The Girl From Penny Lane (33 page)

‘That is the intention,’ Mrs Nicholson said cautiously. ‘I’ve been a widow for fifteen years and am about to re-marry. We thought it best if Lucy went to her father for a while, so that Mr Addison and I might settle into our new home. But I couldn’t give Lucy up for ever,’ she added quickly. ‘We have resolved, Captain Dobson and I, to share her so far as is possible.’

‘That sounds sensible,’ Art said, throwing open a cabin door. ‘Miss Lucy, you’ve gone too far – come back and examine your new cabin with your grandmother.’

Lucy ran back, beaming.

‘Oh, a
window
,’ she exclaimed joyfully. ‘Oh, isn’t this nice, Gran? We’ll be able to see the sea and the gulls and have a breeze when it gets hot. Thank you, Mr O’Brien.’

‘It will do very well,’ Mrs Nicholson said, having taken a good look round. ‘Could you arrange for one of the deck hands to bring my traps along here? I’d like to settle Lucy in by bedtime.’

During the days that followed, Art saw quite a lot of Lucy Dobson. She was a lively and intelligent child and it was soon obvious that whilst her grandmother adored her, she was no longer of an age to play games for hours at a time with her little tomboy of a granddaughter. Art, however, was glad of someone to amuse and came out of his office daily to play deck quoits, to teach Lucy new skipping games, to play cards in the evenings and to advise on a fancy dress when the weekly fancy dress ball loomed.

He was on his way to meet Lucy when the storm blew up.

It came from nowhere, the way storms at sea so often do. One minute it was calm enough beneath a lowering sky, with leaden clouds chasing one another across the horizon. The next moment a low rumble of thunder was followed by another and another, by lightning flashes, forking from the highest heavens deep into the sullen, surging sea. Then the rain came, great shining rods of it, bouncing off the suddenly boiling surface, hitting the deck so hard that the spray leapt head-high, forming puddles and lakes on the tennis court, running in rivers around the hatches on the foredeck.

Art watched from a convenient shelter and wondered just where Lucy had got to. She was an adventurous kid, she’d already been extracted from the engine room with a ruined cotton dress, and dissuaded forcibly from trying to climb the funnel. She loved the kitchens and pottered round there, helping with anything that she was big enough to do, hindering quite often, though always without any evil intent. If we’d been a sailing ship she’d have been balancing on the yard, darting in and out of the lightning strikes, Art thought rather balefully, for he had grown extremely fond of Lucy and rather resented her grandmother’s casual acceptance of her charge’s various adventures.

Art had arranged to meet Lucy on deck for a game of boule, a diversion which was proving popular amongst the younger element on board, but clearly she had realised that there would be no deck games until the storm abated and so had remained below. He was about to leave his look-out when he saw, dancing along the deck with her skipping rope dangling behind her, Lucy’s small figure. She looked even smaller than usual with her clothing and hair drenched through, but she grinned at the sight of him and waved the wooden handle of her rope.

Art dived out of hiding and was soaked before he’d gone more than three yards. He gestured furiously to Lucy – the ship was heaving and tossing, it wasn’t safe on deck, he realised, even if you didn’t count the lightning and thunder.

‘What?’ Lucy shrieked across the short distance which separated them. ‘What do you want? It’s
lovely
out here – Gran wouldn’t book us tickets on a big ship with a swimming pool because I can’t swim yet and she said she’d never have an easy moment, but this is almost as good—’

Behind her, Art saw the wave coming. A great green monster, as high as the ship’s rail, it raced towards them faster than an express train and every bit as dangerous. He waved his arms, shouted, began to run . . . and saw the wave hit the ship, curl above the rail, and come crashing down on the deck, several tons of green water, sharp with salt and weed, pebbles and sand.

He saw Lucy taken. That was it, she was taken, just as though the wave had curled a great green hand round her skinny little person and scooped her over the side and into the ocean. Art grabbed a lifebelt, heaved at the warning bell with all his strength, heard it begin its clangour . . . and scrambled over the rail. For a moment he stood poised – he heard voices behind him and roared a brief explanation, ‘Kid overboard!’, as loudly as he could against the elements. Then he saw in the water below him, just for an instant, a frightened white face, a swirl of red-gold hair – and he dived.

