The Restless Sea, page 44
CHAPTER 30
Olivia
Loch Ewe is growing less busy; convoys now congregate in the Clyde. The naval base remains, but with a skeleton staff, and soon it will be time for Olivia to be transferred back to London. She is relieved that she is forbidden leave over Christmas. She does not know what to do next. Charlie has still not replied to any of her letters, she has left it too long to tell Jack, and she cannot write to either of them that she has lost Betsy. She is spiralling into a web of deceit, and she dare not imagine what will happen when the truth comes out. She fears for Alfie’s safety. She does not believe that Betsy is capable of looking after him alone. She writes to Carl, hoping he will be able to intervene. He writes back telling her not to worry, that he will keep an eye out. But each day she dreads the arrival of the post, in case it contains some new horror.
While her life unravels, the news from the front is at least improving. The Germans are being pushed back; the Allies pressing on them from the west, the Red Army from the east. Parts of France and Lithuania, Greece and Italy are reclaimed. Christmas comes and goes. Winston Churchill recovers from pneumonia more ebullient than ever. The Allies will win the war; it’s just a matter of how long it will take, how many more lives will be lost. It has been a particularly cold and miserable start to the year, the weather reflecting her inner turmoil. The west coast has been battered by heavy snow and storms. Olivia is woken by the sound of hail against the glass panes that are rattling in the windows. She stares out into the darkness, imagining the great loch frothing beneath the wind, listening to the water running off the roof. She knows the ships will be straining at their anchor cables.
In the distance there is a sudden flash of light. Olivia sits up. Gunfire? Lightning? She fumbles to the window, hands outstretched until she feels the wooden frame, the hail hammering and the wind tugging at it. She presses her face to the cold glass. Outside it is pitch black again, but she knows what that light was. Flares. Something is not right.
She lights a candle. Its lonely flame throws enough light across the room to find her clothes. Not uniform in this weather. She pulls on the thickest, warmest clothes she can find: trousers, woollen jumper, thick socks. In the hall, she wriggles her head into her balaclava, pulls on her boots, searches for the torch.
The wind tears the door from her hand and the candle sputters out. She wrestles the door closed behind her and turns into the vicious cold, angling her head slightly to the side so that her temple takes the brunt of it. A wall of sleet streaks through the torch beam. She runs up to the house, sliding and stumbling in ruts on the way. The twisted trees bear down on her, bending and snapping in the wind.
There is a light on at Taigh Mor. Aunt Nancy is up, her dressing gown tied at the waist. There is a man talking urgently into the telephone in the drawing room, and another staring out of the large French window in the direction of the loch.
‘It’s an American liberty ship,’ says her aunt. ‘Hit rocks trying to come into the loch around at Black Bay. The coastguard’s tried to get a line out from the cliffs, but it’s too far offshore. The Wrens are on their way from Aultbea …’
Olivia is out and running down the drive to the road before she can finish the sentence. She is just in time to flag down one of the trucks that is careering towards her, sending showers of icy water up from its wheels. She scrambles into the passenger seat, the Wrens shuffling up to squeeze her in. The truck is buffeted this way and that by the wind as they race towards the track that leads to Cove, the one she has cycled along more times than she can remember. Past Firemore, and on they bump, peering through the windscreen, barely able to see the track, which is now a slippery quagmire of wet snow. The headlamps highlight horizontal rain, the startled faces of ragged sheep and – once – a herd of deer that has come low to shelter from the bitter cold and snow that still lies deep further inland.
As the track disappears, the truck begins to slip and slide on the sticky surface of slush. They are stuck, and Olivia gets out, squinting against the driving sleet. Three of them struggle to the back of the truck, wedging their shoulders against its cold metal, pushing to free it from the peat, avoiding the spinning wheels that splatter muck behind them.
Eventually the Wrens can go no further. They park and scramble out. Beyond the squealing wind they can hear the crash of sea and spray against the cliffs ahead. Behind them are miles of peat bogs. Olivia’s mood is as bleak as the landscape. She is disoriented, surrounded by impermeable darkness in every direction. She cannot work out which way to go, and then suddenly she spots an extraordinary sight: pinpricks of light spread out among the peat hags and the snow, flickering closer and closer like will-o’-the-wisps. Then Mrs Ross materialises, holding a lamp and a flask of steaming tea. She has a pale, thick blanket around her shoulders, which is covered in a layer of snow. She has crossed three miles of peat bogs and frozen ground. And she is by no means the only one: behind her, more lights float towards them – the crofters are coming to help. Ben and Mrs Munro, the grey-haired MacGregors, the Campbells.
