The Last Lifeboat, page 19
After his fifth lap, Alice expects him to haul himself out of the water as he usually does. But instead of climbing out, he hangs onto the side of the lifeboat.
‘Right then, kids. Who’s for a quick dip?’
Jimmy lifts his head. ‘You’re not serious?’
‘Never been more serious. Look at them. Withering away like rotten apples. It’ll do them good. It might shock them back to life if nothing else.’ He looks to Alice for support. ‘What do you say, Teach?’
Alice is too exhausted to say much at all. She looks at the children and thinks of how peaceful Owen looks in the water. What harm can it do? The ocean is flat calm and they’ve been so still and cramped for so long now. She imagines the relief it will give their bodies to unfurl.
‘Will you hold them?’
‘Won’t let go for a second.’
‘Just a very quick dip?’
‘A very quick dip.’
She nods her head.
Owen needs no further encouragement. ‘Right then. Who’s first?’
One by one, the children peel off their blankets and life jackets and strip off the flimsy nightclothes they’ve worn for the last five days. Robert goes first. He looks like a skinned rabbit, so pale and wrinkled as Jimmy lifts him carefully over the side of the lifeboat into Owen’s arms. He shrieks as the cold water wraps itself around him, but the initial shock quickly passes and a wide smile fills his face as he relaxes against Owen’s embrace.
Owen holds the boy in his arms, lies back in the water and kicks, until they are both floating alongside the lifeboat.
‘Can I look down?’ Robert asks. ‘I’ve never been in water this deep.’
‘I have him,’ Owen says before Alice can protest. ‘I won’t let go. I promise.’
He tilts Robert forward until the boy’s chin dips beneath the surface. Robert draws in a breath and puts his face into the water. Alice holds her breath with him. She counts – three seconds, four, five, six. Just as she’s about to shout to Owen to get him up, Robert re-emerges.
‘It goes down for MILES!’
His excitement is infectious. He stays in a minute longer and even takes a few strokes alongside the boat, but he is cold and needs to come out. Alice wraps him in two blankets and Owen’s thick sweater. He trembles beside her, but he looks so alert, so alive, for the first time in days.
Molly is still too weak and poorly to swim, but she watches with a smile as Brian and Hamish take their turn to have a quick dip. Like Robert, they are revitalized by the sensation of freedom and the chance to move in the water. Arthur isn’t as confident as the other boys. He hesitates before taking off his life jacket and coat.
He stands at the edge of the lifeboat and grips Alice’s hand tight. ‘Does it really go down for miles, Auntie?’
She squeezes his hand. ‘Not really. Think of it as a nice cool bath. That’s all.’
‘Come on in, kid.’ Owen calls from the water. ‘I’ll have hold of you all the time.’
Arthur looks at Alice once more for reassurance.
‘He won’t let go,’ she says. ‘You’ll be perfectly safe.’ It is only when she’s said it that she realizes how much she trusts Owen to keep the children safe.
A rare sense of peace washes over her as she watches Arthur in the water, his arms and legs spread wide, his face a wide, gap-toothed smile. For a moment, he is just an ordinary seven-year-old boy, free from the extraordinary circumstances he has found himself in.
Finally, it is Billy’s turn. Alice isn’t sure he should go in the water at all. ‘You have a nasty cough, Billy. I don’t want you to catch a chill.’
‘Please, Auntie! Just for a minute.’
Jimmy says they should let him go in. ‘I don’t see how he can get much colder than he already is. Look at him, soaked to the skin.’
It is a fair point, but Alice is still reluctant.
Billy takes the marble from his pyjama pocket and hands it to her. ‘Will you keep it safe for me?’
She studies the clear glass orb, a swirl of aquamarine running through the centre. It reminds her of the ocean, and of a stoic little boy on the station platform, ready for the off.
Alice can’t bear it. ‘Yes, I’ll keep the marble safe for you. Just a very quick minute though. That’s all.’
