The Last Lifeboat by Hazel Gaynor

Author:Hazel Gaynor [Gaynor, Hazel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2023-04-27T17:00:00+00:00

22

Mid-Atlantic. 20 September 1940

Day Three

A golden orb of light rests against Alice’s cheek, blooming and spreading inch by inch as it traces a path across her lips, then her nose, her eyes, her forehead. She is awake, but keeps her eyes closed to better absorb the sensation of light and warmth. The relentless damp and cold have made icicles of her bones, but now she begins to thaw as the brittle tension in her body eases.

The air is still. The silence, a gift.

Above, the sky is robin-egg-blue, immense and beautiful. Alice draws in a deep breath, fills her lungs with the brackish air, infuses her soul with hope. This will be the day. The break in the weather will, at last, bring help.

She reaches for Arthur’s hand. ‘Look, Arthur! The sun is shining.’

He sits up and blinks against the dazzling light of the shimmering ocean, his face ambered by the morning sun. Beside him, Billy places his palms together in prayer and says it is like one of Jesus’s miracles. Hamish says it looks like the sky has been painted in the night.

Alice is astonished by their gentle grace and steely resilience, their ability to find beauty amid the dismal horror of their situation. They look so small and vulnerable beside the vast ocean, yet they are Titans; brave warriors battling on. She feels so fiercely protective of them, prepared to do anything to keep them safe. Maybe this is the devotion Jimmy spoke about.

She sets the children a task to see how many different colours they can observe, and how many different words they can find for reds and yellows and oranges.

‘Does marmalade count as a colour?’ Arthur asks.

‘Of course.’

Robert adds butter. Molly suggests golden syrup. Brian and Hamish shout, ‘Honey!’ at the same time.

Alice scoops up a handful of water from one of the pools that have formed in the bottom of the lifeboat. ‘Imagine, children. This is the same water you paddle in when you’re at the beach back home in England. Here, touch it.’

Her father once told her all the world’s oceans are connected, that a Pacific wave is made of the same water she splashed in at Whitstable Beach. Water has a memory, Alice; a soul. The concept is as magical to her now as it was to her curious young mind.

‘Is it really the same?’ Arthur dips his fingers into the cold liquid in Alice’s hands. ‘The same water I swallowed on Chalkwell Beach?’

Alice smiles. ‘The very same. And it knows the way home. It remembers.’

As others wake to the calm sunlit morning, a round of applause rises up from the lifeboat. Robert sings ‘The Sun Has Got His Hat On’, accompanied by Owen on his harmonica. Mr Harlow plays the notes on an imaginary piano. Hamish emerges from beneath the tarpaulin and joins in. Even Brian sings along, quietly at first, and then louder. Molly is still asleep. She’s been unusually quiet over the last twenty-four hours. Alice observes the scene, conscious of

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