The Crystal Gull: A Christmas of romance and drama in the Austrian Alps
The Crystal Gull
Lucilla Andrews
Copyright © The Estate of Lucilla Andrews 2019
This edition first published 2019 by Wyndham Books
(Wyndham Media Ltd)
27, Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX
First published 1978
www.lucillaandrews.com
The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, organisations and events are a product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organisations and events is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Cover artwork images © Kiselev Andrey Valerevich / mitchFOTO (Shutterstock)
Cover artwork design © Wyndham Media Ltd
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By Lucilla Andrews
from Wyndham Books
The Print Petticoat
The Secret Armour
The Quiet Wards
The First Year
A Hospital Summer
My Friend the Professor
Nurse Errant
Flowers from the Doctor
The Young Doctors Downstairs
The New Sister Theatre
The Light in the Ward
A House for Sister Mary
Hospital Circles
Highland Interlude
The Healing Time
Edinburgh Excursion
Ring O’ Roses
Silent Song
In Storm and Calm
Busman’s Holiday
The Crystal Gull
One Night in London (The Jason Trilogy Book 1)
A Weekend in the Garden (The Jason Trilogy Book 2)
In an Edinburgh Drawing Room (The Jason Trilogy Book 3)
A Few Days in Endel (writing as Diana Gordon)
Marsh Blood (writing as Diana Gordon)
Wyndham Books is reissuing
all of Lucilla Andrews’s novels.
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Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
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Chapter One
Ultima Thule, I thought over my sandwiches that day on Valla. Ultima Thule ‒ the end of the line. And I wondered if the Romans had, in fact, so described the Shetlands and decided that if they hadn’t they should have if only for my benefit. When I remembered this later that day, I wanted to crawl under a stone.
It was late September, but it could’ve been a high summer’s day in southern England. A faint heat haze hovered over the peat, the solitary, upright granite slab I was using as a backrest was warm, and the chorus of mews, coos, honks, grunts, squawks, squeals, wails, how-how-hows and why-why-whys was as soporific as the deceptively tranquil sound of the sea. It was not just hard, it was impossible to believe I was sitting on an uninhabited patch of rock and peat poised between the Atlantic and the North Sea roughly one hundred and fifty miles north of John O’ Groats.
Valla was the shape of a tortoise about one third of a mile long and slightly less wide and lay off the northern tip of Finella, one of the smallest inhabited islands in the archipelago. The oil industry had barely touched Finella and it was still the fishers’ island it had been for centuries. All the fishing boats were out that day. The narrow strip of water between the islands was a brilliant blue mirror, criss-crossed only by sedate flotillas of black guillemots. In the west, the Atlantic stretched calm, dark green and unbroken to the horizon; in the east the North Sea only differed by being pale grey. The nearest oil rig was ninety miles east; the nearest landmass Norway; the nearest inhabited land to Finella, the Isle of Tell, ten miles south. And from where I sat Finella was a long, slightly curling green-brown leaf floating on quiet water.
Valla belonged to the birds. It was a permanent home for hundreds of thousands of sea-birds and one of the resting places in the sea for migrants. On the rocks and boulders on the beach, some thirty yards below, every inch was as bird-packed as it was sandpapered smooth by sea and wind. The massed ranks of eider ducks, puffins, gannets, guillemots, fulmars, kittiwakes, shags, and others I couldn’t identify, had lost interest in me. But on the nearest of the several long, low, walls of cut, stacked peat left out to dry that at irregular intervals edged the turf that covered the back of the tortoise, a line of wrens followed my every mouthful with greedy, unwary eyes and turned their heads with the unison of a Wimbledon crowd. High over my head the razorbills and great black-backed gulls danced rather than flew in the bright, sweet, salty, unused air and high above the gulls a line of Black Canada Geese flew north-west and reminded me of a Chinese painting on blue silk I’d once seen with Chris. At least, I could now admit to myself that that exhibition had bored him out of his mind. I still had to close my eyes and was still brooding on my masochistic streak when I fell asleep.
I woke with a start about an hour later, found I was very cold and damp and Valla was shrouded in a white sea mist. The sun, sea, Finella, even the water just beyond the rocks below had disappeared, the rocks were blurring and the birds turning into huddled snow-drifts. Their chorus had stopped and somewhere above was the sound that had woken me. It was the sound of a ’plane engine in trouble. I stood up and stared upwards but couldn’t see anything through the dripping white blanket. The engine gave another splutter, then cut out. I was too tense to time whether it was seconds or minutes later that a small, white engineless ’plane suddenly swooshed downwards. I flung myself face down on the turf and amongst the muffled flurry of wings and squawks heard my voice: ‘Can’t land at that speed ‒ wrong angle ‒ he’ll go over cliffs the other end!’
