The Black Tide Read online

  Andy Trevose, a few feet in front of me and talking to another Sennen Cove fisherman, suddenly got to his feet. ‘Tedn’t laikly th’all get ’er off’n tamorrer.’

  ‘The salvage operators assure me—’

  ‘Then th’are kidding themsel’, an’ thee – t’ll be blawing tamorrer, d’you see.’

  ‘Have it your own way,’ the Under-Secretary said mildly. ‘I’m not an authority on local weather and I can only repeat what the salvage operators have told me. They are optimistic – very optimistic – of getting the ship off on tomorrow’s tide.’ And on that he sat down.

  His speech, which had lasted almost half an hour, was followed by a question and answer session. Here he was at his best, combining an air of authority with a touch of humour that had the effect of softening his slightly offhand manner and making him more human. Yes, he thought the Minister would be giving close consideration to the setting up of some sort of committee to reconsider the question of tanker routes in the sea area between the Scillies and Land’s End. This in answer to a question by the representative of the International Tanker Owners’ Pollution Federation. Both Nature Conservancy and the local representatives of the inshore fishermen pressed him hard on this point, but all he would say was, ‘I will convey your observations to the Minister.’

  Nobody seemed to think this was good enough. The demand was for a tightening of regulations in the waters between Land’s End and the Scillies, and regular patrols to ensure that tankers and other bulk carriers of dangerous cargoes reported in as they had to on the French side off Ushant. And, similarly, they wanted them routed outside the Scillies. The Under-Secretary said, of course, it would take time, that there were a great number of interests to be considered, as well as the whole legal question of the freedom of the seas. At this point he was shouted down, first by local fishermen and their wives, then by some of the coastal farmers; finally a group of boarding house operators led by Jimmy joined in. There was so much noise for a time that even the local MP couldn’t get a hearing.

  In the end the Under-Secretary departed with nothing settled, only his promise that he would convey the feelings of the meeting most forcibly. It was by then almost eight-thirty. Jimmy and I, and several others from the Whitesand area, talked it over in the bar of a nearby pub. Most of us felt nothing had been achieved. Andy Trevose said he reckoned nothing would be done until we got a disaster as big as the Amoco Cadiz. ‘An’ tedn’t no use pretending – tha’ll put paid to the inshaaw fishing for a generation.’ And he went off to phone his wife.

  When he returned we had another round, and then Jimmy and I left. It was very still by then with wisps of sea fog trailing up from the direction of the harbour. ‘Looks like the man from London could be right.’ Jimmy was crouched over the wheel, straining to see the road. ‘If this weather holds they’ve a good chance of getting her off.’ The mist was thick on the moor, but when we reached his house the barometer was already falling. It was as we were standing there, staring at it, that Jean handed me a printed card. ‘Give that to Karen, will you? I said I’d try and find it for her, but it’s so long since we used it …’

  ‘Used what?’ I asked.

  ‘That flame weedkiller. But it’s very simple and I told her how it worked.’

  ‘You told her—’ I was staring down at the instructions card, my mind suddenly alerted, seeing Karen out in the cove and remembering there had been something beside her in the dinghy, something with a bell-shaped end like a blunderbuss resting on the bows. It must have been the flame guard, but the light was so dim by then I hadn’t been able to see it clearly. ‘When was this? When did she borrow it from you?’

  ‘This afternoon. She was up here … Oh, it would have been about three – well before tea anyway.’

  ‘God Almighty!’ I breathed. ‘You gave her that thing?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ she added quietly. ‘I explained it all to her, how to pressurize the tank and get the flame ignited. I even lent her a pump and some meths.’

  ‘She didn’t say why she wanted it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You didn’t ask her?’

  ‘Why should I? It’s for burning off weeds.’

  I turned to Jimmy then and asked him to drive me down to the end of the lane, and when we got there he insisted on coming down the path with me to the cottage. The mist had thickened, a blank wall of vapour blocking the beam of my torch. ‘What are you worried about?’ he asked. ‘She wouldn’t be fooling about with it at this time of night.’

