Air Ambulance (6 page)

Swiftly she bent to kiss him.

“I wish you could,” she whispered for his immediate comfort. “Perhaps—some day.”

When she straightened and turned to shake hands with Fergus Blair there were foolish tears in her eyes.

“Please take care of him,” she said unguardedly. “He’s such a little fellow!”

Blair held her hand for no more than a second, no longer than convention demanded, before he strode away across the
machar,
and the last she saw of him was a tall, broad-shouldered figure in a shabby kilt silhouetted against Coirestruan with a small, crippled child limping by his side.

“When you’re ready!” Ronald Gowrie said at her elbow. “Once you get Blair of Heimra out of your system perhaps we can get on with the job, nurse.”

“Yes,” she said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hold you up.” She got into the plane, waving to the people gathered on the landing-strip as they taxied gently along the beaten sand. She did not look in the direction of Coirestruan to watch a small white launch drawing away from the shore and making an arrowhead of foam on its way to Heimra Beag.

“Forget about it!” Ronald Gowrie urged briskly as they gained height in the limitless blue above the islands. “It’s not going to do you any good to fret about a kid.”

He could not know whose child Andrew was, and she could not tell him. Not now, not at this moment when she had come to know so much about the Blairs of Heimra in so short a time. It was sufficient, she thought, that he had been instrumental in bringing Margot Blair’s son back to Heimra. Beyond that point she could not think.

CHAPTER FOUR

“EMERGENCY, LANG! It’s your turn out.” Night Superintendent shook Alison by the shoulder. “Sorry, and all that, but Hamilton has reported sick, and you’re next on the rota. It’s a filthy night,” she added by way of extra inducement as Alison struggled into a sitting position on her bed trying to grasp the electrifying words. “I’d much rather you than me, even though it is in the cause of suffering humanity!”

“Where to?” Alison tried to shake the last remnants of sleep from her mind as she swung her bare feet over the edge of her bed and blinked at the light. “Did you find out where we are going?”

“I’m not sure.” Moira Leslie paused at the half-open door. “The message was passed on to me. Just that I was to get you out of bed. Smart Annie phoned through from the hospital. I don’t like that girl,” she yawned. “And I don’t
l
ike nights, either. While I’m still young and healthy, I’m going to get me a man!”

“You could fall in love with someone who did night duty just as easily as not,” Alison pointed out, reaching for her stockings.

“I’m not talking about love,” Moira returned gloomily. “That’s out, as far as Tm concerned. I’m going to get me a man with money, and love will follow easily enough!”

“You’re the sort of person who’ll fall in love with a poet or something, who hasn’t any money,” Alison warned, thrusting her feet into her shoes. “Br-r-r! It’s terribly cold. Did you say what time it was?”

“I didn’t, but it’s just after four o’clock, and I should think it’s about three degrees under. I’ve been frozen all night! Rather you than me,” she repeated, edging out of the door to return to her own quarters. “Good night. Pleasant trip!” she murmured.

Alison was already thinking about the emergency, hating the thought of it on such a cold, bleak morning. She could hear rain spattering against her window and there was a heavy greyness about the outside world that depressed her, yet she did not think for one minute that she should not go. The Air Ambulance had been requested from some far-off isle, and she was next on the rota of nurses to go out with the plane. It was her duty to go.

She could refuse, of course. The whole thing was voluntary, but no one ever thought of refusing. On the contrary, there was always a waiting list to serve with the unit. To go out with the Air Ambulance had become an accolade of their profession, a matter of prestige, eagerly sought.

When she finally reached the hall where her instructions awaited her, she was warmly wrapped against both wind and rain. In the past few days the temperature had fallen considerably, and March, which had come in like a lamb, was going out like the proverbial lion.

“The weather reports are pretty foul, nurse,” the driver told her when she went out to the car waiting to drive her to the airport. “These emergency calls can be tough on a night like this.”

“I’m with you there,” she agreed, “but the plane will get through. We can fly above all this.” She glanced up at the lowering sky, not without anxiety. “I’ve never seen it so thick,” she admitted. “We’ve got everything tonight!”

“If we had more wind we wouldn’t get the fog,” the driver said, turning smartly out under the main archway. “It’s mostly up the river, I suppose, although Duncan says the Cloch’s been blowing all night, so there must have been some down there, too. I think a fog-horn is about the most dismal thing you could hear all night long, especially if you don’t sleep too well.”

