Welsh Lessons-4

Ger yanked the pull cord on Seren y Môr’s outboard once more. This time, the engine coughed into life, rattly at first but then with a deepening putt-putt-putt.

He motioned his head: “She’s fine! Hop aboard!”

Janice, clutching her red plimsolls advanced gingerly into the shallows, gasping one side of the boat with her free hand. “Ouch! Pebbles!”

More than by good luck than good judgement, she managed to scramble aboard in a manoeuvre resembling the Fosbury Flop. The small wooden boat rocked back and forth as it took her weight.

“Phew! Thought I was going to have us both over!”

“Nar! She’s solid as rock, this one. Good for a Force ten.”

“Did you check the weather, Ger?”

“Think it might blow up a bit later in the afternoon. But we should be back in Porth Tawel before that. Anyway, more exciting when there’s a bit of a sea.”

“You know, Nick’s dead against me coming along with you. Threatened to tell my Mum.”

“O, sais ofnus. You’ll be fine with Big Ger.”

“You know they call you Mad Ger?”

“Do they? Maybe they’re right. I thought we’d go and check the lobster pots, then maybe we could do a little trip round the bay, up to the power station. You can wave to your Dad.”

“He’s not there today. Visiting his brother in Wolverhampton…”

“Wolverhampton, eh? Full of …er, stuff...”

 

 

The grey hulk of the power station blurred into the mist behind them, then vanished completely, almost as if someone had pulled a switch. Ger opened the throttle on the little outboard, the note deepening as it worked harder against the wind and tide. The slap-slap-slap of the water on the Seren’s hull was louder now, more rhythmic. The boat was jumping up and down now, riding the waves like a pram on cobblestones, slamming off the back of every wave with a WHUMP! The salt spray leached through Janice’s thin blue waterproof. She shivered.

“S’pose you must feel the cold more. Coming from Africa and all that.”

“I don’t come from Africa. I’m from Altrincham.”

“But your family must be from there.”

“Jamaica, actually. Is there far to go, Ger?”

“Five miles, maybe. An hour…”

“An hour?”

“Something like that.”

Ger? I’m not feeling so good. Any chance we could pull in somewhere?”

“Need to get the boat back to Porth Tawel by seven. Promised my brother I would.”

“Oh Ger! PLEASE!”

“It’s a terrible thing, seasickness – and there’s nothing you can do about it!”

“There IS something you can do about it, you complete sod! You can take me into that little bay over there! Why does your brother need the boat at seven o’clock at night?”

“That would be telling.” Ger tapped the side of his nose.

“Oh GOD! OOORRRRGGGH!”

“Got to catch the tide, Janice. Better out than in. You’ll be fine now.”

“AAAHHHH! Let me lie down!”

“We’ll be back soon enough. This’ll blow itself out. See, we’re just coming round the headland now. You’ll be able to see Porth Tawel up ahead.”

They rounded the point. THWAM! Another wave, bigger than the rest, thwacked into the stern. Suddenly, there was six inches of water in the boat; the engine note rose in pitch into a tormented scream. Without being asked, Janice levered herself upright and grabbed the cut-down orange plastic bucket. She scooped water, frantically throwing it over the sides. THWAM! Another wave, more water. Ger threw the rudder over, pointing the little boat directly to the shore, now beginning to disappear in the spray and gathering darkness. Any port in a storm. Any piece of rock in a storm.

The waves and tide shouldered the little boat aside, pushing it west, towards the rocks that separated Porth Tawel from Llwch Harbour.

“Janice! "Grab the tiller! Just keep us pointing to the shore and don’t let the throttle move. I’ll grab the oars, keep us moving. Bale out if you can!"

Janice braced her plimsolls against the side of the boat and held the controls. Ger grabbed the oars from the bottom of the boat and, grunting with the effort, tried to spin the boat round. He shouted something but his words were lost above the screaming outboard and the roaring wind. Suddenly he stopped rowing, letting the boat spin round again, pointing back towards Llwch Harbout. He mouthed something that could have been an instruction. More water crashed into the boat; they were knee-deep.

“MUM! MUM!” screamed Janice.

 

---***---

"Llanerchyllwch inshore boat, Holyhead Coastguard. Seas extremely rough, visibility poor. Moelfre and Holyhead offshore boats en route. RAF helicopter assistance requested. Llanerchyllwch inshore boat, stand by for further instructions. Over.”

“Holyhead Coastguard, go fuck yourself. Take an hour at least,” said Coxswain Dai Jones, not realising his finger was on the transmit button.

“WHAT!”

“Er, message received and understood. Over.”

“Llanerchyllwch inshore boat. We FORBID launch. Stand by. Over.”

“Received and understood. Over.” Dai turned to his crewmates: “Sion…Ifor, do we know who it is?”

