by Burke, John
The respectable folk in the saloon bar set up a mournful howl which resolved itself into an old music-hall song. Ellen blushingly knew two versions of the lyric – one original, one full of double meanings – and heard the two of them being muddled through at once by conflicting factions. Mr Owen, with a Welshman’s ear for music, winced. He was just getting sternly to his feet when the door into the tiny snug opened and a head came round the door.
“Ah, here’s our Ivor.”
“Mrs Jones says fine.”
Ellen got up at once. “I’ll go and get the car. If you’ll tell me which way...”
“Best leave your car where it is, miss. No parking outside Mrs Jones’s. On the hillside, you see, just a step down from the road. Had one of them big American cars into their back bedroom, once – right off the road and into the bedroom. Tidy old mess there was.”
Ellen wondered whether, after all, she ought not to have expressed a preference for the room in the pub. But the noise surging up from all sides was too much.
Mark said: “I can run you along and then come back.”
“I’d sooner walk.”
“Look, if Mr Owen says it’s just along the road...”
“That’s what I mean. I really would love a walk. Just a short one.”
“Our Ivor’ll carry your bag along.”
“It’s all right,” said Mark. “I’ll go with Miss Sawyer.”
“I...” Ellen was about to argue, but the words petered out before she could speak them. She was too tired to stand up for her principles. If Mark Nicholson wanted to carry her bag, let him. If he wanted anything more than that, he’d be unlucky. She would let him accompany her, they would say their polite goodnights, she’d have a wonderful night’s sleep, and tomorrow she would be on her way.
“Right?” said Mark, draining his brandy.
They went out to open the boot of her car.
Somewhere there was a moon, faintly silvering the higher leaves. The lights of the pub cast a yellower glow along the road some way and then faded.
Carrying Ellen’s mauve-striped vanity case, Mark held it out at arm’s length for a moment in the headlights of a passing car.
“A bit gaudy,” he observed. “Doesn’t quite fit the image.”
“It’s not the one I’d have used if...I mean, it was ready packed, so the easiest thing was just to grab it. I didn’t want to keep you waiting.”
“I still say it’s gaudy.”
“It’s special,” Ellen explained. “I use it now and then when I want to test the reception – before I admit I’ve got more respectable luggage in the car.”
“Oh.” A note of disapproval crept into Mark’s easy, affable baritone. “Sort of agent provocateur?”
Ellen decided not to answer.
A car driving away from the Pride of the Valley forced them into the side of the road. Pressed close to her, Mark took her arm. She did not pull away. It was just pleasant enough, just friendly enough. And it certainly made walking easier. The road was in darkness. The ragged treetops formed an irregular, unreliable skyline. The slightly darker edge of a stone wall beside the road was all that penetrated the night, acting as a barely distinguishable guide-rail.
Somewhere below it the stream rustled and chattered like an insomniac bird.
Ellen breathed deeply. The frustrations of the day and the clamour of the pub went pounding on in her head, but she could feel the tension slackening. It was a long time since she had last walked along a country road at night. The sweet-sour smell of it plucked at her memory. She groped to recover that lost sensation of immediacy – of the faint breeze, a touch of something like gossamer against her forehead, the whispering turn of leaves in infinity.
As though sensing her mood, Mark stopped, and they leaned back against the wall. For a prickly, bristling moment she was afraid that he was going to talk and spoil it all. But he was silent.
They looked back in the direction from which they had come.
The moonlight was little more than a shimmering mist. Darkness cloaked the land. Only far up an unidentifiable slope was there one brightly winking eye.
Ellen was the first to speak. Involuntarily she said: “That must be Bryncroeso up there.”
“Just what I was thinking.”
“Then there’s someone at home after all.”
“But baked beans is orf.”
The light seemed to move. Ellen blinked and went on staring at it. Yes, it was certainly moving.
Mark said quietly: “Not the house, after all.”
“Just a car on some road somewhere.”
“Not just some road. The line it’s taking, I’d say it was coming down the driveway. If it stops at the gate, and then swings...” The light was suddenly extinguished. “Damn,” said Mark. “Gone behind the trees.”
Ellen laughed. “It isn’t really any of our business, is it?”
“No. It’s not.” Yet they stayed where they were, in the cool of the night, propped companionably against the wall. Waiting, somehow. Waiting as the sound of the distant car grew louder through the blackness. Waiting as its note changed and struck an echo from what she knew must be the gap by the pub and the wall behind the car park. It was coming on fast. There was a faint, rushing shaft of light along a line of trees.
At the same time a car approached from the opposite direction. Headlights converged, clashed, and sprayed across Mark and Ellen. They squeezed back even harder against the discomfort of the lumpy wall.
The car from Bryncroeso edged over to one side but did not slow. It was an old car – a battered Ford Popular of uncertain vintage – and it ought not to have been racketing along at this speed on such a road at this time of night. Ellen caught a brief glimpse of its lopsided number plate in the splash of the other car’s lights – a 7, a 5, a 9, and something else, but she couldn’t have repeated what order they were in – and then red tail lights were off and away like reckless fireflies; and the sounds ran away down a thin hollow until they ceased altogether.
