Mainlander

by Will Smith

  She nodded. She didn’t have the energy to shout a reply over the wind.

  ‘Can you manage it?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Okay, where’s the rock and the knife?’

  Louise pointed them out and he kicked the rock towards the knife. ‘I’m going to get my bike. I can wheel him down on that.’

  He grabbed her hand and they began walking. When they got to the bottom, he sat her in the car, reached in and rummaged in the glove compartment for a cloth, then got his bike out of the boot and headed back up the slope into the storm.

  Louise sat still, on the edge of elation that Danny could make the situation right for her, but not daring to believe it just yet. Ten minutes later he emerged from the dark, straining to keep the bike upright as he leant into the wind. Billy was bent over the crossbar, his arms hooked behind him and his feet dragging on the ground. His head was covered by one compartment of a double pannier that Danny had removed from the rack. He opened the back door. ‘What’s that doing on his head?’ asked Louise. ‘Is it so I don’t have to look at him?’

  Danny silently heaved the body into the back, then put the bike into the boot. He ran round to the driver’s side, got in and started the engine. ‘Don’t want to get his blood on the back seat. It’s got to look like he died on impact, driving the car.’

  ‘Jesus, Danny, you sound like you’ve done this before. Either that or you’re a natural.’

  ‘Just common sense.’

  He pulled off and they went back up La Rue de Scez, which was now strewn with small to medium branches. He wore a look of unflinching concentration that, for some reason, reminded her of her little brother playing Mousetrap.

  ‘Fuck, I hope a tree doesn’t fall here and trap us.’

  ‘We can make him crash into that.’

  ‘Uphill? Not likely. Why don’t you shut up, Lou, and leave this to the professionals?’

  They neared the top, and pulled out. ‘We’re going to go round in a square, two rights in a row basically.’

  ‘Shit – oh no oh no oh no,’ gasped Louise, at the sight of oncoming headlights. ‘Fuck, no.’

  ‘Calm down. I’ll let them pass,’ said Danny, pulling into a field entrance and waving as the Land Rover went by.

  ‘Why did you wave? They’ll have seen your face! You should have turned away.’

  ‘Fucking act normal, okay?’

  They pulled out again. The road was canopied by trees bending as if their trunks were elasticated. Louise was hyperventilating again, worried that everything was about to collapse on them, that the world was falling in on itself.

  Danny took a right turn. ‘This is the road.’ It was steep and narrow, again with a carpet of small fallen branches. He inched along as they came to a bend. As they rounded it, it straightened out as it plunged further, then was blocked about twenty feet ahead by a huge beech that had stood on the bank, where its roots had gone down vertically rather than spreading out to steady it. Danny braked, then reversed and stopped, leaving the car in neutral.

  ‘Okay, this is as far away as I can get it on the straight. It’s bloody narrow as it is. We don’t want it getting stuck against one of the banks. Out.’

  Louise did as she was told. She went round to the boot, where Danny got his bike out and laid it on the road. Nothing was going to stay upright for long in these conditions.

  ‘Hold the door open. The wind’s going to push it shut again.’

  Louise opened the back door while Danny pulled Billy out and put him over this shoulder.

  ‘Okay, shut this and open the front one.’

  Danny heaved the corpse into the driver’s seat, struggling to get it upright. Eventually he pushed Billy’s forearms through the spokes of the steering wheel and let his head fall forward against it.

  ‘Does that look right?’ asked Louise.

  ‘It’ll help keep the wheel straight, maybe it’ll look like his arms slipped in there on impact.’

  ‘Maybe?’

  ‘Have you got any better ideas? Because I don’t want to hang around.’

  ‘No. Let’s just do it. Have you put the knife in?’

  ‘It’s in his pocket,’ said Danny, tugging off the pannier that lifted Billy’s head up straight before it flopped forward, unsupported. ‘I’ve got the rock in the other pannier. Right, I’m going to lean in the other side, jam it in second and take the handbrake off. It’s going to start rolling, but don’t push till I’ve shut the door.’

