Daughter of the House

There came a lurch and a shriek of protesting machinery, and then a rending noise like metal plates being crunched up and pitched on a metal floor. When this din stopped the engine had stopped too, and in the strange quiet the buffet of wind and the waves churning beneath the pier sounded even louder.

From Cornelius’s expression Nancy knew that something must have gone seriously wrong.

The steamer rolled heavily as its prow turned through the water, unable to make headway without engine power. Two sailors dashed to the rail, pushing aside the passengers in their hurry. One of them grabbed a fender and the other took a boathook. Turning to her hero, Nancy saw that the pipe was gone. He fought with the wheel, trying to bring his boat round, but wind and current swept it towards the pier supports.

A woman pressed her hand to her mouth, stifling a scream.

The male passengers began shouting and dashing to the seaward side, propelling their children and womenfolk away from the looming pier. The people on the walkways were now far above them and at the lower level yawned an underworld of heaving water and dripping iron stanchions.

Devil caught Eliza tightly at his side. Arthur was trapped in the press of people who had fled to the far rail.

‘For God’s sake hold on,’ Devil bellowed to his family.

The sailor made a stab with his boathook, but the sturdy pole splintered as the Queen Mab smashed into the pier.

The force of the impact threw the steamer sideways. The outer rail dipped and water flowed over it before the vessel sluggishly rolled in the opposite direction, sending bodies tumbling across the decks and falling against the benches. Cornelius lunged towards his sister and caught her by the arm to stop her skidding down the crazily angled gangway. A confusion of shouts and screams tore the air. Water poured everywhere, covering the decks and the seats and flooding into the wheelhouse.

Devil supported his wife as the water rose past his knees. She was trapped by the weight of her sodden skirt. A barnacled ladder on the nearest pier support rose to an opening that was already jammed with shocked faces. An arm reached down with a dangling lifebelt and Devil somehow hoisted Eliza up the lowest metal rungs. She grasped the lifebelt and men began to haul her up from above. Only when she was safe did Devil turn to look for his children.

Nancy saw all this, as if from the depths of the Uncanny.

Cornelius shouted her name as icy water sucked round her knees. A wave slammed into her chest; she was torn away and thrown against the submerged rail. All around there were people in the water, splashing and flailing as the Queen Mab went down.

To her horror she saw Arthur amongst them. His blond head was darkened with the hair plastered against his skull. Nancy let the next wave lift her free of the sinking vessel. Her skirt caught between her legs as she tried to kick out. She was submerged, sinking into bubbling depths with her hair fanning out like seaweed. Somehow she freed her limbs and frantically fought her way upwards. Her face broke the surface and she gulped for air.

There were boats approaching, and at the same time men with ropes came swarming down the pier stanchions. A half-submerged dark shape was bobbing close at hand and she recognised it as one of the boat’s wooden benches, the green seat cushion still attached. She launched herself at it and somehow caught hold. She took a sobbing breath, trying to remember where she had seen Arthur in the water. Clawing back the hair that clogged her eyes and mouth she yelled his name.

The waves were dotted with hats and cushions and a dark floating web that had been a woman’s shawl. Rotating as far as she could without losing her hold on the seat she caught sight of him. He had torn off his coat and his shirt billowed in the swell. When she glimpsed his face it was dead white, frighteningly like a corpse.

But Arthur knew how to swim.

She screamed again, ‘Arthur. Here, Arthur. Swim to me.’

He caught sight of her and tried to reach out, a splashy scramble that brought him no closer. He was already exhausted by his efforts to stay afloat. His head seemed to sink lower in the water.

Powered by desperation Nancy kicked towards him, towing her makeshift raft. Arthur’s shirt ballooned as another wave caught and released them. They were only a yard apart now. Filling her lungs with a huge breath Nancy let go of the bench. She splashed frantically to her brother and at last caught hold of him. They clung together and there was a long, suffocating and terrible moment when it seemed certain they were going to drag each other down. But then Arthur seemed to revive a little. He struck out with his free arm and Nancy followed suit and somehow they propelled themselves through the water to reach the floating bench. They grabbed it at the same instant. The seat wallowed and sank deeper but it was just buoyant enough to support them both.

A rowing boat swayed on the crest of the next wave.

‘Two children here,’ a man at the prow shouted.

