Someone Special (22 page)

In her tiny slit of a cave something woke Nell, some sound other than the crash of thunder and the howl of wind. She stirred, then sat up. Recollection of her whereabouts was instant and unpleasant. Her mouth felt dry and her throat ached but she crawled up to the crack of daylight, glad that she hadn’t slept for long. She could imagine the horror of waking when it was dark outside, to see no light whatsoever.

Again, she squeezed as close to the crack as she could and was sure she could hear the murmur of voices. It must be Mum and Dad, come to find her; her heart lifted and began to pound with excitement. She must make them hear her, she dared not face the terror of hearing those voices growing fainter and fainter! She put her face as far into the crack as it could go and shrieked with all her might.

‘Mum, Dad, it’s Nell, I’m behind the big rock, I’m stuck.’

‘What was that?’

It was Nell … oh thank God, thank God!

Hester crouched on the ground and peered behind the big boulder leaning against the cliff. But there was not enough room for a kitten to get through there; her poor baby must be behind some other boulder, or in a cave somewhere, and the sound of her voice must be travelling to this spot. There wasn’t room for the tiniest child behind this enormous chunk of rock.

But John knew better. He looked at the rock, at the cliff behind it, and then he took Hester’s face between his hands and spoke very clearly so that there could be
no misunderstanding.

‘The boulder’s been struck, Hester … look at the top of it, look at the ground to the side. It’s half toppled over, that’s why she’s caught. We’ll have to shift it, somehow.’

Hester looked fearfully at the boulder, then at her companion. ‘But we can’t,’ she whispered. ‘It’s too big, no one could move that.’

‘We’ve got to,’ John said. She couldn’t think of him as Mr Geraint, not with that white line around his mouth, that desperate urgency in his eyes. ‘We don’t know how deep the crack is, but it won’t be a proper cave. Come round the other side and we’ll start shoving.’

They were pushing fruitlessly when Matthew came over the ridge. His face was scarlet with effort, his hair was slicked to his forehead with sweat. He glared at them both. ‘Where’s my girl?’

Mr Geraint stopped pushing and straightened.

‘Ah, Matthew, good man,’ he said briskly. ‘Go down the hill and fetch a crowbar, if you please, and fetch Willi and Dewi at the same time. We’ve got to shift this thing, the kid’s somewhere behind it. She must have crept into a crack in the cliff when the storm was at its height and then the boulder was struck and it’s trapped her. Hurry!’

‘You go,’ Matthew said. He spoke very loudly and glared at Mr Geraint as though at his deadliest foe. ‘You go; I’ll try to get at the littl’un. I reckon if I were to dig under it one end, unbalance it like …’

‘Matthew, get that crowbar!’

Matthew dropped his gaze, half turned, then turned back.

‘What right—’ he began furiously. ‘That’s my little girl … oh, very well.’ He began to lumber downhill a good deal faster than he had lumbered up. Hester, who had taken no notice of the short altercation, knelt on the
ground and pushed her head as far as she could between the cliff-face and the boulder.

‘Nell? Nell, darling, are you here? Dad’s gone to get a crowbar to shift the big rock and Mr Geraint and I are going to try to undermine it so it tumbles back and lets you out. It may take a little while, but you won’t mind that, will you?’

There was a short silence, during which Hester realised that her heartbeat was so loud she doubted she would hear if Nell spoke, but then Nell did speak, and she heard each word.

‘Mummy! Oh, Mummy, I’ve been so frightened, but it’s all right now you’re here. I am glad you found me before it got really dark.’

Hester was about to answer when she found herself pulled backwards and Mr Geraint, without a word of apology, knelt down and inserted his own head into the gap between cliff and boulder.

‘Nell, it’s me, Mr Geraint. Are you hurt, sweetheart?’

Hester could not hear Nell’s reply, but imagined that she had said she was not hurt.

‘Good. You’re in a little cave, aren’t you?’

Again, Hester could not make out her daughter’s words but guessed that the answer was in the affirmative.

‘Good again. Stay there and keep well back, because the boulder may rock a bit once we get it moving. Is that clear? Stay well back.’

Hester waited until he had backed out and was standing up and wiping his face on his shirt-sleeve, then she touched his arm timidly.

‘We
are
going to get her out?’

He nodded, glancing measuringly at the boulder. ‘Oh yes, we’ll get her out all right, but it may take time and she’s too young to relish being stuck down there for very long. Ah, here comes the rain. It may help.’

