by Jane Bailey
‘I know Pippa . . . I know she’s no saint, but I don’t think she would have deliberately . . . I think there’s been some sort of—’
‘Here you go!’ My friend Cyril handed me a half of cider. I smiled and thanked him, and then I turned to Arthur.
‘I don’t think there’s any point in discussing this further. We’ll have to agree to differ. Will you excuse me?’ I turned to Cyril and started to ask about our next numbers, which no doubt surprised him as we’d discussed them at length on the journey down.
I didn’t look back, and he must have moved away, because he didn’t speak again.
I played through the second half without thinking about the music at all. I couldn’t be sure if he was watching me or not. When I dared to look up, there was no sign of him or of Len in the darkened room.
When we were packing up to go, I thought he might appear at my side again, having thought it all through, but he didn’t. It was quite clear that he’d left. Well, I thought, if that was his reaction to the truth, then he really was a drip, and he and Pippa deserved each other. Frankly, I was glad he was gone.
57
ARTHUR
Pippa had shown no interest in the twenty-year reunion that September, but then the day before, on the Friday, she rang me from London to say she would meet me there.
‘My publishers want to do a little photo shoot for my new book.’
‘New book? I didn’t know you had a new book.’
‘Surviving Survival. It’s not out yet. Well, actually, it’s not quite written, but they want a picture of me with the survivors.’
‘Have you asked Daphne?’
‘Why should I ask Daphne?’
‘Well, maybe people don’t want to be photographed. It’s a bit intrusive – it’s a private event.’
‘Look, I’m not asking for your advice here. I’m going to be there, and I think if you’re going to be there we should be together, don’t you? After all, we are a bit of a story.’
A bit of a story.
The trouble was, there was a bit of the story I couldn’t make out. I did go to the reunion, of course. I didn’t want to miss the chance of seeing Dora, but the thought of Pippa swanning about being photographed at my side filled me with nausea. However, the day did not turn out anything like I had imagined. In fact, it was one of the most extraordinary days of my life.
I arrived early. The Wayfarer’s was still the venue of choice, but a room at the back had now been converted into an events room, and tables had been set up with crisp white tablecloths for the twentieth-anniversary reunion. Daphne was busy talking to the pub landlord about the buffet, and it was her husband, Jack Heggarty, who greeted me warmly. Before long, the bar started to fill with the faces of old friends, and I went up to join them. I was relieved to see no sign of Pippa as yet, although I felt I should warn Daphne about the likely intrusion of photographers. From where I was standing I could see the entrance door, and I kept my eye on it, desperate for a sighting of Dora before my wife arrived.
‘Arthur!’ cried Daphne in delight. ‘I’m so glad to see you. Is Pippa with you? We were all intrigued by the book!’
I examined her face for clues as to any other meaning hidden in the word ‘intrigued’, but Daphne looked brightly and candidly at me, smiling with genuine warmth. I explained that Pippa was coming later, and I apologized for any photographers that might trail in with her.
‘How wonderful! Perhaps we could all have a group photograph free of charge!’
‘I think that’s the least you could ask for.’ I apologized again that Pippa had not asked permission. ‘Daphne, do you know if . . . if Dora is coming?’
‘She accepted the invitation, but after what’s just happened, I’d be surprised.’
‘After what? What’s happened?’
‘Haven’t you . . . Peter!’ She spotted someone and grabbed his elbow. ‘Peter! I’ve been meaning to introduce you two for ages, but one or other of you keeps slipping through my fingers. At last! Peter, this is Arthur, from Boat Nine. Arthur, this is Peter, an American seaman on one of the rescue ships. Now, I’ll leave you two to talk.’
The short, bearded man in front of me put his beer in his left hand and stretched out his right one to me. I shook it. ‘I’ve been hoping to meet you at one of these reunions,’ he said in a soft American accent. ‘Shall we sit down?’
I had hoped to stay standing so that I could move around and not get stuck, but I could think of no excuse not to join this gentle-eyed man at a table.
