by Peters, Sue
`Thank you for the lift.’ Her chin rose and she looked at Dan squarely, gathering together the tattered remains of her dignity.
`My pleasure.’ He sketched a bow, mocking her, and temper sparked for a moment in her eyes. He spoke as if it was a pleasure, as if he enjoyed the fact that she had been forced to rely on him to support her. Anger completed the restoring effect of the wind, and Jo turned, sure now on her feet, and spoke to Lance curtly.
`Let’s go back and look after the birds.’ She ignored Dan. She did not care whether he came back with them or not, she hoped he would not. It would give her all the longer to regain her poise. Perhaps he would stay with the Kittiwake and put in the new bit he needed for the engine.
`The sooner the better, I think ‘ The younger man’s face was full of concern as he gazed into the basket, his anger forgotten with the urgency of a new task ahead.
`I’ll follow you along, I came down in Julian’s car.’ Neither Lance nor Jo bothered to answer him, Jo did not even look round to see if he was following them, although
she twisted round in the passenger seat she kept her eyes on the bedraggled birds and resolutely refused to look out of the back window of the car. A familiar van was parked outside Penderick House when they drew up, and she made a face.
`Tessa’s here.’
`Do you want to go in and say hello?’ Lance asked. ‘I’m not going to bother, I want to give these a wash first,’ he indicated the basket.
`I’ll come and help you,’ Jo said firmly. ‘Tessa and I don’t seem to have—er—much in common.’ She tried to be as polite as possible. They did have one thing in common Dan—but it was hardly conducive to a good relationship between them.
`I’d noticed your friendship wasn’t exactly flourishing,’ Lance grinned. ‘Melanie’s all right, though,’ he added, `she’s a nice enough youngster.’ Melanie was more Lance’s generation than Tessa, who was nearer to Dan’s age. And wanted to be a lot nearer to Dan, Jo thought caustically. Well, she could have him t She hurried after Lance, intent on helping him. This time she knew what to expect, and was of more use to Lance than she had been to his brother.
`Flippers is coming along fine.’ Defiantly she used her pet name for the guillemot Dan had rescued.
`I think these will if I can get them clean without exhausting them beyond hope.’ Lance worked industriously, soaping and cleaning while Jo wielded the shower. `Let’s see if they’ll take some food.’ He tried the same tactics as his brother, with the same results, except for one bird, ‘He’s a puffin,’ that was too weak to eat. ‘I’ll try giving him some brandy.’ Lance went to lay him down, reluctantly.
`I’ll go.’ Jo was on her feet immediately. ‘Tell me where it is.’
`Hannah keeps it, ask her.’ Lance gazed up at her gratefully. ‘If we can get him through the night he should pull round all right.’ He gazed compassionately at the limp creature in his palms, a travesty of the staid, upright little birds that to Jo always looked as if they only needed a bowler hat and a briefcase to make them the perfect city business types.
`Take him this ‘ Hannah reached for what was evidently an emergency kit kept specially for the purpose. ‘There’s a drop of milk—oh, and don’t forget the spoon,’ she directed. `A dropper’s no good with the sort of bird he’s got, one clap of its bill and there’d be glass everywhere.’ She handed over a metal spoon and Jo fled for the door, fearful that any second’s delay might have an adverse effect.
`Feeling better now?’ Dan’s voice spun her round as she reached out for the knob. He came out of the drawing room, with Tessa in front of him, and they were both laughing. At her? Jo’s face flamed. No doubt her malaise would make a very funny story, she thought furiously. Just the same, it was unforgivable of Dan to tell it for Tessa’s entertainment.
`Quite,’ she snapped, and deliberately turned her back on both of them, but if her simple manoeuvre shut them from her sight, it did not put her out of earshot, she discovered.
`I can’t imagine why Lance took her,’ Tessa’s voice was deliberately provocative. ‘I told her before, she’d be seasick. Trippers always are.’ And she laughed again.
CHAPTER NINE
‘MELANIE’S had to go home with Tessa.’ Chris looked up from the hearthrug as Jo appeared dressed for dinner.
