He disappeared. Emma took Finn’s watch and buckled the fat strap round her wrist, then held the ladder-end. Finn stepped on to the rung and simply walked out, balancing easily. By the time she reached the conning-tower it had sunk another five inches, covering the glass. Gingerly Finn lowered herself in. Again the hatch clanked shut, and after a short pause the silent churning of the propeller dragged the tower out along the jetty until it lay about ten yards beyond the end, like a buoy waiting for somebody to come along and moor to it. Even in this clear water the shimmer off the surface prevented one from seeing anything of the hull at all. Slowly the tower began to sink; it took two minutes to disappear completely. Emma looked at the watch: twenty to one.
“Typical,” said Roddy, frowning beside her. She knew at once what he meant.
“Andy said it might be dangerous,” she said, “and he didn’t want to drown both the male McAndrews in one morning. Do you think it really is dangerous? I can’t get used to the way you seem to rush in to things.”
“I’m so glad,” said Miss Newcombe. “Nor can I.”
“Yes,” said Roddy, his frown vanishing. “Yes, that would be hell on Finn.”
“What would?”
“If Andy and I were killed, she’d become Clan Chief when Father dies; and then she’d pretty well have to marry one of the Fertagh McAndrews. They’re drips.”
It seemed one of the oddest arguments Emma had ever heard for allowing oneself to be drowned in a bronze trap, but it appeared to have stilled Roddy’s wrath for a bit, so she said nothing. She looked at the watch: eighteen minutes to one. The seconds ached away. No ripple troubled the water.
“Hello,” said Roddy. “They’re going further out.”
He pointed at the cable and Emma saw that it was inching along the concrete.
“But they haven’t got the propeller going,” she said. “We’d have seen that boiling it makes.”
“Did he say how deep he was going?”
“About ten feet. That wouldn’t pull the cable out—not that much. Roddy . . .”
But Roddy spun round, waved an urgent arm at Ewan and shouted. The distant knock of the tractor-engine quickened and deepened. The cable rattled back up the slipway and rose clear until it ran almost straight from the winch to the top edge of the concrete, touched there, and ran straight down to the water. Once it was taut it didn’t budge an inch inland. The tractor gave a brief roar and Emma saw its front wheels buck slightly at the extra strain.
“He mustn’t do that,” said Roddy and raced up the hill. Yes, thought Emma, a jerk like that might simply tear the bows out.
“What’s happening, darling?” said Miss Newcombe’s voice, slightly anxious. “Is something, er, wrong?”
“I think they’re stuck out there, under the water. The tractor can’t pull them in. Perhaps they’re wedged under an old cable or something.
“Shall I go and see?” said Miss Newcombe. She dropped her dressing-gown idly on the jetty and ran down to the far end, changing her springy pace at the last instant so that she took off perfectly for an almost splashless dive, and was gone too. Emma began to count the seconds, finding it hard to keep the count steady against the heavy banging of her heart. Fifty-one, and the blonde head shot up, gasping, fifteen yards out; she didn’t dive again but came back to the jetty at a quick crawl.
“Too deep,” she panted. “I found the rope thing, but it goes over a sort of edge, and just . . . down.”
“You couldn’t see Anna?”
“No.”
“How far out is the cliff edge?”
“A bit . . . nearer than where . . . I came up.”
Emma raced up the hill towards the tractor, meeting Roddy who was hurrying down, but she plunged on to where Ewan sat frowning and gasped the news to shim. He fiddled with the controls of the tractor so that the winch turned twice and the cable lay slack along the grass, then the three of them walked down to the jetty where Miss Newcombe stood biting her knuckles.
“Yess,” said Ewan. “It’s stuck under something they are.”
“I think I could go deeper . . . now I know where to look,” said Miss Newcombe.
“No,” said Ewan. “They’ll do for a wee while. There’s no real weight there, not while she’s in the water. No bubbles you saw, Miss Poop?”
“Bubbles? No.”
