The Boy Who Never Drowned chapter six

I was exhausted. My eyes throbbing, a quick relief every time I closed them. The Titanic was tired, all the bodies it encompassed worn out. There was no moon. Victoria was asleep, our bedroom a dark abyss. The sheets were wrapped around her slim body, so tightly that it was as if she had been swallowed by a snake. I sat cross legged on the bed, trying to listen to the music that always drifted from the crack in the entertainment room’s door. There was nothing. No sound. As if the whole boat was underwater. I had taken a bath earlier, craving warmth. I sunk below the surface, letting the room sway a bleary picture. The water stung my eyes, but I kept them open, wanting to witness this grey world that I was seeing. How a little water could conceive such a distorted appearance? I thought of how the world should sink below water, how different but yet the same it would become. Everything blurring into a parallel universe where the houses would morph into one, and the people’s faces would warp and twist in a watery manner until you couldn’t tell the difference between your mother and the Prime Minister. I wondered how long I had been holding my breath for.

I woke, startled by the door unlatching. Half my Father’s face could be seen in the dull yellow light of the hallway. His eyes met mine, neither one of us looking away. I almost thought he would then close the door and it would be forgotten in a dream, but he spoke. His gruff voice breaking the silence.

“Felix,” he said, pushing the word from his mouth. “I’m worried about you.” I was shocked, for this had never been an emotion I’d assume he’d have about me.

“Don’t be.” My timid voice managed, sounding so much like a child against his.

“You’re becoming more and more…” he trailed off, his eyes cowering to the floor. “I just want you to be happy.” He finally mumbled. He behaved this way with only one other person I knew about.

“I am happy.” I said, wanting to dissolve his worry, wanting to say something, for once, that he wanted to hear. But again, it had appeared that I had done the opposite.

“You’re too intelligent to be happy.” He half laughed, trying to make light of the severity that underwent his true meaning. I kept silent, remembering the things that Anne had taught me and how they weren’t particularly intelligent or perceptive. “Don’t stop drawing, will you?” He then said finally. “I may not understand your imagination, but it doesn’t mean it should die.” And he waited.

“I won’t.” I replied, thinking that I hadn’t drawn a thing since boarding the Titanic.

“I love you, Felix.” The words were a warm, welcoming knife to my chest. My Father’s voice trembled, as one does when saying goodbye to someone for a very long time. “It’s important you know that now.” The emphasis on the word now confused me, but I did not dwell on how he emphasised these words at the time, I was in love with them.

“I know.” I managed, quite taken aback. I desperately wanted to say that I loved him, for now was the only time I thought appropriate, but the words were locked in a possessive part of my mind, not willing to let them go. So instead I let the selfish monster hold onto them, and said nothing else. He closed the door after taking an unhappy glance at Victoria, having her last free dream in a bed that only belonged to her. 

 

***

A soundless crash. I woke from a dreamless sleep, my eyes unable to adjust to the darkness around me. I felt like a bear waking up from hibernation, the depths of my cave enclosing me from the world. It was so dark, I couldn’t see Victoria sleeping; I couldn’t see my hand out in front of me. A room of shadows, one of them must have woken me. My feet landed on the cool boards of the floor and I fumbled around for my boat shoes. I was wearing a white t-shirt that I’d held onto for some years, my newly growing muscles trying to escape from it like wings. My trousers were linen and blue and fell off my skinny legs. I grabbed my coat from its position on the door and left. I was not sure why I had taken this unexpected adventure that wouldn’t have happened if it were not for the invisible alarm. I could have easily gone back to sleep, but a determination that risen somewhere inside me that drove me to the deck. I walked as if in a dream, gliding up the stairs and through the corridor that was absolutely quiet. No giggling was heard, no shuffling no singing no snoring. It was a ghostly ship, as if I had arrived somewhere in the future where it had been abandoned. The deck. Icy winds cut into me, razors to my chest and a poisonous blade to my ears. I wrapped my arms around myself and looked up at the blue moon. It was partially hidden by a cloud, but it shone through it like a stain glass window. Stars littered the translucent sky, a black ocean. I felt isolated in a freezing paradise, and I welcomed the cold. No one was there, the deck was deserted, forgotten. I strayed into the middle, embracing the great Atlantic Ocean that, at that moment, only belonged to me. I pretended I was the captain of the Titanic, looking upon my endeavour and the unseen nature I had witnessed. I breathed in, my eyes fixated on the moon, obstructed by a white sheet. A shift in the air, and the sheet had evaporated. The moon beamed like a silver chandelier, a luminous outline encircling it. I looked down from the magnetic pull of the sky to the deck. There was a girl. She sat upon the railing, her white dress that looked like it was crafted using the moon’s glistening glow floating down to the ship’s floor. She hadn’t been there before, like nature had materialised her being into the air, composing her to be perfectly poised and balanced on the railing. I gingerly approached her, wondering if she was alright. As I grew closer, I noticed things. Like her hair was grey, an odd blend of light and dark, and her dress shimmered, as if covered in dry water. I was too afraid to speak, scared that my voice would break the dream. Suddenly, as I was a couple of feet behind her, she turned her head.

