Lucy knew that she should write more, Mrs Penhaligon expected at least two pages, but somehow she found it hard to put the words down on paper. She wondered whether she could just escape to the world beneath the waves and never come back. It would be a dream come true if she could. Would Dad notice she wasn’t there anymore? Would he search for her? She hoped he would, but just at that minute, she wasn’t sure.
Mrs Penhaligon came up and looked at her work over her shoulder.
‘Did you like the story Lucy?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I knew it. My mum told it to me when I was little.’
‘And what about your own folk-lore tale? Was it hard to think of one?’
‘Yes,… no’ Lucy stumbled over her words, not knowing quite what to say. Mrs Penhaligon quickly read what Lucy had written.
‘A magic door to the dolphin world…how would that work?’
‘Well’ said Lucy, ‘it’s a matter of thinking really hard and then relaxing and finding a gap between being awake and asleep. It’s sort of there in the middle, but most people aren’t aware it is there and never look for it’ Lucy said before she knew it. She felt that maybe she had said too much and stopped. Mrs Penhaligon pondered on her words for a moment.
‘I think Lucy’ she said quietly ‘that not everyone has that gift. I think it is a rare thing and should be used carefully.’ Mrs Penhaligon looked Lucy directly in the eye.
‘But always leave the door open to this world Lucy’ she said, her voice serious and thoughtful, ‘never let it close, there are too many people here who would miss you.’ She patted Lucy’s arm gently. She straightened up and her tone changed back to normal. ‘It’s a good start you’ve made here Lucy, but you need to expand on it a little. Try to add detail to your story. Describe the characters. What happens after the girl goes through the magic door?’ She smiled. ‘I hope its going to have a happy ending.’ She passed on to speak to Amy next to her.
‘What was all that about?’ asked Amy as they came out of the lesson. ‘Old Mrs Penhaligon was a bit weird with you wasn’t she? You were a bit weird as well for that matter!’
‘I kind of have a feeling that Mrs Penhaligon was trying to tell me something’ replied Lucy cautiously. By this time she was dying to tell her friend everything that had been going on, but the time never seemed right.
‘I’m even more confused now’ said Amy. ‘You’re not allowed to have secrets from me you know, that’s the rule.’
‘I know, I know’ said Lucy. They walked towards the sports hall for P.E. ‘Listen, I’ll come round to your place on Saturday. I can tell you stuff then.’
‘It’s a deal’ said Amy emphatically ‘I’m really curious now’ she added, ‘I want to know everything!’
Soon, the afternoon was over and all the children piled out of the school for the weekend. Lucy had French club and for a change Dad was actually there to pick her up when it finished.
‘Hey Luce’ he said as they walked to the car after he picked her up. ‘I’ve got some pizzas from the supermarket. I thought perhaps we could hang on the sofa and eat them while we watch a DVD.’
‘I suppose’ she said uncertainly. Pizza did sound good though.
‘How was French club?’
‘Comme ci comme ça’ she replied. She always said that when she didn’t want to talk. Dad sighed.
‘Come on then, let’s get home’ he said. They climbed in the car and set off for the short drive back to the house.
Despite herself, it was nice to hang out on the sofa and watch a DVD. As soon as she could though, she made her excuses and got ready for bed. Dad was surprised. Normally Lucy liked to stay up late on a Friday night. Of course she could not tell him, but Lucy wanted to try and reach out to the little dolphin again. She still felt as though it was just all in her imagination. She needed to be sure.
As before, Lucy sat on the rug in her bedroom, looking into the distance, trying to see beyond the confines of the four walls of her room. She concentrated hard and then let go, relying on some deeper force to guide her through that door, towards the dolphin world. It wasn’t easy and she was on the verge of giving up. Then suddenly before she knew it, Lucy had passed through and felt herself engulfed in the water. But it was dark, inky dark. ‘Of course!’ It was night for her little dolphin as it was for her.
