Through The Storm

  THROUGH THE STORM

  BY

  MARGOT BISH

  Copyright 2015 Margot Bish. All rights reserved.

  I and Smashwords ask that no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

  THROUGH THE STORM

  Authors Note

  At the time of writing, the people in this story followed the correct procedures as outlined by the Royal Yachting Association. As I teach sailing on inland waters, I do not know the guidelines of the canoeing association or the RNLI and hope they will forgive me if I have not followed their guidelines in the story. These procedures are constantly reviewed and amended, and may well have changed by the time you read this book as the various associations learn from the experiences of their instructors and have the safety of everyone in mind when procedures are written. Obviously, to make the story exciting, there had to be some mistakes made so that an element of danger could creep in. Otherwise it would be no fun.

  I hope you enjoy the book and also hope it will encourage you to go out and have some adventures. The weather is rarely as challenging as the people in this story experienced, but always needs to be treated with respect.

  CHAPTER 1

  Jack gave Ross a wide grin and a friendly slap on the back.

  “What are you doing this summer hols then?” Jack asked, and Ross knew Jack had something good planned. After all it was only the 1st June – six weeks of school to go……….. It might be something even better than good, Ross thought.

  “Not much”, Ross shrugged. He could see Jack was at the point of bursting with his news, but Ross also knew Jack did not want to just tell him. He was hoping to be asked first, just so that he could act offhand and cool about it, act like it was nothing much. Just to blow his mind, Ross turned and looked out of the school bus window. He could see Jack’s reflection in the glass and watched Jack’s face, waiting for the frustration to show. Huffing on the glass, he drew a stick man. The stick man was frowning, but Ross was grinning to himself and he carefully didn’t turn until Jack’s face creased into a matching frown. Then Ross swung round with an I gotcha grin.

  “Go on then. Spill it.”

  “Sometimes, I just don’t want to be your friend anymore,” Jack muttered sheepishly, realising he had fallen for the tease. Then he thought of the holiday to come and his face lit up. “I’m going to an Outward Bound Centre in Wales” he crowed.

  Even this fell flat as a punctured football. Ross was supposed to look impressed, maybe even jealous. Ross didn’t. Ross looked as blank as a bowl of custard.

  “What’s that then? Some kind of prison? Tie you up on the way out, do they?” he joked. It was Jack’s turn for the custard look. Ross sighed. “It’s a pun. Get it?” he added.

  “No, stupid,” Jack exclaimed. “It’s where you get to do all kinds of wild things – sailing, rock climbing, canoeing, abseiling, parachuting, scuba diving…..” Jack paused for breath and to rerun the list in his head. What else could he boast about?

  “You sure about the parachuting?” Ross asked sceptically.

  “Er, now you mention it, no. But all the other stuff. It’ll be magic, Ross. Nick’s gonna be there too. He’s helping take people canoeing”.

  Nick was Jack’s brother, much older and if you went places with him life always got dramatic. He was a real fizzing livewire. You never knew if you were going to get lost in a maze of caves, get stuck up a mountain or get soaked crossing a river but things always happened.

  “Sounds good”, Ross said and sighed. He knew what his mum and dad had planned. The normal boring old Isle of Wight beach holiday. OK, yes, when he was six and seven, the beach was just great, digging sandcastles and splashing in the sea, but by age ten it was getting a bit repetitive. He scowled as he compared the two alternatives. Wales came tops all round, a holiday with his friends, and all those new things to try out. There was worse to come.

  “Dave and Chris are coming too,” Jack added. “Can’t you come as well ? ”

  The bus jolted to a halt at the school gates and they pushed their way off, five minutes to get to class. No time to discuss things now.