Olivia tries to greet them, but the wind catches the breath in her mouth and forces it back. Mrs Ross nods, and together the women head for Black Bay as dawn begins to break. When they reach the high granite rocks above the beach, it is just light enough for Olivia to make out the awful sight of the stricken ship foundering on the reef. For a moment, the women stand there, their clothes sodden with sleet, their hands and hearts numb. Olivia’s own secret beach is only yards around the corner – that place of sanctuary where she used to fish, and where she spent so many happy hours with Jack. Jack. The fear in her heart grows. Any one of the merchantmen out there on that cargo ship could be him. She forces herself to focus, not to let her thoughts run wild.
The waves are too high for the ship to launch its lifeboats, and the men are clinging desperately to her as water surges over them. There is a terrible groan, and the ship cracks in two, and there are men in the water and men scrabbling at the ship and men flung on the rocks and across the bubbling sea, and the Wrens and crofters are immediately scrambling and slipping over the boulders and down to the shingly beach below. The wind rips at Olivia’s balaclava and the rocks tear and scrape at her hands and legs, but she is down, where the waves smash against the earth and toss themselves high into the air, falling back down into a seething foam. Wreckage and bodies lie strewn across the shore. Everything is covered in a black film of oil. The coastguard and his men are already here, deep in the surf, pulling bodies from the water. A British escort tug is trying to get a line out to the wreck, but the sea is too choppy, the wind too strong. They cannot get closer or they too will be dashed on the rocks. The last of the desperate figures cling to the ship; the lucky ones are flung inshore, the unlucky dragged away into the churning depths.
All the time, there is a terrible noise like a giant clanging bell, and Olivia realises it is the hull of the broken ship, clanking against the rocks every time another wave tugs at it. Olivia runs to the closest body. He is naked: the clothes ripped from him by the sea; his limbs smashed and pulped by the rocks. She knows it is crazy, but she cannot stifle the terrible fear that it could be Jack. She touches his cold, pale face, clasps the unresponsive hand. For a moment she is glad he is not Jack, but then she remembers he is someone else’s lover, someone else’s son. He will not wake. She gently lets him go, and stumbles to the next body. Each time she prays, please don’t let it be him, please don’t let it be him.
Across the beach, fires lit by the crofters are leaping to life. In the weak light, she can see that this sailor’s clothes have been shredded and he is covered in black oil so that only the whites of his eyes are showing, but at least he is shivering, which means he’s alive. She sticks her finger into his mouth to clear the waxy ball of oil from his throat. Then she drags him towards one of the fires. There are other survivors gathered around its smoky flames. The crofters are gently cleaning the oil from their mouths and ears and eyes too, wiping it away and offering warming sips of tea from their flasks. They wrap the men in the blankets woven by their ancestors, whispering kind words and stroking brows. Their fires offer warmth, and are also beacons for the men still struggling in the water, unsure which way to swim.
Word has spread across the area, and there are more rescuers on the beach now: the latest Fieldcraft Training Centre boys, as well as more naval ratings from Aultbea. They scramble to help the coastguards, scrabbling across the boulders where a survivor is wedged up high, throwing themselves into the sea to grab hands, limbs, rags. The lighthouse keepers help to carry survivors on their backs across the rocks, giving them sips of whisky on the way.
Olivia wades out into the surf. It is so cold that it burns her legs into numbness. She feels the waves pull and pummel at her, trying to knock her over, trying to take her away. She reaches an already exhausted sailor who is attempting to drag one of his shipmates to safety. Her fingers ache with cold. The debris in the water crashes against her, lacerating her legs. They yank the body to shore together, where Ben Munro is waiting with a stretcher. They lie the sailor on it, and she gropes for the end with her frozen fingers. The sailor moans for his mother, the sobs low beneath the shriek of the wind. The snow settles on him as they grapple their way up the cliff. Olivia slips. The sailor cries out. She scrambles up, and they make it a few more inches before Ben slips too. They carry on until they reach the top, then they have to stumble the two miles to the waiting trucks. By the time they reach the ambulances, it is too late. The doctor pronounces the boy dead.
