Unknown - Heartsease

Scrub swam steadily, his feet kicking below the impulse of the waves, his head arched high like a sea serpent’s. Margaret could do nothing but trust him; she was in a blind world where she could sometimes see a few feet of the wrinkled upslope of a disappearing wave, sometimes snatch a full breath, but mostly was hard put to it to keep her eyes open and the burning salty water out of her nose and throat. The only constant thing was the sturdy beat of the legs moving against her ribs, the slippery leather of the saddle and the roughness of the living hide. Once, looking back from the top of a wave, she caught a glimpse of Heartsease, end on to her: she thought Jonathan had decided to come and pick her up, though she knew he wouldn’t attempt anything so impossible — it wasn’t his style. But next time she saw them the tug was bow on to the weather and tide, still almost level with her. Tim was holding Otto up so that he could watch the shore — Jonathan must have circled perilously upstream so as to be certain that she had come safe to land. At that moment Scrub’s swimming motion hesitated, stopped, and he rose six inches out of the water. The waves were lower here, and Scrub had been moving with them, but now they began to stream past. He must be standing on firm land.

She heaved herself onto his back, to lessen the resistance to the hurrying torrent; the shore seemed very close, and the tug, when she looked back, far away. She raised her hand and waved. Otto and Tim waved back. She felt a sudden choking pang that she had not said even this remote kind of good-bye to Lucy.

As Scrub battled shorewards Heartsease began to wheel side on to the tide again. There was something about the smell of the storm that made her believe it was ending, though the clouds seemed no less dark — but perhaps that was the real night. Up in the wind the water in her clothes chilled and chilled; a cold like death felt its way towards her bones.

Scrub had to swim across two narrow channels before at last they were really riding out of the waves to the true shore, with water streaming from her thighs and calves and her whole body shuddering like a twanged wire. On the pebbly beach, under low cliffs, she wrung the water out of the clothes in her bundle, stripped and changed. She hid the jeans and jerseys in a cranny between two boulders, then piled pebbles into the gap until no shred of cloth could be seen. Her ears were singing and her head lolling from side to side when she led Scrub up a steep little path to the coarse sea turf above the reach of any tide. The hill sloped up and up, but she knew from the way he hung his head that he too was near the last morsel of his strength, so she led him dizzily on. Halfway up the seemingly endless slope she had to stop and be sick. Perhaps it was just the salt water she had swallowed; or perhaps she was really ill.

There was a path. It must go somewhere, so she followed it right-handed, looking a bare yard in front of her feet but still stumbling every few paces. Round the shoulder of the hill the path dipped and they came out of the full blast of the wind, so she stopped and looked about her.

It was almost night, true night. They had climbed far above the deadly waters which stretched away on her right into dimness. There lay Wales, invisible in storm and dusk; ahead, though, a fault split the level clouds and a thin streak of gold evening sky showed through it, the last light of day gleaming off the water. Into this gold gleam on the sea crawled a black fleck, dirty as cinders; above it, just visible, rose its indomitable signal, puff-puff-puff. She waved again, though no one could possibly see her, then stumbled on along the path.

THE path started to climb again, curving through the dusk, then dipped; it was hard to see now that night was turning all colors to different shades of dark gray. She kept falling, and Scrub waited while she picked herself up. She tried to mount him once, but was too weak to pull her own weight up to the sodden saddle. She kept her eyes on the ground, only aware of the few feet of bristly turf round the dimming path. She could no longer feel anything, even the cold, but she knew that if they didn’t come to warmth and shelter soon she would die.

A gate blocked the path. Cattle snorted and fidgeted in the darkness down the slope. The voice of a hen tickled the night. She looked up at these homelike sounds and saw, not twenty yards away, the orange square of a lit window. The gate led into a farmyard. She fumbled at the chain with unfeeling fingers.

A tied dog lunged yelping at her the moment she had it open, but she edged round the limit of its reach, trying to think of a story. A door opened and a man’s voice shouted, “Quiet, you! Who’s there?” The dog slipped back to its kennel, duty done, and Margaret reeled towards the black figure outlined against firelight and lantern-light.

“We fell in the river,” she gasped, clinging to Scrub’s neck to hold herself from falling.

“Martin!” he shouted. “Horse to see to!”

A boy, younger than she, ran out and took Scrub confidently by the reins. The man grunted and caught her by the elbow as she melted towards the paving. Then she was lifted and carried into warmth and light, and the lovely smells she knew so well — curing bacon and fresh bread and a stew on the hob and woodsmoke and old leather and cider.

“Cold as a side of beef,” said the man’s voice, “and dripping wet.”

“She’ll have pneumony on her, likely,” said the soft voice of a woman.

“What’d we best do?” said the man. “She’s nobbut a girl.”

“Put her in my chair,” said the woman, “and fetch me two blankets and some towels. You can go and help Martin while I strip her off and dry her. I shan’t be ten minutes.”

“Aye,” said the man. “Horse’ll need a good rubbing down, given it’s as drenched as she is.”

Margaret heard a door close, and flickered her eyelids up to catch a picture of flecked green eyes in a large red face with a straggle of gray hair around it. She tried to say thank-you, but her lips wouldn’t move.

“There, there,” said the woman, “we’ll soon have you to rights, my dear. Warm and dry and sleeping like the angels.”

Then there was darkness.

Voices swam in the dark, and pictures which shifted into each other before they could really mean anything. Uncle Peter snorted in his chair by the fire, and the bull snorted towards her over the mashed turf, and Mr. Gordon raised his blackthorn stick and cried, “The Devil has taken his own!” Then they were all on the sledge, including Aunt Anne, racing along the hissing snow in glorious freedom, but the snow had melted and Tim was trying to haul the sledge through a plowed field, only now it was a capstan and the rope broke like a strand of wool and Uncle Peter, swinging his ax, galloped at her out of the smoke and she leaped for the tug but it wasn’t there and she was falling, falling, falling.

There were many dreams like that, sometimes with the dogs hurtling after her, sometimes with seas of petrol reeking over her, sometimes Mr. Gordon rocking and clucking till she forgot the lifesaving lie and blurted out the truth. But at last she woke to a strange ceiling with a black beam straight above her head, motes dancing in the sunlight, limed walls. A large woman in a gray dress sat by her bed, knitting placidly but looking very serious. Her eyes were the color of plovers’ eggs, and flecked with the same brown spots. She spoke as soon as Margaret opened her eyes.

“Don’t tell me anything. I don’t want to know. You talked enough — more than enough — in your fever.” “Oh,” whispered Margaret.

“Four days you’ve been lying here,” said the woman, “and talking I don’t know what wickedness.”