‘Lucy!’ she cried, amazed to see her niece shyly looking round the door into her home. ‘What on earth are you doing here?!’
After Bethany got over the initial shock of Lucy suddenly turning up unannounced and Thelma had told her how she had come to collect Lucy from the bus stop, Thelma explained that she had to get back to cover reception at the surgery and left. Lucy and Bethany found themselves alone.
‘Oh, it’s so good to see you Kiddo’ said Bethany affectionately, giving Lucy a big hug. ‘I’ve been thinking a lot about you since your text and our chat on the phone a few days ago. I really felt torn about what to do for the best. But here you are now anyway!’
Lucy smiled shyly and hugged Bethany in reply. It was a relief to be there at last, but she still didn’t feel safe, not till she knew how Dad would react. It was three o’clock now and Dad was expecting to pick her up from French club at four thirty. She or Bethany would have to give him a call soon and that was the moment that Lucy was dreading.
‘Look at you, in your uniform, coming all this way on your own!’ Bethany exclaimed. ‘I almost jumped out of my skin when I saw you, you gave me such a surprise. A good one though!’ she added hastily. Bethany could tell that Lucy was feeling very vulnerable just at that moment and wasn’t ready to speak, so she went to the kitchen area to make a drink whilst Lucy stared out of the window.
‘It’s beautiful here’ Lucy said absently. She wandered over to the easel where Bethany had been working. She recognised the face of the ornithologist that Bethany was painting as a commission. She’d seen him on a wildlife programme on the TV. The painting was almost finished. It looked really good.
Lucy glanced down. Propped up against the wall was another picture half finished, of a young girl, standing with her back to the sea, the wind blowing her hair across her face, half obscuring it. It was another picture of Mum, Bethany’s sister. But it wasn’t a picture of Mum as an adult, the painting showed her as a child, of about Bethany’s own age, like the one in the gallery window in town. Lucy felt her legs go weak again.
Just at that moment Bethany came up behind her with the drink she had prepared. Lucy turned and looked at her with anguish in her eyes.
‘Do you keep painting pictures of Mum because she’s dead?’ she asked simply. Bethany’s face crumpled up in tears. She slowly put the two mugs down.
‘I guess so’ she whispered quietly, trying to hold back the emotion. ‘I guess I do.’ She hugged Lucy again tightly and Lucy could feel Bethany’s salty tears dripping down onto her face. Lucy wished she could cry too, but just at that moment she just felt numb. They stood there together for a minute or so and then Bethany stood back, wiping her red eyes with a handkerchief.
‘I’d have put it away if I’d known you were coming’ she said. ‘I suppose you saw the one in the gallery in Merwater. It’s not for sale you know. Just for show because the owner Lionel there asked me specially to show it.’
‘But why do you paint her the same age as me?’ Lucy asked, emotion clutching at her throat.
‘That’s just how I always think of Megan, your Mum I mean. I always think back to the time when we were girls together, down here over the summer.’ She smiled and sniffed, wiping her eyes again. ‘It’s funny how the mind works.’
A few minutes later Lucy glanced at her watch. ‘Oh no’ she thought, it was already a quarter to four.
‘We’ve got to phone Dad’ she said to Bethany with a heavy heart. ‘He’ll be picking me up at four thirty from school.’ Right now Bethany wasn’t going to ask any difficult questions. She could find out more later.
‘Yes of course’ she said. ‘But the reception’s terrible here. We’ll have to walk up to the top of the hill to get a better signal.’ She glanced out of the window. It was beginning to rain. ‘Second thoughts, I’ll ask Mary in the farmhouse if we can use their landline. She’ll understand. This is no weather to be traipsing up the hill. Come on then’ she said, guessing Lucy’s emotions from her face, ‘we’d better get it over and done with.’
They went out together and crossed the muddy yard to the farmhouse. Just at the farmhouse door, Lucy stopped and looked up at her Aunt imploringly.
‘Do you think you could speak to him first, while I wait outside? I just…’ She trailed off uncertainly.
‘Yeah, I know’ said Bethany. ‘I’ll speak to him first, but then you need to come in and talk to him too, ok?’ Lucy nodded.