“Then they’ll have air now, for a little. I’d best be taking my bike up to Andy Ghillie’s, and then we’ll have four men about. It’ll be a matter of rigging a big float—barrels, all lashed—Master Roddy, if you’d be going to tell Andy Coaches to find what he can in the buildings—and I’ve got some long timbers back of the hill there—I’ll bring them down with the other tractor—and we can spar the float out beyond this cliff place and maybe pull the submarine outwards, see? And if that dinna serve . . .”
“Look, look!” shouted Roddy. “They’re going deeper.” The cable was once more grating across the slipway.
“I locked the winch—I’m hoping,” said Ewan and began to race up the hill.
Despairing, Emma watched the cable shift and shift, three feet, four. It stopped for an instant, straight along the slipway but not truly taut, then all at once it gave a little wriggle and lost its straightness—whatever had been pulling it was pulling no longer.
“The bows have broken,” whispered Emma.
She snatched her gaze out across the water to see the huge bubble rise, the bubble that would mean the end of proud, fierce Andy, and of Finn, whom Emma had liked more than anybody she had ever met, or ever would meet.
The water boiled and creamed.
No bubble could be that shape, nor that hard and grey, like a flattish bowler hat rocking amid the turbulence.
The waves settled and there lay Anadyomene, a foot further out of the water than she had been even before Andy had first got into her, with almost three feet of the hull showing fore and aft.
“Oh, super!” said Miss Newcombe. “Wasn’t that horrid! And I’ve ruined my hair, too.”
They heard a shout from up the hill and the changed note of the tractor engine. The cable rattled along the slipway; Roddy ran for the spar to pole the submarine clear of the jetty, but Ewan judged his job so neatly that soon the green hull was lying just where it had been in the clear water by the knobbly planking. The hatch hinged open and Finn climbed out, her face grey-white like oatmeal, her glorious hair drenched. No proud balancing along the ladder this time; instead she crawled ashore, where Miss Newcombe put an arm round her shoulder, as much to be comforted as to comfort her. Nobody said anything until Andy, also dripping wet, was safe on the jetty.
“What happened?” said Roddy. “What went wrong? You were stuck over the cliff, and Poop couldn’t go any deeper. Why are you wet?”
“I don’t know what happened,” said Andy.
“We’re wet because the windows leaked,” said Finn.
“It wasn’t much,” said Andy. “A few squirts where the rubber seal round the windows had perished. Two or three cupfuls.
“We couldn’t see!” said Finn.
“Yes,” said Andy. “That was the trouble.”
“Why did you go so deep?” said Emma.
“We didn’t mean to. I think the ballast tanks must have been quite empty on the trolley, and stayed empty after the launching. We flooded them a bit to sink, and overdid it, and then the pumps wouldn’t empty them completely so we were still not quite buoyant and just went on sinking. That pressure-gauge registers all right. Then the seals gave way and started spouting, and then one of you must have spotted that something was wrong, because Ewan started to haul us in before the five minutes were up . . .
“That was Roddy,” said Emma quickly.
“. . . only of course our tail was still sinking and we started to tilt and then he hauled us in under something—our nose, that is—but the tail went on going down. I had to drag Finn right up to the bows, and that was just enough to even the weight out, so we sat there . . .”
“Listen
ing to the loch hissing in,” said Finn.
“Yes. Then Finn remembered this handle she’d seen, and we thought we might as well give it a try.”
“I saw it yesterday,” said Finn. “I thought it was just something for the crew to steady themselves by, but it said ‘Weight Release’.”
“Yes, I saw that,” said Emma. “‘Weight Release’ and an arrow to show you which way to turn it. I didn’t know what it meant.”
“It meant that Grandfather had fitted a safety device,” said Andy. “Or Monsieur Goubet, perhaps. You were right Cousin Emma—we damned near sank Anna with the weight of the extra batteries. Father had run her in Coronation Year without the safety-weight, which is why he’d had to add ballast to get her under at all . . .”
“What sort of safety-weight?” said Roddy. “How did it work?
