The Drowning Read online

  The beach was thick with bodies in various stages of undress.

  “There must be five thousand people here . . . and at least five hundred in the sea.”

  “Are you going to swim?” Imogen asked.

  “In a while,” Jenna said slowly. She turned on to her stomach, spread out her arms. The heat of early afternoon had scorched the sand beneath her fingers. “I’ll go for a swim with Benjie in a while.”

  The sounds of Porthmeor drifted into her ears: shrieks of delight from the swimmers, the splash of surfboards, a plane purring overhead, laughter from a group nearby, a mother scolding her child, the soft thud of feet pulling their way through mounds of dry sand.

  She felt tired . . . so tired . . . All that work, all those exams were over . . . Now she could let herself relax . . . flop . . . even sleep . . .

  She closed her eyes . . .

  She dreamt she was in a terrible hurry to catch the train to London at St Erth. She just caught it as it pulled out of the station.

  The baking-hot carriage was entirely empty, but she could not decide where to sit. Suddenly the carriage became the ground-floor studio at the Academy. The Head of Dance stood in the middle of the room, wearing a scarlet bikini.

  She read out a list of names, but Jenna’s was not among them.

  Jenna cried, “But you’ve forgotten me, you haven’t said my name . . .”

  People on the beach were shouting.

  Jenna woke with a start, her shoulders burning.

  She sat up.

  “Where . . . What’s the matter? What’s happened?”

  “It’s OK.” Morvah put down her novel. “I’ve just been to find out. There was an accident off Man’s Head. Some guy was messing about on his own on a Lilo. He fell into the sea. Luckily, someone spotted him from the cliff path and raised the alarm.”

  “Will he be OK?”

  “The lifeguards are on to it.” Imogen rooted in her bag for a comb, started to tug it through her blonde curls. “They do an amazing job.”

  Jenna touched her shoulders and winced. “I forgot to put on any suntan lotion.”

  She looked across at the spot where she had last seen her brother. The book of crossword puzzles lay on its side. Sand around it had been trodden over several times.

  “Where’s Benjie?”

  Imogen said, “He’s playing with some friends.”

  “What friends?”

  “I don’t know, do I? Three or four of them came up to him, asked him to go and play. They’re over there, on the rocks, paddling around in the pools.”

  “But I promised—”

  “Don’t worry about him, Jenn. He’ll be OK. We can have more of a juicy chat without him.”

  “Sure.” Jenna stood up fast.

  Too fast.

  The beach swayed slightly.

  “Course he’ll be OK . . . Think I’ll just go and check.”

  Jenna thrust her feet into her flip-flops, tied her towel around her waist and pushed her way through the clusters of bodies towards the rocks and their pools.

  A group of children, none of whom she recognised, raced towards her, holding small bottles full of murky water.

  They vanished into the crowd.

  She began to pick her way over the rocks.

  Benjie must be with the guys he went off with,just around the corner.

  A man and a young boy fished for crabs, their trousers turned up to their knees. A woman swimmer lay panting on a boulder, her hair dripping, catching her breath for the next underwater venture. Above the rocks, sitting on a bench reading a newspaper, a silver-haired gentleman took the air and enjoyed a peaceful afternoon.

  At Jenna’s feet, the sea devoured the edges of the rocks as the tide rose and the swell increased.

  She called,“Benjie? Where are you?”

  She stumbled on a limpet-covered rock. It badly grazed her heel. She swore under her breath.

  “Benjie? Come back at once. Do you hear me? This minute. Come back to the beach, where I can keep an eye on you.”

  A wave grumbled against the rocks. Spray showered Jenna’s burning shoulders, making her gasp. She struggled on, round the vast corner of craggy boulders, further and then further still.

  The sea and the rocks played smilingly with each other, empty of humankind. Above them, the sky basked, endless, cloudless, impersonal.

  Jenna shrieked Benjie’s name into the blue.

  The murmurs of the sea thrummed into her ears.

  No answer came.

