by Maggie Ford
He didn’t know how they got him into the skiff, when the Millicent’s crew pulled him up into the shrimper in the manner of bringing in a catch: as the vessel leaned into the sea to slacken the line, they were grasping the rope to wrap it around a baling pin, pulling on the backward lean, again and again, then as Danny’s body came within grabbing distance dragging it over the side until it lay in the scuppers like some dead cod.
Chapter Thirty-One
Seawater was being urgently pumped out of his body, and it hadn’t taken long to regain consciousness.
Danny came to, face down on a moving deck, water spilling from his mouth with every downward pressure on his back from the man kneeling above him. A wrinkled, weather-beaten face came down level with his and he found himself gazing at a pair of anxious, faded blue eyes.
‘He’s awake,’ a voice buzzed in his waterlogged ears. ‘Y’can stop now. Don’t seem t’be any more in them there lungs. Reckon he’s all right.’
‘Let’s sit ‘im up!’
Danny felt himself turned over and carefully brought to a sitting position. Beneath him the boat was heaving forward gently. Shivering with shock and cold, his soaked clothing icy on his flesh, he stared witlessly around him, vaguely recognised Pete, and …
A blanket draped unceremoniously around his shoulders shut out the faces for a second, then, with a mug of hot tea thrust into his shaking hands to add to the warming process, he gathered his wits enough to recognise the owner of the weather-beaten face as Dick Bryant, and behind him, his son George. He recalled the voice beside him in the water, recalled seeing the figure dive down again and again to secure the rope beneath his armpits and pull the heavy oil-skin coat off him as he spluttered and took half the estuary into his lungs; this was the owner of the voice who had shouted: ‘get a line to ’im!’
George now studied him closely. ‘You feel all right?’ Danny nodded, a vague animosity rising inside him. ‘We thought you was a goner for a minute.’
‘Was it him that got me out?’ he asked, still finding a need for confirmation from this ring of faces, the crew of the Millicent, he assumed.
George Bryant was silent, but all eyes had turned to him. ‘It was ’im as jumped in,’ said Dick Bryant, his voice trembling with pride. ‘And ’im a poor swimmer. Thought we’d niver get you out, what with them boots and that bloody oil-skin weighin’ you down. My George had to risk his life getting you out on ’em and a line around you, an’ you danglin’ on it like a dead thing when we hoisted you up. We thought you was dead. It was ’im what saved you.’
‘Thanks,’ Danny said inadequately, self-consciously.
‘We thought him was goin’t’go too, tide making in so quick like, an’ him takin’ in water and choking. His wife could a’ bin made a widow, easily. And her pregnant too.’
Danny looked directly at George, hardly his enemy any more. How could he be, a man who’d leapt into icy water to rescue him?
‘Pam and you – another little ’un?’ was all he could say.
‘Seems so,’ George muttered.
His father had come forward, bent to look at the rescued man, his expression strained, his lips pale behind the bristly grey moustache. ‘You feel all right now, son?’
Danny nodded, finished his mug of tea and handed it to someone. With help he got shakily to his feet. His uncle who seemed in better shape than himself, was already up on his feet, a blanket around his shoulders as he sipped at the scalding hot liquid handed to him.
Danny’s knees, weak beneath him, threatened to let him down and he locked them so as not to fall back onto the deck and look a fool before these two. Beneath his feet, the jerk and roll of the boat making her way slowly through the fog, her thin tinny foghorn sounding at intervals, didn’t help.
‘We’ll have you ashore as soon as we can,’ George said, noticing the way the other shook and trembled, his face ashen, his lips white as chalk.
Hesitantly, he reached out and pulled the blanket closer around Danny’s shoulders. Then the hand, still extended, moved towards Danny in an unmistakable gesture.
‘For Pam’s sake,’ he said simply.
For a moment Danny regarded the outstretched hand, then knowing exactly what he meant, slowly took it.
