Shabby Seaside Bar
000
The instant he put the book down, it was splashed, soaked by an errant wave that surged over the gunwale into the boat. ‘Damn!’ Lifting it by the drenched cover, which instantly started to bend and warp, he swiped seawater off with his injured hand, gritting his teeth as he did. First, a sprained wrist, now this.
‘Damn, damn.’ Muttering as he squeezed down the companionway, he was careful to duck. The last thing he wanted was to cultivate a permanent red spot on his forehead from repeatedly bumping against the top beam of the companionway, like he did last night. And the night before.
He heard sloshing as his foot touched the slatted floor of the saloon below. There was water in the bilges again. Seas the Day must have developed a leak. He hoped not. Spending what amounted to a fortune at another marina far from home was not going to happen. He’d have to repair it himself. There was some silicon somewhere, probably locked in the lazaret in the cockpit. When was he going to remember where he put stuff? He placed the wet book on the chart table, where it left a damp spot. ‘Damn.’
‘Look,’ he said, in a moderated tone to his reflection in the mirror over the heads. ‘Look—I’ll change course, get within sight of land, stay clear of a lee coast, and anchor outside that pretty bay I saw yesterday. Okay, skipper?’ He gave himself a sideways grin and felt better. He sighed. ‘Oh, Jim Horn, you idiot. Is this your idea of a great retirement?’
But what else was there apart from sea and sky when one turned 67? No more dead-earnest zoom meetings, no more shirt and tie, no more business trips to Canberra, no commuting to the city and back. All he had now was this boat and the shack in Singleton. ‘Really, Jim? Really? All you have left? What about—’
‘Seas the Day, Seas the Day, come in please.’ A tinny voice over the radio startled him.
How was it possible? How could he be in range again? His eyes swung over to the instruments and he saw he had sailed much further than he thought and much closer to the south coast. And he had not even slept. Somehow, he had lost a few hours.
‘Seas the Day here,’ he responded. ‘Bremer Bay, Bremer Bay … come in.’ He gave his position coordinates as they appeared on his screen, said he was alone on board, listened patiently to the weather warning voiced slowly by a tinny female voice, and ended the call, looking up and out through the companionway. Yes, it looked like it was getting dark. Ah well, he must have slept for a while.
His wrist throbbed. There was some Tigers Balm somewhere, he had used it when the winch spun and whacked him on the back of the lower arm, causing an angry inflammation.
What was that?
He put his head out into the cockpit and saw it. An enormous whale’s head, black as night and covered in barnacles, breaching the surface just to starboard. Ye gods! A foamy wake was formed by a mighty back that rolled forward, under a funnelled burst of exhaled seawater, disappearing as suddenly as it appeared, enormous tail just visible. If he had looked a moment later, he would have missed it, and there it was—land! Not a distant line on the horizon, but green dunes and a headland within cooee.
Jim Horn scrambled and adjusted everything, shortening the headsail and lowering the main as quickly as he could, breathing hard, then taking the tiller, his wrist aching. It was no fun pulling lines and turning winches with a bad hand. He went down and tapped directions for the auto pilot and windvane, and slowed his breathing. ‘Cup of tea, I reckon.’ The memory of that whale’s head rising and rolling back, the tail flukes only just discernible under a few feet of clear water, made him smile. Whatever made him think he was alone out there? A chill ran up his spine.
The wet book had curled, the damp cover rolling in on itself. He straightened the soft cover and weighted it with one of the glass paperweights he kept on the chart table. They were a present from Carla, a set of four exquisite Venetian hand-blown glass weights for holding rolled maps open, bought for him when she was touring Europe alone, sending him messages about how travelling ‘her way’, in luxury hotels, on coaches, planes and trains, and never, never wearing boat shoes or damp towelling hats, was far better than any adventures he went on. Far better than risking life and limb in damp conditions, cooking makeshift meals over a gimballed spirit stove while the whole vessel rolled side to side, threatening to send everything deckwards, himself included.
