For once in her life Meggie did as she was told. She obeyed Dr Wright’s orders to the letter and the consequence was that after her first week of enforced rest and all the medicines she felt considerably improved. Her cough had all but gone, her appetite was returning, albeit in a diminished form, the pains in her chest had disappeared and she was sleeping better. Even the deep exhaustion from which she had been suffering seemed to be on the wane, prompting Rusty to remark that she was really beginning to look herself again.
Meggie thought it wasn’t only the medication that was helping her recovery, but also the couple of transatlantic telephone calls she had received from Waldo, however indistinct they might have been. Besides the fact that he loved her, which he shouted down the line at every possible opportunity, she also gathered that if all continued to go as well as it was he would be home earlier than intended, particularly since he intended to fly home by stratocruiser. Meggie, who hated the thought of him flying the Atlantic, for once didn’t press him to come home by boat, so anxious was she to be reunited with him.
‘I love you, Meggie!’ he shouted for the last time. ‘Next time you hear me I’ll be calling up the stairs!’
Six days later Meggie was awoken from her afternoon sleep by someone kissing her tenderly on the lips.
‘Hiya, honey,’ whispered an all too familiar voice. ‘Bad luck! I’m home.’
Meggie stared at him, blinking her eyes, trying to make sure this wasn’t a dream, that the dark-eyed man sitting beside her on the bed really was Waldo.
‘You might have waited to come home until I was up,’ she said, staring at him. ‘You’re not seeing me at my best.’
‘This is the best as far as I’m concerned, darling.’ He smiled. ‘I wouldn’t care if I found you down the coal hole covered in soot. You look beautiful.’
‘I look as if I’ve just woken up,’ Meggie complained, looking past him at her reflection in the distant mirror. ‘And look at my hair.’
‘I could do with a bath and a shave myself,’ Waldo said. ‘As well as a change of clothes. Why don’t I pop back home and freshen up – and meet you back here for cocktails? I’m sure you’ve got a lot to tell me.’
‘I have? About what?’
‘About how much you missed me. And about how much you love me.’
‘And what have you got in your beak for me, mister?’
‘Just you wait and see.’
* * *
After she had bathed, Meggie stood in her best silk underwear in front of her wardrobe wondering what to wear for the evening. She had just decided to take down one of the simple black taffeta short evening dresses that she knew Waldo loved and that she knew set off her colouring to the best advantage when her eye fell on another of Waldo’s favourites, the dress he claimed she was wearing the moment he knew he was in love with her, the night of the Regatta when she had been serving behind the packed bar, her old red silk dress with the puffed sleeves.
She took it down and held it up to herself in the mirror. She’d had it cleaned since that night and even though it was old, and perhaps even a little old-fashioned, the colour still did wonders for her, as did the cut, once she had slipped into it. She had lost a little weight, but Meggie thought that was all to the good since the dress now fitted her to perfection. This time at her neck she added one of her grandmother’s beautiful necklaces, tiny diamonds shaped like a small pendant which showed off the elegance of her slender neck and somehow seemed to bring even more colour to the dress.
‘I am at a loss for words,’ Waldo said when he saw her. ‘And before you say anything about pigs flying I mean it. You look just out of the world.’
‘You look pretty handsome too,’ Meggie said, taking him by the hand and leading him over to the drinks. ‘I like you best in everything you wear.’
‘That’s clever – I must remember that.’
‘No point – wouldn’t be true about everybody. But it’s true about you. You look wonderful in everything.’ She kissed him, touched his cheek with one of her long-fingered, elegant hands, which he grabbed at once to kiss in the palm, and then asked him to make the drinks.
‘Is it OK you drinking?’ he asked. ‘Aren’t you taking medication?’
‘Henry didn’t say anything about not drinking.’
‘It’s Henry now, is it? I think I’ll put a ban on any further housecalls.’
‘You don’t have to worry. He’s only called here twenty-three times. Or is it twenty-four?’
‘And how does he think his patient is?’
‘He thinks his patient is gorgeous.’
‘How does he think her general health is?’
‘As gorgeous as she is. Now make me the perfect dry Martini. I always put too much vermouth in mine. How’s your health, by the way?’
‘Mine?’ Waldo picked up the gin bottle. ‘Couldn’t be better. Why should you enquire about my health? There’s not been anything wrong with me.’
‘That’s what you think,’ Meggie teased, poker-faced.
‘Did Henry say anything to you?’ Waldo asked with a frown, pouring a tiny measure of vermouth into the shaker.
