“Nicola's missing” was all Andrew could say to her, and he whispered this, so Lee, who was dozing, wouldn't hear. Elizabeth looked stricken at first, and then smiled.
“If anyone is tough enough to get through this, it's Nicola.”
But Nicola, the woman he knew now with absolute clarity to be the love of his life, the matching half of his splintered heart, had not been seen or heard from for hours. And he knew she was nowhere near as tough as she pretended to be.
Colin appeared out of nowhere with a van, and began shuttling survivors from the rectory to the village hall at the top of Fore Street, where arrangements were being made to take those who needed medical attention to the clinic in Camelford and those who needed shelter to the big leisure center there. The police were letting no one near the lower village, where the river still raged and the destruction continued.
At the village hall, Roger and Anne arrived, having had to drive miles out of their way to avoid the roads the police had blocked. Lee was asleep in Andrew's arms. Instead of waking and startling her, both parents knelt on the floor on either side of the mat on which Andrew sat holding her, and, very gently, stroked her hair and bony legs until she awakened.
“Mum! Daddy! It was so cool! You should have been there, up in my tree! It was like the whole of Cornwall was swimming by—trees, bridges, bits of buildings; I expected to see cows and sheep.”
Roger looked at Andrew, lifted his eyebrows, and just shook his head, as if to say, She's a complete mystery to me … but thank you.
Andrew smiled. Anne stood, kissed him, tears in her eyes, and gathered her gangly daughter in her arms. “Come home, Drew; we're dry up there.”
“I need to find Nicola,” he replied, and Anne nodded.
“Do it for all of us,” Roger said. “Lilly needs her.”
And then they left, and Andrew ached at the completeness of them: mother, father, daughter … family.
Andrew had just left the hall and turned down Fore Street, toward the ruins of the lower village, when she arrived in the van from the rectory. She stepped down to the road hugging a rag-covered package and looked around, blinking, as if she'd been left on another planet. Andrew would remember this moment for the rest of his life: She was shattered, lost, a waif in borrowed clothes. He didn't call out, for fear he'd frighten her. He reached her just as she entered the village hall.
“Nicola…”
She turned toward the sound of her name, in a stiff, twitchy motion, as if the turning were a reflex, not entirely of her own volition. She stared hollow-eyed for a moment, and then the light came on. A smile rose from somewhere deep and she held it for a moment. Then she began to sag, like a leaking balloon. Andrew slipped his arms under her armpits and lifted her toward him.
“Nicola,” he said again.
“I saved her,” she said into his shoulder.
“Of course you did,” he said quietly. He had no idea what she was talking about.
After they'd been fed by volunteers and had their dried clothes returned, they spent the night, side by side, wrapped in blankets on gym mats at the leisure center in Camelford, along with dozens of others—residents and tourists alike. Though she was dry and warm, Nicola trembled uncontrollably. Andrew wrapped his arms around her and held her close until the trembling passed and he could tell by her breathing she was asleep. Then he unwrapped the package and understood whom she'd saved.
Tuesday, August 17, was cruel. The heavy weather having passed, the morning dawned sunny, warm, and preternaturally clear—the kind of storm-rinsed clarity that made you think you could see right over the horizon into the next time zone if you were only tall enough. A perfect day for tourists, but the only people moving in the lower village were emergency workers.
Nicola and Andrew were standing on the edge of the main road at the top of the switchback, halfway up the hill above the harbor. Though they were told the police had cordoned off the area, they'd hitchhiked back to Boscastle from Camelford anyway. Nicola had been adamant about returning. Now the two of them, along with a small crowd of others, tried to take in the scene before them. No one said a word. The only sound was the muted roar of the river, still flowing filthy and fast through the ravaged town, but no longer at full flood stage. The main road through the lower village had survived, but the bridge that carried it over the normally sparkling river had been stripped of most of its stone railing walls. The Clovelly Clothing Company, the shop on the other side of the bridge, had vanished, leaving only a section of thick stone wall. At the Riverside Hotel—and, for that matter, at all of the buildings as far as they could see—the ground-floor doors and windows had been ripped out, and tree branches hung out of them like claws. The river had gouged out ravines at least eight feet deep, exposing and destroying water lines, sewer pipes, and underground cables of all sorts. And everywhere were towering piles of destruction—uprooted trees, poles, bits of twisted metal, signs, rock, and crushed cars.
