Lifeboat! (5 page)

In the top flat, Joe Milner, step-father of the two boys, snorted in his sleep and then, as if the sound had disturbed him, he opened his eyes. He yawned noisily, stretched and glanced at his wife lying beside him. She was on her back, her open mouth without its false teeth shrunken and falling inwards, making her look older than her thirty-seven years. Her black hair, frizzed with frequent perming, was already liberally speckled with grey. Her face had become tanned this last week, whilst he, with fairer colouring, had burnt and blistered, a layer of skin peeling like tissue paper from his shoulders. Gingerly he touched his nose which was still sore. He heaved himself out of bed and hitched up his pyjama trousers. He wore no jacket, only a vest. He had reached the end of the bed on his way to the bathroom down the landing, when the dull thud in his head and a funny weakness in his legs reminded him of the gallon and a half of bitter he had drunk the previous night. He belched loudly and fell across the end of the bed landing heavily on his wife's feet.

Blanche—had there ever been anyone so misnamed?—woke up swearing. ‘What the bloody 'ell …? Ugh—I might 'ave known!' She drew her knees up out of his way and turned herself on to her side. ‘Noisy bugger!' she whistled through her flabby mouth and closed her eyes again.

It wasn't until twenty past eleven that they first missed the boys, but even then they knew of no reason to worry. Every morning of the holiday the boys had played quite safely on the beach until their parents had surfaced around eleven or later.

So why should this morning—the last day of their holiday—be any different?

Bleary-eyed and wobbly, Blanche Milner began to stuff her clothes into a suitcase. Breakfast was a cigarette and a cup of instant coffee—if Joe could be nagged into putting the kettle on.

‘Where's them little buggers got to? Don't they know the train goes at one?'

Joe sniffed and coughed juicily. ‘They'll be on t'beach.'

‘
'Course
they'll be on t'beach. I know that,' she shrilled scornfully. ‘But I wants 'em 'ere packing, not playin', not this morning. Go'n look for 'em, Joe.'

He made a token resistance, not moving until she shrieked warningly, ‘
Joe
, you hear me?'

He flopped down the three flights of stairs and out of the rear entrance into the back yard. Four cars belonging to other occupants of the flats had been squeezed into the square. To the left, against a brick wall was a sort of lean-to where beach gear—deck-chairs, buckets and spades, balls and various objects—could be left instead of being carted all the way up the stairs to the flats.

Joe Milner stopped. In the middle of all the clutter was an open space where their dinghy should have been. But the black and orange inflatable was not there.

‘The little …!' he began, but strangely he was not given to swearing as frequently and volubly as his wife, and he contented himself with planning the various punishments he would inflict upon the disobedient boys when he caught up with them.

He shambled through the alley dividing their block of holiday flats from the next in the row which ran the full length of the Marine Esplanade overlooking the foreshore gardens, the putting-greens, the bowling-greens and the boating-lake, and beyond them the wide expanse of beach and the sea. Joe walked along the esplanade, past the lifeboat station with its doors still wide open, the empty trailer and tractor standing at the ready for the recall to the beach. Skirting the fountain he walked down Beach Road and on to the sand.

Visibility was clearer now. A light offshore breeze had blown away the last vestiges of the early-morning mist and the sands were dotted with people, families entrenching themselves for the day. But on Saturdays, change-over day, the beach was understandably less crowded than on any other day of the week.

Joe's tired eyes watered against the brightness as he scanned the sands and the water's edge. He spotted two minute figures cavorting in the shallows and he began to struggle across the soft sand towards them. Beads of sweat sprang out on his forehead and prickled his armpits and his calf muscles began to ache. The tide was about halfway between high and low water now and Joe had to wade through a creek to reach the sea itself.

‘Little sods!' he muttered. ‘I won't 'alf give 'em what for when I catches up wi' ' em!'

About fifty yards from the children, he stopped, blinked and rubbed his eyes. He could see now that the two children were not his stepsons. One was a boy of a similar age, but the other was a little girl, dressed in a frilled bathing-suit. Unaware of the man standing watching them, the two children continued digging the trench, squealing with delight as the waves ran up their channel and around the moat of their sandcastle.

