"Not bosom-friend well. I was terribly in awe of her, you sec."
"In awe? Of Laura?"
"Yes. She was very clever, you know, and good at everything, and I never could add two and two."
Since part of his delight in her was the contrast between her Hans-Andersen-illustration quality and her practicality, he deduced that this was an exaggeration. But it was probably true that she had no—no branches to her, so to speak. No multitude of leaves to breathe the air of the world. The climate of her mind was uncritical. Her utterance had none of Laura's swift interest and dissection.
"We arc very lucky, you and Laura and I, to have known the Highlands when we were children," she said, when they were talking of early fishing experiences. "That is what I should wish most for a child. To have a beautiful calf-country. When David—my husband—was killed they wanted me to sell Kentallen. We had never had much money, and the Death Duties took the margin that made the place workable. But I wanted to hang on to it at least until Nigel and Timmy and Charles are grown-up. They will hate losing it, but at least they will have had the years that matter in a beautiful country."
He looked at her, putting her tackle neatly away in its box with the sober care of a tidy child, and thought that the solution of her problem was surely remarriage. The West End that he knew so well was lousy with sleek men in shiny cars who could keep Kentallen with no more effort than they would keep a Japanese garden in one of the rooms that they called lounges. The difficulty was, he supposed, that in Zoë Kentallen's world money was neither an introduction nor an absolution.
The spring sunlight faded. The skies grew luminous. The hills went far away and lay down, as Laura had once said as a child, describing in eight easy words the whole look and atmosphere of an evening of settled weather when tomorrow is going to be a wonderful day.
"We ought to be getting back," Zoë said.
As he picked up their fishing things from the bank he thought that there had been more magic in this one afternoon on the Turlie than in all the much advertised Islands of the West.
"You love your work, don't you?" she said as they walked up the hill to Clune. "Laura told me that you could have retired years ago if you had wanted to."
"Yes," he said, a little surprised. "I suppose that I could have retired. My mother's sister left me a legacy. She married a man who did well in Australia and she had no children."
"What would you do if you retired?"
"I don't know. I have never even considered it."
But that night, going to sleep, he did consider it. Not as a prospect, but with speculation. What would it be like to retire? To retire while he was still young enough to begin something else? If he began something else what would it be? A sheep-farm like Tommy's? That would be a good life. But could he make a success of an entirely country existence. He doubted it And if not, then what else could he do?
He played with this nice new toy until he fell asleep, and he took it to the river with him next morning. One of the really charming facets of the game was the thought of Bryce's face when he read his resignation. Bryce would not merely be short of staff for a week or two; he would find himself deprived for good and all of his most valued subordinate. It was a delicious thought.
He fished his favourite pool, below the swing bridge, and conducted delightful conversations with Bryce. Because, of course, there would be a conversation. He would give himself the ineffable delight of laying that written resignation on the desk in front of Bryce's nose; laying it there himself, in person. Then there would be some really satisfying chat, and he would walk out into the street a free man.
Free to do what?
To be himself, at the beck and call of nobody.
To do things he had always wanted to do and had had no time for. To mess about in small boats, for instance.
To get married, perhaps.
Yes, to get married. With leisure there would be time to share his life. Time to love and be loved.
This lasted him very happily for another hour.
About noon he became aware that he was not alone. He looked up and saw that a man was standing on the bridge watching him. He was standing only a few yards from the bank, and since the bridge was motionless he must have been there for some time. The bridge was the usual trough of wire floored with wooden slats, a structure so light that even the wind was capable of moving it. He was grateful to the stranger for not walking into the middle of the thing and swaying about there so that he distracted every fish in the neighbourhood.
He nodded to the man by way of expressing his approval.
"Your name Grant?" asked the man.
After the circumlocutions of a people so devious-minded that they had no word for No, it was pleasant to be asked a straight question in simple English.
"Yes," he said, and wondered a little. The man sounded as if he might be an American.
