by Colin Watson
However, two minutes later she saw the commander’s fair hair bobbing along beyond the hedge. He pushed open the gate and strode towards her. Even while he was still twenty yards away, she could see from the set of his head and the briskness of his step that he was in a good humour.
“A thousand apologies, dear lady. I was prepared to find you flown.”
“Nonsense, I have only just arrived myself.”
“Excellent!” He patted her thigh, as he might a gun dog. “In any case, I’ve a perfectly good excuse in my locker—or rather in ours, as it’s a joint account. The money’s paid in—five hundred nice shiny Jimmy O’Goblins!”
(Dear God! Where had she last come across that one? Sapper? Henty?) She widened her eyes commendingly. “My word! You are not one for wasting time, Mr Trelawney.”
“Hello-o-o...” Mock despair was on his face. “Who’s this talking to Mister Trelawney?”
“Commander,” she corrected mischievously.
“What! Pulling rank now, eh?”
Her glance fell. “Jack...”
“I should jolly well think so!” Again he patted her thigh, but this time his hand remained. He gazed closely into her face while his fingers contracted. She was about to draw sharply away when she saw in his eyes genuine interest and surprise.
“I say...” He withdrew his hand and stared at where it had been. “You’ve got some muscle, haven’t you?”
Miss Teatime straightened her skirt. “I do try and keep in trim, as a matter of fact. Just a few toning up exercises.”
His air of bright purpose returned. “Did you write that letter?”
Opening her bag and holding it so that the map she had bought that morning stayed out of sight, she took out an envelope and handed it to him.
“The cheque is there as well,” she said. “I have made it out to the daughter just in case there is some difficulty in Mr Cambridge’s dealing with it in hospital.”
He nodded. “Very sensible.”
The envelope was unsealed. He drew out the letter and began to read.
Dear Evelyn [Miss Teatime had written],
This is to introduce my good friend, Commander John Trelawney, who has kindly agreed to act on my behalf in the matter of the boat. He will hand you my cheque, which, as you will see, is for five hundred pounds (I wish you would let me make it a sum nearer the true value of the Lucy, or even half of it, but it seems that you and your father have made up your minds). Please give Commander Trelawney the receipt, and also the boat’s manual and the other documents—of which you will know more than I—and take him to the mooring. He is going to sail the Lucy here himself (a task for which I could scarcely have chosen anyone better qualified than a one-time Naval officer!) and he will wish, of course, to satisfy himself that she is in good condition for the voyage. I think there is nothing much to add, except perhaps the telephone number of my hotel (Flaxborough 2130), in case you wish to ring me about any details I have forgotten to mention. I do hope and pray that the money, ridiculously inadequate as of course it is, will be of some immediate use in easing your troubles.
Yours sincerely,
Lucilla.
Trelawney looked up. “I should say she is very lucky to have such a good friend,” he said solemnly.
“Just as I am,” replied Miss Teatime, with no less sincerity.
He put an arm round her shoulder and squeezed in a comradely fashion.
“Now how do I find this good lady?”
“Do you know Twickenham?”
“Only as a rugger ground, I’m afraid. I used to go down for the navy matches whenever I happened to be ashore.”
“I do not think that would be very near where the Cambridges live. Their address is on the envelope, by the way. It is a rather nice old house in a place called The Turnills. Number eight. It is not so much a street as a sort of close, with the river at the lower end. Ask anyone for the old part of Twickenham and you should have no difficulty in finding it.”
“Is there a station handy?”
“Your best plan probably will be to go to Richmond Station and cross the river. It is a pleasant walk and not very far.”
“Fine.” He put the letter in his pocket.
“When do you intend to go?”
“Tomorrow morning. There’s a London train just before ten o’clock.”
“I shall see you off,” announced Miss Teatime, with an air of sudden decision.
“Oh, you don’t need to trail round specially for me.”
“But I shall, Jack. I know you are going up by train, but I cannot help thinking of you as embarking on a voyage. After all, it will be a voyage back—a real one. Are you not afraid of storms?”
Trelawney could not help laughing. For a moment, Miss Teatime looked abashed, then she joined in his amusement.
“You must think of me waiting here like Madame Butterfly,” she said. “I wonder if there is a hill top from which I can watch out for you.”
“O-o-one fine da-a-ay!” sang the commander, not to be outdone in drollery.
Miss Teatime sighed. “It all seems like a dream,” she murmured.
“Yes, doesn’t it...”
“It sleeps four, you know. She does, rather.”
“She?”
“The Lucy. And there is the loveliest little kitchen.”
“Galley, my dear.”
“Of course. Galley. You will not believe this, but I am really a very good sailor.”
“I do believe you.”
“Do you think we shall be able to sail in her all the year round?”
He smiled. “Hardly. At least we shall have to winter in our cottage.”
