For Death Comes Softly (26 page)

Mary Riley, I was told.

‘OK, Mary,' I said. ‘What do you think are the chances of getting me some sensible clothes?'

‘I'll do my best, ma'am,' she said.

Her best was pretty damn good. Less than half an hour later she returned with a pair of jeans, a sweater, and even some elderly trainers which were almost the right size.

‘There's always a store of clothes somewhere in a hospital if you know where to look,' she responded when I congratulated her. I tried not to think about who they would have belonged to and why they were available.

I could sit and wait no longer. It wasn't in my nature. I tried to forget that I was a bride on my wedding day, to step outside myself, to force myself to function. Immediately after having changed my clothes I promised Maude and Roger that I would return as soon as possible, and left them to their tea and sympathy. Clem's shock was so severe that she had been admitted and heavily sedated. I went to the ward where I knew she had been taken and slipped behind the curtain surrounding her bed. She was fast asleep. Her wedding attire had been swapped for a hospital nightgown and she looked quite peaceful. I remember thinking how short-lived that peace was going to be. When she woke up the horror would envelop her again. That was how it was going to be for all of us, I feared, probably for the rest of our lives.

I kissed her forehead lightly before I left. Then I sought out the lobby area in Accident and Emergency where the ambulance had delivered us, and sat down to wait for more arrivals, trying to make myself as inconspicuous as possible. Apart from our little party, only one other helicopter had come in to the North Devon District Hospital so far, and the hospital emergency procedure was already in full swing in preparation for a much greater influx of injured people. A row of trolleys as lined up by the double doors and a group of nurses and porters – many of whom I guessed would have been off duty and had been called in to boost the hospital staff to its maximum – were hovering around making the most of the calm before the storm.

Peter Mellor and his wife were in the first ambulance I saw arrive. Karen Mellor seemed superficially uninjured but was obviously in deep shock. Peter had one arm around her, ever protective. His face was bruised and cut and his other arm looked as if it were broken, but he was on his feet and walking.

I went straight to him. I was delighted to see him relatively unharmed, nonetheless, and no doubt to my discredit, my first enquiry was not about his welfare.

‘Robin,' I breathed. ‘Robin, have you seen him? Is he all right?'

Mellor's eyes were wild, his voice cracked and strange. He spoke to me, but it was as if he had not heard what I had asked.

‘The earth opened up, Rose,' he said, using my Christian name probably for the first time ever. ‘It opened up and swallowed us.'

‘Robin,' I said again. ‘Where is Robin?'

Peter Mellor just looked at me. I wasn't even sure that he was focusing properly.

‘There was a child, Rose,' he said. ‘Right in front of me. A little boy. He disappeared into the ground. I tried to hold his hand, but he slipped away from me. I . . . I nearly went too . . .'

Mellor's voice broke. He was trembling. A nurse appeared and wrapped a blanket around his shoulders.

My eyes filled with tears, although still I could not weep. I backed away, suddenly all too aware of the scale of this disaster. What if that child were Luke, I wondered, thinking at last of someone other than Robin. Clem would never get over it.

The emergency reception area began to fill. Maybe the dredger had already arrived at lifracombe. The scenes around me were heartbreaking. Even professionally I had never been at the site of a major disaster before. There had not been one in Devon, Cornwall or Somerset in my lifetime. The nearest we had ever got to it had been a crippled airliner heading for the North Devon coast which had dropped into the sea off Ireland – five minutes away from Bideford, they said.

I had been trained in emergency procedure, of course, but nothing prepares you for the reality of it. As well as the walking wounded there were the stretcher cases, and more than once a doctor shook his head and pulled a sheet over the head of a victim. I felt as if I was in a daze as I wandered among all these poor injured people, hoping to find Robin, dreading the condition I may find him in. As a policewoman I had only been used to anonymous victims before. It was hard to think that these were my wedding guests.

I lifted the sheet from a comatose figure and revealed the face of a dead woman so disfigured that even if I had known her I would not have been able to recognise her. One side of her face had been more or less sliced off and congealed blood surrounded a gaping head wound. As I stood and looked at her my whole body started to shake.

‘I don't know who you are but you will please get out of my casualty unit,' ordered an authoritative female voice. I turned around and faced a tall commanding-looking woman in a uniform I just about had the nuance left to realise was that of a senior nursing officer.

By this time I was only too glad to obey. I couldn't take any more. I found myself a chair in a quiet corner of the main reception area and sat down to wait. I couldn't face Maude and Roger again, nor Clem. Not yet. Not after what I had seen. I shut my eyes and quickly opened them again. All I could see inside my head were the terrible faces of the dead and injured, jumbled up with images of people being literally swallowed up by the earth. Many of them must have been buried alive, I knew. My shakes were almost uncontrollable now. The scale of the disaster was almost beyond my comprehension. And this had been my wedding day. It was supposed to have been the best day of my life.

Somehow or other I fell asleep, just sitting there in reception. My head was still full of terrible images, but I suppose I must have been exhausted.

I was woken sometime after dark by a voice so welcome.

‘Rose, Rose, wake up, darling . . .'

It seemed to take me a long time to open my eyes. For a brief wonderful moment I couldn't quite remember where I was. Then the horror overwhelmed me again. Automatically I glanced at my watch. It was just after ten. I had been at the hospital for almost nine hours. I couldn't quite work out where the time had gone. I couldn't work out anything much. I felt dazed.

Julia crouched by my chair and stroked my cheek with one hand. Her eyes were very bright and there was a gauntness about her. She looked as shocked as everyone else but appeared to have escaped unscathed.

‘People have been looking for you,' she went on, managing a half smile. ‘They wanted to take me to some bloody survivors' centre or something, but I found out that you were here and just bloody well insisted that I was brought here too.'

