Phosphorescence Read online

‘Could I squeeze in with you and Freda?’ Pansy whispers to me. ‘I bet she’ll snore. Drunk people always do.’

  ‘I think I might sleep outside,’ I say, tentatively but loud enough for the boys to hear. ‘That was the idea earlier. We’ve just got to make the beds up.’

  I am still keen to keep some sort of spell going and, also, I am pretty sure none of the others has ever slept outside, and they will love it.

  ‘Can you sleep outside?’

  ‘What if it rains?’

  ‘Isn’t it freezing?’

  Everyone crowds around me, and Harry grins and says, ‘Come on then, Lola. Lead the way and we’ll do it. But what do we sleep on?’

  Chapter 14

  A piping birdcall close to my ear wakes me, and beyond it I hear the clamour of gulls and the sea whispering. A breeze plays around my head, and I put up my hand and find my nose is frozen, but the rest of me, inside my sleeping bag, is warm and heavy. Opening my eyes, a dazzle of light, pale gold and blue, hits me and I blink several times before I can see properly. Leaning up on my elbows I survey the camp and wish so much that I had a camera.

  The fire still smoulders and around it, like moored barges, our camp beds are positioned end to end. On each bed, a mound of sleeping bags and coats lies inert and slug-like, only the different mops of hair poking out at the end suggest the identities of the sleepers. With difficulty, I wriggle out of my cosy hollow and build the fire up again. I don’t know what time it is, but it must be early because Mr Lascalles hasn’t unzipped his tent yet, despite his plans for dawn birdwatching.

  I am the only person awake and the kingdom of the island belongs to me. It won’t last though. The fire is blazing again, and soon everyone will get up and begin cooking bacon and boiling the kettle. I realize that this is the moment to slip away to Jack’s grave. I couldn’t bear anyone here to even ask where I’m going. Jack doesn’t belong to my new life, he is the centre of my old one, and I need to say goodbye to him alone.

  The grave looks different now. It is no longer a raw new scar, but part of Salt Head. Vetch and sea holly have scrambled over it, and Dad has put up a simple wooden cross. The inscription reads, ‘In loving memory of Jack Jordan, who lived on and loved the sea.’ With the dates of his birth and death.

  The breeze had been getting stronger, but at Jack’s grave the air is still. I look up at the pale blue sky and see the dot of a lark, its voice tumbling towards the earth. I have the weirdest raw-egg sensation. I feel that I have a shell and I am only aware of having it because it has just cracked in two and sadness is welling out everywhere. The morning is clear overhead, although, on the horizon, the purple bruise of a storm is coming. It is an effort to leave. I can feel my grandfather’s presence so strongly here. James’s grave is less shocking now it has been joined by Jack’s, and the tearing grief of the place has gone. It has become peaceful. I wonder if Grandma ever comes across here.

  Freda and Carl are squatting by the fire, prodding bacon in a smoke-blackened pan. It has taken no time for them to adopt primitive habits, and all of us are beginning to look mad.

  ‘I don’t suppose anyone has a mirror?’ Pansy has not yet given up on her appearance. ‘Mr Lascalles confiscated mine back at school.’

  ‘The nearest we can muster is a piece of silver foil,’ offers Mr Lascalles, smoothing a scrap he has just unwrapped from the sausages.

  ‘Oh, thanks,’ says Pansy, rolling her eyes and sighing. ‘I may as well go and find a puddle to look in.’

  I try to deflect her.

  ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea to know what you look like when you’re out here. You can imagine from the state of the others, but even if you did see, there would be nothing you could do. It’s not like hair straighteners are available.’

  Pansy stares at Freda, with her bird’s-nest hair and soot on her nose, and then at me. I can only imagine that I look filthy and slaggish, as Pansy shakes her head.

  ‘No,’ she says, ‘I don’t think I can possibly imagine myself from the state of you lot. And anyway, I don’t want to imagine.’ She presses her hands against her cheeks, and I can’t tell if she is in mock distress or real. ‘But I have to see myself in the mirror. It’s something I’ve done every day of my life. I thought Jessie might have one, but she’s just groaning in my tent and won’t come out. She says she needs to talk to you, by the way.’

  Realizing it is useless to reason with her, I abandon Pansy and crawl into the purple tent. Inside, mauve light figured with daisies casts an unhealthy shadow across Jessie’s face.

  The tent smells of stale alcohol, and poor Jessie has tears sliding on to her pillow.

