Chapter Four
In the
top room of the tower, a grizzled search-and-rescue flight
lieutenant studied Merouac closely. The copilot was still out in
the chopper, keeping her engines warm in the clifftop field where
she’d landed. Priddy, having been helped back into his own
lighthouse and courteously aided up the stairs—an endless process,
it had felt like, and utterly surreal, Merouac no more concerned by
his nakedness indoors than out—had decided to keep a low profile.
The officer was fully occupied with the rescued sailor, filling out
a form on a tough-packed iPad. “So, Mr... Merouac, is
it?”
“Oh, just Merouac. Please.”
The
kettle finished its boil. Priddy took mugs out of the cupboard and
spooned instant coffee into them, one for his guest and one for
Flight Lieutenant Trewin, who looked puzzled as well as exhausted,
oilskins dripping onto the lino. Merouac had turned one of Priddy’s
kitchen chairs into a throne simply by sitting down in it.
Thankfully he’d accepted a towel, and turned that into a Scottish
prince’s ceremonial kilt by wrapping it round his waist. He’d sat
patiently through Trewin’s checks on his pulse, temperature, blood
pressure. Covertly Priddy admired the beautiful set of his
shoulders. The guy had to be a model, or an actor of some kind,
or... Well, Priddy was as interested as Trewin in finding out
what.
At
present the flight lieutenant was stalled on line one of the form.
“No first name, Mr Merouac?”
“First name? Oh, to distinguish an individual from his lineage?
Yes, I suppose I should have one of those.” He stole a glance at
Priddy, making him spill the sugar. “Let’s call me
Jack.”
“Jack... Merouac?”
Priddy
dropped a spoon. This was mortifying. He’d called out SAR for a man
who no more needed rescuing than a dolphin from the deep blue sea,
and now the bastard was winding the officer up. Priddy’s
connections with Hawke Lake were tenuous—he was just the winter
temp, the bulb-changer on a fully automated lighthouse—but he liked
and admired the brave souls who launched themselves off into
roaring Atlantic storms in the Sea Kings. This callout was his
responsibility.
But Merouac was leaning in to glance at the form. He’d dropped
his haughty demeanour, and Trewin was smiling reluctantly, shaking
his head. “Oh, the French
spelling of Jack, is it? Sure your last name’s not
Cousteau?”
“No, but oddly enough he’s a friend of mine. A friend of my
father’s, anyway. Lovely gentleman, and certainly knew how to keep
a secret.”
“All right. Jacques. What about an address?”
“It’s a little embarrassing. I ran into some financial trouble,
and to tell you the truth, I was living on the boat.”
“The yacht Lyonesse, you said.”
“That’s right. My pride and joy, she was.”
“You’re the registered keeper of the vessel, which ran into
foul weather off Hagerawl Point tonight?”
“Correct, sir.”
“With only you on board.”
“Yes. I was quite alone, and would certainly have drowned had
it not been for the courage and prompt action of that young man
over there, whose name I haven’t yet had the chance to find
out.”
Trewin
squinted. “Why, that’s Jem Priddy, isn’t it? Don’t I know your
dad?”
Priddy
flinched in the act of handing him his coffee. If a Hawke Lake man
knew Vigo, it was probably because a dodgy fix on a boat had gone
wrong and landed some poor mariner in the drink. “I don’t know.
Er—yes, I’m Jem Priddy.”
“Right. Jem Priddy, meet Jacques Merouac.” Trewin tapped at his
screen. “I’ll have to verify your boat’s registration, Mr Merouac,
as well as the details of your identity. I’d do it now, but the
network for this bloody thing seems to be down.”
Merouac
nodded. “I quite understand that, sir.”
“And as for you, Priddy-boy, you might want to think twice
about calling out the chopper when you’ve plainly got the situation
in hand yourself. Just as well we don’t take the launch cost out of
your pocket money, because it’s eight grand a throw these days,
more or less.” Trewin got to his feet, took his coffee and downed
it in one. “Having said all that, well done for making the rescue.
Not everyone would have had a go, not on a night like this. Good
lad.”
Priddy
nodded: cleared his throat, choked on thin air and tried to melt
into the background. The circular room allowed no cover. No
separate kitchen or bedroom, so unless he wanted to make a dash for
the bathroom on the half-floor below, he’d have to cope with his
reactions right here. Not easy. He’d had plenty of practice at
swallowing tears of shame, but never shame’s opposite. He turned
away and busied himself with the kettle. “Would you like another
cup?” he managed. “One for your mate in the chopper?”
“Oh, right, because I’m going to carry it down all those stairs
and up the cliff to him.” Trewin put his pad away, shouldered his
kit and gave Priddy a jovial crack on the back as he headed for the
door. “No, Dave’ll have guzzled his way through our whole flask by
the time I get back to him. Mr Merouac, you don’t seem any the
worse for your dip, but you should look after yourself tonight. Do
you want me to put a call through to one of our tame B&B ladies
in Penzance, get her to put you up until you can contact your
friends or family to bail you out?”
“You’re very kind. No, Mr Priddy here’s kindly offered to put
me up for the night.”
Had he? Priddy propped himself up by the sink. He couldn’t
remember. But Merouac had spoken up for him. Good lad, the flight lieutenant had
said. “Yes, that’s right. He can stay here.”
Trewin
glanced at Priddy’s unmade bed. “What, in your bottom bunk? Rather
him than me.”
“Oh, no,” Merouac said innocently. “Top, I think, Priddy. Don’t
you?”