  ‘She didn’t want it for weeds,’ I said.

  ‘What then?’

  ‘That oil slick.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ He laughed. ‘Well, you can relax. Even if she did get it going it wouldn’t do much good. That’s pretty heavy stuff that slick.’

  The cottage loomed, a darker grey in the fog. No sign of a light. The door was locked and I was shouting for Karen before I had even got it open. But there was no answer. The cottage was still and dead, wrapped in the fog, and only the faintest glow from the peat fire in the big chimney place. ‘Karen! Karen!’ I searched quickly. There was nobody there. Then I was running, stumbling through the fog, down into the cove. The little stone boathouse was empty, the door hanging open and no sign of the inflatable anywhere on the sands, only the marks where she had dragged it into the water.

  I stood stock still for a moment, my heart hammering and trying to think, trying to prove to myself that what I feared couldn’t be, that she couldn’t be such a fool. But I knew she could. The fog swirled to a breath of wind and I turned, the path and the cottage suddenly clear in the long-throwing beam of my torch. Andy Trevose! That would be the quickest. Drive to Sennen and get Andy to take me out in his boat. I called to Jimmy, climbing the path in long strides, not bothering to lock the cottage, heading for the van, and behind me Jimmy said, ‘You think she’s going to use that flame-thrower on the slick?’

  ‘Yes,’ I panted.

  ‘But I told you, that stuff’s too heavy—’

  ‘The ship then – something. She wanted to make a gesture, blow the thing up. I’m afraid she’ll hurt herself.’

  We reached the van. ‘Sennen?’ he asked as he started the engine.

  ‘Yes, Andy Trevose.’ He should be back by the time we got there.

  ‘She’s probably stranded on the sand somewhere. If the outboard broke down … Shall I stop for Jean?’

  ‘No. Hurry.’

  But he stopped all the same, to tell her where we were going, and then we were feeling our way up on to the Sennen road, with the mist closed down and getting thicker. It seemed an age, both of us peering into the murk and the refracted beam of the headlights, but at last we were down by the hard and pulling up at the Trevose cottage near the lifeboat station. Andy was back and he had his oilskins on. ‘Seen your wife?’ he asked. ‘Is Karen home?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She was here,’ he said. And his wife, behind him, added, ‘Karen came up from the quay abaht eight-thirty, asked me what Andy thawt would be the result of the meeting, and when Ah told her he’d promised to phone she asked to stay. She was that urgent to knaw what happened.’

  ‘And when you told her, what did she say?’

  ‘Nothing much. She’d been very withdrawn, all the taime we were waiting. Very edgy-laike, knaw what I mean. And then, when Ah tauld her nothing had been decaided, she laughed. I knew it, she says, the laugh a little wild and her voice a bit high laike. Very white, she was. Very tuned-up – laike she wanted to scream but was managing to throttle it back.’ She gave a big, full-breasted shrug. ‘Tha’s all. She went out then.’

  ‘She didn’t say where she was going?’

  ‘No. The only thing she said was, Ah’ll show ’em. At least, Ah think that was it. She was muttering to herself as she flung out of the door. I ran after her, but the mist had thickened and she was already gawn.’

  ‘Rose thinks she’d be off to the ship’, Andy said, and his wife nodded. ‘Tha’s right. A
h don’t know why, but tha’s what Ah think.’

  And Andy Trevose in oilskins and sea boots. ‘You were going to take your boat out,’ I said. ‘You were going to look for her?’

  ‘Aye, but not my boat. The ILB, I think.’

  I thanked him, glad I didn’t have to waste time trying to convince him of the urgency of it. ‘You’ll need oilskins,’ he said as we started down towards the lifeboat station, a single street light shining dimly and a cold breeze swirling the mist over the roofs of the cottages. Away to the south-west the Longships’ explosive fog signal banged twice and far away I could just hear the moaning of the Seven Stones’ diaphone. ‘Rack’n we’ll take the inshore boat,’ he said. ‘Tha’ll be quicker.’ He had the key of the Lifeboat House and after issuing Jimmy and myself with lifejackets, oilskins and seaboots, he motioned us to take the stern of the high speed rubber boat and the three of us dragged it out and ran it down into the water.

