Couldn’t see what? What was he talking about? ‘Did you know her well?’ I asked—more to distract myself from visions of what could be happening to Muriel than because I really wanted to know.
‘No. She stayed pretty much alone with Henry. He wouldn’t have visitors—they were damned isolated—but I’d see her sometimes when I was laying craypots near the cliffs. She’d be surfing, day after day. You should have seen her then. Just beautiful.’
I swallowed. Beautiful. Oh God.
Where was she?
Jack’s hand was suddenly on the small of my back, supporting me against the rise and fall of the boat. It was chilly on the water, and the sea air was making me shiver. Or maybe it wasn’t from the cold. Jack had put his jacket around my shoulders and I’d hardly noticed. I was trembling from the toes up and Jack’s hold on me tightened.
Why hadn’t I taken Muriel seriously?
She wouldn’t have wanted me to. Muriel wanted to be alone.
Like me.
I’d learned my isolation the hard way. I was good at it. It was what I wanted.
Except for now. Now I leaned into Jack and felt the warmth and solidity of the man beside me and I wasn’t moving for anything. In this nightmare, I was taking comfort where I could find it.
Where are you, Muriel?
‘What are you doing as a hospital orderly?’ I managed, still desperately trying to distract myself, and Fraser sucked his pipe a while longer. There wasn’t any smoke, though. Was it empty?
‘I’m bored,’ he said at last.
‘Sorry?’
‘My boys took over my fishing licence,’ he told us, peering out into the distance, hesitating and then pulling the boat around again. ‘Cray licences cost a fortune and I don’t want to spend my time hauling craypots anymore. So I handed the licence over. Not the boat, though. The kids’ll get the boat when I’m dead but not before. I thought I could keep myself busy messing around on the boat but I can’t. Not when I’ve been used to hard work for so long. Anyway, I used to drop into the hospital kitchen for a bite to eat—my niece is the cook—and they’re always flat out, so I thought I’d make myself useful.’
By acting as an orderly?
This was such a far cry from New York. This community … People cared so much. Jack milking his neighbours’ cows. Fraser wanting to make himself useful any way he could.
There were more and more boats nosing their way out of the harbour now. So many locals joining in the search. I could see flashlights on the beach, working their way along the sand in case Muriel had been swept in. Scores of flashlights.
This island took care of its own.
It was … weird.
It made me want to cry.
Where was Muriel?
‘What’s over there?’ Fraser yanked the pipe from his mouth and pointed it northwards. ‘Did you see?’ His old eyes creased in concentration and then he grunted. ‘I’m not imagining it. There’s something out there.’
I couldn’t see. Untrained in night sight and unaccustomed to the sea, I was left staring blankly in the direction he’d pointed while he nosed the boat forward. He hit a switch and bright light spanned out across the waves. He’d left the floodlights off until now, as having them on meant we couldn’t see beyond the pool of artificial light. ‘It’s no use using the flood until I think something’s there,’ Fraser had told us. But now there was something? I strained to see.
It was a surfboard.
The boat moved closer.
Muriel’s board.
She wasn’t on it.
Dear God.
‘This was what she planned,’ I whispered as Jack snagged the board with a hook on a stick and hauled it onto the deck. ‘She must have planned to paddle right out and then abandon it. Oh, God, she’s drowned.’ I was losing it and I no longer cared.
Fuck control. Fuck everything.
I didn’t swear. I never swore. Now my head seemed to be one huge oath. It felt like it was exploding. The pain was unbelievable.
‘It’s harder to commit suicide than you think,’ Jack told me, but his words sounded as bleak as I felt. ‘To drown yourself is a hard call, especially in a sea as calm as this.’
‘And she’s a bloody good swimmer,’ Fraser muttered. He turned the ancient Malibu over as if it could tell him the answers. He hit the radio and in a few terse words told the rest of the search fleet what was happening. Almost immediately the lights bobbing all over the coastline turned in our direction.
Fraser stared down at the water. He licked his finger and held it to the wind—there was hardly any—then lined up the boat and turned his attention to the board again.
‘No teeth marks,’ he muttered—which made me feel a whole heap better. Or not! ‘That means no sharks. And our Muriel was a champion swimmer.’
