Dead Water (5 page)

But when his mother had left them, Jenny thought for a moment he looked very troubled.

In the old bar-parlour Major Barrimore with Miss Pride’s letter in his hand and his double-Scotch on the chimneypiece, stood on the hearthrug and surveyed his meeting. It consisted of the Rector, Dr Maine, Miss Cost and Mr Ives Nankivell, who was the newly-created Mayor of Portcarrow, and also its leading butcher. He was an undersized man with a look of perpetual astonishment.

‘No,’ Major Barrimore was saying, ‘apart from yourselves I haven’t told anyone. Fewer people know about it, the better. Hope you all agree.’

‘From the tone of her letter,’ Dr Maine said, ‘the whole village’ll know by this time next week.’

‘Wicked!’ Miss Cost cried out in a trembling voice, ‘that’s what she must be. A wicked woman. Or mad,’ she added, as an afterthought. ‘Both, I expect.’

The men received this uneasily.

‘How, may I inquire, Major, did you frame your reply?’ the Mayor asked.

‘Took a few days to decide,’ said Major Barrimore, ‘and sent a wire. “Accommodation reserved will be glad to discuss matter outlined in your letter”.’

‘Very proper.’

‘Thing is, as I said when I told you about it: we ought to arrive at some sort of agreement among ourselves. She gives your names, as the people she wants to see. Well, we’ve all had a week to think it over. What’s our line going to be? Better be consistent, hadn’t we?’

‘But can we be consistent?’ the Rector asked. ‘I think you all know my views. I’ve never attempted to disguise them. In the pulpit or anywhere else.’

‘But you don’t,’ said Miss Cost, who alone had heard the Rector from the pulpit, ‘you
don’t
deny the truth of the cures, now
do
you?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I thank God for them but I deplore the – excessive publicity.’

‘Naow, naow, naow,’ said the Mayor excitedly. ‘Didn’t we ought to take a wider view? Didn’t we ought to think of the community as a whole? In my opinion, sir, the remarkable properties of our Spring has brought nothing but good to Portcarrow: nothing but good. And didn’t the public at large ought to be made aware of the benefits we offer? I say it did and it ought which is what it has and should continue to be.’

‘Jolly good, Mr Mayor,’ said Barrimore. ‘Hear, hear!’

‘Hear!’ said Miss Cost.

‘Would she sell?’ Dr Maine asked suddenly.

‘I don’t think she would, Bob.’

‘Ah well, naow,’ said the Mayor, ‘Naow! Suppose – and mind, gentlemen, I speak unofficially. Private – But, suppose she would. There might be a possibility that the borough itself would be interested. As a spec – ‘ He caught himself up and looked sideways at the Rector. ‘As a civic duty. Or maybe a select group of right-minded residents –’

Dr Maine said dryly: ‘They’d find themselves competing in pretty hot company, I fancy. If the Island came on the open market.’

‘Which it won’t,’ said Major Barrimore. ‘If I’m any judge. She’s hell-bent on wrecking the whole show.’

Mr Nankivell allowed himself a speculative grin. ‘Happen she don’t know the value, however,’ he insinuated.

‘Perhaps she’s concerned with other values,’ the Rector murmured.

At this point Mrs Barrimore returned.

‘Don’t move,’ she said and sat down in a chair near the door. ‘I don’t know if I’m still – ?’

Mr Nankivell embarked on a gallantry but Barrimore cut across it. ‘You’d better listen, Margaret,’ he said, with a restless glance at his wife. ‘After all, she may talk to you.’

‘Surely, surely!’ the Mayor exclaimed. ‘The ladies understand each other in a fashion that’s above the heads of us mere chaps, be’ant it, Miss Cost?’

Miss Cost said: ‘I’m sure I don’t know,’ and looked very fixedly at Mrs Barrimore.

‘We don’t seem to be getting anywhere,’ Dr Maine observed.

The Mayor cleared his throat. ‘This be’ant what you’d call a formal committee,’ he began, ‘but if it was and if I was in occupation of the chair, I’d move we took the temper of the meeting.’

‘Very good,’ Barrimore said. ‘Excellent suggestion. I propose His Worship be elected chairman. Those in favour?’ The others muttered a disjointed assent and the Mayor expanded. He suggested that what they really had to discover was how each of them proposed to respond to Miss Pride’s onslaught. He invited them to speak in turn, beginning with the Rector who repeated that they all knew his views and that he would abide by them.

‘Does that mean,’ Major Barrimore demanded, ‘that if she says she’s going to issue a public repudiation of the Spring, remove the enclosure and stop the festival, you’d come down on her side?’

