Paul considered. Contact would have to be made with the stranded cutter and a bomb disposal expert brought ashore. The Naval sub-depot would have to be informed and everybody kept well clear of the beach. That, he supposed, was Constable Voysey’s job and, as Noah said, the tide would take care of the cutter in less than an hour. All that was really necessary then was to keep the mine in view and get ready to bolt for cover when it was close inshore. He and Smut could do that and Noah or Jaffsie could get word to the crew of the cutter. The sea was choppy but presented no danger to a dinghy inside the bar.
‘Go out and tell those chaps what’s happening, Noah,’ he said. ‘If necessary bring one of the experts ashore.’
Then, noting Noah’s crestfallen look, ‘There’s no danger, so long as you keep east of the jetty. Jaffsie will go along with you. You’ve got a skiff handy, haven’t you?’
‘Arr, I got a skiff, but they got one too. Why dorn ’em launch it an’ row ’emselves ashore?’
‘Because they zeen the mine explode and they baint spotted its mate yet,’ said Smut. ‘I daresay they’m zittin’ cosy till the tide lifts ’em but you do like Squire says They’m paid for their time and us idden.’
Still grumbling Noah and Jaffsie slouched off to the boat-house and Smut, watching them go, muttered, ‘Baint no more good than a cold hot-dinner. Dan, his brother, would ha’ been out there be now.’
‘I was just thinking the same,’ said Paul, with a grin and turned up his coat collar, tucking the glasses into his capacious pocket to keep them from misting. ‘Can you see that mine with your naked eye, Smut?’
‘I can now I knows where her’s tu.’
‘Then hang on here while I find Voysey and get him to tell Whinmouth what we’re about,’ and he turned to recross the quay, heading for the rope Voysey had already placed across the High Street as a barrier.
He was only a few yards up the hill when he saw Voysey arguing with a fat woman on the fringe of the crowd and as he advanced the woman broke away, beating aside the constable’s restraining hand and descending the slope at a trot. As she came closer he saw who it was, Pansy Willis, ‘Pansy-Potter-that-was’, wife of the blind Home Guard telephonist who was her third husband. Paul had known all Pansy’s husbands and had, in fact, been present at two of her weddings, the first to Walt Pascoe, killed by a Turkish sniper under the slopes of Achi Baba and later in the war to Dandy Timberlake, who had sired one of her children when she was still married to Walt. Despite promiscuity in and out of wedlock he had always regarded her as the best of the Potter girls. She had been a good wife to the ailing Dandy, a good mother to her children, and a real comfort to the near-helpless Willis in his middle-age. As she came slopping down the hill he noticed, even from a distance, that she was not her usual brash self and was clearly in some kind of distress for as she ran up to him she clawed at him for support, sobbing for breath and unable, for a moment, to utter more than a series of inarticulate sounds. He said, steadying her, ‘What is it, Pansy? What’s the matter?’ and Pansy, half reeling, gasped, ‘My Alf—I just heard—he’s out there in that ole fort. Do something for God’s sake,
send
someone out for him bevore ’er bleeds to death or drowns!’
For a moment Paul took it for granted that she was hysterical and talking nonsense, but when, writhing in his grasp, she pointed distractedly to the wrecked jetty, he realised that she might have information nobody had yet passed to him.
‘
Alf is still in the post?
He was on duty when it happened?’
‘They only just told me, the bliddy thickheads!’ she wailed. ‘I took un over there when I come off duty in the bar and when the big bang come, and I see what happened, Nell Tremlett tells me he come ashore half an hour zince. But ’er didden, ’er coulden ’ave, because ’er baint home, an’ where else could ’er be? I asked around an’ nobody zeen him,
nobody
!
He’s out there, I know he is, and if he baint hurt he’ll stumble an’ vall among they old piles!’
Paul said, ‘If he’s there we’ll get him. You’re quite sure he was on duty when it happened?’
‘Zertain sure. He was working on his ole switchboard. Fred Olver was going for him when it went off but then that vool of a Nell Tremlett told us he’d come on back on his own. He could do that so long as he had the hand rail but ’er coulden have, or he’d
be
here, woulden ’er?’
It all seemed logical, the kind of mix-up that might easily occur in a few moments after a violent explosion. It was a case, Paul reflected grimly, of everybody assuming everyone else had done the obvious and as for Nell Tremlett, nobody would trust her identification for she had worn pebble glasses since she was a child. On balance it seemed that Pansy’s fears were justified but was there time to check? In a matter of twenty minutes or so the surviving mine would be alongside the jetty and projecting underwater beams, splintered by the first explosion, would probably touch it off before it reached the main structure. If that happened, given that Willis had survived the first blast, his chances of surviving a second in the weakened structure of the block-house were not impressive.
