by Peters, Sue
`I can’t stop thinking of those birds,’ Lance decanted Hannah and the two young people at the front door of Penderick House. Chris and Melanie raced up the front steps, unable to wait to examine their new treasure, and Hannah followed at a more leisurely pace, her motherly voice calling after them to, ‘Mind and wipe your feet now, both of you!’
`Neither can I,’ Jo admitted. ‘Will the boats see them when they go out tonight, do you think?’ It was a possibility, but not very probable after dark.
`Not a hope,’ Lance confirmed her doubts. ‘And it’ll be hours before Dan gets back. It’s only just gone four now, and dinner isn’t until eight, that means over three hours away.’
`The water seems calm enough now.’ Miraculously it was. The tide had turned, the wind dropped to a brisk breeze, and although there was a heavy swell running, the
sea had the aspect of a millpond in comparison to its angry behaviour of the morning.
`I’m going out to fetch those birds in.’ Lance made up his mind.
But how can you? Dan’s not here.’
`I don’t need Dan breathing down my neck every time I put to sea.’ The youngest Penderick bridled. ‘I’m as capable as he is of taking the Kittiwake out.’
`The Kittiwake?’ Jo looked at him aghast. ‘Lance, you can’t ! You musm’t. The Kittiwake’s Dan’s boat. He’ll be furious.’
`He should let me skipper one of my own.’ His young jaw set stubbornly. ‘He knows I’m capable, he just won’t admit it. Don’t worry, there’s no danger,’ he assured her as she still looked worried. ‘It won’t put the boat at risk. The storm’s blown itself out, and there’s no excuse to leave those birds out there to die.’ Impulsively he grasped her arm. ‘Come with me and crew for me, Jo,’ he begged her. `There’ll be nothing for you to do except help me fish them out of the water,’ as she demurred. ‘I need someone to hold the other end of the net. Tomorrow it might be too late to save them, even if we could find them by then. Dan would go in a minute, if he was here,’ he coaxed.
`Very well, I’ll come.’ She slid back hastily into the car, before she had time to change her mind. ‘Lucky I went out in slacks, it’ll save changing.’ She kept pace with Lance as he parked the car and ran along the harbour wall.
`There’s the Sea Swallow, tied up alongside the Kittiwake,’ she pointed to the boats moored by the harbour steps. If they took the Sea Swallow, maybe Dan would not be angry. Even now she regretted her impulsive agreement to accompany Lance.
`Take Amos’s boat?’ Lance looked at her in genuine amazement. ‘I wouldn’t dare,’ he confessed. ‘Amos would never forgive me if I took a woman aboard his boat.’
And Dan won’t forgive you—or me—in a hurry, for taking the Kittiwake, Jo realised unhappily, but it was too late now. She grasped Lance’s hand, her feet hurrying down the wet stone steps, and then she was on the deck of Dan’s boat, and Lance untied it and joined her with a quick, practised leap that judged the widening gap between the harbour wall and the boat rails to a nicety.
`Come on into the wheelhouse, it’s warmer there.’ He drew her into the tiny enclosure, and with hands as sure as those of his brother he guided the trawler out between the arms of the harbour, and turned to follow the coastline.
The birds can’t be all that far out,’ he murmured. ‘I reckon they’ll be about half a mile off the Claw, still.’
`I thought you said there was a current that pulled towards the rocks?’ Jo remembered his remark to the man at the hotel.
`So there is, but from what that idiot from the cabin cruiser told us, I reckon the birds must have been beyond the pull of it, and the ebb tide will probably drift them further out still.’
`Do you think Dan will mind?’ she began tentatively, her misgivings returning with full force now she had nothing to occupy her.
`I don’t care whether he minds or not,’ Lance retorted carelessly. ‘I’m not going to let those birds die for the sake of trying to get them back. Keep a look out for’ard,’ he instructed her, ‘we shall soon be in the area where they were seen, and they could have drifted in any direction.’
