The Lion of Sole Bay (Strong Winds)

by Julia Jones

  She stopped crying for a moment and looked at him, surprised.

  “I’ve been on boats before, with my friends. I mean they usually did everything but I had a go. My friend Donny showed me how. And I helmed this one before for a while with…Elsevier.”

  He couldn’t pretend he was sorry that Elsie was gone. He didn’t understand exactly what Helen said had happened but he’d save asking her for later.

  “My friends had a VHF radio to call for help. We could send a Mayday. Don’t you have one?”

  “We d-did. The K-kapitein tore out the wires when she f-found they were c-connected to the s-satellite.”

  Helen had controlled her tears but she was shaking with cold – or maybe it was shock. Same thing probably. Angel really wanted her to come down to the cabin. She was going to make them all drinks and help Helen get warm. She’d zipped her own jacket right up to the top and had shoved her free hand deep into her pocket. She could feel the other going blue but she needed it to hang on with.

  Luke was listening intently as Helen told him about the speed and the course and not getting near the section of the chart-plotter that showed the navigation lanes. She’d recorded their position at the time of the tragedy and was trying to explain, through her chattering teeth, that their only hope of finding the bodies was to continue to motor, very slowly, in the direction of the tide.

  “It w-will be t-taking them a-w-way to the n-north. But at w-what speed I am n-not sure. I am only w-waiting for the l-light. Perhaps a c-couple hours?”

  They found Luke an oilskin and gloves and a waterproof hat and Helen tied a rope around his waist and found somewhere to fix it. She was shaking all the time she did these things.

  “I haf no f-family at all,” she kept saying. “There is n-no-one.” She showed them the point on the chart where she’d pressed the MOB button. “It l-looks as if we are l-leaving them b-but I am t-t-trying to stay c-close.”

  Angel made the drinks then and her dad did his best to help. They weren’t neither of them good in the kitchen at the best of times and when it kept on heaving up and down and swinging sideways as this one did, even four cups half full of tea felt like a big success.

  “More tea!” said Luke, swigging it back. He seemed to have got his balance really well. Her dad had found a waterproof and was offering to join him though to be honest, it wasn’t clear what he would be able to do.

  She asked Helen where there were dry clothes and blankets and persuaded her to get changed out of her wet things. Then, very daring, she asked whether she’d like her to hold her hand while she settled in her bunk to sleep.

  Helen carried on auto-crying for a while and Angel sat next to her. She’d never exactly seen the point of sleep. Now it seemed the best and kindest thing. She hoped that Helen would sleep undisturbed for weeks.

  When there were no more hiccuppy sobs, Angel found as many layers of clothing as she could for herself and went to keep Luke company. She told her dad he could go back into the cabin. She’d even put on the buoyancy aid that she’d used in the kayak though she could see that would be useless in such heavy seas.

  Mike tried not to look relieved. He promised that he’d keep checking on Helen. Then he started rummaging in the cupboard where Luke had found the boxes and all those files. He pulled out a stack of papers and said he’d keep himself busy looking through them. He was interested in Hendrike’s research.

  “Talk about obsessive!” Angel thought.

  The new day dawned so slowly. There was a paleness in the sky to their right – which Luke said was the east – and then, gradually, each individual wave seemed to take shape again. The rain had drizzled to a halt but the sun, when it finally appeared, was big and red and still partly covered by thick grey cloud.

  Angel realised that, if there was anything close enough to see, they would now be able to see it. Helen told them to wake her as soon as it was light. It wasn’t a moment Angel was looking forward to.

  Luke was looking ahead all the time, and at the compass and the chart-plotter, fixated on keeping his course. He had no idea that there was a boat with masts quite a long way behind them. Or that there was something…floating…over to their left.

  “There’s something over there,” she said, feeling queasy for the first time. “I think it could be…Can you go that way?”

  “Yeah, probably, but it’s right off Helen’s course. I s’pose we ought to fetch her. Or your dad?”

  “But what if it’s…you know…her mum? I think we should check it out first ourselves.”

  “She’ll feel it if I change direction. It’ll wake her anyway.”

  He knew that he desperately didn’t want to see…whatever it was. That the nightmares would begin again.

  Angel was on tiptoe, really staring. The thing was mainly under the water. It couldn’t be alive. And it wasn’t that far off.

  “We could call Dad but he’ll fuss.”

  “Well, yeah. I mean, why not? Anyone would.”

  “And that’ll wake Helen. Think about it Luke, your mum’s dead body. It’s got to be everyone’s worst nightmare.”

  She didn’t notice that he couldn’t answer. She was completely fired up.

  “I’m going to get in the kayak and check it out. It’s really near and we could be worrying about nothing.”

  “You can’t! You absolutely can’t! It’s dangerous. And what if it’s Elsie?”

  “It’s not alive whatever. And I was only scared when she had that gun.”

  “Well, what if you, you know, start fitting again?”

  “Helen found my pills and they weren’t even wet. I’m going and you can’t stop me. The waves are way better now and if the floater’s nothing to do with us, then think how we’ve saved Helen’s feelings.”

