by Jane Cable
“Follow me,” I called to Izzie and started to run along the path.
It wasn’t a quick descent to the water. I knew a deep gully cut through the woods and I could tell the voice came from beyond it. Or rather voices, because the next time there were two yells, increasingly loud and desperate. I stopped and cupped my hands.
“Don’t panic – we’re coming!” I shouted. “Where are you?”
“In the river.”
“Where?”
“By… by the big bend.”
Izzie had caught up and we were off again to the edge of the woods and down a path that ran alongside a field. At the bottom was a wide strip of land where the Hamble had been dumping silt for generations as it curved towards the sea. And sure enough, about a third of the way across the river were two children – one of them little more than a toddler – clinging to each other as the water swirled around the taller one’s knees.
“Don’t try to move – I’m on my way,” I called and started peeling off my shoes and clothes. Izzie bent to remove her plimsolls but I stopped her. “Stay here – you don’t know the river this far up.”
“I want to help.”
“Well stay on the bank and if I get into trouble run for your life up that field – there’s a farm at the top. But I should be OK – I can probably pick my way to them across the sandbanks – they can’t have crossed the main channel.”
I walked to where the end of the spit was being submerged by the rising tide and started into the water, following the ridge of silt as far as I could. The river wasn’t wide – only about ten yards, but it was freezing cold and I had to make my way upstream to reach the children. I could tell now that the older one was a boy of about seven or eight but the smaller child was clinging to him so hard all I could see was a red T-shirt and a tangle of fair hair.
I was near enough to talk to the boy and tell him to stand firm and stay calm.
“But it’s getting deeper,” he whimpered.
“It’s OK – it’s only the tide coming up and it’s not happening that fast. I’ll take the little one first then come back for you.” That was moments before I realised they were the other side of the deep channel and I cursed inwardly.
I edged as close to them as I could. I could swim to reach them, but then what? They were entirely surrounded by water and I couldn’t hold two children out of it for very long. But I was almost within touching distance and it gave me an idea.
I looked back at Izzie on the bank. “Can you manage to follow the way I came?” I called. She’d tucked up her dress and was in the water almost before I’d finished speaking.
“OK,” I told the boy. “You hand the little one to me, I’ll hand him to Izzie and then I’ll come back for you. I won’t get out of this river without you, I promise.”
The boy was shivering but he nodded. “G…go with the man, Toby,” he said, but Toby wouldn’t relax his grip.
“Toby,” he tried again. “You have to. Gran will be really cross. He’s going to carry you to that nice lady then come back for me.” His voice shook despite his attempt to sound brave.
“Come on Toby,” I said. “It’ll be an adventure.”
Finally the toddler looked at me and I held out both hands. “Can you edge a bit closer and still be safe?” I asked the older lad.
He nodded and shuffled near enough for me to grab Toby’s arms, then gave the child a little shove and the force was enough for me to swing him up towards me and he clasped his hands around my neck in desperation. I wobbled for a moment but held my ground and turned to take him towards the shore. Izzie was only a few feet away and I handed him over, returning for the older boy.
I took both his hands across the deep channel of water. “Now jump,” I told him, “and try to swing out past me. I won’t let go of you, whatever happens.” He launched himself towards me and I used his momentum to pull him across. We both stumbled and I almost slid over, but we fought to remain upright as the river swirled around our legs, the lad clinging to my waist.
Izzie was knee-deep with Toby in her arms but at that moment the toddler decided to make a bid for freedom. Struggling to hold onto him she slipped and they both fell headlong into the river. To her credit, she didn’t let go of his hand and I was able to push past the older boy and grab Toby before he had spent very long in the water. He promptly threw up an improbably large amount of river, then started wailing as I carried him to the shore. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the other boy help Izzie up and hand in hand they picked their way back to dry land.
I had no idea what to do with a screaming toddler so I put Toby down on the grass while holding him firmly by the shoulders. Izzie looked equally helpless but the older boy, who I took to be his brother, was more experienced in these matters.
