‘Uh-huh. We’ll board her?’
‘Probably I’ll stay on and come in with her if she can get her engines going, as whenever possible it’s far better not to shift injured in this kind of weather. I’m not sure about you yet. Depends on the woman’s condition and how close she is to term. The report’s a wee bit garbled about her, but my guess is she’s had a haemorrhage. See when we get there.’ The second maroon was just audible above the wind. ‘That’s to let us know they’re ready and waiting for us. It never takes them more than a few minutes to be ready and they always say the only thing they ever have to wait for is the doctor.’
‘Thing’ struck me as a very apt word for myself at that moment.
Chapter Eleven
‘This’ll save your suit, Doctor!’ The sturdy, youngish man with a thick golden beard and blue knitted hat, threw Magnus a dark blue nylon track-suit and helped me into a life jacket. He had already agreed my thick slacks, sweater and anorak should be thick enough. ‘Over she goes, Nurse ‒ that’s it. Can’t sink in one of these and soon as the water hits that bulb up front of the chest it’ll light up. Can be handy in the dark,’ he added cheerfully. ‘Ready, Doctor ‒ get you aboard and I’ll see to the young lady.’ He rushed us out of the small Headquarters building and steadied my arm as we crossed the wind and spray-lashed L-shaped quay. ‘You let this to me, Nurse!’ He lifted me off my feet as Magnus jumped down on to the lifeboat and yelled, ‘When you’re ready, Doctor!’
Magnus steadied himself on the throbbing open deck with feet astride, knees slightly flexed and as he held up his arms the huge black R.N.L.I. across the chest of his bulky, shiny, yellow life jacket, stood out sharply in the premature dusk. The wind blew back his hood and made his hair stand on end as I was lowered into his arms and then balanced on my feet like a sack of ballast.
‘Yellow beard’ was the last of the six-man crew to board and directly he jumped down, the coxswain moved Harriet Ryan from her berth and began the careful passage through the harbour that was now crowded with foreign as well as local fishing boats in to wait out the storm. The sheltered water had a heavy swell and the sea was sweeping over the breakwaters and the spray soaked us in the fraction of time it took to get into the water tight wheelhouse.
Mr Ferguson at the wheel was the only man wearing an official peaked cap. The taller, but equally bulky figure beside him watching the panels of gauges and switches, had on a black crofter’s cap. He hitched it up politely as Mr Ferguson welcomed us aboard without taking his eyes or hands from the steering. ‘The wife,’ he said, ‘will be interested to hear you’ve come along with us, Nurse. I hope you’ll both be comfortable down aft.’
Magnus said he was sure we would. I had to say something, so I said I thought Mr Norris would be interested and they all nodded and said he was a wonder and doing nicely so it seemed and that was good, wasn’t it? Then ‘Yellow Beard’ guided me on down the few steps to the aft cabin and Magnus followed us, bent nearly double, as the door was low.
At first glance the tiny and only cabin was jammed with men wearing garish yellow, black thigh boots, assorted headgear and shy smiles. ‘Yellow Beard’ made the introductions. ‘I’m Tom. That’s Bill out there with Wally Ferguson. Lofty here’s Harry ‒ the Doctor’s in one of Harry’s spare track-suits ‒ and this is young Bert trying to grow a beard to beat mine. And that ‒’ he perked a thumb at the man sitting watching the radar screen, ‘is Charlie, Nurse. Not often we’ve the pleasure of a young lady along, eh, boys?’
Bert grinned. He was about my age and had a black fringe beard and wore a scarlet pom-pom woolly hat. ‘Not often enough!’ Charlie grunted amicably without turning from the radar and Harry, an older man with grey hair and a fine, aesthetic face, shook our hands. I later learnt both he and Tom were Civil Servants, Bert was a lorry-driver, Charlie a fitter, Wally Ferguson and Bill, marine engineers.
Harry said he was glad to have us aboard and yes, thank you, Doctor, the arm had done nicely and came in useful as it let him know when it was going to rain. ‘Watch it, miss!’ He lunged helpfully as Tom and Magnus fielded my stagger.
