Sea Glass Summer

by Dorothy Cannell

  Mandy Armitage had indeed provided quite a feast. When they’d finished everything but crumbs, they disposed of the wrappings in the waste bin – the cartons were not yet empty – and got down to discussing how long to wait after Elizabeth and Gerard came up to bed before going down to the cellar. Oliver suggested an hour, but Brian wisely thought two would be safer. He’d taken two flashlights out of the backpack along with the food and now received the congratulations from Walker Plank on his forethought.

  ‘Evan was right; it would be stupid to go down without them. I should have asked Mrs Poll where I could find some.’ At that moment they heard the distant sound of the doorbell and both got off the bed. ‘Guess the time has come, Bri.’

  ‘You do keep saying that!’ Brian attempted to flatten his dark hair, only to send it springing back up. ‘But if you will have your little mysteries what can I do? Push you overboard?’

  ‘If you mean down the stairs, I’d sooner you didn’t.’ Oliver gave him a poke of the finger. ‘I’m not a good bouncer.’ They headed downstairs with more cheer than is usually the case with people about to attend a memorial service. There was no one in the hall; the arrivals had to be in the living room. Oliver’s optimism wavered as they went in. Elizabeth, it wouldn’t have been Gerard, had lighted candles on the mantelpiece and tables. Perhaps this was to be prepared in case the lights went out in the storm, which was now hammering the windows, or to make the place look like a church. Their pale yellow gleam added more shadows to the gloom, making the room look unholy rather than the other way round. Emjagger and Rolling Stone were on one sofa without an inch between them, their parents on the other. All four fixed in place like people in one of those very old photographs. Whatever the mom and dad had in the glasses they were holding was of that same brownish-yellow shade. Elizabeth was standing in front of the fireplace. She alone saw Oliver and Brian come in. No other heads had turned in their direction.

  ‘There you boys are,’ she said brightly. Too brightly. The false cheer emphasized her color-stripped face and the haunted look in her eyes. ‘Brian, you don’t know our guests, do you?’ She made the introductions, bringing only a nod from the dad, but the mom said in a thrilled sort of voice how nice it was to meet Brian and see Oliver again. Her enthusiasm did not cause her to shift position other than to lean further back on the sofa.

  ‘Nice to meet you all.’ Brian stepped forward into the distorting candlelight with Oliver alongside him.

  ‘And yet the circumstances! So bitterly sad! As I said to Elizabeth when she phoned, our boys Emjagger and Rolling Stone were devastated by the sweet little birdie’s death. They so adore animals. You see how it is with them now; they can’t bring themselves to say anything. They truly had to force themselves to come, because it was the right thing to do. They both adore Oliver and wish they could see more of him, though being so understanding they accept that he has other friends.’

  Oliver hadn’t looked at Elizabeth when the phone call was mentioned – that she was the one who had made it. Had she noticed she’d been given away? He didn’t think so; her face was increasingly blank, as if she had left the room leaving only her outline behind. ‘Shall we get started?’ he asked her.

  ‘What? Oh, yes . . . yes, we should. So sorry,’ she pressed a candlelight glossed hand to her forehead, ‘I’m afraid I feel one of my wretched headaches coming on.’ Her gaze shifted in what seemed like slow motion to the four people on the sofas. ‘So, although I hate to seem inhospitable, we’d best keep this short.’

  ‘It’ll be from the shock, Mrs Cully.’ Emjagger broke his grief stricken silence to simper consolingly. ‘Finding Feathers dead and stiff and all in its cage.’ He turned to his equally pasty-skinned, greasy-haired, ferret-eyed brother. ‘We sobbed our eyes out when we heard, didn’t we, bro?’

  ‘Couldn’t stop.’ Rolling Stone sagged against him. ‘Poor Oliver, we kept saying, he has to be heartbroken – we’ve pictured him so often snuggled up in bed with his feathery friend, stroking its soft little head, singing a goodnight lullaby.’

  Brian started to say something but the father cut in. ‘Don’t be more stupid than you can help, boy. Elizabeth’s right. Let’s move matters along. Get me a refill.’ He shoved his glass at his wife who, far from looking put out, got up eagerly, went to the table with the bottles and poured herself a sizeable splash too. The moment she was reseated Elizabeth beckoned to Oliver and when he stood with his back to the fireplace, dropped into a chair, fingers instantly plucking at its already snagged fabric arms.

