You, Me & the Sea

by Elizabeth Haynes

‘Can you walk?’ Fraser asks the sailor, who has managed to twist round to a sitting position. Now he can actually see, he realises with shock that it’s a woman: short greying hair, ashen face. She nods, shaking. Fraser helps her to her feet. ‘Were you alone on the boat?’

  ‘Yes,’ comes the response.

  ‘What’s your name? Can you tell me your name?’

  ‘Shona Carter.’ Her voice is just a gasp.

  She’s looking at what’s left of her yacht, split in two and glistening, shredded and terrible, picked out by the lifeboat’s searchlight.

  Fraser helps her to her feet. From overhead someone is being winched down on to the headland. Rachel is heading towards the helicopter already, holding her hood futilely over her head. The paramedic runs towards them as the helicopter takes off again. It looks as though it’s going to try and land on the helipad, which is past the ruins, towards the bird observatory.

  ‘Who’s been in the water?’ the paramedic yells.

  ‘These two,’ Fraser yells back.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Only my feet,’ he fibs.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Rachel yells. ‘This is the lady from the boat.’

  ‘Any other casualties?’

  ‘No,’ Fraser shouts.

  ‘If you can walk, make your way up to the helipad; I’ll assist here.’

  Fraser leaves the paramedic with Shona and wraps his arm around Rachel’s waist, supporting her along the path, lighting the way with his torch. The helicopter has landed and the engine quiets, and suddenly it’s just the wind and the waves again.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asks her. Through the wet hi-vis he can feel her trembling.

  ‘I’m fine, stop asking.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ he says again. And, quieter, more to himself, ‘I thought you were dead.’

  He’s shaking too.

  Rachel

  The paramedics let Fraser take Rachel back to the lighthouse. She’s blue with cold, but what she really needs is dry clothes and to warm up, slowly. They only let him do this when he explains that he’s a first-aider.

  Lefty comes into the hallway when he hears them come in. He’s wide-eyed with shock when he sees her.

  ‘I’m okay,’ she says, to fend off the inevitable questions.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘The yacht broke up,’ Fraser says. ‘Rachel was in the water. She went in after the sailor.’

  ‘Fucking hell,’ Lefty says.

  Rachel detects that tone in Fraser’s voice, dangerously calm. As if he’s beyond angry with her. She can see why: he shouted for her to stop. He told her to stay put. He kept shouting at her and she ignored him and went ahead anyway. But what else was she supposed to do? She could see the woman clinging to the broken mast. She could see what he probably couldn’t: the huge split in the hull that meant the boat was about to break up. What she’d missed, of course, from her position in the water, was the massive wave that had lifted her off her feet and hurled her back towards the shore.

  ‘We need to get her warmed up,’ Fraser says to Lefty. ‘You stay near the radio.’

  He peels the hi-vis jacket off her and leaves it in a heap on the stone floor of the hallway.

  ‘I’m sorry about getting everything wet,’ she says.

  He ignores her. ‘Upstairs,’ he growls.

  ‘You got wet too,’ she says, teeth chattering.

  Her legs feel unbelievably heavy, as if she’s run a half-marathon, and her hip is hurting where the wave hurled her against the rocks. The ice-cold water had been a shock at first, had made it difficult to breathe. She had paused and calmed herself, despite the roaring of the sea, the darkness, the tug of the water around her knees. Forced herself to breathe deeply. Then she’d heard Fraser yelling at her and she had moved forward again. If she looked round, she’d thought, she would have to stop, turn back, and she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if the person on the deck of the yacht had ended up in the water.

  After that the cold had been just cold. She was numb and moving automatically, trying to stay on her feet, until the wave came and she saw it and knew she was going to go under – the panic of holding her breath, gasping in just as it hit, bowling her over and her head smacking against the rocky ground and then her feet, and then her hip, and then the wave pulled back again and she found the shingle rolling under her hands and dug in.

  ‘You’re shaking like anything,’ Fraser says, gentler now, but still clearly furious. He is peeling clothes off her in the bathroom. She has tried to do it herself but her fingers are completely numb. ‘You really need to go to hospital.’

