Driftwood

by Harper Fox

  He listened to the announcer trying to give the crowd a commentary through the wind and rotor roar. Their pilots were trained, he said, to maintain steady height relative to a forty-foot pitching ocean swell, to compensate for hurricane-force winds. Each of the Sea Kings was fifty-five feet long, weighed in at six tons, could reach speeds of one hundred forty miles per hour…

  It should have been hard to imagine Flynn, who stayed in Thomas’s memory as a bright-haired sea spirit, strapped into the cockpit of one of these vast machines, putting it through its manoeuvres. Although there was considerable grace in the flight of the Sea Kings, it was massive, ponderous, a great industrial pod of metal-clad whales on the move. Last year the Red Arrow fighter jets had flown over Perran for the air show, to the pride of the local council—their aerobatic displays had a formidable waiting list. Thomas hadn’t seen them, but had caught them from a distance as they swooped, converged and exploded apart with a surfer’s nonchalant flair. Yes, he could see Flynn as a jet pilot. Giving it thought, though, he had surprisingly little trouble putting him at the Sea King’s controls too. He would be capable and fast, his body braced against the vibe of the machine…

  When Thomas’s mind delivered the image of Flynn’s tanned and elegant hand closing firmly on the Sea King’s joystick, he astounded himself with a shout of laughter. Oh my God. Time to go home, definitely. He was not quite sure what he had come here to accomplish, but the chopper team was landing now in neat formation on the tarmac a couple of hundred yards away. The display was over. Belle was looking at him in bewilderment, and he had turned a few heads among the spectators around him too.

  He turned to open the Land Rover’s door and saw that, while he had been staring at helicopters like a ten-year-old boy, he had been neatly and shamelessly parked in. A Volkswagen camper, typically, painted end to end with flowers and peace signs. Thomas looked for the driver, but he was nowhere to be seen. Probably hadn’t even noticed the Land Rover and two other vehicles he had paralysed. Bloody hippies.

  Thomas felt a cold twist of anger, which was more to do with being trapped than inconvenienced. Now he would have to find his way across the field to the tannoy tent and get a bloody announcement made, like a lost child.

  Then he stopped. What the hell was his problem? The day was warm, the wind soft. It was May, he suddenly realised. Over at Padstow, the ’Obby ’Oss dancers would have made their ancient rites to welcome the summer, scattering blossoms across half of Cornwall and scaring maiden tourists to death with the terrible old hobbyhorse, whose operative made it ceremonially bite as many unsuspecting backsides as he possibly could. Thomas used to love the Padstow rites. Why hadn’t he gone?

  Running a hand across his hair, he felt himself calming, the old gift of perspective returning to him. Was his time so precious, his day so packed with duties, that he had to go running off to demand his release? And as far as bloody hippies were concerned, there were worse things to be parked in by. Thomas knew he should be grateful, and found that he actually was. A kid’s Volksie bus, not a Snatch Land Rover or armoured truck. The roar of slowing rotors just the coda to a good day out, not a signal that within ten minutes he would be up to his elbows in the blood of incoming wounded. He had his usual flask of decent coffee on the back seat. There was no hurry.

  He set the flask on the roof, and then on impulse scrambled up to join it, a trick he hadn’t practised in a while. He was relieved that he was still agile enough for the jump, as well as that the Rover’s creaking metalwork would still bear his weight. He could see across the whole paddock from here. Pouring himself a coffee, he idly took in the stalls and marquees, the bright flap of bunting, the blessed multicoloured clash of civilian garments in a peaceful crowd. Yes, there were worse places he could be.

  Belle, who had been watching him in approval, suddenly stood up and issued one of her rare barks. Thomas looked down at her, smiling and frowning. She was becoming quite demonstrative in her old age. She began a slow, dignified circling, which Thomas after a long time had learned to interpret as anticipation of some desired person or event.

  “What’s the matter with you?” he asked her, and, shielding his eyes against the sun, looked out over the field again.

  The helicopter crews had disembarked. It might have been a display flight only, but they were fully kitted up in their rescue gear, the orange jumpsuits, designed to be visible at sea, almost incandescent in the sunlight. Not hard to spot, as they dispersed in small groups among the crowd, attracting hordes of excited kids.

