‘What do we do?’
‘Start feeling around for the opening. Sorry I’m not much help.’
‘Why don’t I set you down, then I can move faster?’
It hurt them both but finally Rupert was back leaning against the tunnel’s hot, dry wall and Jack was sucking in big breaths. ‘I don’t suppose you have a water flask?’ he asked.
‘I do! Or at least I should do. Here.’ Rupert guided Jack’s hand in the dark. ‘Attached to my belt.’
‘Please say there’s some left.’
‘There is. Have you got it?’
‘Yes,’ Jack said, tipping the contents down his throat. He could have drunk all of it but stopped after the first two gulps. ‘Here, you have some.’
‘Thanks,’ Rupert said, taking the flask and sipping from it. ‘There’s none left, Jack.’
‘We won’t need it. The next drink we take is going to be in the open air.’
‘You keep that promise,’ Rupert warned.
‘And then we’re both going to get drunk.’
‘I’ll drink to that.’
At the surface the first casualties were being hoisted from the cage. Ned watched with despair as women began to beat their chests and tear their clothes. Already three men had been declared dead, another had died minutes after arrival at the surface and five others were critically injured.
Ned watched Harold Walker move carefully from patient to patient, performing triage. A team of doctors and nurses had been rushed in from both the Mines Hospital at Champion Reef and the Civil Hospital from Robertsonpet. Ned felt helpless. He offered to drive a car with the wounded in it but they really didn’t want volunteers right now. There were actually too many people crowding around the site and that was hampering easy access.
‘Ned, get people to stay back, will you?’ Walker pleaded. ‘The ambulance needs access.’
And so he’d found himself foreman of a tiny patch of ground, keeping onlookers at bay. He’d lost track of Iris but could still see Kanakammal staring at the shaft entrance, her gaze unwavering.
Ned had just got word via Harold Walker that one of the rescue teams had communicated with Jack before losing contact after a second tremor. They knew nothing more.
‘Arnold de Souza was found dead,’ Walker sighed. ‘He was with Jack when they sent Charlie back up.’
‘Dead?’
‘Crushed. Jack had gone on. Don’t ask me why. I have to keep hoping he heard my son, because there’s been no news of Rupert from anyone else.’
They stared at each other in silence.
‘Well,’ Ned began, ‘then we have to pray.’
‘Indeed. Not a word to my wife, Ned. Besides, it’s speculation. Either way, there’s no good news yet. Just hold this position, will you? It’s only going to get worse.’
‘If Jack’s with Rupert, he’ll get him out, Harold.’
The old man smiled sadly and then retreated to his makeshift emergency centre.
30
Jack couldn’t help the elation. ‘I found it, Rupert! You were right!’
‘You see, my mind is like a vice!’ Jack had a newfound respect for Rupert Walker and that grudging admiration was deepening all the time. ‘Can you get up into the next tunnel easily enough?’
‘The ladder is there!’ Jack even clapped, but he regretted it immediately, as shock waves ripped through his shoulder.
‘Well done,’ Rupert said, but Jack detected a false note. ‘Listen, I’m not sure I’m going to make it. I want you to go on alone and —’
‘Don’t be stupid, man! We’ve got this far. We’re on the home straight now.’
Rupert seemed weak and breathless suddenly. Perhaps the bleeding had begun again.
‘I’m not leaving you down here.’
‘You have a chance without me …’
‘I am not leaving you,’ Jack said slowly, firmly, crouching beside his companion. ‘Now rally, man! Rally as your father would expect you to and help me get you onto my back. We’ve got a lot of ladders to climb.’
‘Do you want to know how many?’ Rupert mumbled.
‘Shut up, Walker. Now, just get on my back and let’s do this. I’m dying for a beer.’
They began to laugh; the shared nervous laughter of those with no other path to take. Once again they resumed their former position, this time with Jack’s hands firmly gripped beneath Rupert’s knees. He didn’t trust Walker not to slip off his back if he lost consciousness.
Iris brought Ned a cup of coffee sweetened with condensed milk.
