Stormswept
Authors: Helen Dunmore
To Amber Ia
Contents
orveren! We’ll get caught! Let’s go back and wait for the boat!” shouts Jenna, but I keep on running as if I haven’t heard. We’re nearly half-way across the causeway to the Island. Jenna won’t turn back without me. Sure enough, I hear her feet splashing over the cobbles behind me.
“Morveren!”
We can make it, I know we can. The tide has reached Dragon Rock and is pouring round it. We’ll get a bit wet maybe. I’m not turning back to wait for the boat now.
“Morveren!”
I don’t stop, but this time I look back. My sister is standing stock still on the causeway. The wind flails her hair over her face and the creeping water is already at her feet. I want to keep running but my feet won’t do it. Maybe she’s got a stitch. I race back to Jenna, and grab her hand. It’s cold, and her face is panicky. I pull her hard, but it’s like pulling a statue.
“We’ll drown if we stay here! You’ve got to run!”
The tide is coming in behind us too. We can’t go back to the mainland now, even if we want to. That’s the way the tide tricks you. When you’re looking ahead, the water slides in stealthily from behind. But we can still reach the Island if we run as fast as we can. Every second counts. I yank Jenna’s arm and she unfreezes.
“We can’t go back now, Jenna. Look, it’s too deep.”
She knows it. Jenna’s the sensible one usually, but if we stand here much longer it’ll be too late to go on as well as too late to go back. I’m hot all over with anger at myself. We should have waited for the next boat. Jenna wanted to, but I wouldn’t. Dad will be so angry if we get caught by the tide. There’s a refuge a hundred metres ahead but if we have to climb up there someone’s got to bring a boat out to rescue us and everyone will know how stupid we’ve been.
We race as fast as we can over the causeway cobbles. Our feet slip, slide and splash. The tide’s not racing, but it’s coming in relentlessly, pulse after pulse. The stones are almost underwater now. Here’s the refuge, standing firm with its ladder and iron handholds. It’s only just been rebuilt because the old one was swept away by last winter’s storms. We pound past it without slowing down. We don’t have to discuss it because Jenna feels the same as I do. We’re not going to be stuck up there, waving for help like tourists. There’s no mobile reception out here, or on the Island.
Jenna and I run on side by side, clutching hands. If anyone saw us we’d get in so much trouble. It’s only because I had a detention and Jenna waited for me that we were both late. The sea’s putting out claws of grey water now, slopping over our feet. Surely the causeway will start to slope upwards soon, to the Island shore. Rain’s driving in too, big flapping sheets of rain that hide the rocks. But we’re nearly there. All that scares me is the way the water keeps on getting deeper. If it rises past our knees there’s a danger that the tide will be strong enough to push us off the causeway into deep water. We could be swept away.
The sea is pushing us now. It wants to win.
You only have to make one mistake,
Dad always says,
because the sea never makes any.
All our lives we’ve been taught to respect the sea. Dad would go mad if we got swept away.
Jenna stumbles. My shoulder wrenches as I drag her upright.
“Quick, Jenna!”
But as I pull her I lose my balance and my foot turns on the cobbles under the water. This time it’s Jenna who hauls me back.
We’re nearly there. It’s going to be all right. My legs hurt because it’s so hard to run when you’re almost knee-deep in water. We wade and slither and stumble, shoving ourselves forward as if we’re running in a nightmare. The water licks our legs hungrily, but it’s not going to get us this time, because suddenly, with a rush of relief, I see that the outline of the cobblestones below us is getting sharper again. The water’s falling. The causeway’s rising. We’ve made it.
At that moment the strangest thing happens. I stop fighting the swirl of the sea around my legs. I slow down. The smell of salt fills my head as a curtain of rain moves across my field of vision and hides the Island. A herring-gull swoops down, combing the air above my head. The tide shoves in, almost lifting me off my feet.
And for a moment I want to be lifted. I want to know where the surging tide will take me. If only I could fly through the water like that gull which is skimming away, free, towards the horizon… My mind fills with longing and for a few seconds everything else is crowded out. Even Jenna, my twin sister, closer to me than I am to myself – Jenna vanishes from my thoughts. Grey water, glistening water, the smell of salt—
But Jenna’s tearing at my hand. “Morveren!