  The room and the faces turned to Oliver. He was back on the phone with Evan, feeling his calm strength, remembering the strength of those arms around him when lifting him down from Nat’s statue, secure in the bond between them – the unfailing belief in a father for his son, the willingness to work through any problem brought to him, however big or small. What Oliver was about to say felt exactly right. It wouldn’t be painfully false or miserably forced and that wouldn’t be so without Evan’s intervention.

  ‘This is for Feathers, with an acknowledgement to Lewis Carroll and Through the Looking-Glass,’ said Oliver. ‘I hope it puts a smile on your beak.’ He hadn’t brought down the note pad; the lines were fixed in his head. His voice came out strong and clear. ‘“The time has come,” the Walrus said, “to talk of many things: Of shoes – and ships – and sealing-wax – Of cabbages – and kings. And why the sea is boiling hot – and whether birds like swings.”’

  ‘Feathers had to like that. You nailed it, Ol!’ Brian slid a glance at Emjagger and Rolling Stone, who weren’t smirking. They sat slack-faced, then spoke as one. ‘What’s this looking-glass thing?’

  ‘You’d know if you ever read anything,’ snapped back their father.

  ‘So clever not to make it morbid,’ said their mother.

  ‘I changed the last line.’ Oliver was pointing this out when a cell phone rang. Elizabeth, who had been sitting in a trance, stood up and groped in her skirt pocket, said she had to take this and headed for the doorway. Her first words sifted back into the room. ‘Hi, have you been trying to reach me for long? You were? I turned off my cell while I was lying down earlier and forgot to put it back on until half an hour ago.’ Footsteps heading up the staircase and then what sounded like a moan. But that could be, probably was, the wind.

  ‘Time for us to be heading out.’ The father seized what Oliver was sure must seem to be a golden opportunity and hurried his wife and sons into the hall, and with goodbyes flung over their shoulders they exited the front door.

  ‘Well, that’s over!’ said Brian.

  ‘Yes.’ Oliver couldn’t entirely share his relief. He had looked up to see Elizabeth clinging, head bent, to the banister post before seeming to walk blindly toward her room. Should he go up and knock on the door? He was hesitating when Gerard came out of his office and said something indistinguishable before going past Oliver and Brian and onto the stairs. At least he didn’t stagger. He might even have sobered up. A door opened and, after a weighted moment, closed.

  ‘Seems like that call she got was bad news,’ said Brian.

  ‘Right. I hope it wasn’t to tell her someone’s ill or has died.’

  ‘Doesn’t have to be that bad. Maybe she went after a job she didn’t get. You said she went up to Boston yesterday – that could’ve been for an interview. It wouldn’t mean she’d have to work there. If it was with a big firm they’d probably have branches everywhere.’

  Oliver thought this over. It made sense if Elizabeth and Gerard were in a financial mess and would explain her returning so on edge that she’d gone out of control over Feathers. But if they were that hard up, why not sell the Cully Mansion which they both hated? Entering his bedroom with Brian a couple of steps behind, he listened for sounds of an argument coming their way, but only the rattle of tree branches against his window disturbed the empty feel of the house. Instead of feeling wide awake, he had to smother a yawn and saw Brian’s face stretch into one. But maybe that wasn’t a
bad thing when they lay down on the bed. If they nodded off while talking that would be OK. A nap would revive them, while trying to kill time until the moment came to explore the cellar could have the reverse effect. They managed to stay awake for nearly an hour. Brian was always the early to bed, early to rise type, and then they went out like a pair of lights.

  Oliver started up in bed at the grasp of a hand on his shoulder and Brian’s voice telling him to wake up. ‘What is it? What’s happened?’

  ‘It’s four in the morning. If my foot hadn’t started to itch I might have slept right on till the time I usually get up, and I was starting to think I had to throw a pitcher of water over you. Too bad the storm’s over; I bet it stopped hours ago. No violent rumbles of thunder or cracks of lightning to startle us awake.’

