Flood Tide

by Stella Whitelaw

  Dedication

  To Swanwick Writers’ Conference where this story began.

  Chapter One

  Later she could not remember why she had been in such a hurry that morning, her head in a book.

  It had been an old, rust-coloured, leather-bound book she had picked up at Oxborough market, the pages brown-edged and fragile, the faded printing difficult to read and the pen-drawn illustrations like spider’s legs on the paper.

  She had been hurrying along the main corridor at college, absorbed in the old book, when some small, spine-chilling message made her look up instinctively.

  The staircase at Oxborough College was a curving sweep of wide, worn oak treads, a relic of the days when the main building had been the home of a prosperous Victorian coal baron.

  She stopped at the foot of the stairs. A swift sense of apprehension ran through her veins. She stood, staring, frozen to the spot.

  There was a man on the stairs. He was descending the long sweep with an easy vitality that drew her gaze like a magnet. He was quite tall, wearing a casual pale blue safari suit and an open-necked blue shirt. His light brown hair was cropped Hamlet-style with a fringe falling over his tanned brow.

  But it was his eyes which drew and held Reah’s gaze. They were the most electrifying, dark brown eyes she had ever seen, laughter crinkles at the corners like fans of sunshine on his tanned skin.

  She stood, rooted, the book still open in her hand.

  “Are you about to say something important?” he said briskly. “If not, young lady, would you kindly get out of my way?”

  The accent was difficult to place. Later Reah was to know that it was Welsh, nurtured in a tiny village tucked in the green hills where Ewart Morgan had grown up and become a man who wrote magic onto the television screen with an ease that belied the lonely hours of discipline and concentration behind every play.

  “Sorry. I’m s-sorry,” she stammered, unable to move.

  His eyes raked over her. He was taking in the old Trilby hat crammed down on her red hair; the tight patched jeans; the baggy sweater that hid the femininity of her figure. Amusement, then irritation flashed through his expressive brown eyes.

  “If you’re going, then go—if not, perhaps I could climb over you?” he suggested, his voice now tinged with exasperation. “No doubt this habit of blocking the stairs always makes you late for your class.”

  He thought she was a student. Reah was not surprised. She looked about sixteen with her fine-boned face freshly scrubbed and her mane of red hair tucked up under the old Trilby. She loved the old hat.

  It had been one of her father’s. It made her feel close to him, wearing his old hat. It was his sweater too, a baggy cable knit which her aunt had produced for him to wear on his sailing boat. He had not been wearing it the day the boat overturned during a sudden squall off the coast. The lifeboat crew had searched for his body for hours. He had been washed up on deserted French sand dunes days later, sea-battered and hardly recognisable. It had not helped that the sailing boat had been called Reah.

  The man on the stairs made as if to squeeze past her. Reah moved in the same direction. It was like a farce, predictable comedy from a sit-com.

  “Since you are obviously intent on preventing me from being on time for my lecture, perhaps I’d better start climbing now?” he said. “I take it you are on your way to the conference hall?”

  Reah shook her head, the Trilby tipping a little over her eyes. She guessed he must be the visiting celebrity come to give the end of term lecture. Ewart Morgan, the playwright.

  Miss Hardcastle, headmistress of Oxborough College, expected Reah, as the youngest member of staff, to make the customary speech of thanks, but Reah hated having to do it.

  That was why she was not going to the Ewart Morgan lecture.

  “No,” she said, looking him firmly in the eye, those penetratingly deep eyes which were still taking her apart. “I don’t go on ego trips.”

  Her words cut through the air and hung there as if she had spray-painted them on the walls.

  She heard his sharp intake of breath. In his left hand, he was holding a stick.

  It was a thin bent branch of silver birch. He had picked it in the grounds of the college to use as a pointer for the black board in the conference hall.

  “What a pity,” he said, the ice edge to his voice telling Reah that she had gone too far, much too far. “You might have learned some good manners.”

