On Stormy Seas
Sally has an otherworldly encounter as she navigates the choppy waters of a break-up
It was the mist that caught her eye. She’d been staring out to sea, wondering if the wind was going to change and they’d be able to get out after all. She was rapidly reaching the conclusion that it was too rough to make pleasant kayaking.The horizon looked lumpy and waves were rolling in, spitting the occasional mouthful offoamattheshore.
Mist was all wrong for this weather, but there was definitely a patch of haze that she couldn’t see through. And it seemed to be moving against the wind.
“Don’t fancy it myself. Do you?” Michael laid a hand on her shoulder as he leaned forward to wipe condensation from the café window.
Maybe it was just that, Sally thought. Maybe it was a steamed-up window and not mist at all.
“Not really,” she said, feeling the warmth of his hand through her waterproofs and the warmth of his smile too close for comfort.
“It would be hard work with the wind against us.We’d be lucky if we made Siggy’s.”
The intention had been to paddle to a point further down the coast, haveadrinkandasandwichata small beach café that was used to having kayak club members piling ashore like a flock of gannets, and then paddle back.
Sally didn’t want to venture out on the sea today.That was unusual. She was normally one of the first to pull her kayak off the rack.
She had as great a respect for the sea as anyone who went out on it. But it was as if, after her break-up with Simon, that bit of extra risk didn’t seem to matter so much. Anything to fill the emptiness that threatened to engulf her.
“Right, then.” Michael took charge. “Too rough for the sea, so who’s for a paddle up the river?”
There was an enthusiastic chorus of agreement from the rest of the group. Anything to get on the water before the season was over and storms made being out on the sea a dangerous occupation.
The last bites of bacon sandwich were hastily chewed; the last drops of tea drained from the depths of mugs.
They emerged from the warm frowstiness of the café into a brisk wind and Sally found her eyes being drawn to the portion of shore where she’d seen the mist.
Against all the odds, it was still there, but as she watched, it curled upwards, shredding into nothingness and leaving only the eternally rolling sea.
“Hasn’t changed,” Michael said, smiling, noticing the direction of her gaze.“If you fancy going out in that, feel free.The rest of us will enjoy a quiet paddle up the river.” She shook her head.
“I don’t. I was looking at the mist. How can there be mist on a windy day like this?”
Michael shot a glance towards the shoreline.
“Ah, that’ll be the Viking.” “Viking?”
“He’s a local legend.You’ll know that the land from Northumberland to Kent was invaded by the Norse? Norwegians, Jutes, Saxons – anyone from over there who could find a boat and get an easterly wind, really.”
Sally saw the twinkle in his eyes, as bluegrey as the sea behind him.
It had taken her a while to get used to Michael and his teasing. Simon never teased. He’d rarely realised when someone was indulging in a gentle leg-pull, much less done it himself.
After Simon, her bruised heart rejected the thought of getting involved with someone else, but she was finding Michael more intriguing than she’d like.
She grinned back at him.
“All right, I’ll bite! What’s this legend?” “Our lad’s supposed to be a Norse warrior. Probably came over when Harald Hardrada had the punch-up with Harold of England at Stamford Bridge.”
“Bit like Chelsea versus Arsenal,” one of the others put in helpfully.
“Only the wrong Stamford Bridge, I assume?” Sally said, entering into the spirit of things.
Michael laughed.
“Anyway, Harold won this match and bombed off down to Hastings to keep an eye on the arrows. It’s claimed that it took 300 ships to bring Hardrada’s army over, but they only needed 30 to take them back.
“And this chap missed the boat, so the story goes, and he’s been waiting ever since for a ship to take him home.”
“Almost as good a service as the YorkPocklington bus!” someone joked.
The rest chortled, but Sally felt a surge of sorrow for the Viking, longing in vain to see the mountains of Norway again.
Each time they went out from that part of the coast, she looked to see if the patch of mist was there. But so far they’d been lucky with the weather and she hadn’t seen it since.
Maybe it only appeared on days when the sea was rough and the wind from the east.They’d had mostly westerlies of late, but it was an east wind that had brought him here and abandoned him.
And an east wind that would bring the boat to take him back.
They were too far out to see the people strolling along, licking ice-creams, enjoying the late sunshine, but they knew they were there.
One moment, they could see the coast winding away on their right hands, lining a sea as smooth and featureless as silk; the next, someone shouted a warning.The fog had rolled in, literally out of a clear blue sky.
