Ship Ahoy! (A Cliffhanger Novel Book 3)

by T. J. Middleton

  ‘You great ninny, ’ she said, turning back, staring out the window, her fingers playing on the Formica table top. ‘Though it does make a sort of sense, I suppose.’

  ‘So does this.’ I came up behind her, put my arms around her, rested my head on her neck. She was magic really, Miss Prosser. She pulled my hands apart, gentle, but firm.

  ‘Not now Al. Maybe when it’s all over, but not now. Last night was like she’d never gone away for you. I could feel it, in that room, in bed. You weren’t lying next to me. You were lying next to her.’

  I couldn’t say nothing

  ‘Maybe it’ll wash away, maybe it won’t. I don’t know. I don’t think you do either.’

  ‘I do know Em. Course I know.’

  ‘She’s been there for most of your life, me, I’m the new kid on the block. Mum was right. I shouldn’t be with you really. But there’s something about you, I can’t let go of. First time I saw you, head down, working on that lump of clay pretending you couldn’t care less, unable to disguise how you loved the feel of all that slippery wet in your fingers, I knew what you were, lies and evasions and those hands of yours everywhere, knew I wanted to feel them on me too. ‘Cause I’m not as pretty perfect as everyone thinks. Why, would I be with you if I was? I like the buzz of it too Al, your life, on the Lady Di, here, waving your chainsaw around, cutting great slices out of life. It thrills me, what you do. You should have made love to me last night, with Audrey listening next door. I’d have made sure she’d have heard us. You should have made love to me or gone and fucked her, one or the other, set a match to it. But you did neither. Perhaps you’re losing your touch.’

  She turned to face me.

  ‘Go on, leave me alone. You’re right. It’s nice up here. Perhaps you should have brought me here earlier, after all it’s near the scene of your crime isn’t it—at least one of them. God, the curtains closed, the gas light flickering, the sound of the sea below, we could have gone right to the brink and back. Right here.’

  I needed a drink. I drove to the Spread. Doc Holiday was on his corner stool, showing Doreen the barmaid how to make a three-cornered hat out of the evening paper. He beckoned me over but I wasn’t in the mood. I took myself to a corner. It was dead quiet, apart from the machine gun of girly laughter that came the little room where they do the feeding. It was like a woodpecker ramming his beak into the bark, ha-ha-ha-ha ha. Annoying. Every time you thought it had stopped, it started up again. Nearly bit my glass in two, just thinking about it. I got up, took the lager with me, just in case I had to chuck it over someone. Doc gave me the thumbs up. It’s the last thing you want in a pub like the Spread, strangers enjoying themselves. Gerald Palmerstone was sitting very cosy with this bird who was busy drawing something rude on the froth of his Guinness. He saw me standing in the doorway.

  ‘Mr Greco! The very man! Come and meet the wife.’

  Mrs Durand-Deacon Mark Two licked her finger and looked up at me through the biggest pair of eyelashes I’d seen this side of Dusty Springfield. She had hair like Dusty Springfield, piled on top of her head, and her jumper filled out in much the same manner too. The only thing missing was the microphone, but I daresay she could get her hands on a substitute when the time came.

  ‘Very pleased to meet you, Mrs Durand-Deacon,’ I said. ‘Very pleased. It’s not often the Spread has a double-barrel name on its premises. You come here again, they might even wash the linoleum.’ She put her hand to her mouth, laughed. She had a sense of humour, this version.

  ‘It is rather charmless around here,’ Gerald said. ‘Surprised you have any visitors at all.’

  ‘That’s what our village is noted for,’ I told him. ‘Its lack of charm. Still, you have the lovely Mrs Durand-Deacon here to make up for it. I’m sure her charms are enough for a whole bloody county, let alone a village like ours. That laugh for instance. Stick her on a rock and we wouldn’t need the Shambles lightship anymore for when the fog comes down.’

  ‘It’s her tonsils,’ he said. ‘They’re extra big. Like tuning fork.’

  She blushed.

  ‘Time to powder the nose,’ she said. She got up and balancing on her heels, walked off.

  ‘I didn’t know they said that anymore,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t think they do that anymore either’ he replied. ‘It’s just to make us sextegenarians feel comfortable.’

