by Gwen Moffat
‘I saw Rupert when I went over for the key.’
‘Ah yes. Rupert. He’s married to Doreen. Rachel’s mother.’
His mind was far from what he was saying. Miss Pink’s bland gaze wandered to the fuchsia hedge which, she thought absently, would be the better for pruning. Judging by the sounds of activity the beach was filling up, but the noise of people was unobtrusive. The heat lay over the bay like a blanket, and children’s cries, lacing the whisper of gentle waves, had a somnolent quality, like the calls of sleepy gulls.
The village stood in the corner of the bay, and beyond the hotel the peninsula jutted into the sea, densely wooded on this side but, with the sun full on the glistening foliage, she could just make out a tall chimney and a gleam of roof where Riffli stood a hundred feet above the shore. At this point there were no cliffs; they lay beyond the woods, round the corner, fronting the sea.
She moved restlessly. The tea was hot and the air on the terrace close against the white wall was stifling. He put down his cup.
‘You’ll be wanting to get yourself straight. Come down to my place at six and we’ll walk to Riffli together; no sense in taking a car, and we don’t want to. Roderick never stints the wine on birthdays. Is that all right with you?’
She acquiesced and showed him out, then she changed into thin worn jeans and, with a small rucksack on her back and binoculars slung round her neck, she set out for the cliffs: the picture of an elderly spinster happily intent on a strenuous and innocent day’s bird-watching.
Chapter Three
The cliffs were convex. The mass of the peninsula was an elevated plateau of farmland, pasture and arable, but towards Riffli Head the boundary bank (topped by fencing) stopped short before a heath of gorse and heather. Then came a stretch of turf and the first drop: of grass which fell away for one or even two hundred feet in dangerously steep slopes contoured by pale threads of sheep paths. The sea showed at the bottom of the grass, but the eye of the climber could calculate the vertical distance between grass and sea if only from the scale of the low-flying cormorants which were black specks identified by flight alone.
Then in places, from a sideways slant, the structure of the coast was revealed with the gaunt cliffs plunging to the sea under the long brown slopes. Anyone slipping from a sheep path would have no chance, only time to think—slithering out of control down nothing more than scorched grass—of that moment when the grass would end and the vertical rock begin.
Miss Pink, treading a sheep path warily, stopped at a knob of rock and, looking back, started to take deep breaths to combat a rising panic. But the plummeting cliff she’d traversed above was striated by ledges and white with droppings and when she’d sat down and steadied the binoculars on her knees, she had in view rank upon rank of nesting guillemots. She watched until her eyes were tired and then looked out to sea where the tide-race slipped through the channel between the headland and the twin islands of Saint Pedrog. These were low but rocky, their crests crowned with rank vegetation. Through the glasses she could see the puffins standing outside their burrows.
She gave a sigh of pleasure and leaned back against the slope. She was at the side of a great gully or funnel which had the effect of increasing the angle, but even here a sheep path ran into the back and out again. Looking up, she saw black scree and a blacker hole, and recalled that there were old manganese mines in the district. On the skyline was a stretch of new fencing and a stile.
The sides of the funnel ran down in raised spines to the top of the cliffs, that on the far side continuing in an overhanging buttress but on the facet towards her was a magnificent slab over a hundred feet high. She looked down her own side of the funnel. Could there be a buttress here too? She started to descend, moving carefully from anthill to anthill, from rock to rock.
There was no sharp demarcation between grass and cliff, only the grass was more withered and there were arid patches of earth round rabbit holes; then bedrock appeared in a tilted pavement which steepened, but there were fissures in corners, and big cushions of thrift pink with blooms. Eventually her descent was blocked by a crack which was quite easy for as far as she could see but which appeared to be bottomless. Nothing was visible but the water perhaps a hundred feet below. A kittiwake floated out from underneath. She was above a massive overhang.
She glanced to her right and there at sea level, in the back of the cove and directly under the funnel, gaped an enormous cavern. Against the gloom of its mouth the kittiwakes drifted in the sunshine. Young shag swam in the navy water which was very deep under the jut of the roof. The tide was ebbing with a few hours to go before the turn but although the water was clear, she couldn’t see the bottom. This place would never dry out.
