Driftwood (2 page)

Belle, who had never heard him raise his voice any more than he had heard her raise hers, came trotting down from her safe refuge higher up the sand and took up an anxious position at his side.

“You stupid fuck!” Salt water rose up and choked him, briefly checking his momentum. “Do you think I care about you? What about the poor bastards who have to come and get you? You think you're worth a helicopter, a lifeboat—all those lives?”

The surfer gazed up at him. His eyelashes were matted together with salt, the grazing to his brow and cheekbone beginning to bleed copiously. He didn't look resentful at the tirade—waited patiently till his rescuer had run out of breath and was coughing again, hands propped on his knees. “The RNLI boys know not to come out for me. One of the Hawke Lake choppers is out of commission, and the other two are off to Devon for the air show. That's why I chose today.”

“What?”

“That's why I chose today to surf.”

“No. I… How do you know all that? And how do you come to have an arrangement with the Royal National bloody Lifeboat Institute?”

The surfer smiled. “Lieutenant Flynn Summers,” he offered, holding out a hand. “Search-and-rescue unit, Royal Naval Air Service. At your disposal.”

Thomas straightened up. He was calm now. He steadied himself with one hand on Belle's collar, and surveyed his new acquaintance, outstretched hand and all, with dispassion. He said flatly, “Of all the people who should bloody well know better,” and walked off.

His cold detachment carried him a good twenty yards or so. He wished he could do better, keep his head down and march off in good earnest, leaving this flotsam to fend for itself. He was not sure what was stopping him. Why, at the edge of the dunes, he found himself slowing down.

The wind had shifted. If Summers had needed him, had called out to him for help, Thomas wouldn't have heard. He was aware that, for all the display of bravado, the fool had come within a hairsbreadth of drowning. Beneath his wetsuit, he had to be bruised down to the bone. Why would a rescue pilot, a military one at that, put himself through such a wipeout? No one could have ridden the surf here today. He must have known he would crash and had carried on regardless. What had he been looking for? Peace? Release? There had been a fever in his gaze.
Expiation
, Thomas thought suddenly, though for what crimes he couldn't possibly imagine. He stopped, and reluctantly turned and looked back.

He needn't have worried. Summers was on his feet and jogging down the beach away from him. As Thomas watched, he came to a halt and scooped up a bundle of clothes Thomas only at that point recognised were his own discarded jacket and boots.

For God's sake. He would have to try harder not to get angry. It stripped from him any frail dignity he had been managing to accrue for himself. He'd been ready to stalk off barefoot from this encounter. He supposed he might have noticed when he reached the gravelled car park.

Anger made him bloody uncivil too. Dismissive and unjust. He was—or had been—too good a combat-zone medic to judge a patient's book by its cover, especially when it came to soldiers. He had seen Lieutenant Summers' brand of panache before, in men too proud or shaken to admit that they were hurt. Having gathered up Thomas's things, he was now jogging after him, or trying to. He wasn't steady on his feet. Thomas saw that his left ankle was grazed raw where the tough Velcro cuff of his surfboard had torn off him. He managed three or four strides, then crashed to hands and knees in the sand.

Thomas ran to him. He unfolded him gently from his cramped-up curl, made him sit with his head down while he picked up his jacket. Summers shuddered as the warm, fragrant leather descended round his shoulders, then again as Thomas briefly brushed a palm across his skull.

“You'll be all right.” The tone came easy to him. Detached but kind. He'd said it to boys who were breathing their last in his arms, and watched the fear leave their eyes as they believed him. “You've just had a bit of a knock. Sit there for a minute. Then come back to my car. I've got some coffee, and I'll run you in to Penzance casualty for a check.”

Summers raised his head. “I'm okay. I'll take the coffee, but I really don't expect anybody to—”

“That's right,” Thomas interrupted him, dryly but without irritation. Now that he had this man tagged in his mind as a patient, not some wild-card rogue with the power to disrupt his day, to get life and death out of the separate boxes to which he had assigned them and tangle them up around his feet, he could be kind. “Because when the lifeboat crew hear someone's in trouble, they're gonna say,
oh, it's just that idiot from the air base, let's not bother.
Aren't they?”

