I was still reading Batman comics and had just battled my way through Joseph Conrad’s, ‘Lord Jim’, when my mother married a dentist. Peter was 55, smoked Panatela cigars and was an officer in the navy during the war. On his 35’ wooden yacht, the Edie Rex, he still acted like one. I was 12. That awkward age when girls seem extraordinarily important and superfluous at the same time.

Because my mother worked night shifts as a nurse, I had lived with Grandma and Grandpa in a two bedroom shack on the edge of town, surrounded by an acre of bamboo. Paradise for an undisciplined boy. In the new order, I lived in Peter’s house on a hill in the suburbs with dowdy Queen Anne furniture. I shared the house with mother, Peter’s son David and two well-behaved border collies, Fritz and Tawny.

In the first week in the new house, feeling like a stranger, I walked in to the master bedroom and caught Peter and mother making love on the bed. They looked like snakes consuming each other.

It was mother’s idea for the men of this new family to spend ten days sailing around Kangaroo Island. She hoped the elements would forge a maritime fraternity to banish the long silences over dinner. David was ten years older than me and barely tolerated my existence. I was an insect in his world of fast cars, bought for him by his father. At the age of 22, he owned a black e-type Jaguar and worked as a junior manager in a bakery. Mum spent much of her time washing Peter and David’s clothes and ironing their shirts. The hierarchy was established early. Mum sat above the dogs and I sat with them. I was allowed to bring my best friend Francis, a good Catholic boy, on this ‘adventure’. He lived next door to Grandma and Grandpa.

A light zephyr blew from the south east as we set off from the yacht squadron. Mother waved goodbye from the pontoon. The weather forecast predicted a benign high pressure cell, moving slowly across the Great Australian bight. I gave Francis a crash course in boat handling: duck when the boom swung over in a tack and never leave me alone with Peter and David.

We put Kangaroo Island’s south coast to starboard as Dolphins played in the bow waves. Peter went below to sleep and David had the helm. It was time to poke the bear.

“No girlfriend?” I asked David, pretending to studying the curve of the sail. “A man with a car like yours needs one”

He gave me his insect look as if determining what sort of specie I was, then scratched his arse.

“What would a piss-ant like you know about women?”

“Quite a lot. I lost my virginity last year”

“At 11? You’re a wanker Stephen. Dad could have done better than marrying Florence Nightingale with her downstairs pretensions to upstairs grandeur. Now I have to put up with excreta like you”

“Your Mum – it was Audrey wasn’t it?” I said as if concerned. “I heard she drank herself to death after giving birth to you. Any connection you reckon?”

The wind had picked up and while I was wasn’t Vasco De Gama, I could see the bow was pointing 45 degrees away from Kangaroo Island. David was steering too far south.

xxxxxxxx

Peter arose from the cabin with a bread, banana and honey sandwich. He looked to starboard to where Kangaroo Island should have been and saw only ocean. We were on a reach heading south west as a fresh north wind blew.

“Jesus, David, where are we?” Peter said, wiping the crumbs from his moustache. Up close, his face was a map of small broken capillaries.

“We’re about 70 nautical miles south of Cape De Coudic,” David said as if he’d led us through fire and brimstone.

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

Peter looked at the sky and saw high wind-blown cirrus cloud. The low oily swell had turned into sine waves half a metre high, coming from the west. He tapped the barometer and it fell like a stone. He turned on the two way radio and studied the navigation map.

“I was going to tack and make for the western end of the island,” David said in a small voice.

“Look at the wind, you idiot,” Peter said. “It’s in the north now. The Southern Bight current is pushing us to Antarctica and the Roaring 40s are going to slap us on the arse. We’ll jibe and head back with the spinnaker up. We might just out run it. I’ll call in our position.”

A large, lone wave hit the bow on the quarter, picked the boat up and threw it in to the air like a toy. Water cascaded over the deck and washed Francis in to the cockpit.

“Life jackets on and hook yourself to the railing,” Peter yelled. “Don’t want you to go over the side, Stephen. What would your mother say?”

Peter tried to start the motor. It churned for a moment and went dead. He jumped in to the cabin and tried to start the motor again.

“Engine’s flooded. I forgot to seal the cover,” he said. “Prepare to jibe. Francis, watch your head. Standby, here we go! Jibe-ho!” He spun the helm as the boom swung over and the Edie Rex turned 180-degrees as storm clouds raced towards us.

“David, put the spinnaker up. Stephen, help him. Francis, stand behind me and keep your eye out for those bloody waves”

I stood my ground amongst the flurry of commands.

“So what you’re saying is, your dickhead son’s recklessness has endangered all of our lives and now we’re trying to flee a storm without a motor?”

Peter hadn’t heard me say so much since I moved in to his art deco waxworks house.

“It’s no one’s fault except mine,” Peter said. “I’m in charge and we’re going to get wet. But as your mother said, it will give us something to talk about over dinner.”

“You might have been a big swinging dick in the navy,” I said with more venom than I intended, “but a lot of cigars and claret have gone down since then. You’re not exactly in combat shape are you?”

“And neither are you, you lazy shit,” he said. “The waves below that storm have had 1500 miles to build. Remember the typhoon in Lord Jim? Get off your bony arse and help David with the spinnaker, then go below and secure anything that might fly about the cabin”

As I locked the cupboards in the galley, I looked up at Peter, his white knuckles clenching the helm, glancing back at the weather building behind him. His face set in stone. He was afraid and I was afraid but I’d be damned if I’d let him see it.

