Entrance to the Harbour

by Peters, Sue

  sooner or later, and the young girl seemed to know all about everybody. Probably by now the occupants of St Mendoc knew all about herself and Chris, she realised ruefully, or at least as much as Melanie had gathered from her time with them.

  `Julian doesn’t fish, he’s not strong enough. He looks after the canning factory instead,’ the girl enlarged. ‘Dan Penderick looks after the fleet.’

  `The fleet?’ Jo looked up interestly. Melanie had earlier described the Pendericks as ‘the fishing family’, an odd label in a community that were nearly all fishermen, and one that did not seem in accord with the Penderick style of living.

  `They run a fleet of inshore boats.’ Melanie accepted her glass of lemonade and a piece of gingerbread, and settled on the hearthrug beside Chris. ‘They keep their own canning factory going, and sell their surplus catch at the open auction. The boats anchor up in the harbour on the other side of Penderick Head, where the village street peters out,’ she described the location with graphic accuracy.

  Penderick House. Penderick Creek. Penderick Head. It all seems to be Pendericks around here,’ Jo grumbled.

  `It is mostly, I suppose.’ Melanie accepted the local pecking order calmly. ‘Lance doesn’t skipper his own boat yet, though,’ she added. ‘My father says he wants to, but Dan won’t let him. He says he’s too young, and too irresponsible.’ She spoke with the sympathy of fellow feeling, and Jo smiled. Melanie had probably had the same sobriquet applied to herself often enough to be used to it.

  `Can’t he ask—who did you say the eldest one was? Julian?’ It amused her to think someone might stand up to Dan Penderick, his autocratic manner when they met still nettled her.

  `Julian Penderick wouldn’t interfere,’ her informant said wisely. ‘He’s the quiet one—gentle,’ she added. ‘He got something or other when he was little, and it left him frail.’

  She wrinkled her face, trying to remember what it was. ‘It’s the same as that mint sweet you get in a tube.’

  ‘You mean polio? Infantile paralysis?’ Light dawned on Jo.

  `That’s right.’ Now her description was satisfactorily completed Melanie lost interest in things that were mere history to her. ‘Are you really going to turn this into a necklace?’ She fingered the red striped stone that Chris showed her with an impressed expression.

  `I thought it would make a nice pendant,’ Jo responded. `I’ve got a claw setting and a chain somewhere. If you like I’ll polish and set it, and you can have it to keep,’ she offered generously. It would be a small thank-you to the child for befriending them, she thought. They had seen no one else, to speak to since they arrived. Except Dan Penderick, of course, but that was a meeting they could well have done without. She dismissed Dan Penderick from her mind.

  He intruded once or twice between herself and her work as she sat polishing the piece of striped stone beside the fire several days later, his dark, angry face outlined by a fringe of daffodils.

  `I do wish this rain would stop.’ For some reason Dan Penderick’s persistent intrusion on her peaceful occupation made her irritable. As her intrusion had made him, she realised honestly, but the thought did not make her any less cross.

  `Melanie says it’s rained on and off for six days and nights,’ Chris offered, his interest more on the book of birds he was studying than on what his sister was saying. ‘They had a lot of frosty weather before that. She says it’s unusual to have bad frosts down here.’

  Warm winters would mean smaller fuel bills, Jo thought thankfully. That would be a help in their present circumstances. And if she took in one or two visitors during the summer months, she might accumulate enough capital to make a reasonable stock of jewellery during the winter.

  Chris’s suggestion had taken root, and the more she thought about it the more attractive it seemed. She would need an occupation, alone in the cottage during the winter, with Chris away at school. She wondered what age Melanie’s sister was. It would be nice if they could be friends.

  Thinking more hopefully about the future, she fell asleep that night only to find she still could not shut Dan Penderick out of her mind. He strode through her dreams in the same arrogant manner that he had blocked her path along the side of the creek, his piercing blue eyes watching her as she struggled along the shore against the wind, looking in vain for striped stones to make a bracelet to match Melanie’s pendant The girl’s gay laugh rang out over the blustery gusts. ‘It’s private, of course,’ she kept saying, and Jo knew she was trespassing again, but this time there was no other path to lead her away from Dan Penderick, and whether she wanted to or not she had to go on, to face his anger, and his booming voice that rose above the crash of the waves as he bade her sternly to turn round and go back to where the path forked. She stumbled and fell, and the waves crashed louder, drowning even the rumble of his voice.