  Hurriedly, she slithered back over the rocks to the beach.

  “Did you find him?” Imogen asked.

  Morvah said, “Put your shirt back on. Your shoulders are bright red. And your heel’s bleeding. You need to—”

  “What I need is to find Benjie!” Jenna snapped. “Could you help me search the beach? He can’t just have vanished into thin air.”

  “What Have I Done?”

  One of the lifeguards sat on his rescue buggy by the edge of the sea.

  Jenna tugged at his shoulder. “I need your help. My little brother’s gone missing.”

  He turned swiftly towards her. “When did you last see him?”

  “My friends saw him about two hours ago, over by the Island.”

  “Where have you looked?”

  “All over the beach. Imogen and Morvah and I, we’ve asked hundreds of people. Nobody’s seen him. He should have stayed with me, but I fell asleep. I think he may have gone off to the rock pools with some friends.”

  “Ah . . . Those pools can be very tricky. We can’t see them all from here.”

  Jenna could taste sand in her mouth, feel its grit in her eyes and under her fingernails. “We can’t find him anywhere.”

  The lifeguard spoke clearly and concisely into his two-way radio. Then he looked at Jenna. “My colleague at the Lifeguard Hut will put out a call for him through our megaphone.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Middle of July, height of the season . . . Happens all the time on a beach as crowded as this. I’m sure he’ll turn up . . .” He looked at her more closely. “What’s his name?”

  Jenna’s cheeks and shoulders burnt, while her stomach clutched cold as ice.

  “Benjamin Pascoe. Everyone calls him Benjie . . . Please, could you hurry . . . I’m really worried that something may have happened to him. My friends are still searching the beach, but if he was here we should have found him by now.”

  “Climb on the buggy. I’ll run you back to the Lifeguard Hut and we can take it from there . . . You’ll need to give us a full description . . . How old your brother is, the colour of his hair, what he’s wearing. All the details you can.”

  Calling Benjie Pascoe . . . Has anyone seen Benjie Pascoe? If there’s a Benjie Pascoe on the beach, would he please go immediately to the Lifeguard Hut at the top of the beach . . . Calling Benjie Pascoe . . . He’s eleven years old with fair hair and glasses . . . He’s wearing blue swimming trunks and a blue-and-white-striped T-shirt . . . If Benjie Pascoe is on the beach, please come at once to the Lifeguard Hut where your sister, Jenna, is waiting.

  The second lifeguard’s confident husky voice made the crowds sit up and listen.

  “Thank you,” Jenna muttered. Her teeth chattered with dread. She scanned the beach yet again, praying for the sight of Benjie’s fair hair, his sticking-out ears, his glasses, his T-shirt.

  “How long do we wait before we . . . before you—”

  “Couple of minutes. Usually they turn up pretty quickly.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  The lifeguards glanced at each other.

  The second one said, “I think we’ll alert Falmouth Coastguard . . . We’ve just done that for the guy off Man’s Head . . . Luckily, we managed to rescue him in time . . .”

  “What’ll the coastguard do?” Jenna asked, trying desperately to make her voice sound calm. The lifeguard’s dark brown eyes were full of sympathy.

  “Ask the RNLI to relaunch the inshore
lifeboat . . . and then to back it up with the offshore Mersey lifeboat.”

  “The big lifeboat?” Her heart lurched. “You’ll bring the big one in? The one where you set off the maroons?”

  “That’s right.”

  Jenna closed her eyes. How often, lying on her narrow bed in the attic room opposite Benjie’s, had she heard the two dreadful thunders of the maroons, the finality of their boom; felt the way they made her heart beat and her room shake with the sound? How often had she thought, Please God, whoever it’s for, keep them safe.

  Now St Ives would hear that sound again – only this time it would be a cry of help, a warning of danger, a call for her own brother.

  The second lifeguard patted her shoulder reassuringly. His hand felt cool against her burning skin. “Don’t panic. I’m sure your brother’s wandered off with some of his mates. Nine out of ten cases turn up again and no harm done.”