Bethany disappeared into the farmhouse. She was in there a long time. Eventually Bethany came to the door.
‘Come on in’ she said. ‘It’s ok, he won’t bite your head off.’ They walked into the hall together to the phone on a small table at the foot of the stairs. Bethany handed Lucy the receiver with a sympathetic smile.
‘Hey Dad’ she said nervously, holding the handset to her mouth.
‘Hello Lucy’ he replied. Lucy could tell immediately that he wasn’t angry, at least not anymore. Instead there was a sort of broken, cracked sound to his voice.
‘So I’ve spoken to Bethany and you’re going to stay with her for a few days. Then I’m going to drive down and pick you up. I just want you to remember two things though Luce.’
‘What’s that Dad?’ asked Lucy shyly.
‘The first thing is that I love you. The second thing is that you must keep yourself safe. No crazy acts of heroism you hear? No swims in the sea. Nothing silly or dangerous. Do exactly as Bethany tells you.’
‘Of course Dad.’ Lucy could hardly believe it. She had no idea what Bethany had said to him, but it had evidently worked.
‘Promise me now!’ he said.
‘I promise’ replied Lucy. They spoke for a minute or two more and then he asked to be handed back to Bethany. They spoke about practicalities, like toothbrushes and changes of underwear and then they rang off.
Bethany thanked Mary for the emergency use of the phone and they walked back hand in hand to Bethany’s studio. The drink that she had made Lucy earlier had gone cold and so she made her a mug of chocolate milk and Lucy sat at the kitchen table to sip at the hot frothy drink, while Bethany went up to the raised platform to get out the linen and make up the spare bed. The tension and excitement of the day had been too much for Lucy. Physically and mentally exhausted, her eyes dipped closed as she sat, resting her head in her hands, elbows propped on the kitchen table.
She slipped off into a light sleep.
Chapter Fifteen:
After his initial struggle to free himself, Spirit realised that nothing that he could do was helping him to break free. The length of thick steel cord was tightly fastened, like a lasso around his tail and try as he might, he could not rid himself of it. If he started to struggle again, it would cut into his skin and hurt him more than it hurt him already. He felt panicked at the thought of being restricted and unable to swim freely wherever he wanted. He had never been trapped before and the thought of it now horrified him. His heart beat fast as the gravity of the situation became clear to him. Unless he could escape, or some dolphin or person was able to free him, he would remain there until he died.
The threat was not immediate, because the rope was sufficiently long to enable him to surface and breathe through his blowhole. The tide was at its highest and so he knew that he would not be drowned when the tide turned. However he was trapped and could not escape. He would soon die of hunger and even if he found some means of feeding himself, he risked being dashed against the rocks in a storm, or if there was a heavy swell of the sea. The granite cliffs loomed above him. The sun had gone behind the cliff, leaving the rock face in shadow; dark and menacing. With all his thrashing when he had first ensnared himself in the steel wire, he had pulled himself clear of the kelp, swaying under the water and at least he had a clear view of his surroundings. Other than his beating heart, everything seemed calm around him. The swell of the sea was rhythmic and peaceful. He looked at the limpets moving infinitesimally slowly across the rocks. A crab scuttled by sideways across another rock, whils
t a sea anemone swayed its tentacles in the current, hoping to catch morsels of food floating past. This was a familiar scene for Spirit, one he had seen a thousand times before. Ordinarily he would not give such creatures a second glance, but now he was forced to. This was their home and they could live their entire lives on barely a metre of submerged rock. Spirit though, could not.
Spirit was hungry again. He had not eaten as much as he would like that day and the few fish that he had grabbed had been barely more than a snack and certainly not a meal. The urge to eat was an insistent feeling in the pit of his stomach. He eyed the rocks again hungrily. Anything he could see was too small to eat. He would not be able to knock the limpet free, let alone prise the creature from its shell and the crabs were too adept at scuttling into cracks in the rock when danger came close. The anemones he knew tasted bitter. He saw a shoal of small fry darting round the rocks and he lunged hungrily, snatching one, but with the rest escaping.
