The Black Tide

‘You told her—’ I was staring down at the instructions card, my mind suddenly alerted, seeing Karen out in the cove and remembering there had been something beside her in the dinghy, something with a bell-shaped end like a blunderbuss resting on the bows. It must have been the flame guard, but the light was so dim by then I hadn’t been able to see it clearly. ‘When was this? When did she borrow it from you?’

‘This afternoon. She was up here… Oh, it would have been about three — well before tea anyway.’

‘God Almighty!’ I breathed. ‘You gave her that thing?’

‘It’s all right,’ she added quietly. ‘I explained it all to her, how to pressurize the tank and get the flame ignited. I even lent her a pump and some meths.’

‘She didn’t say why she wanted it?’

‘No.’

‘You didn’t ask her?’

‘Why should I? It’s for burning off weeds.’

I turned to Jimmy then and asked him to drive me down to the end of the lane, and when we got there he insisted on coming down the path with me to the cottage. The mist had thickened, a blank wall of vapour blocking the beam of my torch. ‘What are you worried about?’ he asked. ‘She wouldn’t be fooling about with it at this time of night.’

‘She didn’t want it for weeds,’ I said.

‘What then?’

That oil slick.’

“Oh, I see.’ He laughed. ‘Well, you can relax. Even

if she did get it going it wouldn’t do much good. That’s

pretty heavy stuff that slick.’

The cottage loomed, a darker grey in the fog. No sign of a light. The door was locked and I was shouting

for Karen before I had even got it open. But there was noi answer. The cottage was still and dead, wrapped in

the fog, and only the faintest glow from the peat fire in the big chimney place. ‘Karen! Karen!’ I searched quickly. There was nobody there. Then I was running, stumbling through the fog, down into the cove. The little stone boathouse was empty, the door hanging open and no sign of the inflatable anywhere on the sands. only the marks where she had dragged it into

the water.

I stood stock still for a moment, my heart hammering and trying to think, trying to prove to myself that what I feared couldn’t be, that she couldn’t be such a fool. But I knew she could. The fog swirled on a breath of wind and I turned, the path and the cottage suddenly clear in the long-throwing beam of my torch. Andy Trevose! That would be the quickest, Drive to Sennen and get Andy to take me out in his beat. I called to Jimmy, climbing the path in long strides, not bothering to lock the cottage, heading for the van, and behind me Jimmy said, ‘You think she’s

going to use that flame-thrower on the slick?’ “Yes,’ I panted.

‘*But I told you, that stuff’s too heavy—’ ‘The ship then — something. She wanted to make

a gesture, blow the thing up. I’m afraid she’ll hurt herself.’

We reached the van. ‘Sennen?’ he asked as he started the engine.

‘Yes, Andy Trevose.’ He should be back by the time we got there.

‘She’s probably stranded on the sand somewhere. If the outboard broke down … Shall I stop for Jean?’

‘No. Hurry.’

But he stopped all the same, to tell her where we were going, and then we were feeling our way up on to the Sennen road, with the mist closed down and getting thicker. It seemed an age, both of us peering into the murk and the refracted beam of the headlights, but at last we were down by the hard and pulling up at the Trevose cottage near the lifeboat station. Andy was back and he had his oilskins on. ‘Seen your wife?’ he asked. ‘Is Karen home?’

‘No.’

‘She was here,’ he said. And his wife, behind him, added, ‘Karen came up from the quay abaht eight-thirty, asked me what Andy thawt would be the result of the meeting, and when Ah told her he’d promised to phone she asked to stay. She was that urgent to knaw what happened.’

‘And when you told her, what did she say?’

‘Nothing much. She’d been very withdrawn, all the taime we were waiting. Very edgy-laike, knaw what I mean. And then, when Ah tauld her nothing had been decaided, she laughed. I knew it, she says, the laugh a little wild and her voice a bit high laike. Very white,

she was. Very tuned-up — laike she wanted to scream but was managing to throttle it back.’ She gave a big, full-breasted shrug. Tha’s all. She went out then.’ ‘She didn’t say where she was going?’ ‘No. The only thing she said was, Ah’ll show ‘em. At least, Ah think that was it. She was muttering to herself as she flung out of the door. I ran after her, but the mist had thickened and she was already gawn.’ ‘Rose thinks she’d be off to the ship’, Andy said, and his wife nodded. ‘Tha’s right. Ah don’t know why, but tha’s what Ah think.’

And Andy Trevose in oilskins and sea boots. ‘You were going to take your boat out,’ I said. ‘You were going to look for her?’