Midnight Dolphin (31 page)

Even though
Bethany had been left standing at the water’s edge, she felt
included somehow; as if now she was in on the secret too. After Jet
had swum off again. Megan let her come with her and they scrambled
up the path out of the cove. Megan started desperately searching
for something along the top of the cliff. It was so many years ago,
but it felt like yesterday.

‘
Megan?’
Bethany had asked. ‘What are you looking for?’

‘
I’m looking
for a hole, or a crack in the rock or something. Something that
leads down to….’ She broke off.

‘
Down to
what?’ asked Bethany.

‘
Down to a
cave, I think’ replied Megan, lost in thought. ‘I don’t know
really. I just know that…. I just know I have to find
it.’

‘
But why?’
asked Bethany, full of the curiosity of the very young.

‘
I can’t
explain. I just have to’ replied Megan, distractedly thrashing a
bramble bush with a stick. To Bethany it felt like they spent ages
searching that bit of the cliff near where a wind-swept tree clung
perilously to the rock. Bethany was scared of the edge of the cliff
and hung back, but Megan was fearless, clutching onto tufts of
grass to peer down over the edge.

They found
nothing and as the sun began its final descent down towards the
horizon, they trudged back towards Old-Man’s Cove. Mum and Dad were
standing at the top, their beach bags in hand.

‘
We were
wondering where you two had got to’ said Mum, her arms and face
glistening with sun cream. ‘Come on, let’s get going.’

As they drove
up the dusty track back to the holiday cottage, Bethany suddenly
noticed her sister’s face light up. Following her gaze, Bethany saw
the familiar Citroen Deux Cheveaux that Rachel drove. Pulling up,
they could see Rachel leaning against the bonnet of the car,
wearing jeans cut off at the knees and a shapeless baggy blouse.
She had a grass stalk in her mouth and was gazing out towards the
sand-dunes. She turned and waved.

As they
clambered out of the car, Megan ran over to her friend, leaving
Bethany to trail behind with her buckets and fishing net, feeling
small and unnoticed.

‘
What are you
doing here?’ asked Megan, suddenly full of life again.

‘
Well my Mum
cooks a mean spag bol and we wondered if you fancied coming over
for a plate. You could stay over if you want to.’ Megan turned to
look imploringly at her parents.

‘
We’re very
complimented that you’ve been so friendly to our daughter Megan’
cut in Dad rather stiffly, ‘but you do know we’re leaving tomorrow
don’t you?’ he asked. He regarded Rachel suspiciously. It was
strange that a University student should be so keen to spend time
with a twelve year old.

As if guessing
his thoughts, Rachel produced an envelope from her back
pocket.

‘
Here’s a note
from my Mum. You can call her if you like’ she added, though she
knew that the cottage had no telephone. ‘Truth is that Megan and me
have been doing a bit of research and there’s something I wanted to
run past her before she left. And we like hanging out with each
other don’t we Megan?’ Rachel added with a smile.

Bethany could
see Mum and Dad exchanging a glance. ‘I suppose there’s no harm in
it love?’ Bethany’s mum said to her dad.

Half an hour
later, once Dad had walked up to the payphone to call Rachel’s Mum,
Megan sat in Rachel’s Citroen with her overnight things hastily
stuffed into a spare duffel bag.

Bethany
watched as the car bumped along the dust track and disappeared
round the corner. Left out yet again. It felt so unfair, thought
Bethany as Mum ushered her into the cottage.

‘
Have you
found the Trinity Caves then Rachel?’ asked Megan, as they rattled
along the road towards Merwater.

‘
Well, err no’
replied Rachel.

‘
What is it
then?’ asked Megan.

‘
Do you
remember that girl Mary Pewsey that the Reverend Smith wrote
about?’ asked Rachel.

‘
Yes of
course.’ replied Megan.

‘
Well it turns
out she was this nineteenth century educator and reformer’ Rachel
went on. ‘A bit of a suffragette before anyone ever thought up the
term.’

‘
What’s a
suffragette?’ asked Megan.

