A Gathering Storm (12 page)

They plodded on, the pony sluggish, Beatrice watching the dark haze surge nearer, inking out the sky, cloaking the sea. White light flashed. A splash of rain struck her cheek, then another. The goal was reached and she wheeled the horse round. Nose to home, he grew more eager, breaking into a trot. Even so, by the time they reached the turning back to the stable, a stinging wind was blowing. She pulled up and took a final look out at the swelling sea. There was a sailing boat, flying before the wind, heading round the point to St Florian harbour. Further out, a small rowing dinghy inched towards the shore. She watched it for a moment, thinking it had better hurry, then came another great roar of thunder. Cloud reared in alarm, then charged forward in a wild gallop, ignoring his rider’s instructions, sensible only of stable and safety.

Beatrice dropped the reins then hurled herself forward, throwing her arms round his neck, gasping at him to stop. Some instinct told her to kick off the stirrups, so that when, finally, she fell, it was cleanly and into a yielding if prickly hedge. There she was caught, scratched and weeping, till bit by bit she worked herself free. The rain started in earnest now, great drops slapping her face and bare forearms, and the whole countryside vanished in thick mist that lit up and thundered. As she stumbled towards the stable she thought, Poor old Rafe and James Sturton on the beach, having to lug that great canoe back home . . . and then, with a stab of almost physical pain, she made the connection.

It was still sinking in, this realization, when a huge figure formed out of the mist ahead. For a moment she was terrified, then saw it was Harry, enveloped in oilskins.

‘Thank God you’re safe, miz,’ he cried, reaching her and seizing her shoulders, his breath coming in great gasps. ‘Your face. Are you all right?’ She touched her cheek and blood and rain flowed down her fingers.

‘Just scratches,’ she said above the noise of the storm. ‘From the hedge. Is . . .?’

‘Cloud’s safely in his stable. I was that worried – you could have fallen anywhere. Run with me now or you’ll catch your death.’

‘Harry, no.’ Her teeth were chattering. ‘The beach. You’ve got to come. Trouble. A friend of mine. There’s another boy, too.’ She wasn’t making sense.

‘You’re soaked through, Miss Beatrice.’

‘I don’t care. We’ve got to hurry. They’re out in a boat. They won’t get back in time.’

She stared into his weathered, rain-blurred face and he saw her urgency. ‘Wait a moment,’ he cried, and disappeared back into the mist. When he returned, long minutes later, he carried a second oilskin and a coil of rope.

The beach was deserted. The sea, good-tempered such a short time before, was a raging beast. They heard its angry roar, then, running down the beach, met huge waves that dashed the shore, clawing up towards the dunes. Beatrice stared into the tumult, and uselessly cried, ‘Rafe!’ but could see nothing through the rain and spray.

Moments passed, then Harry gave a shout and rushed into the waves, where she saw him clutch at something. It flipped up in his grasp and she saw its large solid shape – like a coffin, she thought. It was the canoe. He had it, now, wrestled it into the shallows and levered it upright. It was empty – what else did she expect? She helped him drag it out onto the sand.

‘We’ll find them, miz,’ Harry said, and strode back into the sea. Together they waded up and down the shoreline, searching and calling, then he turned and said, ‘You must go for help. The nearest house.’

She did not like to leave, but knew she must. She stared one last time through the stormy waves. The rain seemed to be lessening now, and an ethereal gold light suffused the air. The worst of the storm was passing. Then the light caught something in the water, a brief flash of silver and a long pale shape in a breaking wave and it was gone. The wave crashed and there the shape was again. With a cry she rushed towards it.

She struggled, was sucked down across sand and stones, pain, darkness, then up again, her lungs bursting. As she lurched to her feet, whooping for air, she was struck by something softly solid, felt cloth and hair against her skin. She grabbed at the body and, wrapping her arms around it, held on for dear life. Crying to Harry for help, she braced herself, digging her feet into the shifting sand. Harry reached her now and with the help of a following wave, they heaved the body onto the beach. It was shrouded in water, a lifeless thing. Harry rolled it onto its back and she gave a howl. It was Rafe.

Harry knew what to do. He felt for a pulse then tipped back the boy’s head and bent to breathe air into his mouth, again and again. Nothing happened for a long time, then suddenly Rafe lurched forward and began to retch. Beatrice helped Harry to turn him onto his side, where he lay coughing and sobbing. The grey limbs were flushing faintly now and his eyes fluttered open. She knelt to stroke his face, crying, ‘Rafe, Rafe, come on, it’s all right,’ and he rolled onto his front, confused and terrified.

