The Runaway by Rhona Gorringe
It was a few years ago when I was convalescing at my parent’s seaside cottage. The weather was kind at first and then, unexpectedly for midsummer, threatening winds blew up just after supper. I shivered listening to the thrashing of greedy waves clacking the shingle and sucking the pebbles.
Local legend maintains that such summer storms are the restless spirit of an eighteenth century smuggler sea captain. He so captivated the squire’s daughter that she sailed off with him. The grief stricken squire used to walk to the headland, scanning the horizon in the hope of seeing the ship and welcoming his daughter home. Driven insensible by his loss, the squire put a curse on the captain that he would find no peace. The smuggler’s ship was struck by a storm and all perished save for the captain. Enraged by the injustice the Squire lost heart and, whether an accident is still debated, the villagers eventually found his salt encrusted body. Denied rest, the smuggler captain forever sails the seas searching for his love. Occasionally he weighs anchor in this harbour. The local people have taken this story to heart. In fact there is a pamphlet in the library, written by some 19thc. worthy who claimed to have seen, in broad daylight, the spectral ship with golden sails on a red mast. It is a whimsical story which no doubt encourages the tourists and swells the souvenir trade but I am full of scepticism for such folk lore.
For no accountable reason I thought of the squire’s daughter and her smuggler captain, adrift in the heaving sea and the inky black sky broken only by streaks of silver shards. A banging window broke my reverie and I went upstairs. Rolls of thunder crashed and the staccato raindrops sounded like handfuls of gravel being thrown on the conservatory roof. The wind had a malevolent death shriek as it tore round the garden, muffling the ding-dongs of the church clock.
I switched on the landing light and saw a loose shutter was slamming against a drainpipe. I stood on a chair and leaned out to grab the catch and there, silhouetted against the full moon, I saw it. A three-masted schooner with billowing yellow sails was ploughing up and down off the end of the pier. Then I saw no more.
When I opened my eyes, I was on the floor. My back hurt and my mouth felt full of salty grit. The chair had overturned and the window shutter hung limply. It was daylight but what day I wasn’t sure. Painfully I stumbled to the kitchen and reached for the kettle but there was no electricity. I felt so parched that I drank almost a pint of milk in one gulp.
To this day I don’t know what happened and my back hurts when bad weather is forecast. All the specialists I have consulted can find no explanation for this and neither can I..
A beautifully descriptive piece, especially of the weather and the storm. The only thing I have a niggle about is the use of the present tense when the narrator is full of scepticism about the folklore. Given that she’s just seen the ship herself at point of writing, is she still sceptical? Or is it a general point that she is always sceptical?
I like the greedy waves sucking and the pebbles clacking.
From Simon: This has elements of a ghost story and of a psychological study. The first sentence contains the word ‘convalescing’, which is one of those good ‘trigger’ words. It triggers questions. What is the narrator convalescing from? Was it a physical illness or a mental one? Has she – or it could be he – fully recovered? Then we get the sudden summer storm, ‘the thrashing of greedy waves clacking the shingle and sucking the pebbles.’ How much more effective here is the audio description than an envisioned one would be. Always remember when writing that sight is only one of our senses. Sound and smell are equally important. Touch and taste can be evocative too. Next, we have the legend of the summer storm and the smuggler’s ship, debunked as ‘whimsical’ by many, including the narrator. But she (or he) is summoned upstairs by a ‘banging window’ – strange how spooky the sound of a banging window always is. Then the climax of the story – the apparition of the ship, and the narrator’s fall… or faint… or something else…? We’re back to the narrator’s medical problems. ‘All the specialists I have consulted’ brings us full circle to ‘convalescing’ – and made me worry for the narrator’s mental health.