He reached her. Somehow, he didn’t quite know how, he got hold of her, floated on to his back, forced her into the lifebelt, got her up on his chest and began to turn back towards the ship. The sea was running high still, and now that he’d got Lucy in a firm grip he was hanging on to her and the lifebelt, concentrating on keeping afloat, hoping to be seen because if they weren’t there could be only one end to Lucy’s latest escapade.

They were seen; a rope came snaking over the side, more lifebelts were thrown, they were lowering a boat. Lucy had been shuddering with cold, he thought her unconscious, but suddenly she turned her head and grinned weakly at him, looking so like the small Lilac that he could only grin back, knowing he should be angry with her but wanting only to see her safe, up on deck with her grandmother crying and cuddling her, regretting, at last, her lackadaisical stewardship of this most precious cargo.

He got her into the boat; the two men on board hauled her over the side and dropped her on to the bottom-boards, then turned to Art. But the boat had drifted too near the hull and they had to leave him to tread water for a moment whilst they worked desperately at the oars to avoid being crushed against the echoing steel plates. And Art, whilst they struggled, found himself fighting a force which was stronger than the arms of the men in the boat, stronger than Art himself; he was being drawn back and down by the currents which swirled around the ship’s hull.

For a moment longer he fought it, not realising why he was gradually moving away from the boat, despite his attempts to get aboard. He saw Lucy, on her knees, holding out her small hands to him, her expression desperate. He even heard her voice, clearly, above the storm.

‘Mr O’Brien . . . Art! Come to Lucy, swim to Lucy!’

Then the sea sucked him down. He fought it maniacally, struggled to rise to the surface as his lungs began to burn with the effort of holding his breath. Then he was dragged deeper, deeper yet, the sea no longer gleaming green around him but black, black.

He realised what was happening to him, knew that he was powerless to prevent it for one brief second before he spiralled down into the lightless deeps beneath, his breath gone, water in his lungs, his body squeezed by the pressures of the depths into the likeness of a rag doll.

His last thought was that he would never take Lilac to New Brighton now.

Chapter Twelve

It was all over the national dailies that he was a hero, that he had died saving a child. Nellie read it idly, standing in the kitchen with a cup of coffee in one hand, waiting for the wash-boiler to reach heat. No sooner had the dreadful news sunk in, however, than she was out of the room and on the telephone to Stuart at his office.

‘Stu . . . have you seen today’s
Times
?’

‘No, not yet,’ Stuart said. He worked in a newspaper office, so presumably, Nellie thought, he had enough to do writing for his own paper without reading other people’s. ‘Why? Is there something we should pick up?’

‘No . . . Stuart, c-can you come home? It’s Art O’Brien, Lilac’s fiancé. Of course there might be two of them, but he was acting purser on the
Queen of the Straits
, I’m sure that’s what Lilac said. He – he’s been drowned, Stu, saving a little girl’s life.’

‘Drowned. Art? Oh, dear God, and he and Lilac . . .’

Stuart’s voice, which had been indulgent, absentminded, only interested, she could tell, because he thought there might be a story in it, sharpened into dismay. He had been fond of Art, Nellie knew, but he loved Lilac, as she did.

‘That’s right; he came home to plan their wedding. Oh Stu, this will kill her – I must go to her! Can you come home right away?’

‘I’ll leave at once.’

A different tone yet again, crisp, stern. Nellie could picture him hurling himself down all those marble stairs, through the revolving doors and out across the pavement to the nearest tram stop.

Nellie had been using the telephone in the hallway, sitting on a low chair, so now she stood up, replaced the receiver on its stand, picked up
The Times
and walked into the kitchen. Elizabeth was sitting up at the kitchen table, doing a wooden jigsaw. She had a summer cold and every now and then blew her small nose noisily into the hanky attached to her wrist by a length of wool. She looked up as Nellie entered.

‘What’s ’a matter, Mam?’ she said thickly. ‘Your eyes is red.’

‘Mam’s sad,’ Nellie said. ‘Someone we love is . . . is not well. I’ve rung your Da at the office and he’s coming home. We’re going to have to go to Liverpool, queen.’

‘Liverpool?’ The child’s eyes brightened though the lids were heavy still. ‘To Auntie Li?’

‘That’s right, sweetheart. We’re going to see Auntie Li.’