‘
She fought
for women’s rights’ Rachel continued ‘and wrote a pamphlet saying
that women should get the vote. She was a regular scientist as
well. Did a lot of work on marine biology. Died young of course,
but then plenty of people did in those days. Thing is, Toby Smith’s
dug up something on her he thinks might be of interest to us. Hence
the spag bol. He’s coming round to our place this evening.’ Megan
couldn’t help but smile.

‘
You reckon he
likes your Mum?’ she asked. She couldn’t quite believe that people
that old could fancy each other. Rachel laughed.

‘
I wouldn’t be
surprised’ she replied. ‘Anyhow, let’s see what he’s got for
us.’

Spirit,
Dancer, Star-Gazer, Storm and the other dolphins circled listlessly
in the water. The short winter day had surrendered to the night and
the stars were spread out above them in the sky. Spirit felt
uneasy, as though he knew that something was about to happen, but
he didn’t know what. Earlier, great fat snow-flakes had fluttered
down and melted on the surface of the sea. Playfully, Spirit and
Dancer had tried to catch the flakes before they hit the water, but
they had had no luck. Storm had told them that in the north the sea
turned to ice in the winter, but Spirit could hardly believe it.
The sea would have to be unimaginably cold to freeze over, he
thought.

Their
discovery of the Three Green Caves was the talk of the pod. All of
the others were too big to swim through the crevice into the caves
except for No-Name, who was far too young to try.

‘
How could
Spirit have discovered those caves?’ asked Chaser sceptically. ‘In
a dream!’

‘
It’s
Dream-Time’ said Storm simply.

‘
What’s that?’
asked Dancer, her curiosity aroused as she circled restlessly in
the water.

‘
They used to
say that Dream-Time is what connects all dolphins together’
Star-Gazer answered. It is said that before dolphins came into
being, their souls existed first. Dream-Time is what links the
ancestors with us here and now. So they are dreaming of us and we
are dreaming of them. In this way all dolphins from all times exist
in the same moment.’

‘
I don’t
understand’ said Dancer, feeling confused.

‘
Maybe Storm
is right’ Star-Gazer cut in. ‘How else could Spirit have known?
There are many things in the world that we do not know the answer
to.’

‘
There must be
a reason’ said Storm thoughtfully. ‘Everything has its own place in
nature.’

Once Lucy had
wrapped her few small presents for Christmas, she sat and stared
out of the cottage window at the cold white landscape outside. She
shivered, even though the central heating was on. It wasn’t only
the temperature that made her feel cold. The idea of the long grey
years ahead of her without Spirit made her feel numb and empty.
First she had lost Mum. Now she had lost Spirit too. She felt
broken. Despair began to curl round her thoughts like
weeds.

To distract
herself, Lucy picked up Mum’s copy of the ‘Flora and Fauna of the
Cornish Coast’ that Rachel Greenwood had sent her anonymously in
the post. Mum had scribbled in the margins when she was roughly the
same age as Lucy was now. Lucy had been all through the book
several times, but although it mentioned the Trinity caves, it gave
no indication as to where they might be.

Suddenly,
something in pencil in one of the margins caught her eye. She
shivered again, but this time not from cold, rather from
recognition. ‘
To find what you want, you
must first let go. You will know when
.’
There it was in black and white, the same words that the young
woman in the bonnet in the tunnel had said to her when the light
went out and she had banged her head. Lucy wondered if she’d just
read it already, and only imagined the apparition in the tunnel
saying those words. She was sure she hadn’t read them before
though.

Whatever the
words meant, they gave her a small spark of hope in the darkness of
her thoughts. It was a riddle and she had to have faith if she was
going to solve it.

‘
Well you
might say you peaked my curiosity’ said Toby Smith expansively, as
he splashed red wine generously into his own glass. They were
sitting in Rachel’s Mum’s small living room above Owl Books, with a
big bowl of Spaghetti Bolognese in front of them on the table. Toby
Smith had called it a
hippy
habitation
, and sat himself right down on
a floor cushion. Megan wondered whether he’d ever be able to get up
again. He didn’t look very flexible in his joints.

‘
It was all
this stuff about the Rev that got me wondering’ he went on. The Rev
was a dreadful old prig. I’m embarrassed to have him as a relative
really’ he said, ‘even as a dead one’ he added, glass half raised
to his mouth.