An octopus regarded him balefully from a crevice, before emerging tentatively, its tentacles feeling its way cautiously across the rock. Octopuses were good to eat and Spirit struck out towards it, but the octopus squirted out a stream of water, propelling itself away. Spirit was pulled up short by a pain in his tail from where the thick steel wire cut into his flesh. The octopus slipped away in an easy, fluid movement, out of reach. Spirit turned disconsolately away and instead put his head up to the surface of the water. He could not leap out of course, but Spirit glanced over the surface of the water, between the lapping waves to see if, by any chance, there was any sign of salvation on the horizon. Of course there was none.The sea was perfectly clear. There were no boats or anything that might come to his rescue.
He was quite alone. Dancer, Storm, Moonlight and the other dolphins of his pod had absolutely no idea where he might be. He called and called in the hope that some dolphin swimming nearby might hear him and come to his assistance, but there was no answering call and he did not seriously think that there would be a dolphin for miles around. Even if another dolphin could come to him, there was nothing they could do. The steel wire was too strong to bite through; he had already tried and hurt his mouth in the process.
It was only the night before that he had struck out bravely on his own to take his coming of age swim, without Storm’s agreement or the blessing of the rest of the pod. It seemed like a lifetime ago that he and Dancer had swum together so happy and free. For a while he had felt special, different, with a destiny that no other dolphin that he knew shared. Now he felt so small and foolish. His impetuous actions would be his last, he thought. He would end up eaten by the crabs that he himself eyed so hungrily.
As he fretted over his fate, Spirit could see the shadows drawing over the water. The sun was getting low and soon it would be night. Normally the darkness was a familiar and comforting place, where he would float happily, in his waking sleep, lulled by the lapping waves. Tonight, in this strange and unfamiliar corner of the coast, trapped by the steel wire cutting into his flesh, he could not imagine being able to sleep at all. Yet he had swum through the dark hours the night before. He was exhausted and, despite himself, as the sun went down he felt the urge to rest his fevered mind.
‘Lucy!’ he thought, ‘Lucy will help me!’ But how could she? His tired mind struggled to think. The girl seemed like a dream to him now and maybe he had only ever imagined her. Perhaps she did not really exist outside his own head. Although it had felt at the time that she had come to him when he was threatened by the Jet Ski, maybe it was just a corner of his own mind that had given him the inspiration to jump at just the right moment. Certainly she had not come to him now, even though he was in more danger than he had been just a couple of hours before. Feeling sad, lonely and afraid, Spirit slipped into an uneasy sleep as the night engulfed the coast and plunged the sea into darkness.
Lucy had been startled to find herself thrust into Spirit’s world so quickly when she closed her eyes briefly at Bethany’s table; she normally only dreamt of her little dolphin towards morning time. It had been scary to see Spirit so distressed by the hideous metallic noise of the Jet Ski’s engine and she was filled with relief when she had been able to help him escape from the terrible machine. She’d woken up from her reverie as quickly as she had fallen into it and it took her a few moments to realise that she was with Bethany in her studio, miles away from Dad and all the pressures of home.
‘You certainly are tired!’ said Bethany, ‘but I’d better feed you before getting you off to bed.’ Bethany chatted about her work and about her studio while she cooked up some pasta in the kitchen area. Lucy thought about Spirit as Bethany talked away. It’d be good to tell Bethany about Spirit and maybe she would understand, but not tonight. Tonight she was just glad that Spirit was safe again and that she was safe and warm in Bethany’s home in the hills behind Merwater. Lucy imagined trailing her fingers in the sea as she leant over the edge of a boat and touching the smooth skin of Spirits head. She wondered where he might be, but she had no real way of knowing. He was probably many miles from here. At least she was close to the sea and just by being near the sea, in a way she felt closer to Spirit.
The pasta that Bethany cooked up was simple, but filling and Lucy felt happy in her aunt’s company.
‘Right, let’s get you to bed Kiddo’ said Bethany after they had finished eating. ‘I’ve dug you out a pair of pyjamas and got the spare bed ready, so let’s get you into both of them.’