“How cold do you think the water is?” She said. “Down there.” She spoke was acute clarity, pronouncing each word with perfect precision. Her voice would be hired in all radio stations in England, I thought. Her skin was luminous, a mirror to the moon’s light, which in turn illuminated the deep redness of her lips. I was fascinated by her face, which distracted me from finding the words to answer her question. “Oh, I’m sorry. Can you not talk?” She asked innocently, a single frown lining her forehead.

“Oh, no. I can speak I was just- I wasn’t sure of the words.” I stammered, embarrassed at each syllable. She laughed with me, a wide smile that revealed pearly teeth. They were slightly pointed at the ends, unnatural.

“Oh that’s a relief. I’ve never got along with mutes. Words are so much fun.” She breathed in, resting a hand on the railing, her body half turned toward me. “So, the water.” She said, prompting her previous question. She spoke in a light way, her voice an excited whisper.  

“Oh, I think it’s pretty cold.” I said. “What do you think?” She giggled, twirling a dark grey spiral of hair around her finger, a drop of water escaping from its curled end.

“I know how cold it is.” She said, a brazen grin across her face. “And the answer is more than ‘pretty cold’.” She teased, talking in a matter-of-fact way. “This is the ATLANTIC!” She released her hands from the railings and spread them out like an eagle’s wings, as if to hug the entire Ocean. Instinctively I lurched forward to save her, thinking she’d surely fall. I clasped my hands around her waist, the lace of her dress providing a thin curtain between my hands and her skin. I felt my heart beating in my chest like a drumroll, for I had never touched a woman’s waist before, apart from when ballroom dancing, which I considered one of the most impersonal things you could do with a woman. She did not seem to mind, or notice my hands, oversized, touching her rounded hips. She was laughing fantastically.

“Shh!” I said, looking up at her face. Her eyes scanned the seas in awe and familiarity, like greeting a prodigal son.

“Oh I’ve had enough of shh-ing!” She cried. “Anyway, no one will hear me. I’m talking to the Ocean!” She shouted, her voice built up with wonder and elation. I was trying to keep her balanced, for all her excitement had caused her to shift quite rapidly.

“Of course they can hear you, you’re screaming!” I held back a laugh, amazed by her energy. She spun around, my hands still on her hips. She was facing me now, her eyes a cloudy blue, as if reflecting a cloudy sky.

“So what is your name?” She asked politely, her hair tumbling about her face as the wind tried to stir it.

“F-Felix.” I replied, suddenly aware of how cold I was, or maybe it was the nervousness that came with looking into this girl’s eyes.

“F-Felix,” she repeated, smiling curiously. “You seem awfully cold, even with that jolly great big coat on.” She hopped down from the railing, pushing herself into me. I jumped back. She skipped along the deck, watching the skies.

“And you’re not cold?” I asked, looking at the short sleeves draped across her pale shoulder, her collar bones looking like they had been drawn. The dress was long, it fell to the floor narrowly. It was fitted around her curves, like a fishtail.

“I’m absolutely freezing.” She stated. Immediately I removed my coat. “Oh silly, don’t do that. I love being frozen.” She grinned, taking care that she was standing in the middle of the deck.

“Why?” I asked, bewildered. I was sure that hating being cold was one thing humanity shared. She shrugged.

“Makes me feel alive.”

“Doesn’t breathing make you feel alive?”

She giggled in a way that made me realise that she was quite a lot older than I was.

