Lifeboat! (7 page)

‘It was you! Couldn't wait to get to your blasted bingo, could you?' Joe retorted.

Blanche's voice rose higher. ‘ You don't care about 'em—just ' cos they're not yourn!'

Appalled they stared at each other before Joe lumbered out of the room, leaving Blanche to throw herself across the bed and beat the pillow with her fists, screaming with rage and fear.

Downstairs the owner of the flats met Joe. Behind her, in their best coats and carrying heavy suitcases, stood a newly-arrived family of four—mother, father and two little girls.

‘Mr Milner—you're supposed to be out of the flat by twelve noon. It is now …'

Joe ignored her, squeezing himself past the family.

‘
Mr Milner …
'

‘Look, missus,' he turned to face her, fear making him vent his anger on someone, anyone. ‘Us two lads is missin'. Us can't leave yet.'

‘Well, really …' began the woman, but Joe was gone, leaving them all staring after him, the landlady open-mouthed, the family weighed down by their luggage.

Joe walked the short distance to the lifeboat station.

He was angry and frustrated. Angry with the two boys, fed up with his wife's nagging and reluctantly angry with himself for not having deflated the dinghy the previous night. Every other night of the holiday he had let the wretched thing down only to have to blow it up again the following morning. Then last night—their last complete day—the weather had been so warm that they had lingered on the beach until the last possible moment. Only Blanche with her bingo fever had at last nagged them into returning to the flats. Only her ill-temper that they would be late for the bingo session had caused him to leave the dinghy as it was.

Hesitantly now he approached the lifeboat station and hovered uncertainly in the open doorway. He cleared his throat and the young fellow coiling a rope and stowing it neatly in the small trailer looked up.

‘Any—any news?' Joe asked.

Tim Matthews's expression was blank for a moment, then he realised. ‘ Oh sorry, sir, you're the boys' father?'

Joe nodded, relaxing a little. The lad seemed friendly, not blaming him as everyone else seemed to be doing. Even the policeman to whom Joe had first reported the fact that his two boys were missing, whilst being swiftly efficient, had seemed a little brusque with him as if it were his fault the lads had gone off like they had.

‘I'm sorry, sir,' Tim was saying. ‘No word yet. The inshore boat will be on its way back soon. But the offshore boat—' he indicated the huge empty carriage behind him—‘ has gone in search of your lads now, and the air/sea rescue helicopter will be called in. They'll soon find them, sir, don't you worry.'

But at one o'clock there was still no word of the missing boys and the train to Worksop left Saltershaven without the Milner family.

That was the worst thing about a Bank Holiday weekend, Macready thought as the lifeboat headed at full speed north-north-east on a bearing of 010 degrees towards the area where he believed the inflatable might be, assuming that the two little boys were out on the ocean. Bank Holidays brought not only a run of genuine calls, but the hoax calls and the doubtful ones as well.

It said much for the patient character of the lifeboatman that even if he were unsure whether a search was really necessary or not, he still treated the service the same as any other. The only unanswerable question that such a doubtful report posed was—just how long should they go on searching?

At 13.40 the lifeboat reached the area Macready had ringed on his chart. The coxswain estimated that if the inflatable had begun to drift out to sea soon after their own launch, it would have been carried out by the ebbing tide and the offshore breeze at a rate of between three and four knots in a north-easterly direction. He planned to cover an area between 035 and 045 degrees working towards the north-east and his decision was backed by the headquarters at Breymouth.

The inshore boat, practically on the limit of its range, came alongside the larger boat. The inshore craft was this time crewed by reserves, because Phil Davis, Tony Douglas and Pete Donaldson, any two of whom normally crewed the ILB, were already aboard the
Mary Martha Clamp.

Macready spoke to Terry Lightfoot over the radio. ‘We'll carry on the search from here, Terry.'

‘Right, Mac. We'll put back now but continue to search on our way.'

Across the stretch of water the two men waved acknowledgement to each other.

The light offshore breeze had strengthened since morning to force three and the sun was bright in a cloudless blue sky, the sea a rippling, shimmering mirror.

In the bows Phil Davis screwed up his eyes against the glare whilst Pete Donaldson turned from his radio and looked up at his coxswain. ‘Breymouth confirm the helicopter is on its way.'

