She looked about her for something to support her, a stick of some kind; and a few yards away she saw a large piece of driftwood: that would do very well. But she had to get to it. Hopping was too dangerous; crawling would be easier. And so inch by agonising inch, she crawled towards the piece of wood, every movement of the broken leg agony, the other one cut and scratched by the stones, her hands too.
Dusk was settling now, removing the colour from everything: and it was terribly cold. If they didn’t come and find her, if she had to stay there until the morning, might she die of hypothermia? No, don’t be absurd, Flora. People survive stranded on mountains for nights on end. You’ll just be cold, and serve you right…Ah, now here she was, at the driftwood; if she could just lie on her side, propped on one elbow, and get a good grip on it, use it almost as a lever, she should be able to haul herself up. And yes, she could, she was rising on it, very slowly, little by little, up on the good knee now, she was nearly there, yes, she was upright…and just before the wood slipped again and she went down with a scream of pain, she saw that the water had completely covered the causeway and that Rachel could well have drowned in it, and she was alone as she had never been in her life before, alone and experiencing a fear that was far worse than any pain she had ever known.
Still on the cliff path, and in a scene she knew would be carved into her consciousness forever, Debbie watched Rachel surface for the second time, saw her small arm reach out of the water, her desperate, supplicating pink arm, and thought she really could watch this no longer, it was beyond endurance; and then saw, incredulous, that Richard, up almost to his waist now in water, had managed somehow to grab Rachel’s foot, and then her leg, and draw her towards him, and lift her clear of the water and into his arms, and then turn and take Colin’s outstretched hand, haul himself beside him up onto a rock; and then the pair of them, Richard holding Rachel, made their way slowly and with great difficulty away from the rushing water, and Colin climbed up onto the grass and reached down and took Rachel from Richard and appeared to be setting her down on the ground. And then they all froze into invisibility as dusk settled relentlessly down.
And then Emma said again, as she had said what seemed a lifetime earlier: “Mummy, don’t you think we should get help?”
There was an emergency phone on the cliff top: next to a sign that said DANGER. How could she possibly not have remembered it was there, she thought, running towards it. She should be shot, or forcibly drowned, but somehow it had been wiped out by the drama and the fear; she lifted it, gasped out her message.
They looked down at the lifeless little figure on the ground: only for a moment, but it seemed forever, fearing she was drowned, for she had shipped in a lot of water, or concussed by the nasty gash on her head from the rocks. Then Richard dropped to his knees beside her, turned her on her front, with her head sideways, sobbing like a small child himself, started kneading away at her back, hoping to get her lungs working. And then suddenly there was the wonderfully unpleasant sound of Rachel vomiting up a lot of water, and then she looked up at them and said, “We have to fetch Granny, we think she’s broken her leg,” and then she started to cry and Richard cradled her in his arms, saying, “It’s all right, you’re safe now,” and “No, no,” she sobbed, “it’s Granny’s favourite scarf. I’ve lost it, she’ll be so cross.”
Flora surfaced again to feel her hand being rubbed very gently, and her hair stroked tenderly back from her face; she thought she must be hallucinating, and opened her eyes with an enormous effort—for even that seemed to cause pain in her leg—to see Colin Peterson looking down at her, and to hear him saying in his wonderfully level voice, “You really are an extremely silly woman,” and replying in a whisper, “I know, I know, I’m sorry,” and then remembering and saying, “Rachel,” her heart clutched with fear, and Colin telling her, “She’s fine, she’s cold and wet, but she’s fine. Rachel! Over here—your granny’s over here.”
And by the time the wonderful rescue helicopter had arrived, summoned by Debbie’s call, Rachel at least was cheerful, if cold, sitting by her grandmother and telling her everything was going to be all right, and that she was terribly sorry but she’d lost her rainbow scarf.
“I think I can just about forgive you,” Flora said.
Chapter 59
DECEMBER 1990
Joel, back in London after a rather unsatisfactory Christmas with friends in Kent, had slept badly—and woke to the realisation that today, life properly began. It was 27 December, the day on which Debbie was telling her husband that she was going to leave him: and then she would drive to London to be with him.
