helicopters seemed fully occupied upstream, above the heart of the village itself, and not down here near the harbor.
It was the copilot of one of the second wave of rescue helicopters, a bird from RAF St. Mawgan, who noticed the pillar of smoke in the valley. The chopper was on its way to respond to a report of stranded motorists in a shallow valley near Otterham, where the deluge at times had been even heavier than at Lesnewth, when Tim Llewellyn, a Welshman who, like the crewmen in Rescue 193, had also seen service in the Gulf War, tapped his pilot's shoulder and pointed down. A hundred feet below, beside the smoky fire, a man was pointing frantically west, toward the center of the flooded Valency valley. They circled once but, seeing nothing obvious, continued to Otterham. It was fifteen minutes later, as the helicopter returned to Boscastle after having lifted and dropped the motorists to safety, that the copilot saw the smoke again and, almost immediately thereafter, a flash of orange flame. Roger had thrown the rest of his gasoline onto the smoldering pile.
This time, the helicopter dropped and pivoted around the signal fire. Again, the fellow below was waving them toward the center of the valley.
Llewellyn peered into the canopy of trees as the pilot banked sharply and brought the aircraft low into the valley and hovered. And then, amid the mass of green and brown that was the valley floor, a flash of red appeared. Bizarrely, a man in a tree was waving an opened red and white umbrella. Llewellyn radioed his winchman in the back to prepare to descend again.
As they held position above the raging river, the downdraft from the blades tore the leaves from the old oak and its neighbors and whipped them into a green storm. In moments, the winchman was down, and, to Llewellyn's surprise, a child appeared from the foliage beside the man with the umbrella.
Robbie Campbell, the winchman, balanced on a limb and cinched the girl—who, to his amazement, was grinning broadly, as if this was the best adventure yet—to his chest, then signaled to be lifted. And up they went, spinning slowly in the backwash, until another crewman pulled them both in through the side door. Then Campbell descended again for the man, and Andrew, too, was carried up to the hovering craft.
In the field beside the smoky bonfire, Roger Trelissick waved with both arms like a madman. Then he sat down in the wet grass and wept.
21:00 hours: First fire brigade relief crews mobilized from St. Ives, St. Austell, Newquay, Camborne, and Penzance. Helicopters return to bases. Over 150 people have been air-lifted to safety by the emergency services. Cliff rescue and lifeboat teams continue to search for casualties.
Boscastle: The Flood (North Cornwall District Council, 2006)
seventeen
Lee clung to Andrew's soggy shirt like a limpet to a rock once the helicopter dropped them at the football pitch above town, like everyone else who'd been airlifted. Volunteers guided them down to the rectory, where Janet Stevenson, the vicar, enveloped them in care, served hot tea, and found them dry clothes. Andrew realized, with a suddenness that seemed like someone had thrown a switch, that he was utterly spent. He slouched in an easy chair, and Lee, dry now, curled into his chest. He held her there for all he was worth, as if she were life itself.
But his love for Lee—who'd turned out to be a little girl after all—and his joy at having found her, could not ease the dread he felt about Nicola. No one had seen her. No one knew where she was. And the people gathered at the rectory were so overcome by their own traumas they had little emotional energy left to give to someone still missing. Elizabeth, from the Visitor Centre, was the exception. Having herded her flock to safety, she moved through the little clutches of refugees asking after everyone's health, offering encouragement, reminding them how lucky they were.
“Nicola's missing” was all Andrew could say to her, and he whispered this, so Lee, who was dozing, wouldn't hear. Elizabeth looked stricken at first, and then smiled.
“If anyone is tough enough to get through this, it's Nicola.”
But Nicola, the woman he knew now with absolute clarity to be the love of his life, the matching half of his splintered heart, had not been seen or heard from for hours. And he knew she was nowhere near as tough as she pretended to be.
Colin appeared