Olivia rests for a moment, crouched against a small rock, her head in her hands. The stretchers of the dead lie in silent rows next to her. She is glad that no one can see she is crying because her face is wet where the sleet has melted as it tries to penetrate her skin. Ben squeezes her shoulder, and then goes to help Mr MacGregor; the aged crofter is struggling towards them with a survivor on his broad back. The living are placed carefully into the ambulances, which race away back down the track to the hospital at Gairloch.
Olivia heads back to the beach. There are no more men clinging to the wreckage of the broken ship above the black water. Now the rescuers are working desperately to recover any bodies before darkness falls again. They will not leave the dead out here in the lonely night. Above them, the crofters scour the cliffs. They find two more men thrown up by the force of the waves. Their bodies are covered in snow, but they are still alive. A bloody trail leads to another man unconscious in the heather. Since the ambulances have gone, the crofters carry them to the hospital, across the paths that they have trodden for centuries. They do not rest until they reach Gairloch.
Olivia feels an arm around her shoulders and the comforting weight of a soft blanket. ‘Come on, lassie,’ says Mrs Ross, and together they stumble and trip back across the peat hags to her croft. Inside, Olivia sits, stuck in a twilight world somewhere between life and death, while Mrs Ross stokes up the fire and begins to bake bread to take to the hospital.
The next morning, Olivia drives Mrs Ross to Gairloch. There are twelve survivors in the makeshift ward. Sixty-two of their shipmates are dead, some of their bodies lost for ever to the sea. The sailors have nothing: no clothes, no belongings. They are weak and covered in bruises and cuts, but they are alive. They greet the crofters with tears and thanks. They ask Olivia to find paper so they can write and let their mothers and daughters, wives and girlfriends know they have survived, clinging on to life with all the strength they could muster. Olivia thinks of Jack and of Charlie. She scribbles their messages until her fingers are stained with ink and her wrist aches. Mrs Ross delivers her freshly baked bread; others bring eggs and jam, the last of their winter rations – a taste of home for dazed boys so far from theirs.
On the beach, the battered, useless lifeboats lie among the debris thrown up by the storm, and the embers of the crofters’ fires still breathe smoke into the air, but at the hospital there is no sign of yesterday’s storm. The wind is only a soft ripple on the sea, and the birds wheel and call to each other, swinging through the square patches of leaden sky through the windows. It is after lunch, and Olivia is writing her last letter of the day for a survivor called Skip, when Aunt Nancy appears on the ward, bearing a basket of preserves and winter vegetables.
The nurse rushes over and gives a little curtsey. ‘Oh thank you, Lady McPherson.’
‘Nothing like healthy food to nourish the body and the soul,’ says Aunt Nancy. She drifts past the beds, stopping beside each one to say a few words to its occupant; she is proficient at small talk.
Skip narrows his eyes in a conspiratorial way, and whispers at Olivia: ‘A lady, eh? What’s that mean? Royalty?’
‘No,’ Olivia laughs. ‘Not exactly.’
‘What then?’ Skip’s hair is beginning to recede, which makes him look older than he is – Olivia reckons about forty. But he is still an attractive man, and there is mischief in his hazel eyes.
‘It’s hard to explain unless you’re British.’
He nudges her. ‘Look lively,’ he says, as her aunt approaches the bed.
Olivia smiles again. ‘Hello, Aunt Nancy,’ she says, and Skip’s eyes twinkle beneath his raised eyebrows.
‘I hope my niece is behaving herself,’ says her aunt.
‘She sure is,’ says Skip. ‘I can’t believe she’d be anything other than delightful.’
‘She’s had her moments.’ Aunt Nancy does not say it unkindly. ‘Any news of Charlie?’
Olivia shakes her head. ‘Nothing.’
‘And Jack?’
‘He’s fine. Thank you.’
Her aunt moves on, and Skip says, ‘You’re a dark horse. First it turns out you’re a blue blood, and now there’s a Charlie and a Jack? Looks like you got the makings of a heartbreaking tale right there.’
She smiles a tight little smile and glances away. ‘It’s complicated,’ she says.
