Kilgarthen

by Kilgarthen (retail) (epub)

  Cecil Roach had got a grip on himself and he demanded he take Joy’s place on the dustbin. Ada pushed him away roughly. ‘Bugger off, you! You weren’t no use before and we can manage better without you now.’

  Joy was shouting desperately at Laura. ‘Get up, Laura! You have to get out, the fire’s spreading.’

  Laura’s arm hurt badly but she scrambled across the room on all fours towards the three remaining children. She wrapped her arms round them and dragged them towards the desk. She clutched the backs of the cardigans of two sobbing little girls and with a cry of pain and effort she heaved them up for Joy who got a grip on their fronts. Joy yanked them out so hard she fell off the dustbin with them. Two mothers came forward and pulled their daughters to safety.

  Ada got up on the dustbin, paying no regard to her age and arthritis. She saw that Laura was swaying as she coughed and choked. ‘Laura! Don’t give up now. Take hold of the boy. Come on, you can do it.’

  Laura bent down, reaching for the terrified little boy. She touched the boy’s head and lowering her hands she put them under his armpits just as the boy passed out. He was a dead weight to lift. Somehow she got him up to her chest level and threw the top half of his body over the window frame. Ada grabbed him and realising Laura was about to buckle and fall off the desk, she shot out her other arm and grabbed her hair.

  ‘Help me, someone!’

  Spencer and Ince, like many of the farmers working outside had seen the smoke billowing up in the sky. They had driven to the village at speed, knowing there was a fire but doubly horrified to find it was the school.

  ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ Vicki screamed shrilly, freeing herself from the mother looking after her and running up to him. ‘Get Laura! Get Laura!’

  Spencer saw Ada’s predicament at the same time he heard her shout for help. Thrusting Vicki into Ince’s arms he sprinted across the playground and leaped up onto the dustbin, beating the boy’s mother to it. He pulled the little boy out over the top of the window and dropped him into his mother’s arms. He got a tight grip on Laura’s shoulders and just before the first tongues of flames could reach her he dragged her out.

  Barbara Roach helped Ada down off the dustbin and led the old lady outside the school walls where everyone else had moved for greater safety. Spencer jumped down with Laura lying limp in his arms. He carried her away from the building to join those watching helplessly as smoke and flames poured out of every window and door and through the roof. The ringing of the fire engine could be heard but it would be too late to save the school.

  Andrew and Tressa had arrived, with Daisy on their heels. They pushed their way through to where Spencer was laying Laura gently on a coat on the ground. ‘Did she breathe in much smoke?’ Andrew asked anxiously, looking at her blackened face. ‘I’ll give her mouth to mouth resuscitation.’

  Spencer pushed him away. ‘I know how to do it.’ He tilted Laura’s head back and put his mouth over hers and breathed into her. Her chest rose and fell but she didn’t seem to be breathing on her own. He breathed into her five more times and then she coughed and spluttered. She gasped for air and Spencer sat her up against his chest.

  ‘Is she going to be all right, Daddy?’ Vicki asked tearfully from Ince’s arms.

  ‘I think so, pipkin. Has someone rung for an ambulance?’ Spencer looked at all the staring, concerned faces. It was easy to tell which of the children had been trapped and rescued, their faces and clothes were blackened, the whites of their eyes gleaming like snow. Then he realised that Vicki’s face was blackened too. ‘Oh, my God.’ He held his arms out to her and Ince passed her to him. He cried unashamedly over the woman leaning against his chest who was now gazing up weakly at him. ‘Thank you, Laura. How can I ever thank you.’

  ‘I’ve rung for an ambulance, Mr Jeffries,’ Barbara said, kneeling down beside them and rubbing Laura’s wrist. ‘It’s no good asking my husband to do anything at a time like this.’

  There were similar mutters in the crowd. Questions had revealed that Cecil Roach had only left the classroom moments before the fire began and most people held him responsible. Cecil scowled and slunk away. He had to think of a way out of this.

  ‘Be careful with her other arm,’ Barbara said as she ministered to Laura. ‘It looks as if it’s broken.’

  ‘All these children would have died if it wasn’t for Laura,’ Daisy said, sniffing back tears as she voiced what was on everyone’s mind. ‘And Mrs Prisk and Mrs Miller.’

