Short Stories

FLOTSAM

A collection of short stories from the Rosemullion Guest House, Polgorran Cove, on the south coast of  Cornwall

1  TELLING THE BEES

A brilliant sun shines in a cloudless Cornish sky, and a warm breeze carries the faint, sweet smell of seaweed and rock pools.  Goran and Lowenna Blamey look at the For Sale sign in the garden of Rosemullion, Polgorran Cove, and touch hands briefly in nervous anticipation.   

This place is their dream.   

The front door of Rosemullion is opened by a large, unconvincingly blonde lady of a certain age, wearing a velour leisure suit in an assertive shade of pink.  The scents of seaweed and rock pool are obliterated by a smouldering Sobranie in a long cigarette holder. 

'Come in, come in, Mr and Mrs Blamey, isn't it?   I'm Mrs Hoxton, very pleased to meet you, I'm sure.  The agent said you'd be coming to view the Property, eleven o' clock he said, still, what's half an hour late when you've got all day?  If you've got all day.  Come in, come in. 

'Now, this is the Entrance Lobby, well, you can see that, though why they call it the Entrance Lobby I don't know, it stands to reason you go out through it just as often as you come in, anyway as you can see it's a good place for putting all your coats and umbrellas and things. 

'And this is the Old Parlour, "deceptively spacious," that's what the estate agents call it in the particulars, though who they think they're fooling, gawd only knows.  They'd've done much better to go with "cosy," well, that's what I think, anyway, mind you, that's what they say when they mean there isn't enough room to swing a cat, though why anyone would want to go swinging a cat indoors is more than I can tell you.  Or outdoors, for that matter.' 

'Cat o' nine tails, ' says Goran Blamey, speaking for the first time since entering the house.  His wife gives him an anxious glance.  Coming here is bound to be something of an ordeal for him, and it shows in his vaguely abstracted air.  'To swing a cat doesn't mean a moggie,' he says. 'It's an old Navy expression. Cat o' nine tails.  For flogging.  You need a good bit of room for that.' 

'Well, fancy that, Mr Blamey, and there's me thinking - well, I never did.  Mind you, I always say it's a crying shame they ever did away with flogging, don't you think so?  Or a good birching, that's what these young hooligans need today, not those daft ASBO things.  ASBOs, my ar-  my eye.  Half the kids in the village here have got them, in fact they're none of them satisfied until they have. 

'Anyway, like I said, this is the Old Parlour, and then next door, that's it, Mrs Blamey, down that way, through the door to your right, that's the Kitchen, well of course you can see it's the Kitchen, can't you?   We're still in the old part of the house here, by the way, but you'll see we've done it all up nicely, so you'd hardly know, except for that thing there, that hole in the wall there by the Aga, that's what they call a clome oven in these parts.  Quaint, isn't it?  I keep my ciggies in it.  And under the vinyl there's still all the old flagstones, the estate agents said to be sure to mention that, Delabole slates, they tell me, they say some people like them, but me, I think they're cold, I like a nice bit of vinyl under my feet in the mornings, not that it ever gets really cold in here, what with the Aga, of course.  And the New Wing, now that's got your proper underfloor heating, very cosy, no, no, not cosy, well, not estate agent cosy, the Lounge is really big, thirty feet long it is, and of course there's the Conservatory too - well, you'll see in a minute - and there's a ground-floor bedroom and cloakroom and shower room, then three bedrooms above, all en suite they are, of course, my husband put all the plumbing in himself, he's properly qualified, you know, and one of them's a wet room and they've all got sea views, really nice they are. 

'Anyway, that's the Aga there, we had it converted, you know, it used to be solid fuel, but we had the electric put in, much cleaner, and of course you don't have the bother of raking it out all the time.'   

Goran Blamey stares at the big kitchen range, remembering…  

Granny Blamey, down on her poor old knees every morning, raking out the Aga, and Granfer, slowly and carefully carrying the hot cinder-bucket down the garden path to tip on the ash heap … 

'Yes, that's the back garden out there, Mr Blamey, there where you're looking.  Mr Pascoe from the village, he looks after it for us, we can't do much ourselves what with only being here every other weekend, if that.  Anyway, I don't care for gardening, nor does Mr Hoxton, we can't see the point of it really.' 

'It's very pretty,' says Lowenna Blamey. 'It must be nice to sit out on a sunny day.' 

