Entrance to the Harbour

by Peters, Sue

  `What was the catch like this morning?’ He spoke directly to Lance, who interrupted his discussion with Chris on fishing to answer.

  `Good,’ he said laconically, ‘and I must say,’ he smiled with a hint of malice in his tone, ‘the Kittiwake behaves like a lady, even with strange hands at the wheel.’

  `I told you to let Amos take her out.’ Dan’s face darkened like a thundercloud, and Jo held her breath. By some means she could not fathom the younger man seemed to be needling his brother, and Dan’s reaction was instantaneous. `I’ve told you before, the Kittiwake’s my boat, and I won’t have you skippering her. Not until you’re more experienced, anyway,’ he compromised ungraciously.

  `And how can I get experience, when you consistently refuse to let me take a boat out?’ Lance’s smile faded, and mounting anger took the place of the teasing. They glared at one another across the table, forgetful of everything, even their guest, and watching them Jo thought how very much alike they were. ‘I’m not a child, although you insist on treating me like one.’ Lance’s voice rose, and he had obvious difficulty in controlling it from breaking into a shout.

  `Can’t you see Lance is only teasing? He didn’t take the Kittiwake out, Amos did,’ Julian’s voice cut across their antagonism. ‘And you forget—both of you—that we have a guest.’ His voice was curt, but effective. With a surprised stare in his direction Dan and Lance subsided and after a moment they both began eating again. The gentle Julian

  had asserted himself. If what Melanie had told her was correct, it was a happening unusual enough in itself to warrant instant attention from his two brothers.

  `Now you’ve come to live among a seafaring community, you’ll soon learn that a boat is almost like a wife to a man,’ Julian smiled at Jo, covering the awkward moment, and to her relief she saw his two brothers relax. Hannah appeared, creating a further diversion, with the sweet.

  `I don’t know if I’ve got time,’ Dan glanced at the clock on the mantelshelf elf as she put a tray containing five bowls of delicious-looking soufflé on the sideboard.

  `That clock’s twenty minutes fast.’ Hannah clicked her tongue vexedly. ‘I moved it when I dusted the shelf this afternoon, and I didn’t notice it had stopped until later. It’ll have to strike the hour now before I can put it right.’

  `This is scrumptious !’ Chris dug his spoon into his bowl and grinned his enjoyment of the contents.

  `With a recommendation like that, I’m glad the clock is fast,’ Dan laughed, and started on his own dish with similar relish, and Jo felt a flash of envy. Lucky Hannah ! At least she did not lack appreciation.

  `I won’t stay for coffee, though,’ Dan decided. ‘I’ll have a drink later on tonight.’ Regretfully he emptied his bowl and stood up. ‘If you’ll excuse me …’ He rose and made his excuses, and he was already peeling off his jerkin before he reached the door, as if he could not get out of the room fast enough, thought Jo.

  `Your jersey’s on the stand, Mr Dan,’ she heard Hannah address him as he reached the hall. ‘And I’ve put a snap in a box on the side.’

  `You spoil us, Hannah.’ For a moment his voice was caressing, its tone almost like Julian’s and showing a side to Dan Penderick she had not suspected. Jo listened unashamedly, wondering at the chameleon aspect of this man’s moods. She had caught a glimpse of his softer side—but

  only a glimpse—after the cottage had collapsed, but it had no sooner shown that it was hidden again, so that she wondered afterwards if it had been there at all.

  `I’ll bring you back a nice breakfast,’ Dan promised his housekeeper, and through the partly open door Jo saw him stoop and kiss her on the forehead. ‘Goodnight,’ he bade her. ‘We shouldn’t be late in.’

  `See that you make it a nice plaice,’ Hannah bade him. `I’m fair sick of pilchards and herrings.’

  Dan turned at her parting shot and grinned. ‘I’ll hook one specially for you,’ he promised, and was gone. Where? Surely not birdwatching at this time of night? Jo discounted his teasing about the fish. It had sounded more like a parting ritual than a real promise. But he must be intending to remain out for some hours, or why had Hannah packed him up a ‘snap’, as she called it? Jo gave up and turned her attention to Dan’s two brothers. It was really no concern of hers where Dan was going to, or how long he intended to be away.