  ‘I think I’ve got tonsillitis,’ she croaks. I put my hand on her forehead. It is hot and dry. She flinches. ‘Everyone will think it’s a hangover,’ she weeps, ‘and I’ve probably got that too, but my throat is agony. Is there a doctor near here?’

  Nodding, I crawl back out to get Mr Lascalles.

  ‘Lucky the tide is right or we’d have to walk with her,’ he says, putting away the bird book and the SAS handbook which he has been studying. ‘What a pity. I was going to do something on scavenging food and also sea safety. It will have to wait though.’

  Mr Lascalles sets off, pulling the dinghy on its long mooring rope as close to the beach as he can, and helping poor Jessie climb into it. She sits miserably beside him, looking as though she has swallowed two golf balls and they have lodged in her neck. Pansy goes with them.

  ‘I just think I need to see a pavement,’ she says. ‘I know it’s only a village pavement, but it’s better than nothing.’

  ‘Yeah, and they’ve got mirrors in the Staitheley Hotel loos,’ adds Harry cynically as we wave them off. Carl and Pete are also in the boat, Mr Lascalles having decided that he needs some manpower in case of emergency.

  ‘And as for the rest of you, please just take it easy around the camp till I’m back,’ he shouts across the water.

  The little dinghy is filled to capacity with five people in it. The swell rocks it as Mr Lascalles and Pete heave on the oars, fighting the pull of the outgoing tide. Carl holds the tiller ready to start the engine as soon as they reach deeper water.

  ‘And then there were four. Except Dave hasn’t surfaced yet,’ says Harry, turning away and taking a running jump towards Dave’s tent.

  ‘Come on, man. Get up! We need to go on a mission, while the tide is still here at all,’ he yells, levering himself in through the opening.

  Freda follows, kneeling outside and shouting, ‘Yes, come on. We want to go and swim with the seals. Mr Lascalles told us where they are at breakfast. We’ve got the map. We’re going in the canoes.’

  ‘I think we should stick around here.’

  I am embarrassed to be the voice of reason, as usual, and none of them hear me except Freda.

  The tent is rocking as Harry and Dave tussle over Dave’s removal from his sleeping bag.

  Freda throws me a scornful look.

  ‘No way, Lola. You can come out here and do this stuff all the time, but for us this is really exciting.’

  Freda is assertive and excited, quite different from her cool school persona. She doesn’t need to be Pansy’s sidekick any more. She is here in her own right and she loves it. Her eyes glitter as she pulls on her jeans and ties her matted hair in a ponytail.

  ‘Come on, we’ll see so much. We need to get going, the tide is going out.’

  In my head, as persistent as the sea, is my dad’s voice telling me never to set out from Salt Head on an outgoing tide; the current can sweep you away if you haven’t got a reliable engine.

  ‘I think it would be better to wait until the tide comes in again. It could be dangerous.’

  But suddenly they are all experts on the sea.

  ‘Oh no! Don’t be pathetic. We want to go over to Seal Point and Mr Lascalles and your dad both told us you can only see it properly at low tide.’

  ‘Yes, but you can’t land on it.’ I am impatient. ‘It is forbidden
to actually set foot on it.’ I now see what Dad means when he says that no one listens. ‘It isn’t safe on Seal Point. There’s quicksand for one thing, and the tide races in and you can get caught in some powerful currents.’

  ‘Excellent,’ mumbles Dave, doing up his belt as he joins us, a bacon sandwich wedged in his mouth. ‘We’ll have to be incredibly precise. It’s so cool, it’s a life and death thing.’

  I sometimes get nightmares where I am trying to speak but no sound comes out of my mouth. In those dreams I try to move, maybe just to write down what I can’t say, but my limbs are so heavy and I am so sinkingly tired that there is nothing I can do about the situation I am in. Right now is one of those nightmares, except for the horror of it being real.

  Harry and Dave have got the canoes from behind the lookout hut into the water. Four red one-man canoes suddenly look like a lot of trouble for me.

  ‘I don’t want to—’ I start, but Harry, who hasn’t seemed to notice me this morning, drops his canoe and comes over.

  ‘Don’t worry, we’re going to have a great time. We’re going to test ourselves, and that is the biggest thrill of all.’ He smooths my hair out of my eyes, and the gesture is so gentle and thoughtful I have to look at the ground to stop my eyes bombarding his with devotion.

