The Last Lifeboat, page 23
He looks at her and nods. ‘A boy.’
‘Then forget about the charts and calculations. As a father, as a parent, I know you understand. As a mother who has lost her boy, I am begging you to help me.’
He stands up and lets out a long sigh. ‘Very well, Mrs Nicholls. I will look at your calculations with my superiors and, if it is indeed possible that a remaining lifeboat could have passed beyond the search grid before HMS Imperial arrived, I will arrange for one more search attempt. In the meantime, I believe your daughter’s arrival is imminent. We should leave for the docks.’
Lily begins to make her way from the room.
‘One more thing, Mrs Nicholls.’
‘Yes?’
‘For what it’s worth, I would have done exactly the same, in your position. I wouldn’t rest until my child was found.’
‘Well, for what it’s worth, I wouldn’t have done the same in your position, Mr Quinn. I would have been honest from the start. I would have told parents the exact arrangements for escorting their children. But that’s the difference between people like you and people like me. I have decency and integrity. All you have is power and ambition and letters after your name.’
She shuts the door behind her and closes her eyes as she takes a moment to compose herself and catch her breath.
‘Lily? Is everything all right? What happened?’
She is relieved to see Kitty. ‘I’m not entirely sure.’
‘We should go down to the harbour. They’ll be here soon.’ Kitty reaches for Lily’s hand. ‘Are you ready?’
Lily pushes her shoulders back and takes a deep breath. What matters now is her daughter. ‘Yes. I’m ready.’
23 September 1940
Over two weeks of bombing and still no let-up despite the air force inflicting heavy losses on the Luftwaffe. Some say Hitler won’t invade after all. Hope they’re right. Feel very war-weary. For now, we count our dead and our blessings because there’s always someone much worse off. Even felt guilty putting on lipstick today, but they tell us to keep our spirits up, so Spitfire Crimson it is (beetroot juice sounds so rural). Going dancing later. Haven’t a thing to wear.
Mass-Observation, Diarist #6385
33
Mid-Atlantic. 23 September 1940
Day Six
A new day dawns beneath moody skies and a sludgy grey ocean. Sunlight or storms, it is all the same now.
Alice watches the water, mesmerized by the undulating motion, in awe of its power. She stays like this for a long time, drifting in and out of sleep, watching the waves as the lifeboat rocks gently, up and down, up and down. Everything is so quiet, so calm, that when a juvenile whale surfaces beside the lifeboat, Alice doesn’t cry out or try to get everyone’s attention as she did before. She stays exactly as she is, quietly observing.
The creature studies her for a moment, its jet-black eye fixed on hers, telling her to hold on, that there is still hope, that there will be a life beyond this. It is so beautiful and intense, so peaceful and serene. It moves closer. Alice reaches out an arm, desperate to touch it. She stretches her fingertips as far as she can, leans forward until she is almost there. Someone says something behind her, but noises are muffled and strange now and she can’t understand what they’re saying. She reaches out further until she is hanging over the side of the lifeboat. The whale stays perfectly still, as if it is waiting for her, and as the ocean pushes the lifeboat forward, Alice feels cool flesh beneath her fingertips. She runs her hand across the whale’s smooth skin, reaches out further, but somebody is pulling her arm back and somebody else is pulling her waist and the whale, startled, suddenly dives, and there is so much noise and commotion as Alice slumps into the bottom of the lifeboat.
Owen is staring at her, his eyes wild and intense. ‘What the hell are you doing? Nearly lost you overboard.’
Jimmy runs his hand through his hair. All the colour has drained from his face. ‘That was too close for my liking.’
‘I was looking at the whale,’ she says, confused by their reaction. ‘I wanted to touch it. Did you see it?’
The children stare at her. Arthur looks away, embarrassed.
‘What’s the matter? Why are you all looking at me like that?’
Owen helps her to sit up. ‘There wasn’t a whale, Alice.’
‘There was! The juvenile came back. It was right there, beside the boat.’
Jimmy shakes his head. ‘You’re seeing things, Alice. Hallucinating.’
