Chapter 30

No Knickers

 

‘Get her out of those wet clothes.’

A second doctor, who lived up the hill in New Rawscar had been called for and she had run an eye and a few practised questions over Cass after Marian had brought her up to one of the pub’s empty letting bedrooms. The room was half empty with most of its homely touches packed away for the winter season, a king size bed, bare save for a waterproof mattress cover dominated the room. Marian had already brought Cass a large, warm towel to dry herself with, and a thick quilt to wrap herself in. Hal had been whisked away to another room for the doctor to examine him separately. Cass was struggling to undo the buttons on her wet black shirt and her jeans, her fingers were so useless with the cold, Marian had to help her to undress.

‘I’ll run you a nice hot bath, Vicar,’ Marian said.

‘No. No don’t do that,’ the doctor said. ‘Get her dry, that’s the first thing. Stay with her for a while; get her a hot drink, but no alcohol. I think you have mild hypothermia, but nothing to worry about. A good job you got out of the water when you did! Now, get dry and get warm. I’m going to check Hal over now, but any change in her, come and get me. Any confusion, any faintness, anything like that. But I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.’

‘How’s Anna? Have you seen her? Has she … is she …?’ Cass stuttered. She couldn’t bring herself to ask the awful question that was in her head – is she dead?

‘The paramedic is with her right now, and the helicopter is coming to take her to Ormsborough University Hospital. She’s being well looked after.’

So, there was still some hope.

‘The helicopter?’ Cass said as all the implications spun round in her head. They wouldn’t send the helicopter if she didn’t have a chance – but they wouldn’t send the helicopter unless she was seriously ill.

‘It’s very isolated out here. The air ambulance will get her to hospital more quickly,’ the doctor said in a reassuring tone.

‘Can I see her?’

‘Not right now. Her father is with her; he’s going with her when the helicopter arrives.’

‘Her father?’ Cass echoed, stupidly, hoping that the doctor didn’t think it was hypothermia rather than disbelief that was causing her to repeat everything.

‘Yes. Charles, her father.’

Cass wanted to be happy that he was there, but would Anna ever know? What if she and Hal hadn’t pulled Anna out in time and what if she …

Cass tried to send out a prayer for her friend as she would have done so naturally for the rest of her life, but even as she tried to feel that connection with God, her doubting mind stopped her from relaxing into prayer. Again and again she had tried to come back to her beliefs over the last few days as the bishop had advised and again and again she had felt that iron fist of her own faithlessness smack her away. There was no God to be found through prayer, she was a fool for ever having felt it to be true.

‘You were so brave, Vicar,’ Marian said after the doctor had left them and gone to see Hal.

‘I didn’t feel brave. I’ve never been so scared in my life. I thought we were both going to die,’ Cass said. Even now she couldn’t stop shivering uncontrollably. ‘If it hadn’t been for Hal, we would have done. How did he find us?’

‘It was Jack heard you shouting and saw you in the water. He raised the alarm, but our Hal was faster to get there.’

‘And Hal came into the water for us.’ They both knew how much he struggled with the sea.

‘Hal would do anything for that Anna. Since Rob, he’s been like a brother to her. She’s always been such a troubled little soul. I hope she …’ and Marian’s voice began to choke up, and she turned away so that Cass wouldn’t see. ‘I’m going to take these wet clothes of yours to wash, Vicar. I’ll come back in a minute.’

As she waited for Marian to return, Cass moved over to the window to see what was going on outside. There were still several groups of people chatting outside on the fish-quay, Cass felt strange being up here at the window looking down on them, life carrying on as normal below her as she was in this strangely sterile, unused bedroom looking down on them as if she had already been taken away from the reality of life, put on hold away from everything. She wrapped the quilt that Marian had brought her more tightly around herself.

Cass heard the whir of the air ambulance arriving overhead and a commotion on the quay as it appeared out of the sky. It was landing on the beach; the tide was out far enough to allow a safe landing, and clouds of spray and sand were whipped up into the air by the blades as the helicopter came down. It looked tiny down there on the huge expanse of sand, distant, unreal. The people on the quay parted to let two paramedics through with a stretcher, and all fell quiet again, the helicopter blades still, and only the heartbeat of the sea could be heard. Was Anna’s heart still beating? What was going on?

She didn’t want to go wondering around the pub – she couldn’t go wondering around the pub – with only a quilt to hide her nakedness. She was stuck there until Marian came back and Marian was taking a long time. Cass began to feel a rising surge of panic. Was everything OK with Anna? With Hal? The stretcher had gone in, but was taking a long time to come out, what was happening? Perhaps she should go down?

Just as she was thinking that she should do something, that she couldn’t stand being shut up alone here any more with only her own fears for company there was a tap on the door and Marian was back with a steaming mug in her hand. She handed it to Cass, whose hands were still shaking but not so much that she couldn’t hold the mug.

‘I’ve brought you a nice cup of tea, Vicar. The doctor’s been in to see Hal, he’s fine. He asked how you were doing.’

‘And Anna?’ Cass asked as she took a gulp of the tea, which was scalding hot and sweeter than she would have liked.

‘They’ll be taking her out to the ambulance any time now. She’s holding her own though, hasn’t got any worse. The doctor said at first that she might need to have some kind of heart procedure if her blood had got too cold, but the one who came in the air ambulance don’t seem to think she’ll need it. So, it’s not quite as bad as we thought, but because she’s so thin, they’re saying she wasn’t able to keep her body heat as long as you were. She’s stable, that’s what they’re saying. Thank God you got to her when you did.’

