She also managed to keep the bulk of press attention away from me yet I knew she must be walking a tightrope in her own office – showbusiness editor or not. After all, she had been at the wedding, she was the bride’s best mate, she would be expected to get the big story. Whatever the big story was. I felt for her. I knew exactly what it was like to be in that kind of situation. She must have been under terrific strain but she did not show it. She was such a good friend and support.
Robin was far too shocked to be supportive of me. I had to support him. That I could understand, but I was a little surprised – maybe because I had grown to regard him as some kind of superman.
Maude continued to be the most magnificent of all. She never spoke of her own grief, never seemed to consider her own pain. Her concern was entirely for Robin and for me and the families of all the other victims. She seemed to regard everyone else as being worse off than her.
I was coming to love Maude more with every passing day, and it was no surprise that she struck up an instant bond with Julia, who stayed with us all at Northgate for several days while the funerals were going on. Often it seemed that only Maude and Julia were holding the rest of us together.
Even before the Abri Island dead were buried, speculation about what had caused the disaster was rife. It seemed quite extraordinary that the entire structure of the island had caved in the way it did. It had been, as Eddie Brown had at once described it, like an earthquake. But earthquakes of that magnitude were not known in the British Isles, not in modern times, anyway – although I couldn’t help remembering those giant chasms which the locals all believed to have been caused by a quake some time around the seventeenth century.
Abri was unique, people said. And early speculation was that there must have been some extraordinary geological fault running through the island. Certainly, whatever the true cause might turn out to be, it seemed likely that Robin’s mother’s instinctive presumption that the disaster had been triggered by the volume of people on the island could be proven absolutely right.
Seventeen
The only excuse I had for my behaviour over the next few months was that I was also in deep shock. I went into a kind of denial, I suppose. Once the funerals were all over the one obsession which preoccupied me was when Robin and I could decently rearrange our wedding. In spite of, or maybe it was because of all that had happened, I could think of little except marrying him.
I lay awake in bed at night reliving my wretched wrecked wedding day and imagining what may have been, what should have been. It was indecent really to allow the true horror of the Abri Island disaster to be over-shadowed, or even in any way challenged, by personal disappointment.
At the end of April Robin went ahead and moved into the Clifton house as planned. I stayed on at the flat for a couple of weeks, wondering if perhaps we would heal better apart, but, predictably, I needed to be with him. He said that he wanted me at the house with him, that it was our house, but there was of course no longer any joy about setting up our first proper home together, and he showed little interest in my presence when I finally completed the sale of my flat and moved in with him. He reacted in the way which I by now knew was typical of him when he was distressed. He withdrew into himself. He was quite capable of going for days without hardly speaking to me at all, and spent many of his evenings sitting in front of the TV mindlessly channel surfing or endlessly playing backgammon on his laptop computer.
I understood his anguish, of course, because I shared it. I too had lost friends and family on Abri. I too had witnessed horror beyond my wildest imaginings. But Robin seemed to have no conception of that. He was obsessed with his own misery.
He was a man of paradox though. It was only at night when he was alone with me that he allowed himself to sink to the depths of despair. He went back to work three weeks after the disaster, immersing himself in his new property business, and seemed quite able to deal with the day-to-day routine. I tried to do the same, returning to The Job about a week later. There was little point in moping around at home, I thought. However, I did not succeed in the way Robin appeared to. I told myself that it was different for me, that Robin’s new business was an impersonal affair involving balance sheets and men in suits, whereas mine was centred around people’s sadnesses and tragedies. All of which I had experienced quite enough of myself lately.
Whatever the reasons, and for the first time in my life, I really was not able to cope. Perhaps surprisingly under the circumstances, I had immediately been put back in charge of the Stephen Jeffries case which remained unresolved. Maybe if I had been working on something with which I was not so emotionally involved it would have been all right, maybe my state of mind might even have been improved by having to concentrate on matters apart from Robin and what had happened on Abri. As it was, within a couple of weeks of being back at Kingswood, everything just became too much for me. Looking through a file of photographs of Stephen Jeffries for the umpteenth time one evening, I started to see accusation in his trusting eyes and suddenly realised that tears were running down my face. This case had got to me long before the Abri disaster and now my emotions were completely out of control. The tears turned into great heaving sobs. I was sitting at my desk with my office door propped open as usual. No doubt the officers in the open-plan area outside were riveted by my display – I didn’t even notice. Eventually I became aware that Peter Mellor, only just back at work himself following the disaster and with his arm still in a sling, was at my side and that my office door was closed.
He put his one good arm around me and held me close, something he would never have dreamed of doing before the terrible experience of Abri. We were both haunted by what we had been through. It was bound to be worse for Robin and me, in terms of guilt if nothing else, but everyone who had been there that day was going to be tormented by it for the rest of their lives. It was a bond between all of us, and as I sobbed convulsively against Peter Mellor’s shoulder I realised that at least he understood. At a glance he seemed so remarkably unaffected by his own ordeal, but I knew this could not really be so.
