Ron dreaming startles awake, finds himself in utter darkness. A voice had reached through the levels down to the deep riches of his dreams and shocks him into blindness. He has no idea where he is; is he part of the black that seemed to reach forever? He wants to return to the palaces of his squandered dreams.
Has he really lost his sight? Blind? His fear grows the longer
he lies prone on the bunk frozen in time and by fear. Soon Ron begin to imagine
his own personal monsters glutting on his terror, yes, yes they wait laughing
at my cowardliness. Was I dead? Or have I been buried alive? He could lie here
and just accept an eternity of moon dark, star death, the air dense and massive
as a black hole.
Yet, buckling the fear away Ron almost jumps out the bed going
to battle his monsters. Somehow he found the door fingers anxious at the lock
got it open as surprising as the darkness the bright light in the corridor
outside almost took his breath away. He said aloud:
‘I thought I was in the grave.’ There is a stunted noise of
cruel laughter. ‘Don’t laugh at me.’ Laughing Man makes a half-hearted
threatening noise. But Ron was braver now he has seen the illumination and his
panic has subsided. It is a relief he had not been buried alive.
Behind him the room is starting to light up, he turns nearly
bumping into Laughing Man who doesn’t look at all happy and is the size of a
well-built shed brushing passed him into the toilet. The gay guy he’d talked
about Ernest Hemingway in the restaurant is still in the lying in the bottom
bunk, while the guy above him looks at him in disbelief. Ron wanted to get out
of here quickly he stuffed his books and pad in his rucksack and was out into
the precious light of the corridor. Now there were people, a few, and he
follows behind them, as he walked he tries to figure out the look Top Bunk guy
had made. Ok Ron hadn’t slept much, read a free copy of the magazine Nexus in
the passenger lounge, smoked out on the viewing deck, got bored with the
magazine and thought about trying to sleep. Of course he tried his best to be
quiet, but sleep would not take him, so out again he went doing his best to be
quiet, but once he’d smoked another cigarette he didn’t know do what to do. He
lay on an uncomfortable couch as about the passenger deck others had already
had the same idea. So he went back to the room and makes no attempt to be
quiet. No wonder they’d given him such foul looks, idly he imagined he was lucky
that they let him live.
Though now he was free of them and once more he went to the
viewing deck watches while he smokes Scotland passing on his right fire lit by dawn’s
sun over the calm waters. The sky was clear from horizon to the horizon. The
night before one of the crew had told him:
‘Good job you didn’t travel last week, this is the calmest
all year.’
His cigarette has long gone out, but he is lost in the
morning light the changing coastland, yet relaxing on the white guard rail in his boots and dirty coat
he felt barely aware he was moving at all. Others came out to smoke as the
hours before arrival time sped by the like the beaches and cliffs, little towns
hugging the coast and the nearer to Aberdeen the ferry came the coastland seem
to pass more swiftly and he could see lines of passengers getting their
breakfast. As if he has lost time like it were a forgotten song he should know,
but didn’t, suddenly he saw the sands of Footdee where he had played with his
dog and his daughter. At last, he sighed as if he were breathing out a lung
full of smoke and anxiety, I’m home and that long day of sunlight lay ahead of
him.
