Emma Tupper's Diary

by Peter Dickinson

  “Yes. I’ll tell you what happened in Anna when my voice is better. What’s this?” Emma patted the flat tin.

  Finn smiled.

  “Film,” she said. “They took miles of it. A lot of useless stuff about Loch Goig, with Poop looking windblown. Then one of the cameramen, the arty one, fell in love with Big House and took reels of that, and there was all the stuff about the rescue, and an interview with Andy Ghillie, and other bits and bobs. But there was only one bit which showed our monster looking at all like a monster, because you came up in the wrong place and the launch was in the way of the shore camera. Gabriella knows I’m mad about cameras, so she asked the cameramen to let me hang around. That’s why I was there when they were sorting out what they’d got, and I kept my eye on where they put it and how it was numbered. When they were packing up I told Poop what I wanted, and she went and what she calls found it for me.”

  “So they can’t even make a pretend mystery,” croaked Emma. “I was worrying about that. Except they’ve still got your bit of film.”

  “That’s copyright,” said Finn. “I rang up Old Crow, and he sicked a lawyer on to them. Then Gabriella rang up to say they’re showing five minutes of the hoax that went wrong and the daring rescue this evening. Nice of her, considering. In fact she came out of it pretty well. She’d told Gritt and McTurdle all along it was a hoax, and she was the only one who didn’t lose her temper.”

  “I’d like to have met her.”

  “You will,” said Finn, caressing the object in her lap and then holding it up. “I’m afraid I gave Poop the idea that she could find anything she fancied, and just after the telly-folk went Mary brought me this. It’s three-hundred-and-twenty quidsworth of telephoto lens. I told Gabriella that it had somehow got left out in the packing and why didn’t she drive up this week-end and fetch it. She said yes. Andy’ll purr, won’t he?”

  “I hope so.”

  “So do I. Now I’ll go and see if I can find something for your throat. I’m afraid our medicine cupboard is rather randomly labelled, so you won’t mind if it turns out to be stuff for cows’ udders, will you?”

  The telephone rang just as Emma was going through the hall in her dressing-gown to watch herself being rescued. She picked the receiver up and said the number. The stuff Finn had found in the medicine cupboard, even if it was meant for cows’ udders, had done wonders.

  “One moment,” said the operator. “Are you there, Switzerland? You’re through.”

  “All right,” said a man’s voice, dry and angry. “Where is she?”

  “In the bottom of the loch,” gabbled Emma.

  “No!” cried the voice, then paused. “People do not send telegrams from the bottom of my loch, not even Poop. To whom have I the honour of speaking at this absurd expense?”

  “Emma Tupper. I asked Miss Newcombe to send the telegram. That’s Major McAndrew, isn’t it?”

  “It is. Nick Tupper’s girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hm. Your father spoke fairly well of you. What’s all this about? Who’s at the bottom of the loch?”

  “Anadyomene. No other people.”

  “You’re talking in code, girl. Will you please explain to me why I must come home.”

  “We’ve found something. An animal. It oughtn’t to be alive, but it is.”

  “Ah. How many legs?”

  “None. Flippers.”

  “Yes. Yes. I see. There’s a plane leaves tomorrow morning. I hate night flights.”

  “Major McAndrew?”

  “What else?”

  “The boys are making plans. If you could send a telegram . . .”

  “That’ll help you stave them off till I come. The US Cavalry gallops over the horizon to rescue the beleaguered garrison. Finn on your side?”

  “She says she’s neutral.”

  “They’re the dangerous ones. Well, I’ll be interested to meet you, ma cousine.”

  Emma reached the drawing-room in time to see herself being hauled inert from the water, while bearded cameramen queued to give the kiss of life to Miss Newcombe. The McAndrews were analysing the awfulness of Mr McTurdle when Mary coughed at the door.

  “They have rung through a telegram, Master Andy,” she said. “Himself will be coming home the morn, and will you meet him at Glasgow airport at half-past two?”