  Visibility was virtually nil as we went out from under the stone breakwater on a compass bearing, Andy crouched in the stern over the big outboard, Jimmy and I in the bows. I have only a vague recollection of the passage out, my mind concentrated on Karen, trying to visualize what she was doing, where she would have got to by now. Maybe Jimmy was right. Maybe she was just lost in the fog. But the double bang from the Longships light made it seem unlikely. Andy hadn’t thought she was lost. He’d put on his oilskins as soon as Rose had told him, prepared to go out after her alone. I could just see him, a dark shadow in the stern leaning forward away from the engine, a VHF handset to his ear.

  Through The Tribbens it was only about a mile and a half from Sennen to Kettle’s Bottom, and before we had gone half that distance the five minute fog signal from the Longships was audible even above the roar of the outboard. Another ten minutes and Andy was throttling back, listening out on his walkie-talkie. ‘Tha’s one of the tugs. Rack’ns he’s seen a laight by the starn o’ that tanker. Farg cawms an’ goes, he says. He’s got a searchlight trained on ’er an’ he’ll keep it so till we get thar.’

  He opened up the throttle again and we bounced across what appeared to be a small tide rip. The tide would be ebbing now, pulling us down towards the rocks. There was movement in the fog, an iridescent glimmer of light. The light was there for a moment, then it was gone, the fog closed up again.

  ‘Getting close now,’ Andy shouted, leaning forward and passing me the big torch. ‘As soon as ’ee see the wrack—’ He shouted a warning and swung the boat over in a hard turn. The slop of wavelets running over rocks awash slid by to port, just visible in the beam of the torch. The fog signal on the Longships cracked out, sharp and very clear, and in the same instant the landward-facing fixed red peered at us through thinning mist like some demented one-eyed Cyclops, and to the right of it the shadowy shape of the stranded tanker showed black in silhouette against the brightening beam of a searchlight.

  I don’t know how far away the wreck was – four, five hundred yards, three cables perhaps. But it was near enough for me to see that all the huge length of her was clear of the water, save for the stern, which was right against the rocks and sunk so low that the deck was awash. It was only a few seconds that we saw her clearly, then the fog closed in again. But it was still long enough for me to see a rubber boat snugged against the after rail and a figure moving along the sloping deck pinpointed by a flickering light.

  I shouted. But at that distance and with the engine running … what the hell did she think she was doing? It had to be her. Nobody else would be out to the wreck in a fog like this. I turned to Andy. ‘Did you get a bearing?’ I screamed at him.

  He nodded. ‘’Bout three-one-O. We’re in among the rocks.’ He had cut the engine right down, manoeuvring slowly. ‘Gi’ us some laight.’ I switched on the torch again, swinging the beam of it in a wide arc. Ripples everywhere, the white of little waves breaking as the tide ripped the shallows.

  ‘Was that a torch she had?’ Jimmy asked. But he knew it wasn’t. There had been no beam and a faint, flickering light like that, it could only be that damned flame-thrower. The beam from the tug’s searchlight was growing, the fog like a luminous curtain getting brighter all the time. Then suddenly it was swept away completely and we had a clear view of the tanker again, a little nearer now, her decks deserted, no sign of anyone. Had I dreamed it, that figure with the ghostly flame? But then I saw her, coming out from the shadow of the superstructure, a small shape high up the sloping deck and holding out ahead of her that tiny flame of light.

  There was an open hatch and my eyes, staring through the cold humidity of the atmosphere, were beginning to water. It had to be a hatch, the entry hatch to one of the fuel tanks, and a void opened up inside me, my breath held and my body trembling. Oh God, no! And nothing I could do, no way I could stop her. I saw her reach it and she paused, crouched down on the deck. ‘She’s pumping,’ Jimmy breathed. ‘She’s pumping up the pressure, building up the flame.’