  It was all the three adventurers could talk about all day. They wriggled and bounced like helium balloons as they planned the challenges ahead. Ross stood quietly amongst the chatter and tried not to look as left out as he felt. Like a slug at a meeting of the snail shell admiration society, he thought. By the time he hopped off the bus in the evening, he knew everything about Outward Bound Centres. No parents, hardly any real grown ups, apart from the instructors for each activity, and most of them would only just have left school, or were even still at College or University so they didn’t really count as grown ups. Everyone would sleep in a dormitory. Ross had wrinkled his nose at that. It sounded like boarding school, but then he thought, it was perfect for midnight feasts and such, so who cared? He ached to be going too. Every evening there would be a film to watch, and probably it would be something exciting or maybe scary, something to talk about for weeks after. It’d be the perfect holiday. Ross had no other ambition as important as going on that holiday. He knew there’d be trouble though. His parents couldn’t seem to grasp the fact that he was growing up. Here he was, ten and a half years old, able to look after himself (apart from cooking and shopping and washing his clothes and other minor things like that) and still protected like a toddler. The pillars of opposition were likely to be unbudgeable, but he was going to push with all his might, just the same.

  “Hi Mum”, he called, opening the back door.

  “Hello Ross,” his mother’s disembodied voice called back.

  Ross found her on the patio, trying to absorb the sun’s rays as it peeped around the drifting clouds.

  “Good day?” she asked, peering under her sunglasses at him. This was Ross’s chance.

  “Not bad,” Ross thought he’d better lead up to the main matter with something to please her. “I got top marks in Maths. Trouble is, the day was a bit spoiled ‘cos I found out Jack, Dave AND Chris are all going on holiday together to an Outward Bound Centre in Wales this summer. I felt really left out. They want me to go too”, he paused to gauge the effect of what he was saying. A look of vague sympathy, but no response, so he continued. “I’d really like to go too. I mean, there’s grown ups to look after us, and we get to learn some really amazing things. I mean they might be useful when I’m grown up. Jack and Chris and David, they couldn’t hardly talk…..” his mother gave him a look…… “I mean they hardly talked about anything else all day. I’ll be left out of every single conversation between now and Christmas if I don’t go. Could I go too, Mum, please?”

  “PLEASE MUM”

  “Hmmm”, Mum said. “You’re not really old enough to go away without us yet, and I think some of the really amazing things are a bit too much for a ten year old”.

  She looked at Ross’s despondent face, and tried to cheer him up a bit.

  “We thought maybe we could do some cycling and sailing as a family this year if you’d like. Your dad is quite keen that we have a go. Then, maybe in a couple of years time you can show off what you know at this Centre”.

  She escaped to the kitchen to make tea. Experience had taught Ross that persistence while Mum was busy in the kitchen was dangerous and likely to lead to a firm NO. He lay in wait for his dad.

  As the car pulled into the drive, he hurried outside to open the garage doors for him and loitered while his dad gathered up briefcase, coat and laptop and locked the car.

  “Hello kiddo”, he greeted Ross absently.

  “Hi Dad”, Ross replied. “Er, Dad? I’ve got a favour to ask, but it’ll be good for you and Mum, too”

 
; “Oh yes?” Dad said, gradually closing down his work brain circuits and coming back to planet earth.

  “I thought you and Mum might like a holiday doing what you and Mum like doing best, without having to worry about me, and Jack says the perfect answer is to send me away to an Outward Bound Centre where I could have a good time too and be looked after. It’s what Jack’s parents are doing, and Chris and Dave’s mums and dads think it’s a good idea, too….”

  “And what does your mother say?” Dad broke into Ross’s sales pitch. Ross sighed. It was never any good bluffing. His mum and dad communicated too well.

  “She says I’m not old enough, but I am Dad. I mean, I’m older than David and he’s being allowed to go”.

  “Yes, but that is up to David’s parents. We’re talking about us and you. Remember last year? We left you alone for just two hours in a cinema and you blew the whole week’s pocket money on popcorn and spent the whole night being sick from stuffing.”

  “Yes but I’m a whole year older now, Dad”, Ross pleaded, “and they probably don’t sell popcorn, and anyway, I don’t even like it anymore…”

  It was no good. His dad disappeared into the bathroom for his after work shower and, after rushing tea, they went out for the evening, leaving Ross with a babysitter.

  “Parents!” he muttered as they waved goodbye from the car.