  I forget that I don’t want the biggest thrill of all. I push the warnings I have learned since childhood out of my mind, and without further hesitation I step into the canoe Dave is holding for me. Immediately the current takes a hold and pulls me out into the sea behind Freda, who is paddling madly to stay in one place.

  ‘This is so elemental,’ she screams. ‘Have you got any lip balm?’

  ‘This is so bloody mental,’ I shout back, doom heavy in my mind now I am out of the intoxicating aura of Harry’s immediate presence.

  Suddenly he sweeps by, Dave just behind him, and we are whisking along like Pooh-sticks on a swollen stream, except we are heading for the open sea. Harry paddles a circle, or attempts to and is brought up next to me. He looks serious for once.

  ‘I’ve just realized we should have worn life jackets,’ he says, then his eyes crease into a smile. ‘But there is no way we can go back for them. Just you try paddling against this current.’

  The panic that flows over me with his words has me gasping as if I have been dunked in icy water, and I try to turn my canoe, or even just bank it against the shore, desperate to stop, to escape this folly. But the current, as I know too well, has a pull like a juggernaut. It is useless to fight it, and exhausting to try.

  The sun has vanished behind a cloud, and the sea has changed from blue to pewter. Dave’s red T-shirt is vivid up ahead, drawing away from Freda in her pink summer top, a garment so fragile it looks completely out of place now the sea is rough.

  We pass the lookout hut, and I stop pretending to myself that we will be fine and I shut my eyes and pray. I am really scared. I have never canoed round the end of the island before, because it is too dangerous. It is also very remote. Even Josh with his binoculars wouldn’t see us up here if we needed rescuing, and anyway, who’s to say that he’s looking out for us at all today?

  We are parallel with the dunes now. Soon we will be at the end of Salt Head and I have no idea how we are going to stop there. Seal Point is exposed for a short time, and we may not coincide with it. I have never tried to land on it, and have no idea how to, or how deep the water is when it comes in. I just know that it is treacherous. Freda and Dave are shouting and pointing in excitement, turning and wobbling in their canoes.

  ‘A seal, a seal!’

  ‘Look, it swam right past us. It’s huge!’

  Harry paddles enthusiastically to catch up.

  ‘Come on, Lola, let’s get a look at it.’

  Their laughter on the wind reminds me of playtime at primary school and I think of Sadie. She will be coming out of infants now, happy but tired. She will go home with her mum and play in the garden or help hang out the laundry.

  She will do what she does every day, and I will try to paddle for my life, with three people who have no idea of the danger they are in.

  Here on Salt Head, the weather can alter in a flash. Now the sky has changed from summer afternoon azure to menacing, rumbling grey and brown. The waves, which have been edged with a frill of white water, are suddenly peaks with stomach-swooping troughs, and the canoes scale them like model boats in a small child’s bath. We are out by the very end of the island by this time, and although the light is gloomy and swampy, I can just make out the red line of rope fencing running around the perimeter of the tern breeding area. My dad is the only person authorized to come up here, where the beach is littered with flints, and the rough sand and shallow bays look more like Scotland than Norfolk. He usually comes by motorboat, and as we spin past his mooring and the little jetty he has erected, with the red pole on which there is a lifebelt and a flare, I realize that I must act now, or we will be unable to save ourselves. I look around for the others, and it takes a moment to comprehend what I see. The sun has burst out from a tiny space in the banking dark cloud, and it glitters on the two canoes ahead of me. One, with Freda’s pink top, darker now with sea spray, rides another huge wave, but the other has capsized, and there, next to it but not holding on, is the red blur of Dave.

  ‘Harry! Harry!’ I yell, turning wildly to find him. He is much nearer me than I thought, near enough for me to see the horror on his face.

  ‘I’ll try and get to him. You go for help, Lola,’ he shouts.

  ‘There isn’t anywhere,’ I scream back. ‘We are miles away from everything. This end of Salt Head stretches back for miles. I’ll send up a flare and maybe someone will see it.’

  He doesn’t reply. He is already ahead of me, hunched over his paddle, the front of his canoe like a compass needle, aimed at Dave. Or rather Dave’s canoe.

  There is no sign of the red T-shirt in the heaving waters. I turn to the shore and try to paddle in. It is hopeless, impossible against the quickening tide. I am too far out.

  ‘Oh my God,’ I whimper, not even trying to paddle any more.