‘How did you not see it? I touched it!’ She can’t understand what they’re saying. She’d seen it look at her, she’d felt its skin beneath her fingertips. She turns back to Owen. ‘You must have seen it!’
He says he didn’t. ‘I’m sorry, Alice. It wasn’t there. There wasn’t a whale. It was all in your mind.’
Upset and confused, she leans forward and curls into a ball, her head in her arms. They are wrong. She had seen it; felt it. They are all wrong.
A little while later, Arthur shuffles up beside her. ‘There wasn’t a whale, Auntie. You leaned out of the boat and dangled your arm in the water. We thought you were going to fall out. You won’t, will you? Promise you won’t leave us.’
Alice brushes Arthur’s hair from his forehead. ‘I won’t leave you, Arthur. I promise. We’ve come this far together, and we’ll go home together. You’ve been ever so brave. Really, I think you are all the bravest children I will ever know.’
She rests her head on the gunwale as the ocean breathes in and out against the lifeboat, and the haunting sound of whale song reaches out to her from the fathoms below. In her mind, she sees her father, a finger to his lips, a smile in his eyes. ‘Come and see,’ he whispers. ‘It’s a Hunter’s Moon. It’s so close you can touch it.’ In her slippers and dressing gown, she pads downstairs, her hand in his, and they sit together on the old bench in the garden and look up. She reaches out her hands, either side of the great orb in the sky, so that it looks as if she is holding the moon. ‘What does it feel like?’ he asks, and she makes up stories about how it feels soft and warm like butter, or hard and cold like ice and they sit, telling stories about the moon until she falls asleep and he carries her back inside, and in the morning she won’t be sure if she’d dreamt it, or if it was real, but she’ll know for certain that her father is the most wonderful man she’s ever known.
Alice sleeps, wakes, watches the children. She sees faces and shapes in the gathering clouds.
Someone recites the Lord’s Prayer. Someone sings ‘Pack Up Your Troubles’. Owen’s harmonica catches the haunting melody. Alice moves her lips in time to the chorus. ‘Smile, smile, smile.’
The midday dipper of water comes around. Alice knows she can’t keep giving Billy her water, but she quietly gives him half of her ration and sucks on a slice of tinned peach, drawing as much liquid from it as she can. Owen watches her carefully to make sure she eats. Small scraps of food. Little routines. The only things they can rely on now.
Mr Harlow sees two phantom ships that day, conjured from the play of light on the horizon and his delirious mind. Robert spots land, but it is just a cloud, hanging low in the sky. Imagined things. Nothing is real anymore.
At Alice’s feet, little Billy Fortune is restless. His cough has worsened again. When she touches her fingertips to his forehead, he feels hot, and yet he shivers. She reapplies the cold compress, dipping the rag into the puddles of seawater in the bottom of the lifeboat as she wills him to cool down, to be well again.
She sleeps, wakes, watches the children. The lifeboat moves up and down with the rise and fall of the ocean, up and down until Alice’s breathing matches the rhythm of the boat and she becomes the ocean.
A breath in. A breath out.
Up, and down.
Up, and down.
‘Alice. Alice! Wake up!’
She opens her eyes. Owen is crouched beside her. She stares at him, confused for a moment as to who he is, where she is. And then she remembers. His name is Richard, but she doesn’t know why.
‘Are they here? Are we safe?’
He shakes his head. ‘It’s the boy. He’s in a bad way.’
‘Which boy?’ Her words are muffled by her swollen tongue. She wishes she could rip it out, wishes she could be free of the thick useless lump in her mouth.
‘Billy.’
She sits up. Every part of her is in pain. Her bones feel heavy and yet spongy at the same time. She retches at the stench of damp and stale sweat that clings to her clothes. The lifeboat is rotting and decaying, and she is decaying with it.
Billy is laid out on the thwarts, delirious with a fever.
Alice crawls over legs and feet to sit beside him. ‘It’s all right, Billy. Auntie is here. What’s all this noise?’ She tries to comfort him, calm him, rubs his hands and reassures him.