  CHAPTER 2

  The months passed and, despite Ross’s intermittent pleas and arguments, he was still set for a holiday on the Isle of Wight, while his mates got more and more excited about independent living in Wales. They tried to find other things to talk about when Ross was with them but somehow the conversation always swung round to Wales. They tried not to get too excited when Ross was there, but there was so much to look forward to that they often forgot he wasn’t coming too, and then there’d be an uncomfortable silence when they suddenly remembered again. Ross tried hard not to show how much it hurt that he wasn’t going but he could feel the stiffness of his smile and the deadness in his eyes and started wondering if perhaps he should find some new friends.

  There was only a week to go when a double miracle occurred. They weren’t miracles from Chris’s point of view. Chris started to feel ill on Sunday night. Nothing very bad, just a bit of a sore throat and a slightly stiff jaw.

  “Too much nattering about this holiday”, his mum said, and put the flushed face down to excitement. In the morning, though, she had second thoughts, and despite his protests that it was nothing, she kept him off school and called the doctor.

  When Chris didn’t turn up for school, Ross collared Carl, Chris’s younger brother at break time.

  “Hey Carl. Where’s Chris?”

  Carl booted his football to someone else and stopped playing long enough to explain.

  “Mum’s called the doctor ‘cos he’s got jaw ache”. He laughed. “First schoolday ever I’ve seen Chris insisting he was well enough to go to school and Mum insisting he wasn’t. It’s always been the other way round. Mum thinks it might be mumps.”

  Dave and Jack exchanged looks of horror.

  “But what about the O.C?” Dave said.

  “Dunno”, Carl replied. “Maybe Mum’ll be wrong. Don’t s’pose he’ll be allowed to go with mumps “.

  But Chris’s Mum was right. “Mum’s furious,” Carl reported on Tuesday. “Chris can’t go and they won’t return the money ‘cos they can’t fill the place at such short notice. They said something about she should have taken out insurance against illness. Mum gave them a right earful but it didn’t change anything”.

  Jack and Dave groaned. “It won’t be the same with only two of us. We had everything planned”.

  Ross sighed. If only he could take Chris’s place, but he knew his parents were still adamant.

  The next miracle came when Ross’s dad arrived home from work. He looked even more absent minded than normal as he hung his briefcase on the coat pegs and put his coat on the hall floor.

  “Got to talk to your mother. Go and watch TV or something, will you Ross”. He invaded the kitchen. Ross could hear his dad rumbling out the problem in his deep down voice.

  “Oh Simon!” Mum groaned

  There was more deep down rumbling.

  “But we can’t take Ross there”. Ross was thankful for his mum’s clear and carrying voice. His dad was no good at all when it came to listening in to secret conversations, but at least he only had to guess half the conversation. There was a bit more rumbling.

  “Well, bang goes the Isle of Wight”, said Mum, “You’ve no way out. Paris! Even with you having all those seminars, I would have loved to have come, but I can’t ask his gran at this late stage. It wouldn’t be fair on Ross or my mum.”

  A slow, hopeful smile spread across Ross’s face as the penny dropped. His dad had to go to a conference somewhere his mother had always wanted to go and his mum could have shared the hotel room, but not Ross as well. Ross dived for the phone. He was lucky. Carl answered on the fourth ring, and his mum and dad were still in deep discussion.

  “Carl,” Ross whispered, “I can’t promise to solve all problems but it’s a maybe. Can you get LOOKING COOL

  your mum to ring my mum and ask if I can have Chris’s holiday due to the place having been paid for. It’s important she does it now, straight away. I haven’t time to explain, but something’s come up that might swing it. Bye”. Hurriedly, Ross rang off and zipped into the front room to put on the TV and sprawl in the comfiest armchair trying to look as relaxed as a jelly fish in Barbados and not let the exaltation show. Look natural, he commanded himself, even though he felt like bouncing on the furniture and swinging from the light fittings. He tried to concentrate on the TV. What was he watching? Oh some cooking programme. He scrambled for the remote. That would look suspicious. Yes, car racing, that looked better. Even on this, he found concentration impossible. His whole mind was centred on the non-ringing phone.

  “Come on phone. Ring.” He urged it.