'Yes, well, sitting out's one thing, but they don't look after themselves, do they, gardens? And if it wasn't for being able to get Mr Pascoe to come and do for us we'd have had it all paved over and a nice bit of decking put in, that's my idea of a proper garden, like you see on that Alan Titchmarsh, you know, that make-over programme, the one with that redheaded woman in it, her with the teeshirts and no bra, Charlie something, isn't it?   Anyway, now come and see the New Wing.' 

Lowenna Blamey follows dutifully, but her husband lingers by the back door, lost in the past, gazing out on the long sloping garden, bathed in brilliant sunlight.  Thirty years ago, ten year old Goran Blamey stood at this same kitchen window, watching his grandmother making her slow and painful way one last time down the roughly-paved path.   

'I'm just  a-goin' to tell they bees, my lover.  Just a-goin' to tell they bees.'  

Mrs Hoxton sticks her head back into the kitchen.   'Mr Blamey, don't you want to see the New Wing?'  

'Not really, thank you, Mrs Hoxton,' he says. 'We'll be putting in an offer on the place.  The full asking price.'   

I'm not going to lose this.  I'm not going to lose all this again. 

'Well I never.  I am pleased,' says Mrs Hoxton.  'I'm sure Mr Hoxton and I both hope you'll be very happy here.' 

'Thank you, Mrs Hoxton.'   

Oh, we will be.  We were. 

'I'd love to look at the New Wing,' says Lowenna Blamey.  'But I know my husband would really rather look around the garden, wouldn't you, Goran?' 

Goran Blamey drags himself back to the present.  'Yes, I would, if that's all right with you, Mrs Hoxton?'     

Yes, I'd like to see the garden.  I'd like to see it how it used to be, Granfer digging in his veg plot, Granny talking to her bees. 

'I expect you'll find it a bit overgrown, Mr Blamey,' says Mrs Hoxton. 'Well, down in the bottom part, anyway.  We put in that wattle fencing there to hide all that, and now we just tell Mr Pascoe to keep the top bit looking nice, just what you can see from the windows.  As I said, my husband and me, we're not really garden people.' 

'That's all right,' says Goran Blamey distantly, still staring out of the kitchen window.     

'The estate agents call it a Wildlife Garden in the particulars,' continues Mrs Hoxton. 'They say it's an asset.  A Feature.  They say people like to encourage wildlife in their gardens these days.' 

'Bees,' says Goran Blamey vaguely. 'Are there any bees?' 

Mrs Hoxton looks at him doubtfully. 'Well, I'm sure I don't know.  There used to be an old beehive down at the bottom of the garden when we first came here, but there weren't any bees in it.  I haven't really been down there since, not to speak of, I'm not a great one for gardens, like I told you.  I suppose it might still be there, the beehive.  And I'm sure there are bees on the flowers sometimes.  Or they might be wasps.  No, bees, I'm sure they're bees.' 

'The New Wing, Mrs Hoxton?' Lowenna Blamey prompts their hostess, and the two ladies leave Goran Blamey staring into the past. 

He gazes out into the sunlit garden, remembering that last day, thirty years ago, when the old woman stumbled, and he ran down the rough path and took hold of her thin, frail arm to steady her.  They moved on together then, side-by-side, through Granfer's vegetable plot, down to the very bottom of the garden, where the white beehive stood behind the compost heaps.   

Goran let go of his grandmother's arm, and watched as she reached out a trembling, bone-pale finger and lightly touched the lid of the hive. 

'Bees, pretty bees, Blameys is leavin'.' 

Two furry golden-brown bees crawled over her thin hand, twisted with arthritis, gnarled with pain. 

'Bees, pretty bees, Blameys is leavin'.'  

The old woman reached out to her grandson, and drew him closer.   

'There's some do say you must tell 'em three times, my handsome.  You must always tell they bees what's a-happenin' in the family, one time or three times, I don't reckon it do make no odds.  Just so they knows.  Put your hand on the hive, Goran, my lover.  Feel that?  They do know it now.  They do know we'm goin'.  They'll be a-swarmin' afore night come, then they'll all be gone, same as we.' 

Grandmother and grandson stood quietly together for a while, feeling the murmurous vibration of the hive.  

'Well, 'tis time us were off, my bird,' said the old woman, with a sigh. 'Bees, pretty bees, Blameys is gone.'  

