The July sun scorched into the white stucco walls of the fishing museum as Peter, Anne and their daughter Jessica stepped inside. Partly a time-killing exercise, Peter had persuaded himself the visit was an homage, a homecoming, paying admittedly overdue respects to the land of his forefathers; never forgotten, but also not acknowledged nearly enough, let alone celebrated.
Visibly relieved to be away from the heat, Jessica made an instinctive bee-line for the children’s area, essentially a corner of the large room with brightly coloured bean bags, non-removable activity games and a scattering of dog-eared preschool books. Anne followed behind efficiently at a discreet distance, happy to give Jessica the freedom to explore and happy to oversee her steps in a town the girl had only previously been brought to as a baby. Peter’s old town.
This was fine, Peter thought, and made his own way subconsciously to the real reason he had come here. The display took up its own side of the hall, and rightly so. Large-scale photographs printed onto fascia boards, the originals also present and behind glass, logs, records, witness accounts and cased artefacts all told the story of the Rinmouth lifeboat disaster.
In the early part of an infamously swift and brutal storm in 1886, a lifeboat crew was dispatched to assist a fishing boat spotted in trouble. By the time they had reached the vessel it was too late; swallowed by the waves with everything and everyone aboard. The rest of the fishing fleet was also in danger by then, unable to make it back to shore. The lifeboat crew could not assist them all, and when the weather grew even more angry, the lifeboat itself was struck. Two more response crews were scrambled from the harbour to no avail. Thirty six hours later, only a single trawler limped into the quay bearing four fishermen. One hundred and sixty nine souls had been lost, an unthinkable number in any era, but especially in the days when the town’s entire population numbered under a thousand.
Peter stood wordlessly in front of the photo. Of that photo. The particular one which, for all the newspaper clippings and essays and locally published books he’d amassed over the years, he’d never seen in any place other than here. It hadn’t been blown up to display-size and wasn’t a reproduction. But the group portrait of the 1885 Rinmouth lifeboat crews was around eighteen by ten inches, unusually - if satisfyingly - large for such a relic.
He hadn’t seen these faces in too long, and gazing again at their unchanging familiarity felt almost comforting. Fourteen men, of varying ages although all young enough to withstand the rigours of the job, all wearing uncomfortably heavy looking waterproof gear as they pose for the photographer.
Some of these are young with optimism - naivety, even - shining from their eyes. Others already have the lines etched into their faces from persistent windburn and far too many friends’ funerals. But the one thing that unites them all is pride. Not in what they’ve done but in what they can continue to give, to serve, to be the reassurance for the fishermen who are the backbone of this town; to be the very heart of it.
His ears ring from the coxwain hammering the bell like his life depends on it - even though someone else’s does - as the young navigator clatters his way down the slippery wooden steps to the boat that's being prepared for launch. Few words are spoken, only the most terse of instructions covering the variables of this call. All four men know exactly what they are doing, but there’s an uneasy song in the blackness this morning, and certainty is a luxury they can’t afford.
Peter’s intake of breath was loud and sudden as he faltered, still not taking his eyes from the photograph. This was… new? No, old. No, new. Something was different, something had changed. And then he saw it...
Freezing water stings Peter’s eyes as he scrabbles to pull the collapsed beam from the old man. It looks too late. The torso convulses, rising and falling, but no air comes in or out of his mouth, only foaming sea-diluted blood. Peter pushes on the man’s chest, trying to expel the liquid, to let life literally breathe into these lungs. But that doesn’t seem to work. Then the rest of the beam falls.
Peter inched back closer to the photo as his eyes grew wider and met… his own. Peter was in this photograph. Oh, he knew he had an ancestor who was lost that night - several in fact, once fishermen were taken into account - and had remarked at his vague resemblance to one of the lifeboatman in years past. But this… this was Peter, now? Somehow. In the portrait. Looking motionlessly back out at Peter across the decades, the centuries. As everything turned white, he could taste the salt again.
The flash fades slowly - too slowly - from Peter’s vision as he lays atop of what’s left of the fishing trawler. Everything is too heavy, soaked through and yet smoke rises from his hands and feet, an inferno having coursed through his entire body and soul as lightning rent its fury on the boat and on those who had dared to try and save it. Peter cannot breathe properly. And he cannot move. He is broken and burned in too many places inside, he can feel that much. All that can be heard now is the storm. Is he the last? Others must have gotten to safety, surely? Somebody must live, otherwise what it is all for?
The wreckage heaves on, soon to be driftwood, and begins to list. Peter knows this because of the tipping feeling in his stomach, and that he’s able to just make out the lights on the shoreline through the whipping storm and the smouldering wreckage of all that surrounds him. The angle grows more acute and Peter begins to slide, gravity bestowing one last ironic gift to his paralysed body.
That tang - no, the flame - the burning up the back of his nose, arcing through the base of the skull and up across the scalp. Peter’s vision flares to white and back again as he is roasted from within, a searing fire caused by the very thing which should extinguish it. So this is the drowning. He's desperate to claw at his head, not that it would help, to flail to stay afloat, to swim, to breathe. But the waves that Peter has battled in recent years have other ideas. Time to come home.
Peter’s next - last - thoughts are of Elizabeth and Mary, of their imminent sadness and their loss. And of their disappointment. Who will provide now? What life for a widow in a town the size of Rinmouth? Well, there may be a few widows when the sun rises. He can’t see any signs of life out here. Not in the remnants of the spent boats that brush noiselessly past him in the furious water. Peter thinks of the disappointment, the most. What use a lifeboat crew that saves no lives?
“Are you ready to go now, love?” Anne asked, as Jessica skipped toward her. The girl smiled, nodded and reached for her mother’s hand.
“I saw Daddy in the photograph!” she chirped.
“Daddy?”, Anne frowned playfully. “His great, great granddad perhaps, but your Daddy isn’t in here sweetheart.”
“Okay” said Jessica, happy not to argue the point. After all it had been a long time since the accident at the swimming pool, and already the photographs in the house were starting to feel like someone she didn’t really know. “I miss Daddy” she added, simply.
Anne furrowed her brow but smiled. “I know you do sweetheart, so do I. C’mon, let’s go and see Nanny, she’s got plenty of photographs of your dad you can look at."
~ ~ ~
As the pair made their way out to the blinding glare of the car park, the museum’s curator stood with one eye on his departing visitors and the other on the small pool of water in the centre of the lifeboat display. The roof couldn’t be leaking now, it hadn’t rained for a month. Honestly, the worst thing this place ever did was take down the signs saying no food or drink. Bloody tourists. No respect. Still, it was easier to deal with than sugary fingerprints on the glass cases.
The curator rolled his eyes and went to get the mop. Again.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• Short stories © WorldOfBlackout.co.uk, all entries are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Y'know, mostly.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
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