He was not expecting her to arrive radiantly happy; she would be desperately upset, remorseful, guilt-ridden, and quite possibly even hostile to him. It was a horrible thing that lay ahead of her. He felt wrenched with sympathy, concern, and even some guilt of his own for her; and he wished suddenly that he could be nearer her when she had done, and that she didn’t have to make the endless drive up to London alone. And then he realised that there was no reason why he should not drive down, maybe to Cardiff, and meet her there. He couldn’t imagine why he hadn’t thought of it before; the only problem was how to let her know.
A phone call was dangerous, even today. Even on her mobile. Anyone might pick it up. But—oh, what the hell. It was worth the risk. And she surely wouldn’t leave it lying around…
He dialled her number: it rang and rang. Come on, Debbie, come on. I want to hear your voice, I want to tell you I’m coming to get you. The phone moved cumbersomely onto the messaging service; Joel decided it was safe. Richard was such a dinosaur, he would hardly know mobile phones existed, so he certainly wouldn’t be familiar with the mechanics of picking up messages.
“It’s me. Good luck today. See you soon, definitely hopefully. Ring me. I’ll come to Cardiff to meet you. Love you.”
Colin was sitting by Flora’s bed in Swansea Hospital the next morning, as she lay still groggy from her ordeal and the general anaesthetic that had been necessary to set and pin her broken leg.
She turned her head towards him. Her voice was unnaturally faint. “Could you ask if I can have a cup of tea? I’ll die of caffeine withdrawal at this rate.”
“I’ll try. What about some more water?”
“I don’t want water, I’m sick of the beastly stuff. I want something warm and comforting. Please, Colin, do ask.”
“Yes, very well. But I don’t think they’ll agree. They didn’t half an hour ago. They kept saying you’d been so sick last night.”
“Yes, well, this is this morning. And I feel fine.”
She felt far from fine, but it was not just the pain from her leg that was troubling her, it was a sense of dreadful shame and remorse. She had been solely responsible for risking the lives of her entire family, had very nearly caused the death by drowning of her youngest granddaughter; she had distressed her daughter-in-law almost beyond endurance; she was a stupid, arrogant woman, and if she never saw any of them again, if they turned against her and never allowed the children into her house, never mind her care, it would be absolutely fair and just and she would have no right to complain or even question it. Why was she like this? What drove her, what convinced her that she was right and everyone else wrong? Why couldn’t she listen properly to people instead of simply hearing what they said and ignoring it? Somehow she must learn, even at this late stage in her life, and somehow she must do penance for this dreadful thing she had done. But how? What was she to do about herself, her overbearing, wilful self? And who would help her to do it?
Colin reappeared, smiling rather nervously. “I’m sorry, Flora. They say in another hour…”
“Another hour? That’s ridiculous.” And then she thought that this at least would be a beginning, an acceptance of a judgement of someone other than herself. “I suppose I’ll have to wait then,” she said, and then found herself weeping.
Colin pulled his chair up to the bed and produced a very large, very clean handkerc
hief with his initial on it, which he passed her.
“It’s the anaesthetic,” he said. “Upsets all your emotions, everyone knows that. There, there, the tea’ll be here soon.”
“No, Colin, that’s not why I’m crying. I’m crying because I’m so ashamed of myself, I feel so wretched about what I did. It was wrong of me, I should have known better, and—”
“No,” he said, taking her hand, “you mustn’t feel like that. You were only trying to give your family a nice day.”
“No, Colin. I could have given them a nice day perfectly well by hiking over the Bryn, or in Oxwich Woods. But I have to—to sort of show off, to be reckless. It’s a terrible way to behave, it’s no wonder Debbie doesn’t like me.”
“Doesn’t she like you?” he asked in genuine surprise.
