Air Ambulance

by Jean S. MacLeod

  His jaw tightened as the house came into full view. At this hour it was quiet and looked curiously empty. A house without a soul.

  Margot would be somewhere in there, doing heaven alone knew what with her long, interminable day.

  He looked at the yellow door, wondering why she had wanted it painted that colour when she had shut all light and colour out of her life and only admitted selfishness.

  There was a bell—a meticulously-polished ship's bell—hanging from a wrought-iron bracket at one side, and he rang it after only a moment’s hesitation. The sound of it made in that quiet place would have summoned the dead.

  Footsteps came quickly across the hall within, and Hannah opened the door. She blinked at him without recognition at first.

  “You’ve forgotten me, Mrs. Auld,” he said. “Or is it just that I’ve changed so much in the past six years?”

  “Ron Gowrie!” she exclaimed without belief. “It can’t be you! Not after all this time.”

  “It can and it is!” He walked past her into the dim hallway, noting the cap and apron with distaste. “Where’s Margot?”

  “I wasn’t to disturb her.” She was still gazing at him as if she found it difficult to believe the evidence of her own eyes. She had always liked him, always thought him the determined sort of person Margot needed in her life. Not gentle and easily swayed like the man she had eventually married. “She has bad days and good ones,” she added. "It will be a long time before she will be able to walk properly.”

  “But she can walk.” His mouth was thin. “Will you tell her that I want to see her?”

  Hannah Auld hesitated, not knowing what to do in the circumstances, and in that moment a sharp, clear voice demanded from the head of the staircase:

  “Hannah, who is that?”

  “It’s someone you used to know.” Hannah sounded as if she had been trapped. “I said you were resting—”

  “And I told her I had to see you!” Ronald was at the foot of the stairs, his thin, dark face with its smoldering, resentful eyes turned upwards. “The name’s Gowrie, by the way. Ronald Gowrie. Do you want me to come up and help you down, or are you prepared to invite me up?” he asked.

  “Neither!” Her voice was cool, although there might have been just a suggestion of desperation in it as she added, “I don’t want to see you at all.”

  “That’s rather a pity.” He gave Hannah a swift, commanding glance which told her to stay where she was and not to interfere. “Because I’m afraid you will have to. I’m coming up.”

  He mounted the stairs slowly, because he still felt the strain on his back, and Margot appeared to accept the situation, for she did not turn away. She stood holding on to the newel-post at the top of the stairs, and only when he reached her side did he see that the knuckles on her hand were standing out against the pink flesh.

  “What do you want?” she asked, looking at him directly for the first time. “I didn’t ask you to come here. People on Heimra understand that they don’t pay visits to Monkdyke. They come when I send for them.”

  He laughed that to scorn.

  “All right, Margot!” he agreed. “Let’s say that I didn’t understand, shall we? I’m not ‘on Heimra’—not to stay, so perhaps I have some excuse.”

  “There can be no excuse for thrusting yourself in here, for trying to speak to me against my will,” she began, until she felt him take her gently by the elbow.

  Gently? His grip was like iron. It forced obedience, and she found herself backing towards the half-closed door of her bedroom, the inner sanctuary which she guarded against all comers, as a rule.

  “You can’t do this!” she cried. “I’ll talk to you downstairs some other time!”

  “Time won’t stand still, even for you, Margot,” he told her relentlessly. “There’s so little time left for me, you see. I’m leaving Heimra the day after tomorrow—on Friday.”

  “Then why have you come?” she demanded, her voice curiously shaken. “Surely not to say goodbye?”

  “We said goodbye once before, remember?” His voice was low and controlled, his eyes like flint. “Ten years ago, when you decided to marry someone else. You were all I had,” he went on relentlessly, “but you wanted something more than love. You wanted position, money, social standing—and now you want it all again.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she countered nervously as he closed the door behind him. “And you had no right to come.”

