by A. J. Cronin
As she did so, a few heavy drops of rain began to fall, splashing upon the water, as though the invisible sky were dripping tears. But although she was bareheaded and without a coat, she did not mind the wet. Suffused by a trembling exaltation she could think of nothing but the mercy of their escape. For a moment the tiny pinpoint of Harmon’s cigarette showed faintly on the shore, then she rounded the promontory and it vanished from her sight.
In the bay it had been easy to propel the skiff, but now she was beyond the point, and had started to cross the loch, the going became more difficult. There were no large waves, at least, none was visible to her in the blackness, yet she felt a choppy tide against her and the boat bounced and veered occasionally, in an awkward manner. She put her shoulders into the work, however, and made steady advance towards the opposite shore.
About halfway over the skiff took a sharp dip, reared its bow high into the air, then smacked down hard upon the water. At the same moment Gracie’s cheek was stung by a strong gust of wind and a harder spatter of the driving rain.
She had known the loch since her childhood and was quick to realise that they had quitted the shelter of Inchlade Island, which lay about a mile farther to the north, and were now in open, unprotected water. But although prepared for some worsening of weather she had not expected the wind and waves to hit them with such severity. The dinghy was in fact plunging and pitching in a disturbing manner, less from heavy seas than from a rolling ground swell, the aftermath of storm.
And suddenly Gracie became aware of herself, alone with Robert in the darkness, upon this heaving waste of waters, far from the shore and the islands, and the shapeless mountains beyond. All that she had heard of the treachery of this loch, the unplumbed depths and dangerous currents, the sudden gusts and squalls that struck without warning from the clefted hills, fell upon her with cold and terrifying force. Had she been wise to take this course, or was it her worst, her all-surpassing and most reckless folly?
Twisting round on the rocking thwarts she glanced towards the opposite shore and was reassured by the lights of Gielston, perhaps not more than three-quarters of a mile away. This, then, was still her best objective, and with a fresh access of determination she drove the tossing skiff towards it.
Holding tightly to the gunwale, Robert, during all this time, had not uttered a single word. His gaze remained fixed on his mother’s face and, although stiff with uncertainty, was on the whole steady and unafraid. Meeting those trusting eyes, Gracie was overwhelmed by a new upsurge of feeling.
“It’s all right, Robert,” she reassured him, between her gasping breaths. “ Only a little rough … we’ll soon be there.”
Alas, despite her efforts, the lights of the friendly town crept nearer with agonising slowness. Her spine was breaking, her breast constricted, her raw and blistered hands gave her excruciating pain. The wind, ever growing, sapped her strength and fought her like a live thing, throwing her back, it seemed, with every yard she gained.
Now the high swell was topped by spanning crests, which broke over the bows and drenched the tiny craft. The flying spray had soaked her to the skin, plastered her hair against her dripping face. She wanted to weep, to give up, sink into oblivion. Yet she kept on, urging the boat forward by the sheerest effort of her will.
Then, as she pulled blindly, her strength almost spent, the skiff lifted dizzily, she missed the water with one oar, which, meeting no resistance, spun from the rowlock, and as she fell backwards vanished into the surrounding void.
A stab of mortal horror pierced her. Now indeed they were lost. She raised herself slowly, grasping the sides of the wildly gyrating boat. The lights of Gielston were near, the lantern of the pier not more than a quarter of a mile away but still, in this gale, far beyond the reach of any human voice. She shivered.
“Robert,” she said to him, “ come to me.”
He had seen the oar go over, had read her face, and was crying quietly, crying into himself, it seemed, the tears coursing silently down his cheeks. But he obeyed and crawled on his hands and knees to the centre thwart. Now there was nothing she could do but hold him closely in her arms in the bottom of the boat, shielding him as best she could, feeling the rapid patter of his heart against her breast, murmuring in his ear tender, inarticulate words. And all the time praying in her heart:
“Oh God, anything, anything but that … he is so helpless and so small.”
The skiff was now completely out of control, yet by a freak of chance, or perhaps by reason of some inshore current, as though to mock all Gracie’s agonised and useless striving, it drifted, sluggishly at first, then with increasing speed, towards the Gielston pier. As she peered across the misted water a feverish hope caught Gracie by the throat, rushed through her chilled veins like fire.
“Robert,” she cried, “ I believe we’ll do it.” And, raising her voice as the distance narrowed, she shouted with all her power. There was no answer.
The little boat, deeper than ever in the water, seemed likely to founder at any moment. Rigidly, she crouched, while the rain poured down upon her, running into her eyes, blinding her, and again she shouted out loud. Then, to her joy, her delirious joy, there came an answering shout, and dimly she saw figures running on the pier.
