The Fleethaven Trilogy (71 page)

Suddenly Kate’s hand seemed frozen on the tiller as a dreadful fear clutched her. This could happen on our beaches! The thought terrified her.

She shuddered, thinking of the peaceful tranquillity of the beach at home; she couldn’t imagine Fleethaven Point becoming a place of death with guns blasting and soldiers fleeing for their lives into the dunes and bodies floating in the sea . . .

We can’t let it happen, she thought suddenly. We have to help stop it happening – Danny and I. We must.

Until this moment the war had seemed far away; unreal. Oh, they’d read the papers, but it hadn’t really affected their small community.

Now – off the beaches of Dunkirk – it was very real.

On their fourth trip back to the lines of waiting men, Danny shouted. ‘Give us a hand here, Kate, this one can’t help himself. He’s about had it.’

‘Here – hold this,’ she asked one of the soldiers already in the boat.

‘Anything you say, Cap’n.’ The soldier’s face was black with oil, and his clothes were saturated, but he still managed a grin as she handed the tiller over to him and moved down the boat to help Danny.

The man Danny was trying to bring aboard was in a semi-conscious state, almost sinking under the water. ‘Give him a shove up, will ya, mate?’ Danny asked the man waiting next to him.

‘Shouldn’t bother,’ put in one of the soldiers already in the boat. ‘He’s only RAF. Where are they, that’s what I’d like to know? Ain’t seen one of
our
planes all day.’

‘Shut up!’ said the man next to him. ‘He’s here, ain’t he? He must have been doing something. There’s a lot of sky up there. Here, Miss, let me give you a hand.’

The men carefully shuffled position in the boat so that the friendly soldier moved to Kate’s side. ‘Come on, mate, let’s be having you back to good old Blighty.’

They hauled him into the bottom of the boat where he lay with his eyes closed. The sleeve of his pilot’s jacket was ripped open and blood oozed out, mixing with the sea water. Kate took off her scarf and wrapped it round the man’s arm, tying it at the back of his neck in a makeshift sling.

‘Danny, are there any blankets left?’

‘No – we’ve used ’em all.’

‘Here, Miss, take mine,’ said the soldier who had helped pull the airman aboard.

‘The glamour boys get all the attention,’ grumbled the soldier who had already moaned about the RAF.

‘Shut it, will you?’ muttered the friendly one. ‘Else I’ll shut it for you.’

The other sniffed. ‘All the same – the women . . .’

The other man put his mouth close to the grumbling soldier’s ear, but Kate still caught his words. ‘This lass had no need to come and save your miserable hide. Risking her life, she is. So shut it!’

Danny turned the boat around and headed out to sea, the small craft low in the water with the weight. Kate bent over the airman and was relieved to hear a low moan escape his lips. She tapped his face with the flat of her hand, not exactly a slap but sharp enough to try and rouse him.

‘That’s right, Miss,’ the friendly one encouraged. ‘Don’t let ‘im go to sleep. The cold will kill him, else.’

Kate put her mouth close to the airman’s ear, her whole attention now on the injured man. ‘Come on, try to wake up. What’s your name?’

She continued to talk to him, gently tapping his cheek to try to rouse him, while in the sky above, enemy aircraft swooped in again from the west, strafing the beaches and sending the waiting soldiers diving for cover in the dunes. The planes shot off to the east but turned and came back over the water, this time aiming for the small boats loaded with soldiers. Further out to sea, two more planes dropped bombs close to the larger ships waiting for the retreating British Army.

Kate hardly noticed the noise now; she was trying to wrap an already sodden blanket around the airman. She sat down in the bottom of the boat and cradled the man in her lap, wrapping her arms around him and holding him close, rubbing his back to try to warm him.

‘I tell you, them glamour boys get all the blooming luck,’ the grumbling soldier said again. Kate glanced up at him and opened her mouth to speak, but her words were drowned by a terrific explosion and all heads turned to see the very ship they were making for receive a direct hit. Flames engulfed the bow and black smoke drifted skywards.

‘Oh no!’ Kate muttered, while the soldiers stared at the rescue ship in grim silence.

Wordlessly, Danny changed course slightly and headed for a smaller boat some distance further out to sea, skirting round the stricken vessel which was now burning fiercely. They could see men jumping back into the sea from which they had just been rescued, but with the present load they carried, Danny could do nothing to help. He steered away, thinking that if they went closer, panic-stricken men would grab their little fishing boat and capsize it.