“Toby – shut up.” Nothing happened.
“Tobes – I’m telling you – put a sock in it.” Still no response, but he had a final gambit. “If you stop crying right now I’ll let you play with my Death Star.” It worked a treat and there was silence on the riverbank.
I turned to Izzie. “You’re soaked through.” It was a statement of the obvious if ever there was one; her sundress clung to her in a way that only accentuated how cold she was. “Take that off and put my dry clothes on,” I told her, as much for my own sake as hers.
Her eyes sparkled. “And what are you going to wear? My dress?” I followed her gaze and suddenly felt very naked in just my damp boxer shorts.
“Don’t be so silly,” she continued, “put on your trousers and wrap that baby in your shirt.”
“Why don’t you come back to Gran’s?” asked the older boy through chattering teeth. “Then you can tell her how you rescued us and perhaps I won’t get such a tongue lashing. Not until you’ve gone home, anyway.”
“And do you deserve a tongue lashing?” I asked.
He nodded. “I’m the oldest. And it was my idea to cross the river.” All of a sudden he looked close to tears.
“Where does your gran live?” Izzie distracted him.
“In the big house next to the farm. She keeps chickens,” he sniffed, trying to smile.
The boy led us up the side of the field and behind the woods. We passed the farm buildings some fifty yards away then came to a tall beech hedge which seemed filled with contented clucking. At the corner was a gap and we emerged into a wide open space with a chicken coop to our right and a patchy lawn to our left. I’d been carrying Toby but he cried out to be let down and raced across the lawn towards the house.
Doubtless due to his yelling the French windows opened and a tall grey haired woman stepped out, dressed in brown slacks and a blouse the colour of the mellow bricks that framed her. Toby barrelled into her legs and she picked him up.
“You’re soaked through! Stephen – what on earth’s been happening?” There was the vaguest hint of a guttural accent in her voice but I couldn’t place it.
When Stephen didn’t reply I started to explain. “They got stuck half way across the river when the tide came up. We pulled them out but we all got a bit wet.”
“You can say that again, young man. You’d better come in and get dry – it’s the least I can do.”
Before we knew it, Gran was bustling us through a dining room, seemingly oblivious to the trail of wet footprints across the Chinese carpet. An oak staircase rose in two flights from the hall and once we had reached the top she made the boys wait while she showed Izzie and me into a narrow shower-room.
“Take off your wet things and put them out on the landing then have a shower to warm up. I’ll get these two into a bath then put your clothes in the tumble drier and find something for you to wear while they dry. There’s plenty of clean towels on the airer.”
Never, in all my daydreams in the pub garden, had I imagined we’d end up in a strange bathroom with orders to strip off.
“You’re wetter than I am,” I told Izzie, “so you go first.” I handed her a large towel. “I’ll look away until you’re decent aga
in.” Turning around I found myself looking straight into a mirror and I could see her peeling off her dress. “Izzie – stop,” I panicked. “I’ll have to look at the back of the door or something.”
Her touch was gentle on my shoulders but then she hugged me so hard the damp from her dress seeped through my jeans. “Robin – you’re one in a million, do you know that?”
I grunted. “It’s just good manners.”
She grinned. “I’ll be tempted to look when it’s your turn to shower.”
“Then I hope you won’t be disappointed.” I twisted around and kissed the tip of her nose. “Now please get on with it, Izzie – you’re beginning to shiver again.” And I was beginning to get a hard on it would take all my reserves of willpower to deal with before it was my turn to wrap myself in nothing but a towel.
Chapter Seven
It was only my shirt that was really wet so once I had showered I was able to go downstairs looking reasonably like myself in my own jeans and a sweatshirt we had found neatly folded on the floor outside the bathroom door. Izzie had fared rather worse in a floral blouse and a navy skirt so long she had to hold it up as we made our way downstairs.