‘I don’t know how your mother keeps going,’ he remarked, sighing from the syrupy, comforting taste.
‘It helps her to stop panicking. But she’s on the edge right now … over eight hours since the rock burst.’
‘You must stay positive. We all must.’
‘Every second man is so hideously injured. Either that or he’s dead,’ she said and crumpled, the tears streaming down her face. ‘I couldn’t bear it if I never saw Rupert again.’
Ned was desperate to reassure her; to watch her weep broke his heart. ‘Listen, you have to swear you’ll say nothing to Flora. But there’s a chance Jack got through to Rupert and John Drake.’ Her expression was a mixture of confusion and delight. He bit his lip and then decided to tell her everything he’d learned. ‘But, Iris, this is all speculation,’ he warned, as her smile broadened.
She hugged him tight. ‘Jack will bring him out safely, Ned. I know it. Jack won’t let me down.’ She turned, invigorated with fresh hope, and returned to help her father tend to the walking wounded.
Ned stared after her, a hollow pit opening in his belly. Iris was smitten by Jack – he hadn’t moved fast enough to secure her … and now it was too late.
Once again Jack blanked his mind. Rupert had found some last reserve of strength to hang on, and slowly, painfully, they had ascended the ladders, step by killer step.
Many a Cornish miner had dropped to his death from nothing more than fatigue, Jack recalled, knowing he now risked a similar fate. He was exhausted, aching, bleeding and frightened. But he couldn’t tell Rupert that and he barely dared admit it to himself, so he focused instead on the beer he had promised himself and the sight of the Walker family and their joy.
Rupert had fallen silent again but Jack could hear his ragged breath.
Jack paused. ‘I have no idea how far we’ve come.’
‘Just over two hundred steps. We have at least that yet to go, perhaps even more.’
Jack groaned. ‘I didn’t need to know that.’
He set off once more. The first twenty to thirty steps were the hardest as he tried to find the rhythm again.
‘Sing with me, Rupert.’
‘Don’t be daft.’
‘Come on, no one can hear, not even me. My heart’s beating too loud.’
‘No strength.’ Rupert laughed mirthlessly. ‘Do you take requests?’
‘For a price?’
‘I’ll pay you a rupee to sing my mother’s favourite song.’
‘Tell me, then,’ Jack replied, dreading it was going to be one of those Al Jolson numbers he couldn’t stand.
‘ “What’ll I Do”,’ Rupert said.
Jack knew the song; liked it. ‘What’ll I do,’ he began in a weary voice that was hardly singing but would do, and was surprised when Rupert, despite his fading energy, joined in.
And so, murmuring Irving Berlin, two wounded soldiers dragged themselves up another two hundred and forty-five rungs from the dark, bleak battleground and into the murky, silent dawn of survival.
The atmosphere surrounding the Walker clan had become thick and bleak, like a fog. Ned felt the family’s heartbreak so keenly that his teeth ached from clenching. Silence had long ago descended among them. There was simply nothing more to say. Where at one point the family had huddled with arms around one another, praying and reassuring each other that Rupert would be saved, now they stood close but separated, as if bruised.
Iris looked inco
nsolable. She had retreated from him, moving closer to her brother Jim, and her mother, whose silence was perhaps the most heartrending of all. Flora continued to fuss with cups and bowls of sugar, teaspoons and tins of milk, but anyone could see she was oblivious to her own actions. Her mouth was uncharacteristically turned down. Her neat hair, normally twisted into a tight bun, now looked ragged, with silvered hair loosened and falling down. She seemed to have aged a decade during the night.
Even though he was so close to the Walker family, Ned felt like an interloper – an observer who kept watch over them, but wasn’t fully part of them. Once again the isolation that had plagued Ned for most of his life echoed strongly in his thoughts. He stood just a few feet away from those he loved, knowing they did not love him in the same way they loved each other. He belonged to no one.