Sally turned her head.The ominous grey bank was heading their way.
With practised ease, they turned the kayaks towards the shore, but the fog was quicker.Within moments, they were cocooned in grey curtains.
Salty drips gathered on Sally’s lips and the pleasant day turned chill in an instant.
She thrust the kayak through the glassy water towards the shore, knowing the others were doing the same.
For a while, she could hear voices and the sound of paddles stirring water, but gradually they faded until all she could hear was her own breath, the squeak of neoprene and the ripple of water against the hull.
She dug in her paddle, bringing the kayak to a halt. She had better make sure she was still heading in the right direction.
“Michael?” she called, but there was no answer and she felt sudden panic.
She tried to think who had been nearest to her when the fog came down. Dory. She’d been just to the right. “Dory?”
The grey walls might have been solid, keeping all sound within themselves. She fished out her whistle and blew it hard.
Her straining ears detected a faint answering blast, but it was impossible to tell from which direction it came.
Panic was the cardinal sin when you were in a situation like this. It was so easy to get disorientated; to go round in circles until you were so confused you lost all sense of where you were.
Sally glanced at her compass.The fog couldn’t affect that. But she frowned as the pointing needle seemed at odds with the set of the tide.
She tried to picture the coastline, knowing the current would pull her towards Flamborough. She’d need to be careful – she didn’t want the bottom of her boat torn out by rocks.
She set the kayak in motion again, feeling her way.
The fog swirled and her hopes rose that it was dispersing, but it seemed to settle in more thickly than before.Then she heard a noise.
“Dory? Michael?” she called.
Surely the sound she could hear was paddles? Yet it wasn’t the light, rhythmic turn-over of fellow kayakers.
She paused, the blade dripping water as she listened, her head tilted. Some vessel was nearby, but it wasn’t a kayak. Not one of her friends, then.
She could hear faint creaks and the glopping as oars dug into the sea. Oars. Not paddles. She’d swear it. “Hey!” she called and blew a warning blast on her whistle.
A low-sitting kayak would be almost invisible to the people in the other boat, especially if they were rowing, facing away from her.
The fog stirred, and a shadow passed through it. Sally thought she heard children’s voices before she caught the briefest glimpse of a woman’s face, then a slim wooden oar lifted and there was nothing but herself on the gently rocking sea.
The shout was so faint, she thought she’d imagined it. But a moment later she heard it again.
She yelled back with all the force of her lungs and plied the paddle with fresh vigour, following the path of the oars.
The fog parted as she drove through it, closing in around her again as if it were made of the same substance as the water she rode.
It muffled the voice she could hear calling her shorewards, hiding the words but not completely blotting it out. She pulled herself through the sea, towed by the guiding sound.
For an instant, a tall figure flickered in her sight, beckoning her onwards.Then she was bursting through the wall of fog into light that seemed so bright after the dimness that she screwed up her eyes.
Michael was pacing the shore in front of the line of kayaks hauled above the high-water mark.
As she emerged, he plunged into the water, splashing though the shallows in a great flume of spray to envelop her in a hug that threatened to pull the kayak out of the sea.
“Sally! Thank goodness! What happened? How did you get separated? Everybody else got ashore but no one knew where you went.”
He was pulling her and the boat to safety, releasing the waterproofing skirt around her waist and lifting her out.
His arms went tightly around her and she nestled her cheek against his wetsuit.
“I heard you calling, so I knew which way to come.”
“I was sure you were just there somewhere, even if I couldn’t see you. Don’t you ever give me a heart attack like that again, you hear?”
“Not if I can help it,” she replied with a shaky grin.
She shot a quick glance up and down the shore.There wasn’t a wooden boat in sight, but she was sure one had passed her and she was sure she’d led it through the fog. And then it had returned the favour.
She knew now why the Viking came to the shore when an easterly blew. Not all the raiders came to pillage and sail away. Many of them stayed and made their lives here.
He wasn’t waiting for a ship to take him home. He was home.
He was waiting for his wife and family to cross the sea to join him and make his world complete.
He’d been waiting for nearly a thousand years, but Sally was convinced that it hadn’t been only her who had emerged from the fog to find her future standing on the shore, waiting patiently.
She had the feeling that, after today, no one would see that patch of mist any more.
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Ah, that’ll be the Viking. He’s a local legend. He’s been waiting for a ship to take him home