  “No?” he queried, watching without pity as she sank down into a chair. “Not when I know you’re out to cheat and deceive and trick again?”

  “That’s not true!” she gasped. “You’re saying all this because you’re sore about the past—”

  “Sore?” There was nothing but derision in his tone. “That’s an understatement if ever there was one! I came to hate you, Margot, for what you did to me. You’ve given me nearly seven years of hell, when I trusted no one, believed in nothing, and scattered every ideal I ever had held to the winds. Do you wonder that I hated you?”

  Her eyes softened as she rose carefully to her feet.

  “But you don’t hate me now,” she suggested softly. “You couldn’t go on hating me for ever, Ronnie—”

  He moved then, catching her roughly in his arms and kissing her with a passion he had never shown in the past. And she clung to him with equal passion, pressing her lips to his in a wild abandonment which, in a saner moment, he would have considered nauseating.

  When he put her from him at last she was trembling.

  “I’ve nothing much to give you, Margot,” he reminded her scathingly. “Nothing except love. Not the sort of love you’ve known—reticent and weak and far too generous in its giving—but an overpowering, demanding love, taking as well as giving. You wouldn’t have the plush existence you’ve had here on Heimra if you married me,” he added, glancing round the over-furnished room. “You’d have to be prepared to take me as I am—crippled and perhaps unable to fend for you when we got back to the mainland. I’d never be able to give you the things you’ve enjoyed here as Blair of Heimra’s widow—the luxury, the security. I’ll never fly a plane again,” he added grimly. “I know that now, although they won’t admit it at Garrisdale. But that won’t keep me from holding down some other job.”

  “Ronnie!” she sobbed, “you know I’ve always loved you, but I needed security. I never had any. Always, when I was a child, there was the thought of Hannah Auld and her husband—the thought that they could send me away if they liked. I wasn’t really their child. I was the little girl nobody wanted. And it was all so drab! The close in the Edinburgh tenement and the windows overlooking the back green.” She shivered. “There was nothing green about it. The world seemed full of reeking chimneys and grey pavements on the way to school. I never had the sort of clothes that other children had. They were always hand-down from someone else—rich people’s children who looked at me with pitying eyes at the church bazaars when they came with their mothers to serve behind the jumble stalls! I hated Hannah for being poor in those days, and I’ve hated poverty ever since. But I wanted your love when you first told me you loved me. I wanted you desperately—as I want you now...”

  He looked at her, half believing what she said for a moment, and then he shook his head.

  “It isn’t enough for you, Margot. You’re soft and degenerate and waiting for the sort of love that isn’t too difficult or doesn’t ask too much. You want to keep what you’ve got in the easiest possible way, but, by heaven! I’m not going to stand aside and see you marrying Blair in that frame of mind. You’re not going to trick him while I’m around. You’re going to tell him the truth. You’re going to walk to Garrisdale and tell him!”

  She caught his hand, but he put her away from him.

  “I’ll give you twenty minutes to get ready,” he said. “I’ll wait for you in one of the rooms downstairs.”

  He went out, closing the door behind him. He could hear her wild, frustrated sobbing thro
ugh the stout panelling, but he would not go back to comfort her or retract his ultimatum one inch.

  He was halfway down the stairs when he saw that the main door was still open and that Isobel Pollock was standing on the threshold. Her face was completely devoid of colour, her hair blown about by the wind, as if she had been running against it.

  “Polly! What is it?” he asked, leaping down the last few stairs.

  “It’s Andrew,” she said. “He’s disappeared. He didn’t come back with the other children from the picnic. I came to see if he was here.”

  “Have you searched everywhere else?” he asked. “Everywhere within reason?”

  “Within reason and without reason,” she told him, trying to hide her pain at finding him here. “Fergus and Alison have gone back along the rocks, and the Camerons are out searching on the Strand. He was with the others when they left the bay, but you know how they straggle behind, looking for things. The island is so safe, except for the bogs, and they know not to go there.”

