Portcreif, 1952
Estie toed the edge of the shallows and contemplated shoving Jago off the harbour wall. It would make a satisfying splash, she decided, and put an end to his triumphant crowing.
‘Fancy a dip, Estie?’
She glanced up despite herself. Even across the expanse of the bay she could make out the familiar flash of his sneer. She met it with her blackest stare. ‘You couldn’t keep up, Jago.’
A rattle of laughter pierced the evening haze, and her face flushed in irritation. She should have known better. Jago was fuelled by attention, and his cronies could always be relied upon to worship whatever he said. Flanking the wall like his soldiers, salt-stained shorts, stupid grins, and fishing-rods angled like muskets.
All it would take was one satisfying splash and then there’d be stillness. Bye bye, Jago.
She imagined herself giving him a cheery wave as he disappeared beneath the darkening waves.
‘Oh, come on, Wetty. Not going to wait for me?’
She clenched her teeth. That was original. She’d never wet herself or anything, but itwas actually one of Jago’s more imaginative insults. Not that it even rhymed.
Jago Martin was only a week past his sixteenth but already six foot of lean muscle and frantic energy, strutting along the harbour like he owned the place.
Except he didn’t own it. It had been her place, long before any of the boys had explored the bay. Then he’d taken it for his own and she’d hated him ever since. Hated his easy laughter and his sly jokes. Hated the rage he brought out in her. But worst of all, she hated the way he didn’t even know the worth of what he’d taken.
She stepped out into the shallows and choked back a gasp as water slopped over her knees.
It had been her place long before any of them could remember. The very end of the harbour wall and a swallow’s dive to the reef where lobsters edged over scallop beds, their claws as long as your hand. Where strands of amber kelp gave way to midnight waters – if you could hold your breath long enough.
A silent place. A magical place. Her place.
She splashed the water over her thighs and steadied her breathing. The waves were picking up, but she’d swam in worse. It wouldn’t do to worry.
‘Come on then Wetty, we’re waiting.’ She could picture the glint of vicious mischief dancing in his eyes. He didn’t think she’d do it.
With the autumn swells picking up, it would take an ordinary boy ten minutes to cross the harbour to the deep waters, navigating the rolling fishing boats and the criss-cross of mooring lines. She hoicked up the strap on her swimsuit. Longer in the ridiculous hand-me-down monstrosity Dad had dragged from a box of mum’s old things.
But she’d never be ordinary, he’d gifted her that too, and reminded her that clothes didn’t matter. She strode out, feet slipping over the rocks, skin humming with cold. She wouldn’t let them see her nerves.
She took a final breath and dove. Then the water seized her like its own.
Her arms sliced through slate-grey and mottled green, arcing crystal-spray over her back, muffling the cacophony from the harbour wall. Proving she was stronger than them with each stroke.
Every day the same. Every day claiming her place, her limbs growing tanned and lean, as summer dragged into autumn. Every day searching out the solitude of the deeper water. Ruby red anemones shimmering like gems, spider-like urchins, a sand-eruption of hound shark skittering away, and all the while the weight of the ocean pressing in on her. Cocooning her in silence.
She pivoted under a sagging rope, then broke for breath, mouth guppying over the waves that pounded the harbour mouth. Just a little further and she’d be swallowed up in the stillness of the deep.
‘Storm’s coming, Wetty,’ Jago leant over the harbour wall – gave a mocking salute.
A wave broke over her head as if in answer, and the lads trumpeted with laughter as she spluttered for breath. The swell had risen from nowhere and the tide was rushing in. For the first time in years, uncertainty prickled the edges of her mind. All the stories that had been passed down by generations of villagers – stories that hadn’t been meant for her – suddenly flooded her senses.
The boys were prancing along the edge of the wall above her, reading the fear in her expression.
‘Hope she drowns,’ someone jeered.
Now was the moment to turn back. It didn’t matter what they thought. It didn’t matter. But the waves were buffeting the harbour wall, and the boats were straining like wild horses, and she was struggling to make out a route.
There was a splash behind her, loud enough to drown out the jibes and she spun round, expecting a volley of rocks or coke bottles, or filthy bait slop.
‘Here!’ panicked voices tumbled from the wall. A boat lurched towards her and she darted sidelong like an eel.
‘Jago.’ ‘Here!’ ‘He jumped.’ Voices poured over one another, but no-one was doing anything. ‘He fell!’
She bicycled her legs, scanning the peaks, glimpsing the shore. Faces crowded the harbour edge. Panic twisted their pale expressions. No longer soldiers, just frightened boys.
‘Where?’ she screamed. Why was no one helping?
‘There!’
A rod lurched to the surface a metre away, rejected momentarily by the sea’s clutches, then dragged back under foaming peaks.
She waited for the hand, the grinning face erupting, gasping for breath. A joke. It was just a joke. But there was only the dancing water and the boats prancing upwards.
‘Quick!’
For a second she thought about doing nothing. Save yourself. The thought glinted at the corner of her mind, like the hate Jago had dragged from inside her. I could leave him. I could do nothing. The thought was tantalising.
She couldn’t… Could she?
Estie scissored down, feet piercing the air, then meeting coldness. Down and deeper down, hands tearing icy darkness, eyes stinging, legs trembling. Lungs screaming.
Then a tangle of fishing wire, and the wriggle of limbs, and heavy hands threatening to drown her in panic.
It was a minute to the surface. It could have been an hour. Then eight more, heaving all six foot of him back to the beach, grasping from rope to sodden rope to tow herself landwards, his body like ice under her arms.
They’d timed it. That’s what they said afterwards, the boys crowding round, thumping her on the back, brine streaming from her nose and mouth, as if she was one of them.
‘He’s breathing. He’s breathing.’
‘He’d have died. He would have.’
Her bravery was all anyone could talk about for weeks after, following her down to the harbour, arms clamped around her shoulder. Retelling the stories a hundred ways until the waves were six foot high, and Jago had been unconscious, and someone’s dad had definitely seen a shark.
A shark in Portcreif. She’d smiled to herself.
Through it all Estie kept walking, bare feet slapping damp harbour stones, all the way down to the furthest end, where no one would dare keep her from. Not now.
She hadn’t been brave, she realised, as she climbed to the top of the wall, toes clenching the edge of the stone – a gesture as familiar as a handshake. She hadn’t been scared for herself at all.
Then a leap into space. A twist. A swallow’s dive, and her head careering into darkness and stillness.
She just couldn’t imagine it being her place if he’d died there.
Because it was Estie’s place.
Sarah Connell writes fiction from her attic in the South-West. Her work is inspired by the things she sees out the window when it isn’t raining and the things she imagines when it is. Her work has recently been featured in PaperBound magazine and she is represented by Stephanie Thwaites at Curtis Brown.
@sarahconnellwrites