Dead Water (2 page)

‘Handsome offer!’ said Major Barrimore. ‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Tell me,’ said the young man expansively and at large. ‘Where is this spring or pool or whatever it is?’

Patrick explained. ‘Up the hill above the jetty.’

‘And the kid’s story is that some lady in green told him to wash his hands in it? And the warts fell off in the night. Is that it?’

‘As far as I could make out,’ Jenny agreed. ‘He’s not at all eloquent, poor Wally.’

‘Wally Trehern, did you say? Local boy?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Were they bad? The warts?’

‘Frightful.’

‘Mightn’t have been just kind of ripe to fall off? Coincidence?’

‘Most unlikely, I’d have thought,’ said Jenny.

‘I see,’ said the young man, weighing it up. ‘Well, what’s everybody having? Same again, all round?’

Everybody murmured assent and Major Barrimore began to pour the drinks.

Jenny said: ‘I could show you a photograph.’

‘No? Could you, though? I’d very much like to see it. I’d be very interested, indeed. Would you?’

She ran up to her room to get it: a colour-slide of the infant-class with Wally in the foreground, his hands dangling. She put it in the viewer and returned to the bar. The young man looked at it intently, whistling to himself. ‘Quite a thing,’ he said. ‘Quite something. Nice sharp picture, too.’

Everybody wanted to look at it. While they were handing it about, the door from the house opened and Mrs Barrimore came in.

She was a beautiful woman, very fine-drawn with an exquisite head of which the bone-structure was so delicate and the eyes so quiet in expression that the mouth seemed like a vivid accident. It was as if an artist, having started out to paint an ascetic, had changed his mind and laid down the lips of a voluptuary.

With a sort of awkward grace that suggested shyness, she moved into the bar, smiling tentatively at nobody in particular. Dr Maine looked quickly at her and stood up. The Rector gave her good-evening
and the restless young man offered her a drink. Her husband, without consulting her, poured a glass of lager.

‘Hallo, Mum. We’ve all been talking about Wally’s warts,’ Patrick said.

Mrs Barrimore sat down by Miss Cost. ‘Have you?’ she said. ‘Isn’t it strange? I can’t get over it.’ Her voice was charming: light and very clear. She had the faintest hesitation in her speech and a trick of winding her fingers together. Her son brought her drink to her and she thanked the restless young man rather awkwardly for it. Jenny, who liked her very much, wondered, not for the first time, if her position at The Boy-and-Lobster was distasteful to her and exactly why she seemed so alien to it.

Her entrance brought a little silence in its wake. Dr Maine turned his glass round and round and stared at the contents. Presently Miss Cost broke out in fresh spate of enthusiasm.

‘…Now, you may all laugh as loud as you please,’ she cried with a reckless air.
‘I
shan’t mind. I daresay there’s some clever answer explaining it all away or you can, if you choose, call it coincidence. But I don’t care. I’m going to say my little say.’ She held up her glass of port in a dashing manner and gained their reluctant attention. ‘I’m an asthmatic!’ she declared vaingloriously. ‘Since I came here, I’ve had my usual go, regular as clockwork, every evening at half past eight. I daresay some of you have heard me sneezing and wheezing away in my corner. Very well. Now! This evening, when I’d heard about Wally, I walked up to the spring and while I sat there, it came into my mind. Quite suddenly.
‘I wonder.’
And I dipped my fingers in the waterfall – ‘ She shut her eyes, raised her brows and smiled. The port slopped over on her hand. She replaced the glass. ‘I wished my wee wish,’ she continued. ‘And I sat up there, feeling ever so light and unburdened, and then I came down.’ She pointed dramatically to the bar clock. ‘Look at the time!’ she exulted. ‘Five past ten!’ She slapped her chest. ‘Clear as a bell! And I
know,
I just
know
it’s happened. To ME.’

There was a dead silence during which, Jenny thought, everyone listened nervously for asthmatic manifestations from Miss Cost’s chest. There were none.

‘Miss Cost,’ said Patrick Ferrier at last. ‘How perfectly splendid!’ There were general ambiguous murmurs of congratulation. Major
Barrimore, looking as if he would like to exchange a wink with somebody, added: ‘Long may it last!’ They were all rather taken aback by the fervency with which she ejaculated. ‘Amen! Yes, indeed. Amen!’ The Rector looked extremely uncomfortable. Dr Maine asked Miss Cost if she’d seen any green ladies while she was about it.

‘N-n-o!’ she said and darted a very unfriendly glance at him.

‘You sound as if you’re not sure of that, Miss Cost.’