Downstream, it was worse. The verdant lawns that had graced the riverbanks were knee-deep in charcoal silt and strewn with rocks that had once been parts of buildings but now lay embedded in mud as if trying to return to their native habitat. The lower bridge was invisible, buried beneath a tangle of trees and cars. The historic Harbour Light building was gone. Down at the harbor, the tide was out, and the entrance was choked with sandbars of mud from which dead trees and the corpses of cars and vans protruded.
“It's still there,” Andrew heard Nicola say.
“What is?”
“My house.”
A weary-looking man beside Andrew said, “Fifty people missing.”
“Fifteen?” Andrew asked.
“Fifty. Five-oh.”
“Jesus.”
At the bottom of the hill, they could see that the police were refusing to let anyone across the bridge. Nicola grabbed his left arm and pulled him away.
“Come on,” she ordered, leading him to a footpath along the hillside that led west to the coast. “We'll go in the back way.”
“What in the name of God for? There's nothing left down there.”
“I need to get Lee.”
“Lee's at home, Nicola,” he said gently, wondering if Nicola was still in shock.
She stopped amid the yellow gorse and magenta heather and turned to face him, a hand on one cocked hip, one eyebrow raised.
“The painting of her!”
“Oh. Right.”
“How did you ever get to be a professor? Affirmative action for the hopelessly dim?”
“Nicola?”
“What?”
Andrew grinned. “Nice to have you back again, love.”
To his utter surprise, she stepped forward, held his face in her hands, and kissed him.
“Thank you,” she said. “Now get a move on!”
When they reached the cliffs, they picked up another footpath that dropped down to the harbor entrance along a series of slate ledges as regular as stair steps. With Nicola leading, they ran along the edge of the ancient stone wharf and ducked behind the backs of buildings so the police and firemen at the center of town wouldn't see them. It was slow going, either plodding through stinking mud or picking their way across expanses of debris. They were both wearing what they'd worn the day before—Andrew his hedging work clothes and boots, Nicola black slacks, sandals, and a museum T-shirt printed with a pentagram. They were filthy in minutes.
When they finally came out of the shadows and turned the corner, Nicola gasped. Where only yesterday there had been a postcard-worthy cottage—whitewashed wall, two small, multipaned windows with sagegreen window boxes flanking the granite-linteled doorway—there now was nothing but a raw, gaping hole, much of it filled with a huge, mud-caked tree trunk.
“My God, what's keeping it from collapsing?” Nicola said.
“Post-and-beam construction,” Andrew replied, missing completely that the question was rhetorical. “The stone walls really just function as filler; it's the posts and beams that hold it up.
If they're intact, the structure will survive. Problem is, there's no way of knowing the condition of the upright posts without going inside.”
He was peering into the dim interior when he heard shouts from upstream. Men in yellow hard hats were waving at them. Nicola bolted inside, clambering over the tree toward the back.
“Nicola! I don't know whether—”
“Neither do I, but I'm getting Lee! Hold off the goons!”
Daylight cascaded down the worn stone steps from the hole in the roof as she crawled upstairs. Her heart leaped when she reached the top and saw Lee's portrait, clean and dry, leaning against the wall. She grabbed the spread from her bed, wrapped it around the canvas, then glanced at the wild, dark painting she had just finished—so different from anything she had painted before. And suddenly she knew it had been a premonition of the flood. She left it on the easel, turned, and started back down the stairs. But the treads were greased with mud, and she hadn't even descended halfway when her feet shot out from under her. Desperate to protect the painting, she twisted and fell heavily on her side, landing on the sharp edge of the stone treads and slithering to the bottom, into the mud. Pain like a knife blade shot through her rib cage and took her breath away. She lay still for a moment, breathing shallowly.
