A Thimbleful of Hope Page 17

  She nodded.

  ‘I’ve heard that the captain of the Fanny Buck was to blame for the accident,’ she said.

  ‘It’s all speculation for the present – everyone is looking for somebody to blame. Never mind. It will all come out in the wash.’

  She turned away, letting her gaze settle on the French coast in the distance. She and Arvin should have been leaving Paris by now on their way to the chateau to meet his sister, she remembered, unsure if the salt she could taste on her lips was from the sea spray or fresh tears. They’d been tacking back and forth, making slow headway for about half an hour when the captain gave the order to heave-to to bring the boat to a steady position. Having consulted with his sextant and chronometer, he concluded that they were at the place where the Fanny Buck had hit the Samphire.

  ‘Then we must start making our search here,’ her father said, his voice taut. He called for William. ‘Tell me where you last saw Mr Brooke.’

  ‘I can’t say exactly, sir,’ he responded, standing up with his gloved hands in his pockets. ‘It was dark and foggy, and there was much confusion at the time. I would guess that we’d drifted a little further north-east by the time we had the trouble with the lifeboat.’ He pointed towards a buoy floating on the surface of the water, as two men emerged from the fore-cabin, wearing heavy-booted brown canvas suits which covered everything except their heads and hands.

  ‘How sure are you?’ Pa moved across and caught William by his coat lapels. ‘Come on, my man. Think!’

  ‘I’ve already explained why it’s impossible to be certain of the exact position.’ William stood tall and straight, staring down at Mr Rayfield. ‘Unhand me.’

  Pa continued to cling on.

  ‘I said, unhand me.’

  Pa took one hand off William’s coat and clenched his fist.

  ‘I see that I’m going to have to knock some sense into you!’ he growled.

  ‘Pa, leave him alone! Let him go!’ Violet shouted, hot with shame at her father’s behaviour, and worried that he was about to lose his temper completely and knock William to the deck. She rushed up to them and grasped her father’s arm, at which he seemed to recover his wits, releasing the young engineer.

  ‘As you aren’t going to help me, I’m going to make sure you suffer,’ Pa went on, spitting fury. ‘I’ll have you taken off the Samphire’s crew. I’ll make your life a misery.’

  ‘Father, stop this!’ Violet snapped. ‘You are making a scene. Whatever has happened to you? Mr Noble has stated that he doesn’t know where to look for Arvin. Threatening him won’t make any difference.’ She despaired of his lack of manners. In fact, at that moment, she despised him. She turned to William.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said with a half-smile. ‘I’m grateful for your intervention but I can fight my own battles, you know.’

  ‘Violet, where is your loyalty to your father?’ Pa interrupted.

  She glared at him – he didn’t deserve it.

  ‘We’ll discuss it later,’ he went on impatiently. ‘There’s no time now. What do you think? Is this where the lifeboat fell into the sea?’

  ‘I concur with Mr Noble – this would be as good a place as any to start the search,’ she said coldly, siding with William.

  ‘Then prepare the divers,’ her father said as she scanned the surface of the water, which was a murky grey-green beneath the winter sun, much calmer and less malign than it had been on the terrible night of the accident.

  ‘Divers?’ Violet couldn’t help herself. She hadn’t imagined that her father would invest in an underwater search for Arvin. What about these men? Why would anyone make a career of putting their own life in danger? And why would they risk diving in the winter? They would freeze to death.

  She looked up to find a man of about her father’s age, dressed in a cap and overalls, placing a heavy copper helmet over one of the diver’s heads. He tightened the bolts that held the corselet to his diving suit while the diver fiddled with his dark leather cuffs. He connected a hose to the helmet, and shouted and gesticulated to the diver inside.

  ‘Forgive me for raising such an indelicate subject, Mr Noble, but wouldn’t a body have floated away by now?’ Violet whispered.

  ‘I think so, if it were not weighted down.’ William cleared his throat. ‘I wonder if you might address me as plain William, as you did once before? Please forgive me if I’ve been too forward in assuming we are friends of sorts. It’s the situation that we find ourselves in. I feel – wrongly, perhaps – that we are kindred spirits, having survived that night. I’m sorry, Mrs Brooke, you are suffering …’

  ‘I will call you William, if you will address me as Violet,’ she said softly.

