Midnight Dolphin

by James Carmody

  They found nothing and as the sun began its final descent down towards the horizon, they trudged back towards Old-Man’s Cove. Mum and Dad were standing at the top, their beach bags in hand.

  ‘We were wondering where you two had got to’ said Mum, her arms and face glistening with sun cream. ‘Come on, let’s get going.’

  As they drove up the dusty track back to the holiday cottage, Bethany suddenly noticed her sister’s face light up. Following her gaze, Bethany saw the familiar Citroen Deux Cheveaux that Rachel drove. Pulling up, they could see Rachel leaning against the bonnet of the car, wearing jeans cut off at the knees and a shapeless baggy blouse. She had a grass stalk in her mouth and was gazing out towards the sand-dunes. She turned and waved.

  As they clambered out of the car, Megan ran over to her friend, leaving Bethany to trail behind with her buckets and fishing net, feeling small and unnoticed.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ asked Megan, suddenly full of life again.

  ‘Well my Mum cooks a mean spag bol and we wondered if you fancied coming over for a plate. You could stay over if you want to.’ Megan turned to look imploringly at her parents.

  ‘We’re very complimented that you’ve been so friendly to our daughter Megan’ cut in Dad rather stiffly, ‘but you do know we’re leaving tomorrow don’t you?’ he asked. He regarded Rachel suspiciously. It was strange that a University student should be so keen to spend time with a twelve year old.

  As if guessing his thoughts, Rachel produced an envelope from her back pocket.

  ‘Here’s a note from my Mum. You can call her if you like’ she added, though she knew that the cottage had no telephone. ‘Truth is that Megan and me have been doing a bit of research and there’s something I wanted to run past her before she left. And we like hanging out with each other don’t we Megan?’ Rachel added with a smile.

  Bethany could see Mum and Dad exchanging a glance. ‘I suppose there’s no harm in it love?’ Bethany’s mum said to her dad.

  Half an hour later, once Dad had walked up to the payphone to call Rachel’s Mum, Megan sat in Rachel’s Citroen with her overnight things hastily stuffed into a spare duffel bag.

  Bethany watched as the car bumped along the dust track and disappeared round the corner. Left out yet again. It felt so unfair, thought Bethany as Mum ushered her into the cottage.

  ‘Have you found the Trinity Caves then Rachel?’ asked Megan, as they rattled along the road towards Merwater.

  ‘Well, err no’ replied Rachel.

  ‘What is it then?’ asked Megan.

  ‘Do you remember that girl Mary Pewsey that the Reverend Smith wrote about?’ asked Rachel.

  ‘Yes of course.’ replied Megan.

  ‘Well it turns out she was this nineteenth century educator and reformer’ Rachel went on. ‘A bit of a suffragette before anyone ever thought up the term.’

  ‘What’s a suffragette?’ asked Megan.

  ‘She fought for women’s rights’ Rachel continued ‘and wrote a pamphlet saying that women should get the vote. She was a regular scientist as well. Did a lot of work on marine biology. Died young of course, but then plenty of people did in those days. Thing is, Toby Smith’s dug up something on her he thinks might be of interest to us. Hence the spag bol. He’s coming round to our place this evening.’ Megan couldn’t help but smile.

  ‘You reckon he likes your Mum?’ she asked. She couldn’t quite believe that people that old could fancy each other. Rachel laughed.

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised’ she replied. ‘Anyhow, let’s see what he’s got for us.’

  Spirit, Dancer, Star-Gazer, Storm and the other dolphins circled listlessly in the water. The short winter day had surrendered to the night and the stars were spread out above them in the sky. Spirit felt uneasy, as though he knew that something was about to happen, but he didn’t know what. Earlier, great fat snow-flakes had fluttered down and melted on the surface of the sea. Playfully, Spirit and Dancer had tried to catch the flakes before they hit the water, but they had had no luck. Storm had told them that in the north the sea turned to ice in the winter, but Spirit could hardly believe it. The sea would have to be unimaginably cold to freeze over, he thought.

