“Yes, sir.I was just out fishing, and I saw you godown.”
“Fishing?In a category-three storm?What were you thinking?”Ahuge wave crashed over Trewin’s head, briefly silencing him.Assoon as it receded, he spat water and picked up his thread.“It’sstillacategory-three storm.Where’s your boat?Did you have any crew?”The next wave brought memory home.Trewin stopped his hopeless,hard-trained efforts to stay on the surface, the doggy-paddle thatwas all he had left in him.The stillness of despair seized himwhole, obliging Priddy to whip round in the water and take him in alifeguard’s tow-hold, keeping tail and fluke well out of reach ofthe drifting limbs.“Ihad a crew.Oh God.Oh shit, oh fuck, oh Christ.Where’s mycrew?”
The category-three was driving the sea in alternatingmountains and troughs.Priddy took advantage of the next mountainpeak to scan the bay.There was the hull of theMirage, bobbing and adrift.Merou andthe storm combined had smashed enough bits off her to make usefulspars for drowning rescuers, and the bright, gallant shape of theSennen Cove lifeboat was nosing about amongst them.Priddy couldn’tmake a count from here, but she looked pretty full, laden andpotent with hope.“Safe, I think,” he said.“Come on—we’ll go andtake a look.”
“Priddy, how are you holding me up?”
“I’m a good swimmer, that’s all.”
“Nobody’s this good.Didn’t I tell you to...”
He brokeoff, coughing.Priddy got a better grip, made sure Trewin’s mouthand nostrils were clear of the water.It was easy to forget, whenyour lungs were full of stars.“To stay out of trouble?I tried.Ireally tried.”
He approached the lifeboat from the stern.All her crew’sattention was fixed on theMirageup ahead, on the last two orange-suited survivorsbeing hauled from the maw of the waves.Four lifeboat crew, fullcomplement.That was good.Now he counted orange suits.Two beingdragged over the rigid-inflatable tubes to safety, three morehelping out.One lonely soul in the prow, head down, weeping loudenough to be heard over the wind.The RNLI man nearest to himreached a hand to his shoulder.“I’m so sorry, Dave.”
“I can’t believe he’s gone!”
“I know.He was a great guy.”
“He should’ve bailed the second our rotors failed, but hestayed strapped in to land her so we could all escape.He was abloody hero.What am I gonna tell his wife and kids?”
Priddywas close enough now to let go of Trewin, who managed the last fewstrokes on his own.He grabbed at the gunwale six inches away fromDave’s knee.“Tell them I’ll be late for tea.For God’s sake,Davey—pull yourself together.”
You couldn’t stay to watch the reunions.Priddy understoodthat as clearly as if Merou had whispered the warning in his ear.Already Trewin was pointing back the way he’d come and bellowingorders, as best he could with his ecstatic co-pilot dragging himaboard, hugging him and pounding him on the back.Jem Priddy’s in the water somewhere here!Hesaved me.God knows how—if ever there was a lad that couldn’t savehimself...
But Priddy could.He ducked beneath the lifeboat, stayed underuntil he found the upturned remains of theMirage.He knew, with ahunter-predator’s precision, where he should surface to stay out ofsight of the men in the boats.He had no more business here: heonly wanted to count them.Six from the helicopter, four RNLI.Andone more, huddled well away from the rest.Priddy tried to persuadehimself that the solitary figure was dressed in a familiar,battered windcheater, but the effort failed.
Thewater burst open beside him.Merou caught him, clamped a handacross his mouth, dragged him back into shelter.“No.Hush.Youcan’t.”
“The murdering bastard!He killed Kit.And nobody saw, and he’sbeen rescued, and he’ll get away—”
“Quiet.”Merou restrained him forcibly.“I am telling you, ifyou go over there and prove our existence now, you will berewarding him beyond his wildest dreams.Trust to time, or if youcan’t, trust me.”
Priddystared at him, wide-eyed.“Is that what this is?Is Kit one ofthose...fixed points in time, where he has to die no matter what,and nobody can...”He choked on an inbreath of water and sobbed,seeing in his mind his lost friend’s descent, like the Sea King’s.A toy and a speck and then a memory, gone.“Nobody can savehim?”
“Priddy, love, we have to go.”Merou’s grip on him became ahold, then an embrace, the deepest and most absolute gathering-inthat Priddy could ever have imagined: warm arms, the press of warmmouth to fluttering newborn gills, the helixing clasp of tailaround tail.“You’re tired.Just rest on me.”
