On a Wing and a Prayer. Ruby Jackson
back on her knees beside the injured man. ‘I’m going for help,’ she said. ‘I wish I could stay with you but there’s no one else here.’ She was pulling her shirt out of her shorts. Desperately she tried to tear off the bottom but the material resisted.
Rose looked around and her eyes lit up as she saw a large shard of glass from the broken headlamp. She picked it up and feverishly sawed at the shirt. At last there was a tear, which allowed her to rip it apart.
Praying that it was clean, she folded it and gently wiped the blood from the man’s face. ‘I wish I could do more for you but I’ll get help…’
The whisper was so faint that she had almost to put her ear to his damaged face. ‘Dispatch. Pocket. Urgent…Take.’
Again Rose looked round, hoping desperately that someone – anyone – was within hailing distance. No one.
She felt a touch on her hand. ‘Please.’
‘Of course, I’ll do what I can.’ With a hand now marked by his blood she tried the pocket of his leather jacket. Nothing. ‘It’s a dispatch. An inside pocket. Do you have…?’
His eyes blinked as if answering her. Rose reached inside his jacket, hoping that she was doing no damage to his poor body. There was a pocket, and inside was a fairly thick envelope. ‘Got it,’ she said. ‘I’ll run for help and then deliv—’
The eyelids fluttered again and the voice was fainter than before. ‘Urgent. Please.’
‘I’ll do it. Trust me. I’ll get you some help. Trust me,’ she repeated. ‘I’ll deliver your letter and I will bring help.’ As she spoke the last words she was already running. She had not run competitively since she was a schoolgirl, but she was fit and well. She tried to forget the injured, possibly dying dispatch rider, and the message that seemed to be burning a hole through her shirt. She had read the word on the front. ‘SILVERTIDES’. She knew the name only because she had occasionally delivered tea to the kitchen door of the great house. It was at least three miles away and she had a single mode of transport – her long legs.
Rose kept going. As she ran she remembered the words of her coach from those long-ago school days. ‘Long and longer strides for the first twenty paces; then accelerate until you think you can’t go any faster. Relax facial muscles.’ She almost flew, her long stride eating up the uneven ground. She tried not to think of the letter she was carrying, or the dispatch rider who had insisted that he be left, possibly to die, in order that the dispatch might reach its destination. The young man was in the military and was obviously about the same age as her brother Phil.
Twenty-three is too young to die, she thought fiercely, remembering the loss of her brother Ron, who had been even younger when he had given his life for his country.
‘Empty your head, girl, empty your head,’ came the order from the long-ago voice, and obediently Rose forced herself to concentrate on nothing but finishing the race.
She ran as she had never run before, oblivious of her screaming muscles, her labouring breath, her tears. Heel, outside of foot, rock off with the toes, over and over again; push with your ankles, drive with your elbows. For a moment she was in a bubble as she pulled remembered advice up from her subconscious, which helped her think only of technique and not of injured dispatch riders or important messages.
Ahead stood the gates of Silvertides Estate. With her last ounce of energy she reached them, clung to the bars to prevent her body sliding, exhausted, to the ground, and pressed the bell.
‘Don’t fuss, Mum, it was no more than a cross-country run.’
Rose had had a refreshing bath and was now sitting in the scrupulously tidy front room, not the kitchen, so seriously had her parents taken her story of the afternoon’s events. Of course she had been much too late for Sunday dinner and was now pressingly aware of growing hunger.
‘Quite an adventure, our Rose, but your mum and me think you’re making light of it.’
‘’Course not, Dad. Only sorry I missed Miss Partridge.’
‘She said the same about you, love, but she’d promised to do geometry or some other maths subject with George – sharp as a tack is our George.’
Delighted to have young George Preston’s prowess become the subject of discussion, Rose congratulated her father again for taking in the orphaned youngster, who had initially caused the family a great deal of bother, culminating in vandalism and an attack that had put her twin sister, Daisy, in hospital.
But Fred had had years of experience in dealing with daughters who did not want to be the focus of his attention. ‘Come on, Rose. Rose ran, Rose saw accident, Rose helped injured rider, Rose delivered letter. Rose came home. There has to be more to it than that.’
‘Aw, Dad,’ moaned Rose, using exactly the tone of voice she had used as a disgruntled child, ‘he was speeding on a poor surface and a pothole caught the front tyre. He and the bike went up in the air – I think, I didn’t see it – and the bike landed on top of him. He asked me to deliver his dispatch and I did. Possibly I spoke to a butler sort of person, quite grand and with a posh voice, but he said not to worry, it was in their hands. I sat in a lovely room and a maid brought me tea; they’ll have got an ambulance…can’t be sure.’
Is he alive? Did they find him? They had promised to go immediately and they said they would get him a doctor.
A long-ignored memory surfaced. This was not the first time she had run for help. She had tried to black out all memory of that day on Dartford Heath, when Daisy had stayed beside two unbearably sad, dead bodies, and Rose, the faster runner, almost traumatised by shock and horror, had conquered her threatening hysteria and run for help.
‘Didn’t want to warm it too quick, Rose; nothing worse than dried-up food. Eat that up and then off to bed with you or you’ll never do your shift tonight.’ Her mother had come in from the kitchen at just the right moment, for Rose wanted to be left alone to think.
Sitting in an armchair in the front room with a plate of food in her hands took her straight back to childhood. Unwell? Unhappy? Either situation could be mended by sitting in a comfortable chair in the front room, eating a plate of Mum’s best stew. Not that this stew could measure up to the ‘before this dratted war’ stews; far more vegetables than meat – thank goodness carrots were not rationed – and a gravy Mum was near ashamed of. But so far the Petrie family had managed to avoid tinned stew. ‘Can’t be sure what’s in it,’ muttered Flora as she arranged the tins on their grocery shop shelves.
As she ate her lunch, Rose could remember nothing but the face of the dispatch rider and the feel of the gates at Silvertides as her exhausted body collapsed against them. Maybe it would all come back tomorrow. She wondered if she would ever find out about the injured rider. She knew enough about dispatch riders to realise that she would never learn what was in the so-vital letter. But it had to be really important. His face swam before her tired eyes and his voice whispered, ‘Urgent, please.’
I tried, she thought to console herself. I hope it was enough.
Two days later Rose was standing at her workbench on the factory floor. She was dirty and hungry and very, very tired. More than anything she longed for the shift to be over so that she could go home.
Rose’s shift supervisor appeared at her bench. ‘Petrie, got a minute? Boss wants you in his office.’
‘What’s wrong, Bill?’ Rose could think of no reason for a summons to the office.
‘He’ll tell you hisself and that’ll save me guessing, won’t it?’
Rose straightened up, took off her overall and the scarf that covered her hair, and walked off to the office, where she hesitated before knocking on the door.
‘You sent for me, Mr Salveson,’ she said, noting that as well as her boss and his secretary there was a second man in the room.
‘Come in, Rose. Mr Porter here would like to talk to you.’