From "Making Tracks", due to be released in paperback in October 2007 (Wings ePress)
Even down under the cosy nest of blankets, water could be heard splashing noisily against the roof and running in streams along funnels and grooves. Above the drumming rain the rattling of chains scraping along the side was distinct. The anchor's coming up. A clank, a thud - and after that silence for a while. Someone muttered up on deck. Then, that old familiar rolling sensation, barely perceptible at first within the shelter of the harbour, but later, more pronounced as they rode up and down on the ocean swell. A dull thumping. That'll be the fenders coming in. Strange that the usual barrage of blasphemous commands which inevitably accompanied the process of putting out to sea should be missing. The skipper must be feeling mellow.
To be wrapped up in a cosy warm cocoon below deck, while above the crew scrambled about in the lashing rain and heaving surf was the most scrumptious thing imaginable. I seem to have got away with it again, she registered languidly. Thank God, they obviously weren't tacking into heavy seas, the boat slamming and shuddering against every wave. The rolling motion was softer, quieter, dreamier. Probably running ahead of the wind, slithering comfortably over undulating seas.
I wonder where we're going? Doesn't matter, Dad'll get us there safely. The mighty mollifier and keeper of peace on land, ocean-borne he was the Rambo of the high seas. In his car, he'd conscientiously drive at a consistent fifty miles an hour down the dual carriageway; on board, playing chicken with the Hollyhead car ferry at the mouth of Dun Laoghaire harbour was a leisurely pastime.
He had always manoeuvred in such a way that, as a child, she seriously believed that the massive multi-storey ferry swerved to miss them at the last moment, and not the other way round. Donal, winking at her mother, would shake his fist menacingly at the bridge shouting, 'Peggy! Did you see that? Fast asleep at the helm! Motor has to give way to sail...lucky thing I forced him to change course, otherwise we'd have made an awful mess of his bows!' Lurching up and down on the wake, Margaret would close her eyes and shake her head, having played this game a thousand times before, but Peggy, the neon orange life jacket up around her ten year old ears, had always clapped her hands in delight at her father's unequivocal navigational skills.
He was, indeed, a good sailor, well able to manage the boat alone, but loved to give Peggy the feeling he couldn't do without her. He would often ask for advice on the best place to throw down anchor or whether she thought it might be time to go about. On board, he made her feel important and she adored it. When, just before Peggy's fifth birthday in 1962, Donal, after a lot of financial juggling, finally decided to splash out on a new boat, he even named it after his little daughter - Peigín.
They never went very far, usually weekend trips either up the coast past Howth and Rush to the sandy beach at Skerries, giving Lambay Island a wide berth, or a slightly longer trip down past Wicklow, going about at Brittas Bay and back up to spend the night in Greystones. Peggy had often heard her father impressing his boaty friends with tales of how he'd rounded the Mizen Head in filthy force six to seven head on winds, the sails reefed tautly, great walls of water crashing over the bows and surging along the semi-submerged gunnels. Years later, she had been somewhat disillusioned to discover that he'd only ever rounded the Mizen Head north of Arklow, a wee nipple of land protecting Brittas Bay from amiable southerly winds, and not the notorious storm-battered Mizen Head on the south-west Atlantic coast. He'd well and truly pulled the wool over their eyes, but she didn't love him any the less for it. She smiled into her pillow at the thought.
When Peggy was a teenager, Donal decided to apply for a coveted membership in the Hibernian Cruising Club, but due to his limited cruising experience, was sorely in need of a recommendation. To this end he spent hours chatting to fellow sailors up at the bar of the Dun Laoghaire Yacht Club, relating horror stories of leaking bilges, fouled up propellers and broken masts.
On one such occasion, he was introduced to a Galway man with a mighty shock of silver hair who had been sitting nestled in the corner of the bar drinking pints of cider. They had struck up an animated conversation and, one thing leading to another, before the evening was out Donal had been invited to join the other man and his crew on a four day sailing trip. He'd enthusiastically accepted the offer, faltering only briefly when he heard they were to bring a Sigma 36 up to Galway from Cork, navigating their way round Mizen Head (the storm-battered one), through the Dursey Sound and north past Loop Head and the Cliffs of Moher to Inis Mór. Never having sailed on the Atlantic coast before, Donal had paced the sitting room every evening for a week before the trip, listening to the weather forecast, his face pale, lips pursed.
He was somewhat perturbed when friends started shaking his hand and wishing him good luck, but really started to get worried when he discovered that the skipper, a well-travelled mining engineer and hardened sea dog of the most infamous kind, was renowned for his somewhat raw boatside manner. To survive a sailing trip as crewmember for Garret Rory Fogerty, it was said, was to survive the ultimate challenge of Irish offshore yachting.
The evening before he was due to travel to Cork to join the yacht, Donal went down to the sailing club for a pint. Lost in nervous contemplation, he had emptied half his glass when the elderly barman, Dan, approached him.