  Luke didn’t know what to think. Bodies. His mum and his dad in those tip-up hospital beds. That container that he and the others had found, caught on the sand off the Desolate Shores. Mike’s description of the Sole Bay Battle. He’d caught himself wondering whether any of that blood could still be there in the water washing round them – diluted hundreds of thousands of times. They weren’t that far away from the site.

  Angel didn’t wait to wonder why he didn’t speak. She’d gone running up to the foredeck and had the kayak over the side and streaming beside them before he could find a word.

  “Look how easily it moves. I’m really going to be cool,” she said climbing so nimbly over the guard rail and taking the paddle with her.

  Drie Vrouwen was going up: the kayak dropping down. How did she do it? She was amazing but she was completely stupid. No wonder her parents panicked about her. That fiery red hair and her gold-brown eyes blazing with delight.

  “Angel, no,” he began.

  But she had gone.

  And then Drie Vrouwen’s engine stopped.

  ***

  “I’ve called the coastguard. I’ve told them that we’ve seen the barge. And I’ve told them about the kayak as well.”

  “And the Thing?”

  “That too.”

  “I’m putting her about now. We should be going for the kid.”

  “They wanted to scramble the helicopter but it won’t come close until we tell them that he’s safe.”

  “He?” Donny queried as the three sails swung across and Strong Winds settled to her new course.

  “Only one person I ever knew stupid enough to go over the side in cold water and a heavy sea and he was male, Donny-man.”

  Donny shut up. He wished he could coax a few more knots of speed out of the junk but the tide was running hard against her. It would be pushing the kayak and the Thing in their direction. He hoped his boat-handling was going to be accurate enough to pick them up without swamping or collision.

  “Will the coastguard get in touch with Lottie and Anna? Tell them at least that we’re in sight of the
barge?”

  “Yup. And they’re in contact with the mum of the other one as well.”

  “You mean the girl Anna mentioned – called Angela or something? The one with the dad?”

  “That’s who I mean.”

  “And there was another girl on board – Grace Everson said – a Dutch one.

  “A Dutch GIRL. Do you hear what you’re saying, Maggi?”

  “Oh okay. So you double-xs might not have a monopoly on crazy stunts. Now shut up and sail. I’m going to fetch some binoculars.”

  “You know,” she said after a while. “That is a girl. And she’s totally awesome. She’s like surfing the waves. I’m not sure we’re going to reach the Thing before she does.”

  “Or it’s going to reach us.” The older sister’s voice had none of its usual warmth.

  “What is it, Mum?” Donny had developed a way of steering the junk with the crook of his leg so he could use both hands to talk. “Can you see it yet? Do you think the Thing could be a body?”

  Skye, who’d been watching without speaking, signed back to him and he passed her answer to the others.

  “Mum’s not sure. She doesn’t think that it’s human. It may be only a large lump of wood but there’s something strange about it. It keeps turning in the waves.”

  “Not the sort of thing you’d want to hit if you were in a plastic kayak then.” It was a statement not a question.

  “So why isn’t the barge going after her?”

  ***

  Angel had always been rubbish at assessing Risk. Everyone who’d ever written a report on her said that. This time what she hadn’t worked out was how difficult it was going to be to see the floater once she was down at the level of the waves herself.

  The paddling was sensational; powering up and over the big smooth waves. She wished she could do this for ever. The difficulty was the floater being up on the top of a wave at the same time she was. Because usually it wasn’t.

  And as she got further away from the barge it began to be hard to see that either, not reliably. Especially when she could only twist and glance behind her.

  She realised that she’d made another of her terrible mistakes. Should she try to turn back? Would Luke follow?

  All the same it was brilliant fun. She discovered she could flatten her paddle behind her and use it to steer the kayak and control its speed down the sides of the waves. Then it took all her strength and all her concentration to climb the next slope. She worked out her technique: exactly how she should be stretching forward from her hips to place one blade in the water and drive it backwards along the side of the boat while she rotated her body and stretched again for the other blade to follow in a smooth continuous flow.

  She savoured each magic moment poised on top of the water-mountains, looking urgently ahead to spot the floater or glancing backwards over her shoulder to check on the barge before accelerating again down the steep slopes ahead of her, like the surfers she’d seen in films.

  She’d pulled the skirt thing round her waist so there wasn’t any water coming in and if she’d only known where she was headed, or what she’d find if she got there – she’d have been completely happy.

  Angel vanished in a wave trough and Luke had lost power. For a moment he thought of Reepicheep, the mad Narnian mouse who set off to paddle for the end of the world.

  What had happened to Drie Vrouwen’s engine? Since they’d all come on board at the Fynn Creek moorings – it felt like a lifetime ago but wasn’t quite a day – its noise had been a constant part of their existence. Chugging steadily as they’d motored down the Deben, roaring when the barge was stuck on the bar, labouring as it drove her into the wind and rain and up the massive waves. Now there was nothing.

  Luke couldn’t hold the barge on her course, her head was slipping round. In a moment she would begin to roll.

  Why didn’t someone come and help? Maybe Helen was so traumatised she couldn’t wake but Mike must surely wonder what had happened? Luke was still attached to Helen’s makeshift harness but he got as close as he could to the top of the companionway and shouted down.

