The Campaign Badge

Veda caught Roscoe Sayer by the sleeve before he could leave the quay. She had spent seven weeks wanting to kiss a man who wanted her fishing grounds closed, and another polite conversation would finish her.

“Did you come to disagree with me,” she asked, “or to kiss me?”

He looked at her hand. Then at her mouth. Across the channel, the new campaign banner hung between two posts, its blue lettering still so clean that she could read it without her glasses.

“The second,” he said.

“That’s inconvenient.”

“Yes.”

She liked that he hadn’t tried to make it charming. He wore an old grey shirt with the sleeves rolled unevenly, and the small enamel badge she had seen at the consultation. At forty-four he had a narrow silver seam through his dark hair and a face that usually seemed on the verge of taking responsibility for something. Now it held an altogether different possibility.

Veda let go of his sleeve.

Behind her, Morrow lay alongside with the engine off. Arden had gone to collect the last boxes. Departure was twenty minutes away, everything ready except the skipper’s ability to behave as though this were an ordinary Friday.

“I’m not asking you to take that off,” she said, looking at the badge.

“I didn’t think you were.”

“I’m not changing my submission.”

“Neither am I.”

The practical objections were large enough to occupy the whole quay. They had occupied it on three previous occasions: outside the fish buyer’s, by the noticeboard, in the queue at the bakery where he had held her place and she had told him that doing so did not make him right.

She could leave them there for one minute.

“Then come here.”

He took the step she had left between them. His hand settled at her waist, lightly enough that she could have moved away without disturbing him. She didn’t. She put her fingers against the warm side of his neck and drew him down.

The kiss began softly, which was almost a disappointment until his mouth moved against hers and she discovered what softness could make possible. His breath caught. She felt it under her hand, the small involuntary movement of his throat, and wanted to be the cause of it again.

She had expected relief. Instead she acquired a precise new difficulty: she knew how he kissed.

When she eased back, his hand left her waist at once.

“Well,” she said.

He smiled, slowly. “Do you have a considered response?”

“No. You’ll have to submit it again.”

“Gladly.”

This time she laughed into his mouth. It did not improve the efficiency of the proceedings. By the time they separated, his shirt had acquired the shape of her fingers at the shoulder.

A gull dropped onto a nearby bollard and gave an appalling, proprietorial shout.

“Someone’s lodged an objection,” Roscoe said.

“Let him put it in writing.”

She wanted another kiss. She also wanted to be the woman who left for work when she said she would. At forty-six, she had managed difficult departures before, although none had involved this particular mouth.

“I have to go.”

“I know.” He stepped clear of her route to the gangway. No playful blocking, no last demand disguised as a joke. She noticed the absence with an inconvenient tenderness.

“Not this second.”

“All right.”

They stood beside each other and looked at the boat. Morrow’s blue wheelhouse needed paint along the lower edge; Veda had put it on the list twice and bought a new radio bracket instead. A coil of spare line lay secured where Arden had left it. This little arrangement of things was the shape of her days.

Roscoe followed her glance. “You look different when you see her.”

“More solvent?”

“Happy.”

It was a word she had not heard much in the discussions about her work. Viable, traditional, extractive, marginal. Happy had stayed out of the room.

“She starts,” Veda said. “That’s a strong basis for affection.”

He looked at her, but did not pursue the answer she hadn’t given.

Arden appeared at the top of the quay carrying two nested boxes. Her gaze travelled from Veda to Roscoe, then to Veda’s hand, still resting against his sleeve.

“I’ve got the boxes,” she said.

“Good.”

“I can see that wasn’t your difficulty.”

Roscoe laughed. Veda took her hand away, without haste.

“I’ll see you,” he said.

“You’d better.”

He walked up the quay. Veda watched until he turned past the fish store, then boarded by the proper access instead of the enthusiastic leap her body felt prepared to attempt.

Arden handed down a box. At forty-two she had the patience of somebody who had learned to reserve it for things that deserved it.

“Any alterations to the sailing plan?”

“None.”

“Lovely. I dislike learning new things before breakfast.”

· · ·Scene break

Out beyond the narrows, Veda stopped thinking about Roscoe’s mouth for whole stretches of time.

There was work to do. Forecast, traffic, the set of the tide, the familiar response of the wheel beneath her palm. Their crew details were with the nominated contact ashore; their flotation equipment was on, the morning checks done. Familiarity made the sequence easier. It did not make any part of it optional.

They worked the pots on the rocky outer grounds. The shallow meadows inside the estuary were behind them, below water that looked empty from the quay. A printed campaign map coloured both the grass and these rougher margins the same blue. The colour was so attractive it concealed the size of the thing proposed.

Veda knew the campaign wanted a no-take recovery area. She also knew the inshore fisheries authority had not decided to make one. It was collecting evidence, including evidence from people who would have to move. Neither fact made a fuel bill less payable.

Arden checked the catch as they worked, returning what could not be retained. They spoke in short, useful phrases. There was no room beside working gear for a distracted performance of being in love, and Veda was not in love. She had kissed someone. Two times, if one were being accurate.

At the end of a string, with the deck clear and the next movement agreed, a curlew called from the exposed edge nearer shore. Veda turned towards it before she could help herself.

Arden saw. “Same one?”

“They don’t carry identification.”

“You always look as though you’re expecting a particular bird.”

“Perhaps it owes me money.”

The call came again, a falling liquid sound. Veda smiled and felt the morning settle into its proper scale: the engine, the light, the boat moving under her, the world large enough to continue beyond any meeting room.

Then she remembered Roscoe saying happy.

That annoyed her more than the kiss. The kiss had been a thing she chose. The recognition had got past her while she was busy defending herself.

· · ·Scene break

Back alongside, after the catch had gone to the buyer and the deck was washed down, Arden sat on an upturned box with her flask.

“Are we discussing it now?” she asked.

“We have an engine-service estimate to discuss.”

“That has occupied enough of my imagination.”

Veda leaned against the closed wheelhouse door. “We kissed.”

“I assumed you weren’t checking his teeth.”

“He’s not asking for anything about the boat.”

“I’m asking about you.”

There it was: a question without a trap, and therefore harder to answer.

“I like him.”

“Right.”

“I know what he wants done.”

“I assumed you hadn’t mistaken him for the other tall man who puts up banners against your interests.”

“He’d say they’re against one part of my interests.”

“And you’d say?”

“That he can make his own argument.”

Arden screwed the lid onto her flask. “Then let him. Don’t start doing both jobs.”

Veda had no answer ready. Arden let the silence stand, then rose to fetch her bag. She did not offer approval, or tell Veda it would all work out. She had worked for her long enough to know the difference between kindness and an unsupported forecast.

When she had gone, Veda checked the messages on her phone. There was one from Roscoe, on the number they had exchanged for forwarding the public meeting notice weeks ago.

Sunday lunch. Somewhere neither of us is expected to make a speech?

Below it, a second message.

This is a date. I realise the first version sounded like a proposal for improved civic procedure.

Veda laughed aloud in the empty wheelhouse.

She typed I noticed, deleted it, and put the phone down. The boat creaked against her fenders. Across the water the banner lifted in a gust, collapsed, lifted again.

Sunday would be different from one minute on a quay. She would have time to learn things she could not unlearn. He might be kind. He might be funny for an entire meal. She already knew the feel of his neck beneath her fingers, and it seemed reckless to add the way he took his tea.

She picked up the phone once more.

The message waited, plain and absurdly brave.