Priddy
lost a breath. A blush tore through him, a heatwave that began in
his toes and spread like a flash-fire in summer-dried gorse. If his
hair could have changed colour, he’d have turned bright ginger on
the spot. “Yes,” he croaked. “That’s the most comfortable
one.”
“Well, I’ll leave you to it.” Trewin looked from one to the
other of them, eyebrows on the rise. “I don’t doubt your word, Mr
Merouac, but I do have to make those checks. Don’t leave the area
for a couple of days—or, if you need to, report to the Hawke Lake
admin offices first.”
He
stamped out, leaving a trail of wet bootprints on the lino behind
him. “Shit,” Priddy whispered, closing the door behind him. “You
are very welcome to stay, mate. But what the bloody hell was all
that about the bunks?”
Merouac’s chair was empty. Priddy glanced around the room
with its complete lack of hiding places, and saw with a faint shock
that Merouac had gone to bed. He hadn’t made a sound, and was
curled up in the bunk—the bottom one after all—as if he’d been
there for hours.
He was
shivering. Priddy went to crouch by the side of the bed. “Are you
all right? Do you want me to run after Trewin and tell him to
airlift you out to hospital?”
“No, no. I’m just suddenly so tired, and—it aches, doesn’t
it?”
“What does?”
“The gravity. Dragging all the time on your poor, forky little
stick-legs. I’d forgotten.”
Priddy
released a breath, blowing his cheeks out thoughtfully. “Wow. That
was a good act, pretending to be sane for the nice
pilot.”
“What would he have done if I’d told him the truth? What
will you do?”
“I’m not sure. Depends what it is, I suppose. Meantime I’ll fix
you some coffee and soup, if you like.”
“Ugh, no.” Merouac shuddered, curled up tighter. “What I’d like
now is the sweet clean inside of a fresh-caught herring, but
that’ll wear off soon. I’m so, so tired.”
“Well—get some kip, then. You can tell me the truth in the
morning.”
Merouac
was two-thirds out already. His hand was trailing on the lino. “In
the morning. Yes.”
“Look, are you sure there’s nothing wrong with you?” Priddy
picked up the cold hand and tried to tuck it back under the sheet,
then let it go, jolting back a step. “Jesus. I think there is.
Your... Your fingers.”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“You’ve got some kind of skin growing between them. And—God,
what is going on with your eyes?”
Merouac
blinked hard. The silvery film that had hidden the irises and
pupils disappeared. “Sorry,” he murmured. “Didn’t you ever have a
cat?”
“Several. What has that got to do with it?”
“Did you never see their eyes, when they were out of
sorts?”
“Yes, but you’re not a cat.”
“Nor yet a catfish. And not yet quite a man.” Merouac spread
his hand in front of his eyes. “Glad the good lieutenant didn’t
spot the webbing.”
“Why didn’t he?”
“He wasn’t looking. And if he had been, he wouldn’t have
believed. You won’t believe it yourself in the morning, when I’m
all dried off and finished and just like you.” With that, Merouac
rolled himself up in the bedclothes and turned away.
Priddy
crouched by the bunk. “Wait a moment. Are you really called
Jacques?”
“Of course not. But I really did meet Jacques
Cousteau.”
“I thought you said your father did.”
“Well, Trewin was trying to fill in his form. And he didn’t
have a box for the year I was born, so... Do you always
cross-question your guests like this, Priddy-boy?”
“Don’t call me that.” Priddy didn’t know why he suddenly
minded. He’d had it all his life, from family and mates, until he’d
stopped caring, but he’d never really liked it, not even from Kit.
“Priddy will do.”
“I’m sure he will.” Merouac twisted back far enough to present
a smiling, unreadable profile. “It’s a shame. If you didn’t live in
Cornwall, and you steered clear of the States and anywhere else
they don’t pronounce their Ts properly, you’d be all right,
wouldn’t you? But you don’t want to live your whole life as nothing
but the Rosewarne Bay pretty boy.”
Priddy
sat back on his heels. He felt as if Merouac had hit him, or sent
through him a sudden electric shock, shaking up the dust and
sorrows of the years. It was true. There he’d been, pretty-boy
since earliest childhood, with his blond curls and blue eyes, his
inability to grow a beard or grasp enough of life’s realities to
counteract his downward spiral into the Rosewarne sink. His sister
had once crisply informed him that she was twice the man he’d ever
be. The trivial outside edge of these realities snagged in his
mind, and he asked, unsteadily, “How do you know where I come
from?”
“Lucky guess. There’s always been a cluster of you lot at
Rosewarne.” Merouac pushed up onto one elbow and looked at him
directly. “Let me tell you something about your name. You’re either
the pride of the waters—prid-eaux, like the French, the ones
who came over with the Normans, right royal haughty bastards.
Or—more likely for you, with that set of face and those eyes—you’re
a branch of ap-Ridih, the kings of the mountain.”
Priddy
swallowed. “There aren’t any mountains in Cornwall.”
“No, but there are in Wales, and greatly did Arthur, our
undying king, value the ap-Ridih clans who rode by his side to the
battle of Mynydd Baedan.”
“Mate, I haven’t got the least idea what you’re talking
about.”
“Never mind. I won’t call you Priddy-boy, and you won’t call me
Jacques. In fact, Merouac’s a mouthful for a landling. You can call
me Merou.”
“Merry?”
Merouac
chuckled. “If you like. Pretty and merry—won’t we make a pair?”
Closing his eyes, he pulled the bedclothes up to his chest, and
Priddy must have imagined the webs between his fingers—there was
nothing there now but a glimmer, like fine-ground fish-scale
dust.