‘We’ll see if we can pick some up when we’ve dropped you lot off,’ Danny promised, but no one on board answered him. They just continued to stare at their comrades struggling in the water. As they watched, a figure, his clothes alight, jumped from the vessel into the water. Even above the turmoil they could hear his screams.

‘Looks like every man for himself now,’ muttered the friendly soldier.

They neared the smaller ship but already they could see that the decks were lined with soldiers.

A ship’s officer hung over the side. He cupped his hands and shouted down to Danny as the small boat bobbed against the side, ‘We can only take ten maximum.’

In the small boat, heads turned, counting their number. There were eleven soldiers and the airman besides Danny and Kate. The soldiers began to haul themselves up the nets hanging over the side of the ship.

‘What about him?’ Kate indicated the airman. ‘He ought to be taken on board first. He needs medical attention urgently.’

The soldier who had been so scathing about the RAF glanced down as he began to climb. ‘Shouldn’t bother, miss, he’s a gonner anyway.’ And with that parting shot, he hauled himself up to safety.

Ten were on board, leaving the airman and the soldier who had been friendly. ‘Reckon I’ll stay and give you a hand, Miss, if we’re to save this lad’s life, eh?’

Kate gazed into his craggy face. He was older than the rest – a regular soldier, she thought, rather that a conscript.

‘Reckon it’s time we introduced ourselves.’ He held out a large hand that was blue with cold. ‘Gordon Stratford, pleased to meet you, Miss, though I could have wished for better circumstances.’

Kate grinned at him and put her own cold hand briefly into his. ‘Kate Hilton, and he’s Danny Eland.’ She nodded towards Danny, who was manoeuvring the boat around to head back towards the soldiers from the sinking ship.

‘We ought to get him roused if we can,’ Gordon said. ‘He’ll slip away if we don’t keep him awake.’

Together they struggled with the dead weight of the unconscious airman, trying to get him into a sitting position in the prow of the boat.

The airman’s face was gaunt and pale, his eyes closed.

‘I’ve got some rum stowed in that locker,’ Kate said. ‘Let’s try that.’

She held the neck of the bottle to the airman’s blue lips and gently tried to ease some of the reviving liquid into his mouth.

‘He’s a squadron leader,’ Gordon said, suddenly. ‘Wonder where the rest of his chaps are?’

‘Now don’t you start, Gordon!’ Kate said, but she was smiling, teasing the friendly man who had so generously given up his own chance of immediate rescue to stay to help her and Danny.

Gordon’s teeth shone white out of his oil-streaked face. ‘No – I’m not like our friend back there.’ He jerked his head back towards the ship they had just left. ‘The RAF is here all right – I know that – but they’ve a hell of an area to cover and they won’t have a lot of flying time from a fuel point of view when they do get here.’

‘Talking about fuel . . .’ Kate looked around at the cans Danny had brought. There was only one remaining tin. She glanced at Gordon. ‘You go aboard with him the next trip back to a ship,’ she said firmly, nodding towards the airman.

Gordon gave her a mock salute. ‘Yes, Ma’am.’

While Danny steered the boat back towards the ship that had been hit, Kate chafed the airman’s hands, though her own were now as cold as his. Then she rubbed his back again. ‘Come on, feller, do wake up,’ she murmured as his head lolled against her breast. She wrapped her arms around him again, rocking him as she might a child.

Above the airman’s unconscious form, she met Danny’s glance as he sat with his hand on the tiller. There was a fleeting look of pain in his eyes. Intuitively, she knew that he had felt a sudden stab of jealousy seeing her with her arms around another man. It was the first time, but it might not be the last, and she could see his inner struggle to come to terms with it. She smiled at Danny, understanding and commiserating. For a brief moment amidst all the chaos, they gazed at each other, and then he gave her a small smile and lifted his shoulders fractionally in a tiny shrug of helpless, reluctant acceptance. Even now, she thought, after all this time, for Danny as well as for her, the pain was never very far away.

‘What’s all that smoke?’ she asked Gordon, watching the huge pall of black smoke ahead of them on the shore billowing and spreading, clouding the coastline for miles until it seemed like dusk, in stark contrast to the bright blue sky over the sea behind them.

