The ink said
The czar
E
mma girl, in’t it time you got in a gig?” Digby shouted to me one day at the shore. A couple of the old pilots tutted, but they knew he was right. I brought my cousin Ivy, who brought the woman who runs the stables, who brought Meg from the shop. Pretty soon there were six of us, and we beat that sea up all winter. “Jesus, it’s like watching a centipede playing the trumpet,” Digby would mutter from the cox’s seat. “Christ on a bike Jenna, this isn’t the Olympic javelin final.” Every stroke was a painful, groaning effort. “Get that blessed spoon wet Soph. Don’t just tickle the water!” We left every session 58
Vale Life : Mar/Apr 2019
Ink Paintings and Micro Stories by Gabrielle Turner
close to tears, with the sea water stinging our blistered hands. Perhaps his exclamations eventually summoned a divine force, because one morning, four months in, we took one stroke perfectly in time. And another. From beneath us came an unfamiliar rushing sound, as if we were about to take off. Digby tapped the hull excitedly with his outstretched palms. “This is it girls,” he called. “Feel her lift!” The next day, we gathered round the training boat and waited for the call to roll her out. Where was Digby? “Over here,” a voice shouted from the boathouse where the wooden gigs were kept. “We’re going out in the Czar?” I asked. “Why not? You’re ready,” he
replied. We set out with caution, sending our frothy puddles shorewards, exchanging the turquoise shallows for indigo waves. With every lean we felt the heave of all the oarsmen that had polished these seats smooth before us, their buttocks pinched just like ours against the wood. The gig began to lift again. The noise the Czar made sounded almost like a voice. It told the stories of how she had ridden these waters for centuries, like a phantom whale in the dead of night. How her rowers jostled to pilot half-grounded ships for a fistful of cash; how they fished out all kinds of treasure from the sea… “Close your eyes, Emma,” Digby whispered. “Listen to her sing.”
Gabrielle Turner The ink said l Gabrielle Turner is a writer and artist at the Phoenix Studio near Thame. As @theinksaid on Instagram she writes daily micro-stories inspired by her abstract ink paintings. Also at www.theinksaid.com and www.gabrielleturner.co.uk