The Snow Goose

It was a little more than three weeks before Frith returned to the lighthouse. May was at its end, and the day, too, in a long golden twilight that was giving way to the silver of the moon already hanging in the eastern sky.

She told herself, as her steps took her thither, that she must know whether the snow goose had really stayed, as Rhayader said it would. Perhaps it had flown away, after all. But her firm tread on the sea wall was full of eagerness and sometimes unconsciously she found herself hurrying.

Frith saw the yellow light of Rhayader’s lantern down by his little wharf, and she found him there. His sailboat was rocking gently on a flooding tide and he was loading supplies into her – water and food and bottles of brandy, gear and a spare sail. When he turned to the sound of her coming, she saw that he was pale, but that his dark eyes, usually so kind and placid, were glowing with excitement, and he was breathing heavily from his exertions.

Sudden alarm seized Frith. The snow goose was forgotten. ‘Philip! Ye be goin’ away?’

Rhayader paused in his work to greet her, and there was something in his face, a glow and a look, that she had never seen there before.

‘Frith! I am glad you came. Yes, I must go away. A little trip. I will come back.’ His usually kindly voice was hoarse with what was suppressed inside him.

Frith asked: ‘Where must ye go?’

Words came tumbling from Rhayader now. He must go to Dunkirk. A hundred miles across the Channel. A British army was trapped there on the sands, awaiting destruction at the hands of the advancing Germans. The port was in flames, the position hopeless. He had heard it in the village when he had gone for supplies. Men were putting out from Chelmbury in answer to the government’s call, every tug and fishing boat or power launch that could propel itself was heading across the Channel to haul the men off the beaches to the transports and destroyers that could not reach the shallows, to rescue as many as possible from the Germans’ fire.

Frith listened and felt her heart dying within her. He was saying that he would sail the Channel in his little boat. It could take six men at a time; in a pinch, seven. He could make many trips from the beaches to the transports.

The girl was young, primitive, inarticulate. She did not understand war, or what had happened in France, or the meaning of the trapped army, but the blood within her told her that here was danger.

‘Philip! Must ’ee go? You’ll not come back. Why must it be ’ee?’

The fever seemed to have gone from Rhayader’s soul with the first rush of words, and he explained it to her in terms that she could understand.

He said: ‘Men are huddled on the beaches like hunted birds, Frith, like the wounded and hunted birds we used to find and bring to sanctuary. Over them fly the steel peregrines, hawks, and gyrfalcons, and they have no shelter from these iron birds of prey. They are lost and storm-driven and harried, like the Princesse Perdue you found and brought to me out of the marshes many years ago, and we healed her. They need help, my dear, as our wild creatures have needed help, and that is why I must go. It is something that I can do. Yes, I can. For once – for once I can be a man and play my part.’

Frith stared at Rhayader. He had changed so. For the first time she saw that he was no longer ugly or mis-shapen or grotesque, but very beautiful. Things were turmoiling in her own soul, crying to be said, and she did not know how to say them.

‘I’ll come with ’ee! Philip.’

Rhayader shook his head. ‘Your place in the boat would cause a soldier to be left behind, and another, and another. I must go alone.’

He donned rubber coat and boots and took to his boat. He waved and called back: ‘Good-bye! Will you look after the birds until I return, Frith?’

Frith’s hand came up, but only half, to wave too. ‘God speed you,’ she said, but gave it the Saxon turn. ‘I will take care of t’ birds. God-speed, Philip.’

It was night now, bright with moon fragment and stars and northern glow. Frith stood on the sea wall and watched the sail gliding down the swollen estuary. Suddenly from the darkness behind her there came a rush of wings, and something swept past her into the air. In the night light she saw the flash of white wings, black-tipped, and the thrust-forward head of the snow goose.

It rose and cruised over the lighthouse once and then headed down the winding creek where Rhayader’s sail was slanting in the gaining breeze, and flew above him in slow, wide circles.

White sail and white bird were visible for a long time.

‘Watch o’er him. Watch o’er him,’ Frith whispered. When they were both out of sight at last, she turned and walked slowly, with bent head, back to the empty lighthouse.