Christ,it was cold!The North Atlantic Drift wasn’t the benevolent forceit had once been along Cornwall’s western shore.Even the greatwhites were snacking on tourists elsewhere these days.He breastedthe first wave and the second, and the third smacked him right inthe face and took him under.He’d forgotten how hard the shoreshelved.It didn’t matter—was much more peaceful underneath thesurf than in it.Once his guts stopped trying to implode from theshock of immersion, he plunged strongly forward, cleaving thepulverised foam.He’d got a good fix on his drowning man.If hejust kept one hand on the belt, kicked through the few more yardsof the washing-machine maelstrom, he’d find him.The only troublewas the sucking undertow.He’d have to breathe at some point, andthe back-dragging current was making short work of the buoyancy ofthe belt.The turbulence flipped him—wig over love-handles, as Kitmight have said, in the wild days of their youth when they’d neverimagined ever having to worry about either—and he lost track ofwhich way was up.
Something seized him round the waist.The water took hisscream in a handful of bubbles, his last lungful of air.Everygiant-squid story he’d ever come across flashed through his mind,the tales he’d listened to on the harbourside when the oldfishermen got bored enough to start spinning yarns, the comics he’dcollected to scare his eight-year-old self shitless with bytorchlight under the duvet.He fought, kicking savagely, and thecoiling muscular strength tightened, hoisting him skyward, up andup into the wild night.
Theeerie thing was that he could hear singing.Not one voice buthundreds, as if half-a-dozen male-voice choirs had washed ashore onHell’s Teeth.The song spiralled up, skeined and shattered on thewind, fractured into laughter that bounced off the cliffs andbecame a single voice, resonant and close to his ear.
“What’s the point of the lighthouse if you come charging downto do the job yourself?”
Priddygot his face out of the water.He was able to do this because hewas being held clear of the undertow by the shipwrecked mariner,who didn’t look shipwrecked at all up close.Who looked annoyed andamused all at once, and more than anything else bloody gorgeous,the kind of face Priddy had only seen before in medieval portraitsof Spanish princes, sculptured and haughty and not the least bitconcerned by the heaving surf.Some kind of superhuman bloodyswimmer, as well—maintaining position with powerful strokes of hisfree arm, his grip on Priddy almost casual.
So far,his hallucinations had done everything but piss him off.He had tobelieve this one was real.Arrogant bastard, putting lives indanger for kicks, and where was his crew?“The point of thelighthouse,” Priddy choked, spitting out seawater, “is to keeptwats like you away.Let me go!”
TheSpanish prince obeyed.Priddy sank like a stone.A second passed,sluggish with cold in Priddy’s blood, then two, then five, and thenhis captor/saviour tired of the joke and punted him from below asif he’d been a dolphin’s beachball, lifting him again.Was hewearing jeans, or a rolled-down wetsuit?He was naked from thewaist up, skin hot and electric when Priddy grabbed at him, but hismuscular backside scraped Priddy’s palm like wire, rough enough todraw blood.The steep-pitched beach rushed up at him and he hit itbelly-flat and hard.
Something—some force—had thrown him ashore like a fish.Hescrambled out of reach of the next wave, got to his hands and kneesand hauled out.He stared back at the swimmer, now scullingleisurely back and forth among the waves.“How are you doing that?”he yelled, rubbing water out of his eyes.“You should be drowning.You should be freezing to death.Who the hell are you?”
“Don’t you meanwhat?”
“I’m sorry?”
“They always meanwhat, when they ask that.What the hell are you.Nopoint in explaining, is there?It’s not as if I’ll ever see youagain.Take care of yourself, lighthouse boy—for you, I almost wishI could—”
Hevanished.Coughing, clawing his way upslope, Priddy watched thespot where the waves had closed over his dark head.