"You the guy who put that advertisement in the paper?"
There was no doubt about the nationality this time.
"Yes."
The man tipped his hat further back on his head and said in a resigned way, "Oh, well, I'm crazy too, I guess, or I wouldn't be here."
Grant began to reel in.
"Won't you come down, Mr.—"
The man moved off the bridge and came down the bank to him.
He was youngish, well-dressed, and pleasant-looking.
"My name is Cullen," he said. "Tad Cullen. I'm a flyer. I fly freight for OCAL. You know: Oriental Commercial Airlines Ltd."
It was said that all you needed to fly for OCAL was a certificate and no sign of leprosy. But that was an exaggeration. Indeed, it was a perversion. You had to be good to fly for OCAL. In the big shiny passenger lines, if you made a mistake you were on the carpet. In OCAL, if you made a mistake you were out on your car. OCAL had an unlimited supply of personnel to draw upon. OCAL cared nothing for your grammar, your colour, your antecedents, your manners, your nationality, or your looks, as long as you could fly. You had to be able to fly. Grant looked at Mr. Cullen with a double interest.
"Look, Mr. Grant, I know that that thing, those words in the paper, I know they were just some kind of quotation that you wanted identified, or something like that. And of course I can't identify them. I was never any good at books. I haven't come here to be any use to you. Quite the opposite, I guess. But I've been very worried, and I thought even a long shot like this might be worth trying. You see, Bill used words like that one night when he was a bit high—Bill's my buddy—and I thought, maybe, it might be a place. I mean the description might be a place. Even if it is a quotation. I'm afraid I'm not making myself very clear."
Grant smiled a little and said No, not so far, but suppose they both sat down and straightened it out, "Am I to understand that you have come here looking for me?"
"Yes, I actually came last night. But the post-office place was shut, so I got a bed at the inn. Moymore, they call it. And then I went to the post-office this morning and asked them where I could find the A. Grant who had a lot of letters. I was sure you'd have had a lot, you see, after that advertisement. And they said Oh, yes, if it was Mr. Grant I wanted I would find him on the river somewhere. Well, I came down to look, and the only other person on the river was a lady, so I guessed you must be it. You see, it wasn't any good writing to you because I really hadn't anything that seemed worth putting on paper. I mean, it was just a daffy kind of hope. And you mightn't have bothered answering it anyway—when it had nothing to do with you, I mean." He paused a moment, and added in a half-hopeful, half-hoping-for-nothing tone, "It isn't a night-club, is it?"
"What isn't?" Grant asked, surprised.
"That place with talking beasts at the door. And the odd scenery. It sounded like a fun-fair place. You know: the kind of place where you go in a boat through tunnels in the dark and see ridiculous and frightening things unexpectedly. But Bill wouldn't be interested in a place like that. So I thought of a night-club. You know, one of those got up with oddities to impres
s the customers. That would be much more Bill's mixture. Especially in Paris. And it was in Paris that I was to meet him."
For the first time a gleam of light appeared.
"You mean that you were due to meet this Bill? And he didn't keep the appointment?"
"He didn't show up at all. And that's very unlike Bill. If Bill says he'll do a thing, or be in a place, or remember a thing, believe you me he'll deliver. That's why I'm so worried. And not a word of explanation. Not a message left at the hotel or anything. Of course, they may have forgotten to put down the message, hotels being what they are. But even if they did forget, there would have been some follow-up. I mean, when I didn't react, Bill would have telephoned again saying: What are you up to, you old so-and-so? Didn't you get my message? But there wasn't anything like that. It's funny, isn't it, that he would book a room and then not turn up to occupy it and not send a word in explanation?"
"Very strange indeed. Especially since you say your friend was a dependable type. But why were you interested in my advertisement? I mean, in connection with Bill? Bill—what, by the way?"
