How To Be Brave (25 page)

Once away from it, the ocean’s many colours fade. No paintbrush or pen can ever quite recreate their intensity. And yet, while on the lifeboat and surrounded by them, Colin dreamt of otherworldly tones and tints, of unnatural shades manufactured by companies wanting to lure children into their pages.

During those final nights at sea he saw a shelf full of books. The place he’d been so often now. Some were neatly placed in alphabetical order; others were piled high more carelessly. They were as real as though Colin could have taken one and read it. But when he tried to it melted like snow.

Then he wasn’t alone; he never had been.

Sitting on two cushions were a woman and the beautiful girl with her sunlit hair, her eager, imploring eyes, holding a box full of tiny needles and other strange things. Seemingly unaware of him, they shared a story. It must have been one they loved for they barely stopped talking, taking turns and then interrupting in excitement.

Colin didn’t want to disturb the moment. Yet he also wanted to reach out and let them know he was there too. On and on they went with their story, their sentences flowing, building, bouncing. He couldn’t hear what they said but, as with the other curious dreams, the words were somehow familiar.

It began to fade and he panicked.

Don’t leave me
, he tried to yell.

But darkness stole the books, their faces.

Then he heard it:
You have to get up and keep looking, Grandad!

The girl. His great granddaughter. Where was she?

He could hear the sea’s current. Her watery hands rocked and tipped the boat. No, he didn’t want to wake. He knew what awaited him there.

Do you know the story of Noah
, said the girl.
Remember what the bird meant. Get up and keep looking, Grandad!

Colin woke to find Ken staring at him. His eyes were lifeless, hopeless, apathetic, shrunken into their sockets. After the dream, Ken’s face shocked Colin. Having watched forty-three days of deterioration he rarely noticed Ken’s gaunt appearance, but that morning, after the fresh faces in his dream, Ken looked like him. He looked like Death. Colin realised then how ill they were and knew that without land or a ship they wouldn’t last longer than another two or three days.

Ken bravely tried to smile at his chum and Colin attempted to return the effort. The sun was already halfway across the sky – how had they slept so long? Never before had Colin missed dawn; and when had he last said to Ken,
Maybe today a ship
? He tried to say it now but his tongue filled his mouth, trapping the verbs and muffling the nouns. The effort he anticipated would be needed to reach the final water tin kept him from moving.

In the last twenty-four hours Colin had felt the will to live leaving his body as acutely as if he were physically bleeding. He no longer cared that he didn’t care. He did not count fish or sharks or clouds. He did not miss food or water or home. He did not see his brothers, all different sizes and heights and colours, united by the subtle family trait of firm chin and heavy brow.

It was easier to give in and sleep. To wake only to sip the tiny bit of water Ken made him take and nibble on scraps of chocolate given. Each man would, upon finding the other alive, nod weakly. Colin was not sure he would care now if he woke alone, left drifting on the lifeboat until someone came for him.

Who would that be?

Not his mum; he had called her many times, but she never came. Maybe the sunlit-straw-haired girl would take him. She came often. Maybe she was Death prettied up in his head to make his end gentler? Maybe Colin had hallucinated her. Maybe he had hallucinated the whole journey, every one of the six weeks, and he was still on the
Lulworth Hill
, whistling and writing letters home?

But no. There was Ken, skeletal, desperate Ken. His friend.

Ken crawled now to the final water tin and came back with it, no moisture left in his body even to sweat after the action. He opened the lid as carefully as they had each one, lest a single drop got wasted. The temptation to drink it all in violent gulps never died; that they hadn’t was probably the only reason they still existed. They looked into the clear liquid now, their grim faces reflected back more kindly in its mirror.

‘Two ounces,’ croaked Ken. ‘Two ounces four times a day might get us to another five days.’

‘No … point…’

‘No?’

‘We’ll be dead by…’ Colin couldn’t finish.

