Fall of a Philanderer

by Carola Dunn

  A gun? Daisy’s breath caught in her throat.

  7

  Alec was fed up, to the back teeth. A delightful afternoon had not prepared him to be precipitated into a bar-room brawl followed by a domestic drama where his intervention might be necessary to avert tragedy. He was on holiday, dammit!

  What was more, he suspected that Daisy had been aware of the possibility of the evening’s events. He couldn’t blame her for the events, nor even for finding herself in the middle of them, but he could blame her for not warning him. And he did. If they had not been caught in an extremely delicate position, he would have had it out with her here and now.

  However, Anstruther appeared to be loading his service revolver. To approach him unnecessarily would be dangerously foolhardy. On the other hand, supposing the object in his hands were shown to be quite harmless, they could hardly waltz past him and into the house as if nothing had happened.

  All in all, for the present they were stuck.

  Either Baskin had come to the same conclusion, or he was following Alec’s lead. In either case, Alec’s opinion of the schoolmaster rose a notch.

  Though Daisy was equally still and silent, Alec did not for an instant presume either that she had reached the same conclusion, by the same route, or that she was following his lead. No doubt she had her own reasons, which might or might not be vouchsafed to him sometime in the future. She might change her mind at any moment. He put a warning hand on her arm.

  Smiling up at him—his eyes were adjusting to the near darkness—she sighed a tiny sigh, almost obliterated by the susurration of the waves on the nearby beach.

  “I’m going to sit down, over there,” she whispered, no louder than her sigh, and went to place herself wearily on a flattish rock nearby.

  She was pregnant, he reproached himself; he ought not to have dragged her to the pub in the first place, far less have brought her back to face an angry armed man. But where else could she go?

  Just as he returned his gaze to Anstruther, a match flared. The sailor was lighting his pipe.

  Reflexively, Alec felt in his pocket for his own favourite briar and the tobacco pouch with his initials crookedly embroidered by Belinda. Baskin mirrored the gesture, then both withdrew their hands empty, with a rueful shake of the head at each other. Other than a shout, nothing was more likely to draw Anstruther’s attention to them than the lighting of matches. If walking past him and into the house would be awkward, being found skulking in the shadows to spy on him would be horribly embarrassing.

  They could go back and round to the front door by the lane. Yet the innocent lighting of a pipe did not mean he had no violent intentions towards his wife. They dared not leave.

  A sound from the house brought Alec to full alert. Cecily Anstruther came out of the back door. A pale shawl draped about her shoulders, she glided across the lawn like a ghost. She stopped a few feet in front of her husband.

  Alec and Baskin started forward.

  Anstruther didn’t move. He must have seen her, but he didn’t stir. The only motion was a curl of smoke catching the light as it rose from his pipe. If he spoke it was too softly for the listeners to hear.

  She joined him on the wall, sitting with perhaps a yard between them, head bowed. And she started to talk.

  Alec made a deliberate effort not to catch what she was saying—that was none of his business. It was Anstruther’s words he was interested in, words which might give warning of an assault in time to prevent it. But to intervene in time, he needed to be nearer. He continued forward, his tread stealthy, stooping so as not to appear above the wall. Baskin matched his actions.

  So did Daisy.

  Glaring at her, Alec waved her back. In the darkness it was easy for her to pretend not to see—or perhaps she really couldn’t, but she must know he would disapprove. Not that his disapproval had ever made much difference to Daisy when she was set on her course.

  He went on, wondering whether the same words from HMS Pinafore buzzed silently in her head as in his:

  Carefully on tiptoe stealing, Breathing gently as we may, Every step with caution feeling, We will gently steal away.

  Except that she was not stealing “away,” and he damned well wished she was.

  When next Alec raised his head, Anstruther was on his feet, facing the garden wall but slightly turned away, towards his wife who, fortunately, was beyond him. His voice, though low, was impassioned, and clear enough for Alec to make out his words.

