PROLOGUE
Right now I’m cold. Really cold. What time is it? The chill of my fingers as I touch my face tells me I have been out here for several hours. I want to dream not live this nightmare. I think about going home, but memories of how I came to be here in the first place assail me. There is nothing there for me. I left my family because of fear and to find hope in this place. ‘I am safe now, I am safe here, I am safe with him.’ That was what I knew then, but now.... I mutter the words over and over to convince myself not to hear the other words, the ones I’m trying to unhear but which echo ever louder,
‘Come and live with me before he kills you.’
I am no longer sure where I am going. Nor who I should be going with. Just where do you go when you really don’t know where to go because you can’t trust your own instincts anymore? I’m not safe with him, but I need him. How can I let myself need him though, if I am not actually safe with him? If he only wants me to harm me, then why can’t I just go where I am safe?
ONE - now
(DIANE)Viewed from up here on the cliff side the horizon stretches unbroken from farthest left to farthest right. A ship-high ribbon of glowing pinky-orange light separates the grey blue of the sea from the peachy blue of the sky as the dawn spreads. The pier immediately below Diane is a dark silhouette, stiff and crisp-edged as a cardboard cut-out. The only thing vying for her attention is the gentle shimmer of the first rays of sun off the mast of a yacht anchored in the middle of the bay.
Sitting on the bench reserved for those hearty enough to complete the trek this high, Diane has the world to herself. Few are the hearty at this time of day. There is a hanging sea mist and finding footholds to reach this height is still risky in the half-dark. Dawn brightens the sea and the sky as she watches. A light breeze further chills the sweat on her forehead, the only sign of the steepness of the climb up there.
The clock on the church by the pier strikes seven. And, although he can’t be seen, Diane knows, like half the town, that Father Walter is opening the huge wooden doors preparing for a service blessing the new lifeboat to be held later this morning, it’s that kind of town. A minute or two passes and a bright blue and orange fishing boat appears in the bay. The Blue Boy is Cory Bradley’s boat. Or, rather, he was the Skipper until two days ago when he was found collapsed in the alley between The Ship Inn and the fish quay at four am. He had a blow to his head, could only groan when spoken to and, apparently, no memory of anything. Jim Fairbord, who found him, called 999 at once, but Cory had been there a while and felt very cold to the touch. The tutting about town is that he was drinking heavily in The Ferryboat Inn on the quay after unloading his catch around five the previous evening, had declared himself on holiday on account of the storm coming in. Around midnight, having taken a ‘phone call that seemed to sober him up dramatically, he told the assembled company that he was off to ‘…sort out some business with that silly bitch…’ Not for the first time in recent years he is now in the intensive care ward and, for the foreseeable future, it will be his nephew and assistant skipper, Harry, who lands any catches.
Cory met his future wife up here. A long time ago. A lot of water has flowed under a lot of bridges since then. Eighteen and owning only the clothes she stood up in, and the contents of the soft canvas bag at her feet, she looked to him like a beautiful flower girl, the kind pictured on a birthday card his sister Hester might choose. This girl was willowy, pale and interesting, with an air of somewhere other than this place. Looking at her feet he noticed her battered sandals and dusty toes and, glancing at the cliff path and then back at her feet, his first words were full of admiration.
‘You climbed up here in those?’
‘Only ones I managed to grab. Used to them now.’
When he had not known what else to say, but had not moved away, she told him he was welcome to share the bench, but she didn’t want to talk about it. Thanking her, he took the weight off his feet and they sat silent for quite some time before he spoke again.
‘Not being funny or anything but you don’t come from round here, I’d know if you did, I’m Cory, who are you?’
‘Diane’
‘Pleased to meet you Diane…’
‘And you,’ she said, taking his offered hand before lapsing back into silence.
Again the silence, now broken vaguely by the breeze getting up. Cory waited before adding, ‘I came up just to get a walk, now I’m away for my lunch at the Sidewinder Café–will you come with me? My treat.’
Their eyes met and, by and large, that, and a wedding with pageboys and flower girls in sailor suits at Father Walter’s church, sealed the deal for the next twenty odd years. Then the Blue Boy capsized.
