Gabrielle ran through the rain to her car with Shadow at her heels. The dog leapt onto the rug in the back seat with a sigh. She drove down the lane and made for the next cove. If the rain stopped she could walk over the headland to Elan’s cottage. She parked in the empty car park and watched the violent sea run at the rocks, hit them with a sound like thunder and spray upwards towards the sky.
Further out, rounding the cove, a small fleet of fishing boats were battling home along the coast to Newlyn. She could see the skipper at the wheel and the crews in their heavy sou’westers trying to stow away the nets.
She watched them anxiously. A small green boat seemed to be in trouble; she could see men leaning over the stern looking into the water. None of the boats battling against the sea seemed to be making the progress they should towards the headland and comparative shelter.
Gabby sat up, mopped the misting windscreen. Something was wrong out there. Should she do something? She reached out for her mobile telephone and at that moment the maroon went off for the lifeboat. Gabby jumped, her blood running cold as she heard the sound of the rescue helicopter above the clouds.
She got out of the car still clutching her phone. The rain had stopped but the wind nearly blew her off her feet. She hung on to the car, peering out to sea. Two of the fishing boats had made the far headland and disappeared, but the other one manoeuvred dangerously round to go back to the stricken little boat. Gabby could hear clearly the roar of protesting boat engines as they battled not to get blown onshore. Hugging the cliff she edged forward, ignoring Shadow’s indignant barking.
The air-sea rescue helicopter had descended from the cloud and hovered over the green boat. The crew waved at it and pointed down into the water, and Gabby saw with horror a small yellow figure rising in the water behind the boat. He appeared caught in something, then a huge wave rolled in and they were lost to sight as they sank into a trough.
When the boat came back into view two fishermen were leaning dangerously over the stern towards him. The helicopter was now winching a crewman down a rope into the water, but the wind kept blowing him away from the desperate yellow blob fighting in the huge swollen belly of the sea.
The helicopter hovered like an angry wasp as the crewman tried to get a line round the fisherman. The second fishing boat rocked dangerously, men leaning out, waving encouragement to the man in the water.
Suddenly, riding, plunging, ploughing through the waves, the lifeboat came into sight and the second fishing boat began to manoeuvre out of the way. Knowing there was nothing she could do to help now, she turned and headed for the harbour beyond the headland.
The crewman was now in the water with the lifeboat as near as it could get. Gabby realized she was praying. ‘Please God … please God … please God …’
Now, on the wind she could just hear the faint shouts of men over the storm, and that meant they were all being blown onshore towards the rocks.
Villagers’ cars were beginning to fill the car park as well as the people hurrying to the cove on foot. A shout went up, ‘I think he’s got a line. Thank God.’
But the helicopter could not lift the two men out of the water. Gabby could see the winch man peering down from the bottom of the helicopter. A man beside her said, ‘They can’t lift the weight of the fisherman in full wet-weather gear and the crewman … Or the fisherman’s caught in some tackle.’
All at once the yellow figure was pulled free and was being drawn upwards out of the water. He hung suspended, swinging perilously in the wind, then slowly he was reeled upwards to waiting arms leaning down to gather him in to safety.
‘The crewman’s still in the water. God help him …’
People had brought binoculars but Gabby could see nothing now except the lifeboat frantically turning so the towering waves did not catch her broadside on.
‘He’s going to be blown ashore onto the rocks unless they get him …’
Gabby saw the tiny figure rise up on the crest of a wave like a rag doll. An echo of fear rippled through the watchers, like a lament. Gabby’s teeth chattered and she was shaking from head to foot.
They saw a line thrown from the lifeboat before a vast wave crashed over it, hiding them all, and rushed like an express train towards the rocks in the small cove where they stood. The small crowd, including Gabby, turned and ran for safety, before it crashed over the rocks and sprayed up in a volcanic explosion over the car park and the nearest cars.
Oh my God, Gabby thought. The airman would be on the rocks. It was then they heard the whirring blades of more helicopters. Elan was suddenly beside her.
