The Wind Off the Sea

by Charlotte Bingham

  Waldo paid a visit to London to collect the suit he had ordered from his tailors in Savile Row. He also took time to keep an appointment with Henry Wright.

  ‘You sure this is OK, Henry?’ he said, doing up his shirt after his examination. ‘It’s all right going through with this?’

  ‘Of course,’ Henry said. ‘It’s not going to change anything, and if you’ve been following my instructions—’

  ‘To the letter.’

  ‘Then why not? Personally I think it’s wonderful.’

  ‘And you are coming?’

  ‘Try and stop me.’

  In spite of her recovery, which seemed to be gaining a new momentum, Meggie was banned from accompanying Waldo to London to do her wedding shopping. Naturally she protested, arguing that she couldn’t possibly find anything suitable for her wedding and for the Tates’ celebrations locally, to which Waldo replied that if Muhammad couldn’t get to the mountain, the mountain would come to Muhammad. Sure enough, two days later a dark green Harrods van arrived outside Cucklington House, followed by a small dark red Austin 10 from which two impeccably attired middle-aged ladies disembarked to supervise the delivery of two dozen ensembles from which Miss Gore-Stewart would be required to choose her wedding outfit.

  Surprised and thrilled, Meggie carefully sifted through the choices before her, listening to the advice of the two good ladies and trying on several of their recommendations before deciding on a two piece New Look suit in dark blue, with white piqué sleeves and collar, topped off with a small veiled hat in the two matching colours. Everyone agreed it was the perfect choice, all except Waldo who was banished to the gardens to smoke a cigar while the final selection of gloves and shoes was being made.

  When he saw her come into the Register office on the morning of their wedding, however, he was happily nearly speechless.

  ‘Meggie Gore-Stewart.’

  ‘Very soon you’ll have to call me Mrs Astley,’ she replied smartly.

  ‘You’re perfection. You’re Mickey Mouse – you’re cellophane.’

  ‘And you – are a large Napoleon brandy.’

  ‘I’m so nervous I could do with one.’

  They took each other as man and wife and the bridegroom kissed the bride, for a little too long according to the registrar who cleared his throat but with a beaming smile reminded them that he had several other couples to marry that day. As she walked out of the office on Waldo’s arm, with Waldo unable to take his eyes off her, Meggie thought she would burst with the sheer happiness of the moment. Afraid that it all might suddenly end, she held Waldo’s arm with all her strength, so forcefully in fact that Waldo had to remind her he wasn’t going anywhere – for once.

  ‘You’d better not,’ Meggie warned him as they stood on the steps outside having their photographs taken. ‘One wrong move, buster, and you are a dead man.’

  ‘Having felt what your naked foot can do at the breakfast table, Mrs Astley,’ Waldo returned, ‘I heed your warning.’

  After a celebratory bottle of French champagne back at the Three Tuns, enjoyed of course as it should be in the cocktail lounge, it was on up the High Street and into the church, where in the most traditional of English ceremonies, and therefore the most deeply moving, Lionel Eastcott gave his daughter Mathilda away to John Sebastian Tate, eldest son of Captain and Mrs Hugh Tate of Shelborne, Bexham. The bride looked so beautiful in the antique Gore-Stewart gown that the stalwart John Tate all but piped his bright blue eyes when he saw her walking up the aisle to him. Walter was his best man, and Dauncy, on leave from National Service, was his chief usher. The church was packed with friends and well-wishers, so crowded in fact that as Mr George from the post office remarked – he thought it was only the whole of Bexham what had been invited, not all the neighbouring villages too.

  Eschewing tradition, the couple came down the aisle not to Mendelssohn but to Mozart, to the joyous wedding march from The Marriage of Figaro, and even further from tradition – or at least her own custom – Mrs Waldo Astley found it difficult to stop herself from crying through almost all the ceremony.

  ‘Remind me not to take you to too many weddings,’ Waldo muttered, lending his new bride his only handkerchief.

  ‘It’s these stupid pills,’ Meggie whispered, attempting to smile. ‘They make one so awfully waterlogged.’

  The reception was an entire success, blessed by warm spring sunshine and catered for by the ever redoubtable Richards, whose team of smugglers must have been working nocturnal overtime to be able to bring ashore all the wonderful foods and wines that the guests enjoyed.