Now, he made sure the book was trapped by the raised edge of the chart table, looked in the kettle and filled it some more, rinsed out an enamel mug and turned on some music. He still had some old CDs, which was comforting. Queen and ELO reminded him of the days he and Carla travelled together, but … but oh, they were well past that stage.
He took the mug of hot tea up to the cockpit and watched the world go dark, with Venus appearing a bit more to the west than he thought, and the glimmering scatter of stars coming through a purplish sky. If the whale came back … if there were anybody there … that was the trouble with solo sailing—it was solo. No one to make conversation with. It was crazy to think you could talk to a whale. ‘Damn,’ he said for the fifteenth time that day. Damn. He was over it, wasn’t he?
He was over this thing of lone voyages out where he lost sight of land. Of taking Seas the Day down to where two oceans met, and sailing the south coast of Western Australia. He was over seeing Albany loom in the distance, beckoning to him to come ashore, have a decent meal and a hot, hot, hot shower and a shave he could give himself without having to pause and rock, swaying at the knees, always nicking his chin near that scar he got one year from the boom swinging loose.
‘Jim Horn …’ His voice turned angry. ‘You’re gonna have to find yourself some other kind of adventure, mate.’
0
Carla looked over the rail at the solid calm spread of water—blue, gold, blue, struck by the sun, brilliant—held within the arms of that famous bay. She held up her champagne flute and looked at the last of the evening light through it. It was light that made her evening dress glimmer, its tangerine sequins shimmer with reflections of the bulkhead lights on the cruise ship. ‘Is it always this calm?’ she asked, knowing she was not really interested in the response. She was not really interested in any of her shipboard acquaintances. It was just small talk, made to fill a silence.
Her companions talked over her, at her, and none of them listened to anything, just talked, talked, talked. Questions went unanswered as a matter of course. Most of them had had too much to drink.
In the distance, the barely-visible coast of Naples shimmered too, with lights coming on at dusk. ‘Pretty,’ she said, to no one in particular.
‘Pretty,’ someone else in the group said, not having heard her observation.
In an hour, they were preparing to disembark at the Naples port, changed into street clothes, ready for the night-time scenic drive promised on the brochure. The great windows on the square customs building glowed and slid sideways in the gloom. They berthed, amid shouting voices, clanging, and the ship’s engines shuddering. There was only a slight raising of excitement. PORTO di NAPOLI in white letters loomed in the fading light.
She had seen it all before. Twinkling lights snaked up the heavily built-up city and suburbs. ‘See that ridge overlooking the city? That’s the Vomero,’ she said, to someone who walked off before she finished the sentence. ‘It’s where the wealthy … where the big villas are.’ Finishing lamely, she huffed and rolled her eyes.
Talk around her was all about the coach tour.
‘I think I’ll stay on board,’ Carla said. No one heard her. No one saw she pulled away the silk headscarf and started to shuck off her leopard-print jacket. She wondered if she would be missed on the coach. No. She knew no one would notice her absence.
Walking to the far side of the deck, she gave her back to the famous Italian city, whose reputation swung from seedy to trendy every five years or so, and gazed out at the enormous bay. The twin peaks dead ahead of her turned black against an indigo sky, and the sea started to ripple in an evening breeze from the west. She saw a small fishing boat leave a slow wake that widened as the little vessel worked its way outward into the Mediterranean.
‘This part, outside the bay, is the Tyrrhenian Sea,’ she said aloud, pulling the collar of her jacket tighter around her neck after she pulled it back on. She repeated what the guide had said as they approached the Bay of Naples earlier that day. ‘And I’m on this enormous cruise ship, hating every minute. And Jim is out there on the Southern Ocean, in a world of bliss. What a chump I am.’
She thought of the beaches south of Fremantle, the clean white sand decorated with stretched beached seagrass, which baked in the sun and buzzed with insects and maggots the seagulls came for. She thought and thought of rolling surf, of beaches one could practically have to oneself, and of the red beaks and feet of the pairs of oystercatchers that tripped along at the edge of clean foamy water, seeking whatever it was they pecked for as they went, always in pairs. Always together.