  “It’s my fault. You’ve been alone too much, with no family near to support you, no children to occupy you. I’ll apply for a shore berth, Devonport or Portsmouth. I’ve been at sea over twenty years, that’s enough. Cecily, you need never fear me.” He held out his hands to her, and she threw herself on his chest, sobbing. As his arms closed about her, he repeated tenderly, “Never be afraid of me, Cecily.” Then his voice rose, the tone turned menacing, and he spat out, “But as for that filthy lecher who took advantage of you, he’d bloody well better watch out!”

  The sun shone through the open window onto Daisy’s face, but she didn’t want to get up. She was sure her bottom still bore the imprint of the cold stone step she had cowered on for what felt like hours, while the Anstruthers canoodled in the garden above. Of course she was glad they were reconciled, but they might have had the decency to take their billing and cooing indoors!

  She had been too tired to face the slog back along the track and round by the lane to the front door, though if she had known how long the wait would be she might have changed her mind. Alec and Baskin had both stayed with her, all by silent consent too embarrassed to openly walk up the steps. When at last the Anstruthers went into the house, Alec swore his every joint creaked as he rose from his crouch.

  Baskin still had a youthful spring in his step. But as he and Daisy and Alec crossed the lawn towards the back door, she had heard him mutter, “Well, that settles it! The man’s a cad and a bounder and he’s got to be stopped.”

  Last night, cold, cramped and cross, Daisy had considered it only right that George Enderby should get his just desserts, and the sooner the better. This morning, warm and comfortable in her bed, she was inclined to feel more charitable.

  Or rather, since she was not at all inclined to make allowances for Enderby, she began to consider consequences.

  Peter Anstruther’s attack in the pub had not done Cecily’s reputation any good, but at least his naval superiors were not likely to take a bar-room brawl too seriously. A premeditated assault, on the contrary, could lead to a court-martial as well as a prison sentence, besides confirming and spreading word of Cecily’s downfall. The couple would be ruined.

  Whatever Cecily’s misdeeds, Daisy liked her. She liked Baskin, too, and he was pretty well bound to lose his job if he raised a hand to Enderby. Still, though she knew nothing of his family circumstances, she thought on the whole it would be a good thing if he put Enderby out of commission before Anstruther got around to it.

  She wondered if she dared hint to him that he should stop procrastinating and get on with giving Georgie Porgie the thwacking he so richly deserved. But Alec would be furious if he discovered her meddling. The phrase “accessory before the fact” came to mind.

  A glance at the clock on the mantelpiece told her she was too late, anyway. By the time she was up and dressed, Baskin would have finished his breakfast and gone off for his daily hike—unless he chose a shorter walk today, to the Schooner Inn and a confrontation.

  Daisy was getting hungry. Alec had promised to bring her up some toast with homemade jam, but she was beginning to wish she hadn’t surrendered to the temptation of her cosy bed. Scrambled eggs, she mused, her mouth watering, with a rasher of back bacon and one of those scrumptious sausages from the local butcher, nicely browned …

  A knock on the door.

  “Who’s there?”

  “It’s Cecily Anstruther, Mrs. Fletcher.”

  “Come in.”

  The landlady entered, preceded by a lad
en tray balanced on one hand.

  “You angel!” said Daisy. “You must have read my mind.”

  With a slight smile, Mrs. Anstruther set the tray on the bedside table while Daisy sat up and rearranged her pillows. “Mr. Fletcher said you were tired, not that you weren’t hungry. I thought you ought to have something.” The smile disappeared. “Besides, I wanted a chance to see you in private, to apologize.”

  “Apologize?”

  “For the fracas in the Schooner last night.”

  “You weren’t even there.”

  “It was my fault, though.” Agitated hands twisted together. “I don’t know what you must think of us!”

  “As long as you and your husband have made your peace, that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?”

  “Peter’s an angel,” she said fervently. “He’s the one who’s an angel. He says we’ll sell the house—it was his father’s—and move to Devonport, and he’ll apply for a shore job. But I don’t know what will happen if he … He’s talking about having it out with George Enderby. I’ve begged him to let it be. I don’t know what he’s going to do. I don’t know what to do.”

