A Safe Harbour Read Free Page B

after the others leaving Kate on the now deserted beach.  
    How quiet it was. Just the lapping of the waves on the shore and then the drag back across the shingle. Up in the village warm lights shone from cottage windows. Kate turned to look at the beached cobles. It wouldn’t be long before the men returned, trudging down the bank in their heavy sea boots and oilskins. Their wives and children would come with them, helping to carry the fishing gear, the nets, the food, the water bottles.  
    The crew of each coble would push their boat on wheeled bogies into the water. Then they would row the boats out beyond the breakwater before hoisting the sails, which would flutter briefly before filling with wind and thrusting the bows of the cobles into the heavy open sea. Soon, all that would be seen on the far horizon would be a cluster of tiny specks of light coming from the fire-pans. The men would harvest the fishing grounds as they had for centuries. But Jos would not be with them. Jos would never go fishing again. She was waiting here in vain.  
    The forlorn screech of a herring gull roused Kate from her reverie. She turned away from the sea and made her way, slowly, up to Bank Top.
     

Chapter Two
     
    At sunrise Kate was back on the shore.  
    She had not slept. She had been sitting by the fire in the cottage when her older brother William had come home from the grim task of taking the bodies of the two young men to the lifeboat house. There they would stay until daylight, when the undertaker would be called. Kate’s father, who had taken no part in the recovery, had already left to prepare the coble for the night’s fishing and Thomas had returned to the beach to help him. Kate’s mother had been seeing to the old woman, feeding her a bowl of broth one slow spoon at a time.  
    ‘Kate, lass . . .’  
    She looked up mutely to see William’s handsome face drawn and grey. His ashen features and the way he shook his head, almost in disbelief, sharpened her grief. She rose and moved towards him.  
    ‘Why, William? Why?’  
    ‘Whisht, lass,’ he said with a glance over his shoulder towards the bed where their mother was tending to Sarah. Nan nodded gravely in their direction and continued with her task. William motioned for Kate to sit again and drawing up a chair sat beside her. He took both her hands in his.  
    ‘I’ll tell you what I’ve learned from Constable Darling,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t want you to hear it from others. It seems the two of them had a drink or two.’  
    ‘Jos told me they were going to talk about the wedding.’ Kate felt her voice break and she paused a while before she asked, ‘Did they drink too much, is that it? Were they too drunk to know what they were doing? But why would they put to sea?’  
    ‘No.’ William shook his head. ‘They weren’t mortal. It seems they drank just enough to make them merry. They must have decided to walk it off. They went up to Marden farm. They . . . they stole some apples.’  
    ‘Stole apples!’  
    ‘Aye, Farmer Bains saw them from his window. They’d climbed over the orchard wall and they’d found an old sack. They were gathering up the apples that had fallen too soon. They were laughing and pushing each other like two big bairns and it was only when one of them fell against a tree that Farmer Bains decided to chase them off before they did any harm. He came out hollering at them but, of course, the lads outran him.’  
    ‘So why did they put to sea?’  
    William gripped her hands more tightly. ‘That’s the tragedy of it. Mr Bains says he’ll regret all his life what he said next.’  
    ‘What? What did he say?’  
    ‘He yelled after them that he’d get Constable Darling to arrest them and lock them up.’  
    ‘But they must have known he wouldn’t do that – not for the sake of a sackful of unripe apples!’  
    ‘If they’d been sober they would have known that. A tongue-lashing from Farmer Bains or