  “Andrew wouldn’t walk into a bog,” he said decisively. “He must have gone off on some other tack.” He turned swiftly as Hannah came towards them across the hall. “Will you tell Margot that Andrew is missing?” he said deliberately. “We have gone in search of him.”

  “Oh, my!” exclaimed Hannah. “The poor wee bairn! Could I do something? Get blankets ready or make a hot drink in case he’s been hurt?”

  Ronald paused at the door, glancing up at the deserted staircase for one brief moment before he followed Isobel out.

  “Get the blankets ready, Mrs. Auld,” he said. “We may need them.”

  “I told Alison I would follow her up on to the cliffs,” Isobel explained breathlessly. She had almost to run to keep up with him. “She’s terribly upset. She has always been so fond of Andrew, and she feels that the children were in her charge this afternoon.”

  "It could have happened at any time,” Ronald returned grimly.

  “There’s Alison!” Isobel cried, pointing. “But she’s alone.”

  “Ahoy, there!” Ronald shouted, but the wind carried his voice away.

  Alison was running in the direction of the cliffs, oblivious of everything but the need of movement, the terrible urgency of covering all the open ground over which they had walked from that fateful picnic.

  Fergus had gone on ahead of her, working his way with Sandy northwards along the cliffs, and Isobel had run to check up at Monkdyke in case, by some odd chance, Andrew had decided to go there.

  She turned to look back to the bay and saw both Isobel and Ronald hurrying towards her.

  “Any news?” Ronald demanded, seeing by her stricken expression that there was none.

  “Not yet.” For a fleeting instant she wondered if he were well enough to rush about like this, and then she knew that argument would be futile. “Fergus has gone along the north headland. Andrew so often went there to watch the puffins.”

  “It’s too far away,” Ronald decided. “Although I suppose Blair’s idea of working his way along the cliff is quite good. My guess is, though, that we’ll find Andy somewhere nearer at hand.”

  Alison looked down at the sea breaking ceaselessly against the base of the cliff, swirling and eddying between the jagged rocks like a hungry monster licking its lips, and shivered.

  No! she protested inwardly. No! Dear God, don’t let that have happened...!

  “We’ll work south,” Ronald said. “No point in following in Blair’s tracks.”

  They kept together at first, but soon he was on ahead, sometimes clambering over the edge of the cliff to gaze down searchingly from a jutting buttress of red gneiss which obscured his view of the shore beneath. Each time, when he came back, there was both disappointment and relief in his eyes. He had not found Andrew, but at least there was no definite evidence of tragedy. There was hope.

  Isobel called at intervals, “Andrew! Andrew!” her voice echoing and re-echoing hollowly as they scrambled up and down the undulating cliff path, but no answer came. Then, pointing, she stood at the edge of the cliff and said in a stiff, frozen voice:

  “What’s that down there?”

  Alison’s heart seemed to turn over and lie still. She could not speak, and she could not look for one awful second that seemed torn from time. When she did turn her eyes towards the sea she moved closer to Isobel, as if for protection.

  “Look!” Isobel said. “Down there.”

  Some thirty feet beneath them, down on a ledge of rock, a small white object lay in the half-dark.

  Before she could make out what it was, the bleak little cry of a seal pup met her ears. It was such a forlorn, lost sound in the gathering dusk that it might have been a human child whimpering there for its mother, for the comfort of her arms and the reassurance of her touch.

  “It’s a baby seal,” she heard herself whispering with relief. In that moment Ronald Gowrie was past them sliding on his hands and buttocks down the almost precipitous incline towards the ledge.

  “He’s seen something,” Isobel breathed. “Something else...” They could do no more than wait. Ronald had not spoken, and there didn’t seem to be room/for more than himself and the seal pup on the ledge. There was danger, too, in the possibility of the adult seal’s return, when she would undoubtedly attempt to protect her defenceless offspring. The baby was too young yet to be taken into the water with her, but she would be somewhere around, watching them with sad and questioning eyes from a band of drifting weed, perhaps, her small glossy head rising and falling with the tide.