‘I shouldn’t try to dissuade her.’

The Mayor made an explosive ejaculation and turned on him: ‘If you’ll pardon my frankness, Mr Carstairs,’ he began, ‘I’d be obliged if you’d tell the company what you reckon would have happened to your Church Restoration Fund if Portcarrow hadn’t benefited by the Spring to the extent it has done. Where’d you’ve got the money to repair your tower? You
wouldn’t
have got it, no, nor anything like it.’

Mr Carstairs’s normally sallow face reddened painfully. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t suppose we should.’

‘Hah!’ said Miss Cost, ‘there you are!’

‘I’m a Methodist myself,’ said the Mayor in triumph.

‘Quite so,’ Mr Carstairs agreed.

‘Put it this way. Will you egg the woman on, sir, in her foolish notions. Will you do that?’

‘No. It’s a matter for her own conscience.’

The Mayor, Major Barrimore and Miss Cost all began to expostulate. Dr Maine said with repressed impatience: ‘I really don’t think there’s any future in pressing the point.’

‘Nor do I,’ said Mrs Barrimore unexpectedly.

Miss Cost, acidly smiling, looked from her to Dr Maine and then, fixedly, at Major Barrimore.

‘Very good, Doctor,’ Mr Nankivell said. ‘What about yourself, then?’

Dr Maine stared distastefully at his own hands and said: ‘Paradoxically, I find myself in some sort of agreement with the Rector. I, too, haven’t disguised my views. I have an open mind about these cases. I have neither encouraged nor discouraged my patients to make use of the Spring. When there has been apparent benefit I have said nothing to undermine anyone’s faith in its permanency. I am neutral.’

‘And from that impregnable position,’ Major Barrimore observed, ‘you’ve added a dozen rooms to your bloody nursing home. Beg pardon, Rector.’

‘Keith!’

Major Barrimore turned on his wife. ‘Well, Margaret?’ he demanded. ‘What’s
your
objection?’

Miss Cost gave a shrill laugh.

Before Mrs Barrimore could answer, Dr Maine said very coolly, ‘You’re perfectly right. I have benefited like all the rest of you. But as far as my practice is concerned, I believe Miss Pride’s activities will make very little difference, in the long run. Either to it or to the popular appeal of the Spring. Sick people who are predisposed to the idea, will still think they know better. Or hope they know better,’ he added. ‘Which is, I suppose, much the same thing.’

‘That’s all damn’ fine but it won’t be the same thing to the community at large,’ Barrimore angrily pointed out. ‘Tom, Dick and Harry and their friends and relations, swarming all over the place. The Island, a tripper’s shambles, and the Press making a laughing-stock of the whole affair.’ He emptied his glass.

‘And the Festival!’ Miss Cost wailed. ‘The Festival! All our devotion! The response! The disappointment. The humiliation!’ She waved her hands. A thought struck her. ‘And Wally! He has actually memorized! After weeks of patient endeavour, he has memorized his little verses. Only this afternoon. One trivial slip. The choir is
utterly
committed.’

‘I’ll be bound!’ said Mr Nankivell heartily. ‘A credit to all concerned and a great source of gratification to the borough if looked at in the proper spirit. We’m all waiting on the doctor, however,’ he added. ‘Now, Doctor, what is it to be? What’ll you say to the lady?’

‘Exactly what I said two minutes ago to you,’ Dr Maine snapped. ‘I’ll give my opinion if she wants it. I don’t mind pointing out to her that the thing will probably go on after a fashion, whatever she does.’

‘I suppose that’s something,’ said the Mayor gloomily. ‘Though not much, with an elderly female so deadly set on destruction.’

‘I,’
Miss Cost intervened hotly, ‘shall not mince my words. I shall tell her – No,’ she amended with control. ‘I shall plead with her. I shall appeal to the nobler side. Let us hope that there is one. Let us hope so.’

‘I second that from the chair,’ said Mr Nankivell. ‘Though with reservations prejudicial to an optimistic view. Major?’

‘What’ll I do? I’ll try and reason with her. Give her a straight picture of the incontrovertible cures. If the man of science,’ Major Barrimore said with a furious look at Dr Maine, ‘would come off his high horse and back me up, I might get her to listen. As it is – ‘ he passed his palm over his hair and gave a half-smile, ‘I’ll do what I can with the lady. I want another drink. Anyone join me?’

The Mayor and, after a little persuasion, Miss Cost, joined him. He made towards the old private bar. As he opened the door, he admitted sounds of voices and of people crossing the flagstones to the main entrance.