“In a bit of a hurry, wasn’t he?” she said.
“Off to Abermadoc to push the boat out, perhaps.”
“Is Abermadoc in that direction?”
He thought for a moment. “Yes, as a matter of fact, it is.”
They walked on until, on a corner, there was the warmly lit outline of a window.
“This must be it,” said Ellen.
There was a gate in the wall, and a light over the door showed a flight of steps and a brief path. You felt that you risked toppling over and falling off a precipice.
Mark opened the gate and took her elbow, the faint pressure of his fingers emphasising the rhythm of the descent.
Ellen said: “You don’t suppose they’re smuggling, do you?”
“Smuggling? Who?”
“Up there at the Hall. Gold. Digging it out and carting it to the sea, and then...well...”
“Digging it out,” he said, “with their bare hands, without anybody knowing about it, and shipping it to Ireland?”
“It doesn’t sound likely, I suppose.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
Before they could find a knocker or a bell-push, the door opened and a small, wiry woman stood framed in the entrance.
“You’ll be the lady from the Owens, is it?”
Ellen turned to Mark. “Thank you for walking along with me.”
He put her vanity case down. “I’ll see you in the morning before we start out again?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well...goodnight, anyway.”
“Goodnight.”
Ellen went in.
The house was tiny but not cramped. Mrs Jones was clearly a meticulous organiser. Oddments were not allowed to accumulate on the dresser or corner table. The gate-leg table had a chenille runner draped over it. Ellen could visualise the neat routine that would occur when a meal was to be served: the runner would be neatly folded, put in a drawer, or perhaps hung over a chair; the flap would be raised, the tabl
e laid; and afterwards the runner would go back. Never a variation, never a mistake.
She yawned. “Oh, dear, I’m so sorry...”
“Busy day?” Mrs Jones smiled a nervy, eager little smile. “Time you saw your room, nothing special like, but if there’s tired you are then...”
She was still talking as she led the way up the narrow flight of stairs, as though too shy to stand and look at Ellen and hear what she might have to say. It was a small, clean room with a slight smell of damp.
Ellen opened the window and sat by it for ten minutes, drinking in the living silence. Then she climbed thankfully into bed and fell asleep at once.
In the morning she ate a huge breakfast, paid Mrs Jones, and walked along to the Pride of the Valley to collect her car. The sun was already strong, and where last night there had been an enveloping blackness there were now a hundred different shades of green.
Nobody seemed to be stirring in the pub as she got into the Fiat. Mark’s car was still beside it. As she backed cautiously out and then began to move off, the saloon bar door opened and Mark came out, waving.
She slowed but did not switch off.
“On your way, then?” he said.
“And you?”
“Any minute now.”
“Don’t get stuck in a cul-de-sac,” said Ellen.
“Bon appetit,” he retorted.
Ellen drove away.
She was on the road to Abermadoc. She could turn off, she theorised, some five miles further on and head south, gradually swinging back to link up with her original route. The plan had been to keep close to the border, exploring the Marches first and then coming right into Wales along the south coast and up the coastline to the northern resorts. But there was no need to stick too rigorously to it. Having deviated this far, she might save time by visiting Abermadoc first. Sooner or later she would have to check on its facilities. It might as well be now.
When she reached the crossroads, she drove straight over them.
The estuary was a wide, savage cleft into the towering coastal ridge, its gloom tempered by a fringe of unexpectedly sparkling, golden sand. Abermadoc had started as a single street of houses clinging to the seaward slope but had gradually developed round the shoulder of the mountain and along the northern bank of the estuary. Approached from the land, it came as a swift surprise: one minute there was nothing ahead but the stark edge of rock rising against the sky, and then the land ceased, the sea was a glittering plain far below, and the road was tugged round and down beside a dour red chapel, a terrace of grey houses, splashes of white and a brighter red where new houses and a couple of hotels had established themselves. The harbour within the sheltering arm of the estuary bristled with a coppice of stark masts.
Ellen drove cautiously down the tilting road. The public car park, set back on a terrace, was full. She reached a fork in the road. One branch went on down; the other climbed, and an ornamental board announced that the Owain Glyndwr Hotel, Restaurant and Buttery Bar was first left, one hundred yards.
Later, said Ellen to herself and her professional conscience. It was too early, anyway, to eat. Far too early, after that splendid breakfast. She took the right turning, came to a traffic sign which exhorted her to change down, and crawled the last steep stretch to the shore.
The road petered out into a path of pebbles and grit. Along the lower face of the mountain were several houses which had been hidden from above. They had been tucked into ragged corners, settled on crags and narrow ledges, constructed around whatever natural aid or obstacle presented itself. One small avalanche would have destroyed the lot; but the turbulence which threw up these tortured shapes millions of years ago had died when the volcanoes died, and they were solid and immobile now.
Ellen bumped her car on to the coarse grass and stones behind what was obviously a sailing club pavilion.
The wind off the sea was stronger than she would have expected, and the tide was swirling in round the harbour entrance.
There was nobody in sight, apart from a group of holidaymakers far along the shore.