  Louise nodded and followed Danny round to the back of the car, stationing herself at the boot while he opened the door and reached in. He was out in a flash, the door was shut and the car was rolling. Louise pushed and it was away from her too fast for her to keep up. Danny ran after it, giving it a shove, then stopped as they watched it graze the right bank before slamming into the tree.

  Danny stood there, staring down at it. Louise walked in front of him and took his hands. ‘You okay?’

  ‘It’s just hit me. There’s no turning back now.’

  ‘It’s okay. We’re together on this. Together.’

  She lifted his arms wide and leant into an embrace that felt to her like the safest place on earth. Then they turned to walk back towards his bike and the long and dangerous road that lay before them.

  21

  COLIN

  Friday, 16 October 1987

  Debbie had told him earlier that the tower had stood since 1782, and that L’Avarison, the rock upon which it was built, had been there since the lava had hit water millions of years ago. Tonight it felt like the wind might upturn it all and the sea splinter it into sand. Until now, Colin had always found Victor Hugo’s assertion in ‘The Archipelago of the Channel’, that Jersey had become detached from France during a terrible storm in AD 700, rather fanciful. Now he felt the Island could easily be being shifted out into the middle of the Atlantic.

  He and Debbie cowered in the dark, Duncan between them, clutching his rucksack against himself. They were back where they had found him, as far away from the steps and the open side of the platform as they could get, sitting against the tower where it cornered with the short edge of the wall. The wind was blowing into them, screaming at them, the chilling breath of an angry demon. There was no hiding from it. It was whipping up the rising tide that was hitting the steps to their left with a ferocity that rose by the minute, lashing them with spray. Colin, the closest, was getting the worst of it. With another three hours till high-water, there was every likelihood that soon their current perch would be submerged.

  Soaked, shivering and terrified, they had no choice but to sit it out. They were silent. Where before they might have let out the occasional cry at an unexpected dousing, now it was a whimper.

  ‘We have to get inside!’ yelled Colin to Debbie.

  ‘I told you, locked!’ she shouted back.

  ‘We’re going to get washed off!’

  Debbie said nothing, just looked at him. There was no longer fear in her eyes, but neither was there hope. Instead there was simple acceptance that this was where things would end.

  He craned his neck to look up at the tower behind him, its white outline looming ghostlike out of the dark.

  ‘Window!’ He gestured, turning on his torch and holding it with both his numb hands to keep it steady. The door to the tower was in the centre, ten feet above them, accessible by a steep set of hand-railed iron steps. A foot above the door there was a small window, about two feet square.

  ‘No!’ Debbie replied. ‘Too dangerous. Too high. Duncan’s too weak to climb through.’

  ‘I’ll go through, open the door!’

  ‘Deadlocked!’

  ‘I can open it!’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Break it down. Duncan, I need your rucksack.’

  The boy stopped hugging it and put his hands over the back of his head, his elbows knocking the bag forward. Colin grabbed it and tipped everything out, then stood, stashing his torch in a side pocket.

  ‘Ple
ase, don’t!’ implored Debbie, gripping his arm. ‘You’ll fall.’

  Colin shook himself free and crouched his way along the wall to the base of the steps, holding the frame of the rucksack, side on to the wind – it would fill like a sail if the blast got hold of it. He reached the base of the ladder, realised he would need both hands for the ascent and slung on the rucksack. He began to climb, his sodden trousers flapping. His fingers ached from the icy metal, so when he reached the top, he hooked one elbow over the rail, then opened and closed them fast to get the blood flowing. He looked up. It was madness. He’d be blown clean off if he stood up. But he couldn’t just go back down.

