Chapter Nine #3
“I swear to God, Prid, I don’t know where to put myself. He’s
so handsome, people turn and watch us as we go down the street.
Probably wondering what a little fat-arse like me’s doing with
someone like—”
“Kit!” Priddy stared at him in horror. Even in the worst of
their teenage years, he’d never known his mate to be anything other
than secure and happy with his solid Cornish frame. “You’re not a
fat-arse. And even if you were...”
“Oh, I know, I know. Geoff says the same. He just thinks people
ought to make the best of themselves. Speaking of which, you look
amazing. But for the love of God, put that dressing gown on, will
you?”
It
wasn’t Priddy’s style—a neon tartan probably visible from low
orbit—but it felt very expensive, and even in his Zen-like new
state, he could see that sitting naked at the breakfast table
wasn’t the thing to do. Merou could have carried it off, but not
Priddy, not yet. He wrapped himself up. “Thanks. I feel a lot
better these days.”
“I’m so glad. Oh, Prid, this makes everything perfect. If I
don’t have to worry about you anymore, and I have Geoff, I mean.
Now we have to find someone just as amazing for you.”
“Well, it’s early days, but there’s just the
possibility—”
“And he’s loaded. I didn’t tell you that before, because it shouldn’t be
important. And it’s not, only... I never knew anybody with money
before, and sometimes I hardly know how to act around him. The
fancy restaurants and everything.”
“You can take him to Mick’s chippy in Rosewarne. See if he
knows how to act around you there.”
“Oh, he’s not
difficult about it. It’s just me.” Kit sat back, catching his
breath. “I’m sorry. I’m just... all in a flutter about him. You can
probably tell.”
Priddy
took his hand. He made sure Geoff wasn’t yet on his way back out of
the kitchen, and planted a kiss on the strong, fish-hook scarred
fist. “I can tell.”
They sat in silence for a moment. Kit took his hand away,
blushing a little. He began to examine Priddy’s face, as if
something indefinable about him had changed. Priddy sat patiently
beneath the scrutiny. Then, unexpectedly, Kit’s eyes filled with
tears. “Shit. It isn’t right, is it, to have to worry about how we look? If even
someone as gorgeous as you...”
“Er... thanks. But what?”
“If you feel
you have to change. Have you had botox?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your forehead. Here, where that little crease used to be...”
He reached out, and Priddy forbade himself the recoil. “Jesus,
Prid. Your scar is gone.”
Priddy
burst into laughter. “Of course I haven’t had botox, you dork.
That’s for smoothing out your wrinkles, not...” He raised his
fingers to his brow, the place just below his hairline where poor
Nance Govett’s hand had shaken on her stitches. “Bloody
hell.”
“How did that happen?”
“I dunno. Maybe it just faded off—you know, with time or
something.”
“No amount of time was gonna fix that. He really hurt
you.”
Priddy
leaned his elbows on the table. The new warmth inside him didn’t
abate—increased, rather, as if in response to outer chill. But
there was an old mystery here, a sorrow. Geoff brought in mugs on a
tray and Priddy smiled absently in thanks, otherwise oblivious. “My
mum told everyone I fell off a horse in Pritchard’s
field.”
“Nobody believed that. My dad said you should’ve been in
hospital, or taken into care.”
Kit was
now as pale as he’d been red before. The words coming from him
seemed scarcely voluntary. “If you knew,” Priddy asked gently, “why
didn’t you say something to me about it?”
“Christ, Prid. I was twelve. And you... you were just the same
sweet, dippy lad afterwards as you’d been before, and everyone said
that if you wanted to forget what had happened, we should let
you.”
Geoff
banged his mug down on the table. “This is what happens,” he said
severely, “when we make visits home, and expect things to be the
same as when we left. Priddy has his own life now, Kit, and so do
you.”
Kit sat
up straight. “I’m aware of that, Geoff. Also, it was your idea to
come here.”
Geoff’s
eyebrows climbed into his fashionably spiky fringe. Priddy began to
push his chair back, to take himself out of the way of this good
new current, but Geoff flashed him another of the charming smiles
and motioned him to sit down. “Don’t go, please. Kit’s right. It
was my idea, and part of it was because I wanted to talk to
you—about these mermaids.”
Priddy
pressed his lips together. He’d ridden out Kit’s further confession
of the limitations of friendship, and coped more or less with the
discovery and final proof of Merou’s healing magic. He didn’t want
to crack into whooping hysterics now. “Mermaids?”
“Yes. I know you and Kit have a great deal to talk about, and
you’ll have to forgive an old man for being a bit grumpy when he
sees the two of you together. Since you’re here, though, I would
love to find out a bit more about these legends Kit
mentioned.”