Slowly, her eyes adjusted. Lucy realised that the little dolphin was floating just to one side of her. He was asleep. Lucy stretched out her hand and placed it gently on his flank. It was as though her hand were there and not there at the same time. Although she could not quite touch him, she could sense his smoothness and warmth. She could just make out the pulsing of his heart from somewhere inside. It was amazing to be able to stretch out and touch such a beautiful, wild creature. She could barely believe it. It felt as though if she pressed with her hand, it would pass through him altogether.
Lucy turned to look at the dolphin’s face. He seemed to be smiling at her. ‘Don’t be silly’ she thought to herself, ‘dolphins always seem to be smiling, it’s just the shape of their mouths.’ Slowly, his eyes flickered into consciousness.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked quietly. He did not seem surprised to see her there again.
‘Lucy’ she replied simply.
‘What does that mean?
‘It means light I think.’
‘Then that is a good name. My name is Spirit. Light and Spirit. The two names seem to fit somehow, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, yes I do.’ She smiled.
‘And are you a male or a female human’ he asked. Lucy was startled for a moment but then realised, there was no reason for him to know.
‘I am a girl,..I mean a female. And you, are you a male?’ she asked in response. He seemed to smile again.
‘Yes I am.’
‘Is your world very different from our world?’ he asked. Lucy looked around, it couldn’t be more different.
‘I wish I could describe it to you’ she said.
‘Maybe you will.’
Lucy could sense that the tiredness of being there was sweeping over her as it had done before. It was like trying to use a muscle she’d never known she had. It tired quickly.
‘I must go’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’ Already Spirit seemed far away from her.
‘Come again soon’ he whispered.
The pods of dolphins slept on, obscured by the darkness and the shadows of the sea. Spirit was just one amongst many. But one other dolphin was awake and was watching Spirit being lulled by the gentle sea above him. Storm always kept a watch at night, but tonight he was watching over Spirit in particular. He looked over to another sleeping shadow and then back to Spirit. There seemed to be an apparition next to the young dolphin; a girl with hair floating freely about her and wearing a simple nightdress, arms and legs bear. Storm gasped. He had never seen such a vision before. He said nothing, not wishing to alarm the young dolphin. The girl seemed to fade back into the water again like a ghost and then was gone. Storm continued to watch the young dolphin for another half hour or so before, slowly, he too slipped into a waking sleep.
Lucy found herself back in her bedroom again, more tired than she thought. She climbed into bed and soon fell asleep. A short while later Dad put his head round the door of Lucy’s bedroom to say good night. He could hear though from her gentle rhythmic breathing that she was already asleep. He turned to leave the room. As he did so, he saw something on the rug in the middle of the room. Out of habit, he stooped to pick it up and tidy it out of the way, thinking it was litter. It smelt pungent and he held it briefly to his nose. ‘Goodness’, he thought, ‘if I didn’t know any better, I’d say that was seaweed.’ He dropped it in Lucy’s bin and quietly closed the door to her room.
Chapter Eight:
The Lady Thelma turned slowly in the water. Her paint was rusting in places and one or two barnacles clung fast on the water-line. She was a boat which had seen better days, but Nate was proud of her. He’d named her after his wife, Thel
ma, twenty one years before and she’d given faithful service ever since. ‘Thelma may not be as young as she used to be’, Nate thought, ‘but neither am I.’ She’s a good girl, he’d say to anyone who would listen and they were never quite sure if he was talking about his trawler or his wife.
The Lady Thelma was not a big boat and the cabin, with its cracked glass and ill-fitting door, was only just big enough for Nate and Bob to squeeze into. When the rain lashed down on the deck and the spray of the waves blew across in squalls, the cold water would slosh under the door and Nate would peer through the cabin window, it’s small windscreen wipers struggling under the strain, as he set course back to port. ‘Get us home Thelma’ Nate would mutter as he clasped the small wheel. Bob always smiled when he heard Nate talking to his boat, but he had a lot of respect for the old girl and would pat her affectionately as he walked around the deck. Atta girl! was what Bob would say when Nate wasn’t listening. Bob didn’t want Nate to think that he was getting too familiar with the skipper’s girl.
