Stormswept (4 page)

“Your dad’s gone for a quick one in the pub with the others,” Mum told us when she got back from rehearsal, and we thought he’d be there for a while, talking and maybe singing. But as Jenna and I are clearing the table, the door flies open and there he is.

“The lifeboat’s gone out from Penmor,” he tells us, not coming in. Rain streams off his waterproofs. Mum hears him and comes downstairs.

“What’s happened?”

“There’s a Polish cargo ship drifting off Carrack Dhu. Lost power to the engines they say.”

“Is the helicopter out from Culdrose?”

“That’s as much as I’ve heard. With the wind as it is, she’s drifting this way, on to the reef. They’ll try to get a tow on her, but—”

We stare at each other.

“We’re going to ready the boat,” says Dad.

There’s no lifeboat station on the Island. Dad means the fishing boat he has a share in, along with Josh Matthews and Will Trebetherick.

“Where’s the sense in that?” cries Mum. “If the Penmor lifeboat’s already gone out?”

“It’ll need more than one lifeboat, if the ship breaks up on the reef. There’ll be men in the water.”

We all know how many ships have broken up on the reef. The sea around the coast here is full of wrecks. Dad knows the sea like the back of his hand. If we lived on the mainland he’d be in the lifeboat for sure.

“I’ll help you, Dad,” I say.

At that moment the gate bangs open. It’s Josh, streaming wet as well and out of breath.

“Been a message to the pub, she’s on the reef with the sea going over her. Crew got off in the lifeboat but two, maybe three, were thrown in the water. Come on.”

“Is the lifeboat still out there?” shouts Mum.

“She’s coming in. Sennen lifeboat’s on its way too. The Sea King’s had to turn back to Culdrose, technical problem.”

Everybody’s heading for the shore. The reef is a mile east of us and we’re the nearest landfall. Even though it’s dark, we can see all too clearly in our minds the way the sea will be boiling around the reef, ready to swallow ships and human lives. The wind is a hard south-westerly, maybe severe storm by now. Dad mustn’t go out in that.

But they are readying the boat.

Suddenly there is a shout. “Lights! Lights!”

It could be the Penmor lifeboat, or maybe the ship itself. The lights are close to where the reef is. Mum’s hand digs into my shoulder. The light disappears behind mountainous waves, then we see it again.

“I’m going to climb up the Mound!” I say. I’ll be able to see more from there.

“No,” says Mum, “You and Jenna come with me. We’ll get the hall ready.”

I know what she means, because it’s happened before. When I was ten, the lifeboat had to bring the rescued crew of a coaster in to the Island because the wind and tide made it too dangerous to cross the channel to the mainland. We laid out airbeds and blankets in the village hall, and gave them food and drink. As soon as the weather eased, a Sea King took a man with a broken leg to hospital. It’s happened other times too, but I was younger then and I don’t remember them.

Mum and Jenna and I get the tea-urn going, turn on the heating and blow up airbeds with pumps. Dr Kemp’s here too, setting up. Other people are in the hall, getting things ready, finding tea and sugar and mugs. Maybe none of this will be needed. I don’t want to be here, I want to be down at the harbour, watching out to sea.

“Dad won’t go out in this, will he?”

“Not unless he judges it’s right. He won’t risk giving the lifeboat any more work, you can be sure of that, Morveren.” Mum speaks calmly, but her face is creased with anxiety. She knows, as I do, that if Dad and Josh think there are men struggling for their lives out in that water, they’ll go to their rescue come what may.

“Jenna, they don’t need us here any more,” I whisper. “Let’s go back down.”

Jenna gives Mum an anxious look, but she comes with me. The wind hits us as soon as we are out of the hall. We run against it, and it holds us up like a wall of air. There’s the harbour, and for a panicky moment I can’t see Dad’s boat.

“Dad’s gone out!”

“No, look, there he is,” pants Jenna, and sure enough, there is Dad among the crowd.

“Are you OK, Dad?”

He shrugs. “Couldn’t get her out. We tried twice, nearly went over as soon as we got beyond the harbour wall.”

“Bad enough job getting her back,” confirms Josh, who is standing beside him. But they look crushed.

“Could’ve done it if we had more horse-power,” says Dad.

Everyone is out, lining the harbour, staring out to sea. Rain drives in our faces but no one seems to notice. There are two tractors with tarpaulin-covered trailers on the wharf, and I wonder why they’re there.

“There’s the light!”

It’s coming closer. A single, powerful beam that shines out and then vanishes as the boat bucks through the waves. Every time it disappears I hold my breath. Every time, it reappears. The seas are mountains that the boat has to climb.

“He’ll be getting his bearings from the harbour lights,” says Dad. “He’ll bring her round and get her in with the wind following.”

I think of the coxswain, who’s got to line up the harbour lights correctly to find the deep-water channel. It’s so easy to get it wrong. I’ve been out night-fishing with Dad and I know what it’s like to watch for those lights while your boat dips on the swell. And that’s on a calm night, nothing like this…

“Wind’s easing off a little now,” says Josh. Easing from severe storm to storm, maybe. Maybe just that little bit will make the difference and help them to bring the lifeboat safely in.
Two, maybe three, were thrown in the water.
How could anyone survive in a sea like this?

