Devil's Rock - Chris Speyer [89]
Flare? There was no flare. The dragon. Zaki looked at Michael – their dragon. No way of explaining that to their rescuers.
As soon as Anusha and Rhiannon were safely on the lifeboat, exhaustion took its toll. And afterwards Zaki’s memory of the trip back to Salcombe seemed a disordered jumble of noises and pictures: Michael, silent and dazed, wrapped in a silver survival blanket; Rhiannon with her head bandaged; Anusha, her face so pale, asleep in a lifeboatman’s arms; people asking questions that seemed to float in the air around him without finding answers; sudden, unexpected rushes of emotion – gratitude, guilt, elation. He remembered Anusha hugging him and one or other or maybe both of them crying. He remembered taking off the bracelet that was still on his wrist and giving it back to Rhiannon, and he remembered her saying, ‘I suppose that makes us even,’ and then suddenly smiling, and he had never thought she would have such a warm smile. And he remembered wishing and wishing Michael would say something, anything, to prove to him that he was bringing back the real Michael, the whole Michael and not just an empty shell.
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Chapter 24
Of the faces in the small crowd that waited as they were helped off the lifeboat, his mother’s was the only one Zaki really saw. That face was still there many hours later when he opened his eyes after the deepest sleep of his life.
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Several weeks went by during which no one in Zaki’s family seemed to say very much about anything in particular, as though a need for quiet had settled on them all. Although they said very little to each other, they sought out each other’s company and if all four of them were at home at the same time they would usually be found in the same room. Zaki’s father gave up working late and meals were eaten together at the kitchen table. During this time, the house itself began to change. Small additions at first: a painting on the wall here, a blind for a window there. Then carpets were laid and shelves were built for books that had been in boxes since the last time the family moved. Zaki made a close study of his parents’ behaviour. They asked each other’s opinions about home improvements and discussed the usual domestic arrangements, but when they spoke it was with a slightly strained politeness that Zaki found unsettling.
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The way the story of the wreck of Curlew was reported in the local paper was that ‘Three brave young people from Kingsbridge rescued a lone sailor when her yacht was wrecked on the notorious Devil’s Rock.’ And that ‘Zaki Luxton, in a feat of quite remarkable seamanship, steered his family’s yacht through a maze of reefs in a south-westerly gale to effect the rescue.’ Grandad was generally considered to have been the source of the story.
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During a spell of calm weather, Curlew was refloated and towed back behind Morveren to Grandad’s slipway. Her black hull was deeply scarred and her rigging gone but Grandad set to work rebuilding her.
Zaki never saw Rhiannon at the boat shed, but when he asked his grandfather why he was repairing the boat he said, ‘Because she asked me to.’
Zaki and Anusha often wondered where Rhiannon went during the weeks when her boat was out of the water. Zaki thought she was probably at the old cottage but they decided she wouldn’t want them to go looking for her.
Then, on a raw, cold November morning, Grandad collected Zaki, Michael and Anusha and drove them to Salcombe to see Curlew launched. And Rhiannon was there to meet them.
At high tide, Curlew slid back into the water and lay rocking gently, her new varnish gleaming in the pale sunlight. Rhiannon stepped aboard, raised the sails and cast off. Zaki, Michael, Anusha and Grandad followed Curlew down the harbour in Grandad’s launch, stopping only when they reached the harbour mouth. As they watched, Curlew’s sails were lit up by the low winter sun, shone for a moment,