'Well, Donal I hear you're off on a sailing trip with Fogerty?'
Donal, hoping Dan would leave him alone, kept staring at his glass. If he got involved in a discussion, he would surely hear something that would rob him of his sleep.
'That's right,' he murmured.
'Leaving tomorrow, are you?'
'Yep.' Oh God, please go away, he thought to himself.
'A four day trip, I hear?'
'Yeah.' Donal turned away and started studying the trophies on the mantelpiece at the other side of the room, still hoping that Dan would take the hint. It was a quiet evening, only one or two members had popped in for a jar.
Dan was bored. He wiped the counter in front of Donal for the tenth time. 'The Atlantic coast, isn't it? Hmm...I hear there's filthy weather forecasted - northwest winds, rain.'
Donal sighed and took a deep gulp from his pint. Dan picked up a sparkling clean ashtray from the bar, wiped it and placed it back on the green towelling Smithwicks runner.
'You're a brave man, that's all I can say,' he said, pulling the corners of his mouth down in an expression of extreme respect.
He'd had enough. Pulling a wallet from his back pocket, Donal got off the barstool and threw a fiver onto the counter. He was anxious to get the hell out of there before Dan, who was obviously leading up to something apocalyptic, started going into detail.
'I haven't paid yet - what do I owe you?'
Before Donal had a chance to withdraw his arm, Dan, in a fatherly gesture, laid a hand over his wrist and leant towards him over the bar.
'What ever you do, son, don't lose your cool.'
'What...? What do you mean?' Bugger it! He shouldn't have asked!
'Don't look now, but Terry Jenkins - the man sitting over by the fire - went on a two week cruise to Brittany with Fogerty last year. They ran smack into a storm and, in the middle of the night, just off the coast, something snapped. In a flash, Fogerty popped Jenkins into a harness and had him pulled up the mast. The boat was floundering in mountainous seas, gale force winds beating against the bows. Fogerty, who was down in the cockpit watching the echo sounder like a hawk, suddenly started screaming obscenities as the display showed thirty feet, then five, then ten and then three! They were drifting over submerged rocks! The situation was critical - all hell broke loose!'
Not wanting to hear any more, Donal tried to pull his arm away, his guts having shrivelled up into a tight hard knot, but Dan held him firmly - he wasn't finished his story yet.
'Like on a swing chair carrousel, Jenkins was left rotating around the top of the mast for half the night while they frantically tried to motor against the tide out into safer waters. They lowered him down just before dawn.'
Dan shook his head and glanced over Donal's shoulder towards the fireplace, a look of abject pity on his face.
'The poor man hasn't been the same since.'
Only then did he loosen his grasp, allowing the unwilling listener to take his leave. He gave Donal an encouraging nod.
'Well then, enjoy your trip and listen, don't worry too much...Fogerty hasn't lost a crew member yet.'
Donal, not bothering to wait for his change, turned and made a beeline to the door, but before closing it behind him he couldn't help risking a glance at the piteous Terry Jenkins. The man was sitting staring into the flames, his trembling hand clutching a glass of whiskey, a nervous twitch sending jerky tremors through his left eyelid. Donal slammed the door and ran all the way to his car, where he sat for a full fifteen minutes before driving home to pack his bags.
When he returned from the west five days later he looked five years older and was very, very quiet. Peggy had wanted to know how his trip went, but whenever anyone asked he would only stare at the floor and shake his head. A few weeks on, however, he was back to his old self and, with new energy, Donal threw himself into preparations for their next weekend sail to Greystones. Bobbing out past Dalkey and around Bray Head in a gentle southwesterly breeze, it appeared these family trips had taken on a whole new meaning for Donal.
There was also no further talk of joining the Hibernian Cruising Club and for that very reason the surprise was all the greater when, about two months after the west coast trip, an expensive envelope with the H.C.C. crest fell through the letter box. It was a letter from the committee inviting Donal to submit an application to become a full member of the Hibernian Cruising Club - on high recommendation of Garret Rory Fogerty.
Five years have passed. The sequel to the award-winning Chapel of Eternal Love, this book revisits the same couples in the first book, and where the lives have taken them since they left the altar at The Chapel of Eternal Love
Even down under the cosy nest of blankets, water could be heard splashing noisily against the roof and running in streams along funnels and grooves. Above the drumming rain the rattling of chains scraping along the side was distinct. The anchor's coming up. A clank, a thud - and after that silence for a while. Someone muttered up on deck. Then, that old familiar rolling sensation, barely perceptible at first within the shelter of the harbour, but later, more pronounced as they rode up and down on the ocean swell. A dull thumping. That'll be the fenders coming in. Strange that the usual barrage of blasphemous commands which inevitably accompanied the process of putting out to sea should be missing. The skipper must be feeling mellow.
