The Night Raid

by Clare Harvey

  She felt a draught of air, saw the purplish blob of the driver’s face as he held the door open for her. ‘Nah then, d’you need a hand?’ he said. ‘What with the baby and all?’

  ‘No,’ Violet replied, slipping the ring on her finger and stuffing the paper deep into her pocket. ‘Thank you for offering.’ She picked up her sleeping baby and shunted out of the cab and into the cold night air. The driver shut the car door behind her. ‘I think we’ll be just fine on our own, now.’

  Chapter 28

  Laura

  She kept her hand moving, despite the paralysing panic that threatened to halt her entirely. Oh, good Lord, Laura, what the hell are you playing at?

  She tried to distract herself with the landscape, the way the headland nudged the waves like a dragon’s snout, sea spray like smoke from its nostrils. Her cold, scared fingers muddled the shadows of boulders and surf as she continued to sketch. Perhaps she could work it up into a painting, later on: November in Sennen – the mauves and shades of teal of the winter skies and waves, horizon citrus-bright as lit touch paper, flashing in between as the sun westered low.

  The shoreline sighed. Soon the men would be crunching down to their boats, ready to launch the first herring fleet of the season, heaving in lines and heading off into the inky night. But not quite yet. There was still daylight to be had. And the last bus from Penzance had not yet arrived.

  Laura leant against the rough pebble-dash wall of the lifeboat station, in the lee of the wind, sketching, and waiting. What if he didn’t come? But what if he did? The waves whispered like post office gossips and the sand shifted uneasily underfoot.

  Then, a sudden screech, loud laughter, footfalls and high-pitched shouts: a swarm of children swirling down the sand towards the water’s edge. Of course – school must have finished for the day. Sennen was jam-packed with evacuees, now, cockney voices twanging in the wind. As Laura looked on she saw boys ‘shoot’ each other with pieces of driftwood, making machine-gun noises and dropping dramatically sandwards. Some girls were searching for shells, others began making ‘pies’ in the damp sand by the shore. The older boys and girls were skimming ducks-and-drakes, which tilted and span out over the pewter waves. None of them so much as glanced in Laura’s direction. One little girl, pixie hat tilted skew-whiff and half-unbuttoned brown coat three sizes too big, trailed along behind the others, cradling a rag doll. She looked too young to have been in school, she couldn’t have been more than three or four – perhaps her mother just let her out to play with the bigger children at the end of the day whilst she was making supper, Laura thought, just as her own mother had done, sending her outside to play with Nellie and Sis, to stop her hopping on Cook’s bustle, trying to ride it like a pony and getting in the way of the important meal-making business.

  ‘Hello, dear,’ Laura said. The girl looked up: huge, dark eyes in her heart-shaped face, a crust of snot on the edge of one nostril. ‘If you can stand still like that for five minutes, I’ll give you a penny.’ The girl blinked. Her lashes were long and curled. ‘Can you do that?’ The girl nodded. ‘Very well.’ Laura turned over a fresh sheet of her sketchbook. ‘Just like musical statues, still as a statue, starting – now!’

  Laura’s hand gripped the pencil, swerving over the paper, taking in the diagonal of the girl’s coat, which was flapping half-open in the breeze, the curl of chestnut hair across her wide forehead. Her pencil moved down, catching the jumble of clutched doll dangling down near the uneven hem of her frock.

  Perhaps she could use this, Laura thought: the girl and the headland. It would be like one of her pictures from the old days, the good old Cornwall days, before there were wars, before she had to paint soldiers and airmen and factories.

  She was just focusing on the way the girl’s plump toddler’s calves looked like stool legs pushed into the sand, when she heard it: the sound of the Penzance bus winding down the road into Sennen Cove. Laura leant over and put her pad and pencil down on the sand, then fumbled in her pocket for change. As she did so, her fingers slipped over the triangle of painted canvas that she’d kept with her all these months, since Nottingham, and she shivered.

  ‘Here you are, dear. You did a very good job of standing still.’ The girl’s fingers were like peeled prawns, curling and closing over the coin. She ran off to join the others, then, shoes pad-padding on the sand, coat flying out behind her.