George’s father, looking on, appeared speechless, but as far as Danny was concerned, the old feud that had gone on for so long would not carry on into any other generation. What George’s mother would make of it he had no idea but he was sure Mum would understand, and Connie and Josie and Annie. There was still Dad, but it didn’t matter. Dad was in the minority in this, and it was right that his hatred should be his alone with no one but him feeding on it.
His legs becoming even weaker, Danny let them unlock, let men carry him into the wheelhouse to take off his soaked clothing and ply him with another mug of steaming tea on which to warm his still chilled hands.
Two days to go to Christmas. While everyone was making a fuss of Danny, Annie felt nothing but that low throb of loneliness this particular festive season could inflict upon some …
Josie’s excitement at having her Arthur here on Boxing Day, his pay enabling him to come by train instead of braving the weather on his bike, jarred in Annie’s head.
There was Connie all aglow and flashing her ring about. Her new fiancé, Ian Lindsay, would be managing a few hours with them on that same day, Boxing Day, allowing him a little respite from his round of church services.
There was Pam carrying her second child, glowing with pride and happiness, her position in this household restored, she and her husband due to pop in after Christmas Day and hopeful that her father would accept her husband, if only grudgingly.
Mum, caught up in final preparations for Christmas, her puddings and her cake sitting waiting to be eaten, the turkey to be bought at the last minute in the market at half price; she was too busy to take note of her daughter’s unhappiness.
And Dad, almost himself again, upright, everyone remembering again how large a man he was as he paraded his new-found mobility around on his two crutches, swinging his paralysed legs forward on them with an aggressive defiance; he too had not stopped to see how unhappy she was.
Only she had nothing to celebrate. Couldn’t they see it?
‘Annie, love, stop staring at the fire. Kettle’s boiling. Fill the teapot.’
‘Yes, Mum.’
‘See what I’ve got for Arthur?’ Josie was saying. ‘It’s a tie. Pity I can’t give it to him until Boxing Day. But it’s still his Christmas present. What do you think of it?’
‘Nice, Josie.’
‘Is that all? Nice? I paid a good bit for that.’
‘It is nice. He’ll love it.’
‘When Ian and I are married next year,’ Connie said, ‘I expect I’ll be spending all my time in church coming up to Christmas. And any other time come to that. Lots to do as a vicar’s wife, seeing to this, seeing to that, organising things, meeting people.’ Connie spoke with such joy it wrung Annie’s heart.
Only Danny seemed quiet, but there was little he could say. And he still hadn’t quite recovered from his ordeal. He had a nasty cold which was affecting him, but Mum’s hot drinks and endless Beecham’s powders would keep it from turning any nastier. There was no cough, so pneumonia had no say in it. And Danny was strong and basically healthy. Allowed to do little, he sat by the fire most of the time, a perfect place for watching her.
And Holly when she was here, which seemed to be most of the time with school Christmas holidays, was quiet too around her; when she spoke to her it was in low tones as though she saw it as wrong to enthuse noisily while Annie suffered. That Holly knew she suffered was a comfort of sorts to Annie and she silently thanked her, aware that Holly even seemed by some sixth sense to know she thanked her though nothing was said.
Dad was having a little sleep, Danny was resting up in his room, Holly was helping Annie make coloured paper chains to hang up around the small tree Uncle Reg had brought in for them. Danny had not been well
enough to go out and get one. Reg and his brother and their families would be here on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, as would Mum’s side. It was Mum’s turn to have them, having missed last year out altogether for many reasons.
‘How you’re going to get them all in this house I can’t imagine,’ Holly remarked as she and Annie worked. ‘If it gets too noisy, maybe you and I can go for a quiet little walk – if the weather lets us.’
She glanced through the window where outside the warm air had departed, the wind veering right round to the southeast bearing raw cold and a threat of snow on it. ‘That’s if you want. Though I expect you’d like to be on your own.’
‘No, honestly,’ Annie said, not looking up from her task. ‘I’d like to have you with me.’