‘I recognized your anorak. Culdrose must have been scrambled.’
They clutched each other, peering out at the empty sea, but there was the lifeboat still riding safe in a trough and the man with binoculars called, ‘They’ve shot another line out … He’s got it … There are two men in the water … One of the lifeboat men has jumped in … They are pulling them both in …’
Two helicopters still hovered overhead. After that last huge wave the sea seemed momentarily calmer and then the cry went up … ‘They’ve got them … They’ve got them! They’re safe!’
‘Thank God. Thank God,’ Elan said. ‘You look dreadful, Gabby. Come on, off to my place; brandy, that’s what we need. You’re shaking like a leaf, darling, I’ll drive your car.’
‘You walked in this?’ Gabby asked through chattering teeth. They got quickly into the car with the sulking dog.
‘I saw the fishing boat send up a flare from the cottage and I rang the coastguard. They had already had various radio messages that a fishing boat seemed in trouble. It seems a young lad got pulled overboard and was caught in the nets and they couldn’t pull him back on board. That first helicopter happened to be exercising in the area. Just as well.’
Elan drove up the hill to his gate and parked. They climbed over the stile with a more cheerful dog and ran with her into the warm cottage, slamming the door against the weather. Elan threw more logs onto his fire and then cried, ‘Brandy! I hope all those rescuers are having stiff ones. I’m wondering, Gabby, if that fisherman could have survived in the water so long. I do hope so.’
At that moment Patrick called from upstairs, ‘What happened? Is everyone safe?’
Elan called, ‘Yes, all safely out of the water …’
He turned quickly to Gabby and mouthed, ‘Patrick home. Very ill, don’t look shocked.’
Startled, Gabby turned as Patrick began slowly to descend the stairs. He smiled down at Gabby.
‘Hello small one.’
‘Hello tall one.’
Gabby went to hug him. ‘Oh what a wonderful Christmas present, to have you back,’ she said, terrified of holding him too tight for there was so little of him left.
‘So good to be back, my sweet.’
He sat abruptly at the kitchen table, small beads of sweat collecting on his upper lip. Elan was fussing, finding clean glasses.
Gabby said, ‘Excuse me a minute, I must go to the loo.’
She leapt upstairs to the bathroom and sat on the upturned loo taking deep shaky breaths. Patrick was dying. He was even the colour of death. And yet … yet there was something peaceful, even radiant about him. Elan, too. The sadness was missing. As if they had both reached a point of acceptance or understanding; two of them in the place they wanted to be, together.
What a strange unnerving day this was turning out to be. She looked out of the bathroom window at the trees bent to snapping point and the sea beyond full of angry white waves; at the rain, continuous now, lashing the panes. Yet, she could see blue sky in the distance, the storm was blowing itself out.
I wonder what you are doing at this moment. I miss you. How I miss you. I want to tell you about this. Want to hear your voice … need you.
She splashed cold water onto her face and went back downstairs, calling as she entered the kitchen, ‘Hey, you guys, I am now a drinker!’
Elan’s eyebrows lifted. ‘Since when?’
‘Since London.’ She sat at the table.
‘Who has corrupted you, small person?’ Patrick asked, laughing. ‘I mean, what are we talking here, alcoholism or two glasses of wine?’
Elan handed her a brandy and Gabby sipped and made a face. The two men grinned at one another.
‘Pathetic!’
‘A drinker? Not!’
They ate bread and cheese and then went and sat by the fire and Elan put on his old Noel Coward records. He and Patrick sang along, imitating Coward beautifully and camply, making Gabby giggle. She drew her feet up into one of their old squishy chairs and fell asleep.
When she woke, Patrick lay fast asleep opposite her on the sofa. The cottage was silent, the wind had dropped and it was dark outside. Elan sat by the window, painting, with Shadow at his feet. Firelight played over the walls. Gabby did not want to wake up or to move away from that room. She felt secure and held. There was peace here and faith and a strange happiness.