She felt Harry’s hand on her shoulder. ‘Leave him. He’ll be all right. Go for help, now. I’ll find the other one.’ And this time she rose, shivering, and ran back up the beach, through the slackening rain.

They searched for James Sturton until nightfall, returning again at dawn. It was his father who found his body, washed up by the tide. It was unimaginably awful. He was sixteen, their only son.

When she heard the news, Beatrice fled upstairs and wept on her bed until, bruised and exhausted from her ordeal, she fell into a troubled sleep. Around two in the afternoon she was woken by her mother to be told that Mrs Brooker, Rafe’s aunt, had telephoned. Rafe had been asking for her.

‘I can’t go,’ Beatrice said, burying her head in her pillow.

‘Béatrice, you must.’ Delphine came to sit on her daughter’s bed, and softly stroked her hair. ‘Sometimes we must do things we don’t want to, because it is our duty. And you, who have been so brave in rescuing the boy, must go to help him now.’

She helped Beatrice up from the bed, washed the girl’s scratched face and brushed her hair as though she were little again, then found her a fresh dress from the wardrobe.

‘Do you need me to come with you?’ she asked, as Beatrice opened the front door, but Beatrice shook her head and stepped out into appalling bright sunshine. She walked to the Brookers’ house as though in a trance, aware that only yesterday she’d have been at a high pitch of excitement to be invited there. Not today. The summer blazed on all around, but a page had been turned in their sunny lives, and the story had gone dark.

‘Ah, our young heroine,’ Mrs Brooker said when she opened the door. ‘Rafe will be so happy to see you, dear.’ She was a good ten years younger than her burly husband, elegant and bony like a greyhound. ‘He’s taking it very hard. Seems to think the whole thing’s his fault for some reason. He’s out in the garden. Supposed to be resting, of course.’

Rafe was sitting hunched up on a bench, tossing an old tennis ball from hand to hand. When he saw Beatrice he stood, pocketing the ball and drawing his forearm across his eyes. She saw at once that he’d been crying. His face was blotched and puffy and he had a bruise on his forehead, but seemed otherwise uninjured. ‘The doctor said he’d be right as rain,’ Mrs Brooker said, twisting the rings on her manicured hands. ‘Now I expect some lemonade will make everybody feel better. And Cook’s made a chocolate cake to die for . . . Oh, silly me!’ She saw Rafe’s disbelieving face, and turned and hurried into the house.

‘She means to be kind,’ he said. He sat down again, pulled out the tennis ball and turned it in his hands. ‘I must thank you, Beatrice. They all said you’ve been a brick. Saved my life and all that. What can I say?’

‘You don’t need to say anything,’ she said, sitting next to him. ‘It was Harry who knew what to do.’

‘Poor old Sturton.’ His voice ended in a squeak and his face screwed up, his shoulders shook and he began to sob. Beatrice put out a hand and touched his arm. To her surprise he turned towards her and she found herself pulling him into her embrace and he was crying noisily into her neck. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered between sobs. ‘I’m so sorry. I wish my mother was here.’

For a minute or two they sat like that, she stroking his hair as her mother had stroked hers, immensely moved. He must feel so alone. She didn’t imagine Mrs Brooker to be much use, and the Colonel was nowhere to be seen. Rafe needed her. No one had really needed her before, not even Angelina.

Soon he grew quieter, then drew away. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve funked it. Don’t know what you must think’ He dragged a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and blew his nose.

‘It’s all right, really it is,’ she said, but they were both embarrassed now and sat without looking at one another.

‘I’m to see his parents,’ Rafe said dully. ‘Don’t want to, but of course I must. I don’t know what to say to them. I should have stopped us going out so far. It’s my fault really. All my fault. It’s always my fault.’

What a strange thing to say. Beatrice thought of that moment she’d seen the canoe from the top of the cliff, with the storm coming, and not known what it was. Perhaps she ought to have recognized it and to have raised the alarm then. An abyss of guilt opened in her mind. The hell of guessing what might have been. ‘It’s not your fault, Rafe,’ she said desperately. A phrase Mrs Wincanton used came to mind. ‘Really, you can’t take on so.’

‘But it was my idea, buying the canoe. I talked him into it.’

‘You couldn’t have predicted the storm. It took everyone by surprise.’