  Jenna said through icy lips, “And what if Benjie’s number ten?”

  “We’ll do everything we can,” the lifeguard said briskly, doing his level best to keep up Jenna’s spirits. “Don’t forget we’ve also got air-sea rescue capacity. A helicopter can be with us from Helston in eight minutes.”

  “I must go and tell my parents.” Jenna shook with terror at the thought of what they would say to her. “They own the Cockleshell Tea Room.”

  “We’d prefer you not to leave the scene. You’re what we call our first informant. Could you get one of your friends to go?”

  Jenna spotted Imogen and Morvah walking despondently up the beach towards her.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m sure they’ll go for me.”

  As Jenna waited, the sound of the maroons rang through the streets, once and then again. People had gathered along the road above Porthmeor Beach, staring, pointing, gossiping.

  Mum and Dad, with Imogen and Morvah behind them, fought their way through the crowds.

  Dad clasped Jenna in his arms.

  They stood and watched.

  They stood and waited.

  There was nothing they could do but watch and wait.

  And pray.

  I don’t know what’s happened to you,Benjie,but please,please come back to us. Just turn up on the beach, or come marching through the door of the Cockleshell with some silly excuse. Any excuse will do . . .

  I should have looked after you. I shouldn’t have fallen asleep. I didn’t mean to. I was going to take you for a swim.

  We’ll do that tomorrow. After you’ve come back and you’ve had your tea and a good night’s sleep, we’ll come down here in the morning and we’ll go for a swim.

  The small inshore lifeboat circled the rocks off the Island.

  The offshore Mersey lifeboat roared in to give it back-up.

  High overhead, the rescue helicopter zoomed into the sky.

  Jenna said through icy lips, “That was quick.”

  She screwed up her eyes. She could see the helicopter’s whirring rotor blades as it searched the immediate area; heard its patient, insistent drone.

  Suddenly it hovered in one position. A diver slid like a snake down the wire and into the water. The inshore lifeboat closed in.

  The crowd fell silent.

  Somewhere in the distance a voice shouted, “They’ve found him!”

  The diver emerged with a limp body. The inshore-lifeboat crew helped him lift it into the lifeboat. After a few moments, the diver, carefully holding the body, was winched up into the helicopter.

  Jenna turned her head away.

  I can’t look any more . . . I can’t bear to look.

  She hid her face on Dad’s shoulder. He gripped her waist.

  “Hold on, Jenn . . . It’s going to be all right.”

  The second lifeguard stood awkwardly in front of them, his arms hugging his bronzed body.

  “They’ll take Benjie to Truro Hospital,” he said slowly. “They’ll do everything they possibly can for him.”

  Her face chalk-white, her lips a purple-grey, Mum said, “Get me to Truro, Elwyn. Now. Quickly. As fast as you can.”

  Dad said, “Of course, dear . . . Anything you—”

  “Benjie isn’t dead, Elwyn. The minute he sees me . . . He’s going to be just fine, you’ll see.” Her eyes glittered, black as polished coal. “Now, as fast as you can.”

  Jenna began to hurry with them back along the Digey. Mum elbowed her out of the way.

  “She,” she hissed at Dad as he took her arm, “can stay behind . . . I don’t want her beside me, I don’t want her in the car or at the hospital. Just get her out of my sight.”

  Jenna opened her mouth to plead with Mum, but no words came.

  She dropped behind on the narrow street, the crowds threatening to swallow her. She could hear Dad saying, “Come on,Lydia. Benjie will want us all to be with him . . . Jenna never meant this to happen.”

  Mum pulled her arm out of his and marched ahead of him.

  They reached the tea room.

  Dad swung round to Jenna, his eyes pleading. “Do you mind, Jenn?”

  Her fury with Dad bubbled to the surface. “Of course I mind! I’m desperate to see Benjie!”

  Dad shook his head, took her hands, pressed the keys into them. “We’ll be back as soon as we can.”

