August Bank Holiday Weekend, 1984 - Missing Words (Pt 1)
It is Saturday morning, the start of the bank holiday
weekend, and this time she is taking the car ferry to Fishbourne, a few miles
to the west of Ryde. A veil of fog hangs over the water, and the seam between
sea and sky, crafted anew each morning, is stitched so finely that from the bow
of the ship Jenny cannot tell where one ends and the other begins. Everything
is white and empty and thick with silence.
Lost in the mist somewhere off to
the right of the ship, a foghorn cries out. A moment later, a muffled reply
rises up on the left, and for a while they sing a mournful duet to the new day….
She has cycled round half of the
island now, in search of Deborah. It has not been a thorough search, but she
has done the best she could. Her best, though, has never quite been good enough.
She could always have done better. Out there somewhere not far away, a girl
pines for her lover, lost to her forever for all she knows, and now it’s up to
Jenny to show her the way to go forward. She needs to give her hope. She needs
to give her purpose.
A clutch of scooters circles round her as the ferry glides into the dock at Fishbourne. When the ramp is lowered and they are released on to the island the scooters rev their motors and overtake her before her wheels have reached the tarmac. A thin stream of lorries and Ford Escorts follows along behind, speeding up and shifting and flowing past her as she grinds uphill through the long car park towards the road. When the vehicles slow into the junction she stands on the pedals and slots into position behind a transit van. Stuck to the van’s rear doors are the flags of a dozen different countries, a bumper sticker from The Best Little Campground in Teesside, a lumbering moose, a Spanish bull, the Eiffel Tower, Surf’s up! Inside, an Australian flag is draped across the back window like a curtain, and as the queue of vehicles joins the A3054 Jenny races after it.
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