Running Aground by Patsy Collins

Retirement had taken them in a different direction – but it wasn’t where they had planned to go . . .

AS usual for a Sunday, or any other day for that matter, Lynn woke up alone. Andrew would be downstairs making tea. He’d bring her a cup, tell her what the weather was like and then say he was off birdwatching.

“Would you like to come?” he always asked for form’s sake.

“Not today, I have things to do,” she always replied.

Then, when he was gone, she’d try to make the housework fill the morning.

They had a roast on Sundays but, apart from the meal choice, every day was much the same since they’d retired.

As expected, she heard Andrew climb the stairs. Unusually, though, he crept into the room and put the tea on her bedside table without a word.

“It’s OK, I’m awake,” she told him.

“Oh, good. I didn’t want to disturb you, but it didn’t seem right going without saying anything.” “Going?”

“I’ve seen on the internet that a ship’s run aground at Southampton Water.

“Apparently they’re going to try moving it at high tide. I thought I’d go and take a look.”

“Oh, those poor people.” How terrible to be setting off on a cruise or catching the ferry over to the Isle of Wight, and for that to happen. It certainly put her boredom into perspective.

“I think the crew are all safe,” Andrew said. “And the passengers?” “There aren’t any. It’s one of those car carrier things.”

“Do they know what happened?”

“Not yet, but the local news will have updates, I’m sure. It’ll be on the radio too, so I’ll listen in.”

“Switch it on for me, will you?” The radio alarm they no longer needed was on his side of the bed.

It wasn’t until he’d done as she requested that Lynn noticed the time; quite a bit earlier than Andrew usually went out.

She didn’t know he looked at the internet when he got up, either, and wouldn’t have guessed he’d be interested enough in a stricken ship to miss out on birdwatching. It seemed she hardly knew him at all.

“Will you be back for lunch?”

“Yes. I doubt anything much will happen for a while; I just thought I’d take a look. It’s a good birding spot. Or . . .” “What?”

“We could go, if you like?” “Oh, I . . .”

“It’ll only take a couple of hours at the most and this kind of thing doesn’t happen very often.” “That’s true.”

It sounded as though he hoped she’d come, and there was more than two hours before she’d need to put the meat in the oven.

It would be something to talk about when she spoke to the children, too.

They always asked what she’d been doing and the answer was usually nothing.

“Yes, all right,” Lynn said, surprising herself.

“It’ll be cold,” Andrew warned her. “Put on lots of layers.”

He fetched her coat, hat and gloves as she dressed and gulped down the tea.

On the drive round they kept the radio on low so they could catch any news updates and Andrew told her what he’d found out from the internet about the ship, its cargo and the intended destination.

“The sea between here and the Isle of Wight is very shallow in places.

“To get out safely, ships have to follow special channels that are kept dredged.

“For some reason this ship went slightly off course and is now stuck on a sandbank.”

The local news came on the radio and Lynn turned up the volume. Very little information was given; less even than Andrew had already told her.

The reason for the grounding was, apparently, “unclear“.

A pop song came on and Lynn adjusted the volume.

“Could it have just taken a wrong turning?”

“I doubt it was quite as simple as that. If the captain isn’t familiar with the port then he has to have a pilot on board. They know the route well and advise.”

“So what could have happened? Not pirates or terrorists, surely?” She’d wanted some excitement in her life, but not that kind.

“Unlikely,” Andrew reassured her. “If there’d been the slightest hint of that it would’ve been all over the internet.

“Maybe the recent stormy weather moved the sandbank, or the ship’s steering failed.”

Lynn was surprised he was so knowledgeable, but then he spent a lot of time on the coast looking at birds and talking to those who shared his hobby, and others who’d come to photograph ships.

She supposed he’d picked up information.

They joined a slowmoving queue for the last part of the journey and were lucky to find a parking space.

“It’s never this busy, not even in the summer holidays. The ship must be drawing a bit of a crowd.”

Andrew was right. There were people everywhere, carrying cameras and binoculars and all heading in the same direction.

Lynn and Andrew joined the group on the beach.

Even though she’d come to see a stranded ship, Lynn got quite a shock.

It was right over on its side, the edge of the deck practically in the water.

How frightening it must have been when it happened.

And how fortunate that whatever had gone wrong occurred so close to land and help was quickly available.

Now, though, the drama was over. The crew were safe. The ship, stuck fast, was going nowhere.

She knew the feeling. The crowd who’d gathered were saying it was the pilot’s fault, or the captain’s. There was talk of people being fired or sued.

Lynn felt pleased that her first thought, when Andrew had told her of the grounding, had been for the safety of those on board and not who was to blame.

