Hills End by Ivan Southall

Paul?’
    â€˜Of course I must.’
    His tone was sharper than he meant it to be, but he was frightened, too. He wasn’t a man. He was only a boy thirteen years old.
    â€˜Switch it off,’ said Adrian.
    Suddenly the cave was very, very dark. One by one, even the older ones, they reached out their hands and held on tightly to the next person, and after a while Adrian could feel the water at his feet. He pulled his legs up and hoped desperately for the rain to stop, but he could hear it still, roaring and blustering in the distance.
    Perhaps the water had never washed the bones away because there never had been a storm like this before. Perhaps this was the worst storm for a hundred thousand years. Perhaps this was the storm that would wash the bones away.
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    Miss Elaine Godwin waded on across the rock pan, calling for Christopher, surely knowing that her voice was lost in the storm, but still calling. Perhaps she called to convince herself that the boy was still capable of answering. Perhaps she called because she needed the company of her own voice. Perhaps she needed to direct all her thoughts upon the boy because it was not possible any longer to blind herself to the rising waters. She knew the peril was there, but had to force herself to ignore it. In places the flow of water had become a dangerous current. In places it roared and swirled and branches and bushes swept from the cliffs bounced and spun across the rocks, propelled sometimes by water and sometimes by wind; but she waded on, pulling herself hand over hand, searching, calling, groaning for breath in the gale that sought only to punch the life out of her, sometimes driven into the rocks or gusted into pools that were waist-deep and more, sometimes knocked from her feet.
    Her calls became weaker and weaker. Her ability to fight the wind and water and rocks became less and less. She had drawn upon reserves of strength that had been unused in a lifetime. She had wrung her thin body dry. There was nothing left except her will, but she had not found Christopher. Perhaps it would have been better if she had died at the foot of the bluff. Then she would have been spared this last bitterness, which had given her extra life for nothing.
    At last she laid herself down to die, because she couldn’t help Christopher or herself any more. She still cried his name in a faint, faint, call, but she couldn’t hear herself or anything else. She was finished. That she laid herself down only three yards from the boy she didn’t know.
    He knew, but she didn’t.
    Simple Butch, the boy who was almost as big as a man, wrapped his fat young arm round her and began to drag her towards the forest fringe.
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    Paul stirred. He was stiff and chilled and aching. ‘The rain’s stopped,’ he said.
    â€˜Do you think so?’
    â€˜Well, I can’t hear it, can you?’
    â€˜I don’t know. I’m not sure. What would you say, Frances?’
    â€˜Perhaps it’s only the wind that’s dropped.’
    â€˜What’s the time, Adrian?’
    â€˜Ten past five.’
    â€˜Golly! Is that all? It feels like the middle of the night.’
    Paul flashed the light on the water beneath them. It was about six inches from the lip of the ledge. The cave was like a lake. Must have been under water to a depth of eighteen inches.
    â€˜It’s getting higher.’
    â€˜Yeah.’
    â€˜Are we going to drown?’
    â€˜Don’t be silly, Gussie.’
    â€˜Better switch that light off.’
    â€˜Wait a tick. What’s wrong with Harvey?’
    â€˜Nothing. Sound asleep.’
    â€˜Poor little kid.’
    â€˜Golly! What a day for a picnic!’
    â€˜Wonder how they went?’
    â€˜Perhaps it rained there, too.’
    â€˜Could have, I suppose.’
    â€˜Do switch that light off, Paul. We might need it during the night.’
    â€˜We’re not going to be here all night, are we?’
    â€˜Grow