  The kitchen confab came to an end and his parents came doubtfully into the room to see Ross. Frown lines deep enough to lose the Titanic creased their foreheads and their mouths turned down looking just like the entrance to a railway tunnel. They exchanged glances, each inviting the other to do the talking. The phone remained silent. They sat down opposite Ross and gave him uncertain looks.

  “Bad news,” Ross’s dad announced. “I’m afraid the holiday is off”.

  The phone did nothing.

  “Your dad’s boss has demanded his presence at a conference in Paris for all of the next week”, his Mum explained.

  Ross tried to look disappointed as he looked from one parent to the other. It was a struggle. He tried to think of something to say. The phone rang. Even though he’d expected it to, Ross jumped. He struggled to look sad but could feel the hope rising inside him and lifting the corners of his mouth. He pushed them down firmly and looked from one parent to the other with his best attempt at a serious look.

  “I’ll get it”, his dad said. There was more suspense as his dad rumbled in the hall (why couldn’t they have a phone in the living room, Ross wondered, like normal people). His mum tried to explain about the conference, and Ross tried to listen to her and make sense of the rumbles in the hall. Then his dad came in smiling.

  “Problem is solved”, he said. “I’ve found someone to look after Ross, if he’s willing, which leaves you, my love, free to come to gay Paree, with me.”

  Ross gulped. Could it have been the wrong phone call? “Grandma?” he asked.

  “No, that Outward Bound place you mentioned. It’s an amazing coincidence, just as we are trying to work out how to get your mum to Paris without abandoning you. That was Mrs Rice. She rang to ask if you would like to take Chris’s place as apparently he has mumps and can’t go. The Outward Bound Centre said they could not fill the place at such short notice but she could sell the place on if she wanted.” He paused and a look of doubt flitted, like a grey cloud on a blustery day, across his face. “I
suppose you are still keen. I said yes, but really I should have asked you first”.

  “Yes PLEASE”, Ross confirmed. He glanced at his mother, and watched another set of clouds dashing across her features. Worry, uncertainty, desire, hope, “He’s too young, Simon,” she said hesitantly, not wanting him to agree but afraid to change her standpoint from the position she’d held for the last three months.

  “Mrs Rice assures me the instructors and centre managers are all highly qualified and police checked”, came the reassuring reply. “She’s dropping a brochure in tomorrow, and if you like we could have a look online right now.”

  Ross thought it best not to mention Nick. Being qualified as Jack’s older brother wasn’t a good thing in some adult’s eyes. His mother still looked doubtful, but the lure of Paris loaded the seesaw of uncertainty and she nodded. “We’ll check the website and if there’s no doubts following that, I’ll agree.”

  Ross ran to her and gave her a hug. “Thanks, Mum”, he said. He turned to his dad. “Thanks Dad”.

  “No worries”, Dad replied.

  Ross wanted to dance about the room, shaking a triumphant fist and shouting “YES, YES YES” but he remembered he was trying to convince his parents he was old enough to act responsibly so he suggested they go to look at the website instead and then leaped exuberantly up the stairs to the computer room. The website was professional and aimed at showing a safe and secure environment as well as showing lots of grinning children having a great time. You couldn’t say it killed any last remaining doubts but they were certainly tucked away, out of sight on a high shelf, and Ross was getting the holiday of his dreams.

  CHAPTER 3

  The family were packed and ready to go. Mr and Mrs Turner’s suitcases sat respectably in the hall. Ross’s bulging rucksack bounced on his back. On receipt of the brochure, there had been a mad late night shopping spree, dashing from shop to shop to find hiking boots, sleeping bag and waterproofs for sailing and walking in. Now, Mrs Turner was fussing about an extra blanket and a first aid kit and wondering about where to put a pack lunch and thermos flask. Ross, looking over his mother’s shoulder, gave his Dad an exasperated silent plea to step in and end the fussing. His Dad gave him an unhelpful wink and almost laughed as Ross wriggled under his mother’s fidgets. He was worrying, now, if there would be the further embarrassment of being kissed goodbye at the mini bus, in front of everyone. That would be just so uncool.