‘Let me think a minute, Pansy. There’s another mine out there and the Naval boat can’t reach it. Give me a minute to think.’
She stopped talking and gesticulating, forcing herself to wait. She had acknowledged him tribal chief of the Valley for more than forty years and her faith was just about equal to the strain. His mind began to conjure with priorities, balancing the risks and the time element involved, but he realised at once that he could not do such a complicated sum alone. He needed the help and advice of a man of action and it would have to be Smut, for he could not imagine a man of Noah Williams’ calibre undertaking the extremely delicate task of interposing between mine and jetty, and holding the boat steady while somebody searched the blockhouse and brought Willis out if he was alive.
He said briefl
y, ‘Come with me, Pansy. Smut and I will think of something, but there’s no time to go asking for volunteers, no time at all,’ and together they hurried through the rain to the quayside opposite the jetty where Smut was still standing like a sentinel, his back to the village. In a few words he explained the situation and for once, having no constructive ideas and still not fully convinced by her story, he was content to leave it to a man who had been in and out of trouble the whole of his life.
Smut said, sucking his lips, ‘She’s right. She must be right. Alf is mazed about that switchboard and he’s out there all right if he baint backalong and he baint or I’d have seen him. Well then, there’s two ways o’ goin’ at it, Squire, and tiz for you to decide. Do us go out an’ fend off that bliddy Easter egg by catchin’ hold o’ the cable, or do us bank everything on bridging that gap and fishing Alf ashore bevore ’er strikes? Tiz one or the other, baint it?’
‘No, it’s both,’ Paul said for Smut’s clear presentation of alternatives had aired his mind so that he began to form the basis of a plan. It wasn’t much of a plan and he didn’t think he had time to elaborate it. The mine was now appreciably closer to the end of the jetty, rolling gently in the rising tide, and out of the corner of his eye he could see Noah and Jaffsie on the point of launching their skiff some seventy yards west of where they stood. He called, at the top of his voice, ‘Not there! Bring her this side!’ and when Noah straightened himself and looked bewildered, he cupped his hands and roared, ‘Over here, man! Pick it up and carry it!’ and his urgency must have conveyed itself to them for they bent and raised the light skiff as he turned to Smut and said, ‘If Noah and me can get to the block-house could you give us a few extra minutes by catching that trailing cable-end and stopping the drift? It’s asking a lot I know, but there’s no other way.’
Pansy spoke up and Paul noticed that resignation had taken the place of panic in her voice. ‘If he won’t, I will,’ but Smut said sourly. ‘Dornee talk so bliddy daft. You’d sink the skiff wi’ your weight.’ Then, with a half-grin, ‘I’ll do it but I doan reckon I could on me lonesome. It’ll need two and it’ll have to be Jaffsie. Anyways, I’d sooner him than his father.’
‘Suppose they refuse?’
‘You leave the persuading to me, Squire. They’ll back down on a gentleman.’
By the time he had said this Noah and his son were within thirty yards, both bent under the weight of the skiff and oars. Smut hurried over and intercepted them and they lowered their burden to the ground. Pansy said, ‘What can I do then? I got to do
something
.’
‘You can tell the constable what’s happening and ask for volunteers if there are any able-bodied men in that crowd back there. Where are the nearest ladders, long ladders?’
‘Back o’ the pub, the boss keeps a twenty-rung in the yard in case o’ fire. There’s rope too if you need it, in the bran tub. Shall I show ’ee?’
‘I’ll find them. Go up and tell Voysey and see if you can get someone to help, but I can’t wait for them. We’ll have to do the best we can right now.’
She scuttled off into the High Street as the three men approached, Noah looking more thoughtful than Paul had ever seen him look although his boy Jaffsie was wearing the same slack grin.
‘You knows what youm at, Squire,’ Noah said flatly, and Paul snapped, ‘Have you got a better plan? If you have, speak up. Every second counts.’
‘There baint a better plan,’ Noah said slowly. ‘Us’ve no choice, neither one of us. All the same—’ and here he glowered at Smut, ‘there was no bliddy call for him to threaten me. You doan reckon I would have left Alf to get blowed to tatters, do ’ee? I’d ha’ done
something.