  He touched her sharply on the arm with the stick. She felt the rap shoot along the raw nerve ends of her arm. It was almost a pain and she had to bite her lip to stop herself crying out.

  Ewart Morgan brushed past her. He was taller than she had thought; her eyes were level with his shoulder. He was very slim, the leather belt round his flat waist fastened on the last hole. She was taking in everything about him, her mind was acting like a camera.

  He strode away down the corridor and she watched his back, memorising in every detail, seeing the controlled vitality in his walk and the set of his shoulders.

  She would know him again. She already knew him. She had seen him before. But not on the stairs or anywhere. It had been in a dream. She had seen him in a dream that had been so frightening that for months she had shut it completely from her mind.

  In one moment, she had learned two devastating truths. The man in her dream had always been unknown. Now she could give the face a name. Ewart Morgan, who had brought her so much distress when her father died. She turned blindly, pushing the thoughts away.

  Reah fled up the back stairs to the high-windowed room where she taught art. She was shaking.

  Staff were not supposed to make coffee in their rooms but Reah had an electric kettle in a cupboard. It was the last day of term and she could use the morning tidying the art room.

  Oxborough College was not a top-scale private school, though it had a good reputation for turning out nice young ladies. It was a haven where failed A and O level students could re-take their examinations after personal tuition.

  Reah longed for the moment when she could start painting again.

  Watercolour was her first love; pen and colour wash her second. She liked drawing buildings, finding surprises in every line and angle, every crevice and corner. She could touch a pen drawing with a wash so pale and delicate that the colour seemed more like a reflection.

  Her father had always encouraged her to paint. She had painted everywhere from the age of four, including the bathroom walls, but he had forgiven her and the splodgy rainbows and fan-fingered men stayed on the walls till the next spate of redecoration. If Reah had had a mother, things might have been different, but she had died soon after Reah’s first birthday.

  A wave of applause came from the conference hall. Then she heard the scrape of chairs on the floor. They were giving him a standing ovation. She imagined Ewart Morgan lapping up the teenage adulation, leaving the hall beside Miss Hardcastle, tapping his calf with the silver birch stick like a Regency buck.

  She was leaning against the windowsill, sipping coffee when the door opened and Miss Hardcastle came in followed by the man Reah never wanted to see again. He looked at her with a flicker of curiosity.

  “Ah, Reah. I thought I’d find you here,” said Miss Hardcastle. She turned to Ewart Morgan. “May I introduce Reah Lawrence, our art teacher and the youngest member of my staff. Reah, I’m just showing our famous visitor round the college.”

  Ewart inclined his head. “We have already met,” he said. “Though I was unaware that Miss Lawrence was on your teaching staff. I took her to be one of the students, a somewhat unorthodox student.”

  Irene Hardcastle smiled. She was a tall woman with speckled brown hair in an out-of-date French pleat, and faded blue eyes behind half-moon glasses. She
had a great fondness for Reah and that was one reason for her latitude over Reah’s casual appearance in class. Miss Hardcastle was also shrewd enough to know that Reah’s trendy look took her a long way towards a good relationship with her pupils.

  “Reah looks too young but I assure you she’s fully qualified and a most responsible, diligent teacher.”

  “Responsible and diligent enough to skip the end of term lecture?” he enquired, his eyes flashing a critical look across the room at Reah and the mug of coffee in her hand.

  Miss Hardcastle held open the door. “This is a lightning tour. Mr. Morgan is due back in London for a script conference this afternoon,” she explained. “Come and see me before you go, Reah.”

  Ewart Morgan paused in the doorway, his hands deep in his pockets, and rocked back on his heels.

  “You’ve forgotten the still life,” he said, nodding towards a collection of over-ripe fruit on a plate. “Unless you intend to make a study of the growth of mould.”

  “That’s not a still life,” said Reah, gathering her dignity. “That is my lunch.”