It was a long time before I managed to stop crying completely. Mellor drew away then and sat down opposite me as I dried my tears.
‘I’d take an early cut, boss, if I were you,’ he said mildly.
I nodded. There was nothing much to say. I picked up my coat and left for home, red-eyed but just about in control again and looking straight ahead as I walked through the big office ignoring the curious stares. I think Mellor and I both knew at that moment that I was in no fit state to run a missing child operation. Chief Superintendent Titmuss, I found out the next day when I was summoned to Portishead, appeared to agree – ironically one of the very few things we had ever agreed on.
It was on a suitably grey Wednesday morning that what passed for my career was finally put on hold. I was taken permanently off the Stephen Jeffries case, on the grounds that I was carrying too much emotional baggage. It was also made fairly clear to me, albeit tactfully, that my seniors would really prefer me to remain at home for a bit. The news was broken by Titmuss, in, for him, an unusually sympathetic manner.
‘The stress you have been under would have broken a lot of people, Rose,’ he said. ‘And it is to your credit that you have coped as well as you have. However I don’t think it would be right for us to allow you to carry the burden of such an emotive case right now. Upon reflection, I think it was too much to have expected you to be able to do so. I’m sure Occupational Health could help out.’ He paused, studying me carefully. ‘And there’s always Goring,’ he continued.
Occupational Health had access to a team of professional counsellors who specialised in sorting out the psychological problems of stressed-out police officers. And when Titmuss mentioned Goring he was referring to the convalescent home at Goring-on-Thames.
Titmuss’s manner was hesitant, even perhaps slightly apprehensive. He was probably waiting for me to show anger and outrage, something I had usually been fairly quick
to do in my career whenever I felt under any kind of threat. After all, if not quite suggesting that I was off my trolley, the boss was telling me clearly enough that he considered that I needed professional help, and furthermore indicating that he didn’t want me on his team in any capacity in the state I was in.
I merely shook my head, and said mildly enough: ‘I’d rather sort it out myself, sir.’
‘Then why don’t you take some leave, as much as you like?’ suggested Titmuss, with a slightly weary sigh.
I realised he was still expecting a fight. He had yet to realise that there was none left in me – that was the problem. I had always been seriously ambitious and highly protective of my territory. Before the Abri disaster I would have fought tooth and nail, as Titmuss well knew. On this occasion I made some kind of token protest but the truth was that I knew I couldn’t carry on as I was. The only thing which hurt a bit was the relief in Peter Mellor’s eyes when he learned that I was no longer going to be in charge of investigating Stephen Jeffries’ disappearance.
Apart from that, although it seems extraordinary now, my first and most major reaction was that there would be one less distraction preventing me from concentrating 100 per cent on Robin. I was aware of him becoming emotionally more and more distant towards me as the days passed. This did not help my fragile state of mind, but it failed to affect my feelings for him, my aims or my desires one jot. I simply determined that we must both come through our terrible ordeal together, and ultimately grow close again – just as we had been before. It really was the only thing that mattered any more.
Nothing could ever be the same, of course. And certainly no kind of normality, however contrived, could return to our lives until the public enquiry had been completed.
Torridge Court, a stately home turned country house hotel, just outside of Bideford, was to be taken over as the enquiry headquarters, to be chaired, as was often the way, by a High Court Judge, Lord Justice Symons. The proceedings were expected to take at least two months.
During the long weeks while we waited for the enquiry to begin, a disturbing new element was introduced. A theory had been put forward that the structure of Abri Island may have collapsed due to the gold-mining operation which Robin’s ancestors had conducted there in the nineteenth century. And the first Robin and I heard of it was early one morning in June when our daily newspaper carried the story. It seemed that there had been a much greater complex of old tunnels on the island than anyone had realised.
Robin was horrified, I could see. I asked him what it meant. Predictably he did not want to talk about it, but this time I made him.
‘It’s never been a secret that there was gold mining on Abri,’ he said eventually. ‘You’ve seen the old works yourself. They used drift mining, a network of tunnels dug out at angles like the London Underground, rather than going straight down to great depths like they do in South Africa. It cost Ernest John a fortune – I told you about that. He was obsessed, couldn’t stop digging, you see, carried on long after the gold had run out.’ Robin paused, as if only just becoming aware of what he was saying. I struggled to take it in. ‘Rose, I had maps of all the mines,’ he said. ‘I gave them to the Japanese, their surveyors didn’t see any danger.’
I waited for Robin to go to his office before I called Peter Mellor – if anyone knew what was going on it would be Peter.
‘Seems like the mining went on for years after the date of those maps,’ he told me. Then he added chillingly: ‘The question being asked, I’m afraid, boss, is did Robin Davey know that?’
I was shaking when I replaced the receiver, shaking uncontrollably like on the day of the disaster. I hadn’t imagined that things could get any worse, but they just had. It seemed to me that a scapegoat was being sought, as usual in these kind of situations, I thought. And when I told Robin about it that evening he retreated even more into the grim shell of nothingness I had become accustomed to.
