pushed it. The mud clung to him. Next it would be his bloody shoes going down in the mud and bloody lost. He took them off, and his sodden socks, and shoved them into his outer pockets. At each step the mud seemed to pull him back, but he had his shoulder against the wood of the boat; funny, but Ricky Capel, who could strut in any company, found that he needed not to fail, had to show his worth to this man, was not going to be found bloody wanting. For two whole hours, with one rest time of not more than five minutes, they scraped the boat over the mud and then they reached the water. The surf came in spurts up to their knees, then ran back.
When they floated off, when the man dragged on the oars, Ricky lay in the floor of the boat and water sloshed round him. He found, under his back, a saucepan tied with string to the boat's side, and began to use it to ladle out the water. As fast as he did so, the boat filled. The water level crept up – the saucepan could not compete with it. It lapped at the top of his knees and up his hips, but he kept bailing because he could not let the man see him fail.
They grounded across the channel. The moon had come up and he could see the line of a shallow hill in front of them. They stepped out, water up to their thighs, went down in a hole and crawled out.
'Well done, Ricky. That was good.'
He flushed at the praise, and a little of his exhaustion fled.
If she had asked, Malachy would have said, 'Perhaps Timo Rahman'll drop them by the ferry or have them brought over in a fast craft. They'll link up with a boat offshore, use a radio for it. The size of boat that can get across the North Sea would be too large to come in close, so it'll have to launch a dinghy and come right in to the beach, somewhere along the stretch we walked. They can use a radio for the final contact with the boat but they'll have to signal an exact spot for the dinghy, and my guess is that they'd use flashing lights to guide it in. That won't be easy – of course, I'm not a seaman and don't have exact knowledge – because of the surf that the storm's knocking up. I hope to see them when they've put the light on. It'll be when their plan is most vulnerable, but they'll know with the weather that no living soul is going to be out and watching for them, which will give them confidence.
I'm not reckoning, where we are, that we can miss the light they'll use, could be tonight or could be tomorrow night – maybe right now they're lying up.
We'll see that light. I want to hit them when they think they're on the last leg – they're coming down from the dunes and they're out on the beach without cover…
I want to screw it up for Ricky Capel. You've your own target and that's your business – mine is with Ricky Capel. I want him out there in the sand and unable to get to his dinghy – for him the whole thing is failure on a mind-blowing scale. It's only a gesture, but it's what I want… I want to hear him scream, and then I can walk away.'
She was beside him and her sleeping-bag was already half buried in the sand that the wind pulled off the beach. He could hear the steady rhythm of her breathing. He sat hunched, and his eyes raked the shoreline and the upper points of the dunes as he watched for a light. The same sand that covered her was caking on his chest and shoulders, on his lips, cheeks and around his eyes. He would have liked to listen to his voice telling her that he would hit Ricky Capel, then walk away, but she slept and would not have heard him.
Chapter Seventeen
He sat on an upper point of the dunes, and the rain was back, and the pledge made to Malachy was broken.
He watched and she was huddled on her side in the sleeping-bag, eyes clamped shut, sand carpeting her hair. When the drizzle had started, he had carefully lifted the bag's neck so that her mouth and nose were covered; through her misted spectacles he could see that her eyes stayed closed. The pledge, broken, had been that he would watch till two in the morning, and then she would take her turn, and he would sleep. He had not roused her.
He glanced regularly at her, a few seconds in each two or three minutes, but his focus was on the sea, where a boat would come. More likely the boat would reach them at night, guided by lights, but he thought the weather – rain that drove up on to the dunes, mist, low cloud that shortened the horizon – gave enough cover for a dinghy to be launched. It was as if the few clustered houses by the harbour where the ferry docked were detached from the rest of the wilderness of the island. The voices he heard were those of gulls that ducked and dived in the wind. The tide was up and they had fewer acres of sand to feed from, so their hunt for shells to split open was harder and more frantic. Other sounds were from the wind's thrust in the dunes, and its singing in the low branches of the few trees behind him. He thought she would wake soon because her breathing was less regular than it had been during the night.
The expanse of the beach was being steadily sub-merged. The tide rolled in. In the gloom, sometimes, he saw the light of a buoy, but no boats came past it.
She woke. Sudden movement. Wriggling in the bag and fighting to get an arm clear, trying to see a wrist and a watch. Cursing. Head lifted. Spectacles snatched off and wiped crudely on the underside of the bag. Spectacles replaced. Looking around, eyes fastening on him.
'Damn you.'
It amused Malachy to see her annoyance. 'Good morning, Miss Wilkins.'
'You promised.'
'An earthquake wouldn't have woken you.'
Her fingers were in her hair and sand flew clear. She shook her head violently. 'Damn you because you promised to wake me. If you didn't know it, that is insulting.'
He turned his eyes back to the sea. What had he seen? Nothing. What could he now see? Nothing.
Why had he not woken her?
'There was nothing worth waking you for.'
'We were supposed to share the watch. You half and me half.'
'I thought you needed the sleep,' he said vaguely.
'That is what's insulting. I need the sleep and you don't? That's a cheap shot.'
He remembered Roz, remembered manufactured arguments, remembered vicious, spiky arguments coming out of a clear blue sky, remembered her ability to rouse a dispute from a half-thought-through remark. He watched the surf where the gulls danced, and saw the buoy's light.
'Right… You've seen nothing, so what was so important for you that you could let me sleep?'
'The chance to think.'
'Thinking about today, or thinking about your bloody past?'
Malachy felt himself stiffen, as if there was a catch in his throat. The past, his, was never gone from him.
Worse at night when he slept, but he would not field that to Polly Wilkins as an excuse for not waking her.
Bad in the day because it was the small pain that came and came again. Then he was free of it, then it was back.
She would have seen his mouth stiffen. She was close to him and was kicking out of the sleeping-bag. She had a gimlet gaze on him. He did not know whether she'd intended it, but memories flooded his mind.
She said, spat, 'Your problem, you're in denial.
You're hiding. My people fed me the stuff. I'm not ignorant, I know what the accusation against you is, Malachy. It's a pretty bloody one… I don't know of anything that beats it, what you were called. So, what's your answer? It's pathetic: I don't know what happened. Being in denial isn't good enough and hiding from it means you'll never clear it. All of this stuff, thrashing around and trying to play hero, won't clear the stigma. You have to face facts, kick some dirt in your own eyes.'
'Have you finished?'
'God – it's just that denial isn't a cure.'
'Can we move on?'
'I'm trying to help.'