Tom thought I had best sit astern and propelled me to the end of the blue leather and padded bunk fixed with a padded backboard to the port bulkhead. The starboard bulkhead had an identical bunk. Our medical bags, now in waterproofed containers, were strapped to the lockers beneath the port seat. ‘If you sit here, Nurse, and the Doctor alongside, you’ll be able to steady yourself on the aft hatch and the Doctor’ll be there to lend a hand if Harriet Ryan starts to lift a mite when we get outside and she may seeing there’s a bit of a sea running.’
Magnus caught my eye as we flopped rather than sat down, and behind the noise of the engines, the sea, the wind and Charlie talking to a coastguard over the radio-telephone, said to me, ‘Naturally, I’ve paper bags in every pocket.’
My smile felt and probably looked like a grimace. We were in the middle of the Sound and heading for the northern entrance, the wind was stronger, the boat had started pitching, and what I had done had properly sunk in. I felt green, but not with the movement. Before Doug, I had loved rough weather, found it exciting, stimulating. Now I barely dared glance through the two small, heavily barred portholes in each bullhead. I did just once. The charcoal and white sea looked on the boil and though the sky, just visible between chinks in the flying black clouds, was still pale, the lighthouse light was on and swinging round. The RT began to crackle violently. ‘Always does that when we pass the light, Nurse.’ Tom sat on the opposite bunk. ‘You’ll hear the same when we get back.’
Bert sat by him. ‘Been out in a lifeboat before, Nurse?’
‘No.’
Magnus said conversationally, ‘Nurse Anthony comes from London.’
Harry said he’d sailed up London river many a time in the war. ‘Done much sailing, have you, Nurse?’
‘Not a lot. Some.’
‘Good sailor, are you? We know this Doctor’s all right.’ He grinned not unkindly. ‘Doctors don’t all find their sea-legs that easy.’
Magnus studied his feet on the slatted deck. ‘Well, no. I think maybe my colleague Dr Donald would go along with that.’
They all grinned and Tom said as I was a young lady they’d better not tell me Dr Donald’s expressed opinion of the sea the last time they were on a medical call with him. ‘You get sea-sick, Nurse?’
‘Not yet at sea.’
The crew relaxed slightly. Magnus continued to study his feet. Bert asked if I had ever been in a sharp sea.
‘I’ve been in a Force 10.’
‘Where’d that be?’ Tom wanted to know.
‘English Channel.’
Harry nodded. ‘Right sharp she can be there. What size craft?’
‘Twenty tonner.’
‘You’ll be all right. Harriet Ryan’s thirty tons. And what were you ‒ sorry, Doctor! What was that?’
Magnus said he was having a mental blank over Harriet Ryan’s engines. ‘Isn’t she 60?’
‘Not her! 72 horse power diesel. You must’ve been thinking of our old lifeboat, but she was more than 60 …’ and for some minutes the conversation remained mechanical, and as men talking machines anywhere, the crew and Magnus had fun outdoing each other’s searing experience with inanimate objects. Tom said he knew the Nurse would appreciate no offence to present company was intended, but machines were like women. ‘Get a good ’un and she’ll never let you down. Get a wrong ’un and you’ve trouble from the moment you weigh anchor.’ Harry said that was a fact, so it was, and went up to the wheelhouse. Bert nudged Tom and whispered something. Tom winked at me. ‘Young Bert’s noticed you watching the radar out the corner of your eye. Like a closer look?’
‘Well worth it.’ Magnus answered for me and heaved me on to my feet. ‘Just get my legs out of the light ‒’
‘Let it to me, Doctor.’ Tom had me by the shoulders again. From his hold and Bert’s expression, I was made of glass and one lurch and I’d splinter irrevocably. ‘Just h
ang on to the back of Charlie’s chair. It’ll not tip as it’s bolted to the deck. Charlie’ll not mind.’
Charlie said something in dialect as I clutched the back of his blue padded chair. The three men laughed and Tom translated, ‘Charlie says he’d not complain if you’d hang on to him and not his chair.’
‘Or words to that effect,’ said Magnus and all, including Charlie laughed again. I was hollow with fear, but they were being so sweet, I had to smile.
‘That’s nice of you, Charlie. Thanks.’
‘You are welcome, Nurse,’ he said clearly.
Tom leant over his shoulder and tapped the circular, highly magnified radar screen. ‘You see that thin line of light swinging round like the seconds hand on a watch? That’s the radar beam. See it picking up those specks of light coming and going down the bottom of the screen? That’s the northern entrance behind us. Very narrow, see? Not so easy to find on dark nights before we’d radar.’