  ‘No, I really don’t. What are they going to do?’

  ‘Warm you up with one of those special blankets – I don’t know. Jesus Christ, Rachel, what the fuck did you think you were doing?’

  He has tugged down the waterproof trousers and her jeans underneath them, finally, and he sees the huge red mark on her hip, livid against the mottled bluish whiteness of the rest of her.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ he says.

  ‘I must’ve hit a rock,’ she stammers. ‘It’s fine.’

  He turns on the shower, his mouth set in a grim line.

  She gets in, still wearing her bra and knickers and one sock. According to the dial the water is barely above lukewarm but it feels boiling, searing her cold skin and making her gasp. Her nostrils are sore with the salt water. She told him she hadn’t swallowed any but of course that was a lie.

  A hand reaches into the shower and turns the temperature dial up slightly. Searing heat, again.

  ‘Is this how you’re supposed to warm someone up?’ she calls.

  ‘Body heat is better,’ he says. ‘But the only warm person here is Lefty.’

  ‘Right.’

  Then the shower curtain is pulled back and Fraser gets in with her. He might think he’s cold but she feels warmth from his body, watches the water running down through the dense dark hair on his chest and shoulders, forming dark rivulets. She reaches out a hand and presses it against the hard muscle of his chest. His arms are holding her up, under the spray.

  ‘I thought you’d died,’ he says.

  ‘I promise you I’m very much not dead.’

  His eyes are searching her face, his brows knitted, his breath fast.

  I’m not going to do this again, she thinks, and then she leans forward and kisses him anyway. Cold mouth, hot mouth.

  Fraser

  He was careful of her hip. He found other injuries too: a graze on her forehead that she insisted was just a scratch; marks on her back. He kissed them in turn, first in the shower and then afterwards in bed, dry and warmer now, moving quickly because at any minute the paramedic was going to be back to check them over.

  He had brought her up here and undressed her, and fucking her had been the very last thing on his mind, but somehow it’d happened anyway. She was wrapped up in her towelling dressing gown, had pushed him on to his back and straddled him, and they had forgotten to use a condom, and immediately afterwards he had apologised and she had too, and said something about bigger things to worry about.

  And they had both heard the knock at the door.

  He pulled on dry jeans as she limped to her room to find clean clothes. He came downstairs first.

  It’s not the helicopter paramedic but two of the lifeboat crew. They have managed to dock at the jetty, which privately Fraser thinks is little short of miraculous given the narrow channel to the harbour and the high seas outside. They are, of course, used to performing difficult manoeuvres in dangerous conditions.

  Lefty has boiled the kettle and left them to it, and the crew are helping themselves to tea and biscuits when he gets to the kitchen.

  ‘All right there, lads?’ he says, by way of a greeting. ‘That was dramatic.’

  ‘We came to check you over, see if anyone else needs to go to the mainland.’

  Fraser thinks of Rachel’s bruised hip and the graze on her head and thinks she really probably should go to
hospital, but the thought of letting her out of his sight now, even for a moment, is something he can’t bring himself to contemplate.

  ‘Hi,’ Rachel says, coming into the kitchen.

  She looks almost normal: big grey jumper, black leggings, thick green socks, red hair hanging in thick, damp ropes. She’s still pale. She’s very definitely alive.

  One of them, Paul, is a paramedic in his day job and takes Rachel to one side to check her for concussion and various other things.

  ‘How’s the casualty?’ Fraser asks the other one. ‘I’ve not had time to radio the coastguard just yet.’

  ‘She’s okay, surprisingly enough.’

  ‘What the hell was she doing out there in this weather?’

  ‘Sailing round the coast single-handed.’

  ‘Ah – not any more, she’s not. Did you see the boat?’

  ‘Aye, it’s pretty much gone. She had a lucky escape, right enough.’

  ‘She did.’

  Rachel comes back with Paul. ‘I’m fine,’ she says, as if she’s been repeating those two words on a loop for the past hour.