Ken appeared to think about this. ‘You’re right, lad. You were right that other time and saw us through.’ It took him a few minutes just to say these words, saying only two at a time and pausing for breath between. The heat shimmering on the midday deck drained every last bit of energy they had. ‘We’ll have four ounces now then. Assess what we can get by with each time we serve it up. You go first, chum.’

‘No, you,’ croaked Colin, and so they argued back and forth until Ken took his share.

It barely wet their throats.

‘Rest,’ said Ken. ‘Then … watch.’

‘But … the dream,’ Colin said. The memory of it sparked sudden hope.

‘The dream?’

‘She said … get up … and keep looking.’

‘Who did?’

‘That girl. The one … who said … Grandad.’

‘Chum.’ Ken closed his eyes. ‘If I believed all the dreams I’d had on here, we’d have been picked up weeks ago and I’d be in Kath’s arms now.’ A dry sob broke from Ken’s chest. ‘Kath,’ he said. ‘Kath, why don’t you help us? Please help us. You’re with the RAF. Send someone. Send a ship. Help us.’ And then he passed clean out.

Colin tried hard to stay awake. He took the brown button from his pocket and sucked on it. Not so much to lessen the endless thirst – which, really, it had probably never done – but to do something physical that would prevent sleep but not overly exhaust him. He turned the button over in his mouth – click, clack, click – and watched the water until his eyelids began to droop.

Remember the bird and what it meant. Get up and keep looking, Grandad
.

Click, clack, click.

‘I’m trying,’ he muttered. ‘I’m trying hard.’

But in the end he fell asleep.

A persistent buzzing noise woke him. It throbbed in his head like a fly had got stuck there. He decided he had gone mad; that the occasional drinking of seawater and lack of food and too much sun had finally fried his brain. But then the lifeboat was moving in a way it never had and a rhythmic thudding that kept time with the sound in his head made Colin open his eyes.

Ken was pointing, his face one of joy that even parched skin could not dull. ‘Can you hear it?’ he cried. ‘Can you hear it? A plane, a plane!’

Together they searched the clear skies, methodically, from port to starboard, up a few degrees and then starboard to port, seaman on watch again, on proper duty, eyes tired but eager.

‘There she is!’ Colin and Ken broke into insane laughter at the realisation that they had spoken at exactly the same time.

The plane was astern of them, flying very high. Ken clapped his hands and slapped Colin on the back, who in turn shoved him almost over the side. Wasting no time, Colin grabbed one of the three smoke-floats. He pulled the firing-tape and dropped it into the water. Like two children watching a bonfire, they smiled as the dense red smoke drifted in the breeze.

Scarface surfaced to investigate the smoke-pall but disappeared as quickly as he’d arrived when no food materialised.

‘No plane can miss that,’ cried Ken.

‘No matter how high,’ said Colin.

‘I reckon that smoke could even be seen from below the horizon!’

They clasped hands together, jubilant. The plane continued her journey. Was she going to slow down? Circle overhead? Signal an acknowledgement somehow? She must,
she must
.

‘Where are you going?’ whispered Colin.

‘Don’t leave us,’ begged Ken, and Colin felt sadder for his chum in that moment than for himself.

Not wanting to believe their eyes, they watched the aircraft grow smaller and smaller until it was a dot in the sky and faded from ear and then eventually sight.

‘They left us,’ said Ken.

 Colin could not look at him; could not stand to see in his friend’s face the desolation that crushed his own chest. He turned instead to port where the dying smoke-float slowly drifted, increasing distance from the lifeboat, until with a few sputtering gasps of smoke it died.

With it went all hope.

Ken flopped to the deck, head in hands. Colin had no words. He sat too, the exertion of joy leaving him broken. Neither man spoke all afternoon. Scarface trailed the boat as though also waiting for the plane to come back. The sun began her descent. Water was consumed, chocolate eaten.

Colin picked up the length of line and ran it through his fingers in grim silence. Ken watched him, knew his thoughts. How quick it would be to lash themselves together and go over. Colin twisted the line, over and over, wrapping it about his arm and then letting it slide through his fingers again.