‘My eyes were closed,’ she said quickly.

‘I see,’ said Dr Maine.

The restless young man who had been biting at his nails said loudly: ‘Look!’ and having engaged their general attention, declared himself. ‘Look!’ he repeated, ‘I’d better come clean and explain at once that I take a – well, a professional interest in all this. On holiday: but a news-hound’s job’s never done, is it? It seems to me there’s quite a story here. I’m sure my paper would want our readers to hear about it. The London
Sun
and I’m Kenneth Joyce. “K.J.’s Column.” You know? “What’s The Answer?” Now, what do you all say? Just a news item. Nothing spectacular.’

‘O,
no!’
Mrs Barrimore ejaculated and then added: ‘I’m sorry. It’s simply that I really do so dislike that sort of thing.’

‘Couldn’t agree more,’ said Dr Maine. For a second they looked at each other.

‘I really think,’ the Rector said,
‘not.
I’m afraid I dislike it too, Mr Joyce.’

‘So do I,’ Jenny said.

‘Do
you?’ asked Mr Joyce. ‘I’m sorry about that. I was going to ask if you’d lend me this picture. It’d blow up quite nicely. My paper would pay –’

‘No,’ said Jenny.

‘Golly, how fierce!’ said Mr Joyce, pretending to shrink. He looked about him. ‘Now
why
not?’ he asked.

Major Barrimore said: ‘I don’t know why not. I can’t say I see anything wrong with it. The thing’s happened, hasn’t it, and it’s damned interesting. Why shouldn’t people hear about it?’

‘O, I
do
agree,’ cried Miss Cost. ‘I’m sorry but I
do
so agree with the Major. When the papers are full of such dreadful things
shouldn’t
we welcome a lovely, lovely true story like Wally’s. O, yes!’

Patrick said to Mr Joyce: ‘Well, at least you declared yourself,’ and grinned at him.

‘He wanted Jenny’s photograph,’ said Mrs Barrimore quietly. ‘So he had to.’

They looked at her with astonishment. ‘Well, honestly, Mama!’ Patrick ejaculated. ‘What a very crisp remark!’

‘An extremely cogent remark,’ said Dr Maine.

‘I don’t think so,’ Major Barrimore said loudly and Jenny was aware of an antagonism that had nothing to do with the matter under discussion.

‘But, of course I had to,’ Mr Joyce conceded with a wide gesture and an air of candour. ‘You’re dead right. I
did
want the photograph. All the same, it’s a matter of professional etiquette, you know. My paper doesn’t believe in pulling fast ones. That’s not
The Sun’s
policy, at all. In proof of which I shall retire gracefully upon a divided house.’

He carried his drink over to Miss Cost and sat beside her. Mrs Barrimore got up and moved away. Dr Maine took her empty glass and put it on the bar.

There was an uncomfortable silence, induced perhaps by the general recollection that they had all drunk at Mr Joyce’s expense and a suspicion that his hospitality had not been offered entirely without motive.

Mrs Barrimore said: ‘Good night, everybody,’ and went out.

Patrick moved over to Jenny. ‘I’m going fishing in the morning if it’s fine,’ he said. ‘Seeing it’s a Saturday, would it amuse you to come? It’s a small, filthy boat and I don’t expect to catch anything.’

‘What time?’

‘Dawn. Or soon after. Say half past four.’

‘Crikey! Well, yes, I’d love to if I can wake myself up.’

‘I’ll scratch on your door like one of the Sun King’s courtiers. Which door is it? Frightening, if I scratched on Miss Cost’s!’

Jenny told him. ‘Look at Miss Cost now,’ she said. ‘She’s having a whale of a time with Mr Joyce.’

‘He’s getting a story from her.’

‘O, no!’

‘O, yes! And tomorrow, betimes, he’ll be hunting up Wally and his unspeakable parents. With a camera.’

‘He won’t!’

‘Of course he will. If they’re sober they’ll be enchanted. Watch out for K.J.’s “What’s The Answer” column in
The Sun.’

‘I do think the gutter-press in this country’s the rock bottom.’

‘Don’t you have a gutter-press in New Zealand?’

‘Not as low.’

‘Well done, you. All the same, I don’t see why K.J.’s idea strikes you as being so very low. No sex. No drugs. No crime. It’s as clean as a whistle, like Wally’s hands.’ He was looking rather intently into Jenny’s face. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘You didn’t like that, either, did you?’

‘It’s just – I don’t know, or yes, I think I do. Wally’s so vulnerable. I mean, he’s been jeered at and cowed by the other children. He’s been puzzled and lonely and now he’s a comparatively happy little creature. Quite a hero, in a way. He’s not attractive: his sort aren’t, as a rule, but I’ve got an affection for him. Whatever’s happened ought to be private to him.’