Joe Milner glanced to right and left along the beach.
Then where the hell were Nigel and Martin?

The first moments of panic had passed and Nigel released his brother's arm.

‘Come on,' he said roughly, as if to rouse not only Martin but himself too from their petrified state. ‘It can't be 'that far away. We can paddle back.'

But the younger boy still shivered and shook. His teeth rattled with fear and now with cold for the breeze was growing stronger with every minute. ‘But where—which w-way?' he whimpered. ‘We don't know which—way to g-go.'

For a moment Nigel hesitated, confused, then he said scornfully, ‘It's the way the waves are going, stupid! Where's them paddles?'

Martin, still shaking as if with the ague, hadn't moved, ‘ Paddles? I don't know.'

‘Didn't you bring them?'

Martin's eyes widened as he shook his head numbly. ‘You stupid little bugger …' Nigel screeched, sounding so much like their mother that Martin cowered beneath the expected blow.

‘Now we'll have to use our hands to paddle,' Nigel ordered. ‘Come on, get crackin'.'

Martin dabbled his hand ineffectually in the water, whilst Nigel leaned over the edge and made sweeping movements deep into the water. The dinghy began to move, not forwards but round and round in a spin.

Nigel stopped and lashed out at his brother. ‘Idiot! You'll have to do it harder than that. We'll just go round in circles else.'

Martin began to whimper and shiver. His tee-shirt and shorts were wet through and the further they drifted out to sea the colder it seemed to get.

‘Eh, wait a minute, I reckon I saw summat then,' Nigel shouted. ‘Yeh—look, the beach, I can see t'beach.'

The mist was being blown away by the strengthening breeze, but it did not bring consolation to the two boys.

Forlornly—they stared towards the shore. Martin hiccuped, the tears flowing now unchecked.

‘It's so far away—it looks miles.'

‘Don't be daft!' Nigel tried to say, but his words lacked conviction even to himself and as Martin added hopelessly, ‘We can't paddle it that far. We can't get back. We can't never get back!' for once the older boy was silent.

In fact the inflatable was only a few hundred yards from the shore but it might as well have been the miles it seemed to the two boys for all the chance they had of getting themselves back. Still no one saw them. The lifeboat was heading south in the opposite direction to that in which the boys were being carried, and the coastguard's landrover was speeding along the coast road towards the marshes of Dolan's Sand.

Across the saltmarsh south of Dolan's Point, behind a grass-covered sandbank two figures lay prone, their elbows resting on the ground, a pair of field-glasses to their eyes.

‘See it, Mel?'

‘Yep. It's the lifeboat all right,' the girl answered.

‘See? I told yer we could fetch it out wiv them flares we found.'

The girl giggled. ‘Look at 'em swannin' up an' down there. An' they don't even know what they're looking for.'

‘They don't know they're looking for nothing!' the boy said and his girlfriend rolled over on to her back shaking with laughter.

The boy lowered the binoculars. ‘Eh Mel, where do you reckon we could get hold of some more of them flare things?'

Her fit of the giggles subsided. She sat up and wiped the tears from her eyes. ‘I dunno. Do they sell 'em round here?'

‘Hey—I arn't buyin' 'em!' the boy said indignantly. ‘That ain't my scene.'

‘Nick 'em then.'

‘Yea, but where from?'

Thoughtfully the pair gazed across the marsh at the boat ploughing up and down the stretch of water.

Macready turned the lifeboat at the end of another run and then throttled back to dead slow. His crew relaxed their vigil and congregated in the coxswain's cockpit.

‘Nothing,' was the agreed opinion.

‘Pete?' The coxswain looked towards his R/T operator.

Pete Donaldson turned, his eyes slightly red-rimmed from concentrated staring at the radar screen. ‘Nope—nothing here either.'

‘Hmph,' Macready granted, his eyes scanning the gently swelling ocean. As if in answer to his moment of indecision, the radio receiver crackled and the coastguard call-sign from his landrover came over the air.