“No. And it’s entirely my fault. I was never very friendly to her, and I’ve made it worse over the years, being so domineering and bossy, and she’s just grown to hate me. I was the same with William, you know—I always had to know best. He was a very careful, rather fussy person, and I used to be so high-handed with him, ignore his wishes half the time—ride out without my hat, for instance…”
“That doesn’t sound too bad.”
“But it was, because every time I went riding he was in agonies of worry, thinking I’d be thrown. It wouldn’t have hurt me to wear a hat. And I used to tease him about his financial carefulness too; do you know, he had never ever been overdrawn in his entire life, not by so much as a fiver. I was always trying to persuade him to be a bit bolder, take a few risks, buy shares…”
“Going into Lloyd’s was hardly careful,” said Colin mildly.
“Oh, but it was, or so he thought. It was his one bit of speculation and he went into it so carefully, examining all the history, went over and over it with the dreadful Trafford Smythe, making sure there hadn’t been a lot of big claims—and there hadn’t, of course, as you know, except that one in the sixties. Oh no, he can’t be blamed for that. If anyone could, it’s me.”
She was crying harder now; Colin looked rather wildly round for help and saw a nurse bearing down on them with a cup of tea.
“There you are,” she said to Flora, putting it down. “Little sips, mind. Now what are you upsetting yourself for—you’ll send your blood pressure up. Come on, lovely, drink your tea like a good girl, there, that’s right.”
Ten minutes later, Flora lay back obediently, having duly taken the prescribed little sips, and submitting to being called “lovely” and “a good girl” without complaint. It wasn’t easy, but she did it. It was a start, after all, on the making of a new humble, docile Flora. In time it might get easier.
“Why don’t you have a little sleep,” said Colin, picking up on the hospital turn of phrase and she did suddenly feel very tired.
The last thing she thought, as she smiled at him and thanked him for coming in, was that his clothes were particularly dreadful this morning: a light-green polo-neck sweater in the style favoured by Mr. Val Doonican, with contrasting blue stripes, and some ready-creased trousers. The funny thing was though that it actually didn’t seem to matter in the very least.
Richard walked into the kitchen; it was eight o’clock. Debbie was sitting with Rachel on her lap, trying to keep her quiet as the doctor had said she should, and reading aloud from James and the Giant Peach.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Yes, I’m fine.” She looked very white and drawn.
“Good.” He smiled at her. “You were so fantastic last night, Debbie. Thank you for being so…so great. Especially to my mother. I really appreciated it. It can’t have been easy. Not a word of reproach.”
“Well, not a lot of choice really. And she was in a terrible state.” She had been, poor Flora; in fearful pain, until they gave her the morphine injection and even then it had still obviously been agonising. But she had insisted on talking to Debbie as she lay in Casualty, waiting to be seen by the orthopaedic surgeon.
“I know you’ve got enough to worry about with Rachel, but if you could see her, just for a minute, please,” Richard said.
They had rendezvoused at Swansea Hospital; the helicopter that had picked them all up, Richard, Rachel, Colin, and Flora, had radioed the police at Reynoldston, where Debbie was waiting. She would never forget that moment for as long as she lived—being told they were all safe, that Flora had a broken leg but that the others were just wet and cold. The policeman had insisted on driving her over to Swansea, said she wasn’t fit to drive, that she’d had a terrible shock, and indeed, she was shivering violently as she sat in the back, one arm round each child, Alex goggle-eyed at being in a police car, and one moreover that was going extremely fast with its blue light on…Debbie had been touched by that, and said so. “Well,” said the sergeant, twinkling at her in the mirror, “you want to get there as fast as you can, don’t you? Must be terribly worried.”
They’d rushed into Casualty, and Rachel had shot into her arms, kissing her, saying, “Mummy, Mummy, the helicopter was so exciting, it made a huge wind and we looked down and we could see all of Gower.”
She was showing no apparent signs of distress. “That may come later,” the doctor had said in a low voice, after putting a couple of butterfly stitches in the gash on her forehead.
Richard had appeared, kissed Debbie on the cheek, and asked her if she was all right, more tenderly than she could remember for some time.
“Of course I’m all right. What about you, Richard? You’re soaked, and what about your head? That looks nasty.”