  Thomas repressed a grin. There were certainly two kinds of old-blood Cornishmen—his own type, stocky and dark, who had probably been here as long as the rocks, and the Bronze Age Celts who had succeeded them, strapping creatures, often blonds or redheads, with piercing blue-grey eyes. The six-foot-odd example of the latter breed standing regally in the crowd almost made Thomas laugh again, he was such a perfect picture. Thomas could imagine his own ancestors apprehensively watching from their green mounds while these invaders made landfall from many-oared boats. Red-gold hair, bright as metal in the breeze, plainly lapping up the attention from the hero-worshipping children around him too, bending down like a film star to give autographs.

  Thomas blinked. To the left of this Bronze Age giant, hanging back a bit and somehow eclipsed by him, was Flynn Summers. Thomas, who was now aware that he had been thinking of little else all week, was astonished that he hadn’t noticed him. It was as if his companion somehow put his lights out, somehow made him look ordinary. He seemed to be chatting distractedly to one little boy, but every so often he lifted his head and scanned the crowd, as if looking for something or anxious to be somewhere else. On the next of these wistful surveys, his eye caught Thomas’s.

  He blazed up again. Thomas saw once more his brilliant smile, the sea-green brightening of his gaze. Involuntarily Thomas glanced over his shoulder—surely this lovely reillumination couldn’t be for him—but there was nobody else sitting on top of a truck around here, consciously or otherwise making himself noticeable. Diffidently he raised a hand in greeting, and saw Flynn touch the other man’s arm and gesture towards him.

  He dismounted from his perch, resisting the urge to tug his shirt straight or check in the wing mirror that his hair had not performed its occasional trick of standing up in spikes across his crown. This was, for God’s sake, the most casual acquaintance imaginable—thirty minutes, ten of which they had both spent trying not to drown. Belle increased the pace of her circling, then suddenly peeled off and, to Thomas’s surprise, went confidently trotting down between the line of cars to greet Flynn as he approached.

  Thomas was so absurdly glad to see him that, for a moment, his voice wouldn’t work. He put out a hand awkwardly—their introductions had already been made, but he could hardly go up and embrace him, much as some idiotic part of him wanted to. Much as, strangely, Flynn looked as if he would have liked to return the gesture. Both settled for a brief, fervent handclasp. “Hi,” Thomas managed. He looked at Belle, now standing at Flynn’s side as if she belonged to him, or vice versa. “My dog seems to like you. Which is weird, because she doesn’t like anybody.”

  Flynn smiled. “Great place for her to start—with the bloke who tried to drown her master, I mean. How are you?”

  “Fine. How have you been?” Automatically Thomas found himself glancing at the healing scratches on Flynn’s brow and cheek. “No colds, or…”

  Flynn broke into laughter. Helplessly Thomas reflected that it was one of the nicest sounds he’d ever heard—generous and natural as the sunlit wind. “Fine, Dr. Thomas. How’s your shoulder? Any sign of rabies?”

  Thomas found that he was grinning back. It felt good to be resisted like this. Even the healthiest and least self-centred of men seemed to feel the need to detail their little aches and pains when asked how they were by the local GP, and he in turn would use his role in place of conversation. “No. Not yet, anyway. Look, Flynn, I’m glad I saw you. I…”

  A shadow f
ell. Belle shifted and subtly turned herself round so that she was shielding both Thomas and Flynn. For a wonder, she emitted a low growl, and Thomas took her firmly by the collar as the six-foot Celt emerged from between two cars. My ancient enemy, he thought, smiling at the lurid concept, and stepped forward as Flynn, who had for some reason gone a little pale, said, “Oh, hi, Rob. Robert Tremaine, this is Thomas Penrose, the doctor up at Sankerris. My saviour from the other week.”

  The new arrival looked Thomas over. At first his expression did not indicate any particular pleasure at the introduction or the idea of the rescue. He had a striking, raw-boned face on which contempt would sit easily. Then he smiled, a wide bright flash only slightly marred by predatory, overlarge teeth, and thrust out a hand. “Ah,” he greeted Thomas warmly. “Flynn told me what happened. Pleased to meet you. I owe you a great deal.”