Gran must have heard us and was waiting in the hall. She led us into a bright kitchen at the back of the house, completely dominated by a scrubbed pine table. Our clothes hung limply on a rail over a cream Aga. “They’re almost dry,” she reassured us, “I’m just airing them off.” Next to the hob was a huge jug of roses, their scent filling the air.
Introductions being well overdue I put out my hand. “I’m Robin Vail,” I told her, to be greeted by a firm, dry handshake.
“Jennifer Dodd. I’m the boys’ grandmother and I can’t begin to thank you for hauling the little buggers out of the river.”
I looked around. “Where are they?”
“Tucked up in bed with instructions to stay there, out of trouble, until their clothes dry. Not that they don’t have other clothes,” she twinkled, “I just like the punishment to fit the crime.”
I smiled at her. “Stephen hoped he wouldn’t get his tongue lashing until after we’d gone.”
“Then Stephen hoped wrong. They had at least ten minutes while they were in the bath. They scared me so much – but that will be the end of it as far as I’m concerned. And in truth I am blaming myself for letting them go into the woods on their own. I never dreamt they’d go near the river, let alone cross it. The tongue lashing I’ve given them will be nothing compared to the one I’m going to get from my daughter when she comes back.”
“You were only trying to give them a bit of freedom,” Izzie chipped in. “It’s too easy to molly-coddle children in this day and age.”
Jennifer’s sharp eyes looked from one of us to the other. “You two look a bit young to have a family.”
“We haven’t known each other that long,” Izzie blushed.
“Oh dear, so your quiet romantic walk in the woods was interrupted by my young hoodlums. I’m so sorry – but on the other hand I am really very glad you were there.”
“I brought Izzie to show her the Faerie Tree.”
“And did you make a wish?”
I shook my head. “We’d only been there a few minutes when we heard the boys calling for help.”
“Then you must go back and do it as soon as your clothes are dry.” She pulled out one of the chairs from the table and gestured to us to sit down.
“Another time. Izzie’s probably going to be late as it is.”
“It won’t take you five minutes – and the hidden folk will look especially kindly on your wishes after your good deed for the day,” Jennifer persisted as she started to pour tea from an earthenware pot.
“There’ll be another time.” I wanted to sound firm but when Izzie pleaded to go back it wasn’t in my heart to refuse.
So once our clothes were dry we retraced our steps through Jennifer’s garden and back onto the path between the trees. I don’t recall us saying much as we walked along, in fact the woods seemed eerily silent, the air oppressive in the late afternoon heat.
Then we were in front of the tree.
“What do we do?” asked Izzie.
I shrugged my shoulders, “Just close our eyes and wish, I guess.”
“No – we have to make it more special than that. Come on – we’ll hold hands around the trunk.”
Izzie stood on one side of the Faerie Tree and I stood on the other and we stretched. The tree was of a size where we could hold hands without having to hug it so closely the little offerings would snag on our clothes. She gripped my fingers and there was only one wish in my mind: please, please, let it come right for Izzie and me in the end.
A distant rumble of thunder broke the stillness and I let her go.
“What did you wish for?” she asked.
“Oh, nothing much – world peace, that sort of thing.”
She tucked her arm into mine. “I like a man with big ideas,” she joked and then added as an afterthought, “should we leave a present for the fairies, do you think?”
“I think they’re more in the way of thank yous than bribes,” I told her.
“Well then,” she replied, “we’ll bring them something next time.”
But that was the day everything changed. I didn’t see Izzie for… I tried to work it out… twenty years, three months, two weeks and… or was it three weeks… my mind was too tired. I remember thinking; perhaps I’ll just curl up on the bench and go to sleep. Maybe, when I woke, Izzie would be standing next to me with a cardboard cup of coffee in her outstretched hands.