He scrabbles at her like a wild animal. Between heart-wrenching wails he coughs so violently that his tiny body bucks and jerks. When Alice places her hand to his skin, he is burning up.
Little Billy Fortune, who captured her heart the moment he reached for her hand on the station platform in London, is now suffering the most. His fevered body convulses in dreadful spasms.
‘Nearly home now, Billy,’ she says as she holds him in her arms. ‘Nearly home to see your mother, and your father’s marvellous pigeons.’
He cries for his lost marbles, and reaches for the one in his pocket.
Alice assures him it is safe.
‘We’ll buy you some new marbles when we get home,’ Owen says. ‘The biggest and best we can find. How about that, Billy the Kid?’
Another coughing fit takes over.
Alice wraps her arms firmly around him and tells him to hold on. There is nothing else she can do.
As afternoon drifts into evening, the last of the day’s water is handed out. After that, everyone sucks their buttons to try to stimulate a little saliva. When that doesn’t work, they suck the sodden sleeves of their pyjamas and the damp edges of their blankets, crazed in their desperation to drink more.
Alice stumbles her way through the final parts of Moby Dick, a gory muddle of harpoons and smashed boats and sailors tossed into the sea, until Ishmael is floating on Queequeg’s coffin and he is rescued by a whaling ship.
‘And I only am escaped alone to tell thee. The End.’ She repeats her closing words twice, reluctant to finish, for the story to be over. Arthur is pleased that Ishmael was rescued, but Alice’s heart is heavy. There is no pen poised to write them out of their ordeal, and their end is surely not far away now. As she shuts the imaginary book, she notices that the wind is picking up again.
Over the next hour, dark, ominous clouds gather. The increased rocking of the lifeboat is impossible to ignore.
Not long after sunset, the first heavy drops of rain begin to fall.
The seventh night in the lifeboat, and another storm, begin.
34
Glasgow. September 1940
A murmur of expectation ripples through the crowd gathered on the wharf. Hundreds of spectators have arrived, eager to see the few precious survivors for themselves, but Lily hardly notices anyone else. She is silent and still, alone in her desperation to have her daughter safely in her arms.
She shields her eyes from the sun and peers into the distance. It takes her a moment to locate the plume of smoke from HMS Imperial as it steams toward them. She takes in a breath and clenches her hands together at her chest, as if in prayer.
Kitty stands on Lily’s right, Mr Quinn stands beside Kitty. He is pale and quiet, his impervious gaze giving away little of whatever emotions simmer beneath his carefully controlled demeanour. He brushes off reporters’ questions with a firm, ‘Not now, gentlemen. There will be ample time for questions later.’
The enormous ship moves agonizingly slowly. Each minute feels like a hundred more, until Lily is just able to make out figures beside the railings, and then she can see people clearly – the crew, waving. Then, individual faces become distinct. She scans them quickly, searching wildly. Where is she? Where are they? There is still a faint trace of stubborn hope in Lily’s heart that Arthur will be with his sister, that the authorities have made a mistake and the two of them will walk off the great ship together, hand in hand.
Everything moves in slow motion as the ship comes to a stop alongside the wharf, dwarfing every vessel beside it. The ropes are thrown and secured, protocols and procedures diligently followed despite the exceptional circumstances of this ship’s arrival and the growing sense of anticipation among the restless crowd.
A group of adults leaves the ship first. Men and women, young and old. Lily sees the same haunted expression on every face. She wonders what horrors they’ve seen, what unimaginable events they’ve been through. Some are reunited with loved ones in moving scenes of tender relief. Others seem to just melt away into the crowd, their ordeal over, and yet in many ways only just beginning. She notices a tall man hesitating as he approaches the gangway, and then sees the reason for his pause: children are beginning to emerge through a doorway.