  `The fish was delicious,’ she expressed her appreciation of the meal. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever tasted nicer.’ It wasn’t merely Hannah’s cooking, either. There was something else …

  `It was only caught about an hour before you ate it,’ Lance supplied the answer. ‘By my own fair hands,’ he added with a grin, and Chris looked up interestedly.

  `I didn’t see you carrying any rods when you came in,’ he remarked.

  `I didn’t catch the plaice with a rod and line. It came in with the net over the side of the Kittwake,’ he explained. `She’s a trawler, the same as the rest of our fleet,’ he mentioned one obvious source of Penderick wealth carelessly. ‘I picked it out from among the pilchards specially for our guests.’ He bowed gallantly towards Jo, and for some reason she felt glad that Dan had left the table. His black

  scowl flashed uncomfortably across her mind’s eye at Lance’s extravagant behaviour, and silently she derided herself for her relief that Dan was not a witness.

  Anyone would think I was afraid of him, she jeered at herself, and refused to listen to a small voice which told her that, having incurred Dan’s wrath twice during the short time since they had become acquainted, she did not relish doing so again.

  `Dan won’t be happy until he’s taken the Kittiwake out again and made sure for himself we didn’t hole her on the Claw this morning.’ Exasperation tinged Lance’s voice, and Jo said,

  `Surely he isn’t taking his boat out tonight? It’s been dark for over an hour, now.’

  `There’ll be half the fleet out tonight,’ Lance answered her. ‘They’ll be hunting herring,’ he waxed informative. `That’s why Dan didn’t change out of his working clothes when he came in to dinner,’ he added. ‘They sail with the tide. It’s running full at seven o’clock.’ The clock on the mantelshelf said twenty past.

  So that was why dinner was linked with the tide. Enlightenment told Jo something else. Dan had changed for dinner, or at least had bothered to put a decent jerkin over his working clothes so that he did not appear in full working gear in front of his guests. She bit her lip, feeling guilty at her hasty judgment of him.

  `I’d never thought of fishing as hunting,’ Chris harked back to Lance’s earlier remark. ‘I suppose it is, in a way,’ he said thoughtfully.

  `It’s the old story of the predator chasing prey,’ Lance said lightly, ‘so it’s got to be hunter and hunted, hasn’t it?’ Thoughtfully, he brought it down to Chris’s level of understanding.

  Hunter and hunted … Why should a casual remark of Lance’s bring to her mind Dan’s silent regard across the

  dinner table? Jo wondered irritably. She resented the habit he seemed to have made of intruding into her very thoughts. To shut him out, she spoke.

  `I didn’t realise you fished at night as well as during the day?’

  `Dan would have gone out this morning, but …’ Lance stopped abruptly, checked by his eldest brother’s glare.

  But he came to rescue me instead,’ Jo realised with dismay. ‘And now he’s losing his night’s sleep, as well as his day’s fishing.’ He could have slept during the afternoon, but he had gone to fetch her luggage from the station. Remorse at her lack of charity towards the absent fisherman made her face go pink.

  `You didn’t hole Dan’s boat, I hope?’ To cover her confusion she spoke lightly. She already felt the burden of obligation to Dan Penderick too heavy for her liking, and with each minute there seemed some new revelation of what he had done on her behalf, sacrificing his own interests in the process.

  `I wouldn’t have dared come in to dinner if I had,’ Lance laughed.

  `You said something about a cla
w?’ Chris’s thirst for sensation was typical of his age group. ‘It sounded sinister.’

  `It is.’ Lance did not laugh now, and at his tone the boy’s eager interest turned to sober attention. ‘I meant the Claw Rocks,’ he went on, ‘they lie just off the point of Penderick Head. That’s the strip of land this house is built on,’ he explained. ‘It narrows just beyond the few fields that border the gardens, and runs like a thin finger right out to sea. Just past where it ends, there’s a string of jagged rocks sticking out of the water. In silhouette, they’re not unlike a claw to look at, hence the name. And they’re a menace to shipping,’ he told his interested audience. ‘There’s more than one vessel foundered on them. There’s a light on the end of Penderick Head now as a warning.’