  There is a thin shout from Freda. She is gesturing further out than I can bear to look. Dave has been swept on. He is treading water, and waving every few strokes. His head bobs, tiny and vulnerable on the swelling sea. Ignoring the empty canoe, Harry turns and paddles towards Dave but makes slow headway.

  ‘This undertow is so powerful. Dave’s got ahead and he’s moving fast. I don’t know if I can get to him,’ he shouts.

  ‘Just try,’ I scream back. ‘We’ve got to try.’

  The wind is roaring in my ears, I can’t hear anything but I can see Freda is mouthing something. She has turned her canoe, and is trying to paddle back towards me. She is not moving forward in the water. With utter disbelief, I watch her chuck her oar into the sea and jump in.

  ‘What are you doing? You’ll drown. You’re mad!’

  It looks as though she has drowned already, because as I speak a wave slaps over her and she disappears. A moment later she comes up in a completely different place, much nearer, gasping, chalk-white with hair sprawled down her face. And again she is submerged. Tears blur my vision, but I wipe them away furiously. I am witnessing someone drowning. This is what happened to my uncle. This is what my dad sees in his mind when he thinks of James. I look round wildly for Freda. She has not come up where I expected her. I can’t see Dave either.

  Freda appears further from me again, heading along the shore but about fifty metres out. Her canoe has floated away round the corner. Struggling, I paddle towards her. Her face is in the water, I do not take my eyes from her pink top floating. The rushing roar of the sea fills my ears, and my own voice, whispering over and over, ‘She’s going to be all right, she’s going to be all right.’

  I do not hear the boat engine, or see its looming bulk until I am no more than two waves from it.

  Round from the seaward side of the point, dragging Freda’s canoe, a fishing smack appears. It is Josh and h
is dad, Ian, and Billy Lawson coming in from a fishing trip. I am terrified that they are too late. A flare cracks into the sky, I can hear the fizz of the offshore radio and Ian giving urgent instructions.

  ‘Get the lifeboat dinghy – they won’t last more than twenty minutes and I don’t know how many there are. I’ll send up another flare for you to find us.’

  Josh chucks a rope to me. It snakes into the water and lies rippling on the surface for a moment before I grab it and haul myself to the side of the boat. There I cling to the rope with one hand, gesturing with the other.

  ‘It’s not me, it’s the others, quickly, please quickly.’

  Billy reaches over and lifts me up by my armpits as if I am a small kitten.

  He looks hard at me.

  ‘Are any of you wearing life jackets?’

  ‘No, and there are three others in the sea, not just me,’ I gasp, then collapse, exhausted and overwhelmed, on a seat behind Josh.

  Billy mutters something under his breath and moves away to scan the sea for the others. I am so wrung out that even when Josh strips off his weatherproof clothes, and, holding a rope, jumps off the other end of the boat in his shorts and life jacket, I cannot register any emotion at all. Dragging myself to my feet, I see him swimming with the rope towards the pink top, the only part of Freda with any colour in it.

  ‘She’s dead, she’s dead,’ I sob to Billy. ‘And where are the others? They were there.’

  ‘We will look for them when we’ve got this one in. The lifeboat is coming from Salt. It won’t be long.’

  ‘Dave’s been in the water for ages already,’ I whisper to myself more than anyone else.

  ‘Christ, this is ever a job for the lifeboat men,’ mutters Ian as he begins to haul Josh and the inert form of Freda back towards the boat. ‘We’ve got to stop them both smacking themselves against the boat,’ he says grimly to Billy. The pitching waves slap against the gunwales, and Ian leans right over into the sea, trying to keep the rope taut so Josh and Freda don’t hit the side.

  Billy leans with him and, after an eternity, Freda is hauled into the boat and Josh is pulled up behind her. Freda is placed gently on the floor on the wet fishing nets. Billy covers her with his oilskin, Josh crouches over her, shivering, and administers the kiss of life. Nothing happens. A corner of my mind registers that the boat has turned and we are picking up speed, but I cannot risk looking away from Freda. Her skin is blue, and when Josh blows into her mouth, her cheeks swell then deflate again with a little pop. Her eyes are closed. Josh does not stop for a moment, does not hesitate, but pumps and blows, pumps and blows. All I can think is that Dave is still in the water, and Harry is there too. Freda must be gone already. Suddenly she struggles, turns her head and retches, vomiting bile and salt water. She sits up, gagging for breath, and sobs, ‘I’m sorry, it was stupid to jump, but I couldn’t stay in the canoe. I was being swept away, I just wanted to get out of the sea.’