  Laura heard the bus coming to a halt on the front. She looked over to where it idled, watching the passengers getting off, feeling the base of her throat tighten like the drawstring on an old-fashioned purse. Two women in black hats got off first, and a man with a huge sack of something. Behind them a queue of airmen and women, a grey-blue spurt of youth and vigour. There was an almost identical line of RAF men and women waiting to get on. The two cloud-coloured ribbons mingled and swirled as the colleagues exchanged greetings in passing. That was it, then: a couple of civvies and half an RAF unit, and nothing more.

  So he hadn’t come, despite her telegram?

  No, wait.

  Slowly, a tall, dark figure emerged from the doorway, uncurling a little as it went, like a flower finding sunlight. Black coat and hat: he looked like a silhouette against the bright green paintwork of the country bus – bag in one hand, hooked walking stick in the other. (A stick – did he always use a stick, nowadays? He’d used one when they went for that walk, on Easter Sunday, she remembered. But that was nearly seven months ago, now.)

  Leaving her sketchbook on the sand, Laura began to walk up the beach towards him. She hadn’t coiled her hair in its usual ‘earphones’ today, merely twisted it up into a low bun, as she used to in those early days of marriage. Now, as she strode out into the windy afternoon, it began to pull loose, hairpins scratching against her skull as the breeze tried to tug it free.

  ‘Harold,’ she called out, but her voice was whisked away, and he looked round, not seeing her, whilst the wave of air-force uniforms slid past him and onto the bus. ‘Harold!’ She forced her voice louder, and this time he glanced in her direction, startled. He looks like a lost old man, she thought. She stopped, then, by the path that ran up from the strand, past the sea wall and onto the road. She lifted one hand to her face. The skin was sagging, where once it had been taut and firm. And the strand of hair that had broken free and flung itself against her cheek was no longer corn-blonde, but snow-white. He is an old man, she thought. He is an old man, and I am an old woman.

  Are we too old for this?

  She strode up the path to the bus stop. As she arrived, the bus pulled away. Petrol fumes mingled with the salty air on her tongue. She walked straight up to him, but stopped short just a couple of feet away. ‘Come-quick-to-Sennen-I-am-on-the-brink-stop-Laura,’ he said, glaring at her. ‘What the hell, Laura? What the bloody hell?’ He turned away, then, looking out to sea.

  ‘We need to talk, Harold.’

  ‘Why couldn’t we talk in Malvern? I thought you were ill. I thought something was wrong!’

  ‘Come on. I’ll explain.’

  He let himself be led down the path to the beach, back to her sheltered perch by the lifeboat station. She offered her arm, but he refused, instead planting his stick firmly and deeply in the sand at each step.

  The sun had sunk lower now, a glowing golden ring dipping towards the edge of the sea. The wind had got up, too, white horses flecking the seascape and gulls tossed like ticker tape on a parade. The children were still playing their noisy games, but Laura had lost sight of the little girl with the doll.

  They leant next to each other against the wall: dash-dash, like the start of a tally mark. Harold took out cigarettes. They were a devil to light, in the wind, and burnt fierce and quick when they did. Smoke and briny-chill Atlantic air rushed and boiled in Laura’s lungs.

  ‘Well?’ Harold said, at length.

  Laura sighed and tossed the remains of her ciggie down on the sand. She pushed her flapping hair off her forehead with her left hand. Out with it, Laura, get it all out into t
he open air. She took in a breath, ready to begin, but it was Harold who cut in: ‘Where’s your wedding ring? Why aren’t you wearing it? Is that what this is all about? Is it over between us?’

  ‘I think it’s been over for a long time, Harold. Since the winter of ’16, in point of fact.’

  ‘You left me. Never forget that. You were the one who went off with the soldiers, with that Canadian boxer boy. Harold-the-conchie cuckolded by a soldier, that’s what they were saying, remember?’

  ‘Cuckolded? I had a commission to paint the Canadian Regiment in Surrey, that was all.’

  ‘You shacked up with that amateur boxer boy in London. You were away for months.’

  Laura didn’t answer immediately, but let her gaze move to the horizon. There was that sense, as there often was on the western coastal edge, of the sea being tugged towards America, like a vast damask tablecloth about to be whisked off. She drew breath and turned back to face her husband.

  ‘Shacked up?’ she said at last. ‘Who told you that? Ella? I did not “shack up” with him. I painted him.’