Morveren!
”
The feeling fades, like waking from a dream. I try to snatch it back as the gull screams in the distance, but it’s gone.
“Hurry, Morveren!”
We wade through the shallows as the causeway rises and the grip of the tide releases us. It’s just water now. We’re safe, and suddenly the sea is cold, freezing cold, and all I want is to be in front of the fire at home.
Panting and wet, we haul ourselves up the last few metres, scramble up the slipway and collapse against the harbour wall, hoping no one will be about. But of course, Jago Faraday’s lounging around as usual, even though it’s now pouring with rain. There’s nothing he likes better than someone else having a bad time.
“Cutting it a bit fine, my girl,” he says to me, frowning as if it’s all my fault that we nearly got caught by the tide. “You keep your sister away from the water.”
To say that Jago has favourites is an understatement. He loves Jenna and hates me. He calls us the good ’un and the bad ’un. It’s supposed to be a joke – the kind of joke which is not funny when you are the butt of it.
“You been getting your sister into trouble again.”
Jenna is exactly the same age as me: in fact she is twelve minutes older. So how is it that I’m always supposed to be the one who leads her into trouble? But I don’t say this. Backchat will make him more likely to tell Mum and Dad that not only have I nearly drowned Jenna, but I gave him lip as well.
“I shan’t tell your mum and dad,” says Jago, as if he’s read my mind. “I can keep a secret.”
I’m relieved in a way, but I don’t want to share any secrets with Jago Faraday. He’s a spiteful, mean old man. But Jenna smiles at him, and then Jago’s face changes completely as he smiles the creaky old smile that only she ever gets. “You go on home and warm yourself, my maid,” he says to her, in his special Jenna voice. Never mind if I die of pneumonia, as long as Jenna’s warm. I look sidelong at Jenna, and pull a face, but unfortunately she is still smiling at Jago.
Our school shoes are sodden, and our tights too. Our coats are not too bad.
“If we stuff our shoes with newspaper and put them near the stove, they’ll dry out all right,” says Jenna. “Lucky it’s raining. Mum won’t notice.”
“I should have skipped detention. No one except Mr Cadwallader would give a detention on the last day before half-term.”
“You’d have got a double one.”
“Yes, but I wouldn’t have had to do it for more than a week… Jenna? Have you ever had a detention?” I know she hasn’t.
“Well… I haven’t yet,” says Jenna cautiously, because she doesn’t want to make me feel bad.
“You haven’t
ever
, you mean. Do you realise how much easier my life would be if you weren’t so good?”
“Mum won’t ask why we were late. We’ll just say we missed the boat.”
“OK.”
Mum will find out anyway at the end of term, when she sees my report. They always put detentions on reports, but that’s a good long way off and anything could happen before then. If only Jenna didn’t bring her report home at exactly the same time, mine wouldn’t look so bad. If my parents compared my report with Bran Helyer’s, for instance, they’d be quite happy. Ecstatic, even…
“Couldn’t you throw a few crisp packets round the classroom, Jen? Or tell Mr Kernow you didn’t fancy doing your maths homework?”
Jenna stares at me.
“Why would anyone do that?”
is written all over her face.
“Bran was in detention today,” I say casually.
Jenna’s face shadows. It’s complicated. All through primary school she and Bran were friends. No one else liked him, though he had a gang for a while. But the gang got too violent even for the people who were in it. Soon, Bran was a gang of one, and everybody left him alone.
Mum used to say, “Bran doesn’t have much of a life, with that father of his,” as if she were sorry for him. No one else was: they were too scared of him. But then something changed between Jenna and Bran. People think that twins tell each other everything, but that’s not true. Jenna doesn’t need to tell me, anyway. I can feel the difference in her. She might not be friends with Bran any more, but if someone talks about him, Jenna always reacts. It’s not obvious, because nothing with Jenna is obvious, but it’s there. I can sense what Jenna’s thinking most of the time and I know from the way she looks at Bran (which, being Jenna, she rarely does any more) that even if they aren’t friends, there’s still a link between them. But Bran is too much of a bad boy for Jenna now.