APRIL 3, 2018

Wrecked ~ A story written with Bill Kirton

The image entitled “Six Months of Winter” was the prompt for episode #74 of R.B. Wood’s WordCount Podcast. At the time Richard posted the picture, he was experiencing awful winter weather in New England.

I think he continues to give us ‘icy’ themes just to torture us.

This was not an easy prompt for me, but I had help. Scottish author Bill Kirton and I decided to collaborate again, yay! I’ve written several stories with Bill in the past. Go to the last one, called “In Two Minds” and you’ll find links to all the others.

Thanks to JB Graphics, we even had a new picture created just for us. It suits the story.

Bill kicked off “Wrecked,” and we took turns writing four parts. He pushed my limits with something I knew very little about, and with which he has expert knowledge—ships. His bestselling book, The Figurehead is about this very subject.

As you will hear or read, the story’s opening is strong and detailed. I had to figure out what was happening before I could even contemplate what to write. My stories are always character-driven, so I stuck to what I knew and embellished where I could. From there, the tale unfolded. It was a challenge, but a wonderful challenge!

Listen to Bill and me reading the story here. You can also learn all the latest from the Facebook page for the Wordcount Podcast. Please do LIKE the page. It will give us more visibility and increase our listening audience. Thank you!

I hope you enjoy the story.

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Bad choice. Really bad choice. But with so few Masters’ jobs available nowadays and eager new kids waving their tickets at every company with a fleet, you don’t say no when they ask if you’re available. I’ve been at it 18 years now – South America, Far East, Europe – everywhere. So when this company asked if I’d take their latest buy for some trials off Newfoundland, it was a no-brainer. It was coming up to Christmas. Jenny would hate it. Well, it’s understandable. I never do coastal stuff so every trip I was months away, and when I am away, well, all I think about is the boat. The sea’s a drug. Can’t explain it. I could never work onshore.

I’d heard, though, that this particular lot – a Canadian outfit with fleets of bulk carriers as well as cruise ships – were pretty generous with their perks, one of which was letting the Master take his wife along with him if it was going to be a long trip. Jenny’s no great lover of the sea but I knew she’d hate to be stuck at home over Xmas with crap TV and phone calls from her mother. And a few days in Montreal before we sailed would be an added bonus. When I told her about it, she said yes, but there was ice in the air.

The trouble started before we’d even got clear of the St Lawrence seaway. Jenny had been on the bridge with me, actually seeming to enjoy it all, but then the chief engineer came up, asking permission to repair the cylinder liner of one of the main engine units. To do that, the engines obviously had to be stopped, but the company wouldn’t be very impressed if I put into port in Newfoundland and they had to pay berthing charges so I decided to keep going and drop anchor some 2 miles east of one of the offshore islands. When we did, the weather was fair. But the forecast wasn’t: ‘Variable 4 to 6, veering East. 8 or 9 from East overnight. Severe gusts. Locally rough, becoming very rough.’

‘Just like our marriage’ said Jenny, before going below.

There was no time to reason with her. I needed to have my wits about me. Those stronger gusts were already on us. We were a couple of miles off a lee shore with gales coming in from the ocean and relying on just the anchor to hold us. No point regretting my decision now. We just had to see it out.

* * *

What was I thinking when I decided to join David on this trip? I wasn’t thinking, that was the problem. If I were, there’s no way I’d be on this monstrosity of a ship in the middle of the ocean facing gale force winds. Everyone warned me about Canada’s unpredictable east coast weather.

Canada, of all the godforsaken places to be trapped at sea!

What I wouldn’t give to be back home in the cold of Inverness. When we left, the temperature was hovering above zero, typical for this time of year. It’s not to say it’s warm, but at least it’s a climate I’m familiar with—overcast, rainy, even stormy at times, but … nothing like this.

Despite being inside a massive steel vessel, I feel vulnerable and scared. We’re swaying back and forth, only this isn’t a warm breeze carrying a sailboat we’ve taken for a joy ride. It’s a howling wind moving a huge ship with hundreds of knobs and gears and god knows what else.

Even after twenty years being married to a sailor, I still can’t remember any of the boat terms.

I sit on the thin mattress in our Master’s cabin and try to breathe normally. It’s not working. Scenes from the movie Titanic flood my memory. I remember watching it with David. When we drove home from the theatre afterward, I was emotionally raw. I didn’t care about the sinking ship story. We all know how that ends. It was the tale of two ill-fated lovers, separated by social class who never got to live their lives together that touched me. Who wouldn’t be touched by their story?

David. That’s who.

His focus was the ship and all the film’s inaccuracies, how the Master-at-Arms office was actually an inside cabin because it had no portholes, how the ship accelerated too quickly when leaving Southampton without the aid of tugboats, and on and on until I tuned out.

We didn’t speak much after that. It was my own fault for suggesting that we see a movie I should have seen with a girlfriend. If there was any doubt that the romance was gone from our marriage, that day sealed it.