  ‘Actually,’ Meggie said, as she and Waldo sat on the wall at the end of the garden drinking champagne, ‘actually this has been such fun I vote we all get married more often.’

  ‘Do you mean all of us?’ Waldo enquired. ‘Or all of us?’

  ‘I don’t mind if you get married six times, Waldo,’ Meggie replied with an even smile. ‘Long as every wedding day is like this, and as long as it’s always me you’re marrying.’

  ‘On my heart of hearts, my darling, when I feel like marrying again, you will be the very top of my list, as well as number two, three, four, five and six.’

  ‘And who shall be number seven and eight?’ Meggie wondered, looking at him imperiously.

  ‘Loopy,’ Waldo said. ‘Then you again.’

  ‘I heard my name,’ Loopy said, stopping to sit beside them. ‘Hope you’re not taking it in vain.’

  ‘Nope,’ Meggie assured her. ‘Waldo was just saying he’d marry you after he’s married me six more times.’

  ‘Sounds a good arrangement.’ Loopy laughed. ‘Except I might not accept.’

  ‘If you didn’t, Loopy,’ Waldo said, ‘then I’d have to return to Miss Gore-Stewart here again.’

  ‘Mrs Waldo Astley if you don’t mind.’

  ‘So – are you going anywhere nice on honeymoon?’

  ‘We haven’t planned a thing, Loopy – my belief being that, to paraphrase Mark Twain, wherever Meggie is – is heaven.’

  Meggie turned round and murmured, ‘You say the nicest things.’

  ‘I say the nicest things other people have said first.’

  ‘That simply is not true. Some of the nicest, nicest things I have ever heard anyone say have to have been said by you. And that’s an order.’

  ‘We thought we might take the Light Heart out for a few trips, if the weather stays like this. Sail down the coast – stay the night at a few seaside inns,’ Waldo said, taking Meggie’s hand. ‘It was Meggie’s idea. Said that’s what she’d like to do, very best of all.’

  ‘Say, that does sound romantic,’ Loopy replied. ‘Hugh and I used to sail all the way down to Land’s End some summers. Sleep in those lovely deserted Cornish coves at night, at anchor. I can’t think of anything more romantic.’

  ‘Cornwall here we come,’ Meggie said happily. ‘All aboard.’

  * * *

  They missed out on the next two days, delaying their departure until they were both fully recovered from both weddings. Waldo seemed to be even more exhausted than his wife, who in fact was up and about packing for their trip the following afternoon while he lay flat out and fast asleep on the bed.

  ‘You OK?’ Meggie asked him when he finally woke up properly late in the afternoon. ‘You do know what time it is?’

  ‘I think it’s all just hit me, sweetheart,’ Waldo said with the deepest of yawns, rubbing his bleary dark eyes with his closed fists. ‘I think it’s all just caught up with me – America, the trip there and back, all that divorce nonsense – and now all this marriage wonder. Hey, come here – come on—’ He took hold of her by the hands and sat her on the bed. ‘I haven’t seen you all day.’

  ‘Do you think I’ve changed much?’

  ‘Almost entirely. You look even more lovely.’ Meggie kissed him and ruffled his dark hair. ‘Hello, Pirate Captain.’ She smiled. ‘You’re my very own Pirate Captain and you’re just about to kidnap me, smuggle me aboard your le
aky craft and carry me off to Penzance.’

  ‘Yo ho ho,’ Waldo growled. ‘But first I have another little surprise for you in my locker.’

  They set sail on the Tuesday following, leaving on the midday tide accompanied by an enormous tail of tin cans Dauncy and Walter had tied on to the back of the Light Heart. They had also writ large and clear on the back of the lovely craft JUST MARRIED in very obvious whitewashed letters. Waldo and Meggie didn’t mind. They were well beyond the gates of their seventh heaven.

  The weather was as fine as it had been at the weekend, sunny but with a good stiff breeze at sea enabling them to indulge in some proper sailing.

  ‘I’m impressed,’ Waldo said as Meggie took the wheel and found the line. ‘You’re a good sailor.’

  ‘You’re not so dusty yourself.’

  ‘Thanks to young Dauncy. I wanted to be able to handle a boat this size and young Dauncy showed me how.’

  ‘Not in Dingy, surely?’ Meggie laughed.