  Their discovery of the Three Green Caves was the talk of the pod. All of the others were too big to swim through the crevice into the caves except for No-Name, who was far too young to try.

  ‘How could Spirit have discovered those caves?’ asked Chaser sceptically. ‘In a dream!’

  ‘It’s Dream-Time’ said Storm simply.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Dancer, her curiosity aroused as she circled restlessly in the water.

  ‘They used to say that Dream-Time is what connects all dolphins together’ Star-Gazer answered. It is said that before dolphins came into being, their souls existed first. Dream-Time is what links the ancestors with us here and now. So they are dreaming of us and we are dreaming of them. In this way all dolphins from all times exist in the same moment.’

  ‘I don’t understand’ said Dancer, feeling confused.

  ‘Maybe Storm is right’ Star-Gazer cut in. ‘How else could Spirit have known? There are many things in the world that we do not know the answer to.’

  ‘There must be a reason’ said Storm thoughtfully. ‘Everything has its own place in nature.’

  Once Lucy had wrapped her few small presents for Christmas, she sat and stared out of the cottage window at the cold white landscape outside. She shivered, even though the central heating was on. It wasn’t only the temperature that made her feel cold. The idea of the long grey years ahead of her without Spirit made her feel numb and empty. First she had lost Mum. Now she had lost Spirit too. She felt broken. Despair began to curl round her thoughts like weeds.

  To distract herself, Lucy picked up Mum’s copy of the ‘Flora and Fauna of the Cornish Coast’ that Rachel Greenwood had sent her anonymously in the post. Mum had scribbled in the margins when she was roughly the same age as Lucy was now. Lucy had been all through the book several times, but although it mentioned the Trinity caves, it gave no indication as to where they might be.

  Suddenly, something in pencil in one of the margins caught her eye. She shivered again, but this time not from cold, rather from recognition. ‘To find what you want, you must first let go. You will know when.’ There it was in black and white, the same words that the young woman in the bonnet in the tunnel had said to her when the light went out and she had banged her head. Lucy wondered if she’d just read it already, and only imagined the apparition in the tunnel saying those words. She was sure she hadn’t read them before though.

  Whatever the words meant, they gave her a small spark of hope in the darkness of her thoughts. It was a riddle and she had to have faith if she was going to solve it.

  ‘Well you might say you peaked my curiosity’ said Toby Smith expansively, as he splashed red wine generously into his own glass. They were sitting in Rachel’s Mum’s small living room above Owl Books, with a big bowl of Spaghetti Bolognese in front of them on the table. Toby Smith had called it a hippy habitation, and sat himself right down on a floor cushion. Megan wondered whether he’d ever be able to get up again. He didn’t look very flexible in his joints.

  ‘It was all this stuff about the Rev that got me wondering’ he went on. The Rev was a dreadful old prig. I’m embarrassed to have him as a relative really’ he said, ‘even as a dead one’ he added, glass half raised to his mouth.

  ‘When you came round I just had this niggling feeling that there was something about him I needed to tell you, but I just couldn’t remember what. Then yesterday, while I was listening to some Charlie Parker, I suddenly remembered.’ Megan lowered her fork of spaghetti to listen.

  ‘Her name was Mary Pewsey’ Toby Smith concluded, smiling broadly. Mother used to tell me the story when I was a child. Rachel, her mum and Lucy all leant forward to listen.

  ‘Mary Pewsey was this young girl from the Rev’s parish. Daughter of a fisherman apparently. Then her
father recovered some silver plate from an old wreck and became wealthy enough to enable Mary to finish her education. She had a keen mind and soon she was writing extensively on education, Cornish folklore and marine biology. Turns out she had an almost preternatural knowledge of the seas, currents and submerged sandbanks and rocks and whatnot. Of course the Rev absolutely hated her.’

  ‘But why?’ asked Megan.

  ‘She took the Rev on at his own game and won. He wanted to be the authority on all things Cornish. She was just better than him. Her writing was crisper and she was more knowledgeable. The Rev used to correspond with various bigwigs at the Royal Society in London. They stopped writing to him and started writing to her instead. He started drinking too much port and neglected his parish. He got gout and stayed indoors. He wrote letters to the London journals denouncing this young up-start of a woman, but it didn’t help him at all. It seemed to be all over for him.’