“What do you think of the Atlantic? Pretty special isn’t it. I love the way the Ocean is so dark, anything could be lurking beneath it.” She paused, pivoted on her feet. “Or nothing!”

“It’s cold.” I said, watching her smooth, twitching movements.

“Cold?” She repeated, dully. “Is ‘cold’ the only descriptive word you’re aware of? How about bitter or frosty or magically crisp? There’s so many words out there, Felix. Use them. Otherwise you won’t be a very good story teller.”

“Do you like stories?” I asked, trying to figure out her age.

“I love them.” She winked.

“I know one.” I said, shyly. Her face brightened as she danced over towards me.

“Well then you must share it!” She grabbed my hands, her skin cold as ice; my hands felt warm in comparison to hers. She pulled me down to the deck so we were both sitting cross legged, her dress floating out in a flower around her.

“It’s a story my mother told me.” I said, trying to build up a bank of descriptive words.

“Ah, well then!” She exclaimed. “Now you must expand on the story, otherwise it will not be yours to tell.”

“What do you mean?”

“Add to it.” She said. “Add to the story to make it your own. Conceive an extra character or create a plot twist or something magical!” She shuffled closer to me, her face a symbol of child-like innocence and fascination bordering on obsession.

“Okay.” I took a frosty breath. “There was once a king whose wife was very sick, you see she had something wrong in her head, making her sad-“

“Don’t use the word sad!” She cut in abruptly.

“Okay,” I replied. “Making her depressed.”

“Nice.”

“Anyway, it was rumoured that a scale from a mermaid’s tail could heal the distress of the mind. And the only place that mermaids were said to exist, was the Atlantic Ocean.” I spread out these two words in a wondrous way. Her eyes sparkled, like her cloudy sky had turned into a mystical night. “He sent a ship and arranged the best crew. Early the next morning, the ship sailed for the Atlantic.” She squealed in childish excitement. “But for days and days, no mermaid was found. The crew were becoming cold- I mean- magically crisp.”

“Good use of words there.” She stated knowingly, an adult sense of irony that dissolved her previous child. It vanished with another grin.

“They became ill and tired, frozen to the bone!” I started to get lost in the story, loving the spot light that the moon had provided for me, the attention. “Then, on the coldest night, the crew retired to their cabins, desperate for a speck of warmth. But the Captain’s son, Fabian, decided to explore the waters once more. He leaned over the wooden edge, the waters dark and murky. But suddenly,” I built up the tension, she shifted with agitation. “An almost translucent tail surfaced its silvery skin. And then it was gone.” I finished, feeling an electric connection to my Mother, for the first time. The girl’s face fell.

“Well?” She leaned forward. “Was it a mermaid?” I debated how to answer, reflecting on how I felt with the one Mother gave me.

“No,” I sighed. “Mermaids don’t exist.” I had deflated my own amusement. She slapped my knee.

“No!” Her eyes were sad, sympathetic. “Mermaids absolutely exist. Who knows what’s under the Atlantic! Stories are meant to keep these legends alive, Felix. Don’t tell the story that kills that.” She was smiling, but her voice had a serious under tone. I felt guilty, like telling a child that they couldn’t have a bedtime story. I felt a subtle feeling of anger towards her, how could she have so much childish faith?

“Where are you from?” I almost snapped, annoyed by the mystery of this girl. She raised her eyebrows, her grey arctic eyes somehow growing bigger than they already were. “I haven’t ever seen you here.” I wanted to know which class she belonged to, how she stole the chance to board the Titanic.

“That’s because I don’t belong here.” She grinned, and stood up, admiring the view.

“What do you mean?” I called after her. She walked with an elegance, as if approaching a man she would be dancing with.

“Come here,” she beckoned me over, a luring expression engraved on her face. I walked towards her, gingerly. “Look out there.” She gestured to the whole of the Ocean that faced us, the moon creating a silver path on the sea. “How can you be among such beauty, and think of something so trivial?” Her lips were perfectly shaped, she pouted, looking deeply into my eyes, building a sense of guilt inside me.

“Can I at least know your name?” I asked, aware of my sulking voice.

“Yes!” She stepped up onto the railing. My heart beat rose, scared as to what this unpredictable girl might do. I reassured myself in a belief that she had a good sense of balance. “My name is Olive. Pleased to meet you.” She curtsied on the rails, no trembling legs or loss of poise. I smiled at the uniqueness of her name.

