Chapter Ten
Poor
Flight Lieutenant Trewin. If Merou had thrown him half a Cornish
mile, that was nothing by comparison with the story he was hearing
now. Priddy sat hunched up on a kitchen chair in a corner, keeping
well out of the way. Kit was dashing back and forth, trying to
provide tea, biscuits and brandy all at once to the castaways, and
Professor Geoff was leaning on the mantelpiece, his expression
strangely avid. “So,” Trewin said, tapping at his iPad, “just to
review—you ran aground on Hell’s Teeth last Friday night, and you
have no idea where you’ve been since then?”
“No. We don’t know anything except what we’ve already told
you.” The man—Michael, he was called, a pleasant-faced guy who
looked more like an accountant than a sailor—was still shivering.
He had his arms clasped around as many of his family as he could
manage, and his teeth were audibly chattering despite the blankets
Priddy had brought through from the cottage bedrooms, and the
aluminium ones Trewin and his partner had piled on top. “We’ve been
kept—somewhere. They didn’t hurt us. They helped us, I think, but
I’m buggered if I understand how.”
“Me too,” Trewin said fervently. “Kit, no brandy in those teas,
please. Tell me again—just so I’m sure I’ve got my facts
straight—about this membrane.”
“I know it sounds bonkers. Please don’t lock us up. My wife
will tell you the same, and Mikey and Susan. They’re sensible
children, not...” He shivered so hard that his tea spilled, and
Trewin patted his arm. “Not imaginative.”
“God forbid. It’s all right, Mr Henderson. I just need as much
as you can recall while the events are still fresh, and then Dave
and I are going to airlift the whole lot of you to hospital. You
woke up after the shipwreck—underwater, as far as you were aware,
and cocooned in some kind of transparent sleeping bag?”
“With lights in it. You’d better put everything down. Lights
running through, and what looked like blood vessels, everything
shining and pulsating. I was warm, and although I should’ve been
frightened, I wasn’t. I could see Gwen and the kids lying there
near me, all in their own pods of this... this stuff. Except the
baby—she was with Gwen, lying on her tummy. I had no sense of time,
or being hungry, or worrying about anything at all. I think I just
went to sleep.”
“For four days.” Trewin closed the iPad off. “All right. Just
for now, you keep on not worrying about anything at all. We’re just
very glad to have you back—we were about to call off the
search.”
“Thank you for looking. So foolish of me to let us drift near
those rocks. So expensive to bring the helicopters out, I
know.”
Gwen
Henderson, who until now had remained speechless, suddenly sat
upright in her chair. “We could do a charity fun-run!”
Trewin
hid his amusement behind a cough. “That would be very much
appreciated, ma’am, but that’s what search-and-rescue is for. I
just wish I knew where all of you had been for the last few
days.”
“Isn’t that a Cole & Brightman watch?”
Trewin
glanced over his shoulder at Geoff, who had shifted from his slouch
to focus an alert, almost predatory stare upon Michael Henderson’s
wrist. “Beg your pardon, sir?”
“The watch he’s wearing. If it’s the latest model, it’ll have
GPS on it.”
“It is the
latest model,” Michael said, a little proudly. “Gwen got it for me
for our anniversary. I’m not very good with it though, I’m afraid.
I just use it to tell the time.”
Now it
was the teenage girl’s turn to animate. “You are hopeless, Dad. I
set the GPS before we set off so I could link it to Facebook and
show my friends where we were.”
“Honestly, Susan—couldn’t you just tell them?”
Trewin
put out a hand. “Could I take a look at that? Dave and I are going
to be pretty embarrassed if there was a GPS marker bipping away out
there all the time you were lost.” He took the watch from Michael
and turned it over. “I must be getting old. I can’t even see the
controls, let alone how you work them.”
“All part of the sleek, sophisticated look,” Geoff said, with
an effort at geniality that didn’t sit well on him. “I used to have
one of these. May I?”
Trewin
passed it to him. Deftly Geoff manipulated the hidden control
points around the face. “Here,” he said, showing Trewin the screen
he’d accessed. “It wasn’t set to broadcast, but this is the recent
GPS location list.”
Priddy’s
hands clenched in his lap. He didn’t want Trewin—or, more
precisely, Geoff—to find out the coordinates of Lyonesse. It was
like getting the Loch Ness monster’s phone number, or an invitation
to the Yeti’s cave. But Trewin was shaking his head, calling up a
marine map on his iPad. “There’s nothing there. Just a lot of empty
sea floor. It does show you immobile at those coordinates since the
early hours of Saturday morning. The water must have affected
it.”
“Not likely,” Geoff murmured. “They’re waterproof to one
thousand feet. Still, you’re right, I suppose.” He handed back the
watch to Michael. “It’s been an unexpected pleasure, but it’s nice
to have arrived in time to see all of you safely
returned.”
