Air Ambulance (20 page)

“It isn’t enough for you, Margot. You’re soft and degenerate and waiting for the sort of love that isn’t too difficult or doesn’t ask too much. You want to keep what you’ve got in the easiest possible way, but, by heaven!
I’
m not going to stand aside and see you marrying Blair in that frame of mind. You’re not going to trick him while I’m around. You’re going to tell him the truth. You’re going to
walk to Garrisdale and tell him
!”

She caught his hand, but he put her away from him.

“I’ll give you twenty minutes to get ready,” he said. “I’ll wait for you in one of the rooms downstairs.”

He went out, closing the door behind him. He could hear her wild, frustrated sobbing through the stout panelling, but he would not go back to comfort her or retract his ultimatum one inch.

He was halfway down the stairs when he saw that the main door was still open and that Isobel Pollock was standing on the threshold. Her face was completely devoid of colour, her hair blown about by the wind, as if she had been running against it.

“Polly! What is it?” he asked, leaping down the last few stairs.

“It’s Andrew,” she said. “He’s disappeared. He didn’t come back with the other children from the picnic. I came to see if he was here.”

“Have you searched everywhere else?” he asked. “Everywhere within reason?”

“Within reason and without reason,” she told him, trying to hide her pain at finding him here. “Fergus and Alison have gone back along the rocks, and the Camerons are out searching on the Strand. He was with the others when they left the bay, but you know how they straggle behind, looking for things. The island is so
safe,
except for the bogs, and they know not to go there.”

“Andrew wouldn’t walk into a bog,” he said decisively. “He must have gone off on some other tack.” He turned swiftly as Hannah came towards them across the hall. “Will you tell Margot that Andrew is missing?” he said deliberately. “We have gone in search of him.”

“Oh, my!” exclaimed Hannah. “The poor wee bairn! Could I do something? Get blankets ready or make a hot drink in case he’s been hurt?”

Ronald paused at the door, glancing up at the deserted staircase for one brief moment before he followed Isobel out.

“Get the blankets ready, Mrs. Auld,” he said. “We may need them.”

“I told Alison I would follow her up on to the cliffs,” Isobel explained breathlessly. She had almost to run to keep up with him. “She’s terribly upset. She has always been so fond of Andrew, and she feels that the children were in her charge this afternoon.”

"It could have happened at any time,” Ronald returned grimly.

“There’s Alison!” Isobel cried, pointing. “But she’s alone.”

“Ahoy, there!” Ronald shouted, but the wind carried his voice away.

Alison was running in the direction of the cliffs, oblivious of everything but the need of movement, the terrible urgency of covering all the open ground over which they had walked from that fateful picnic.

Fergus had gone on ahead of her, working his way with Sandy northwards along the cliffs, and Isobel had run to check up at Monkdyke in case, by some odd chance, Andrew had decided to go there.

She turned to look back to the bay and saw both Isobel and Ronald hurrying towards her.

“Any news?” Ronald demanded, seeing by her stricken expression that there was none.

“Not yet.” For a fleeting instant she wondered if he were well enough to rush about like this, and then she knew that argument would be futile. “Fergus has gone along the north headland. Andrew so often went there to watch the puffins.”

“It’s too far away,” Ronald decided. “Although I suppose Blair’s idea of working his way along the cliff is quite good. My guess is, though, that we’ll find Andy somewhere nearer at hand.”

Alison looked down at the sea breaking ceaselessly against the base of the cliff, swirling and eddying between the jagged rocks like a hungry monster licking its lips, and shivered.

No! she protested inwardly. No! Dear God, don’t let that have
happened...!

“We’ll work south,” Ronald said. “No point in following in Blair’s tracks.”

They kept together at first, but soon he was on ahead, sometimes clambering over the edge of the cliff to gaze down searchingly from a jutting buttress of red gneiss which obscured his view of the shore beneath. Each time, when he came back, there was both disappointment and relief in his eyes. He had not found Andrew, but at least there was no definite evidence of tragedy. There was hope.

