The Girl Who Dreamt of Dolphins (27 page)

Bethany busied herself with tidying away the breakfast things.
Lucy looked around her idly. It felt so easy with Bethany and so
comfortable. It was like it used to be with Mum and Dad in the old
days.

As Lucy sat there peacefully, gazing out of the window,
Bethany cast an occasional glance in her niece’s direction. She was
worried about Lucy. She was delighted to see her of course, but had
been really taken aback when Lucy had turned up there unannounced
the day before. The conversation that she’d had to have with Lucy’s
dad that evening had been difficult, really difficult. She was glad
Lucy had not heard.

As an artist, Bethany was trained at looking at not only the
surface appearance of things, but what lay underneath. It didn’t
feel right. Lucy hadn’t come all this way without her Dad’s
permission just to see her, escape her Dad or even to see the sea.
Bethany felt as though there was a more fundamental force working
deep inside Lucy and it worried her. It reminded her of her sister
Megan and she thought of all those pictures she had painted of
Megan as a girl of roughly the same age, trying to discover what it
was that lay underneath.

‘
Listen, I’ll just pop into town and buy a few provisions’
announced Bethany, ‘and then we can head on down to Old Man’s Cove.
It’s really atmospheric down there, with craggy cliffs, a thin
crescent of beach and rock pools in the south corner. I think
you’ll like it. You’ll be okay here for half an hour while I pop to
the shops won’t you? Any problems and you can just ask Mary in the
farmhouse. I’ll get some things for a picnic. What do you
say?’

‘
Ok!’ said Lucy. She was happy just to sit at the kitchen table
in idleness for a while. Bethany didn’t even have a television, but
Lucy didn’t want to watch TV anyway. It wasn’t that kind of a day.
Bethany got her things.

‘
See you then Kiddo!’ called Bethany, banging the door after
her. Lucy waved through the window as she saw Bethany climb into
her old Land Rover and then drive off.

Now that Lucy was alone and well rested, her thoughts flew
irresistibly back to Spirit. She wondered how he was and what he
was doing. She stretched out to him with her mind. The skill came
to her more easily now, though it was still hard to achieve and she
had several false starts. She knew now that it was when her mind
was relaxed that she could find the doorway through to the world of
water and Spirit himself. She strained her mind and then relaxed it
again and as she did so, she found the doorway, just out of sight,
tucked away in the corner between her conscious mind and the
unknown. She pushed at it gently and then found herself plunging
down, through the veil that divided the two worlds and was suddenly
enveloped in salty water, tumbling head over tail in a confusion of
bubbles.

It took Lucy a moment or two to orientate herself. As she
righted herself, she looked around. A curtain of kelp floated to
her left and beyond that she could see rocks curving up behind. She
glanced to her right.

‘
Hey Spirit’ she cried happily, gliding towards him. He too,
moved towards her, but she could see immediately that something was
wrong. He looked grey and unhappy and he wasn’t moving
naturally.

‘
What’s the matter?’ she asked, a look of worry replacing the
look of happiness of a moment before.

‘
I am trapped’ he replied in a quiet voice. ‘This thing made by
man is caught round my tail. I cannot escape.’He glanced back and
Lucy followed his gaze. Only now did she see the thick steel wire
snaking through the water in great loops and then curling round
Spirit’s tail. She glided forward. It was looped in a noose around
Spirit’s tail and his struggling had pulled it tight. She could see
that it had cut into his skin, leaving a great horrible red wound.
Every time he moved, Lucy could see Spirit wince, the pain searing
through his face.

‘
Let me have a go’ she exclaimed, eager to help her friend.
‘I’ll soon get you free of this!’ She stretched out her hands to
grasp the thick steel wire, but although she could sense Spirit’s
firm flank through her finger tips, her hands passed through the
wire as though it was not there. She tried again, but the same
thing happened. She looked closely at her hands. For the first time
she realised that they were not quite solid. She had projected her
mind into Spirit’s world, but not her physical body. It was as
though she were an apparition here. She could not physically touch
things. The realisation caused her heart to beat anxiously. She
looked at Spirit.

