The Godsend

by Bernard Taylor

  Our request to adopt her was really inevitable. There could be no genuine peace for us otherwise. We couldn’t give Bonnie up, and we couldn’t be happy in the knowledge that at any time she might be taken away.

  Miss Jenkins—good, kind Miss Jenkins—gave us her wholehearted support when we made our application, and she was with us, too, when our case came up before the judge. I didn’t find it quite as nerve-racking as I’d anticipated, though I could see that Kate was jumpy and rather scared. Her voice cracked when she spoke to him and I dreaded to think what she would be like if our request was denied. I needn’t have worried. Benign, understanding, he seemed quite satisfied that every effort had been made to trace Bonnie’s natural mother. To our great joy he dispensed with the “parental consent” and, with a smile of congratulation, gave us his longed-for seal of approval. We had instigated the proceedings in October, and by the following May, Bonnie was ours, signed and settled. Goodbye, kind Miss Jenkins; welcome home, Bonnie Marlowe.

  We had a little party that afternoon to celebrate. Kate was radiant.

  It was only a couple of weeks after, on a warm, unbelievably sunny day, that Kate announced her intention of taking the children to the lake. Lucy and Davie were on holiday from school, and the opportunity, according to Kate, was one “not to be missed,” and she added that if I had any sense, I’d go with them.

  “How can I? I’ve got work to do.” I was finishing my second cup of coffee before leaving for the loft.

  “Leave it. It’ll keep till tomorrow. You’re your own boss.”

  I looked at her in mock surprise. “My own boss? I’ve got a whole gang of children to support, not to mention a very pushy wife. How can you say I’m my own boss!”

  “Oh, come on.” She aimed her fist at me in a slow-motion punch, and I grabbed her hand and held it while the children clamoured around us.

  “Why can’t we go on a Saturday or a Sunday like everybody else?” I asked.

  “That’s just the reason. Everybody else does go then. And you know—” (Here she had the grace to grin at the transparency of her solicitousness) “—how much you hate crowds. Anyway,” she added, “I don’t think the weather’s going to keep up.”

  “No, Kate, I’m sorry.” I was quite adamant. “I’ve got far too much to do.”

  We left for the lake just over an hour later.

  She was right—there were very few other people there that afternoon—a bit early in the season, I reckoned, apart from it being a weekday. We saw one small family we knew by sight and we smiled, nodded to them, exchanged the odd words of greeting, and then went on to make our own way round the lake. The sun was getting warmer and warmer, and I was glad I’d been persuaded to come. The half-completed painting fixed to my drawing-board in the loft seemed light-years away. Of course it would keep till tomorrow.

  We made our base beneath the branches of a chestnut, some distance back from the water’s edge and on the fringe of a rambling thicket that separated the lake area from fields beyond. I spread out the blanket and the picnic cloth and Kate gave her attention to the unpacking of the hold-all, Davie lending a helping hand. Bonnie sat nearby, talking to herself and scratching about in the grass. Sam and Lucy had wandered off in the direction of an old oak about fifty or sixty yards away. It was a favourite tree with them. On the opposite side of the lake the other family looked very small and far away. I liked it like this—calm and secluded.

  I watched Davie as he helped Kate set out plastic cups and beakers. Unaware of my gaze he went studiously about his self-appointed task, the concentration apparent in the seriousness of his grey eyes. He frowned, balancing plates and Tupperware containers. A slight breeze stirred his fair hair—so much the colour of Kate’s—and I saw how the hair curled gently around his ears, brushing the collar of his checkered shirt. I thought of my own close-cropped boyhood.

  “He needs a haircut, doesn’t he?”

  “No, not yet. It looks fine.” Kate turned to Davie. “Don’t you?”

  He looked up from his work. “Don’t I what?”

  “Daddy says you need a haircut. I told him I don’t agree.”

  “Ah,” he said, and went back to his task. He wasn’t interested; the problem wasn’t his.

