Priddy's Tale

By Harper Fox

What doesn’t kill you sometimes makes you wish it had...
Priddy’s a lost soul in a part of Cornwall the tourists don’t get to see. He’s young, sweet-natured and gorgeous, but that’s not enough to achieve escape velocity from his deadbeat village and rotten family life.
He’s a drifter and a dreamer, and self-preservation isn’t his strong suit. An accidental overdose of a nightclub high leaves him fractured, hallucinating, too many vital circuits fried to function in a tough world. When a friend offers him winter work in a lighthouse – nothing to do but press the occasional button and keep the windows clean – he gratefully accepts.
His plans to live quietly and stay out of trouble don’t last very long. A ferocious Atlantic storm washes a stranger to Priddy’s lonely shore. For a shipwrecked sailor, the new arrival seems very composed. He’s also handsome as hell, debonair, and completely unconcerned by Priddy’s dreadful past.
Priddy has almost given up on the prospect of any kind of friendship, and a new boyfriend – let alone a six-foot beauty with eerily good swimming skills – out of the question entirely. But Merou seems to see undreamed-of promise in Priddy, and when they hit the water together, Priddy has to adapt to Merou’s potentials too, and fast. His lover from the sea might be a mere mortal from the waist up, but south of that line...
Far-flung west Cornwall has a hundred mermaid tales. Priddy’s loved the stories all his life. Now he has to face up to a wildly impossible truth. Merou’s life depends upon his courage and strength, and if Priddy can only find his way in the extraordinary world opening up all around him, all the ocean and a human lifetime needn’t be enough to contain the love between merman and mortal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Harper Fox
• Release date: Jun 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781910224557

Harper Fox

Harper Fox is the author of many critically acclaimed M/M Romance novels, including Stonewall Book Award-nominated Scrap Metal and Brothers Of The Wild North Sea, Publishers Weekly Best Book 2013. Her novels and novellas are powerfully sensual, with a dynamic of strongly developed characters finding love and a forever future – after an appropriate degree of turmoil. She loves to show the romance implicit in everyday life, and she writes a sharp action scene too.

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Priddy’s Tale

Harper Fox

Copyright Harper Fox 2016

Published by FoxTales at Smashwords

Priddy’s Tale

Copyright © June 2016 by Harper Fox

Cover art by Harper Fox

Cover photo licensed through Shutterstock

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from FoxTales.

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This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Priddy’s Tale

Harper Fox

Table of Contents

Foreword

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Afterword

Foreword

Extract from Wild Southwest—Legends of the Cornish Coast, by Dr Christopher Berryman

There was once a young man who did a favour for a spirit of the sea.

That’s how a story like Priddy’s should start. But that sounds like another legend, a tall fish-tale in a land already bursting with them. So I’ll begin more quietly, like this...

There have always been Priddys at Rosewarne Cove. They don’t have the best reputation. Hard-nosed land-dwellers say it’s impossible to get a good day’s work from them: they embody the Cornish concept of dreckly, roughly equivalent to Spanish mañana. There’s even a rhyme about them, best roared out in the pub with a burring, piratical Penzance accent: I’ve seen Gweek and Truro City, but I’ve never in my life seen a working Priddy!

Harsh judgement, and not entirely accurate, in my experience of the clan. It’s fairer to say that they’re dreamers, poets. Work’s not easy to come by in the far southwest, and when they find it, they tend to be fishermen, boat-builders, ferry crew. The occasional plucky lifeguard thrown in. They don’t seem to thrive away from the sea, and if they do leave, they always return.

Well, read the story, and then you can decide for yourself if you believe Priddy’s tale. I’m a little ashamed to be telling it, respected academic as I am now. But I’m retired, and not so concerned with my reputation as I used to be, and I’ve seen some things in my years among the whales, sharks and dolphins that perhaps I shouldn’t take to my grave with me. It all began in the summer of 2016, when Jem Priddy was no more than a boy, and a lost boy at that, down in beautiful Porth Bay...

