What Was Rescued Page 4

  It may seem ridiculous, but I wasn’t afraid. I couldn’t swim, of course. I’d never even seen a swimming pool and had been only once to the beach at Barry Island with my Aunty Ruby (a paddle in the sea and a wafer ice cream on the beach under a dome of gunmetal sky). It wasn’t fear, though. What I felt as those waves picked me up and swept me about was something that stayed with me for many years. It was a deep sense of shock born of insecurity and betrayal. The Pippa incident had shaken my faith, and now the real grown-ups had sold us a lie. We had trusted them with their endless practice drills, and now their safety boats had not only failed to keep us safe, but they had tossed us into the sea like so much rubbish. I wanted badly to believe in their protection, but seeing all those children in the boat before mine flipped into the waves, screaming, and then the same thing happening to me, it was the almost callous inadequacy of the grown-up world that hurt, more than the result itself.

  There was no protection after all. We were on our own in life for certain, as I had once feared when my sister died. All the grief at my mother’s hopeless distance from me then resurfaced like the bits of chair and table that now bobbed up around me. So it was a wonderful release when a man’s strong arms hauled me over the gunwales of a vessel and into the relative safety of a waterlogged lifeboat, seemingly jammed with people.

  The safety was short-lived, but the gesture was important.

  ‘We can’t take any more! We’ll sink!’ a woman’s voice shrieked, but the man whose arms had come to my rescue was unrepentant.

  ‘They’re children, for God’s sake!’

  I found myself in a boat so full of water that my knees were completely submerged. A few of the ship’s crew were doing their best to bail out the water and free up the Fleming gear. It was dark, but The City of India gave off her mysterious blue emergency lighting, and a full moon dodged in and out of the clouds. I heard a familiar voice a few feet away. ‘I’ve lost my brother. I promised him I’d wait.’

  ‘Philip!’ He was wedged between two shivering lascars. I waded along to him and one of the lascars shuffled into my space to make room for me. ‘It’s me, Dora.’

  ‘Dora?’ He clung on to me, cold and trembling. I put a stiff, sodden arm around him and gave him a little cwtch. He said, ‘Don’t worry, Dora, I’ll look after you!’

  The water was creeping up to our waists. There was no hiding the panic on board now; even the naval crew members seemed to be losing control. They knew we had to get as far away from the ship as possible, but the water in the boat was weighing us down and holding us back.

  Suddenly the blackness became illuminated with pretty shining lights. It was like a firework display. All the ship’s lights had come back on together. Then her bows went right up in the air and she slid swiftly down into the sea. It was a terrifying sight. The lights stayed on for a bit after she had sunk, so you could see this glow coming out of the sea, and it was so sad to think of all that loss.

  No one spoke on our boat. There was an aching silence amongst the grown-ups, as if we were in church or something. I suppose they knew we were about to suffer the same fate but in a less stately manner. Then Philip murmured an utterly awestruck ‘Crikey!’ He heaved a loud sigh: ‘What a waste of ice cream!’

  5

  ARTHUR

  I was reading my Beano with a torch when it happened. There was a sound like a massive gong – you know, the one you see at the pictures when the film is about to begin. Only it was very, very deep in sound. You wouldn’t have taken it for an explosion, because sound travels so differently underwater, but this was right under our cabins, so I guessed straight away. I shone the torch around the room: the wardrobe had fallen away from the wall, leaving a hole, and you could see the passageway through it. I could hear screams, and then the alarm went off.

  I found the light switch, but it wouldn’t work. Phil had been thrown awake and was practically hanging off the edge of his bunk. I shone the torch up at him, and he looked dazed. ‘Come on!’ I said. ‘We’ve got to get our shoes on!’

  There was water all over the floor. I sat Phil on the edge of the bed and put his shoes and socks on. There was no time to waste getting dressed when we should have been dressed already. Our pyjamas felt like a stupid luxury. The grown-ups had got it wrong.

  When we both had shoes on we tried the cabin door, but it was stuck. We managed to climb out through the hole in the wall, but as soon as we got into the passageway we could hear Mr Dent shouting for help. His cabin door was jammed too, and another boy was trying to open it. Phil and I joined in, ramming and shoving until eventually Mr Dent came out, dishevelled and ghostly pale in the blue emergency lights which had come on.