‘Can radar work through all weathers?’
‘Ah well, it’s not so good in fog, snow, sleet, or if there’s too much of a wind.’
‘I clung to the chair, swung with the boat, and watched the swinging line of light. ‘I suppose you get called out a lot in fogs.’
‘More often in gales, Nurse. Ships have a way of breaking down in gales, though, mind you, they’ll break down as often in fine as rough weather. All weathers, you might say, all seasons.’
‘Yes. I’m sure you might. Tom, what’s that other circular instrument just above the radar?’
‘This boy?’ He slapped it. ‘Direction Finder. This, as you’ve seen ‒’ he gave another slap to the large black radio telephone apparatus fixed to the bulkhead on Charlie’s left, ‘our RT. Placed this all handy, haven’t they?’ He jerked a thumb at the open wheelhouse door and the backs of the three men only a few feet away. ‘Old Charlie can sit here snug and tell Wally anything he wants to know ‒ but watch the radar now. See those lights coming up the port side? That’s the northern coastline of Thessa and those black patches are the northern hills. Radar can’t go through land. You been up to our northern hills?’
‘Yes. They’re lovely.’
‘So they are. So they are.’
He took me back to my seat as another coastguard talked to Charlie. I couldn’t follow the conversation as both used dialect, but from the casual tone of Charlie’s voice, they could have been chatting over a garden fence. Tom settled himself down, locked his hands behind his head and smiled. ‘Any more for the Skylark, eh, Nurse?’
‘What’s more,’ said Magnus, ‘twice round the lighthouse.’
‘Maybe an hour. Maybe less. Maybe more. Not much more. Young Bert may keep his date with his young lady, after all!’
‘And the Nurse get back to her farewell party.’ Magnus enlarged on this, and Tom and Bert shook their heads and said always the way of it, so it was.
‘Two months ago,’ added Tom, ‘Bert’s mum and dad had a dance at the new hotel for their silver wedding. We were all asked ‒ first and reserve crews ‒ all in our best dancing suits and not there an hour before we were called out. Best-dressed lifeboat crew you ever saw in your life! Ship in distress just outside. We got a line to her, towed her in, got back to Headquarters out of our tracksuits and back to the dance. They extended another hour for us. Do the same for you tonight, Nurse!’
‘Sure.’ I didn’t dare think ahead, or even think. ‘How ‒ how long do your trips generally take?’
‘No saying. Anything from half an hour to ‒ been more than the twenty-four hours many a time.’
Bert hoped there’d be no call four weeks Saturday as it was his wedding day. Tom said he’d be lucky! ‘Had a call my wedding morn. Six-ten. I rang the wife, only she wasn’t then, to say not to worry and she says to me, you be back in time, boy, or the wedding’s off!’ He chuckled. ‘She knew what was on. Her dad was coxswain before Wally. Had twenty-eight years service when he retired.’
I said, ‘Your wife must be very proud of him.’
Tom and Bert exchanged uncomfortable glances and avoided looking at me. Magnus quickly covered my solecism by asking if Tom would mind his telling me the pension the ex-coxswain received for that length of service and did so without waiting for permission. ‘One pound a week.’
‘What?’
My reaction removed the embarrassment and, briefly, my own fear. Tom and Bert now exchanged resigned grins, while Magnus continued to shatter me with figures. ‘As coxswain Wally gets a yearly retainer of £100, and Bill, as assistant-coxswain, £50. On which both are taxed.’
‘For lifeboat work? Oh, no!’
‘Oh, yes. And all the crew on their pay at sea. Aren’t I right, Tom?’
‘You are that! You are that, Doctor!’
I asked if they would mind telling me what they got. They assured me they didn’t mind at all. ‘One pound seventy-eight pence the first hour. One pound fifty pence an hour if it’s just two hours. After that, whatever the number, thirty-seven pence an hour.’
Magnus added, ‘In hurricanes, fine weather, mist, sleet, snow.’
‘Mind you,’ Tom had to raise his voice over the increasing noise, ‘when I first joined that was good money. I made more at sea than on my job by the hour. Different now earnings have risen, but not this money. Not that we do it for the money. We’d do it without. We’re not doing this to make a living, but seeing as someone has to do this job, as you can’t let folk to perish in the sea if you can bring ’em back, we take it on. But it’s having to work out all the sums, and the wee forms, and the taxman sending to ask ‒ where is it, boy? Aye after me!’
