by Jenny Colgan
Polly paced up and down, feeling helpless. Every time she saw the little dinghy disappear beneath the latest great crashing wave, she would say a silent prayer that it would re-emerge – but each time it did, it would do so a little later, a little lower in the water than before.
That must have been the last flare, for no more went up. It was hard to see the raggedy white sail at all; it was mere flutters, only to be glimpsed in the whorls if you already knew it was there. Nothing was worse, thought Polly, than standing by, desperate to do something but unable to move until you knew the best thing to do. She wanted just to reach out, scoop up the little boat, gather them in; she felt herself sobbing with frustration.
The walkie-talkie crackled at last and Polly grabbed it.
‘Are they on their way? We need a helicopter,’ she rasped. ‘Get bloody Prince William down here.’
‘They’re all out,’ said Selina, her voice panicky. ‘They’re all out on calls. Half of bloody Cornwall was out sailing this afternoon apparently, even after the warnings. Well, half of bloody London more like.’
‘Fuck.’
There was a long pause.
‘Can you…’ said Selina.
‘It’s very…’ said Polly at the same time. She looked out. The sail fluttered, barely.
‘Oh God,’ said Selina. ‘Well, I rowed a bit at college.’
‘I’ve… hmm, not really,’ said Polly. ‘But I know where they are.’
There was a longer pause.
‘Is there nobody there at all? Not even Jayden?’
‘Not even Andy,’ said Selina. ‘Not even Malcolm.’
Polly swallowed. Her heart was beating fast.
‘We have to try,’ she said finally.
‘I thought you were going to say that.’
‘I’ll bring the big lantern.’
‘I’ll write a will,’ said Selina.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The climb back down didn’t seem quite so perilous, now that Polly had something else to be worried about. The high winds still buffeted her, and she still got facefuls of rain flung at her, but at least this time she was expecting it. She was careful on the wobbly balustrades, and put out the big lantern to conserve the batteries until they were really needed; surely she could pick her way across the rocks by instinct alone.
Even though she was in a frenzy of rushing, she did stop at the downstairs coat cupboard for two things: Huckle’s huge, bright yellow oilskin with matching sou’wester, that he used for fishing; and a wetsuit Reuben had bought her for her birthday when she’d mentioned wanting to learn to surf then never got around to it. He’d also bought her a top-of-the-range surfboard and various other bits and pieces, but she hadn’t seen them for a long time and assumed they’d been sold off with the house. But the wetsuit was still here.
Getting into it – in a sweaty panic, tearing off her wet things and trying to squeeze into it – was torture, seconds flashing past as she writhed to pull it up, thinking all the while of the little figures out on the water. It was like being caught in a dream, but she focused on what she knew to be real: that outside it was incredibly cold, with very high winds and terrible seas, and she couldn’t possibly help anyone else if she couldn’t help herself.
Finally she had it on. It was incredibly uncomfortable, but she threw on the little booties too, and the oilskin. She reflected for a millisecond that she must look completely insane, then reminded herself that it didn’t matter. She grabbed the second wetsuit – Huckle’s – and the lantern, and tore out of the lighthouse, the door banging hard against the side then swinging back to slam into place.
Somehow down here at ground level it wasn’t quite as bad, even though she was walking directly into the wind. Lightning cracked and showed her the steps leading down, and she felt her way carefully, trying to find the right balance between haste and safety. The waves were making a mockery of the harbour wall; they simply skidded over the top as if it wasn’t there. And beyond it, of course, blackness. Polly turned her head to see the dim shape of the lighthouse disappear behind her. There was, it seemed to her, no eerier sight than a lighthouse marooned in the dark.
She passed the clattering fishing boats, making their own jarring cry of alarm, bouncing and hopping against each other. She checked the moorings as she lightly ran past, but they seemed fast.
Selina was waiting anxiously by the water taxi. Polly charged up and threw the spare wetsuit at her.
‘We’ll get the lifejackets on in the boat.’
‘Have you got the light?’
Polly made sure it was pointing out to sea before she turned it on. The strong beam made much more headway across the waves than it had done shining down feebly from the lighthouse. Just beyond its reach she could make out some snatches of white, and what might have been the orange of a lifebelt.
‘There it is,’ she said.
They agreed that Selina would do most of the rowing. Polly would steer. The two girls looked at one another, both pale.
‘We can do this,’ said Polly. Her teeth were chattering. Selina nodded, her chin taut. She leapt into the boat as Polly held it.
Polly had been steeling herself for the onslaught, but even so the pressure and the low temperature of the deluge took her by surprise, and she gasped as the torrent of salt water unleashed itself on her. She started to bail immediately.
Selina was incredibly strong. The churning water would have been far too much for the little engine, and they set forth against the waves with sheer force alone, Selina grunting and pulling on the oars with all her might. Polly attempted to help, but she needed to steer to make sure the sea didn’t carry them away.