  ‘We hired a craft from someone at the club.’

  ‘I don’t know. You had all this planned?’

  ‘I thought it might come to this, some time, and I didn’t want to be found lacking.’

  ‘That is you all over, Waldo darling. You’re always so prepared you could have invented the Boy Scouts. Perhaps you did.’

  ‘I’m not always that prepared, Meggie mine,’ he said, more to himself than to her. ‘You can’t prepare for everything in this life.’

  They moored off a tiny cove in Dorset on the first night, eating the first of the picnics Rusty had helped prepare for them and then sleeping well wrapped up on deck under a blanket of stars. On the second night they stayed in a small inn overlooking a sandy bay on the Devon coastline, and on the third night, after three beautiful days of perfect sailing weather, found a tiny beach in a Cornish cove which they reached by means of the small dinghy Mr Todd had thoughtfully suggested bringing for exactly this purpose. On the beach they built a bonfire of driftwood and cooked fresh mackerel they had caught earlier that day and ate with potatoes baked in their jackets in the embers of the fire.

  ‘Why does food – food like this – just fish and spuds – why does it taste so different like this?’ Meggie wondered. ‘Because it always does.’

  ‘Because it is different. It’s in a different place, cooked on a different fire, enjoyed for different reasons.’

  ‘I wish we could always live like this,’ Meggie sighed. ‘I could take the life of a native. Long as you were around, Captain.’

  ‘I shall always be around, Meggie darling, don’t you worry about that,’ Waldo assured her. ‘Now we have a choice of bedrooms. It’s warm enough to sleep out, but where? Here? Or back on board? Or do you want to go on and find an inn?’

  ‘Bit late for that, Captain,’ Meggie said, looking at the clear skies above them. ‘I vote for a night on the beach.’

  ‘In that case I’ll need to row back to the Light Heart to get our sleeping bags and blankets – and anything else we might need.’

  ‘My hand luggage has my—’

  ‘I hadn’t forgotten. Will you be OK? Won’t take me longer than twenty minutes.’

  ‘Can’t I come with you?’

  ‘Of course you can.’

  ‘But on the other hand …’ Meggie said, looking about her, ‘Maybe I’ll stay and tidy up this beautiful bedroom.’

  ‘I’ll hardly be more than a minute.’

  ‘You’d better not be,’ she warned. ‘I might not be here when you get back, Captain!’

  Waldo rowed hard and fast back to the boat. It was easy getting out to the yacht because the tide was only just on the ebb, but after he had collected everything they might need, and more, he found the return leg tough going with the tide now fully on the turn and hurrying it seemed out to sea as fast as the moon would pull it.

  Pulling the dinghy up onto the sand he suddenly staggered and fell over, stubbing his toe on a buried rock.

  ‘Damn,’ he said, getting up and hopping. ‘Damn and blast, because that hurt.’

  Once he had pulled himself together and got his bearings he looked round the tiny beach but of a sudden he could see no sign of Meggie. The fire was still well alight and burning with a comforting red glow against the darkening evening sky, but the place where he had left Meggie was deserted, her former presence marked only by the indentation in the sand.

  ‘Meggie?’ he called. ‘Hey – Meggie sweetheart! Come out wherever you are! I give up? Come on, Meggie! I give up!’

  By now he was wandering round the beach, turning in circles as he eye-searched the tiny cove. There was no access other than from the sea, and there was nowhere really for anyone to hide – no caves, no huge rocks, just a few jagged ones too sharp to climb and hide behind, and otherwise just a sheer cliff running a hundred or so feet up above him.

  ‘Meggie? Meggie, this isn’t funny!’ he cried, his heart pounding in his chest, the breath catching in this throat. ‘Meggie darling – where are you! Where are you!’

  Then he saw her. What he had taken in the lengthening shadows to be a rock at the edge of the sea he now saw was nothing of the sort. It was Meggie.

  He hadn’t far to run – twenty yards, no more – yet it felt like a marathon. Every step he took seemed to get him no nearer her. He just seemed to be running on the spot, and then it seemed as if she was moving away from him, being carried out to sea, which with sudden horror he realised she was.

  Doubling his speed and hardly able to catch his breath thanks to the bullet still lodged in his lung he leaped into the sea and caught hold of the saturated shape that was Meggie – the slender, wet, bedraggled shape that was Meggie, that was still Meggie, but that was only just still Meggie.