Hester followed his gaze. Sweeping across the green
and gold plain which separated the hills from the sea came a curtain of rain, billowing from the heavens. The thunder’s crash was receding, it was muttering off into the distance when the rain reached them.

In seconds, she and Mr Geraint were soaked to the skin, but he gave a grunt of satisfaction and ran lightly and nimbly down the hill a short way, to where the giant pine still smouldered. He broke off a big branch, then returned to the hilltop and began to push the branch into the softening earth at the foot of the boulder. Seeing his intention, Hester also ran down the hill, rescued a branch for her own use, and joined him. In five minutes, between them, they had dug a narrow trench along one side of the boulder and when Mr Geraint leaned against it, it moved. Not much, but a definite movement.

‘It’s going!’ Hester said. She knelt the better to dig with her branch, indifferent to the long streaks of yellow mud which caked her arms and legs. ‘We’re going to do it!’

‘I never doubted it,’ Mr Geraint grunted. ‘Ah, here comes Matthew with the crowbar … shove it here please, Matthew.’

Without a word Matthew complied. This time the great boulder seemed to sigh as it settled. With renewed vigour, Hester and Mr Geraint dug and scratched with their branches and Matthew wielded his crowbar until the great boulder made a horrible sucking noise and settled several inches. Matthew stood up and mopped his brow, not that it made much difference with the rain sluicing down like a waterfall.

‘This’ll take a week,’ he said gruffly. ‘Stand back, both of you. I’m goin’ to wedge the crowbar behind the boulder, see if I can win a few inches that way. Seems to me a few inches would do it – she’m a little thing, our Nell.’

But it was not to be so easy. Matthew and Mr Geraint
both strained on the crowbar until their muscles cracked, but the boulder would not budge.

‘It’ll have to be an undermining job,’ Mr Geraint concluded, leaning against the cliff to get his breath back after the last effort. ‘Hester, run down and fetch more help, we need manpower, the more the merrier. Matthew and I will keep digging here.’

‘I don’t want to go … she’s my baby. Can’t one of you go?’ It was an illogical and stupid reaction because she was not as physically strong as either of the men, but she was not thinking logically or sensibly. ‘I can dig, I’ve been digging.’

‘You’ll have to go into the village; Dewi and Willi went off when the storm started,’ Matthew said. He looked challengingly at Hester, his dark eyes suddenly cold. ‘You’d better hurry, girl.’

Hester nodded, then crawled around the rock once more. ‘Nell? Are you all right, darling?’

There was a pause during which, Hester supposed, Nell made her way to the front of the cave.

‘Mummy, will it be soon? I’m awfully cold and I’m sitting in a sort of river. I – I don’t like it much.’

A river! Hester’s blood ran cold. The rain beat on her head, as insistent as Chinese water torture, as threatening as the Flood. If it continued to rain and the rain continued to build up in the tiny cave, what would happen to Nell? She could tell by the sound of the child’s voice that the cave must be lower than the crack … oh God, what if Nell were to drown within a few feet of help? But it was useless thinking like that.

‘It won’t be long, darling,’ she called back. ‘I’m just going to fetch the men to give us a hand. Chin up, Nell!’

She backed out and Mr Geraint took her place. ‘Keep right to the back, there’s a good girl,’ he called. ‘Won’t be long once Willi and Dewi get here.’

As he backed out, Hester caught his arm.

‘John, she’s sitting in water,’ she said urgently. ‘The cave’s lower than we are – she could drown if the rain doesn’t stop.’

‘Off with you; we’ll get her out long before the rain gets to that depth,’ Mr Geraint said bracingly. ‘Hurry, Hester, but go carefully.’

Hester nodded, smiled blindly at both men, then set off down the hillside.

The rain poured on, forming big puddles in the clay soil of the cliff top. Matthew was steaming; he glanced sideways. The old man was steaming too, his greying curls flattened, his glasses cast aside, his shirt transparent with wet. His face was all bones, Matthew thought contemptuously, bashing his crowbar into the solid rock at the foot of the boulder, nibbling away at it inch by inch. The old man’s stronger than I credited though, he got up that mountainside like a bloody goat … he is a bloody goat, a bloody old goat. I saw them, I heard them, when they thought I was too far behind to notice. All those years of calling her Mrs Coburn, now it’s Hester this and Hester that. What’s the old goat playing at, eh? Answer me that! If he’s got an eye on her then he’ll have me to answer to; not that she’d stand for anything, not my Hester.