  ‘And was it?’ asked Rachel, her forkful of spaghetti half way to her mouth.

  ‘Well the old fraud had one thing going for him, and that was longevity. He lived a very long time and Mary Pewsey didn’t. She wasn’t forty when she died. He outlived her and then he was able to re-establish his reputation by picking away at hers. Now she’s forgotten and his books can still be found in libraries, even if they are out of print now.

  ‘That’s horrible!’ exclaimed Megan. ‘Poor Mary Pewsey.’

  ‘That’s life I’m afraid’ replied Toby Smith. ‘It was a tough world for women in those days. Especially women with little standing in society. She should have gone to America like many from these parts did when the tin mines closed. She could have made a real name for herself there. But she didn’t want to be separated from the Cornish sea apparently.

  ‘That’s an interesting story Toby’ said Rachel’s mum, ‘but I don’t really see…’

  ‘Aah, yes well I haven’t quite got to the nub of it yet’ Toby Smith continued. ‘That’s what my old mother used to tell me when I was younger. It was bit of family folklore, you might say. I never knew about this stuff to do with the Trinity Caves until you two came on the scene’ he said, nodding towards Rachel and Megan.

  ‘Well I thought I’d give an old pal of mine a buzz. He’s always in the British Library Reading Room ferreting out some fact or other. I wondered if he might do some sleuthing for me. Turns out he dug up a couple of old Mary Pewsey’s pamphlets.’ He paused and downed another mouthful of red wine.

  ‘What do they say?’ asked Megan.

  ‘Well the last one was published after Mary Pewsey died. It was all about the education of young women as it happens. The thing that caught my friend’s eye was the introduction. I’d told him about the connection between dolphins and this thing about the Trinity Caves you see. The introduction was written by one of her friends, or followers you might say. He dictated the salient bits over the phone to me.’ At this point Toby Smith pulled a small piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it. He cleared his throat.

  ‘My dear and good friend Mary is now lost to us. She knew more about the sea than any person I know and was passionate about the education of women. It was only a short time before her death when she was already ill, that I learned quite by accident that she was a Dolphin-Child, which have been spoken of by the people of Merwater for centuries. Yet she did not lose her gift like all the others when she became a woman. I asked her why. She said that she was what she was because of the Trinity Caves and the experience she had had there. Then she said something that I did not understand. She said that she was one of three sisters, though the second and third sisters had not yet been born. She said that she dreamt of them sometimes and she believed that they also dreamt of her. She said that her revelation had come to her one night when the stars were bright. She would not tell me where the Trinity Caves were. She said instead “To find what you want, you must first let go. You will know when.”’

  Megan felt a shiver run through her. It was almost as though these words were written specifically for her.

  Chapter Nineteen:

  That evening, Spirit could not help himself. He had an irresistible urge to slip away back to the caves while Dancer and the others slept. The sea was choppy and a light wind had picked up from the west. The stars glittered brilliantly in the night sky and now that Storm and Star-Gazer had pointed them out, he could see the Three Sisters in alignment clearly above him.

  As he approached the dark cliffs he could see the line of snow running along the top. The wall of rock below the waterline looked forbidding and cold. If he’d had to rely on his eyes alone, he would never be able to find the opening. Fortunately with his clicking echolocation he was able to find it easily enough and he confidently swam into the narrow channel that led to the main chamber.

  Spirit was worried that he might snag his flank on a jagged rock this time, but he passed through easily and soon found himself in the expanse of the main cave once more, lit by the iridescent glow of light, shimmering from the walls. Again he had the sensation of being entirely at home there in this strange, enclosed environment, even though he had only been there once before. He could not understand the glow of light from the walls. It was beyond his comprehension. He swam slowly around the enclosed space of the main cave, careful to avoid striking the walls of stone on each side, worn smooth by the timeless tides. He knew that there were two other smaller caves, but somehow it did not feel right to go there. As he swam slowly around, entranced by the eerie light, he fell into a trance in which sleep and wakefulness merged and became one.