Goran Blamey pulls open the kitchen door, and automatically stands aside to let Petrock the lurcher rush out ahead of him.  But it's thirty years since poor old Petrock last bounded through that door, almost knocking young Goran off his feet as he always used to do in his eagerness to be out.  Petrock is long gone, like Granny and Granfer, forced by old age and sickness and poverty to sell up their one real asset, the cottage where Goran was born, where Blameys had lived since time out of mind.  They had sold it to a couple from up London-way, to use for weekends and holidays, people who somehow managed to creep in under the planning regulations and build on a monstrous extension of concrete and glass and steel, swallowing up half the garden and dwarfing the tiny old cottage.  It looks faintly absurd now, the cottage, like a shabby little tugboat nudging a great sleek ocean liner.   

Still, there is no denying that what Mrs Hoxton calls the New Wing, with its spacious sitting room and conservatory, and its smart, modern, en suite bedrooms - the New Wing is what will make everything possible.  Goran and Lowenna Blamey are going to run a guesthouse, and do cream teas, and a very good living they hope to make, and a very good living it will need to be, to service an eye-watering mortgage.  They'll make it work, though.  Goran Blamey is coming home after thirty years, and he will make it work. 

He moves slowly now down the garden path, not the weedy crazy paving of his childhood, but great, close-laid slabs of concrete in muted shades of yellow and red.  Not nearly muted enough, but at least the horrible slabs come to an end at the wattle fencing that hides what was once Granfer's vegetable plot.  He pushes his way in around a loose panel. 

There are no neat beds of vegetables now, no tidy rows of carrots and spuds and beans and beet.  Instead he sees a riot of rosebay willowherb, shocking pink, which clashes gloriously with a mass of wild fuchsia, red and purple, while shaggy moon-daisies dazzle his eyes with their brilliant white, and assault his nose with their faint, regrettable smell of incontinent cats.  On what is left of the old path, every gap in the paving is filled with low-growing thyme that fights with the daisies' cat-pee smell as his feet bruise the tiny leaves and flowers.   

Goran walks on, a man in a dream of a golden past, a happy ghost-dog trotting at his heels, and there, at the very bottom of the garden, is Granny Blamey's old white beehive.  He stops and stares, and behind him he can almost hear the sound of Granfer's spade, chuck… chuck… chuck…, still working away at the good, rich Cornish soil.  

There is another sound, too, a soft, low murmur on the very edge of hearing.   

The bees are back! 

Hundreds of small, golden-brown bodies are circling the hive, crawling in and out through the slats, barrelling off in all directions, busy, busy, just as they always were.   

He reaches out to touch the lid of the hive.  Two bees crawl onto his fingers, but his mind's eye sees not his own hand, strong and brown, but Granny Blamey's, thin, bone-white, twisted with arthritis, gnarled with pain.   

'Granny, Granfer, I'm home,' he says softly.  'Bees, pretty bees -  the Blameys are back.'  

THE END

4   HOW TO CATCH A MERMAID  

'She follows us everywhere, Ma!' moans Kenwin Blamey. 

'It's just not fair, Ma, she's making us a laughing stock!' adds his brother Keverne. ''Think how you'd feel, having your baby sister always trailing around after you!' 

'Ma, it's just not cool!' says Kenwin. 

Lowenna Blamey regards her twin sons with a mixture of exasperation and amusement.  Kevern and Kenwin are a month off becoming teenagers, and it is hard on them to be constantly dogged by a round-eyed, worshipping six year old sister.   

'I know, boys, I know, but it's just a phase she's going through,' says Lowenna. 'She'll soon grow out of it, I promise you.' 

'That's as may be, Ma, but for now we have to put up with her, always under our feet!' says Keverne. 

'And it's not safe for her, following us around,' adds Kenwin. 'We're taking the boat out this morning, us and the Pascoes -' 

'Oh no you're not.' 

The head of the household comes in through the garden door, and regards his sons with as stern a look as he can summon up, which isn't very.  Goran Blamey is inordinately fond of his two boys, and finds it almost impossible to deny them anything they want.  This is the exception, though.  He is not about to let two twelve-year-olds and their equally young and inexperienced friends put out to sea in a small boat on a falling tide and a building swell. 

'If you want to take the boat out, I'll be coming with you, and that's until further notice,' he announces firmly. 

'Aw, Dad!' 

