Fall of a Philanderer

by Carola Dunn

  Alec let her listen. Whatever she had done with Enderby, she was still in some ways a child, he thought. He wished Daisy was with him, to reassure her, to win her confidence.

  The tune ended. Before the mechanism started a repeat, Alec said, “Do sit down, Miss Coleman.”

  Clutching the tinkling clown, she subsided into the nearest armchair, one of a suite upholstered in shoddy tangerine plush. Her healthy colour had faded, and she moistened dry lips with the tip of her tongue. “What is it, then? What d’you want to know?”

  Alec sat down on a matching chair, and discovered that it was as uncomfortable as it was hideous. “Think back to Sunday,” he said. “Just four days ago. Tell me about it.”

  She took him literally, beginning with getting up at dawn to help milk the cows. The recital of the morning’s chores in dairy and house seemed to calm her, so he didn’t interrupt.

  “And then we had dinner, roast beef wi’ apple pie after.” She paused. “No, I tell a lie, it were plum pie. And then me dad got hisself into a fine taking, so I cut and run. When me dad flies off the handle, you don’t hang around if you don’t want a thick ear—or worser.”

  “He followed you.”

  “He come out roaring for blood.”

  “So it was you he was angry with, not your mother. What did you do to upset him?”

  “’Tweren’t nothing I done,” she whined. “Mum tole him some gossip Aunt Ellen tole her. She’m a terrible tattler, Aunt Ellen.”

  “She told him you had been seen meeting George Enderby.”

  “Well, if so be you knows, why ask?”

  “I want to hear your version, Miss Coleman.”

  “All right,” she said uneasily, “so I met Mr. Enderby a couple o’ times, when I were out walking. Bain’t nowt wrong in talking to a fella that I knows on.”

  Enderby was not available to be charged with causing the deliquency of a minor, Alec reflected, so, for the moment at least, what exactly had occurred between them was not material. The way she called her lover “Mr.” was rather pathetic. “How far did your father chase you?”

  “’Tweren’t no distance. I hid, and he stamps about a bit, shouting. Then he yells out, ‘Just wait till you get home, you’ll get what’s coming to you.’ And off he goes down the lane.”

  “Then you come out of hiding and set off across the cliffs, and he turns around and follows you.”

  “That he did not! I went ever so careful. I’d stop and watch to see were he coming after, and he weren’t. He were certain sure I’d have to go home soon or late and he’d get me then.”

  Lips compressed, Alec swore silently. If anything was “certain sure,” it was that Olive had no desire to protect her father. It looked as if Coleman was out of the running.

  “And he can wait forever,” Olive continued. “I bain’t going home and you can’t make me!”

  “How did you get to Newton Abbot?”

  “Mr. Enderby give me money for the bus fare. He give me earrings, too, but I lost one o’ they,” she said sadly. “He were nice to me and I be sorry he’s dead.”

  “How did you come to lose the earring?”

  Olive scowled. “He were a-watching of us! Disgusting, I calls it. I seen him peeping and tole Mr. Enderby and up he jumps, and I pulls down me frock and I were in that much hurry to get away I must’ve dropped the earring wi’out noticing.”

  So much for meeting the man to talk! But who was the observer? “Your father caught up with you and watched … what you were doing?”

  “Dad? Nay, I tole you I lost him,” the girl said scornfully. “’Twere me simple uncle, Sid.”

  26

  With ten men at the oars, the lifeboat and its towed dinghy scurried down the inlet, rising and falling as the swells passed beneath the wooden hull. Daisy was glad she was not subject to seasickness. In a comparatively small craft, close to the water, the gentle pitching felt quite similar to the effect of a North Atlantic storm on an ocean liner.

  “You been’t dressed for this, missus!” Someone thrust a yellow oilskin and sou‘wester at her as they approached the mouth of the inlet. She took off her hat and struggled into them, turning up the brim of the sou’wester so that she could see out.

  Beyond the shelter of the hillsides, the wind grew boisterous, and waves broke over the sandbar in clouds of spray. Huddled in a corner out of the way of the crew, Daisy closed her eyes as the boat dived head first through a breaker and emerged into the open sea. Water trickled down her oilskins, soaking her feet and ankles. She regarded with envy the seamen’s boots and trousers. If she ever again went to sea in a small boat …

  “Mrs. Fletcher?” The middle-aged man shouting to make himself heard over the clash of wind and wave, the creak of oars, looked distinctly peeved. She had seen him steering; he had handed the tiller over to someone else. His oilskin had COXSWAIN emblazoned across front and back. “You are Mrs. Fletcher?” His voice was educated—and outraged.