The church clock is striking nine. The wind is up, stirring beyond a breeze now. So much to work through, Diane’s brain is tired of this day already. She’s remembering that February day, five years ago. She was leaning on the railing on the promenade, as she often did, watching The Blue Boy bringing her boys home. There was usually a moving coronet of seagulls above the boat, rising and falling above its fishy mass. What is it they say about rats and sinking ships? That grim winter’s day there were just two brave birds, battling the wind, rising and falling with the swell then, suddenly, rising and falling and not rising. They mirrored the trawler that had dipped and risen but was now listing, precariously, the hull wedged on the sandbar. The next rush of the rising tide crashed through, and around, and over the boat, and she could not see how they would get out. Such a scene played regularly inside her head in the half-awake 3 am consciousness that often strikes the wife of any man who goes to sea. Time and her breathing stopped, until, above the spume and spray, rose a cracking sound and a golden flare lit the sky.
(GIRL) The young man and the young woman are on the beach – waves crash around though the tide is still quite far out. They have to shout to hear each other.
‘I’m afraid! He’s a bully, the way he looks at me...’ Her words hang a second then fly off in the fury of the waves. He barely hears her.
‘Just do as he says, he’ll sort the paperwork, he’ll fix it, he fixed it for me; it’s not for long.’ He can barely catch her response but it seems to be language he wishes she wouldn’t use, not helpful, things are what they are, this is about survival.
‘But he’s a bully.’ She tries one last time.
‘If he says you do something you must, or we will find ourselves running again. He’s getting me a car, he’s giving you a job, he’ll sort out the papers, just humour him.’ Her response is drowned out by the roar of the sea as the wind blows yet harder.
TWO – back then
(DIANE)At first, the days after The Blue Boy went down were punctured by the beeps and whistles of the machines around him and Diane heard nothing beyond a few feet of his bed. The background drone was low and rhythmic, but persistent. The kind of hum one only really notices when it stops, the way in which the room lets you know it’s there waiting patiently, as must you. There was no lasting peace though. Turn by turn a drip a monitor, or pump, or fan, would stutter, a shriek or beep would sound. Each time she would gasp at the lurch of a suspended breath restored – the same lurch she had experienced first as she watched from the promenade. The lurch would bump her chest and reverberate until someone appeared to reinstate calm and her breathing could shudder on. Mostly, not a word was spoken. But, once a day at least, a white coat would stop to say there was nothing to report. Cory would wake up in his own good time. He was strong. It was not just the blow to his head, he had had a heart attack too, they weren’t sure what was affecting him most. A week later Harry, having had a luckier escape than Cory, felt strong enough to join her vigil periodically. They would try a little light conversation, but he was still suffering the effects of the near drowning as he pulled Cory from the hold onto the lifeboat. Even being in the room was a struggle for him now.
‘What if he doesn’t make it?’
‘He will!’ Diane needed to believe it. ‘He won’t give up, he won’t…’ An alarm sounded beside her. Harry rushed out as a nurse hurried in and shooed her out too.
They colonised the three plastic chairs, yes, three, outside the ward and waited. Harry shivering beside, and to the left of, Diane, despite a battalion of Victorian radiators lining the corridor walls. On her other side, Hester. She can’t safely think about Hester right now though.
Eventually, they came and ushered the three of them into a side room. Blood pounding a relentless fuzziness through Diane’s ears, she barely registered the doctor explaining that Cory had now added a stroke to his list of injuries.
‘We just don’t know what the outcome will be. He might be perfectly fine-.’ The voice lacked conviction. ‘He’s resilient, he’s a fighter… well, it’s all a matter of time’
(GIRL) The big guy with the crisp suit and the open wallet pushed a piece of paper into the young man’s hand.
‘If you can get a passage over call me and I’ll find you a place. He hesitates only a minute as the man looks in the direction of the bar and says,
‘If I leave they’ll arrest her, as security.’
‘I’ll find her one too.’ The guy takes the paper back and scribbles something further. ‘This skipper needs a hostess, tell her to say I sent her.’
(DIANE)Somewhere, six whole months disappeared, in tiny chunks mainly, punctuated with travel to and from the house, eating and sleeping and, very occasionally, going to the office, paying bills and doing housework. Cory woke up thirty seven days and fourteen hours after being admitted, and shortly after Diane finished counting all the ridges on all the tiles of the suspended ceiling of his side room. She wasn’t sure who had endured more successfully. Cory had limited movement, as if his body had forgotten that it was made of moving parts; Diane felt her joints needed oiled after all the hours in the one hunched position permitted by hospital furniture. It had seemed to her that keeping still and vigilant was the only thing that would save Cory, or was that what she had needed to save her? But now the worst was over and they needed to get rolling again, go home and get on with life.
It took more long weeks though, and a lot of hard work, before Cory actually made it home. Outwardly there was not a mark on him, to the world he was the same Cory. It was simply that they had not seen him about for a while. August bank holiday Harry took him to see the Blue Boy in the dry dock where it was refitting, having been salvaged off a higher tide two days after the accident.
