotlessly clean again. The food and my clean clothes were neatly stowed. Connie Lydon slept softly on the settee berth opposite mine. And I felt really good for the first time in a long time. I fell asleep again easily.