‘I remember a beach where … now where was that? We sat on a damp towel together, looking at the darkening sky, until we got so thirsty we had to go into Rockingham for a Coke.’ It was decades ago, of course, but she doubted the beaches would have changed much along there. She also doubted it was a good thing talking to herself. When she got back to Perth, she would drive down and try to find the spot where there were islands not too far from the beaches, where the sand went on for miles, where seabirds were always present, creating a picturesque scene for whoever cared to watch. Where lampposts formed a necklace trailing off to as far as the eye could see. She wanted a bay full of tethered sailboats, a promenade shaded by Norfolk Island pines.
‘You must be having a ball, Jim Horn,’ she called over the Naples water. ‘You couldn’t be missing me one tiny bit!’ She made her way down to one of the bars and ordered a coffee and an Amaro Averna, which she would sip, tucked away at a corner table in a deserted lounge, until it was time to descend to her cabin.
0
The terrace café overlooking smooth rounded dunes below, rocks lapped by waves that came and went and dunes covered in coastal shrubs had seen better times. Peeling paint, cracked laminate tables and chairs, and tin ads stuck to the wall that were genuinely vintage proclaimed its age. The peculiar smell of fish and chips and stale fishing bait hung in the air.
A waiter in a t-shirt broadcasting some distant seaside paradise—certainly not this one—jangled used glasses on a round metal tray that was yet another advert for local beer. ‘You guys want anything else? We close at seven.’
Carla and Jim looked up at once. And looked at each other, with no need to say a word. The man was wishing them away, wanting this old couple to leave so he could close up and go home for the day. On the wobbly table in front of them lay a newspaper folded to the cryptic crossword. The crumbly remains of two meat pies and used beer glasses were pushed to one side. They looked down again.
‘Six down, Jim. Let’s solve this and then we’ll go.’
He stood and walked to the railing. ‘Try it—I’ve worked it out.’
‘Hmm. Some nudist ran down beach. Six letters. We already have a D at the end.’
He turned and leaned both elbows on the rail, looking at her from the few metres’ distance, her grey windblown hair, the lines around her mouth, the piercing eyes. ‘You’ve solved harder ones.’
The best cryptic conundrum both of them ever solved was the one that made them ‘retire’; really retire, in a vastly different way from the concept that had been tried and found to be wanting, years ago. Carla stopped buying sequined frocks to cruise with strangers, and he gave away lone sailing, selling Seas the Day to an enthusiastic newbie who would not take it out of its berth more than half a dozen times before he too would sell it onward.
Now they fought over crossword solutions, who would unload the dishwasher, the politics of the day, and what movie to stream in the evening.
‘Seabed’s too long and sand is too short.’ Carla mumbled to herself. She clicked the pen and clicked it again, looking up at him. ‘Let’s go. That man wants to close shop.’
They climbed the concrete steps to the street.
‘Seabed is the right length, but it’s wrong. You must take the middle letters …’
‘Aha!! Yes, Jim—from the end of nudist to the beginning of down. It’s S-T-R-A-N-D.’
‘Yup, another word for beach or seaside.’
Carla looked out to the island in the distance, now a familiar sight she gazed at almost daily. ‘There is no other word for this, though, is there, Jim?’ She moved an arm in a wide arc around them.
‘There is no other word for shabby seaside bar, no,’ he replied, his mind obviously elsewhere.
Carla chuckled. ‘I didn’t mean …’
‘You meant beautiful, Carla. B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L. Beautiful, serene and reassuring. And manageable. And affordable. Giving up the big house in the northern suburbs and living in the Singleton shack all the year round, together, was the best idea I ever had.’
‘It was my idea!’ Her eyes glared wide.
He laughed and led the way to the car.
000
© Rosanne Dingli 2025