Macready nodded as Pete added, ‘I'm not likely to pick up a plastic dinghy on the radar, am I, Mac? Do you want me on deck?'

‘Aye, another pair of eyes will help up here.'

As the ILB sped away back towards Saltershaven beach, Macready set a northerly course on a bearing of 350 degrees and eased the control forward to cruising speed. He kept on this course for two nautical miles and then turned eastwards for one mile and then abruptly south-south-easterly for four miles on a reciprocal bearing of 155 degrees to take him directly back across the estimated path of the drifting dinghy.

If—indeed—there was a drifting dinghy out here.

As he made this second turn, Pete Donaldson caught his eye and pointed towards the south. Macready looked and saw a tiny speck in the sky approaching rapidly. The Sea King helicopter. Pete then left the deck for a few minutes to call up the pilot of the Sea King.

‘Rescue helicopter Five-five. Rescue hell-copter Five-five, this is Saltershaven lifeboat, Saltershaven lifeboat. Do you read? Over.'

‘Saltershaven lifeboat, Saltershaven lifeboat, this is Rescue Five-five. Rescue Five-five. Loud and clear. Go ahead. Over.'

Pete then gave the helicopter pilot details of the lifeboat's planned course and the pilot replied, ‘Saltershaven lifeboat, this is Rescue Five-five. Message received and understood. We will fly further out and work back towards you. Out.'

Both Breymouth Coastal Rescue Headquarters and Jack Hansard came on the air to confirm that they had heard the exchange of conversation between the lifeboat and the helicopter and now knew exactly what was happening out at sea.

The time was 14.10. For the next hour the
Mary Martha Clamp
continued on her box-like zigzag pattern of search whilst a few miles to the north-east the Sea King adopted a similar method, skimming only feet above the waves.

At 15.12 the helicopter pilot's voice came over the radio/ telephone again and Pete hurried to respond.

‘… We have sighted an object in the water fifty-three degrees seventeen minutes north, zero degrees thirty-six minutes east. Over.'

The lifeboat was three and a half nautical miles away and Macready immediately set a course for the position on the chart given by the pilot. Pete relayed his coxswain's message. ‘… Lifeboat heading on bearing zero-three-zero at full speed. Will be with you in about thirty minutes. Over.'

Now the crew shifted their positions towards the bows of the lifeboat, each man eager to be the first to spot the dinghy. Pete Donaldson now remained near his radio/telephone.

Twenty-three minutes after they had received the message from the air/sea rescue helicopter, Tony Douglas pointed and shouted excitedly, ‘Mac—there's something over there.' All eyes now turned to look in the direction Tony pointed. The helicopter was circling above the area.

‘There's summat there,' Fred muttered to himself and signalled his agreement. Macready swung the wheel and the boat turned a few degrees to starboard, heading for the bobbing black object that Tony's sharp eyes had spotted.

‘I reckon it's them,' Tony shouted. ‘Here, let's have those glasses, Dad.'

He trained the binoculars, squinting against the mercurial water. ‘Yup, it's a dinghy right enough—an' I can see them in it—at least …'

He paused as the lifeboat sped closer.

Then slowly he lowered the glasses. Tony Douglas, father of two young children himself, turned towards his father, his face sombre.

‘I can only see
one
bairn!'

Julie Macready heard Howard's car as she was taking the casserole from the oven. She ran out to meet him.

‘Hello there,' he called as he swung his legs from his car and bounded towards her, enveloping her in an enthusiastic bear-hug.

‘Hello, Howard,' Julie said, a little shy of him, a little nervous of how he and her father would get along together.

The only other time the two men had met had been on Open Day at Julie's College, when her father had visited. Howard had joined them for the afternoon from the neighbouring University. There, Howard had been surrounded by his own kind, and it had been Macready who had felt out of place.

But this was Saltershaven.

Admittedly Howard was smartly dressed in a grey check suit and matching waistcoat, a yellow rose-bud in his lapel, but Julie hoped he had brought some less formal clothes for the weekend.

‘Come and look what I've got.' Behind the car was a trailer and Howard was dragging her towards it. ‘There, what do you say to that?'

Proudly he waved his arm to encompass the trailer and perched upon it a fifteen-foot sailing day-boat, with the name painted on the bows—
Nerissa
.