There was a watery snort. In the middle of the cove a grey seal appeared, the lustrous eyes already turned to her as it surfaced, causing her to speculate, and not for the first time, how they could know an object of interest existed before they came up, let alone its exact position.
She found a corner in the shade and ate her lunch. There wasn’t a breath of breeze. Close at hand she could hear a pair of fulmars talking quietly and she felt like an eavesdropper. Even the shade was hot. After lunch, she thought, she would return to the top, to level ground, have a short nap, then potter along the heath . . . keeping an eye open for adders . . . swim. . . if she could find a beach where it was safe . . .
The scream wakened her: a crescendo of astonishment and fright. There was pain in her neck and ribs and her hands scraped the rock frantically. There was an effect of immediate darkness but a more spacious one of brilliance, like viewing a stage from the auditorium. Birds and a human figure floated in the air. Awe over-rode panic and there was a fraction of delighted time when she knew, without surprise, that death was beautiful.
Then the scream broke in the gabble of an angry gull and a raven honked unseen. She sat up, wincing and rubbing the places where the rock had dug in while she slept. The binoculars were round her neck; nothing had rolled off. She blinked across the water. The human figure was real; not floating but climbing down the great slab on the other side of the cove.
She didn’t have to peer to be sure that there was no rope and no companion; the sun picked out every groove in the rock, every move of the climber, and these had the precise and dedicated absorption of one who fancied herself unobserved.
She wore a blue bikini and she was very brown. Her hair was a tawny mass. She was barefooted and sturdy and she moved, not like an animal for that place was impassable for anything without hands, but like a natural climber, which was where Miss Pink had got that momentary impression of floating. The silent descent had the fluid quality of water dropping down the rock.
The slab ran into barnacled shelves exposed by the tide and the climber turned and looked out to sea. The seal came up about a hundred yards from the shore and the girl lowered herself into the water and swam towards it with a lazy breast stroke. The beast trod water with waving flippers, watching her approach, then humped and dived. A low chuckle rose to Miss Pink.
The girl curved back towards the buttress. There was no sign of the raven and the gulls had settled again. Kittiwakes sped in and out of the cavern.
Then from high above, confusingly high when the attention had been directed downwards for some time, there was a kind of commotion, a clattering and thumping approaching fast, curiously familiar: an imprint in the convolutions of the brain which had recorded it decades ago, in the Alps, in a couloir. A rockfall.
Miss Pink gaped at the lip of the cliff above the cavern, glimpsed a figure on the skyline and then, out from the lip leapt a mass, a huge jagged disc turning in the sunlight. It fell with a rush of air past the cavern and crashed into the water like a bomb. The impact reverberated against rock walls, spray rose and splattered, and the birds erupted in a cacophony of panic.
She glanced seaward. The girl was staring up at the cliffs. Then she swam to the foot of the buttress, climbed out and started to make her way up the slab. M
iss Pink didn’t stay to watch. She was cramming her things in her rucksack in a state of furious shock.
As she emerged on the tilted pavement and started to scramble up the grass she saw a man watching her from the scree tip outside the manganese mine. She didn’t stop to think but somewhere in the back of her mind was the sensation of a terrier shaking a rat. When she reached the tip, he’d vanished, nor could she see him when she came out on level ground. She sat down, trembling from the exertion of rushing up the slope, and closed her eyes.
‘You’ve hurt your hand.’
The girl in the blue bikini stood on the turf, her eyes searching the gorse. Miss Pink saw that the back of her own hand was smeared with blood.
‘He was too quick for me,’ she said. ‘He got away.’
‘He wouldn’t do it if he wasn’t such a good runner.’ The tone was dry.
‘You know him?’ Miss Pink asked in astonishment.
‘Our local hoodlum—although that’s not fair. He’s got problems.’
‘We all have.’ She didn’t trouble to restrain her anger. ‘You’re not making excuses for a man who might have killed you?’
‘Me? He didn’t even know I was there. It was you he was after.’
