Make the choice

“You’ll have to make your mind up Liz. And realise that’s the only way it can be, you have to look out for yourself.” Darren gave that harsh laugh he does so often. “It’s dog eat dog in this life, and I want to be top dog. London, that’s where it’s happening, then New York, somewhere big, alive. Stick with me Liz and we can conquer the world. Little people get trampled and I won’t let anybody trample us.”

We’d had this conversation before. I’d never be classed as an idealist, never a ‘do-gooder,’ but the idea of just walking all over people, like Darren said, never felt right.

“It doesn’t have to be like that, Darren love. We can be successful, you can be successful without all that aggro. There’s plenty of ways to be happy without spreading misery. You’re clever enough to make it anywhere, without all that.” I appealed to his ego, he likes that.

“No Liz, it does have to be like that. The rich ones, the really rich ones, they go for the throat. They don’t take prisoners. None of this namby-pamby, help your neighbour stuff, it’s every man for himself. Stay with me I’ll make us both rich, you’ll see.”

His enthusiasm goes on for ever. Rich sounds good, but at what cost? That’s something he never asks.

We parted a few minutes later, I gave him my usual non-committal agreement, that’s all he ever needs. Our wedding was on the twenty-third, two days before Christmas. The invites had been sent months ago. The venue booked, the honeymoon arranged, Antigua of course, only the best for Darren.

Back home, it was warm and welcoming without the big debates. Mum gave me a bowl of vegetable soup for tea, hot and thick. A bit like Darren I think sometimes. “I’m just not sure, mum. I love him I think, but does he love me?” I sighed. “He says he does but how do I know?”

“We all have second thoughts when the wedding’s so close. It’s only natural. You just have to think it through for yourself, and go with your heart.” Mum gave me a long stare. “And you should know better than, ‘I think.’ It’s only two weeks to the wedding.”

“I know, I know, we’ve been over it before. When I’ve finished this,” I held up the bowl, “I’m going to go out and have a big think about everything.” I was just unsure, and as usual, mum was right. I should be more certain than, ‘I think’.

“There’s a gale blowing out there and it’s perishing. Make sure you wrap up warm and stay away from the prom. The wind down there’s fit to blow a bus over.” Which was a pity, the prom’s where I go to think things through. Sea breezes clear my head.

I wrapped up warm, following that part of mum’s advice. As for the rest? I walked the few hundred yards down to the prom and slowly started to promenade.

Not even thinking to begin with, just walking and shivering a bit as I went. Darren was a bit of a chancer I knew. Always an answer for everything, with a good job and prospects, he says. I know dad had reservations but he wouldn’t talk about them to me. And mum was discrete of course, but I knew she didn’t want me that far away. I walked for a bit, buffeted by the wind, lights on one side in the December gloom and the sea hissing and spitting on the other.

Then I saw him.

The man was standing, weeping when I noticed him. Not a big sobbing sort of show, just quietly, unashamedly crying, the tears rolling down his cheeks.

He was a big man, and big men don’t cry, or so they say. I’ve never believed that myself, but then again, I suppose they aren’t supposed to, at least not in public, not standing on the promenade at St. Annes. He had a moustache and a beard as well, a big impressive, old fashioned affair, dominating his face.

“Are you all right?” I asked, when I got closer to him. 

I was warm enough in the best that North Face could offer, with my legs encased in thick jogging pants. He was dressed, not in rags exactly, decent enough clothes in another time, another season perhaps, but thin and worn, old fashioned I suppose, not scruffy, but not suitable for that December weather. He was soaked as though he’d been standing there for ever. The jacket was buttoned at the top, the front hanging loose. Definitely not the clothes you’d want to wear there. The wind seemed to cut through them and billowed out his jacket, like the sail of some tiny boat. It didn’t move him at all though. He stood, still as a rock and silent.

I took a couple of steps closer, almost near enough to touch, “You’ll catch your death in this wind.” I said. I don’t make a habit of talking to strangers. But there was something about him, like he needed something, help perhaps.

“I’m alreet, lass,” he said, his accent marking him down as local. “There’s nothing you can do for me. Not now, not here,” and he turned, walking to the edge of the prom, into the teeth of the gale.

Briefly I thought he was going to jump over. The tide was in, a rare enough treat on a lot of days, and with that wind, not a nice place to be. It’s seldom deep enough to exactly ‘crash’ against the sea wall, but the spray was flying enough that it felt like a steady downpour. I followed him, in case he needed stopping I suppose. But he halted at the railing and stood, looking out towards Southport, his head shaking from side to side slightly as if remembering something.

