The crewman was now in the water with the lifeboat as near as it could get. Gabby realized she was praying. ‘Please God … please God … please God …’
Now, on the wind she could just hear the faint shouts of men over the storm, and that meant they were all being blown onshore towards the rocks.
Villagers’ cars were beginning to fill the car park as well as the people hurrying to the cove on foot. A shout went up, ‘I think he’s got a line. Thank God.’
But the helicopter could not lift the two men out of the water. Gabby could see the winch man peering down from the bottom of the helicopter. A man beside her said, ‘They can’t lift the weight of the fisherman in full wet-weather gear and the crewman … Or the fisherman’s caught in some tackle.’
All at once the yellow figure was pulled free and was being drawn upwards out of the water. He hung suspended, swinging perilously in the wind, then slowly he was reeled upwards to waiting arms leaning down to gather him in to safety.
‘The crewman’s still in the water. God help him …’
People had brought binoculars but Gabby could see nothing now except the lifeboat frantically turning so the towering waves did not catch her broadside on.
‘He’s going to be blown ashore onto the rocks unless they get him …’
Gabby saw the tiny figure rise up on the crest of a wave like a rag doll. An echo of fear rippled through the watchers, like a lament. Gabby’s teeth chattered and she was shaking from head to foot.
They saw a line thrown from the lifeboat before a vast wave crashed over it, hiding them all, and rushed like an express train towards the rocks in the small cove where they stood. The small crowd, including Gabby, turned and ran for safety, before it crashed over the rocks and sprayed up in a volcanic explosion over the car park and the nearest cars.
Oh my God, Gabby thought. The airman would be on the rocks. It was then they heard the whirring blades of more helicopters. Elan was suddenly beside her.
‘I recognized your anorak. Culdrose must have been scrambled.’
They clutched each other, peering out at the empty sea, but there was the lifeboat still riding safe in a trough and the man with binoculars called, ‘They’ve shot another line out … He’s got it … There are two men in the water … One of the lifeboat men has jumped in … They are pulling them both in …’
Two helicopters still hovered overhead. After that last huge wave the sea seemed momentarily calmer and then the cry went up … ‘They’ve got them … They’ve got them! They’re safe!’
‘Thank God. Thank God,’ Elan said. ‘You look dreadful, Gabby. Come on, off to my place; brandy, that’s what we need. You’re shaking like a leaf, darling, I’ll drive your car.’
‘You walked in this?’ Gabby asked through chattering teeth. They got quickly into the car with the sulking dog.
‘I saw the fishing boat send up a flare from the cottage and I rang the coastguard. They had already had various radio messages that a fishing boat seemed in trouble. It seems a young lad got pulled overboard and was caught in the nets and they couldn’t pull him back on board. That first helicopter happened to be exercising in the area. Just as well.’
Elan drove up the hill to his gate and parked. They climbed over the stile with a more cheerful dog and ran with her into the warm cottage, slamming the door against the weather. Elan threw more logs onto his fire and then cried, ‘Brandy! I hope all those rescuers are having stiff ones. I’m wondering, Gabby, if that fisherman could have survived in the water so long. I do hope so.’
At that moment Patrick called from upstairs, ‘What happened? Is everyone safe?’
Elan called, ‘Yes, all safely out of the water …’
He turned quickly to Gabby and mouthed, ‘Patrick home. Very ill, don’t look shocked.’
Startled, Gabby turned as Patrick began slowly to descend the stairs. He smiled down at Gabby.
‘Hello small one.’
‘Hello tall one.’
Gabby went to hug him. ‘Oh what a wonderful Christmas present, to have you back,’ she said, terrified of holding him too tight for there was so little of him left.
‘So good to be back, my sweet.’
He sat abruptly at the kitchen table, small beads of sweat collecting on his upper lip. Elan was fussing, finding clean glasses.
Gabby said, ‘Excuse me a minute, I must go to the loo.’