Was? I flinched.
‘Is,’ Fraser muttered, catching himself. ‘Sorry.’
‘You really noticed her,’ Jack said absently, his eyes skimming the surface of the ocean in all directions.
‘My oath,’ Fraser told him. We were all concentrating fiercely on the surface of the waves, searching for a body—searching for anything—but there was room for talk. Silence was almost unbearable. ‘Who wouldn’t notice Muriel? She left more than fifty years back and I’ve never forgotten her. It was before I started courting my Edie, of course.’ The way he said it I knew he was trying to distract me but I was beyond distracting. But on he went. ‘Edie was my wife,’ he explained to me, whether I listened or not. ‘A good ’un. Dead these ten years, though. I loved my Edie but I hadn’t noticed her before Muriel was here. I was a late starter. I’d hardly noticed any woman but Muriel was someone a lad had to notice. If I’d met her before … If she hadn’t been married to Henry …’ He grimaced again and turned back to adjust the wheel. ‘Anyway. Let’s see if we can find her.’
‘This is hopeless.’ I was close to disintegration, searching across acres of cold, black sea. ‘She could be anywhere.’
‘Nope.’ Fraser was adjusting the boat’s nose against the breeze. ‘The current’s running straight north. Tide’s coming in. She won’t be able to fight it. If the surfboard’s here she has to be close. She’ll be in this slip stream somewhere.’
‘She’ll be drowned.’
‘Like Doc said, it’s harder to drown than you think,’ Fraser said flatly. ‘I tried it once. Got my foot caught in a craypot rope and went overboard. Took them three hours to find me in filthy weather. Thought for a bit it’d be easier to drown than fight, but in the end there was no choice but to keep my nose above water.’ He jabbed his pipe at Jack. ‘Your grandpa pumped the seawater out of me and told me I was lucky I hadn’t grown gills, but I survived. This sea’s a millpond in comparison and you can’t just hold your nose and sink. You bob straight up again. Bloody frustrating. Now I’d be thinking … the way the tide’s running … just about here …’
He cut the motor to a crawl. The floodlights swept back and forth across the water.
‘There!’ It was me who saw—or thought I saw. It was a flash of white … imagined? I clutched Jack’s sleeve, nearly overbalancing as I leaned out over the side. Fraser shifted the floodlight, and there she was.
A tiny figure in the ocean. An elderly lady in a white bathing suit, holding her hands to shield her eyes from the light.
Even in extremis she looked … glamorous. Her bathing suit was brilliant, pure white with tiny diamanté buttons down the front. Her blonde hair was floating around her face—an ethereal halo. She was even wearing pearls!
An elderly Ophelia, drifting to death, but refusing to sink.
‘Holy Mother of God.’ Fraser crossed himself, and tears were running down his craggy face. ‘And me a Presbyterian. Hang in there, girl.’
We were right beside her. There was no doubting Fraser’s skill. He cut the motor so we glided close without the risk of the propeller doing damage. We could reach her.
She touched the bow, she put out her hands—and she shoved h
erself away with a strength that was unbelievable.
‘Go away,’ she yelled, and if Fraser hadn’t grabbed me I’d have been over the side.
‘I’ll go in.’ Jack was already pulling off his boots.
But Fraser wasn’t in the mood for protests—or heroics. ‘There’s no need for anyone else to get wet,’ he snapped. ‘If I get a tuna this close I’ll have it on board, no question, and I’ll get her, even without the gaff!’
Before we could protest, the old fisherman gunned the motor, just enough to swerve back towards her. As she brushed past, he cut the engine again. Pushing Jack out of the way, he leaned over the side and grasped Muriel’s arm before she could realise what he intended.
Still she fought. ‘Let me go.’ Muriel was fighting like a wildcat. ‘If you think I’ve done all this just to be dragged in …’
‘You’re not drowning on me,’ Fraser barked. ‘I let you go fifty years back. I’ll be damned if I’m letting you go now.’
And the fight died right out of her. Muriel stared up into the boat’s lights in bewilderment.
