He knew that something was seriously wrong as soon as he saw Ralston’s expression. He looked, Ikey thought, sympathetic and began, with a brave but false smile, ‘I’m afraid I’ve a bit of a disappointment for you, old chap!’ At this form of address Ikey’s stomach contracted but Ralston went on hurriedly. ‘You will have to stay over a week or two, Palfrey. I’ve just had a … well, a rather sensational message from your guardian’s agent, a Mr John Rudd …’ and Ikey, suddenly feeling sick, said, ‘What’s happened, sir? Is the Squire dead?’ so that Ralston went on reassuringly, Oh, it’s not that bad, old man, it’s well … something rather unusual, something I think you may well be proud to hear when you get over the shock! There was a shipwreck a few miles from your home and your guardian, along with a number of his tenants, was instrumental in saving several lives. The place has been turned into a hospital and everything is at sixes and sevens. Mr Rudd telephoned to ask if we could keep you here for a day or so.’
His bright smile did not deceive for an instant. This was only Ralston’s second term as a housemaster and his first attempt at breaking bad news to a boy, so that he would have done well to have rehearsed his speech. Ikey said, quietly, ‘Is the Sq … is my guardian all right, sir?’ and Ralston, unable to meet the boy’s eye, replied with tell-tale hesitancy, that ‘Mr Craddock had been knocked about a bit during rescue operations. He’s getting the best attention and there’s absolutely no need to worry,’ he added, ‘but for a week or so he needs rest and quiet, so I agreed that you could either stay on with us or, if we can arrange it, stay with a chum. Who is your particular chum? Is it Rawlinson or Hooper Two?’
‘Rawlinson, sir,’ Ikey said but before Ralston had finished speaking he had made up his mind. The conclusion was obvious; if the Squire had been injured in such an improbable event as a shipwreck, it was obvious that God was already taking a hand in his plan, for now there was no need to con Mrs Craddock with stories of attempted suicide. All he had to do (and surely the need to act was more urgent than ever) was to go through with the main part of his scheme, that is, get to London, find her, and tell her Paul needed her desperately. If that did not bring her back by the first train then nothing would but, as he decided this, he was aware that certain difficulties had arisen to cancel out such unlooked-for advantages and that the Almighty was rather overdoing it. As things were it now looked as though he would remain a prisoner at school until Squire was in a fair way to making a recovery and this milked the urgency from his mission. He looked carefully at Ralston and decided that the housemaster was telling the truth, or most of the truth, and that Squire was neither dead nor dying. He said, quietly, ‘Thank you, sir, I’d sooner stay at school until I can go home. Will that be all, sir?’ and Ralston beamed at him and said heartily, ‘Why of course, old man, and I’m bound to say I admire your pluck! Would you like to spend the rest of the evening with Mrs Ralston and take supper with us? Or would you rather go back to prep and keep this to ourselves until tomorrow?’
‘I’ll go back to prep, sir, I should like to write a letter home straightaway!’
‘Naturally, naturally,’ said Ralston, patting his shoulder. ‘I’ll look in after dormitory bell tonight, just to cheer you up,’ and Ikey, muttering, ‘Thank you, sir!’ slipped from the room.
He knew that he must act at once. He must go to the bursar’s office, find his ticket to Paxtonbury among the tickets drawn in advance and get clear of the school before the morning papers made him the centre of attraction and flight was impossible.
The bursar’s office was unlocked and the tickets were in their marked envelopes on the desk. He soon found his own, pocketed ticket and half-crown, and hurried back to Big School, where reading prep was still in progress. He took out his letter, read it over, scribbled a brief postscript and then readdressed it. When supper bell rang he posted it on the way to the dining hall. It would be collected early in the morning and arrive at Shallowford the following afternoon. By then he would have been missed, and Ralston would be trying to get in touch with his home, but this would be difficult since there was still no telephone at Shallowford (Rudd must have telephoned from The Raven) and it would increase his already excellent start. For a moment or so Ikey felt almost sorry for Ralston but the moment passed after the housemaster came softly into the dormitory to whisper something to Geary, the dormitory prefect. Ikey saw Geary glance across at him and then say something back, so that when the housemaster came down the aisle between the beds he pretended to be asleep. He did not want to risk discovery of the fact that he was wearing his nightgown over shirt and rolled-up trousers. He would give them a couple of hours to settle down before slipping out and walking the six miles to Barrow Market. He would have to walk fast if he was to reach there in time to stow away on the late goods train that crossed Barrow viaduct in the small hours every week-night. Ikey knew all about that goods train, even to the time of its arrival in Paxtonbury, having made it his business to find out from Gobber Christow, the school lamp-trimmer. Gobber’s son was an engine-driver and drove it three times a week.
