Cargo of Eagles (10 page)

Dido coloured his every thought. Her face came between him and the page and his reactions were slowed because he could no longer concentrate.

When he reviewed the situation in an intense effort to behave disapassionately, he found no comfort. She was elegant and he suspected gloomily that she was probably extremely clever in her profession and undoubtedly surrounded by admirers who spoke her own language. He stood no chance at all. Even if she was not already committed, the competition must be continuous and ardent. She could take her pick from a score of brilliant rivals each with common interests and a start of five years' acquaintance. Except for a brief moment during the alarming adventure they had shared she had remained cool, efficient and aloof. Now that he came to assess the situation he doubted if he had made any real progress with her.
Any man would have behaved protectively and many would have made a better job of it. Dido accepted favours but only because they were strewn perpetually in her path and she was too nicely nurtured to refuse. Damn her, damn her for her style, her elegance, damn her for sweeping him casually into her net, for reducing him to a jelly, for threatening to hurt him irrevocably.

He closed his book with a slam and as the cruets on the table ceased to vibrate he realised that the inn was silent for the first time that evening. The last car, the last motor cycle, the last transistor and the last late drinker had vanished. The lights in the bar were out and through the open window he could hear the lap of the rising tide against the wooden bulwark of the quay. It was a clear, moonless night but not totally dark, for the stars carpeted the whole sky and an occasional window still glowed to emphasise the black silhouette of the hamlet.

Mob's Bowl had closed its doors and had become a secret place, shrouded but still slyly awake.

Morty tiptoed through the stale silence of the bar and strolled out towards the estuary where the air was still warm and tangy. The path over the saltings was irregular but this was familiar ground. Ten minutes' cautious walking brought him to the higher area where the old fort was still marked by stones whose original purpose was so erased that they could have been an outcrop of rock. This was his place, his personal domain, the lookout post from which he could consider the world and the ache in his heart.

From somewhere beyond human sight he could hear the scrape of oars in rowlocks and presently there came the grating of a keel on pebbles and retreating footsteps. A light died in a cottage and a gull mewed forlornly. Now, he thought, now I am utterly alone with my melancholy and I can be as theatrically miserable as I please.

Dido, my sweet, unique, unattainable Dido, where are you now? Do you even give me a second thought?

‘
To the world's end have I come. To the world's end
.'

The voice behind him was deep and had an edge of sardonic amusement in the overtones. Morty jerked violently, realising too late that this was the reaction the speaker had intended.

‘Wishart!

‘The same. I wonder if anyone reads Macleod today?'

The landlord of The Demon who had been standing directly behind him moved to his side and offered a cigarette. His voice was so low that in a crowd he was difficult to hear but in this silent place each separate granulation of sound lingered like a sustained chord. The young man could just discern the leonine sweep of grey hair above the broad forehead and he sensed rather than saw the twinkle of mockery in the hooded eyes.

‘William Sharp—Fiona Macleod, if you prefer his romantic side. You won't have read him. Out of date, out of fashion. Yet he was a poet, you know.'

Morty was still edgy with shock. He retorted brusquely, putting himself at a disadvantage.

‘Wrong. You are quoting The Immortal Hour. And if you must know I've read him on Shelley and Sainte Beuve.'

Wishart laughed. ‘What a benison a little learning is. Do you know what I miss most of all in this ancient isolation? The mind of man, the single glimmer which goes beyond personal greed. It is a brutal hunger, Mr Kelsey. You are fortunate to be free of it. But perhaps you came out here to escape from company? This should be the quintessence of solitude. You have the time and the place—' he hesitated and blew smoke into the still air, ‘—but not the loved one?'

‘Suppose you mind your own goddam business?' Morty was irritated and off balance. His mood had been broken and the shock of Wishart's appearance still tingled in his bones. His host took a step towards the remaining corner of stone and leaned on it, hunching his shoulders and turning his head away.

‘You mistake my motive, my dear sir. In a sense it
is
my business. I may be an elderly observer but I still have the use of
my ears and eyes. Again, I am indigenous. But for the accident of education—and I can assure you that it was an accident—I am the basic man of the estuary.'