It was like my mother told me when she found out I was marrying a sailor, “You’ll never be his only love.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked as a naïve bride-to-be.

“You’ll always have to share him with a mistress,” she said.

At the time, I dismissed her comment as that of an unworldly woman, someone who’d never experienced life outside the Scottish Highlands.

Now, I know she was right, for whenever his mistress called, David would leave me, only this time, he’s taken me along with him.

* * *

It’s been a hellish night. 0600 now, and the wind’s gusting up to 40 knots. She’s rolling all over the place. No question of doing any repairs. Too dangerous.

The anchor started to drag a while back. We’re on the edge of the island’s one mile exclusion zone now. It’s being monitored by the Port authorities, of course. They’ve just asked me to shift further east. Huh, if only.

I asked the engineer for an update. He said there’s no chance of starting the main engine. I asked him why. He just said it’s in bits. I’ve been on to the owners. They’ve passed the buck back to me. Fair enough, but they made it pretty clear that the trials budget was tight. Easy to say when you’re sitting in an office. I’ve got no choice, I asked the port to send out a tug. When it arrived, we managed to get a towline fixed but it only held us for about an hour before it parted. No surprise in these conditions.

There’s bugger-all I can do. I’m already hearing – and feeling – the grindings and scrapings. She’s drifted through the thin ice onto an offshore reef. The grounding’s stopped her rolling but we’ll never get her off again, that’s for sure. And the way she’s lying, it won’t be long before the fuel tanks rupture. That’ll send a slick out over all the little islets and probably onto the shore of the mainland. Ecological mayhem – and all down to me.

There’s just me left. I called the crew together, thanked them, and gave the order to abandon ship. My first officer, Tom McIntyre, tried to talk me out of it. We know each other well, sailed together for years. But there’s no other choice. I put Jenny in his lifeboat. He’ll look after her. Her face, when she stepped into that boat, was heart-breaking. Made me love her all over again – as powerfully as in the first days. Worse than breaking the boat, I’ve broken her. God forgive me.

But he won’t. I’ll stay on board. If I left, there’d be scavengers sailing out to salvage her and claim the rewards. I can imagine what they’d have to say about that in the office. So when the oil’s spilled and the ship’s lost, if I survive, I’ll be the one who pays. Few years behind bars. No more ships to sail. Goodbye to poor Jenny. That’s only fair, though. Good Masters don’t make the sort of choices I have. I’ve only got myself to blame.

* * *

I stare out at the ocean even though the ship has long since disappeared from view. When I said good-bye to David before getting into the lifeboat, I didn’t know how to feel. It wasn’t a moment to clutch him tightly and beg him to come with me. It didn’t even seem appropriate to give him a kiss in front of his crew. Instead, we hugged one another like siblings at a parent’s funeral. I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. The look of defeat on David’s face said it all for him as he sent me off with his first officer.

Why should I have expected it to be different? My husband and I were not fictional characters from Titanic. He was not my Jack, and I was not his Rose. We were just a couple whose marriage had run aground long before he ran the ship into the ground. With numerous trepidations for coming on this trip, this is the last thing I could have imagined. It wasn’t supposed to end like this.

“He’ll get rescued,” says a voice nearby. A tall shadow of a man takes up space beside me. “They’ll send out a salvage tug to get him once the weather conditions improve.”

The man’s face is unreadable, his voice calm and matter of fact. “I can’t believe what’s happened,” I say. “Is this karma, Tom?”

“I don’t know about that. Your husband is a good man, but .…”

I bow my head. My face heats up as it always does when Tom is near. “But what?” I ask him.

“But he isn’t me. He can’t make you feel the way I make you feel.” Tom takes my hand in his. “You and I both know your marriage, for lack of a better term, was dead in the water before you came on this trip.”

I glance my surroundings to make sure no one is close enough to hear us. “I shouldn’t have come. We were crazy to take this risk, to think we could keep our feelings private the entire two months at sea …”

Tom squeezes my hand, “There’s no point dwelling on what could have happened. The fact is we didn’t have to put that to the test.”

I feel Tom’s fingers brush my palm. The heat inside me intensifies. “I accompanied David on this trip, and now … I leave with you—at his insistence no less. There may be no greater irony than this.” I heave a sigh before asking, “What’s going to happen to him?”

Tom strokes his bearded chin. “He’ll probably get jail time, but it may not be a long sentence. He wrecked the ship, but he did everything he could to save it. No one died. Hopefully, the judge shows leniency.”

As the shoreline draws near, we both instinctively disentangle our hold of each other’s hand. I look one last time in the direcition of David’s ship and allow guilt to wash over me like a giant wave. Once again, my thoughts turn to karma. If Tom and I can help it, David will never know about the affair. Perhaps it’s our fate to be together, and perhaps it’s David’s to be with his mistress.