He lay still listening to the excited chatter and end-of-term laughter until silence bell and to the scrunch of Geary’s feet as the prefect came up, undressed and got into bed. He waited for Geary’s contented sigh, for his neighbour’s high-pitched snore and finally the far-off clank of the earlier goods train crossing the viaduct, the rattle telling him it was now almost midnight. Ten minutes later he was out of bed and he had jacket and boots on before he remembered the prayer. He did not need reassurance of the kind he had sought long ago, when he had prayed for Squire Craddock’s appearance at the railway station the day of his arrival in the Valley, but thought it might be just as well to buy some insurance on the Squire’s health. He knelt by the bed and muttered, ‘Keep Squire in bed and everyone busy until I get back with Mrs Craddock, Oh, Lord!’ In his unseemly haste to get started he forgot the obligatory Amen!
Chapter Thirteen
I
On the afternoon of March 14th, 1906, Tamer Potter was also in communion with God, having decided that it was high time he made a survey of his private beach, in order to see what the Almighty had sent him in the way of a bonus to his conventional activities. He went through the cliff-top rabbit-run and down the dry gully to the tiny bay that he thought of as Flotsam Cove (although it was unnamed on the Ordnance maps) and there began a meticulous examination of the boulder-strewn margin between high- and low-water mark, commencing at the knob of sandstone in the east and working westwards as far as Coombe Bluff, where the overhang of the cliff had kept this tiny section of coastline out of reach of less knowledgeable beachcombers.
The Cove was not more than eighty yards across but the points enclosing it were never uncovered, not even at extreme ebb tide, so that nobody could walk here from Coombe Bay or from the area further along the coast. High tides surged almost to the foot of the cliff, all of two hundred feet high at this part, and the sole approach, save by boat, was by the Potter tunnel, discovered forty years ago by an inquisitive lurcher called Kitty that Tamer had owned as a boy. The tunnel was really a long, steep rabbit run, beginning below the cliff path and weaving a path through thick gorse to the head of an old water-course, dried up since the stream had dug itself a new channel. It was a tricky descent but safe enough for anyone knowing it as well as Tamer, who usually went down there about twice a year, once after the autumn gales and again in early spring, for these were the times of the year when he could expect a harvest from gales and the cross-tides sweeping up Channel to meet the outfall of the Whin further west.
Flotsam Cove had brought Tamer several slices of luck in the past. Once he had salvaged a watertight box of Virginia tobacco, which had kept his pipe filled throughout three winters. Another time he had found a strongly-built dinghy which he had repaired and still used for inshore fishing. Then there had been an almost new buoy and an anchor, which he sold for a sovereign to Tom Williams, the Coombe Bay fisherman, and la
ter still, after a week of gales, he had salvaged a thing that had been a man, still wearing sea-boots and a few rags of clothing. Tamer was not squeamish. He searched the corpse and found a leather bag containing a gold crucifix and two sovereigns. He pocketed them and reported the presence of the body to the proper authorities.
On this particular day the weather was wet and wild, with an unseasonable south-westerly gale blowing itself out and a particularly dense sea fog creeping in from the west when the wind lost some of its force. It was warm, however, almost muggy, and Potter, who was a cold mortal, never minded rain so long as the temperature stayed round about fifty degrees. He buttoned his reefer and dragged his sixteen-stone-ten through the narrow tunnel to the gully where, with surprising agility for one so gross, he lowered himself to the beach and began his square search.
About five o’clock, when the weather was settling in really thick, he came across a park bench. It was an odd thing to find wedged between two knife-edge slabs of rock but a close inspection showed it to be in good condition, with its iron rails and back supports intact, the latter stamped with the letters ‘U.D.C.’ indicating that it had been washed out to sea when a storm lashed some esplanade. Tamer assessed its worth at about thirty shillings, providing he could prise it loose and get the girls or Sam to drag it up the cliff. In all cases of salvage it was Tamer who prospected and the family who supplied the muscle work. The Potters never called in auxiliaries, no matter how heavy the task, for this would have meant revealing the secret of the approach to the cove.