“The cafe’s open, can I get you a tea or a coffee? A slice of toast, perhaps?” I offered.

He looked startled, as though we hadn’t just spoken, and now I’d surprised him. “No, I’m fine enough Miss. There’s nothing I need, except remembering.” He was still weeping, but the tears were flying from his face, joining the spray and vanishing into the air.

“I’m Elizabeth, Elizabeth Tims. I live round there,” I gave a sort of general wave in the direction of the town. “I’ve not seen you here before.”

“Aye, I know you Miss,” he replied. And that startled me. I’m not famous, a nobody really. There’s family; mum, dad and Jim my younger brother. And Darren of course. I wouldn’t expect anybody that I didn’t know, to know me.

“How do you know me then?” I asked, “I don’t know you.”

“Your father, he’s Charles isn’t he?”

And that answered it. Some mate of my dad’s, from work perhaps.

“I didn’t catch your name?” I asked, although he hadn’t offered it.

“I’m Charles an all,” he said simply. Then he added, “You’re leaving. aren’t you?” And yes I was, probably. Darren’s got that job in London. I’ve never been completely sure what he does exactly, he’s always a bit vague, but it pays well and once we’re married I’ll join him down there.

“You’ll forget when you’re down there, with all them fancy folk in the big city.”

“Forget who? Forget what?” I was surprised that he’d know where I’d be going and that dad hadn’t told me about him, at least a quick mention. I knew most of the men he worked with, a decent bunch. But no Charles.”

He turned his back to the wind and faced inland for a minute or two, while I watched and shivered, just a little. The tears seemed to have stopped and for that I was grateful. It’s always upsetting talking to somebody who’s crying. And you don’t know why.

He turned back to the water without speaking, and I was tempted to just leave, walk away. But before I could, he spoke again.

He pointed out toward the estuary. “Out there. That’s where. That’s what wants remembering. And them.” Then he started to weep again.

I looked. I couldn’t see much through the wind and spray. I couldn’t even see the rigs, flaring off on the horizon. I was about to speak, when he continued.

“My mates, aye and kin too. Reuben, a fine lad, And the Johnsons, Bill and Jim, and the others. God rest their souls. Good lads all of ‘em. They’re worth remembering. That’s all you can do for them now. Johnny Wignall, another good lad.” He shook his head again. “And Tom…” he turned, leaning in to me. “Five kiddies, no food and no money to get any.” He stopped as if wanting me to say something, but there was nothing to say.

It was a bit weird. A stranger, a big man, on that lonely path looming over me, and I wasn’t threatened, not a bit.

“What happened?” I asked.

“See! Nobody remembers,” his stare accused me, stabbed me. I bit my lip trying to think if I should step away and maybe ring for some help. “When everybody’s forgotten then it dies, it might as well never have happened. They were my mates. Aye even the ones I’d never met, an there were a good few of them too. They came running when they were needed. Not a thought but to help.”

I wasn’t sure what he was talking about, but it clearly meant something big to him. He talked on.

“Filthy night it was, like this but dark, black as hell an all, beggin‘ your pardon, Miss. The warning went out like a blue star, and then was blown away real quick they said. Perhaps there were a couple of them, I don’t know. I just heard the maroon go off. That’s how I knew something was up, so I came running, I was closest. And then the others came too. God bless ’em.”

He pointed down at the sea, along the beach to the right. I looked, and so help me I could see a boat house, half-hidden by the sea. There shouldn’t be anything. I know that beach well and there’s not been anything there as long as I’ve been walking on it. There were people down there too, I could just make out the shapes. And there shouldn’t be people down there on the beach, in that weather, and where had the sea gone?

I looked hard but I couldn’t make out details, just vague shapes, like some impressionist painting. There but not there. Then the sea swirled over them and there was nothing, the mirage vanished.

“It took a dozen men, to put her in the water, the Laura Janet. There were a couple of horses to drag her out of the boat house and down to the sea. But men, that’s what we needed. The horses were too canny to get in the water when it was that rough. The tide was coming in but we had some clear beach to start with. I was on the port side, in the stern, near to Bill the coxswain, my oar in the air like we’d practiced. Waving about in all that wind till we got some sea under us. Then down into the water, and pull. Pull hard. That’s what we did, all of us. Pulled like our lives depended on it. And they did.”

I didn’t remember any rowing boats being launched from the beach down there, and not with horses pulling them from a boathouse that wasn’t there.

“When was this?” I asked.

“Three weeks afore Christmas,” he sighed.