  He was growing so rapidly, I realised. You were never aware of the actual growth of the children—but only of the results of it—in the shoes beginning to pinch, the wrists appearing longer from the sleeves of shirts and coats. But I saw it now in Davie. I saw, suddenly, that he was beginning to lose the roundness of his extreme childhood, his limbs were longer and slimmer. And his coordination was growing too—I could see it in his movements, his handling of the picnic things. I thought of the night before when he had sat on my knee reading to me from his school primer; his efforts to master the words, the pride in his voice when he at last solved—for him at least—some almost insurmountable problem. I thought of his own special corner in the room he shared with Sam, the space filled with objects relating to his—and only his—interests: the books, the ships and aeroplanes, the different rock samples, the pheasant’s feather above the bed. He was becoming a person—separate—with his own identity.

  “He’s growing so,” I said.

  “Don’t tell me.” Kate shook her head and gave a wry smile. “It’s frightening. I can’t keep pace with his clothes.” She glanced across at him and he looked up, knowing he was under discussion. “And he’s going to be quite tall, I’m sure.”

  “I am?” Davie said.

  “Yes, you,” I answered.

  “Well, I’m nearly seven,” he said, as if that accounted for every­thing, and came to me, grinning, putting his arms round my neck, stifling.

  I gasped for breath. “And you’re getting too strong as well.”

  “Am I?” He turned now to Kate, stepping across the grass and enveloping her in his lean arms. “Am I too strong, Mummy?”

  “Much too strong,” she agreed, laughing as he dragged her down onto the rug. “And too big to pull me around like this.”

  “Yes! Yes, I am!” His words bubbled out, ringing over the water, and Kate held him against her, running a hand through his unruly hair. “Before we know it you’ll be grown up, won’t you?”

  “Yes.” For a moment he nestled there, his head on her shoulder, his mouth close to her neck. I knew the sweet smell he would smell, the soft texture of her skin that he would encounter. At my side Bonnie sat, like me, watching. She sucked her thumb, her big eyes shadowed by the leaves of the chestnut. She looked so pretty in her bright blue boiler-suit rompers. I smiled at her, putting my hand gently on her blonde curls, but she didn’t look at me.

  “Let’s get the tea poured,” Kate said, and Davie sprang away from her, reaching into the hold-all and bringing out the thermos flask.

  It was while Kate was pouring the tea just half a minute later that Lucy’s high-pitched, terrified scream rang out.

  “Oh, my God . . . !” Kate’s face blanched. The cup spilled and the flask fell onto the cloth, tea spreading in a dark stain. As she jumped to her feet I was only a split-second behind her.

  “Look after Bonnie!” I yelled at Davie’s open-mouthed expression, and dashed away.

  We found Lucy sprawled at the foot of the oak—it was obvious that she had taken a tumble from one of its branches. Picking her up I held her to me while she cried in terror at the blood that was spattering her yellow jumper. Kate, in her panic, was all flapping hands and cries of “Oh, God . . . Oh, dear God . . .” all the time. I did my best to appear calm—murmuring little safe, secure words of comfort—but what with Lucy’s hysterical screams and Kate’s moans, and Sam’s protestations that it wasn’t his fault, I wasn’t surprised that I went unheard.

  Kate knelt down then and I put Lucy into her arms and ran to the lake. Soaking my handkerchief in the cold water I hurried back to them. Carefully, very gently, I wiped Lucy’s face so that we could see the extent of the damage. It wasn’t serious.

  “You’re all right,” Ka
te assured her breathlessly. “It’s not much, darling.” Her voice was still trembling from the panic. “You’ve just cut your lip. You’ll be okay.”

  But nothing did any good and Lucy went on screaming and crying out. Shock, mostly, I reckoned—from the fall and the blood. The pain would be minor in comparison.

  Only after several minutes did she eventually begin to calm down. Lying in Kate’s blood-spotted arms her cries gradually died away till all that remained were little dry, breath-catching sobs. When at last she was quiet, I said:

  “Next week we’ll go to the circus. Would you like that . . . ?”

  She nodded at me dully over her clenched hand. She was such a pathetic little sight with her face dirty and pale beneath the blood and tears, the red-sodden handkerchief held to her mouth, her eyes showing so clearly the signs of her hurt.

  “Right, then,” I said, “we shall go.”