‘Left!’ she shouted. ‘Bear left! I mean port! I mean… No. I do mean port. It has the same number of letters as left. PORT!’
‘Left is fine!’ screamed back Selina.
Standing up, Polly took the brunt of every smashing wave as they ploughed on, and for the first time she truly understood what Tarnie had once told her: that it was possible to drown at sea without ever going beneath the surface of the water.
She shone the light ahead and around, but could not get a fix. Please, please let them not be too late. Let this not be in vain. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t. There couldn’t be nothing left of what had been there: the day trip, the family, the little boat. People didn’t just disappear into the sea.
Except if there was one lesson she’d learned from living in this strange and astonishingly beautiful part of the world, it was that they could, and they did. The sea was beautiful, it was life-enhancing, but it did not belong to you. It was not there to be tamed: the ocean was wild, and she would take what was hers.
Selina was growing exhausted as they advanced slowly against the oncoming wind, and Polly was trying to shout encouraging things when she saw it.
‘There!’ she screamed, stretching up and nearly toppling in. ‘There!’
There was hardly anything: no sail left, no mast at all, nothing except a stripy cushion, of all things, bobbing up and down in the water.
‘Go there!’ screamed Polly as it floated away from them. ‘There!’
‘It’s just flotsam,’ said Selina. ‘Just the wreckage. It’s nothing, Polly, just garbage. Let’s keep looking.’
‘No!’ said Polly, sure she’d seen something. ‘No, go on.’
Selina sighed, thrashing hard with her oars. Polly reached out for the cushion, perilously far over – and just at the very second she did so, Selina said something.
‘WHAT?’ It was a struggle to hear anything above the wind.
‘I know,’ said Selina, looking straight at her, out of breath. ‘Just in case… in case… I know about you and Tarnie.’
Polly shook her head, spraying water around her.
‘Jayden told me, last night, when we got drunk. Then I went and did that to your van. I’m sorry.’
‘You did what?’ Polly turned back to the sea, her heart pounding. ‘You wrote on Nan the Van?’
&n
bsp; Finding the cushion as it bobbed up and down in the waves was tricky, but Polly trained her light on it, and as she finally caught it in the beam, she saw underneath it a flash of orange, and a glimpse of something that could only be hair.
‘THERE!’
Newly invigorated, Selina took off through the dense rain, the waves battering them again and again. Polly’s throat was raw with salt water, the inside of her nose felt scoured; her eyes stung and she could hardly keep them open.
‘THERE!’
They were drawing closer now and a final burst of adrenalin from Selina managed it. Polly leant over the prow, and Selina held on to the back of her oilskin, absurdly too big, with her teeth, whilst continuing to row for their lives.
‘Seriously, you’re telling me NOW?’
Selina couldn’t speak with the oilskin in her teeth, but muttered something that sounded like ‘Sorry about the van.’
The large cushion hit the front of the boat. Underneath it, fingers clinging, white and unfeeling, to the zipped end was a man, his nose and mouth barely above the water. Hanging on round his neck, eyes closed, so that Polly was at first gripped by a terrible fear, was a small boy.
The man was so exhausted he didn’t see them, didn’t acknowledge their presence even when Polly shone the light full at him, then away again, not wanting to blind him.
‘Get the boy first,’ said Selina.
Polly had to pull hard to get the semi-conscious child to untether his grip. The man didn’t even notice. Together they pulled the boy into the boat, then unzipped the waterproof safety bag with the silver blankets, and wrapped the little fellow up tight. Selina checked him for vital signs.
‘He’s breathing,’ she said. ‘But we’d better hurry.’
Polly made several attempts to prise the man from the cushion; he would not, or could not, let go. Finally she stood up and shucked off her oilskin, then put her lifejacket back on over the wetsuit.
‘I promise I didn’t know he was married, Selina. I promise.’
Then she turned round and dived into the formidable sea.
Polly fought panic in the rise and noise of the waves, managed to cling on to herself, let her life jacket bring her up. She grabbed the man from behind, and, with a strength she had absolutely not known she possessed, heaved him up, with a wave, to break over the boat. Selina grabbed him, letting him drop gracelessly into the bottom of the boat like a sack of potatoes.
‘I HATE THE SEA!’ Selina was yelling. Then her eyes widened as she saw something coming up behind them. ‘POLLLLLY!!!!!’
Polly scrambled into the boat just as a particularly huge wave picked it up as if it were a surfboard and sent it plunging straight towards the coastline.
‘PORT! LEFT! PORT! LEFT!’ screamed Selina, hand on the tiller, desperately trying to steer a course between the rocks. Polly scrambled up, drenched, and held the light up, but it was unimportant now. Selina could not control the boat, and they were being pushed along so quickly by the force of the water that everything now would be down to luck.
