MIRACLE ON KAIMOTU ISLAND/ALWAYS THE HERO

by Marion Lennox

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he gasped. ‘No, don’t tell Ginny I said that. I’m not sorry, it’s just this damned piano is heavy.’

  Ben headed for the radio. ‘Where the hell are you guys?’

  ‘The church has come down,’ Don barked at him. ‘We have three old ladies trapped in the rubble. They were trying to rescue the altar cloths, for heaven’s sake, in a building categorised as unsafe. It’s okay, we’ll get ’em out, but what’s worse, the land behind has slipped and our vehicles are trapped. No, it wasn’t another tremor, it was just damage we couldn’t see—the rise behind the church must have been waiting to fall since the quake. We’re organising vehicles on the other side but I reckon it’ll be another half-hour before we get up to you.’

  ‘I don’t think he can last half an hour,’ Ginny whispered. They’d gone back behind Ben’s Jeep to radio where Henry couldn’t hear. ‘Ben, there’s a sliver—a small cavity round the back. If you hold Button I could...’

  He’d already seen the cavity she was talking about. It was a tiny hump in the caved-in iron. He’d shone his torch in and seen nothing but rubble, but at that point they were only maybe ten feet from where Henry was lying. If they could reach Henry... Even an arm or a leg might be enough to inject painkillers. As well as that, if someone could just be here with him it could make all the difference.

  An elderly nurse, an old-school martinet, had instilled Just being there into Ben in his first year as an intern.

  ‘Don’t be scared of getting personal, Doctor. All these new-fangled drugs and treatments, they don’t matter half as much as human contact, and don’t you forget it.’

  He hadn’t. He wasn’t forgetting it now.

  They’d been talking to Henry—of course they had. Ginny had persuaded Button to sing her favourite song, ‘Happy Birthday to Button’, to Henry, and he knew it helped, but touch...

  The way Henry sounded...

  ‘You can’t,’ he said harshly to Ginny. ‘I’ll go.’

  She drew back, appalled. ‘No!’

  ‘Hang on. It’s okay if you go in but not me?’

  ‘No,’ she said, more urgently. ‘I’m smaller.’

  ‘And I’m stronger.’

  ‘What if the roof comes down?’

  ‘So what if the roof comes down?’ he said. ‘Ginny, you know as well as I do that if we don’t get drugs on board soon we’ll lose him—we can both hear it. I’m only going under iron. You suggested it. I’m the one to do it.’

  ‘No!’ It was a cry of terror.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Ginny, I’ll concede there’s a risk. I think it’s small but it’s still there. With that in mind, I’m a bachelor with no dependants, and you, my love, like it or not, are a mother with a dependent four-year-old. Your job, I believe, is to keep the home fires burning, take care of the children and prepare slippers and pipe for when your man comes home.’

  ‘Ben!’ Despite the gravity of the situation she choked on laughter.

  ‘That’s right, my love, I’d like a nice Irish stew when I come out, please, with golden syrup dumplings on the side.’ He was shoving gear from his backpack into his pockets as he spoke; syringes and vials, wrapping the vials in dressings to keep them unbroken. Then he gave her a swift, hard kiss, the sort of kiss a man should give his woman as he went off to battle—and he was gone.

  She could help him for the first part. At the edge she helped him clear loose rubble, and then as he worked his way under the iron, he shoved stuff sideways and she reached in and helped him haul it clear.

  There’d been some sort of sideboard at the side of the room. It formed a kind of base so the roofing iron hadn’t been able to reach floor level.

  Once the rubble had been exposed they saw clearly what was happening. The sideboard was too low for Ben to go under it; there was no way they could shift it and neither would they want to—it could bring the whole roof down even further—so Ben had to manoeuvre his way round the sides.

  It was filthy, dangerous, even foolhardy, but Henry had grown silent. Ginny had stopped protesting, but she felt sick.

  She felt worse when Ben managed to get around the massive sideboard, gave a grunt of satisfaction and hauled himself further under and she could no longer see him. There was now nothing else she could do.

  She went back to Button. They started making daisy chains again but Ginny was doing it by feel.

  She was watching the crumpled roof and she was watching the track down the valley.