  “There’s some sort of cave down there,” Isobel said at last. “An opening in the rock face.”

  “But Andrew would never have got that far—not on his own,” Alison protested.

  “I suppose not.” Isobel was straining her eyes now, trying to see in the grey, uncertain light. All the glory of the afterglow had gone from the sky, merging into a band of gold which cooled and paled to yellow and then to violet as the night absorbed it, slowly and surely, out to the far horizon’s rim. “He’s gone,” she said at last. “Ronald isn’t there any more. There must be a cave.”

  Then, quite distinctly, she saw his tall, lean form silhouetted against the silvery surface of the water. He was carrying something in his arms.

  “It’s Andrew!” Isobel breathed. “Ron’s got him!”

  Neither of them dared to put into words the question that hammered at both their hearts. The small figure in Ronald Gowrie’s arms was Andrew all right, but was he dead or alive?

  “He can’t get him up the cliff,” Isobel said. “His arm—it’s no use to him. He can’t hold anything for any length of time. He couldn’t possibly carry Andrew and hold on as well. I’m going down to them,” she decided.

  Quickly she slipped over the edge, slithering downwards as Ronald had done ten minutes before.

  Alison waited, her breath held, her lower lip caught tightly between her teeth. She would be needed to help them up that last difficult bit over the cliff face to the grass at her feet.

  It was Isobel who passed Andrew up to her. He was so white and looked so limp that for a moment she could not believe him to be conscious, and then he opened his eyes and gave her a small, uncertain smile.

  “I fell,” he said. “I was going to the baby seal, and I slipped and fell.”

  She held him close, oblivious of everything but the utter joy of knowing that he was alive.

  “Oh, Andy-Pandy!” she murmured. “You gave us the most awful fright!”

  “He’s got some sort of injury to his leg.” Ronald Gowrie rolled on to the grass at her feet, breathing hard. “It may be no more than a wrenched ankle, but we can’t be sure. We’ll have to carry him.” He bent over the child. “Does it hurt a lot, Andy?” he asked. “Do you think you could rise on my shoulders?”

  Andrew nodded. He was still looking at Alison, as if he were trying to explain something, to excuse himself for breaking away from the crocodile on the journey back to Garrisdale.

  “It wa
s the baby seal,” he said. “I heard it crying. It cried and cried. It was down there all alone. I think,” he added sadly, “its mother didn’t want it.”

  “Of course she did!” Alison hugged him close. “She’ll come back, Andy. She’s sure to come back! She’ll only be waiting till we go away.”

  Turning, she caught a glimpse of Ronald Gowrie’s face. It was harsh and grey, with a grimly-compressed mouth, but the dark eyes were full of compassion as he looked at the child in her arms. “O.K., Andy!” he said after the briefest pause. “Let’s go!” The quickest way was straight across the headland, and he turned that way without hesitation. Perhaps he did not notice, at first, that it went past Monkdyke, or perhaps he did.

  “I ought to go and try to contact the others,” Isobel said. “You go on with Ronald, Alison. Andrew is fond of you. He might fret if he thought you were vexed with him for lagging behind.”

  “I’m not taking him all the way to Garrisdale.” His mouth was suddenly taut. “It’s over a mile further, and he’s had about enough, poor kid. I’m taking him to Monkdyke where he belongs.”

  Alison’s heart raced, but she did not offer any protest. It was a perfectly reasonable step to take, the most natural thing to do in the circumstances.

  Hannah had the yellow door open long before they reached it. “I saw you coming,” she told them. “Is the wee lad all right?”

  “We’re not quite sure, Mrs. Auld. He’s tired and hurt...” She was still speaking when she noticed Margot standing beside the wide chimneypiece in the glow of the fire. She looked as if she had been standing there for a very long time—waiting.