She leapt upstairs to the bathroom and sat on the upturned loo taking deep shaky breaths. Patrick was dying. He was even the colour of death. And yet … yet there was something peaceful, even radiant about him. Elan, too. The sadness was missing. As if they had both reached a point of acceptance or understanding; two of them in the place they wanted to be, together.
What a strange unnerving day this was turning out to be. She looked out of the bathroom window at the trees bent to snapping point and the sea beyond full of angry white waves; at the rain, continuous now, lashing the panes. Yet, she could see blue sky in the distance, the storm was blowing itself out.
I wonder what you are doing at this moment. I miss you. How I miss you. I want to tell you about this. Want to hear your voice … need you.
She splashed cold water onto her face and went back downstairs, calling as she entered the kitchen, ‘Hey, you guys, I am now a drinker!’
Elan’s eyebrows lifted. ‘Since when?’
‘Since London.’ She sat at the table.
‘Who has corrupted you, small person?’ Patrick asked, laughing. ‘I mean, what are we talking here, alcoholism or two glasses of wine?’
Elan handed her a brandy and Gabby sipped and made a face. The two men grinned at one another.
‘Pathetic!’
‘A drinker? Not!’
They ate bread and cheese and then went and sat by the fire and Elan put on his old Noel Coward records. He and Patrick sang along, imitating Coward beautifully and camply, making Gabby giggle. She drew her feet up into one of their old squishy chairs and fell asleep.
When she woke, Patrick lay fast asleep opposite her on the sofa. The cottage was silent, the wind had dropped and it was dark outside. Elan sat by the window, painting, with Shadow at his feet. Firelight played over the walls. Gabby did not want to wake up or to move away from that room. She felt secure and held. There was peace here and faith and a strange happiness.
Both the men in the room had reached a place of safety. A steady calm that would last through the painful moments to come. It would live on in the house when one or both were gone, as things profound and worthwhile always did, giving inanimate things an aura of good, soaking the walls of the house with the past.
She felt ashamed of her outburst of the morning. Self-pity was shameful. She had stood and watched a helicopter and lifeboat crew risk their lives in terrible seas to save an unknown fisherman. She had sat by firelight listening to two people revisit their youth, gently singing, one to the other, ironic little Noel Coward lyrics, their eyes meeting in a form of joy. One was dying. The other was going to be left alone. Yet, look at what they had in the firelight together as the wind beat outside against the granite walls of a small cottage perched on the coast. Look what they had decided to make of tragedy.
What had Mark said? Never ask for too much. Don’t lose the moment in wishing for more.
Her mobile bleeped suddenly in her pocket and she took it out and quickly pressed the button so she did not wake Patrick. A text message.
GABRIELLA. GABRIELLA. GABRIELLA. I CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT YOU.
Gabby closed her eyes, trembled, felt inexpressible joy. Then a sharp sudden fear of the destruction to come. What of the life she had here? The life now in this room with people who love her, with people she has spent more than half her lifetime with.
She sat up and leant towards the fire to text Mark back. I LUV YOU LUV YOU AND IT HURTS. She pressed send.
Elan, cold, stretched and came back to the fire. Patrick woke up slowly, came from a long way away.
‘Hello, dear peopl
e, I have had such a lovely dream.’
‘Tell us.’
‘I was a small ship, a sloop perhaps, with huge squarerigged white sails. I flew like a bird over aquamarine seas as still and clear as glass. I could see all the fish and coral and bright seaweed below me, a whole glittering world. Dolphins leapt at each side of me like a guard of honour. There was nothing in sight, just me with my sails unfurled, flying on and on … I felt this overwhelming and encompassing happiness …’
His voice wobbled. ‘I did not want the dream to end; I did not want to wake up.’
He closed his eyes again, lay very still.
Elan mouthed ‘Morphine’ to Gabby.
She got up. ‘I’ll make you both tea, then I must go,’ she whispered.
‘I rang Nell, just so she knew where you were, darling.’
‘Thank you, Elan.’ Elan looked up. Gabby was not talking about a telephone call.
‘For what?’ he asked gently.
Gabby hesitated, then smiled. ‘For being you. For always being you.’
She went to put the kettle on.
