Malin Head (standard:romance, 1605 words)
Author: KShaw	Added: Jul 21 2005	Views/Reads: 3479/2422	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Sailors will go where sailors go...an almost true story. A love story with a difference.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story


Jimmy beckoned me closer with a cobwebbed spiny hand. I felt uneasy,
almost afraid of his weakness. “Not one of us has ever taken a risk,” 
he said in a whisper, just before the nurse returned with a clean bowl. 


“Jimmy, why don't you let me clean you up some,” she pleaded kindly. 

“Cos I ain't dead yet, you useless bloody cow,” he croaked. She removed
the bowl of bile and placed a clean one at his side. 

“You need more oxygen, Jimmy, it's time your friends were leaving.” 

Jimmy, in irritation, spat and coughed and gasped but couldn't find the
breath to speak. With one momentous effort, his chest awash with flem 
and his heart clogged with spleen, he managed to splutter just two 
words. 

The expression on the nurse's face will never leave me. Jimmy had
managed to couch his anger with the merciless efficiency of a 
monofilament net containing just two words. 

That night Sid and Cecil showed up at the harbour carrying axes. Harry,
who owned the Bedford dormobile, was sat in the drivers seat in the car 
park with the lights off. Together we walked towards Harry who, seeing 
all three of us walking toward him, leapt out of the van and took Sid 
and Cecil aside. When they turned back toward me Cecil instructed me to 
remain here and keep tight hold of the axes. I did as I was told. 

It was after one in the morning when the van turned, headlights out,
into the car park. The rear doors were opened and all three lifted 
Jimmy out of the back and over to the wharf. Jimmy must have 
spluttering blood over the back of Harry's shirt, and it blossomed like 
a rose in the moonlight. They managed to lay him in the hull of the old 
Viking. Sid, Jimmy's brother, and Harry remained in the boat while 
Cecil climbed out, took the axes from me and handed them down to the 
others. The old Viking's engine started and the boat bobbed gently away 
from the berth, the calm waters slapping against the bow. 

“Com'on, lad, you'll come with me,” Cecil ordered. Together we walked
over to Harry's dormobile, and when the rear doors opened I could smell 
Jimmy's clothes, his old clay pipe, and something else, excrement and 
piss. “We'll burn these later,” he said. We gathered them up and walked 
towards Cecil's Raven 26, moored to the jetty. He backed the launch 
away from its mooring and the small diesel Perkins droned us slowly out 
between the harbour walls. 

It took all the strength I had to help Harry into the boat. Cecil
struggled with Sid till me and Harry helped haul him over the side. We 
all lay there, breathing like fish fighting for their lives. 

A couple of days later, a fatter, greyer, but still kindly Jack Rafferty
came to the door. 

“Hello Jack,” mum said, what will you be doing visiting?” 

“I'd like a word with your lad, Marion.” He took off his helmet as she
beckoned him through the door. 

“I hope it's not trouble, Jack.” 

“It's just a couple of questions, Marion. I've heard that your lad has
been mixing with some bad sorts lately.” 

“Bad sorts, Jack?” 

“Harry Spokes, Cecil Bannister, and Sid Cullen, our three town misfits,
now that Jimmy has disappeared.” 

“But I thought Jimmy was in the cottage hospital, Jack.” 

“He was, but appears to have miraculously recovered and left in the
middle of the night, and taken his boat out of the harbour.” 

“Never! My goodness, I believed he was close to death. Peggy Shaw was
telling me yesterday that Social Services had removed him from his 
house for his own welfare, saying the house was too damp.” 

“True enough, the doctor's and the nurse on duty say he was physically
incapable of leaving the hospital on his own. Suspicion surrounds 
Cecil, his brother, and the nurse told me that your lad had visited 
Jimmy last night and was possibly one of the last people to see him, 
along with Sid and Harry.” 

Mum looked round at me. 

“He looked kind of okay, I mean he was coughing, but that's all.” I
said. Mum looked back at Jack. 

“No one spoke to you about removing Jimmy from the hospital?” 

“No.” 

“And you don't know anything about Jimmy's disappearance?” 

“No.” 

“You're not keeping good company, lad, not with the likes of those
fellows. You'd be wise to keep your distance.” 

Jack trawled the town for informative gossip for the next few days. 

I grew up among sea folk where rules are made according to wants, and
where social workers don't always know what's best. The pubs to this 
day still ring with rumour. Cecil and Sid, too, have been laid to rest, 
taking their truth with them. Harry still gives me the odd wink, and a 
smile, his old rheumy eyes seeing everything. 

Sometimes, less often now, I sail 'Paladin' out into the dark waters,
and when the forecast is for storms across Malin Head, I know it's just 
the wheezing of an old man who knew where his heart should be. 


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