‘He’s all right,’ she told me. ‘I’ve seen him.’
The relief washed over me, then I was overcome with shame again at my selfishness.
‘All those poor people,’ I said haltingly. ‘My nephew, my mother... are they still missing? And how many others?’
She shrugged. ‘Nobody knows how many yet,’ she said. ‘It’s still too soon.’
I could hold the tears back no longer. I wept in her arms, great heaving sobs wracked my body but brought me no relief.
‘There’s time, Rose,’ Julia soothed. ‘They are still digging. People have been...’ She paused as if searching for the right words. It became obvious with what she said next that there were no right words. I knew what she was about to say, I had been thinking about it myself, but hearing the words was still shocking. ‘People have been buried alive. But they come out alive too — sometimes...’ Her voice trailed off. We held each other very tightly.
The Puffin, carrying the last of the survivors and many of the emergency workers was on her way into Ilfracombe, we learned. Mary Riley was still on duty and able to tell me that Robin was definitely aboard. Apparently he had refused to leave the island until everybody who could be helped had first been transported to safety, or at least installed aboard the Puffin.
I could not wait at the hospital. I did not even know if he would be taken to the North Devon District. I wanted to get to the quayside at Ilfracombe, fast. Mary Riley fixed me a ride with a couple of young constables in a squad car. Strictly against procedure, but I can be very persuasive. And I was a Detective Chief Inspector.
It was almost midnight when we arrived at Ilfracombe. Several ambulances were waiting there for the Puffin to berth, and a Mobile Incident Room — a West Country Ambulances’ control van — was parked by the waterside. In spite of the hour there was quite a large crowd gathered including more press and TV.
The night was as cold as the day had been glorious. I had no coat and I was shivering as I stood on the quayside, but after waiting only for twenty minutes or so I could see the Puffin’s navigation lights approaching.
It seemed like a lifetime before they brought her alongside, and then another lifetime before I spotted Robin clearly illuminated in the bright lights which had been erected around the harbour by the emergency services. I could tell that he was holding back, waiting on the deck until all the rest of the survivors had been helped ashore. Eventually he stepped onto the quayside briskly enough. His clothes were muddy and torn and he had a nasty gash on his cheek and was supporting his right hand with his left as if it was giving him pain. Other than that he seemed unharmed — except for his mental condition.
I rushed forward, pushing to one side a police constable who misguidedly tried to stop me, and half threw myself at Robin. He did not even greet me, just stared into the middle distance, his eyes vacant. I wrapped my arms around him to try to comfort him, but it was as if he was incapable of focusing on me. He looked grey and gaunt. He did not speak.
A paramedic checked him out, carefully studied his injured hand, consulted a clipboard and decreed that Robin should be taken to the Musgrove Park Hospital at Taunton — apparently the North Devon District was already dealing with well over its quota of injured. I begged to be allowed to travel with him.
In the ambulance he remained silent. I suppose it was crazy, but I found myself wondering if he would ever speak again. I asked him about his brother, and Luke, and my mother — of whom I still had no news — and he just looked at me blankly. I told him I had left his mother safely at Barnstaple, and that she was coping well. He did not react at all to anything I said or did. I accompanied him into the emergency room and nobody tried to stop me sitting with him while they stitched up his face-wound and then set splints on two fingers which had turned out to be broken. I was not even sure if he was aware of my presence.
They said he would be kept in for twenty-four hours and gave him two pills which he meekly swallowed. Ten minutes later he was soundly into what seemed to me to be an unnaturally deep sleep.
I was alarmed and called a nurse. ‘Classic reaction to shock,’ she said. ‘Best thing for him.’
I sat by his bed all night. The hospital told me they could get me transport home, if I wished. There was no question of my going home. I wasn’t even quite sure where home was any more. Contracts were about to be exchanged on my apartment and Robin and I had been due to move directly into the new Clifton house on our return from honeymoon.
The next morning it became apparent that Robin was being hailed as a hero. I learned that it was those inside Abri Parish Church, which could seat only 100, places allocated mostly to relatives and island residents, who had been worst hit, trapped within a tomb of collapsing stone. The others, to whom the ceremony was to have been broadcast on a closed-circuit TV screen, could at least run. Robin had been standing just outside the church, apparently waiting until the last moment before going in so that he could see me arrive. Instead of running from the crumbling building he had managed to help some people out before the entire church collapsed.
I would have expected no less of him. Mrs Cotley, who had also been taken to the Musgrove Hospital at Taunton, told the story of how he had defied flying timbers and masonry to throw himself into a huge crack in the earth to grab hold of her three-year-old grandson who had been fast disappearing into it. Somehow he managed to get the boy and himself to safety.
‘I don’t know ‘ow he did it,’ she told me wonderingly. ‘All I could do was watch.’
She had sustained a broken leg and a couple of cracked ribs, but she was sitting up in her hospital bed when I took a break from my vigil at Robin’s bedside and visited her on the morning after the disaster. I knew how fond Robin was of Mrs Cotley, and reported back to him that she appeared to be recovering surprisingly well. Robin showed little interest. He seemed to be in a kind of trance. The papers may have dubbed him Abri’s Hero. But it meant nothing to him. He was discharged from hospital later that day, although I did not really think he was fit to leave. It seemed to me that he was still in deep shock.
Somehow, I don’t really know why or even recall exactly how, we all ended up going to Northgate Farm. I knew by then that my mother and my brother-in-law Brian were both safe, but my nephew Luke was still missing, and so was Robin’s brother, James.
Robin and I travelled in complete silence in a hospital car. He would by then answer questions in a monosyllabic way, but there was still no possibility of conversation. I wanted desperately to talk about all that had happened. Robin would have none of it.
Maude and Roger were already at Northgate when we arrived. She was deathly white behind her perpetual tan, but maintained her dignity as ever.
The news we had all been dreading came within minutes of Robin and I arriving at the farm. Roger answered the phone. Maude and I were sitting at the kitchen table drinking tea. Robin had gone upstairs alone. He returned as soon as he heard the phone ring. All three of us stared silently at Roger as he held the receiver in his hand and listened. He said little, just an occasional desultory yes or no, but his manner told the story.
‘They’ve found James,’ he said simply, when he turned to face us.
We did not need to ask if he was dead. We knew, and indeed had known all along, I suppose. Nonetheless this was the final blow.
Robin seemed to sway on his feet. I thought for a moment that he was going to pass out, but before I could get to him Maude was by his side, her hand under his elbow steadying him. She had been a tower of strength all her life, I had no doubt, and it seemed to come automatically to her to support others. Even at this terrible time, learning that she had lost her much-loved younger son, her first thought was to prop up Robin — in every sense.