“Just do as I damn well say!”He grabbed Priddy hard, for thefirst time hurting him, shocking from him a short cry of pain.“Youdon’t understand what’s going on here, and I haven’t got time toexplain.Promise me you’ll stay.”
“Merou, no.You know I can’t.WhatwasGeoff Blades twenty years ago,for God’s sake, to upset you this much now?”
“He was a genetic engineer,” Merou said hoarsely: raised onehand, and knocked Priddy cold.
Chapter Twelve
Priddyhad forgotten one basic fact about his own nature.He was stupid.Not in the intellectual sense: given time and a couple of re-sits,he might even have scraped through college and into university.Once there, though—like Kit, who had turned out to be stupid,too—he’d doubtless have picked up some handsome bastard to screwhim over.
As things stood, he’d managed to do it without leaving home.He stood on the slipway, dabbing blood from his mouth.Merou hadn’thit him very hard, because here he was, alone at the end of hisdash down the spiral stairs, in time to see the charter boatMiragedisappearing roundHagerawl Point.He’d even taken a moment to pull on a jumper andjeans.
Thejumper was big on him, ruffling in the wind.Geoff’s, of course.Priddy hadn’t bothered to look at what he’d pulled out of thetangled pile of clothes.Merou hadn’t taken anything at all, andwhy should he?His skin was all he needed.He’d have hit the waterin a slicing gannet’s dive, out of sight of the boat, in the baywhere Priddy had first found him.His two temporary legs—nothingbut a nuisance to him, like his assumed humanity, like Priddy—wouldhave painlessly fused, and he’d have beaten the great fluke of histail, once, twice, three times, and he’d have been gone.
He was gone.That was the essence of Priddy’s stupidity.Fantasies came easily to him, stories about the world and his ownplace in it, and he’d told himself a short, vivid, sweet one upthere in the top room.Merou and I willdive into the Atlantic, breathe for shipwrecked mariners, savethem.Merou and I...“Fuck,” he shoutedinto the wind.“Fuck you anyway.Why did you leave mebehind?”
A windblown strand of kelp flew up from the harbour andcracked him wetly in the face like an answer.Everybody was headingsomewhere else apart from Priddy.That was the message of his wholesodding life.He scraped his vision clear and stared after theboat.There was one navigable channel past the Hell’s Teeth rocks,risky enough in clear weather, a tightrope in a storm like this.Kit was a fair sailor.He must be at the helm, because theMiragewas threading herway along the edge of the cliffs, hugging the shoreline.Maybe hewas fine, and had cheerfully volunteered to take Geoff out to seain a tempest.Nobody knew the waters here better than thelighthouse-keeper’s grandson, and he was holding a good coursealong the one safe track.
That yawp of the horn hadn’t sounded cheerful, though.Noreason for a sound signal at all, on a deserted coast like this,unless you were trying to tell someone—anyone, even so useless acreature as Priddy—that you didn’t want to leave.Priddy hadwatched enough vessels come in and out of the tiny Hagerawl portover the past three months that he knew where the boat must beheading.In weather like this, she’d have to pass almost beneaththe overhang of rocks between here and Portheras Cove.It was afair drop, maybe twelve foot of clearance from deck to theoverarching cliff.You still couldn’t do it in a sailboat.TheMiragewasmotor-driven, powerful.Priddy could hear the thrum of her engines,but they were fading fast.
He wasglad that the shoes he’d yanked out from under the bunk were hisown.The right pair for the occasion, too: his well-worn trainers,which had carried him fleetly out of reach of many a bad situation.Even Vigo had never been able to catch him in those.Over theRosewarne cobbles, up the main street, the old man—who wasn’t oldat all, only in his forties, and hard and fit despitehimself—haring along after him.Down the alley and quick round thecorner past Kit’s house, where a loose plank in the garden fencewould save him, and then Kit’s mum and Kit himself, pulling wryfaces at each other while they hustled him silentlyindoors...
Friendsand friendships had their limitations, but they had their momentsof glory, too, and Priddy wasn’t about to be the one who had to goback to that ordinary refuge of a house, stand on the doorstep andbreak the news to his best mate’s mother that her boy was drowned.As for Merou—Priddy had been the one who had taken the wild, simpledelights of his company and twisted them up into a mad dream.Merouhad looked sick with fear in Priddy’s last memory of him—fear ofGeoff Blades, and this boat and its mission, whatever the hell thatwould turn out to be.Priddy checked his laces, then took off likea greyhound along the cliff-edge track.
***
Geoffwas clearly a tougher customer than his designer oilskinsadvertised, but still he let out a high-pitched shriek when Priddylanded on the deck behind him.The sound gave Priddy somesatisfaction.He caught his balance, grabbed the rail and pressedhis advantage.“Turn this boat around,” he yelled, glad for oncehe’d inherited a touch of Vigo’s boom.“Tell Kit to do it now,before we lose the shelter of the headland.”
“Where the bloody hell did you come from?”
“There.”Priddy didn’t mind if his upward jab indicated thecliffs or heaven.“Trewin warned you about the storm.Risk your ownneck if you want, but you’re not taking Kit with you.Turn heraround.”
“You jumped off...”Geoff glanced up at the rocks now vanishinginto the spray.“You should’ve broken both your legs.”
“Are you not listening to me?”
“I am.Do you somehow think I’ve got Kit aboard this boatagainst his will?”
“Against his bloody common sense.She’s a nice rig, but there’sno way she’ll handle weather like this.”
“Come and talk to him.Jesus Christ, I can’t believe it.Firstwe find you apparently dead on a beach and now this.”
Geoffturned on his heel and marched into the wheelhouse without abackward glance.Priddy could either follow him or wait for thenext big wave to sluice him across the deck.After a moment hescrambled in pursuit, ducking into the padded-leather shelter ofthe cabin.“Kit?Kit, it’s me.I got your message.I’mhere.”
Kitjerked round.He was too good a mariner to let go the wheel, andPriddy saw him lay in a course for the autopilot before turning togawp at him.He was pale, but it looked like concentration, notabduction and terror.“Priddy?Bloody hell, mate, what are youdoing here?What message?”
“You sounded the horn before you left the slip.Iheard.”
“Yeah, she’s new to me.I was trying to find the screenwipers.”
“Oh.Shit.Well, you still have to turn around now.Fuck’ssake, Kit—you know better than to tackle weather likethis!”
“Yeah, normally, but—”
“Do as he says,” Geoff interrupted.“Pull back her engines,anyway, and hold position while I talk to him.”
“You said we had to get out there right away.”
“I know what I said.But he’s clearly upset, and he doesn’tunderstand.”