  Please, let it not collapse.

  Please, let help arrive.

  ‘Talk to me,’ she pleaded, and Ben grunted back.

  ‘It’s pretty hard to talk with a mouth full of grit. Henry, I know now why we haven’t heard from you for a while. You couldn’t, I don’t know, whistle or something, just to let me know where you are?’

  There was a faint attempt at a whistle and Ginny managed a smile and went back to daisy-chain-making as if her life depended on it.

  ‘We need a conversationalist,’ Ben grunted, his voice muffled almost to incomprehension. ‘Go on, Ginny, tell us a story.’

  ‘Story,’ Button said in satisfaction.

  Ginny thought, Story? What sort of story?

  Ben was inching his way through rubble. Henry was lying trapped in pain. Button was looking up at her expectantly.

  She’d been in pressured situations before, but none like this.

  Tell us a story.

  ‘Once upon a time,’ she said, feeling helpless, and Button beamed and bounced on her knee.

  ‘I like stories.’

  ‘You need to stay quiet,’ Ben growled. ‘Shush, Button, we all need to hear.’

  A story.

  Stories don’t have to be made up, though, Ginny thought, floundering for inspiration. Stories could be real.

  ‘Once upon a time there was a little girl called Ginny,’ she said, and Button squeaked in surprise, but then put her hands firmly across her small mouth as she remembered the rules.

  ‘Ginny’s mum and dad brought her to the island but she was very lonely,’ Ginny continued. ‘She didn’t have any friends but she had beautiful clothes.’

  ‘I remember those clothes,’ Ben said, muffled, and there was a thump and grating of metal on metal and Ginny’s heart almost hit her ankles. But her job wasn’t to quiver with fear. She was the storyteller.

  ‘Ginny’s mum and dad were busy,’ she said. ‘They were always busy. So they asked someone else to take care of Ginny. The lady’s name was Ailsa and she had a little boy called Ben. The first time Ben met Ginny he pointed to her pretty white pleated skirt and he snickered.’

  ‘I did not,’ the voice from under the tin said.

  ‘What’s snickered?’ Button asked.

  ‘Laughed. He laughed at my white pleated skirt.’

  ‘That wasn’t nice,’ Button said.

  ‘I didn’t think he was a very nice boy,’ Ginny agreed. ‘But then he offered to take me tadpoling. You’ve seen tadpoles, Button. We caught some last week, remember?’

  ‘Yes,’ Button said, wiggling more firmly onto Ginny’s lap. ‘I like this story.’

  ‘As long as I stay the good guy,’ Ben said. ‘Henry, mate, could you grunt or something? I should be able to see you soon.’

  ‘Grunt,’ Henry managed. ‘Will that do? Keep going, girl.’

  ‘So he took me tadpoling,’ Ginny said. ‘Out the back of town there’s a farmer’s field with a lovely, wide pond. It’s a great place for catching taddies.’

  ‘I know it,’ Henry said, sounding strained to breaking point. ‘You nearly here, lad?’

  ‘Reckon I’m three feet from your feet,’ Ben said, sounding just as strained. ‘Oi, storyteller, get on with it.’

  She couldn’t bear it. If the iron came down...if anything
happened...

  Get on with it.

  ‘So Ben took Ginny to the pond,’ she managed. ‘And he said the best taddies were on the far side. Now, the farmer had left an old bath lying near the pond. I don’t know why, but Ben said it was a good old bath and he used it as a boat. The only problem was there was a hole where the plug should be.’

  ‘Didn’t you have a plug?’ Ginny asked, and astonishingly Ginny heard Ben chuckle.

  ‘Shush, Button,’ he said, mock-sternly. ‘This is a very good fairy-tale and I like the ending.’

  ‘Shush yourself,’ Ginny said tartly, and it was almost as if he was standing beside her, grinning. Her Ben...

  ‘There was clay by the pond,’ she made herself continue. ‘So Ben showed Ginny how to make a ball of clay mixed with grass, and shove it into the hole in the bath. Then Ben climbed into the bath and used a pole and pushed himself all the way across the pond and back. He’d obviously done it lots of times because he was very fast.’