Stripped of his clothes, and standing just in his underpants, Billy is nothing but a bag of bones as Jimmy lowers him into Owen’s arms. He gasps as his narrow shoulders slip beneath the surface, his legs and arms instinctively kicking into life.
He laughs and cries at the same time, euphoric in his delight. ‘I’m flying!’ he says, his reedy voice amplified by the water. ‘I’m floating! Look!’
It is a gift to see him – all of them – being children again. Alice wipes a tear from her cheek, her need to protect them now so urgent and profound, the need to trust and encourage herself, just as strong. She remembers Kitty’s words when they’d skimmed stones together in Dover: I want you to do something, Alice. Something reckless and unexpected. Something brave.’
By the time Billy is back out of the water and dressed, she has made up her mind.
In a sort of madness, she unzips her skirt, unbuttons her blouse, and in only her underwear, she edges forward on the thwarts, swings her legs over the side and dips her toes into the water. It is cold, but it is also smooth and inviting. She pushes her fear to one side as she thinks of the pact she’d made with Howard Keane to stay curious, to keep moving forward.
‘Come in. I’ll catch you,’ Owen says.
Alice slips into the water with a gasp, the cold snatching her breath away as she briefly goes under. She starts to panic and reaches for the side of the boat, but her grip is weak and she can’t hold on.
Owen loops his arms around her. ‘I have you,’ he says. ‘Relax. I have you.’
She steadies her breathing, leans back into Owen’s arms and lets the water wash over her. Her teeth chatter with cold, but the sensation is exhilarating. The once furious ocean is a balm, a sheet of silk that drapes itself around her battered body. She feels so free and light, all the pain and discomfort eroded by the gentle lapping of the ocean. But it is more than that. She feels a spiritual response as well as a physical response, a cleansing of more than her skin; a washing away of the past, a letting go.
‘What made you change your mind?’ Owen asks as they float effortlessly beside the lifeboat.
Alice can’t respond for a moment because the answer is overwhelming. It feels impossible to her now that she’d thought her steady quiet life in Whitstable would be hers for as long as she wanted it, that nothing would ever change, or that she would ever want it to.
‘Everything,’ she says, eventually. ‘Everything made me change my mind,’ and whether Owen understands the depth of her answer or not, she feels his cheeks widen in a smile.
Too soon, he guides her back to the boat and Jimmy helps to pull her out.
‘How was it?’ he asks.
‘Cold, and wonderful!’ She looks at the ocean as she shivers beneath an emergency blanket. ‘It’s so unpredictable, isn’t it. Constantly changing. Terrifying one day, beautiful the next.’
‘Much like life,’ Jimmy says.
Alice nods. ‘Yes. I suppose it is.’
Before the torpedo strike, she’d taken life for granted. Now she knows it is a gift to be cherished, and as she stands in the lifeboat, impossibly lost in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, she has never felt closer to the whisper of death, or more acutely aware of the insistent thrilling roar of life.
28
London. September 1940
Kitty’s arrival, although unexpected, lends shape and structure to Lily’s grief. Now, with facts and information, her sense of helplessness shifts toward action and purpose.
‘Tell me everything you know. I’ll put the kettle on.’ But as she stands up to light the stove, she remembers she’s out of milk. ‘Actually, would you prefer something stronger? I’m sick of tea.’ She rummages in a cupboard, pulls out an almost empty bottle of sherry and pours two small glasses. ‘The Christmas trifle can do without this year.’
Lily drinks her sherry in one satisfying gulp.
Kitty takes a sip and puts her glass down. ‘Right. Let’s start at the beginning.’
The facts, while hard to hear, offer vital ballast to Lily’s floundering hope. She clings to the details, desperate to find Arthur somewhere among the rigid lists of dates and shipping records as Kitty sets out everything she knows about the last movements of SS Carlisle and its convoy and naval escort. Lily takes a sheet of paper and maps out known locations, distances, wind speeds and the span of the search grid. Her mind craves information while her heart longs to find a solution to the most important puzzle she’s ever faced. But as Kitty speaks, Lily’s thoughts drift and wander. She imagines Peter at the kitchen table, quiet in his grief, but determined to find their son, to bring Georgie home, to understand how this terrible tragedy ever happened. Make them keep looking, he says. Make them go back for our bright-summer-breeze of a boy.