Dutifully, Jo looked, but all she could see was the heaving water, and in it a reflection of Dan’s face, angry as it had been when he pulled her back from the daffodil field, and with a queer, sick feeling inside her she wished heartily Lance had not talked her into coming with him Sick? Oh no, she mustn’t be seasick as well. That would be the last straw. And incur Dan’s wrath for yet another reason. Tension turned her stomach into a tight ball, and she regretted the ice cream and trifle she had rashly indulged in at lunch time. It had seemed like a tiny celebration then, because Dan was safely back.
`There they are.’ Lance’s more accustomed sight picked out a dark patch on the water ahead. ‘I’ll get as near as I can to them.’ He throttled the engine down. It gave an odd sort of cough and settled into a muffled thump that just gave the boat way against the swell. Lance ran out on to the deck and Jo followed him, Dan’s possible disapproval temporarily forgotten. Lance had judged their position well; the birds were coming up alongside, but so slowly they had ample time to unravel the net between them.
`Lower it when I say.’ It was suitably weighted, and hung down just above the water.
`They look in a bad way.’ Jo peered over the side.
`Aye.’ His reply was brief, as grim as Dan’s had been on a similar, earlier mission.
`Now!’ Lance flung his end of the net outwards and down, all that Jo had to do was hold on to her side of it, which she did with all her might, finding it unexpectedly heavy as it hit the water and sank.
`We’ve got them!’
`All of them?’
`Yes, lift up. Gently,’ he bade her. It was heavier still now, but with a mighty effort she managed it.
`Best leave this bit to me. Go and have a look over the other rail for a minute.’ Considerately Lance took on the grisly task of sorting out their catch, and for once Jo was glad to do as she was told. One glance at the net confirmed the queasy feeling inside her, and she dared not let it get the upper hand. After a few minutes, from behind her she heard a series of faint splashes, then Lance’s voice again.
`Four of them were dead. These others might survive, with luck.’ He carried the rest of the birds back to the
wheelhouse and laid them side by side in the basket under the locker. ‘We’ll get back home and wash them clean.’ He reached for the controls and throttled the engine into life again. For a couple of seconds it responded, and then suddenly it gave another cough, and with what Jo suspected was a death rattle, it died into ominous silence.
`Come on, old girl …’ Lance spoke impatiently and tried again. ‘Oh !’ He gave a muttered expletive. ‘Just as I wanted to be extra quick.’ He did not say whether he wanted to be quick for the sake of the birds, or to be back in harbour before Dan came home. Jo’s own feelings included a good measure of the latter.
`Can you get it going again?’ Her voice was tight.
`Of course I can,’ he replied confidently. ‘It’s just that bit playing up again, I’ve adjusted it before.’ He dropped down into the hold, and Jo’s anxious ears caught various metallic sounds that indicated a spanner being wielded.
`It’s no good.’ He reappeared several minutes later, and his confident air was replaced by a worried frown. ‘You know that bit Dan said he’d tried to turn for himself, and it didn’t quite fit?’
Jo nodded dumbly, dreading what was to come.
`Well, he left it on the engine in place of the faulty part.
He must have been carrying the old piece with him this
morning, to make sure the suppliers had got the exact part.’ `Does that mean …?’
`We’re stuck,’ he found the words for her, and his glance flicked shorewards. Towards the black outline of the Claw Rocks? Jo’s throat went dry.
`The current?’ she whispered, fearfully, remembering what he had said to the cabin cruiser man that morning.
`We’re too fa
r out for the current to touch us, thank goodness,’ he replied, but his worried look did not diminish, and Jo wondered fearfully whether he was as confident as he sounded. She searched his face, but found no reassurance
there. Lance looked desperately concerned at their plight.
`What shall we do?’ Her eyes were enormous, pleading with him to find a solution. What on earth would Dan say when he realised his boat was not only taken, but broken down and stranded? She dreaded to think, and resolutely closed her mind to the many possibilities that presented themselves.
`The lifeboat?’ she suggested tentatively. He would be angrier still if they had to turn that out again, twice on the same day, and each time through someone else’s carelessness.
`No, not the boat.’ Jo noticed they all called it ‘the boat’, as if there was only one boat in St Mendoc. It was that important, to them.