Patrick looked in. ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ he said to his mother. ‘The bus load’s arrived.’

She got up quickly. ‘I must go,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

His step-father said: ‘Damn! All right.’ And to the others. ‘I won’t be long. Pat, look after the drinks, here, will you? Two double Scotches and a glass of the sweet port.’

He went out followed by his wife and Patrick and could be heard welcoming his guests. ‘Good evening! Good evening to you! Now, come along in. You must all be exhausted. Awfully glad to see you –’

His voice faded.

There was a brief silence.

‘Yes,’ said the Mayor. ‘Yes. Be-the-way, we didn’t get round to axing the lady’s view, did we? Mrs Barrimore?’

For some reason they all looked extremely uncomfortable.

Miss Cost gave a shrill laugh.

‘ “ – and I’d take it as a personal favour”,’ Alleyn dictated, ‘ “if you could spare a man to keep an eye on the Island when Miss Pride arrives there. Very likely nothing will come of these communications but, as we all know, they can lead to trouble. I ought to warn you that Miss Pride, though eighty-three, is in vigorous possession of all her faculties and if she drops to it that you’ve got her under observation, she may cut up rough. No doubt, like all the rest of us, you’re under-staffed and won’t thank me for putting you to this trouble. If your chap does notice anything out of the way, I would be very glad to hear of it. Unless a job blows up to stop me, I’m grabbing an overdue week’s leave from tomorrow and will be at the above address.

‘ “ Again – sorry to be a nuisance,

Yours sincerely,”

‘All right. Got the name? Superintendent A. F. Coombe, Divisional HQ, wherever it is – at Portcarrow itself, I fancy. Get it off straight away, will you?’

When the letter had gone he looked at his watch. Five minutes past midnight. His desk was cleared and his files closed. The calendar showed Monday. He flipped it over. ‘I should have written before,’ he thought. ‘My letter will arrive with Miss Emily.’ He was ready to leave, but, for some reason, dawdled there, too tired, suddenly, to make a move. After a vague moment or two he lit his pipe, looked round his room and walked down the long corridor and the stairs, wishing the PC on duty at the doors good night.

It was his only superstition. ‘By the pricking of my thumbs.’

As he drove away down the Embankment he thought: ‘Damned if I don’t ring that Super up in the morning: be damned if I don’t.’

Miss Emily arrived at noon on Monday. She had stayed overnight in Dorset and was as fresh as paint. It was agreeable to be able to command a chauffeur-driven car and the man was not unintelligent.

When they drew up at Portcarrow jetty she gave him a well-considered tip, asked his name and told him she would desire, particularly, that he should be deputed for the return journey.

She then alighted, observed by a small gang of wharf loiterers.

A personable young man came forward to meet her.

‘Miss Pride? I’m Patrick Ferrier. I hope you had a good journey.’

Miss Emily was well-disposed towards the young and, she had good reason to believe, a competent judge of them. She inspected Patrick and received him with composure. He introduced a tall, glowing girl who came forward, rather shyly, to shake hands. Miss Emily had less experience of girls but she liked the look of this one and was gracious.

‘The causeway is negotiable,’ Patrick said, ‘but we thought you’d prefer the launch.’

‘It is immaterial,’ she rejoined. ‘The launch, let it be.’

Patrick and the chauffeur handed her down the steps. Trehern stowed away her luggage and was profuse in cap-touching. They shoved-off from the jetty, still watched by idlers among whom, conspicuous in his uniform, was a police sergeant. ‘ ‘Morning, Pender!’ Patrick called cheerfully as he caught sight of him.

In a motor launch, the trip across was ludicrously brief but even so Miss Emily, bolt upright in the stern, made it portentous. The sun
shone and against it she displayed her open umbrella as if it were a piece of ceremonial plumage. Her black kid gloves gripped the handle centrally and her handbag, enormous and vice-like in its security, was placed between her feet. She looked, Patrick afterwards suggested, like some Burmese female deity. ‘We should have arranged to have had her carried, shoulder-high, over the causeway,’ he said.

Major Barrimore, with a porter in attendance, awaited her on the jetty. He resembled, Jenny thought, an illustration from an Edwardian sporting journal. ‘Well-tubbed’ was the expression. His rather prominent eyes were a little bloodshot. He had to sustain the difficult interval that spanned approach and arrival and decide when to begin smiling and making appropriate gestures. Miss Emily gave him no help. Jenny and Patrick observed him with misgivings. ‘Good morning!’ he shouted, gaily bowing, as they drew alongside. Miss Emily slightly raised and lowered her umbrella.