Miss Pink was speechless.
‘Oh, he didn’t mean any harm,’ the girl assured her earnestly. ‘He was just trying to frighten you. It’s his thing,’ she explained as the other stared. ‘He’s always rolling rocks down on visitors. What he likes most is fellows with girls. They get on the sheep paths: chaps leading the girls by the hand—and Jakey drops a rock. The guys can’t go after him because he’s miles above, and because he can run fast, and anyway, by that time the girls are having hysterics. They’re not happy on the paths to start with. Jakey’s little game sends them over the edge. It’ll happen literally one day.’
‘But the man’s a sadist!’
‘Man? Didn’t you see him? He’s a boy. He’s fourteen.’
Miss Pink asked weakly: ‘Who is he?’
‘Jakey Jones. His people work for us. I’m so sorry—’ her manner became conventional, ‘—I should have introduced myself. I’m Roderick’s granddaughter: Rachel Kemp. And you’re Miss Pink, I guess. I’m sorry that this should have happened. I’ll have a talk with Jakey.’
Miss Pink said grimly: ‘I think your grandfather would do more than that. How many birds does he injure with those rocks?’
‘I know.’ The girl looked anguished. ‘That’s why I don’t tell Grandad, you see; he’d have a fit. You can’t do anything with Jakey. If I’d seen any birds killed, I’d have felt like killing him, but there weren’t any floating.’ She thought about this. ‘Yes,’ she went on, ‘I would have thumped him; he’s got it coming. He should be at school right now but, of course, he’s playing truant.’
‘And his parents?’ There was a trace of resignation in Miss Pink’s voice and the girl caught it and nodded. She shrugged muscular shoulders. Wet curls shaded her eyes and left the sharp blade of her nose too prominent.
‘Wait till you see them. There’s no broken home but he’s an only child and spoilt. His mother’s a compulsive cleaner—you know the type: all bleach and Jeyes’ fluid, and wall-to-wall plastic in the parlour to protect the carpet. And Jakey can do nothing wrong. He runs around with Ossie Hughes from the Post Office who’s fat and not very bright but Thirza Jones says Ossie corrupts Jakey! Ossie would jump over the cliff if Jakey told him to.’
‘And the father?’
‘He’s screwy. He used to work for Lord Barmouth. He was the handyman actually but he tells people he was the butler. Got a peculiar veneration for “the Lord”: the Lord would never use a knife for the Stilton, or put milk in tea first—it’s weird, honestly. We think he’s funny but he must be hell to live with particularly for a boy with no sense of humour, or one that’s twisted—like Jakey’s.’
‘What’s the father’s attitude to his son’s hooliganism—such as terrifying visitors by starting rockfalls?’
‘He blocks out the facts, let alone the rumours. Some parents can do that. If someone said they saw Jakey throwing stones at sheep or shop-lifting then his father would swear they were mistaken. He’s never been caught, you see, except by my husband. He gave Jakey a hell of a thrashing when he found him breaking up Grandad’s nest boxes. Two nights later we had all the tyres slashed on our Mini. No proof, of course, but Norman says he’ll get Jakey for it one day.’
Miss Pink exhaled heavily.
‘It was a shame you had to run into him on your first walk,’ Rachel said politely.
‘How did he know I was there—and why are you so sure he didn’t intend the rock for you?’
The girl stared at her intensely. ‘I didn’t know you were there,’ she said obliquely, and stopped. She stood up. ‘Come down to the tip: where he was standing.’
They went down to the scree at the mouth of the old mine. The tip itself was very unstable; there were more large rocks lying about and below, in the funnel, they saw the marks gouged in the soil by the falling boulder.
‘You see,’ Rachel pointed out, ‘the cove is invisible from here but he could have seen you on that buttress. I never saw you till after the rock fell.’ Her tone was accusing. ‘How long had you been there?’
‘I saw you go down the slab.’
‘Did you?’ Again that brooding stare.
‘Does Jakey know that there’s a way down and that you swim there?’
‘No one knows.’
Miss Pink felt a little uncomfortable. ‘If you’d rather I didn’t publicise it, you’d better explain. Your family would disapprove, of course.’