‘Why should Henry say anything to me about you?’ Meggie laughed. ‘Unless there is something wrong—’
‘I told you,’ Waldo interrupted. ‘Henry looked after me after I’d been shot. When I got back. I had a check up with him before I went away.’
‘I know you did. No need to be ratty.’
‘I wasn’t being ratty.’ Waldo grinned, shaking the cocktails. ‘I just didn’t want you worrying, that’s all.’
‘I’m not worried.’
‘Good. And neither am I.’ Waldo leaned over and kissed her, then poured them both the perfect cocktail.
‘To you,’ Waldo said, holding up his glass. ‘To the most intoxicating thing I know. Martinis included.’
‘To you,’ Meggie returned. ‘May your shadow never grow less.’
‘I like that. Where did you get that?’
‘I have an Irish uncle.’
They sipped their delicious drinks then moved over to sit opposite each other by the fireside.
‘You really do look amazing,’ Waldo said. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen a vision quite so lovely.’
‘Thank you. But keep your looks strictly above knee level.’
‘Knee level? And miss out on those glorious legs?’
‘My legs are not always what they should be!’
‘They look pretty wonderful to me.’
‘How. I. Have. Missed. You.’
Meggie smiled and raised her glass. ‘Let me count the ways. In the morning—’
‘In the evening,’ Waldo put in.
‘All the time,’ Meggie finished, simply. Waldo kissed her. Meggie smiled. ‘So tell me all about your trip. Did you bring me home anything nice? I do hope you brought me something indescribably unrepeatably gorgeous?’
‘Pretty much so,’ Waldo agreed. ‘I brought you back an unencumbered me.’
‘Unencumbered?’ Meggie frowned at him. ‘Don’t get. What do you mean?’
‘I have come back …’ Waldo said, ‘a free man.’
‘So why didn’t you tell me?’ Meggie demanded later over dinner.
‘Why on earth do you imagine? I’d fallen in love with you. I didn’t want to lose you.’
‘But supposing she hadn’t suddenly granted you a divorce for whatever the reason was—’
‘She had good reason.’
‘No, but what would you have done, Waldo? If someone just refuses—’
‘I’d have asked you to live in sin with me instead.’
‘Instead of what?’
‘Marrying me.’
‘You haven’t asked me to marry you.’
‘Yet. Would now be a good time?’
‘She sounds absolutely frightful, your thankfully ex-wife. How on earth did you come to marry her in the first place?’
‘Will you marry me?’
‘I can’t understand how you could have been so duped.’
‘Will you marry me?’
‘I didn’t know anything about women. I was a lamb to the slaughter. The moment we married she changed – seriously. One minute she was all sweetness and innocence and the next minute – oh boy. She was out there – on the prowl. I imagine the condition has a medical name. Now for the last time, will you marry me?’
‘Well of course I will,’ Meggie replied, almost grumpily. ‘Now tell me all over again how you two met.’
He had brought her back a ring, a single diamond like Mattie’s, but considerably larger. He had also brought her a diamond brooch to match, and a diamond necklace just in case she said yes. He made her put the necklace on then he led her upstairs, took off her clothes and made love to her in only the necklace.
‘When would you like to get married, Meggie?’ he wondered as they lay together in the darkness.
‘Would yesterday be too soon?’
‘Not soon enough. I shall start putting all the arrangements in hand immediately.’
‘I have an idea,’ Meggie said the next morning as they ate breakfast.
‘You look tired,’ Waldo said. ‘I kept you up too late.’
‘You look tired as well. I kept you up too late.’ ‘By the way, what did the good doctor Henry say about making love?’
‘Making love isn’t something Englishmen recognise.’
‘I’m sure he must have said something about too much excitement.’
‘Excitement isn’t something Englishmen recognise.’
With his bare foot Waldo found her bare leg under the table and gently booted it.
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Now what was your big idea, darling?’
‘Mattie and John are getting married soon. Why don’t we get married on the same day?’
‘And have a double wedding? Isn’t that the sort of idea people like you go ooer at? I know I do. Anyway, it wouldn’t be fair to crowd their act.’
It was Meggie’s turn to kick him under the table.
‘Ow,’ Waldo said. ‘That was my war wound.’
‘Very funny. I didn’t mean a double wedding. I can’t think of anything more ooer. Anyway, they wouldn’t let the likes of you get married in a church. You’re divorced, spit, spit. We could do a Register office job then share a huge great splendiferous, fantasmaganic, and absolutely magnifichentous knees-up. We do have all the same friends – know all the same people. At least I do. You don’t have any friends at all and don’t know anybody.’
‘Could be, could be,’ Waldo said, thinking about it. ‘Have to ask John and Mattie though.’