Chapter One

In the Sandhopper bar on Porth beach, Priddy sat admiring a handsome young man. He could only see him in profile—salt-curled blond hair brushing his shoulders, long tanned legs in cut-off denim shorts. Typical surfer, but none the less attractive for that. A little bit too thin for his height. Wearing a T-shirt with the legend, written out backwards for some reason, Weeverfish Southwest Tour 2010.

That was odd. Priddy had that same T-shirt himself. It was one of his favourites, a souvenir from six years ago. He wondered if the lad on the barstool across from him wore it for the same reasons he did, in memory of better days.

Priddy didn’t want to be caught staring. He returned his attention to the beach. The bar was open at the front in this blazing June weather, the shutters rolled up and only the framework of the veranda dividing the interior from the single-track road that ended here, and beyond it the sand and the rolling Atlantic surf. Late August, high season in full swing. The lifeguards were out in force, buzzing back and forth on their quad bikes, making sure the board-riders stayed between the wind-fluttered safe-zone flags and out of the ferocious rip. It was a perfect summer scene, sea-glass greens and Mediterranean blues, and all the dancing, jingling, ruffle-sailed beach-bum charm that drew kids down by their hundreds in Volkswagen buses and every other refitted make of van imaginable.

Most were content to obey the lifeguards’ rules. Not all, though. As always, a few hardy souls who thought they knew better were straying beyond the flagged boundaries, waiting for the monster waves that humped up over the sand bar and curled into delicious blue tunnels before exploding with glorious power on the beach.

Their arrogance had angered the sea god. Poseidon created himself out of the crystal Cornish waters, a barrel-chested giant taller than the Porth Bay cliffs. He looked a hell of a lot like the Harryhausen masterpiece from Jason and the Argonauts, the guy who’d risen from the waves to hold the clashing rocks apart for the Argo. He raised one muscular arm and began to poke at the errant surfers with his tripod.

Priddy fell off his barstool. The blond boy took fright too and did the same. Priddy didn’t blame either of them, but nobody else seemed concerned. The lifeguards continued their casual surveillance. The bartender checked his watch, went to the door and glanced irritably up and down the promenade. He raised an eyebrow at Priddy, then strolled back behind the counter as if nothing was wrong.

And nothing was, of course. Poseidon dissolved into glittering foam. Priddy tried to give the other boy a sympathetic grin, but couldn’t quite see him from this angle. Nice to know he wasn’t the only poor sod around here who sometimes saw things that turned out not to be real...

He scrambled upright. The Sandhopper had no other side: just one mirrored wall to make the place look bigger, and a second mirror mounted over the bar. The two reflections had conspired. Priddy was the boy with cut-off jeans and blond curls. Now he had identified himself, his attractions blew away like dust: the real Priddy only looked tired and bemused. He hitched back onto his stool, sheepishly brushing himself down.

A scooter roared to a halt on the sand outside. The rider dismounted and opened the carry-case on the rear, then ran up the wooden steps of the veranda. Priddy smiled, recognising his best mate from childhood upwards, Kit. Like most of the Rosewarne Cove lads who hadn’t made the A-level grades for university, Kit was scraping a living from patched-together part-time jobs: driving a delivery bike, taking the odd shift in his grandfather’s lighthouse at Hagerawl Point, even finding time to do lifeguard duty during the peak summer months. Priddy himself had once been one of those sun-gods down on the beach, sober and responsible by day, by night partying hard with the surf bunnies. Not anymore.

Kit hadn’t seen him. He deposited a box of bulk-buy peanuts on the bar. The barhop gave him a high-five, and they fell into conversation. Clearly they knew each other. Kit still went to places, talked to people, made friends, did things. Priddy felt like a satellite, orbiting coldly a million miles out.

Kit took his signature pad back from the bartender. They finished their business and Kit turned away, heading back to his bike. He stopped mid-stride, eyebrows rising in surprise. That you over there, Priddy-boy?

