Little Wishes

by Michelle Adams

  “Where is he?”

  With barely a look in her direction, he said, “You’ll have to ask him when he gets back.” And then after a moment, “Whenever that might be,” before heading up the hill to a home that would be as thrilled at his surprise return as she was disappointed.

  That letter had been a stupid idea. The fact that he was going to become a father wasn’t news one blurted out in a letter. At first guilt crippled her, shame over the situation she had pulled him into. But after a time she began to reason that perhaps she was being unfair to herself as well. Wasn’t she scared too? The pregnancy had come as a shock to her as well, but impending motherhood wasn’t something she could escape, hidden on some rock in the shallows of the Atlantic. Not coming back was the most despicable thing he could have ever done, even more so than leaving right after her mother died. Thoughts that James had been right all along began to permeate her days, and the idea that perhaps she had been wrong about Tom started to grow.

  Her father spent most of his time either at the practice or in his bedroom. Elizabeth was grateful because it made it easier to hide her increasing sickness. Gratitude didn’t even come close to what she felt for James, who had proved a real stalwart when it came to matters such as the reading of the will and removal of her mother’s belongings from the house. Until then she couldn’t focus on anything that resembled normality. How could she when she was a single girl about to have a baby, and her boyfriend was ignoring her very existence? Her future materialized in her mind: life as a pariah, just like that poor Edith Ball. Out of desperation she started stitching odd ends of material together, planning to unite them with Tom’s family quilt. It was the only way she could convince herself that their relationship wasn’t over, yet despite her efforts it was becoming increasingly harder to believe.

  In the day, while James was at work, she took to hanging around the lifeboat station and had found herself a job of sorts, even though there was little to no pay involved. Occasionally Mr. Pommeroy gave her a small envelope with a little recompense for her time, which she kept in a box under her bed and told nobody about, something she thought of as money for her future. She also placed the photograph of Tom that she had taken from his bedroom in that box, so that nobody would see she had it. Mr. Pommeroy always seemed to find a way to ensure they were never alone, as if he knew she had a thousand questions for him that he was not inclined to answer. Still, she liked it in the lifeboat station, alongside the Susan Ashley, the Watson-class lifeboat her constant companion. It calmed her to spend hours polishing the brass, cleaning the salt from the boat’s hull. In some small way she felt that she was protecting Tom by doing so. Because as her initial anger faded, she found it was replaced by desperation. It was all she could do to ready the lifeboat in case it was needed, in case there was ever the call for a rescue.

  Then, after weeks of waiting, one wet Sunday morning in December before the harsh reality of a coastal winter set in, she found her chance to question Mr. Pommeroy. Arriving before sunup, she watched him from the deck of the Susan Ashley as he set about boiling water, setting a tea bag in his cup. Only once he moved deeper into the station did she make her presence known, for fear that he would nip out of the door to avoid the cross-examination. It wouldn’t have been the first time.

  “Good morning,” Elizabeth said. Mr. Pommeroy jumped, spilled some of his tea down his leg. “Sorry to startle you,” she said, handing him a tea towel.

  “Christ almighty, Elizabeth. You scared me senseless.” More tea spilled as he set his mug down. “What are you doing here at this time?”

  In the early hours of that morning she had walked up to the headland to look out to Wolf Rock for the first time in a week. What had driven her there she didn’t know, but it felt like a terrible dread, a sense of foreboding perhaps, something she couldn’t explain. When she arrived on the rocks she had been met by a severe gale, the sea a swell of froth and foam, milky white along the coast. For what felt like hours she waited, praying for a break in the mists that clung to the choppy sea, anything that might show her that life still existed on Wolf Rock. No such prayer was answered. No light shone. So instead she had walked down to the lifeboat station and begun to ready the vessel just in case.

  “The winds woke me,” she lied.

  He nodded his understanding. “They’ve woken most of the village. Old Man Cressa has lost a third of his roof, and one of the swells has flooded a few cottages on Cove Hill. Thank the Lord it’s not tourist season and most of them are empty.”