  `I can’t find the path.’ She sat up and shouted, trying to make him hear. Trying to make him understand. The sound of her own voice woke her up.

  `Jo?’ Her bedroom light snapped on, and turned her sleep daze into wide-awake reality.

  `Chris, what are you doing at this time of night? What’s the matter?’ She was out of bed in a flash, the months of emergency just behind her still speeding her reactions where her brother was concerned.

  Nothing’s the matter. At least, not with me.’ He climbed on to the side of her bed, and curled his bare feet under the blankets for warmth.

  `Then what are you doing out of bed?’ she scolded. Her

  immediate panic gone, she automatically pulled his dressing gown closer round him and tied the cord. ‘Your feet are frozen !’

  `There was a loud rumbling noise, and then a crash. There it goes again.’ His hand sought Jo’s and gripped her tight.

  `It must be an explosion somewhere.’ She raised startled eyes to the ceiling, which for a second seemed to rock above them. The lamp hung from the centre gyrated crazily, then as the ominous rumbling died down it steadied again, and Jo’s heartbeat began to swing back to normal with it.

  `The crash I heard sounded like crockery,’ Chris found his voice as the noise subsided. ‘It came from the direction of the scullery, anyway.’ Now Jo was awake and in charge his fright turned to excited interest. ‘There was a tinkling sound after the crash.’

  `Let’s go and see.’ The noise stopped and the ceiling lamp returned to normal except for a slight pendulum movement that grew less even as she watched it. ‘It must have been the first rumble that roused me. I was dreaming, and thought it was the waves on the beach.’ She chatted on cheerfully, as much for her own sake as for the boy’s. At this hour—she glanced at the clock, and the hands showed half past two—the cottage seemed even more isolated than it did in the daytime. ‘Oh, my goodness, what a mess !’ She flicked the light on in the kitchen and surveyed the row of hooks on the kitchen dresser, that now supported a row of brightly coloured crock cup handles—and no cups. Her dismayed glance took in the shards of their precious crockery, scattered all over the floor.

  `There were four mugs left inside the cupboard.’ Ever an optimist, Chris sought what had been saved rather than what had been destroyed. ‘They’re still in one piece—look,’ he opened the cupboard door and revealed the four mugs, jumbled now among the other things by the rocking of the

  cupboard, but still triumphantly intact.

  `Perhaps it’s a nuclear submarine or something,’ Chris said hopefully. His reading matter included the usual ten year-old’s adventure series in the weekly comics, and his vivid imagination did the rest.

  `And perhaps there’s a quarry somewhere nearby, and they’ve chosen now to dynamite a fresh supply of stone,’ Jo said more practically. ‘All the houses round here seem to be built with the same grey material, even Penderick House.’ It gave her an odd satisfaction that Penderick House should in this respect be no different from their own humble abode. ‘I expect it’s a local stone, and the quarry isn’t too far away. It can’t be, for their dynamite to shake the cottage lik
e that.’ She hoped they would not blast the stone too often; apart from crockery being expensive it would probably crack the ceilings. It might even have cracked the window panes as it was. She would have to look in the morning.

  `Surely they wouldn’t use dynamite half way through the night?’ Chris sounded puzzled. ‘If it’s shaken our house like this, it’s probably woken up half the village.’

  `They might have to use it during the night hours to save disrupting traffic or something,’ Jo hazarded a guess. ‘And if the village has been woken up, they’ll probably be used to it and go right back to sleep again. The same as you must,’ she forestalled further flights of fancy. ‘Oh, very well, if you’re hungry,’ she intercepted his hopeful glance at the cake tin, ‘get two of those mugs and we’ll take a drink and a piece of gingerbread each back to bed with us.’ She herded him firmly back to his own room. ‘We’ll clear up this mess in the morning.’