I’d ha’
tried!
’
The man’s unaccustomed dignity shamed them both and Paul’s memory, rippling back across the years, saw him not as Noah, the village layabout with the half-idiot son, but as all the dead Williamses who had plied their trade from this spot and lay in a string of two-tier graves in the churchyard, all but Tom and Dan, whose bones were coral now in the hull of a drowned battleship.
‘There’s a long ladder in The Raven yard,’ began Paul, ‘you and me could …’ but Noah, still glowering, made a sudden, emphatic gesture and growled, ‘Bugger the ladder! You an’ Smut can zee to that end of it. Me’n Jaffsie’ll come in from the Bluff zide and zee if us can ketch that cable-end and hold un off for a spell, but fer Christ’s sake doan hang about, Maister. The scour’s getting stronger every minute an’ us’ll have our work cut out as it is. Come on, Jaffsie, us’ll launch un from the far zide o’ the breakwater.’
He and the youth picked up the skiff and marched off without another word and Smut, looking as chastened as Paul had ever seen him, drew his hand across his mouth without comment. They stood there long enough to see father and son crash down the shingle bank beyond the breakwater and then, turning their backs on the sea, they ran together through the open gates of The Raven yard.
II
T
he ladder was there, leaning against the roof of the old coach-house but Paul saw at a glance that it would be as much as they could do to carry it. They dragged it out and were emerging on to the quay when Voysey bustled up and behind him Fred Olver and Pansy. Behind Pansy was a tall Negro wearing the fatigue dress of the U.S. Army and Paul never did discover how he came to be there at that particular time but was grateful for his strength on his end of the ladder. In a staggering little group they ran diagonally across the quay to the short stretch of runway that sloped down to the jetty and it was only when they had begun to pick their way through the rubble that Paul remembered the boat. The rain was falling steadily now and visibility was shortening but the skiff was well in view, making its wide approach sweep to the west in choppy water. Without the glasses Paul could see Jaffsie at the oars and the thickset figure of Noah at the tiller. The mine was perhaps a hundred yards offshore, approximately equidistant between the boat and the blockhouse.
Voysey, notwithstanding his uniform, was awaiting a lead and it was Smut who gave it.
‘If they catch and hold the bugger we can take our time. If they don’t we’ll never make it,’ he said.
‘They’ll catch it,’ Paul said and suddenly he had a vivid recollection of Noah’s expression the moment before he bent to lift the stern of the boat. For the first time since Pansy had accosted him he felt confident of extricating Willis without the sacrifice of lives.
The ladder, long and cumbersome as it was, was too short to bridge the gap blown in piers and planking by the mine. The best they could do—and this was Voysey’s suggestion—was to lower one end into the debris and rest the other on the last section of crossbeams where the jetty had been sliced as by a knife. The ladder then lay at an angle of about forty-five degrees and the approach beyond, across a tangled mass of beams and iron supports, was negotiable to an active man.
Voysey said, with a briskness that failed to conceal an exasperated dismay, ‘Do we all go over? And if he’s there how do we get him down? He’s not only blind, he’s almost certainly unconscious or badly injured.’
‘We got to find him first,’ Smut said, but then the Negro private spoke up and Paul was surprised by the ordinariness of his voice, as though he had half-expected him to speak like a coloured character in
Huckleberry Finn.
‘I’ll go across and poke around some,’ he said quietly. ‘Then I’ll call for help, maybe.’
They all looked at him with varying degrees of astonishment but he did not await their sanction or encouragement. Without even crouching he descended the angled ladder and picked his way over the rubble to the canting wall of the blockhouse. In a few seconds he had passed out of view behind the structure and Paul at once forgot him, turning to peer through the enclosing trailers of mist at the skiff.
It was no more than forty to fifty yards east of them now and being held almost stationary by an occasional flick of the oars. Noah was lying face down and full length in the stern, his gumbooted feet braced against the thwart on which Jaffsie sat, his arms, spread like an advancing wrestler’s, projecting over the rudder-bar, almost as though he intended playing catch-as-catch-can with the black, spiralling object that bobbed and lifted about ten yards nearer the jetty. Smut, Voysey and the other man, Fred Olver, stared down at the scene as they might have gazed at some fantastic feat being performed for their entertainment in a circus tent. Nobody said anything. Everyone’s concentration was riveted to the strange, crablike posture of the blubbery man in the skiff. They did not even shift their gaze to the mine. Their eyes were on Noah Williams and his half-crooked embrace of nothing.