  There wasn’t any answer.

  So it was up to him to work out what had happened and to fix it.

  But he couldn’t.

  But he had to.

  The silence was bizarre. Nothing but the slap of the waves against the barge’s sides and the sound of objects sliding in new ways. Drie Vrouwen was worse than rolling, she was wallowing.

  It was odd how this silence made him think of cars. Car engines when you turned them off: Lottie’s car which was so quiet that you hardly knew when it was on. Was there any chance that Drie Vrouwen’s engine could still be on without making any noise? Luke went back to the tiller and pushed it, experimentally.

  There was no feeling of leverage and no response from the barge. The swell was big but smooth. The light was good. The wind and rain had died. Luke didn’t think he was in imminent danger. He was well away from any shoals and the barge didn’t feel like she was going to roll three-sixty. Not like before.

  He wasn’t in danger but Angel could be. Crazy lion-mouse Angel.

  Cars. Fuel. Lottie’s car was quiet because it was a hybrid. It had an electric battery as well as petrol.

  The boats Luke knew didn’t work like that. He guessed Drie Vrouwen would have diesel. Lowestoft Lass did. And Strong Winds. She’d have lots of diesel if they were going all the way to Holland.

  But if you were playing a game and you hadn’t been checking your scores you could unexpectedly lose power. A light would have come on or something, wouldn’t it? Like in a car?

  Luke looked hard at the row of gauges that were mounted on the side of the cabin opposite the chart-plotter and the compass. There was a red light. But that was next to the ignition key so it was most likely telling him that the engine had stopped.

  Well, duh! he reckoned he knew that.

  A splosh of cold wave slopped over the side and slapped him on the side of his head.

  There were two round black gauges with simple white needles that had probably been luminous in the dark – except that he been so busy staring at the plotter that he hadn’t bothered to look at them. One needle was far over towards the right, ‘vol’: the other flat down into a red zone, ‘leeg’.

  Luke didn’t need a translator. He was looking at one thing that was empty and another full: ‘dagtank’ and ‘hoofdtank’. Someone had used one of those machines that did raised lettering on sticky plastic strips. Luke felt a moment of pure love for the person who had made those labels.

  Drie Vrouwen did another hundred and something degree roll. Luke’s stomach heaved and he remembered that terrible time in the night when her ship’s bell had started to ring like a tocsin.

  Angel! Crazy lion-mouse, wild-cat Angel! He needed to get after her.

  If there were two tanks and one was empty and the other one full, you must be able to switch between them. Luke clicked on a small metal lever about half an inch long, sited above the two gauges. There was a sort of distant hydraulic noise and the needle in the ‘dagtank’ began lifting itself slowly out from the red zone.

  He had never seen anything so beautiful.

  He waited until the needle was almost up to ‘vol’ and then he switched off. Scarcely daring to breathe he pushed the throttle forward as Helen had shown him and turned the ignition key.

  Tgg – tgg – tgg. Please Drie Vrouwen, please!

  Oh yes! And he was back at the helm and turning her into the waves. Angel!

  Where was she? She been gone…it felt like hours. Disorientation. The empty sea. Which way should he go?

  And then he saw the three masts of Strong Winds and her streaming dragon flag.

  ***

  The lion looked up at Angel as she swung the kayak through 90 degrees to lie alongside it. This was the first time they�
�d been close.

  The lion’s eyes were blank and its mouth was full of the cloudy seawater. Its red paint, dull beneath the surface, made her think of blood and she realised how horrible this moment would have been if she had discovered a human body.

  There were two human bodies, she remembered. Probably somewhere close by. She hadn’t thought at all what she’d been doing when she set off. She was an idiot – just like everyone always said she was.

  Angel feathered her blade to hold the kayak steady as she and the lion were lifted up towards the summit of another wave. She could see its wooden teeth and claws and flaring nostrils … but then they were over the top and it rolled exhaustedly away.

  “Old and tired and ready to die.” She could hear her father saying that in one of his talks. The lion’s magnificent mane had come up from the sea as it turned over. Then it was gone and the next thing that she saw was the plain, flat surface where it would have been bolted to the front end of a warship – or to the outside wall of a pub.

  Angel and the lion were floating together with the tide. The carving moved more heavily than the kayak so she didn’t find it at all difficult to avoid collision.

  She wasn’t going to beat herself up anymore for being stupid. There’d always be someone else to do that. She was going to stay beside the Lion of Sole Bay for however long it took. It wouldn’t be alone any more.

  Strong Winds took the lion under tow and Angel said goodbye. Once Luke had arrived, steering Drie Vrouwen, she agreed to go back to the barge in case Helen might wake and need her.

  Xanthe rigged the Mirror dinghy, Lively Lady, and came across to join them. She brought a portable VHF with her and used it to transmit the MOB reading to the search and rescue team. The Southwold lifeboat passed the two boats as they headed west and they could hear the noise of approaching helicopters

  In fact Helen never stirred and it was Luke who took Drie Vrouwen into his own home port of Lowestoft.

  “Harwich might have been neater. That’s where the Stavoren was taken and the Royal Katherine and all those Dutch prisoners.”