He looked at Ken.

‘It’s the quickest way home,’ Ken said.

‘Are you ready to go there?’

Ken didn’t answer.

‘I don’t think I’m ready yet,’ said Colin. ‘We can’t let our friends down, can we?’ He looked about the boat; he saw Weekes joking about eggs for breakfast, Fowler on watch, Platten issuing rations, Arnold praying fervently, and Officer Scown in his final moments. He saw them all chatting after rations, egging Ken on with his spear, sleeping, praying, surviving, living, dying.

‘Who else will tell everyone how brave they were, Ken? We owe it to them. How will anyone ever know what went on here. What we all endured. What we saw. Who we were.’ He paused. ‘I don’t think I’m ready yet.’

Colin put down the line and closed his eyes. How long he was out can’t be known but buzzing disturbed his slumber again. Not daring to open his eyes, he thought he must be dreaming about the plane.

But the sound continued.

Then Ken shook him. ‘Two more!’ he cried. ‘There, two more planes!’

Colin leapt to his feet. Energy returned so fast when immediate survival required it. He set off the last two smoke-floats, hoping this would make certain that they were seen. In his haste, one ignited while he still held onto it. Yelping in pain, he went to plunge his hand into the sea, but Ken grabbed him and pulled him back.

‘Scarface,’ he said.

Once again, as Colin nursed agonising burns, the two planes continued overhead and eventually disappeared, oblivious to the smoky red signals that died like the other had. Colin’s hand swelled up and blistered fast. They had nothing to ease it. No creams, no bandages, and only saltwater to pour on it, which caused greater hurt. But the pain lifted Colin as though any feeling, even bad, was something.

‘We may see more planes,’ he insisted. ‘Look Ken, we’ve been forty-three days on this lifeboat without seeing another sign of human life. Then in one day we spot three planes. Maybe we’re in a patrol area. It’s a good sign.’ He paused. ‘You do think so too, don’t you Ken?’

Ken nodded with effort. ‘Of course, you’re right. We’ll be picked up tomorrow, you’ll see. Tomorrow.’

When they retired at sundown, Ken wrote on the torn canvas.

30th April – 3pm – Two more aircraft passed over but gave no sign of seeing us. But we have greater hopes now. If there are any tomorrow, we shall know it for the RAF Coast Patrol, and then we can expect to be sighted any day. We are both very ill.

Morning brought 1
^st
May. Colin wasn’t sure what prompted his thinking of the date for he’d hardly noted the others. Time had become meaningless. He watched their limp sail hanging from the mast, a forlorn and colourless Maypole. He thought about those back home, celebrating under England’s gentle skies. Oh, for kind weather, for less heat.

He must have spoken the words because Ken croaked, ‘Without the heat we’d have been dead long ago.’

Colin knew it to be true. If their journey had been through the Arctic it would have been much shorter. Immersion in those seas resulted in quick death. Still, he longed for cold, for cool air, for icy drinks.

The men drifted through day forty-four, eyes closed to the sun’s cruel glare, ears open for another plane. When they felt strong enough to talk it was mainly of planes; when they might return, if they’d been spotted, and what might result.

During midday rations Ken watched a young dolphin swim playfully alongside the boat. He nudged Colin and the two men enjoyed the gorgeous creature’s dance. How silvery his skin shimmered beneath the waves, how his tail flashed through surf. Joy was tempered by concern that Scarface would appear.

‘Go swim away,’ whispered Colin. ‘Sharks here.’ He leaned over the boat edge to watch the dolphin dive there and saw a cluster of four large goose barnacles attached to the wood. ‘Ken,’ he cried. ‘More barnacles! Look!’

Ken leaned over. ‘They’re a good foot away,’ he groaned. They looked so juicy and succulent that Colin’s jaws automatically moved, imagining the delicious meat in his mouth.