CHAPTER EIGHT
TELL me about your wife…your blonde, beautiful, elegant wife…
The words hovered on her tongue yet again, but this time she wasn’t so sure that she wanted to ask them.
She’d spent a whole year alternately congratulating herself for escaping from his house with her scruples intact—their house, she corrected herself with a grimace—and the other half wondering if she’d made the most enormous mistake.
What if she asked him now, when there was absolutely nothing she could do about it whatever he told her? What difference would it make to anything?
If he was still married she would die knowing that Adam had never loved her the way she’d loved him, but if she discovered that his marriage had already been over that night a year ago, she would leave this life knowing that she had wasted the last year of it alone when the two of them could have been together.
‘Adam…?’ The voice in the background at Adam’s end of the line called across to him again, and when Maggie realised that her chance for asking that question had disappeared again, this time she wasn’t sure whether she was disappointed or relieved.
Then the voice drew closer…not close enough for her to follow their conversation but enough for her to realise that it was some sort of update about Tel.
‘I don’t know if you heard any of that,’ Adam said when he returned to her. ‘But that was a message from Neurosurgery at St Piran’s. Tel’s out of Theatre and is being transferred to ICU as we speak.’
‘So he did have to go to Theatre,’ she said with sudden feeling of dread. ‘How much did I miss? Have they been able to rectify it?’ At first she’d been quite certain that Tel didn’t have a major cranial injury, but when he’d shown little sign of regaining consciousness her concern had steadily grown. ‘How is he?’
‘You were right to be worried,’ he said. ‘I passed your suspicions on so that the neurosurgeon was waiting for him when he arrived at St Piran’s. Apparently, Tel did have a small bleed at the site of the cranial trauma that they only picked up when they did a scan. They went in to remove the clot to relieve the pressure on his brain and to make sure that the injury wasn’t still bleeding, and then orthopods did a swift job on his leg.’
‘And? What’s his prognosis?’ For Jem’s sake she didn’t want Tel to suffer any lasting damage. She could imagine the youngster taking it hard, even though it hadn’t been his fault.
‘With the usual proviso that the next few hours are crucial, they’re pleased with the way it all went. Everything’s looking good, and the chances are that he won’t have suffered any permanent damage,’ he reassured her, and she breathed a sigh of relief as he added. ‘They also sent their compliments for a job well done to whoever patched him up and stabilised him.’
‘Well, this is definitely my day for collecting pats on the back,’ she joked, touched that the staff at St Piran’s would send such a message. All too often in their job, the paramedic’s contribution was forgotten almost as soon as the patient was handed over in A and E. It was gratifying that her work had war ranted a special mention, especially considering the conditions she’d been working under.
She was also delighted to hear that Tel was expected to make a full recovery. Of course, there was always the usual caveat about the initial hours after surgery, in case there were any unforeseen setbacks, but he was an otherwise fit and healthy boy, which had to augur well for his recuperation.
She’d been lost in her thoughts for a while and only realised that Adam hadn’t spoken for some time when she heard the indistinct sounds of a heated discussion going on in the background at his end of the radio. She even thought she heard him shouting at someone, although he’d always been the most easygoing of men, far more likely to walk away from an argument than get into a pointless fight.
‘Adam? Are you there?’ she called. ‘What’s going on out there?’
‘I’m here, Maggie,’ he replied immediately, but sounded slightly distracted, as though a large part of his attention was elsewhere. That impression was confirmed when he added, ‘Hang on, keresik. I’ll get back to you in a minute.’ And to her horror he broke the connection between them with an audible click.
The next few minutes seemed to stretch into infinity while she waited for him to come back, and she’d even resorted to watching the illuminated seconds ticking away on her watch to prove to herself that time hadn’t stood still.
‘Gone midnight,’ she whispered to the surrounding rock walls, and tried to imagine just how many millions of mid nights had passed since this hillside had been formed. As far as she could remember from her geography lessons, granite was an igneous rock formed in conditions of intense heat during volcanic activity.
She smiled at the thought. Cornwall, land of volcanoes? Not!
Except…now that she thought about it, hadn’t someone once told her that St Michael’s Mount was an ancient volcanic plug isolated out in Mounts Bay, and what about Launceston Castle? That high motte could easily have the remains of another volcano at its heart. How many more could there be that she’d never really thought about before, and how could she find out about them?
Penhally Library might have the information, just a few doors along from Nick Tremayne’s house. Or, failing that, there was always the internet…
Her excitement died a sudden death when she remembered that visiting the library and surfing the net probably weren’t on her agenda any more, so she’d probably never know whether there really were any volcanoes in Cornwall.
‘No!’ A sudden surge of anger seized her. She might be stuck down here until…for the fore seeable future, but there was no reason why she couldn’t ask someone else to find out for her. Even if they didn’t have immediate access to a computer, someone among the large rescue squad assembled such a short distance away must know someone who did… Or perhaps Young George knew the answer without having to consult reference books? His schooling might have been short and basic and he’d gone into mining immediately after that, but his knowledge of the industry was encyclopædic, as was his familiarity with Cornwall and all things Cornish.