‘
I, I can’t’ she stammered in confusion, ‘I can’t touch
things.’ She paused. ‘I can’t help you.’

‘
You’ve already got me out of trouble twice’ replied Spirit,
still hopeful. ‘You made suggestions that helped me escape real
danger. You can do that again!’

Lucy looked around her, hoping that a sudden flash of
inspiration would somehow help her set her friend free. She
followed the steel wire with her eyes as it snaked around and then
glided along to see where it came from. She could see that the wire
was fixed to a buoy that in turn was stuck firmly under the rocks
at the base of the cliff. There seemed to be no way that it could
be dislodged. She moved back to Spirits tail and looked at the
loop, as if she might have missed some easy solution to the problem
or a way to pull the knot so that it would fall away. She hadn’t.
Lucy shook her head anxiously.

‘
I don’t know, I don’t know what to do.’ She trailed off, in
too much distress to say anything more. She shook her head again.
Spirit swum up to the surface again to draw in a fresh lungful of
air through his blowhole. Lucy followed, seeing him strain
painfully to gain the surface. It was almost as though she could
see the life seeping from him as she looked on. She knew that at
this rate he could not last that much longer. Desperate, she
glanced as well as she could over the surface of the water. There
was the great craggy granite cliff looming up behind them and to
the right, the empty, featureless sea. There was no boat, nothing
that could come and save Spirit. It was no good.

‘
You can do it, you can think of something’ said Spirit. But
even as he said the words, Lucy could tell that he did not really
believe them. She could feel the tiredness enveloping her that came
over her immediately before she was drawn back to the world of land
and her own physical body. She struggled against it.

‘
Don’t worry Spirit, I’ll think of something. I’ll come back
sooner than you think. You’ll see!’ The words were barely out of
her mouth before Lucy was pulled away from him, back, back until
she became aware of standing in Bethany’s studio once more, staring
absently beyond the nearly finished portrait and out through the
window into the bright morning sunlight and the field of cows
beyond. She immediately collapsed into tears.

When Bethany returned a few minutes later with two brimming
shopping bags, she found her niece distraught, her body wracked
with sobs, curled up in a ball on the floor of the
studio.

‘
Lucy, whatever is the matter?’ said Bethany, dropping her bags
and hastening to Lucy’s side. ‘What’s happened?’ Lucy’s body shook
uncontrollably, tears streaming down her face.

‘
I can’t, I can’t help him’ she said between sobs. ‘I don’t
know what to do!’ Her face was contorted with anguish.

‘
Help who?’ asked Bethany, ‘your dad?’

‘
No!’ cried Lucy in reply. ‘Spirit! Spirit my dolphin!’
Bethany, who had gathered Lucy up in her arms, took a long deep
breath.

‘
Oh, I see’ she said quietly, with a sense of deadening
recognition.

‘
You do?’ asked Lucy, surprised.

‘
I think I might’ replied Bethany.

Eventually Lucy’s sobs subsided and she got up to go to wash
her face in the bathroom. She came back, red-eyed and miserable.
Finally she managed to tell Bethany what had happened.

‘
You know Bethany, you can help me. You’ve lived here for ever
and you know the sea better than anyone. Tell me what I need to do
to help my dolphin’ she implored.

Bethany sat on a kitchen chair and shook her head to herself.
How could she start telling Lucy everything she knew? Lucy was so
young! It was all too soon. Barely two weeks ago she had told
Lucy’s Dad that she was special, that she had a gift. She never
thought her words would come back to haunt her so soon. But it
wasn’t a gift she thought, it was a curse. It was she who had put
the idea of coming to Cornwall in Lucy’s mind. It was she who only
last night had promised John that she would look after Lucy and
that no harm would come to her. Yet she knew that Lucy’s fate was
inextricably linked with the life of that dolphin. At this moment
she only cared about Lucy and nothing else. But could she ignore
the danger the dolphin was in? She knew she could not.