“Yes, the cottage...Tell me about the cottage, Jack.”
“You shall see it for yourself very soon. White walls thatch—little windows under the eaves. And central heating!”
“Marvellous!”
“And scarcely a soul within hail.”
“Whereabouts is it, Jack?”
“You’ll see.”
“Tell me.”
“That’s enough, my girl. You’re sailing under sealed orders. Just leave everything to the navigator!”
“What an old tease you are!”
That evening, after she had waved goodbye to Trelawney when he looked back from the other side of the ticket barrier, Miss Teatime did not immediately leave the booking hall. She waited, listening for the arrival of the Brocklestone train. Only when she had heard the last of its departing coaches rattle over the level crossing at the station’s east end, did she walk out into the forecourt and make her way to the car.
She got in and put the map on the seat beside her, together with the list of the train’s stopping places.
The first of these was Pennick, a village just beyond the outskirts of Flaxborough, whose expansion would eventually absorb it as a suburb.
The Pennick road ran almost parallel to the railway. Its first mile, while fairly free of traffic at this time of the evening, was lined with houses and shops. It was within the speed restriction area, and Miss Teatime was careful to observe the limit, give or take twenty miles an hour, until she saw the crossed white discs at the beginning of a comparatively sparsely built-up stretch of ascending road. Then she let the Renault hum happily into the eighties.
A series of three sharp double bends constrained her to drop gear and halve the car’s pace, but on emerging from the last corner she found herself at the start of a straight descent into Pennick village.
The station could be seen quite clearly. It stood on its own, a little to the right of the village and connected to its main street by a fenced path. The train from Flaxborough was just drawing in.
Ten seconds later, Miss Teatime’s car stopped precisely opposite the station path.
The first passenger was coming out of the door of the little booking office. A woman, carrying a shopping basket. Two young men followed, then another woman with a little girl. No one else. Behind a window in the station, a shutter-like movement of li
ght and shade grew faster and faster; then suddenly the window showed clear daylight. The train had gone.
Hambourne was its next stop, about two miles farther on. The map suggested the road to be fairly free of complications. Miss Teatime set off again.
Once beyond the last of Pennick’s cottages, she saw with surprise just how straight the road was. It might have been built as a third rail track. Hambourne was actually in view, a tiny cluster of russet-coloured roofs, glowing in the last of the sun.
Here it would have been simple enough to pass the train, but she decided against doing so. Rail passengers had nothing to do except look out of their windows and even at twenty or thirty yards it was not difficult to recognize the driver of an overtaking car. So she drove slowly into Hambourne and again was able to pick a vantage point near its station before any travellers made an appearance.
There were two. Neither was the commander.
She drew another blank at North Gosby.
Between there and Strawbridge, she encountered an almost disastrous hold-up in the form of a flock of sheep that was being driven along the road to fresh pasturage. This lost her five minutes, and only a hazardous, if exhilarating, passage through Gosby Vale at a fraction over ninety saved her from missing Strawbridge’s homecomers altogether.
By the time she reached Moldham it was decidedly dusk and she was alarmed to find that the railway line, together with Moldham Halt, had somehow contrived to put between themselves and the road a broad and seemingly bridgeless canal. Helplessly, she watched the train come to a stop on the far side of the water.
Then, almost at once, it moved on. She had not heard a single door slam. Moldham, apparently, had sent none of its sons and daughters to the big town that day.
Miss Teatime switched on the lamp behind the driving mirror and consulted her map.
Only Benstone Ferry now, then Chalmsbury Town. Its true that the train went on from Chalmsbury to Brocklestone, but that was nearly thirty miles farther on. Surely Trelawney did not come all that way to press his suit? No, at Chalmsbury she would call it a day.
Darkness steadily deepened as she drove the five miles to Benstone. It spread out from the hollows in the fields and gathered beneath hedges. The road, winding now, and with a disconcerting way of slipping suddenly away to right or left as if alarmed by her headlights, was of the greyness of grey cats. She could defeat it only by remaining constantly alert and using the lower gears to whip the car into pursuit of every advantage that its lights revealed. The Renault’s cornering, she told herself happily, was tight as a turd in a trumpet.
Even so, on such a road at this time of day there was no better than an even chance of reaching Benstone Ferry before the train. Would there still be a waterway between her and the line? She would need to have another look at the map as soon as she got to the village.
A long mass of darkness loomed up on her left. She was passing a plantation. A brown blob moved erratically from the side of the road ahead. It was in her path, creeping first one way and then another. She braked, dropped into second gear and skirted round it, smiling at the glimpse she had had of tiny eyes and a wet boot-button snout. Hedgehogs, she considered, were very endearing creatures.