Isobel called at intervals, “Andrew! Andrew!” her voice echoing and re-echoing hollowly as they scrambled up and down the undulating cliff path, but no answer came. Then, pointing, she stood at the edge of the cliff and said in a stiff, frozen voice:

“What’s that down there?”

Alison’s heart seemed to turn over and lie still. She could not speak, and she could not look for one awful second that seemed torn from time. When she did turn her eyes towards the sea she moved closer to Isobel, as if for protection.

“Look!” Isobel said. “Down there.”

Some thirty feet beneath them, down on a ledge of rock, a small white object lay in the half-dark.

Before she could make out what it was, the bleak little cry of a seal pup met her ears. It was such a forlorn, lost sound in the gathering dusk that it might have been a human child whimpering there for its mother, for the comfort of her arms and the reassurance of her touch.

“It’s a baby seal,” she heard herself whispering with relief. In that moment Ronald Gowrie was past them sliding on his hands and buttocks down the almost precipitous incline towards the ledge.

“He’s seen something,” Isobel breathed. “Something
else
...
”
They could do no more than wait. Ronald had not spoken, and there didn’t seem to be room
^/
for more than himself and the seal pup on the ledge. There was danger, too, in the possibility of the adult seal’s return, when she would undoubtedly attempt to protect her defenceless offspring. The baby was too young yet to be taken into the water with her, but she would be somewhere around, watching them with sad and questioning eyes from a band of drifting weed, perhaps, her small glossy head rising and falling with the tide.

“There’s some sort of cave down there,” Isobel said at last. “An opening in the rock face.”

“But Andrew would never have got that far—not on his own,” Alison protested.

“I suppose not.” Isobel was straining her eyes now, trying to see in the grey, uncertain light. All the glory of the afterglow had gone from the sky, merging into a band of gold which cooled and paled to yellow and then to violet as the night absorbed it, slowly and surely, out to the far horizon’s rim. “He’s gone,” she said at last. “Ronald isn’t there any more. There
must
be a cave.”

Then, quite distinctly, she saw his tall, lean form silhouetted against the silvery surface of the water. He was carrying something in his arms.

“It’s Andrew!” Isobel breathed. “Ron’s got him!”

Neither of them dared to put into words the question that hammered at both their hearts. The small figure in Ronald Gowrie’s arms was Andrew all right, but was he dead or alive?

“He can’t get him up the cliff,” Isobel said. “His arm—it’s no use to him. He can’t hold anything for any length of time. He couldn’t possibly carry Andrew and hold on as well. I’m going down to them,” she decided.

Quickly she slipped over the edge, slithering downwards as Ronald had done ten minutes before.

Alison waited, her breath held, her lower lip caught tightly between her teeth. She would be needed to help them up that last difficult bit over the cliff face to the grass at her feet.

It was Isobel who passed Andrew up to her. He was so white and looked so limp that for a moment she could not believe him to be conscious, and then he opened his eyes and gave her a small, uncertain smile.

“I fell,” he said. “I was going to the baby seal, and I slipped and fell.”

She held him close, oblivious of everything but the utter joy of knowing that he was alive.

“Oh, Andy-Pandy!” she murmured. “You gave us the most awful fright!”

“He’s got some sort of injury to his leg.” Ronald Gowrie rolled on to the grass at her feet, breathing hard. “It may be no more than a wrenched ankle, but we can’t be sure. We’ll have to carry him.” He bent over the child. “Does it hurt a lot, Andy?” he asked. “Do you think you could rise on my shoulders?”

Andrew nodded. He was still looking at Alison, as if he were trying to explain something, to excuse himself for breaking away from the crocodile on the journey back to Garrisdale.

“It was the baby seal,” he said. “I heard it crying. It cried and cried. It was down there all alone. I think,” he added sadly, “its mother didn’t want it.”

“Of course she did!” Alison hugged him close. “She’ll come back, Andy. She’s sure to come back! She’ll only be waiting till we go away.”