  ‘Thank you, boys,’ he said tremulously. ‘Let’s form an orderly exit to the promenade deck.’

  We edged our way slowly in the dim light, stepping over all sorts of wet debris. The floors were drenched. At one point we had to step around a gigantic hole in the floor at the side of the passage. I couldn’t help looking down, and I wish I hadn’t. You could see all the way down to the curved hull near the bottom of the ship, which was where the torpedo had struck. It was terrifying. I mean, really terrifying. I turned to help Philip pass this point without his looking down, but what I saw when I looked at him horrified me more.

  ‘Where’s your life jacket?’

  He looked confused. He had left it beside the hole in our cabin as we’d climbed out.

  I hate remembering this. I knew I shouldn’t leave him, I knew I shouldn’t, but he couldn’t be without a life jacket. We were still edging relentlessly forward in this queue of boys, so I didn’t have much time to think. I gave him my life jacket and fastened it on him securely.

  ‘Stay with the other boys. Go to the muster station with them. I’ll be back in a tick. Okay, Phil?’

  ‘Yep.’

  I went back the way we’d come, edging around dazed boys coming towards me. That’s how I got to be on deck after the lifeboats had started being launched. That’s how I got to be in the last lifeboat, without my brother.

  The captain spoke over the tannoy: ‘Take care of yourselves. Get into the boats.’ We were told this was the very last boat and everyone else had left the ship except for the captain, but I wanted to look for Phil.

  ‘Get in the boat!’ A huge seaman shoved me in, and I noticed that Mr Dent was there too. He had waited until all the boys on deck were safely in lifeboats and he had gone back to check all the cabins with Miss Prendergast. She, too, sat in Boat Nine, and I felt some relief to see two familiar faces amongst the forty or so passengers and crew that were now being lowered with me into the dark ocean.

  We were on the port side, towards which the ship was listing, so our descent was relatively easy. The falls were released as we hit the water and we all did whatever we could to get the boat as far away from the ship as possible. One of the crew members, Jack Heggarty, explained that we could get sucked down when the ship went under, so we had to get away quickly. Because we’d had such an easy launch compared to the other boats, we weren’t waterlogged. This made it easier to work the system of paddles down the centre of the boat – the Fleming gear – and get us clear of any suction. But this great advantage – which no doubt helped to save our lives – would also be a disadvantage, as we would soon discover.

  It was freezing cold and wet. The waves lashed against us and the wind was relentless. I was glad to be wearing my damp overcoat and shoes. Most of the lascars were in thin cotton clothes and they looked shocked and cold. Once we were free of the ship, we all sat for a moment, tossing on the waves and looking back at the dim lights. In the moonlight you could clearly see the shape of the majestic City of India like a giant sea creature nosing out of the water. There were screams and people shouting. The odd piece of ship’s furniture floated by from the veranda cafe. I thought of Philip, and loathed myself for going back for the life jacket. I hadn’t needed it after all. I could have kept him safe with me.

  You could see a torchlight g
oing around by the bridge, and I’m sure it was the captain, making one last check that everyone had abandoned ship safely. Was Philip still on there, on the dark ship? It was a chilling thought. I prayed that he wasn’t lost somewhere in the maze of passageways, searching for me. Then suddenly the ship lit up. All her lights blazed and her bows came up. Then she went down by the stern and slid right down into the ocean very, very fast. For a few seconds you could see all her lights still on under the waves, and then it all went dark. There was a sudden silence, although you could hear faint cries in the distance. No one said anything. I wondered if one of the cries was my brother calling to me.

  God.

  So there we were, stranded in a storm in the North Atlantic, waiting for someone to come and rescue us. The trouble was, we had drifted further away than any of the other boats because we were water-free. Our success had isolated us. All we could make out were the distant lights of one or two lifeboats. We didn’t know what had happened to the convoy, although one of the bigger merchant ships had been hit too and was on fire.