Many people had intermittently strolled over to offer quiet commiserations. They no longer sounded like words of support but more like condolences. No one was holding out much more hope. He watched Walker adopt the stiff upper lip that the British prided themselves upon as he worked through his despair, tending to those who needed his skills. But his wife and his children found it easier to show their emotions; Jim wept openly for his brother.
All the Indian workers had now been accounted for, and their families had dispersed to tend to their wounded, to pray over their dying or to offer a vigil for their dead. Only Arnold de Souza’s body hadn’t been recovered. It would need some heavy equipment to retrieve his corpse from beneath the enormous boulder.
As for Bryant, the last sighting had him alive, but there had been no word of Rupert or Drake. No one was comfortable about pronouncing the lost trio dead, preferring the softer-sounding term of missing, but to Ned and the Walker family it meant the same.
Ned felt sick, just as forlorn as any of the other mourners and more isolated because he was so alone. Pricked by this sad realisation, Ned remembered one other person who was here for Jack. He glanced across to where the servant girl stood as still as a marble statue. The mythical stories he’d enjoyed as a child came to mind, where goddesses watched from on high and now and then deigned to interfere in mortal life. That’s how Kanakammal struck him; she was here but not really involved in the scene. There was little expression on her face and even close up he found her pale eyes unreadable. But there was something lurking behind that calm façade; her passions burned deep, Ned guessed, but she had learned how to contain them.
Dawn was breaking. Only the Walker family kept a united front, hoping against hope. He cast a final glance towards Kanakammal, wondering when she would give up her lonely vigil and accept that her new employer was gone and that her hopes of a steady income were dashed for the time being. Ned assumed her family would be relying on it; no wonder she was willing Jack Bryant to survive.
Suddenly she turned her head sharply to the left, away from him and the main shaft, and in the direction of one of the three adits – the small access shafts – that linked with it. He assumed she was resigning herself to defeat. For some reason, he couldn’t bear to watch her give up on Jack and he deliberately turned away.
Kanakammal saw them first, her gaze dragged to a separate access shaft that linked to the mine. From her high vantage on the hill, where she had stood alone through the long hours, she saw the unmistakable silhouette of Jack Bryant in the ghostly grey light of the dawn. He was on his hands and knees, while another man lay flat on his back next to him. She watched the man she was convinced was Bryant flop to the ground now. He was spent. The other did not move.
Both were covered in blood from head to toe and she paused a moment to stare at Bryant. She had reached out to him in her prayers through the night. And she had pictured herself travelling to him in spirit, finding him, urging him not to give up, to follow her back to safety.
And here he was. She had found him. And he had found her.
Kanakammal shouted, raising the alarm, pointing and gesticulating. She knew the Walkers had given up hope. They should have had more faith.
She was certain that the man lying next to her master was none other than the missing Walker son. Drake was much older but the man with Bryant was young.
People began to run.
The nice young Edward Sinclair was among the first to react to her cries. Amid the hysteria he took a moment to share a meaningful glance at her as he charged towards the adit, where she pointed. And Kanakammal nodded at him once – in joint relief – before she turned away and walked down the hillside.
31
Flora Walker described it as ghosts returning from the dead. Although Ned had reached the injured pair first, the Walker family had descended as one, screaming their joy until they registered the scope of Rupert’s injuries.
Jack remembered little of that time. As soon as he had reached the surface, he had blacked out. He recalled only the sensation of a soft breeze caressing his bare skin and the banishment of the dark. As they’d got closer to the surface he did remember urging Rupert to stay conscious, stay strong and to look up; he wanted Rupert to see the light streaming down the tiny access shaft. It had felt like the eye of God smiling down upon them. It was in fact the dawn; they’d made it before an everlasting night had claimed them.
Now he was sitting up in a hospital bed, his arm in a sling, his body tight with bandages and every inch of him throbbing in pain.
Harold Walker, who had personally attended to his injuries, was now sitting on the edge of the bed. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Sore,’ Jack croaked, his voice like fresh sandpaper scratching on old paint.
The doctor nodded. ‘Let me give you the litany of your injuries,’ he said, smiling kindly now. ‘They’re impressive.’