  The crinkle lines round his eyes deepened and he was laughing at her. She spun away, annoyed that he had managed to mock her again.

  A few minutes later, she saw him walking across the grass towards the tennis courts. She watched him, her artist’s mind observing the movement of muscles in that long, determined stride. He would have a lovely body, she thought, lean and muscular and tanned. She stopped her thoughts abruptly in exasperation. She did not want to think about Ewart Morgan, ever. She did not want to acknowledge that there was anything special about the man. He was a sarcastic and arrogant cynic, and she certainly did not want to watch him drive away in an expensive and showy car.

  There was the usual end of term noise and chaos. The girls eventually left the buildings, and Reah was able to lock the art room and go downstairs to Miss Hardcastle’s study. She had taken off the Trilby hat and her long red hair hung round her shoulders, bouncy and vibrant.

  “Well, Ewart Morgan seems to like you,” said Miss Hardcastle. “He’s left you a memento of his visit.”

  She held out the silver birch stick. Reah could hardly believe her eyes. He could even insult her when he was miles away.

  It was unforgiveable.

  “I take it that this is some kind of joke between you?”

  “He may think it’s funny but I find his humour quite pathetic.”

  Miss Hardcastle decided to change the subject. “Now, I really asked you to come and see me because I wanted to say how well you’ve done this term. I know how desperately you miss your father. It’s been a difficult time for you, but you’ve coped admirably.”

  “Thank you…”

  Reah was suddenly back on the cliffs, staring into the uneasy seas, knowing with a chilling certainty that he would never return.

  Miss Hardcastle was still talking… “and I do hope you are going to take a holiday. What are you planning to do?”

  Reah dragged her mind back to the book-lined study.

  “Holiday? Oh, nothing much. There are a lot of odd jobs to do around the cottage, and the garden has been terribly neglected this year. I might start painting again.”

  “You really need a holiday. You ought to get away, have a change of scene.” Miss Hardcastle paused. Money was always a delicate matter. “I hope we pay you enough salary for a little holiday?”

  “Yes,” said Reah. “I can afford to go away. And my father left me some money. I’m just not interested in holiday resorts or lazing about on a beach.”

  Miss Hardcastle got up and came round the desk.

  She had a flat brown paper parcel in her hands.

  “I’ve been turning out my bookcases at home. I’ve far too many books. I’ll never read them all. You might like this one. It seems more your style.”

  Reah took the parcel. It was a heavy book. A smile lit up her face. It was a long time since anyone had given her a present.

  A smile quickly changed Reah’s face. The remote beauty of the young woman’s bones was suddenly brought into focus; the gentle, curving lips revealed lovely, even teeth; the large, wide-set hazel eyes sparkled with golden flecks like captured sunshine. It was altogether a radiantly dazzling smile.

  “What a nice surprise. Thank you,” Reah said. “Can I open it now?”

  “No, wait until you get home. And send me a postcard.”

  Reah smiled again. “Thank you and good-bye till next term.”

  “I wonder if you feel like doing me a small favour before your holiday really starts?”

  “Of course.”

  “Would you show Ewart Morgan the shortcut to the cliffs? He said he’d like a breath of sea air before driving back to London. I know you often go that way.”

  “All right. I’ll show him the way to the cliffs. I promise not to push him over. Not in term time anyway.”

  Ewart Morgan was waiting outside. He had been making some notes on a small pad.

  “I understand you’d like a breath of sea air before you return to muggy old London,” she said.

  “We don’t have fog anymore,” he said, as if talking to a child. “Smokeless fuel, you know.”

  Reah took the path through the shrubbery. It was a shortcut to the cliffs and to the road which led to her flint-walled cottage in the small hamlet of Southdean, about a mile away.

  The atmosphere was brittle. She could not think of a thing to say to this confident and successful man in his expensive London clothes. At the same time, there was nothing soft about him. He looked tough and ruthless.

