It just so happened that Annie came visiting that evening. Gwen flew down the veranda steps, flung her arms round her and burst into tears.
‘What is it?’ Annie asked. ‘What’s happened? What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing’s the matter,’ Gwen told her when she could speak. ‘Oh, Annie, it’s happened at last—after all this time! I was beginning to think it never would!’
A slow smile spread over her friend’s face.
‘You’re not—are you?’
‘I am, I am!’ Gwen hardly knew herself whether she was laughing or crying. ‘I’m expecting a baby! And you’re the first person we’ve told, Annie. We haven’t even been to see my mum and dad yet.’
‘That’s wonderful news,’ Annie said. ‘Congratulations, both of you.’
Gwen looked over at Reggie, who hadn’t stopped grinning since she had made her announcement. ‘No more nasty digs about pencils and lead now, eh? It was just waiting till it could be born here, in our little wooden hut.’
‘That’s right. Now we’ll be a proper family,’ Reggie said, coming to hug her and Annie together.
In their emotional state, neither of them noticed that Annie was a bit quiet.
As the summer progressed, along with Gwen’s pregnancy, the only thing that worried her was Annie’s situation. She often talked it over with Reggie.
‘She always did have a horrible time there with that father of hers, but at least she used to get out and enjoy herself every now and again. Now everyone’s turned against her because of—you know—It’s even worse. I think I’m the only person who’s still friends with her. It’s really horrible, the way people behave.’
‘A lot of girls had their heads turned by the Yanks,’ Reggie said.
‘He promised to marry her, you know! The dirty swine. She wasn’t to know he was already married. But people don’t think of that, they just treat poor Annie like she’s some good-time girl, and she isn’t.’
‘No,’ Reggie agreed. ‘She’s a really decent person. She’s bringing that boy of hers up really well.’
‘She is. He’s a smashing little boy, is Bobby. But people don’t see that, they don’t see how hard she’s trying. They just call her all sorts of names. I mean, I’m not surprised at that blooming Beryl Sutton. She always did hate Annie, and they’re living over there on the North Cliff now and she’s Lady Muck with knobs on. But the others—! You’d think they were all plaster saints, and I know for a fact that they weren’t. That lot that used to work at Sutton’s, they’d run after anything in trousers, but Annie, the only boys she ever went out with were her Tom and that blooming Yank.’
Gwen sighed.
‘I wish I could wave a magic wand and change your life,’ she often said to Annie.
And Annie would laugh and hug her. ‘Just stay being my friend,’ she said.
At the end of their first summer as caravan site owners, they still had a huge bank loan, but they did have plenty of customers who wanted to come back next year and who said they would tell their friends. They cleaned out the vans for the last time and shut them up for the winter. Gwen gave up her job at the rock factory with relief and settled down to knit bootees and wait for the baby.
On the last day of January, the wind howled across the low-lying fields and battered against the walls of the chalet. It found its way through all the cracks and made the fire blow back and fill the little living room with smoke.
‘It’s going to be a bad night,’ Reggie said. ‘I’ll go and check on all the vans before we settle down.’
They listened to the weather forecast, which wasn’t very cheerful.
‘What a good thing we had the electricity put in,’ Gwen said. ‘It feels safer somehow when you can see properly.’
‘Silly old thing,’ Reggie said. ‘Want to listen to Saturday Night Theatre?’
It took them both a while to get off to sleep that night, what with the wind shaking the little chalet and Gwen finding it difficult to get comfortable. It seemed to Gwen that she had only just managed to drop off when Reggie shook her awake.
‘What? What is it?’ she slurred.
‘We’re flooded,’ Reggie told her. ‘Quick, get dressed. We’ve got to get out of here.’
‘Flooded? How?’
Gwen sat up in bed. She realised that the blankets were all wet. Thoroughly awake now, she put a hand over the side of the bed and met with cold water.
‘Oh, my God! What’s happening? Put the light on.’
‘In all this water? Don’t be daft. Come on, we can’t just sit here.’
They waded about the room in the thick darkness, trying to find clothes. The wardrobe doors wouldn’t open and only the top drawer of the chest of drawers was above water level.
‘Come on, leave it, it’s getting deeper. We’ve got to get out.’
Gwen whimpered with fear. ‘I don’t want to go, Reggie. I don’t want to leave the house.’
The water was cold and stinking. The outside was a frightening place. The chalet was her home.
Reggie got hold of her wrist. ‘It’s nearly up to the windows. Come on, you’ve got to. I’ll help you.’
Clumsy and ungainly with her big bump in front of her, Gwen had to be pushed through the window. She landed up to her waist in water on the veranda and shrieked with terror, for here there was a strong current and it was trying to carry her along. She grabbed hold of one of the veranda posts while bits of flotsam jostled past, knocking into her.
‘Reggie!’ she cried. ‘Help! Quick!’
The cold and the dark were terrifying. The current was like a live thing, clutching at her with strong arms.
‘It’s all right. I’m with you.’
Reggie was there beside her, but she could tell that he was frightened too.
‘What are we going to do?’ she wailed.
‘We got to get out of the water,’ Reggie said. ‘The roof! We got to get on the roof and stick it out until someone comes to rescue us.’