“I think Kit probably knows as much about them as I
do.”
“Maybe, but you taught them to him. It’s always good to go to
the source.”
Priddy
tried to remember. Yes, rainy afternoons in Kit’s bedroom, which
looked out over the Rosewarne cliffs. The house felt safe, and Kit
felt safe, and Priddy would curl himself up in the window seat and
regale him with the stories he’d picked up from the library or
fishermen in the harbour, embellishing freely when Kit had wanted
to know more. “I’d forgotten.”
“I never did,” Kit said. “I used to love your stories,
especially the way you made sure there were always mermen as well
as maids. And you were adamant the girls would never wear those
scallop-shell bikini tops, because they’d be uncomfortable. And we
used to speculate for hours on how they used to go to the toilet,
and whether they’d be able to have it off.”
Geoff gave a disgusted chuckle. “Have
it off, Kit? Don’t be such an
adolescent.”
“Well, it was a valid point. I was interested in marine biology
even then.”
Priddy
would have to ask Merou about the toilet thing. As for the sex...
He closed his mouth firmly on the affirmation. He was suddenly,
passionately certain that he shouldn’t breathe a word of his
experiences to Geoff Blades. “They were just stories. They don’t
matter, do they? Apart from the thing about the
dolphins.”
Geoff frowned. “The dolphins? Oh, yes, of course—I almost
forgot why we were here. There’s an incredibly rare species,
Delphinus cantans, almost
certainly extinct now. In the nineteenth century, though, a
scientist called Alberts—marvellously level-headed fellow, sailed
with Darwin—surmised that sailors were misinterpreting sightings
of cantans as
mermaids, based on some of its behaviours.”
Priddy
had had a long night, and Geoff had the rare gift of making even
the most intriguing of subjects sound dull. Kit, having got over
his short rebellion, was watching him in adoration. Priddy blinked
himself awake. “What does it do?”
“From Alberts’ observations, it appears to strand itself
voluntarily on sharply inclined shores, where it could be sure of
returning to the water. It would bask, and it seems to have had a
residual hair-mass on the back of its skull, which it would rub
against the rocks as if to preen it. Also, Alberts wrote, in the
right conditions, it would exhale through its blowhole with a
musical intonation, possibly in order to attract a
mate.”
“It would comb its hair and sing?”
“Essentially. What do you think?”
“I think Alberts must have been on the rum.”
Kit
elbowed him ferociously. “Priddy!”
“No, no. It does all sound rather bizarre.” Geoff bared his
teeth at Priddy. “I welcome enquiring minds, especially if they’ve
got a better idea. The next most likely explanation is that these
men—these grizzled old sea dogs, with no more imagination than a
turd—were seeing mermaids. What do you think about
that?”
Priddy got up and went to the window. His eye had been caught
by a little group of people in bright sailing gear, making their
way up from the shore. He didn’t like Geoff, and he didn’t want
that to become apparent so quickly to Kit. He’d met the type
before, behind desks in classrooms and at college. Enquiring minds
were about as welcome as a dose of clap, and they could put a spin
on words like turd which left a sting of insult in the air, safely indefinable.
“I think,” he said distantly, leaning on the window ledge, “we have
some visitors. Are you expecting anyone, Kit?”
Kit
looked indefinably stung as well. “No,” he said, his eyes fixed on
Geoff in reproach. “What sort of visitors?”
“Family, it looks like. Man and a woman and a couple of
kids.”
“Probably some off-season tourists wanting to see the
lighthouse. I’ll nip out and tell them we’re not open to the
public.”
Priddy
decided that Kit and Geoff needed time alone. “I’ll go,” he said,
and knew he was right when neither of them reminded him about his
dressing gown. Maybe Kit had learned to put a spin on things too,
and could pass off Geoff’s mood as jealousy, or something else
palatable to early-stage romance. Maybe he’d come back and find
them in a clinch amongst the high-tech binoculars and tracking
gear. He pushed his feet into Kit’s wellies—another habit from
their shared childhood—and let himself out into the
yard.
The man was carrying a baby. The other three—a woman and two
kids in their early teens—were trudging along, heads down. They
didn’t appear to be bothered by Priddy’s dressing gown either, and
came to a shambling halt in front of him when he ran to open the
gate. “Who are you?” he asked, already knowing, hearing once again
Flight Lieutenant Trewin’s voice in his head. Five people missing, three under eighteen, one a
baby.
The man fell to his knees on the cobbles, careful even now not
to drop the child. “Help us, please. We were shipwrecked. We’re
from the Sweet Rose.”