They drove to the airport as swiftly as possible. Visibility was poor and the fog that hung over the city seemed to have cut off both sight and sound. The thick grey world through which they travelled revealed nothing familiar until they came to the airport gates.

Here, in the wide enclosure, it seemed less intense, lit by the yellow eyes of the perimeter lights and the marked path of the main runway. The vague shapes materialized out on the apron: a plane; a trolley; a group of men huddled together in conversation; the fire crew checking on their extinguishers and possibly grumbling about being called out on a night like this, and, finally, the bulk of the administrative block itself, grey against grey, with the control tower rising above it and brilliantly lit at this unexpected hour of the morning.

Clutching her heavy cloak about her, Alison got down from the car, and the first person she recognized was Ronald Gowrie.

“Cheers for you!” he greeted her. “Nice to know I’m going to have a pleasant companion on a trip like this!”

“All nurses are pleasant companions!” she chided. “It’s part of our training! Are we ready to go?”

“Almost, I’m waiting for the final word from ops. We’ve got Ginger MacLean with us, by the way, so it shouldn’t be dull!” He gave her a quick, calculating look. “What’s the case, anyway?”

“A perforated bowel, with all sorts of complications.” She knew that it would be useless to go into detail. He had told her once before that all he did was fly the plane and that was all that was expected of him, apart from a smattering of first aid. “I’m ready when you are,” she added.

“You’ve got guts, sweetheart!” he told her lightly. “And you’re good-looking. Seems a strange sort of combination to me.”

“You’re too much of a cynic,” she informed him. “but I know you don’t mean half you say.”

“Remind me to marry you when we come back!” he grinned. When he came back out to the apron again, five minutes later, he was no longer smiling. The tense, grim look of a man who faces considerable odds had hardened, his mouth and narrowed his blue eyes, and he walked smartly towards the Heron without saying anything.

“Control’s all ready for us,” he told Ginger when he reached the cockpit. "We’ll be up above all this in a couple of shakes.”

Alison was surprised how soon and apparently effortlessly his words came true. Looking down from her seat behind him, she could see the bank of fog like a dense grey barrier cutting the Firth in two. It stretched almost in a straight line between the Ayrshire coast and the low foothills of Argyll, a grey trap to shipping, but no longer dangerous to them once they were above it.

Afterwards, Alison was never quite sure when she realized that something had gone wrong. It had been more than a bumpy trip, and at times, over Mull, they had encountered down draught. The plane had lurched and staggered on, but immediately they had climbed higher and the cold had become intense. Away to the north dense cloud had begun to form, and there was a blackness about the sky which began to look more and more ominous as they approached it. Rain slanted at them, but the sturdy little Heron drove steadily into it.

Inside the cabin the windows had iced over, and suddenly Alison noticed that the same sort of thing was happening in the cockpit. The rain was freezing as it struck the plane.

They had climbed to seven thousand five hundred feet, and now that they were in the cloud they seemed to be racing ahead. It was no more than an optical illusion, but she peered out of her window as well as the ice would let her, gathering courage from the suggestion of speed. In less than half an hour they would be at their destination.

The minutes ticked away, and suddenly she was aware of added tension. The two men in the cockpit were fighting the terrors of ice.

Ginger turned to her at last, beckoning her towards him, and in one swift glance she saw that they were down beneath four thousand feet.

“We can’t make it,” he said cryptically. “We’ve iced up along the wings and we’re being forced down. The de-icing has gone. There isn’t anything for it but to land somewhere and have it seen to. We’re trying to make Tiree, but there’s a devil of a wind blowing.” He gave her a quick, critical glance. “At three thousand we’re committed to a landing,” he explained, “but we hope to make Tiree before that. O.K.?”

She heard herself say “O.K.” automatically, and went back to her seat and fastened her seat-belt. She had no idea where they were or what could be done now, but, curiously enough, she had no immediate sense of fear. There was no alteration in the steady sound of the engines and they suggested unlimited power. She found assurance, too, in the sight of the two rigid backs ahead of her in the cockpit, although now Ginger was speaking steadily into the microphone attached to his headphones. She heard him repeat “Mayday”, “Mayday”, “Mayday”, over and over again without knowing what it meant, without realizing that she was listening to the final S.O.S. of the skies.

Then, suddenly, she saw the sea immediately beneath them.

