Chapter Fourteen
“Stars,” Trewin said faintly, doing his best to swim. “That
felt like stars.”
“Didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“No, not at all. Just felt like stars. Did you kiss me? Sorry,
I’m rambling.” Trewin got his head up long enough to look around.
“Bloody hell, Jem Priddy—is that you?”
“Yes, sir. I was just out fishing, and I saw you go
down.”
“Fishing? In a category-three storm? What were you thinking?” A
huge wave crashed over Trewin’s head, briefly silencing him. As
soon as it receded, he spat water and picked up his thread.
“It’s still a
category-three storm. Where’s your boat? Did you have any crew?”
The next wave brought memory home. Trewin stopped his hopeless,
hard-trained efforts to stay on the surface, the doggy-paddle that
was all he had left in him. The stillness of despair seized him
whole, obliging Priddy to whip round in the water and take him in a
lifeguard’s tow-hold, keeping tail and fluke well out of reach of
the drifting limbs. “I had a crew. Oh God. Oh shit, oh fuck, oh Christ. Where’s my
crew?”
The category-three was driving the sea in alternating
mountains and troughs. Priddy took advantage of the next mountain
peak to scan the bay. There was the hull of the Mirage, bobbing and adrift. Merou and
the storm combined had smashed enough bits off her to make useful
spars for drowning rescuers, and the bright, gallant shape of the
Sennen Cove lifeboat was nosing about amongst them. Priddy couldn’t
make a count from here, but she looked pretty full, laden and
potent with hope. “Safe, I think,” he said. “Come on—we’ll go and
take a look.”
“Priddy, how are you holding me up?”
“I’m a good swimmer, that’s all.”
“Nobody’s this good. Didn’t I tell you to...”
He broke
off, coughing. Priddy got a better grip, made sure Trewin’s mouth
and nostrils were clear of the water. It was easy to forget, when
your lungs were full of stars. “To stay out of trouble? I tried. I
really tried.”
He approached the lifeboat from the stern. All her crew’s
attention was fixed on the Mirage
up ahead, on the last two orange-suited survivors
being hauled from the maw of the waves. Four lifeboat crew, full
complement. That was good. Now he counted orange suits. Two being
dragged over the rigid-inflatable tubes to safety, three more
helping out. One lonely soul in the prow, head down, weeping loud
enough to be heard over the wind. The RNLI man nearest to him
reached a hand to his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Dave.”
“I can’t believe he’s gone!”
“I know. He was a great guy.”
“He should’ve bailed the second our rotors failed, but he
stayed strapped in to land her so we could all escape. He was a
bloody hero. What am I gonna tell his wife and kids?”
Priddy
was close enough now to let go of Trewin, who managed the last few
strokes on his own. He grabbed at the gunwale six inches away from
Dave’s knee. “Tell them I’ll be late for tea. For God’s sake,
Davey—pull yourself together.”
You couldn’t stay to watch the reunions. Priddy understood
that as clearly as if Merou had whispered the warning in his ear.
Already Trewin was pointing back the way he’d come and bellowing
orders, as best he could with his ecstatic co-pilot dragging him
aboard, hugging him and pounding him on the back.
Jem Priddy’s in the water somewhere here! He
saved me. God knows how—if ever there was a lad that couldn’t save
himself...
But Priddy could. He ducked beneath the lifeboat, stayed under
until he found the upturned remains of the Mirage. He knew, with a
hunter-predator’s precision, where he should surface to stay out of
sight of the men in the boats. He had no more business here: he
only wanted to count them. Six from the helicopter, four RNLI. And
one more, huddled well away from the rest. Priddy tried to persuade
himself that the solitary figure was dressed in a familiar,
battered windcheater, but the effort failed.
The
water burst open beside him. Merou caught him, clamped a hand
across his mouth, dragged him back into shelter. “No. Hush. You
can’t.”
“The murdering bastard! He killed Kit. And nobody saw, and he’s
been rescued, and he’ll get away—”
“Quiet.” Merou restrained him forcibly. “I am telling you, if
you go over there and prove our existence now, you will be
rewarding him beyond his wildest dreams. Trust to time, or if you
can’t, trust me.”
Priddy
stared at him, wide-eyed. “Is that what this is? Is Kit one of
those... fixed points in time, where he has to die no matter what,
and nobody can...” He choked on an inbreath of water and sobbed,
seeing in his mind his lost friend’s descent, like the Sea King’s.
A toy and a speck and then a memory, gone. “Nobody can save
him?”
“Priddy, love, we have to go.” Merou’s grip on him became a
hold, then an embrace, the deepest and most absolute gathering-in
that Priddy could ever have imagined: warm arms, the press of warm
mouth to fluttering newborn gills, the helixing clasp of tail
around tail. “You’re tired. Just rest on me.”
He
couldn’t. Here he was, afloat in an Atlantic storm, nothing but a
merman’s tail to hold him up. Surely he’d succumbed to Huddy Jones
and his chemical enticements back in the lighthouse, or maybe even
before that, in a dirty alley in Penzance. But exhaustion was
sweeping through him, deep as the unstoppable sleeps of childhood.
Priddy flashed back helplessly to his last one of those. He’d spent
the afternoon scrambling about the Rosewarne cliffs with Kit.
They’d done everything they shouldn’t: explored the old mineshafts,
dared each other to get closer and closer to an adder curled up and
basking in the sun, risked the incoming tide in a cave. Got back so
late that even Kit’s placid mum had yelled at them, then fallen
like puppies onto his bed, asleep before their heads had hit the
pillow. The wind’s voice died. As if the storm too had caused as
much havoc as it could, and worn itself out in the process, a gleam
of sunlight touched the water. Priddy let go.