‘Come over here, Matthew. Have a crack at that.’

The old man had unearthed another patch of rock. Matthew was inclined to tell him to do it himself; what was the point of continually bashing away at different spots? He’d got down a couple of inches with that last blow, it would probably pay him to keep on undermining just there. But old habits die hard. Sighing, he moved, to thud the crowbar into the new challenge, though his shoulders felt as though someone were sticking red-hot daggers into them and the ache in his lower back had to be felt to be believed. He had been harvesting in the thundery heat since six that morning; he wasn’t fresh from
a nice, sit-down job in the study, like Mr Geraint.

‘Well done, Matthew. Now let’s have another go at moving her. Put some beef behind it this time.’

Mr Geraint grinned encouragingly and put his shoulder to the rock. Matthew scowled, then bent to his crowbar. If they could just shift it four, six inches …

It rolled! Sluggishly, with a horrible squelching sound. Then it settled, and Matthew felt his heart contract with horror. It was settling nearer the cliff, not farther from it, they’d never get her out at this rate.

‘That’s no good,’ he shouted roughly, heaving the crowbar free. ‘That’ll make it worse, Mr Geraint, she’s movin’ nearer the cliff, not farther off. We’ll have to try something else.’

‘It’s all right,’ Mr Geraint panted. His cheekbones were showing dull patches of red, his mouth hung open, but his eyes were very bright. This was an adventure to him, Matthew told himself, just an excitement. But to Matthew it was his child’s life or death. ‘It’s all right, Matthew, we’ve got to lose some to gain some … can’t you
see
?’

For two pins Matthew would have brought the crowbar down on the old man’s head, using that patient, sarcastic tone with him! And he could not see what good it did to crowd the boulder closer to the cliff face; they were trying to release Nell, not pen her up for good.

‘Come on, man, don’t just stand there,’ Mr Geraint’s voice was sharp, impatient. ‘I want to get this done before dark falls.’

That was the final straw. Matthew flung the crowbar down and jumped forward, seizing Mr Geraint by his shirt-front.

‘You want this, you want that! Whose little girl is trapped behind there, eh, old feller? It’s just a bleedin’ game to you, isn’t it, just a bleedin’ game! But that’s my daughter behind there, wi’ the water creepin’ higher with
every drop of rain that falls. You don’t give a toss, all you care about …’

Mr Geraint turned and looked at him. Really looked, as though he was seeing Matthew for the first time, seeing him as another man, not as a servant.

‘I don’t give a toss, don’t I? It’s a game, is it? Well, you’re wrong, Matthew, quite wrong.’ Mr Geraint’s voice was full of scorn and mockery, the tone Matthew particularly hated. ‘That’s
my
little girl behind that boulder and I’m going to get her out whole and well with or without your co-operation. Now hand me that crowbar!’

Matthew shook his head and charged, like a bull. All the pent-up frustrations of years, all the fears for Nell, all his love for Hester, his uncertainty whether she truly returned his love, boiled to the surface. Within thirty seconds the two men were rolling to and fro in the yellow mud, fighting, gouging, swearing, their goal forgotten.

Hester had gone only as far as the castle; as she was running past the main courtyard a car had come cautiously out from under the arch with its windscreen wipers going and the driver leaning forward to see better. Fortunately, the driver’s window was open and through it Hester could see Mr Seddon, with his wife beside him. Hester guessed they had come up for afternoon tea with Mrs Clifton and were about to depart. Realising that this could save her time, she ran forward and leapt for the running board, catching hold of Mr Seddon’s shoulder through the window and giving it an imperious shake. She saw her hand on that immaculate dark suit, the fingers bleeding where she had grazed her knuckles on the rock and the skin yellow with clay. Mr Seddon jammed on the brakes, bringing the car to an abrupt halt.

‘Mrs … er, er… is something wrong? You seem in some – some distress.’

‘Oh Mr Seddon, my little girl’s trapped in a cave
at the top of the mountain; there’s been a rock-fall. Matthew and Mr Geraint are trying to dig her out but they need help. Could you possibly …’

Mr Seddon caught on quickly. ‘A rock-fall, by heaven! I’ll drive into the village, get a car full of men. Tell Geraint I’ll be with him as soon as possible. Whereabouts on the mountain?’