  ‘It was a glad day for the village when that maid come here,’ Johnny Prouse added emotionally.

  Laura regained full consciousness. ‘Vicki! Vicki!’ She tried to get up but Spencer and Barbara held her gently down.

  ‘I’m here, Laura,’ Vicki murmured, the full extent of her frightful ordeal now hitting her.

  ‘Thank God,’ Laura croaked, her voice husky from the smoke, holding out her arms to her.

  Vicki wriggled out of Spencer’s arms and placed her head on Laura’s shoulder. Laura put her good arm round her. ‘Thank God she survived,’ she whispered to Spencer. ‘I don’t know what I would have done if anything had happened to her. What about the boy? The other children?’

  ‘They’re all right, thanks to you,’ Felicity Lean said, smiling down encouragingly on them. ‘I’ve been checking up on all of them. They’ll all have to go to hospital just to be sure. You’re the one who has suffered the most, Laura.’

  ‘What about Mrs Prisk?’ Laura gasped, mindful that she was an old woman. ‘She saved my life.’

  ‘I’m fine, m’dear.’ Ada pushed her head through the milling crowd and grinned down on her. ‘Take more than that to stop my yap.’

  Laura smiled, then cuddling the child she loved more than anyone in the world, completely worn out, she fell asleep in Spencer’s arms.

  Chapter 37

  Cecil Roach looked at the smouldering ruins of his school. His life was in ruins too. Any hopes that the authorities would give him even a humble teaching position would be lost in the recriminations of the many angry parents who despised him anyway. There would be an inquiry. There would be newspaper reporters knocking on his door. The constable might want to ask questions. He thought of the magazine that had been responsible for the fire and turned for home. He had to get rid of his illicit collection.

  He passed through the kitchen, spitefully pushing Barbara out of the way; he would deal with her later for the disloyal way she had spoken about him in front of all those wretched people. Up in his study he began piling his precious magazines and postcards together. He’d burn them in the garden. It would be a terrible wrench to get rid of them but when he was settled again, he’d begin another collection. He’d have to leave this house and village.

  He gathered up an armful of Etta and her playmates to put them in a cardboard box. A strange numbing feeling that started in his head and spread quickly through his body made him stagger. His vision blurred. His strength left him and he dropped his dirty books. He felt dizzy. Sweat broke out all over him and he tried to get to his chair to sit down. He didn’t make it and fell to the floor. He wet himself. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak. All he could do was stare straight ahead at a picture of a totally naked Etta.

  Barbara thought it strange that Cecil didn’t come down for tea but because he hated being disturbed when in his study she didn’t call him. She had been thinking over her position. How could she go on living with a man like him? He was cruel. He was a coward. He was vile. He was perverted. Cecil Roach should never be allowed near a child again. In a few months’ time her grandchild would be born and he had sworn to make trouble for that innocent little soul if she left. Barbara was suddenly full of indignant fury. Like hell he would! She’d protect that child at all costs. Her mind was clear. She’d leave her despicable husband this very minute and if he made any attempt to come near her, Marianne and the baby, she’d go to the police and tell them about his filthy secrets. All she had to do now was to tell Cecil, and she had the outrage and courage run
ning through her veins to do it. She picked up the poker. Heaven help him if he tried any violence this time.

  She climbed the stairs and stood for a moment at the bottom of the study steps. He would be furious with her for setting foot in his precious domain, he had never allowed her even to dust up there and she had never dared to venture inside it before.

  As she went up the steps, she realised it was strangely quiet. She called to him. There was no answer, not even the usual abuse. She remembered the sudden bump she had heard hours earlier. If he had been any other sort of man she might have thought he’d been so upset over the school fire he had done something drastic.

  She turned the handle of the study door, pushed it open while resolutely tightening her grip on the poker. She saw Cecil lying on the floor, his mouth open, eyes glazed as they stared ahead. She thought he was dead at first then she noticed him twitching.

  ‘Cecil, what’s happened to you?’

  Then she saw his filthy pictures. Wanton women with huge breasts and bottoms seemed to be leering at her from every angle of the room. They were mocking her. It was them that had led him to want to do so many beastly things to her.

