Book 2, Chapter 57

We all stood, raised our glasses and gave a cheer as Bill entered the restaurant closely followed by my father. I wouldn’t swear to it but I think Bill was close to tears as it’s in the nature of even short voyages to open sailors emotionally to the world about and those we love in particular. Grandma explained to Bill that this was her way of thanking him for a romantic weekend and to let him know that just because she was now a McLeod, that didn’t contradict that she came as a ‘job lot’ with the rest of the family.

Chatting away over our meal made me appreciate how tough it would be sailing alone, cut off from my family. Even now there were family members missing so I went to the manager and arranged for a photo to be taken of us all together, glasses raised, with a card behind us saying Hello from your Williams, McLeod and Bach family in Wales to Anna, Tao, Gabriella and Aarón †.

Monday meant work but when the sun is shining on a late spring morning working outside felt to be no hardship. With my Da’s permission I alternated varnishing inside Dumblebit with weaving netting on the yacht I’d visited the day before. Although it made for a long day it meant I didn’t have to breathe fumes from the varnish between coats and I could pass the time of day with other people around the marina.

“Anyone for tennis?”

A voice from the past broke into my concentration as I finished a section of netting. Mr Harding, as I'd known him as a gym teacher in my secondary school from ages 11 to 16, and at the tennis club for the the last two years, was standing on the dock watching me. There was no doubting that he recognised me but I found his expression unsettling, and ‘not in a good way’. My experience of men as sexual beings was very limited but he wasn't looking at me with awe as Jay had on the disastrous double date with Penny, nor as an exasperating child in the way Jean Luc often did. This look was the look of a man who wanted something.

His attention certainly wasn’t drawn by the way I was dressed in my pink work- dungarees so I kept to my boat-worker character rather than turn on the modelling grace or sexy dancing sizzle. “The weather is certainly warm enough for tennis Mr Harding but as you can see I’m rather busy.”

“I couldn’t help but notice your appearances in the newspapers and on television so wonder which team will you be trying for this season, the men’s or the women’s?”

I wouldn’t have time to play tennis for any team this season but I did suddenly realise where his interest in me might lay - the media hadn’t mentioned my surgery so what he was seeing was, I supposed, a chick-with-a-dick’ or a ‘she-male’ and that for him was an attraction.

“As you know, even if I had time, the rules won’t allow me to play for the women’s team no matter what the doctors know and do. Would you take my bag for me a moment as I must finish work now if I'm to be on time for my kick-boxing session.” With that I swung my legs over the lifeline to stand on the dock and, although I couldn’t be sure of Mr Harding’s original intentions, as I now felt reasonably certain that he knew I wasn’t interested in him I felt comfortable about closing the conversation by reclaiming my tool bag and heading up the dock towards my bike.

It might have been a coincidence that Mr Harding chose to walk up the dock with me but there was no mistaking his effort to prolong contact when his arm went round my shoulders…. A sophisticated a woman would have cut him down with a well chosen phrase like, “…????… .” , but I being technically an only just pubescent virgin, I ran. It was a stupid thing to do as Harding was hardly likely to attack me on a public dock in daylight but it was less stupid than Harding’s reflex action in giving chase, tripping over a dock mooring cleat, bashing his head on a yacht bowsprit and dropping unconscious into water!

It was the ‘Thunk!’ of skull hitting unyielding wood that stopped my flight and the ‘Kersplash’ that made me turn back to see Harding floating face down in the water. I've no idea how long it would have taken for his body to sink as the air left his lungs but in those seconds I'd grabbed him by the back of his collar and finding myself too weak to haul him out of the water passed the loose end of a mooring line under his arms and lashed him to the very cleat over which he must have tripped.

Thank goodness for mobile phones which have cut the time to call for an ambulance enormously so that the only person who arrived earlier than the paramedics was my father who must have some extra-sensory perception to hear my yells for help from where he was working. I was so grateful for Da’s arrival as although my efforts to pull Mr Harding’s legs onto the dock had started him coughing up water as he became horizontal the makeshift plans I'd been formulating to lift him completely out of the water using a nearby yacht’s mainsheet were likely to be more damaging than helpful. Da in contrast simply plucked Mr Harding out of the water, holding him like a baby as I undid the rope lashing, then Da lay him on the dock where I knew enough to arrange him in the recovery position thanks to watching Yorkshire medical student Victoria deal with Aunt Sophie’s heart attack a few weeks before.

“Do you know who he is or how he came to be in the water?"

“He's one of my old teachers but although I heard it I didn’t see him go in. Looking at the blood on his forehead he probably tripped and hit that bowsprit an almighty bang… "

That’s when the ambulance men arrived who, lifting Mr Harding onto a stretcher, asked me to follow them to the hospital A&E department when they realised I knew who their patient was.

“I’ll call round to his house on the way. That way I can inform his family if any and note the proper address.”

I'd known where Mr Harding lived, if not the house number, since school days but ringing the doorbell felt odd. It felt odder still when it was answered by a youngster of about 11, wearing a dress, who was either a girl with a boy’s haircut or a boy dressed as a girl. I shivered at the thought that Harding might be some sort of paedophile. I was glad my father was with me but happier still when a middle-aged woman came through from the kitchen and placing her arm protectively round the child’s shoulder, looked at me and said, “But you’re Venus Williams; how did you know we wanted to see you?”

† Gabriela Martinez……….Joy's Aunt in the Dominican Republic
Aarón Martinez…………… Director/Joy's cousin
Anna Williams………………Sister of Grandfather
Tao Taulapapa……………...Brother of Grandmother in Samoa