  Did Chris shout Boo ! behind you when you were drying

  up, or something?’ Melanie poked a laughing face round the

  door as Jo dealt with the broken crockery the next morning.

  `Golly, what a mess !’ She sounded awestruck.

  `It is, and he didn’t,’ Jo commented in reverse order. `And you’ll have to have your elevenses from a mug, there isn’t a whole cup in the house,’ she told their visitor ruefully. ‘That explosion last night broke the lot.’ She indicated the cupless handles, still dangling uselessly from the hooks.

  `What explosion?’ Melanie’s eyes widened, and she perched on the table, all ears. ‘I didn’t hear any explosion. What happened?’

  `You didn’t hear it?’ Jo looked at her incredulously. ‘You must sleep like a log,’ she said enviously. ‘Swing your feet up a bit while I brush under you.’

  `I haven’t come to be in the way.’ Melanie jumped lightly to the floor. ‘I’ve come to fetch Chris. I thought we’d go and see if that heron had come back—that is, if it’s all right with you?’ She remembered her manners.

  `You’re not to trespass.’ Jo spoke firmly. ‘I won’t have Chris getting into any more trouble with Dan Penderick. Once was quite enough,’ she said feelingly.

  `We’ll keep to the public footpath. Honestly.’ Huge black eyes gazed seriously into Jo’s, then lightened with a twinkle. ‘I promise we won’t trespass until Chris can run fast enough not to get caught,’ she laughed gaily, encouraged by Chris’s mischievous chuckle from by the door.

  `See that you don’t,’ Jo threatened, hiding her own amusement with difficulty. ‘At least that’ll give me a week or two to establish reasonable relations with my neighbours before you two can do any damage.’ She could not scold when Chris was already so much stronger. His excursions about the cliffs and beach with Melanie had tanned his white face, and the resultant appetite had filled out his thin body, and already his limp was less noticeable than when they arrived. She had the girl to thank for this, and realisation made her remember the pendant.

  `Put it on to see if you like it,’ she suggested, and Melanie’s face lit up.

  `Isn’t it pretty?’ She fingered the stone, polished now to a smooth shine that brought out the colour, and held by three silver claws at the end of a long chain.

  `I wish I’d got a box to put it in,’ Jo said regretfully, ‘but my things are still with my luggage. And that’s still at the station.’ Brisk efficiency did not seem an attribute of the local travel facilities, the population of St Mendoc had inherited the easygoing `maiiana’ of their Spanish forebears.

  `I’ve got a big shell I can keep it in when I’m not wearing it. But I want to wear it now.’ Melanie danced off to show her treasure to Chris, and Jo called after them :

  `Be back by one o’clock for lunch !’ Hunger would probably drive them back a lot earlier, she thought with a smile, and set about preparing vegetables for three in case the girl should decide to stay and eat with them. She was half way through making a bread and butter pudding when the rumbling they had heard in the night started again. It was hardly noticeable at first, and she spread butter and jam with a liberal hand, intent on catering for a couple of ravenous appetites, when a series of thuds arrested her knife in mid-air. For some unexplained reason her heart began to hammer wildly, and her mouth felt dry. Two thuds—a third—then a sort of slithering rush that died into a silence that seemed as ominous as the noise. Jo stood stock still in the tiny kitchen, frozen into immobility while she waited for she knew not what. There had been no explosion, only the rumble. And that had seemed to come, not from a distance, as the shock waves of rock blasting would travel, but from right under her feet, through the very foundations of the cliff itself. It could not be water surge in a cave under them, the tide was well out—she could see a wide strip of dun-coloured beach over the edge of the cliff beyond the back garden.

  The rumble came again, louder this time, and the utensils on the kitchen table danced an accompaniment The noise increased, filling the house, drowning her gasp of terror, and her ability to think, let alone to act. The floor rocked wildly under her feet, and as she watched, petrified with fear, a large crack appeared and zigzagged lightning fashion diagonally across the outside kitchen wall.

  `Jo! Jo Wallace !’

