Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits - Donoghue [39]
"I know," said Sarah, her throat sore.
The men were in a little huddle over the Apparatus. Anna squinted up the beach. "They told me the Boat had been sent for, but where is it?" She let out a harsh sigh, and pushed her shoulders back. "We can't expect much of the poor. It's up to people of property to organise matters and set an example of courage. Those who can, I mean," she added bitterly.
Sarah stared at Anna, whose forehead wore its old badge of pain: three lines across, one down. "Cousin," she said, halting. "My dear. You've saved many lives."
"Vicariously," came the answer, very crisp.
"What difference—"
"The difference is this," said Anna, twisting round in her chair to face Sarah, "that in my library I can act for myself but here on the shore, when lives hang in the balance, I'm shackled to this chair, as feeble as an infant. As trapped as a rabbit in its hutch. Besides," she added, cutting Sarah off, "I've saved no one today, have I?"
Their eyes turned back to the ship. A gigantic wave smacked it from behind and there was a terrible groaning of old wood.
"She's breaking up," said Anna through her teeth.
"No," said Sarah, but only because she couldn't bear it, not because she didn't believe it. After a minute, she added, "I sometimes wonder..."
"What?"
She spoke with some diffidence. "What sort of God lets these things happen."
"These things, meaning wrecks?" asked Anna harshly.
"Yes," said Sarah, "and other things," her eyes on her cousin's motionless knees, skinny as a dog's under their blanket.
Anna kept staring out at the splintering ship. "The same God who made the seas for us to sail on," she said finally.
"But—"
"We can't have it both ways," snapped her cousin. "Either we're free, or we're safe; take your pick."
But Sarah hadn't picked, it occurred to her now. There had never been a moment where her life had forked like a pair of paths in front of her. She'd come to the Cottage as a child to do lessons with her Cousin Anna, and she'd never left, that was all; she'd been content to let her life happen to her, like weather. Perhaps she lacked a sailing spirit.
A yelp went up now from one of the fishermen, and turning, Sarah saw Fowell come loping down the beach. His servants behind him toiled to drag the little wooden Life Boat.
"Cousin Fowell, at last!" called Anna.
He was breathless, red-faced; his neckerchief hung dishevelled on his broad chest. He opened his mouth to speak to the ladies, but there was a terrible ripping in the air, and they all stood and stared as the foreign ship broke apart. Tiny figures slid, disappeared into the dark cave in the waters. Sarah thought it almost obscene to watch, but couldn't turn away. She seemed to feel the water in her own lungs.
"All lost," wheezed Fowell.
But Anna pointed mutely.
"What?" asked Sarah.
"There," said Anna, "among the wreckage. I'm sure I saw a head."
Sarah looked at her cousin's red-edged eyes and pitied her as she was never usually allowed to pity her; pitied her more than she pitied the drowning seamen, though she couldn't have said why.
"My dear—" began Fowell kindly.
Anna let out a scream. "There! Two of them, holding to the mast!"
And then for a second they could all see the foreigners, the two dark, minute heads, the bodies dragging along behind the broken mast as it heaved and dropped on the waves.
"The tide is washing them this way. Get the Life Boat into the water."
"It's too rough, Anna," Fowell told her. "The men won't risk it."
"Poltroons! I'd go in myself if I had the strength."
At that he turned his back, as if offended, but he was heading for the Life Boat, Sarah saw; he was beckoning to the servants to drag it down to the slashing edge of the waves. The wreckage had drifted in another twenty yards on the tide. Sarah's mouth was diy with excitement.
After a brief discussion the ladies couldn't hear, Ned Sylvester got into the Boat with Fowell Buxton and hauled on the oars, face wide in a grimace as he fought the incoming tide. As soon as