This at least is true, Morty admitted to himself. He is a local at heart. Even that unnaturally cultured voice has echoes of the coast. Perhaps that is what saves him from being offensively theatrical here in this unlikely wilderness.

As a gesture of reconciliation he fumbled through his memory of the man's work and found the phrase he was seeking.

‘Let us respect the saltings and the wind.'

‘That is a subtle flattery. Few people recall anything of mine beyond a single line written forty odd years ago. I had supposed Dixie to be the last soul on earth interested in my withered laurels. Yet you say your subject is history and you profess to conduct your researches here?'

‘That's certainly true. You are leaning on all that is left of a Saxon fort, if my guess is right. These stones were brought here before the quarry at Nine Ash had been discovered and St Polycarp's, which did come from there, is early Norman. Why did you follow me?'

It was some time before Wishart replied. Finally he threw the end of a cigarette so that it travelled for several yards like a shooting star before it vanished into the water below the bank.

‘You do me an injustice. I could argue that it was I who led and you who followed, but that would not be strictly true, I came here because I wanted to talk to you and because it seemed very probable that you would come this way. There is not much that you can do in Mob's Bowl without being remarked. I came to tell you of a letter bearing no signature which I have received and have now destroyed, though some of it is committed to memory. You could also say, perhaps, that I came to offer you a lesson in history.'

A chill caught at Morty's heart and he shivered involuntarily, his resentment shifting reluctantly from his companion.

‘Not another of those infernal things?'

‘Ah, so there have been others? You don't altogether surprise me for I have heard a whisper of them in the wind. I think I should tell you the burden of the writer's plaint. It was posted, by the way, in Saltey two days ago and was written in block capitals by an elderly person, probably a woman. Not wholly literate but with quite a gift of invective. A woman, almost certainly one who was born in this place.'

‘How do you know that?'

‘I am building with very trifling straws, but they make a brick or two. I say a woman, since there was a brand of malice in the missive which I believe to be typically female. I say elderly because the hand was not steady as yours would be if you inscribed the same essay. And I say local because it has a peculiar hallmark which no stranger would recognise.'

In the darkness Morty could visualise Wishart's secret smile, the satisfaction of a lonely man who normally finds no audience for private jokes.

‘All of us in Saltey who are nearing seventy betray ourselves by it. It was the snobbery of the time, the idiosyncracy taught to us by Miss Jessica Croft our village schoolmistress, the Greek E in handwriting. I use it myself, and it derives from my childhood here and not from my frail knowledge of the classics. Dame Croft went out with the tide when this century was very young and no child has used it since. My correspondent, ergo, is of her vintage.'

‘O.K. So you had a letter from some anonymous old harridan. What did she say?'

‘You will not care for the contents. I may be an indifferent Boniface but I am equipped to be your mentor in some respects. It said that I should not accept a Jezebel as a guest, a “Whore of Babylon” was the phrase. It stated that the delectable Dr Jones had been conducting a liaison with the late Hector Askew, in order to inherit Miss Kytie's property. This suggestion was colourfully supplemented and in some detail. The writer added that since Askew had been struck, rightly, by the vengeance which Jehovah wreaks upon the sinners of this
world, the doctor was now casting libidinous eyes upon the body of Mortimer Kelsey and that he too stood in danger of receiving a retributive thunderbolt from the servants of Nemesis now resident here on earth. Not a particularly Christian document but it struck a religious note.'

Morty snorted. ‘There's nothing new in it. Dr Jones tells me she's given hers to the police. You ought to have done the same.'

‘A little beyond our local Dogberry, I fear. As for the amiable Throstle, his hands are full elsewhere. The two happenings—the death of Askew and these letters—have only the remotest of basic connections in my arrogant opinion. You don't understand us in Saltey, Mr Kelsey, and there are long odds that you never will.'

‘I can see that a group of evil minded jealous and greedy old witches are trying to frighten Dido out of her wits—trying to scare her off by a pack of lies and slanders.'

‘Just so. The question is, will they succeed?'