Of all people she wanted Holly with her. Perhaps to Holly she could explain more the cause of her marriage breaking up. No one had really listened. Mum had cuddled her, told her to try and put it behind her, but she had bitten her lip and moved away or changed the subject when Annie had tried to explain how lonely it had been with Alex too preoccupied to see how his absences had affected her. The mere mention of her giving her body to another man brought a sick look to Mum’s face. Dad, of course, was out of the question. The others had too many of their own worries or pleasures for her to even begin imparting confidential secrets to ease her heart.
Holly would listen, she knew that instinctively, but would confession really ease her conscience? Nothing would ever do that, but she was paying the price.
‘If only I could see Alex again, speak to him, tell him why it all happened.’ She said this to herself a dozen times a day and often aloud, to the exasperation of everyone around her. But Holly was different, patient.
‘Would he listen?’
‘I don’t suppose so.’ They had their heads lowered, both apparently absorbed in what they were doing.
‘He wouldn’t listen before,’ Annie went on. ‘He just behaved hurt and bewildered and then said it would be better if I went home. He might as well have said he didn’t love me any more. If he’d loved me, he would have forgiven me. I’m sure he would.’
‘Forgiving can be the hardest thing in the world to do, even though you still love that person you can’t forgive. You can’t turn love off that easily. I’m sure he still loves you.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Annie sniffed back the ready tears, seeing the futility of hoping her marriage would ever mend. One day the postman would bring a long heavy envelope with a solicitor’s seal on it and she’d know without having to open it what would lie inside, the commencement to the end of her marriage, paid for by Alex’s wealthy family, only too glad to get rid of her.
Annie bent her head even lower, hoping the tears stinging her eyes wouldn’t fall on to the strip of yellow paper she was looping around a blue one.
At a knock on the door, Mum ceased painting milk on to the pastry tops of the second batch of mince pies to make them shine before going into the oven – the cooked ones lay on the table, their tops all glistening, the cosy kitchen filled with their warm sweet aroma. Wiping her hands on her apron, she went to answer it.
Probably Mum’s sister, Anne, after whom she herself had been named. The last thing she wanted was to smile at visitors. She heard her mother exclaim, then a voice sounded in the front room, a man’s voice – not Aunt Anne, probably Uncle Bill. Annie didn’t look up as the two came into the kitchen.
‘Annie?’
At her mother’s voice she lifted up her head and an anguished cry burst from her, the cry itself seeming to propel her out of her chair.
‘Alex! Oh! I can’t believe it!’ The next second she was in his arms, not pausing to think whether he wished this or not, was here with good news or bad, all the pent-up guilt stored up inside her pouring out in a gush of words, muffled as she buried her face against his chest, the coat he wore cold and rough against her cheeks. ‘Oh, Alex, please … forgive me! I did such a terrible wicked thing. I’m so sorry. I’ve missed you so much.’
For a moment he held her tightly, then gently eased her from him to gaze into her face. His was solemn, but she read the message in his eyes and immediately threw herself back into his arms which closed, oh so gloriously, around her.
Behind her, her mother signalled to Holly, and easing themselves past the pair without touching them, they went out of the room. On the table the mince pies ready for the oven lay in their tray, the brushed milk slowly seeping into the pastry.
Sitting before the kitchen fire, the rest of the family keeping out of the way in the front room, Alex spoke in low sombre tones of how things had been since her leaving while she wept intermittently, unable to discern from those flat tones whether he still blamed her and merely felt he should forgive her, or whether he saw her as the gullible innocent party in that affair. Not once did he say he still loved her.
In this way he told how the whole club had proclaimed their support, and sorrow for him, telling him they were all on his side; how he’d felt when everyone had spoken her name in defamatory terms; the revulsion he’d had for himself at not being strong enough to defend her, taking it all in silence.
Worse, it appeared that the Burringtons had made up, Mrs Burrington loudly accusing Annie of leading her husband on, saying she’d practically thrown herself at him, a man powerless in the hands of such a scheming brazen hussy whom he had merely been trying to comfort and whose clutches he hadn’t known how to escape, even that she had blackmailed him once she had him in her claws with the threat that she would tell his wife all if he didn’t do all she wished.