He worked away doggedly for half-an-hour and all the time the wind was dying and the sea fog getting thicker and thicker along the coast. After an hour or so he could not even see the long tongue of rock that split the cove into two parts, a kind of natural causeway that ran south for perhaps a hundred yards ending in a solitary bastion of sandstone that had resisted thousands of years of erosion and formed a tiny island shaped like a broad-bladed dagger embedded on a shelf of rock. At last he worked the bench free and stood upright, grunting with satisfaction and it was just then that he heard some confused and subdued shouting that seemed to come at him from all points of the compass. He located it, however, as soon as he had made allowances for the echo in that enclosed place, realising that its centre was the sandstone pinnacle about a cable’s length from the beach. It was an eerie sound, a combination of human and metallic noises, a steady grinding and crashing, with overtones of voices raised in fear and punctuated by hoarse shouts and just once a long and piercing scream, almost certainly the scream of a woman.
Tamer was a very stolid man and not easily frightened by noises. Some people might have interpreted the shouts as the wails of long-drowned creatures revisiting the scene of a tragedy long ago, but Potter understood at once that, whoever was making them, was in danger of being drowned at that particular moment. He forgot all about the seat and climbed over the rocks to the causeway, thinking that he might edge along it in the face of the rising tide and get some notion of what was happening behind the thick, wet blanket of mist, but when he was less than ten yards from the beach he realised that to go further would be suicidal, for the sea was running high and there was nothing to grasp for support on that narrow, weed-covered rock. So he put his hands to his mouth and bellowed ‘Ahoy, there!’ and at once a man’s voice answered ‘Ahoy!’ after which there was more confused shouting and several isolated shouts for help.
Even at that distance, and with the voices distorted by fog, Tamer knew that the poor devils stranded were foreigners, for in the answering voices an accent was clearly noticeable. The presence of foreigners on the reef did not surprise him. He was familiar with the Whinmouth coastal trade, a coming and going of Dutch and German brigs, some of them operating under sail with a single auxiliary engine, that carried cargoes of apples, timber, cattle food, coal and coke. He thought, gloomily, ‘They’m in a rare ole fix, an’ there’s no ’ope for ’em in this sea while the tide goes on risin’! They’m stuck on that ole point for sure and although the sea’s goin’ down it won’t zettle ’till it ebbs and by then there’ll be thirty voot o’ water on that slab!’ He hesitated a moment, his instinct to help at war with his strong reluctance to reveal a close family secret to coastguards, police and even local foreigners west of the Whin, but then he realised that he could not let a personal consideration prevent him from doing what he could for the poor wretches out there in the fog, so he shouted, ‘I’m a-goin’ for ’elp! I’m a-goin’ fer the lifeboat! ’Ang on, will ’ee, now?’ and without waiting for an answer he hurried back to the beach and began the steep ascent of the gully.
By the time he was half-way up he was sobbing for breath and his heart was pounding at the cage of his ribs. He paused to strip off the reefer jacket and then continued climbing, moving from foothold to foothold until at last he struck the mouth of the rabbit run and went on up the cliff-top on all fours.
When he reached the top he was convinced that he was dying. His eyes misted over and he fell on his knees, bowing his head to the grass but after a few minutes his vision cleared and although he could not see five yards through the fog and still knew precisely where he was, he was uncertain where to go for immediate help. He was kneeling there, wheezing and gasping, when he heard the chink of iron shoes and to his relief a mounted figure loomed out of the east, looking gigantic in the dense trailers of mist. Tamer at once recognised the horseman as Farmer Willoughby, his neighbour, returning no doubt from one of his evangelistic missions at one or other of the chapels along the coast, and well mounted on his strong, barrel-chested cob. Willoughby stared at the thick-set figure in mild surprise.
‘Why, Potter,’ he said reproachfully, ‘you shouldn’t be out in this weather without a coat, man! Jump up behind and I’ll take you across to the Dell,’ but Tamer, still very breathless, grabbed his stirrup leather and gasped, ‘Tiz a wreck! Down on the reef below. They’m out on that ole rock ledge an’ if us dorn get ’em orf before high tide they’ll drown, every man jack of ’em!’
