AllFreeNovel
Share Us
When she looked right at him as he pushed the great coat off her shoulders, Magnús felt himself weaken as though absorbing all of her exhaustion into his own body.
Her eyes were heavy-lidded and irises icy blue, truly like an Icelander. She was having difficulty keeping them open.
Why had she been at sea in these high winds? It was miraculous she’d managed to put in at the harbour at all. Perhaps she’d been washed ashore while she slept? Magnús watched as the woman pulled her dripping jumper up over her head and let it fall on the shore.
Mrs Crocombe – who was tiny in comparison to this woman – immediately wrapped her tightly in blankets and grabbed the wet clothes. She was shivering like a person in hypothermic shock and urgently needed to get warm.
‘A hot bath will help her,’ Magnús instructed nobody in particular, and the woman’s eyes snapped to his once more, her expression dazed and unreadable. Was it a look of curiosity? He didn’t have time to learn more; she was suddenly whisked off up the shore by the Bickleigh brothers who, without warning, had picked her up off her feet and were carrying her away like a great haul caught in their nets, making it look effortless and as though they netted mermaids every day of the week.
Magnús followed in their wake, unsure what to do now and feeling like he was no longer required. He was, after all, a failed bookseller, not a doctor.
Jowan and his little beige dog were waiting for the brothers on the old lifeboat ramp, long since decommissioned, and they placed the woman onto Jowan’s wooden sled where she sat stiff and motionless before they hauled her up the cobbled street and out of view.
Mrs Crocombe placed a hand on Magnús’s arm. ‘She’ll be all right now,’ she told him with all the certainty of a soothsayer.
‘Where are they taking her?’
‘Jowan’s cottage, the old B&B. Doctor Morrison will arrive soon, sort her out.’
The old woman was struggling in her wellies over the rocks, and Magnús slowed his stride to match her pace until they were at the top of the concrete lifeboat launch. ‘You’re shaking as much as she was,’ she told him, looking up into his face. ‘Come along, Finan can help you.’
Even though every muscle and nerve told him to follow after the mermaid, he let Mrs Crocombe tug his arm, leading him along the wide sea wall and into the pub.
Only once inside the deserted bar room with the door shoved shut did he realise how roaringly loud the wind had been and how cold his body was. He slumped into a chair by the crackling fire. All the while Mrs Crocombe shuffled about, finding Finan and ordering him to make a full English and a pot of sweet tea, and making Magnús take off his jacket and move even closer to the fire.
Magnús couldn’t see anything other than that pair of blue eyes, wide and entreating, and the way the woman from the sea had looked down at him as he lay on his back on the shore likehewas the one who had been shipwrecked and then dramatically, miraculously saved.
‘I’ll be off then,’ Mrs Crocombe announced.
‘Shouldn’t you stay and have a hot drink, too? You were blown about just as much as everybody else,’ Magnús asked with a croaky voice. Had he really been shouting that loudly over the winds?
Mrs Crocombe was already on her way out the door.
Bella appeared, placing Magnús’s mug on his table, watching the woman leave.
‘She’ll have fourteen houses to call in at Up-along, spreading the gossip about the girl in the boat. She’s better than the local paper, and usually more accurate.’ She smiled, but not with her eyes, and walked back behind the bar, telling him his breakfast wouldn’t be a minute.
A couple of holidaymakers with a grumbling, teething baby arrived and sat at the furthest table by the window, asking Bella for coffee as they passed. There was no one else around this morning, it seemed.
Magnús had the presence of mind to eavesdrop as Finan returned and informed Bella that the doctor had arrived and Monty was back in the kitchen to finish the breakfast service.
‘Is she OK?’ Magnús enquired weakly, but Finan and Bella had fallen deep in conversation, standing by the espresso machine.
‘That’s the last of our Christmas guests gone, except the Austens.’ Finan raised a hand to the young couple by the window but they were too busy trying to get baby Serena in her highchair to notice. ‘They’ve come too far to leave now, not with a little one and a ten-hour drive to get home,’ Finan told his wife.
‘All of them refunded?’ Bella said.
Finan nodded. ‘All but one room empty and our Christmas visitor takings wiped out by an amber weather warning.’
To Magnús, Bella looked a cheerful, robust sort; her voice now told a different story. ‘Only the three breakfasts then,’ Bella called through to Monty, close to tears as she turned back to her husband. ‘There’s eleven six-kilogram turkeys in the freezer. What am I supposed to do with them now?’
As Finan shrugged, Monty swept through from the kitchen carrying a plate. ‘Did anyone recognise the boat?’ he asked.
For a moment Bella and Finan only paused, looking at him.
‘The woman’s boat? Wasn’t local. I never saw it before,’ Monty added.
‘What was it called?’ Finan managed to ask, though he couldn’t summon much interest. His eyes were now fixed on the till.