Against the glimmering west, the black peaks of roadside cottages began to appear. An isolated street lamp’s yellow rays fell upon the signboard of an inn...George the Fourth, tight-collared and archly surprised, a great pale blue, bejewelled, silk-bound dropsy in the sky. Farther on were the lighted windows of four shops and a cabin in which a group of Benstone villagers stood waiting before a fish and chip range.
Miss Teatime pulled up and held the map in the light from the cabin. The station was about a quarter of a mile away, along the next road on the right. And this side, thank God, of the canal—here called the Benstone Eau apparently.
She made the turn and almost at once saw the train’s lights, a distant golden chain moving slowly to the left. From the station, just visible at the far end of her headlamps’ beam, four or five people were walking up the lane towards her. They drew to the side to let her pass and she scanned their faces. Strangers.
Then she spotted a figure on its own, moving past the corner of the station. She recognized Trelawney as he stooped to unlock the door of a car.
Miss Teatime drove straight past, continued for about a hundred yards, and stopped just beyond a gateway, into which she reversed. As soon as she saw Trelawney’s car emerge from the station yard and turn towards the village, she swung back on to the lane and followed it.
In Benstone, the other car crossed the main road and gained speed down a hill. Miss Teatime kept a fifty-yard distance from the two red tail lights. These flickered every now and then, presumably when the car went over one of the frequent patches of uneven surface.
The descent ended in a left turn, after which the road climbed steeply for a while before levelling off between what seemed to be stretches of common. Another turn led them past a grove of silver birch and down into the valley of a stream.
It was at the moment when the commander’s car reared to cross a hump-backed bridge over this stream that its tail lights winked twice and died. Miss Teatime accelerated to close the gap but by the time she reached the bridge the short stretch of road between it and the next corner was empty.
The rest of the climb from the valley was so tortuous that only an occasional white glow among the trees indicated that Trelawney, who obviously knew the road well, was still ahead.
At the top, Miss Teatime found herself in high, open country. Not far away, skeins of cold violet light evidenced the main streets of a town. Chalmsbury, no doubt. But where had dear Jack got to?
There...She saw the narrow, rather weak beams lift and fall, swing round, turn again...
Odd. They had gone out.
She drove on to where she thought Trelawney’s headlights had last been visible, but realized how difficult the darkness made her judgment. On her left was the opening to a little lane. Farther on was another turning. And on the opposite side of the road, a third. He could have gone up any of these.
Pulling up, she quickly switched off the engine and opened the window. She listened intently. A faint throbbing came to her for a few seconds only, but from what direction she could not be sure. Then, distantly, the sound of a closing door. Silence.
She put on the mirror light and traced on the map the journey she had made from Benstone Ferry. The common, the valley with the stream, the bridge...the route was quite easy to follow. And so—her ringer moved on—she must now be exactly...yes, here. She pencilled a ring round the three little side roads.
Miss Teatime leaned back in her seat and considered. She was certainly not going to traipse around on foot in the darkness. At least she knew now where to come. Ten minutes in daylight would be enough for finding out the rest. If that proved necessary. It might not, of course. She knew better than to be greedy. Particularly in this case. Goodness, yes. If all went as it should tomorrow, she would leave well alone. If not...well, a girl had to live and there was more than one way of skinning a cat.
Chapter Sixteen
Commander Trelawney leaned from the carriage window and blew a kiss to the receding figure of Lucy Teatime. Not until she was out of sight, lost in the straggle of hesitant, slightly embarrassed seers-off on the Flaxborough up platform, did he withdraw his head, close up the window and sit down.
The train was that recommended by Flaxborough booking clerks as “the best of the day”—a testimonial that might have had a brighter ring had it not sounded, in their mouths, synonymous with “the best of a bad lot“. In fact, it was quite reliably fast and comfortable and a good deal cleaner than expresses from more notable centres of population.
The commander had lunch “aboard”, as he would have said if Miss Teatime had been there, and filled in the rest of the time before the train’s arrival at Euston by reading a boat-builders’ catalogue which had arrived for him by that morning’s post.
He was surprised
and more than a little gratified to learn how expensive a relatively humble river craft was. The more ambitious models were comparable in price with the best makes of motor car. As for the builder’s largest and most lavishly equipped offerings, these were illustrated without mention of such vulgar irrelevancies as cost, but it was obvious from the scale up to that point that the four thousand mark was by no means high water.
It was nearly two o’clock when Trelawney left the train and took a taxi to Waterloo. London was colder than he had expected. The sky was full of low, curd-like cloud, driven by a wind that swooped fitfully into the streets and set grit and bus tickets swirling in the shop doorways.
By the time he came out of Richmond Station, a fine rain was being blown in from the direction of the river. He kept in the shelter of shops as much as possible until he reached the bridge. At the sight of its gleaming parapet and the sound of bus tyres hissing at the heels of what few pedestrians were braving the crossing, the commander reeled back beneath a café awning and prepared to hail the next taxi to come in view.