‘Daphne told me you had a tough time of it after the rescue – that you lost your brother.’
‘Yes.’ I was distracted, trying to see the front entrance in my peripheral vision.
‘You thought it was your fault that he drowned.’
‘Yes, that’s right. I was supposed to be looking after him.’
‘What if I told you he didn’t drown?’
I sat back in my chair and stared at him. The voices and laughter from the bar spun into eerie silence. Peter put his hands on his beer glass nervously, clearly unsure how to proceed.
‘You can’t mean he’s alive?’
‘No.’ He looked flustered, apologetic. ‘No, I’m sorry, he’s dead, but we picked him up. We found him after midnight, adrift on his own. He was very weak when we got him on board. He died of exposure.’
‘He was alive?’
‘Yes . . . I thought you’d like to know.’
I found myself taking in deep gulps of air. I tried to speak, but my lips just stayed ajar, unable to form any words. Eventually I said, ‘I must tell my father. He should know.’
‘I think your parents would have been informed at the time. We buried him at sea.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I wouldn’t have brought it up, only Daphne seemed to think you didn’t know.’
I put my hand on my forehead. This seemed impossible. Why would my parents not tell me? But even as the question formed in my head, it answered itself. We didn’t talk about it. We never talked about it. All these years I had been left thinking my brother had drowned in my care, but he had survived, if only briefly.
‘Was he conscious? Did he mention me?’
‘Oh yes. That’s how we knew who he was. He said his name was Philip, and he kept asking after you: “Is Arthur all right? Is Arthur safe?” So we worked out you were his brother all right.’
Now he had my full attention. I wanted to know everything, every detail of Philip’s last hours alive. ‘So it was definitely him? So he definitely didn’t drown?’
‘No, he was alive but in a bad way. I think he must’ve been battered by bits of debris; he had some very nasty injuries to his head and shoulders.’
I shuddered. ‘What sort of injuries?’
‘Oh, nasty ones. I remember there was fresh blood on his forehead coming from a deep gash, and he had some colossal marks on his shoulders.’
‘Are you sure it was exposure he died of?’
‘That’s what the ship’s doctor said. And it was bitterly cold in that sea. It’s a wonder he lasted as long as he did.’
I closed my eyes. What Peter said next made me open them again.
‘There was something else he said . . .’ He was very hesitant as he spoke.
‘Go on.’
‘When I asked how he got his wounds, he said . . . “Papa tried to kill me.”’
‘Papa?’
‘Look, I know it’s ridiculous. Your father was at home in London, and those were fresh wounds, and please don’t think for a moment that I believe your father—’
‘No, it’s all right. I don’t think that. Papa, you say? He said Papa?’
‘I’m sorry. I probably shouldn’t have told you.’
I put my hands on the tablecloth and stared at them. They belonged to the most ignorant man on the planet. ‘Peter,’ I said, ‘you did the right thing. Let me get you another beer.’
As I waited at the bar, my hands began to shake. I noticed now that my wife had arrived with her entou
rage. She slung her handbag down on the seat next to mine, clearly having spotted me talking to Peter. Someone shouted to her from the bar, asking what she wanted and calling her ‘Flip’. She was already being arranged at a spare table with a pile of her books. I looked over. A photographer was telling her to hold her book up higher and smile. No one seemed to mind her lack of modesty, and a posse of onlookers appeared thrilled with the little drama.
My order arrived, and I took the beer back to Peter, spilling some on the carpet with my shaking hands.
‘I don’t suppose you have a pen?’ asked a man leaning over my shoulder. It was Graham. He slapped me on the back and laughed. ‘I’ve brought a copy of your wife’s book with me, and I wondered if she’d mind signing it.’
‘Graham!’ I tapped my pockets. This wasn’t my work jacket, it was my best suit jacket, and there was nothing in it but a clean handkerchief. ‘Sorry – oh, wait.’ I snapped open Pippa’s handbag on her chair and rifled around for a Biro. ‘There.’ Before I snapped it shut, I took out a golden lighter and slipped it into my trouser pocket.
