The sea made its next attack and Richard knew that it was time. He didn’t have the energy to hold Joseph down for much longer. As the water began to climb into the room, Richard pushed down with all his might. He raised his head as the water enveloped Joseph.
The wriggling and writhing from beneath him grew less and less intense.
Then it ceased altogether.
The water began to recede and Joseph re-emerged. He was slumped on the floor. Water trickled from his open mouth, like the tide retreating from a cave.
Richard stooped down to check if he was breathing.
Nothing.
He placed his hand on his back.
Nothing.
Joseph Lovekin was dead.
Richard stood and exhaled.
A torrent of wind blasted in from the sea, whipping the lantern from its hook and smashing it to the floor.
In the ensuing darkness, Richard failed to spot the roof truss above, as its fixtures cracked out of place, sending the beam crashing down onto his back.
Darkness closed around him.
Silence.
Chapter Twelve
30th March 1827, The America Ground, outside Hastings, Sussex
Stillness and calmness, which had been brutally driven from the America Ground the previous day, had begun to return. The duplicitous sea, that was simultaneously friend and foe to the people of Sussex, remained as perfectly still as a well scolded dog. The timid waves were almost unwilling to break on the shore and witness the destruction that they had wrought. Even the wind had retreated timorously back over the channel, leaving a strange warm emptiness hanging in the air. The usually raucous herring gulls bobbed silently on the water, as if they too were aware of the prevailing mood.
Christopher Elphick placed his hand in the small of Harriet’s back. They were standing in silence at the edge of Cuckoo Hill beside a few insignificant lumps of wood—all that now remained from the hulk of the Polymina.
‘It be like nothing ever happened,’ Harriet stammered, watching three fishing boats far out to sea.
‘If you were a-seeing it last night, Hattie…’ Christopher murmured.
Having arrived here via the back alleyways, Harriet twisted to face the America Ground shoreline for the first time since the storm. With a gasp, she drew her hand over her mouth, unable to comprehend what she was seeing. The entire beach was littered with debris—fragments of wood, stone and glass that gave no hint as to their previous purpose—strewn amongst personal effects—clothes, furniture, food, kitchen apparel and toys—of those whose cottages that had once stood where there now only existed a desolate void. Several women, some of whom Harriet thought that she recognised, were rummaging in the wreckage in search of their belongings. Harriet’s gaze fell on the remains of the stone cottage where Christopher had taken lodgings after his mother’s death and the place that her father’s body had been found. A group of men were milling about outside the house. Christopher had told her that another body—that of a man—had been found near to her father’s, but that they had not yet been able to retrieve it, as part of the building had collapsed around it.
‘Take me down there,’ she whispered.
‘Do you be sure, Hattie?’ he asked.
She nodded and Christopher took her hand and began the descent to the beach.
They arrived at the cottage and Harriet felt her legs weaken beneath her. She squeezed Christopher’s hand as she took in the full horror before her. The building was wrecked and she was sure that a pounding from a hundred cannon balls would have caused less destruction. The storm had peeled back the roof and torn down the entire front of the house; all that now remained was a crumbling stone shell of three walls.
‘What did he be doing in there?’ Harriet asked.
‘Helping folk. We were a-thinking that Mrs Woods were trapped. Turns out that she were taking shelter over at her friend’s house.’
Harriet began to sob and he placed his arm on her shoulder.
‘Do there be anything left of your belongings, Christopher?’
He looked up at where his small bedroom had once been and shook his head. ‘Nothing.’
Harriet dried her tears and took his hand. ‘Let us be checking, Christopher; something might have survived.’
Christopher followed Harriet towards the cottage, choosing their path carefully among the rubbish. ‘I’d not much belongings anyway, Hattie,’ he said matter-of-factly.
‘It still be worth looking,’ she answered, beginning to pick among the debris, anxious to find something—anything—to offer some consolation, to assuage the terrible losses that they had suffered.
Dispiritedly, Christopher joined in and together they moved from one torn up and sodden item to the next. Among the abundance of building materials, they stepped over smashed ornaments, shattered family portraits, dead animals and saturated books.
Through her watery eyes, Harriet spotted something floating in a small rock pool and she bent down to study it more closely: it was the American flag, torn and ripped. For several seconds she just watched it floating there in the perfect stillness of the water. The extra star that her mother had added had held on defiantly and survived the storm. Harriet went to move on, to continue searching for Christopher’s possessions but the flag drew her back. It was worthless and yet it somehow struck her as an important item to keep—it represented their small community and shouldn’t be left to the mercy of the English Channel. She carefully pulled it from the water and held it out, determined to repair it.
After some minutes had passed, Christopher called out to Harriet, ‘Let’s be stopping now, Hattie; there ain’t nothing left. What little I had in the world be gone and that be that.’
Harriet was reluctant to stop but when she glimpsed the hollow look in his eyes, she realised that the futile search was making the situation far