Morty considered. The picture of Dido, angry, cool and determined, came vividly to him.

‘I'd say no. She's a hell of a girl. Spooks and mumbo jumbo, wisecracks from old Rip Van Winkle in your bar and all the broken glass in creation wouldn't keep her out if she gave her mind to it. If you want my bet I'd say that the bigger the opposition the more determined she'd be to fight it.'

‘I thought you might form that impression.' Wishart pulled a pipe from his pocket and filled it. When it was satisfactorily alight he spoke again.

‘You call yourself a historian, Mr Kelsey. Have you come to any conclusion about our Demon? My impression was that you came here originally because you were attracted by that significant piece of mythology.'

‘It's largely true—that and my thesis. I've read your book of course. Why do you ask?'

‘Because it has a bearing on your problem. If you can read that riddle you can touch the fringe of knowledge. Understand
the Demon and you have the clue to our psychology. My pamphlet is a bait for the tripper trade, written at the insistence of my dear wife. Those who can read between the lines will find some amusement at what are called “in-jokes” today. It is an experiment in the forgery of folk lore. Yet the story has an origin, a basis in fact. Have you no idea what it could be?'

‘According to your fairy tale,' said Morty, giving his mind to the subject with an effort, ‘on June 7th 1895 the village of Saltey, or rather the Mob's Bowl end of it, was visited by a Demon who rushed down the road, smashed gates and windows, broke moorings, took tiles off roofs, destroyed crops and generally had himself such a ball that the place took years to recover. The story has been handed down from those who saw him to their children's children as if they were the warriors of Bunkers Hill or Agincourt. A lot of embroidery has been added on the way, of course—the baby found in the middle of a haystack, the two headed calf, the plague of bats, the cloven hoof marks in the churchyard and the remarkable cakes cooking in the bakehouse oven. I rather go for the bats myself and I should say they were your contribution. But do I believe any of it? No, sir.'

‘Yet something undoubtedly happened. What is your suggestion?'

Morty considered. ‘Oh, something set the tongues wagging sure enough. Almost certainly a freak storm, purely local. It probably raised a small whirlwind, the sort we call a Dust Devil in the States. They can cause quite a bit of damage and certainly look kind of strange if you haven't seen one before. That would be my reading of it. But you've got nothing to worry about. I'd hate to spoil a good story by supplying a simple corny explanation.'

‘You'd be wrong to do so. Doubly wrong, because although there was no whirlwind there
was
a great deal of damage to property.'

Wishart settled his elbows more comfortably on the rock and
Morty was again aware of the man's hunger for more sophisticated conversation than his patrons at the inn could provide.

‘The truth about the Saltey Demon,' he said at last, ‘is better than fiction—funnier, if you like. It would be a pity to spoil a good legend for the sake of a poor joke but this is a risk I am going to take. It is for your researching mind alone, so you must respect my confidence.

‘June 7th 1895 was the day of the Royal review of the troops and militia in the grounds of Sparrows Manor at Nine Ash. It was a sort of a local Field of the Cloth of Gold, with bands, marquees, pageantry, the flags of all nations and of course a royal Prince and Princess. No one in the district had talked about anything else for weeks and nearly every able bodied man, woman and child was determined to be there. Charabancs—horse drawn wagonettes in those days—were hired, dog carts were polished, brakes repainted and those who couldn't afford to ride went on foot. By eight o'clock in the morning, with a few notable exceptions, Mob's Bowl and Forty Angels were as deserted as the central Sahara.

‘It was a very hot day, the middle of a heat wave in point of fact, and what is more important it was a Wednesday.'

‘I don't get the significance of that.'

‘You will, my friend, you will. Wednesday was always a baking day in the village and every housewife made her own cakes, but few had the right ovens for the operation. The mixtures in their pans were brought by the ladies every Wednesday morning to the baker, whose name by the way was Septimus Kytie, a relation of the old lady up the road. His custom was to bake the cakes during the day and have them ready for collection in the evening, thus saving a great deal of valuable fuel. This practice continued here until the advent of the mass produced rubbish which is called bread today. Mr Kytie was therefore excluded from the exodus.