Vanessa de Haan - The Restless Sea

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2018

Copyright © Vanessa de Haan 2018

Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperColl‌insPublishers Ltd 2019

Cover photographs © Elisabeth Ansley/Trevillion Images (figure), © Jim Robertson

( www.jimrobertson.co.uk) (background), © Photographing North/Alamy Stock Photo (bi-plane)

Vanessa de Haan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it

are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008245764

Ebook Edition © April 2018 ISBN: 9780008229818

Version: 2019-04-05

To my weird, wonderful and extensive family

– you know who you are –

and to Amelia Grace Jessel, in memory.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Hymn

Prologue

Chapter 1: Jack

Chapter 2

Chapter 3: Charlie

Chapter 4

Chapter 5: Olivia

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8: Jack

Chapter 9

Chapter 10: Charlie

Chapter 11

Chapter 12: Olivia

Chapter 13

Chapter 14: Charlie

Chapter 15: Olivia

Chapter 16: Jack

Chapter 17: Charlie

Chapter 18: Jack

Chapter 19: Olivia

Chapter 20: Jack

Chapter 21: Charlie

Chapter 22: Jack

Chapter 23: Charlie

Chapter 24: Olivia

Chapter 25: Jack

Chapter 26: Olivia

Chapter 27: Charlie

Chapter 28: Olivia

Chapter 29: Charlie

Chapter 30: Olivia

Chapter 31: Jack

Chapter 32: Charlie

Chapter 33: Olivia

Historical Note

Acknowledgements

We, Who Live Now

About the Author

About the Publisher

Eternal Father, strong to save

Whose arm does bound the restless wave

Who bidst the mighty ocean deep

Its own appointed limits keep

O hear us when we cry to thee

For those in peril on the sea

O ruler of the earth and sky

Be with our airmen as they fly

And keep them in thy loving care

From all the perils of the air

O let our cry come up to thee

For those who fly o’er land and sea

O Trinity of love and might

Be with our airmen day and night

In peace or war

Midst friend or foe

Be with them wheresoe’er they go

Thus shall our prayers ascend to thee

For those who fly o’er land and sea

This famous hymn, written by William Whiting in 1860, is also known as the Navy Hymn and sung at naval occasions around the world. This is a version frequently used by the Fleet Air Arm.

The roof stretches across the railway station like the skin of a drum, magnifying the sounds: the tapping and pounding of feet, the trains clanking, the rumble of wheels, the shout of a guard, the whistle of a porter. At the ticket office, there is no sense of where the queue ends or where it begins. A man bashes on the glass, his voice raised in anger, frustration. Tickets are scarce. Everybody here wants to get away, to follow the children who have been evacuated to safer parts of this now unsafe country. The air is sticky and humid. In the haze, little things stand out: two sailors balancing on a stack of cases, one singing as the other accompanies him on a squeezebox. The drifting smoke from the newspaper seller’s pipe; the neat rows of black-and-white print on his stand. A cluster of soldiers, their uniforms smart, the leather of their boots supple and clean, their dark, heavy rifles pulling at their shoulders.

A policeman tails a group of suspicious-looking lads that trickle away from him like mercury, slipping through gaps that close as quickly as they open. He loses them again as they circle a girl dressed in a pale-green coat, a cerise ribbon tied around her matching hat, a bright splash of colour among the drab browns and greys of suits and caps. The policeman glimpses the lads once more as they sidestep the expensive leather cases at the girl’s feet. Then they are gone again, like the brief flash of the bracelet she is fiddling nervously with beneath the cuff of her jacket: now you see it, now you don’t.

The sounds swirl into one cacophony – the sobs of children, the wails of babies, the tinny squeezebox and the guard shouting into the loudspeaker, the scream of another train pulling free from the throng and towards the light. And then suddenly all noise is drowned out by a new sound, one that Londoners will soon grow accustomed to, but this is the first time they have heard its ear-splitting warning. For a moment, the station freezes, caught in a sliver of time. The babies stop wailing. The man stops banging the window. The squeezebox exhales with a breathless sigh. A thousand pairs of eyes widen, a thousand hearts stop beating.

And then there is chaos. Hands fly up to ears. People scream and clutch at each other. Others gape, bewildered. ‘It’s the gas!’ ‘A bomb!’ ‘They’re coming!’ Some people throw themselves to the floor while others blindly follow each other, staggering from one foot to the other, unsure which way to run. People fumble for their gas masks, trying to remember the drill. The straps pinch and catch at their hair; the rubber digs into their faces; the horrible smell fills their nostrils.

The crowd takes on a life of its own and surges towards the Underground, sweeping everything before it, pushing aside anything that will not join the plunging wave. The girl in the pale-green coat is caught up in the rush. She stretches out for her luggage, but it has scattered and she is knocked one way and shoved another and then swept along for a little while, all the time trying to reach back with a pale hand for her bags. The policeman is too busy trying to calm the uncalmable to notice that the girl has been swept up by the hoodlums he had his eye on. Now her bags are lost, but at least she has been carried on the tide to the safety of the Underground.

The siren wails through the empty station. The concourse is a mess of scattered things. Luggage is strewn across the floor like flotsam, bags split open, a favourite teddy has been trampled, the newspapers have toppled to the ground, the thick headlines declaring war smudged and smeared by a myriad of shoes. The ticket seller cowers beneath his desk. The guards and porters have disappeared. The only sign of life is a group of naval ratings who have remained on their platform and are being lined up by a young officer. The officer issues his instructions and smooths his impeccable uniform. The boys do not take their eyes off him, drawing confidence from his easy manner, the authority borne of fine breeding and education. They form neat rows of bell bottoms and white-topped caps. The officer calls out another command, and this time the words echo clearly across the silent emptiness. The wailing has stopped.