The ’plane had touched down. It cannoned up to the flattened top of the tortoise back, circled like a crazed bee, shot back towards the beach my end, and tilted. One wing ripped the turf and managed to slow the momentum before it snapped off. The ’plane lumbered on drunkenly and I had my first real glimpse of the solitary pilot struggling for control under the transparent cockpit hood, just before the machine skidded sideways and was stopped by one of the peat walls a few yards above the rocks.
Momentarily, I was too horrified to do anything but pant like a stranded fish. Then all my mental prof
essional alarm bells deafened me. I charged over to the still shuddering wrecked ’plane and from engrained habit refused to contemplate what I could be about to see. I couldn’t now see the pilot. The nose had concertina-ed and part of the metal superstructure had buckled right over and flattened the cockpit hood. I was about a yard off when I saw two hands squeezing through and trying to enlarge a long slit between some of the buckled plates. My instant relief was limited. In the last two years in my present job I had seen too often that there were times when a quick death was kindest.
The air reeked with petrol and I heard the pilot coughing before I got a foothold and grabbed one of his hands. It was cold but could have been colder and still living. ‘Badly hurt, pilot?’
‘God knows how‒’ he gasped. ‘No. Thanks. Just shaken.’
He pulled free his hand and both disappeared. ‘Get away! Keep anyone else around away ‒ well away! I’ll bust out of this sardine tin once the gas evaporates.’
I didn’t argue. I peered into the slit but could only see a heaped shadow in the darkness. The fumes coming up were throttling. ‘For Christ’s sake, woman, get away!’
I stood back slowly and tried to think fast. Though the mist was soaking and the engine dead, enough frictional heat could have been generated still to spark off an explosion. I’d seen that happen more than once. I longed passionately for the Fire Brigade and remembered one fireman’s laconic, ‘Like I always say, nurse, just as well we’ve got the kind of tin-openers for opening these kind of tins’. No tin-openers of that kind nearer than Thessa, I suspected. Thessa, one of the largest inhabited islands, was twenty-five miles south. I remembered another fireman, ‘When you’ve only got your hands, nurse, after you’ve taken a good look all over, just try every bolt, every screw you can see. Impact often jolts some loose. Get ’em out and no telling what you won’t get out.’ I tried some of the bolts in the buckled plates and nearly shouted for joy. Several had been loosened. I couldn’t shift them further with my hands. ‘Got a spanner in there? Big one? Or anything I could use as a spanner?’ I explained quickly why I wanted one.
He had stopped coughing and his voice was English, educated and angry. ‘You out of your mind? Clout metal with metal and one spark’ll have us both off the bloody map! Get the hell out of it! I’ll manage!’
‘Like hell you will!’ I tried to widen the slit. ‘Brute force alone’ll never widen this. Jammed. I’m not going to clout anything. I know what I’m doing. You’re not the first person I’ve met trapped in a sardine tin. I work in a London Accident Unit. Have you got a spanner?’
There was a brief silence. ‘Medic?’
‘Staff nurse. HAVE YOU GOT A SPANNER? If you’ve got one, stop messing about, man, and shove it out! I don’t want to die any more than you do!’ I knew that last was cruel but that it would produce a spanner if he had one. It did.
‘Right size?’
‘Looks it. Thanks.’ I laid a face tissue over one bolt and tested. ‘Yes ‒ yea! I’m shifting it!’
‘Take it easy, honey, don’t get carried away.’ His voice had altered to a drawl. ‘You’ve got a cute voice even when bawling me out. I’d like the chance to see the rest of you. Pretty?’
‘Ravishing.’ I threw the first bolt well away on to the turf and began on another.
He laughed quietly. It was rather a splendid sound. ‘Any minute now I’ll start believing in Santa Claus.’
‘Dead right if you really are in one piece.’
‘Far as I can make out ‒ the lad I’ve always known and loved.’
Though tense as hell, I had to smile. ‘Bully for you, chum.’ I threw out another. ‘What do you look like?’
‘Amongst sardines I’m without equal. Where’ve I landed?’
‘Valla in the Shetlands.’
‘Bird-island off Finella?’
‘Yep.’ I chucked away two more.
‘God, was I off-course! What the hell are you doing amongst the birds?’
‘Came over from Finella this morning to look at them.’
‘Live on Finella? You don’t sound a Shetlander.’
‘I’m not. Just visiting friends there for a couple of days and borrowed their spare dinghy to picnic here. Where’re you flying from?’
‘Norway. I was aiming for Thessa to re-fuel and then go on to the Scottish mainland. Up on holiday?’
‘Sort of. I’ve a cousin married to a medic on Thessa. I flew up from there yesterday to see these birds. Hang about!’ My voice rose with relief. ‘Gravity’s getting into the act. This plate’s shifting and pulling down the one above ‒ a couple more may do it.’
‘Nice going, kid ‒’ His hands reappeared in the slowly widening gap and heaved. ‘I knew the US Cavalry wouldn’t let us down,’ he grunted. A minute later he began to squeeze through his head and shoulders. He pushed, I pulled and suddenly we were both flat on the turf. He jumped up first and winced.
