Stormswept. Helen Dunmore

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