Jack felt the weight of the words hang in the air, not just a confession, but an origin story, a piece of history that explained some of her. He realised that he hardly knew anything about her really. How many times had they talked? And she knew about his mother, his brother, his father; he hadn’t wanted to let her become a full person. A full person you could fall in love with. He preferred his conquests to be acquaintances, friendly ones at most, women with beautiful faces and minimal biographies. All of a sudden, the panic was back.
‘I’m sorry,’ was all he could muster, aware of how many times those words had seemed empty to him. But he wasn’t sure he could handle any more exceptionalism for one night. He had already broken his usual routine of being drunk, and his rule about postcoital cuddling, and now here he was engaging in inquisitive pillow talk. On top of that, she was crew, and that wasn’t his rule to discretionarily break, it was Mary’s.
After Petra, she had given him a stern talking-to, which he hadn’t been expecting. There were lots of rules on the boat, and a lot of them were met with a don’t ask, don’t tell policy. Mary had worked on boats most of her life and she knew what went on. She was wise enough to know that sometimes it was better to let people blow off steam, than to tempt a pressure cooker explosion.
‘It’s just really difficult to find good people, Jack,’ she had said in a steely tone he rarely heard. She usually called him Jacky in private. ‘A lot of hard work has gone into you rising up the ranks, yours certainly, but also mine. You’re about to become first officer, and Petra’s on track for head stewardess. I can’t afford to have a lovers’ tiff on my hands.’
It hadn’t been hard to cut things off with Petra. She’d seemed more inconvenienced than hurt when he told her. They had both been drinking and although he liked her company, it had felt perfectly natural for them both to stumble back to their respective bunks when the act was done. He had not felt compelled to smell her hair or stroke her back, or kiss her earlobe as he was doing with Sofia. The most affectionate relationship he had ever had with a woman was probably with Mary, he thought.
She had been the one who had held him when he wept for his mother, when his father seemed to always be away, and his brother refused to talk about her. At least he’d learnt that it made people uncomfortable to talk about the dead, that as much as his days were flooded with memories of her face and her voice, he had to keep it to himself. No one liked morbid talk. She was gone and it was best that everyone just moved on.
‘What was your mother like?’ He had thought Sofia had drifted to sleep, so calm and regular was her breathing. He found himself wondering if she could read his thoughts.
‘Well, as much as it sounds like a reductive thing to say, she was beautiful.’ The back of his throat burned, his voice hoarse. It was an unfamiliar feeling, fighting the urge to cry, and here he’d had to try two nights in a row. What was it about this woman in his arms that made him feel like a boy again? ‘She was also a bit wild. She loved travelling, something about being trapped on the island all her childhood, call it cabin fever.’ He chuckled weakly at his own lame attempt at lightening the mood.
Sofia said nothing, just looked up at him with those almond eyes of hers. Before he could stop himself, he reached for her face, stroking her cheek softly. Her eyelids fluttered closed and she let out an almost inaudible sigh. He was a fool to think he could have stopped all this from happening. It all felt so inevitable.
‘She married my dad when she was twenty-two. He was thirty-five, and like all the great works of art he finds, he wanted to bind her, keep her neatly tucked away on his bookshelf.’ Jack couldn’t seem to stop himself. ‘They split up when I was about thirteen and I didn’t see her for years. It was only when she got the diagnosis that my dad let us come back to Capri.’ His voice cracked. He had lost the battle against his tears, and his cheeks flushed hot as one rolled down his face. Sofia’s eyes flashed open and he was surprised to see his own sorrow reflected back at him. She raised her hands and gently wiped the wayward drop away with her thumb.
‘I think my dad was scared that we would inherit her bohemian ways. Don’t get me wrong, she was an incredibly hard worker, but she was never interested in money really. She was only ever looking for adventure.’
Sofia smiled up at him and Jack could feel his heart beating a little faster. ‘So it didn’t work then,’ she said.
Jack laughed, the whole tragic story suddenly seeming so ludicrous. ‘No, it didn’t work; well, not for me.’ He thought of Danny, getting up at the start of each day to put on a well-pressed suit, and then falling asleep in it at the end of that same day, probably on his sofa, passed out drunk.
‘What did she do, your mum?’ Jack was a little overwhelmed by her curiosity, alien as it was.
‘She was one of those, I guess you would say “multi-hyphenates”. She met my dad at an exhibition of her photography – I think it must have been her student show, but later she was a poet, a painter, the whole shebang.’
‘She sounds amazing, and then two kids on the side. I don’t know how people do it.’
Jack was touched by the awe in her voice. ‘She was amazing. I think she was lonely though. Mary was her only real friend in New York, I think, and then she went away...’
‘Captain Mary?’
‘The very one. I owe her a lot – she got me out.’
‘Of New York?’
‘Of New York yeah, of the life my dad had set for me, of everything really.’ They lay in silence. They were both avoiding the topic of their transgression. Jack wanted to stay in this moment a little longer, before he had to face the fact that he would have to choose between these two women. The one who had given him a life and the one who made him feel so excited, if a little terrified, of living it.
‘I feel like we only ever talk about me. What’s your story, Harlow?’ Jack wanted to move on from the subject of Captain Mary.
‘Me? Nothing half as exciting. My parents met in London, moved down south, had me. That’s it really.’ He couldn’t quite work out if she was deflecting, but as someone who often thought of his own backstory in suffocatingly ambivalent terms, he found the simplicity of her answer refreshing.
‘Sounds idyllic,’ Jack mused.
‘I guess it kind of was, but I think in a weird way having everything my way, being free to do whatever I wanted, I was the one who had to put the pressure on myself. I had to become my own taskmaster, and I was so sure that I needed to be successful, to be a Michelin chef, that I never stopped to think if I wanted to be?’ Sofia sounded uncertain, like she was wading through those thoughts for the first time. ‘In London, I was right on track to achieve everything I had worked for, and then...’ She stopped, looking embarrassed.
‘And then it didn’t make you happy?’ Jack offered.
‘Exactly, and I thought it must be something to do with me, some sort of self-sabotage or retribution for the charmed life I’d had.’
‘I don’t think it works like that, and anyway, it’s pretty impressive stuff, to cook in a place like that at your age.’
Sofia rolled her eyes, bursting the delicate bubble of sincerity they had been building for themselves. ‘Ease up on the old “when I was your age” stuff. You’re only like five years older,’ she scolded, but there was humour in her tone.
‘Six,’ Jack corrected. ‘But I mean it, you don’t get to be a sous chef at a place like Nakachwa by twenty-seven without being pretty exceptional.’