‘Got him on my back.’ Harry returned and sat in the doorway. ‘Getting dark early. Hope we’re not back too late. This should be the wife’s night for going to the cinema with her mother and me for putting the bairns to bed. The wife’ll ask the old lady to step in for the evening and watch television, but she’s getting on a bit and doesn’t fancy seeing herself home in the dark ‒ up she goes!’ An extra large wave crashed overhead and the boat shook like a wet terrier. I grabbed one of the huge steel bolts in the white aft hatch, Magnus grabbed me and held us both on the seat. ‘And another! Getting lively!’ Harry’s voice was half-drowned by the second giant wave. He waited for the third before going on. ‘Wally’s got to watch her in this, Nurse! Got to hang on to her wheel. No automatic pilot on a lifeboat and you can’t ‒ upsadaisy! ‒ you can’t lash a wheel for a fixed course when the wind’s not far off a hundred miles an hour! Gusting real lively, now!’
Tom bellowed, ‘Wouldn’t surprise me if it’s gusting 10 to 11 now. As well you’ve the Doctor for anchor, Nurse! We wouldn’t want you chucked about like me one day this spring. I’d been working a special night shift and just got home to bed when Wally rang to say we’d been called out. Sleeting hard that morn and a 9 imminent ‒ German ship ninety miles out had broken down. Short, sharp sea that morn ‒ much same as this. On the run out I got my head down on the bunk you’re on and was right away when Harriet Ryan gives me a shake and next thing I kent I’m turning a somersault and landing on my head in that doorway. When we got back Wally drove me up to the hospital for an X-ray. No damage.’
‘Save to our doorway!’ said Harry and Bert and Charlie grunted in chorus.
In the next comparative lull I asked if the radar was all they needed to find Miranda Nova. Tom had gone out to the wheelhouse and Harry, now in Tom’s seat, answered. ‘More than that. She’s carrying a Decca Navigator so she can pinpoint her bearings. We don’t have a Navigator ‒ you don’t have ’em on lifeboats ‒ but we’ve a Decca chart, so once she’s told us where she is, we know where to make for. If she could move herself, which she can’t, seemingly, we’d tell her where to alter course and steer towards us.’
‘What about the language problem?’
‘What’s that, Nurse? Language ‒ oh, she’ll have someone aboard speaking some English. I’ve not known one foreign ship not have on the line someone who can’t speak some English an
d naturally they’ll speak it slowly ‒ clearly as possible.’ Harry pushed up the peak of his tweed cap and exchanged grins with Magnus. ‘Doctor knows what I’m going to say. Know the most difficult folk to understand in the North Sea, Nurse? North East fishermen.
‘North East?’
‘North East of Scotland, Nurse. You can’t get ’em to speak slowly, or to stop using their own dialect, no matter if it’s a major emergency. We’ll talk English not our own dialect, the foreigners’ll talk English, but the North East fishermen’ll not alter their ways for any!’
I asked, ‘They speak Gaelic?’
Magnus raised pained eyebrows. ‘Indeed, not! Braid Scots.’ Tom returned to confer with Charlie. Harry and Bert in turn swayed to and from the wheelhouse. Harriet Ryan streaked, pitched, tolled, bounced on through the screaming wind and the maniacal sea that sounded and felt as if trying to crush the life out of the lifeboat. Sustained conversation became impossible even across the small, clean, and somehow incongruously bright cabin. The bulkheads were a pristine white, the lockers polished dark brown wood, the blue leather was cheerful and spotless. And at regular intervals the crew balancing with the technique of flies on a ceiling, came to ask, ‘Just fine, Nurse? Just fine!’ Every tooth in my head seemed to have rattled loose with terror more than the battering, but their unspoken kindness and placid attitude helped steady me mentally as much as Magnus’s did that job physically.
It was the thought of reaching Miranda Nova that put the real edge on my terror. I had now had time to realize I had not merely been stupid, but criminally at fault to volunteer for this out of some irrational, subconscious urge to prove something to myself. Before I opened my mouth in the hall, I should have faced the consequences to the crew, to Magnus, to a sick woman and her unborn child and two injured men, if the trained nurse on whom they had every right to rely, cracked when asked to do more than sit, paralyzed with fear.
In Storm and In Calm Page 19