“No, it’s fine, couple of stitches’ll fix it, they said.”
“And I should have brought you some dry clothes—how stupid of me.”
“No, no,” he said. “They’re getting me some hospital pyjamas.”
“Pyjamas? You’re not having to stay here, are you?” For some reason, she didn’t want him to; she wanted him home.
“No, of course not. But it’s all they’ve got in the way of dry clothes. That’s what Rachel’s wearing—hospital pj’s, didn’t you notice?”
“No,” she said humbly, wondering what sort of mother she was, not even thinking of bringing warm clothes for her nearly drowned child.
“No, I only noticed that she was alive. Sorry.”
“It’s OK. She is. Very much so.”
“Where’s Colin?”
“Oh, in that cubicle. He got a gash on his arm, they’re just cleaning it up, checking him over. They thought he might show some ill effects, but he seemed fine, said he’d enjoyed it. He was bloody wonderful, Debbie, don’t know what I’d have done without him.”
“I know, I could see. Bless him. So where’s your mum?”
That was when he’d asked her to see Flora.
She’d looked dreadful, white and hollow-eyed with pain, but totally lucid.
“I just had to say something to you, Debbie,” she said, “before they took me away.”
“How—how are you?”
“I’m all right. Leg hurts a bit. But…I owe you an enormous apology. I am deeply and terribly ashamed of myself. I should never have done it, insisted we went, when I knew you were anxious, and as for putting Rachel in such danger—”
“Well, I’m sure it wasn’t deliberate,” said Debbie carefully.
“That part wasn’t, of course. I simply slipped, went down with a bit of a bang. And I insisted she stayed with me, of course; only I conked out a couple of times and she took the law into her own hands, and when I came round the last time, she was gone. Oh Debbie, I’m not even going to ask you to forgive me, I’m sure you never can, but I do want you to know that I am completely remorseful—”
“Of course I forgive you,” said Debbie, “don’t be silly. It was—was an accident. Anyway, Richard shouldn’t have left the two of you, shouldn’t have agreed. It was stupid of him, he must bear some of the blame.”
“But I pretty well insisted he went.”
“Oh Flora, that’s rubbish. Richard is thirty-fi
ve years old. He can stand up for himself. Look, I’ve got to go, Rachel needs to be got home, given some food and the others too. I’ll see you tomorrow. But please don’t feel so bad. Everyone’s all right, that’s all that matters. Bye now.”
She kissed her mother-in-law and left. She was feeling odd, very odd indeed. She supposed it was the shock.
But this morning, if it was indeed shock, then that was only part of it. She did sleep, greatly to her surprise: a heavy, haunted sleep, filled with images of rushing water and darkness and the sound of screaming and terrible fear. But at least it was sleep. What she woke to was different and she knew what it was, and it was a revelation so inescapable and so dreadful that she couldn’t face it, tried to push it away, to keep herself safe from it. Only she couldn’t; it was impossible. It pursued her as she got up and went downstairs into the kitchen, and made herself a cup of tea and sat at the table staring unseeingly into the dark morning, thinking of what today would have held, and knowing that it could do so no longer.
She couldn’t leave Richard, not today, not tomorrow, not ever; however much she wanted to, however much she loved Joel. Richard was who she belonged to; because he was the father of her children, their children. That was all there was to it. Together they had done this amazing thing, this amazing and yet totally unexceptional thing; they had created three people, three small people, totally dependent on them emotionally and physically. As she was in turn dependent on them. They were the centre of her life, the core of herself, and she had known as she watched Rachel in the water yesterday, possibly lost to her forever, that nothing was as important, as precious as they were, and had thought too that if anything had happened to any of them, she would truly want to die.
There was a bond between her and Richard that was steely strong, and it had been created by those children; they might be at odds with each other over many, many things, but in their love for the children they were as one, absolutely concerned, completely together. And the thought of what that meant to her was so horrible, so painful that she sat there, bent over, clutching her stomach, her eyes closed, fighting down the tears.
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