  `D’you mean a real lighthouse? With a lighthouse keeper?’

  `No,’ Lance smiled at the youngster’s enthusiasm. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, but it’s an automatic light. But it’s mentioned on the charts, I’ll show you where it is on them if you like.’ With kindly patience he reached down a chart from a rolled stack on the bookcase and unrolled it on the rug and pointed out the spot. ‘But you can walk out there and see for yourself. Oh, it’s quite safe,’ he assured Jo, catching her silent shake of the head. ‘There’s a path right along the headland to the end. It’s an easy stroll,’ he tactfully indicated that it would be within Chris’s capabilities, `and a pleasant one on a nice day.’

  `If it’s fine tomorrow morning,’ Jo gave in to the boy’s hopeful pleas without too much coaxing. It would get her out of the house before Dan came back from his fishing trip, and with any luck by the time he had rested—even he would have to sleep some time, she thought caustically, unable to quite control the exasperation that his image raised—she and Chris would be departed to lodgings in the village, and she would feel as if she was her own mistress again.

  `Does the fleet fish near the Claw Rocks?’ She could not help a tiny shiver of apprehension as she said goodnight to Julian and Lance later, and prepared to carry her bedtime drink upstairs to her room. She did not doubt Dan’s capabilities as master of his boat. He would not doubt his own, she thought drily. But what if there was a storm? Momentary fear caught at her throat, and her tone appealed for reassurance.

  `Heavens, no, they’ll be way beyond the Claw by now.’

  `But you said they were inshore boats?’ Brought up among an agricultural community as she was, Jo’s ignorance of the coast except for brief holidays was abysmal, and drew a chuckle of amusement from Julian.

  `I know, but that doesn’t mean they fish near the beach,’ he smiled. ‘They’ll be hunting a couple of miles or so out to sea. It’s only when they’re coming into harbour that they have to pass close to the Claw Rocks, and with good visibility there’s no danger. Even in fog, don’t forget they’ve got radar to help them nowadays,’ he reminded her.

  `Look out of your bedroom window before you go to sleep,’ Lance suggested. ‘You’ll be able to see where the fleet is by their lights.’

  It would be like searching for a needle in a haystack, thought Jo with a smile, to find a light among the vast expanse of water beyond the headland, but in case Lance asked her the next morning she obediently switched off her light and drew the curtains back—and blinked in surprise. Across the dark water a string of lights glittered, right out to sea, shimmering like crystals in an arc that crossed the horizon beyond the bay in a seemingly endless line. From this distance they appeared to be stationary, but she knew that if they were trawling the boats must be moving, if only slowly. And on one of them, Dan would be at the wheel, his dark face serious with concentration on his task, all thoughts of the shore—and of herself—expelled from his mind by the need to fill his nets with the harvest the sea provided, and bring home the promised plaice to Hannah. Jo smiled softly into the darkness as she sipped her warm milk. She had no doubt that by some means Dan would keep his promise, and discovered as she fell asleep that however much she resented the skipper of the Kittiwake intruding on her thoughts, the fact that his work could exclude her from them left a small corner of desolation in her heart such as even her recent broken engagement could not bring.

  `It isn’t raining any more, Jo.’ Chris gave a preliminary thump on her bedroom door the next morning, and came in fully dressed. He looked as if he had been up for ages. ‘You

  said we could go to the end of the headland ‘n’ see the Claw Rocks, ‘n’ the light. I’ll know where to look, Lance showed me where they were on the chart,’ he said confidently.

  - ‘The minute breakfast’s over,’ Jo promised, hiding her smile. From Lance’s description of the headland it was so narrow at the tip there would be no need for them to search, the objects of their walk would be self-evident. And she was as keen to go out as Chris, if only to be missing when Dan got back.

  There were three places laid at the breakfast table when she got down, and her eyes looked silent enquiry at Hannah.

  `Are we late?’ Hannah had said eight o’clock, and it was only five minutes to now.

  `No, Mr Julian never bothers with more than a cup of coffee first thing,’ Hannah told her calmly, ‘and Mr Lance has been down at the harbour supervising the unloading of the boats for the past hour. He had his meal early, and I expect he’ll be going out with one of the boats on the morning tide. The other place is for Mr Dan, he’ll be back when they’ve unloaded, for his own meal and a sleep, I expect.’