  ‘OK, I’m up.’ Oliver got off the bed as Brian was doing. They had lain down fully clothed, apart from their shoes which they now scrambled into. Oliver got the key out from under the mattress and asked Brian if he had the cell phone. All set, they tiptoed out of the bedroom, each holding a flashlight. Unnecessary to turn them on. The house was still illuminated above and below the stairs; seemingly neither Elizabeth nor Gerard had come out from their bedroom to switch off the lights. More strangely several candles, reduced to stubs, still burned in the living room. Oliver and Brian exchanged glances as they stood looking in, then without a word blew them all out. The scent of wax hung slyly unpleasant on the air. It followed them down the hall to the cellar door. What if the old, rusty iron key didn’t turn? But it did so, with a grating sound that jarred the ears disproportionately to the night silence. Oliver returned it carefully to his pocket and reached for the light switch. A naked but high-wattage bulb flared overhead. The stone steps that he’d pictured as narrow and twisting, were – though a little uneven – wide and went straight down; the concrete walls weren’t crumbling or moldy. The air smelled stale but there was only a faint odor of damp. Oliver closed the door behind him and they started down quickly, reaching the floor below. Again, he didn’t see what he’d expected – a place crammed to the point of permitting only sideways movement by an accumulation of a hundred years of junk, including dressers, armoires, boxes and trunks, all to be searched through before dawn. The space they stood in had to match in size much of the floor above, but it was empty. Completely empty. Someone must have had everything cleared out. It was obvious Miss Emily had clung to her possessions, other than the family albums, surrounding her. But what would she care about a cellar, which due to her lameness, was off limits to her? And so had nothing to do with her home as she knew it. Why not let its junk go to the needy over the years?

  ‘Is it a let-down, or a relief?’ Brian was still whispering.

  ‘Neither,’ replied Oliver staunchly. ‘There have to be other rooms off this one. Where’s the boiler and the rest of the plumbing stuff, and the door to the outside?’ He pointed to the far end. ‘That dark stretch of wall! It has to be an opening.’

  Brian adjusted his glasses and stuck out his neck. ‘Hey, so it is! There’s no light on in there, that’s the trouble.’ They both turned on their flashlights as they drew nearer, directing the beams into the rectangle of gloom, shifting them around in search of a light switch. Oliver found it, just inside, on his left. A narrow room with a couple of turnings flared into view. Here was the boiler and water tank and there the door to the outside. A mattress and couple of blankets that looked as though they’d been rescued from a dump occupied a corner. Willie Watkins’ bed. Oliver was glad he hadn’t had to sleep on the floor. He also felt a tingling down his spine. He was close . . . very close now to what Nat had told him he was being led toward – not the picture he had originally hoped to find but something else . . . something much more important.

  ‘Come on,’ whispered Brian, ‘let’s take a look round those corners.’ They took the one to their left first; the overhead bulb showed a narrow area with a low ceiling. Again, empty. Whoever had done the clean sweep had been thorough. Now there was only one more place to look. They crossed to the right – their last hope of finding . . . anything. Brian no longer looked like Captain B. Curdle about to board the treasure ship. There were three items in this gangway space, ‘All of them barrels.’ Oliver must have said the words aloud without hearing them over his buzzing excitement. The captain corrected him.

  ‘Kegs.’

  ‘Whatever. Help me to get them open.’ He was bending down. ‘This one’s top seems to be stuck.’

  ‘Move over, Walker Plank, these wicked fingers grip like steel.’ Brian wasn’t idly boasting. He had that top and the second off in a second. Nothing inside either of them. ‘Third time’s the charm, matey!’ And so it proved. This one was three-quarters filled with some kind of oil and beneath its surface could be glimpsed what looked like bones. Oliver reached into the slime and pulled one out. It was shaped like a tooth. It was . . . what had to be a whale’s tooth. He shook off the excess while Brian dragged off his T-shirt.

  ‘Wipe it off with this.’ He stood, pale and shivery, looking as Oliver did so. ‘Scrimshaw,’ he breathed. ‘Looks like a frigate to me.’

  ‘And here’s the signature: Nat. It’s his work and there are all those others in there. I wonder why he hid them in oil?’

  ‘Stored, more like. That’s what the whalers did with them on ship. To keep them from drying out was the idea. Aunt told me about it.’