  ‘Old trick,’ Henry muttered. ‘I did that when I was a lad. Got into all sorts of trouble. Hey...’

  ‘Yeah, that’s me touching your arm,’ Ben said. ‘Can you see the flashlight?’

  ‘Can I...? Answer to me prayers,’ Henry said, his voice breaking. ‘Lad...’

  ‘Hold still. I can reach enough of your arm to give you a shot of something to take the edge off the pain.’

  ‘I’m scared of needles,’ Henry retorted, and the old Henry was back. Human contact...the best medicine in the world. Ben was in there with him, and Ginny heard the easing of the old man’s terror.

  ‘Be a man and put up with it,’ Ben retorted. ‘Quick, Ginny, get to the exciting part.’

  ‘So then Ben brought the bathtub back to Ginny’s side of the pond,’ Ginny said, and for the life of her she couldn’t keep her voice steady. ‘And Ben made her make her own plug out of clay and grass and fill the hole. And then he pushed her out into the pond and told her how to use the pole to push herself across the pond. The pond wasn’t deep but it was very, very muddy. And Ginny wasn’t good at rowing. So she was slow, and because she was slow the plug in the bath slowly melted.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Button asked, trying hard to keep up.

  ‘It means,’ Ginny said direfully, ‘that Ben had tricked Ginny. The hole in the bath was open again and the water was pouring in and Ginny stood in the bath and yelled to Ben to help her but he stood on the bank and laughed while she sank into the mud. And her lovely white pleated skirt got covered with mud, and her pale pink cardigan was ruined and her nice curly hair got soaking wet and there was even a tadpole in my...in her hair. And then Ben strode into the pond and rescued...’

  ‘Rescued Ginny,’ Button crowed.

  ‘Rescued the tadpole,’ Ben said, and even Henry chuckled.

  There was a long silence. This was surreal, Ginny thought, sitting in the bright sunlight on this gorgeous autumn morning, where everything seemed perfect, where underneath the ruin one man was fighting for his life and another was putting his life on the line to save him.

  ‘And then did she cry?’ Button asked in a small voice, and she had to go back to the story. To how she’d felt as an eight-year-old, standing shoulder deep in mud while this strange boy carefully disengaged a tadpole from her curls. Knowing she’d go home to her parent’s disgust. Knowing she’d been tricked. Knowing she looked appalling.

  ‘No,’ she said softly, and added, because suddenly it seemed important, ‘No, she didn’t cry because he saved the tadpole. Just like he’s saving Henry now.’

  ‘Oi,’ Henry said, and his voice was now sleepy instead of pain-filled. ‘Are you comparing me to a tadpole?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘But you’re being saved by a hero and all the best stories have heroes.’

  ‘And heroines,’ Henry muttered. ‘And then they all live happily ever after. Is that you, girl? You’re ready for your happy-ever-after?’

  ‘We’ll get this roof off you guys first,’ she said. ‘And then we’ll see.’

  ‘That sounds promising,’ Ben said, and there was strain in his voice now. What sort of situation was he in? He sounded as if he, too, was in pain. ‘So, in your story...the heroine falls in love with her hero?’

  ‘Maybe she did,’ she said. ‘Maybe he was the first person she’d met who cared more for tadpoles than for pleated skirts.’

  ‘That,’ said Henry, ‘is just plain weird.’

  ‘Maybe it is,’ Ben said. ‘But it’s important. So the heroine might have fallen in love?’

  ‘The best heroines do,’ she whispered.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘The best heroines do,’ she yelled, and she yelled too loud but it didn’t matter. Her Ben was underneath a ruined house, risking his life, and nothing was more important than that.

  ‘A truck’s coming,’ Button said.

  Ginny swivelled and stared down the valley and a truck was coming—no, two trucks.

  ‘The cavalry’s here,’ she told the guys under the house, as she recognised Don Johnson and his fire crew. ‘Let’s get you guys out and concentrate on fairy-tales later.’

  ‘Let’s not forget to,’ Ben said. ‘I have a feeling the end of this one’s pretty import—’

  And he got no further.