At her car, Elan, taking his torch back, said, ‘Drive carefully. Love to Nell and Charlie.’ He met her eyes. ‘Be careful, very careful, with your life, beloved Gabby.’
Driving off into the dark with the road strewn with branches and the eerie stillness after the wind, Gabby thought how long it felt since that morning, as if I have covered a great distance. In the face of tragedy your perception suddenly changed, you swung round and viewed things from a different angle and in that one small movement everything shifted slightly, changed its place and importance; became small and simple and clear.
There was this new, frightening clarity. A place suddenly reached. I love this man and my life feels hopeless without him. Life mattered. Life was tenuous and frightening and lonely and could be snatched away any second of any day.
In the dark the car felt like some small capsule skimming through space. There were no other cars on this branchstrewn road. She was glad of Shadow’s doggy presence in the back for everything seemed oddly unfamiliar.
She turned down the lane and negotiated the ruts and puddles. Gabriella, Gabriella, Gabriella. I cannot live without you.
Wasn’t that what the morning with the washing had been about? Not, I can’t do the washing any more. Simply, I cannot live without you. I do not want to do this any more.
Gabby got out of the car and let Shadow out. She stood for a moment in the dark. The kitchen lights were on but no one seemed to be in and Nell’s cottage was in darkness. It was only then Gabby remembered with a start: she should be at the shoot supper with Charlie and Nell.
She looked at her watch, fed Shadow, had a quick bath, changed and headed out again. Her face in the mirror looked just the same.
This Christmas she must do all she had ever done. Behave and be as she always was. She could do it, for she had had the first glimpse of a future she might have.
Chapter 42
Nell, Charlie, Gabby and Josh cooked and transported Christmas lunch over to Elan’s cottage. They carried the kitchen table into the sitting room and Patrick, whose bed was now downstairs, lay by the fire, pale but peaceful. He had a morphine drip he could administer himself at the press of a finger. The nurse had gone to her sister’s for two days.
Josh and Elan had decorated the cottage with candles and holly and single glass baubles which reflected the light. All looked beautiful. All was well. Patrick felt surrounded by love.
Josh surprised Gabby with his mature and gentle support of Elan. He made lists of things Elan and Patrick might need. He shopped and went to the pharmacy because Elan was afraid of leaving the house, petrified that Patrick might die without him. But Patrick was determined he would have this last Christmas on earth.
After the meal, Elan played his out-of-tune piano and Charlie and Josh sang rousing sentimental Cornish hymns and even more rousing local songs and carols, while Patrick smiled and slept his drugged sleep, his fingers moving jerkily over the covers.
In the late afternoon Charlie left to do the milking, awkward, sad, but glad to be away. Nell and Gabby cleared up and packed the things away while Elan and Josh watched The Great Escape for the umpteenth time on television, sitting one each side of Patrick.
When Nell and Gabby were ready to go, Josh refused to leave Elan. He wanted to stay and help him with Patrick. It was the only time Elan was near to tears. Patrick woke as they left, stared at them.
‘Goodbye, darlings – thank you – so lovely – the day – so happy.’ And slept again.
In the early hours of Boxing Day, Elan rang for Father O’Callaghan, who battled out in the dark to administer the last rites to Patrick. At two-thirty he died, slipped away, Josh told Gabby later, holding their hands.
Josh felt devastated; for Patrick’s shortened life, for his dying, ravaged, at fifty. For Elan who would be alone again. Patrick had brought Josh into the world and he had watched Patrick leave it.
Elan was dignified and busy, calm and tearless, but a shroud of loss clung to him like an invisible cloak. Patrick’s funeral was without delay, on the thirtieth of December at the tiny Catholic church. Only Patrick’s sister, Nell, Gabby and Josh went on to the crematorium with Elan. It seemed hardly possible that Patrick could be alive for Christmas and was dead and buried before the New Year. Elan left that evening for Gatwick and a flight to India.
‘I have to,’ he said. ‘I can’t be here for New Year.’
No one felt like celebrating and Gabby thought Josh should get away too. He was restless and sad.