  ‘She’s in good shape, considering. And you’re trained in first aid?’

  ‘Aye,’ Fraser says, in a voice that allows for no argument, ‘I am.’ It’s been some years since he was certified, and it’s probably out of date, but he’s not going to admit to that. Marion has been pestering him to get it updated and he has been blatantly ignoring her.

  ‘So you know what to look out for, right – drowsiness, disorientation, dizziness …’

  ‘Aye, I’ll keep an eye on her overnight; if she deteriorates in any way I’ll radio the coastguard again.’

  ‘I’d still rather take her to the mainland and get her checked out,’ Paul says.

  ‘No,’ says Rachel. ‘Honestly, I’m fine.’

  ‘Well, I can’t make you go, I can only advise …’

  ‘I appreciate the advice,’ she says firmly. ‘I’m quite happy to take the risk.’

  ‘Apparently you rescued a lone female sailor,’ Fraser tells Rachel.

  ‘I thought it was a woman! I saw her face, just quickly, as she jumped. How is she?’

  ‘We think she’s doing okay,’ says Paul. ‘We’ll hopefully get an update, but we don’t always. It’s nice to know.’

  They all sit around the table drinking tea. The second crew man – Fraser never finds out his name – makes some jokey comment about Fraser’s son being traumatised by all the commotion. Neither of them says anything. He has caught Rachel’s eye and now he can’t look away, his heart thudding all over again.

  He nearly lost her. She nearly died. What would he have done?

  He thinks of the loch, of the cold, dark water. He hears it calling to him, calling him home, and inside him a voice roars.

  No more. No more.

  Rachel

  At the door the crew pull on their waterproofs again, but it’s stopped raining. The wind has dropped considerably. It’s getting lighter again now the storm has passed, the black clouds thinning out overhead, the sea no longer churned up with towering waves.

  ‘Looks like you’ll get a smoother ride home,’ Fraser says, as they head down the hill to the jetty.

  ‘I’ll take that,’ one of them says, and with a backward wave they’re gone.

  Rachel is bundled up in several layers, but she’s still cold. She wishes she could have had a bath instead of just a shower, a huge deep bath with bubbles and candles, something to chase away the dark thoughts of the freezing water surging over her head, the roar of the waves and the shingle and the crashing against the stones, the salt water in her eyes, stinging her nose, making her choke and gag.

  ‘I won’t keep asking,’ he says. ‘But just once more. Are you okay?’

  She stares at him. ‘I’m not sure. I think I am.’

  ‘What you did …’ he says. ‘I’ve never seen anything so brave in my life.’

  It hadn’t felt brave, at the time. It had felt like a compulsion, like something she didn’t want to do but had to; and then she’s reminded of Emily and that other time she made a rash decision and did something brave and selfless and ultimately rather stupid.

  The yachtswoman had been rushed away from them so quickly by the paramedics, it was as if she’d never been on the island at all. As if Rachel had rescued a ghost. It would be good to find out how she is, Rachel thinks, but at the same time she almost wants to forget.

  ‘Did you hear me shouting stop?’

  They are back in the kitchen. It’s the warmest room, next to the range, and Fraser has closed the door to keep the heat from leaching out into the hallway. He gets one of the tubs of leftovers out of the freezer and tips the contents – a solid brick of something vaguely orange in colour – into a pan and leaves it on the top of the stove to defrost. He’s going to start feeding her, she thinks, even though the darkness of the storm has disorientated her and it feels like the middle of the night – it’s not quite eight – and really she isn’t hungry at all.

  ‘You saw what happened,’ she says quietly. ‘The boat broke up seconds later. If she hadn’t jumped then, she’d have been swept off the rocks and we’d have lost her.’

  He shakes his head, his back to her. ‘Christ,’ he says. ‘What a day.’

  ‘I’m glad the storm’s died down. Do you get storms like that often?’

  ‘Not this time of year. Maybe once or twice. But later in the year, sure. Big storms. Worse than today’s.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Aye.’