`She said she could only stay out until supper time,’ Jo reminded him. So that was Tessa’s excuse for coming to Penderick House. She had never known her to come and collect Melanie before, usually the young girl had the long walk back to the flower farm on her own. Evidently Tessa had missed Dan in St Mendoc; Amos must have had his way and seen that she went home when he told her to. And just as obviously Tessa was determined not to be baulked of her intention to see Dan and be with him, if only for a short time, that day. She half smiled as she imagined the other girl’s reaction when she found Dan had come out to rescue Lance and herself. She would not be too pleased about that, she thought with malicious satisfaction that was totally unlike her under normal circumstances.
`She liked my book.’
Mmm?’ Jo was only half listening. ‘Who?’
`Melanie, of course,’ the boy cried. ‘I didn’t mean Tessa,’ he added scornfully. ‘She wasn’t interested, though I showed it to her.’
She wouldn’t be, thought Jo. Not even to be nice to a child. ‘Never mind,’ she comforted, ‘Melanie did, and that’s all that matters.’
`She wants one of her own,’ Chris replied, “cos I said I’d take mine back to school with me, and that’ll only leave her the holidays to look at it in,’ he ended somewhat obscurely.
`Get Melanie to buy a different one,’ suggested Dan, trying to hide a grin. ‘That way, you can swap during the holidays, and enjoy two books for the price of one, so to speak.’
`I’ll tell her, tomorrow.’ Chris was enthusiastic. ‘It’s her pocket money day, so she’s bound to go into St Mendoc to the sweet shop.’
`If you go as well, you’ll be able to help her choose it,’ Dan laughed openly now. ‘Have you got any pocket money left?’
supply him with all that’s necessary.’ Jo’s voice was quiet, but quite determined.
`I wouldn’t try to usurp your authority.’ Dan looked at her coolly, his glance level, and now unsmiling.
`Can we go to St Mendoc tomorrow, Jo?’ She was glad Chris remembered to ask her, though if they lived there he would have greater freedom, despite treating Penderick House as home he still acted as if they were temporary residents.
`Yes, I’ve got to go there anyway,’ she smiled, and hoped fervently he would not question. ‘Have you shown Dan and Lance your bird book yet?’ she sidetracked him successfully.
`It’s a beauty. It was a Puffin—like that one, look—we brought in this afternoon.’ Lance became as absorbed as the child.
`I’m going in again myself in the morning,’ Dan told her. `When Lance wirelessed that he was in trouble I didn’t stop to pick up that engine part. It’s waiting at the boatyard, so if you’d like a lift?’ His tone suggested he did not care either way, and Jo hesitated. She would have liked to refuse, but if the bus was full, and it happened to be wet … She bit her lip.
`Can I ride in the front with you this time?’ Chris settled the question for her. ‘That is, if Hannah isn’t coming along too?’
`Best ask your sister.’ He didn’t even call her by name, thought Jo irritably. ‘If she doesn’t mind sitting in the back …’
`Of course I don’t.’ It would save her from having to sit by Dan. She felt glad enough to be spared the ordeal, she thought thankfully.
`That’s settled, then.’ Dan pulled her chair from the table courteously as Hannah brought in the soup.
`I’m making Mr Julian an omelette, miss,’ the elderly woman bent over her. ‘He’s not partial to lobster-, and I wondered if you might like one too?’
`May I, Hannah? If it’s not too much trouble?’ Relief flooded through Jo in a wave. She did not want to refuse the lobster, and thus add fuel to Dan’s
amusement at her predicament that afternoon. But her tummy felt as if lobster was the last thing it could cope with at the moment. An omelette would be the ideal answer.
`A lot of folk don’t like lobster,’ Hannah nodded, and went off. Jo did, but she didn’t relish the one Dan had caught, she thought mutinously, and she would be long gone from Penderick House before she touched another, and they need never know her partiality. If Dan had been better tempered that afternoon she could have laughed off her malaise and thought no more about it, but she bitterly resented him telling Tessa, handing the girl ammunition for her spite, which she used to good effect.