“I imagine it was a great lump of lead under the keel, with this release-shaft screwed down into it. We turned and turned it, and nothing happened, and then it must have screwed itself free because we were bucketing all over the place as the nose came out from whatever we were stuck under, and up we shot and saw daylight.”
“I see,” said Roddy. “It’s just like chucking ballast out of a balloon. Dead cunning, these Victorians. I wonder what’s for lunch.”
Over lunch Andy said “It’s not as bad as it might be, unless the trolley has gone over the cliff too. But there’s probably some kind of stop on the rails. If Poop will be kind enough to nip down and survey the damage, then we can haul the trolley up, get Anna ashore, and rig her up with a lighter weight. There’s tons of lead in Big House.”
“What about the windows?” said Finn.
“Plastic Padding should fix those, and . . .”
Emma listened horrified. She could have understood if it had been only Roddy, but Andy and Finn were grown up, or almost. When there was a pause she broke in, a little shrilly.
“You don’t mean you’re going on with it?” she said. “After this morning?”
“We can’t stop now!” said Roddy, fiercely.
“We’ve only been a bit unlucky,” said Finn.
“You mean you’ve been frightfully lucky,” said Emma. “You only just didn’t kill yourselves; you only just didn’t kill me, and . . .”
“My dear Cousin Emma,” said Andy loftily. “You are doing me an injustice. In fact we are behaving very carefully and sensibly, taking every possible precaution. That’s why I propose to go to the trouble of making a new safety-weight from the lead pipes at Big House—because I don’t want to run any unnecessary risks. It’s typical of Father that he went barging about the loch in Coronation Year with no safety-weight at all. That’s what I call dangerous.”
“Father’s an ass,” said Roddy.
“No he isn’t,” said Miss Newcombe. “He’s cleverer than everyone else put together.”
“I know that,” said Roddy. “But he’s an ass, too.”
Chapter 5
“YESTERDAY WAS RATHER BORING,” wrote Emma twelve days later. As usual she clicked her pen against her teeth and gazed out over the loch; it looked rather boring too—or perhaps it was just her mood, for quite a lot of things had happened yesterday, only she didn’t feel like writing about them. She and Ewan had done one perfect run across the loch, judging both depth and distance right; then they’d driven off to picnic on the desolate slopes of Ben Goig; spent a lounging afternoon in the dinghy catching enough of the hungry little trout that swarmed at the shallow end to make a luscious supper; and while Emma and Finn and Caitlin, the cook, had been shelling young peas in the evening Caitlin had told them the most marvellous ghost story, not frightening at all, but weird and beautiful. But Emma didn’t feel like writing about any of that. Even the young deer which she and Roddy had surprised when they stalked up a ridge in the hope of spotting some of the wild-cats which no one ever saw by day but which miaowed so often in the dark—she didn’t even feel like writing about how the deer had stared at them, shocked, for one eternal instant before bounding away, zig-zagging down the slope. Though that was just the sort of thing Mrs Sturmer would like.
It was waiting to hear from the Television people that made everything else seem monotonous. Never mind, she thought. Perhaps she was writing too much. Fifty-seven pages was an awful lot to expect anyone to read, even eager Mrs Sturmer.
The thought made a good excuse to leaf back and read what she’d written before, and look again at the photographs. She wished she dared ask Finn to take a close-up of Miss Newcombe; but having the photographs at all was a stroke of luck. And cunning.
——
The two girls were putting another layer of fibre on to the monster’s head. The pear-drop reek of the resin suddenly made Emma feel ill, and she ran for the open doors at the water’s edge and stood there, gasping for sweet air. Both girls had rushed out of the boathouse like this several times, so Finn hardly looked up from her work, busy with the task of rolling a whole layer into shape before the resin started to set.
It was a dullish day, heavy, with many insects darting through the moist, warm, motionless air. The worst of them were the horseflies, which had settled and sucked and stung before you even noticed the tickle of them. It was because they didn’t come into the boathouse that the girls were enduring the appalling resin smell.