Aware of a strange constriction in her throat, as if her heart had suddenly got there by mistake, she sat frozen into immobility in her seat and waited. It was not in her to panic or even to attempt to ask a needless question. They were in trouble and she knew it, but she would add nothing to their efforts by losing her head.

Their powerful landing lights were switched on, and somewhere beneath them a lighthouse flashed, revealing the curl of white on the breakers beneath it. She heard Ronald curse and mutter something beneath his breath as they tipped at a crazy angle and she could see all the starboard wing-span beneath her.

“We’re too damned near the sea,” he said involuntarily, “and I can’t make any height. I’ll have to ditch her and hope for the best.”

“There’s something over there!” Ginger strained his eyes in the first pale flush of dawn which came between the clouds. “Skipper—it’s an island—and hills!”

“My God! Heimra!”

The words were tense and clipped, and Ronald appeared to rise over the controls, although he was firmly strapped to his seat. For a moment they seemed to be gaining height, swerving away from the blackness of the hills. There was no sound in the plane. Nobody spoke, and there was no time for fear. Alison clenched her teeth and waited, while coolly, calmly, Ginger MacLean spoke once more over the radio transmitter to his base, giving his position and direction of flight. Then, once again, the fateful words: “Mayday!” “Mayday...!”

In a silence which could almost be felt they began to lose height, and for a single, devastating moment Alison saw Ronald’s face in the bright flash of the lighthouse beam. It was tense with strain, but it was also calm.

“I’m putting her down,” he said. “Fasten yourself in and hold on to everything. If I’m lucky I might make Heimra Beag.”

Alison felt her fingernails biting into her flesh as they banked again, and a white stretch of sand came racing up to meet them.

“Dear God!” she murmured twice before they touched something solid and the whole bottom of the plane seemed to be wrenched away.

At least, she thought, they’ll send another plane through for the emergency.

When she was aware of light again two hefty arms were pulling her out of the sea. Ginger, with his coat torn and a blackened face, peered down at her with anxious eyes.

“The skipper’s hurt,” he said. “We struck something on the sand—pot-hole, probably. Are you all right? We’re ashore, thank God!”

Alison attempted to struggle to her feet, only to be driven back on her knees by a wrenching pain in her side, high up over the diaphragm.

Ribs, she thought automatically, hoping that that might be all.

“Don’t mind me,” she commanded breathlessly. “See what you can do for Ron.”

Ginger looked at her doubtfully, and then back towards the sea.

“I’ll need help,” he told her without further ado. “The tide’s coming in.”

And who was to help him, apart from herself? Pain racked her as she struggled to her feet, but she bit her teeth into her lower lip and followed Ginger across the sand.

The fuselage was still intact, but in there, somewhere, Ronald Gowrie lay unconscious.

“I’ll have to go up round the other side,” Ginger shouted to her against a rising wind. “She’s tipped this way and the door’s jammed. There’s nothing we can do from here.”

“Tell me what you want me to do,” she shouted back. She was shivering. Reaction had set in, and they still did not know whether Ronald Gowrie was alive or dead. “I’ll try to come with you.”

“Maybe you’d better, if you can.”

Ginger was already scrambling over the rocky headland beneath which the Heron had come to rest, holding on to the side of the fuselage where he could, and soon he was knee-deep in water and liable to slip from his precarious foot-h
o
ld at any moment.

They had, however, to get into the plane somehow.

Alison threw off her cloak. It was already wet and she would manage better without its hampering weight dragging her down.

The darkness had lifted, as if the storm, having done its worst had paused to draw breath, and she could see the outline of the cliff above her and, out to sea, stretching like treacherous tentacles from the island, a line of skerries with white surf breaking over it. That, at least, they had avoided by Ronald’s skill.

From time to time there was the dismal clanging of a bell-buoy, and she found herself listening for its reiterated warning as she climbed.

Seagulls rose and swept over her head, crying bitterly. It was the most doleful sound she had ever heard. Like lost spirits wheeling out above the world.

Ginger was in the plane now.

“O.K.!” he yelled. “I’ve got him.”

In that moment Alison slipped and fell. Clinging desperately to the edge of the wing, she plunged waist-deep into the lifting tide, with no foothold anywhere, and it seemed as if her legs were floating away from her among the heaving, treacherous yellow weed. In no time, she realized, her hands would become too numb to hold on, but she could not call out.