Yes. He wasn’t wholly sure. Maybe the boy in the mirror had really fallen off his stool, and Priddy was the one who’d disappeared into oblivion behind the mirror’s blank eye. It was nice to see Kit, though, and he braced himself to look and sound normal. Hi, Kit. How are you doing?

Pretty much the same as when you saw me yesterday. Er... what are you drinking?

Priddy squinted at the hand-scrawled menu. "Apparently it’s a long, slow sea-blue screw up against the boathouse wall. It’s probably my round, though. Let me get one for you."

Prid, I’m not offering to buy. Kit hitched himself onto the neighbouring barstool, blocking the bartender’s view. He lowered his voice. I mean what the bloody hell are you drinking, and why are you doing it here? I thought you had a job interview.

The memory popped back into Priddy’s head with buoyant force. He was pleased to be able to confirm Kit’s good opinion of him. I do!

Come with me a minute, mate. Come on.

Kit put out a hand. Priddy took it willingly. He’d known Kit since he was four years old. They’d stumbled hand-in-hand through hundreds of childhood hazards. He didn’t resist when Kit towed him off through the saloon-style doors of the trendily unisex bathroom. Here, Kit said, turning him to face the mirror. Let’s get you sorted out. Take your T-shirt off.

What? Why?

Because if you put it on backwards, your potential new boss won’t see the Weeverfish logo on the front. And if you take my shirt and sling it on over everything, you’ll look good. Hip but casual. Pity about your jeans... I’d swap, but you wouldn’t hold mine up anymore.

That was true. Priddy examined their reflected differences. Kit was stocky and dark, starting to pack weight on in a way that suited him. It’s okay. I’ll do, won’t I?

Almost. Shirt?

Priddy peeled it off over his head. He didn’t like to see himself like this. His sun-kissed swimmer’s six-pack had melted away to rib-bumps. Quickly he flipped the T-shirt round and dived back into it. Sorry, Kit. Sorry.

What for?

Bothering you. Being a nuisance.

You’re not. Here, put your arms back. Kit helped him shrug into his clean white shirt. He ran his fingers through Priddy’s hair, tidying at first, then soothing, drawing the tangled curls back. Where is this interview, anyway?

It’s... Priddy paused until the caressing fingers had straightened out enough of his thoughts. It’s here, actually. So that’s okay.

What time?

Priddy glanced up at the shell-encrusted clock on the wall. Why there was one in here and not in the main bar, he didn’t know. He connected the position of the hands—one of them a surfboard, the other a grinning great white shark—with the bartender’s trip to the door, his impatient glance along the road and promenade. Half an hour ago. Shit.

Oh, Prid. Are you having a bad day?

He didn’t know. He had felt all right so far, but a memory lapse like this was hard to square with perfectly organised faculties. Maybe. I... think I forgot my meds last night.

Kit gave him a shake. This is no good, mate. You have to remember. Do you want me to get you one of those little boxes with the days marked on?

I already have one. But it’s white, plastic, boring. It doesn’t seem to impinge on me.

I’ll buy you one that will. Listen to me. My granddad’s going to need someone to take watches at the lighthouse soon. Would you consider doing that?

What? Is your granda hiring certified crackheads these days?

It’s fully automated. Even you couldn’t do much damage. Besides, you’re not one anymore, are you? Kit looked up, brown eyes suddenly full of grief. And I owe you, Priddy. You know I do.

It was time for Priddy to set the record straight on this. Long past time, when he came to think about it. Weeks had flown away like magpies since he and Kit had hit the clubs to celebrate the end of their last sixth-form college term. He turned away from the mirror, took the broad shoulders in his hands. Listen. I was screwing about with all kinds of highs, legal and otherwise, long before that night. And it’s not like you sat on me and held my nose until I opened my mouth for the bloody stuff, is it?

No. I just thought you’d enjoy it. I still could’ve died when you got so ill. You’re still fucked up from it now.

Only a little bit. Only when I forget my meds.