  She watched helplessly as Dad opened the car door for Mum; climbed into the driving seat; hurtled the car into reverse, its horn blaring; drove out of the Digey and away.

  The keys throbbed in her fist. The three tables outside the front of the Cockleshell were littered with dirty cups and plates. On one of them sat a small pile of coins. Jenna stared down at them, wondering confusedly why the money had not been taken or the tables cleared.

  Imogen and Morvah came racing up to her.

  “Is there anything we can do?”

  Imogen’s face was streaked with tears. Morvah looked exhausted.

  Jenna stood huddled in their arms for a moment, willing herself not to cry.

  “No, I’ll be fine. I’ll ring you.”

  She released her friends, steeling herself for whatever lay ahead.

  “I need to be on my own.”

  “Are you sure? We could help. Just tell us what—”

  Speechless, Jenna turned away.

  Imogen called,“Ring me. Any time. Promise me, Jenn. The minute you have news.”

  Jenna unlocked the tearoom door and closed it against the sun.

  The room baked in the afternoon heat. A fly buzzed angrily above one of the tables, then settled itself noisily in a pot of cream.

  She walked stiffly into the kitchen. The sweet scent of pastry filled the air, making her feel sick.

  She threw open the door to the inner courtyard.

  Dusty crouched in a shady corner, his yellow eyes circling the erratic flutters of a butterfly.

  Jenna scooped the cat into her arms. She held his slender body against her face, smoothing the fur between his ears, murmuring into them.

  “Benjie didn’t want to go. He told me. He said it scared him – the noise, the beach, the crowds. I didn’t listen, did I? I promised I’d look after him.”

  Jenna’s legs gave way beneath her.

  “Oh, my God, Dusty. What have I done?”

  Aftermath

  Jenna lay curled up in a ball in the middle of her studio floor.

  As if she were in a trance, she’d fed Dusty, cleared the tea room of its half-eaten meals, piled the dishes into the dishwasher, tidied the kitchen, bundled a tray of freshly baked jam tarts into the freezer. She’d polished the tables, swept the floor, emptied the tiny vases of daisies, counted the money in the till, bagged it up and stacked it in the safe.

  Sweat dripped down her back. Her grazed heel smarted, her shoulders burnt.

  She’d picked up the phone and asked for the number of Truro Hospital. The pencil broke as she scribbled it down. It didn’t matter. She knew she’d never find the courage to dial it.

  Upstairs, she’d stood for a long time in the doorway to Benjie’s bed
room, watching Klunk and Splat scuttle around their cage.

  She’d taken a shower and washed her hair, put on cotton pyjamas, made a cup of tea, waited until it was stone cold before she swilled it down.

  The sickness at the bottom of her stomach subsided into a dull ache.

  She felt numb.

  When the phone rang she leapt to answer it.

  “Dad?”

  “I’m so sorry, Jenn.” His voice choked. “They did everything they could. The helicopter crew, the staff at the hospital. They’ve all been marvellous. Benjie had—” His voice petered out.

  “Dad, talk to me . . .”

  “It looks as if he’d got himself caught . . . trapped under one of the rocks . . . There was nothing they could do for him. It was just too late.”

  She hauled herself upstairs to her studio and shut the door.

  The slow twilight had begun. Through the window she could see gaggles of tourists, strolling, laughing, out for their evening meal; couples with their arms around each other, kissing in doorways; gangs of teenagers carrying cans of beer, jostling their way down to celebrations on the Saturday-night beach.

  I’d forgotten . . . It’s Denzil’s party . . . I said I’d ring Imogen . . .

  I should ring Tammy . . .

  I can’t . . . I can’t do anything . . .

  If I lie on the floor, I’ll still be able to hear Dad’s car when they get back.

  She must have fallen asleep.

  The studio door opened.

  “Jenn? . . . Are you all right?”

  Dad bent over her.

  She blinked at the light shining from the landing behind him.

  She sat up. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  He knelt beside her,took her hands in his. “Mum’s gone straight to bed.”