  A few minutes later with her in my arms, her hand limp over my shoulder, we headed back for the picnic area. She seemed spent. Kate looked at her cut lip and observed quietly: “She’ll need a stitch in that,” and I turned and frowned a warning at her.

  When we got to where the rug lay spread on the grass, the thermos still on its side with the spilt tea saturating the pattern in a shape like Australia, we looked around us in surprise.

  “Now where are Bonnie and Davie?” asked Kate.

  SEVEN

  “They can’t be far away,” I said. I set Lucy down on a dry part of the rug. “I’ll go and find them.”

  “Yes. We must get back. Better start packing up.” Kate gave a frown at what was to have been our picnic, then turned and looked away along the path. When she spoke again there was a note of impatience in her voice.

  “Where can they be? Davie should know better than to take Bonnie off like that.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll find them. You go on getting the stuff together.”­ I turned to Sam who hovered nearby impassively studying Lucy’s woebegone expression. “Help Mummy pick up the cups and things. There’s a good boy . . .”

  Leaving them to it I went up the bank towards where the trees grew at their most dense, all the while looking about me for any sign of Davie’s check shirt or Bonnie’s blue rompers.

  “Davie . . . Davie . . .”

  There was no answer to my call and I continued on into the thicket. When I reached the heart of it—a small sunlit clearing—I shouted again.

  “Davieeeeeeeeee . . .”

  Still nothing.

  Beyond the slender trees ahead of me was a wire fence, and beyond that the fields stretched away into the distance, empty of all but the budding crops. I was sure he wouldn’t have taken her over there. After a minute I turned back the way I had come. They would probably have returned to Kate in my absence.

  Any hopes I had on that score were gone when I saw the questioning look she gave me as I approached.

  “There’s no sign of them,” I said.

  “What do you mean, there’s no sign of them? They must be somewhere.”

  “Perhaps they went the other way . . .”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said sharply. “We would have seen them.”

  We stood side by side looking about us, Lucy quiet at our feet. Sam was trotting away over the grass to empty the remains of the tea into the water.

  “Where are they?” Kate no longer troubled to hide the panic that was creeping into her voice.

  “I’ll go and look further along. Perhaps they’re hiding from us.” I grasped the idea with relief. “They’re hiding somewhere in the bushes, I expect . . .” I turned, moving away again.

  “Well, I wish to God they’d hurry up and come out. This is no time for playing games. We’ve got to get Lucy to a doctor.”

  It was as I opened my mouth to call their names again that Sam’s voice, shouting from the water’s edge, stopped my own sound and sent me hurtling down towards the bank.

  When I got to his side I could see her.

  Bonnie lay half in, half out of the water. She was making faint little crying sounds, her hair slicked to her head, tiny mud-smeared hands reaching out for help.

  In a split-second my eyes and ears took in everything—the way her elbows gouged deep into the mud, the bloody scratches on her wrists, Kate’s own voice as she ran towards us; then, the next moment, heart thumping, I was leaping down over the bank. Already Bonnie was starting to slip away.

  With the water nearly up to my waist I lurched forward, frantic fingers clutching, grabbing at the strap over her shoulder. I held tight, pulling her to me as I floundered in an effort to keep my balance. The mud was thick and slimy and my feet slipped and slithered as they fought to gain purchase. But I had her safe.

  “Give her to me . . . !”

  Drunkenly I swerved, turning full-circle, and there was Kate kneeling above me, arms outstretched, Sam and Lucy standing staring at her side. I pushed on. One foot forward . . . then the other one . . . I was against the bank, knees digging in, reaching up . . .

  “Take her . . .” I thrust the soaking body into Kate’s waiting arms. “She’s all right. Don’t worry. She’ll be okay.”

  As Kate held Bonnie to her I tried to lever myself up out of the water. But the bank was too high and steep, and the mud kept giving way beneath my weight so that I slid back all the time. I had lost my shoes somewhere in the struggle, I realised, and now I could feel the bed of the lake oozing disgustingly under my stockinged feet. I turned and began to wade slowly along to where the bank had a more gradual slope. My progress was like a nightmare—so reluctantly the churned-up muddy water let me pass.