  Megan had been intrigued to see Toby Smith and Rachel’s mum together. They laughed at each other’s jokes and almost seemed to lean in towards each other when they spoke. Megan imagined that her parents must have been like that once, though they’d been married for so long that perhaps they’d forgotten their early romantic days that Mum told her about sometimes when Dad was out. The atmosphere in the small flat above Owl Books was relaxing and fun. Megan was glad to leave her troubles behind for a while at least and let the conversation ebb and flow around her. Bilbo Baggins curled round her legs and she ran her fingers through his soft black fur. He leapt up into her lap and settled down to lapse luxuriantly into sleep.

  ‘Someone seems to like you!’ exclaimed Rachel, looking down at the contended cat.

  Eventually, his wine drunk, Toby Smith announced that he really had to get back home. Rachel’s Mum walked him downstairs and they lingered outside, laughing quietly.

  ‘They’re looking up at the stars’ said Rachel, peeking down through the window at them. ‘What a pair they make’.

  Rachel disappeared for a couple of minutes and came back with a blanket and sheets to make up a bed for Megan on the floor cushions.

  ‘It’s not exactly the Ritz, but I think you’ll be okay for one night at least’ she said.

  ‘Oh it looks great’ exclaimed Megan, stretching and yawning at the same time. ‘I’m dead beat’ she added. Reluctantly, she tipped Bilbo Baggins down onto the floor.

  ‘You watch out for that one’ laughed Rachel. ‘You’ll wake up in the morning with him sleeping on your chest if you’re not careful.’ Later, with the light turned out and with Bilbo Baggins curled up beside her, she lay looking up at the ceiling, wondering about Mary Pewsey, dolphins and her own destiny.

  Lucy’s head jerked upright. She had been lolling over her book, her eyes closed. The book had slipped out of her hands and the sound of it hitting the floor had woken her up again. Lucy got up and went stiffly to the bathroom to get ready for bed. It was another cold night and ice was already extending its crystals across the window panes. She climbed under the cold duvet and shivered. Dad was reading in his room and presently she heard him switch off his light and turn on his side to sleep. Lucy did the same, but now she was wide awake and her mind stirred with a thousand restless thoughts. Through a crack in the curtains she looked up at the starry night outside and thought about Spirit, drifting silently under the dark cloak of ni
ght.

  Sometimes Mary Pewsey was so aware of the other two, she could almost hear them breath. It was as though she was staring into a mirror in a steamy bathroom. There behind the condensation and vapour were two other girls looking back at her. If only she could wipe away the steam and see clearly. She would love to see what they truly looked like, but they were always just out of view. She wanted to call out to them but she was afraid they would not hear her. It felt as though they were part of her, though she knew that they existed in a different time and place. Her oil lamp threw flickering shadows up onto the wall. She blew it out and was enveloped in darkness.

  It was two o’clock in the morning when Rachel awoke with a start. Something had happened but in her befuddled state she could not think what. The night air sighed through her open window and she wondered whether her dreams had got the better of her. She sat up and turned, her bare feet resting on the hessian mat of her bedroom floor. She listened to the sounds of the flat around her. She could just about make out the steady breathing of her mother in the bedroom next to hers. She strained her ears to hear the sounds of Megan sleeping, but it was strangely quiet from the direction of the living room where she’d made up a bed for Megan just a couple of hours before. Rachel sat on the edge of her bed indecisively for another minute or so before standing up. She would just peek in on Megan she thought and then get herself a glass of water from the kitchen.

  The living room was illuminated by the dim glow of a street light. The window was open and a gentle breeze blew in. Rachel looked around. The room was quite empty. Megan had gone. Panicking, Rachel sped round the flat on bare feet, looking in the kitchen and the bathroom and whispering Megan’s name hoarsely as she went. Finally, she went down the creaking stairs into the bookshop. The tall book cases felt like looming cliffs in the dark. There was no sign of Megan there either though. An awful feeling of dread began to spread through Rachel’s body.