‘I won’t be a mo.’ Graham beamed. ‘Save me a place – I want to catch up with all your news.’
Peter and I sat and watched as Pippa preened and glowed for the camera. Then she shouted over to me.
‘Arthur! Arthur! Come over! We’re having a picture of everyone in Boat Nine!’
I rose and thanked Peter for his information. I took my coat from the back of the chair and headed towards the door.
‘Arthur! You were in Boat Nine! Over here!’
I looked at Pippa and saw a confident, scheming and deceitful woman.
‘There’s no point. Not everyone from Boat Nine is here,’ I said, and left.
The twelve-forty to Newport was delayed. In the station cafe, the wireless was playing: ‘I’d like some red roses for a blue lady . . .’ Could it be that I had been waiting for absolute proof before I could admit to myself what I already half knew? I struggled to understand quite why I had refused to believe the evidence in front of me for so long, why I had rearranged the ugliness to fit a happier picture. I was like one of those characters in a detective play. Look, Inspector, I know my wife’s no angel, and heaven knows she can be cruel at times, but murder? No, she’s no murderer. Beat someone to death with an oar? She couldn’t even beat an egg.
My throat ached. I wanted some release, but I couldn’t cry. I realized then the full impact of what Peter had told me. Not only had he confirmed that my wife had tried to kill my brother – that she was responsible for his death and the death of Mr Dent, who had dived into the water to save him – but he had also confirmed that she hadn’t, in fact, murdered Philip. She was safe on that count.
Perhaps, after all, this was the piece of information I had needed before I could admit the terrible truth to myself. Pippa wasn’t a murderer. I repeated it to myself a few times, but the picture of her beating him off to save her own skin wouldn’t go away. But for her, Philip could so easily have been scooped up and hauled over the side of the boat to safety. But for her, Mr Dent would still be with us. I wanted to go somewhere and lick my wounds, but there was no point. There were no tears inside me to be shed, just a throbbing pain in my face and in my head.
I want some red roses for a blue lady . . . I went straight to the nearest flower stall and bought a bunch of them.
I sat in a crowded compartment with the roses on my knee, mulling over the events of the day. I didn’t need to look at the lighter in my pocket to know what was inscribed on it, but I looked at it anyway. Flippy, Flip, Philippa, Pippa, Papa. I had seen it and not seen it. Just as I looked out of the window now at the spinning wet countryside and saw nothing.
58
DORA
The 16th of September 1960 – that’s a date that still haunts me. At the time, I had the 17th of September on my mind, because that was the date of the twenty-year reunion, and I had been expecting to go, regardless of whether or not Arthur went. I think I’d decided to talk to Daphne about things, ask her advice, maybe, see if she could help me put it all behind me. She was one of the few people I could trust. Anyhow, that never happened. I never made it to the reunion.
On Friday the 16th, I came home from work half an hour later than usual because I’d been looking for a new dress. It was about two-thirty when the bus dropped me off. The street was very quiet – unusually so – and although there was no one to be seen, I could hear distant voices.
Our Mam wasn’t in the house either. I knew she sometimes liked to pop into Aunty Irene’s for a chat when she walked Helen back to school after dinnertime. Helen didn’t like school. She was afraid of her teacher and of two girls in her class. She always came out of school for dinner, and sometimes she went to Aunty Irene’s, because Aunty Irene only lived over the road from the school.
I slung my coat on to the back of a chair and went to put the kettle on. I thought I heard a bell, but the kettle was making too much noise to be certain. It wasn’t until I sat down with my cup of tea that I spotted something strange. Out of the back window, things were different from usual. The huge coal spoil tip that loomed on the skyline above the valley was somehow shorter – a lot shorter. I stood up. Down the back, past the end of our yard and down in the valley below, were hundreds of people like ants. A shiny, black river of sludge had wormed its way down the mountainside opposite and had covered some of the buildings below. I could make out the gables of the school and a few houses. Another bell sounded, and an ambulance appeared. Then another. There was a row of ambulances, a few trucks.