Pete replied that their search had so far proved futile. During the two and a quarter hours since they had arrived at the area given, the lifeboat had cruised the St Botolphs Deeps, had passed through Freeman Channel further out into the Wash and had then headed north-eastwards again along the eastern edge of the sandbank known as Long Sand. North of that lay another, smaller, bank, the Inner Dog's Head and it was off the eastern edge of this that the lifeboat now cruised when at ten minutes past mid-day Jack Hansard's next message came across the airwaves. ‘… I'm still at the Point. I've walked across Dolan's Sands and on to the Haven Flats and I can't see anything here either now. I've also just had a report from the police about two missing boys. Their father thinks they've got an inflatable dinghy with them. We're not sure they're even in the sea, but it's a possibility. Over.'

The men standing in the coxswain's cockpit exchanged a look—a look that said it all.

Macready put out his hand for the radio/telephone and spoke directly to Jack Hansard. ‘Saltershaven mobile, this is Saltershaven lifeboat. Coxswain speaking. How long have the boys been missing? Over.'

‘… They don't know. The father says they must have gone off before they—the parents— woke up. You know the sort of thing?'

‘Aye,' Macready muttered shortly, more to himself than to the coastguard. He knew only too well how a happy holiday could so easily end in tragedy because of indolent parents.'

The coastguard was speaking again. ‘ I'm on my way back to the station now. There's nothing more I can do here. Out.'

Without Jack Hansard needing to go into detail over the radio, Macready knew the coastguard's landrover would be heading back either for the coastguard's station on the seafront or possibly to the lifeboat station. There he would obtain further information from the police, or the boys' father, and then he would consult the lifeboat secretary and call up Macready again.

‘Well, while we're waiting,' the coxswain said, ‘we might as well carry on a while here.'

Once more the crew returned to their posts and the
Mary Martha Clamp
headed towards the Outer Dog's Head sandbank, Macready keeping to a northerly course just in case they were needed to search for the boys.

Half an hour later, Bill Luthwaite's voice came over the radio link from the coastguard's vehicle. ‘… The Inshore Lifeboat has launched to search for these boys. We think you should stay where you are at present and let the ILB do a search first. Over.'

Macready agreed and then asked, ‘Is the helicopter on stand-by?'

An air/ sea rescue helicopter operated from an R.A.F base in Norfolk and often assisted in a search and rescue operation in Macready's area. Bill Luthwaite replied that it was but that they would only request assistance if the inshore boat failed to find the boys fairly quickly.

Macready gave a grunt of satisfaction and was about to hand over the telephone to Pete Donaldson once more when another thought struck him. ‘… Jack, get on to the boathouse and see if any of our lads noticed any boys watching our launch this morning.'

The coastguard's voice now came noisily into the cockpit of the lifeboat. ‘… Right, it's a possibility. Out.'

Macready now handed the phone back to Pete, who, ten minutes later was relaying another message from the coastguard to his coxswain. ‘Jack says Tim Matthews saw two lads amongst the watchers at the launch. Tim reckons they didn't seem that interested though. They scampered off before the lifeboat was out of sight.'

Macready smiled at the thought of Tim's indignation at such an action. But Jack's next words, relayed by Pete, replaced Macready's amusement with intuitive foreboding. ‘ Tim's rough description of those lads fits the missing boys though.'

‘Mmm, well, if it was them, that helps a bit as regards time.' Once more Macready reached out to take the radio/telephone to speak directly to the coastguard and the lifeboat secretary.

‘Saltershaven coastguard, this is Saltershaven lifeboat. Coxswain speaking. I suppose we could make a pretty fair guess at the time they could have entered the water—say half an hour after our launch?'

Jack Hansard agreed and added, ‘ The holiday flats they're staying in are pretty near the lifeboat station, so I'd say they'd go in off-central beach. If it was them watching your launch, it could even be the same place the lifeboat entered the water.'

Macready made swift calculations in his head. He had no need to look at his charts, not just to make a rough estimate as to where the boys' dinghy might be, he knew the area so well.

‘… That could put the dinghy out of the inshore boat's range by now. Over.'

‘Affirmative. Suggest you make for the area right away, but we'll let the inshore boat carry on the search until you get up here again. Over.'