‘Who …’
‘Fraser,’ the fisherman said simply, adjusting his grip and tugging her upwards as he’d have landed thousands of craypots in his lifetime. ‘Fraser Carter. You mightn’t remember me, but I sure as hell remember you. Seems I’m always coming to your rescue, Muriel Kelly. Once fifty years back and now this.’
One more attempt at resistance—albeit a pathetic one.
‘Go away!’
‘In your dreams!’
Jack had Muriel’s other arm now and together they lifted her, like it or not.
She tumbled into the boat, still fighting. ‘No, no, let me go, let me go.’ But, as her body slid onto the deck, she slumped.
Defeated.
And I sank onto the floor of the boat and hugged my grandmother harder than the old lady had ever been hugged in her life.
Her body was wet and wrinkled and clammy cold.
Jack was enveloping her—both of us—in towels. Fraser was barking our success into the radio. Then he was producing blankets and hot water bottles from below.
I just held her. For now it seemed the most important thing was contact. To claim Muriel on the side of the living.
‘Grandma, how could you do that? How …’
There was still some fight left. Muriel took a ragged breath and tried to pull away. ‘Put me back, damn you.’
‘Oh, right.’ I hugged tighter. ‘Toss you back like you’re not worth keeping? I’m sorry, Grandma, but I need you to live. You’re the only family I have.’
‘You have Richard.’ Her shaky voice still contained a hint of the Muriel I knew. Deep and abiding displeasure.
But I was angry, too. ‘You think I’d swap you for Richard? No way.’ Maybe it was a silly thing to say—but then I realised that it was the truth.
And Muriel recognised it as well. She stared up into my face and her lined cheeks crumpled still more. Any last vestige of fight sagged out of her.
Or not.
Jack produced scissors and Muriel swiped his hand so hard the scissors clattered onto the deck.
‘What are you doing?’
‘We’ll get you out of that wet suit.’
‘Over my dead body! Do you know how much this cost?’
Jack chuckled. ‘No, I don’t,’ he told her as I placed a blanket strategically over her body and wriggled the garment off the hard way. Fraser smiled too, but there were tears in the old man’s eyes as he handed over more blankets and waited with his hot water bottles.
‘Are you planning on telling us just what the hell you were playing at?’ he growled.
Muriel’s eyes widened. The nightmare of the night was still raw, but Fraser’s presence apparently broke through. ‘Fraser. It was you. I thought …’
‘You thought I’d be dead by now?’ He tucked a blanket more tightly around her and his old eyes creased into a smile. There was joy here this night. Joy in truckloads. ‘I’m not.’
‘That voice. That pipe. You can’t still be smoking it. I told you it’d kill you.’
‘You told me that fifty years ago,’ he said equably. ‘So did Edie. I outlived Edie. I’ll outlive you. Especially if you keep doing damned fool things like this.’
I shifted to grab another hot water bottle, but before I could return to Muriel’s side, Jack gripped my arm and tugged me to the far side of the deck.
‘Stay with me.’
‘What? Why?’
‘We’ll make Muriel a hot drink,’ he said loudly, and pulled me into the shelter of the galley. ‘Leave them,’ he told me. ‘She’s dry and wrapped and safe. Fraser’s her generation. He knows her history. I have a feeling he’s what she needs more than anything.’
I stared up into his face and then turned to where Fraser was kneeling over the tightly wrapped bundle that was Muriel. Should I protest?
What did I know of anything?
‘So what did you hope to achieve?’ Fraser was saying. ‘Did you get swept out to sea?’
We all knew she’d done no such thing but I held my breath. Fraser was giving her back her pride.
‘The currents …’ she managed.
‘They’re unpredictable,’ Fraser agreed, sucking on his pipe some more. It was never lit, I noticed inconsequentially. Maybe Edie and Muriel had got their way after all.
Or maybe I didn’t have a clue. All I knew was that Jack could well be right. Here were two old acquaintances, and Jack and I seemed redundant.
‘The currents around here can be treacherous,’ Fraser was saying. ‘Been doing much surfing lately?’
‘No,’ Muriel muttered, sounding resentful, and Fraser nodded and sucked some more on his empty pipe.