  ‘Why don’t I feel comfortable then, now that she’s said it?’

  ‘Because you know she isn’t my wife.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Because your real name is Al Greenwood and it was your chainsaw that chased my wife half way across the promenade deck of the Lady Di, forcing her to take emergency and very nearly life-threatening action.’

  He leant forward, stuck out his hand.

  ‘Put it there brother. As I said before, it’s a pleasure to meet you.’

  He took my hand, shook it so hard, lager started spilling on the floor.

  ‘You know all about that then?’ I said, a bit sheepish.

  ‘The moment I clapped eyes on you. I recognised your picture. I have a very good memory for faces.’

  ‘Really? You wife seems to think otherwise.’

  ‘You’ve met her then?’

  ‘I was on the beach when she arrived. She thought I was lying in wait for her.’

  ‘She’s going on another of your cruises, did you know that? With her sister.’ He patted his pocket. ‘I’m bringing all the stuff over to her.’

  ‘She did mention something to that effect, yes.’

  ‘Seems bizarre to me, after her last experience. Almost tempting fate wouldn’t you say. She’s expecting me tomorrow.’

  ‘So I see.’

  ‘We’re meant to be having lunch, though I think I might well disappoint her and turn up late. Afternoon probably. Business you know. Stand her a spot of early dinner to make up for it.’

  ‘They do a very passable dinner at the Bindon. Some eat it, but those with any sense pass it.’ He smiled. He’d been there before.

  ‘I was hoping, before that, I might take you up on your kind offer to show me where the Blue Bindon flutters her fragile wings. We could talk about it more then.’

  ‘Talk about what more then?’

  ‘Changes Mr Greenwood. How life evolves from one state to another. Let’s meet up on the Beacon tomorrow afternoon, see what the dextrous use of my butterfly net can catch. Who knows, if I catch one, you might be able to persuade me to buy that painting. Ah darling. That nose looks properly powdered.’

  I went back, joined Doc up at the bar. I spent a very passable evening learning how to make a three-cornered hat out of a newspaper. Once I got the hang of it, there was no stopping me. I did one for me, one for Doc, and one for the stag on the wall. It was late when we finished, very late. That’s the one good thing about the Spread. Its closing time clock stopped in about 1947. The last hat I made was almost watertight, least it seemed that way until we filled it with beer and got Doreen to balance it on her head. She threw what was left down my shirt front. A proper barmaid was Doreen.

  When I got back, the bungalow wrapped in dark. I took off my paper hat and my shoes and walked up to the guest en suite, put my ear against the door. I could hear breathing, quite a lot of it. Audrey-two-nostrils flat on her back. I wasn’t tempted, wasn’t tempted at all. I went into the utility room, threw my beer stained clobber into the washing machine, and climbed into my bed.

  ‘Just in case you try anything,’ someone said, ‘I got the bicycle pump right next to me.’

  I switched on the light. Audrey was laid out on top of the duvet, in her red bra and those Father Christmas tights.

  ‘You’ve been drinking,’ she said. ‘I could smell it the moment you walked through the front door. Some things never change.’ She wafted her hand over her face. It was all show. I’d only had about seven pints.

  ‘Very important conflab,’ I said, ‘vis-à-vis your imminent escape. Doc thinks you should disguise yourself.
Preferably as a boy.’

  ‘You’ve never been talking to him.’

  ‘Only theoretically Audrey, what we should do were you foolish enough to come here asking for help. Did you know that Ethel le Neve, Crippen’s lover disguised herself as a boy when they tried to escape to Canada.’

  ‘I’m not going to Canada.’

  ‘I know that, but just because you aren’t doesn’t mean you can’t disguise yourself as a boy. They have boys all over the place, Canada, Australia, the dusty Transvaal of South Africa. A boy would be a very good disguise.’

  ‘Really?’ She snapped at one of her bra straps. ‘What about these?’

  ‘So, you’re a podgy boy, a boy whose mother has fed him too much suet and dumplings, a boy sadly in need of a diet and some recreational exercise.’ I snapped the other one. She pushed my hand away.

  ‘Never heard anything so ridiculous in my life. I am not going anywhere as a boy. Anyway Ethel what’s-her-face got caught, didn’t she.’