Summers sat quietly, clearly absorbing a new point of view. He did not look to Thomas like a man who submitted easily. Thomas found himself puzzled and oddly touched. Summers was even beginning a faint blush—of shame? Then he frowned at Thomas distractedly and said, “You're bleeding.”

Thomas almost laughed. That was rich, coming from someone who now looked like he'd just survived a shark attack. Head wounds bled profusely anyway, and the salt water was making it worse. His shoulder was stinging, though, and he touched the rip in his shirt. “Yeah. My own damn dog bit me.”

He helped Summers up and let him take a few uncertain steps on his own before reaching to support him. It was only a hand to his elbow, but Summers flinched as if the contact burned him.

“Are you all right?” Thomas enquired, loosening his grasp. “Does your arm hurt?”

“No. Well—yes, it does, but not there.” He shook his head. “Sorry. I'm freaked out a bit. I don't know why.”

“Shock, probably.” Thomas kept his voice level. He was freaked out too, but he had no easy explanation for his own state, or why it was hard for him to make the ordinary doctorly gesture of helping this young man off the beach. “Here. Can you put your arm round my shoulders?”

“Yeah. Thanks. Er… I'll have to give you your jacket back first.” Summers slipped it off his shoulders and handed it to Thomas, making a rueful face at the patterns drying sea salt was making on the leather. “Shit. I'll have that dry-cleaned for you.”

“What? Oh, no. Belle does worse than that to it when she's been in the mud.” Thomas shrugged into the jacket, unwillingly aware that it would be easier to have Summers' arm around him, Summers' warm flank pressed to his side, if there were a shielding layer in place between them, not just his own wet shirt. Why, for God's sake? Why were Thomas's nerves singing, prickles of gooseflesh trying to lift up the hairs on his nape? Handsome Lieutenant Summers probably had an equally presentable girlfriend waiting for him at home, if not a young wife and a couple of blossoming kids. And even if he were queer as fuck, what difference should that make to Thomas? All that was over for him, long dead and buried in the Afghan dust. Shaking himself, he reached out an arm to Summers, who was hanging back, looking at least as uneasy as Thomas felt. “Come here. It's okay.”

They set off together up the beach. Thomas soon realised that the jacket wasn't providing much defence against sensation. Every step brought Summers into light, insistent contact against him. Too damn light—Summers, understandably wary, was stiff and awkward in his embrace. His arm round Thomas was an obedient gesture only, exerting no weight. And he needed the support. His breath was coming shallowly and too fast.

Thomas took hold of the wrist draped over his shoulder, silently reproaching himself once more for his outburst. “Lean on me,” he said, and felt Summers relax a little.

Better and worse. Conflicting desires tore at Thomas. He was helping Summers properly now, justifying their proximity with his strength and his medical purpose. They would cover the couple of hundred yards between here and the car park in no time. Thomas wouldn't have to cope for long with this sweet, profoundly unsettling pressure at his side.

And, perversely, he minded. The distance was suddenly too long and too damn short all at once. He needed and wanted and could hardly bear the thought of letting go. He frowned, bewildered at himself, struggling for control. Here at last were the beginnings of the long ramp that led up to the promenade. Summers winced as they negotiated the stones and bits of concrete half hidden in the sand, and Thomas concentrated fiercely on keeping him upright.

He tugged open the Land Rover's rear door and released Summers carefully to sit on her rusty step. The car park was still deserted, though the sun had boiled off the last of the sea fret and the first really fine day of the season was promising in the periwinkle sky over the cliffs. Reaching awkwardly past him, Thomas extracted a thermos of coffee from under the back seat. As well as a good deal of glass-enhanced warmth, the Rover's interior was exuding pleasant if basic scents: leather, vinyl, clean dog. Summers leaned back into the heat, shivering, and Thomas quickly poured him a cup of coffee from the flask. “Here you are.”

“Thanks.” Summers accepted it gratefully, lifting the cup to blue-tinged lips. “Oh, that's nice.”