‘But he won’t take it in, will he? All the ballyhoo, if there
is
any ballyhoo? He may even vaguely enjoy it.’

‘I don’t want him to. All right,’ Jenny said crossly, ‘I’m being bloody-minded. Forget it. P’raps it won’t happen.’

‘I think you may depend upon it,’ Patrick rejoined. ‘It will.’

And, in the event, he turned out to be right.

Do You Believe in Fairies?

Wally Trehern does. Small boy of Portcarrow Island had

crop of warts that made life a misery.

Other Kids Shunned Him Because of his Disfigurement. So

Wally washed his hands in the Pixie Falls and – you’ve guessed it.

This is what they looked like before.

And here they are now.

Wally, seen above with parents, by Pixie Falls, says mysterious green lady ‘told me to wash them off’.

Parents say no other treatment given.

Miss Elspeth Cost (inset) cured of chronic asthma?

Local doctor declines comment.

(Full story on Page 9.)

Dr Maine read the full story, gave an ambiguous ejaculation and started on his morning round.

The Convalescent Home was a very small one: six single rooms for patients, and living quarters for two nurses and for Dr Maine who was a widower. A veranda at the back of the house looked across a large garden and an adjacent field towards the sea and the Island.

At present he had four patients, all convalescent. One of them, an elderly lady, was already up and taking the air on the veranda. He noticed that she, like the others, had been reading
The Sun.

‘Well, Mrs Thorpe,’ he said, bending over her, ‘this is a step forward, isn’t it? If you go on behaving nicely we’ll soon have you taking that little drive.’

Mrs Thorpe wanly smiled and nodded. ‘So unspoiled,’ she said waving a hand at the prospect. ‘Not many places left like it. No horrid trippers.’

He sat down beside her, laid his fingers on her pulse and looked at his watch. ‘This is becoming pure routine,’ he said cheerfully.

It was obvious that Mrs Thorpe had a great deal more to say. She scarcely waited for him to snap his watch shut before she began.

‘Dr Maine,
have
you seen
The Sun?’

‘Very clearly. We’re in for a lovely day.’

She made a little dab at him. ‘Don’t be provoking! You know what I mean. The paper.
Our
news! The
Island!’

‘Oh that. Yes, I saw that.’

‘Now,
what
do you think? Candidly. Do tell me.’

He answered her as he had answered Patrick Ferrier. One heard of such cases. Medically there could be no comment.

‘But you don’t pooh-pooh?’

No, no. He didn’t altogether do that. And now he really must –

As he moved away she said thoughtfully, ‘My little nephew is dreadfully afflicted. They
are
such an eyesore, aren’t they? And infectious, it’s thought. One can’t help wondering –’

His other patients were full of the news. One of them had a first cousin who suffered abominably from chronic asthma.

Miss Cost read it over and over again: especially the bit on page nine where it said what a martyr she’d been and how she had perfect faith in the waters. She didn’t remember calling them the Pixie Falls but now she came to think of it, the name was pretty. She wished she’d had time to do her hair before Mr Joyce’s friend had taken the snapshot and it would have been nicer if her mouth had been quite shut. But still. At low tide she strolled over to the newsagent’s shop in the village. All their copies of
The Sun,
unfortunately, had been sold. There had been quite a demand. Miss Cost looked with a professional and disparaging eye at the shop. Nothing really at all in the way of souvenirs and the postcards were very limited. She bought three of the Island and covered the available space with fine writing. Her friend with arthritic hands would be interested.

Major Barrimore finished his coffee and replaced the cup with a slightly unsteady hand. His immaculately shaven jaws wore their morning purple tinge and his eyes were dull.

‘Hasn’t been long about it,’ he said, referring to his copy of
The Sun.
‘Don’t waste much time, these paper wallahs. Only happened day-before-yesterday.’

He looked at his wife. ‘Well. Haven’t you read it? ‘he asked.

‘I looked at it.’

‘I don’t know what’s got into you. Why’ve you got your knife into this reporter chap? Decent enough fellah of his type.’

‘Yes, I expect he is.’

‘It’ll create a lot of interest. Enormous circulation. Bring people in, I wouldn’t wonder. Quite a bit about The Boy-and-Lobster.’ She didn’t answer and he suddenly shouted at her. ‘Damn it, Margaret, you’re about as cheerful as a dead fish. You’d think there’d been a death on the Island instead of a cure. God knows we could do with some extra custom.’