Cry of a Seagull (17 page)

Gully was still lying as Rose had left him. A man with an R.S.P.C.A. cap was kneeling by him, rubbing him all over to get his circulation going.

‘You should have thought of that, Rose,' said Rose's critical conscience.

‘Well, but I had to get back home,' she answered herself.

Someone elbowed past her, and she was crowded out of the gateway and squeezed back into the grass space like a cherry stone. The R.S.P.C.A. horse ambulance was parked by the main gate, and the road outside was full of cars. Ben and his father were there.

‘We were driving back to Wood Briar and we heard it on the car radio,' Ben said. ‘How on earth did the donkey get down there?'

‘Fell, they said,' Rose answered innocently.

‘But he'd have broken all his legs. Is he all right?'

‘Seems to be.' She was glad Ben was back, but now she wouldn't be able to sneak out to the boat and fill up the petrol tank. ‘Listen, Ben.' She had better get this in now. ‘While
you were away, I rowed out in the dinghy, just to check that the whaler was all right.'

‘That was nice of you.'

‘I took the key, so I could check the fuel gauge. The tank's almost empty.'

‘That's funny,' Ben said. ‘There ought to be about half a tank left. Must be using more than we thought.'

‘Must be. I'll pay for the next lot. My turn. Listen. There it is.'

The roar and clatter of the helicopter came closer rapidly. The noise grew so loud that no one could talk. When Rose saw Mr Vingo come through the gate from the road with Jim Fisher and Crasher she went to him, but she could not tell him anything.

She did not need to. Mr Vingo nodded at her and dug a piece of paper and a pencil out of his raincoat pocket.

‘When I heard,' he wrote, ‘I thought, that's Rose. Good old Rose of all roses, I thought.'

She smiled at him, and folded the paper carefully and put it in her pocket. She would keep it always, with the red bucket.

When the helicopter passed over their heads to hover above the beach, a mighty wind swept the spectators. Those who were wearing hats lost them. Coats blew open. Newspapers flew away. Hair streamed across faces. Rose's hair was in her eyes when an arm went round her, and she knew that it was her mother.

‘Uncle Ted came,' Mollie mouthed. ‘I wanted to see you.'

Everyone was there. Rose saw most of the guests from the hotel. There were reporters, photographers and a television camera crew. Everyone but poor old Arthur.

Then she saw him. By the ambulance, the old man was sitting on a camp stool, his face tilted to the clamouring sky, mouth open, holding on to his cap.

A rope and a canvas sling descended from the helicopter's innards, like a spider coming down from the ceiling. After it stopped, it seemed an age before the rope began to move again. Then the man standing in the open cockpit doorway gave a signal, and the rope was slowly winched up.

Everyone craned to be the first to see the donkey. As his body appeared above the top of the fence, a great cheer went up, loud enough to be heard over the noise of the helicopter's engine and clattering rotor blades.

Gully had the sling under his stomach. Head and legs hanging, one ear forward, one ear back, they hauled him up like a dirty old sack of compost. Rose looked back at Arthur. The lined face lifted to the sky was rejuvenated by pure joy, and his faded blue eyes stared in wonder, as if he had seen God.

With Gully dangling, the helicopter moved sideways until it was over the camp ground. Policemen held the crowd back to leave a clear space near the ambulance. Slowly and carefully, the small brown donkey was lowered. The R.S.P.C.A. man was there to steady him, and he dropped in a heap on the ground.

The sling was unbuckled, and drawn up into the belly of the machine. The man in the doorway waved. The door shut, and the helicopter swung away fast, as if it had other urgent business.

Now that people could talk again, there was a clamour of excited voices. Everyone wanted to tell each other what had happened.

‘How did they know the donkey was down there?' Rose asked Jim Fisher, to find out what story was going round.

‘Someone must have seen it from a boat,' he said. ‘The owner got an anonymous call.'

‘Who from?' Crasher asked.

‘If they knew that,' Jim said, ‘it wouldn't be anonymous, silly.'

The R.S.P.C.A. man had heaved Gully to his feet. Judy got her father up from the stool, and he came forward with his bent-kneed limp and put one hand under Gully's white nose and the other on his neck. The two of them stood there like that for a moment, and then with Arthur leading Gully by his insignificant mane, the donkey was able to walk unsteadily towards the ambulance.

As Rose stood leaning against Mollie, because she was so
tired, she saw the grey horse Favour materialize on the donkey's other side, and walk with Gully, slowing his stride, his proud head bent mildly to the same level.

Far overhead, a grey gull cried, and flew out over the boundless sea.

The donkey stopped, stretched his neck, and opened his jaws to send out a feeble, croaking bray.

‘Almost as if the little fellow was saying thank you,' Crasher said wonderingly.

‘You say the daftest things,' Jim Fisher told her.

Great granddaughter to Charles Dickens, Monica (1915-1992) was born into an upper middle class family. Disillusioned with the world in which she was brought up, she acted out – she was expelled from St Paul's Girls' School in London for throwing her school uniform over Hammersmith Bridge. Dickens then decided to go into service, despite coming from the privileged class; her experiences as a cook and general servant would form the nucleus of her first book,
One Pair Of Hands
, published in 1939.

Dickens married an American Navy officer, Roy O. Stratton, and spent much of her adult life in Massachusetts and Washington D.C., but she continued to set the majority of her writing in Britain.
No More Meadows
, which she published in 1953, reflected her work with the NSPCC – she later helped to found the American Samaritans in Massachusetts. Between 1970 and 1971 she wrote a series of children's books known as The Worlds End Series which dealt with rescuing animals and, to some extent, children. After the death of her husband in 1985, Dickens returned to England where she continued to write until her death aged 77.

Discover books by Monica Dickens published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/MonicaDickens

Closed at Dusk
Dear Doctor Lily
Enchantment
Flowers on the Grass
Joy and Josephine
Kate and Emma
Man Overboard
No More Meadows
One of the Family
Room Upstairs
The Angel in the Corner
The Fancy
The Happy Prisoner
The Listeners

Children's Books
The House at World's End
Summer at World's End
World's End in Winter
Spring Comes to World's End

The Messenger
Ballad of Favour
Cry of a Seagull
The Haunting of Bellamy 4

For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been
removed from this book.The text has not been changed, and may still contain
references to missing images.

This electronic edition published in 2014 by Bloomsbury Reader

Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square,
London WC1B 3DP

First published in Great Britain 1986 by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd

Copyright © 1986 Monica Dickens

All rights reserved
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make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means
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publisher.Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The moral right of the author is asserted.

eISBN 9781448213924

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