  He shrugged off the rucksack and unclipped the sack from the frame, then wore it on his front like an apron. He went down two steps and wedged the frame against the doorway at the top of the railings. Taking out his wallet, he tied it to his palm with his handkerchief. He took out the torch and put one foot on the handrail, pushing up to stand leaning into the tower. He stared ahead: if he looked down he would freeze or fall. He braced his arms inside the top of the doorframe as he moved his feet on to the bottom of the rucksack frame. From there he felt up with his left hand to the window ledge above, the torch in his right. Then he moved his feet to the top of the frame. He felt it buckle slightly, which gave him the flood of adrenalin he needed to reach up and smash the window with the torch.

  His left hand gripped the base of the window frame, the improvised pad protecting him from the shards of glass. He bashed at the rest of the window, clearing it from the frame with his head down in case it fell into his face. He dropped the torch on to the ledge and pushed up into the window, the rucksack frame bowing then clattering away once his weight was removed. He felt a sharp pain in the back of his head and ducked. His left hand was still on the wooden frame, but the right was now inside, gripping the window ledge. He pulled himself in as far as he could with his right hand, his legs kicking in the gale while his head was in the comparative stillness of the tower. He wriggled forward, the rucksack on his front protecting him from the broken glass over which he was sliding.

  He was now half inside and picked up the torch to see where he might land. It looked like an eight-foot drop to the stone floor. To the right and two feet below was a row of large coat hooks set on a plank fixed to the wall. He reached down and along and gripped the first, then pulled himself further in. He felt himself sliding out of the window ledge and swung down like a pendulum, his left arm flailing. The plank came away from the wall and he fell on to the cold floor. He let out a sob, only now giving in to the terror of the climb.

  He felt around for the torch, found it and examined the door. As Debbie had said, it was deadlocked. Of course she was right: she brought tours out here. He looked around the room. There were three bunk beds, a chemical toilet and a sink with a foot pump. He clambered up to the next level and found a small sofa, a hammock strung between two beams, a kitchen area, a table and chairs, and a fire extinguisher. He lugged the extinguisher back down to the door, lifted it and tried to smash the lock. He misjudged the strength needed and it arced to the floor with a clang and a spark. This time he held it like a battering ram and ran at it, winding himself. Of course. The door would open inwards: swinging in the other direction would mean a visitor had to step back and fall off the steps.

  He sank to his knees. Maybe Debbie and Duncan could climb up as he had done. They might have picked up the rucksack frame. He could move a bunk bed to the window, stick his head out and beckon them. Maybe haul them up using one of the blankets folded on the beds. He doubted he had the strength.

  He looked round the walls: a sextant, a spyglass and a small anchor. He pulled down the anchor, rusted but solid; he could hold it in two hands. The door looked thick and old, planked, with a horizontal beam across the middle below the lock. He swung the anchor above his head, aiming one of the hooks at the join of two planks in the top half. The impact rattled his wrists. He swung again. Chips of wood flew off, but nothing more.

  He stood back. That door needed to come down. He shut his eyes. It was Rob de la Haye; it was Aidan Blampied; it was Barney Vautier. He swung the anchor again and again and again, seeing Rob taking Emma from behind, Blampied touching Duncan while Vautier looked on, but it was the idea of Rob with Debbie that stoked him to a frenzy. By now he was just grazing the door.

  He sank to his knees and burst into tears. The woman he loved was out there, soon to be swept away. He leant his head and fists against the door, crying as he hadn’t since he was a little boy. His father had been taken from him and there was nothing he could do about it. But he would not relinquish Debbie.

  He got to his feet, wiped away the tears, and swung the anchor with a strength that matched the storm. The head of the hook stuck fast, an inch or so deep. He worked the shank back and forth and began to feel the wood split. The anchor came loose, but the join in the planks was now a crack, and there was a golf-ball-sized hole. He jammed the flat end of the hook into the crack and loosened the planks till they began to buckle. He threw down the anchor, picked up the fire extinguisher and battered the split again and again till the wood finally gave way. There was now a passable vertical rent in the top half of the door.

  He stuck his head out into the storm. From the luminescence of the white wall he could see Debbie and Duncan holding each other in a crouch, six inches of water sloshing back and forth under them, as big canopies of spray hit them from above. He yelled but they didn’t respond. The wind was too loud, and their heads were turned to each other, eyes probably closed.