“Here she comes!”

I peer through the dark and wet and the thrashing water at the harbour mouth. Yes, there’s the light! The lifeboat hangs almost vertical, slides down a wave then disappears under the foam. But she’s there. She’s coming in. People are running along the harbour wall to the steps, and suddenly it is over. The lifeboat has made it. She is in the rough, safe waters of the harbour.

There are four crew from the cargo ship, and six from the lifeboat. The Polish crew are wrapped in silver survival blankets, huddled together. Dad goes down the steps behind Dr Kemp but I wait at the top so as not to get in the way. I can hear them shouting above the noise of the storm.

“Two men missing,” shouts one of the men in the lifeboat, “Sennen lifeboat’s there searching. We’re going back out.”

“Any injuries?” asks Dr Kemp.

“One broken arm, this man here. Cuts and bruises, they’re cold but they haven’t been in the water.”

“OK, I’ll see to them and be in touch with Treliske.”

Dad helps one of the Polish men up the steps. The man stumbles, and as soon as they’re up on the level Josh comes round to his other side. They half-carry the survivor over to the tractors. Now I see what they’re for. The tarpaulin is pulled back and the man is lifted very gently – I think he must be the one with the broken arm. They settle him on cushions and wrap him round with more blankets and the tarpaulin again. The tractor sets off immediately for the hall, while the second tractor waits for the other survivors. Already, the lifeboat has turned and is plunging back out to sea.

“That reef’s a desperate place on a night like this,” says a voice behind me. Jago.

“Poorish,” says Will Trebetherick, and it sounds like a rebuke. You don’t use words like “desperate” when a rescue’s going on.

Dad comes back. “We’ll start the shore search at first light,” he says. People gather round to parcel out the Island’s coast and make sure that not a metre of it goes unchecked.

Jenna’s already returned to the hall to find Mum and see if she can help there, and I follow her. Dr Kemp is with the man whose arm is broken. The other survivors stare ahead, as if they don’t yet realise that they are here, on dry land, and not plunging up and down on the sea. They are still wrapped in their silver blankets. Mrs Pascoe, who’s a nurse and works on the mainland, is chatting to them quietly as she takes pulses and blood pressures and checks temperatures. I feel as if we shouldn’t be here any more. They’ve lost so much: their ship, their friends, and very nearly their own lives. They don’t need people looking at them. I slip out of the hall.

Josh is right, the wind is easing off. Too late for the ship and maybe too late for the men who are missing. Could anyone survive out there long enough for the lifeboat to pick them up? I know the lifeboats won’t give up until they are sure there’s no more hope. Maybe the men will be found.

Dad said we would go out and search the shore at first light. I’m going too.

I don’t think I’ve been asleep, but suddenly there is grey light at the window. The shutters are open. Jenna and I didn’t want to close them last night. It seemed wrong, somehow, while the two men might be out there. Jenna’s asleep, flung out across her bed with her hair tangled. She looks pale and tired, and I don’t think I should wake her. I pull on my jeans and a hoodie, and creep downstairs. Dad is at the kitchen table, with his head propped up on his hands, drinking coffee.

“They picked up one of them,” he says without looking up.

“What about the other?”

Dad looks up. “Oh, it’s you, love. I thought it was your mother. No. No sign of him. We’ll search, but…”

I understand what he means. We’ll search the shoreline, metre by metre, but what we’re looking for may not be a living man.

“I’m sorry, Dad.”

“If me and Josh could have got the boat out…”

I say nothing. I’m glad they didn’t. It’s a fishing boat, and although it’s strong enough, it’s not made for search and rescue in seas like the ones last night. What if he and Josh had been lost, like that Polish crewman? I don’t even know the crewman’s name. It seems wrong, that someone may have died so close to here last night, and we don’t know his name.

“They don’t speak much English,” Dad says. “It’ll take a while to find out what happened. Right, I’m on my way.”

“I’ll come with you, Dad.”

“I’m not sure you should, my girl.”

“I’ll come with you.”

t’s the full light of day now, early afternoon and the tide is falling. We have searched and searched since dawn, and found nothing. A Sea King from Culdrose has been out searching too. Everybody on the Island has been out, along with coastguard services from the mainland. They came across in their jeeps when it was still dark, at this morning’s low tide. A section of the causeway has been damaged by the storm, they said. It’s still so rough that no boats are running.

I’m cold, tired and aching. I went home with Jenna at midday and we heated up some of last night’s stew, but I couldn’t eat more than a couple of spoonfuls. There was a knot in my stomach that stopped me swallowing.

Jenna stayed at home with Digory, because he was too tired to walk any farther, but I wanted to go back out. I don’t really know why. All the hope of the search has seeped out of me. My hands are sore from scrambling up and down rocks, searching in gullies and overhangs. The wind is still strong, but there are rags of blue sky now, and the barometer’s rising.

The only place we haven’t been able to search yet is the caves below Golant cliffs. They’re accessible for a couple of hours at low tide, if you go round the point. I’m glad that the Pascoe boys have volunteered for that. Those caves always give me a bad feeling. They’re dark and dripping with water, and when we were little we believed that a sea-monster lived in them. I think it was the smell of the place: fish, and something rotting out of sight.