  Running footsteps pounded up the front path, and a man’s voice roared her name, demanding—commanding that she answer.

  `Jo, where are you? Answer me !’ The front door crashed open, and banged shut again with the force of its rebound off the wall. ‘Jo !’

  Jo shivered. The shout was almost as terrifying as the rumble. Her hands flew to her mouth, and the knife dropped from her nerveless fingers and fell with a clatter on to the floor.

  `There you are. Why didn’t you answer me?’ Dan Penderick stood framed in the doorway, guided by the clatter of the knife. He had to stoop almost double to get his head under the lintel, and in two strides he was across the room and gripping Jo by the wrist. His fingers closed with crushing force about her slender bones, and she drew back with an involuntary cry.

  ‘Don’t be a fool,’ he told her roughly. ‘I haven’t come here to hurt you. Can’t you see the place is about to fall down round your ears any minute now?’ he cried.

  The rumbling started again as he spoke, and with a loud bang the mortar between the bricks gave way, and the crack in the kitchen wall widened and light shone through.

  `Come on, out !’ Without ceremony Dan pulled her after him towards the outer door. She rounded the table in a headlong rush, propelled by his grip on her wrist, and stepped on the fallen knife. It twisted under her sandal and

  she stumbled and went to her knees. Terror-struck, she looked up and saw the man’s mouth move, but what he shouted was drowned in a searing crescendo of noise as a large corner of the ceiling gave way and collapsed on to the spot where she had stood seconds before. The next moment it was blotted from her sight as he stooped over her. With no more effort than if she had been a baby he scooped her into his arms and pressed her face against his rough blue fisherman’s jersey. Crouching low, so that his body protected her from falling debris, he spun round and ran for the front door. With scarcely a pause he raised his foot and kicked at the closed wood, and Jo heard it splinter under the force of the attack, heard the accelerated screech of the hinges as it slammed open and let them through, and then they were out into the open air, and running up the garden path.

  Her rescuer treated the garden gate with the same scant ceremony which he had accorded the cottage door, as he ran hard, away from the cottage, away from the cliff edge, and the tearing, roaring sound that bore into Jo’s consciousness what it was that the noise in the night had foretold. And gave her, too, the despairing knowledge that for the second time in as many months, she and Chris had lost their home.

  After what seemed an age the man stopped running. He slowed and came to a halt, and Jo felt his arm leave the back of her head where it had kept her face pressed hard against him, and she looked up and blinked. Gently he set her on her feet, but he still kept
both his arms about her, holding her close against him as if he was afraid she might not be able to stand. It was a wise precaution. She trembled from head to foot, shaking as if with ague at the realisation of what might have been, and, thanks to Dan Penderick, was not.

  She felt him lean back against something, drawing her with him, and became conscious of his hard breathing, and

  the strong, swift beat of his heart through his blue jersey, reacting to his urgent flight with her extra weight as a burden. Slowly his heartbeat steadied. Her ear came to just the height where he pressed her against him, and as it calmed to a normal steady thud through the blue jersey, so her trembling lessened, her courage renewed by the strength of the man who held her. She raised her head and looked round, and saw they were leaning against the bonnet of a Land-Rover pickup. She glanced at the cottage. It leaned drunkenly towards the edge of the cliff—a new edge, that now came almost up to the back door. The overhang of cliff, and the entire back garden, had disappeared in a tremendous rock fall. If she and Chris … She shuddered and closed her eyes, and felt her rescuer tighten his arms round her reassuringly.

  `Chris?’ She opened her eyes again, wide with terror. `Chris and Melanie—they said they might go and look for stones on the way to the creek.’ Feebly she struggled against his grasp, and her efforts to free herself became frantic as his hold on her remained firm. ‘They might be …’ She choked, unable to go on, and of a sudden her eyes became blurred with tears.

  `Chris and Melanie are safe at Penderick House. I left them with Julian—my brother,’ he explained. ‘They’re quite safe.’ He emphasised his words with a slight shake, and she gulped and drew her hand hastily across her eyes. Although he had undoubtedly saved her life, pride forbade her to cry in front of Dan Penderick.