  Someone fixed the light on the bow of our boat, and suddenly we could see our companions. I was quite startled to see Pippa sitting halfway down the starboard side. It would emerge later that, like me, she had gone back to fetch something from her cabin, only to be scooped up by Miss Prendergast who had missed her own boat in the process of looking for her. I caught Pippa’s eye and said, ‘Hello, Pippa,’ as cheerfully as I could. She raised a hand in salutation and gave a defeated half-smile. I went to sit next to her, but she pulled her coat around her and turned her head to look the other way.

  ‘You okay, Pippa?’

  ‘Just tickety-boo.’

  I felt foolish, and I looked across to the other side of the boat where Miss Prendergast was seated with a very small child on her knee. Mr Dent, in turn, was comforting Miss Prendergast and had wrapped a blanket and his arm around her.

  ‘Look at the lovebirds,’ I ventured in a low voice.

  This raised a smile. ‘And what a romantic!’ she said – almost too loudly. ‘He’ll bring out his dominoes next,’ or something like that.

  I feel guilty, now, that my attention moved so quickly from my brother to attempting to flirt with Pippa, and guilty that Mr Dent might have heard. Because the next thing I remember, someone was shouting about people in the sea. On the port side, where Mr Dent and Miss Prendergast sat, people were turning to look. I stood up and could just make out a few life jackets at some distance from the boat. Jack Heggarty and another man grabbed an oar each and started trying to take the boat over to them, but it seemed useless.

  ‘Have they seen us?’ asked someone. ‘Why don’t they swim over?’

  But the waves were sweeping them along, and it seemed very likely that these people either couldn’t swim or were dead already. For a short while some of them came close enough to our boat for us to see that they were moving.

  ‘They’re children!’ cried Mr Dent. ‘They’re some of ours!’

  And before anyone could object, he took off the dressing gown he had been wearing since we freed him from his cabin and made a clumsy leap over the side of the boat, leaving a stunned Miss Prendergast to peer after him into the dark waves. It seemed like ages before he came back to the boat, but there were all sorts of goings-on with the men with oars, and eventually a child and Mr Dent were dragged, soaking and exhausted, over the gunwales. I can’t remember much about what happened next in the rescue mission, except that Jack Heggarty seemed to take over, but I was commandeered by Miss Prendergast to look after the rescued child – a girl – while she administered to the heroic Mr Dent. I was dispatched to the bow end of the boat to find blankets. It was only when I wrapped a blanket around the child that I saw it was little Dora. Her hair was flattened against her and darkened by the water. She was speechless and shaking and gasping for breath. I found a gap on the starboard side big enough for us both to sit in, but it was a few seats away from Pippa on the same side of the boat. In any case, Dora soon took up all my attention, curling herself on my lap and wrapping her arms around me. I pulled the blanket tightly around her and tried to reassure her. She seemed unable to say anything in reply. When I did look towards Pippa, she was watching me and I felt mildly heroic. Then Dora brought my head down as she clung on to my neck, and I was lost in the new warmth of her as she began to settle down. I couldn’t say that she ever completely settled on that boat. We didn’t know it then, but we were to drift in that punishing ocean for another eight days and nights, and Dora barely let go of me once.

  Well, it must’ve been just a few minutes later when Dora, whose head was resting on my shoulder and facing out to sea, spotted a child on our side of the boat. She became agitated and tried to point, and Jack Heggarty got up to look.

  ‘There’s another one on this side!’ he shouted.

  ‘Dead,’ a voice said.

  ‘No, it moved. It came right up close.’

  When I managed to wrench my head round to look, there was just a distant life jacket bobbing about fifty yards away. The next thing, Mr Dent had shed his blanket, pattered to our side of the boat, and once more jumped inelegantly into the deep.

  ‘It’s too far out!’ shouted Heggarty. Then he lowered his voice and said to the men around him, ‘That skinny runt doesn’t stand a chance. Madness. Complete madness. He’ll die of cold before he makes it back.’

  Later, I saw Pippa was looking anxiously out to sea. I imagined what she must have been feeling, having been so scathing about him. Mr Dent never came back.

  6

  DORA

  Crumbs. Did we really not spot love blooming in our midst? When you think how keenly we were watching the people around us, how on earth did we fail to spot the signs? Was I moved at the time by that act of heroism, by Miss Prendergast’s reaction, her slow realization that he was gone forever along with her dreams? Or did I sit there – more likely – in frozen paralysis, unaware of anything? But I can’t have been unaware, because I do remember things. I’m just not sure how I translated the events stacking up so fast around me.

