The Girl Who Dreamt of Dolphins (13 page)

Slowly, her eyes adjusted. Lucy realised that the little
dolphin was floating just to one side of her. He was asleep. Lucy
stretched out her hand and placed it gently on his flank. It was as
though her hand were there and not there at the same time. Although
she could not quite touch him, she could sense his smoothness and
warmth. She could just make out the pulsing of his heart from
somewhere inside. It was amazing to be able to stretch out and
touch such a beautiful, wild creature. She could barely believe it.
It felt as though if she pressed with her hand, it would pass
through him altogether.

Lucy turned to look at the dolphin’s face. He seemed to be
smiling at her. ‘Don’t be silly’ she thought to herself, ‘dolphins
always seem to be smiling, it’s just the shape of their mouths.’
Slowly, his eyes flickered into consciousness.

‘
What’s your name?’ he asked quietly. He did not seem surprised
to see her there again.

‘
Lucy’ she replied simply.

‘
What does that mean?

‘
It means light I think.’

‘
Then that is a good name. My name is Spirit. Light and Spirit.
The two names seem to fit somehow, don’t you think?’

‘
Yes, yes I do.’ She smiled.

‘
And are you a male or a female human’ he asked. Lucy was
startled for a moment but then realised, there was no reason for
him to know.

‘
I am a girl,..I mean a female. And you, are you a male?’ she
asked in response. He seemed to smile again.

‘
Yes I am.’

‘
Is your world very different from our world?’ he asked. Lucy
looked around, it couldn’t be more different.

‘
I wish I could describe it to you’ she said.

‘
Maybe you will.’

Lucy could sense that the tiredness of being there was
sweeping over her as it had done before. It was like trying to use
a muscle she’d never known she had. It tired quickly.

‘
I must go’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’ Already Spirit seemed far
away from her.

‘
Come again soon’ he whispered.

The pods of dolphins slept on, obscured by the darkness and
the shadows of the sea. Spirit was just one amongst many. But one
other dolphin was awake and was watching Spirit being lulled by the
gentle sea above him. Storm always kept a watch at night, but
tonight he was watching over Spirit in particular. He looked over
to another sleeping shadow and then back to Spirit. There seemed to
be an apparition next to the young dolphin; a girl with hair
floating freely about her and wearing a simple nightdress, arms and
legs bear. Storm gasped. He had never seen such a vision before. He
said nothing, not wishing to alarm the young dolphin. The girl
seemed to fade back into the water again like a ghost and then was
gone. Storm continued to watch the young dolphin for another half
hour or so before, slowly, he too slipped into a waking
sleep.

Lucy found herself back in her bedroom again, more tired than
she thought. She climbed into bed and soon fell asleep. A short
while later Dad put his head round the door of Lucy’s bedroom to
say good night. He could hear though from her gentle rhythmic
breathing that she was already asleep. He turned to leave the room.
As he did so, he saw something on the rug in the middle of the
room. Out of habit, he stooped to pick it up and tidy it out of the
way, thinking it was litter. It smelt pungent and he held it
briefly to his nose. ‘Goodness’, he thought, ‘if I didn’t know any
better, I’d say that was seaweed.’ He dropped it in Lucy’s bin and
quietly closed the door to her room.

Chapter Eight
:

The Lady Thelma turned slowly in the water. Her paint was
rusting in places and one or two barnacles clung fast on the
water-line. She was a boat which had seen better days, but Nate was
proud of her. He’d named her after his wife, Thelma, twenty one
years before and she’d given faithful service ever since. ‘Thelma
may not be as young as she used to be’, Nate thought, ‘but neither
am I.’ She’s a good girl, he’d say to anyone who would listen and
they were never quite sure if he was talking about his trawler or
his wife.

The Lady Thelma was not a big boat and the cabin, with its
cracked glass and ill-fitting door, was only just big enough for
Nate and Bob to squeeze into. When the rain lashed down on the deck
and the spray of the waves blew across in squalls, the cold water
would slosh under the door and Nate would peer through the cabin
window, it’s small windscreen wipers struggling under the strain,
as he set course back to port. ‘Get us home Thelma’ Nate would
mutter as he clasped the small wheel. Bob always smiled when he
heard Nate talking to his boat, but he had a lot of respect for the
old girl and would pat her affectionately as he walked around the
deck. Atta girl! was what Bob would say when Nate wasn’t listening.
Bob didn’t want Nate to think that he was getting too familiar with
the skipper’s girl.

Nate steered the Lady Thelma back to port, chugging quietly,
her diesel smoke drifting in the breeze. There was no rain that
morning and the watery sun shone across the sky. They’d been out
since first light checking their lobster pots. Bob busied himself
on the deck, repairing damaged pots while the lobsters regarded him
bad-temperedly from their cage just behind the cabin.

They’d not had such a good morning. Half the pots they’d
checked had been empty and of the rest, a good number contained
lobster too young to be harvested. They threw the smaller ones back
into the sea to live another day. Nate knew the waters had been
over-fished and their catch wasn’t as big as it used to be. The
area where they put their lobster pots was some three miles from
the port, on a submerged shelf of rock that jutted out from the
mainland and which was only two or three metres deep. The pots were
widely spread out and it took quite a while to check them all. Each
pot had to be checked individually in the season. If a lobster was
trapped, it should not be left longer than was necessary and it was
always possible that the pot with the lobster inside could itself
be attacked by a predator. Rights to put down lobster pots were
hard-won and Nate had inherited his fishing rights from his father.
They sold their lobsters to the local restaurants, but some had
started to get the cheaper lobsters that were flown in from
abroad.