‘That was a lie,’ Annie wept. ‘It was all lies. It was him. I thought he was being kind. And I needed someone to be kind to me, to be with me. He made me feel you didn’t care, that you never bothered to come and see me. And I was so lonely up there in Simla and you down in Jalapur. No one else ever seemed to understand. He was the only one who seemed to.’
She came at last to a hiccuping stop, knowing Alex would see no point in her efforts to vindicate herself. Telling him the truth didn’t lessen her part in ruining their marriage. It had happened no matter who was to blame. His forgiving her could never turn back the clock. So why had he come here?
This she asked him, stemming her tears sufficiently to ask.
‘I came,’ he said slowly, ‘to tell you I had to return to England. My father passed away two weeks ago. I wrote and told him our marriage had broken down and he called me home immediately. I was just in time to be there when he died. It was all very sudden.’
Annie listened bleakly. She couldn’t even say she was sorry for his father’s death. She didn’t know him, and she had long blamed him for his attitude towards her and his son. The way Alex spoke, he didn’t seem all that grieved either, merely stating the facts. But it was obvious Alex hadn’t come back to pick up the threads of their marriage. As far as he was concerned she had been unfaithful, had been the one who’d broken up their marriage. He was only exercising good manners in letting her know he was back in the country. No doubt also he’d inherited from his father. What better reason to come back to England?
Embittered, she became aware he was still talking. ‘The funeral was last week, but I would have had to come home, even if my father hadn’t asked for me. I couldn’t stand it out there after you left. I’d wander around the house. It seemed so empty, seemed so deserted. I couldn’t put my mind to my work. I felt completely … I felt lost.’
He turned to her. ‘Annie, please forgive me for the way I treated you. I never thought. I know how discontented you were out there, but I was so wrapped up trying to prove to my parents I could make our marriage work. I wanted to prove to them it didn’t matter if we were from opposite ends of what they like to call the social scale. But instead all I did was to wreck what we had. Annie, I want to start again. Come back to me?’
He had been speaking so fast she was left hardly able to fit together what he was really saying. It was only as she looked up and saw the beseeching glow in his
eyes that she realised he had been asking that their marriage be rescued, and from somewhere deep inside her a voice cried: ‘Oh, Alex, yes.’
Seconds later he was kissing her, his breath harsh on her cheek. And, oh, the joy that consumed Annie as she kissed him in return. All the obvious problems of their future together seemed of no importance: the turbulence that being the wife of a wealthy businessman would inflict on her; the social life she would be expected to lead; the people she would be asked to meet and mingle with, she with no grounding for it. That wasn’t entirely true – she’d had good grounding in India. The second time around she would know the pitfalls, and in England perhaps be able to meet them on her own terms. It would be difficult even here, she knew, as she kissed Alex, but she would surmount it, the foolish mistake she had made in India forgiven as she in turn silently forgave him for having been partly the cause.
The lingering aroma of Christmas cooking still filled the house this Boxing Day. The turkey now was a carcass from which people picked little bits as they went by it, the debris of yesterday’s celebration still lay uncleared, everyone sat about, full to the gills from eating too much, stupefied from too little sleep, having played cards into the night and dozed where they could.
Daniel Bowmaker looked around at his family as he leaned heavily on his crutches in the doorway, his paralysed legs supported by the hefty iron callipers. Boxing Day as it used to be. Everyone was here. His brothers and their families, Peggy’s people, Connie and her new fiancé, Josie and hers, Pam …
Daniel looked at Pam and his heart swelled with affection despite all that had happened. As for her husband – George was responsible for Danny’s being here today with nothing worse than a stinking cold where he could have been a drowned man – he supposed be could put up with George if he put his mind to it. But the boy’s father he would never forgive, though for Pam’s sake he would never refer to it again in her hearing. So the burning of his boat had been an accident. But Dick Bryant, low coward that he was, intending merely to cause a bit of vandalism to get his own back, had still burned down his entire livelihood.