  The aftershock was the biggest yet. It rolled across the island as a great, rolling swell. The iron of the house heaved and shifted.

  Ginny heard Ben yell once, just once, and then she had to grab Button and hold her and crouch down until the land settled.

  Until the world settled in its next new place.

  * * *

  The fire crew had to stop while the world shook but no more cracks appeared in the earth and as soon as things settled Don ordered his crew forward.

  They topped the rise and saw the ruins of Henry’s home. A great sheet of roofing iron was ripped almost all the way along and on top of it a woman was tearing at it with her bare hands.

  Ginny.

  ‘They’re in there,’ she screamed at them as Don and his crew reached her. ‘Henry and Ben. Ben... The iron’s come down. Get it off them. Please, get it off them. I can’t bear it. Oh, Ben... Oh, Ben, my love, no...’

  * * *

  If it hadn’t been for the dust they would have been fine. Or sort of fine. The world gave a giant heave, the mass of iron and debris above them rolled and shook and shuddered, there was momentary pressure on Ben’s chest that took his breath away but then the iron shifted again and the pressure eased—and the heaving stopped.

  He was fine except the torch had rolled somewhere out of reach, beaming a useless stream of light into unreachable darkness. The air was clogged with a dust so thick he couldn’t breathe and Henry was rasping with ever-decreasing strength.

  What was it they said in planes? Fit your own mask first and then help others around you?

  First make a mask.

  He was trying to haul his shirt off but there wasn’t enough room to manoeuvre. He needed to rip the thing and who would have guessed how strong shirts were? Note: remember to buy cheaper ones. He couldn’t get his hands apart wide enough to wrench it.

  He had a sudden flash of memory of Ginny’s shirt ripping...how many hours ago?

  Ginny.

  Above him he could hear her sobbing, ripping away at the tin, her voice filled with terror. He wanted to reassure her, to tell her he’d be fine, but he wasn’t yet. It was so hard to breathe.

  Finally the shirt gave way, and he wrenched again, hauling the arms off so he had two long strips and large panels front and back.

  What followed was more ripping and then wriggling in the darkness, trying to get cloth on his face and the sleeves around to tie his makeshift mask on. But when he did, the relief was almost instant. The appalling, clogging muck was kept out by the bar
rier.

  Now for Henry.

  ‘Ben? Henry?’ Ginny was screaming from above but there was no way he could use precious air to call back. He had to get closer to Henry. He had to.

  He heaved himself forward, risked bringing the entire sheet of rubble down on them, but he had no choice. Before it had simply been enough to reach Henry, to get the drugs to his arm, but now he had to get to his face; he had to fit a mask. The drugs he’d given him would depress his breathing still more.

  He was hauling at the rubble, pushing forward—and miraculously something moved, gave and he could pull himself the last foot forward and feel Henry’s head.

  ‘Mate...Henry?’

  He got no answer—Henry’s entire focus was on his weak, rasping breaths.

  ‘Help me, Henry,’ Ben managed, and swept a handful of dust from the old man’s face and somehow managed to get the back of his shirt across it. He was clearing Henry’s mouth, shifting muck the old man was clearly unable to shift himself. ‘Breathe through the cloth. Breathe...’

  ‘They’re coming, Ben, they’re coming,’ Ginny called from above, and he gave up trying to tie Henry’s mask in place. It was too hard. He didn’t have enough breath left himself. He simply lay full length in the filth and held Henry’s makeshift mask in position and willed Henry to keep on living.

  Ginny’d tell them where he was. Ginny’d bring in the troops.

  Ginny...

  The thought of her up there in the sunlight was his one true thing. He thought of her again as she’d been at eight years old, standing in tadpole territory, and he thought how he’d decided he had been stupid asking her to marry him when he’d been seventeen.

  He should have asked when he was eight.

  ‘Just keep breathing, mate,’ he told Henry. ‘Just keep on breathing, one breath after another. Over and over. Breathe, breathe, breathe, because Ginny’s up there waiting for us, and I, for one, have unfinished business with the lady. I suspect she loves us both and, dammit, I suspect if we die she’ll blame herself. She’s dumb like that, but there it is. For Ginny’s sake, we keep on breathing.’