  ‘You aren’t offended?’

  She shook her head. He was right – they shared a bond, and although she would always be Mrs Brooke, she felt safe and at ease with him.

  ‘How deep is the water here?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know – Mr Johnson will have looked at the charts,’ he said as one of the divers disappeared into the water with a soft splash, the umbilical unwinding behind him. The second diver followed immediately after.

  Violet shivered with cold.

  ‘May I suggest that we take shelter in the cabin?’ William said.

  ‘No, I couldn’t …’ her voice faded.

  ‘It’s freezing out here in the wind.’ He fetched an oily canvas sheet from the fore-cabin. ‘You can have my coat.’

  ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘That wouldn’t be right.’

  ‘I insist.’ He took off his coat and placed it around her shoulders. ‘I’ll sit under the canvas – it’s windproof.’

  Grateful, she pulled his coat around her chin, inhaling its scent of musk and engine oil as she waited for the divers to return to the surface.

  ‘I’m sorry about my father. He had no right to threaten you like that.’

  ‘There’s no need for you to apologise on his behalf. I had always thought of you as sweet-tempered and mild-mannered, but you are quite a fighter.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said. Was he trying to say that he considered her unfeminine?

  ‘What I mean is that I admire the way that you stood up for me. It takes guts to confront one’s father.’

  ‘Did you ever …?’

  ‘On a few occasions. I feel terribly guilty because we had an argument over – oh, it was something trivial – before he left on his last navigation with the Dover Belle. I only hope that he knew how much I loved him in spite of his flaws.’ He swallowed hard.

  ‘How is your mother?’ she asked, feeling a little guilty for having focused on her troubles when he obviously had challenges of his own.

  He smiled. ‘She’s as well as can be expected, thank you.’

  ‘How does she feel about you going to sea? I mean, perhaps you don’t want to talk about it. I’m sorry.’ She blushed at her insensitivity as the wind whistled around the mast.

  ‘Don’t be. Ma and I talk of my father and brother often. I’m sure she doesn’t let a moment go by without thinking of them. We remember them fondly.’

  ‘Aren’t you scared of the water?’

  ‘No, my family have been seafarers for generations – it’s in our blood. In fact, my grandfather used to say that if you cut into his veins, the sea would drip out of them. My mother would be much happier if I found a shore-based position, though.’

  ‘I would be too, if I were her. She must be afraid of losing you as well.’

  He nodded. ‘You speak frankly – I like that.’

  ‘I miss my husband,’ she said, trying to control her trembling lip. ‘We were supposed to grow old together …’

  The boat rocked and creaked beneath them, and eventually William broke the silence. ‘Here they are.’

  ‘Well?’ said her father as the divers dripped water across the deck, and the man in charge, whom they called Mr Johnson, helped them to remove their helmets.

  ‘There’s no sign of what you’re looking for, Mr Rayfield,’
one said, shivering, his hands blue with cold.

  ‘You’ve been all the way to the bottom of the sea?’

  ‘We have, but the visibility is very poor today as we told you it would be. It’s like diving through pea soup down there.’

  ‘But you have been to the bottom?’ her father repeated. ‘You weren’t down there for long.’

  ‘It was long enough,’ Mr Johnson said. ‘The water is extremely cold, the visibility is terrible, and we’re looking for a needle in a haystack. I told you that this mission was unlikely to succeed, yet you wouldn’t listen.’

  ‘You will dive again and again until you find what we’re looking for.’

  ‘I won’t send the divers down a second time. It’s taking an unnecessary risk.’

  ‘Mr Johnson,’ one of the divers interrupted, ‘I’m willing to give it another go. Mr Rayfield’s paying us a year’s wages for this.’

  ‘I know that, but your life is worth more.’

  ‘I have a wife, children and bills to pay. I want to dive again – I know what I’m doing.’

  Mr Johnson gazed at the two divers. ‘All right then. Dive closer to the buoy, but don’t expect to be able to see any better this time.’

