‘Well, yes,’ he said vaguely. ‘And she told me I was all that she had left, that I mustn’t give up.’ He spoke quietly and above the noise of the car’s engine I could only just hear what he said next. ‘I owe it to her, don’t I, Rose?’ he said.
And for the first time since the disaster he kissed me — just leaned across as we belted down the motorway and pecked me on the cheek. My heart lifted. It felt like the very best kiss of my life.
By the time the enquiry began Robin seemed at least to have recovered his public composure — or maybe he had never completely lost that. When he was called to give evidence he appeared distraught but dignified.
We knew by then that the extensive new survey undertaken by mining experts had indeed discovered a treacherous network of tunnelling on Abri, much greater than anyone had previously suspected. Robin pleaded ignorance, and under the circumstances, that was reasonable enough. Like all the others who had lived on Abri, he had had no idea of the danger beneath his feet, he said. Nobody had.
We were both well aware of the practicalities of the affair now. Our emotional problems were just a part of it. Robin’s and my entire future depended on the result of the enquiry. If Robin were blamed for the disaster he would be ruined — financially as well as in every other way. Dozens of law suits were being bandied about by survivors and by the relatives of the dead and seriously injured. A number of civil proceedings for damages were already on the table.
What we could salvage from our lives depended entirely on the decisions that Lord Justice Symons would make at Torridge Court. He was a small thin wiry man who looked as if he may have been physically better suited to being a jockey than a judge. Certainly there was nothing imperious about him as he sat, in his neat navy blue suit, at a table strewn with papers and files. He had to be in his late fifties and his hair, although thinning, was very dark — certainly his skin seemed unnaturally pale in contrast. He had rather pinched features and his facial expression gave little away. His eyes were hooded and he only rarely looked up, from the piles of papers before him and the notes he made copiously throughout the proceedings. It was hard to accept just how much rested on his narrow shoulders.
The representative of AKEKO Worldwide, the Japanese syndicate which had leased Abri, now more or less worthless, said in his evidence that he and his associates now believed categorically that Robin must have had foreknowledge of the true state of Abri. It was a damning allegation, its impact lessened only slightly by the awareness that the only hope AKEKO had of recovering any of its investment in Abri was to prove that Robin had not leased them the island in good faith — that he had in fact known the island was unsafe and had deliberately concealed information to that effect.
Robin stood stiffly before the enquiry chairman and protested his innocence. His fists were clenched at his side, and only the whiteness of his knuckles betrayed his tension.
‘If I had had any idea of the danger do you think I would have stayed on the island myself all those years, let alone allowed people I had known and cared for all my life to do so?’ he asked.
I sat in the body of Torridge Court’s great hall and thought how much the events of the past three months had aged him. Robin was still an overwhelmingly handsome man, but the lines of pain were now deeply etched around his mouth and eyes. Obscurely he reminded me of a magnificent Greek sculpture, finally becoming pitted and flawed by the ravages of time. I so hated to see him suffer more, to have to face up to aggressive cross examination as if he were on trial — which he was not, although that nightmare might yet await. I thought again about how scapegoats are invariably sought whenever there is a major disaster, and I continued to fear that this was the role in which Robin was being cast by Lord Justice Symons and his cohorts.
A lot of fuss was made about the maps of Abri’s gold-mine network which had been made available to the surveyors employed by AKEKO. These dated back 150 years and, as had been proven first by the disaster itself and then by the team of surveyors and mining experts sent in afterwards by the enquiry, were woefully inadequate.
Lord Justice Symons glanced up from studying them and peered unenthusiastically at Robin over his half-moon spectacles. His surprisingly bright blue eyes remained hooded. His voice managed to convey the impression of painstaking enquiry mingled with vague world-weariness at the same time.
‘Are we really supposed to believe that these are the only maps in existence of Abri’s gold mines, Mr Davey?’ he asked tiredly.
This was a key point of issue. Robin answered it clearly and reasonably. His integrity was so patently being questioned yet again, but he did not rise to the bait. I was proud of him.
‘Yes, they are, sir,’ he said. ‘People did not chart mines in those days in the way we would now. You have that problem throughout the tin-mining areas of Cornwall and everywhere in the country where there is the legacy of an old mining industry.’
Judge Symons grunted. ‘But these maps are extremely detailed, are they not?’ he asked. He lowered his head over them again. ‘Beautifully drawn, too.’
‘They are, sir, yes,’ agreed Robin.
‘Yet it now appears that gold was mined on Abri for a further ten years or more after these maps were made, is that not so?’
Robin agreed that it was.
‘And did you know that, Mr Davey, when you leased the island out, for example?’
‘I was never sure of the exact dates of the gold-mining operation on Abri, sir,’ said Robin. ‘I don’t think anyone is, to be honest, not even now. It’s only because the mining surveyors have found a network of shafts and tunnels so much greater than we believed to exist on the island that it seems clear mining for gold, or at least further exploration, must have gone on for at least ten years after those final maps were dated.’
‘And yet the last of these maps, which we all agree are detailed and apparently remarkably accurate for the period in as far as they go, was drawn in 1850, is that right?’
‘Yes sir, which is why everybody thought the digging stopped then, too.’
‘But why would that be, Mr Davey? Why would mining engineers who had all along chronicled their activities in such detail suddenly stop doing so?’
‘I don’t know the answer to that, sir,’ replied Robin much more calmly than I could have managed. ‘Except that in view of the damage that was done to the structure of the island it could be that the gold miners knew they were going too far, even for those days, and wanted no further record of what they were doing. Gold makes people greedy, sir. History records that well enough.’
‘Indeed, Mr Davey,’ said Judge Symons. ‘And so does property, does it not?’
Robin had no choice but to agree again.
‘Hu-hmmm,’ murmured Mr Justice Symons. ‘I must ask you one final time, are you absolutely sure, Mr Davey, that neither you nor any of your family have ever had possession of or knowledge of any later maps of the gold mines of Abri?’
There was the merest hint of a tremor in Robin’s voice when he replied.
‘Upon my honour, sir,’ he said in that old-fashioned way of his. ‘Upon my honour, no. Absolutely not, I swear it.’
‘Hu-hmmm,’ murmured the judge again. And he took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes wearily with the back of his hand.
He switched tack then to the reasons behind the leasing of Abri.
‘The very existence of your family has revolved around Abri for generations,’ he told Robin. ‘Surely it would take something truly momentous to lead you to hive off the place for what could well be the rest of your life — like learning that the island was desperately unsafe, perhaps?’