  “Yes. I’m sorry …”

  “What the deuce do you think you’re doing here? This is a rescue mission, not a sightseeing tour!”

  “I know!” Daisy yelled back. “That’s why I came. It’s no good trying to rescue someone who’s scared to death of his rescuers. He’ll just try to get away and make things worse for himself, and probably endanger your crew. I know Sid, and I think I can persuade him to come to me.”

  “Do you realize we’re going to have to send the dinghy into the cave to get him out? With the waves washing in and the tide rising? It’s already dangerous as Hades. You’re out of your mind if you imagine for a moment I’ll let you go in!”

  He turned away to return to the tiller. The coxswain: Mr. Wallace, the solicitor, she thought. Solicitors were notorious for their excessive caution.

  The lifeboat added roll to pitch as she crawled diagonally up a dark blue slope, over the emerald green crest fringed with blown spume, and down the other side of the wave. Daisy remembered, on that trans-Atlantic voyage, watching the ship’s lifeboats in heavy seas. From the upper decks, they had looked like beetles climbing mountains.

  She was rather glad she couldn’t see herself from above.

  Whenever they reached the top of a roller, Wallace gazed landward, presumably to judge their progress along the coast. It seemed to Daisy that they were moving not parallel to but away from the cliffs at an angle. Keeping well away from the rocks, she supposed. Every now and then she caught a glimpse of a white line of breakers at the base of the cliffs. In a couple of spots, huge fountains of spray burst over headlands.

  Chilled and cramped, she started to stand up to change her position. A heavy hand on her shoulder pushed her down, as Wallace shouted another order and the sailors sprang into motion.

  Bill Watson, the ferryman, gave her a gap-toothed grin. “Us don’t want to have to stop to pull ’ee out,” he admonished her. “If you goes over the side, the life-jacket’ll keep you afloat, but for all ’tis August, the water’s colder nor you might think. Stay out o’ the way, missus.”

  Daisy scrunched down lower against the gunwale and gripped the nearest projection. “What are they doing? Oh, changing places?”

  “Aye. Bain’t no mite o’ use raising sail lessn the wind’s abaft, so us be taking turn and turn about, giving a rest to they as has been rowing. ’Twill be heavy work enough for all, belike, when us gets close in.”

  It dawned on Daisy that to reach the cave they were going to have to brave the breakers. “Is it very dangerous?” she asked nervously.

  “Nay, missus. She’m pretty near unsinkable, self-righting they calls it, watertight deck, and packed full o’ airtight compartments, and cork on the sides to ward off the rocks.”

  “Good.” As she had suspected, Mr. Wallace had grossly exaggerated the danger. “Come to think of it, a lifeboat that’s liable to sink would be rather pointless.”

  “Aye, that it would. ‘Tis the chaps going into the cave in the dinghy as’ll be facing trouble. Our strongest oarsmen Cox is sen
ding.” Watson grinned again. “And seeing as how rowing’s me livelihood, one o’ they chaps’ll be I.”

  Daisy was dismayed. She hadn’t properly grasped the lawyer’s mention of the dinghy. “You mean you’re going to take that little rowboat, the one tied on behind, right into the cave?”

  “Bain’t no other way to get the poor chap out, not as I knows on.”

  “I suppose not.” She had been crazy to come, and she would be crazier to go into the cave. Perhaps she wouldn’t have to. Perhaps Sid wasn’t afraid of the ferryman. “Who’s going with you?” she asked.

  “Ned Baxter. A lobsterman he be, allus rowing around his string o’ pots. ’Twixt the two on us, us’ll manage it.”

  Ned Baxter: he was the man who had wheeled Sid’s cart down to the Anstruthers’, under Bel’s watchful eye. Nancy Enderby had told Daisy the girls would come to no harm with him, that he and the others just liked to tease poor Sid. But Sid had obviously believed they were going to steal or wreck his precious cart. Whatever he felt about Bill Watson, he’d never trust Ned Baxter.