Both the men in the room had reached a place of safety. A steady calm that would last through the painful moments to come. It would live on in the house when one or both were gone, as things profound and worthwhile always did, giving inanimate things an aura of good, soaking the walls of the house with the past.
She felt ashamed of her outburst of the morning. Self-pity was shameful. She had stood and watched a helicopter and lifeboat crew risk their lives in terrible seas to save an unknown fisherman. She had sat by firelight listening to two people revisit their youth, gently singing, one to the other, ironic little Noel Coward lyrics, their eyes meeting in a form of joy. One was dying. The other was going to be left alone. Yet, look at what they had in the firelight together as the wind beat outside against the granite walls of a small cottage perched on the coast. Look what they had decided to make of tragedy.
What had Mark said? Never ask for too much. Don’t lose the moment in wishing for more.
Her mobile bleeped suddenly in her pocket and she took it out and quickly pressed the button so she did not wake Patrick. A text message.
GABRIELLA. GABRIELLA. GABRIELLA. I CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT YOU.
Gabby closed her eyes, trembled, felt inexpressible joy. Then a sharp sudden fear of the destruction to come. What of the life she had here? The life now in this room with people who love her, with people she has spent more than half her lifetime with.
She sat up and leant towards the fire to text Mark back. I LUV YOU LUV YOU AND IT HURTS. She pressed send.
Elan, cold, stretched and came back to the fire. Patrick woke up slowly, came from a long way away.
‘Hello, dear people, I have had such a lovely dream.’
‘Tell us.’
‘I was a small ship, a sloop perhaps, with huge squarerigged white sails. I flew like a bird over aquamarine seas as still and clear as glass. I could see all the fish and coral and bright seaweed below me, a whole glittering world. Dolphins leapt at each side of me like a guard of honour. There was nothing in sight, just me with my sails unfurled, flying on and on … I felt this overwhelming and encompassing happiness …’
His voice wobbled. ‘I did not want the dream to end; I did not want to wake up.’
He closed his eyes again, lay very still.
Elan mouthed ‘Morphine’ to Gabby.
She got up. ‘I’ll make you both tea, then I must go,’ she whispered.
‘I rang Nell, just so she knew where you were, darling.’
‘Thank you, Elan.’ Elan looked up. Gabby was not talking about a telephone call.
‘For what?’ he asked gently.
Gabby hesitated, then smiled. ‘For being you. For always being you.’
She went to put the kettle on.
At her car, Elan, taking his torch back, said, ‘Drive carefully. Love to Nell and Charlie.’ He met her eyes. ‘Be careful, very careful, with your life, beloved Gabby.’
Driving off into the dark with the road strewn with branches and the eerie stillness after the wind, Gabby thought how long it felt since that morning, as if I have covered a great distance. In the face of tragedy your perception suddenly changed, you swung round and viewed things from a different angle and in that one small movement everything shifted slightly, changed its place and importance; became small and simple and clear.
There was this new, frightening clarity. A place suddenly reached. I love this man and my life feels hopeless without him. Life mattered. Life was tenuous and frightening and lonely and could be snatched away any second of any day.
In the dark the car felt like some small capsule skimming through space. There were no other cars on this branchstrewn road. She was glad of Shadow’s doggy presence in the back for everything seemed oddly unfamiliar.
She turned down the lane and negotiated the ruts and puddles. Gabriella, Gabriella, Gabriella. I cannot live without you.
Wasn’t that what the morning with the washing had been about? Not, I can’t do the washing any more. Simply, I cannot live without you. I do not want to do this any more.
Gabby got out of the car and let Shadow out. She stood for a moment in the dark. The kitchen lights were on but no one seemed to be in and Nell’s cottage was in darkness. It was only then Gabby remembered with a start: she should be at the shoot supper with Charlie and Nell.
She looked at her watch, fed Shadow, had a quick bath, changed and headed out again. Her face in the mirror looked just the same.
This Christmas she must do all she had ever done. Behave and be as she always was. She could do it, for she had had the first glimpse of a future she might have.