  ‘That’s not the point. The point is she got on a ship disguised as a boy.’

  ‘And was arrested on the ship as a boy. You’re drunk’

  ‘I am not drunk Audrey. I am trying to think of what’s best in this most delicate of delicate situations.’

  I lay back down again, trying to get my head clear. Something wasn’t quite right. It was right there in front of me, but every time I tried to reached out and grab it, it slipped away. I closed my eyes, trying to figure it out what it was.

  Then suddenly, I knew. I sat up, wide awake. It was broad daylight, the sun streaming on Audrey’s back. Then I heard it. A cough. I shook her awake. She rolled over

  ‘What is it?’ she said, rubbing her eyes. She’d looked brilliant standing in the conservatory with Rump breathing down her neck, or splayed out on the Easy-slumber SofaBed with her blood all sexed up, but in that light her skin looked like it had died three months back. That’s what prison does to a body, takes the living out of it.

  I heard it again. Phlegm at the back of the throat.

  ‘Correct me if I’m wrong Audrey, but can I hear someone next door?’ She shook her head.

  ‘Not some one. Some two.’ She sat up, started fussing with her hair.

  ‘Friends of yours?’

  ‘Your first bed and breakfasts. I made them cocoa last night. Semi-skimmed. Gave them a biscuit each.’ She looked quite pleased with herself. It didn’t seem possible.

  ‘Am I hearing this right? You let a couple of strangers into my bungalow without my permission while you’re on the run, hiding here?’

  ‘Shhh,’ she said. ‘Not so loud. What could I do? They rang the bell.’

  ‘And with that comes the option of not answering it. It’s called freedom of choice Audrey, one of the components that distinguishes us from the animals.’

  ‘They saw me.’

  ‘You forgot to pull the blinds down. Honestly!’

  ‘No. I was in the garden. I wanted to…I wanted to see the fish.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, woman.’

  ‘I know. I know. It was stupid. I just wanted to see them. Alice had gone out so I thought they’d be no harm in it. So I went down to the pond and sprinkled their feed through my fingers, like I used to do when we first got Torvill and Dean, you know, before you got all jealous and possessive about them. I don’t know, it was like I’d never gone away, like nothing had happened, even though it wasn’t them that I was feeding. And I was just coming through the back door, feeling you know, just normal, like it was my bungalow still and you were out on a job, and things weren’t too bad between us, when the doorbell rang. So I answered it. Without thinking. It was like a, what they call it, a Palava reaction. I answered the door, like I always used to.’

  ‘No, you didn’t always used to. No one ever rang our bell. In fact if I remember rightly, we didn’t even have a bell.’

  ‘Of course we had a bell. Honestly, your memory Al. Sometimes I think you’re going senile.’

  ‘I’m not the one that answered the door.’

  ‘Yes, all right, I did. And there they were, the two of them, standing there. “Sorry we’re late,” he said. “but we were enjoying ourselves so much we quite forgot the time. We have booked.” And he walked right in!’

  I’d forgotten. Em’s blessed booking, that she did without telling me.

  ‘You still could have said no. Told her there’d been a double booking or something. What about you, your safety. My safety?’

  ‘It was too late, they were both in, suitcase parked in the hall. I couldn’t. It looked like it was going to rain. Anyway they weren’t interested in me. They could barely keep their hands off each other. That’s why I minced the Valerian I found in the bathroom cabinet into their cocoa. They’d have kept us awake all night otherwise.’

  ‘Was that wise? It’s not what we want to get known for, Audrey, drugging our guests into insensibility.’

  ‘They’re not really drugs are they, if they’re homeopathic. They were Em’s I take it. You always slept like a pig. Anyway it worked. They didn’t bother me anymore last night and they won’t see hide nor hair of me this morning either. You can cook their breakfast and then they’ll be on the way. And the one-hundred-and-twenty quid I charged them will go towards my travelling expenses.’

  ‘How much!’

  ‘I know. Great isn’t it. They were that desperate.’ She leant across, sniffed my breath.

  ‘You still stink of drink. If I were you I’d suck a cough drop before you see them. And take a shower. What did you do last night? Bathe in it?’

  ‘Hello!’ A voice came booming from the kitchen. ‘Anyone there? It’s ten to seven and two hungry travellers here require some early morning sustenance.’