  Up above me Kate was crying and asking how in the world Davie could have gone off and left Bonnie alone. But I was only vaguely aware of her words. I had got to the spot where the bank was lower and now I reached up and grasped at the coarse tufts of grass that grew over my head. At the same time I was groping with my feet, toes digging in, searching for a foothold, some kind of firmness.

  And when I found it I cried out.

  Holding on to the grass, my body shuddering, I fought to get my breath while the sound screamed out between my teeth from a throat as dry as sandpaper.

  Kate’s face went chalk-white. She leapt to her feet and looked down at me over Bonnie’s dripping hair. And she read what was in my face—just a flicker as I hung there—but she knew. Then the echo of her own cry was cut off from me as I let go the bank and plunged down, the water closing over my ears.

  I couldn’t open my eyes beneath the surface. But I didn’t need to. My searching hands found at once the collar of his shirt, the smoothness of his cheek.

  I lifted him, and he hung in my arms like a sodden rag doll, the water that had taken him streaming from his body back into the lake. And I stood there, with the water up to my chest, shouting his name over and over, and knowing that no sound on earth would ever reach him again.

  Later there was an ambulance. It was called by the family we had seen on our arrival. They had heard our cries for help.

  The experts who appeared on the scene found me still working—trying to pump back some life into the young, lifeless body that lay before me in the grass.

  Somehow we got through the weeks that followed. I don’t know how, but we did. Somehow we had to carry on. I still had my work to do and so did Kate. We couldn’t just let it all come to a standstill. We had to manage some way.

  Everybody was so kind to us. Even through our numbing grief the concern and thoughtfulness of the villagers surprised me. They seemed to do everything possible to relieve for us, by various means, the strain of our loss—no one saying very much after the initial words of condolence but showing their sympathy and affection in a score of other ways.

  Like Mrs. Hazlitt, our little widow-neighbour, who called round bringing home-made bread and fresh eggs. She “just happened to be passing,” she lied. And then Ian Barrow and Les Hopkins, two young farmhands from the village, who also appeared one afternoon. Both self-conscious and bearing gift
s, and both eager to get away again—to escape from the awkwardness of their shy, halting excuses for being there. Ian’s wife had done too much baking, he told me, handing over a basket containing a large apple pie and a lemon-sponge cake—and “she wondered if maybe the children couldn’t help her out . . .” Les brought butter and a box of vegetables. He knew, he said, that I wasn’t “so keen on the old gardening . . .”

  It didn’t stop there. There was also Mr. Daniels, our milkman—due for retirement and getting slower with every season, who, for a whole month, left an extra pint of milk on our doorstep, and then swore blind that Kate was mistaken when she insisted on paying for it. Everybody makes mistakes, he told her, and went on doing it for another fortnight. And all the while, Mrs. Gordon worked harder than ever, often staying well beyond her appointed time in order to help Kate with the children or some domestic chore . . . So many acts of kindness from so many people . . .

  And yet, with all their efforts, nothing anybody did could really help. Because nothing could ever bring Davie back.

  Thoughts, pictures of him would come to me just a second after waking, shocking me from the forgetfulness of sleep, striking blows that were almost physical. And even in sleep I was not completely free. So often sleep brought dreams of him. And if not to me, then to Kate. There were so many times when I awoke to the trembling of her body next to mine as she cried silently into her pillow.

  But during the days, of course, memory of him was always there. Always. So many times I watched and saw Kate simply stopped in her tracks, tongue-tied, annihilated by the ghost of him, and I’d feel the pain in my throat tighten like a cancer.

  Lucy was left with a tiny hair-line scar from her tree-fall. I never saw it afterwards without seeing Davie. So much promise. All over.

  For some time I was aware of feelings of resentment towards Bonnie. It was obvious to us—and to everyone—what had happened that day: she had strayed to the water’s edge and had fallen in. And Davie had drowned whilst trying to save her. And he had saved her, I reminded myself—he had preserved her life at the cost of his own. Somehow the thought of his bravery made his death even more difficult to bear—if that were possible . . .