`We’ve got ship-to-shore radio, I’ll use that. Dan said he was going to the canning factory to join up with Julian, we’ve got a radio link direct with his office.’ He consulted his watch. ‘With a bit of luck they’ll both be there now.’
`Dan?’ She’d prefer the lifeboat, Jo thought worriedly, and then changed her mind. Dan would have to come out on that too, so the one was as bad as the other.
`He’ll bring the Sea Swallow out, and give us a tow in, I expect.’ Lance tried to be comforting.
`That’ll confirm all Amos’s fears about women on boats,’ Jo said miserably. ‘And just as he seemed to be getting to like me, too.’ She had not forgotten the old fisherman’s unexpected championship when Tessa was being spiteful.
`Don’t worry about Amos,’ Lance echoed Dan’s words, but with a different meaning. ‘He likes you well enough. He thinks you’re a “leddy”, he’s said so,’ he grinned briefly. `And you needn’t worry about those, either,’ he nodded towards the Claw Rocks. ‘We’re too far out, and on the wrong side of them, for the current to take us.’
`I wasn’t thinking of the Claw.’ Strangely enough, she had not been. She looked at them indifferently. They
looked almost friendly she thought ruefully, in comparison with what she was expecting from Dan when they met. With no little trepidation she watched Lance operate the radio. After a lot of crackling a voice answered. Lance gave a curt résumé of their plight, and then Dan’s voice came on the air, disembodied, slightly distorted by the atmospherics, but unmistakably Dan. And just as unmistakably, very angry.
`I’ll come and fetch you in,’ he snapped, and the radio went dead. Lance pulled a face.
`Big brother didn’t sound too pleased.’
`He doesn’t look it,’ thought Jo, peering out of the wheelhouse window half an hour later, and watching from a safe distance as the Sea Swallow drew alongside, and a hail from its deck drew Lance outside. She could not hear what the two men said to one another, but a rope was exchanged between the trawlers and Lance made it fast. With a signal of his hand he rejoined Jo in the wheelhouse.
`There’ll be a bit of a jerk when it tightens, but it’s nothing to worry about,’ he told her.
That was the least of Jo’s worries, but she did not tell him so. Her throat felt dry, her head felt hot, and she wished her stomach belonged to someone else. She dreaded staying in the wheelhouse, and she dreaded going ashore.
`At least one of us is feeling chirpy,’ Lance commented more cheerfully, as a rustling from the basket on the floor attracted their attention to one of its occupants, that had struggled upright and was now taking interested stock of its new surroundings. ‘Cheer up, Jo,’ he continued bracingly. `Dan can’t eat us,’ he assured her. ‘He might even be pleased, when he sees the birds.’
Dan looked quite capable of swallowing both of them, she thought shakily. She emerged reluctantly on to the deck as the two boats closed on their moorings, and the men tied up. She tried to pick up the basket of birds, but as she bent
down her head began to swim and she hurriedly straightened up again.
`I’ll take those.’ Lance evidently thought she found the basket too heavy and she did not disabuse him. Dan was coming aboard, and she wanted her senses clear for the difficult minutes that she felt sure were bound to follow. He did not wait for them to disembark. With a swift twist of the rope he made the Sea Swallow fast and leaped with a lithe grace from one boat to the other as surefooted as a cat. With detached interest Jo noticed he wore soft pumps, which accounted for the silence of his tread as he approached them. Somehow it made his approach almost menacing, heightened by the grim silence of his demeanour. It was like the calm before the fury of a storm, Jo thought, and caught her breath.
`Well?’ Dan stopped in front of Lance with a curt monosyllable.
`We went out after these,’ Lance replied evenly. He tipped the basket slightly so that Dan could see the birds. `That fellow in the cabin cruiser told us where he’d seen them. I couldn’t let them stay out there and die,’ he said simply.
`You could have contacted me before you purloined the Kittiwake,’ Dan grated harshly.
`It would have taken too long to locate you. It seemed more important to go straight out. I didn’t think beyond that,’ Lance admitted.
`Do you ever think)’ Dan snapped back, the heat of his anger beginning to show. ‘You knew very well the engine was faulty.’
