Stephanie kept watch intently for a few minutes more as the rollers relentlessly arched up the beach. Her eyes were beginning to ache with trying to distinguish the dolphin from the waves that intermittently allowed a peep into their troughs. Wanting desperately for it to be a dolphin. There was nothing, though, nothing more to be seen. The creature had swum back out to sea in search of that elusive shoal.
Yet, lingering in her mind's eye was that half-seen shape, and it gave her the shudders just imagining what might still be out there somewhere in the depths, if it was not a cetacean. Rightly it must be something with flippers, a shark even, or a dead boat's hull surfacing, spars waving as the sea drove it.
"Well it's gone." Rod said aggressively, as though disgruntled at not being able to make a positive identification. Stephanie slipped her arm under his and tugged gently against his resistance. They turned their backs to the sea and headed to their accommodation. He turned his head back briefly, paused, took a deep breath.
Breasting the dunes using the half-hidden steps that the old man had climbed that afternoon, both of them turned to face the bay again. The moon was a fat crescent, very bright. The extra height furnished them with little more in the way of visibility, however.
Gilbert's dinghy continued to rock to and fro, the only motion besides the restlessness of the tides.
Rod was stroking Stephanie's back, but not affectionately. Unconsciously he was urging whatever had been out in the bay to reappear. The mystery of it aggravated him. Stephanie knew he did not enjoy ambiguities. She could sense his dissatisfaction, but could do nothing about that. In any case, it was hardly worth losing much sleep over.
Except… the sighting had left her rather uncertain. As if she had glimpsed something that she should not have.
Gilbert swore and stomped along the beach, his waders grinding on newly deposited seashells. As he skirted the rocky inlet, he opened his flies to relieve himself. The urine gleamed bright yellow in the moonlight and hissed as the swirls and eddies took it. He swore again and spat, the wedge of phlegm phosphorescent as it hit the surf.
"Tonight. Tonight… Tonight." He mumbled to himself as he sloshed through the shallows to where his boat was tied up. The vessel tugged on its rein, a frisky horse, anxious for the ride. He felt the vibration in the painter surge through his fingers as he untied it. That urgent, persistent pull. As if the boat knew something… He let the line drop into the swell, releasing his watery stallion. As the hull rode the shallows, he stepped aboard and fixed the oars.
Then he began to row, the wooden craft breasting the waves. His strength was transmitted to the timbers and, as if they were extensions of some strangely articulated arms, the oars rowed and rowed.
Tonight…
Beyond the cliffs, the sea swell lifted the puny craft and dropped it again, but Gilbert stood up nevertheless as he cast his fishing net overboard. "I'll give an almighty haul," he muttered to the waves. "I cut it loose once." He sat, rowed a few strokes to allow the net to drift on its floats. "I won't next time. I won't." He huddled himself against the sharp and persistent breeze, hugging his waterproofs tight around him.
The sea sensed his presence and the water grew more restless. The moon brightened as luminous drifts of cloud hurried out of the way. Selenitic light shimmered on his oilskins and lit up the boat's cracked paintwork. His eyes roamed to the heavens. "The water, like a witch's oils, burnt green, and blue, and white."
He waited as the boat nodded in acknowledgment of the waves. The moon's argent haloes existed for the brief life of the swell and were a second later lost and another created. Then there was the tug, the net pulling against the boat's prow. Instinctively he moved hand over hand, reeling in. The drag of the mesh was steady at first, as if what was netted was somehow comforted, embraced by the nylon lattice. But then whatever was hidden in the waves began making furious water.
"Coming to bed?" Rod's call from the small bedroom sounded muffled, sleepy.
"Mmm. In a minute." Stephanie moved the closed curtains aside and peeped out. There was the cove, glittering under the high moon.
The surf was rougher now, endless waves poised constantly, on the edge of breaking, gathering their brawn from tideless deeps. She cupped her hands to the glass to eliminate the glare of a table lamp and then she saw the rowing boat coming ashore.
She was holding her breath as she watched a hunched, black-clad, wetly luminous figure haul the dinghy out of the water. Across the thwarts of the boat a fishing net dragged, as if the ocean's hand had gripped the tangled nylon fibres and held them.
She knew who it was. He fell, slipped on seaweed or net or through old-age, and a muffled curse rang out loud in the night. He struggled to his feet, hauling himself up using the boat and it wallowed, daring him to try again as he lost his footing once more. He. was acting in a panic now and began dragging on the net while still prostrate in the shallows. Quickly the motion of hand-over-hand in time with yelled words, repeated over and over:
"Tonight! Tonight!"
And some thing was dragged into the shallow water, a shape that flopped, not struggling, as if unsure whether dry land offered more safety than the sea. On the shining sand at Gilbert's feet, luminescent plaits of water… and this…?
Stephanie pressed her face closer to the glass, fascinated and terrified at the same time. In the net… bilious white, flesh that might have been partly consumed by some predator. She tried to imagine it had arms, the waving arm she had seen earlier. Gilbert reached out his hand and began tenderly to untangle the wrinkles of the net. No… she mouthed the word silently. He stood and moved in front of her line of sight and bent over the shape on the beach. There was a cry, an echo of which reverberated around the cliffs. An inconsolable cry. Stephanie squeezed her eyes hard shut and, when she next opened them, the old man was trudging for the rocks and the cliff footpath that led to his house.
Once more she tried to focus on the beach. The rising shallows served to shadow whatever had been in the net. It may have been dead or half-alive. Certainly not a thrashing beast anxious to escape its doom on the shore. But there was something still in the water, not moving much. The fishing net both obscuring and trapping its quivering. A dolphin she thought. It must be.
Rod's resonant and irritated sigh dragged her away from the window. Partly that, but mostly because she was frightened her imagination might make her go down to the beach…
"No dolphins around here miss," the young man said, shaking his head. "They're all over the other side of the bay. This spot's a problem for 'em." He nodded out towards St Bride's Bay. "Too hemmed in 'ere."
Well there was one last night, Stephanie thought, still assuring herself it had been a cetacean that the old man had caught in his net.
She had risen at first light, leaving Rod flaked out still, and was taking a walk along the beach, to make certain herself that the creature had not died in the shallows. The man had been descending the coastal path and she decided to engage him in conversation. After the usual niceties, she had asked about the dolphin. She had not mentioned Gilbert and his moonlight trip into the bay.
"I don't think I've seen a dolphin round this beach, since…" He tailed off as the clap of wood against wood carried down from the cliff.
Stephanie jumped at the sound.
"Gilbert." The young man explained. "That'll be him, lives up there." He gestured at the cliff.