  “They’re not all empty,” she said. Even though the reception she’d received the first time was more than frosty, and despite everything that had been said, she knew she had to call by to check on Tom’s mother. She’d tried to see them a few times since Tom’s leaving, but they never answered the door.

  “If you’re talking about Tom’s, I’m afraid to tell you it is. His parents left a few weeks ago.”

  “What?” Left? How could that be so? “Where to?”

  “Heard that Pat found work on the Tremayne farm, out near Releath. Now, it’s not safe to be out here. Get yourself home.”

  Even the idea of his parents leaving terrified her. Had Tom just disappeared too? Had he come back from Wolf Rock and slipped quietly away? With the aid of one of the ropes dangling overboard she shimmied down to the ground. “Mr. Pommeroy, I have to ask you about the letter,” she said, swallowing hard, gulping at courage she was struggling to muster. “The one I wrote to Tom.”

  He opened his mouth to speak, hesitating, she was sure. But before he could answer, the emergency line sounded, the coastguard calling in the lifeboat. Both Mr. Pommeroy and Elizabeth knew there was no time to waste, and that awful sense of foreboding returned, along with a silent prayer for it to be anything other than something related to Tom. Mr. Pommeroy picked up the call, Elizabeth listening to his mumbled answers as he scribbled down the most pertinent of details.

  After hanging up the telephone he turned to face her. “Fetch me the flares, Elizabeth.” The need to ask questions held her back, but sense prevailed and she hurried away while Pommeroy set about opening the doors. Lights blared against the black night still upon them, and almost as if in protest, the inimical sea roared loud and defiant, charging at the slipway like frantic hands clawing at the shore. Rain soaked him as he fired two of the rockets into the sky. The boom was loud enough to be heard up to a mile away, bright enough to light the whole of the bay for a second or so. He was soon back inside, completing a list of tasks that he knew as well as he recognized his reflection, readying the vessel the best he could before the rest of the crew arrived. They would already be rushing into yesterday’s clothes, woken by the sound of the gun, the indication that somebody, somewhere was in trouble.

  “Mr. Pommeroy?” she probed, getting as close as she could without hindering him. The frayed ropes that tethered the lifeboat to the slipway strained against his might. He stopped only briefly, but it was a pause heavy with meaning, and she knew then that her worry across the course of the previous night hadn’t been in vain. Tom hadn’t left the lighthouse, she would have felt it if he had, and that meant he was in danger. “Tell me.”

  The gray pallor of worry spoke a million words before he could find the courage. “A vessel has struck Wolf Rock. It’s beached, and the crew are stranded.”

  The waters off the coast of Cornwall were notorious and fierce. The crew of the Susan Ashley knew every hidden rock, every current that could take an outsider by surprise. Strangers to these waters had no such knowledge, but that was what the lighthouses were for. What had happened to Wolf Rock that a vessel could land upon its foundations? Why hadn’t the sailors seen the light?

  “And the lighthouse crew?” she begged, clutching at Mr. Pommeroy’s arm. “Tom?”

  His heavy hand pressed against hers. A misty rain waxed down the window, casting irregular shadows on the wall. “The lifeboat crew will be here soon with a bit of luck. Let’s get out there and see, eh? You’ve done yo
ur bit. Best thing you can do is get yourself home.”

  Leaving the station as instructed, stepping out into the cold air with a wind that bit her skin as it burrowed through her clothes, she stood against the railings, watching a disquieted sea. Tom himself had told her that beacons had been washed clean away from Wolf Rock before that spike of granite dared house three brave men at a time. There was no way that she could go home. Not now.

  The lifeboat crew came rushing, hurried and poorly dressed. Not long afterward, Mr. Anderson came chasing down the road, still battling with the buttons on his coat. She hoped his blood pressure held out. The idea of Mrs. Anderson, alone and worried, came to her. What would she do without him to fuss over for the next few hours?

  “Yours out there too?” said a woman who arrived alongside her, wrapped in a thick dressing gown, her hair in rollers with a scarf tied around it. It was Mrs. Nichols from down the road, who let her spare rooms out to tourists. Rain drummed on her umbrella, which she placed over their heads, but Elizabeth was already wet through. “I can’t stand it when I hear that bloody flare.”