  In that case she would get through her own breakfast and be gone, decided Jo, starting on her cereal without delay. `We’ll go for our walk,’ she told Chris, ‘the weather may not last,’ she blackmailed him into not lingering over his own breakfast, and without much delay, though to her strained nerves it seemed to take twice as long as usual, she was able to quit the table and get ready to go out. But she was not quick enough to miss Dan.

  `Did you sleep well?’ he asked, bumping into her in the hall. His keen eyes raked her face, taking in her bright eyes and the faint flush of colour in her cheeks that had not been there the day before, and was heightened now because he watched her, and deepened rapidly because she was annoyed to find herself flushing. He seemed to have the most

  disconcerting effect on her, she thought crossly. After being accustomed to meeting literally hundreds of men in the form of her father’s students, for as long as she could remember, it seemed silly to let a virtual stranger put her out of countenance like this.

  `Very well, thank you.’ She sounded like a small girl being polite, and his lips twitched slightly. ‘Did you manage to bring Hannah her plaice?’ she could not resist asking him, and the twitch became an amused smile.

  `Oh yes, I managed to find one to suit her,’ he assured Jo. `Two, for good measure,’ he added, his eyes twinkling.

  `She’s waiting to give you your breakfast.’ For some reason Jo did not want to tell him she was going out. She had the uncomfortable feeling he might try to stop her from leaving, though she was a free agent, she told herself firmly, he could not make her remain if she did not want to stay.

  `I’ve just told her not to bother, I had some on the boat after we finished unloading.’

  `We’re going to see the Claw Rocks ‘n’ the light at the end of the headland.’ Jo could cheerfully have slapped Chris, but it was too late now, Dan knew where they were going, and she automatically tensed, waiting—expectinghim to obstruct their plans. But he only said mildly, ‘I’ll come with you, it’s a nice walk, and I could do with stretching my legs after a night on the boat. That is, if you don’t mind the smell of fish?’ He was still in his working clothes, that must have been covered with something while he was out, Jo judged, for they were still clean and dry, and despite his half apology did not smell at all fishy.

  `We shan’t trespass,’ she assured him hurriedly. ‘Lance and Julian both said it was all right to go.’ He need not think she was trying to pry round his home. Her chin came up in an automatic gesture of defence, but he merely said calmly :

  `That’s O.
K., you can go anywhere you like. You’re a

  member of the household now,’ he reminded her, and Jo flashed him a quick glance. He returned her look with an unfathomable expression in his eyes. She wished she knew what he was thinking, and then she was glad she did not. Dan’s attitude to herself was disconcerting enough without probing further, she decided.

  `We were just going up to get a woolly each.’ She nearly said ‘my mac’, but remembered in time where she had left it. She did not quite know what to do about that. It was a problem she would have to sort out during the day. The fact that the only cash she possessed was in the pocket worried her. Even to get into the bank at Arlmouth she would need bus fares, and pride forbade that she borrowed from the Pendericks. She annexed Chris and made for the stairs. If they took their time sorting out a jersey each, maybe Dan would get tired of waiting and leave them to their walk in peace.

  `Slip your mac on,’ she told her brother. Fortunately he had been wearing it when he went out with Melanie the day before, and she would manage somehow, herself. ‘I’ll make do with my anorak.’

  `Your mac would be warmer.’ Chris strolled through into her room, buttoning up his own waterproof. ‘Here it is, I’ll get it for you.’ He crossed the carpet and reached up to the hook behind her bedroom door. ‘You won’t need your purse with you, will you?’ he asked innocently. ‘It’s heavy—look, it makes the pocket bulge.’ He held out Jo’s mac towards her. The red mac, that she had left hanging behind the door of the cottage living room, where Dan had forbidden her to enter to retrieve it, because of the danger of being trapped in another rock fall.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  `You might have been killed !’

  She felt angry. Angry, and frightened at the thought of Dan risking his life to rescue her mac.

  `It wasn’t worth it. You forbade me to try,’ she reminded him, visibly upset, and angry with herself for showing it.