  Chapter 9

  THERE WAS NO POINT in writing any more. Dully Emma leafed through the diary, wondering what to do. Sleep hadn’t helped her make up her mind. She had gone to bed with the vague idea of getting Miss Newcombe to drive her off to Mallaig, and posting the Diary to Daddy, just like that. But now she saw that that would put Daddy in a fix, the same fix that she was in: nothing could be done—that is, nothing could be done and leave you feeling that you’d done right—unless Major McAndrew agreed.

  She shut the folder and looked just as dully out at the loch. It was a nice enough day, but . . . Anyway, she was glad that it had cleared up yesterday in time to sparkle for his homecoming.

  He was smaller than Emma expected, barely taller than Finn; thin, tanned and dapper, with a spruce little white moustache. His hair had gone back a little from his forehead, but not enough to make him seem at all bald; it was not quite white, but flecked with darker grey that made it easy to believe that it had once been as black as Andy’s and Roddy’s. He held himself like a soldier, a man used to horseback, but he didn’t look quite like a soldier. He didn’t look quite like a scholar either, though—but it was easy to see why Roddy said he was a spy. You could imagine him plotting quietly in tents with Arab princes. Only his eyes showed how tired he was with travel. Miss Newcombe spanielled round him. His hand was cold and dry when Emma shook it.

  “How do you do?” said Emma, very nervous.

  “How do you do?” he said. “How good it is to hear those words! In Geneva nobody seems to say anything except ‘Gladda Meecha’ when they are introduced. Mary, my dear, there still seem to be three of my offspring in tolerable health. None missing. You’ve done well.”

  He kissed Mary on the cheek, asked Caitlin about her aunt’s hip, said something else to Jeannie, called good-night to Andy Coaches and a greeting in the Gaelic to the four or five other McAndrews who seemed for no special reason to be lounging on the road between The Huts and the loch.

  “In Grandfather’s day there’d have been a piper when the Chief came home,” whispered Finn. “Father can’t stand any of that nonsense.”

  “I have my own brand of nonsense,” said Major McAndrew without looking round. “Perhaps Mary will be kind enough to bring us a drink, and we’ll sit and look at the evening for a while.”

  There was a chair on the verandah that hadn’t been there before; he settled himself slowly into it, and looked in silence at his own slim foot. Miss Newcombe cuddled herself on to a cushion on the floor beside him. Roddy, astoundingly, brought a deck-chair for Emma. Mary returned with a silver tray, glasses, Coke, and a bottle of champagne dewy with chill. Emma watched her strong, small fingers coping with the cork.

  “Quiet, now,” said Major McAndrew, holding up his hand. It was as though he had commanded silence on the whole rain-freshened valley, and the whole valley, being his, had obeyed; cliff and scree, pine and heather, and the long reaches of the loch waited poised in stillness.

  “Pop!” went Mary’s cork, and the foam flowed. Major McAndrew’s hand stayed up. His lips were moving. He was counting.

  “Pop” answered the cliff at last, incredibly soft and far, but still the same noise flung back.

  “Good omen,” said Major McAndrew, smiling and ruffling Miss Newcombe’s hair. “That’s my sort of nonsense.”

  Mary took the glasses round.

  “Actually,” said Roddy, “we have a little man up there with binoculars, who bursts a balloon when he sees Mary pull the cork out. Anything to keep Father happy.”

  “It’s too far,” said Emma, puzzled. “The pop wasn’t loud enough to get there and back.”

  “The cliff is curv
ed, like a lens,” said Major McAndrew. “You might not even be able to hear the noise out there, because the sound-waves have spread and thinned, but the curve sends them back to this point, like a focus, and you can hear them again. That’s why my father built his laboratory at this point. That was his sort of nonsense. We will talk about your troubles after supper, Cousin Emma.”

  There were candles, of course, and old, old silver, silky clean. And an extra course, a bitter savoury. And then peaches, which Andy and Miss Newcombe had bought in Glasgow The Major said his stomach was too delicate for red wine but he seemed to knock back a lot of the white, first the champagne, then hock, then a yellow wine from Bordeaux with the peaches. Emma had a glass of this, sweet and polleny. It was thirty-five years old, past its best the Major said. Even so it seemed to be an extraordinary thing to be destroying it by pouring it down your throat, something so old, made with such care. She tried to remember the taste of every sip, as though she were putting it away on a shelf in her library.

