Stormswept

“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.

“It’s the monster’s lair,” Jenna would whisper, and we’d scream and run out again. There are tunnels at the back, but they don’t lead anywhere. They are just waiting to wrap themselves around you as the tide rises to fill them to the roof.

I’ll stop soon, and go back home for a while to warm up. No one really believes that we’ll find the missing man alive now. Too many hours have passed. I hope he died quickly. I hope he didn’t struggle too long in the water, hoping for rescue which didn’t come. I hope he wasn’t trapped anywhere. That’s my worst nightmare.

I rub my hands together to warm them. The sun is out now, sparkling on the waves. It looks so beautiful that it’s hard to believe this is the same sea that drove a cargo ship on to the reef last night. The wind is still cold, though. I shield my eyes and stare down the stretch of pale sand, to the rocks that gash into the water. Porth Gwyn. That’s its proper name but we just call it “the beach” because it’s where we always played when we were little. In the summer people come out here to sunbathe. It’s not a great place to swim because of the rips, but there’s a big natural pool hidden among the rocks, right down at the end of the beach. It’s more than two metres deep at one end. Jen and I call it King Ragworm Pool because we found the biggest King Ragworm we’ve ever seen in it, after a storm. It was half a metre long, and hideous. It put us off swimming there for a long time.

The pool fills from a channel, because the tide doesn’t come up far enough. It’s quite strange how it happens: there’s another rock pool higher and closer to the sea, which fills with every tide, and then the water runs to King Ragworm Pool. It looks as if someone engineered a channel long ago.

I search among the rocks, peering down into deep clefts and gullies where the sea thumps in at high tide. While I’m looking, I don’t let myself think about what I’m looking for. I think about Jenna and I searching for lost things that the tide has taken. If you’re patient, and thorough, you often find them. Maybe I should check again along the surf and the shoreline.

At that moment the church bell rings out from the village. Even at this distance I can hear it clearly. Just one bell, tolling out one slow stroke, and then another, as they do for a funeral. It’s a signal. The wind lifts the sound, carries it towards me and then snatches it away. I know exactly what it means. At times like these the church bells have their own language, and everyone understands it. The lost man has been found, but he is dead. If they’d found him alive, all the bells would have pealed out a clangour like wedding bells. This single bell-note is telling us it’s time to give up, and come home.

Such a slow, heavy sound. The sea glitters as the sun comes out more strongly, and a gull dives down, screeching. They used to say gulls were soul-birds, and carried the souls of drowned sailors. No one believes that now, but I wish it were true as I watch the gull ride the waves of the air.

Five men were saved, I remind myself. The lifeboat did everything it could.

I ought to go back home, but I don’t want to. Everybody will be talking about where the man’s body was found.

I wander slowly along the strand, still watching the gull which has now soared high into the air. It heads out to sea and soon it is out of sight. Maybe you’ve gone back to Poland, I think, but I can’t really believe it. The bell is still tolling.

The rocks ahead of me are covered with mussels. Maybe I’ll pick some. Tide’s way out now. The Pascoe boys will be able to get round to the caves at the base of Golant cliffs. Then I remember that there’s no need for them to do that any more.

Anyway, it was a stupid idea to pick mussels, because I’ve nothing to carry them in. Mum usually has an “in case” bag in her coat pocket. I dig my hands into my waterproof pockets, and to my amazement I pull out a Sainsbury’s bag. Where did that come from? I remember that it’s from when Jen and I bought Cokes and crisps in Marazance. I must have stuffed it in my pocket afterwards. Obviously I am meant to pick mussels.

I’m walking towards the rocks when I hear it. Not the bell, but something much closer. A sound like a groan, quickly smothered. I stop, and stare all around. Nothing. Empty sand and empty sea. But I’m sure I heard it. I wait, dead still. Seconds tick past, with the wind soughing in my ears, and the sand sifting underfoot. Nothing. I’m about to walk on when it comes again. The kind of sound you make when you’re in too much pain to keep quiet, but you choke it back as soon as you can, because you’re frightened of people hearing. But who would be frightened of me?

“Who’s there?” I call. No one answers. My mind races. Maybe there was another crewman, and in the confusion of the wreck he was forgotten. Or else, maybe the rescued crewmen gave the number of crew wrong. They barely speak English. What if there’s another man, an injured survivor lying somewhere close, maybe unconscious? You can still groan when you’re unconscious, I think. I’ve got to find him.

“Where are you?” I call. “Don’t be frightened. I want to help you.”