Lessons

by Ian McEwan

By the time he was twenty Marlow had been at sea six years. He had been up the mizzen mast in rolling seas, furling the sails, shouting commands over the wind at men more than twice his age. Against that Roland had five years at boarding school among the easy air of the boys. He had sailed or crewed, crouching under the boom, pulling on a rope attached to a corner of the jib while an older boy called Young screamed at him for two hours. Back then it was thought that this was how sea captains should be. In Marlow’s view such pottering about on a river was ‘only the amusement of life’. His existence at sea was ‘life itself’. Roland had once capsized on that River Orwell, a lovely blue from a distance, an open sewer up close.