Nate’s family had lived in this area for generations and, ever
since he was a boy, he’d been out on his Dad’s boat in all
weathers. He knew every rock, cove and sandbank for miles
around.

When Nate had been younger he’d been a volunteer for the local
lifeboat. This meant that he had to be ready to dash from his house
at a moment’s notice and run, drive or bicycle down to the life
boat station before setting out through stormy seas to some
stricken vessel or other. Nate was too old to do that anymore and
his ‘old bones’ as he would say, wouldn’t move as they used
to.

Nate nosed the Lady Thelma back into Merwater’s harbour.
Cliffs rose up one either side of the small town, which had grown
down the steep hill between the coast line to the sea’s edge. A
natural spit of land had been used to build a harbour, deep enough
for the smaller fishing and sailing boats that used it now, but not
for the larger commercial vessels, which used other ports along the
coast.

Nowadays there were more sailing boats than fishing vessels
and Nate eased past the jostling boats to where the few other
fishing boats were moored. Young Mick, son of old Michael, was
sitting astride a barrel on the deck of the Seaspray next to where
the Lady Thelma moored. The Seaspray was a larger vessel, only a
couple of years old and was equipped with modern sonar and radar
equipment. Mick fished with nets and provided much of the wet fish
that was sold at the fishmongers on the harbours edge.

‘
How are the lobsters this morning?’ he called over to Nate and
Bob in a friendly manner. Bob pulled a face.

‘
I thought as much’ Mick continued, peering over at Nate’s
lobster cage. He saw that only a few pincers protruded through the
bars and quickly concluded that the catch had not been
good.

‘
And the Seaspray?’ Bob called back.

‘
We’ve had a good haul of sole and squid’ replied Mick with a
confident smile on his face. ‘These new nets are really the
business’ he said, gesturing to where the nets were stored. We can
really rake the seabed good and proper now.’ Nate was tying up aft.
He looked up.

‘
What’s that?’ he enquired casually.

‘
That old net I had was no good to anyone’ Mick replied. ‘Half
the fish swam right through. In the end it got snagged up on some
buoy a couples of miles out. It was such a mess that we had to cut
both the net and the buoy free. Its fathoms down now Nate’ he
continued. Nate glanced up at him, worried now.

‘
Tell me you didn’t chuck your net and a buoy away?’ he asked.
‘Old Michael would never do that. He knows they’re a danger to the
sea. You never know what might swim into a net that’s been left at
the bottom.’

‘
Don’t you worry your grey old head about that’ Mick laughed,
shrugging off Nate’s concern. ‘Dad’s long since hung up his
water-proofs and he knows I run a tight vessel. They’ll not cause
harm to anything now.’

‘
I hope you’re right’ replied Nate, still with a concerned look
on his face. He didn’t like lecturing young Mick or anyone else,
but Nate thought he was careless with his boat. He should have
brought the old net back in to dispose of properly. You can’t just
go around cutting other people’s buoys adrift either. ‘You’ve got
to leave the sea a better place than you find it’, Nate would say
over his pint in the Three Bells Pub, but the younger men like Mick
didn’t want to hear what Nate thought.

Nate and Bob tidied the deck and heaved the lobster cage onto
the harbours edge, before carrying it over to Bob’s old pick-up
truck. Bob would do the rounds of the local fish restaurants where
they hoped to get the best price. The remainder they’d bring back
to be sold in the fishmongers next to the harbour. Lobster was an
expensive item on anyone’s menu and not everyone knew how to cook
it well. It wasn’t the business it used to be, Nate
sighed.

‘
See you later!’ Bob called to Nate out of the open window of
his ancient pick-up as he drove off. Nate and Bob couldn’t make
ends meet from fishing alone so in the afternoons when it was fine,
they’d take the tourists out from the harbour and show them some of
the local coves and rocky inlets, looking for seals and even the
occasional dolphin or whale if they were lucky. Not on the Lady
Thelma though, as she wasn’t safe for tourists to go on. They
crewed a tourist vessel and were paid a wage for taking it out. It
wasn’t a bad trade thought Nate and there were more tourists on the
harbour wall than there were lobsters in pots he would say
ruefully.

Merwater had changed a lot since Nate was a boy. The houses
and cottages were all still more or less the same, but now the town
thronged with tourist traffic during the summer months. They
weren’t in high season yet, but already most of the faces he passed
on the street were strangers. The shops, which in his day had sold
fishing gear and all the things that local people needed had been
replaced by quaint souvenir shops or cafes with watercolours of the
sea on their walls. The locals mostly drove to the supermarket to
do their food shopping or the next big town inland with its
shopping centre.

There were fishermen’s cottages along the side of the harbour
and up the hill, but no fishermen lived in them now. They’d mostly
been bought up by the out-of-towners; people with money from London
who stayed for a few weeks of the year and then either let their
cottages out to visitors, or left them locked and shuttered for
weeks or months on end. This gave the small town a rather desolate
air in the winter months when it was cold and wet and empty. Most
of the local people had to live at the edge of town now or further
out where houses weren’t so expensive. A lot of younger people had
upped and left, looking for better jobs elsewhere. Both Nate’s
children lived miles and miles away now and he and his wife,
Thelma, didn’t see them as often as they would like to.

Nate got in his pick-up, even older and rustier than Bob’s and
set off up the hill back home for lunch. He passed the cottage
where he had been born, looking down on the harbour and the sea
beyond. It was done up very nicely inside now and he couldn’t
believe how much it had been sold for last time it was on the
market.