Nancy’s layers of clothes were dragging her down. It took every ounce of her strength to keep her head above the waves, but somehow she managed also to watch Arthur and make sure his grip was secure. He shuddered and coughed as the waves tipped their raft up and down. Water sluiced over his head and she screamed at him to hold on.

An oar thrust past Nancy’s ear and then a grappling hook caught the slats of the bench. A man’s hand reached for and snatched the collar of her coat. She felt herself being towed in to the side of the rowing boat where more sturdy arms supported her. The boat rocked fiercely and she howled at her rescuers, ‘Save my brother.’

‘Your brother’ll be right enough,’ someone shouted back.

A man in a jersey leaned right down into the waves and tried to lift her, but it took another fellow to help him and they hauled on her wrists and arms and then her heavy body until her hips cleared the side and she tumbled into the bottom of the boat. Her petticoats and even her drawers were all on show but she didn’t give it a thought.

‘Arthur!’

She fought to sit upright and her rescuers steadied her.

‘We’ve got ’im. You’m a brave girl, ain’t you?’

A sodden, inert mass was hoisted and deposited beside her.

Sobbing and spitting up water she half-crawled to him. His shirt was twisted up to his armpits and his exposed skin was mottled but his eyes opened, startlingly blue in his blanched face. Two of the boatmen bent at the oars and Nancy glimpsed the looming corner of the pier as they swung away from the wreck. The third wrapped a coat around the shuddering boy, and then did the same for Nancy.

‘You’ll be good as new,’ their rescuer said.

The grim faces of the three men told Nancy that they were the fortunate ones.

Arthur lay half in her lap with his eyes fixed on her face. His breath came in shallow gulps but he was clearly reviving. Through chattering teeth he gasped, ‘Mama? Where’s Mama?’

Nancy stretched upright to look back at the pier. Eliza had reached the ladder and the lifebelt, and must have been saved.

But where was Cornelius? Phyllis? And their father?

The water was dotted with floating debris and rescue boats that had made the short trip out from the beach. She saw some steamer passengers in the other boats, and others being helped up to the pier walkway, but she recognised none of them. The Queen Mab was almost submerged. The funnel and the wheelhouse tilted at a crazy angle, and the jaunty awning had been torn to tatters by the force of the waves.

The black flower grew so big that it filled her whole chest.

Their boat rode a wave close in to the beach and a man in big rubber waders strode out to them. He swept Nancy into his arms and carried her to the shingly rim, where she was passed along a chain of hands and finally set down on the sand where a blanket immediately enveloped her. Arthur was given the same treatment, and the boat pushed out again.

‘My father,’ Nancy screamed. ‘Where is he?’

Her legs gave way beneath her. A woman in an apron knelt to take her in her arms and wrap the blanket tighter. Nancy thought she recognised her from the cockle stall on the beach corner.

‘There you are, my love. You’m all right now. Don’t you worry.’

‘My father.’

She was shuddering now like Arthur, great uncontrollable waves of cold and panic sweeping over her. ‘My other brother. I have to find them. Phyllis was with us too. Where are they?’

‘Your daddy will be here, I’m sure. Where are you staying, my darling?’

Someone else was trying to make her drink warm milk out of a thick white cup. The smell of it was unbearable. Her teeth rattled on the rim before she managed to turn her face away. Arthur drank his although his head was hanging and he seemed too shocked to speak.

‘Terrible,’ a voice said nearby. ‘I seen one drowned at least.’

‘Not now, Mary,’ another reprimanded.

The little boats straggled back to the beach with the last of the rescued passengers. Women and children were passed ashore as Nancy and Arthur had been, to be immediately swaddled in makeshift coverings. Arthur’s friend with the cricket ball was amongst them. He was crying and trying to hide his tears. Nancy sat with her arms wrapped round her knees in an attempt to control her shivers. Her eyes stung from the salt and the effort of scanning the beach for her family.

A shadow fell across her. Mr Feather loomed tall and black like the gnomon of a sundial. One of the rescuers had draped a rough blanket over his wet clothes, giving him the look of an Old Testament prophet. The resemblance was strengthened when he raised one hand and brought it to rest on the top of her head. The uneasy sense of being weighted down that she felt in his presence now became real. She tried to duck away but his hand pinned her beneath it like one of Cornelius’s butterflies in a case. In the shingle beside her feet she saw a pink shell, the size and shape of a child’s fingernail.

In a hoarse voice he begged, ‘She slipped away from me. Where is she now? Tell me what you see. Is she here or has she passed?’