I flung on my coat again, ran out the back of the house down the steep, raggedy garden and out of the gate at the bottom. I kept running. I ran down the slope to the ribbon of houses below. People were everywhere. There was no point asking what had happened: I could see. We all knew it might happen one day. Our Dad had always warned it would. The heavy rain had swollen the spring underneath the tip and it had brought the black mountain of waste down on top of the village.
‘Are the children safe?’ I panted, grabbing at Mrs Jones from the Post Office. ‘Are they safe?’
She looked at me with such anguish that I wished I hadn’t asked her. I looked for someone else, someone who might give me the answer I wanted. ‘What’s happened to the children? Where are the children?’
‘They’re in there, love, under the rubble,’ said a man with a spade. ‘We’re trying to get them out.’
I ran around, frantic, desperate for information. It seemed that the landslide had happened less than half an hour before, at ten past two, just after lessons had started for the afternoon. It was also just after the horn had sounded to mark the end of the miners’ first shift, and miners were still coming towards the submerged buildings from all directions, up and down the valley, bringing spades and shovels.
Desperate, I started to shovel with my hands. I clawed at the gritty slime until my fingers were lacerated and my knuckles bleeding. I could see the place where our Helen’s classroom was, and it was yards deep in this wet, black earth. I looked around for a spade, and a miner took hold of my arm: ‘Go and get some tea going, love. We’re all going to need it.’
‘My girl’s in there!’
‘My boys too. Leave it to us. We can shovel. It’s one thing we can do, look.’
I walked away and went to join the growing band of women, herded into groups now away from the danger.
People kept coming: men and youths with spades, firemen, ambulances, the Salvation Army with tea urns, the Red Cross. Two young lads I’d always thought of as bad sorts came with shovels and set to work tirelessly with the rest of the men. I stood for four hours, watching the men dig, watching the bodies come out, covered in a blanket each one, and taken up to the chapel at the end of the road. Every now and then a child was carried out alive, and our little band of women would surge forward, straining for a look, praying for the familiar face.
It began to get dark and the few colours that there were disappeared into the
dusk. The thin drizzle became heavier. Some trucks came and set up floodlights, and suddenly I was aware how long I’d been there. I was about to turn back to the house to change my wet clothes when I saw something.
A stretcher went by from the direction of the buried houses. I had to make way for it. It went right past me. From underneath the grey blanket an arm flopped out, and on it was the unmistakable raw-knuckled hand of Our Mam. There was her ruby engagement ring.
I followed the stretcher up to the chapel. There were so many bodies now that they would only let us in one at a time to identify them. Women came out with their faces covered in their hands, weeping quietly. From inside, there was an occasional wail, but by the time the mothers emerged, supported on each side by friends, it was their legs, it seemed, that could no longer function.
Our Mam was black from head to foot. I could just make out the flowered pattern of her housecoat. Aunty Irene was a few yards away, also dead. I was glad Our Mam couldn’t see the school, glad that she wouldn’t have known what had happened. I looked for Helen in the rows of bodies, although I didn’t want to find her. I had to force myself to look at each child. She wasn’t there.
I did go back home, but just to use the lav and replace my wet coat with Our Dad’s old coat. I felt safe in Our Dad’s coat. My hands were shaking. My legs were wobbling. I felt sick. I went back to the school.
By now things were organized. The army had arrived and was filling sandbags with rubble to stem the slow tide of sliding coal spoil. Policemen were telling us to keep away. Men who arrived to help were told to go home. Already there were hundreds of men prepared to work all night. The least I could do was wait. I went to where the tea urns were churning out cups of tea in paper cups, and I helped to distribute them. My hands were still trembling, but I was glad to be busy. At least this way I would be allowed to stay. The floodlights lit up the devastation, and behind it smoke rose up from the fires that had burned in the ruined houses. It was like hell.