Hecouldn’t.Here he was, afloat in an Atlantic storm, nothing but amerman’s tail to hold him up.Surely he’d succumbed to Huddy Jonesand his chemical enticements back in the lighthouse, or maybe evenbefore that, in a dirty alley in Penzance.But exhaustion wassweeping through him, deep as the unstoppable sleeps of childhood.Priddy flashed back helplessly to his last one of those.He’d spentthe afternoon scrambling about the Rosewarne cliffs with Kit.They’d done everything they shouldn’t: explored the old mineshafts,dared each other to get closer and closer to an adder curled up andbasking in the sun, risked the incoming tide in a cave.Got back solate that even Kit’s placid mum had yelled at them, then fallenlike puppies onto his bed, asleep before their heads had hit thepillow.The wind’s voice died.As if the storm too had caused asmuch havoc as it could, and worn itself out in the process, a gleamof sunlight touched the water.Priddy let go.
Chapter Fifteen
Rosewarne Cove, for all its faults, was a beautiful place inwinter.A sheltering arm of the cliffs created a row of littlebeaches, each one shielded from the others, and from the villageabove, by outcropping rocks.On a sunny day like this you couldimagine yourself a thousand miles away.Priddy had spent a lot ofhis childhood doing just that, dreaming the Atlantic into theCaribbean, the beach into a desert island.
It waseasier now that he didn’t feel the cold.He stretched, yawned,looked down in wonder at his two naked legs.He must have fallenasleep again.Merou had told him there would be many suchawakenings, many necessary trips to shore, while his body adjustedto the changes happening within it.And although the first timehe’d panicked and clung to Merou like a barnacle while the cleavingsensation worked its way up from his fluke to his groin, hislover’s reassurance had been true: in water, the transformationswere no worse than being unzipped, and zipped back up again whenthe time came to return.
The zip, invented by George Zipowski in the 1860s.Priddy gave a snorting chuckle.How could he haveknown the love of his life would be a mythical creature of the deepwith a dumb sense of humour?At this rate his semi-immortality wasgoing to fly by.Beauty and mystery, passion, tenderness beyondcompare, and a supply of stupid jokes that would drive away allPriddy’s shadows in time...Merou had filled up his world from hissky to the depths of his ocean.
Thatworld would be utterly empty without him.Priddy sat up.He hadn’tmeant to close his eyes, although Merou had told him to let thebouts of sleep wash over him when they needed to, that they wereall part of the process.He would never be far away.If Priddy wasworried, all he had to do was sing.
That was ridiculous, of course.What was he meant to sing?Heglanced down into the tidal pool glimmering in the sunlight beneathhis rock.Sea anemones were plying their brainless trade in thebright water, tentacles hungrily drifting.Leaning so that he couldsee his reflection, Priddy checked his gills.They looked fine,invisible behind the muscle flaps which he could hold closed almostas well as Merou could now.His hair was a mess, though.Runninghis fingers through it, he tried a few bars ofHal-an-Tow, then the Padstow Maysong.His voice rang out of him in a startling baritone.It bouncedoff the cliffs, and the ravens on their promontory lookout postsflapped skywards, cawing and prooking back at him.He sounded goodby anybody’s standards—the opera-singer seemed to have taken uppermanent residence—but still his eyes filled with tears.Kit hadloved his Flora Day and his Padstow ’Obby ’Oss, seeing it as hisGod-given duty as a Cornishman to get roaringly drunk at both, anddance and sing until he passed out.Merou had told Priddy that hewas healing from a baffling, bruising lifetime of being human, butit had only been three days.Priddy was afraid that he was going tobe human for a long while yet.
“You do make a perfect merman, though.”
Hejolted upright.Merou was stepping carefully down from the rocks atthe base of the cliff.He was balancing two large cardboard cups,and he was unexpectedly dressed in Priddy’s clothes.The jeanscould have belonged to anyone, but the Weeverfish T-shirt wasunique.Priddy jumped down from his perch, ran up the beach to meethim.Merou broke into laughter, rocking under his assault.“Hey!Don’t spill the coffee.”
“Why was I perfect?I’ve only got my forky little human legstoday.”
“All the better to wrap round my neck, mountain king...Youwere looking in your mirror, and singing and combing yourhair.”