Andrew, too, had thought it might be an accident rather than jumping to the conclusion of negligence.

“Why blame anyone? Couldn’t it have just been an accident?” Lynn spoke almost in defiance of those around them.

“It could have been,” someone said. ”Probably was, but ultimately it’s always the captain’s fault. At least technically.”

Was the same true of her, Lynn wondered? Yes, she was captain of her own ship, wasn’t she?

Maybe she was stuck in a rut because she hadn’t steered correctly . . .

Really, she hadn’t been steering at all for some time, just drifting.

She never looked ahead, or even to the side. There had never been time.

Raising the children, housework and demanding jobs left her and Andrew little time for themselves or each other.

Now they’d retired they were where she’d thought they wanted to be.

They had time to lie in bed, time to sit and watch the birds, to do whatever they wanted.

But they weren’t really anywhere; certainly not on any chart she might have plotted.

It wasn’t deliberate. She’d not actually steered them into trouble. Neither had Andrew.

An accident, then – the steering, rather than being mishandled, had simply broken. No-one’s fault . . .

Except that it hadn’t been maintained, had it? Their marriage? Not recently.

Andrew seemed to have given up and she’d never really made an effort.

There was a brief flurry of excitement when a camera crew turned up to film the stricken ship and the watching crowd.

After that, people began to drift away.

It seemed nothing much would happen until high tide, over an hour away.

“What will happen then, do you know?” Lynn asked.

“Maybe they can pull it off the sandbank with tugs.

“That might cause more damage, though, especially to the cargo that must have moved.

“Without the water holding it afloat, the tugs might not shift it, and it’ll have to be salvaged there.” “Salvaged?”

“A team would make it safe, pump out the fuel and that sort of thing. They’d take off what cargo they could, and then cut the ship into pieces.”

That sounded drastic. “Is there no other way?” she asked.

“Before we came out I read the hope was she’d float free with the rising tide.

“It’s possible, I suppose, but I can’t really see it happening.”

Looking at the exposed keel of the ship and seeing the high tide mark on the beach, Lynn had to agree with him.

They weren’t as stricken as this ship, though. They didn’t need tugs, or for their marriage to be cut to pieces.

They just needed a little water under them to get them moving.

“Shall I take you home, then?” Andrew asked. “Do you have things to do?”

“No, not today. What would you have done now, if I hadn’t come with you?” Lynn asked.

“Gone and looked at the birds for a while, then come back to see if anything was happening with the ship.”

“We could do that together, if you like.”

“I would like that.” He gave her the smile she’d almost forgotten.

“Of course, if I’m not there to cook it there won’t be a roast, but it wouldn’t hurt to have something else for a change.”

Andrew led her to a quieter spot and pointed out the elegant white egrets, the smartly patterned oystercatchers and the aptly named yellowlegs.

Lynn enjoyed borrowing his binoculars and searching them out.

It wasn’t something she’d want to do all day every day, but it made a nice change from Sudoku and daytime TV.

More importantly, she saw how interested Andrew really was. It wasn’t just an excuse to get away from her for a few hours.

Actually, he’d always been interested.

He taught the children to identify the various visitors to the bird table and he still put out seed each morning.

And before that, when they were dating and first married, they’d gone together on bird-spotting walks and he’d talked about how nice it would be to have the money to go farther afield; maybe spend weekends in Wales or the Lake District.

There had been things Lynn had wanted to see, too, places she’d have liked to visit.

“Andrew, you don’t have to go without your roast dinner,” she said.

“You want to go home?” “Actually, I thought we could go to a pub for lunch, if the ship isn’t moving by then. Then we could come back here afterwards, make a day of it.”

“Good idea.” He grinned. “And maybe another time we could go somewhere new.

“There’s that swan place you once said you’d like to go to, and I’d love to visit where they filmed ‘Downton Abbey’.

“We could go down to Kent where some of ‘Call The Midwife’ was made. They probably have different birds there. . .” Andrew chuckled. “Bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover?”

She knew he was teasing her; he’d explained once that the bluebirds were an American species that never visited British shores.

“That sounds like a wild goose chase to me,” she said.

“Wild geese are considerably easier to find. I’ll show you some this afternoon. Hundreds of them.” He looked happy, really happy.

“That’s an impressive salvage team!”

“Sorry, love. I’m not with you.”

“I’ll explain it when we have time, but for now let’s see how that ship’s doing, then find somewhere for lunch, look for the geese, and after tea maybe we can start making plans for next week.”

“Come on then.” He reached out and took her gloved hand in his.

Unlike the ship, they’d taken a turn at the last minute and avoided running aground. Now they could plot a course and sail out of the shallows.

Who knew where they’d end up? ■