“It’s that Geraint Jones, you know, the Seren…”

“Mad Ger!”

“And he’s got Janice - the black girl, with him…”

“O DUW! NO! Come on, you two! If it was your kid…”

 

The small orange inshore boat rounded the Llanerchyllwch Port breakwater. Dai gunned the motor. “Any idea where we’re looking? What we’re looking for?” said Ifor.

“If Geraint had any sense, they’d have headed for Ynys Llygodan. If they could get over the other side, they’d have a chance.”

“Geraint. Dim sense o gwbl.”

WHAMPF! The wave hit them, swamping the tiny inshore boat. Now they were just three men in a small rubber dinghy, not much bigger than the rubber lilos that they rescued holidaymakers from on summer afternoons. They were cold, wet - and afraid.

Dai zig-zagged the craft, in hope more than expectation. Another wave hit them broadside. Water poured in. Ifor and Sion bailed, frantically. The motor laboured, then screamed. Dai eased back on the throttle, momentarily, then gunned it again, trying to keep headway.

Nothing but water; grey waves on every side, higher than the boat, much higher. The wind screamed overhead. “NO!” said Sion.

Blindly, Dai pointed the boat into the waves, anything to avoid another broadside hit. Spume skittered over them; they could taste the salt. The lights of Llanerchyllwch were nowhere to be seen. Everything was just black, black. Nothing.

Ifor pointed. “Llygodan!” Dai revved the motor again, tacking the small craft against the waves and tide. Slowly, slowly, the grey rock started to assume shape in the darkness. Now they were as close as they dared. Sion held up the Aldis lamp; it lit up the rock fitfully. They chugged slowly along the edge of the rock.

“Dim byd. Dim byd o gwbl.”

“Y Cric?”

A small boat fleeing ahead of the storm might conceivably have headed for the Creek. Whether it would make it was another matter entirely.

Away from the shelter of Ynys Llygodan, the waves thumped and banged into the bows. The lights of the chemical works, half a mile off, jerked into view for a split second, then disappeared again. Another wave came crashing in; Ifor and Sion baled, Dai jerked the throttle on and off, trying to ride the oncoming waves. Away to the north, they heard the clatter of the search and rescue helicopter, fitfully across the wind and the crash of the waves. Evidently, the RAF boys had decided that the Seren had been swept out into the Irish Sea. “Chwilio needle in a haystack,” muttered Sion.

“If they’re still alive, they’ll be on the coast,” said Dai. “Hold up the lamp. We’re getting close.”

---***---

 

Thirty minutes passed. The crews’ ears were filled with the BOOM-BOOM-BOOM of the waves crashing and reverberating in the creek. The Aldis light bounced on and off the rocks, the seaweed, the waves. Nothing.

“Where to now?” Dai, said Sion.

“We’ll keep searching the coast, towards Llwch Port. Anywhere the current might have taken them.”

The adrenalin rush of the first minutes of the shout had long ebbed away. In its place was just a dull, empty ache, something they could feel in their bones. “Someone should have chopped up that bloody boat of his for firewood,” said Sion.

Dai nodded, slowly.

 

 

A straggle of about 20 people were gathered on the foreshore at Porth Tarw. Cars parked askew in the small car park above, headlights still blazing. From a distance, the ‘hee-haw-hee-haw of a two-tone horn, insistent, getting closer. Then, a grey Ford Escort lurched over the brow of the hill, halting with a scuff of its tyres. The passenger door was thrown open. “You seen anyt’ing? ANYT’ING!” Maureen’s eyes bulged, bloodshot.

Her sister Nena emerged from the driver’s side, a larger, slightly plumper version of Maureen, her hair in an elaborate beehive, trembling in her agitation. She’d been staying over for a few days.

“No, sorry, Mrs Robertson. All we know is that they’ve called out the lifeboats from Moelfre and Holyhead. Maybe the small one from Llanerchyllwch too. And we’ve seen the helicopter.” It was Tom Williams who spoke.

“THE HELICOPTER?” shrieked Nena. “Oh my God!”

“Dai and his crew will be out there, you bet. He’ll find them!”

“Yeah. Dai’s a good man. Knows this coast like the back of his hand.”

“Why! Why! WHY did she do dis ‘ting! She told me she was going to see friends! Who is this Ger? Why she go with him?”

“Headstrong, aren’t they at that age? My two were just the same. Don’t always tell parents the truth…”

“But Janice. She was always such a GOOD girl!”
”Look, Mrs Robertson. Ger’s been in scrapes like this before; he’s pulled through. Probably taken shelter in the Creek, or one of the bays. Dai’ll find them…”

A woman put her arm round Maureen’s shoulders. “They’ll find her; they’ll find her.”