Even as she finished speaking, Cass was aware of a commotion outside the window and the two women went to see what was happening. The stretcher was being carried from the pub, Anna’s form unrecognisable under the blanket that covered her. Hal and Charles followed Anna’s stretcher, Hal’s hair still wet and combed down flat. He stopped at the top of the ramp whilst Charles followed the stretcher down onto the beach until Cass couldn’t see them any more behind the harbour wall. The helicopter blades started up again, in a whoosh of sand and salt water, and the helicopter was off over the top of the village and Cass watched it until she couldn’t see it any more. By the time she looked back to the quayside Hal had gone.

‘Hal will be worrying about her,’ Cass said, thinking out loud.

‘About Anna? Of course he will. He’s been like family to her since she fell out with her parents. He’s been the only reliable thing in that girl’s life! If it wasn’t for him who knows what would have happened to her? I’ve no time for those parents of hers. Cold hearted, that’s what.’

Just then there was a knock on the door.

‘Can I come in?’ It was Hal’s voice outside. Marian looked at her questioningly.

‘Yes, it’s fine,’ Cass said. She knew she was only wearing a quilt, but it was a large, thick quilt and it covered her very completely. He opened the door and stood in the doorway for a moment, looking suddenly old and tired.

‘How are you doing, Vicar? Dried out after your dip in the sea?’

‘Better. Warming through now.’ She didn’t really want to think about the sea right now. ‘And you?’

‘Fine. I didn’t get as cold – or as wet – as you did though.’

‘The doctor asked me to keep an eye on the vicar – would you sit with her for a bit Hal, while I go and see your father?’ Marian turned to leave the room, giving Hal very little choice but to do what she asked.

‘Sure,’ Hal said, coming into the room. He stood awkwardly just inside the doorway at the other side of the room while Cass sat back down on the bed, making sure that the quilt stayed tucked around everything that should be concealed. He watched Cass carefully as his mum shut the door behind her.

‘You look awful,’ he said with a tone of concern, his eyes never leaving her face. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Numb,’ Cass admitted. ‘I feel like I’ve let Anna down.’

‘But you saved her life.’ It was a simple statement.

‘You saved her life, and mine. I did the wrong thing at every step of the way. I didn’t realise how desperate she was and I should have seen it – I thought she was better today because she was eating. I didn’t notice when she left the quayside, and then I should have got someone else straight away instead of trying to do it all myself. I was an idiot and I nearly got us both killed. If it hadn’t been for you -’

‘If it hadn’t been for me she wouldn’t have gone into the sea in the first place,’ Hal said miserably, looking down. ‘She needed me and I wasn’t there to help her.’

‘But you were! You saved her life! And she doesn’t want you to have to always be there for her, she told me so on Christmas Eve,’ Cass tried to recollect exactly what Anna had said, ‘She said: Hal has got a life to live and I don’t want to hold him back. I can’t keep holding onto him …’ and even as she repeated Anna’s words, she realised exactly what they had meant. For a moment, in silence, they looked at one another.

‘What if she dies?’ Hal said. His voice shook and he reached out a hand to her, and she stood up and crossed the room to take it, still clutching the unwieldy quilt around her with her left hand. When she took it, his hand was colder than hers and he held onto her as if her hand was all that was keeping him safe.

‘There are two ways to see it, Hal. You can keep looking backwards and blaming everything on the fact that you didn’t go and help Rob – but Anna didn’t go into the sea today because of that, or because of you or me, she did it because she’s ill, and she needs her family. So you can either carry on blaming yourself for something that isn’t your fault, looking backwards and looking inwards and thinking everything is because of one mistake you made ten years ago – or you can see what happened today as a turning point and start moving forwards again. It’s your choice, Hal!’

She waited in silence as Hal paced the room without a word, to the window and back again without an answer.

‘I wish there was something I could say, something I could do …’ she sighed more gently, overwhelmed by a desire to help him and suddenly she knew where this rush of sympathy and pity she felt was taking both of them.

She saw a hunger kindle in his eyes, and he walked over to where she sat on the bed. How did Hal find relief from his guilt and his pain? He tried to lose it in the arms of a woman. Any woman.

‘Please …’ he said, and she knew what he was asking of her. His eyes fixed on hers, those piercing blue eyes that made her body tingle in the most unexpectedly delicious ways, and she knew exactly what he wanted from her. All she had to do was let go of the quilt and Hal would be hers, for a little while at least and she could help him to forget for an hour or two. It would be easy to give him the kind of help he wanted, all she had to do was give in to the surge of heat that swept through her body and let go. This time she wouldn’t be trying to seduce him because of her own carnal desires. If he needed her she would give him what he wanted out of gratitude and love.

‘I want to help you, Hal, whatever it takes. If you want to sleep with me right now then I’m yours. I’ve wanted to know what it would be like, being with you, since I first saw you, so you won’t be doing anything that I don’t want you to, believe me. I just want to help you, I just want to …’ she couldn’t quite say it though, and let her voice trail off. For an agonising moment she waited for his reply, as he stared at her, looking quite strangely fearful for a man who had “slept with half the women in the village”. He said nothing and made no move towards her. ‘I just want you, Hal.’

Cass took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and let go of the quilt. She heard his sharp intake of breath and waited, imagining his eyes on her naked body. She was tense, half hoping, half fearing to feel his cold hands on her skin.

Instead of his hands, she felt him wrap the quilt gently back around her and when she opened her eyes, he had gone.