The Last Lifeboat, page 27
Alice sits on a bench and takes slow steady breaths in and out, glad of a moment alone until a woman rushes toward her.
‘Excuse me, love. Are you Alice King? With the CORB programme?’
Alice looks around for Kitty. ‘There’ll be time for newspapers to ask questions later. At the reception. I can’t talk to you now.’
The woman looks panic-stricken. ‘I’m not with the newspapers, love. I’m looking for my boy. He was in the lifeboat they found. Billy Fortune. Do you know where he is?’
43
Glasgow. September 1940
The hospital is reassuringly calm and quiet after all the fuss and noise of the wharfside. With Kitty beside her, Alice sits quietly in the reception area. She can’t stop thinking about Mrs Fortune, sitting with her son as he fights for his life. She is glad, at least, that they were able to bring her straight to the hospital, all thoughts of welcome receptions and newspaper reporters forgotten.
Kitty says Alice is as stubborn as an ink stain. ‘I really think you’d be better off at the hotel. You’ve been through such a dreadful ordeal. You need to rest now and build your strength up. The boy is in the best place.’
Alice dismisses Kitty’s concerns. ‘I’ve a whole life ahead of me to rest and build up my strength. I’m not leaving until I see him.’ She cares about the children so deeply; worries about Billy so viscerally. ‘If you’d seen them in the lifeboat, Kitty. If you’d heard their panicked screams …’
Kitty listens patiently as Alice talks about the lifeboat, but no matter what words she chooses, she struggles to properly convey their fear and struggles. It sounds like a story she’s made up; remembered fragments of a book she’d once read. But it isn’t just the worst moments she wants to tell Kitty about. She wants her to know about the small kindnesses, the moments of gentle humour, the stunning sunrises and dazzling stars, the grace and beauty of the whales. Already, she forgets things, little details that were so important at the time now fading to a muddled blur. But the people she’d shared those days and nights with, she knows she will never forget. She misses them, worries about them, wonders where they are and what they’re doing.
Alice and Kitty wait for an age. Doctors and nurses come and go but nobody has any news about little Billy Fortune.
The receptionist keeps looking at Alice. ‘You’re her, aren’t you? The Nightingale of the Atlantic. You did an incredible thing, miss. Keeping those little children safe all that time in the boat. It must have been terrible for you all.’
Alice says yes, it was. She stares at the floor and hopes the young woman will take the hint that she doesn’t want to talk about it. She is deeply uncomfortable with the attention, feels undeserving of the accolades and the names being attributed to her, especially when she hasn’t kept the children safe. Billy isn’t safe. Billy is in grave danger.
‘She means well,’ Kitty says, sensing Alice’s discomfort. ‘It’s not everyday somebody comes back from the dead.’
‘They look at me as if I’m the Messiah. And I’m not. I’m just me. Just Alice.’
‘It won’t last forever. They’ll be talking about something else within a month. Alice King will disappear into obscurity, a footnote in a history book, all talk of heroic deeds forgotten.’
‘Good. I just want to find a quiet job as the village postmistress, or something. Whatever is needed.’ It occurs to her that she doesn’t even know the latest developments in the war. Part of her is happy not to know.
‘You’ll forget too, in time,’ Kitty adds. ‘I know it’s all so vivid and raw now, but the memories will fade.’
Even if they do, Alice knows the Carlisle will always be part of her, even when other people stop talking about it and forget it ever happened.
The receptionist brings them each a glass of water. Alice looks at hers for a moment.
‘Not thirsty?’ Kitty drinks her own.
‘Just thinking about how desperate we were for a glass of clean water. I’ll never take it for granted again.’
Kitty links her arm through Alice’s. ‘I met a friend of yours, by the way. I’m not sure if he’s still in Scotland, but he spoke very fondly of you.’
‘Oh? Who was it?’
‘A lovely Irish man. Howard Keane. Quite the hero, by all accounts. He pulled several children out of the water and into a lifeboat. They’re saying he’ll be given a medal of some sort. He still had a book you’d lent him. David Copperfield. The one Father gave you for Christmas.’