‘
Look, I want to help you, I really do, but I just don’t know
how’ she said to Lucy. ‘I think he’ll be alright’ she said, trying
to comfort herself as well as Lucy. Lucy glanced up at her eyes,
shaking her head.

‘
No, no we can’t wait. We’ve got to do something.’

‘
Well, what about the other dolphins, can’t they help your
one?’ Bethany asked.

‘
He sort of ran away from them. They, they don’t know where to
find him. But…’ Bethany could see Lucy thinking. ‘Maybe they could
search for him. At least they knew where he started from.’ The
thought, once planted in Lucy’s mind, seemed to seize her. Bethany
could see her niece emerge from the worst of her black cloud, as
she started thinking again.

‘
Maybe I could reach them, maybe I could…’ She looked around.
The rug was as good a spot as any. She sat down cross-legged and
tried to focus her mind.

Bethany had seen this sight before, many years ago and knew
better than to say anything. Lucy tried for ten long minutes, but
even before she began, she realised that it was no good, not now at
least. She had just expended all her energy in reaching out to
Spirit. It was too much to expect of herself to stretch out to the
rest of the pod, wherever they were. She broke off in
frustration.

Yet from her dreams she knew Spirit’s special friend, though
she did not know that dolphin’s name. It was a girl, a little older
than Spirit and in her mind’s eye she pictured the two of them,
almost dancing among the waves. That was the dolphin she had to
reach out to! But she had to wait until she had replenished enough
energy to try again. Suddenly Lucy felt really hungry.

‘
I’ve got to eat something.’ she announced. Bethany quickly
produced a peanut-butter sandwich and Lucy wolfed it down. She
still didn’t feel right. She needed more time, more
energy.

‘
You know what Kiddo?’ said Bethany. ‘Granddad used to say that
when you don’t know what to do next, the best thing to do is to
just do something, anything at all and then it’ll be easier to take
the next step and the step after that. Get your coat. We’re going
to the cove. It’s not going to do you any harm to look at the sea
for half an hour.’

Bethany bundled Lucy into her Land Rover, started the engine
on the third attempt, ground into gear and shot off up the narrow
country lane. They climbed up the hill and once they reached the
crest and started to go down the other side, Lucy was able to
glimpse patches of blue water through the hedgerow. The sea was not
far away now. The thought of the ocean gave her a thrill and a
strange sense of hope. It was as if the sea had a magnetic force,
pulling her nearer to it.

‘
Old Man’s Cove is not far’ Bethany informed her, ‘It’s less
than a mile now. We’ll soon be there.’ Bethany parked the truck at
the side of the road by a farm gate, with a stile and a sign for a
footpath down to the sea. Bethany had thrown a few things to eat
into a bag before they left and she slung it over her shoulder now
as they set off, climbing over the stile and heading off across the
field, Lucy eagerly walking ahead.

‘
Be careful now’ Bethany warned her, ‘the path gets steep
pretty soon. The rocks are loose and I don’t want you stumbling!’
She was right. Before long the path was so steep that she had to
cling on to clumps of grass to steady herself. The hillside fell
away to her left as they descended and below her she could see a
small cove, with a crescent of sandy beach and beyond it the
brilliant sea, glinting in the sunlight.

‘
Not many people are brave enough to clamber down that path’
Bethany continued, ‘and so more often than not I have the place
entirely to myself.’

Lucy took one final leap from the rocky path at the bottom and
her feet crunched into pebbles. She ran down to the sand and kicked
off her shoes and socks before splashing into the shallow water.
The sea was colder than she thought, but if felt good to be in the
water, if only up to her ankles.

She looked around her. The place seemed familiar, although she
knew that she had never been there before. Bethany came up behind
her.

‘
It’s nice here isn’t it? It’s good for the soul.’ She breathed
in deeply. ‘How are you feeling now Kiddo?’

‘
Yeah, a bit better’ she said, but then she thought of Spirit
again, trapped and that made her feel guilty and worried again.
Lucy felt the urge to plunge into the sea to swim out and look for
Spirit, but she knew that it was as pointless as it was dangerous
and what was more, Bethany would never let her.