Jack gave a lopsided grin. ‘I reckon I can guess. Ribs?’
‘Several broken. A sprained shoulder, or so you screamed when we tried to turn you over. Your back is a mass of contusions.’
‘The rock slide in the aftermath.’
‘Rupert has no such bruising. Did you shield him?’
‘I can’t remember,’ Jack said.
Walker’s eyes narrowed; Jack was being modest. ‘You’re seriously dehydrated. We’ve got you on a drip. Just be patient. I have no idea how you bore the pain carrying my son. It is a miracle either of you made it out.’
‘Rupert?’
‘Not as robust as yourself but he’s a fighter, Jack. He’ll come back from this.’
‘His arm?’ he croaked, hardly daring to hear to the answer.
‘We amputated it a few hours ago.’ Walker looked away, hiding the tremble at his lips. He cleared his throat. ‘It’s all very clean now. He’ll learn to live with one good one.’
Even though Jack had anticipated it, the news was still a kick in the guts. ‘Is he conscious?’
‘Not yet. Rupert will need some time to adjust.’
‘What about his leg?’
‘His ankle was smashed up. We saved it but he’ll limp, I suspect. When you’ve lost an arm, what’s a limp?’ His attempt at a philosophical approach fell short and sounded hollow.
‘He lost a lot of blood.’
‘Yes, he did. Your tourniquet saved his life, Jack.’
‘Anyone would have done the same.’
Walker paused. ‘I’m not sure that’s true. Rupert was more or less a stranger to you, and our family hasn’t been overly gracious towards you either. We’ve always considered you a dangerous influence over Ned, whom we care plenty for … and no doubt recent relations have become more frosty with Geraldine’s interest in you.’
‘Dr Walker, Geraldine —’
‘Jack, you don’t have to explain. I know it has been unsolicited and that’s her burden, not yours. We owe you a great debt for your courage and your strength, your tenacity and your willpower.’
‘Dr Walker, we kept each other going. We were blind down there but Rupert knew how to find the opening even in the pitch black.’
Walker nodded. ‘He’s a stickler for detail. But the poin
t is that you chose to stay, to risk your own life for our son. I have to wonder why you did.’
Jack swallowed. His throat hurt. His mind was racing. ‘I did it for Ned,’ he lied. ‘You’re all the family Ned has and I know how much he loves you all. I couldn’t have faced him if I didn’t try – he’s the closest friend I’ve ever had.’
Walker looked thoughtful. ‘Well, I’m grateful for it, Jack, and I want you to know that you’re welcome at our house, around our table, at any time.’
‘Thank you, Dr Walker, and for patching me up as you have.’
‘Don’t mention it.’ He held out a hand and Jack had to shake awkwardly with the wrong one. ‘Ned’s waiting outside. In fact, expect a long stream of visitors, all of them Walkers!’ He smiled again and the warmth in it touched his eyes. Jack could see Iris in that smile.
Ned walked in, his face all but shining from a shave, his hair still damp but neatly combed. He held out a bottle of Scotch triumphantly. ‘I’m not allowed to leave this here,’ he said, beaming, ‘but we’re going to drink it when you’re out.’
Jack whistled. ‘That must have cost you a week’s wages.’
‘And the rest!’
They locked hands.
‘I thought we’d lost you, Jack.’
‘You can’t get rid of me that easily.’
They laughed.
‘Blimey, but I’m thirsty,’ Jack complained.
‘Your lungs must be charred.’
Jack wet his cracked lips. ‘No one’s told me how many made it out.’
‘Seven dead. Two still clinging to life. Among the dead are Arnold de Souza and John Drake.’
Jack nodded. ‘I held Arnold’s hand as he died.’
Ned looked shocked. ‘I had no idea.’
‘If he hadn’t guided me to Walker, I would have headed back.’
‘Have you heard about Rupert?’
‘Yes. He showed real courage.’ He thought he could avoid the subject but she roared into his mind, defying his resistance. ‘How’s Iris taking it?’
Fields of Gold Page 30