Alice lets the tears fall down her cheeks. Dear Howard. She’d thought about him so often, at times it felt as if he were in the lifeboat with her, his warm enthusiasm spurring her on … Let’s make a pact – that we won’t go back to the lives we’ve left behind, that we’ll stay curious, keep moving forward. She doesn’t feel the need to cry out with relief, or rush to see him. She feels calm and peaceful, so relieved to hear he’d survived. ‘I hope he’s still here. I would like to see him.’
Toward late afternoon, Kitty has to return to the hotel. ‘There’s a press briefing scheduled with CORB. Why don’t you come with me? We can come back in the morning. I’m sure they’ll let you see Billy then.’
‘I’d rather stay here. You go. I’ll be fine.’
Reluctantly, Kitty leaves her.
Eventually, Alice sleeps.
Sometime in the evening, a nurse gently shakes her shoulder. ‘You can go in now, dear. Second corridor on the left.’
Alice goes where instructed. She finds Ada Fortune sitting in a chair beside Billy’s bed. He looks so peaceful.
‘Not a mark on him,’ Ada says as Alice stands hesitantly beside the bed. ‘All that time at sea and he looks like he just got out of the bath.’
‘He’s a remarkable little boy,’ Alice says.
‘He was born with a heart defect,’ Ada continues. ‘They said he wouldn’t last until his first birthday, and look at him. Six birthdays gone. Scrapper, his dad called him. His little scrapper.’
‘I’m so sorry I couldn’t keep him safe, Mrs Fortune. He was so brave. I’m so very sorry.’
‘But you did keep him safe, miss. Think of all those poor mothers who’ll never see their little ones again. You brought Billy home.’ Ada reaches for Alice’s hand. ‘You brought him back to me so that I could say goodbye. I can never thank you enough for that.’
Alice says she’ll come back later, that she doesn’t want to intrude.
‘I’d like you to stay, Miss King. Please. Stay with me, and tell me all about the Carlisle and the lifeboat. How he was. What you did. I’d like to know. It’s the only part of his life I haven’t shared since we took him in.’
Alice takes a deep breath and pulls up a chair. ‘I met him at the train station in London. He showed me his best marble and held my hand. I think he could tell I was a little nervous, that I needed a friend …’
She talks for a long time.
She isn’t sure at what point in the night she falls asleep.
She is woken by a gentle shake of her shoulder.
The chair opposite her is empty.
The bed is empty.
The nurse takes Alice’s hand. ‘I’m so sorry, love. He slipped away quietly in his mother’s arms.’
The words drift around Alice as if she’s underwater and can’t hear them properly.
‘She wanted you to have this.’ The nurse takes something from the pocket of her uniform and places it in Alice’s hand. ‘She said you would understand.’
Alice can’t bear to look. Can’t bear to know.
Slowly, she unfurls her fingers. In her palm sits a clear glass orb, a swirl of aquamarine running through the centre. It reminds her of the ocean, and of a precious little boy to whom it meant the world.
The nurse places an arm around her shoulder. ‘Take your time, love. When you’re ready, there’s a gentleman waiting for you in reception. He’s been here all night.’
Alice wipes a tear from her cheek. ‘It will be a reporter. Can you tell him I have nothing to say?’
‘It isn’t a reporter, love. He said to tell you he is a friend, and to take as long as you need.’
Alice sits for a while longer, alone with her thoughts and memories and grief, before she takes a last glance at the empty bed and walks slowly out of the ward. She follows the long, hushed corridors, each quiet step taking her away from her past as she finally forgives the frightened little girl crouched in her heart and accepts that everything and everyone she has lost is part of the woman who was found. She has been given a second chance; a second life. She must keep moving forward now, one step at a time, a small glass marble held tight in her hand, ready for the off.
PART FOUR – RECOVERY
44
London. March 1941
Lily wakes to a sunrise of violets and roses, the windowpanes patterned with frost lacework. It is so beautiful it takes her breath away when she pulls back the blackout curtains. She’ll never understand how the world can hold such beauty and such horror at the same time.