Gradually she became unaware of any feeling other than a growing numbness which deepened into a sense of security. It would be easy and kind, she thought, to drift away on this slow-moving
tide...

“All right! I’ve got hold of you!”

The voice had been slow, measured, calm, and she recognized it immediately. Fergus Blair was up there somewhere, above her on the rocks, and before she could speak, before she could make any sign, he had lifted her bodily into his arms.

Tension snapped in her as she lay against him, feeling the numbness and the cold ebbing away, aware of nothing very much in these first moments but a strange, vague unreality and the hard pressure of his encircling arms.

He carried her in silence towards the beach, sure-footed even on the treacherous stretches of seaweed, and put her down at last on the firm sand.

She brushed the hair out of her eyes to look at him, and his sense of shock was immediately evident.

“I had no idea,” he said harshly. “I heard the plane, and guessed that you were in trouble.”

“I—we didn’t mean to land on Heimra. We wouldn’t have done, but there was no other way.”

Her voice had sounded high-pitched and aggressive even in her own ears, and she hadn’t really been thinking of Heimra Beag as the prohibited island. It was just that some subconscious urge had put the accusation into her voice.

Without answering her he peeled off the thick sheepskin jacket he wore and put it securely about her shoulders.

“Stay where you are,” he commanded. “It looks as if I may be needed on the plane. Is the pilot still aboard?”

She nodded dumbly.

“Yes. It’s Ronald Gowrie.” She seemed to be speaking in an odd sort of trance. “He didn’t want to land on
Heimra...”

He gave her a quick, searching look, striding off almost immediately to plunge waist-deep into the water beside the Heron, and in seconds, it seemed, the door had been forced open and Ginger’s small, puckish face appeared in the aperture. It was red with exertion.

“He’s pretty badly hurt
...”

The remainder of the sentence was whipped away by the wind, but she saw Fergus Blair forcing his way into the cabin and thought that all might now be well.

Trying not to crumple up ignominiously on the sand, she stood waiting with the warmth of the sheepskin-lined jacket penetrating her whole body and enabling her to think clearly again.

The faint tang of a good tobacco hung around it, and when she thrust her hands into the vast pockets for extra warmth, her fingers fastened over the bowl of a pipe.

An eternity seemed to pass before there was any further movements from the plane, but at last Ginger backed through the doorway, and she drew a swift breath of relief.

He stood hunched for a split second, blocking the exit, and then he let himself down slowly into the water. Above him Fergus Blair appeared, carrying a heavy burden, and final relief poured over her like an engulfing tide. They were bringing Ronald Gowrie out.

“Is he all right?”

Her words were no more than a whisper, and Fergus Blair answered them in the only way he could.

“He’s alive,” he said.

Alive! Alive, anyway, she thought. Not trapped out there where he could have drowned in unconsciousness.

She could not really help them. Blair and Ginger carried Ronald between them easily enough once they had reached the beach, and she could only trudge behind them and pray that he would live.

Subconsciously her mind filled with all the odd little things he had ever said to her, his sarcasm and the idle quips he made, the sting of which was obliterated by his laughter. He wasn’t really hard-boiled and cynical, she thought. Not deep down. He wore it as an armour because of what had happened in the past.

And the past was here. Here on Heimra Beag, where fate had now forced him to play the role of trespasser.

The two men laid their heavy burden down on the edge of the
machar
in the shelter of a ridge of rough grass, and Fergus Blair began his examination. It was as thorough as he could make it in the circumstances, and when he stood up he looked straight at Alison.

“I’ve given him a shot of morphine which will last him till we can get him to shelter,” he said. “He’s quite badly broken up.”

She drew her breath in but did not speak, waiting for him to tell her what to do.

“We must find some sort of improvised stretcher in case there are other internal injuries,” he added. “You’d better come with me. I think we can leave MacLean in charge here till we get back.”

“But
...”

The protest she had tried to make died on her lips as the sand and the sea and the angry, violent sky swam dizzily before her eyes, but she knew that she must not faint—not now, when Ronald Gowrie’s life hung so precariously in the balance.

“I—can follow you,” she said, biting her teeth into her lower lip.

For a moment longer he searched her pale face for the signs of collapse, and then he led her gently by the arm over the rough grass and the clumps of little, half-awakened flowers that edged the shore.

“Where were you going?” he asked.

He was making conversation to help her to cover the distance to their destination and she was determined not to fail him.

“To Benbecula. There was an emergency.”