It was not long after my eighteenth birthday, that summer I finished college. I had it all
planned out, from the second I slapped shut my final exam paper, I practically floated out of the building towards my Dad’s VW Polo that sat idling in the carpark ready to zip me away
straight to Heathrow Airport. I was ready leave it all behind, the concrete-clad buildings that reflected the grey of the English skies right back into you, the piss-stained tapestries of graffiti-covered crumbling brick, the teenagers with nowhere else to go spitting insults on every corner. The time of my great escape had finally come.
After a brief sea safety course in a dank public pool in Devon, I’d found myself with a one-way ticket to Nice and a job as a stewardess onboard a super yacht, the kind that you might’ve only ever seen in Hollywood movies with budgets to match. At that time I think I could have counted the number of boats I’d ever been on on the one hand, on which occasions had taught me that I possessed a propensity towards sea sickness. But none of that seemed relevant to the fact that this job could get me out and get me out far. I hadn’t mentioned to my parents that I’d found the job on Facebook, I didn’t want it to sound any more precarious than I was afraid it actually might turn out to be.
I arrived in France on a day so bright that the blue Mediterranean water outside the plane’s window echoed straight into me and filled my whole body with a warm fuzz whilst my mind sat nervously in my seat. We descended over giant green hills that gave way to that impossible mass of blue, dotted all-over with tiny white specks like packs of gulls that I came to realize were the very boats on which I would soon live.
The taxi dropped me off on the corner of Nice port on that hot June afternoon. Everything seemed so French that it was almost a cliché; the terracotta and pale orange buildings, each framed with shutters of turquoise and pale greens, their ground floors bursting with boulangeries and cafés adorned with bursts bright violet bougainvillea. The air hung dreamily with the scent of sun-cream and freshly baked bread.
I began upon the port to look for the boat I had been told was named Heliad II. The marina was a small rectangle sparsely arranged with yachts, so it didn’t take me long to realise that the boat I was looking for wasn’t amongst them. I retraced my steps and carefully re-read the names of each yacht I passed, but to no success. I reached for my phone and typed a tentative text announcing my arrival to the captain, which I typed and re-typed several times as sweat began to bead down my back. I held my phone tight in my palm, anticipating its vibration of response any minute, or better that I’d soon see the bow of my new floating home appear rounding the seawall. As I waited, I made my way over to one of those chocolate box French bistros with serious looking waiters and those black and white wicker chairs under a sign in old cursive font that read something like ‘Le Petit Bar’ or ‘Le Chat Noir’, or something equally as innocuous yet charming to foreigners. I picked a table outside giving me clear view to the port and refrained myself from ordering a wine to calm my nerves, opting for a Diet Coke instead.
In the hour or so that followed, I must have lifted my phone to my face more times than if I were driving on a motorway and checking my rear-view mirror, but the screen remained a blank reflection starring me down. Just as the bubbles from the Diet Coke I’d finished almost an hour earlier started to rear their ugly head by storming up into mine, a car pulled up at the port entrance. A man and a woman climbed out and looked around as if they were either lost or looking for someone. I didn’t think much of it at first, until the man took out his phone and held it to his ear just as mine started to ring. I was still in that awkward phase of life where I found answering the phone to be the most anxiety inducing thing one could do, so I did my best to soothe my nerves to a low fizz as I made my way over to them and their rusted-up little red Peugeot.
'Ahhh you must be Lucy!' The man said in a thick French accent. I instantly liked him as he’d saved me from stumbling over my own awkward introduction. He had a head of shaggy salt baked hair and tanned leather skin that contrasted against his otherwise youthful features, an attribute I would soon learn to be common amongst those who spend their lives at sea. I shook his hand as he introduced himself as Sammy.
'Bonjour! I'm Helen' the woman said as she made her way to kiss the air that grazed either side of my cheeks. I was surprised upon hearing her Welsh accent, as it was so unsuited to the French banalities I had delighted upon thus far. She was of much paler and rounder complexion than her male companion, with a subtle tinge of red permanently stained to her cheeks in a way that suggested her skin was not built for regular sunlight exposure.
‘So nice to meet you!’ I said too eagerly.
‘We’re going to bring you over to Villefranche to join the boat’ Sammy announced. The fact they knew my name was enough for me to throw all caution to the Southern French breeze, and I gladly jumped in the sagging backseat. With all windows rolled down, we made our way through the charming rues and boulevards that covered the peninsula like a mosaic of brilliant, coloured tiles. I envisaged all the great humans who’d held famed fondness for this place, holding them tightly in the forefront of my mind as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is The Night burnt a whole in my backpack on the seat beside me.
‘So… do you get seasick?’ Helen asked. Her question took be aback and I was suddenly aware of how green I must’ve been presenting.
‘I have a few times in the past. But that was when I was living in England, I can’t imagine I’ll get sick in the Med’
They both laughed.
‘You’d be surprised eh Lucy’ Sammy said.
‘The Mediterranean is beautiful for sure, but it can get a little… err…’
‘Choppy!’ Helen filled in.
‘Oui, choppy!’ Said Sammy as he briefly threw his head back with laughter. It sounded more like ‘shoppy’ when entrapped in his French drawl which I gathered amused them both greatly. I sat with this information for a moment before becoming aware that my silence may be perceived as fear. I continued,
‘And you guys? Do you ever get seasick?’
Sammy scoffed.
‘Hardly ever to be honest’ Helen said through her teeth whilst looking back at me apologetically.
‘Except from when I’m hoovering! I don’t know what it is about vacuuming at sea, but I’ll be hurling in seconds’.
‘I’ll keep that in mind’ was the best reply I could think of. This topic had made my already nervous gait become so tangible that I had to force my eyes to control my thoughts by focusing my gaze on the beauty of the Cote d’Azure that was whizzing by.
We soon pulled up to a line of charmingly shuttered buildings in more hues of orange and teal that lay opposite the sea in a small bay. This pocket-sized place was Villefranche, where Helen would be leaving us. After she kissed farewell to Sammy, who I now assumed to be her lover, we exchanged a brief goodbye. Upon looking around, I was curiously aware that there was no port ahead of us, not even any yachts anchored out in the bay.
‘What’s the plan Sammy?’ I tentatively asked, painfully aware that my youthful eagerness could become annoying at any moment.
‘Errmmm…’ He scratched at the stubble on his chin as he looked around.
‘Ah! Over there!’ he pointed toward a man sat upon a small wooden skiff with a rusted Yamaha engine duct-taped to the back.
‘We get on the boat, and it takes us to the big boat!’ He said triumphantly.
As we powered away from the safety of the shore, I tried to act as nonchalant as possible to convince myself, if no one else, that this was entirely normal. Sammy spoke excitedly about how the boat was brand new and had just arrived from The Netherlands. His heavy French accent battered against the oily cough of the skiff’s engine as the salty air whisked around us.
‘We get on the Dockwise first eh Lucy!’ I strained to hear Sammy say. I had no idea what a Dockwise was and upon seeing the confusion on my face he retorted,
‘A chip that chips chips!’ I feigned my understanding with a smile and nod but remained as clueless as before. Shortly after, we pulled up to a giant off-red container ship with rusted trails that seeped from each porthole. Before there was time to ask any questions, I was ushered onto a ladder of rope and wooden slats that dangled sheepishly over the ship’s side. I looked up to see a giant of a man dressed in a hard hat and high vis beckoning me to climb up as Sammy called from behind between his bouts of laughter,
‘I meant a ship that ships ships!’
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