"Bill Kenrick. He's a flyer like me. With OCAL. We've been friends for a year or two now. The best friend I ever had, I don't mind saying. Well, it was like this, Mr. Grant. When he didn't turn up, and no one seemed to know anything about him or to have heard from him—and he had no people in England that I could write to—I thought about what other ways there were of communicating with people. Other than telephones and letters and telegrams and whatnot. And so I thought of what you call the Agony Column. You know, in the newspapers. So I got the Paris edition of the Clarion—the files, I mean, at their Paris office—and went through them, and there was nothing. And then I tried The Times, and there was nothing there either. This was after some time, of course, so I had to go back through the files, but there was nothing. I was going to give it up because I thought that that was all the English papers that had regular Paris editions, but someone said why didn't I try the Morning News. Well, I went to the News, and there didn't seem to be anything from Bill, but there was this thing of yours that rang a bell. If Bill hadn't been missing I don't suppose I would have thought twice about it, but having heard Bill gabble something along those lines made me notice it and be interested. Are you with me, as Bill says?"
"Entirely. Go on. When was it that Bill talked about the odd landscape?"
"He didn't talk about it at all. He just babbled one night when we were all a little drunk. Bill doesn't drink, Mr. Grant I don't want you to get the wrong idea. I mean, drink as a habit. A few of the boys in our lot do, I admit, but they don't last long in OCAL. They don't last long anyway. That's why OCAL heaves them out. They don't mind them killing themselves, but it gets expensive in crates. But now and then we have a night out like other people. And it was on one of those nights out that Bill got going. We were all a little high so I don't remember anything in detail. I know we were drinking toasts and we were running out of subjects by that time. And we were taking it in turn to think up unlikely things to toast. You know, like 'The third daughter of the Lord Mayor of Bagdad,' or 'June Kaye's left little toe.' And Bill said, 'To Paradise!' and then gabbled a piece about talking beasts and singing sands and what not."
"Didn't anyone ask about this Paradise of his?" "No. The next fellow was just waiting to get his word in. No one was paying any attention to anything. They'd just think Bill's toast pretty dull. I wouldn't have remembered it myself if I hadn't come across the words in the paper when my mind was full of Bill."
"And he never mentioned it again? Never talked about anything like that in his sober moments?"
"No. He isn't much of a talker at the best of times." "You think, perhaps, if he was greatly interested in something he would keep it to himself?"
"Oh, yes, he docs that; he does that. He's not close, you know; just a bit cagey. In most ways he's the most open guy you could imagine. Generous with his roll, and careless with his things, and willing to do anything for anyone. But in the things that—in personal things, if you know what I mean, he sort of shuts the door on you." "Did he have a girl?"
"Not more than any of us can be said to have one. But that's a very good sample of what 1 mean. When the rest of us are out for an evening, we take what's going. But Bill will go off by himself to some other quarter of the town where he has picked something more to his fancy."
"What town?"
"Any town we happen to be in. Kuwait, Masquât, Quatif, Mukalla. Anything from Aden to Karachi, if it comes to that. Most of us fly scheduled routes, but some fly tramps. Take anything anywhere."
"What did—does Bill fly?"
"He's flown all sorts. But lately he's been flying between the Gulf and the South Coast"
"Arabia, you mean."
"Yes. It's a damned dreary route but Bill seemed to like it. Me, I think he was too long on it. If you're too long on one route, you get stale."
"Why do you think he was too long on it? Had he changed at all?"
Mr. Cullen hesitated. "Not exactly. He was just the old Bill, easy-going and nice. But he got so that he couldn't leave it behind him."
"Leave his work behind, you mean?"
"Yes. Most of us—all of us, in fact—drop work when we turn the bus over to the ground staff. We don't remember it until we say hello to the mechanic in charge next morning. But Bill got so, that he would pore over maps of the route as if he had never flown the hop before."
"Why this interest in the route, do you think?"
"Well, I did think maybe he was figuring out a way to avoid the bad weather areas. It did begin—the interest in maps, I mean—one time when he came in very late after being blown out of his way by one of those terrific hurricanes that come out of nowhere in that country. We had nearly given him up that time."