“Recent then. Yesterday? The day before?” I queried, I would have heard, but he just shook his head.

“We pulled as hard as we could, but we struggled to make proper headway in that wind. Slowly we made out towards Penfold, on the seaward side. It was hard, and we suffered doing it. Big strong lads all of us, running out of strength.” He waved off towards the right, toward the sea.

“It seemed like forever we pulled, our arms and shoulders were aching, the sea was coming in over the side. Most of the time we were pulling with water up around our knees. The scuppers couldn’t take it away. Cold in the feet and hot in the shoulders that was us. And all the time we didn’t seem to be getting nearer where that blue light had been.” He stopped again.

I could feel the cold as he described it, seeping up from my feet. No. More than seeping, gnawing at my limbs, like some hungry beast. I was shivering again and this time it was from the cold. But I couldn’t walk away and leave him standing there.

Then everything went black. Black, and cold, and wet. And I hungered, like never before. There was a rough piece of wood in my hands, an oar and I was pulling on it. Pulling because I knew if I stopped I’d die. Drowned in a sea that hungered for me as I did for a meal. I remembered vaguely, the soup from less than an hour before. But that had no nourishment for me in this place. My clothes were soaked, thin and useless against the cold of the sea. And there was just the pulling, endlessly. In the dark I could barely make out the back of the man in front of me, I knew there was another to my right, pulling like me. And together we were brothers in a fight against that vicious sea, all of us working and freezing and praying. In a boat, leaping and diving with no control, tossed like a piece of jetsam wherever the sea would.

My hands were blistered, slick now with blood as well as the sea, the salt stinging and burning as I heaved on that wood. My brothers with me as we fought to survive, and more than that. I knew we had a reason to do this and we had to finish it. Or die trying.

Gasping for breath, panting for air, freezing and soaked to the skin, I looked around, and I knew them, my brothers. Not kin, but brothers still.

And then I was back, back where I belonged. Shuddering with something more than relief, but colder than I had ever been. My feet and trousers soaking, and the feeling of empty hunger lingering in my belly. I looked down at my hands, now blistered and red and knew where I had been.

Charles waited, it was if he could sense what I had seen, felt, and done. His eyes bore into mine before he nodded, satisfied he’d got through to me. He started his tale again. 

“Bill Johnson, the coxswain, shouted it was time to try the sail. We were up on the windward side and we could let that gale drive us where we had to go.”

I imagined what that was like. Remembered what that was like.

“Once we’d stopped pulling I could look out and catch my breath. Away in the distance I could make out the Ribble Light, but only when we reached the crest of a wave, and then nothing as we crashed down into the trough. There was nothing else to see, nothing around. The moon had gone and no stars shone down on the likes of us, just white spray as the waves rolled and then black as they grabbed the boat, and sucked her down.

“They started to hoist the sail, Tom Bonney and Jim Dobson, both of them, heaved on the line and up it came, flapping and cracking like some circus master’s whip. She responded straight away did the Laura Janet, turning and pulling down towards Spencer’s Brow. Like she wanted nothing more than to reach the shore and escape that night.”

He shook his head, “We couldn’t have that. There was a rescue to do, that’s what the blue light meant and that wasn’t on any land. Bill took us about, looking for the South Channel. From there we could get where we were needed.” He shuddered and paused.

“We could have got where we were needed more like. We turned inland, toward the east and then a huge wave, the biggest I’d ever seen, smashed us. Swamped us. Turned us over like some angry beast that was done with us.”

He stopped and looked at me again. His eyes now black as the sea he’d described. “And that was it,” he said quietly, “water and cold and a memory.”

Now I really was shivering. And from more than the cold and the damp. I looked at him, his old fashioned clothes and the beard, his bearing, it all seemed so out of place, out of time.

And I remembered. God help me, I remembered. The Mexico, aground in the estuary. Twenty-seven men died attempting the rescue. And now I knew them, their names, their families, their lives. And his name too, Charles Tims, the same as mine. And now I never could forget.

“There were thirteen of us on the Laura Janet. Aye and sixteen on the Eliza Fearnley. All but two of us met. I’d not call it in peace, but we knew if we’d had to, we’d have done it again. People need help and that’s what you do. You give it. You don’t ask why, or what do I get? You just help. People should remember, and that’s all we ask.”

And now I wept instead of him, and I turned away, not wanting him to see.

I took a minute to dry my eyes, to gather myself and when I turned back he’d gone. I looked around and there wasn’t anywhere he could have reached in that time. Except the sea.

I got his message and I knew the answer I was going to give Darren.