‘Oh—a boat!' Julie said unnecessarily.

‘Well, you might show a little more interest, old thing,' Howard said. ‘Just the ticket, I thought, for a weekend by the sea.'

‘Is—is it yours?'

‘Oh yes,' Howard said airily. ‘I bought her last week.'

‘She's lovely—really lovely,' Julie said, but then she could not prevent the words from slipping out. ‘But this coast is not terribly safe for sailing, you know. Not unless you really know what you're doing.'

‘Know what I'm doing?' Howard laughed aloud. ‘Of course I know what I'm doing. I'll have you know that some friends I used to spend all my hols with had a boat. We were hardly ever out of the thing.'

‘Oh, that's all right then,' Julie said, relieved and added, ‘Come along in and I'll show you your room. Dad's out on a service, I'm afraid, and I've no idea when he'll be back. We won't wait dinn—I mean—lunch.' Dinner to Howard, she remembered, was at seven in the evening, not midday.

‘A service? What is he—a parson or a motor mechanic?' Howard asked, laughing at his own joke.

‘Neither. Didn't I tell you? He's the full-time coxswain/mechanic of our lifeboat.'

‘Oh, rescues people who can't swim and kids in rubber dinghies, does he?' Howard guffawed again.

Ironically, she could make no retort for she now knew—Tim had rung through to tell her—that at this very moment her father was indeed searching an area of the ocean for two small boys in a dinghy.

As the
Mary Martha Clamp
drew alongside the black-and-orange inflatable, anxious faces peered over the side. Half-sitting, half-sprawling against the side of the dinghy was a semi-conscious Martin, his tee-shirt and shorts saturated, his arms and legs were white, almost a pale blue, from exposure. His eyes were swollen and his lips were cracked and parched by the salt water.

In the bottom of the dinghy lay the still figure of Nigel Milner.

Tony Douglas and Chas Blake clambered over the gunwales of the lifeboat and down the scramble net. Carefully, so as not to set it rocking, Tony stepped down into the dinghy and picked up the younger boy in his arms. Gently Tony handed him up to Chas, and Fred and Phil Davis hung over the side, reaching down with willing hands to help.

‘Come on, me little laddo. You'll be all right now.'

At the sound of the voices of the rescuers, Martin opened his eyes and tried to speak. ‘Me brother, what about me brother?' he whispered hoarsely.

‘Dun't fret,' Fred reassured the shivering boy. ‘We'll get him.'

‘Mister—'ee fell over into the sea. I thought ' ee was drownded, but I got 'im back into the dinghy, but 'ee ain't moved since.'

Martin was borne away to the covered cockpit in the bows of the lifeboat.

Carefully, Tony squatted down beside the still figure in the dinghy. From at first having experienced a profound relief at seeing, that the second boy was in the craft but out of sight until they were right up to it, Tony now felt a renewal of the fear and doubt wash over him. He felt for the boy's pulse. It was weak and fluttery—but there!

‘He's alive,' he shouted jubilantly, ‘ but he's in worse shape than the other little lad.'

As Nigel was lifted into the lifeboat, Macready spoke to the pilot of the Sea King over the radio link and swiftly explained the situation. ‘One boy's reasonably okay, but the other's in bad shape. He needs immediate hospital treatment.'

The pilot's voice came over loudly, ‘Make ready to receive the winchman. Over.'

Macready acknowledged and handed the phone back to Pete. ‘Keep in contact with him.'

Fred Douglas arrived in the coxswain's cockpit and took over the wheel, holding the lifeboat steady whilst Macready went for'ard to look at the boys. Squeezing his way beneath the protective tarpaulin covering the for'ard cockpit he glanced at one of the boys sitting huddled in blankets, but attacking a chocolate bar from the emergency rations on board. Martin Milner was still suffering from shock, but Macready could see that he was in no danger now. He turned his attention to the motionless form on the stretcher being wrapped warmly by Tony and Phil.

‘The pilot's all set to lower the winchman as soon as we're ready?' It was a question as well as a statement.

‘About two minutes, Cox'n,' responded Tony Douglas, all the while his fingers deftly wrapping the boy in a warm blanket whilst Phil Davis was making sure the boy's nose and throat were clear and that he could breathe.