'And when I'm convinced you can handle her safely, then you can take her out on your own.  You can even take the Pascoe boys along with you if you want.  But until then, if you want to fish, you can either come out with me or stick to the rock pools.' 

'Rock pools!'   

'Dad, we're thirteen next month, not three!' 

'Take it or leave it, my handsomes,' says Goran Blamey placidly, giving his wife a surreptitious wink.  She knows perfectly well that her ex-sailor husband would far rather be out on the water than weeding the vegetable garden, which is what he is actually scheduled to do on this bright, breezy day. 

'And if Tamsin wants to come as well -' Goran is interrupted by a synchronised 'No, Dad!'  He grins at his two sons. 'If Tamsin wants to come, she's coming.' 

'She'll be whining to go home before we're even half way to Fowey,' says Kenwin gloomily. 

'She'll get seasick again, Dad, you know she will,' says Keverne. 

'We're not going all the way to Fowey, and she has to find her sea-legs one day,' says Goran firmly. 'No more argument.  Now go and find her, and ask if she wants to come with us.  She's out in the front garden, playing with Inky.' 

Kenwin and Keverne know when they are beaten, and slouch off to find their sister.  As they step out of the house, the garden gate opens to admit their near neighbour, Mrs Pascoe, carrying a large wicker basket. 

'Morning, my handsomes! I just brought down some o' my duck eggs for your Ma,' says Mrs Pascoe, lifting the lid of her basket to reveal a clutch of large greenish-white eggs.  Keverne stares, transfixed, and his twin recognises the signs of imminent inspiration.  As Mrs Pascoe proceeds up the garden path, Kerverne whispers urgently to his brother, who turns and follows her. 

'I'll take that basket for you, Mrs P,' he announces. 'Ma's in the kitchen, just putting the kettle on.  These ought to go straight out into the pantry.' 

Mrs Pascoe relinquishes her heavy basket to Kenwin with some relief, and carries on into the house.   

'Go get Tamsin's paint box,' whispers Keverne, 'and some of that glitter stuff from the Christmas decorations box.  And glue, if you can find some.' 

Five minutes later, the two boys approach their little sister, who is playing in the sunlit garden with her white kitten, Inky. 

'Here, Tamsin, see what we've got,' says Keverne, in a conspiratorial whisper. 'It was caught up in Fisher Tom's nets this morning, and he'd no idea what it was, so he let us have it when we asked him.' 

Tamsin Blamey looks up with innocent curiosity as her brothers display a large egg, an improbable blue in colour, which sparkles with a dusting of tiny bright flecks. 

'It's an egg,' says Tamsin cautiously. 

'Yes, maid, but what kind of an egg do you think it is?' prompts Keverne. 

Tamsin shakes her head, black curls bobbing around her face, and looks at her brothers with wondering eyes. 

'It came up, up, up from the very bottom of the sea in Fisher Tom's nets,' says Kenwin, in thrilling tones. 'It's a mermaid's egg, my bird!  A mermaid's egg!' 

Tamsin breathes a wordless sigh of wonderment, and reaches out to touch the precious object. 'Oh, when will it hatch?' 

'Soon,' says Keverne. 'Some time this afternoon, and by tonight for sure.' 

'How can you tell, Kev?' asks Tamsin, still wide-eyed with awe. 

'Easy,' says Keverne. 'A mermaid's egg starts to change colour when it's going to hatch.  You see how it's a lovely bright blue now, just like the sea?  Well, the colour's starting to fade already, and when it's nearly white, then the egg will hatch.' 

'It will get paler and paler all through the day,' says Kenwin, surreptitiously wiping his hands on his trousers, where they leave a faint shadow of Cerulean and a scattering of glitter frost. 'See the sparkly bits?  That comes from the very bottom of the sea, where the mermaids make their nests in heaps of silver sand.  It's wearing off now, and that shows the egg must be near to hatching.' 

'We were going to take it down to the shore, to a big rock pool, and watch until it hatches,' says Keverne, 'only we can't.' 

'Dad wants to go fishing,'' says Kenwin, 'and he'll be really disappointed if we don’t go with him.' 

'So we need you to stay and look after it for us,' says Keverne. 'You find a rock pool, and put the egg just under the water, and watch it really carefully until it hatches.' 

'What do I do then?' asks Tamsin breathlessly. 'Shall I catch the baby mermaid for you?' 