  ‘You bastard,’ she shouted at Cecil contemptuously, holding back the urge to kick him. ‘So this is what you get up to up here? I knew it was something filthy but I never guessed you went this far.’

  She could see now what had happened to him. He had suffered a massive stroke. Barbara looked down at him with no emotion. He seemed to be silently pleading to her for help.

  ‘If you think that after all you’ve put me through, all the terrible things you’ve done to make me suffer, that I’m going to nurse you for the rest of your life while you’re as helpless as a baby, then you’re very wrong, Cecil Roach.’ Her voice was ice-cold. ‘I came up here to tell you I’m leaving you. Who will blame me, even with you like this? They all know in the village what a bastard you are. I’m going to Marianne and her baby, my grandchild, the one you don’t want. You can’t come after us and even if you could, I’d never let you hurt us again.’ She made to go and he made a frantic gargling noise. ‘Oh, don’t worry, Cecil. Someone will find you eventually. They’ve got nice little seaside institutions for cases like you, although when they see this filth they might find another place to put you.’

  She hurried to her bedroom and packed her suitcases. She telephoned Marianne, and then ordered a taxi to pick her up at the top of the village hill. She dashed off two notes. One was to Cecil, saying she’d had enough of his cruelty and was leaving him. It wouldn’t be found by him, of course, but by the people who would have to arrange to have him carted away. They would assume she had left him before he’d had the stroke and knew nothing about it. The other note was to Laura Jennings, thanking her for all her help and kindness. She would put it through Little Cot’s letter box when she left this house to start her new life.

  Chapter 38

  ‘All ready to go home, Mrs Jennings?’ the tall straight-backed sister on Laura’s ward in Launceston Hospital asked in her efficient manner.

  ‘Yes, Sister,’ Laura replied, her voice hoarse, her throat sore. She was sitting on the bed, dressed except for her shoes. ‘It’s good to be wearing clean clothes but even after a hair wash and bath I still feel dirty and gritty. I can still smell the smoke.’

  ‘That will fade and your throat will soon be less sore. I’ve just received a telephone call from your family. They’re on their way to collect you. Now, you are to go home and get straight into bed and rest for the next few days. You’ve got a broken arm, your lungs took in some smoke and you badly strained yourself pulling those children out of danger. Your body needs plenty of rest to recover properly.’ The sister smiled and put her hand on Laura’s shoulder, a gesture she had never made to a patient before. ‘I’ve never had a heroine on my ward before. Good luck to you, dear.’

  The sister left her and like so many times since she had been brought here two days ago, Laura felt weepy. Her eyes stung as hot tears hit her eyelids and she sniffed into a hanky.

  ‘Never mind, my luvver,’ the jolly woman in the next bed said to her. ‘You’ll feel better when you get home.’

  Laura smiled gratefully for the words of comfort. Although all the children had been saved, and Benjy Miller had quickly recovered from an asthma attack brought on as a result of the trauma, she kept thinking about the children being suffocated or burned to death. Their screams echoed through her mind. In her imagination she could see their little blackened faces turned up to her from the schoolroom floor, begging her to get them out. She saw herself standing on the dustbin, unable to break the glass, unable to climb through the window, unable to reach them, unable to coax them to come to her. She couldn’t understand why she was thinking this way. They were all safe; Vicki had cuddled into her all the way to the hospital to prove it.

  Laura looked at the handkerchief she was almost shredding with the fingers of her good hand. Each corner was embroidered with tiny flowers and in one corner was the letter A. Laura remembered coming round as she was being put into the ambulance and a thin elderly face, topped with an untidy iron-grey bun, looming over her and a familiar voice exclaiming, ‘You can’t go without one of these, dear.’ Ada Prisk. She had given the hanky to the ambulance man to pass on to her when she was cleaned up. ‘It’ll take more than that to shut up my yap,’ Ada had said stoutly.

  Laura knew that when she got home everything apart from the village having no school would be the same. Ada would be chasing her for gossip and all the other villagers would be the same familiar characters. But all of them would be closer. She dried her eyes and practised a bright smile, ready for when her ‘family’ arrived on the ward. She assumed Andrew and Aunty Daisy were coming for her.

