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Chapter Thirty
Gathering
Minty loved it really; the being needed.
She’d marched around telling everyone what to do, even instructing one of the men from Environmental Health that she’d had it on good authority there were eleven perfectly good Christmas turkeys locked in the Siren’s Tail’s freezers, probably nicely defrosted by now, and he was to recover them immediately or they’d spoil.
He’d shaken his head and said, ‘Now look, lady—’ but she’d only had to fix him with sharp eyes and repeat the word, ‘Immediately!’ and he’d lost confidence and ordered his team down at the pub to search the kitchens. Within the hour, the turkeys were conveyed by stretcher up the back paths to the Big House.
Jude worked in the kitchen all day, having chased away a fussing Mrs Crocombe and Bella intent on helping, saying they needed to rest, while everyone else milled around the ballroom drinking tea and sharing their stories of what they’d seen. Some stood in more subdued groups in the reception hall (where in one corner Elliot and Mr Moke watched the donkeys settling on hastily scattered hay) saying on repeat that they just couldn’t believe it, and how it was ‘just so horrendous’ and ‘unreal’, as if reiterating those same words was helping everyone process the shock.
Nobody was allowed to leave the Big House until morning, the rescue teams said, even those, like Mrs Crocombe’s family and the Burntislands, who lived up on the promontory and had dry homes to go to. The roads into Clove Lore were needed for bringing in the diggers overnight.
As darkness fell around three o’clock the roads rumbled with heavy machinery and orange lights flashed. Down-along was taped off and work started on making emergency power lines.
Jowan set up an old TV in the ballroom and let the news programmes run endlessly until it was announced that the woman airlifted from a washed-up ferry was staying in hospital for observation but was uninjured.
That was when Magnús woke Alex, who was lying on a camp bed by the ballroom fire, to ask her how it had happened. How Eve could have been in the boat and not Alex?
After being monitored in the back of the ambulance at the top of the village, Alex had been given the all-clear to head to the Big House with all the others and told she simply had to stay warm, hydrated and get plenty sleep, the very same diagnosis Doctor Morrison had given her a week ago when she’d been found washed up the first time, only this time she wasn’t burdened with a heavy heart any more.
She was, however, exhausted from jumping from theDagalienand clinging to mooring chains while the water gushed around her. She told Magnús how she’d held on, thinking of him, and just when her strength was leaving her she’d felt the flood waters weaken and she’d waded up the beach with trembling legs of jelly. She’d fallen through a wall of water, found a spot on the rocks and must have passed out with the tiredness and relief.
Eve hadn’t been quick enough to jump free and Alex hadn’t even seen theDagalienswept from the harbour mouth in frothing brown water as the little boat was lifted and turned in circles like a waltzer car at a fair.
The room grew quieter as everyone watched the news but when the special extended report was about to play again Minty decided they’d all had quite enough of the images of their homes under water. She changed the channel toThe Snowmanand everyone, without exception, sat on their bunks and folding chairs and watched it with glassy eyes, some singing along with the music, others mouthing the words for the sake of Mrs C.’s grandkids and the Burntisland boys, even if they couldn’t sing all that well for the lumps in their throats.
Tom Bickleigh had befriended a reporter from the local paper who had arrived two hours ago only to find she couldn’t now leave. The pair were talking in hushed tones about how his fishing boat was thankfully still afloat and moored in the harbour. He’d find out what state it was in tomorrow morning. The reporter offered to go with him – for the sake of her story, she’d quickly put in with a shy smile – and Tom’s eyes lit up.
Seeing his brother getting on with the reporter, Monty had taken a stroll in the dark to where the police officer was once more stationed at her post. He carried with him two cups of tea and some of the excellent gingerbread men Jude had made in Minty’s kitchen while they waited for the ovens to come to temperature for two of the turkeys. He’d been gone for so long it was safe to assume the officer was glad of a friendly person to talk to as she marshalled the traffic and kept the place clear of rubberneckers from the nearby villages – all of whom had fared far better than Clove Lore where all the region’s run-off had converged.
‘We’ll have Christmas dinner in two hours!’ Minty had told everyone through an old loudhailer kept for the estate’s fox and field day announcements in the summer. The loudhailer really wasn’t necessary but this had still been met by a cheer and she’d retreated to help the vicar with the tea urn.
It all helped keep her mind off Jowan who was sitting by the fire cradling Aldous with a sorry frown and not speaking to anyone. Minty had barely glanced his way since she’d seen him brought inside by the rescue team. She’d watched as Leonid took him away to get changed out of his wet clothes and said nothing when he returned half an hour later smelling of her lodgers’ shampoos and shower gels, wearing something baggy and soft of Izaak’s apparently called ‘lounge pants’ and a hoodie in khaki and cream over a white cotton T-shirt, also oversized and soft, with a thick pair of Leonid’s woollen welly socks. He’d have looked ten years younger if it weren’t for the repentant wistfulness etched across his face. Still, Minty couldn’t help feeling tormented by the scent and proximity of him as she delivered up his share of the coffee and gingerbread biscuits by the fire.
‘Mint?’ he’d attempted, but she’d only said a flustered, ‘Busy, busy,’ in response and hurried away leaving him to sit dejected by the fire, sharing his gingerbread with Aldous who felt all his doggie birthdays were coming at once: a spot by the fire, gingerbread men to eatandthe promising smell of turkey roasting!
Alex had eventually got a signal and spoken to Mrs Thomas in Port Kernou.
‘I really am all right. I’m glad they both got home safely too. New Year? No idea, to be honest. I’m not thinking that far ahead, I’m just glad to be alive.’
She lay flat across a camp bed with squeaky metal springs and Magnús sat crossed-legged on the floor by her side, stroking her cheek with his thumb. She’d made a second call to the hospital and been told Eve had already been discharged and was heading home to spend Christmas with her little boy.
When she hung up the call, Magnús lowered his face to hers and they talked in whispers punctuated by discreet kisses.
At four o’clock the postman was shown into the ballroom by someone in a hard hat and incredibly muddy waterproofs. Bovis too slipped in, his hat in his hands, complaining that he’d been behind a police cordon for hours and they’d only let him through when he saw the postie being allowed in and complained that he worked here, so if anyone was allowed in, it ought to be him. The inhabitants of the ballroom welcomed them like heroes.
The postman quickly had a crowd around him and he thoroughly enjoyed telling everyone how he hadn’t been let through at first. ‘But I’d a van full of your parcels. Told ’em I couldn’t very well take ’em back to the depot, could I? Not when they might ‘ave some Christmas cheer inside for you all.’
The postie called out names and Minty emerged from the kitchen to comment that it was like ‘letters day’ at boarding school. Nobody in the room had the experience to concur that it was indeed just like that, but they all stepped forward to collect the bundles of Christmas cards and packages that on any normal Christmas Eve would have been brought to their doors hours ago.
Some struck it lucky: Bella and Finan unwrapped boxes of chocolates from family members far afield; one of the old men held up a bottle of whisky from his brother in Torrington. That received a rowdy cheer. Others were less fortunate. Poor Monty received an outdoor clothing catalogue while Monica Burntisland opened, of all things, a water bill.
‘One ’ere for Magnús Sturluson? Care of the Borrow-A-Bookshop?’ the postman called.
Magnús hadn’t paid much attention until this point; he’d been too busy telling Alex soft things in her ear and letting her whisper back words that made him blush and bite his lip. Now he was amazed to find he was the recipient of a parcel passed from group to group across the ballroom.
‘For me?’ he asked the package once it was in his hands. ‘Ah! It’s Mamma’s writing.’
