Eleanor Walsh

Lasting Honey

Michael brewed instant coffee to smother his seasickness, wiping grime from the inside of a mug with a forefinger. Despite it being mid-morning, he was still in darkness, hiding from the beams of sunlight that cut through the cabin from the row of portholes. The boat bobbed on the high tide, bumping unpleasantly against the marina wall. Repressing a belch of nausea, he shed from his shoulders the woollen blanket that he’d taken from his bare mattress, exposing the slackness of his puckering belly. He usually wore a blazer at the weekends, but the carpenter was coming today, so he risked the only t-shirt he owned – one from a team-building exercise with the rest of the university’s Law department. It had the since-abandoned faculty slogan We’ll Get You Off on the back.

Michael took his coffee and newspaper onto the deck, bleary-eyed in the summer sun. Sitting on his single fold-out chair, he glanced up at the marina, waiting for the carpenter. He knew Frank didn’t count as company – Michael was paying him – but he hadn’t held a conversation with anyone outside of the university since Teddy had left.

Teddy was in the newspaper again: another report on the scandal. There was no new information but more conjecture, gossip; the journalist had interviewed students who described Teddy’s Chaplin moustache and risqué jokes. One recounted the story of when he’d had them dress in togas during Open Day to promote the Classics department. Though Michael lectured in Law, his own faculty were ordered to attend training days on professional conduct after Teddy’s departure, and other staff members had rolled their eyes and glared at Michael as if he were guilty by association. The department introduced a dress code for students that mentioned bare thighs and bra straps, and Michael felt his chest tightening at the thought of enforcing it. Now, he scrutinised the students’ descriptions of Teddy in the newspaper before touching a hand to his own unruly moustache – his hair that wafted back and forth across his bald spot like seaweed – before guiltily folding the newspaper.

There was a thud on the deck and Michael slopped hot coffee onto his thigh as he turned in his chair.

‘Michael?’

There was a girl on the deck of his boat: bony and bare-legged. Her head was shaved and her pale scalp framed a darker, weathered face. She wore work boots, too clunky for her legs, and had a rucksack slung over her back, which she heaved over her head and threw onto the deck with a clunk. Michael jumped up, clutching his mug with both hands, the splash of coffee spreading on his trouser leg.

‘I’m Honey,’ she said. ‘I’m here to strip the deck.’

‘I don’t think so.’ He was already scanning the marina for help.

‘Yeah. I was sent to work on the boat called Margaret. And this is Margaret, right? It says it on your lifebuoy on the bow. And you’re Michael.’

‘I was expecting Frank.’

‘Frank’s gone to get wood to replace the rot. You have a section of deck that needs replacing, right? He’ll be here later.’

Michael turned again to the marina, hoping to see Frank still departing, close enough that Michael could call him back and tell him to take the girl with him. She had already toed some mooring ropes out of her way and kicked off her boots. She was kneeling on the deck, dragging a gas canister from her rucksack with a horrible scraping.

‘I have builder’s gloves,’ he said, worrying about the way she pointed the blowtorch at her own fingers while she flicked a lighter.

‘I don’t use gloves. I’m allergic to latex.’ She sat on her bare feet and set to work scorching his deck, singeing the paint until it blackened and curled away from the exposed timber. He cringed visibly as she brushed the loose, burning flecks away with a bare hand. Michael thought he recognised her from campus, although she was young and must be a first year. He fretted that she might have been one of Teddy’s students, or might know that he and Teddy had been friends.

He realised he was staring at her. ‘Would you like a coffee?’ He couldn’t bring himself to call her Honey.

‘Huh?’ she cocked her head over the noise of the blowtorch.

‘Coffee?’ his voice sounded high as he pointed at his own cup.

‘No thanks. I’m allergic.’ He wasn’t sure coffee allergies existed, and wondered if she thought he was trying to slip her something. Defeated, he retreated down the stairwell, shuffling backwards to avoid her seeing the humiliating slogan on his t-shirt.