‘So, that’s what I’ll do,’ she said aloud, her new determination filling the little man-made cave around her. ‘As soon as Adam comes back to me, I’ll ask him to speak to Young George about the volcanoes in Cornwall.’
As if her words had brought it about, there was a sudden click and crackle and her heart leapt with the knowledge that Adam had switched the radio on again.
‘Maggie?’ His voice sounded husky with weariness and, instead of leaping in with her planned question, she found herself wondering just how many hours he’d been working that day. Had he been on call last night, too, or did the surgery use an out-of-hours service to prevent the GPs burning out?
‘Keresik, are you there?’ he called urgently, and she realised she’d been so wrapped up in her concern for him that she hadn’t replied.
‘Where else would I be?’ she said wryly. ‘I tried to do “Beam me up, Scotty,” but the Star Trek transporter-thing that came free with my break fast cereal the other morning doesn’t seem to be working.’
His chuckle emerged close to her ear, almost as though they were sharing a pillow, and wrapped itself warmly around her.
‘That’s one of the things that I loved about you all those years ago,’ he said reminiscently. ‘It didn’t matter what happened, you always managed to bounce back and find a joke to lighten the atmosphere.’
‘Well, I’m struggling a bit this time,’ she admitted. ‘Now, what was all that about a few minutes ago? Tell me you’ve got some good news.’
‘I don’t know what sort of news it is,’ he confessed, serious again in an instant. ‘All sorts of experts have been looking at this old map—by the way, the mine was apparently called Wheal Owl at one time. Unfortunately, there seem to be as many opinions as there are experts.’
‘Not unlike a medical conference, then,’ she cut in wryly. ‘So is there a general consensus?’
‘Unfortunately, no,’ he admitted. ‘Because we don’t know exactly where you ended up when you fell, so there are at least two possibilities.’
‘And?’ she prompted when he paused, knowing there was more to come and dreading the premonition that the bad news was about to get worse.
‘And both of them are under a layer of particularly dense granite that would take for ever to break through, and as it’s sand wiched between softer strata, there’s a danger that—’
‘A danger that the softer layer would collapse before you could get me out and I’d have the whole lot land on top of me,’ she finished for him, able to visualise that happening all too easily after seeing what had gone on at the mouth of the tunnel.
‘Keresik?’ he said when the silence had begun to feel as if it would stretch for ever. ‘Are you still speaking to me?’
‘Oh, Adam…’ She sighed despondently, suddenly aware just how hopeless this all was. ‘Are you all wasting your time out there, trying to find a way to do the impossible? Would it have been better if—?’
‘No!’ he snapped fiercely, not even giving her a chance to finish the sentence. ‘We are going to get you out of there. It’s taking longer than any of us wants, but we’re going to find a way.’
Once again there was an interruption from somebody talking to him, just when she needed his undivided attention to bolster her flagging spirits. Without the torch on she felt, strangely, as if she had her claustrophobia under control—up to a point—but it wouldn’t take much for the whole situation to over whelm her and send her into a full-blown panic attack.
She swallowed down her fear, wondering just how much further she could keep it under control. She was tired and thirsty and it wouldn’t be much longer before hunger kicked in with a vengeance, too, and all she had to look forward to was the last remaining unit of saline and one more energy bar. If ever there was a time when she wished she carried some extra weight, this was it—her body could have lived off its own stores for a while.
‘So, what are the possibilities?’ she forced herself to ask. ‘Where do they think I am?’
‘Well, it can’t be a winze but it could have been an exploratory tunnel…along a rider that didn’t go any further.’
‘A winze? A rider?’ she repeated, not having a clue what he was talking about. Jem would probably have known.
‘I’m sorry. I’ll say it in English,’ he said and began again. ‘It can’t be a winze—a shaft between levels for ventilation—because the map shows that this mine never went below one level. But it could be a passage that was cut to follow a mineral vein that they thought was a rider—a thin seam of ore lying above a larger seam. You might be in a vertical cut that they were dropping down in the hope that they’d hit a big seam somewhere below.’
‘How would they know?’ She briefly flicked the torch on, squinting against the sudden brightness as she played it over the closest rock walls. She certainly couldn’t see anything that looked like a seam of ore—it was all the same rough blotchy in determinate grey with rusty-looking streaks where water had constantly seeped through over the years.
She switched the light off again, shutting out the image of the walls surrounding her so closely, preferring to try not to think about them.
‘Tin occurs naturally as tin dioxide in rock called cassiterite, and the miners would have recognised the tinstone, as they called it, and brought samples up for assay to determine the percentage yield. That way they would know whether it was economically profitable to extract, and there fore worth following the seam any further.’
It made sense. Unless the whole mine had suddenly ceased operation for some unexplained reason, this could easily be the end of a failed exploration…of a failed mine. It certainly didn’t go any further than where she was sitting. ‘And the other option?’