  “If he won’t listen to you, he wouldn’t listen to me. Would you like me to see if Alec will try to talk him out of it?”

  “Oh no. Thank you, but better not. I’ll just have to hope he thinks better of it. I’ll leave you to your breakfast. Just leave the tray up here, the girl will fetch it when she makes the beds.” She went out, looking almost as careworn as she had when she dreaded her husband finding out about Enderby.

  Daisy lifted the cover off the plate and discovered exactly what she had wished for, still hot, as was the tea under its cosy. As she ate, she pondered the situation, but she could think of no solution short of having Constable Puckle lock Peter Anstruther up in his “wash’se” until the sailor’s justifiable wrath cooled.

  After lunch, the sun still shone but a cool breeze had sprung up. Daisy, quite restored after a peaceful morning in a deck-chair in the garden, decided the weather was perfect for a walk up the cliff to show Alec the view.

  “Let’s take a picnic tea,” Alec proposed. “I brought a knapsack just in case.”

  “Oh yes,” said Deva. “Let’s go down that path I found, the one down the cliff to the secret cove, and eat our picnic there.”

  “The tide is still quite high,” Belinda objected. “The cove’s prob’ly under water.”

  “The tide is going out,” Deva pointed out. “By the time we get there, there may be sand. We could go down the path anyway, to see, couldn’t we, Mr. Fletcher?”

  Alec cocked an eyebrow at Daisy, who explained. “I didn’t want to try it without you, darling, but it might be fun to explore.”

  “Down a cliff? Don’t forget we’d have to climb up again.” He cast a meaningful glance at her midriff.

  “We wouldn’t have to race back up. I’d take it easy.”

  “Well, let’s go up the track, anyway. I’ll take a dekko at this famous path.”

  Mrs. Anstruther packed a picnic tea into Alec’s knapsack and they set off up the hill. The girls were quite accustomed to long walks by now, and sped ahead.

  At the top, the south-west wind was boisterous. Daisy had to hold down her skirt, and as soon as they reached the summit her hat blew off, though Alec somehow kept his cap on his head. The girls—Daisy had allowed them to go bare-headed—chased the hat and caught it when its erratic progress halted in a tangle of heather. Daisy decided to leave it near the path with a stone to hold it down.

  “I hope the sheep won’t eat it,” said Deva with a giggle.

  “I hope Sid won’t come along and think it’s been thrown away,” Belinda worried. “But he’d give it back to you, Mummy, if we told him.”

  “I know he would, darling.” Daisy enjoyed the feeling of the wind tossing her shingled curls, though she knew she would pay for hatlessness with a new crop of freckles. She turned to Alec. “Well, what do you think?”

  He eyed her with an admiring grin. “I always did like the informal look.”

  “I meant the view.”

  “That’s beautiful, too.”

  They stood arm-in-arm, gazing out to sea. Even from their height, the Channel looked rough, the great rollers white-capped as far as they could see. Fishing boats bobbed in the middle distance, and farther out a majestic liner ploughed its way through the swells, but the wind seemed to have dissuaded the small yachts from leaving the inlet. Seagulls hung in the air, the “rolling level underneath them steady air,” Daisy said with a vague memory of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem, though that, she rather thought, was about a singular falcon, not plural gulls.

  Walking on, Daisy and Alec stopped now and then to contemplate a particularly fine vista of the rocky coastline. At one high point they could see for miles inland, as far as what Alec claimed was Dartmoor in the hazy distance.

  The girls had run ahead, with strict instructions to stay away from the edge. They came dashing back to announce that they had found Deva’s path down the cliff.

  Alec’s stride lengthened. Pleased to see his enthusiasm, Daisy didn’t try to keep up, saving her energy for a possible climb to come. When she joined Bel and Deva at the top of the path, Alec was already past the first switchback, his hand shading his eyes as he surveyed the rest of the way down.

  “Mr. Fletcher said to stay here till he says it’s all right to come.”

  “And then go carefully. No rushing,” Belinda reminded her friend.