He sat on the single bench in the main cabin that grew stuffy in the summer sun, arms tightly folded, watching the girl’s rodent-like bent-pin legs appear and disappear through the portholes, skittering in the shimmering paint fumes. He felt annoyed. The boat had been his father’s after he’d gotten divorced, and now it was supposed to be Michael’s bachelor pad too. It was supposed to be an alternative lifestyle; rustic, minimalist. He and Teddy would have taken trips up to Snowdonia or over to Dublin. He thought fishermen would pause on the marina to admire the boat, and he’d have manly conversations about the engine power and maintenance of the hull. Instead, Teddy was gone and the cabin had become a sad bunker where he had stashed himself away, humiliated. The dark hull harboured mould and the shelves were stacked with catering-sized cans of tomatoes and corn.

He thought about phoning Frank, crossly telling him that he needed to hurry. He even thought about phoning Teddy, but he’d ignored Teddy’s calls since the scandal broke, staring at his ringing phone, missing the office coffees, the after-work beers, too cowardly to answer, and now he’d left it too long.

Tense and sweating, he realised he’d been staring at the girl’s legs through the portholes for some time. He shook his head and glowered at the floor. The tide was going out and the boat was rocking less; his seasickness replaced by cold shame. He thought of how Teddy had enjoyed women, whereas Michael existed alongside them with unrelenting anxiety – a dull ache of longing when he saw them – coupled with the guilt of being caught leering, the anxiety of their age – the way he’d think of them again late at night. Hopelessly undone by naked forearms, an exposed nape of a neck, the fleeting scent when a woman whipped her hair too close to him. He wanted a wife but the prospect of asking a woman on a date was unthinkable.

Michael jumped at the sound of the girl shouting from the deck. ‘Mike!’ she called out. Nobody called him Mike.

‘I gotta show you something,’ she said as he emerged from the stairwell. She was kneeling, and curls of burnt paint settled around her legs, still orange at the edges with heat. He wanted to offer her something to sit on, but his cheeks warmed as he imagined her burning the backs of her legs, her buttocks, and he stayed silent.

‘Look,’ she said, shutting off the gas and pointing at the deck between her knees, and he edged closer. ‘No, look here,’ she said, so he was forced to lean over her. He realised he was holding his breath. ‘There’s varnish under the paint, see?’ she said. ‘I can try to strip it but it’s scorching the wood. I can sand it afterwards, take most off the charring. S’up to you.’ Michael wasn’t sure what his options were. She looked up at him and her ears, with no hair to frame them, were backlit by the sun, showing webs of pink veins.

‘Yes, that’s fine.’ He wasn’t sure this answered her question. ‘Whatever you think is best. The appearance doesn’t matter.’

‘Sure it does. You want Margaret to look nice, don’t you?’

‘I suppose so?’

‘She’s an impressive relic. You take her out?’

‘I don’t know how. She was my dad’s and he never left the marina.’

‘You should learn. I’d love to take her out. Don’t you want to? Margaret and Mike, hitting the open water!’ She smiled at him, her chin resting on a brown knee that was fuzzy with sun-bleached hair.

‘Yes. I suppose I should learn. If we came unmoored in a storm I’d be in terrible trouble.’

‘Yep. You’d find yourself out to sea. On deck with a tiger called Richard Parker.’

Michael couldn’t help smiling back. ‘Yes! Ha ha! A tiger called Richard Parker! And we’d wash up on a flesh-eating island!’

‘Don’t remember that bit from the film,’ she shrugged. He was about to tell her that she simply must read the book, because the book is always better, but he stopped himself.

‘Well, then I must get around to seeing the film,’ he said.

She relit the blowtorch and returned to stripping the paint, flaming strips spinning around her. One fleck, still lit, came to rest on her chin and she flicked it away. She wiped her face on the hem of her vest, exposing a pale torso, almost translucent. Michael realised that, despite the bare skin, the girl was not sexy – the shaved head and the glowing rodent ears, the boyish vest and the fuzzy hair on her legs were all rather benign. The tide had retreated now; they’d sunk far below the marina and the boat was touching the mud. It was getting warmer – the hottest day this year – and she didn’t mind him being there.

‘Would you like a tea or anything?’ Michael raised his voice over the blowtorch.

‘You got green tea?’

‘Oh. No, sorry. Although, I have spiced apple chai? I could go and buy a green teabag from—’

‘Spiced apple chai sounds great. Thanks Mike.’