  The McAndrews were less rowdy than usual, but their humour was wilder. Mad inventions flew and gathered, including a plot to send out Mr Crowe to hypnotise General Kranz into believing that he was a communist agent who had shaved his head to look less like Karl Marx.

  “You’ll have to hurry,” said Major McAndrew. “I was talking to a chap . . .”

  “. . . a chap in the CIA?” said Roddy eagerly.

  “Too simple-minded,” said Finn. “The world isn’t like that. He was talking to a chap who knows a chap who does a vague sort of something in an office in Washington . . .”

  “OPSCAD,”said Andy.

  “Hey?” said Roddy.

  “The Office for Putting Screws on Central American Dictators,” said Andy.

  “What I like about entomologists,” said Major McAndrew, “is that they let you finish what you are saying. Poop has the same virtue, and Cousin Emma appears to. Finn is not far off being right—it would be more fastidious to say that I was talking to a chap who knows a guy. Our friend Hernando has offended others than Mr Crowe, far more powerful interests. This office of Andy’s, or something like it, is lumbering into action; in the unlikely event of their managing the affair successfully, everything will be much as it was before. In the far more likely event of their making a thorough mess of things, we will probably see a left-wing government in power. Now it so happens that the British Government has gone out of its way to be polite to Hernando’s left-wing opponents, encouraging our ex-dependencies in the Caribbean to give them political asylum and so on. When the dust settles, there is a fair chance that British interests will not be considered as tarred with the brush of dollar-imperialism. For some mad reason my father’s liniment undoubtedly is popular out there, and its shortage unpopular. It suits a new government to introduce a few popular measures, especially relatively cheap ones. I think we’ll be all right in the long run, and in the short run we’ll rub along somehow. We can live on fat for a bit.”

  “Fat!” said Miss Newcombe, startled.

  “It is a way of saying that I am still able to keep you in the manner to which you are accustomed.”

  “Super,” said Miss Newcombe. “Then everything’s all right.”

  “Not exactly,” said Major McAndrew. “I now call the meeting to order. Andy has given me, in the car, an outline of all that has happened. I now move the motion that we should all regard the various idiocies involved as over and done with. There will be no recriminations. Does anyone second the motion?”

  “I do,” said Andy.

  “I put it to the vote. Nem con? Good. But I believe that Andy has a point to raise which he regards as not covered by this motion.”

  “I have,” said Andy. “I’ve been talking to Ewan Uphill about what happened in the boat before the tail got caught in the propeller. I could see that Anna was down by the bows as the launch came up. He told me that she had been behaving a bit oddly, and that there was a sudden power-loss just after he surfaced, which he attributed to the different set of batteries failing. But those batteries were perfectly good. I gave them a drop test. The only answer is that Cousin Emma deliberately gave the stern extra buoyancy, and cut the power in order not to drive the boat under. She wanted to tangle the propeller. It had happened by accident the first time she was crew, in much the same way. As a result of this action, which was deliberate and not negligent and so in my view cannot be defined merely as an idiocy, she sank Anna and nearly drowned Poop.”

  “Unfair!” said Finn.

  “She couldn’t have known about that fat elephant McTurdle,” said Roddy.

  “Order,” said Major McAndrew. “I think Andy is over-playing his hand. I am sorry to have lost Anna. I should be sorry to lose Poop. But as Roddy says the particular danger could not have been foreseen. You must learn not to attempt to play upon a chairman’s prejudices so bare-facedly. Let us see what Cousin Emma has to say.”

  “On a point of order,” said Finn.

  “Yes,” said Major McAndrew.

  “Has Cousin Emma got a vote?”

  “I don’t think so. No, I’m afraid not.”

  “Then she’s got my vote,” said Finn. “I hereby appoint her my proxy in all matters arising.”

  “Is that in order?” said Andy.

  “I don’t see why not,” said Major McAndrew.