Polly made the mistake of glancing behind her into the dark. At first, and oddly, it was like there was a thick black curtain appearing behind her, or a vast gaping maw; something, at any rate, so unnatural, so unspeakable, that her mouth fell open.
Then she realised what it was: a great wall of water, a huge wave rising from the deep.
Selina had dropped the oars. The two girls moved together, clutching hands, trying somehow to steady themselves. They braced their feet either side of the bodies at the bottom of the boat, trying their best to hold on to them, keep them safe.
For a second, the wall of water was like a windbreak: it protected them from the storm and the noise, and for an instant everything went eerily quiet. Then, BOOM!
It was like being shot out of a gun. An unimaginable force, huge and all-encompassing, grabbed the little boat and simply threw it towards the shore. All was chaos and Polly found a terrible scream coming out of her mouth. They were at an absurd forty-five-degree angle, falling off a wall of water, like in a cartoon, thought Polly.
Time slowed down. Everything slowed down: the noise and the shouting; the water; the grabbing hands everywhere. Polly lost her grip on Selina. Everything seemed to fade away, leaving her feeling all alone and, oddly, quite calm.
She found herself hoping it would be quick, that her brains would be dashed out and she would know nothing about it. Then, suddenly, she was thinking about Huckle, and how happy they had been. The first time they had made love, in that golden room the colour of honey; lying on the sand drinking champagne at Reuben’s wedding; the time he had handed her his umbrella in the rain and they had run across the dunes; the ridiculous attempt he had made to lift her across the threshold of the lighthouse and all the way up its 178 stairs, which had ended in utter failure and hysterical laughter. She thought of her family, of course, her life. But what she clung on to, what she thought of most vividly, was the straw-haired boy with the slightly wonky nose and the golden chest and the easy laugh and the slow way of talking; and a simple drop of honey, trenchant and sweet, rolled on his strong hand, given to her to lick, from one of his hives, in a garden heavy with buzzing and flowers and the soft warmth of a beautiful early spring morning…
CRASH!
The noise knocked her back to reality, and she found herself thrown up and out of the water, fleeing with it; the sky, suddenly, briefly, parting above her head, one hopeful star emerging, catching her eye, as she wondered at it; then SPLASH, she was in the freezing, roiling water, completely engulfed, and the waves were sucking her out, sucking her out to sea, then CRASH, she was being thrown on to the shore again, tossed like an old shoe on the waves. She felt herself being sucked out again, a deep pull underneath her, and something in her shouted no! and she pushed frantically and scrambled and scrabbled her way back with her feet; felt shingle below them, dug in, threw her hands down on to the small stones, and pushed herself forward again and again. This time she would not let the sea take her; it would not take her, it would not take anyone close to her, not ever again, and now inside her she felt warm for the first time, as if some kind of flame had been lit; a determined flame, pushing her ahead, and on up the rocky outcrop between the harbour wall and the causeway. She scrambled up higher, out of the waves’ reach, then turned round to see what the ocean had wrought.
Thank God, there was Selina, choking, coughing, but already pulling herself up; there was the man, and the small shape of the boy still in the blanket.
And now, above them, were dozens of villagers, hands coming down to help, pulling them up and wrapping them in blankets and giving them hot mugs of tea; and voices chattering and asking were they all right, were they all right; and were they all there?
Chapter Twenty-Six
Polly was hauled up over the wall, her teeth still chattering. All her strength – the strength that had pulled the child into the boat, that had helped her bail, that had dragged her out of the sea’s grasp when they had crashed ashore – all of it had gone, had deserted her completely, and her legs collapsed in a jelly wobble.
To her extraordinary embarrassment, they had to lift her up, as if she was a ten-ton seal that had washed ashore, and sit her down before she collapsed. Even with the wetsuit on, she was shivering from head to toe.
‘You’ll have to get out of that,’ said Muriel, ever practical. Polly nodded. The idea of actually taking off a piece of clothing seemed well beyond her physical capabilities right at this particular moment.
Muriel was the first to say it, but not the last.
‘What on earth… what on EARTH were you thinking? You’re town girls! You’re absolutely crazy, you could have killed yourselves. Easily!’
‘Are they… are they all…’
‘Everyone’s back,’ said someone. ‘It’s all right, my lover. You’ve done great.’
‘But… BUT…’ said Polly. ‘You’re not listening! You’re not listening.’
She knew where she ha
d seen the yellow curly hair of the little boy, had just realised it, and something snatched at her heart in a panic.
‘NO!’ she shouted, through her chattering teeth. ‘You have to listen to me! You have to! There’s… I saw that family. I saw them before. There’s a mother. I saw her this morning!’
This morning seemed unimaginably long ago.
‘There might be another person!’
Suddenly there were a lot of other people there. The RNLI boat had come back in – with, she gathered later, the crew of a Looe fishing trawler that had foolhardily set out to sea – and now Archie and Kendall had materialised in front of her, Archie shaking his head.