Will you at least think about the job, then? Kit’s voice had roughened with incipient tears. You can live in. The salary’s not much, but that might not be a bad thing for you. And... I don’t think the old man’s gonna let me go until I find a replacement.

The penny finally dropped. Priddy took a deep breath. You’re leaving.

Yes. Shit, Priddy—I’m so sorry. I got a place at Northeast Atlantic to do marine biology.

You said... You said you hadn’t got the grades.

I wasn’t sure. But—yeah, I scraped through.

Why didn’t you tell me?

"You know why. It was meant to be both of us."

Priddy took him into his arms. He clutched at the solid warmth of him, so real and strong. Hot salt flooded his sinuses, made his sight prickle and blur. I’m so bloody pleased for you.

Kit manoeuvred both of them into a toilet stall. He banged the door behind them with one foot, reached to push the bolt home. Priddy lifted his face to meet his kiss, which had surprised him so much the first time—the only time—they’d let their long friendship tip over into sex. Softer than he’d imagined, cloudier, like kissing a peach. He hadn’t been certain that Kit was even gay, not in the way he was certain about himself. He pushed his body against Kit’s, trying to catch the wave of desire. Kit grabbed his buttocks and lifted, grinding him against the wall. Not romantic, as love-nests went, but wild west Cornwall had a way of redeeming sordid corners: the skylight let in a purity of blue afternoon, and gulls crisscrossed the oblong space, tracing runic symbols on the sky...

Priddy?

Yeah? What?

You okay?

Um... Yes. No... Better let me go.

Kit obeyed, a touch too willingly for a really ardent lover. Their tumble in the dunes the year before had been great, but they’d rolled apart quickly afterwards, suddenly all knees and elbows, and never repeated the experiment. What’s the matter?

Nothing. That is... Priddy gave a pained laugh, tried to back away and sat down clumsily on the toilet lid. I can’t, really. Not since—

"Your overdose? Oh, shit, Priddy. You’re kidding."

Priddy decided he’d better be. He hadn’t meant to let the last revelation tumble out at all. Way too much for poor Kit to carry. Forget it. You and I are really good at being friends, that’s all. We always were. Sex can fuck things up.

Sex can fuck things up? I ought to get that printed on a T-shirt.

Not before you go to university. I want you to have some fun. Priddy grabbed Kit’s belt and pulled him close, only loving this time, tired and sorry for the fuck-up he’d made of his life. He rested his face on Kit’s warm belly. I’ll stay here and take your granda’s job, if he’ll have me. And you go off to Northeast Atlantic and be the best fucking marine biologist ever to crawl out of Rosewarne Cove. Do you promise?

Kit’s stomach muscles jolted in a bitten-off sob. I promise. Okay.

Chapter Two

October chilled into November, and wild winds danced around the lighthouse at Hagerawl Point. They rocked Jem Priddy in his bunk room below the control deck, and carried weird voices up from the grey-glass sea. The voices didn’t wake him. Seals sang. Waves surged into serpentine caves and forced air up through blow-holes in the cliffs. No true-bred Rosewarne Cove lad would break his sleep for a song from the sea.

Priddy dreamed on.

Sometimes they didn’t feel like dreams at all. They were just recall, detailed and playing on an endless loop. The nightclub was crowded, faces fading in and out of focus over the top of Priddy’s tenth margarita. The place was pretty damn funky by Penzance standards, Eric Prydz thudding out of high-end speakers, an alchemist’s toybox of neon-glow shots lined up behind the bar. Priddy had already tried most of them, and circled back to the margaritas out of boredom.

He knew he was being a twat. About the drink, about the kaleidoscope of substances, legal and illegal, that came swirling out of the summer visitors’ vans or got dealt by hard-eyed locals in alleyways behind the pubs. It was just that he and Kit had been hammered down so hard in their classrooms at Penwith College for the past few months, cramming for the A levels that might springboard them out of the Cove and into a bigger world. It was easier for Kit, who had parents who gave some kind of shit about his future. When Priddy