'You'll have to be quick,' says Kenwin. 'Baby mermaids are really slippery when they hatch, just like little fish.  She'll slip through your fingers if she gets a chance, then she'll be into the water and away.' 

Tamsin nods wisely.  It won't be easy, catching a baby mermaid - but how exciting to try!  How wonderful just to see one! 

'Don't tell Ma or Dad about the egg,' says Keverne hastily. 'They'll only want to take it and put it in a museum or something.  You know what grown-ups are like.' 

'Just you go and tell Ma you want to play on the beach today,' says Kenwin, 'and make sure you hide the egg when you're telling her.' 

Lowenna Blamey is baffled when her small daughter insists that she wants to play on the beach rather than go fishing with her brothers and her father.  Perhaps the little maid's rather tiresome infatuation with the twins is wearing off at last.  She packs a lunch box with a pasty and an apple, and watches her daughter down the garden path, across the road and safely onto the beach.  

An informal child-minding circle operates at all times on Polgorran beach.  Today Mrs Trenance is there with her brood, and will keep an eye out for Tamsin, and so will old Mrs Borlase, sitting as usual in her tiny cottage yard, perched just above the slipway, where she knits fishermen's jerseys for the tourist trade, and keeps an eye on the children playing on the sands.   

No one wonders why the old woman sits there, day in, day out.  They guess she likes the fresh air, and the sound of the children playing.  But for Tegan Borlase it's as good a way as any to pass the endless hours, as she waits for her man to come home from the sea.   It's forty years and more since Jowan Borlase's boat went down, lost with all hands, they said.  But they never found the bodies, so Tegan is out here every day in her yard, and every night she leaves a candle in the window, to light him home across the harbour bar.   

Meanwhile she watches over the children as they play on the sands and in the rock pools, thinking of the children she and Jowan never had, little girls with her once-bright hair flying in the wind, little boys, noisy and sturdy and dark, like the husband whose face she can barely remember.   Sometimes she thinks she sees his boat, white with a blue trim, and its smart red-painted wheelhouse, and she half-rises, to catch his eyes and wave to him as he searches the shore for a sight of her.  But always the boats drift on by, and Mrs Borlase sinks back to her endless wait, as the tides rise and fall, and the sea holds on to its precious dead.   

Tamsin makes her way down the beach, carefully searching out a rock pool suitable for a baby mermaid.   She finds one at last, just below the high tide mark.  The water is already sun-warmed, and she sets the precious egg down gently, just below the water line.  She watches, entranced, as waving fronds of seaweed, green and red and brown, caress the egg, and tiny fish come to investigate, nosing it gently and dislodging the last of the glitter frost.  Tamsin is thrilled by this sign that hatching is near.  The egg has lost its blue colour too - it is almost pure white now.  Surely it must be nearly time!   

All afternoon Tamsin watches, whiling away the hours by making a soft nest of seaweed for the longed-for hatchling, and collecting a little heap of pretty shells for it to play with.  She eats her pasty and her apple, and wonders whether she should save some to feed the new arrival, but decides that the tiny fish in the rock pool will be food enough, and much more to its liking. 

At half-past four, Mrs Trenance gathers up her brood to leave the beach, and hesitates about fetching the little Blamey girl away with her too.  But the child seems happy enough where she is, absorbed in her rock-pooling, and old Mrs Borlase will keep an eye on her until her mother calls her home. 

At half-past five, Mrs Borlase is starting to worry.  Tamsin has barely moved all afternoon, and that is very strange for a six year old.   Feeling mildly concerned, the old woman packs up her knitting and makes her way carefully down the slipway and onto the beach.  Her steps are not so sure these days, not like the old days when she used to run like the wind to meet the little white boat as it drifted in.  Sometimes it seems like only yesterday, but her aching joints and her mirror and the constant dull pain in her chest tell her it was long, long ago. 

'Tamsin, my bird, what be you a-doing there all day?' she asks as she reaches the foot of the rocks where Tamsin sits, gazing down into her chosen pool. 'Have 'ee found a crab, my queen?' 

'Hello, Mrs Borlase,' Tamsin responds.  Like all the village children, she is fond of the old woman, who always has time to talk to them, and even more time to listen. 'It's a secret thing, but I'll tell you if you like.'  The truth is that Tamsin is so excited by now that she feels she must tell someone, or burst.  She is sure she can see a tiny crack in the shell of her precious egg - any minute now, and the baby mermaid will emerge! 