‘Is it too late for you to spend New Year with Marika?’ she asked, knowing he would not be up to seeing his usual noisy crowd of friends. ‘I think it might do you good. You’ve been marvellous, Josh. I’ve felt so proud of you.’
Josh smiled. ‘Will Charlie mind if I take off before New Year? Will Nell?’
‘You know they won’t. Charlie might go for a pint at the pub. Nell and I will stay here. I just think it will be so flat for you. It is a New Year, Josh, and I think you should celebrate it. Enough of sadness.’
‘I’ve had plenty of invitations in the village, but what I would really like to do is spend it with Marika.’
‘Go and ring her then.’
Within an hour Josh was packed and beside his car.
‘Drive carefully, please. There will be idiots on the roads,’ Nell begged.
‘Will you be home again before you go back to work?’ Charlie asked.
‘I’m not sure, Charlie. I’ll ring.’
Josh hugged Gabby. ‘Love you lots,’ Gabby said.
‘You too, Mum. I’ll ring to say I got there …’ He grinned. ‘Thanks.’
‘What for?’
‘For not minding me leaving early, not spending any of New Year with you.’
‘If anyone understands how you’re feeling I would have thought Marika would?’
‘Oh, yes, Marika will.’
The three of them watched Josh’s car bumping along the lane and out of sight.
‘Not a jolly Christmas for him, was it? Poor Josh,’ Charlie said.
‘That’s life, Charlie,’ Nell said. ‘Josh is grown up now and boy didn’t he prove he was this Christmas. I might even revise some of my prejudices about the services!’
Gabby smiled, pulled on a coat and whistled for Shadow.
‘I’m just going for a walk,’ she said, feeling for her mobile in her pocket. She negotiated the wet, loose stones on the cliff path carefully, and she thought about Patrick and the moving little funeral and Elan winging his way alone to India.
Beyond the cove, on the stretch of beach this side of the headland, there was a single line of banked clouds and in front of them three huge, coloured kites danced against a violet winter sky. Gabby watched them for a long time. It had been a strange, sudden end of a life; end of a year. So much had happened. All their familiar routines had altered, had subtly changed course, like breaking a spell of continuity.
A time in her life was ending. Christmases for the child that was Josh had gone. At the thought of a future Christmas with just Nell and Charlie, Gabby felt a terrible monotonous heaviness. I’ve moved on. I can’t go back now. Then she thought, Maybe we all have.
One of the kites billowed out, then down and into the sea. Gabby’s mobile rang as she had been sure it would. Her heart soared. She felt as light as those kites silhouetted against a vivid blue sky.
Chapter 43
‘I could look for a job near you,’ Marika said, ‘but I’ve heard you blue-beret boys live in a little bubble and talk aeroplanes to the point of catatonic boredom, and the trouble is you don’t know where you are going to be posted, do you?’
Josh turned and wound a piece of her hair round his finger. They were in bed in a luxurious flat in Kensington belonging to a friend of Marika’s. The owners were away, skiing, and Marika was house-sitting.
‘I haven’t got my posting through yet. It might be Germany, but …’ His voice was cagey. ‘I think you must concentrate on getting a job you really want, Marika, otherwise you’re going to be left in a place where you don’t know anyone a long way from home.’
Josh pulled her over on top of him. He was not going to tell her he had applied for the Air Assault Brigade. There had been rumours flying around before Christmas and Josh wanted to get in on any possible action.
‘It is difficult to know where to aim for, Josh. My stepfather too will be posted this year. So both you and my home are constantly moving.’
Josh laughed. ‘Poor little orphan!’
Marika rolled off him. ‘Do not be cruel. I am going to make coffee.’
‘I had other ideas,’ Josh said.
‘I am sure you had, but I do not have sex with men who are about to cast me off as a loyal camp follower!’
Josh sat up. ‘The truth is, I could be posted anywhere and I want to know you’re safe and near your family if I do get posted abroad.’
Marika went and sat on the edge of the bed. ‘Do you know something you’re not telling me, Josh? You seem so sure you are going abroad.’
Another Life Page 27