Peter had a way with words, his creativity – and his trauma – expressed through his poetry as well as his sketching. He couldn’t hide the physical marks of his father’s temper, but those who knew him as happy-go-lucky Pete Nicholls didn’t see the mental scars he also bore. Only Lily knew the truth. Although she was too young to fully understand it at the time, when they’d played together as children, she’d seen the reality of life for a boy whose father carried the emotional trauma of the Somme in his fists as well as in his mind. It was no surprise to Lily that Peter grew up to hate everything about war, the violence it provoked in some men, the narrative of heroes and cowards, the senselessness of so many lives lost, including, eventually, his own.
Some accounts of the incident said Peter’s rifle misfired during a training exercise. Others said he hadn’t followed safety instructions and was entirely to blame. However it had happened, the awful fact remained: a young man was dead, killed by a bullet fired from Peter’s rifle. It was all the war Peter could bear. Lily stares at the knots in the table, as if she might find a different outcome there. His response wasn’t just the act of a man irreparably traumatized by guilt, but that of the frightened young boy he’d never fully outgrown. The next time he fired his rifle, he did so with fatal intent.
‘A terrible act of war, with tragic consequences.’
Lily looks at Kitty. ‘Sorry? I was miles away.’
‘I was saying that the official line from the Ministry of Shipping is that the loss of the Carlisle, like the Lusitania, is a terrible act of war, with tragic consequences. Word is that the king will mention it in his next address to the nation.’
Lily couldn’t care less about the king’s stuttering speeches. ‘Even the king can’t bring them back though, can he?’ She turns her attention back to Kitty’s documents. ‘I still don’t understand why it took so long for help to arrive. Why didn’t the other ships in the convoy go to help straightaway?’
‘Ships in convoy are always instructed to scatter in the event of a torpedo strike,’ Kitty says. ‘They can only return to assist when the threat of danger has passed.’
It is the sense of abandonment Lily finds so unfathomable, the active decision of the other ships’ captains not to return when they knew the Carlisle was carrying children. ‘In other words, they deliberately left them to drown.’
For a while, the two women sit in brooding silence. The facts are too unbearable to accept. Lily feels Kitty’s anger and anguish, as well as her own.
‘What is she like?’ Lily asks. ‘Your sister? Alice?’ She refers to Alice in the present tense, aware of how impossible it is to put a person you love in the past. She still can’t talk about Peter that way.
Kitty smiles. ‘She is wonderful, although she doesn’t know it. Alice never looks for praise or attention, like I do. She just quietly gets on with things. She’s always rescuing things: baby birds that have fallen from their nests, bumblebees from cobwebs, lambs caught on wire fences. Where most people wouldn’t even notice, Alice sees a creature in need of help.’ She takes a moment to compose herself. ‘We lost our father when we were children. I was only three, so I hardly remember him. Alice was ten and absolutely adored him. She was alone with him at the time and has always blamed herself for not being able to help him, or save him. I think that’s why she always looks for ways to save everything else.’ She takes a deep breath and rests her hand on her stomach.
‘How is your mother taking the news? She must be heartbroken.’
‘My mother would require a heart in order for it to break.’ Kitty offers a tired smile. ‘They sent a very nice letter, said lots of kind things about Alice. Deepest regrets and sincere condolences, expressions of gratitude for her sacrifice and devotion to duty. She would be horrified if she knew. Alice hates a fuss, hates being the centre of attention.’
‘Will you get into trouble?’ Lily asks. ‘For coming here and talking to me?’
‘Probably, but I don’t care. They’ve suspended CORB sailings for the time being, but I suspect they’ll resume as soon as possible. There are thousands of children still scheduled for evacuation, and this can never happen again. If mistakes have been made, I want to make sure they’re found.’