  What should she do? If she went along, would her presence just make the endeavour more dangerous for everyone concerned?

  She had practically decided she had better stay aboard the lifeboat, when the crewmen who had been resting moved to doubleman the oars. An ominous roar she had been distantly aware of grew louder. The cliff towered over them now, with headlands on either side. From the crest of the next swell she saw waves breaking in thunder on the rocks.

  There was the mouth of the cave, a black hole shaped like a crooked horn, wide at the base, narrowing to a point at the top. Daisy caught a glimpse of a swell surging into it unbroken, half-filling the opening.

  Watson appeared beside her again. “Hold tight, missus!” he bellowed in her ear.

  Daisy hung on. The sudden jerk would have thrown her overboard had she been standing. “Have we hit a rock?”

  “Nay, Cox set the anchor. A right-down clever seaman, he be. They’re paying out the chain and she’s drifting down gentle-like t’ards the cave, atween the rocks, so’s they’ll just have to fend off. If ’ee’ll move forrard a bit, missus, us’ll pull up the dinghy alongside.”

  The point of the bow had stopped just a few yards short of the cave mouth when Baxter and Watson swung over the side into the dinghy. A third man, carrying an acetylene lantern, moved to join them. Daisy recognized him as the other joker who had threatened to “take care” of Sid’s cart after his fracas with Mrs. Hammett.

  Her memory filled with a vision of Sid’s distraught face. She pictured him scrambling away in terror as they called to him, hiding beyond their reach, drowning—because she had set Alec onto him.

  Before she quite realized she had made up her mind, she was scrambling over the gunwale. One foot found purchase on a loop of rope, the other waved around until the men in the dinghy caught hold of her. Above, shouting faces looked down, inaudible amidst the crash of waves breaking over nearby rocks.

  The coxswain appeared, looking furious. However, he waved at the dinghy’s crew to go ahead. His lips appeared to form the words, “No time to be lost!”

  Daisy crouched in the bows, as far out of the men’s way as possible. Baxter knelt in the stern with a boathook at the ready. Watson was seated on one of the rowing benches, his oars in the rowlocks but resting inboard. The third man pulled the dinghy forward by the rope looped along the side of the lifeboat. A cable linked bow to bow, Daisy noticed. A couple of men on the lifeboat winched up the slack as the boats drew level. The dinghy slowly swung around to present her stern to the shore, Baxter alert to fend her off if she came too close to the rocks.

  The men above paid out the cable and the dinghy slid backwards into the shadow of the cave mouth. A swell exploded into froth against the rock face on either side but the unbroken centre lifted them into the cave. The sound of breakers diminished. For a moment the mass of water blocked most of the light, then it rolled on.

  Their umbilical cord to the lifeboat was no longer taut, Daisy noticed, as the men outside, unable to see what was happening, gave the dinghy some slack. Watson had his oars out, sculling just enough to hold their place. The third man fiddled with the lantern.

  Ahead of them the wave reached the end of the cave and flung back a shower of spray with a boom felt as much as heard.

  “See him, Jimmy?”

  “Nay!”

  Daisy had assumed the cave would open out into a lofty chamber once they passed the entrance. Before the murky daylight dimmed again, she saw that though wider, it was no higher inside. In fact, the ceiling widened from the crack at the mouth but then sloped unevenly downward to meet the receding water, which swirled about their bobbing cockleshell.

  Jimmy got the lantern lit just as the next swell arrived. For a moment the air seemed to thicken and press upon them. The brilliant white light flashed wildly about, then, in the slack water between waves, it steadied and started to quarter the cavern.

  Boom! and a shower of spray. The light jigged about on the rocky, inward-sloping walls. Again that curious compression as another swell arrived.

  “There he is!” Eyes straining, Daisy had caught a glimpse of a white face as the light passed. “Back a bit. Down. There!”

  Sid crouched on a rock shelf, clinging to a crack in the wall. The passing swell had drenched him. Water streamed from his clothes and hair. His face was turned towards the dinghy, his eyes closed against the blinding light.

  “Throw un a belt and us’ll haul un in.”

  The dinghy was bobbing in the backflow again, but Baxter’s throw was perfectly timed and placed. The white life-belt landed right beside Sid.