  She stood up, the flame much brighter as she pushed it forward. That’s what I shall never forget, that I could see her pushing that flame towards the hatch and nothing I could do to stop her. I may have screamed. I don’t know. We were too far away, the engine roaring, and nothing I could do, nothing. I could see her, but I couldn’t stop her. The mist closed in and I sat there, my mouth open, dumb and appalled, waiting.

  And then, as the silhouette of the tanker faded to a shadow, it came – a great whoosh of flame burning the fog to a blazing incandescent fire that shot upwards with a terrible roaring sound.

  The engine was idling again and we sat there, stunned and in a state of shock as the heat of it hit us through the fog glare. And the noise – it was a roar like a thousand trains going through a tunnel, a great eruption of sound.

  I remember Jimmy suddenly yelling, ‘It’s gone. The whole bloody ship’s gone, my God!’ And Andy muttering close behind me, ‘Tha’ll show ’em, arl raight, poor gal.’ His hand gripped my arm, a touch of sympathy. ‘She’ll be remembered – a long taime for this.’

  I didn’t move. I didn’t say anything. I was thinking of Karen, wondering if she’d really known – what she was doing, what the result would be. But she must have. She must have known. Oil and air, the fumes an explosive mixture. She wasn’t a fool. She’d known. Christ! And I’d let her go. I’d seen her, down there in the cove in the dim evening light, the flame-thrower there, in the bows, and I’d waved to her, and gone off up the path to that useless meeting.

  The heat was burning up the fog now. I could see the bright white heart of the fire and the great billowing cloud of smoke rising like a volcanic eruption. I couldn’t see the wreck, only the rocks of the Kettle’s Bottom all red with the glare. Either it was sunk or else the smoke and flames had engulfed it completely. The effect was terrifying, the thunderous roar, the whole appalling conflagration seeming to burst up from the surface of the sea as though fuelled by some underwater vent. Lightning flashed in the smoke and I sat there, thinking of Karen, trying to imagine … I think I must have been crying, for my eyes became crusted with salt and I could feel my mouth trembling. But the intensity of the heat burned up my tears, so that I stared, dry-eyed, at the pyre she had made for herself.

  I should have known. After three years – God! I should have known. And we’d been here almost two – two years living in expectation, waiting for just such a catastrophe.

  The heat was scorching my face and there was wind. Jimmy’s hand gripped my arm. ‘Hold it!’ he said urgently. ‘Nothing you can do.’ I realized then that I had been struggling to my feet. ‘Nothing at all.’ His face was close to mine. ‘Not now. Just sit there …’

  Just sit, do nothing. The tanker blazing and Karen’s body – her lovely, soft body burned to nothing. Had it been quick? An explosion like that, such a holocaust of flame – she wouldn’t have known? Surely to God it wouldn’t have hurt? I tried to imagine myself there beside her when it happened, but it was no use – my mind couldn’t grasp what it would have been
like, what the impact of it would have been on flesh and bone. The nerves … it would have been her nerves that took the full shock of it, reacting like a seismograph, shrieking information to the brain in that split second of exploding flames.

  My head was turned, still facing the lurid heat-glow. But it was over the stern now. Andy had swung the inflatable away from it. The wind was growing, whipping the surface of the water to spray, and it was cold – cold air being sucked in by the rising heat of the flames.

  I don’t know what happened after that, my mind seemed to blank out, so that I wasn’t conscious of anything until we were inside the Sennen breakwater and carrying the ILB up to the boathouse. The sea mist was almost gone, torn to shreds, and out where the ship had been there was nothing but billowing smoke lit by a red internal glow. The fog signal on the Longships banged again, the red light glaring fixedly. Somebody was talking to me, asking questions, and I became aware of a small crowd gathering. There was a police car there and a young helicopter pilot I knew.