  Violet waited as they dived twice more and returned to the boat without success.

  ‘This is impossible,’ she said quietly aside to William. Her father didn’t appear to have thought his plan through. Was he expecting the divers to search the whole of the Straits of Dover?

  ‘I’m afraid so. I admire your father’s determination in trying to find your husband, but, as I’ve said, I think he is on a fool’s errand. Forgive me for talking in such a way.’

  ‘You are only stating the facts,’ she said, looking towards her father who was arguing with Mr Johnson again.

  ‘Let me go down.’ Mr Rayfield raised his voice. ‘I’ll borrow one of your suits with the helmet and airline and go and see for myself.’

  ‘It isn’t safe for someone with no experience to dive on a day like today. It’s easy to become disorientated.’

  ‘It’s my choice. In fact, I insist on it.’

  ‘I can’t let you take this risk,’ Mr Johnson said. ‘If anything happens to you, I’ll be ruined.’

  ‘Your reputation is already at stake – your divers must be blind!’

  Violet didn’t know what to do. At the moment, she didn’t like her father much, but she didn’t want to lose him as well as her husband, for her family’s sake. They needed him. She stood up and walked across the deck.

  ‘Listen to what Mr Johnson says,’ she said. ‘It’s too dangerous.’

  ‘I will go!’ her father bellowed. His face was a deep crimson, and beads of spittle adorned his whiskers as he went on, ‘Mr Johnson, I know what you’re up to – I’m not stupid. Your men are lying, pretending they’ve seen nothing, when tomorrow or the next day, you’ll come back and pocket the gold for yourself.’

  ‘What gold?’ Violet exclaimed. ‘I know nothing of this. Why did you keep it from me?’

  ‘Because we didn’t want to trouble you with it. To be honest—’

  ‘Honest? What do you know about honesty? You’ve been lying to me! To us all!’

  ‘Allow me to explain – Arvin was carrying it on my behalf, with the intention of depositing half in a bank in Paris and using the rest to invest in wine.’

  ‘That was what was in the chest – not papers, but gold.’ That’s why Arvin had guarded it so fiercely. It was Mama’s gold, the dowry she had brought into her marriage, and which her father – by the law of the land – had appropriated. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. ‘Mama doesn’t know about this, does she? You haven’t told her either.’

  ‘What’s the point of worrying her with it? She wouldn’t understand and besides, she’s suffering enough.’ Her father turned back to Mr Johnson. ‘You are trying to deceive me, sir!’

  ‘We have been bringing treasure trove to the surface for almost thirty years and returning it to the rightful owner,’ Mr Johnson said. ‘How dare you suggest that we would act dishonestly!’

  Mr Rayfield was shaking with anger as he removed his hat and coat and flung them on to the deck.

  ‘Give me a suit and helmet,’ he ordered. ‘You gave me assurances of your professional competence, and you’ve let me down.’

  ‘We’re the best people for this enterprise. When we dive to retrieve treasure from shipwrecks we generally know exactly where the lost ship lies, but here we are relying on guesswork.’

  Pa turned to Violet and William. ‘You are both my witnesses – I have chosen this course of action by my own free will. Hand me a suit. I cannot rest until we have retrieved the gold – my life depends on it.’

  ‘If that is your will, Mr Rayfield, I won’t stop you, but I’m telling you now that I wash my hands of all responsibility for your safety.’ Mr Johnson turned to one of the divers with a resigned shrug. ‘Davy, you’ll dive with him.’

  A short while later, her father was dressed in one of the suits which was clearly made for a smaller frame, the canvas stretched so he could barely move, and the cuffs halfway up his forearms. Mr Johnson secured the corselet, helmet and airline.

  ‘Remember to take your time. Guard your umbilical with care – you are dependent on it. If by any mischance you should lose sight of your guide, follow the rope back upwards to the boat. It is all too easy to become disorientated and panic. I’ve known men to suffocate and die from losing contact with the surface and heading further into the depths.’ He gazed at Pa through narrowed eyes. ‘Are you sure about this?’

