‘There’s always a store of clothes somewhere in a hospital if you know where to look,’ she responded when I congratulated her. I tried not to think about who they would have belonged to and why they were available.
I could sit and wait no longer. It wasn’t in my nature. I tried to forget that I was a bride on my wedding day, to step outside myself, to force myself to function. Immediately after having changed my clothes I promised Maude and Roger that I would return as soon as possible, and left them to their tea and sympathy. Clem’s shock was so severe that she had been admitted and heavily sedated. I went to the ward where I knew she had been taken and slipped behind the curtain surrounding her bed. She was fast asleep. Her wedding attire had been swapped for a hospital nightgown and she looked quite peaceful. I remember thinking how short-lived that peace was going to be. When she woke up the horror would envelop her again. That was how it was going to be for all of us, I feared, probably for the rest of our lives.
I kissed her forehead lightly before I left. Then I sought out the lobby area in Accident and Emergency where the ambulance had delivered us, and sat down to wait for more arrivals, trying to make myself as inconspicuous as possible. Apart from our little party, only one other helicopter had come in to the North Devon District Hospital so far, and the hospital emergency procedure was already in full swing in preparation for a much greater influx of injured people. A row of trolleys as lined up by the double doors and a group of nurses and porters — many of whom I guessed would have been off duty and had been called in to boost the hospital staff to its maximum — were hovering around making the most of the calm before the storm.
Peter Mellor and his wife were in the first ambulance I saw arrive. Karen Mellor seemed superficially uninjured but was obviously in deep shock. Peter had one arm around her, ever protective. His face was bruised and cut and his other arm looked as if it were broken, but he was on his feet and walking.
I went straight to him. I was delighted to see him relatively unharmed, nonetheless, and no doubt to my discredit, my first enquiry was not about his welfare.
‘Robin,’ I breathed. ‘Robin, have you seen him? Is he all right?’
Mellor’s eyes were wild, his voice cracked and strange. He spoke to me, but it was as if he had not heard what I had asked.
‘The earth opened up, Rose,’ he said, using my Christian name probably for the first time ever. ‘It opened up and swallowed us.’
‘Robin,’ I said again. ‘Where is Robin?’
Peter Mellor just looked at me. I wasn’t even sure that he was focusing properly.
‘There was a child, Rose,’ he said. ‘Right in front of me. A little boy. He disappeared into the ground. I tried to hold his hand, but he slipped away from me. I... I nearly went too...’
Mellor’s voice broke. He was trembling. A nurse appeared and wrapped a blanket around his shoulders.
My eyes filled with tears, although still I could not weep. I backed away, suddenly all too aware of the scale of this disaster. What if that child were Luke, I wondered, thinking at last of someone other than Robin. Clem would never get over it.
The emergency reception area began to fill. Maybe the dredger had already arrived at lifracombe. The scenes around me were heartbreaking. Even professionally I had never been at the site of a major disaster before. There had not been one in Devon, Cornwall or Somerset in my lifetime. The nearest we had ever got to it had been a crippled airliner heading for the North Devon coast which had dropped into the sea off Ireland — five minutes away from Bideford, they said.
I had been trained in emergency procedure, of course, but nothing prepares you for the reality of it. As well as the walking wounded there were the stretcher cases, and more than once a doctor shook his head and pulled a sheet over the head of a victim. I felt as if I was in a daze as I wandered among all these poor injured people, hoping to find Robin, dreading the condition I may find him in. As a policewoman I had only been used to anonymous victims before. It was hard to think that these were my wedding guests.
I lifted the sheet from a comatose figure and revealed the face of a dead woman so disfigured that even if I had known her I would not have been able to recognise her. One side of her face had been more or less sliced off and congealed blood surrounded a gaping head wound. As I stood and looked at her my whole body started to shake.
‘I don’t know who you are but you will please get out of my casualty unit,’ ordered an authoritative female voice. I turned around and faced a tall commanding-looking woman in a uniform I just about had the nuance left to realise was that of a senior nursing officer.
By this time I was only too glad to obey. I couldn’t take any more. I found myself a chair in a quiet corner of the main reception area and sat down to wait. I couldn’t face Maude and Roger again, nor Clem. Not yet. Not after what I had seen. I shut my eyes and quickly opened them again. All I could see inside my head were the terrible faces of the dead and injured, jumbled up with images of people being literally swallowed up by the earth. Many of them must have been buried alive, I knew. My shakes were almost uncontrollable now. The scale of the disaster was almost beyond my comprehension. And this had been my wedding day. It was supposed to have been the best day of my life.
Somehow or other I fell asleep, just sitting there in reception. My head was still full of terrible images, but I suppose I must have been exhausted.
I was woken sometime after dark by a voice so welcome.
‘Rose, Rose, wake up, darling...’
It seemed to take me a long time to open my eyes. For a brief wonderful moment I couldn’t quite remember where I was. Then the horror overwhelmed me again. Automatically I glanced at my watch. It was just after ten. I had been at the hospital for almost nine hours. I couldn’t quite work out where the time had gone. I couldn’t work out anything much. I felt dazed.
Julia crouched by my chair and stroked my cheek with one hand. Her eyes were very bright and there was a gauntness about her. She looked as shocked as everyone else but appeared to have escaped unscathed.
‘People have been looking for you,’ she went on, managing a half smile. ‘They wanted to take me to some bloody survivors’ centre or something, but I found out that you were here and just bloody well insisted that I was brought here too.’
I threw my arms around her neck. Julia was so wonderful. With all that she had gone through she had come to find me, she had time to think of me.
‘Thank God you’re all right,’ I said.
‘I always was a lucky reporter,’ she responded, and the tentative smile stretched into a crooked grin. Her navy blue and white wedding suit was torn and muddy. I thanked God again that that seemed to have been the only damage she had suffered. Physically at least.
‘I came into lifracombe on a trawler,’ she told me. Her voice had a tremble to it and sounded almost as if it belonged to someone else. ‘A dozen or so of us aboard, none of us with more than a scratch, it’s all inside your head though, isn’t it, Rose? You wonder if you’ll ever be able to think of anything else...’
I buried my face in her neck and felt the tears welling up again.
‘My poor Rose,’ she whispered. And yet I had not even been on the island. I had not had to run for my life as the earth opened up beneath my feet. I had not faced death nor seen it approach close enough to touch as Julia had.
I looked up at her, wondering exactly what she had seen. My relief at discovering that she was alive and well, had, for the first time even put the thought of Robin out of my head — but not for long.
My eyes formed the question. As usual Julia half-read my mind. I didn’t need to say the words.