‘Oil storage tanks. They’ve been bombed. And the whole town’s on fire.’

From out of the smoke hurtled three enemy planes, diving down towards the boats, the rattle of their machine-guns audible even above the engines. Ships’ guns were turned on them and those soldiers on the decks who still had rifles pointed them skywards. Even though it was perhaps a futile gesture, nevertheless it was a display of defiance.

Defenceless, Danny, Kate and Gordon watched as the planes swooped directly towards them. Instinctively, Kate’s arms tightened around the airman.

It was then that she felt him move. He gave a spluttering cough, then a groan, and opened his eyes.

The planes shot past them, spattering bullets into the water only two feet from the boat, and Kate felt the cold splash of sea water on her cheek. Then they banked away and were gone.

Gordon winked at Kate and said, ‘Well now, young feller, back in the land of the living.’

They propped him upright and from the bag, Kate brought out more bread and cheese. ‘See if you can get him to eat something – and have some yourself. We’re getting close to the men in the water now. I’d better take the tiller for Danny.’

As she turned away to move along the boat, Gordon, his mouth full, said, ‘By, this cheese is good. Long time since I tasted proper cheese. You
do
live on a farm, then? Where?’

‘Fleethaven Point. It’s on the Lincolnshire coast, near the Wash.’

‘Good Lord! You come all that way down here?’

‘Yes, Danny’s boat was commandeered, so he decided to bring it himself. I came too – so here we are.’

‘And thank the good Lord for you, lass. For you both – you and your man.’

Yes, she thought wryly, Danny was her man. Still, despite the knowledge of their true relationship, deep in a corner of her heart, locked away, he was still ‘her man’.

T
he little fishing boat all the way from the Wash went back towards the sinking ship, now listing heavily to port and obviously beyond salvage. The men in the water were exhausted. After days and nights on the exposed beaches, under fire from the enemy, then standing in human piers stretching into the cold water of the Channel, they had dared to believe themselves rescued. To be thrown back into the water had sapped the strength and resolve of even these brave men.

Still the enemy aircraft swooped and dived above them. Every three-quarters of an hour or so they were back, splattering bullets across the water and dive-bombing the ships laden with soldiers.

While the men struggled to keep afloat in the water, Danny and Kate went back and forth between the sinking vessel and another rescue ship farther out to sea; so many times that Kate lost count. On the first trip out to the bigger ship, Danny sided with Kate and insisted that Gordon take the young airman aboard and stay with him.

‘Ya’ve done your bit, mate,’ Danny said, putting his hand on the older man’s arm.

‘I don’t like leaving you and the young lass to cope.’

‘Just stay with him,’ Kate said, nodding down at the airman, ‘Get him some proper help as soon as you can.’

‘I’ll do that, Miss, I promise. But you take care, mind.’ He shook Danny’s hand warmly and, without a trace of embarrassment, kissed Kate’s cold cheek. ‘I hope we meet again . . .’

They watched Gordon climb a swaying rope ladder, while alongside him, the RAF officer was hoisted aboard on a swinging stretcher. When he was half-way up, they saw Gordon swing round and look out across the water towards the soldiers on the beach running towards the dunes as yet again, enemy aircraft swooped low overhead. For a moment Gordon released one hand-hold, leaned back and looked up at the planes. He shook his fist at them. ‘We’ll be back, you buggers!’ he shouted. ‘We’ll be back.’ Then he turned and continued his climb.

Danny laughed. ‘He’s a character, in’t he?’

‘He’s a great chap to have around in a crisis,’ Kate murmured, half sorry to see Gordon leave them. ‘Danny, do you reckon the airman’ll make it?’

‘I dunno, Kate. He looks bad to me. Come on, let’s not stay here – we’re sitting ducks!’

Each time they returned to the same ship, Gordon was there, hanging over the ship’s rail.

‘Your young airman’s below,’ he shouted down. ‘We’re in luck – this is a hospital ship. There’s a doc on board – and even nurses! He’s in good hands now.’

Kate smiled up at him and waved.

Then later, Gordon was still there. ‘Come on, mate, come aboard yourselves now. The Captain says we can’t take any more and we ought to be on our way before we get hit.’

Danny shook his head. ‘There’s still men on the beach.’

Gordon shaded his eyes. ‘Not so many now – and there’s still boats picking them up. Come on board, man. That lass is exhausted.’