  ‘Paintable, was he?’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. In any case, what about the girl?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The girl. The one who “looked after” you when I was away.’

  ‘I barely remember anything from that time, you know that.’

  ‘How convenient.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘The girl – Sarah.’

  ‘Surely you’re not suggesting?’

  ‘Surely, you’re not denying!’

  ‘Why bring it up now?’

  ‘What if there was a child?’

  ‘What do you mean? Was there? Is there?’

  ‘No! No, not any more, there isn’t.’ She looked back at the sea, the golden globe dipping into the dark waters. No boats out there – who would set out in this?

  ‘I don’t understand. What are you saying, Laura?’

  She turned back and saw her husband’s face, as if it were a stranger’s: the old man with the aristocratic nose and darkly arching brows, despite the whiteness of his hair. She cleared her throat. ‘I’m saying that I will not have you thinking that I left you for a soldier, when you yourself—’

  ‘When has it ever mattered to you what I think, Laura?’ he butted in. ‘After the Surrey affair, there were the circuses and the gypsies and the ballerinas and the theatre and the trip to America. Any excuse to escape me, to escape the marital bed. And you’re still doing it now. I haven’t seen you since April, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Yes. You have me there, Harold. I have spent the last twenty-five years avoiding married life. And you know why? Because I thought you didn’t want me any more. When I came back in ’17 everything had changed between us.’ She could smell the dank fishy smell of low-tide weed, the rising wind was shoving it up her nostrils as she waited for his response, turning away from him again. She could hear the waves, louder now, crashing and sucking on the shoreline.

  ‘You changed, Laura. It was you. You turned your back on our marriage. You did it then, and you’re still doing it now, swanking round the country. They think I don’t hear them, but I do, “Laura behaves as if she has no husband” – that’s what they say. That’s what they’ve been saying all these years.’

  ‘Who is this “they”? Barry? Ella? K? For God’s sake, I’d like to know, because all I’ve ever done is work damned hard to keep a roof over our heads, and you know it, Harold Knight.’ The sun had almost set. Night was coming in, bringing a gale with it. She kept looking out to sea, away from Harold, away from the schoolchildren, away from it all. Wishing she could be out there, too.

  ‘You’ve been working damned hard to make sure your precious public don’t forget you.’

  ‘Oh, you think I do this to show off?’ She turned back to face him.

  ‘To a point, yes.’

  ‘I do it to pay your ruddy doctor’s bills and to put food in our mouths. That’s what I did in ’16, and I’m still doing it now, you foolish old man.’

  ‘I never asked for your charity.’ He couldn’t even look at her as he said it, had his eyes fixed somewhere further along the shore.

  ‘It’s not charity. In sickness and in health. That’s what I promised, and I kept my vows.’

  ‘The implication being?’

  ‘Oh, you know fine well what the implication is, Harold. I just want this out in the open air. I want the truth.’

  ‘I’m going, Laura.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing!’ She put a hand out to stop him, but he wrenched free.

  ‘No – I’m going to help those girls, see.’ He flung out an arm. Laura looked to where her husband pointed. There was a gaggle of girls at the shoreline poking mittened fingers out to where a rag doll was floating, snatched and tossed by a wave. Harold began to stump across the sand. ‘I’m coming, we can use my stick to hook your dolly,’ he called out, and half a dozen little woolly-hatted heads turned to look.

  Laura set off after him, and had almost caught up, when there was a sudden commotion from the group, a high-pitched yell as someone struggled free. ‘No, let me go, I want my baby back!’ And Laura watched, horrified, as the little girl she’d been sketching just a handful of minutes earlier launched herself into the roiling sea. Out she went, right into the surf, arms out to try to rescue her dolly, and Laura saw her eyes open wide, the panic in her face, as the freezing brine embraced her, grabbing her heavy coat, dragging her down. She opened her mouth to scream, but as she did so a huge wave crested and crashed, sucking her under and away from the shore. Oh, God.

  ‘Children, quick, run for help,’ Laura shouted, but the wind took her words, and the girls faltered dumbly. ‘Run!’ Laura screamed, catching up with the group. ‘Get help, now!’ and they fled as one at the urgency in her voice.

  She didn’t hesitate.