Christ, had a shark got him after all?He exploded back tosurface.His hair threw out a perfect arc of foam and a terriblesound ripped from him, somewhere between a roar and scream, as ifhe was being hewn up the middle or torn into shreds from below.Priddy lurched to his feet and stood swaying, expecting to see ablossom of blood in the water.In for apenny, his recently-acquired deathwishsaid, and the plain ballsy Cornishman in him concurred.He gotready to dive again.
“Stop!”
Theraw-voiced command froze him dead.The swimmer was holding up oneimperious hand.He was choking and spitting out saltwater now ,though, like a normal human being, and clinging to a plank from theboat with his free arm.“What?”Priddy yelled in bemusement.“Whatthe hell are you doing?”
“Did you touch me?”
“Did I...”Priddy tried to shake his ears clear.“Youtouchedme, mate.You slung me out of the water.”
“No.Did youtouchme—tava,merouche?”
Priddyknew the first word from his long-ago Cornish lessons.The secondsounded like an elegant sneeze and meant nothing to him.“You wantto discuss this right now?”
“No.Iamdrowning now, thanks to you.Iambloody freezing to death.I hopeyou’re happy.”
If therewas no shark involved, Priddy didn’t have to go back in the water.He found the rope, reeled the life belt in far enough to grab it.“Heads up!”he shouted into the wind.“Grab this and I’ll pull youin.”
“So undignified!”
“Take it or leave it, you nutcase.Here it comes!”
He threwhard and well.The belt landed within the lunatic’s reach.Eventhen he hesitated, looking back and forth between his spar of woodand salvation.Priddy, beginning to shiver with cold and reactionon the shore, gave the rope an impatient tug, and took up the loadin relief when at last the drowning man made up hismind.
Towinghim ashore was easy after that, just hand-over-hand on the slipperyrope, heels digging deep for purchase.He wasn’t getting much helpfrom the opposite end.Maybe shock was finally catching up with thesailor: just when Priddy thought he was back in his depth and ableto clamber for safety, he folded down into the breaking surf as ifhis legs had given out on him.Well, he could drown just as well intwo feet of water as twenty, and losing him now would be a shame.Looping the rope over one arm, Priddy ran to find him.
“All right.Got you.”Had he, though?His armpits were chillyas abandoned cockle shells.Priddy had hauled enough swimmers tosafety to know that warmth lingered there even when every otherinch had dropped to hypothermic clay.One poor lad had died of coldright at his feet.That had been a bad day, a beginning tochildhood’s end.Not again,please, he prayed to a God whosebad-tempered biblical antics had made him an atheist sincekindergarten.“Come on, mate.You still with me?”
Not aflicker of response from the regal face.His head was drooping overPriddy’s arm.And either he’d been sleeping in the buff when hisboat ran aground or there’d been a hell of a party in progress onboard: he was stark bullock naked, no jeans or rolled-down wetsuitat all.His long limbs trailed helplessly as Priddy dragged him farenough out of the breakers that the next big one wouldn’t snatchthem both back, then a little bit further just to make sure.Oncehe had turf underfoot and hard-packed dune sand, he laid him down.In the strobe of the lighthouse he noted—abstractedly, just as hecouldn’t help but observe the wild beauty of the night—that thiswas the loveliest man he’d ever set eyes on.He had to bring himback.Somebody somewhere would break their heartotherwise.
Heopened the perfect mouth: wonderingly unspooled from it a length ofseaweed.Other than that, the airway looked clear, and he shook theinsulation blanket out of its pack and covered up as much of thesupine body as he could before leaning in to startresuscitation.
A handclosed in the hair at the back of his neck.For less than a secondit imprisoned him—long enough to pull him down and plant oneenthralling kiss on his chilly mouth—then let him go.The survivorsat up, straight from the hips, abs clearly in as beautiful shapeas the rest of him.“It’s happened,” he declared.He clapped hishands to his thighs, ran them down his shins and took hold of hisfeet.“Hasn’t it?Look at me!”
“I can see you,” Priddy said wryly.The wind had flipped theblanket aside, and he reached to grab it before it blew away.Nothing was hidden at all.“Put this on, before you catch yourdeath.”
