"He's a bit simple, isn't he?" she asked. She did not want to talk about Gilbert, but perhaps this was as good an opportunity as any to mention about him catching something big in his net.
"He's not right," the man agreed. "But there's reasons."
"I heard his wife drowned," Stephanie prompted.
He did not need much encouragement and was soon talking. "People say Gilbert was a fisherman for forty years. He went to the Far East to live for a time and brought a pretty wife back with him, younger than he was. Indonesian. He was well into middle age by then and a grim sort. He'd lived too long alone, some said, and the first time the village saw his new bride the talk started. The first time I clapped eyes on her was almost the last." He smiled oddly.
"I'd been away working in Tenby for the summer and when I came back to Nolton I saw her — she was a cracking girl, hope you don't mind me sayin'. It was in the beach shop over there," he pointed to the caravan park. "Chatted her up a bit I did, until Gilbert turned up. Didn't know it was his missus at the time, I just assumed she was on holiday. He let me have a piece of his mind, I can tell you. After that he kept her mostly confined to barracks like, alone with him up there."
"I've been told a story that she might have been done away with," Stephanie coaxed.
"Well there was no witnesses to what happened, not here in the dark. Nolton's a quiet place. They never found her, that's the point, I'd say."
"Yes, I heard." She continued, "Bodies turn up when they drown, but hers didn't."
The young man nodded. "Ah… whether it's guilt at what he done, or sadness for his loss, Gilbert's never been right since. He takes that old wreck of a dinghy out at night, searchin' for her. One of these days it'll be him that doesn't come back." He paused, thinking. "P'raps that's what he's hoping for."
Stephanie ran her hand along the gunwale of Gilbert's boat, the flaking pale blue paint raking against her fingers. The fishing net was still strewn down the beach, a coiled nylon snake. There was no body of any description in its folds.
"Gilbert's story has become a bit of a local legend, a ghost story, if you like, miss," the man remarked. "It's whispered that his dead wife swims out there in the surf, trying to get her revenge on Gilbert. And that people might see her on a moonless night." He laughed. "Maybe that's what you saw last night, miss."
Stephanie started and looked sharply at her companion. "A dolphin. It was definitely a dolphin." And it wasn't a moonless night, she thought to herself.
They returned to the beach that night. They had enjoyed their day walking some of the public footpaths and bridle-ways inland, and she had been pleased for once not to have the constant sound of the sea in her ears.
Rod had wanted a quick drink at the pub and straight back to the cottage, but Stephanie was in a curious mood and almost insisted they take a stroll along the strand before they return.
The moon was hidden in its entirety by a dense eiderdown of grey cloud, transforming the beach into a dark sheet and the rocks to hunched figures swirled by inky water. Stephanie scanned the little inlet, from the horizon beyond the cliffs, to the eddies near the shore, but it was so dark tonight, she imagined that the dolphin, if he came back at all, would be indistinguishable from the water.
"Are you all right?" Rod asked tentatively, stopping, taking her hands in his.
She was surprised and pleased with his attention. "Yes, why d'you ask?"
He did not reply immediately. She saw what might have been concern in his eyes.
"It's just that… The old man," she said. "I saw him again last night, in his boat. He'd netted a dolphin… I think."
"So?" Rod put his arm around her waist and they continued their stroll. "I mean, was it dead or something?"
The waves calmly washed the sand near their feet, drawing close and then back. "No, I don't know. I'd like to know for sure."
They had walked as far as Gilbert's boat and used it to sit on. The craft had been dragged farther up the beach and rested solidly in soft dry sand, but the fishing net still lay neglected, strewn between the dinghy and the shallows.
Rod looked around. "Well, I can't see anything dead lying here. When they strand on a beach they usually attract a lot of attention." He turned to his wife, cupped her chin tenderly and kissed her. "It must have escaped. Or Gilbert let it out of his net."
Stephanie nodded, but she was unable to mould her thoughts into coherent words that Rod would understand. Her feelings were ephemeral, insubstantial, as hazy as the ghostly light upon the water.
Before long the surf was riding higher and wrestling roughly with the sand. The sky was beginning to clear as a strong breeze came off the sea and the moonlight gleamed wetly on the waves. The fish were scurrying again and Stephanie hoped that the dolphin might return, to reassure her that it was still alive.
"Brrr. Winter must be coming early." Rod wrestled with himself. "Maybe we'd better —»
"Look," Stephanie hissed, pointing. "What's that?" Goosebumps travelled up her bare arms, more through a sudden fright than the chill wind.
Near the cliff-face one of the hunched black rocks was rising, moving towards them. The light from the moon threw the features into shadow, but Rod recognized its gait almost straight away.
"Gilbert. It's Gilbert."
He passed close by them, and Stephanie could swear his wild glare revealed that he was somehow aware that she had been watching him the other night. Yet, he did not acknowledge them or glance back in their direction as he circuited his boat and continued along the beach.
"Ay, difficult waters tonight!" he shouted to himself. Swinging from one hand was a bottle of some sort. Stephanie guessed he was drunk. He wove across the strand and stumbled into the shallows, ankle-deep, knee-deep. Pausing for a breath, he arched his arm and threw his bottle as far as he could. There was a distant hollow plop of sound. Then, ludicrously, he began to wade out after it.
Stephanie never thought she would be so close to a scream. She knew Rod was immune to the atmosphere. Just the old man, drunk and half-mad and mourning his wife all these years, or plagued by guilt at a terrible crime to which he was unable to confess. But there was more to it. More she was aware of. Not aware exactly, a kind of impression that remained half-acknowledged by the conscious brain, but the substance of which her deeper psyche struggled to communicate.
She realized she need not fear Gilbert. He was too feeble and shrivelled. Too old, with his scruffy oilskins, his unpleasant face with its dark wiry bristling beard. The fuzzy uneasiness that she had thought might be because of him was something else entirely. As she watched him slouching away in the shallows, she felt the boat beneath her grind on pebbles. Rod jumped up, but Stephanie was thrown backwards into the craft and her thoughts were diverted.
All around now the rising tide was sweeping relentlessly up the beach. The sea swirled, dark fingers of water weaving like snakes into the shallow gutters circling beached rocks. Rod felt water melt into his socks as it surged over his boots and he began to run for higher ground. He grabbed the tough tussocks of marram grass and hauled himself up the dunes, off the beach, and kneeling, turned to reach down for Stephanie's hand.
But she had not followed him. Puzzled, he stood up and peered left and right along the shore. Maybe she had made a run for the rocks, silly girl. He would have to wade in now to help her avoid a soaking. But he could not see her clambering onto the rocks.
"Steph!" There was no longer any beach to speak of, the sea had swamped nearly all of it. Sloshing inelegantly was Gilbert's boat, heading out on the bay, preceded by the drift of net draped over the prow.