“Olive.” I repeated. She started type rope walking across the slim golden bar. It was her walking like this that helped me to notice her dress properly. It was a sparkling white, traces of silvery stains running around it, but every so often a drop of water would escape from it, from her grey twirling hair. “Your dress.” I said.

“Oh, yes. Do you like it? I was supposed to get married in it.” She stumbled over the word ‘married’, as if it was a difficult word for her to say.

“Supposed to?” I asked, regretting my obvious nosiness immediately.

“Yes. Never went through with the thing. Absolute disaster.” She said this lightly, as if discussing a minor amusing incident like forgetting a purse when going out. I would have believed her airy demeanour if it weren’t for the stolen glances at the Atlantic, her face a wash of beloved nostalgia.

“Have you come from the wedding?” I asked, picturing this redhead with luminous skin and sticking out collar bones walking down the aisle, a dark grey colour growing up each coiled hair as her fear consumed her, terrified of the man looming at the end of the trial, not accepting a monogamous fate and instead running from the scene, desperate to reach international waters, where she would have no marital responsibilities. Meeting me, a fourteen year old boy who’s opinions of marriage and frankly most social expectancies to be a disappointment that lead to a deterioration of some sort.

“Gracious no.” She stopped tip toeing across the bar and again looked to the Ocean. “That was many years ago…” Her voice turned to silent speech, her lips moving in a slow slur. She looked to me, as if just noticing I was standing there. “Oh. You must be terribly confused.” She smiled, as if understanding the questions springing to life inside me, forming a whole city of inquiry. “Life doesn’t give many answers, only mysteries you have to decipher for yourself. Quite solitary really, on the surface, despite all the people.” She spoke in fragmented ways, coming up with new words that surprised her.

“Life isn’t a mystery.” I replied, my eyes drifting with hers to the Ocean. The night was a black canvas onto which a glistening moon was painted, it could only attract a gaze. “It’s all pretty straight forward. You’re born, you grow up, you work, you get married and you raise a child to live exactly the same lifestyle. You teach him things you learnt from someone who learnt it from someone else. That’s how we know that a woman can say no to a proposal, but she’ll still get married to the same man. We learn our place.” Olive put a hand to her neck.

 “What an awful example, Felix. I hope that’s not all society has taught you.” She breathed in the cool air, wavered slighting on the rail. I was beginning to think she wasn’t even trying to balance. “You need to think a little less deeply, and just-“she breathed in again, like an actor might before going on a Broadway stage. “EMBRACE.” She grinned for approval, I couldn’t help but relax into her smile. “See, there you go you’re smiling. Now come here.” She held out a delicate hand, her small nails painted black. “Oh, I think I might lose my balance and surely fall!” She teased, bouncing on her tiptoes.

“Okay-okay!” I jumped forward, letting her tiny hand grab mine.

“Firm grip,” she observed. “Someone’s nervous.”

“Of course I’m nervous you’re on the bloody railing!” I laughed, the tension escaping in my sharp breaths. I hated my laugh.

“Of course I’m on the bloody railing!” She flung my arm away, embracing elation with open arms. “Come up, Felix.” She offered her other hand, elegantly bringing it down from the sky.

“No no no no-“ I giggled nervously, desperately wanting her relentless confidence, but somehow thinking that once I got up there, she would have disappeared.

“I want you to experience this. I’m no longer going to look down upon you, Felix. I want you to stand on the Atlantic. And if you don’t, I’ll jump.” Her smile faded. I thought it may be a shadow of a dark cloud over her eyes, but they became encircled in hateful darkness, like a black hole consuming all in its path.

I shuffled forward, suddenly apprehensive of this girl, feeling her age over mine. “How old are you?” I asked, letting her help me onto the banister, my boat shoes clinging to it like old glue. I felt like the floor no longer existed, the railing was my only source of ground. I could feel my legs trembling, the excitement running through me like an electric current. I allowed my eyes to drift up, first to the dark ocean, lying there like Space, then to the blurred like between sea and sky, and then to the moon, shining at me, closer than before, its light striking my face. I could still feel her next to me, my hand encompassing hers. She was cold, a cube of breathing ice.