Andrew was beside her in seconds.
“Are you okay?”
She shook her head. “No, but Lee is; I think I cracked a rib.”
“Take a deep breath,” Andrew ordered.
“I'd rather not, doctor,” she said.
“Do it!”
There's that intensity again, she thought. It always takes me by surprise.
She took a deep breath and let it out again.
“No change?” Andrew said.
“No.”
“Good. Sharp pain would mean you'd actually broken a rib, which could puncture a lung if you moved. Now, let's get out of here.”
They'd just stumbled out through the ragged arch of the front wall when one of the policemen arrived in his reflective yellow emergency jacket.
“Oi! What you think you're doing, then?”
“Visiting my house, dammit; what does it look like?” Nicola barked.
“She lives here,” Andrew said, as if that explained everything.
The policeman, who had probably been up all night, maintained his composure. He looked at the ruin behind them and then said, almost tenderly, “Not anymore, she doesn't. Look, we can't have people trying to enter buildings that may be on the verge of collapse. I'm afraid everyone's got to be evacuated. I'm sure you understand.”
Nicola softened, and the three of them made their way up the debris-cluttered lane to the main road. Andrew carried the draped canvas.
“Which way are you heading?” the officer asked when they reached the bridge.
In pain, emotionally spent, stunned by the destruction all around her, Nicola looked first one way and then the other, and said, “I don't know; I have nowhere to go.” Tears zigzagged down her cheeks through the dirt.
“Yes, you do,” Andrew said, taking her hand.
“I don't know, Andrew …”
“I know you don't, Nicola. But you will.” And he led her toward the road to the upper village.
They'd just reached the switchback above the harbor when Roger found them.
“You two are even more trouble to find than that vagabond daughter of mine. Been to Camelford and back trying to locate you. Somebody back at the farm wants to see you; truck's at the top of the hill.”
It was nearly four o'clock before they finally jounced into the yard at Bottreaux Farm. They'd had to detour south to Tintagel, east to the main Atlantic Highway, then north past Camelford, and finally through the few narrow lanes that didn't cross rivers or streams to get back to the farm. All the other routes had washed-out or badly damaged bridges and were closed.
There were animated voices in the kitchen, and they could smell the heavenly aroma of a beef rib roast as they came through the side door of the house.
“Drew! Nicki!” Lee threw herself at Andrew and scaled him as if she was climbing her oak tree. Andrew was laughing from someplace deep in his belly and realized he couldn't remember the last time he'd done so. Nicki was ruffling Lee's hair and showering her with kisses.
“And aren't you two an attractive pair,” a voice cracked. “Look like a couple of mud wrestlers.” It was Flora; she and Jamie were sitting at the end of the big scrubbed pine table in the middle of the kitchen, drinking red wine from thick tumblers. Anne was bent over the big solid-fuel AGA stove, checking the roast. When she straightened up again, she screeched, “Out! Out of my kitchen, you two; look at you!”
It was the first time Andrew and Nicola realized just how filthy they were. Their trousers were encased with dirt to the knees, and the rest of their clothes were plastered with caked silt. They looked at each other as if coming out of a trance and began giggling.
The ever-gentle Roger said, “Perhaps you'd like a bath …”
“Not till I get a drink!” Nicola protested.
Jamie took charge, and poured three more glasses. Then he held his up and suddenly his aging, weather-browned face lost its levity.
“You gave us a hell of a fright, lass,” he said to Nicola. “Thank God you're with us again. Thank God we're all here and safe.”
“Amen, brother,” Flora intoned. “Now pour us some more of that plonk, will ya? Sermon's over.” And she pinched his rear for good measure, making him jump.
Andrew nudged Nicola. He still had the covered painting under his arm. She looked at him and understood, then took the package, unwrapped it, and laid the painting of Lee on the table before Anne and Roger.
“This was meant to be for your anniversary, but maybe now's the right time,” she whispered.