‘You don’t understand,’ he said, turning and looking straight at her, his eyes wild. ‘It’s always my fault. It’s like a sort of curse.’

‘What do you mean?’ She was almost glad when, at that moment, Arlene Brooker emerged carrying the tray of lemonade and the cake to die for.

They saw each other most days after that. There was the terrible afternoon of James Sturton’s funeral. Most of the town turned out for it, and James was buried in the cemetery on the hill above St Florian, while bumblebees blundered in the long grass. It was a drowsy afternoon when in life he might have played cricket or wandered in the countryside whistling his tuneless whistle. Instead he was laid to sleep for ever in the earth, alive only in the minds of those who knew him as a clumsy sixteen-year-old boy with a lopsided smile, a dusting of freckles, a passion for rugby and a dislike of book-learning. Beatrice’s mother had told her she needn’t upset herself by going to the graveside, but she went anyway to support Rafe, and as she stood at the back of the crowd thinking about all the things in life that Sturton would never see or do, the tears dripped down her face.

Life went on in its unfeeling way. They played mixed doubles at tennis, but not with Sturton’s sister. Rafe came to tea at The Rowans and Beatrice sat stiff with anxiety in case her father was rude or, worse, cold and uninterested. Thankfully, even he responded to Rafe’s polite friendliness, his handsome open face and his happy sensitivity to others.

‘You were in the war, sir?’ Rafe asked, and his respectful manner was genuine. ‘My father was, too.’

‘Your uncle tells me he got an MC,’ Hugh said, a bit grudgingly.

Rafe nodded. ‘He saved some of his platoon by leading them through a minefield. I wish I could remember him, but I don’t.’

Beatrice was intrigued to catch her parents exchange meaningful looks. Then her mother said, ‘Of course you don’t. Now, Rafe, you’ll have some more tea?’

‘I feel sorry for your generation,’ Hugh Marlow continued, discarding the cucumber from his sandwich. ‘There’s another war coming, you’ll see, and it’ll be worse than the last.’

‘I hope you’re wrong there, sir,’ Rafe said, his expression alert. ‘My uncle says we should stay out of it, that Herr Hitler’s not interested in fighting us.’

Beatrice’s parents again glanced at one another, and Mrs Marlow’s face was troubled. ‘I don’t think it’ll be as easy as that,’ her father said.

Her mother smoothed her skirt and shook her head. Beatrice had heard them talk in anxious tones about letters from the family in France. These described the surge of refugees passing through Normandy to board ships to England and America, recounted stories of persecution and brutality that the refugees brought with their meagre possessions out of Germany.

‘This will be everyone’s war, I think,’ Hugh Marlow said solemnly. ‘England expects every man to do his duty.’ He pushed back his chair and went to tap the barometer on the wall with his knuckle. ‘High pressure,’ he said. Rafe watched, sensibly making no comment.

But nor did he let the subject lie. Another day, as they walked on the beach with Jinx, he said, ‘Suppose your father’s right?’

‘What would you do, if there were to be a war and you were old enough to fight?’

‘I’d fight,’ he said, pulling himself up, suddenly looking older than his sixteen years. There was a strange light in his eyes that made her shiver. Seeing her face he said, ‘But don’t worry. My uncle says Mr Chamberlain will sort things out. You’ll see.’ And he picked up a stick and hurled it across the beach for Jinx to chase.

Beatrice watched him tear after the dog, his long legs lithe and golden, his shirt unbuttoned, blowing in his wake like wings. She liked to study him when he dozed in the sun, noting his hair to be the exact old gold of corn waiting to be harvested, the glow of his pale brown skin; fascinated by the pulse that throbbed in his throat. Since that day in the Brookers’ back garden they’d not touched except by accident. That matter had never been mentioned again, but Beatrice remembered it, and treasured it when she lay sleepless during the hot August nights. His skin had smelt salty; even the slight tang of sweat had not been unpleasant, but rather alluring.

Sometimes they talked of deeper things: of his mother, far away in India, whom Beatrice guessed he missed more than he ever had courage to say; of his father, dead when Rafe was only six; of the older half-brother, now at Sandhurst. Beatrice felt a channel of sympathy flow between them.

More often he spoke of that boys’ world full of thrillingly shocking things that Edward had once described: of sadistic schoolmasters and swaggering bullies, of freezing dormitories and trouncing other schools at rugby, of despised homesickness and the boredom of lessons.