Willoughby’s gentle face crumpled with dismay and he said, ‘Dear Lord, are you sure?’ and Tamer, who had some regard for the man but privately thought him quite daft, shouted, ‘Gordamme, o’ course I’m sure! I bin talking to ’em, baint I?’ and at once made a decision, based on the potentialities of himself and his neighbour. ‘Lookee,’ he said, ‘stay yer to mark the spot and I’ll take the cob and rouse Meg an’ the girls! One of ’em can ride on into Coombe Bay an’ talk into that ole telephone at The Raven and another can roust out Squire an’ Mr Rudd. Us can’t wait for the Whinmouth lifeboat nor the coastguard! Time they get ’ere the tide’ll be full, and there’s a big sea running! They’ll be drowned, the whole bliddy lot of ’em! Stay right where you be an’ when us hollers holler back, an’ keep on hollering, do ’ee mind?’
In a situation like this Willoughby was ready to concede leadership to an erring brother. He had lived for so long in celestial regions that he felt helpless in the face of an urgent, earthly problem, so he dismounted and helped Tamer into the saddle and a moment later the latter’s bulky figure had disappeared in the mist, leaving Willoughby to seek the counsel of God. No one in the Sorrel Valley could have done this as well as Edwin Willoughby, noted for his long, improvised prayers, which invariably contained a plea for distressed mariners. He stood there like a biblical prophet on the edge of the cliff and one might have thought, by the urgency of his voice and posture, that he was asking Providence to aid him in staying the flow of the tide immediately below.
II
Tamer reached the Dell less than ten minutes after leaving Willoughby and minutes after that the Potter household had dispersed, Violet mounting the cob and riding for Coombe Bay, Hazel running through Coombe Wood and across the meadow to warn the people at the Big House and Cissie (alone among the Potters without the gift of moving across country by instinct) along the track that led to Sam’s cottage in the woods. Sam was a good man in an emergency and Tamer, sweat
ing and wheezing in his stable as he searched for ropes, cursed the authorities for depriving him of the services of Smut, who would have known just what to do and how to go about it. His wife, Meg, however, was a good substitute. Once she understood the basic facts she wasted no time bothering him with questions but slung baskets each side of the cart-horse and helped him load them with coils of one-inch rope. She also had the forethought to drag out a hurdle that could be used for a stretcher, fastening it to Bessie’s saddle by a length of cord. Once or twice, as they were getting ready to return to the cliffs, Tamer spared a thought to worry about himself, for the speed he had climbed the gully and the mad ride through the mist to the Dell, had left him dizzy and his heart continued to pump with the savage beat of a piston. He thought, savagely, ‘Damme, I’ll ’ave another o’ my ole turns if I doan’t taake it easy but how can a man bide when the water be under the cliff in two hours and us ’aven’t got down to ’em yet?’ Meg noticed his distress and ran into the house, returning with a leather bottle on her girdle. ‘Here, man,’ she said briefly, ‘take a swallow or two o’ that,’ and he swallowed gratefully, feeling the potion warm his belly and put new vigour into his calves. A moment later they were off, Tamer riding the horse, and Meg following the sound of the dragging hurdle; only Potter could have found the still-praying Willoughby in under half-an-hour.
The Potter girls also accomplished their journeys in record time. Cissie reached Sam’s cottage in forty minutes flat and was on her way back in another five, Sam accompanying her with more ropes. Violet entered Coombe Bay village like another Paul Revere, shouting the news right and left as she cantered down to The Raven, to tell her story to Abe Tozer, the shoeing smith, who then made his first ever telephone calls to the Whinmouth coastguard and local police. He told them as much as he knew and what was being done in the way of rescue, then ran down to the quayside cottages in the hope of getting Williams to launch his boat and go round by the Bluff to the Cove but Williams was appalled at the news. ‘That’ll be the German boat,’ he said, ‘I seed her beating out o’ Whinmouth about noon and if er’s gone ashore no one’ll get her off! As for going round under the Bluff, well, us c’n try, but tiz risky. The tide is beatin’ inshore now an’ not due to turn ’till near midnight. I’ll talk to Ned Hockings an’ us’ll see what us can do! Meantime, get the landsmen together and go over the headland to see if you vind some way down to the beach.’
Long Summer Day (A Horseman Riding By) Page 49