'Tell me do, my lover,' says Mrs Borlase, easing herself down onto a water-smoothed rock, and gasping as the dull pain burns suddenly sharp in her chest.   

'You'll never guess what I've got!' says Tamsin, pointing down at the egg. 'My brothers told me Fisher Tom brought it up in his nets this morning, and they gave it to me to care for, and I've watched it all day.' 

Mrs Borlase follows the child's pointing finger, and feels a surge of childhood memory. 

'Well I never!' she says, smiling at the little girl's expression of wonderment. 'Well, I never did.  Tes a mermaid's egg, my handsome!  Tes a mermaid's egg for sure!' 

'That's what they told me,' says Tamsin solemnly. 'They said it will hatch today, so I'm watching it for them, and if it hatches I'm to keep the baby mermaid until they get back.  But it is taking such a long time,' she adds with a sigh.   

The old woman's mind is less than crystal clear these days, but she knows all there is to know about waiting, and disappointment.  Besides, this isn't a new trick the Blamey boys have dreamed up.  Seventy years ago, Tegan Borlase had a mermaid's egg.  She kept it for years, nested in cotton wool and hidden away from her brothers' mocking eyes.  Generations of little Cornish maids have done the same.  It’s usually a gull's egg, pale brown and mottled with darker blotches.   A painted duck egg is a new one on Mrs Borlase, but she knows a mermaid's egg when she sees one, and she smiles to herself at the eternal ingenuity of boys.   

'Ah, but see, maid, tes no good 'ee waiting no more,' she says, gently lifting the egg from the water and holding it to her ear.  'They egg won't be a-hatching now.  Tes addled, my queen. Tes a rare shame, but tes surely addled.' 

Tamsin's face falls. 'Keverne and Kenwin will be so disappointed!'  

'Never you mind, my bird,' says Mrs Borlase. 'Get you along home now, your Ma will be having your tea on the table. And there's no need to disappoint they brothers o' yours.  Get you on home, and you tell 'em the egg did hatch, just like they said it would, and the little mermaid did slip out o' the shell and swim away into the weeds.  You tell 'em that, my bird, and then they won't be disappointed.' 

Tamsin's small face brightens.  'And I could take them a piece of the shell, Mrs Borlase,' she says. 'Will you break it for me?' 

Tegan Borlase taps the egg sharply on a rock, and spills the contents into the rock pool, before rinsing the largest piece of shell handing it over to Tamsin. 

'There now, my queen, and doan 'ee be too sad about the little mermaid.  For if'n she had hatched, do you see, John Harbourmaster, he'd 'a have to 'a taken her, and put her in they Aquarian, over to Mevagissey.  Tes the law, you see, my bird, if'n a mermaid ever be found hereabouts.  And she wouldn't a been happy, now would she, all shut up in they Aquarian?' 

Tamsin shakes her head solemnly. 'No, Mrs Borlase.  So it's all for the best, really.'  She looks down, smiling happily now, at the piece of duck egg.  'And I've still got a bit of a mermaid's egg for my nature collection, even if it didn't hatch.' 

'That's right you be, my bird,' the old woman agrees.  'Now you take that bit o' shell to those brothers of yours, and you show it to them, and mind you show it to your Ma and your Daddy, too.  And you tell 'em all about the baby mermaid, and how she swam away free into the sea.' 

Tamsin reaches up impulsively to kiss the old woman's cheek, then scampers off, happily cradling the piece of broken eggshell.   

Mrs Borlase watches her go, and shakes her head.  She smiles as she makes her slow and careful way back to her cottage over the slipway.  For when all's said and done, who knows?  Maybe one day a little girl will catch a mermaid at last, and Jowan Borlase will come home again from the sea.   

Pain squeezes her chest like the claws of a monstrous crab.  She sinks into her chair in the cottage yard, and sits there, lulled by the sound of the waves, as night begins to fall.  As the last of her long life ebbs gently away with the falling tide, a small white boat rounds the headland.  It drifts slowly shorewards through a sea of stars, and the moonlight picks out its blue trim and its smart red-painted wheelhouse.   

Tegan Borlase smiles and closes her eyes, as her husband's boat comes home at last across the harbour bar. 

THE END 

Coming soon in the same series: 

2    KITTYGATE PART I:  CATRICIDE 

3    KITTYGATE PART II:  

THE COLOUR OF BEARS 

5    THE WANDERERS' RETURN