Thomas smiled. Habitually he made himself up a batch of Kenyan from the cafetière. He hadn't been expecting to share it. He was peripherally glad that it was decent—perhaps it offset the fact that the four-by-four looked ready to crumble to scrap where it stood. Thomas seldom noticed the state of his vehicle, but something in the action of helping Summers across the car park towards it had made him aware of its shortcomings. “Good. Drink it slowly. Do you feel sick or disoriented?”

“Er… No. I don't think so.”

“Okay. Move over a bit.” Thomas leaned past him again, this time extracting a tartan car rug and his first-aid kit. He handed Summers the rug. “Here. Put that round you.” Setting the box down on the tarmac, he crouched beside it and flipped up the lid. “Not sleepy?”

“No. Not irritable, either, and I reckon my pulse and BP are fine.”

Thomas glanced up. Summers, of course, would know the signs of immersion hypothermia as well as he did. Better, probably. “Okay,” he said wryly. “Good.”

“I know you, don't I?” Summers asked. “You're the village doctor up at Sankerris.”

Thomas, busy tearing open an antiseptic pad, frowned in surprise. He didn't get many flyboys through his surgery, the RNAS base having state-of-the-art facilities, though sometimes when they started families they preferred to bring their children to him. “That's right. Thomas Penrose. Have we met?”

“No. I drive through Sankerris on my way to the base sometimes, and I've noticed you, that's all.”

Thomas saw him start to blush, and looked away to let him off the hook. He was ridiculously disconcerted himself, at the idea of having been noticed—by another man, or this one, anyway, explicitly and unavoidably gorgeous in his Neoprene skin. Thomas made no efforts to be seen. He knew that he was still in decent shape, but he dressed quietly, kept his profile low. Other than that—well, the man who stared back at him from mirrors these days was almost a stranger. Brown eyes, once expressive, now guarded, always looking to a dangerous horizon. Thomas kept this stranger tidy, made sure its dark hair never grew out of its soldierly crop. He was not noticeable.

“Oh, right,” he said vaguely, and reached up with the antiseptic pad. “Sorry. This is gonna sting a bit.”

Summers sat patiently while Thomas cleaned sand out of the grazing on his face and neck. Thomas, who usually had no trouble with an impersonal touch—it was the other kind that fazed him these days—found that he was having to concentrate hard on his work. This man's proximity troubled him. To push his wet hair back from his brow was disquieting, made Thomas want simultaneously to do it again and to flinch away. Biting his lip, he finished out his task, steeling himself to non-reaction when Summers tilted his head to one side to accommodate the clean-up, exposing delicate tendons in his throat.

“Thanks,” Summers said, when it was done. “Now, give me that and hold still for a minute.”

Thomas found himself obeying. Now that Summers' face was clear of blood, his hair beginning to dry tawny blond in the sun, he looked younger, maybe only in his mid-twenties. But there was a compelling note in his voice, a shade of authority, and Thomas supposed you did not get to a lieutenant's rank in the Navy without some powers of command.

Oh God. To be tended was almost unbearable. This was not the dynamic of Thomas's world—
he
was the healer. He saw to others. No one looked after him. On the rare occasions of his own illness or injury, he dealt with it himself. Summers' fingers on his skin sent ripples of shock through him, although the other man was only gently easing back the collar of his shirt to examine the place where Belle's teeth had grazed him. Clenching his hands on the Land Rover's step, Thomas stared grimly at the tarmac while Summers sloshed antiseptic over the wound then pressed the pad to it tight.

“There,” he said. “I don't think it needs stitching, but look out for infection. You know, dog bites… To be fair to her, though, I think she was trying to help you.”

“I know.” Thomas drew a deep breath and managed not to flinch out from under Summers' hands as he pulled a wide strip of plaster from the kit and smoothed it into place on his shoulder. “She's a good girl.”

Raising his head, he was about to wonder where she was—then saw her, regally seated by Summers' side. He hadn't seen her jump in. He found he was mildly chagrined. Belle was almost as mistrustful of strangers as himself, another reason, along with her good manners, why he had chosen her. Now she was looking down her long grizzled nose at Summers, in evident approval. A little silence fell. It was not awkward, stitched through as were most Land's End silences with seagull cries and wave song, but Thomas felt a strain on his nerves. It had been a long time since he had spoken properly to someone who was not a patient, and longer than he could remember since he had been touched.