‘The roof? I can’t! I can’t, Reggie!’
Gwen felt huge and helpless. Even without the nine months’ lump in front of her, the thought of climbing on to the roof in the dark was a nightmare.
‘You must,’ Reggie insisted. ‘I’ll help you. Come on, get yourself up on the rail.’
Somehow, Gwen managed to heave herself up so she was standing on the fancy balustrade. She was above the water now, but her nightdress clung wetly to her legs and the wind was buffeting her. She felt chilled to the bone. She clung to the post while Reggie clambered up and stood beside her. He bent down and got his shoulder under her buttocks.
‘Ready?’ he gasped. ‘Now!’
He slowly straightened, and Gwen found herself rising up until her head and then her shoulders were level with the roof. She scrabbled to get a purchase on the guttering. Still Reggie was pushing her. She pitched forward in the darkness and spread-eagled from the waist up on the slippery shingles. The wind was much worse up here. She pressed her face to the roof.
‘Hold on, I’m changing my grip—’ Reggie grunted.
Gwen felt his reassuring presence beneath her backside fail, and screamed.
‘Reggie! Hold me!’
‘Don’t panic. For Christ’s sake, don’t panic.’
She had never heard him swear before. It silenced her. His hands were under her now.
‘Get your knee up, Gwen. Get your knee up and heave.’
Somehow, she did what he said. With a knee in the gutter, she managed to get her whole body on to the roof. Her muscles trembled uncontrollably with the effort.
‘Hold on,’ Reggie told her.
Whimpering, Gwen lay on the roof, trying to grip with her fingers and toes. After what seemed like an age, Reggie hauled himself up beside her.
‘Made it,’ he gasped. ‘You all right?’
She was so far from all right that she nearly laughed.
‘Yes,’ she squeaked.
‘Good girl. Now we’ll try to get up on the ape
x, then all we’ve got to do is hang on. Someone will come and get us as soon as it’s light.’
The words were hardly out of his mouth when they both heard a roaring sound above the noise of wind and water. A shudder seemed to go through the fragile chalet, releasing a clawing fear deep in Gwen’s gut.
‘What was that?’ she gasped.
Reggie was edging his way up to the apex. Up here, there was some moonlight to see by. Gwen could see him peering into the distance along the sea wall.
‘Oh, my God!’ she heard him gasp. ‘Oh, my God. Gwen, hold on! Hold on for all you’re worth.’
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
‘DAD!’
At Marsh Edge Farm, Annie was clinging to the tree trunk, horrified at what she had just done.
Her scream was snatched from her lips. There was no answering shout, only the howl of the wind. She stared into the night, but could see nothing except the glint of moonlight on water. One moment her father had been there, the next he had gone, swept away by the force of the tide. The black waters swirled round her shoulders and pulled at her body, threatening to wash her away too, to turn her into one more piece of flotsam carried along in the flood. Storm-whipped waves broke over her head. There was no time, no space in her mind to consider what she had done. It was a fight for survival. She peered up into the tangle of branches, blacker against the night sky. The tree was only a twisted hawthorn, prickly and dense, but the branches were well within reach. If she could just pull herself up a little way, get her body out of the water …
She stretched out, her fingers touched the first branch, settled round it, gripped tight. The force of the flood tugged at her feet. The level was still rising. It was up to her neck now. She had to get higher. Slowly, fearfully, she let go of the trunk—and the current lifted her off her feet, trying to rip her away. Desperately she scrabbled for a hand-hold, found another branch, pulled. Her bulky wet clothes were pulling her down, her arms were leaden, but terror lent her strength. She heaved, lunged up and forward, flailed her legs and she was there, gasping, choking, sobbing, but with the upper part of her body clear of the water. For a while she just lay there exhausted, still clinging on for dear life. Then she became aware of thorns and sharp twigs sticking into her stomach, her face, her head. She was soaked to the skin, her legs were still in the water and there was an icy gale blowing. She began to pray, recklessly promising God anything and everything if He would just spare her for her Bobby’s sake. The cold ate into her.
After a while, her mind became as numb as her body, and life narrowed down to one essential task: to hold on. It was some time before it got through to her that the water level was falling, that the flow was reversed. The tide was going out. When it finally sank into her dull consciousness, Annie wept with relief. With the first grey light of the dawn, she saw a strand of barbed wire running clear of the water below her. That would be about waist level. It was safe to get down.
It was almost as much of a struggle as getting up had been. Her body was stiff with cold. The thorny twigs tore at her. She felt hair rip out as she pulled free. Slowly she got to the point of balance, then slithered down with a rush. Her legs gave way as her feet touched ground, and she collapsed into the water.
She hardly knew how she made it to the farm. An overwhelming instinct for survival took her home, slipping and staggering, forcing her numb limbs to wade through the mud and the water until at last she fell over the threshold of the farmhouse.
Then there was a confused blur of faces and voices, of hands attending to her, of softness and dryness and rubbing and slowly, slowly, stealing over her like a blessing—warmth.
‘Mum? Mum, are you awake?’
