The Empty Berth

Arden brought her notice in an envelope because she said an email felt like leaving a shopping list.

Veda took it on the quay, before either of them boarded.

“You’ve accepted?”

“Yes. Four weeks from Monday. The dispatch job.”

“I’ll give you a reference.”

“They’ve asked already. I put your number down.”

“Good.”

They stood with the envelope between them. Veda had known this might happen. She had calculated around it, said aloud that she could not offer Arden what the other employer could, even imagined congratulating her. None of that prevented the immediate, unreasonable wish that she would take the envelope back.

“You’ll like shore hours,” she said.

“I expect to. I expect to miss some of this too.”

“You don’t have to reassure me.”

“I wasn’t. I can want a change without disliking the last six years.”

Six years. Veda looked at the boat. The space beside the wheelhouse door would still hold a person next month. It would not hold the person who knew without asking which noise made her look up, who could tell from her silence whether she was concentrating or being stubborn.

“I’ll miss you,” she said.

Arden’s expression softened. “I know.”

“That’s a very confident reply.”

“You’re difficult to replace too.”

They went aboard and worked. The day was decent, the catch unremarkable, the partnership as effective as it had been yesterday. That was the strange part. Nothing in the work announced that its future had changed.

Back alongside, Arden reached for the flask before Veda asked. She poured two cups, giving Veda the one with the lid that never quite tightened. The defective one had somehow become hers through seniority.

“Take that with you,” Veda said.

“The bad lid?”

“The good cup.”

Arden looked down at it. “You’ll need two for whoever comes next.”

“I can buy a cup.”

It was the nearest she could get, standing on the washed deck, to saying that some things could be replaced and some could only be missed. Arden put the cup in her bag. Veda was glad she had not made her explain.

Before they went ashore, Veda asked whether Arden wanted people told yet.

“After I’ve signed the final paperwork this afternoon. I’ll tell the regulars. You can tell anyone you need for cover.”

“All right.”

“And don’t offer me fewer hours because you’re angry.”

Veda turned towards her, startled.

“I’m not going to.”

“I don’t think you are. I wanted it clear before either of us had a bad day.”

She respected that. It stung precisely because she respected it.

“You have your agreed notice work. Same pay. We’ll put the dates down today.”

“Thank you.”

· · ·Scene break

On Sunday, with Arden on her agreed day off, a buyer rang to ask whether Veda could manage an extra trip. The conditions looked workable. The offer would once have sent her reaching for the crew list before the call ended.

She rang the two qualified relief people she had used before. One was away; the other was working. She put the phone down and looked out of her kitchen window.

The boat was not set up in her operating plan for single-handed potting. She knew the risks, had written them down when there was no attractive price on the other end of a call. They had not changed because she wanted to feel useful.

She rang the buyer back and declined.

“Shame,” he said.

“Yes.”

It was. She let it be a shame without making it a personal failure.

The day opened before her, empty in a way she had not planned. Roscoe had sent one message since Tuesday: he had asked whether she would be willing to hear from him after the campaign meeting next week. She had said yes, but not yet to a visit.

She missed him with an irritating specificity. The uneven rolled sleeves. His solemn defence of bad literary storage. The way he put water within reach without asking whether she wanted it five times.

She could ring him and ask him over. He would come, she thought. She could not decide whether that was comfort or temptation.

Instead she went to the gear shed and began sorting what she actually needed.

There were lengths of line kept because they might become useful, cracked boxes retained through habit, old paperwork in a biscuit tin. She had rented the shed when the boat carried more gear. Now it was partly a building in which she stored the assurance that the business was still that size.

She worked for two hours, made three piles, and took nothing away until she had checked where it could go. Cutting an overhead would involve a practical arrangement, not a gesture. The harbour store had a smaller shared locker available; she could ask about it on Monday.

She sat on the step to eat the sandwich she had brought and rang Roscoe.

He answered on the second ring. “Hello.”

“Hello.”

Neither spoke for a moment. She could hear a faint room sound behind him, then the click of a door closing.

“Are you working?”

“Doing paperwork. I can stop.”

“Arden’s leaving. She’s given proper notice. It’s a good job.”

“I’m sorry you’re losing her.”

“I’m pleased for her.”

“I believe you.”

She rubbed a thumb over the seam of her trouser leg. “Both, then.”

“Yes.”

She told him about refusing the extra trip, not because she wanted praise for keeping her own safety rules but because it was the small disappointment she could speak about without weeping.

“I’m at the shed,” she said. “Trying to decide what I’ve been paying to keep.”

“Would company help?”

She closed her eyes. The answer in her body was immediate. The other answer took longer.

“Not today.”

“All right.”

“I still want you. I need you to know that doesn’t mean I’m ready to have you in my house.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?”

“I understand the instruction. I’m not going to claim the whole feeling.”

She smiled despite herself. “That’s better.”

He asked whether she wanted him to keep talking. She did. He told her about the delivery van that had brought a cabinet with all its drawers separately wrapped and none labelled. She told him about the biscuit tin full of receipts for things she no longer owned. They did not discuss the leaflet for ten minutes. The conversation was not a reconciliation. It reminded her what there was to reconcile.

Before they hung up, he said, “I’m glad you rang.”

“So am I.”

She stayed on the step a little longer. From here the berth was hidden behind the corner of the warehouse. She could see only the tops of masts moving, boats revealing themselves by what the water did to them.

She would have to find new crew. She would have to decide how much work she could promise them. She would have to apply for something with a probation period and be a beginner at part of it. None of these tasks would become simpler if she stopped wanting Roscoe.

Back inside, she wrote down the smaller locker price on the sheet with her three piles. She added the cost of disposing of unusable gear properly and a reminder to check the van’s notice period. The list made no romantic claim. It did not turn the shed into a symbol of freedom. It was one possible way to keep a boat without allowing it to consume every other part of her life.

On Monday, she gave Arden a reference that was both accurate and enthusiastic.

Then she answered the call from the cold store, stood beside the window with her notebook open and asked them to repeat the offered hours. She wrote the figure down herself.