  Pa gestured his assent.

  ‘Let’s not delay then – the weather is coming in.’ Mr Johnson glanced back towards Dover where dark clouds were shrouding the tops of the cliffs.

  ‘I can’t watch.’ Violet turned away and held on to the side, a wave of grief washing through her at the thought of Arvin lying cold and alone at the bottom of the sea, and her father about to join him.

  She became aware of William standing beside her.

  ‘I had no idea about the gold,’ she said, not wanting him to think ill of her.

  ‘I believe that wives are not always privy to their husbands’ affairs, although it isn’t how things happened in my family. I don’t think that my father ever withheld anything from my mother, although he didn’t always treat her kindly,’ he said. ‘How is your ma? Is she any better?’

  ‘She is much changed, I’m afraid. She doesn’t recognise us – her daughters – any more, but we still have hope that she will recover.’

  ‘I’m sorry. How are your sisters?’

  ‘They are well, thank you.’

  ‘Is Ottilie walking out with John Chittenden? I saw them on the promenade not very long ago. At least – perhaps I’m being presumptuous …’

  ‘Can I trust you with a secret?’

  ‘I know how to hold my tongue. You can rely on me, Violet.’

  She looked up into his eyes. His gaze was steady.

  ‘My father mustn’t know. They are engaged.’

  ‘It is a love match then?’

  ‘Well, yes.’ Violet recalled her dutiful marriage to Arvin. ‘Mr Brooke and I … I miss him. I didn’t love him, but I came to look upon him with affection … and now …’ She swallowed hard. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything any more.’

  ‘It’s very distressing, and being out here isn’t helping you,’ William said. ‘What is your father thinking, bringing you back to the scene of the accident?’

  There was a sudden series of splashes from behind them as Mr Rayfield and his diving companion emerged from the swell a few feet from the bow of the boat. The diver shoved her father up on to the deck where he collapsed in a heap, his chest pumping up and down like a set of bellows. Mr Johnson hauled him up to a sitting position then removed his helmet, revealing his face, purple from the lack of air.

  ‘Nothing!’ he gasped. ‘It is hopeless! It is all over for me.’ He bent double, clutching his knees, and
broke into great raking sobs before dragging himself up again. ‘We must go home,’ he said abruptly. ‘We have finished here. I am finished. Ruined.’

  There had been a time when her heart would have gone out to him and she would have run up to him and put her arms around his neck to console him, but Violet couldn’t do it. She felt nothing, no pain or distress at seeing a grown man cry for the very first time, only embarrassment at this expression of emotion in public. She had done her duty once too often and all it had brought her was grief. She wouldn’t do it again.

  William and the other men were watching her, waiting for her to help her father, but she would not. The deck shifted beneath her feet, seeming to emphasise the point: their relationship had changed for ever.

  Captain Merriweather turned the boat about and they headed back to Dover. Her father didn’t say a word until they reached the quay and William helped her disembark.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going, Violet?’ he said.

  She turned and glared at him. ‘Home, and it’s Mrs Brooke to you.’

  ‘You can’t ask me to change a habit of a lifetime.’ He offered his arm and she pushed it away. ‘I’ll walk you back to your house. We have much to discuss on the way.’

  ‘I don’t want to have anything to do with you, the way you’ve treated me and Mr Noble today.’

  ‘You are a traitor to me and the rest of the Rayfields,’ Pa said. ‘The way you allied yourself with that uncouth, ill-bred upstart as opposed to your own flesh and blood is a disgrace.’

  ‘You gave me no choice. If you’d behaved like a gentleman …’ She stepped back, her heart pounding. She could sense his anger in the tautening of the muscle in his cheek and the black fury in his eyes, and she hated him for it.

  ‘If you turn away now, I will disown you. I’ll cast you off and leave you to manage your affairs by yourself,’ he went on bitterly.

  ‘I am perfectly able to cope,’ she said, but he added one final blow.

  ‘And I’ll make sure you never see your mother and sisters again.’

  ‘How could you? You don’t mean it.’

  ‘I mean it,’ he confirmed.