  Oliver put the one he was holding back and wiped off his hands. His mind was working furiously. ‘I know why Elizabeth went to Boston. Willie Watkins talked to me about seeing bones in greasy liquid at the Cully Mansion. Mrs Poll thought he meant those she’d put in the soup she used to make for Miss Emily. And yesterday, when Sarah and I visited Grandpa, Willie was on about them again – only he spoke about fangs, and we thought he was talking about Mrs Poll’s teeth. It stuck with Sarah; she mentioned them to Evan on the phone. And get this! She said something about it being the tip-off to what he and his Aunt Alice were searching for at the galleries. Don’t you see, Bri, something had already made them think that Elizabeth had gone to Boston to sell something that she shouldn’t. If it was one or more of these scrimshaws, they were right. Everyone knew Miss Emily put it in her will that any in the house at her death would go to the Sea Glass Historical Society.’

  ‘Wow! She could be in a lot of trouble. Wonder how she knew about them?’

  ‘She came here last January after she and Gerard got the police report that Willie had broken in down here – in the cellar. She could’ve clued in from what they told her about Willie going on about bones. Supposedly, she knows a lot about art. Or maybe she looked in the barrels to see if he’d chucked rubbish in them.’

  ‘Bet it was Willie’s bones.’

  ‘Agree. But I wonder what got Sarah and Evan thinking Elizabeth was up to something like this in the first place?’

  ‘Let me know when you find out.’

  ‘She was frightened and feeling guilty when she got back last night; that’s why she made me her scapegoat over Feathers. But I wouldn’t want her to go to prison or anything like that. I think Gerard may have driven her to it. Actually, I heard her say something about that . . .’

  ‘Ol, we need to get out of here! What if she comes down and catches us!’

  ‘Right. And you have to be freezing!’

  ‘True. Toss me my T-shirt; a little oil won’t hurt me. Where are the flashlights?’

  ‘On the floor by my feet; I’ll grab them and you turn off the lights as we make a dash for it.’

  They made up the steps in no time flat, relocked the cellar door and tiptoed along the staircase wall as if one squeak of a floorboard would bring disaster. Oliver glanced into the living room where the lights, along with those in the hall, were still on. Gerard was standing with his back to them near the fireplace. Both boys froze. He slowly turned and they saw he was holding a gun aimed in their direction. If that weren’t frightening enough, his ghastly stare was terrifying – more so for Brian who hadn�
��t faced it before.

  ‘He’s asleep,’ Oliver whispered. ‘Don’t startle him. Let’s back away and make a dash upstairs.’

  Brian didn’t look as though he could move, but as Oliver reached to grip his arm something appeared to switch on inside Gerard’s head; he blinked a couple of times, swayed as if testing his balance, and stared down at the gun now dangling against his leg.

  ‘I don’t remember getting this out from my desk,’ he said quite casually, ‘but I’ve been thinking about ending it all for years now. Every time I went into my office I’d say this is the day, but I could never get up the guts. Any strength of mind I had went when that plane blew up with my parents, brother and sister-in-law on board. You see,’ he looked off to the side of the room, ‘I persuaded my father to use an outfit owned and operated by a pilot acquaintance of mine. I knew he had several near misses but I had money, gambling debts, which he agreed to forgive if he got the job, with the hope of further recommendations.’

  Surprisingly this didn’t deliver the emotional blow that it would once have done. The knowledge had been lurking on the outskirts of spoken range ever since Oliver had come to the Cully Mansion. It was the sort of thing Gerard would have done; he was weak and selfish, but not evil. Probably he had loved his brother very much at one time. Just as Nat was very likely loved by his brothers before they turned against him because he was the one who got to marry Amelie Courtney.

  ‘Why don’t you put the gun down, Gerard?’ he said gently. ‘I’m sure my mom and dad and your parents would want you to forgive yourself.’

  ‘Great idea,’ seconded Brian.

  Gerard set it down on a bookcase and sank into a chair. His eyes closed and when he reopened them it was as though waking without recollection of what had gone before. ‘Can’t sleep either? Well, whatever your reasons they won’t come close to mine in misery. No time like the present, Oliver, to tell you what’s come to light.’