‘Well of course we’re going to ask John and Mattie!’ Meggie exclaimed. ‘You don’t think we’re just going to turn up at their reception and help ourselves.’
‘I think we might be getting an invitation to the wedding anyway,’ Waldo said poker-faced. ‘And that means the reception as well – where all our friends will be – so why bother telling them? They’ll only make us pay half.’
Meggie couldn’t hold a straight face any longer and burst into laughter, followed by Waldo. Unfortunately the laughing caused a coughing fit and Waldo was quickly despatched up to Meggie’s bedroom to fetch a foul-tasting linctus and a phial of bright red pills, which he did, trying not to look worried.
‘Ta muchly,’ Meggie gasped, after she had dosed herself. ‘I haven’t had a coughing fit since God knows when. All your fault, making me laugh.’
‘Then that’s a good sign,’ Waldo said, lifting her gently up from her chair. ‘But even so, I think after that we’d better go back to the book and have you put your feet up.’
‘Henry said I’d have to get worse before I got better, so here I am – being worse.’
‘Don’t you dare get any worse.’
‘Any worse? Look at me! Look, I’m fine, really, Waldo, I’m fine!’ Meggie protested. ‘I’m as right as rain, though why rain’s right searchez moi. I really am all right. In fact I feel so good I feel like dancing. So come on, let’s dance.’
‘OK – we’ll dance.’
Waldo took her in his arms and smooched her slowly round the kitchen once and then out into the hall and then, lifting her up in his arms, carried her all the way upstairs.
‘But this time no excitement,’ he whispered as he laid her down on her bed. ‘Just one kiss, that’s all.’
There were six kisses, but no matter because that really was all. Two minutes after he had kissed her for the last time, Meggie fell into a deep and happy, if exhausted, sleep.
All the Tates, young and older, were delighted when Waldo called and proposed the notion. Waldo went by himself because Meggie and he were agreed that if she was to be restored to her bonny self by the date set for their wedding then she must abide strictly by Henry Wright’s orders, and they included no further excitement, at least not until they were married. Promising to return the next day to discuss the plans and the guest list, Waldo ambled off.
‘I hope Waldo’s all right,’ Loopy said to Hugh after she had watched him drive away from the house. ‘He doesn’t look quite well.’
‘He’s just flown all the way back from America, Loopy,’ Hugh said. ‘And what with the time difference and the length of the flight a chap’s bound to look a bit washed out.’
‘He doesn’t look washed out, Hugh,’ Loopy said. ‘It’s his eyes. He looks simply dreadful. Next time you see him, take a good look at the dark shadows under his eyes. As well as the look in them.’
* * *
Hugh did, and of course being Hugh saw nothing to trouble him. He had often seen Waldo coming off duty, as it were, and on those occasions according to Hugh he looked a whole lot worse, so a few shadows under a chap’s eyes weren’t going to concern the Spymaster whatsoever. In fact the more he saw Waldo the better he thought he looked and said as much to Loopy, who was forced to agree that perhaps she had been fussing too much.
‘Even so, Hugh, believe me, I know,’ she said in conclusion. ‘Something’s troubling him.’
‘Wedding bell jitters, I’ll be bound.’ Hugh grunted. ‘Remember me? Couldn’t even eat my soup without spilling it. All Waldo’s suffering from is the well known Wedding Bell Jits.’
By the time the month of May rolled in after a sodden April, the weather had suddenly turned to full spring. The plan was for the two couples to get married on the same day, Waldo and Meggie going first to be wed at the register office in Churchester at midday, accompanied only by a small party of friends which included the Sykeses and Walter and Judy Tate. Lionel to act as Waldo’s best man. They didn’t invite anyone else because they knew that everyone else would be too busy getting ready for the big church wedding to be held at three o’clock, so in spite of some hearty and heavy protestations from the Tate clan Meggie and Waldo insisted it was all for the best and stuck to their plan.
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 leaky 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?’
‘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 jetty 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.
Mr Todd took his craft to a point where they could turn about and watch.
The fire caught slowly at first, seeming at times reluctant to do its job, until at last a tongue of flame found the trail of petrol that had been laid along the deck, and seconds later the Light Heart was ablaze on the roughening sea.
As she watched from the safety of the tug, it seemed to Judy that she could hear Meggie’s exultant voice from all those years before – ‘That’s what I want – a Viking’s funeral’ – and she could hear her laugh, that wonderful laugh. ‘See to it, won’t you?’ How had Meggie known that Judy would?
In this way, Judy missed hearing the first few notes as Waldo began to sing the Ave Maria and the little flotilla retreated back to Bexham leaving behind one of its heroines.