Page 4 of The Ship of Brides
‘Not for long, I assume. Mr Vaghela and I were only a few yards away.’ Her tone was sharper than she’d intended.
‘I said I didn’t think we should stop here,’ said Sanjay, eyeing first the group of men nearby, then the car with barely hidden irritation.
‘I had to get out,’ she said firmly. ‘Mr Vaghela was kind enough to accommodate me.’ She sipped her tea, which was surprisingly good. ‘I needed a break.’
‘Of course. I just meant – I would have liked to find somewhere more picturesque for you, it being the last day of your holiday.’
‘This will do me fine.’ She felt a little better now: the heat was tempered by the faintest of sea breezes. The sight of the azure water was soothing after the blurred and endless miles of road. In the distance, she could hear the muffled clang of metal against metal, the whine of a cutting instrument.
‘Wow! Look at all those ships!’
Jennifer was gesticulating at the beach, where her grandmother could just make out the hulls of huge vessels, beached like whales upon the sand. She half closed her eyes, wishing she had brought her glasses out of the car. ‘Is that the shipbreaking yard you mentioned?’ she said to Mr Vaghela.
‘Four hundred of them, madam. All the way along ten kilometres of beach.’
‘Looks like an elephant’s graveyard,’ said Jennifer, and added portentously, ‘Where ships come to die. Shall I fetch your glasses, Gran?’ She was helpful, conciliatory, as if to make amends for her prolonged stay in the shop.
‘That would be very kind.’
In other circumstances, she thought afterwards, the endless sandy beach might have graced a travel brochure, its blue skies meeting the horizon in a silvered arc, behind her a row of distant blue mountains. But with the benefit of her glasses, she could see that the sand was grey with years of rust and oil, and the acres of beachfront punctuated by the vast ships that sat at quarter-mile intervals and huge unidentifiable pieces of metal, the dismantled innards of the defunct vessels.
At the water’s edge, a few hundred yards away, a group of men squatted in a row on their haunches, dressed in faded robes of blue, grey and white, watching as a ship’s deckhouse swung out from a still-white hull anchored several hundred feet from the shore and crashed heavily into the sea.
‘Not your usual tourist attraction,’ said Sanjay.
Jennifer was staring at something, her hand lifted to shield her eyes against the sun. Her grandmother gazed at her bare shoulders and wondered if she should suggest the girl cover up.
‘This is the kind of thing I was talking about. Come on, Jay, let’s go and have a look.’
‘No, no, miss. I don’t think this is a good idea.’ Mr Vaghela finished hischai. ‘The shipyard is no place for a lady. And you would be required to seek permission from the port office.’
‘I only want a look, Ram. I’m not going to start wielding a welder’s torch.’
‘I think you should listen to Mr Vaghela, dear.’ She lowered her cup, conscious that even their presence at the tea-house was attracting attention. ‘It’s a working area.’
‘And it’s the weekend. There’s hardly anything going on. Come on, Jay. No one’s going to mind if we go in for five minutes.’
‘There’s a guard on the gate,’ said Sanjay.
She could tell that Sanjay’s natural disinclination to venture further was tempered by his need to be seen as a fellow-adventurer, a protector, even. ‘Jennifer dear—’ she said, wanting to spare his embarrassment.
‘Five minutes.’ Jennifer jumped up, almost bouncing with impatience. Then she was half-way across the road.
‘I’d better go with her,’ said Sanjay, a hint of resignation in his voice. ‘I’ll get her to stay where you can see her.’
‘Young people,’ said Mr Vaghela, chewing meditatively. ‘There is no telling them.’
A huge truck trundled past, the back filled with twisted pieces of metal to which six or seven men clung precariously.
After it had passed, she could just make out Jennifer in conversation with the man on the gate. The girl smiled, ran her hand through her blonde hair. Then she reached into her bag and handed him a bottle of cola. As Sanjay caught up with her, the gate opened. And then they were gone, reappearing several seconds later as tiny figures on the beach.
It was almost twenty minutes before either she or Mr Vaghela could bear to say what they both thought: that the young people were now not just out of sight but way over time. And that they would have to go and look for them.
Revived by her tea, she struggled to suppress her irritation that her granddaughter had again behaved in such a selfish, reckless manner. Yet she knew that her response was due partly to fear that something would happen to the girl while she was in her charge. That she, helpless and old, in this strange, otherworldly place, would be responsible in circumstances she could not hope to control.
‘She won’t wear a watch, you know.’
‘I think we should go and bring them back,’ said Mr Vaghela. ‘They have obviously forgotten the time.’