At that instant the dinghy, sweeping violently towards the pier, struck the big iron buoy which marked the entrance to the harbour and which, in the swirling darkness, had been quite invisible to Gracie. The force of the impact was tremendous. There was a sickening crash. The light craft spun like a teetotum, broke its back, and fell asunder. As Gracie cried, a high despairing cry, she and the boy were pitched into the black loch.
The shock was devasting. When she hit the water her grip loosened, and on coming to the surface she saw Robert drifting away from her. Her whole thought was for the child. Immediately she struck out, seized him, and struggled back to the buoy.
Desperately, sustaining Robert with one arm, fighting the swirl and race of water, she tried to get a finger-hold upon the iron sides. But the sides, though rusted, were round and rimless, and the heavy mass, oscillating giddily upon its mooring chain, crashed at one instant dangerously towards her, and the next swayed out beyond her reach.
She perceived, however, her eyes straining upwards, that the top was perfectly flat with a heavy ring welded into the centre of its ample surface. At that, she knew what she must do. Oh, God, she prayed again, let me succeed in this one thing.
Supporting the child beneath his armpits with both her hands, she somehow managed to keep afloat and waited, her pale lips drawn back, waiting till the buoy swung down to the lowest point of its arc. Then, with all her might, she strove to raise him to the level surface. She failed. Again she tried and again the crashing thing eluded her, tearing the skin from both her forearms as it bobbed and swung away.
Her strength was gone, the weight of her skirt was dragging her down. Desperately, unmindful of her own safety, she came closer and this time, somehow, she forced him up to the flat top and to safety. A great triumphant sob broke from her. There, for the fraction of a second, with upturned face, she saw him clinging to the ring, then before she could get back the huge weight of iron plunged down and smashed upon her forehead.
The sound of the impact was lost in the night, but out of the darkness a flash of brightness seared into Gracie’s brain. For one swift second she knew that now, indeed, she was upon the threshold of her ending. Then the roar of the wind and the hissing of the rain, the icy chill of the water which enclosed her, all melted from her consciousness.
Her upturned brow, pale speck upon the immense blackness of the loch, was directed towards the sky, where before her glazing vision a great dull redness seemed to break and burn. Sparks flashed in that heavenly glow like the golden corolla of a bursting flower in which she saw, still, the face of Robert. Then, even as the rescue boat drew near, the waters closed above her head.
Chapter Eight
One evening in the following spring Apothecary Hay, h
aving shut up his shop, took his customary stroll towards the toll road.
As he neared the house of Daniel Nimmo his pace insensibly increased, and his air, as he stood at the front door rapping its glass panel with his bony knuckles, was both eager and impatient.
Kate let him in herself. He passed into the parlour, where, at a table by the open window, Daniel sat engrossed with Robert behind a heap of books. With every appearance of conforming to custom the druggist sank in silence into a third chair and stretched his long shanks beneath the table.
“Well!” Hay exclaimed, assuming a tone of patronage. “ What are we up to tonight?”
Daniel raised his head, as though becoming aware of his old friend for the first time. His manner was reflective, mildly impatient.
“It may interest you to know that we’ve mastered the decimal system. Before you came in we had a try at a difficult sum—and, believe me, he got it right.”
“Yes?” Though the exclamation was pointedly noncommittal, Hay’s gaze travelled instinctively towards the scholar. Reddening slightly, Robert smiled at him, not the old wry contortion of his face but a genuine boyish smile.
It was not merely the smile, the change in him had to be seen to be believed. The lack-lustre eye was gone, and the sallow parchment skin; there was flesh on his bones and a firmness in his cheeks. His brow no longer seemed translucent, and his head was planted securely on his shoulders without threatening, from sheer debility, to topple sideways.
Nor was the alteration solely physical. Something had dropped away from Robert, that shell of precocity, revealing beneath a serious, a sensitive intelligence. The acme surely was achieved by that flush at Daniel’s praise—Robert was beginning to be shy!
“In point of fact,” Daniel remarked with an assumption of casualness, “ I’ve seldom known a boy so quick to learn.”
“Don’t give the boy brain fever.”
“God bless my soul, what do you take me for? It takes me all my time to hold him back. He likes learning.”
The argument was interrupted by the entry of Kate with a tray, which she slid along the table among the books with a feminine disregard of all the places which Daniel had carefully marked in them.
“Here’s the young man’s supper,” she declared, pouring a tumbler of fresh milk from the jug. “And since there were new pancakes going, I fetched some in for the rest of you. Don’t you think Robert is getting a fine, big boy, Mr Hay?”
“Mmh!” said the druggist, with his mouth full.