  The pan on the stove has begun to sizzle and the warm, spicy scent of what’s probably his butternut squash curry reaches Rachel’s salt-seared nostrils, and she realises she could probably manage to eat something after all.

  ‘Are we having alcohol with this?’ he asks.

  ‘I think if I started I might not be able to stop,’ she says.

  ‘Aye, well, drink some water instead,’ he says, and fills a pint glass from the filter jug in the fridge, puts it on the table in front of her. ‘You’re probably dehydrated.’

  All that water, she thinks, looking at the condensation forming on the outside of the glass.

  She’s thinking about last night, and this morning, and Fraser going out on his own and coming back drenched and freezing. All of it has been somewhat overshadowed by this evening’s drama. She watches him moving effortlessly about the kitchen, putting on a pan for the rice, muttering something about not having time to make bread.

  He’s got it all inside, she realises. All that stillness, all of the tension in the way he carries himself. He holds it all in, all the time. It’s all very well pressing those buttons, trying to get him to talk, alcohol or no alcohol, waiting for him to be ready – she’s got to the point where she really needs to know. Decisions need to be made.

  She thinks she has begun to make them.

  Fraser

  ‘Will you stay with me tonight?’ he asks. ‘In my room, or yours, I don’t care which.’

  He sees her eyes widen. But everything has shifted after today, and he wants to be clear. He wants to be sure about every thing.

  ‘You’re only saying that because you’re making sure I don’t have concussion,’ she says, smiling.

  ‘That too.’

  ‘Well, okay. And you’re like a giant furry hot water bottle, which is a bonus.’

  ‘I’ve never been described as furry before, but I’ll take it as a compliment.’

  He sees the smile fade. There’s so much going on behind her eyes.

  ‘Are we going to have sex again, or are you literally just going to watch me all night?’

  ‘That’s up to you.’ He’s not going to push her.

  ‘You said all this had to stop,’ she says.

  ‘Aye, I did say that.’

  ‘And yet it keeps happening.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Why do you think that is?’ she asks.

  Oh, God, this woman.

  ‘Because I can’t hel
p myself,’ he says. ‘Because I have no strength. Because I’m stupid. Take your pick.’

  She shakes her head as if she can’t quite believe she’s landed herself here with such an idiot.

  ‘You reminded me of him for a minute there,’ he says.

  ‘Of who? Lefty?’

  ‘Like a wee drowned rat. All blue-white skin and bruises.’

  She’s watching him, with a small frown. It’s not the most complimentary way to describe the woman of your dreams, is it? he realises, but he ploughs on; he’s ruined things anyway.

  ‘That first night he was on the island, we lost him. He got off the boat and when we went looking he’d fucking disappeared. Robert had to get back, so the boat went. And I looked for him, and then just gave up, thought he’d found shelter somewhere. In the bird observatory, maybe. And there was a storm, nearly as bad as this, and the next morning I found him down in the cottages.’

  ‘That was when he did the graffiti?’

  ‘Not then,’ he says. ‘Or maybe he did, I don’t know. I left him there, see. Left him with a blanket and some water and a packet of crisps. I left him there in the storm. I thought he’d die. I wanted him to die, and for it to just happen, so it wouldn’t be my fault, except it would have. It was always going to be my fault, because I left him there.’

  She’s listening.

  ‘I wanted to kill him. But I wasn’t brave enough.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘I went down there to see if he was still alive. He was by the loch, freezing, soaked.’

  All she says is, ‘And you took him in?’

  At last he says, ‘Aye. Dried him off and gave him toast.’

  ‘And when the boat came back?’

  ‘He hid again. Fuck knows where. Then I just gave up trying to get him to piss off back home.’

  ‘He told me he wanted to stay here to get free from drugs,’ Rachel says. ‘And I got the impression he was being threatened by people where he used to live. But that was over a year ago. He can’t stay here for ever, can he, working for nothing and being shouted at by you every day?’

  ‘He can go whenever he wants. But, if he goes, I don’t want him back.’