The war has gone on so long now that sometimes it is difficult to remember life before it. For six months, the bombing raids have come, night after night, on and on and still no sign that they will end. Elm Street is stubbornly unchanged, a perfect seam of upright houses hemmed in among the tattered fabric of nearby streets turned to rubble. Number 13 stands like a sentry in the middle, keeping watch over Lily and the children, a fortress of family and familiarity. Family and home are what matter most now, the simple things Lily had once taken for granted now infused with a sense of quiet gratitude: a fire in the grate, food in the pantry, tea in the pot, the table set for three, tucking the children in at night, tidying their things. Life has distilled down, drawn closer. But for all that there is comfort in the routines of home life, nothing will ever be the same. Lily is forever changed by what has happened. They all are.
She lights the stove and pours a saucer of milk for Moby Dick, their new kitten. Mrs Hopkins’s cat has managed to keep an entire litter alive this time, so seven lucky families in Elm Street now have a new member. The kitten has helped the children with their recovery, Arthur in particular. The two of them are inseparable. Lily often hears Arthur tell the little creature about his friend, Billy Fortune, and everything they did in the lifeboat. Arthur’s strength has gradually returned and although he still finds it difficult to walk far, he improves each day. The doctors assure Lily there won’t be any lasting physical damage. Georgie has also made a good physical recovery, but the long traumatic hours she’d spent waiting for help to arrive, and the memory of all those she’d seen perish around her, linger on in bad dreams and an intense fear of the water. What the experience had done to their young minds, nobody can yet be certain.
Lily hears the familiar squeak of the garden gate just after nine. Mr Kettlewell had offered to oil it for her a few days ago. ‘Must drive you batty,’ he’d said. She’d told him she hardly noticed it anymore, but the truth was she noticed it more than ever. The squeaky gate and Peter were forever connected. If she fixed it, she would lose another part of him, and so it remains, with its perfect flaws. She wipes her hands on her apron, presuming it will be Elsie come to tell her about something or other. After Elsie’s mother-in-law had passed away last month, Elsie and the children had moved permanently into number 14. ‘Officially neighbours!’ she’d announced. ‘Isn’t that terrific!’ Lily owes Elsie a huge debt of gratitude, and has grown very fond of her, but she will always prefer Elsie Farnaby in small bursts. Elsie is invariably the first to know the latest gossip and loves to turn the smallest thing into the greatest drama, so Lily wasn’t a bit surprised to discover that Elsie was writing for Mass-Observation. Elsie was the perfect social diarist, although what people might make of her particular observations in years to come, Lily isn’t entirely sure.
But it isn’t Elsie come to gossip. Lily hears the snap of the letter box, the light thud on the doormat. She pads through to the hallway, picks up a buff-coloured envelope and opens it at the kitchen table. She is still a creature of habit, despite so much disruption and change.
Children’s Overseas Reception Board
45 Berkeley Street, London, W1
18 March 1941
Dear Mrs Nicholls,
Owing to an oversight at the time of the departure of SS Carlisle from Liverpool, a packet of letters that were being held for posting until after the ship had sailed were only very recently discovered. We were uncertain whether it would not be adding to parents’ grief and distress to send these letters on now, but were certain you would prefer to have them. I have put the letters in the enclosed envelope so that you can read them, or destroy them as you wish.
We are aware that Mrs Ada Fortune has been staying with you since the tragic sinking of SS Carlisle. I would be very grateful if you could pass the enclosed letter on to her. There doesn’t appear to be a letter from each of her children (not all children engaged in the activity, it seems).
Sincerely,
Anthony Quinn, CORB
Time folds away like an unpicked hem as Lily reads the enclosed letters from Georgie and Arthur, a few lines about their excitement to be going to Canada and how impressed they are with the Carlisle. As if it were only yesterday, she’s back on her front doorstep, trembling despite the unusually warm September morning, forcing herself to smile through her anguish as Alice King says they really must be going, and gently – almost apologetically – encourages the children to say goodbye before leading them away, her hands in theirs, their little suitcases swinging at their sides. In the end, the threatened invasion that prompted the second wave of evacuation hadn’t happened, thanks to Fighter Command and victory in the Battle of Britain, and yet many civilian lives were still lost on the home front. Stay or go, the risks were the same. It was a time of war. Nobody was safe anywhere.