The waves built astern as Peter struggled to keep control of the ten tonne yacht, as it surfed down their face. Francis heard it first. A low moan in the rigging. It sounded almost comic, like kids playing ghosts. In the next hour, it built to a whine as we dropped the spinnaker and mainsail and reefed the jib. My anger shrivelled as the temperature dropped. On the mooring the Edie Rex looked palatial. Now it looked fragile, unsubstantial, a matchstick floating in an indifferent and terrifying universe. We were tiny organisms, clinging desperately to its surface.

Peter threw the helm over and pointed the Edie Rex in to the storm. The wind sheered wave tops created a blinding spray. It was only a matter of time before the keel bolts snapped and the Edie Rex capsized. I’d given no thought to my death. Death happened to other people and if I was honest, I didn’t care. What were they to me? In my mind’s eye, I saw the yacht founder and I was in the water, as wave after wave crushed the air out of my lungs. My mother said drowning was a terrible way to die because it took so long. You fought to survive, even with lungs full of water.

If I could get away from the roaring wind, away from the cocktail shaker cabin then I might find a bolthole of tranquillity to make sense of this. I saw Peter making love to my mother and instead of wanting to claw my mother back in to my arms, I saw she was in love with him. Before we left the harbour, she kissed him on the lips and I was jealous of that kiss and my mind filled with snakes. The storm scarified that out of me and in slow motion, I saw a wave take Francis over the stern and I jumped in to the cockpit as Peter yelled, “man overboard!” I pulled on Francis’ safety line and saw his head bobbing in the waves with his left arm raised. He disappeared under a wall of foam to rise gasping for air. He swam towards the yacht as a wave crashed over the starboard deck and almost took me over the side. We hauled him in to the cockpit where he vomited seawater. Peter reached down and clipped my safety line to the railing and turned to face the rising sea.

The wave came from the south west. It was as high as three masts. It picked the Edie Rex up like a toy, flipped it over and rolled over the top of us. The mast pointed to the ocean floor and the keel was wavering, like a compass, trying to find magnetic north. Peter was still holding on to the helm but his legs were floating in water. I was suspended three metres under mountains of turbulent green fizz. Apart from the cold, it struck me how tranquil it was. No wind. Like an astronaut tethered to his space craft. Slowly, the keel found its purpose and the Edie Rex righted itself.

I was pulled through the water and in to the light. Francis and Peter grabbed my life jacket and threw me on to the cockpit floor. I saw David race from the bow to see if I was alright and as he stood on the cabin roof, the boom swung over, took his legs out from beneath him and knocked him overboard.

Peter’s hand shook me. “Stephen, help Francis. Help Francis. David’s over the side … for God’s sake”

I could have laid there in a daze, pretending not to hear. My mother belonged to me. I could hear the pleading in his voice. I crawled along the deck to where Francis held David’s life line.

“He’s too heavy,” Francis yelled.

“We need to haul the line astern. Use the jib winch”

I saw in the chaos I’d done something right. When I flew out of the cabin to pull Francis in, I’d briefly, without thinking, secured the cabin hatch. The boat hadn’t flooded. I wrapped David’s life line around the winch and we started hauling until his head appeared below the transom.

“My leg,” he screamed. “Can’t move my leg!”

We hauled David over the stern and lay him on the cockpit bench. A bone stuck out of his wet weather gear. With every wave, he screamed. I got two pillows and rope and lashed one on each side of his leg.

At 1.00am with black heaven above, the monster waves came and hurled walls of ice water at us. The wind screamed and warbled on the top note. Water streamed down Peter’s grey hair. He looked at me, then at Francis, then back at me again, as if trying to answer a question.

“Good sign” he yelled.

“What?” I yelled back.

“A star. Stephen, keep the boat on this heading. When a wave knocks you off it, bring it back immediately. I’ve got to get an hour’s rest below. Think you can do it?”

I steered the Edie Rex in to the storm. I heard voices on the wind. Unnatural voices with syllables cut and thrown in to the air. I looked up and saw Peter’s star, then two, then three stars, then turned back to the compass and ignored the wind talking to me.

“Well, Captain Stephen, this is a quick promotion,” he said, “since you dropped the shitty attitude.”

“What does your Irish Catholic soul think our chances are?” I yelled.

“My chances for eternal life are fairly good – except for the some carnal thoughts which won’t go away. Your chances? I’d say you’re fooked although I’ve noticed some redemptive qualities”

Francis was always parroting Father McGuinness’ broad Irish accent at his Church. He held the wind meter aloft and took a reading.

“This ‘ere gizmo says it’s only blowing a gale now instead of a hurricane. It’s moderating, Stephen, it fooking moderating.”

By 4.00am the wind dropped to 25 knots. Francis couldn’t wake Peter. The storm had wrung all strength from him. He made hot chocolate and I peeled one cramped hand off the wheel and drank it greedily. Francis piled blankets over David, who lapsed in an out of consciousness.

“I’m going to come about. Enough heading west,” I said. “We need to head home”

I spun the wheel and the yacht swung around as Francis unfurled the jib and hoisted half the mainsail. I headed towards the south eastern tip of Kangaroo Island. The first fingers of sunlight pushed through the clouds, drawing a faint red line on the horizon. They moved westward, extinguishing the stars, giving shape and colour to the ocean.

I remembered how Peter hooked my life line on the railing as we pulled Francis onboard. A brief smile. Nothing more. This is what my mother saw in him. It had nothing to do with me. She needed someone to share her life with.

Peter awoke at 6.00am and made us bacon and tomato sauce sandwiches. He looked at David buried under a mass of wet blankets and took the wheel. He said nothing about changing course.

“We need a hospital,” he said quietly. “We’ll make for Penneshaw where the Flying Doctor will take David to Adelaide”

“So Francis,” Peter said dryly, “can I count on you to sail with us again?”

“I’d like to sleep on it, if I may”

We ate our sandwiches as a white sea eagle circled us.