  For a moment, Thomas tried to misunderstand him. Why, he didn’t know. There was less than no reason for the ache of disappointment trying to begin in him, the slight strained tightness in his throat. What had he been thinking? Tremaine slung his arm around Flynn’s shoulders, drew him close in to his side and briefly ruffled his hair, and there was no room left for confusion. No need, either, for this great strapping airman to be scent-marking his territory, which was what it looked to Thomas for all the world like he was trying to do. What had Flynn said to him? Or was this just a general warning display, put on for all passing males, however unlikely they were as potential competition? Whatever was going on, poor Flynn looked mortified. Time for some inane, normalising conversation. Thomas thought he could just about remember how to do that.

  He shook Tremaine’s hand briskly. “Good to meet you too. That was quite a display up there. You and Flynn are cracking pilots.”

  And somehow that was wrong. Perhaps his small talk was rustier than he’d feared. Flynn’s pallor had deepened. “Oh,” he said, smiling sheepishly. “Robert’s the pilot, not me. I’m just crew. The tea bag.”

  Thomas frowned. “The what?”

  “Means we tie him to a rope end and dip him in the water,” Tremaine clarified, giving Flynn a squeeze. “Flynn’s the business end. Harder job by far.”

  Thomas could believe it. He’d seen a couple of rescues, when he’d gone out in the lifeboat to help with the survivors, and had wondered at the nerve of the men who got winched down into the heaving waters, tied to their friends, their craft and their lives by one thin umbilical. If Flynn was ashamed, he had no reason. He’d never claimed to be a pilot.

  “Right,” Thomas said, not certain how to go on. “Well, it was an amazing sight. I…”

  Flynn smiled, visibly deciding to help him out. “Wow. Did you come on purpose to see us?” He looked around, saw the camper van and grinned. “Oh, no. You just couldn’t escape.”

  “No, I got parked in. But I did come to see you, actually.” This was Thomas’s chance. He could have done without Robert’s assessing grey gaze on him, but it couldn’t be helped. “I wanted to say I was sorry for dropping off the parcel like that. I meant to give it back to you, but—”

  “It’s all right.”

  Not a reassurance—a cutoff, a plea that he didn’t go on. Thomas, never slow to pick up on human distress cues, closed his mouth. Too late, of course. The grey eyes had acquired a curious lupine sheen. In retrospect Thomas could see it had been tactless of him, trying to allay his own anxieties like that—Tremaine did not look like the kind of lover who would tolerate…

  “Hoi!” Tremaine abruptly yelled, making Belle raise her hackles. He was looking off between the parked cars. Following his gaze, Thomas saw a skinny teenager approaching through the crowd, a pretty long-haired girlfriend hanging on one arm, the other stacked high with secondhand books, CDs and a stuffed giraffe from the tombola stall. “Yes, you, you inconsiderate little shit,” Tremaine continued, as the poor lad noticed him. “Do you realise you’re stopping a very busy doctor from reaching his patients?”

  The boy, ashen, broke into a trot, scattering belongings on the turf. “Oh God,” Thomas said. “Don’t, Robert. I’m not on duty.” But even if Tremaine had heard him, which he doubted, he was too late—the kids were pelting in what looked like sheer terror for their van. The boy skidded to a halt for one second, staying well out of range of the formidable airman in his glaring orange flight suit.

  “Sorry, dude!” he shouted to Thomas, jumped into the Volksie and roared off as fast as the clustered vehicles and pitted field would allow.

  Tremaine turned back to face him. He was beaming from ear to ear, having apparently thoroughly enjoyed the exercise of frightening children. “There you go,” he said to Thomas. “Bloody hippies, eh?” Thomas, who’d inwardly expressed the same sentiment not half an hour before, felt a sudden sense of affinity for them. Flynn, too, looked as if he would rather have been on the bus. “Right. You can go about your business, Doctor. And we have to go about ours, flyin’ Flynn—time we warmed the birds up for the four o’clock. Bye, Thomas. Nice meeting you.”