  He flinched and backed away.

  “Sid!” Daisy called, as the dinghy rose on the next swell. Her ears felt funny from the air pressure and her voice sounded strange.

  The swell moved on and the beam of acetylene light steadied again on the floundering figure of the beachcomber. Somehow he was holding on. Scattered light showed the cork ring floating nearby, unreachable.

  Swearing, Baxter pulled in the line. “Reckon us’ll have to go in after un?”

  “Jimmy, turn the light on me for a moment. Sid! This is the lady on the beach, the one with the two little girls.” Boom! and a shower of spray. “We’ve come to help you. He’s throwing the belt again. You must catch it and put it over your head, put your arms through it. Hurry!”

  The boat rose. Sid disappeared as the wave caught him. The light reflected off the dark water. Then his head reappeared, gasping.

  “Keep that light out o’ his eyen, Jim!”

  The light slid to one side, reflecting off the water, and once more Baxter flung the belt.

  “Catch it, Sid! Put it on!”

  Sid grabbed at the belt. Daisy thought it was slipping from his fingers, but he hung on. He crouched there holding it, uncertain.

  Daisy yelled, “Sid, put it—” Boom! Jimmy flashed the light on her again, then back to Sid. “Put it over your head and under your arms. That’s right! And the other arm.”

  “Best he come when the water’s high,” said Watson as another swell darkened the entrance. “Less like to knock on the rocks.”

  As the dinghy rose, as the swell reached for Sid, Daisy shouted: “Jump! Now, Sid. Jump!”

  At the same moment, Baxter yanked on the line. Whether deliberately or not, Sid was floundering in deep water, moving towards the boat, his instinctive dog-paddle aided by Baxter’s steady pull.

  “Missus, over to this side, now. Careful!” Jimmy set down the lantern and crossed to join Baxter as Daisy scrambled the other way. Watson, his oars never still as he kept the boat in place, shifted along his bench towards Daisy.

  Boom! and a shower of spray. The choppy backwash arrived just as Sid reached the dinghy. He caught hold of the gunwale. The boat tilted, and Daisy automatically leant back over the water to balance it, gripping tight with fingers beginning to feel like icicles. Baxter and Jimmy reached down to haul Sid aboard
. Daisy leant further back, very glad she was wearing a life-jacket.

  Sid flopped onto the bottom boards and lay there coughing and shivering convulsively. The next swell arrived as Baxter sat down on the second rowing bench and lifted his oars into the rowlocks. Daisy thankfully—and carefully—moved to the stern, while Jimmy took the boathook to the bows. He gave three tugs on their umbilical cord to the lifeboat. It tautened.

  Oars beating time, the dinghy slid down the back of the swell and out into daylight.

  “Baxter and Watson and Jimmy whatever-his-name-is all told Mr. Wallace they’d have had to go into the water after Sid if I hadn’t been there,” Daisy defended herself before Alec had a chance to open his mouth. She was sitting up in bed, well wrapped in her dressing-gown and a shawl of Cecily’s, and well supplied with hot-water bottles.

  Alec stood over her, glowering. “Great Scott, Daisy!”

  “Daddy,” Belinda said anxiously, “Mummy’s a heroine. I heard people saying so, on the quay when the lifeboat came in, didn’t we, Deva?”

  Deva nodded. “Everyone in the village came to see. It was a great occasion, like a festival in India. You were there, Mr. Fletcher, you must have heard them say Mrs. Fletcher was very brave.”

  “Bat-witted!”

  “Off you go, girls,” Daisy said hurriedly. “You can come back later. Darling, please don’t rag me. Try to imagine how I’d be feeling if Sid had drowned because I’d funked it. It was … it was pretty terrifying in the cave, though I was too busy to worry about it at the time.” In spite of all the aids to warmth, she shivered.

  Sitting down on the bed beside her, Alec took her into his arms. “You’re a bat-witted little idiot,” he said, nuzzling her hair, “but I love you anyway. I was terrified too, you know, for you and the baby.”

  “If I’d thought it might harm the baby, I might not have … But after all the walking I’ve been doing, not to mention rushing up cliffs to report bodies, I’ve been feeling so well, it never crossed my mind. I’m perfectly all right now, and Dr. Vernon says there’s no harm done. But what about poor Sid?”