  Audrey pushed me out of bed. ‘Go on. Get to it. And keep your distance.’

  What choice did I have?

  I put on my dressing gown and walked through. Gerald Palmerstone was sitting on a bar stool examining my three-cornered hat. He didn’t seem surprised to see me at all.

  ‘Did you make this?’ he said. ‘Only it’s very good.’

  EIGHT

  ‘Gerald. Of all the b and b’s in all the bungalows in Dorset, you had to choose this one. If I’d known you were coming I’d have peeled you an orange.’

  He put my hat back on the counter.

  ‘Small world isn’t it? Or should I say small table.’

  ‘It’s not a table, Gerald, it’s a breakfast bar. What the modern holiday maker is seeking these days.’

  I put the kettle on, shook the coffee out into the jug. He was watching me with the sort of smile you want to wipe off with a passing baseball bat.

  ‘So,’ he said, swinging his legs about, ‘you do bed-and-breakfast as well as sculpting sharks and pushing my wife off ocean-going liners. A real jack-of-all trades.’

  ‘Gerald, I never meant…’ He waved me away.

  ‘Mr Palmerstone, if you don’t mind, while I am on these premises. Gerald’s all very well when we’re equals under the sun, but we’re not equals here are we? Your lady wife not up yet?’

  ‘Gone to Bournemouth,’ I said, hoping Audrey didn’t do something stupid like turn the shower on or pull the chain. ‘Needs a new painting smock.’ I plonked the coffee pot down.

  ‘Ah yes, she’s an artist too, isn’t she? Emily Prosser, would that be her?’

  ‘That’s her professional name, her nom de paint brush as it were.’

  He pointed in the direction of the conservatory.

  ‘Only I couldn’t help taking a peek. Hope you didn’t mind.’ He’d been wandering about the bungalow without so much as a by-your-leave. Did I mind?

  ‘Them’s her private work,’ I said. ‘That’s why we keeps them in our private conservatory. Because they’re private. Not for any Tom, Dick or Gerald to go poking his nose in.’ He took no notice, poured himself a cup. Black, one sugar.

  ‘Only they look in style very similar to your young protégé whose provocative nude I saw down at the
beach, my wife’s namesake, Miss…what was her name….?’

  ‘Barbara,’ I said. ‘Babs for short.’

  ‘Ah yes. I knew was somewhere near the beginning of the alphabet. They’re not related then, Barbara and…your Emily…?’

  ‘Prosser. No.’

  ‘It was just seeing those paintings in your private collection got me wondering whether there was a Barbara Durand-Deacon at all, if in fact it wasn’t just a name that popped into your head, in order to protect the real artist. What do you think?’

  He was using his spoon, stirring the coffee round and round, just like his real wife did.

  ‘I think you’re what we used to call a clever-dick, Mr Palmerstone,’ I said. ‘A little bit this, a little bit that.’ He put his hands up.

  ‘That’s me, I confess. A clever, attractive, and quite wealthy clever-dick, with one of Britain’s most comprehensive collection of butterflies as one of my added attractions.’

  I didn’t ask him what the others were. He took a sip, ran it round his mouth. He wasn’t expecting it, I could tell.

  ‘Not bad.’ He sounded surprised.

  ‘The best you’ll get round here,’ I said. ‘Coffee hasn’t really caught on yet in these parts. Great bacon though.’

  ‘You probably do a very decent fry-up too, a man like you.’

  ‘And I suppose you’d like me to cook you one, a man like you.’

  ‘Two I think. One for me and one for…’

  ‘Dusty Springfield.’ He raised his eyebrows.

  ‘The eye-shadow,’ I explained. ‘And the figure, natch.’

  ‘Yes, she is rather sixties isn’t it? Helps to put the spring in my step, or wherever else it’s needed. Talking of which, would you mind very much if we ate our breakfasts in bed? Only I‘m not sure we’re quite finished in that department. We fell asleep rather unexpectedly.’

  His face went all smug and smirk. I wasn’t going to give him the pleasure.

  ‘Well you did, obviously,’ I offered him. ‘It’s the age gap. It comes on you all unexpected. Toast as well? Chunky marmalade?’