I sat up. ‘You’ve hurt your leg ‒?’
‘It can wait, honey, we can’t.’ He grabbed my hands, hauled me up and after him to the far side of the stack the wrens had used. He let go of my hand, dropped an arm round my shoulders and we leant against each other gasping for more than breath. ‘Thanks,’ he muttered, ‘thanks very much. Can’t say I much fancied our dice with death or my sardine tin. What I could do to that bitch of a machine ‒’ he glanced across at the ’plane and caught his breath. ‘My God, she’s going! I thought I felt her shifting infinitesimally in the last few minutes but wasn’t sure.’ She was. His voice sank to a whisper. ‘She’s going. She’s bloody going.’
The mist had thickened. We could only just see what happened and it happened in slow motion. The remains of the crumpled stack fell away, the wreck slithered free and like some great lame ghost bird stumbled down onto the near-invisible rocks and disappeared. We heard the muffled cries and squawks of the birds, the muffled clatter as it stumbled on, and then the muffled splash of the hidden sea. When the cries and squawks subsided the silence was frightening.
His arm had tightened round my shoulder and for quite a while we just stared at each other. I noticed absently that he was very tall, that his shortish straight black hair was dripping oily water and that there was a troubled gravity in his very dark eyes. At last he said quietly, ‘I don’t know what to say. Did you have a hunch she’d go?’
‘Not that way.’
He nodded absently. ‘What’s got her? Atlantic? North Sea?’
‘North Sea ‒ I think.’
He drew a long breath. ‘Not as deep as the Atlantic but deep enough, and bloody cold. I can think of nastier ways of going ‒ not many.’ He shook his head at this thought. ‘I still don’t know what to say. Thanks for saving my life, honey ‒ sounds a bloody insult.’ He suddenly kissed my lips gently. ‘Thank you. Thank you very much.’
We exchanged the same small, shocked smiles and flopped onto the turf and leant against the stack as if we were puppets and someone had dropped our strings. It was a few minutes before I remembered his wince. ‘Have you hurt your legs?’
‘Legs?’ From his expression he’d forgotten he possessed a pair. He looked down at his oil-streaked denims and flying boots. ‘No. Left foot. The impact doubled it under. Can’t have busted anything or I wouldn’t have forgotten or run on it.’
Delayed-action shock was now hitting us both and as always in the early stages made me dogmatic. ‘Oh yes, you could if your adrenalin was high enough and I’ll bet it was. I once saw a guy with a badly fractured ankle get out of a crashed car and charge fifty yards to knock out the unhurt drunk driver who’d caused the pile up. Then he collapsed. Did very well.’
‘Now I think of it ‒ I’ve seen something like that once ‒ can’t remember where. How’d the drunk do?’
‘All right after they wired his jaw.’
‘These things happen when one gets carried away.’ He flexed his left knee, rotated the ankle. ‘My adrenalin was up to the two-minute mile ‒ but only muscular from those movements. It can
keep. Boot’s a good splint. Anyway, I’m not taking my boots off. Take ’em off for five seconds and chances are I’ll never get ’em on again.’ He looked around. ‘This lot’s still closing in. Could clear ‒’ he snapped his fingers ‘like that, could last days. Either way, Ms Crusoe, just call me Man Thursday but not in my socks.’
‘You mean, Friday.’
‘No, I don’t. Today’s Thursday.’
I slid suddenly from the dogmatic to the vague stage. I had to think this over. ‘So it is.’
He watched me thoughtfully and I watched him partially as I hadn’t the energy to do anything else, partially as I had just realized his face didn’t match his deep, slightly drawling and very English voice. It was the type of face Velazquez painted and should have been framed by an Elizabethan ruff, not the upturned collar of a leather flying jacket. It was a long, high-browed very sallow face that managed to be both elegant and strong but not at all good-looking. His only good features were his eyes. They were lovely and unusually expressive for an Englishman.
‘What’s up, Ms Crusoe? Shock? Or just allergic to sardines?’
‘Dad and I once went round the Prado in Madrid. Have you any Spanish blood?’
He grinned. ‘Plenty.’
‘You’re Spanish?’
‘Not according to my passport. British. In fact, one parent pure English, one Brazilian of pure Spanish ancestry. I was born, mainly raised and went to school in England, then college in the States. A right schizoid, am I.’
‘Bi-lingual in English and Spanish?’
‘Yea. In English-speaking countries I get called Joe, in Spanish-speaking, Jose.’ He offered me his right hand. ‘Joe Verica. How’d you do?’
I would have laughed had my teeth not started chattering. ‘S-S-Serena M-M-Mathers. H-H-How’d you d-d-d-do?’
‘A bloody sight better than you by the feel of your hand. Nothing like being near one’s last gasp to put new life into one. Let’s get into the anti-exposure bit and insulate you from the ground. Excuse me ‒’ he lifted me onto his knees and folded both arms very tightly around me. ‘You’ll warm up soon. Better?’