‘It was crazy,’ Harry reported to Diane, ‘he demanded to know why I sold his boat. ‘When I reminded him it was in the yard for repairs, not sold, he screamed at me that there was nothing wrong with it!’
‘He’s bound to be a bit confused,’ she told him, heart racing. ‘He doesn’t really remember the accident at all…’ It was a feeble response. She felt cold all over. She had had too many such conversations with him herself. That same night, with that so familiar 3am half consciousness came the spectacle of Cory kneeling over her, a pillow held high above his head.
‘Get out of my way, you’re suffocating me,’ he hissed.
To Diane this man was awake but not the Cory she knew, he must be dreaming. She made no attempt to move as he lunged toward her with the pillow then, seeing him make no move to stop, she rolled sideways and out of his reach. Cory tumbled forward on to the bed and fell back to sleep. It took Diane much longer to find rest.
Five days later a similar thing happened. In fact, Diane has lost count of how often this has been repeated. She’s certain he doesn’t mean it, is not even sure he realises half the times it happens. Nonetheless, her body is no longer so confident, just taut and wary.
(GIRL) Hitchhiking to the coast then a shift on a cargo vessel landed him as a sailor in Scarsbury port just days after the encounter in the bar. She took a little longer, for a more direct route. The trader’s referral brought her the mixed blessing of an uncomfortably intimate stay with a man she did not care for, but also passage, as his hostess, on a pleasure yacht. Thereafter, escape when they docked in Portsmouth found her just a short hitchable ride from her desired destination.
THREE - now
(DIANE)Diane came up here to think it all through, but it’s not working. The wind is getting worse, white tufts now on the ripples on the sea. The blue grey sea is colonising the peachy blue sky, and yet another storm looks to be blowing in. Wrapping her jacket close around her, Diane stands, tentatively testing her tingling legs bent stiff for hours, just like they had been after all those months at Cory’s bedside. How ironic would it be to fall going down the hill? Diane muses. What would the town have to say then about Cory’s ‘silly bitch’? That she got what she deserved probably, the girl who came from nowhere and fancied herself one of them! Twenty or so years is not long enough to be one of them around here. Step by careful step, she picks her path downwards. She’s going to head for the promenade, watch the sea awhile and then decide her next move.
(GIRL) The young woman feels the slap before it arrives and there is a rush of blood to her head as she hears the crack in her neck and falls backwards. Before she can react he yells at her,
‘You'll do as I tell you, you have no choice, like it or leave it honey. You know what the alternative is.’
He leaves her slumped against the quay wall. Seeing stars, both literally and metaphorically, her vision swimming, she struggles to focus. It's dark but the glow from the decorative lights strung along the promenade allow her to make out that he is driving off without her. Standing up on shaking legs, she notices blood on her jacket, stretches to straighten her skirt, and feels nauseous as she recognises that other sticky stuff too. Well, at least he hadn't managed to get inside her before he came. She's deeply thankful for that, and says a quick prayer of thanks to the cold weather today that had made her put thick leggings under her fashionably short tartan skirt. She wants to get back to the house, take a shower and find the boys - they will know how to deal with him. But, he brought her here, no transport around save what's on the beach. Taking a deep breath she begins untying the rope. Memories of the last time she was in a boat flood back, but there is no more choice now than there was then.
FOUR - now
DIANE, heading along the promenade, is musing on her place in this community. Arriving at Hester’s she thanks the gods that she’s not home. Heading for the back stairs to the flat over Birdlip and Associates, Diane notes that the rear gate still isn’t fixed, and the security light only flickers. It’s dark by 3pm this time of year, good job she knows where she is going. There’s almost certainly someone in the office and she’s anxious to avoid needing to explain, yet again, how Cory is doing, or hearing how awful it is. Like I don’t know that already! Leaving a quick note for Hester she heads out, an excited black dog, Humph, at her heels.
A legacy of the past storm, and possibly heralding another, it is winter after all, the wind is gusting along the promenade, between the beach huts, circling around the ice-cream stall. Diane, Humph in tow, braces herself, pushes forward through the gloom towards the first bench she sees. Waves crash in front of her, hitting the sea wall then rolling back reenergised to crash against those behind and send spray shooting skywards.
‘A nasty night to be out in!’
Diane’s already shattered nerves cause her to start so hard she feels a thump in her gut.
‘Oh, you scared me!’ she responds shakily.