  Thomas elected not to watch them leave. He tried to define for himself the pain it would have cost him to do so. Partly it was just the chagrin of being walked off on, a mild humiliation he could avoid by turning his back and going about his business. And in part, he realised, it was his reluctance to see Flynn hustled off. He did not want to think about Rob Tremaine doing that. Did not want to envisage Flynn allowing it to be done.

  He was packing up the Land Rover when a warm grip fastened on his arm. His nerves were raw from his encounter with Tremaine—this was, he had reminded himself grimly, why he avoided people in general—and he repressed a violent flinch. But it was only Flynn. His grasp was tight, electrical. “Thomas,” he began urgently. “I’m sorry about that. Rob’s okay, just… Listen. I’ve only got a second. There’s no hard feelings over the package. Really. I wanted you to have it, but I always go too bloody far. Look, will you come and join us for a drink in the Fox tonight? To say thank you, since you won’t accept my crazy offerings? It’ll just be me and the lads. Please?”

  Thomas opened his mouth to refuse. What am I meant to do with you and the lads in a bloody airbase pub? But Flynn bestowed on him a smile of such persuasive sweetness that the protest melted on his lips. “We’ll be there around seven,” he said. They both stood in silence for a moment. Thomas could not have said what they were waiting for. Flynn, still smiling, was interrogating his gaze, brow furrowing, lower lip caught in his teeth. He looked almost hopeful—and thoroughly confused. When the shifting wind brought rotor roar to them once more, he let go Thomas’s arm with a faint, near-guilty start. “I’ve got to get back,” he murmured, and turning away, set off at a jog through the crowd. Steadying himself on the Rover’s wing mirror, Thomas watched him go.

  He had no idea what to wear. He worried about it briefly, staring into a seldom-used full-length mirror in his bedroom, then shook his head in impatience. Suppose he dressed up, who would that be for? Flynn was—comprehensively—taken, and even had it been otherwise, Thomas could not imagine a world in which their lives could possibly converge. He was damaged goods, a battered war vet with OCD and an incipient booze problem. He wouldn’t lay a hand on Flynn’s bright young life, even if he could.

  Clean and reasonably well-ironed would have to do. Thomas took one of his white linen shirts out of the wardrobe in which hung five others exactly like it and issued himself one of five sets of identical black cords. He checked that Belle had water, biscuits and her favourite rubber toy, and apologised to her—she was no more prepared than he was for him to be spending an evening out.

  Out, for God’s sake, with a wild bunch of RNAS flyboys and hotshots, and Robert Tremaine, who for all his bonhomie and surface charm, would plainly have liked to deck him at the fairground that afternoon.

  Thomas smiled wryly. Flynn wanted him there, and he owed him one friendly act. Then it would be over.

  Over before it started, almost. Thomas walked into the Fox in Breagh village and nearly turned and
walked straight out again. The racket hit him like a brick. He realised with a shock how long it had been since he had ventured into even the quietest of pubs, and this place was rocking, U2 blasting out of the speakers, the unrestrained shouting and laughter of military men off duty. A few beleaguered women too, Thomas noted, making his way through the crowd, although they also looked as if they belonged to the base.

  The whole place had more the air of an army canteen than a Cornish bar. It was modern, and utilitarian in structure, harsh neon lights glaring. Pretty horrible, really, he wryly reflected, asking himself once again—as he had half a dozen times on the road down from his lonely, sea-swept coast—why he had accepted Flynn’s invitation. Now he was here—and his arrival hadn’t gone unnoticed, a few heads turning to check out the civilian entering the RNAS den—he would have to make a decent show of it. He’d timed his arrival for half an hour later than Flynn’s estimated seven o’clock, in the hope of not getting there first, but it didn’t seem to have worked.

  Had he always been like this? Diffident, barely able to hold his head up in a noisy crowd? Suddenly Thomas was annoyed with himself. Probably he laid too much at the door of his experiences in Helmand. Yes, he’d always been shy. But he’d had the grace to hide it, to reach back to offered friendliness. It didn’t really matter that Flynn wasn’t here. And this might be a Navy pub, but they didn’t own it and could just put up with him while he had a drink at the bar like a normal person.