‘Can I trust you?’
‘Well, you climb very competently: within your limit; I see no danger there, but I can quite believe your people would be horrified—except—’ she smiled, ‘—your grandfather. Does your husband climb? I know your father doesn’t.’
‘Norman doesn’t climb.’ For a long moment the girl stared down the funnel. ‘This is my place,’ she said eventually, ‘my very own—and now you know.’ She sounded stricken.
‘I can hold my tongue.’ Miss Pink was tart. ‘But Jakey’s the danger. Suppose he were to drop a rock on a person crossing this slope and you were swimming in the mouth of the cavern right where the other rock fell? It doesn’t bear thinking about.’
‘I couldn’t swim there. When Pritchard, our tenant, put up that new fence, he rolled all the old wire and posts down the funnel and the water is full of barbed wire now. You can see it with a very low tide. Grandad was livid because of the seals.’
‘Do they breed there?’
‘No, fortunately. There’s no beach and no ledges in the cavern. It only goes a short distance and the walls are sheer inside. The birds nest high up in the roof. So there’s nothing interesting inside. I always swim way out beyond the wire. It’s quite safe, I promise you. I only do it when it’s flat calm. Daddy doesn’t know, nor Norman, no one—except you. Please!’
Miss Pink shrugged. ‘I don’t see how it can do any harm providing you do take care. Everyone needs a private place. No, I won’t talk. Who taught you to climb?’
‘People who stayed here. We used to come down for holidays before my parents took over the pub and there were often climbers staying at Riffli in the summer. Grandad likes people. They took me climbing in the mountains but I like it best on my own. No ropes, you see.’
‘And have you explored these old mines?’
‘They’re not worth it. They’re either too easy like this level—’ they turned and regarded the mouth of the tunnel, ‘—it only goes back for forty feet or so and there’s nothing but sheeps’ bones. They come here to die. Otherwise, they’re too difficult, like the lower level.’
‘There’s a level lower down? I didn’t see it.’
‘Just a shaft—but hairy. Come and see; there are some nice plants.’
They descended by well-graded zig-zags outside the funnel: the way the old miners had made. At the foot of the grass
slope and at the top of the cliffs the path came in to the funnel to debouch on a wide ledge on the edge of nothing. As far as this the track was safeguarded by a raised bank on its outer edge but the terminal platform had no protection of any kind. Far below the sea was silent under the shadowed buttress.
At the back of the platform was a gaping hole about ten feet wide. Its sides were damp and festooned with small ferns.
‘Here’s some red broomrape,’ Rachel said proudly, and Miss Pink turned away from the shaft.
‘Orobanche alba,’ she breathed. ‘Can it be? Yes, here’s thyme. It’s a parasite on thyme. Would you believe it!’
‘That’s nice; I hadn’t realised it was rare.’
They poked about a bit but, finding nothing so good as the orobanche, they turned back to the ferns in the shaft.
‘How deep is this?’ Miss Pink dropped a small stone delicately. There was no sound of its landing.
‘Could be more dead sheep down there,’ Rachel observed. ‘No one ever troubled to plug these holes. The land’s private property and there’s no public footpath. Grandad’s attitude is that if anyone’s simple enough to venture on these cliffs and get into trouble, society’s well rid of them. ’Least, that’s what he says.’
‘Bark’s worse than his bite.’ Miss Pink looked at her watch. ‘I must be getting back; I’m in need of a bath before the party.’
‘If you run into Jakey, take a firm line.’
‘I’ll certainly do that. Do you suppose he knows who I am?’
‘A J.P.? That’s very likely. Fancy him daring to go that far! I should think you’re very firm with delinquents though. You wouldn’t be frightened of him, would you?’
‘Not of him, but of the damage he can do.’
‘You’re so right. He’s clever and cruel. He finds people’s weak points—I mean, like you watching birds, and then he can hit you where it hurts most. Sam’s terrified of him—that’s a guy in the village. He’s got a kitten. He won’t let it out of the front door because it might stray and then Jakey could find it. He locks it in when he goes away.’