`I’ve adjusted it before,’ Lance protested, and Dan interrupted him with angry impatience.
`I told you it was good enough in calm water, when it was nursed along. Not in a sea like this. Look at the swell that’s running I I’d have thought even you would have had
the sense not to risk a boat with a faulty engine on that kind of water,’ he snapped contemptuously, and Lance flushed, angry now in his turn.
`How was I to know you’d leave a dud bit on the engine?’ he demanded hotly. ‘I didn’t know you’d taken the original component off as a sample, and of course you didn’t think to tell me,’ he added sarcastically.
`I don’t expect to have to explain my actions on my own boat!’ Dan shouted back at him. The two brothers faced one another, each furiously angry, and somewhere beneath the frightened hammering of her heart Jo plucked up enough courage to interrupt them.
`Lance only wanted to save the birds,’ she began, and stepped back hastily as Dan turned and glared at her.
`If you hadn’t agreed to crew for him he wouldn’t have gone out in the first place,’ he barked, and she went white at the fury in his face. The sheer injustice of being blamed for something she didn’t want to do to start with bolstered her quailing spirit, and she flashed back.
`If you had the sense to warn Lance about the useless part you’d left on the engine, or better still left it off altogether so that the beastly thing wouldn’t start anyhow, none of this would have happened,’ she raised her voice and shouted right back at him, and surprised herself as much as Dan in the process. In the quiet, academic world that had been her environment until now, she had never felt the need to raise her voice to anybody. It was a new experience to her, and a rather shocking one, she found. But it was exhilarating, too. She had managed to surprise Dan into silence, and Lance, she discovered, was looking at her with a dawning respect in his face. And also a dawning grin. Now was not the time to laugh, and she eradicated it.
`If you two are going to stand there arguing over the rights and wrongs of taking your precious boat out,’ she
flung at them both, ‘the reason for the journey will be wasted anyhow. Something will have to be done about those birds quickly, or they’ll die, and I don’t relish feeling seasick for nothing.’ A stronger than usual qualm from inside her warned her that if she remained on the deck much longer—even here, in the harbour, the water was undeniably heaving up and down in the most uncomfortable manner, and her inner self was doing the same thing—she might lose the advantage of her temporary strength, and give Dan the whip hand again. ‘You can stay here all day if you want to,’ she said with asperity, ‘but I’m going home.’ She didn’t correct herself, as she had c
orrected Chris. Anywhere where she could lie down and remain still would be home to her now, she thought wretchedly. She turned her back on Dan, lest he should see her lips suddenly tremble, and took a shaky step towards the rail, that seemed unaccountably a very long way away. Even the flight of stone steps had taken to floating about …
`Allow me.’ He didn’t wait for her to allow him or otherwise. With a quick scoop he picked her up in his arms just as her knees felt about to give way. She closed her eyes as the abrupt change in position from shaky vertical to horizontal threatened disaster, and turned her face into the rough darkness of his jersey, blotting out the light, and the Kittiwake, and the unstable, treacherous water, feeling only an immense relief at being able to lie still. Soft steps crossed the deck, she could hear them now she was so close, and she felt herself lifted higher—across the rail of the boat—then up the flight of stone steps. She started to count them, but lost interest before they got to the top. She opened her eyes, then. The breeze from the sea hit them with full force on the top of the harbour wall, and acted as an astringent against her waxen cheeks.
Put me down, I’m all right now. It was only the steps, they wouldn’t stand still.’ Did she detect a faint upward
curve to Dan’s lips as he looked down on her, lying close against his shoulder, but for once he did not argue.
`Try your feet, but hold on to me until you’re sure you can manage on your own.’ Gently he put her down, and Jo clung to him with both hands. She would have dearly loved to hold her head high and walk away, but physical weakness betrayed her, and a pair of trembling knees cried out for help to support her.
`I think I can manage.’ She couldn’t. She would never really be able to manage without Dan, now, but it was her heart that was at fault there, not her knees. They seemed immeasurably stronger, and the stability of the harbour wall helped her own. She loosed first one hand, then another experimentally, and found the swimmy feeling did not come back.