Filling the kettle below deck, Michael reflected on the exchange. If the girl knew about Teddy, she didn’t seem to care. She was nice, and he realised she’d been friendly since the beginning. He liked the way she’d jumped straight onto the boat, without calling out from the marina first. She was the kind of student who might stay behind after a lecture to ask a question, without finding it weird. When he’d moved onto the boat, hadn’t he imagined that people would stop by to sit on the deck with him and drink tea? And here she was – his first visitor.

He could tell her to take a break from stripping the deck while she had her tea. He’d offer her the chair while he sat on the helm. They’d talk more about books that had been turned into films, and she’d tell him that her friends were off kayaking or rock climbing, and she was left behind again because of a salt allergy, a moss allergy. Conversation would come around to the university and he’d condemn Teddy bitterly.

She’d be back on campus in September. When people talked about his proximity to Teddy, his screwball hair and sloping gait, the way arthritis crumpled his hands like dead spiders, she might say, Oh Mike? No, Mike is OK. I worked on his boat over the summer. We drank tea together. Michael said this out loud to himself, his voice hidden by the kettle’s rumble. ‘That guy Mike is OK.’

He made the tea in the only nice glass he owned and stepped out into the sun.

‘Honey’, he said, but as she turned to him, leaning her ungloved hand back onto the deck, she let out a small cry – a tiny oh of surprise as if she’d been burned – and inspected her palm. He wondered if he could get away with saying something fatherly: see, I told you that would happen. She could sit in his chair, icing her hand while he swept the burnt paint debris for her. But she was picking at her hand urgently, her face screwed up.

‘Bee sting. Get my EpiPen. Quick!’ she said, loudly, startling Michael. He spilled her tea as he set it down and snatched up her bag from the deck. Unable to bring himself to look through it, he stirred an arm into its contents blindly before pulling an EpiPen from its depths, the text on the yellow plastic of its shaft rubbed away with age.

She took it from him and, in the swiftest motion, stabbed the needle into her thigh. She plunged it into herself so hard that Michael felt a punch of nausea in his throat. His legs buckled on the sloping deck as the boat angled on the seabed. A childhood memory came to mind – vividly and without warning – of running up the steps from the cabin of the boat, away from his father who was killing a mouse with a broom.

The girl’s hand went limp as she withdrew the needle. Its point dragged along her thigh, leaving beads of blood, before falling from her hand onto the deck, rolling through a drainage gulley into the mud below.

Michael swayed, reeling from the force with which she’d stabbed herself. He waited for her to recover, but she was slumped, red-faced, limbs crumpled at awful angles. One hand pawed unhappily at her thigh. Her eyes were wet and rolling in her head.

‘I need to lie down,’ she slurred. A bubble grew and popped at the corner of her mouth. She managed to stagger to her feet, stumbling, as if drunk, past Michael towards the stairwell, her bony skull wobbling dangerously on her shoulders. Michael imagined his arm reaching out, steadying her by the elbow, or holding her under the armpits like a child. He could feel her weight as if he was carrying her, and she weighed almost nothing, the tops of her feet sliding across the floorboards as he helped her to the mattress, covered her with his only blanket. He’d have to leave her on his bed while he called for an ambulance, then the operator would send police, telling them – it’s that weirdo who was friends with the lecturer who gave his students drugs and fucked them. He’s got an unconscious girl on his boat. There’d be photos in the papers of the blood on the deck. Michael quivered as he stared into the darkness of the cabin, teeth chattering hard.

‘Honey?’ he called out, his voice wobbling like an old man’s.

His phone was in the cabin. Honey hadn’t made it to the mattress. She was face-down on the floorboards – one foot visible in a sunbeam – twitching. He remembered, again, his father battering at the mouse with a broom. He’d been unable to watch, and he’d run and jumped without a thought across the slash of ocean below, off the boat and onto the marina, and he’d run and run. Now, Michael turned to look across the gap to the marina, but the boat had sunk far below it. He was faced with the stinking stone wall – stuck with barnacles – trailing seaweed and mooring ropes, and way up beyond it the sky was electric blue – so gorgeously rare and entirely empty – further away than ever.

Eleanor Walsh is a PhD graduate from the University of Plymouth. She lives in Cornwall where she works as an English tutor and creative editor. Her novellas Birds with Horse Hearts, set in Nepal, and Stormbred, set in Cornwall, are available from Ad Hoc Fiction.