Nate steered the Lady Thelma back to port, chugging quietly, her diesel smoke drifting in the breeze. There was no rain that morning and the watery sun shone across the sky. They’d been out since first light checking their lobster pots. Bob busied himself on the deck, repairing damaged pots while the lobsters regarded him bad-temperedly from their cage just behind the cabin.
They’d not had such a good morning. Half the pots they’d checked had been empty and of the rest, a good number contained lobster too young to be harvested. They threw the smaller ones back into the sea to live another day. Nate knew the waters had been over-fished and their catch wasn’t as big as it used to be. The area where they put their lobster pots was some three miles from the port, on a submerged shelf of rock that jutted out from the mainland and which was only two or three metres deep. The pots were widely spread out and it took quite a while to check them all. Each pot had to be checked individually in the season. If a lobster was trapped, it should not be left longer than was necessary and it was always possible that the pot with the lobster inside could itself be attacked by a predator. Rights to put down lobster pots were hard-won and Nate had inherited his fishing rights from his father. They sold their lobsters to the local restaurants, but some had started to get the cheaper lobsters that were flown in from abroad.
Nate’s family had lived in this area for generations and, ever since he was a boy, he’d been out on his Dad’s boat in all weathers. He knew every rock, cove and sandbank for miles around.
When Nate had been younger he’d been a volunteer for the local lifeboat. This meant that he had to be ready to dash from his house at a moment’s notice and run, drive or bicycle down to the life boat station before setting out through stormy seas to some stricken vessel or other. Nate was too old to do that anymore and his ‘old bones’ as he would say, wouldn’t move as they used to.
Nate nosed the Lady Thelma back into Merwater’s harbour. Cliffs rose up one either side of the small town, which had grown down the steep hill between the coast line to the sea’s edge. A natural spit of land had been used to build a harbour, deep enough for the smaller fishing and sailing boats that used it now, but not for the larger commercial vessels, which used other ports along the coast.
Nowadays there were more sailing boats than fishing vessels and Nate eased past the jostling boats to where the few other fishing boats were moored. Young Mick, son of old Michael, was sitting astride a barrel on the deck of the Seaspray next to where the Lady Thelma moored. The Seaspray was a larger vessel, only a couple of years old and was equipped with modern sonar and radar equipment. Mick fished with nets and provided much of the wet fish that was sold at the fishmongers on the harbours edge.
‘How are the lobsters this morning?’ he called over to Nate and Bob in a friendly manner. Bob pulled a face.
‘I thought as much’ Mick continued, peering over at Nate’s lobster cage. He saw that only a few pincers protruded through the bars and quickly concluded that the catch had not been good.
‘And the Seaspray?’ Bob called back.
‘We’ve had a good haul of sole and squid’ replied Mick with a confident smile on his face. ‘These new nets are really the business’ he said, gesturing to where the nets were stored. We can really rake the seabed good and proper now.’ Nate was tying up aft. He looked up.
‘What’s that?’ he enquired casually.
‘That old net I had was no good to anyone’ Mick replied. ‘Half the fish swam right through. In the end it got snagged up on some buoy a couples of miles out. It was such a mess that we had to cut both the net and the buoy free. Its fathoms down now Nate’ he continued. Nate glanced up at him, worried now.
‘Tell me you didn’t chuck your net and a buoy away?’ he asked. ‘Old Michael would never do that. He knows they’re a danger to the sea. You never know what might swim into a net that’s been left at the bottom.’
‘Don’t you worry your grey old head about that’ Mick laughed, shrugging off Nate’s concern. ‘Dad’s long since hung up his water-proofs and he knows I run a tight vessel. They’ll not cause harm to anything now.’