Chapter Eight
After my visit to the Faerie Tree I distinctly remember whistling all the way from the corner shop, where I’d made Izzie drop me, to my front door. I called to Mum as I opened it but assumed her reply was drowned by Frankie Goes To Hollywood blaring from the kitchen. It wasn’t.
I know I ran across the room but it felt as though I was wading through mud. I lifted her up but there was no resistance, although she felt warm. Still holding her I groped for the phone and dialled 999. They had an ambulance on the way within minutes, and in the meantime I was to check her pulse. I couldn’t find it; the sweat pouring off me made her skin slippery, but I kept trying and yelling at her to wake up. Then the ambulance men were at the door, closely followed by Auntie Jean and a couple of other neighbours.
It was Auntie Jean who led me into the front room once they told me she was dead, Auntie Jean who went straight to the drinks’ cabinet and poured us both a large scotch, forcing me to gulp mine down through chattering teeth. It was Auntie Jean who kept me away from the kitchen while they came and took her for a post mortem. It was Auntie Jean who cried with me until neither of us could cry anymore and the whisky bottle was empty. I suspect she might even have put me to bed, but I was so drunk I can’t honestly remember.
I sleepwalked through the next few days with Auntie Jean at my elbow. I got compassionate leave from work and she kept me busy sorting through Mum’s things and cleaning the house. Then came the second blow; the post mortem showed that Mum had died from an overdose of painkillers – whether deliberate or accidental, they couldn’t say.
The police came to question me. When had I left the house? When did I come back? Had Mum been depressed? Where were the tablets kept? Had I found a note? I struggled to fathom what they were getting at, but Auntie Jean was sharper. She told them that she – and a number of other neighbours – had seen me leave, and seen me come back. And that Mum had spent most of the afternoon with her anyway. But she had been in pain, terrible pain – it must have been a mistake – she’d just taken too many tablets.
As soon as the police had gone I confessed to Auntie Jean that Mum had never told me about the pain.
I heard the slams of their car door as she turned away from the window to face me. “Me neither.”
“Then why… why did you tell them she had?”
She sat down on the sofa and held my hand. “Robin, love, they’d never have left you
alone. And even if they had then they’d have tried to slur her memory with suicide.”
“Is that what you really think she did?”
“I think… she was in pain. She just never told us. Why else would she have had those tablets in the first place? But she’d never have chosen to leave you, Robin – that’s one thing I do know.”
The inquest recorded an open verdict.
I may have sleepwalked through those days but I wasn’t actually sleeping. Every time I went into the hall I heard Mum saying that she didn’t want to ruin my life as well. I couldn’t avoid that hall; even if I used the back door I still had to go up the stairs to bed. I couldn’t stand the kitchen, either. Slowly I realised that being in that house would bring me no peace; everywhere I turned were reminders of my guilt.
Leaving was harder. I wandered about, looking at the pictures on the walls, turning Mum’s ornaments around and around on the mantelpiece, and finally going upstairs to her room. I opened the wardrobe – it was empty, but somehow the musky scent of Opium clung on. I sat on her bed and cried for ages, and then I must have fallen asleep, and rested, because I woke up with enough resolve to see out my plan.
I went up to the attic and found my rucksack, my tent and the rest of my camping gear. Then I went into my bedroom and stuffed the rucksack full of clothes. Well, not quite full; I left enough space for the photograph of Mum and me she had kept in a frame on her bedside table. I burrowed it in with my T-shirts then collected my driving licence, my Post Office passbook and my bank card. I didn’t think I’d need anything else.
When I knocked on Auntie Jean’s door there was no reply so I wrote her a note saying I needed a break before I could handle all this and I’d see her soon. I don’t know whether I was telling her the truth or not.
I got the bus into town and a train to Bournemouth. I bought myself a burger and chewed through it sitting on the beach, watching the lights on the pier twinkle in the dusk. The resort was buzzing behind me like an angry wasp so I picked up my rucksack and walked along the sand until all I could hear was the sea.