  “He’s on Wolf Rock. He’s one of the keepers.” Mrs. Nichols turned then, regarded Elizabeth with a keen eye, trying to work out what she knew, what she might have heard. A soft smile crept onto her face, recognition of what it meant to stand on the shore and wait for a person you love. “I don’t know anything,” Elizabeth said.

  Mrs. Nichols pulled her gown in close around her chest. “I heard that the light went down sometime just after midnight.”

  Elizabeth’s breath caught in her throat, and she could feel her cheeks flushing with worry. “How do you know that?”

  “My Joe spoke to the station officer at Penlee last night.” That was the lifeboat station just a little way around the coast. “Said he’d never been out in conditions like it. Pulled two men from a fishing vessel, but they lost a third.”

  “That’s awful,” Elizabeth said, her mind already elsewhere. Rough seas and a broken lighthouse. The waves would have to have been monstrous for them to break up parts of Wolf Rock. Only a sea boiling with fury. And how could a man withstand it, if a structure of that magnitude could not? And with that she couldn’t hold them back, and tears began to stream down her face.

  “Come on, love,” Mrs. Nichols said, wrapping her arm around Elizabeth’s shoulders. She looked close to tears too. “Somebody called the coastguard, remember, and it’s most likely the keepers on the light.” Elizabeth wiped her nose. “It gets easier to watch them leave, you know? Easier to spend time apart.”

  Elizabeth used the tissue to dab her eyes. “I hope so,” she said, but she doubted that Mrs. Nichols’s words would ever be true for her.

  * * *

  Those who had managed to sleep through the events of the night before were waking to word of the storm. People were beginning to rally around, including a team of young men balanced on the upper rungs of precarious ladders, patching up Old Man Cressa’s roof. Others were sweeping the sea’s detritus from the streets, or bailing water from their homes, and Elizabeth made tea for the workers. Doors were opened for folk to come and go, a place for a brief hiatus, to get warm. James and her father arrived not long after first light, awaiting the wounded.

  And right then she heard somebody shouting in the distance, the commotion of hurried feet, before she saw the Susan Ashley returning to shore. The first accounts of what had happened began to ripple through the crowd: five crew members had been rescued from a beached fishing lugger, which had run aground on the plug of volcanic rock that housed the lighthouse. A sixth had been lost in a fall. Wolf Rock had failed; a rogue wave drenched the lighthouse, bringing with it all manner of oceanic debris, and a piece of driftwood no bigger than a teacup had taken out one of the windows, and subsequently the light. Two of the keepers had abandoned their posts to attend the stricken vessel, leaving another in charge of the fog gun, but who stayed and who ventured to help was unclear right up until the lighthouse crew came ashore. Rescued crew members from the lugger disembarked with a range of injuries: cuts to the face, a broken arm, and another with a severe-looking wound to the leg, which had drenched the lower half red. Only one casualty had cause to be transferred by stretcher, carried by the other two members of the lighthouse crew.

  Elizabeth pushed her way forward, elbowing through the crowd.

  “Tom!” she screamed, edging past those at the front. Water splashed her legs as she charged through puddles, and she could see Tom’s face just peeking out from underneath a blanket. From the corner of her eye she saw somebody else rushing. It was Mrs. Anderson, running to her husband. She flung her arms around him as if he had been gone for years, and he held her tight with relief. They were so in love, yet Elizabeth had never been able to see it. Love presented itself in all manner of different ways, even in places where she could barely see its existence. Love could be all but invisible, but still it was there, shaken to the surface by the strength of a sea storm.

  “What’s wrong with him?” she begged, close to tears as she rushed into the cottage where Tom was already supine on an old oak table. James was there, his hands poised over Tom’s body. “Why isn’t my father helping you?”

  James lowered his voice, leaned in close. “Elizabeth, your father’s lost it. I found him crying about your mother, and I sent him home.” He motioned to Tom. “He’s broken his arm. I need you to let me get on with my job.”