Elizabeth promptly got down from the table and set off across the kitchen.

‘Wait, Miss Impatience; where are you going?’

‘To pack me things,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I’m going to be Auntie Li’s flower-girl, in a bootiful pink dress! Can I take dolly Gwen and Red Ted?’

‘Oh my God,’ Nellie said. The room dipped and swayed; she clutched the sink for support. ‘Oh, my God! Oh my baby, my poor baby!’

She sank into a chair and put her face in her hands, then began to cry; for Lilac, for little Elizabeth, for all the pain that this cruel death would engender. Art was beyond tears, beyond pain, yet she cried bitterly, helplessly, for him. He had been so young, so full of hopes and dreams, and they had all been lost in one moment of gallantry, one foolhardy, wonderful moment in which he had saved a life and lost his own.

Nellie was still sitting in the kitchen when Stuart’s key grated in the lock. He burst into the house, ran down the hall and, as she got stumblingly to her feet, he snatched her into his arms.

‘Oh my love, my poor darling,’ he murmured against her hair. ‘Get some things together, we’ll go by train, we can be with her before dusk.’

‘Stuart, you’re the best,’ Nellie said huskily. ‘Look, read the report whilst I pack. I’m sorry I didn’t do it earlier, it was the shock, I suppose. All I could think of was the wedding, and . . . oh, Stu, my poor baby!’

She burst into tears again and headed for the stairs. Stuart started to follow her, then turned back and began methodically to tidy the kitchen, pulling the kettle over the heat and setting the teapot ready. Above his head, he could hear Elizabeth prattling away to herself in her small room. Some people might have assumed that when Nellie spoke of her poor baby she meant little Elizabeth, robbed of her chance to be a flower-girl at her aunt’s wedding. But Stuart knew his wife better than that. It was Lilac, a young woman in her twenties, for whom she wept, because Lilac, in every sense but one, was indeed her baby.

Lilac sat behind the reception desk. Her face was perfectly white, but her smile, though a little stiff, sprang into being every time a guest came through the front door and approached her. She was calm and collected, because she did not believe the newspaper reports; how could she? She and Art O’Brien were going to be married, she wore his ring, had bought her gown, had planned her trousseau and her honeymoon, had even reserved the best bedroom at the largest hotel in New Brighton.

Staff came and went; Mrs Brierson was as pale as Lilac, but she wept; Lilac did not weep. Why should she, when she knew the whole report to be some horrible mistake, when she expected that any minute Art would come bustling in through the door, to seize her in his arms, kiss her with little kisses, tell her what a sensible lass she was not to be taken in by a sensationalized story?

Presently Monsieur Arrat came up from the kitchen. He looked different; she tried not to stare because it was rude, but his eyes were red, his nose positively glowed and his lower lip trembled. He told her there was a light supper set out for her downstairs and said she should go down to the kitchen now, she’d been on duty long enough.

She stood up and nearly fell. She wondered just how long she had been on duty – she didn’t usually get so stiff that her legs failed her. But she walked across the hall behind Monsieur Arrat, pushed open the green baize door and began to go down the stairs. She was halfway down the flight when the blackness came up to meet her, like icy water creeping slowly up her body, devouring her. A terrifying numbness accompanied the blackness, an all-devouring chill which swept over her. She tried to clutch at the bannister rail to save herself, tried to call out . . . then fell, swooping headfirst into the ice-cold dark.

Monsieur Arrat caught her before she hit the ground. He had been standing a few paces ahead of her and he simply held out his arms and swept her against his chest. All day he had been lamenting, crying, declaring that he could not work when such a terrible sadness had afflicted one for whom he had so much respect, but now that they needed common sense and practicality more than anything, he shed his affectations and became a tower of strength.

‘I’ll take her to one of the empty rooms,’ he said, in almost accentless English. ‘Poor child, she’s coming to terms with the unbearable; that takes some doing. Someone must stay with her and when she comes round I will bring her supper up on a tray. With a whisky and hot water, I think.’

‘I’ll sit with her,’ Mrs Brierson said. ‘Sadie, go round and fetch Miss Charlotte; tell her what’s happened – I’m sure she doesn’t know or she’d have been round before now – and Phyllis, make me a couple of hot water bottles for her bed.’