Out across the leaden water a motor-launch was moving; the faint puck-puck of its engine was the only noise she could hear until Ewan Uphill’s chain-saw, somewhere up in the plantations, ripped the morning apart. The boys were leaning over the back of the launch, studying the behaviour of the monster’s tail; from the shore Emma could see that it was getting much more life-like. The early experiments with tractor-tyres had looked like nothing except tractor-tyres; and when Andy had filled them with enough water to show only a couple of little hummocks above the surface they had become more than Anadyomene would conceivably tow. The latest tail was much more streamlined—a plastic heating-duct discarded by the kippering factory at Mallaig, with bits added. The first two-thirds of it were very convincing, but the back needed further adjustments.
“Finn,” said Emma.
“Yes, you needn’t come back. I’m just finishing.”
“Where’s your camera?”
“In The Huts.”
“I think you ought to take a few photographs.”
“What of?”
“Things like the head, before it’s painted. And the boys with the tail behind the launch. And Anna, of course.”
“Why?”
“Well . . . I thought . . . well, it’s just possible that you might need to prove that the whole thing’s a fake. I mean, if it got out of hand. I mean, I know you all enjoy lying, but it’s useful to be able to prove the truth.”
Finn smiled to herself and went on rolling the resin into the curves of her beast; it looked better with every layer of fibreglass, less heraldic, meaner, more like a thing that has grown and not simply been manufactured. Some layers had made it look suddenly drunk, but this one was going well, with the tiny head just the right proportions for the short, arching neck. Finn had wanted a longer neck, but Andy had insisted that it would drag too much in the water, so she’d had to make it stubby, and spreading enough at the shoulders to cover the whole conning-tower; so now it looked clumsy, but clumsy in a natural way. Emma thought of the ugly weight of a rhinoceros—Finn’s beast would have something of that quality, when it was done.
“That’ll do,” said the sculptress, standing up and stepping back. “Let’s hope Andy says it’s strong enough. I’ll get the camera.”
Emma lolled and slapped horseflies as they settled, and watched the boys. By the time Finn came back with her equipment they had stopped the motor and were hauling the tail alongside for Andy to fiddle with. Finn stood in the shadow of the doorway and clicked her lens; like a proper photographer she took twenty times as many pictures as she could possibly use—but she could afford to because she did her own developing, using the old laboratory, the oldest part of The Hut
s, as a dark-room. When she had used up three reels of film they strolled back there, lax in the oppressive air. Miss Newcombe was sitting on the verandah writing with immense and frowning concentration her weekly letter to Major McAndrew. Andy had rigged a mosquito-net for her, and she sat under this with a very old typewriter on her lap, choosing the letters one by one and hitting them like enemies. The day after Andy and Finn had nearly drowned, Emma had looked at the letter Miss Newcombe was writing then; it was quite short, in two paragraphs. The first one said that the writer was well, and how much she weighed, and that the weather was fine and they might go for a picnic. The second was longer and started with questions about what the weather in Geneva was like and whether Major McAndrew was taking his vitamin pills and was he sleeping any better; then it reminded him not to eat any lobsters because they made him sick; then it hoped that Swiss women were all very ugly but said Miss Newcombe had seen a TV programme about a place which she thought was either Switzerland or Sweden but anyway some of the girls looked just his type and would he please think about beetles and nothing else. Nothing about the drowning. Emma had felt ashamed of her peeping. Now the girls crept past so as not to spoil Miss Newcombe’s concentration.
The laboratory was a lovely room, a sort of tidy jumble. Glass-fronted cupboards held old brass apparatus and bits of experiments and strange-shaped glass jars and tubes. Apart from Finn’s photographic kit all the things in the room were at least fifty years old and made, like Anadyomene, as well as possible; the cupboard doors and the shutters to darken the windows hissed slightly as you closed them, so cleanly did they fit. A huge safe squatted in one corner.
Emma Tupper's Diary Page 8
