Wrecker. Noel O’Reilly

      

      NOEL O’REILLY was a student on the New Writing South Advanced writing course. He has worked as a journalist and editor at the international business media company RBI, and is now a freelance writer. This is his first novel. He lives in Brighton with his wife and children.

Copyright

      An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

      First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

      Copyright © Noel O’Reilly 2018

      Noel O’Reilly asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Ebook Edition © July 2018 ISBN: 9780008274535

      ‘God moves in a mysterious way

      His wonders to perform;

      He plants his footsteps in the sea,

      And rides upon the storm.’

      William Cowper, Hymn (1773)

      ‘Myreugh orth an vorvoren, hanter pysk ha hanter den.

      Y vos Dew ha den, yn-lan dhe’n keth uta-na crygyans ren.’

      ‘Look at the mermaid, half fish and half human. That

      He is God and man, to that same fact let us entirely give credence.’

      Louis T. Stanley, Journey Through Cornwall (1958)

      To Sally

      PENWITH, CORNWALL

      TEN YEARS AFTER THE FRENCH WARS OR THEREABOUTS

      Contents

       Cover

       About the Author

       Title Page

Copyright

       Dedication

       Contents

I: BUDDING TIME

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

       Chapter 6

       Chapter 7

       II: WHITSUNTIDE

       Chapter 8

       Chapter 9

       Chapter 10

       Chapter 11

       Chapter 12

       Chapter 13

       Chapter 14

       Chapter 15

       III: HARVEST TIDE

       Chapter 16

       Chapter 17

       Chapter 18

       Chapter 19

       Chapter 20

       Chapter 21

       Acknowledgements

       About the Publisher

I

       BUDDING TIME

1

      I got to the beach too late to find anything of real worth. The gale had moved inland, leaving an icy breeze in its wake, and there was a sea stench as if the ocean bed and all its secrets had been torn out overnight and dumped on the strand. All about me the dead from shipwrecks past muttered and moaned in the tongues of their own lands. Having shaken themselves free of their unblessed graves, they shuffled about in search of some lost thing. Look upon them too long, and they’d fade into the mist that sailed across the strand.

      A dead wreck it was, all hands drowned. Sounds of hacking and wrenching floated over to me on the gusts, as my neighbours took the ship apart, plank by plank. All that was left was the bare ribs of the hull, stuck between Jack and Jill, two rocks that stood like monsters’ teeth at the western end of the cove. The ship’s bottom was torn out and her timbers lay in piles. Alongside, casks and boxes waited, and ponies and carts laden with plunder filed from the ship up the steep track to the headland. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen a ship picked clean in a single tide.

      I rubbed the grit of sleep from my eyes and tied back my hair, casting my gaze all about me to make sure I was alone. On the sand a few passengers lay among the dead, but my neighbours had already stripped the corpses for the most part. Among the bodies lay cabin furniture and fittings, lengths of pipe, a binnacle and other nautical instruments of some use unknown to me. Jellyfish lay all over, like plates of glass with the grey sky trembling inside them. Queerest of all were the hundreds of oranges scattered among the corpses as if they’d rained down from the heavens. They were all the more vivid in a world grey and tired as an old garment with the colour washed out. I took my kerchief