the eleven-minute bore.

My jacket was in the bar. She’d little more than a blouse, with a red bra playing peek-a-boo. The wind cut through thin clothing and buffeted our faces. Rain drenched our backs and bums from the doorway. She kissed me or I kissed her. Swallowed her whole like a teenager that has just found his cock. But even as my hand crawled up inside her bra—she tugged it away and put it on her ass, which was fine with me—I know we’d need to make a run for it. The car park was full of beat-up cars and trucks sheltered by the Sea Pig. Her dinky little car would be there too, but we were both married. My lizard brain feasting on hormones worked slide-rule, calculating the path of least resistance.

We broke away from each other as red-faced Ned Cronin stinking of whisky bowled through the doors and careened into us. A tartan deerstalker punched down on his head. He was all bushy eyebrows and a startled expression. But he fell back into himself, peering out into the darkness and talked about the weather like an old adversary.

‘That winds building,’ he shook his head. His pursed lips a wavy line on his bearded face. ‘Force 11, perhaps even Force 12. Hurricane force before we get aff the scale. Forty-foot waves—thank God there’s nane boats oot tonight! Nane o’er boys lost.’

The thought seemed to sober him and us as he stepped out into the path. A kind of adolescent shyness came upon us.

He walked crab-like into the blackness. Even the solitary lighthouse on the mini-skelligs had shoulders as rounded as the men that drunk in The Sea Pig. The wind made a howling sound I hadn’t heard before or since. He lived in an inshot where cow, sheep, pig and hens had once roamed the slopes and wandered freely through living rooms, but only fragments of chimney remained. The whistling wind used them as a trial run before picking up speed. His head bobbling up and down as if he was already under water. He held up a hand in salute.  I guessed too the wind was building up to something destructive.

Laura took my hand, caressed and kissed my crooked fingers. ‘I’ve a giant favour to ask.’

‘We could go somewhere,’ I whispered. Reaching to draw her back into my need.

She stepped sideways and backwards. Her hair swum in wind and rain and her blouse became a layer of see-through mottled bluish skin. ‘Oh, Josh, where could we go?’

‘Away fae here.’

‘Where?’   

She stepped into my embrace. But the kiss on my lips was perfunctory.

My hands rested lightly on her hips, and I sighed loudly. ‘Whit’s yer big favour then?’

Her hand brushed against my zip as if checking if I was still hard. ‘You’re not gonnae like it.’ And she pulled me in close and into a long kiss. The flat of my hand rubbing against her breast, through her clothes, until she moaned and we sprung apart. ‘I might want you to rescue somebody.’

I was ready for her. I’d been ready all my life. ‘You?’

She married a lawyer with a sprawling farmhouse without the farm as a second, or third, home. I hadn’t heard of her having any children, but I’d stopped asking. I’d made my own life. A good life.

‘Who?’

She clutched her arms around herself and bowed her head as if to keep in heat. Her eyes flicked from my face to the darkness.

‘Jesus, no,’ I said. ‘There can’t be anyone oot there in this weather.’

She nodded. ‘Remember the story of the whales and porpoises? How they’d arrived at the time of the great hunger, with the children dying. How men and women of Greater Blaksketts had waded out from the shore and turned the sea red. Women carrying creels full of butchered meat home to save their sons, to save their daughters. But they’d shared. Each and everyone got a share. Because that’s what they did.’

‘Aye, my father’s father,’ he pulled his hand away from her. ‘But you weren’t here. It’s got nothin’ to dae wae you or yours.’ He could see the hurt in her eyes. ‘Sorry,’ I patted her arm.

‘It’s OK, I deserved that. We’re incomers. It would take two hundred year, three generations before anybody would speak to you properly—that’s why I got out.’

‘No, No, it’s nothin’ like that.’

‘Aye, so you say, but I lived here to.’

It pained me, and I could see she was shivering. ‘Let’s get you inside and we’ll talk about it. But it was just really, yer da, being in the police and tha’.’

She turned away to look out toward the sea. ‘Believe that if you want.’

‘Jesus Christ, Laura, nothin’ much could survive oot there. Anything less than the size of a descent sized yacht is going to be in serious trouble.  And I should know. Sixty or seventy foot waves at the shore. Stick or twist, your fucked either way.’

She took my hand and kneaded my knuckles. Picking her words carefully. ‘But you know how the story ended? After enough meat was salted, men and women came to the shoreline and held hands and walked into the water. And those that had boats used them to push the porpoises that were grounding themselves out into the bay.’

Her fingers traced the curve of my elbow and up over my shoulder. I felt the warmth of her as she slid in next to my body. She kissed with a hunger, I found hard to match. And it was me that pulled away.

‘Whit’s this big favour then?’

‘There’s a boat out there in trouble.’

A reflex, I turned my head to check nobody was listening, but the wind was like a legion of gannets and auks. But I played it straight. ‘Then you should call the lifeguard then.’

‘Josh, you know it’s not that kind of boat. It’s mainly women and children.’

‘Refugees?’

‘They’ll let them go under. It’s easier than turning them back and letting them drown elsewhere.’

‘Fuck!’ I slapped the edge of the lentil above her head. ‘Why are you tellin’ me this? It’s fifteen years in prison if you’re found aiding and abetting. You should know that better than maist—your da’s the fuckin’ chief inspector. And nae cunt hates foreigners more than that cunt.’  

I pushed her away. Wondering if she was setting me up.  ‘How dae yeh know this then? The coastguards have a special government line. They track them, but don’t log vessels of a certain size. It’s easier that way.’

‘Josh, Josh, Josh, you know better than I do, they’re good men. Many of them were volunteer coastguards. They’re not going to roll over. Kowtow to any Tory government. They’re like you, men of the sea. They pass things on.’

‘How come you’re involved?’

‘I’m involved because my da’s involved.’

The door opened and the ten-minute bore stepped between us with Laura’s coat in his hand. Even a chief inspector would have found it difficult to make out what we were thinking. Staring at each other as if we hated each other.

‘You’ll be needing this,’ he handed Laura her jacket and glanced at me. ‘And I’ll help you get up the road.’

She pulled on her coat, pulling the collar up and letting her wet hair fall down her back, fluffed it up at the front. ‘I don’t need any help from you.’

The ten-minute bore was lost for words, and I almost felt sorry for him. ‘Suit yourself.’ He sighed and explained to me. ‘She’s always been a difficult child.’

‘I’m not a child,’ she said.

‘But you’re my child.’

‘Fuck off, daddy dearest, will you? I’m having an adult conversation here with a real man. A real human being.’