"Don't you fly above the weather?"
"On a long hop, of course. But when you're flying freight you have to come down at the oddest places. So you're always more or less at the mercy of the weather."
"I see. And you think Bill changed after that experience?"
"Well, I think it left a mark on him. I was there when he came in. In the plane, I mean. I was waiting for him, on the field. And he seemed to me a bit—concussed, if you get me."
"Suffering from shock."
"Yes. Still back there, if you know what I mean. Not really listening to what you said to him."
"And after that he began to study maps. To plan his route, you think."
"Yes. From then on it was in the forefront of his mind instead of being something that you drop with your working clothes. He even began to come in late as a habit. As if he went out of his way to look for an easier route." He paused a moment, and then added in a quick warning tone, "Please understand, Mr. Grant, I'm not saying Bill has lost his nerve."
"No, of course not."
"Lost nerves don't take you that way at all, believe me. You get quite the opposite. You don't want to think of flying at all. You get short in the temper, and you drink too much and too early in the day, and you try to wangle short hops, and you go sick when there's nothing wrong with you. There's no mystery about lost nerve, Mr. Grant. It announces itself like a name on a marquee. There was nothing like that about Bill—and I don't think there ever will be. It was just that he couldn't leave the thing behind."
"It became an obsession with him."
"That's about it, I suppose."
"Did he have other interests?"
"He read books," Mr. Cullen said, in an apologetic way, as one confessing a peculiarity in a friend. "Even in that, it showed."
"How: showed?"
"I mean, instead of the books being the usual story affairs they'd as likely as not be about Arabia."
"Yes?" Grant said thoughtfully. Ever since this stranger had first mentioned Arabia, Grant had been altogether "with him." Arabia, to all the world meant one thing: sand. And what was more, he realised that when he had had the feeling, that morning in the Scoone hotel, that "singing sands" did actually
exist somewhere, it was with Arabia that he should have connected them. Somewhere in Arabia there were in fact sands that were alleged to sing.
"So I was glad when he took his leave earlier than he meant to," Mr. Cullen was saying. "We had planned to go together, and spend our leave in Paris. But he changed his mind and said he wanted a week or two in London first. He's English, you now. So we arranged to meet at the Hotel St. Jacques in Paris. He was to meet me there on the 4th of March."
"When?" said Grant, and was suddenly still. Mind and body still, like a pointer with the bird in sight; like a man with the target in his sights.
"The 4th of March. Why?"
Singing sands were anyone's interest. Men who fly for OCAL were two a penny. But the wide, vague, indefinite affair of Bill Kenrick who was obsessed with Southern Arabia and did not turn up to his appointments in Paris narrowed suddenly to one small focused point. To a date.
On the 4th of March, when Bill Kenrick should have turned up in Paris, the London mail had come into Scoone bearing the dead body of a young man who was interested in singing sands. A young man with reckless eyebrows. A young man who, on looks, would have made a very likely flyer. Grant remembered that he had tried him, in imagination, on the bridge of a small ship; a fast small ship, hell in any kind of sea. He had looked well there. But he would look just as well at the controls of a plane.
"Why did Bill choose Paris?"
"Why does anyone choose Paris!"
"It wasn't because he was French?"
"Bill? No, Bill's English. Very English."
"Did you ever sec his passport?"
"Not that I can remember. Why?"
"You don't think that he might have been French by birth?"
It wouldn't work out, anyway. The Frenchman was called Martin. Unless his English upbringing had made him want to adopt an English name?
"You don't happen to have a photograph of your friend, do you?"
But Mr. Cullen's attention was on something else. Grant turned to look, and found Zoë was approaching them along the river bank. He looked at his watch.
"Hell!" he said. "And I promised to have the stove going!" He turned to his bag and fished the primus from it
The Singing Sands Page 11