Anne's hand flew to her mouth. Roger slipped his arms around his wife and tears inched down his weathered face.
“Way cool!” Lee cried.
“Annie! I don't have any clothes!” Nicola was standing at the top of the stairs wrapped in a big white Turkish towel.
“Music to a man's ears!” she heard Jamie shout from the kitchen. And then, “Ow!”
Anne called from her bedroom, “In here, Nicki!” She'd laid out several pieces of clothing and was shaking her head. Anne was petite; Nicola was not.
“These are the biggest things I have, luv,” she said as Nicola entered. “The only thing we share is a shoe size. Good luck!”
There was an ankle-length black challis skirt with an elastic waistband and a hand-knit, V-necked yellow jumper in a fluffy angora-blend yarn, clearly the work of some loving but inaccurately knitting maiden aunt. Still, with Nicola's lush figure, it left little to the imagination. She slipped into a pair of flats Anne had left and descended to the kitchen again. Andrew was there in his own clean clothes; Roger had fetched them from his cottage.
“Woo-hoo,” Jamie crowed when she entered. This got him another cuffing from Flora.
“Go on, ya randy old man,” Flora said, smiling.
Nicola was stricken. “Oh my God; Randi!”
“Not to worry, luv,” Anne said. “Colin's got him and he's safe, if a little lonely.”
Andrew slipped his hand around Nicola's waist and she leaned into him, feeling safe, too, for the first time in what seemed forever.
Dinner was the sort of event that often follows a disaster, a mix of giddy exultation at having survived and recognition of just how close some of them had been to perishing. They ate in the kitchen, around the big table, a battery-powered radio tuned into BBC Radio Cornwall the whole time. Gradually, the news reports from Boscastle turned brighter. The number of people thought to be missing had dropped sharply. No bodies had been found in either the ruined cars or in the buildings that had been searched. With their usual penchant for hyperbole, the reporters already had begun calling it the “Boscastle Miracle.”
Jamie and Flora had spent the night on the floor of the dining room above the pub, along with others. �
�Gettin' too old for that sort of nonsense,” Flora complained. Jamie allowed as how it was the most romantic night he could remember.
Flora snorted. “Either your memory is rubbish or you need a better life!”
“I'm hoping for the latter,” Jamie said with a grin. Under the table, Flora squeezed his hand.
The police had cleared them out of the Cobweb in the morning, as part of the general evacuation; with no fresh water, the sewage lines broken, and many structures unsafe in the lower village, officials were taking no chances. Jamie had bundled Flora into his van, and they were bouncing along single-track lanes around the fields above town when they ran into Roger on his ATV, moving cattle. Roger told Jamie his chances of making it home were slim, given the closed roads, and invited the two of them to stay at the farm.
They lit candles as the August light waned, but, between the rich food, the wine, and the nearly continuous stress of the last two days, the celebrants were flagging by nine o'clock. It was Flora who called a halt to the proceedings.
“Right, then; I don't know about the rest of you lot, but I'm knackered. Where're we kippin'?”
Anne looked from Flora to Jamie, and then back to Flora.
“Yeah, yeah; we're regular sleepin' buddies now, we are. Just point us to a room, luv; we'll take care of the rest.”
Andrew was almost certain he saw Jamie blush. He felt a tug at his sleeve.
“Let's go home,” Nicola whispered.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Oh, yes,” she said, smiling.
“Me, too!” Lee cried, jumping from her chair.
“No, you don't, you little ragamuffin!” Roger said, sweeping his daughter into his arms. “It's early to bed for you, too. For all of us, I should think.”
“The sheets aren't clean,” Andrew apologized as he pulled back the coverlet on the antique double bed in his cottage.
“Good,” Nicola said, pulling the fuzzy yellow jumper over her head. Her full breasts swayed and came to rest against her surprisingly spare rib cage as she stepped out of Anne's skirt. She had nothing else on underneath. It flashed through Andrew's mind that he wished he'd known that all through dinner.
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