  ‘Laura, no, it’s too dangerous,’ Harold called, trying to catch her sleeve, but she ignored him and plunged into the waves where she’d last seen the girl.

  Ice cold, everywhere, heart-stopping. Don’t open your mouth, Laura, don’t you dare scream. Water dragging her clothes, salt in her eyes, in her mouth. Where was the girl? There, cloth in the water. Catch it, pull. Almost. Don’t lose your footing, further out. A little further. There she is. But then a wave, sudden as a slap, shoving and rolling, liquid sandpaper all over her body and icy water up her nose, in her ears in her mouth, green-grey all around. Which way is up? Don’t panic. Hold your breath, don’t scream. Mangled and trampled and kneaded. A pause. Firm underfoot. Stand up, gasp down air, cough, breath, quick, before the next wave, Laura. There, a coat sleeve. Grab it, heave and pull. Come back to me. I am not letting you go. I am giving you a second chance. Come here and be alive. Tugging at cloth as slippery as weed and a body heavy as an anchor and lifting up, away from the greedy sea. Another wave comes, jaws snapping, but Laura has her feet this time, holds the body high and tight, cradling her safe. Now, she has her, how to get back to shore without slipping under again?

  ‘Take it, Laura!’ What’s that? The hooked end of Harold’s cane, Harold reaching out, tethered by a phalanx of boys. ‘Take it!’

  The wood, smooth-solid, something to cling to through the next wave-rush. She shoves the girl’s body over her shoulder like a sandbag, begins the slow stagger up the shifting sands.

  And the girl is struggling on her shoulder, coughing, vomiting. Alive – alive! People are running, shouting, hands like anemones sucking and pulling her up, away from the sea. And someone is tugging at the girl, trying to take her away. ‘Thank you, oh dear God, thank you. Is she alive? She’s breathing, oh thank God. Thank God.’ And the hands are pulling at the girl, and Laura won’t let go, because the girl is safe with her. Who knows what will happen if she lets go? But they prise her away and Laura’s arms are empty and the girl is gone.

  She sinks to the sand and the tears come suddenly in a saltwater rush, and the sobs heave li
ke the wind in the waves and it’s all over. All over. ‘Zelah, Zelah, Zelah.’ She chokes out the words, snot and tears running warm rivulets through her old, wrinkled cheeks.

  A presence, next to her. An arm round her shoulders. A familiar voice. ‘Dearest. You saved her, my brave, foolish wife.’

  Laura spat out water, wiped a hand over her wet face. Looked at the dark beach, crowded as a summer’s day, the sunset casting odd shadows, like a negative of a photographic print. Someone put a blanket round her shoulders, thrust a metal flask into her hands, guided it to her lips. A sip of fire. The last rays of sun piercing the grey skies. Heaving upwards. A guided shuffle up the beach. Colours all shadowy, jumping and spinning, or was it her dizzy mind making it so?

  ‘Let’s get you in the warm and out of these wet clothes. Where are we staying?’

  ‘Ocean View. The yellow one.’ She tried to point but found she could no longer lift her arm above waist height, and let it fall, trembling, to her sodden skirts. ‘You’re sure she’ll be all right, the girl?’

  ‘Yes, they’re taking her up to the RAF medical centre now, but she’s breathing, she’ll be fine.’

  ‘We saved her?’

  ‘You saved her.’ Her husband’s arm was firm and strong at her back as they made their way towards the hotel. ‘She’s got a second chance, lucky thing.’

  Laura gulped in the cold air, twitching like a netted herring. Her arms were empty without the little girl to hold. ‘A second chance?’ she said.

  Chapter 29

  Violet

  Vi heard the sound of a lorry pulling up at the kerb behind her and turned to look. She was almost home now, the baby asleep in the brand-new Silver Cross pram, so big they’d had to travel down in the guard’s van with all the bicycles, but Vi hadn’t cared.

  She was just on her way from the station, passing the King’s Arms. Up ahead, on the opposite side of the street, she could see Mr Lavery behind the counter at the chippy, serving a knot of young women. She was thinking about maybe popping in and buying a load of chips for them all, as a surprise. It wouldn’t be the only surprise, either, she thought, glancing down at the baby’s scrunched-up apricot face nestled amongst the lace-edged covers.