‘Ain’t it always?’
‘Are you talking from experience?’
‘You write what I tell you, and see what you think.’
Skip dictates a letter to his wife. Olivia does not stop his train of thought. He speaks of how he has gambled away their home, the one they built up from nothing and worked so hard to get just right. How the lovely house with the picket fence and the fancy toys and the car and the fine clothes and the jewellery, paintings and ponies could all be taken at any moment. He wants her to know how sorry he is, and how he will do anything he can to sort it out when he returns.
‘And even worse,’ says Skip as he reaches the end of his story, ‘my kids think I’m some kind of hero because I went off to fight the fascists in Europe. The truth is, I ran away. I couldn’t face telling them their world was about to come crashing down.’
‘And your wife really has no idea?’
He shakes his head. ‘Not unless the debt collectors have already turned up.’
‘You’ve got yourself in quite some pickle,’ she says.
‘And I’ll tell you something,’ he says. ‘Yesterday I almost died. And while I was waiting for the good Lord to carry me away, I realised I didn’t want to take my secret to the grave. I was thinking the opposite. How I wished I’d been honest from the start. How I should’a told Rosie straight out. That woman is brighter and braver than ten of me. I love her more than life itself, and if she can forgive me, then we can face anything.’
‘What if she doesn’t forgive you?’
‘The point is, she deserves to make that decision herself.’
Olivia nods.
‘Now your turn,’ he says. ‘Try it on me first. Then go home and write it down.’
Somehow it is easier to talk to a stranger. Olivia tells him about Jack, and about Charlie and Betsy and Alfie. And how she cannot find the words to tell Jack about Alfie, and that his sister has gone. And he probes her gently for more, and she eventually tells him about the miscarriage.
When she has finished, he says, ‘You know what you need to do now. Be brave. It sounds as if you can be. Jeez, I know you can be – I saw you last night. If he loves you, he’ll understand, and he’ll love you all the more for it.’
‘Thank you,’ she says.
‘Anything to help a pretty lady.’ He doffs a pretend hat at her and settles back against his pillows. ‘Sounds like quite a bloke, this Jack. Ain’t done a Russian run myself, but I know plenty who have. Scares the bejesus out of me. He must be made of strong stuff.’
‘It’s nice to hear you say that. My family don’t approve.’
‘Don’t approve? How?’
‘It’s complicated …’ She smiles.
‘Back to the old lords and ladies thing, is it?’
She nods.
He laughs. ‘Seriously, you should come out to the States. Look me up. We don’t stand for that nonsense there.’
‘You make it sound easy.’
‘It is. You Brits think all the world is here on this tiny island, but it ain’t. And when we’ve kicked this Hitler into touch, you damn well make sure you get out there and find out for yourself.’
Aunt Nancy offers to give her a lift home, but Olivia declines, taking the old path back from Gairloch instead. Before she drops down into Poolewe, she climbs up into the hills behind the bothy, where the snow still lies fresh in the crevices and the temperature drops. She carries on, up beyond the rowan pool, until she is high, where the occasional clump of patchy heather shows through, and great wet rocks lie broken across each other in vast shining slabs. Her hot breath comes out in clouds as it meets the chilly air, but she is warm from the climb. She sits and turns her face up to the dark clouds, feels the cold air cool her hot cheeks as a sprinkling of snowflakes twirls around her. She begins to gather smaller rocks that lie exposed among the ice. She is thinking of their baby, but instead of letting the misery overwhelm her, she relishes the feeling, the imprint of a connection that no one but her will ever feel. She dares to hope that perhaps one day she will experience it again, with another new life. As the sky darkens, she balances the rocks one on top of another until she has built a small cairn. She digs a tiny sprig of dried rosemary out of her pocket. ‘Goodbye, my darling,’ she says as she tucks it beneath the bottom of the pile. She will never forget, but it feels right that there is a place for her child here among the hills. As she turns to make her way back to the bothy, she catches sight of a large stag standing just below her, head held proudly. She counts sixteen points, a monarch, more regal than any human royal. His neck is thick and solid and there is a scar on his dark flank. He stands still as a statue, watching her, the only movement his soft nostrils dilating and constricting. He does not run even as she passes within yards, just watches as she disappears into the snow that is descending on the glen.