‘That it could be a sump or sink.’
‘And they are?’ she prompted when the explanation wasn’t immediately forth coming, wondering at his sudden reticence when he’d been only too keen to explain mining terms a moment ago. His strange reluctance was still clear when he began speaking again.
‘Some mines were plagued with underground springs or surface water that would drain down through the workings. So, to make sure that the area where the miners were digging wouldn’t flood—which would stop them working a full shift when it rained—there would some times be a drainage pit or pool excavated to draw the water away.’
‘So I could be sitting in something that was part of the underground drainage system?’ It was fascinating, but it would all be so much more interesting if she were watching it on television rather than viewing it in person. It would be nice to have some colourful diagrams to look at, illustrating the terms he’d been telling her.
Either way, she did remember learning that it was an important part of Cornish history that stretched back through the years when Cornwall had produced half of the world’s tin plate and boasted the world’s largest copper mine, all the way back to Phoenician traders who had come to barter and the prehistoric settlers who had first discovered and extracted the minerals.
‘So this hole could actually be full of water sometimes?’
‘Exactly,’ he said shortly, and the unexpectedly clipped tone sent all the hairs up on the back of her neck.
‘Adam, what aren’t you telling me?’ she demanded uneasily.
He was silent for so long that if she couldn’t hear the slight crackle on her handset she would have thought he’d cut the connection again.
‘Adam, please,’ she said quietly. ‘I need to be able to trust you to tell me the truth…now of all times.’
‘I’m sorry, keresik, you’re right,’ he admitted soberly. ‘I just didn’t want to put any more stress on you.’
‘You may as well get it over with,’ she said. ‘Once I know the worst…’
‘Maggie, the weather report is forecasting a band of rain moving across Cornwall later on today. Heavy rain, and it’ll probably arrive by midday.’
‘Oh…damn!’ she choked. ‘And I was going to do some washing today.’
‘Ah, Maggie, don’t…’
‘I know. It was a poor excuse for a joke,’ she said, but it was better than breaking down while he was listening.
She drew in several deep breaths and blew them out slowly while she fought down panic. She’d thought things were as bad as they could be, living right in the middle of her worst nightmare, but they had just got much worse. Until now she’d had hope to cling to. There had been a chance that one of the mining engineers could come up with some way to get her out of there if she was just able to survive long enough on saline and an energy bar, but if she drowned in the meantime…
‘Adam, can we talk about something else? I really don’t want to—’
‘Anything you like,’ he offered quickly, apparently every bit as eager to change the subject as she was. Well, she couldn’t blame him. Talking about her imminent death wasn’t exactly a cheerful topic of conversation.
‘You never told me how you and Caroline met,’ she said, and was almost certain that she heard him groan.
She nearly took the question back, wondering if this was the sort of conversation that would be of interest to a woman but would bore a man to tears. Then the stubbornness that had got her through her mother’s illness, without once breaking down, kicked in.
Adam had started to make love to her a year ago, before she’d caught sight of the photo taken at his wedding to Caroline and had run barefoot into the street. The least he owed her was a conversation about the woman she’d nearly had a part in dishonouring.
‘Was she a doctor, too? Did you meet during your training? Or was she completely unconnected with medicine?’ she prompted, then leant back against the dank support of the rough granite and made herself as comfortable as she could, totally prepared to wait him out until he spoke.
Adam stifled a sigh at her determination. Maggie was nothing if not persistent, always had been, but
he hadn’t been looking forward to this conversation.
If, God forbid, Maggie didn’t survive this disaster, nothing would have been gained by raking over that whole miserable episode in his life, but if she came out of it in one piece, his marriage to Caroline was something that she needed to know about if there was any possibility that he and Maggie were to have a life together.
Ha! It had all seemed so easy when he’d been planning it, once he’d got his head around the fact that Maggie had stormed out like that, unwilling to stay long enough to listen to him.
He hadn’t been able to leave London straight away but, then, he’d decided it was probably wiser to give her time to cool down. First there had been the situation with Caroline to resolve, and that had taken all his determination and concentration for several months and had left him utterly drained.
Then he’d seen the advertisements for a locum post at Penhally Bay Surgery and everything had suddenly come together in his head. He’d still had his contract to finish in London, but he’d decided that if he applied for a job in Penhally and got it, even though it was only supposed to be temporary…
If everything went wrong, it would only be a matter of weeks before he would be leaving Penhally for good, but hope fully it would give him enough time to mend his fences with the only woman he’d ever loved.
Then what? He’d propose, they’d get married and live happily ever after?
As if anything was ever that easy! Look at where they were now, and he’d only met her again that afternoon.
Well, he’d wanted to tell her about Caroline a year ago, when she’d first seen the photograph, so even though he knew that some parts of the story didn’t show him in a very good light, there really wasn’t any reason not to tell her now.
The Doctor's Bride by Sunrise Page 12