She got out and looked up at the cluster of houses.
Impulse had brought her here. It was silly. After the results of yesterday’s impulse – the fruitless trip to Bryncroeso – she ought to have known better.
“There’s somebody you’re looking for?”
Ellen started. A slim girl in a pink cotton dress, its hem plastered by the wind against her lean legs, had emerged from the shadow of one of the huts by the pavilion. Her hair was fair and tangled, her eyes a startling blue.
“Er, no,” said Ellen. “Not really. That is...” She felt like a prowler challenged to explain something discreditable. “Which,” she asked wildly, “is Mr Parr’s house?”
If she had wanted to get her own back for being startled, she succeeded. The girl stared at her with a jealousy so transparent that it was pitiful. The words came with difficulty. “That one” – she pointed – “at the end there. The white one, with the blue door.”
It was a low, trim cottage with shutters pinned back from the windows. Having asked, Ellen had to make a show of walking along to it. She had gone only a few steps when the girl called after her:
“But he’s not there.”
Ellen went on. She could see the bonnet of a car sticking out from behind the cottage, sheltered by a lean-to making use of a bulge of rock.
It was an old Ford Popular, and the number plate carried the figures 2759. The car that had raced past them last night?
There was a white glint through the trees on the slope above, and a newer car came slowly down the road to the shore. Ellen turned to watch as it parked beside her Fiat.
When Mark Nicholson got out and looked towards her, she began to walk back.
The girl looked from one to the other: tense, wary.
Ellen said: “Quite a coincidence.”
She felt she ought to have been cross, and wondered why she wasn’t.
“Not exactly,” said Mark. He turned his face half towards the sea and parted his lips without quite smiling. She sensed that he was enjoying the bite of the wind through his teeth. “It’s on my route,” he said.
“Really?”
“Well...” Suddenly they were both smiling sheepishly at each other. “It’s not exactly off it,” he said. “I had to come here sooner or later. I stopped on the way to check a point or two in the R.D.C. offices – and thought I might as well take this in before I turn up the coast.”
The girl edged towards them.
Ellen said: “She tells me Mr Parr’s not here.”
“Commander Parr,” said the girl abruptly. “And anxious you are to see him?”
“We called at Bryncroeso Hall yesterday.” Mark sounded airy and unconcerned. “But apparently he wasn’t there.”
“Then he should have been,” the girl cried; and stopped, and tightened her lips.
Trying to keep it as casual as Mark, Ellen waved in the direction of the cottage. “That isn’t his car?”
“That old thing? Belongs to the feller who’s been staying there.”
Mark and Ellen exchanged embarrassed glances. They really had no right to be asking questions. There was nothing to ask questions about. Instinctively they moved towards their cars.
The girl burst out: “It’ll be him who’s taken the Commander’s boat. No right he had. Not fit to handle it.”
“Boat?”
The girl was striding past the pavilion to the edge of the harbour. They followed her, drawn on by her quivering intensity. She didn’t want to talk yet she did want to talk. She wanted to spit out all that was seething up within her.
“It was there last night.” She waved a declamatory hand down at the clustering yachts and dinghies as though they should be able to identify the gap at once. “There yesterday, it was. And now it’s gone.”
“You don’t think Mr Parr...”
“If the Commander was here, letting me know he should have been. Promised to come for my birthday
, he did. But not a word.”
“We gather he’s been busy with redecoration up at the Hall,” Ellen ventured.
“Finished it is. Finished weeks ago. I helped him, so I know.”
There was an awkward silence. Ellen longed for an excuse to walk out of this silly situation she had got herself into. The girl’s fine-drawn, neurotic face alarmed her. Whether Commander Parr was an honorary uncle or something more, she was clearly obsessed by him. “Lunch?” Mark suggested gently. “Anyway” – the girl herself took the initiative, and with another histrionic wave of her hand dismissed them – “he’s not here, see, and that’s that.”
They drove up to the Owain Glyndwr. As they approached the four wide steps of the main entrance, Ellen said: “Separate tables.”
“Oh, but I was going to...”
“Thank you, but I have to have some excuse for being here.”
He gave her a little deferential bob of the head.
“Never relax, do you?”
“Not in office hours.”
It was not until they were seated on opposite sides of the dining room and Mark had positioned himself so that he could not glance at her even by accident that she realised she ought, as a matter of courtesy, to have offered him lunch. He had given her an excellent dinner last night. It would have been a good thing to keep the balance even.
Firmly she concentrated on the menu. There had been too many distractions already. Work was work. No more messing about.
From time to time she glanced at him to make sure that he wasn’t glancing at her.
He remained steadfast.
Ellen finished the meal and called for the bill; and found that she could remember almost nothing about the various points she was supposed to check on.
She had a wash, and came out without any recollection of the cleanliness or otherwise of the facilities.
Mark was waiting by his car. He held out his hand. “Well, goodbye again. Only this time I really am going north...”
“And I’m going south,” said Ellen firmly.
They shook hands. She tried to think of something flippant to say. But this time there were no quips. He merely said, “Goodbye,” once more, backed in a tight circle, and drove off.