  He pulled one of the bunk beds towards the door and used the top bunk to lower himself feet first and sideways through the hole. As soon as he was on the outside ledge he was almost knocked off by the wind. He was halfway down the steps when Debbie spotted him. She slowly stood and waded over, dragging Duncan.

  Colin reached them at the bottom. ‘Up!’ he yelled to Debbie, pushing her on to the first step. He bent down and slung Duncan over his shoulder as she began to climb, then felt his legs buckle as a wave broke against his knees. They both went down, Colin holding on to the rail with his right hand. The wave hit the far wall and began traversing back towards them, pushing Duncan against him and loosening his grip on the rail. They could both be sent rolling down the steps into the swell. He felt Debbie’s hand on his wrist and, as she took the strain against him, he wrapped an arm around Duncan as the water drained back. He staggered to his feet and hauled Duncan up the steps backwards.

  Debbie climbed through the hole first, then pulled Duncan in by his arms, as Colin lifted his legs. As Colin clambered in he saw, from the corner of his eye, a large red navigation buoy propelled on to the platform. It hit the bottom of the iron stairs, knocking the base loose and leaving them sticking up to the side at forty-five degrees, then wedged itself in the corner where they had been, smashing a hole in the wall and opening up a second front of spray.

  An hour later they were upstairs, warmth returning to their bodies. The blast from the hole in the door was too much for them to stay on the lower level, more because of the noise than the cold. Their nerves just couldn’t take any more of the roaring. There were no beds upstairs but, given the circumstances, comfort wasn’t on the agenda.

  They had helped Duncan up first and left him to take off his sopping clothes, until he called for help, his fingers too frozen to manage buttons. Colin and Debbie helped him down to his underpants, then wrapped him in blankets and heaved him into the hammock, where he fell asleep.

  Colin had started to shiver so they agreed to undress on separate landings, then settled, blanketed, in their underwear on the sofa.

  ‘I don’t suppose there’s a radio here?’ asked Colin.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not that anyone would come out in this anyway. But it would be good to let people know we’re safe. I mean, the tide will go out tomorrow. Hard to imagine now, I know …’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes
… It’s just … seeing you on the stairs in the wind, I thought you were going to fall, and then when you were inside I thought you’d never be able to get the door open, and that we’d drown.’

  ‘I would never have let that happen.’

  ‘Intentions are all very well, but you could have been hit by that buoy. We all could.’

  Colin caught himself just as he was about to confess to the same fears of losing her. An awkward silence descended amid the noise.

  ‘I’m sorry I brought us out here,’ murmured Debbie.

  ‘I’m sorry I nearly drowned us, going the wrong way,’ replied Colin.

  ‘It was stupid of me. Selfish.’

  ‘What are you talking about? You found him, Debbie. Without you, he’d have been out here alone. He’d have been swept out by now. Or dead from cold.’

  ‘We’re safe thanks to you. You saved us from being drowned or crushed. I was the reckless one.’

  ‘You were sure you saw something.’

  ‘I was sure that, once we finished looking for him, you’d go home. That’s why I left my clothes at your flat. So I could go back with you. And why I kept us looking,’ she said, reaching for his hand. ‘All I do when I’m with you is try to eke out every single moment. I want to keep being with you.’

  ‘I want to keep being with you,’ he whispered, pulling her towards him to press his forehead against hers, then giving her the kiss he’d been dreaming of for longer than he dared admit.

  22

  BARNEY

  Saturday, 17 October 1987

  What a fucking mess, Barney thought, as he made his way along the coast via multiple detours resulting from newly created dead-ends. The Island had been picked up and given a good shake. Trees were down everywhere. Tiles lay smashed on roads and pavements, as plentiful as fag butts. He doubted there was a bin left upright. Pity the poor bastards having building work done: you’d be lucky to keep a finished roof, let alone one where tarpaulins or plastic sheets substituted for wood and stone.