  A pair of running light feet heading towards her made her face shine with delight. ‘Vicki, darling! What are you doing here?’ She held out her arm and Vicki climbed up on the bed and hugged her tightly. ‘How are you?’ She saw scratches on Vicki’s face.

  ‘Never mind me. Are you feeling better, Laura?’ Vicki asked, peering at her face with a wisdom beyond her years. ‘You look tired but just as beautiful. Doesn’t she, Daddy?’

  ‘Yes, she does, pipkin.’

  ‘Spencer, what a surprise,’ Laura exclaimed. She hadn’t noticed him following close behind Vicki. ‘I wasn’t expecting you and Vicki.’

  ‘I asked Andrew and Daisy if we could come for you,’ Spencer said, putting down a huge bunch of flowers and a box of chocolates on the bedside cabinet. He looked at her closely, much as his daughter had done. ‘You look pale, but as soon as you’re able to get about, a little moorland air will put the colour back in your cheeks.’

  ‘Is your arm poorly?’ Vicki said, gingerly touching the plaster on Laura’s broken arm.

  ‘Yes, but it will soon get better. You can be the first to write your name on it.’

  A nurse came with a wheelchair. ‘Here, you are, Mrs Jennings. I’m to escort you safely off the premises. Has your husband brought you a coat?’ she asked, bending down to put Laura’s shoes on.

  ‘Mrs Jennings is a friend,’ Spencer corrected the nurse, lifting a bag he had with him up on the bed. ‘A very special friend. I have everything she needs. A scarf and gloves as well as a blanket to wrap her up in.’

  ‘I shall feel like a newborn baby,’ Laura laughed.

  ‘We’re going to look after you,’ Vicki piped up determinedly.

  ‘I’ll enjoy that,’ Laura replied, caressing the little girl’s hair.

  The sister accompanied them to the hospital doors and Laura was put safely in the car. Vicki sat beside her and held her hand. As they waved goodbye to the sister, Laura was already feeling tired.

  ‘Vicki was right when she said we’re going to look after you,’ Spencer said as he drove out of the hospital grounds. ‘We’re taking you to Rosemerryn Farm.’

  Laura was thrilled but there were other people to consider. ‘What will Daisy say about that?’

  ‘
It’s all been agreed. Vicki won’t be going to school until it’s been decided where the children will go from now on, probably to Lewannick. It’s unlikely there will ever be a school in Kilgarthen again. You’ll recover better with Vicki around you. Daisy and the others will be dropping in regularly to help out so all you have to do is rest and get well.’

  ‘Thanks, Spencer,’ Laura said, feeling overwhelmed with joy. ‘You don’t know how much this means to me.’

  He looked over Vicki’s head and smiled at her. ‘Oh, but I do. You’re part of Vicki’s life now, part of everyone’s in Kilgarthen, including mine.’

  ‘I never thought I’d ever hear you say that.’

  ‘Nor did I.’

  As soon as they arrived at Rosemerryn Farm, Laura was bundled up to bed in Vicki’s room; a camp bed was going to be put up beside it for Vicki for the next few days.

  ‘Ince offered his room,’ Spencer said as he knocked and came in with a tray of tea. ‘But it’s a bit basic for a woman to sleep in and I thought you wouldn’t mind sharing with Vicki.’

  ‘And Lizzie,’ Vicki said, putting her doll in the bed beside Laura for company.

  ‘I can’t think of anything better,’ Laura said, warmed through.

  ‘Are you comfortable?’ Vicki asked, copying the nurse’s tone of voice. ‘Can I get you anything?’

  ‘Why don’t you go downstairs and get some of those delicious chocolate biscuits for Laura, pipkin?’ Spencer said, nodding at the door.

  Laura was about to protest that she wasn’t hungry but she sensed that he wanted to talk to her alone. ‘What is it?’ she asked when Vicki had dutifully trotted off.

  He started to pace the room, one moment pushing his hands into his pockets, the next pulling them out and clenching his fists. ‘I think before we go on there is one thing that we ought to clear up.’ He stood still and gazed at her from the foot of the bed. ‘It’s about Bill. You want to know why Bill and I quarrelled. It was over Natalie. I find it hard even thinking about it, it makes me feel so sick, angry and bitter.’