  Her eyes looked up at him faintly, as if they were unable to see him, as if they had no idea who or what he was.

  ‘Meggie,’ he whispered. ‘Meggie darling – Meggie, my darling, it’s me. It’s Waldo. Meggie, my darling, please. Please say you can hear me. Meggie, please.’

  But the eyes still just looked at him. They looked at him hopelessly and helplessly, staring at him as if he were the last thing they would see on earth.

  He was carrying her back to the fire, where there was a rug, the rug they had just been sitting on, the rug where they had just been talking, and laughing, where she had wondered why everything was always so very different with him, while he had wondered why he was so happy, and now there was just the rug and the shape where they had been sitting and Meggie was dying in his arms.

  ‘Meggie,’ he whispered as he knelt down by the fire. ‘Oh, please, my darling – please say something. Please.’

  Gently as he could he laid her down on the rug, and wrapped the whole around her. Tearing off his sweater and shirt, he rolled the shirt into a pillow, and placed the sweater over her. Then he took one hand from under the rug and held it in both of his, and as he did so, his own heart stopped. It was ice-cold. He leaned forward, noting that her eyes too had lost all life. They were dying eyes. Yet he had to keep looking into them, because if she could not hear him any more she had to know from his look how much he loved her.

  For a second as he stared into her eyes it seemed to him that there was just a tiny speck of light, so he put his mouth to her ear and whispered over and over, ‘Love you, Meggie, always.’

  ‘Love you too,’ her voice seemed to whisper. ‘Always.’

  * * *

  He brought her body home covered with the blankets in which they had slept, sailing non-stop while the winds were strong, and when the wind failed he sailed by the engine. He sailed until late in the evening he saw the mouth of the Bex and the landfalls that marked the entrance to the estuary. He had made sure the tide would be running in because he didn’t want to lie off waiting for the tide.

  Later he remembered nothing about their arrival, about landing, about the faces when they learned what had happened, about the fishermen who raised her body off the deck and carried it in their arms on to the jett
y and into the Three Tuns where they laid Meggie out carefully in the back room. He couldn’t remember Richards coming back in with the undertakers and taking her from him for the last time. All he could remember was the pain.

  ‘She didn’t want to be buried in a graveyard, actually,’ Judy said, when Waldo and she finally met to discuss the funeral. ‘I don’t know whether she talked to you about – well. About such things.’

  ‘No. Never.’

  ‘We did. We always talked about it when we were growing up. And of course we often talked about it during the war. Meggie didn’t like graveyards. She always said the only thing anyone ever looked at in graveyards were the dates to see how old people were when they died.’

  ‘Did she ever say what she wanted?’

  ‘Yes. She always said she wanted a Viking’s funeral.’

  Waldo stared at Judy and smiled for the first time since his return.

  ‘Yes, of course. That would be Meggie.’

  ‘Mind you, I’m not sure whether it’s allowed?’

  ‘You can be buried at sea. No-one can stop that.’

  ‘A Viking funeral is slightly different, Waldo. Vikings died in their boats. They were laid out in beautiful clothes, and then their boats were pushed out to sea and set on fire.’

  And so when the time came Waldo and Judy laid Meggie out in a gold robe and cloak that had belonged to her grandmother, and after the funeral service in the church Waldo, Mickey Todd, Walter and John carried her coffin on their shoulders the length of the High Street and down the lane that led to the quays – and the jetty from where, with the help of a band of six strong fishermen, they placed the coffin on board the Light Heart on a dais covered in flowers.

  They left Waldo to pay his last respects, watching as he kneeled down beside her to pray, and then barely able to watch as he kissed the pale pink rose he had plucked from her favourite rose bush and laid it carefully down on the coffin about the place where he thought her heart would be. Coming ashore, he climbed into Mr Todd’s little tug and stood facing the Light Heart as she made her final journey, towed slowly down the estuary and out into the open seas, with the village following in a flotilla of boats, throwing wreaths of flowers after it, until finally they reached Meggie’s last resting place. As Mr Todd brought his tug to a stop and came to the stern to undo the tow rope, Waldo lit the torch and with one last look, threw it aft onto a pile of oil-soaked rags.