‘Thought as much. And you’ve still got that crook leg. That’ll be why you couldn’t fight the currents. Damn fool to try, really.’ He paused, as if in thought. ‘Your leg going to stop you surfing forever?’
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ Jack volunteered from the galley. ‘A week at most.’
Fraser nodded. ‘So you’ll be back on a surfboard then?’
‘Maybe.’ Muriel’s teeth were chattering so hard that it was all I could do not to intervene. But still there was the pressure. Jack was holding me back.
We made tea and loaded it with sugar. Jack gave it to Fraser who held it to Muriel’s cold lips. We watched from a distance as she tried to drink. That she was trying seemed miraculous.
‘I haven’t been on a surfboard for years myself,’ Fraser said reflectively as she finished what she could. ‘Maybe I’ve forgotten how. Did it feel good tonight?’
Muriel lay back in her blankets, the warmth of the water bottles and the tea obviously starting to take effect. The boat was drifting in silence, the only noise being the gentle slap, slap of water against the boat’s side.
Other boats were assembling around us. They’d all be wanting to share in this happy ending, but for now we seemed alone.
‘It did feel good.’
‘Cold, but. You know there’s wetsuits in the loft above Henry’s woodshed?’ Fraser told her. ‘New ones. He bought enough for this damned surfing school he dreamed of. Replaced the ones he bought for Sonia’s mates. There was another harebrained idea. To try and buy a kid like that …’
‘Sonia …’
‘Sonia was brainless.’
They’d both moved on, by silent consent, and I could only wonder.
‘Sonia was my daughter,’ Muriel said, almost defiantly.
‘Aye, and she was Henry’s daughter, too. I’m hearing the pair of you gave and gave. Edie and I have a kid like that. She had a gammy hip and we tried to make it up to her with money. Didn’t work. She went right off the rails for a bit. So did your Sonia at a guess.’
‘What makes you a psychologist?’ Muriel retorted, and Fraser grinned and chomped on his pipe.
‘Seventy-six years’ life is all. You know damned well I’m right, girl. You must have been able to see it. Your Sonia came
waltzing out here saying her mother didn’t understand her. She told everyone she was planning on living with her daddy from now on, but nothing Henry could do was right. He never stood a chance. Sonia couldn’t bear the look of him. All she wanted was the surf gear and the beach. It brought her prestige. Her mates came from everywhere, catching lifts on fishing boats because they’d heard Henry was a soft touch. Great surf, free gear, free lodging. So she’d surf and surf with all her new friends, and he’d sit up in the dunes and break his heart.’
‘Oh, Henry.’
‘It was his own damned fault,’ Fraser said. ‘Wasn’t it, Muriel?’
She gasped. ‘He couldn’t help—’
‘He couldn’t help being burned,’ Fraser said, almost sternly. ‘But he could sure as hell help what he did with it afterwards.’
Muriel choked on a sob. Enough, I thought, but Jack was before me. He made his way forward and put Fraser gently aside.
‘I’ll give you something to make you relax, Muriel,’ he told her, checking her pulse. ‘It’ll make you sleep, which is what you need right now. Sleep and warmth. After that there’ll be all the time for talking—and maybe talking’s what you need most. But you’ve done enough for tonight. Fraser, bring us into the harbour. We need to go home.’
By the time we reached the harbour, the decision had been made to take Muriel back to the cottage. She was asleep and hardly stirred as Jack carried her to his van.
‘Hospital’s not the place for her anymore,’ Jack decreed. ‘Jenny has the expertise to look after her. She’ll be better off at home. As long as you’re willing, Jenny.’
‘Of course.’
‘But Jenny’s helping you out with your work so you can spend time with the littlie,’ Fraser objected.
‘I can do without help.’
‘You can’t.’ In his own way, Fraser seemed as stubborn as Muriel. ‘You won’t have to do without help. Not if I help as well. Jenny can still do her clinic every morning while I sit with Muriel.’ He gave three more short puffs of his empty pipe and then added the clincher. ‘If you think she’ll be suiciding with me around, I’d like to see her try.’
‘You didn’t just watch her from a distance all those years ago,’ I said, watching his face. ‘You knew her better than that.’
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