“Doctor Todd was saying only yesterday that his legs have improved wonderful.”
“Todd!” said Hay in a pitying voice, reaching out for another pancake. “ What does he know about it? The man’s in his dotage.”
“Tut, tut, Mr Hay.”
“Here, boy,” the druggist commanded. “Stand up and let me have a look at you.”
Obediently, Robert stood up, while Hay, first leaning back in his chair for the long-distance view, then leaning forward and running his fingers over the boy’s shins, made an examination impressively expert. No specialist from London or Paris could have shown more aplomb or suggested more profound and intimidating knowledge. Finally he lay back in his chair, tapping his teeth with his thumbnail.
“He’ll do!” he declared in a voice of complete omniscience. “There’s calcium in his bones now.” He glanced pointedly at Daniel. “I think I told you once before, on a certain occasion, that he would do. And I repeat—he will do!” Suddenly, his profundity dissolved, and he broke into his rare, neighing laugh, like a cab-horse having hysterics. “ I tell you, Dan’l Nimmo, one day his legs’ll be straighter nor yours. I’ve always said you were bow-leggit.”
“Tut, tut,” Kate interposed again, not over-pleased. “That’s no way to talk, Mr Hay. And before the boy, too.” She passed her arm about Robert’s shoulders. “He is getting tall, though. Upon my word, he’s nearly up to my shoulder.”
“Yes,” agreed Hay in a measured tone. “ He’s at the growing age. He ought to have been in bed half an hour since.”
“And he would too, only he wanted to wait up to see you.” Kate smiled, belying the tartness of her retort, and took Robert by the arm. “ Come away now, say good-night or Mr Hay’ll be prescribing castor oil for all of us.”
When they had gone and the two men were left alone, a silence fell. Hay, silently stroking his moustache, kept darting glances at Daniel in his most cantankerous style, as though inviting him to start an argument. But Daniel, sitting with his fingertips pressed together and a rapt, a listening expression on his face, was too absorbed to pay much attention to his friend. And so at last Hay was forced to say, in his most provoking tone: “You’re looking mighty pleased with yourself.”
“Ah-ah!” Daniel answered, not hearing a word.
“It’s not to be wondered at, of course,” went on the druggist, biting his lip as though testing his own gall. “ With all the town running after you and crowding to be photographed at the studio by the plaster saint of Levenford. There’s nobody comes for paregoric to my shop just to see if I’ve sprouted wings. No, no! But it’s different with yourself, naturally. You deserve it!”
Unmindful of the satire, Daniel answered quietly: “ People in this town aren’t so bad, Apothecary. They feel they’ve behaved unjustly. And they’re trying to make up for it.”
Hay darted a strange glance at Daniel.
“That won’t bring Gracie back.”
“No,” Daniel sighed, his face turning sad. “And yet … recently I’ve had the strangest feeling. It was tragic, poor Gracie’s death … but she died at her very best, and that’s something for which we must thank God. She was a strange girl, Hay.… She felt too deeply and let herself be too easily influenced. At the end, she was the victim of her own emotions. I loved her more than anyone and yet I often ask myself if she would have been able to live the sort of life I was arranging for her. She would have left for one reason or another, breaking more than one heart. As it is, she has left us with a memory of which we can be proud—which will always be dear to us.”
The druggist considered this epitaph in silence.
“Have you any news of Frank Harmon?” he said at last.
“No,” answered Daniel, shaking his head. “ He is always in the East. I don’t think he will ever come back to Levenford.”
“David Murray is doing well,” said Hay, who seemed determined to extract a full confession.
Daniel smiled gently.
“Yes, David is settling down with Isabel. He will make a good husband … and a good father. He is not made for adventure. All things considered, it has turned out well.”
A sound from the next room interrupted him.
In the kitchen—wonder of wonders!—Kate was singing.
“You see,” said Daniel.
“Yes, yes,” said the druggist, testily. “The ways of the Lord are mysterious and we are nothing but simpletons. Wait until the boy grows up and you will see how he turns out!”
“I am not worried about that, and neither are you,” Daniel answered simply. “You love him as much as I do.”
Getting out of his chair he laid his hand on the druggist’s shoulder. “What’s the use of arguing, my friend? It is a fine night and I have picked a bunch of early snowdrops to take to the cemetery.”
He stood in silence for a moment. In his dreaming eyes was a tenderness, a memory, and a regret for things that were no more.
“If you have the time we could go together and put them on Gracie’s grave.”
The moon was shining steadily, brilliantly, above the firs, as the two friends walked slowly, side by side, towards the field of rest.
Copyright
First published in 1978 by Gollancz
This edition published 2013 by Bello
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Copyright © A. J. Cronin, 1978
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