“Stand up straight, Felix, you look like a bent mast.” I straightened my back, aware of my crooked, trembling posture. “There you go! Isn’t it beautiful, Felix?!” The moonlight had stripped away all shadows on our faces, painting us a silvery white. Olive was smiling, relaxing into the moon, absorbing the beauty onto her own face. She was completely exposed and yet not exposed at all; I did not know this girl, and I had allowed her to lure me onto the slippery railing of the Titanic. But I didn’t care. Her skin was completely smooth, a white wash of transparency, even under the harshness of the moon. She felt me staring at her, ignoring the beauty that was laid out in front of me, and swung her head around. She was smaller than me by a head, her grey eyes a whole circle of clinquant grey, no sign of a black dot in the centre, looking innocently up at mine. She had no expression apart from that of looking, observing me like I was observing her. How her eyebrows were dark and curved, her eyelashes were long and black and the bottom of her eye, the skin that swells when you haven’t slept at all that night, it was enlarged and gave the illusion of a squint, but her eyes were too big to be squinting.

“You’re sad.” She stated, her eyes lopsided. I was taken aback at what she’d seen inside me, wondering if she saw straight into the depths of my soul. I blinked, trying to close the windows inside my iris’, trying to keep from being so damn obvious. I wondered how my mother managed it. No one saw a broken woman living out of a perfectly made doll; no one heard her voiceless screams. I thought no one could hear mine. Before I could answer she had turned her attention to the sea, a bead of water running down her pointed nose. “I’m sad too.” She whispered to the ocean, a secret I thought was not meant for me. “Maybe we can be sad together.”

“Olive?” I put a hand to her bony shoulders, worried a magnificent wing would burst from her blade. “You have no reason to be sad. You’re beautiful.”

She started laughing, each giggle cutting a hole somewhere in my chest. “Don’t look so hurt, Felix, but if you think that’s going to make you feel better then you’re out of your mind.” The laughing got hysteric. That’s when I stopped laughing too. Suddenly I was transported to the kitchen, restricted by a bar on a highchair, my mother in a blue silk dressing gown, she was singing, cooking, but I smelled burning, filling my lungs, the fumes seeping from my stinging eyes. Red. A growing red monster leapt at my mother, her laughing could be heard over its growling. Hysteric, high pitched laughter with a breathless inflection that resulted in coughing and choking but the laughing continued. I couldn’t escape. I scratched on the bar that guarded me from falling and hurting myself, I pushed it, I bit it, I let my tears melt it.

“Felix?” I was cold again. There was no laughing. “Jesus, Felix, I thought you had frozen solid!” She spoke in an excited way, as if what I had just experienced was a humorous joke that added to her mysterious life.

“It’s cold up here.” Was all I could manage. She put a hand to mine; a cold comforting hand was all I needed from her. She smiled, radiating the a warmth that quietened my anxiety, my imagination.

“It’s the Atlantic.” She said. “Let’s jump.” I almost didn’t understand her by the cool way she spoke, fluent and monotone with just a hint of madness. I started laughing, unsure of this girl’s severity.

“You couldn’t possibly be serious. We’d freeze in a second.” I waved the idea away with a shivering hand, which she grabbed. I wobbled.

“I know you want to find out what’s down there.” She grinned. I thought back to my painting, the ‘complicated blue’. I was now standing above the complicated blue, with suddenly no ownership, no control as to the contents. I did not paint this, I was a mere speck on a much larger painting with much grander brushes and colours and design. I felt a sense of something much greater than me. “Get lost with me.” She whispered, her grey eyes in a turmoil of loneliness. A desperate storm that she sat , cross legged, in the middle of, without eyes, just a canvas of pale skin and red lips.

“Olive, no…” I felt her damp hand slip from mine as she turned around, her back to the moon, her white dress leaping out at the sky, desperate to become a cloud and float with the stars, to belong.

“I’m already lost.” They were the words that deepened her voice. They added a wisdom, but a nativity, that reflected a child giving up, working so hard on a play they wrote with crayons, but deciding to let it go.

She fell.

Her arms open like wings. I almost thought she would fly. A quiet splash; the numb ocean swallowing her tiny body, her elegant dress. The surface rippling, a white blur slowly fading from its hazy barrier between ocean and air. Time froze. The moon’s light dimmed, and I was left on the railing, a statue of fear and shock, encompassed by a black fog closing in like a poisonous gas.