Lily’s pulse quickens. Goosebumps run along her skin. Her eyes dart from one face to the next, looking, searching as the man bends down and says something to each child in turn before giving them a hug or a handshake or tousling their hair. Three boys walk, unaided, down the ramp. At the bottom, they are met by Mr Quinn and Red Cross volunteers and a barrage of newspaper reporters and cameramen with popping flashbulbs and loud commanding voices. Lily is heartened by the fact that the boys seem to be in remarkably good spirits. Even the two girls who are carried off the ship on stretchers manage to wave to the crowds and lift their heads to smile before being taken away by ambulance.
Shock and relief thread among the assembled crowds. These few surviving souls are the first visible evidence of the tragedy that has unfolded so far away. Yet their arrival brings as much pain as joy; a reminder of the many others lost.
‘Where is she? Where’s Georgie?’ Lily says the words out loud, but speaks only to herself. What if they’ve got it wrong? What if she hasn’t been rescued at all?
After what feels like an age, two more figures emerge through the doorway and stand on the deck beside the tall man. A boy Lily doesn’t know. A girl she does.
‘Georgie!’ The name falls from Lily’s lips in a gasp. ‘My Georgie.’
She is here.
All the noise around her fades away. All the reporters and spectators disappear. There is nothing and nobody else, just her daughter, her beautiful brilliant girl. Seeing her now is like seeing her for the first time, when the midwife placed the impossibly tiny bundle in her arms. Lily looks at Georgina now the way she’d looked at her then, with wonder and disbelief, and an overwhelming sense of love.
She moves forward, pushing her way past people, propelled by a powerful rush of relief and love. ‘Let me through. That’s my little girl. That’s my daughter.’
She can’t get to her fast enough, can’t catch her breath through her tears as she calls Georgie’s name again and again so that her words come out in snatched gasping fragments, and then Georgie sees her, and Lily hears her cry out, ‘Mummy! Mummy!’ and she is moving towards her, and they are both running and stumbling until, in a dizzying whirl of joy and relief, Georgie is in Lily’s arms.
She is in her arms.
She is in her arms.
Lily sinks to her knees.
For a long time, they stay locked in an embrace in the autumn sunshine as Lily absorbs every part of her daughter, the sweet scent of her hair, the thump of her heart against her own. There isn’t a mark on her. Not a scratch or a bruise. It is, without doubt, a miracle.
Georgie sobs and sobs and tries to say something, but her words come out in great gulps and it takes Lily a moment to understand what she’s saying.
‘I don’t have him, Mummy! I don’t have Arthur. I’m sorry, Mummy. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s all right, love. I know. It’s all right.’ Lily presses her cheek against the top of her daughter’s head. She refuses to let herself cry. She has to be strong, for them both. ‘You’re safe now. You’re safe.’ She draws in a long deep breath. ‘You’re safe.’
‘How does it feel to have your daughter home?’
‘When did you and your husband first hear the news?’
‘What do you want to say to those in charge of the evacuation programme?’
The reporters’ questions land on Lily like arrows. She wants to tell them she is beyond grateful to have her daughter back, but that her son is still missing and her heart is still broken. But that’s not the story they want to hear. They don’t want sorrow and grief; they want reunions and survival. They want to focus on the happy ever after, not on the recriminating questions that linger.
‘I’m very glad to have my daughter safely home.’ It is the best she can manage. ‘If you’ll excuse us, we’d like some time alone. In private. There’s a lot to catch up on.’
As Kitty had warned her, such a public tragedy demanded a public response, and as a representative from the government steps forward and introduces himself, it is immediately clear to Lily that she will not be permitted the quiet time of healing and recovery she so desperately wants.
‘Ed Atkinson. Ministry of Shipping.’ He gives Lily a bewildering set of instructions: places to be, names of people Georgina will be asked to talk to. ‘We’ve arranged a welcome reception for the CORB children. They’ll be given an opportunity to speak to the newspapers, and there’ll be some formal photographs.’
Lily couldn’t care less what has been arranged. ‘We don’t wish to speak to the newspapers, thank you. We just want some time alone. My daughter has been through a terrible ordeal.’
Mr Atkinson is a little taken aback. ‘But everything has been arranged. We have a car waiting to take you to the hotel. It shouldn’t take long.’