After she brushed her teeth, Lucy stumbled into bed and quickly fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. Her mind was too tired to stretch out to Spirit and he too was sleeping and unable to reach out to her. Before she knew it, she woke up to the noise of Bethany boiling a kettle and getting the breakfast things together. Lucy yawned and stretched happily, got out of bed and padded down the creaking wooden steps from the sleeping platform to the ground floor.
‘Hey Kiddo. How are you feeling?’
‘Much, much better thanks Bethany’ replied Lucy smiling and yawning at the same time. She looked out of the window. It was a bright clear day.
Fancy some breakfast?’ asked Bethany. Lucy certainly was hungry. ‘It’s toast, toast, or toast. Basically toast is all I’ve got. I wasn’t expecting visitors you see.’
‘I guess I’ll have toast then’ laughed Lucy, sitting down at the kitchen table. Bethany passed Lucy a mug of chocolate milk and a plate with a couple of pieces of buttered toast.
‘No jam I’m afraid’ continued Bethany. She grinned. ‘We live simply in the country. Well it’s a Saturday and by chance I have absolutely nothing planned. What do you fancy doing Kiddo?’
‘I want to swim in the sea’ answered Lucy immediately. ‘And then I want to explore the rock pools like I did with Mum when I was younger.’ Bethany smiled again thoughtfully.
‘Didn’t I hear you tell your Dad last night that you weren’t going to be throwing yourself into the sea?’
‘Oh I’ll be ok’ answered Lucy airily. ‘You’ll be there with me!’
‘Oh will I!’ exclaimed Bethany laughing. ‘It’s still pretty cold you know. Maybe a spot of gentle paddling. I’m not so sure about anything more adventurous than that.’
‘Okay’ replied Lucy between mouthfuls of toast. She was determined to swim in the sea, but was willing to bide her time for a day or so.
Bethany busied herself with tidying away the breakfast things. Lucy looked around her idly. It felt so easy with Bethany and so comfortable. It was like it used to be with Mum and Dad in the old days.
As Lucy sat there peacefully, gazing out of the window, Bethany cast an occasional glance in her niece’s direction. She was worried about Lucy. She was delighted to see her of course, but had been really taken aback when Lucy had turned up there unannounced the day before. The conversation that she’d had to have with Lucy’s dad that evening had been difficult, really difficult. She was glad Lucy had not heard.
As an artist, Bethany was trained at looking at not only the surface appearance of th
ings, but what lay underneath. It didn’t feel right. Lucy hadn’t come all this way without her Dad’s permission just to see her, escape her Dad or even to see the sea. Bethany felt as though there was a more fundamental force working deep inside Lucy and it worried her. It reminded her of her sister Megan and she thought of all those pictures she had painted of Megan as a girl of roughly the same age, trying to discover what it was that lay underneath.
‘Listen, I’ll just pop into town and buy a few provisions’ announced Bethany, ‘and then we can head on down to Old Man’s Cove. It’s really atmospheric down there, with craggy cliffs, a thin crescent of beach and rock pools in the south corner. I think you’ll like it. You’ll be okay here for half an hour while I pop to the shops won’t you? Any problems and you can just ask Mary in the farmhouse. I’ll get some things for a picnic. What do you say?’
‘Ok!’ said Lucy. She was happy just to sit at the kitchen table in idleness for a while. Bethany didn’t even have a television, but Lucy didn’t want to watch TV anyway. It wasn’t that kind of a day. Bethany got her things.
‘See you then Kiddo!’ called Bethany, banging the door after her. Lucy waved through the window as she saw Bethany climb into her old Land Rover and then drive off.
Now that Lucy was alone and well rested, her thoughts flew irresistibly back to Spirit. She wondered how he was and what he was doing. She stretched out to him with her mind. The skill came to her more easily now, though it was still hard to achieve and she had several false starts. She knew now that it was when her mind was relaxed that she could find the doorway through to the world of water and Spirit himself. She strained her mind and then relaxed it again and as she did so, she found the doorway, just out of sight, tucked away in the corner between her conscious mind and the unknown. She pushed at it gently and then found herself plunging down, through the veil that divided the two worlds and was suddenly enveloped in salty water, tumbling head over tail in a confusion of bubbles.
The Girl Who Dreamt of Dolphins Page 18