‘
When you came
round I just had this niggling feeling that there was something
about him I needed to tell you, but I just couldn’t remember what.
Then yesterday, while I was listening to some Charlie Parker, I
suddenly remembered.’ Megan lowered her fork of spaghetti to
listen.

‘
Her name was
Mary Pewsey’ Toby Smith concluded, smiling broadly. Mother used to
tell me the story when I was a child. Rachel, her mum and Lucy all
leant forward to listen.

‘
Mary Pewsey
was this young girl from the Rev’s parish. Daughter of a fisherman
apparently. Then her father recovered some silver plate from an old
wreck and became wealthy enough to enable Mary to finish her
education. She had a keen mind and soon she was writing extensively
on education, Cornish folklore and marine biology. Turns out she
had an almost preternatural knowledge of the seas, currents and
submerged sandbanks and rocks and whatnot. Of course the Rev
absolutely hated her.’

‘
But why?’
asked Megan.

‘
She took the
Rev on at his own game and won. He wanted to be
the
authority on all things Cornish.
She was just better than him. Her writing was crisper and she was
more knowledgeable. The Rev used to correspond with various bigwigs
at the Royal Society in London. They stopped writing to him and
started writing to her instead. He started drinking too much port
and neglected his parish. He got gout and stayed indoors. He wrote
letters to the London journals denouncing this young up-start of a
woman, but it didn’t help him at all. It seemed to be all over for
him.’

‘
And was it?’
asked Rachel, her forkful of spaghetti half way to her
mouth.

‘
Well the old
fraud had one thing going for him, and that was longevity. He lived
a very long time and Mary Pewsey didn’t. She wasn’t forty when she
died. He outlived her and then he was able to re-establish his
reputation by picking away at hers. Now she’s forgotten and his
books can still be found in libraries, even if they are out of
print now.

‘
That’s
horrible!’ exclaimed Megan. ‘Poor Mary Pewsey.’

‘
That’s life
I’m afraid’ replied Toby Smith. ‘It was a tough world for women in
those days. Especially women with little standing in society. She
should have gone to America like many from these parts did when the
tin mines closed. She could have made a real name for herself
there. But she didn’t want to be separated from the Cornish sea
apparently.

‘
That’s an
interesting story Toby’ said Rachel’s mum, ‘but I don’t really
see…’

‘
Aah, yes well
I haven’t quite got to the nub of it yet’ Toby Smith continued.
‘That’s what my old mother used to tell me when I was younger. It
was bit of family folklore, you might say. I never knew about this
stuff to do with the Trinity Caves until you two came on the scene’
he said, nodding towards Rachel and Megan.

‘
Well I
thought I’d give an old pal of mine a buzz. He’s always in the
British Library Reading Room ferreting out some fact or other. I
wondered if he might do some sleuthing for me. Turns out he dug up
a couple of old Mary Pewsey’s pamphlets.’ He paused and downed
another mouthful of red wine.

‘
What do they
say?’ asked Megan.

‘
Well the last
one was published after Mary Pewsey died. It was all about the
education of young women as it happens. The thing that caught my
friend’s eye was the introduction. I’d told him about the
connection between dolphins and this thing about the Trinity Caves
you see. The introduction was written by one of her friends,
or
followers
you
might say. He dictated the salient bits over the phone to me.’ At
this point Toby Smith pulled a small piece of paper out of his
pocket and unfolded it. He cleared his throat.

‘
My dear and
good friend Mary is now lost to us. She knew more about the sea
than any person I know and was passionate about the education of
women. It was only a short time before her death when she was
already ill, that I learned quite by accident that she was a
Dolphin-Child, which have been spoken of by the people of Merwater
for centuries. Yet she did not lose her gift like all the others
when she became a woman. I asked her why. She said that she was
what she was because of the Trinity Caves and the experience she
had had there. Then she said something that I did not understand.
She said that she was one of three sisters, though the second and
third sisters had not yet been born. She said that she dreamt of
them sometimes and she believed that they also dreamt of her. She
said that her revelation had come to her one night when the stars
were bright. She would not tell me where the Trinity Caves were.
She said instead “To find what you want, you must first let go. You
will know when.
”’