  “He doesn’t look good.” Tom was panting, struggling for breath, yet seemed somehow unresponsive. “Are you sure it’s just his arm?”

  “Elizabeth, please. Go home,” James pleaded when she didn’t respond. “Give me the room to help Tom.”

  Knowing she had to leave, she took her chance. Tom’s face was cold as she held it tight between her hands, planting a kiss on his lips. When she pulled away, she saw how he had changed, stubble where skin had been smooth, cheeks sunken where they had once been plump. His hair was long and unkempt, hanging in curls at the nape of his neck. He looked so frail, withered away.

  “I love you,” she said, and for a moment she thought she saw Tom’s eyes flicker, that his head might have turned to face her. Was that his lips parting? Then she felt the tug on her arm.

  “Elizabeth, come on.” Francine was there, standing at her side. A smile crossed her lips, both kind and regretful. “I’ll help you get home. Let James work. He’s going to be fine, isn’t he, James?”

  “Just fine,” he said, already turning to Tom. Elizabeth had no idea if she believed him, but she let Francine lead her away.

  “Let’s get you home,” Francine said kindly. “You can wait there with your father.”

  * * *

  Not since London had James seen a patient looking quite so unwell, clinging to life by the skin of his teeth. It hadn’t taken long to establish that his arm was broken, but what else was going on? Why was Tom so lost and struggling for breath?

  “Get me some splints,” James said to the owner of the cottage, Mr. Menhenick, a local carpenter, which turned out to be a fortunate coincidence under the circumstances. “And be quick about it.”

  Mr. Menhenick hurried to the rear of his cottage while James stood back and looked at Tom. He was out of shape when it came to this sort of thing, hadn’t got the stomach for it anymore. Broken bones had always given him the shakes, but it was more than that. Perhaps it was because Elizabeth had been there too, and he had seen the worry on her face. Something had stirred in him, guilt about the letters and the baby, and he couldn’t shake it. He had been riding his luck, but now, even though nobody knew what he had done, he couldn’t have felt any worse if the whole village knew his secret.

  But he loved Elizabeth. When he first saw her with a smudge of blue paint underneath her eye, how she marveled over his stories from London, he had felt something that he hadn’t in a long time: like he was the person he’d been before he went to war. Memories of leeches and prickly heat disturbed his dreams, the killings he had witnessed, and worse still after th
at. Just the idea of a jungle could bring him out in a cold sweat. Yet that first night, as the moon crested in the sky and he listened to the gentle lull of the incoming tide, he’d understood that he could build a life there in Porthsennen. With her. That he could find peace with what he had done, what he had seen, and with the man he had become. For the first time in a long while he had seen a future, and when he’d proposed the following month at a dinner with her family, it had never crossed his mind she’d say no. Now, when he thought of that evening, recalling her silence and the fidgety enthusiasm of her father, he wasn’t sure, in fact, whether she’d said anything at all.

  Leaning in close to Tom’s chest, James saw the problem. The right side was flat, the same side as the broken arm. That lung wasn’t inflating. Tom had a tension pneumothorax, and the realization sent a wave of fear rushing through James’s body like the vibrations of the grenades that still exploded in his dreams. A single bead of sweat trailed down his temple, mixing with the blond hairs that softened to silk at his hairline.

  “What the bloody hell are you doing?” Mr. Menhenick said, his eyes dizzying when he saw James cleaning a small kitchen knife with some of his home-brewed spirits.

  James tested the tip of the blade against Tom’s chest, watched as the skin paled before blushing pink as he released the pressure. “It’s either this, or a dead body on your kitchen table. Which would you prefer?” Menhenick licked at his salt-dried lips, and James took his silence as acceptance of the course of action that the blade implied. “Find me a metal coat hanger, and some of the tubing that you used to brew this,” he said, shaking the dimpled bottle with its slick clear fluid sloshing about inside.

  Despite the inexplicability of the request, Mr. Menhenick returned moments later with the suggested items without further question. By then James had placed a chipped glass bowl of water on the floor underneath the table, had washed his hands and Tom’s chest with the home-brewed spirit, and had a plan in mind.