I threw my arms around her neck. Julia was so wonderful. With all that she had gone through she had come to find me, she had time to think of me.

‘Thank God you're all right,' I said.

‘I always was a lucky reporter,' she responded, and the tentative smile stretched into a crooked grin. Her navy blue and white wedding suit was torn and muddy. I thanked God again that that seemed to have been the only damage she had suffered. Physically at least.

‘I came into lifracombe on a trawler,' she told me. Her voice had a tremble to it and sounded almost as if it belonged to someone else. ‘A dozen or so of us aboard, none of us with more than a scratch, it's all inside your head though, isn't it, Rose? You wonder if you'll ever be able to think of anything else . . .'

I buried my face in her neck and felt the tears welling up again.

‘My poor Rose,' she whispered. And yet I had not even been on the island. I had not had to run for my life as the earth opened up beneath my feet. I had not faced death nor seen it approach close enough to touch as Julia had.

I looked up at her, wondering exactly what she had seen. My relief at discovering that she was alive and well, had, for the first time even put the thought of Robin out of my head – but not for long.

My eyes formed the question. As usual Julia half-read my mind. I didn't need to say the words.

‘He's all right,' she told me. ‘I've seen him.'

The relief washed over me, then I was overcome with shame again at my selfishness.

‘All those poor people,' I said haltingly. ‘My nephew, my mother . . . are they still missing? And how many others?'

She shrugged. ‘Nobody knows how many yet,' she said. ‘It's still too soon.'

I could hold the tears back no longer. I wept in her arms, great heaving sobs wracked my body but brought me no relief.

‘There's time, Rose,' Julia soothed. ‘They are still digging. People have been . . .' She paused as if searching for the right words. It became obvious with what she said next that there were no right words. I knew what she was about to say, I had been thinking about it myself, but hearing the words was still shocking. ‘People have been buried alive. But they come out alive too – sometimes . . .' Her voice trailed off. We held each other very tightly.

The
Puffin
, carrying the last of the survivors and many of the emergency workers was on her way into Ilfracombe, we learned. Mary Riley was still on duty and able to tell me that Robin was definitely aboard. Apparently he had refused to leave the island until everybody who could be helped had first been transported to safety, or at least installed aboard the
Puffin
.

I could not wait at the hospital. I did not even know if he would be taken to the North Devon District. I wanted to get to the quayside at Ilfracombe, fast. Mary Riley fixed me a ride with a couple of young constables in a squad car. Strictly against procedure, but I can be very persuasive. And I was a Detective Chief Inspector.

It was almost midnight when we arrived at Ilfracombe. Several ambulances were waiting there for the
Puffin
to berth, and a Mobile Incident Room – a West Country Ambulances' control van – was parked by the waterside. In spite of the hour there was quite a large crowd gathered including more press and TV.

The night was as cold as the day had been glorious. I had no coat and I was shivering as I stood on the quayside, but after waiting only for twenty minutes or so I could see the
Puffin
's navigation lights approaching.

It seemed like a lifetime before they brought her alongside, and then another lifetime before I spotted Robin clearly illuminated in the bright lights which had been erected around the harbour by the emergency services. I could tell that he was holding back, waiting on the deck until all the rest of the survivors had been helped ashore. Eventually he stepped onto the quayside briskly enough. His clothes were muddy and torn and he had a nasty gash on his cheek and was supporting his right hand with his left as if it was giving him pain. Other than that he seemed unharmed – except for his mental condition.

I rushed forward, pushing to one side a police constable who misguidedly tried to stop me, and half threw myself at Robin. He did not even greet me, just stared into the middle distance, his eyes vacant. I wrapped my arms around him to try to comfort him, but it was as if he was incapable of focusing on me. He looked grey and gaunt. He did not speak.

A paramedic checked him out, carefully studied his injured hand, consulted a clipboard and decreed that Robin should be taken to the Musgrove Park Hospital at Taunton – apparently the North Devon District was already dealing with well over its quota of injured. I begged to be allowed to travel with him.

In the ambulance he remained silent. I suppose it was crazy, but I found myself wondering if he would ever speak again. I asked him about his brother, and Luke, and my mother – of whom I still had no news – and he just looked at me blankly. I told him I had left his mother safely at Barnstaple, and that she was coping well. He did not react at all to anything I said or did. I accompanied him into the emergency room and nobody tried to stop me sitting with him while they stitched up his face-wound and then set splints on two fingers which had turned out to be broken. I was not even sure if he was aware of my presence.

They said he would be kept in for twenty-four hours and gave him two pills which he meekly swallowed. Ten minutes later he was soundly into what seemed to me to be an unnaturally deep sleep.

I was alarmed and called a nurse. ‘Classic reaction to shock,' she said. ‘Best thing for him.'

I sat by his bed all night. The hospital told me they could get me transport home, if I wished. There was no question of my going home. I wasn't even quite sure where home was any more. Contracts were about to be exchanged on my apartment and Robin and I had been due to move directly into the new Clifton house on our return from honeymoon.

The next morning it became apparent that Robin was being hailed as a hero. I learned that it was those inside Abri Parish Church, which could seat only 100, places allocated mostly to relatives and island residents, who had been worst hit, trapped within a tomb of collapsing stone. The others, to whom the ceremony was to have been broadcast on a closed-circuit TV screen, could at least run. Robin had been standing just outside the church, apparently waiting until the last moment before going in so that he could see me arrive. Instead of running from the crumbling building he had managed to help some people out before the entire church collapsed.

I would have expected no less of him. Mrs Cotley, who had also been taken to the Musgrove Hospital at Taunton, told the story of how he had defied flying timbers and masonry to throw himself into a huge crack in the earth to grab hold of her three-year-old grandson who had been fast disappearing into it. Somehow he managed to get the boy and himself to safety.