Maureen wrenched herself from the lady’s grasp and ran towards the sea. Nena rushed after her. She trembled at the edge of the water. “We. Should. Never. Have. Come. Here! THIS PLACE!”

A shriek, more of a bellow; it scarcely seemed a human sound. Many of the women on the shore were frightened now.

The siren was much louder now; the ambulance scrunched onto the foreshore, blue lights swirling, followed by a Coastguard Land Rover.

Over on the horizon, the search and rescue helicopter chattered away, its searchlights bouncing fitfully off the waves

 

The wind dropped. For the first time that evening, they heard the bell of St Agatha’s strike: once. Half a dozen of the local women gathered around Maureen and Nena, Maureen collapsed on the shingle, Nena standing, grasping her shoulders. The helicopter had disappeared, gone to refuel, probably. Out to sea, the lights of the big orange Moelfre and Holyhead lifeboats danced spasmodically across the broken water.

One of the ambulancemen approached the group. “Mrs Robertson, you really should come and get warmed up, it really isn’t…”

“NO! No. Just have to keep looking…”

“HEY! THERE! DOWN BY THE CLIFFS! A LIGHT!”

The man was right. A yellow light, now disappearing, then reappearing, moving up and down. The entire group ran towards, stumbling over shingle and rocks, slithering down on their arses on the seaweed, getting up, running on, shouts, yells.

There was a splash, the sound of thrashing in the water. Maureen waded into the water, punching and kicking at the waves repeatedly with her fists, up to her knees, now up to chest, heading towards the light.

Three, four…five figures in a small orange boat, silhouetted against the grey night sky. Two of them swathed in blankets, a big hulking one and a smaller slighter one. Maureen thrashed her way over to the boat and threw herself at her daughter, throwing her arms round the blanketed figure. “MY GIRL! My LITTLE, LITTLE GIRL!”

Janice stared at her mother, mouth agape, as if roused from sleep.

“JANICE! SAY SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING! CAN’T YOU SPEAK?”

“Oh Mum, now you’re all wet too,” Janice mumbled. “I’ll be fine…”

 

On the shore, someone pressed a steaming cup of tea to Janice’s lips. Figures rushed to and fro, shouts, lights. She felt light-headed. “Here, sit down inside the van,” said an ambulanceman. “Get you properly warmed up. Then we’ll get you to Bangor Hospital. Your boyfriend too.”

The other ambulanceman took Ger by the arm. “Dewch...”

“Na, dw i’n iawn. IAWN!” He broke away from his grasp. “AH!” he yelled, clutching his temple.

A knot of villagers rushed towards Maureen, but she managed to aim half a dozen more large pieces of heavy, jagged shingle close range at Ger’s head before Tom Williams reached her and seized her arms. Ger stumbled and collapsed, face down on the shingle, groaning.

“He’ll have to go to hospital now!” someone shouted.

 

 

“Maureen! What’s happening? Is Janice OK?” Nick, out of breath, his face whiter than she’d ever seen it, red around the eyes.

“Yeah. She in the ambulance. Go and talk to her. She fine.”

 

 

“So you did go out with Mad Ger, then. Warned you.”

“I know, I was stupid. More stupid than I’ve ever been in my whole stupid life. Coming with me to the hospital?”

“The hospital? Er, yes…actually, I just came from there. My mother, Mum, she…”

“Nick?”

“At three o’clock this afternoon. It was very peaceful…”

 

 

“I knew you’d be out there, whatever I said, Dai,” said Coastguard Evans.

“Got a young daughter myself. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself. Shouldn’t have said what I did over the radio; didn’t realize it was still on transmit.”

“We all had a good laugh at the station. Don’t worry, we know you of old, Dai Jones. Anyway, I guess you and the boys will be in for some sort of citation from the RNLI …”

“Yeah, maybe. Wasn’t really one of your classic rescues, though.”

“How come?”

“Well, we searched the north side of Llydogan Island, thinking that would be the most likely place they’d have run to in front of the wind. Couldn’t find anything, so we pressed on and tried the Cric. Nothing there so we carried on, all the way up, right to the Hexagon Works. Hours it took…”

“And? Where did you find them?”

“Well, we turned back, we’d pretty much given up hope by then. The wind had dropped, there wasn’t the swell, so I thought I’d take the south side of Llydogan – and there they were, both of them, sitting on the flat rock.”

“Good grief! Didn’t think it would be possible to even approach that side, when it was blowing. Maybe Mad Ger’s a better sailor than we thought…”

“Even his boat was OK. They were drier than us, man! If I’d thought to look, could have saved everyone hours of trouble. Must be losing my touch.”

“You’ll never lose your touch Dai, you know that. Well, all’s well that ends well.”

“Yeah. Something like that...”