Zennor in Darkness by Helen Dunmore

Author:Helen Dunmore
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: World War I, General, Historical, Military, Fiction, History
ISBN: 9780140173567
Publisher: Sound Library
Published: 1992-12-31T05:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

He comes whistling into her dreams. The sea tosses; she stirs uneasily. Don’t go so close in to the rocks, she begs him, in small desperate whispers. But he pulls harder, hauling at the sweat-worn oars. They are toiling out into the bay – she can see Clodgy Point with white foam smothering the rocks, then the waves roll back and the rock streams black and clear. The sea heaves as it roughens, but there is no sound of wind or water, only thin whistling, on and on.

And she wakes. The whistling goes on like bad luck. What had Nan told her? ‘It’s ill-luck to whistle, for you never know what you’re calling to come to you. Don’t let the men hear you.’ The boys knew they must never whistle at night. The seven whistlers mean death when you hear them. But the night is still and there’s someone out in it, whistling for Clare.

She slithers out of her bed. Her night-gown sticks to her, damp with nightmare. She lifts aside an inch of the curtain, and looks down. Dark shadows and a skim of moonlight show on the sea, and she still hears that thin whistling, insistent, on one note, then fluking up, then down to its home note again. Ah, but she knows that whistle, the one he was whipped for. And there’s his dark shape too, and she’s looking down on a strange new map of him in the moonlight, all face and dwindling legs. He is staring whitely up at her window. Cautiously, she pushes up the sash, and the whistling stops. They look at one another, neither knowing how much the other can see. Clare scrapes the window up a little farther and leans out and whispers, pointing down the road.

‘Go round the back! Go round the entry. I’ll come down.’

He nods, and disappears.

No time for anything. She throws on her dressing-gown and shakes her hair back, and runs on her bare feet down the stairs, through kitchen and scullery, to fumble with the bolts. The top one’s rusty – everything rusts if you don’t keep oiling it. And there he is already, close and sudden, making her catch her breath and shrink back. Even now, knowing who it is, she’s afraid of him. It is blind dark in the kitchen, and she feels for the matches, but: ‘Don’t light the candle, Clarey! Come on out.’

‘But I’m only in my night-dress. I can’t.’

‘You’ll be warm enough. It’s still as still out here. The sea’s flat as a plate but for the swell. Come on, Clarey, come down and see it with me. There’s no one about to look at you. All the tabbies have been in their beds for hours.’

He sounds as young and eager as Kitchie. She thrusts out a bare white foot and says, ‘Wait a moment.’

Her old boots are in the cupboard under the stairs. She knows them well enough to lace them in the dark. There. She draws her dressing-gown sash tight and runs back to him.

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