  They reached the Downs where the grass was rough and coarse; pale blue meadow crane’s bills nodding fragile heads, yellow cowslips and ragwort growing among the gorse.

  “This is National Trust land,” said Reah, breaking the silence.

  In the distance were the verdant stretches of golf links and the estuary of the tidal river Cuckmere, flowing blue and peacefully between the fields to the sea. It was a view Reah loved. Below, the sea sparkled with dancing silver droplets.

  “It’s very beautiful,” he said. “Well worth the wait.”

  “I suppose you are used to having people at your beck and call, jumping to your every command,” she said.

  “Something like that.”

  “You could have found your own way.”

  “I wanted you to show me.”

  “I might have had better things to do.”

  “What a firebrand you are,” he said, strolling over to the cliff edge. “I suppose this is what comes from being a school teacher.”

  “Your knowledge of the teaching profession is pretty naive,” said Reah, her hazel eyes flashing. “The days of the dried up spinster with her hair in a bun went out with the Ark.”

  “And more’s the pity,” he said smoothly. “I hardly think patched jeans and an old hat are any improvement. Quite the reverse. I can’t see how your students can learn about being young ladies from your example.”

  “Nor would they learn anything from your bad manners,” said Reah. “Except, of course, they would learn what kind of man to avoid.”

  They stopped walking and their eyes met in a cold, steely clash. Reah did not know why she should feel so threatened just by the very presence of the man. He was undeniably attractive. Reah turned away abruptly.

  Along this small area of coast, the cliffs were not high. They had not begun to tower as the sheer and awesome Beachy Head, nor the undulating Seven Sisters that rose across the far side of the estuary.

  Reah had climbed these lower cliffs many times with her father. They held no fear. She turned her face into the wind and that was her undoing.

  A sudden mischievous gust of sea breeze caught at the brim of her Trilby and tossed it first on the path, and then, as she scrambled to catch it, tipped the hat over the edge of the cliff. Reah was more annoyed than alarmed.

  She put down her bag and the book and peered over the edge. The hat was only a few feet down, but out of reach caught in s
ome rough bush.

  It would be child’s play to retrieve it.

  “Surely you’re not going to try and get it?”

  “There’s no way I’m going to lose my father’s hat,” said Reah firmly.

  “You’re a fool.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to stay and help. I hope you can find your way back to your car.” She waved vaguely in the direction he should take.

  She eased herself over the top, slithering down a rain gully that gave sufficient grip for her feet, holding on to any sturdy root or jutting rock. She had to be quick. Any moment the errant wind might whip the hat into the air and spin it farther down the face of the cliff into the surging sea.

  But she reached it in time. She stuffed it inside her sweater, giving herself a unique third bust. Then she began the ascent.

  Afterwards she could never work out why she got stuck, but somehow she took a different angle of direction and lost the helpful rain gully. She had not been concentrating.

  It was maddening when she could see she was only a few feet from the top. One good heave and she would be perfectly safe. But there was nothing near enough to hold on to. There must have been a minor landslide after the last rain storm, for Reah did not recognise a single feature of the area above her. She moved cautiously sideways but found no easier way up. She was stuck on a small ledge only a few feet below the top.

  She heard footsteps crunching along the path and it was the most welcome sound in the world.

  “Hello there,” she called out. “Can you help me? I’m down here. I can’t move.”

  The footsteps stopped and Reah looked up hopefully. She longed to see a burly farm labourer or a rugged hiker, all brawn and muscles.

  The dark brown eyes of the playwright studied her with circumspection. She felt herself shrinking under his gaze.

  “You do some rash things, don’t you?” he said. “I suppose you need rescuing.”

  “Not exactly,” said Reah crisply. “I could climb downwards, walk along the shore and then back inland along the estuary. But it would be much quicker and easier if you just gave me a hand up these last few feet.”

  “Are you sure it’s safe?” he asked, peering over.