Michael
nodded and beamed. “Well, we can’t thank you and your sons enough
for taking us in.”
Kit
managed to contain his squawk. Priddy blew out his cheeks, leaned
one elbow on the arm of his chair and cast what he hoped was a look
of filial devotion towards Geoff, who had gone crimson. Trewin
stepped in, grinning. “That would’ve been all right for you,
wouldn’t it, Priddy-boy? A definite upgrade. Come along, everyone.
Your chariot awaits, and Trelowarren is expecting us.”
Geoff
recovered himself quickly. He touched Trewin’s sleeve as the family
began to gather itself together for the move. “I’m thinking of
chartering a boat, Flight Lieutenant. Not for a pleasure trip—more
of a research vessel. Where would you recommend I go for one of
those, if money was no object?”
Trewin
frowned. Priddy knew that money was always a large and inconvenient
object to family men in the services. Geoff’s tone was one shade
off my-good-man, and you didn’t ask a Royal Navy officer for
boat-hire tips as if he was a ticket tout on Falmouth harbour. Good
nature won out. “If you want to spend silly money, there’s Bawden’s
at Zennor. Rowe Boats in Sennen will kit you out with something
less flash but reliable. He might make you wait a few
days.”
“Ah. Actually I’m looking to go out straight away.”
“Wouldn’t recommend that, sir. We’ve got a big westerly blowing
in, storms forecast for the next forty eight hours or so. I want to
get lifted off with this lot before the front edge of it hits.” He
gave Kit and Priddy a friendly nod. “Best be off, then. Priddy, I
can’t help but notice you seem to be around a lot wherever there’s
trouble or weirdness these days. You’re looking well, and that’s
nice to see, but you keep your nose clean, all right?”
Priddy
would if he could. “All right.” He watched while Trewin and Dave
gently hustled their strange flotsam outside. “I’d better get
going, too. I’ve got to make my morning checks up top, and I really
should get dressed at some point, too.”
“Yes, yes.” Geoff was scribbling distractedly in a notebook.
“Kit, did you unpack my laptop yet? I want you to find a number for
Bawden’s charter company.”
“Aren’t we getting the department’s boat from the
Institute?”
Kit let the question tail off, and for one mad second, Priddy
thought he was going to finish it with Dad. Geoff too glanced up at him
sternly. “They’re unlikely to send that old tub out in rough
weather. Hurry up, please.”
Definitely time for Priddy to go. If Kit was getting ready to
kick his stroppy new lover’s backside for him, he didn’t want to
get in the way of such a healthy development. “Mind if I hang on to
your dressing gown for now?”
Geoff
only grunted, absorbed in his notes again. Priddy shrugged and
slipped out through the door. The list of things he didn’t mind was
getting longer: the chill of the cobbles under his bare soles, the
rudeness of guys whose politeness wasn’t worth having. The sting of
wind-driven spray from the Atlantic, because that made him think of
the sea horse, rushing to meet her kin among the foam...
He did
still mind very much about other things, and when Kit darted out of
the cottage and caught him up by the lighthouse door, he took his
elbow kindly. “Steady on. Does he not want his phone numbers found
or his academic feet rubbed?”
“I think he’s too busy sticking ’em in his mouth.” Kit
swallowed hard. “He’s behaving like a dick, and I don’t understand
why. I’ve never been away with him before.”
Maybe he feels free to be his own charming self now he’s
off-campus. “Probably he’s just tired. And
he never got the chance to unpack and settle in before half a dozen
lost mariners landed on him.”
“That’s true.” Kit stared out to sea, hands thrust fiercely
into his pockets. “In a way, it’s useless for me to try and think
why he’s doing or not doing a thing. It doesn’t make any
difference.”
“To what?”
“To the fact that I’m in love with him. I didn’t know it would
feel like this, Prid. I thought I’d feel so happy.”
Priddy
took him in his arms. “You will, I’m sure,” he said gently,
ruffling his hair. “Oh, God, please don’t cry about it, mate. Or
I’ll have to go in there and shove his royal highness’s face into
the coal scuttle for him.”
Kit gave
a wet snort. “Great. Maybe I should’ve stayed home with you. Our
fling didn’t work, but we were such good mates, and we could’ve
been happy old bachelor lonelyhearts together.”
“Er... yeah.” Priddy shifted a little. Efficiently self-lubing
lover as Merou had been, he’d left a warm, deep-ploughed ache
behind him. “I guess we could, if...”
“If Priddy wasn’t already taken.”
Kit
jumped back. Priddy whipped round, almost losing his balance. A
lean, dark-haired figure, casually beautiful in charcoal
fisherman’s jersey and jeans, was resting his shoulder against the