Through a burst of blind splashing, the sky, Coldbarrow, the churning horizon were turned vertical first one way and then the other, but through the swing of the world I was aware of a blurred figure on the shoreline. Then, slipping down into the muffled darkness under the water and out again, they were suddenly closer. Something was being thrust out for me to hold. I made a grab for it and felt my fingers close on a frayed leather strap. I felt a pull that countered that of the tide, felt my thighs and knees eventually scraping against the cobbles of the slipway and then the clutch of the sea was gone and Hanny was standing over me. I let go of the rifle strap and he knelt down and touched my face. I could hardly breathe. Words came out juddering. Hanny cupped his hand to his ear, wanting me to repeat what I said, but I pushed him away and he went over to a rock and sat down with the rifle across his knees.
Still shivering, I took off my parka and then my sweater and twisted it into a thick knot to get some of the water out.
‘Why did you go off like that?’ I said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me where you were going?’
Hanny looked at me.
‘You’re an idiot,’ I said, looking back across the sands which had now disappeared completely. ‘We’re supposed to be going home this morning. How the hell are we going to get back? Everyone will be wondering where we are. Mummer will be cross, and it’ll be me that gets it in the neck. It’s always my fault when you do something stupid. You do know that, don’t you, Hanny?’
Hanny patted his pockets. He took out his plastic dinosaur.
‘You’re always sorry, Hanny,’ I said. ‘Why can’t you just think before you do things?’
Hanny looked at me. Then he bowed his head and fumbled in his pockets for the gorilla mask. I went over and took it off him before he could put it on.
‘You’re not frightened, Hanny,’ I said. ‘You weren’t afraid to go sneaking off without me, were you? You weren’t frightened of coming all the way here by yourself.’
He didn’t know any better, of course, but I was angry with him all the same. More than I should have been. I threw the mask into the sea. Hanny looked at me and then went to the edge of the water and tried to scrape it back towards him with the rifle. He made a few attempts but the mask filled with water and disappeared. He rounded on me and looked as if he was going to hit me. Then he stopped and looked in the direction of Thessaly and kissed the palm of his hand.
‘No, Hanny,’ I said. ‘We can’t go and see her. Not anymore. We’ve got to stay away from that place.’
He kissed his hand again and pointed.
‘Jesus Christ, Hanny. Don’t you understand? If they find us here they’ll hurt us. We just need to keep out of sight until the tide turns. No one’s going to come this way for now, not while they can’t get across. If we stay here they’ll never know that we’ve even been. Give me the rifle. Let me keep watch.’
Hanny turned away from me and held it close to his chest.
‘Give it to me, Hanny.’
He shook his head.
‘I can’t trust you with it. You’ll hurt yourself. Give it to me.’
He turned his back to me completely. I took hold of one of his arms and twisted it. He struggled and easily got free and pushed me to the ground. He hesitated for a moment and then swung the butt of the rifle towards me and caught me sharply on the wrist when I put up my hand to protect myself.
Seeing me in pain, he looked momentarily concerned, but turned away and started walking across the heather.
I called him back. He ignored me. I put my sopping coat on and went after him, stumbling through the matted grass and the peat-haggs. I grabbed him by the sleeve, but he shrugged me off and carried on, more determined than I’d ever seen him before.
A dense fog was coming in off the sea now and I thought that he would be too frightened to go much further. But, despite the grey thickening and the silence that fell upon the place, Hanny went on, taking long strides, jumping across the bogs and pools of water, eventually coming to the remains of an old farmhouse or a barn, it was hard to tell what it had been. Only a few ruined walls remained, roughly forming a rectangle that was littered with other rocks and roof slates. Perhaps people had once lived here. Scavenged from the sea. Worshipped at the chapel and tried to pin God to the island like one of the butterflies in our room at Moorings.
Beneath the sound of Hanny’s boots going through the debris I could hear something else. Voices, calls. I tried to make Hanny stop so that I could hear it properly and in the end had to kick away one of his feet so that he fell. He sprawled and the rifle clattered away. He went off on all fours to retrieve it and sat down on a rock to wipe off the mud.
I put my finger to my lips and Hanny stopped what he was doing and looked at me, breathing hard with anger.
‘Listen,’ I said.
The sound of a dog barking came out of the mist, but it was hard to tell where it was coming from or how far away it was. I had no doubt it was Collier’s. It was the same harsh barking that I’d heard in the field outside Moorings where the ewe had led its lamb to feed on the new grass.
‘Hanny, we need to go back,’ I said. ‘We can’t let them find us here. And I’m cold. Aren’t you cold?’
I had started to shiver. My clothes seemed to be wrapped around my bones.
Hanny looked at me and although a flash of concern passed over his face, he turned and clambered over the broken down wall he was sitting against without waiting for me. I didn’t have the strength to hold him back anymore. All I could do was follow him as best I could as his form slipped in and out of the fog.
I eventually caught up with him at the edge of a brook that came gushing milky-white down a gully of rocks and slid away through the limp bracken towards the sea.
Something was wrong.
I touched Hanny on the arm. He was staring straight ahead.
‘What is it?’ I said and, following his eyes, saw that there was a hare sitting on the other side looking back.
It turned its head to one side, sniffed the air, looked back at us, twitched one of its tall spoon ears, and then bolted just a little too late as a dog emerged from the fog, careered into it and tumbled it over in the mud. The hare kicked with its back legs, once, twice, trying to rake off the jaws that were clamped to its neck, but was limp a second later as the dog thrashed it from side to side and chewed out its throat.
This time I got a firm grip on Hanny’s arm and tried to pull him away. If we went there and then I thought we could get away. But he stood rooted to the spot, still looking past me, over my shoulder, not at the hare or the dog but at the two men that had come out of the mist and were standing there watching us.
Chapter Twenty-five
It was Parkinson and Collier. They were dressed in blue overalls and hard boots caked in mud. Scarves wound around their necks and mouths. Their flat caps dripped with the damp.
Collier had a chain over his shoulder. He lowered his scarf and called the dog to him and when it refused he went over and kicked it off the hare onto its side. He raised his hand to the dog and with a well practised obedience it whined and cowered and Collier got a hold of its collar so that he could pass the chain through it. Parkinson continued to stare at us, cold breath misting around his face.
The brook cluttered over the rocks and bracken.
Still holding Hanny’s arm I started to walk away, but Parkinson moved with an unexpected quickness. He sloshed through the water in a few steps and grabbed the hood of my parka, bringing me to heel like Collier had done with his dog. He turned me to face him and gently rearranged my coat so that it no longer strangled me.