Opening a novel

This is the part of the opening chapter to my novel Baudin's Last Breath, published a few years ago. I put it here to start a discussion on 'openings'. All comments welcome, rude ones included!







CHAPTER ONE

NEVER MARRY A SAILOR!

Never marry a sailor. A sailor already has a bride. She'll seep into any marriage and leach away the love. I think my first wife sensed this, deep in the ocean of her innocent heart. Oh she was proud of me. Proud that her husband was a romantic merchant mariner, rather than an insurance agent or a milkman. Such heart-wrenching goodbyes. And reunions that wound our arms and legs in reef knots. But the ocean accepts no rivals. If you don't get back to your ship on time the waters will swell up over the dockside and down the street and into the house and pick you up from the settee and sweep you back to where the gulls shriek and the porpoise rolls. My first wife did more than was reasonable to siren me back from the sea. But she knew it had me firmly in its grasp. By the bollards, if you want me to be polite.

But not my second wife. She had no idea what moved and pulled at me down below all the levels of consciousness, below any level of knowing. Below everything that we normally think of as life. It was not something that I really understood myself. But I sensed it. By the time I had met her the sea was supposed to be no more than a memory. The rough canvas trousers had given way to the light-weight wool. I had deserted the bargirls of Algiers for the models of London and Paris. But the unknown, the far side of the horizon, still called me.

Beer may have given way to wine and cognac but somewhere in the deeper wells of alcohol, I still smelt brine. In bad times I would find my way to the bars near the docks. A figure of fun for the seamen. An easy touch for a drink. Easily poured into a taxi when I no longer amused. But well scrubbed and presented next day for the offices and lounges of the executive world where I was to meet my second wife. And now we had successfully negotiated a wedding. In Paris, of course. This second marriage was to be the marriage that ended all marriages. And that's what it turned out to be. But not in the way we had thought. We'd each been married before so we knew how to handle this. The past was past. Something to be learned from but not to rise from its grave and haunt us. Her ghosts had been confined to photograph albums. And mine were well and truly laid.

The wedding guests flew in from Australia and England and they wore their sophistication to the reception. We'd all been there before. Now we were equipped to handle the real thing. Dom Perignon and Beluga. Maybe a touch of morphine. I respected the solemnity of the marriage commitment so I was more or less sober, and comparatively poppy free. Appearances needed to be maintained. We entered the hotel where we were to have a short rest before the reception and I graciously let my bride go on ahead whilst I acknowledged the congratulations, handclasps, slaps on the back, see you at the reception Victor, don't be late, hah, hah, hah. Don’t forget to be there. We mere mortals might forget. But the ocean never forgets. Never let' you go.

As my friends wandered off down the rue Montorgueil I turned to find an old man at my side and he plucked at my sleeve. I found that I had already drunk enough at breakfast time not only to carry me through the ceremony at the notary's office but also to blur my sight. I couldn’t get a clear focus on the old man who appeared beside me in the hotel foyer. I thought that he looked vaguely familiar. But he looked more like a kind of person than a particular person. He must be somebody from my past, I thought. And yet not a particular person. Just somebody. Some kind of relic from my past.

I felt benign toward him and I leant forward to hear what he was saying. And I lost my balance and reached out to hold onto him and his thin fingers caught my wrist. And suddenly there were shocks through and through my body. For a moment I thought he must have one of those trick batteries up his sleeve and he'd been hired by my friends as one of those foolish but well-meant wedding surprises. But the shocks were in my nervous system and they hit all the hidden pockets of repressed energy within my body. I blacked out.

‘You are chosen,’ he told me, ‘indeed you are’.