Kitty’s sense of injustice and determination is infectious. Lily pores over the paperwork again: official Admiralty documents, typed reports from the Ministry of Shipping, memos on CORB letterhead, numbered lists of lifeboats and names of survivors recovered. No matter how many times she sees the facts set out, or how clearly her head tells her it is impossible for anybody to have survived this long, the possibility that she will never see Arthur again is the much harder thing to believe. ‘What can we do to make them keep searching?’ she asks. ‘A mother’s intuition and instinct isn’t enough, is it?’
Kitty takes another small sip of sherry. ‘You could come to Scotland with me.’
‘Scotland?’
‘I’m travelling with Mr Quinn to meet HMS Imperial when she arrives. You should be the first to see your daughter, not some stranger from the government. Come to Scotland and make them listen to you.’ Kitty picks up a pile of papers from the table. ‘Make them look you in the eye and explain all this to you themselves.’
Every bone in Lily’s body wants to be there when Georgie arrives. ‘I could never afford the train fare.’
‘You don’t need to. I was supposed to travel with a secretary to a newspaper editor we’ve invited – there’s always a scoop – but she was injured in a raid last night. You can take her place. Nobody ever pays attention to the secretaries. Nobody will even notice. The train leaves at nine tomorrow morning, from Kings Cross.’
‘Tomorrow?’ Lily’s mind races. ‘But what about Arthur? What if there’s news?’
‘Then we’ll hear it together. Come with me, Lily. There’s nothing you can do here. Think about it while I use the loo.’
As Kitty uses the outhouse again, Lily looks back through the documents to check the information one more time. Something nags at her, a piece of the puzzle is missing, she is sure. Just as Kitty comes back into the kitchen, Lily remembers something.
‘You said a supply vessel in the Carlisle’s convoy was also hit. HMS Eagle? You said the crew abandoned ship, in a lifeboat. What happened to them?’
Kitty studies the list of survivors. ‘Here it is. Yes, thirteen crew of HMS Eagle are listed among the recovered survivors. They were also picked up by HMS Imperial.’
‘And what about their lifeboat? Was that also recovered?’
Kitty checks again. ‘I presume so, but it doesn’t specify.’
The information forms a pattern in Lily’s mind. A connection of facts and possibility. ‘And it says a total of twelve lifeboats were recovered from the site where the Carlisle sank. But if the Eagle’s recovered lifeboat was mistakenly counted as one of Carlisle’s lifeboats, then …’
Kitty looks up, her eyes wide and alert. ‘They might have missed one.’
Lily’s heart races as they double-check the list of recovered lifeboats.
‘Lily! You’re right. There were twelve lifeboats recovered from the site, but that must have included one from the Eagle. The Carlisle had twelve lifeboats, so …’
‘So there could be another, still out there.’
Kitty grabs Lily’s hand. ‘Yes. There could be another lifeboat still out there.’
They are interrupted by a knock at the door. Lily ignores it, frantic in her need to check over the information one more time, to make sure.
The knocking continues.
‘Shouldn’t you answer that?’ Kitty prompts.
‘It’ll only be Elsie with another casserole.’ Eager to dispatch her, Lily hurries along the hall and opens the front door.
But it isn’t Elsie.
Ada Fortune stands on the doorstep, ashen-faced as she pulls a handkerchief from her coat pocket and wipes her eyes.
‘I didn’t know where else to go, and you said I could come. They’re gone, Mrs Nicholls. All five of ’em, gone.’
22 September 1940
Sick and tired of the raids but don’t like to grumble because lots of people have it much worse. Had a dream last night that the Germans were bombing us with potatoes – skins on, of course, because a peeled potato (Heaven forbid!) is almost as shocking as an iron bomb at this stage. ‘The Kitchen Front’ has become ‘The Potato Front’. Everything must be made from the bloody things: potato pastry, potato salad, baked potatoes, potatoes, potatoes, potatoes. I’ll turn into a potato at this rate.