The warm, light meal helped, she discovered, somewhat surprised that it should be so, but by the time she reached the steamed ginger pudding, that was so light it rivalled the omelette, she already felt well enough to tackle it with gusto. With a cup of coffee in her hand, beside the drawing room fire afterwards, she felt completely recovered. And with her physical troubles settled, her mental ones reasserted themselves. Chris’s mention of returning to school made her realise just how little time she really had.
Dan mustn’t wait for us tomorrow, she thought worriedly. He musm’t know what I’ve gone for. She did not want him to know until everything was settled. The words on the torn poster advertising the cottage for sale haunted her mental
vision. ‘Two rooms up, two down,’ it had said. Well, that would be enough for herself and Chris. And she knew just where it was; it stood off the main street on a safe, secure site, that was not likely to deposit itself into the ocean in the middle of the night. True, it hadn’t got a garden. A small, lost part of her, that still missed the Oxfordshire countryside, mourned the lack of a garden. But beggars can’t be choosers, she told herself firmly. For the foreseeable future at least, so long as she and Chris had an established home she would have to thrust aside personal preferences. Maybe later on … The insurance on the one cottage would probably go a good way towards paying for the other; the one in the village had looked quite a bit smaller. All she would need then would be a job, and until Chris left school she would make herself content with just paying her way, she told herself firmly. It didn’t really matter what sort of job. Maybe the hotel would be able to offer seasonal work? Her mind found the possibility unattractive, but she had to be practical.
`By the way, about the insurance on your cottage.’ Julian spoke to her from across the hearth, and she started guiltily. It was almost as if he had read her thoughts. ‘It’s all but finished, now, except for one minor matter. After that it’ll only need your signature, and the insurance company will be able to reimburse you. I’ll give you the details after you’ve seen that young man up to bed, unless you’d planned anything else for this evening?’
`No, I’ll be down in a little while. And thank you, Julian.’ She escorted Chris upstairs, grateful that she now need not find an excuse to remain up there after she had seen her brother safely to bed. A discussion with Julian on the insurance would be an ideal barrier, she thought thankfully, to prevent her from having to engage in conversation with Dan. Tonight of all nights she wanted to avoid that. She felt angry, resentful—and hurt. And Dan was the cause.
She straightened Chris’s clothes, that he had dropped higgledy-piggledy on the floor, and offered him the usual mild scolding he received every night for his carelessness.
`Is your tummy better now, Sis?’ Adroitly he parried her homily with a question, and she smiled.
`Yes, but it wasn’t funny at the time. Though Tessa seemed to think it was. And Dan.’ She still smarted, and although she had not meant to talk about it to the child, the words came out before she could prevent them.
`Dan didn’t laugh,’ Chris Said seriously.
`He must have done. Tessa did, and Dan must have told her the story,’ Jo said angrily. ‘They were laughing together when they came out of the drawing room after we got back.’
`They were laughing about the couple on the cabin cruiser,’ Chris contradicted her. ‘I know, ‘cos I was on the rug looking at my book when they were talking about it. And he didn’t tell Tessa about your tummy. Melanie and me was going to ask you to take us bird spotting later, with the book.’ Jo let his grammar go for the moment, she was too interested in what he was saying to correct him. ‘An’ Dan told us not to bother you ‘cos you was poorly, an’ Tessa was there an’ heard,’ he finished adamantly.
So Dan hadn’t laughed over it with Tessa. It was only Tessa who had sneered, not Dan. Relief and guilt caught at Jo in about equal proportions, but relief won, and she hung up her brother’s jacket without her usual admonishment.
`He only told Hannah about it ‘cos he thought lobster might make you feel awful,’ Chris added as he snuggled down, and Jo stared at him. So Dan was responsible for the omelette at dinner, too? She felt truly awful now, but it was her conscience, not her tummy, that suffered. She’d been hateful to Dan, and quite unjustly. It was understandable, she mused, for him to be angry when he found they had taken the Kittiwake. Fear probably made him angrier than he might otherwise have been, since he was
aware, and Lance was not, that the engine was working on the home-made part, and was liable · to give way at any moment. She went hot at the thought of what might have happened if the storm had decided to blow up again. And Dan still had to get his engine part. He had abandoned his own plans to come out and tow them back to harbour, and now he had to make another journey the following day.