  At that first reunion Miss Prendergast remembered all those lost that night. ‘You all made your own attempts to rescue people, but because you survived – because we survived – we feel, maybe, that we have less right to be here. There may seem sometimes an unfairness about it, a throw of the dice that went our way at the expense of someone else. But what these reunions must be above all else is a celebration of life – a celebration of the lives of those we lost, for we all lost someone. I remember in particular, of course, those on Boat Nine, because we spent over a week together, and I wish to celebrate the bravery of a very shy and self-effacing man, George Dent – known to many of you here as one of the escorts.’ Her voice began to waver at this point, but only very slightly, and with the fortitude we knew so well, she passed over it. ‘But this is a celebration of our lives too. A celebration of life itself. Because if we don’t celebrate this life and live it to the full, then they gave their lives for nothing. So, I give you a toast . . . to life!’

  I clinked glasses with Arthur on my right and a veteran seaman to my left. Arthur turned from me to Pippa and touched glasses with her, but when I turned back to the table he was looking at the cloth intently, turning slightly away from Pippa as if he wished to avoid her eyes.

  ‘Dora,’ he said enthusiastically, but without looking at me, ‘some more water?’

  I touched his arm. I couldn’t help it. I wanted his arms around me. I wanted to burrow into his neck. I wanted to smell his skin and his hair. Duw! God almighty. He looked up at me briefly and I could see his eyes were glistening with tears. ‘It’s all right,’ I said, and he poured me a shaky glass of water with a frown.

  ‘It’s not all right,’ he said to the table. I felt chastened. I had shown uncharacteristic confidence and it had been rebuked. ‘I can never forgive myself for leaving Phil. I promised my mother that whatever happened, whatever happened, I would not let him out of my sight.’<
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  ‘You mustn’t feel guilty.’

  ‘But I do. I have, ever since. It follows me everywhere, that thought of what I might’ve done, how I could’ve changed everything if only—’

  ‘No. Listen, Arthur . . .’ I was choked with all the things I wanted to tell him, unsure where to start or if I should. What would come out of me once I began? What inappropriate things might I say that simply couldn’t be said in this company? He had already closed his eyes on my beginning, dismissing anything I could tell him before I said it. He wanted none of my balm. But if he’d had any idea what I could’ve told him, he would’ve listened, he would’ve been saved. But those lids came down, and my courage failed to find a foothold. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

  Pippa leant across from his right and blundered in with her cherry lips and dazzling eyes. ‘Come on, Arthur! My glass is empty – mine’s a G and T!’

  He got up gratefully and went to the bar, asking if he could get me anything.

  ‘An orange juice, please.’ I didn’t even know what a G and T was.

  Pippa leant back in her chair and regarded me with interest, as if I were a newly arrived animal at a zoo. She took in my white blouse and my leaf-patterned dirndl (a last-minute creation I’d run up the week before) and she cocked her head on one side sympathetically. ‘What’s not his fault?’

  You see, you couldn’t relax your guard for a minute. ‘Oh, nothing,’ I said, and I got up to help Arthur back with the drinks. I was waylaid by Daphne Prendergast, who called me ‘My darling Dora’, and I hoped Pippa was cringing.

  I tried not to imagine the load that must have weighed on Arthur’s shoulders all these years. I would not picture his homecoming (trumpeted by the local paper perhaps), or his mother’s face as he walked through the door, or however it was that he returned to the maternal arms, alone, without Philip. I closed my eyes to the possibility that those arms felt dead, like my own mother’s after Siân’s death, or worse, that the arms were not proffered at all. He would have sat, like me, at a table normally laid for four, and they would have both turned to him to avoid looking at the empty space. And every now and then he would have seen his mother lay the table and hover, fourth plate in hand, before returning it to the plate rack, or else watched the backs of her arms fidget at the cutlery drawer as she replaced the unwanted – yet so much wanted – fourth knife or spoon. Yes, it was the table that announced the absence as loudly as a pulled front tooth, and I would not look at him there. I could have spared him that. I could have told him.