Warmed by the man's friendliness, Gabe smiled. 'That's kind of you. I guess we'll be okay.'
'Well, don't hesitate. We could do with some new faces around 'ere. Good luck to you and yer family, Mr…?'
'Gabe Caleigh.' Gabe extended a hand across the beer mat and the landlord shook it.
'Sam Pennelly's me name. Enjoy yer stay, Mr Caleigh. Yer in a beautiful spot up there in the gorge.'
Gabe poured the rest of the tonic into its glass and was about to turn away, both glasses in his hands, when a thought struck him. 'Out of interest, how did Devil's Cleave get its name? It's kinda dark for such a wonderful place.'
Now the landlord had both elbows on the bartop as he leaned forward as if to speak confidentially. 'Centuries ago,' he said, his broad face serious, his voice husky, 'the Devil, hisself, tried to cut his way inland from the sea to flood all the villages hereabouts. First he took a bite out of the cliffs and that's how Hollow Bay came to be. Years of land erosion have widened the bay, of course. Anyway, they say after he took his first bite he attempted to gnaw his way up to the moors, but his teeth eventually got worn down to the gums and he couldn't get no further so, frustrated like, he sloped off back to sea swearing to have his revenge one day. And he did, but I'll leave that for another day, Mr Caleigh.'
The landlord straightened up and Gabe grinned at him, then froze the grin as he realized Pennelly's expression remained serious. For a beat or two there was a silence between the two men and Gabe was bemused.
Then the other man chuckled, his face breaking into a broad, yellow-toothed smile.
'Sorry, didn't mean to get a rise from yer,' the landlord apologized, continuing to smile, 'but that's how the tale goes. There's a lot of nonsense legends in these parts and they make good conversations round a roaring fire on winter nights.' He had one last chuckle before saying, 'Nice to meet you and your family, Mr Caleigh. You're always welcome at the Barnaby, so don't you stay away. You take good care of those girls of yours, now—all three of 'em I mean.'
Pennelly strolled off to talk to some customers at the other end of the bar and Gabe brought the drinks back to the table.
Eve looked up at him as he placed the glass before her. 'You seemed to be having a nice chat,' she said, and it was really a question: what were they talking about?
Gabe took his seat. 'Yeah, nice people. But I think the guy was twisting my head at the end.' He supped his beer.
'How did the guy twist your head, Daddy?' asked Cally, taking her lips from the straw she was using.
'Oh, he was just telling me how Hollow Bay and the ravine were made.'
'Gorge,' corrected Loren, who liked her father to speak proper English on occasion (she did this not out of embarrassment but because she genuinely thought she was being helpful, even though all her friends thought his American accent was cool).
'Tell us how, please,' Cally demanded noisily draining the last of her drink.
Gabe lowered his own voice as he told them the tale of how Hollow Bay and Devil's Cleave got their names.
9: THE PROJECT
'See it out there?'
Hunched in his coat against the steady drizzle, Gabe pointed over the stone harbour wall and Eve and the girls followed his direction. Loren and Cally wore yellow, hooded plastic macs while Eve had on her parka, deep blue in colour and drawn in at the waist to give it shape. While she and the girls had the hoods of their coats up, Gabe had stuffed his woollen beanie hat into one of his reefer jacket's pockets, because sometimes he enjoyed the feel of rain or wind on his face and head. His hair was already darkened by the hard rain, but his only concession to the weather was to pull his coat collar up round his neck.
He was pointing at a metal column topped by a square-shaped box that rose from the sea like a sentinel just over two miles from the harbour boundary. A scarcely visible ladder ran down its length into the choppy waters.
'How can you fit in there, Daddy?' asked Cally peering up from beneath her hood. 'It's very tiny.'
Gabe grinned. 'It's bigger than it looks. That's where I'll probably be next week, checking it out.'
'It's too far to swim,' she said, frowning.
What they couldn't see was the important submerged part of the structure, two giant twin rotors resembling aircraft propeller blades attached to either side of a steel monopile which was set into a deep hole drilled into the seabed. Essentially it was a brilliantly conceived device for harnessing power from the sea itself, using tidal flows to turn the rotors.
It was situated where full advantage could be taken of the Bristol Channel's high tidal current velocities; because sea water was eight hundred times more dense than air, quite slow velocities of water could generate significantly more energy than whole crops of surface windmills, and with considerably more regularity and predictability. Gabe's company APCU Engineering (UK) was but one of a consortium of varied companies involved in the production and financing of the prototype, with the UK's DTI and European Commission also partly funding and supporting the enterprise. The parent company, whose invention this was, was aptly named Seapower. The end view was to create whole lines of such marine turbines just off the coast of countries and continents around the world, most of them linked to national grids.
However, as cost efficient and energy productive as these marine current turbines would be, there was a downside, and this was one of the reasons APCU's engineering skills had been sought for the prototype. Maintenance and repairs were, to say the least, challenging, and APCU's engineers had suggested that if the structure's rotors and drive chain could be raised above the waterline when necessary, then maintenance and repair could far more easily be carried out working from a surface vessel. Gabe, who many times in the past had helped design and worked on offshore oil rigs, had been sent to Devon to replace a colleague who had had to resign from the project for health reasons. The temporary assignment was to assist in solving the various but crucial technical problems involved in such an operation.
Loren tugged at his elbow. 'Dad, won't it be awful working out there all day? What if there's a storm?'
'Uh-uh. I only have to visit the actual site now and again. Most of the problems are gonna be worked out on paper. S'why I brought my laptop and printer with me.' The AutoCAD computer program was a boon to the engineering industry, solving problems that used to take hours, if not weeks, in seconds. 'Most of my work time's gonna be spent at the company's local office in Ilfracombe.' Ilfracombe, some ten or twelve miles away, was the nearest big town to Hollow Bay. 'And then a lot of work I can do back at the house, so you'll probably be seeing much more of me than usual.'
'But you brought your laptop too, Mum,' Loren said, turning to Eve. 'Why do you need yours?'
'Oh, just to keep hooked up to a few magazines back in London. You know I still do occasional freelance work.'
'But you haven't for a long, long time.'
'No, and it's time I got back to doing something useful.' God, Eve thought to herself, as if writing trivia for women's magazines was anything useful. At least if some assignments did come up they would keep her mind occupied for a while. She desperately needed distraction and she intended to call some of the mags she'd written for in the past. Perhaps an article on moving to the countryside, or making friends in a completely new environment. Perhaps something on how it feels to lose a beloved child. No, not that—she could never do that.
Cally, who was barely tall enough to see over the harbour wall, tugged at Gabe's hand, impatient to move on. 'Can we go now?' she pleaded. 'Chester will be lonely on his own.'
Feeling wicked, they had locked the whimpering dog in Crickley Hall's kitchen: it would have been even more heartless to leave Chester tied up by his lead in the rain while they had lunch. Besides, they had spoiled him last night when Gabe had brought him up to their bedroom and allowed him to lie at the end of the bed (Gabe had felt Chester continue to shiver in his sleep before he, himself, had dropped off). Leaving the dog alone today might just cure his nervousness. Of course, equally, it might just make him worse. With an inward sigh, Gabe turned away from the sea and led his family back up Hollow Bay's main but narrow thoroughfare.
Towards the end of the street and almost opposite an iron and concrete bridge that crossed the swift-flowing