  “There’s never been anyone like Finn for backing out of responsibilities,” said Roddy.

  “Cousin Emma,” said Major McAndrew. “Would you care to explain your actions to the meeting.”

  “It was my fault,” said Emma. “Andy’s quite right. I did it on purpose. And I ought to have told Ewan what I’d done, and levelled the boat out, and then we’d have stayed floating when the fat man jumped on her. I ought to have done that anyway, and not left Ewan thinking it was all his own fault, but I couldn’t think of a way of telling him without explaining why I wanted to do it, which would have meant telling him about the creatures.”

  “But why?” said Andy. “It’s not just letting us down when you’ve lived like one of the family. You worked like a dog to get Anna out of the cave. You had the notion of drifting her out, and that was a real risk, and you knew it.”

  “Order,” said Major McAndrew. “I must remind you to address all remarks to the chair, and not make personal attacks on other members of the meeting. However, we will take your remarks as so addressed. Cousin Emma?”

  “The important thing,” said Emma slowly, though she had thought all this out many times, both before and after the accident, “was to get the TV people to go away knowing they had been hoaxed. At first I was just going to try and get Mr Gritt to come and see Anna tied up in the bay, and show him the head in the woods. But then I realised he might want to know why I wanted to spoil the joke, and I’m . . . I’m not a very good liar. So I thought if I could make sure that Anadyomene came right out of the water during the run . . . And then I thought that would mean that they didn’t have a film of a complete run, with the head going under again, so it would be harder for them to pretend they thought it was a real monster.”

  “Concise and explicit,” said Major McAndrew. “And your motive for making them go away?”

  “There’d have been a mystery. Even if they hadn’t got the film and hadn’t seen Anna, there’d still have been a mystery. Hundreds of people would have come pouring up here. There’d have been people like the ones who are looking in Loch Ness and Loch Morar for the monsters there; and they’d be bound to find the creatures pretty soon. And then there’d be the tourists, camping round the loch, filling it with sewage and chemicals. The creatures would have died—they’re only just alive, though they look so strong and horrid. But one tiny change could kill them and there are bound to be thousands of changes. Look!”

  She pointed at the lovely oryx horns on the wall. “Do you know how many of them there are left in the world? Less than a hundred. Do you know how many tigers, outside zoos? Less than a thousand. Man kills everything, everything. Sometimes he does
it with guns and sometimes with sewage, or oil, or . . .”

  She ran out of breath and argument, and sat trembling. Major McAndrew reached for the bottle and re-filled her glass.

  “Less explicit, but still cogent,” he said. “Andy?”

  “In a way,” said Andy, poking at the tip of the big cigar he’d taken from a box on the table, “in a way I’m glad Emma mucked things up, though I’m sorry to lose Anna. In fact I ought to have arranged it myself, but I’d got the bit between my teeth, and I couldn’t quite face it. It didn’t turn out so badly, either. So I vote we don’t worry about what Emma did or why she did it. The question is . . .”

  “One moment,” said Major McAndrew, “I put the motion that Cousin Emma’s actions in Anadyomene, though not necessarily regarded as idiotic, be included among the idiocies covered by the previous motion. Proposed? Thank you, Andy. Seconded? Thank you, Roddy. Now, Andy, please proceed.”

  “The question is how can we make the most of the cave. When I was in France last year I went down the Gouffre de Padirac; there were hundreds of people queuing to see it all day long, and that’s only stalactites and things. One advantage of our cave is that it wouldn’t cost much to make it easy to get into, down under Darwin’s Pimple, and . . .”

  “On a point of order,” said Finn, “do I have to revoke my proxy to address the meeting?”

  “Nice point,” said Major McAndrew. “Let’s say not—it’ll save time. Proposed? Seconded? Carry on, Finn.”

  “You know about Lascaux?” said Finn. “Two boys found this cave of stone-age paintings, thousands of years old, gorgeous. The people who owned the land made a packet out of letting the tourists in. And then the paintings, which had lasted, just as good as ever, all those years when nobody was seeing them, began to flake off the wall, in only a few years. It was the tourists’ breath which was doing it.”