Arthur ambles into the room, the kitten in his arms. He yawns and plonks himself down at the table. ‘What time is it, Mummy?’
‘Hmm?’ Lily is miles away. ‘Friday.’
Georgie starts to giggle. ‘He asked what time it is, not what day it is!’
Lily blinks away the onset of tears and smiles. ‘It’s Friday o’clock. Now, both of you, eat your breakfast!’
She opens the sticky drawer and takes out the biscuit tin to add the letters from the children. She’s kept all the CORB correspondence, even the terrible letter they sent to inform her the Carlisle had sunk. She isn’t sure why she keeps it all, but she can’t bring herself to throw anything away. It is part of their story now, part of who they are.
But it is the things at the bottom of the biscuit tin that she looks for now, the items that were returned among Peter’s personal effects. His tattered sketchbook, filled with his distinctive drawings of snowdrops, feathers, daffodils, the dog, Arthur and Georgina in profile. And his notebook, full of his reflections for Mass-Observation but which he never sent to the Ministry of Information for their archives, unlike Elsie, who diligently sends hers off on the last day of each month, thrilled with the importance of it all. Peter’s entries are for Lily to read in private now, a precious insight into his deepest thoughts about family and war, a permanent record of a man who had so much more to say, and do.
The last thing she takes out of the tin is the letter she finds the hardest to read, the letter Peter wrote to her a year ago, and which still feels as fresh and vibrant as if he’d written it that morning.
My darling Lil,
They said we should write a letter to be sent home in the event of the worst happening. This is my fifth attempt because how can I possibly say goodbye to you? I can’t, so I won’t. This isn’t a goodbye letter. It’s a love letter, to my sweetheart.
I brought a few photographs, but I don’t need to look at them. What I’ll see when I close my eyes at night is you, standing on the doorstep this morning, the frost embroidered on the windowpanes as you shivered against the cold. I told you to go inside, that I would write when I arrived, but you stood there, watching me, and you were so beautiful in the sunlight you took my breath away. I wanted to tell you how much I love you, but I couldn’t say a thing. I suspect you might have guessed that’s what I wanted to say, or something like it. We’ve always known, haven’t we.
Anyway, I’ve said it now. I love you more than words, Lily Nicholls. You, Georgie, and Arthur, have made me the happiest man alive. Hopefully this bloody war will be over soon and we can get back to normal. In the meantime, try not to miss me too much (impossible, I know!).
Forever and always,
Peter XX
PS Suppose I should add – in case this does become my last letter – that I want you to live life to the full. Fall in love again, go dancing, do all the things you’ve ever wanted to. And get another dog.
‘I have to pop out for a bit,’ she says as she folds the letter, returns everything to the biscuit tin, pushes the drawer shut and grabs her coat and hat. ‘Mrs Hopkins will look in, and Elsie is across the road if you need anything until Mrs Fortune gets back. Wash your faces after breakfast. I won’t be long.’
Ada, Mrs H, and Elsie have become invaluable in helping with the children when Lily has to work or run an errand. It is one of the few positive things about the war. Neighbours look out for each other, everyone always willing to help. Elm Street is a tight-knit community, and the few precious children there belong to everyone else, as much as to their parents.
It is the reassurance that Georgie and Arthur will be well looked after that eventually leads Lily to answer a question that has nagged at her for months. Who was the Mr Wimborne she’d met on the bus, and why was he interested in her ability to do crossword puzzles?
She takes the bus to Marble Arch and walks to Baker Street, then on until she reaches number 64. She’s never forgotten the address. Six plus four is ten, and ten is her lucky number.
She lifts the knocker, raps twice, and waits. She doesn’t, for one moment, doubt herself or wonder if she’s doing the right thing. She already knows that this is where she was meant to come.