‘I hope you’re right’ replied Nate, still with a concerned look on his face. He didn’t like lecturing young Mick or anyone else, but Nate thought he was careless with his boat. He should have brought the old net back in to dispose of properly. You can’t just go around cutting other people’s buoys adrift either. ‘You’ve got to leave the sea a better place than you find it’, Nate would say over his pint in the Three Bells Pub, but the younger men like Mick didn’t want to hear what Nate thought.
Nate and Bob tidied the deck and heaved the lobster cage onto the harbours edge, before carrying it over to Bob’s old pick-up truck. Bob would do the rounds of the local fish restaurants where they hoped to get the best price. The remainder they’d bring back to be sold in the fishmongers next to the harbour. Lobster was an expensive item on anyone’s menu and not everyone knew how to cook it well. It wasn’t the business it used to be, Nate sighed.
‘See you later!’ Bob called to Nate out of the open window of his ancient pick-up as he drove off. Nate and Bob couldn’t make ends meet from fishing alone so in the afternoons when it was fine, they’d take the tourists out from the harbour and show them some of the local coves and rocky inlets, looking for seals and even the occasional dolphin or whale if they were lucky. Not on the Lady Thelma though, as she wasn’t safe for tourists to go on. They crewed a tourist vessel and were paid a wage for taking it out. It wasn’t a bad trade thought Nate and there were more tourists on the harbour wall than there were lobsters in pots he would say ruefully.
Merwater had changed a lot since Nate was a boy. The houses and cottages were all still more or less the same, but now the town thronged with tourist traffic during the summer months. They weren’t in high season yet, but already most of the faces he passed on the street were strangers. The shops, which in his day had sold fishing gear and all the things that local people needed had been replaced by quaint souvenir shops or cafes with watercolours of the sea on their walls. The locals mostly drove to the supermarket to do their food shopping or the next big town inland with its shopping centre.
There were fishermen’s cottages along the side of the harbour and up the hill, but no fishermen lived in them now. They’d mostly been bought up by the out-of-towners; people with money from London who stayed for a few weeks of the year and then either let their cottages out to visitors, or left them locked and shuttered for weeks or months on end. This gave the small town a rather desolate air in the winter months when it was cold and wet and empty. Most of the local people had to live at the edge of town now or further out where houses weren’t so expensive. A lot of younger people had upped and left, looking for better jobs elsewhere. Both Nate’s children lived miles and miles away now and he and his wife, Thelma, didn’t see them as often as they would like to.
Nate got in his pick-up, even older and rustier than Bob’s and set off up the hi
ll back home for lunch. He passed the cottage where he had been born, looking down on the harbour and the sea beyond. It was done up very nicely inside now and he couldn’t believe how much it had been sold for last time it was on the market.
Legend had it that the people of Merwater were as happy in the water as they were on the land and that no local could move more than a few miles from the coast and the sound of the sea without falling ill and pining. Nate’s own children didn’t see the sea for months on end or smell the salt spray on the breeze.
Nate was hungry and looking forward to getting some food inside him. Work on a boat was cold, even in good weather and physically draining. He needed a hearty meal in the middle of the day to keep him going. Thelma had a job in the afternoons at the doctor’s surgery up the road, but still managed to cook him lunch most days before she went. Nate knew he was a lucky man.
Nate’s home was a suburban brick-built semi on the edge of town, on a road that narrowed into a lane which went on between the fields just beyond his front gate. It wasn’t picturesque like the cottages in the village were, but it was practical and kept warm in the winter when the winds could be cruel.
Nate was slowing down, before turning into his drive. A beaten-up Land Rover emerged from the lane beyond him, coming his way. The Land Rover was just getting close when suddenly there was a bang and the whole vehicle lurched dangerously across the road into Nate’s path. He slammed on his brakes and he could see the driver of the Land Rover struggling to control the vehicle. It skidded back over to the other side of the road narrowly missing Nate’s car, bumping up onto the curb and almost hitting the small red post box fixed to the telegraph pole.
The Girl Who Dreamt of Dolphins Page 9