Within days of the gold-mining story being leaked, relatives of some of the victims began to call for Robin to be charged with criminal negligence or even manslaughter, and the findings of the enquiry would almost certainly dictate whether or not that would happen.
The strain was almost unbearable and Robin and I dealt with it as best we could in our different ways. I quite frequently found myself dissolving into bouts of weeping and sometimes even the basic mechanics of day-to-day life became too much for me. Some mornings I just didn’t bother to get out of bed, and on occasions I eventually did so merely minutes before Robin was due to arrive home. He, meanwhile, continued to go to work every day. But he was like some kind of zombie. He did not seem able to share his feelings with me or anyone else. It may have been my police training which enabled me to realise, even in the blackest moments, that I was going through a period of extreme grief – that I was mourning not only those I had loved and lost on Abri, but also the loss of the person I had been before and knew I could never be again. I was experiencing a severe reaction to all the stress and terrible sadness, but at least I was reacting. Robin wasn’t. I somehow knew that I would get through it all, one way or another, one day. That ultimately I would have some kind of life again. But I was afraid that Robin was heading for a complete breakdown. He seemed to have little interest in anything that was going on around him. Even his extraordinary sex drive deserted him. We did not have sex at all during almost all of the three-month period following the disaster before the enquiry began in July. I could have done with the comfort of it, not to mention the release. Robin clearly was not to be tempted. I dared not even approach him in that way. In fact I hardly dared approach him in any way. He seemed totally unmoved by me, hardly noticing, I suspected, whether I were with him or not. Surprisingly, perhaps, his business seemed to be going very well, but then, even in trauma, Robin didn’t know how to be anything other than highly efficient, and was devoting all the energy he had left to it. I was sure that he derived little satisfaction from it, though. He was on autopilot. All the soul had gone from him. The dreadful strain in him was apparent at every turn. I could not imagine how he was going to face up to the enquiry. I feared he might crack right open then, just as his beloved island had done.
Two days before the proceedings were to begin, Maude had a stroke. I was devastated, I really had grown to love the woman.
Roger called with the news while we were having breakfast. Robin at first seemed incapable of reaction again. After he had spoken to Roger he simply sat down again at the table and continued eating.
‘Don’t you think we should go and see your mother?’ I enquired gently.
He looked mildly surprised. He agreed, of course, but his defences remained in place and his face was set in stone as we drove together to the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital.
I did understand his behaviour. You get numbed by sorrow after a bit. Certainly I felt as if nothing else in life could shock me. But when I walked into Maude’s ward and saw a dribbling geriatric instead of the proud and powerful woman I had always found so captivating, I was shocked rigid.
Maude’s left side was paralysed and her speech dreadfully distorted. She could speak only weakly through the right corner of her mouth, and then manage just a slurred whisper. The entire shape of her face was cruelly twisted. Her left eye drooped and would only half-open.
I made myself not cry, knowing how she would hate that. Robin just stood staring dully at her. I wondered how much more he could take. I wondered if anything would ever move him again. Then I realised that Maude was staring intently back at him with her one good eye, and I felt suddenly sure at least that the brain inside her poor contorted body remained active. Eventually she summoned the strength to beckon him closer.
I couldn’t hear what she was saying really, but I was able to pick up odd words. And from the little I managed to decipher, it was quite clear that she was encouraging Robin to rebuild his life – a remarkable thing for her to do in the condition she was in, but she was a remarkable woman.
‘. . . not
alone . . . share the burden . . . right thing . . . weren’t to know . . .’
Eventually the effort became too much for her and she dropped back into her pillows. But when he pulled away the look on Robin’s face had changed. It wasn’t exactly a miraculous transformation, but his eyes were no longer totally blank. There was a glint of light there again. It seemed almost as if whatever Maude had said to him had at least begun to bring him back to life. Yet when I asked him about it later, as we were driving back to Bristol, he merely said that she hadn’t made much sense, but, yes, she had been encouraging him to start to rebuild.
‘And that you should share the burden?’ I enquired. ‘With me perhaps? I do wish you would, Robin.’
He was driving, but he took his eyes off the road to glance at me for a moment in a strangely perplexed sort of way, then his expression cleared into some kind of comprehension.
‘Well, yes,’ he said vaguely. ‘And she told me I was all that she had left, that I mustn’t give up.’ He spoke quietly and above the noise of the car’s engine I could only just hear what he said next. ‘I owe it to her, don’t I, Rose?’ he said.
And for the first time since the disaster he kissed me – just leaned across as we belted down the motorway and pecked me on the cheek. My heart lifted. It felt like the very best kiss of my life.
By the time the enquiry began Robin seemed at least to have recovered his public composure – or maybe he had never completely lost that. When he was called to give evidence he appeared distraught but dignified.
We knew by then that the extensive new survey undertaken by mining experts had indeed discovered a treacherous network of tunnelling on Abri, much greater than anyone had previously suspected. Robin pleaded ignorance, and under the circumstances, that was reasonable enough. Like all the others who had lived on Abri, he had had no idea of the danger beneath his feet, he said. Nobody had.
For Death Comes Softly Page 21