She re-entered the drawing room with some trepidation. Despite her coming discussion with Julian, she found she did not want to be in close proximity to Dan. He was standing by the coffee tray as she came through the door.
`Hannah’s made us some more coffee. Come and indulge,’ he invited her.
She looked across at him in surprise, but he continued to calmly pour out, and when he had given her a cup, and taken one for himself, he resumed his seat beside Lance.
`I’ve brought some of the proposals for the Gull from the boatyard. They’re purely cosmetic alterations, but I’d like your opinion.’ He handed a bundle of technical-looking sketches to his brother, who leafed through them interestedly.
`These look fine,’ he nodded. ‘Except for this one. Wouldn’t it be better to go about it this way, instead?’ He pulled a pen from his pocket and made a rough sketch on the back of the paper.
`Those two are deaf to everything when they’re talking boats,’ Julian smilingly excused their absorption. ‘They don’t notice whether anybody else is in the room or not.’
And they don’t bear malice, either, Jo realised with relief. The thought that she might have been an instrument, however innocent, to bring strife between the two brothers had troubled her, and it was in a happier frame of mind that she settled down to discuss insurance matters with Julian, and the next morning rode in the back seat of Dan’s car to St Mendoc, with the comforting knowledge that their
now derelict property had been a lot more valuable than she imagined, and she would be well placed to bargain for the cottage in the village high street.
`There’s the bus, and Melanie’s on it—look !’ Chris tumbled out of the car the moment it stopped. ‘I told you she’d go to the sweet shop first.’
`Come on then, I’ll go with you.’ Jo sent him off after Melanie, and turned to Dan. ‘We needn’t bother you any longer,’ she said sweetly. ‘You’ll be glad to get your engine part, I’m sure.’ She did not want him to accompany them. The cottage that was for sale was close to the bookshop, and the notice advertising it said the shopkeeper held the key. She wanted to deal with this herself, she already felt indebted to the Penderick family, and she had no doubt if Julian or Dan knew what she was about they would try to help her. Dan would probably end up by telling her what she must or must not do. Her chin set in a stubborn line. She knew what she wanted to do—move herself and her brother out of Penderick House and into a home of their own. And give herself breathing space to collect her thoughts, she added silently, and sort out her feelings for Dan. May
be when she was away from him, and did not see him about at all times during the day, her heart might give her a bit of peace. Maybe, even, get over its infatuation, she thought, but she knew, deep down, it was not infatuation, and being apart from him would not alter her feelings.
`Don’t let Chris persuade you to buy a book you don’t want,’ she cautioned Melanie, conscious that the boy’s enthusiasm for his hobby might sway the young girl’s choice. ‘Better leave your toffee sticks until afterwards, if you’re going to browse,’ she warned them off sticky fingers. `Take all the time you want, I’ll do a bit of browsing of my own.’ She wanted a word with the bookseller, out of earshot of the young pair, who might chatter over what they heard.
`Indeed yes, the cottage is for sale.’ The man leaned on
the counter, happily prepared for a chat. ‘The lady who owns it has gone inland to live with her daughter. Did you want it as a holiday cottage?’ he enquired.
`No, I want it as a permanent home,’ Jo assured him. `It’s a wee bit on the small side,’ the man regarded her doubtfully.
`That’s all right, there’s only my brother and myself, and Chris is away at school during the term time.’
`In that case, take the key and have a look round. You can bring it back when you want to. In fact I’ll come and let you in myself, when I’ve seen to the needs of these two young people,’ as he spotted Melanie and Chris heading towards him
`Melanie says she knows the cox of the lifeboat,’ Chris blurted out with some awe. ‘She says we can go and see over it if we want to. Can we, Jo?’ he begged.
`Well, if you’re sure it’s all right?’ Jo looked at Melanie for confirmation.
`It is, he said we could go,’ the girl nodded.
`In that case go along, and I’ll walk down to the lifeboat station in a little while and meet you.’ It would occupy the pair nicely while she had a look round the cottage, she thought thankfully.
`I didn’t know you knew one another?’ The bookseller handed over Melanie’s purchase.