Bobby’s excited voice penetrated the thick blanket of exhausted sleep. Annie surfaced slowly, reluctantly. Something was very wrong, but she could not remember what it was. Her body ached all over and throbbed in places. She focused on her son’s face.
‘Mum, there’s a man outside with a Jeep and he’s going to rescue us.’
‘What?’
Her brain felt fuddled. It did not help that she appeared to be in the wrong room. Instead of lying in her own narrow bed, she was tucked up in her parents’ one.
‘A man with a Jeep. He says he’s come to get us.’
It started coming back to her. The flood, the tree, something else, something terrible …
‘Oh, my God!’ She sat up in bed and clutched at Bobby’s arm, startling him. ‘Bobby, where’s D—Mr Cross? Has he come home?’
‘No. He’s not here. Grandma doesn’t know where he’s got to. Mum, there’s water all round the farm.’
Annie got out of bed and tottered over to the window, her legs wobbling beneath her. A scene of desolation spread out before her. Down below in the farmyard, a huddle of cows stood knee-deep in muddy water, surrounded by the corpses of several of their fellows, a lot of dead chickens and a flotsam of straw, timber, seaweed, bottles and nameless muck. At the open gate there was indeed a man in a Jeep, up to its axles in water. Beyond that, where there should have been green fields there was nothing but angry grey-brown waves with only fence posts and the odd hawthorn tree sticking out to remind her of how it should have been. The water went all the way to the Wittlesham road, which ran along the old coastline. The sea had reclaimed all its former territory.
Annie gaped at it all, appalled, until a quirk of the mind brought the memory of looking out of her own window last night, looking towards Silver Sands …
‘Gwen!’
She flew out of her parents’ room, slipping on the bare floorboards in the two layers of socks her mother had pulled on to her frozen feet last night. She burst into her own room and skidded over to the window.
‘Oh, my God,’ she repeated, but this time she whispered it, her hand flying to her mouth. Horror crawled queasily through her guts. The black line of the sea wall that had not been high enough to save them stood between the grey sea and the brown flood, a big gap knocked in it, through which the water was now draining away. At its feet, the cheerful pastel-coloured caravans lay scattered and smashed like a spoilt child’s toys. Worse, much worse than that, Reggie and Gwen’s chalet had been lifted right off its supporting piers and was tilted amongst the wreck of the caravans, lapped by the flood waters. There was no sign of life anywhere.
‘Oh, no,’ she moaned. ‘Oh, no. Oh, God, let them be safe. Please let them be safe.’
‘Mum—?’
Bobby’s small arm went round her hips. Annie hugged him to her, hungry for the comfort of his warm, wiry body, pulsing with life.
‘Mum, are we going with the man?’
Decisions. She had to make decisions because her mother wasn’t up to it and her father—her father was missing.
‘I don’t know. I’m not sure. We’ll go and talk to him.’
She went back into her parents’ room and forced open the window. Bobby put his head through too and they waved at the driver. He stood up and waved back. He was a dependable-looking middle-aged man in a roll-necked sweater and duffel coat. The cinema fan in Annie could imagine him at the wheel of a ship crossing the Atlantic in convoy, cool in the face of attack by submarines.
‘Do you need help?’ he called. ‘Is anyone injured? I can take you to safety.’
Annie considered. If the tide was going to flow in and out twice a day for however long it took them to mend the sea wall, then they could not hold out here. But what was going to happen to the animals, or what was left of them?
‘Wait a minute,’ she said.
She pulled on some clothes and went to find her mother.
Edna was downstairs, surveying the wreck of her kitchen with a look of bewilderment on her face. It was still a foot deep in filthy water. When she saw Annie, she fell on her.
‘Oh, I’m so glad you’re awake. I didn’t like to disturb you, but there’s a man in the yard—’
‘I know. I think we’d better go with him, but I don’t know what to do about the stock. I’m going to go
and have a word with him.’
Edna was horrified.
‘We can’t leave. What will your father say when he comes back and finds we’re gone?’
Guilt churned in Annie’s guts. When he comes back. If he comes back.
‘We’ll leave a message. We can’t stay here, Mum. Look at it. The water’s not going to go away. There’s a great big hole in the sea wall and this’ll stay flooded until it’s mended.’
She found a pair of wellingtons and waded out to meet their visitor. He assured her that the animals would be seen to. Their nearest neighbour on the dry side of the Wittlesham road had volunteered to take them up to his farm and look after them for as long as was necessary.
‘We’ll go, then,’ Annie decided.
They gathered some personal belongings together, climbed into the Jeep and set off down the track. Annie recognised the tree that had saved her. The fear hit her all over again. Bobby was bouncing up and down beside her. His nose was still running, but the drama of the situation seemed to have cured the worst of his cold.
‘Look at all the water. We’re making waves—see! It’s like being in a boat.’
She fought to stop the darkness invading her mind. She stared at Bobby, at his small eager face, pink with the excitement of the journey.
Ann! Help me!
She held her head, digging her fingers into her scalp.
‘Mummy? Mum, what’s the matter?’
Bobby was pulling at her arm. She took a shuddering breath and forced a smile. She had to pull herself together. She couldn’t give way; she had Bobby and her mother to look after.
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