The race… (part 3 of 3)
Final installment of the race that wasn’t.
We arrived at Rosslare ferry terminal a good two hours before we were due to sail. The ship was already in port and vehicles were starting to line up for loading. At least, as footpassengers, we could walk onto the ferry and relax, without having to wait in queue for an hour. Or so I thought.
The terminal was as drab and cheerless as a former eastern bloc airport. A faint smell of cigarette smoke still lingered in the air. The glass doors to the outside terrace were padlocked. In the darkness behind the salt-stained windows loomed loading cranes and concrete walls. On the far end of the hall, across the threadbare carpet, was the depressing sight of a long-abandoned pantry. At least it wasn’t long before the call for boarding came.
We were second through the gate, only to face up against a glass wall between the gate and the exit. The door to the gangway was locked.
The guy in the booth promised that someone would be along with a key “in five minutes”. After one hour of being squeezed into the narrow space between his booth and the locked exit, surrounded by rowers in different states of inebriation, I had enough and stormed past the guy, out of the gate and back down the stairs to the booking desk.
A youngster in black trousers and white shirt was talking into a phone: “Do you know what’s happening? I don’t know either. Can someone tell me please?”
Next to him stood a prim matron listening to another handset with pursed lips.
“Who is in charge?” I demanded, anger giving me tunnel vision with little red spots forming at the edges. I should have gone outside for a smoke first.
The youngster put the phone down and gave me a wide-eyed look, then summoned up his courage and drew up his chin.
“I am.”
“Can you tell me what is going on here?”
The matron put her hand over her receiver and shot me a dismissive glance, lips pursed even further if that was possible. She spoke with an effort, as if she had to summon her inner strength before addressing pondlife such as passengers: “Can’t you see that I am on the phone?”
“I am talking to him, not to you!”
She put the receiver down and took a deep breath.
“I am in charge here!”
I had enough. I was not to be spoken to like a child. I didn’t care who was in charge. In my view the boy had delegated himself to the job and would have to live with the consequences of his cheek.
“No you’re not. He is. He told me so.”
While the matron was reaching boiling point, I extracted an assurance from the petrified boy that he would get on the case straight away and keep us informed. I stepped hastily away, before the matron blew her top. An announcement was duely made on the tannoy not much later. There had been a problem with the ship’s loading doors and the ferry had to be turned around. Apparently the matron had resumed her responsibilities, because things moved swiftly after that.
In the bar on the ferry, once they had oiled their larynxes, the male teams resumed their concert. Between songs, the audience broke into spontaneous applause. You couldn’t tell that the guys were drunk except that they carried on for a while after 70s disco music had begun to blare from the speakers, shattering the harmony.
The wind had died down. The sun rose in a clear blue sky with fluffy white clouds over a sea as calm as a village pond on a lazy summer afternoon. It was not until the following evening that the low pressure moved in, as predicted by the forecast, but when the wind returned it did so with a vengeance. Leaning into the stiff breeze I mused that while there had been a window for the race after all, we could not be sure exactly when it would be open, not even with all the advances and computing power behind modern weather forecasting. Some things are down to old-fashioned good luck.
Tags: Longboats, Tag Index
Denni