  At that moment, Alec looked up and waved. Bel and Deva both immediately set foot on the path side by side. They looked at each other.

  “I found it,” said Deva.

  Bel nodded reluctantly. “All right, you can go first. I’ll help Mummy at the difficult bits.”

  “Gosh, thanks, darling,” said Daisy, feeling a hundred years old. But perhaps it wasn’t her age that prompted such solicitude. Officially Bel hadn’t been told yet that there was a baby on the way, but she was a bright child quite capable of putting two and two together. Children today seemed to know far more of such matters than they had in Daisy’s youth.

  Deva continued downward at a prudent pace. Bel followed her, glancing back now and then to say anxiously, “Are you all right, Mummy?”

  “So far, so good.” The first part was easy, though rather steep, but soon the way turned rough and rocky. The return journey was going to be quite a toil. The almost sheer drop to Daisy’s left was sometimes separated from the path by a rim of rock or a few tussocks of grass, sometimes by nothing at all. She averted her gaze, keeping it firmly fixed on the next couple of yards her feet had to cross. At least they were not buffeted by the wind. Some trick of conformation of cliff and headland sheltered them, and the sun felt warm.

  They reached Alec. “I can’t see sand at the bottom, if there is any,” he reported, “but there are some flat rocks down there we can sit on for our picnic. They should be sheltered from the wind, and with the tide ebbing we needn’t worry about being stranded. How are you doing, love? You don’t think it will be too much for you going back up?”

  With the girls’ pleading looks upon her, and Alec’s obvious lust for exploration, Daisy would have felt a monster if she had doubted aloud her ability to prance back up the cliff like a mountain goat. “I’ll manage very well,” she said, “as long as I’m not rushed.”

  As they went on down, they came to a place where the path narrowed alarmingly in bypassing a large boulder. On the sea side, a few clumps of pink-flowered thrift clung to the top of a steep slope of scree.

  Alec turned his face to the rock and worked his way past crabwise.

  “It’s not difficult. There’s all sorts of little knobs and cracks you can grip if you need to,” he encouraged Deva. She and Belinda followed without a quiver and passed him.

  Daisy, who had been certain her pregnancy barely showed, now felt as if she protruded at least a foot in front. She must not show the white feather, she admonished herself, especially in fr
ont of Belinda, whose grandmother would have forbidden this adventure on the grounds that only boys climb cliffs.

  “Hm,” said Alec, frowning, “maybe I’d better call the girls back. I’d forgotten the extra inches around your middle.”

  “Darling, how rude! I’m not too wide yet.” She edged around the boulder, finding plenty of finger-holds but not really needing them. “See?”

  He grinned at her. “Another month and we’d have had to leave you behind up there.”

  “Another month and I wouldn’t have made it to the top in the first place.”

  “Not too much farther.”

  The path grew easier from there on, and the girls went on ahead. Soon they called back that they could see sand below, and then they disappeared among the tumble of rocks, all shapes and sizes, at the base of the cliff. Waves dashed against the headlands in fountains of spume, but their force seemed to be spent before they rolled into the sheltered cove.

  Belinda briefly reappeared. “Mummy, there’s the absolutely best rock pool ever, with amenomes and gobies and a starfish!” She had to shout to make herself heard against the muted roar of the sea. “Come and see. Come and see, Daddy.”

  “I’m going to find a good picnic place first,” Alec called back. “This knapsack is getting heavier and heavier.”

  “That’s the Thermos flask of tea,” said Daisy. “Not to mention the lemon squash for the girls.”

  “I won’t mention it. I just want to put it down.” He picked his way across and between the rocks towards the small beach they had spotted from above.

  Daisy scrambled over to join Bel and Deva. She found them arguing over whether a tiny transparent creature with blue and orange stripes could possibly be a shrimp.

  “Shrimps are pink,” Deva said dogmatically.

  “Not until they’re cooked, are they, Mummy?”

  No more than Deva had Daisy ever seen an uncooked shrimp. “I have no idea,” she admitted.

  “If we catch one, can we take it home and cook it?”