Turning, she caught a glimpse of Ronald Gowrie’s face. It was harsh and grey, with a grimly-compressed mouth, but the dark eyes were full of compassion as he looked at the child in her arms. “O.K., Andy!” he said after the briefest pause. “Let’s go!” The quickest way was straight across the headland, and he turned that way without hesitation. Perhaps he did not notice, at first, that it went past Monkdyke, or perhaps he did.

“I ought to go and try to contact the others,” Isobel said. “You go
on with Ronald, Alison. Andrew is fond of you. He might fret if he thought you were vexed with him for lagging behind.”

“I’m not taking him all the way to Garrisdale.” His mouth was suddenly taut. “It’s over a mile further, and he’s had about enough, poor kid. I’m taking him to Monkdyke where he belongs.”

Alison’s heart raced, but she did not offer any protest. It was a perfectly reasonable step to take, the most natural thing to do in the circumstances.

Hannah had the yellow door open long before they reached it. “I saw you coming,” she told them. “Is the wee lad all right?”

“We’re not quite sure, Mrs. Auld. He’s tired and
hurt...”
She was still speaking when she noticed Margot standing beside the wide chimneypiece in the glow of the fire. She looked as if she had been standing there for a very long time—waiting.

Ronald Gowrie passed her, his uninjured arm securely about Andrew’s thin little form, his dark eyes holding Margot’s, making it impossible for her to look away.

She slid down on to the edge of the velvet settee before the fire, and without hesitation he laid her son on the cushions beside her.

“Get me something we can use as a bandage,” he said over his shoulder to Hannah. “And plenty of cold spring water.”

Margot looked down at the pale, pinched little face framed against the deep blue velvet of the settee, at the straight, corn-coloured hair that lay on the child’s damp brow, hair so very like her own that it was difficult not to see their relationship. The two pairs of blue eyes were identical, and they seemed to challenge each other. Gradually Andrew’s filled with surprise.

“Did you send for me to come?” he asked incredulously. “Did you know I’d been hurt?”

Margot’s eyes lifted for an instant to the lean, stern face above the child’s head.

“I knew you’d been hurt,” she said without answering the first part of his question. “I knew that Captain Gowrie had gone to look for you.”

Andrew’s eyes widened still further.

“And you said I could come?”

Margot was not going to be allowed to escape the question. Once more she raised appealing eyes to Ronald Gowrie’s, and this time they were full of tears.

“I must have said you could come—Andrew,” she answered.

He put out a small, grubby little hand to touch the fur edging of her elaborate housecoat.

“You’re littler than I thought,” he said.

Suddenly the tears were falling quite quickly down Margot’s heavily-powdered cheeks.

“I’m not really very big,” she said.

She did not attempt to touch him or take him in her arms, but when Alison turned away she surprised a look on Ronald Gowrie’s face which was half triumph and half relief.

“I ought to try and find Fergus,” she said. “He’ll be on his way back to Garrisdale.”

“Yes,” he agreed, without taking his eyes from the settee. “Tell him Andrew is here.”

Here to stay. That was what he had meant, Alison realized, hurrying through the star-filled night. Here now at Monkdyke, where he belonged! And there had been a look in Ronald’s eyes which said so plainly that he hoped to belong there, too, one day.

She could not begin to think what this might mean to Fergus. Her steps slowed as she reached the moor road. He had so many things to discover when he finally reached Monkdyke—bitter things.

She was almost at Garrisdale before she caught up with him. “Fergus! Isobel!” she called as she saw the two shadowy figures ahead of her. “Andrew’s at Monkdyke.”

“Monkdyke?” Fergus turned in his tracks as she came up. “What made Gowrie take him there?”

“He felt that he might be suffering from shock, and it was nearer than coming all the way up here, carrying him. Has Isobel told you that Ron found him in a cave on one of the ledges not very far from the bay? He had gone down to comfort a baby seal.” Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. “I think he must have fallen halfway down and then dragged himself into the cave when the tide started to come up. He would be terribly alone and afraid,” she added gently.