‘That’s right, Trehern. Easy does it. Careful, man,’ Major Barrimore chattered. ‘Heave me that line. Splendid!’ He dropped the loop over a bollard and hovered, anxiously solicitous, with extended arm. ‘Welcome! Welcome!’ he cried.

‘Good morning, Major Barrimore,’ Miss Emily said. ‘Thank you. I can manage perfectly.’ Disregarding Trehern’s outstretched hand, she looked fixedly at him. ‘Are you the father?’ she asked.

Trehern removed his cap and grinned with all his might. ‘That I be, ma-am,’ he said. ‘If you be thinking of our Wally, ma-am, that I be, and mortal proud to own up to him.’

‘I shall see you, if you please,’ said Miss Emily, ‘later.’ For a second or two everyone was motionless.

She shook hands with her host.

‘This
is
nice,’ he assured her. ‘And what a day we’ve produced for you! Now, about these steps of ours. Bit stiff, I’m afraid. May I – ?’

‘No, thank you. I shall be sustained in my ascent,’ said Miss Emily, fixing Miss Cost’s shop and then the hotel façade in her gaze, ‘by the prospect.’

She led the way up the steps.

‘ ‘Jove!’ the Major exclaimed when they arrived at the top. ‘You’re too good for me, Miss Pride. Wonderful going! Wonderful!’

She looked briefly at him. ‘My habits,’ she said, ‘are abstemious. A little wine or cognac only. I have never been a smoker.’

‘Jolly good! Jolly good!’ he applauded. Jenny began to feel acutely sorry for him.

Margaret Barrimore waited in the main entrance. She greeted Miss Emily with no marked increase in her usual diffidence. ‘I hope you had a pleasant journey,’ she said. ‘Would you like to have luncheon upstairs? There’s a small sitting-room we’ve kept for you. Otherwise, the dining-room is here.’ Miss Emily settled for the dining-room but wished to see her apartment first. Mrs Barrimore took her up. Her husband, Patrick and Jenny stood in the hall below and had nothing to say to each other. The Major, out of forgetfulness, it seemed, was still madly beaming. He caught his step-son’s eye, uttered an expletive and without further comment, made for the bar.

Miss Emily, when she had lunched, took her customary siesta. She removed her dress and shoes, loosened her stays, put on a grey cotton peignoir and lay on the bed. There were several illustrated brochures to hand and she examined them. One contained a rather elaborate account of the original cure. It displayed a fanciful drawing of the Green Lady, photographs of the Spring, of Wally Trehern and a number of people passing through a sort of turnpike. A second gave a long list of subsequent healings with names and personal tributes. Miss Emily counted them up. Nine warts, five asthmas (including Miss Cost), three arthritics, two migraines and two chronic diarrhoeas (anonymous). ‘And many many more who have experienced relief and improvement, ’ the brochure added. A folder advertised the coming Festival and, inset, Elspeth Cost’s Giffte Shoppe. There was also a whimsical map of the Island with boats, fish, nets and pixies and, of course, a Green Lady.

Miss Emily studied the map and noted that it showed a direct route from The Boy-and-Lobster to the Spring.

A more business-like leaflet caught her attention.

THE TIDES AT PORTCARROW

The tides running between the village and the island show considerable variation in clock times. Roughly speaking, the water reaches its peak level twice in 24 hours and its lowest level at times which are about midway between those of high water. High and dead water times may vary from day to day with a lag of about 1-1 3/4 hours in 24 hours. Thus if high water falls at noon on Sunday it may occur somewhere
between 1 and 2.45 p.m. on Monday afternoon. About a fortnight may elapse before the cycle is completed and high water again falls between noon and 1.45 on Sunday.

Visitors will usually find the causeway is negotiable for 2 hours before and after low water. The hotel launch and dinghies are always available and all the jetties reach into deep water at low tide.

Expected times for high tide and dead water will be posted up daily at the Reception Desk in the main entrance.

Miss Emily studied this information for some minutes. She then consulted the whimsical map.

At five o’clock she caused tea to be brought to her. Half an hour later, she dressed and descended, umbrella in hand, to the vestibule.

The hall-porter was on duty. When he saw Miss Emily he pressed a bell-push on his desk and rose with a serviceable smirk. ‘Can I help you, madam?’ he asked.

‘In so far as I require admission to the enclosure, I believe you may. I understand that entry is effected by means of some plaque or token,’ said Miss Emily.

He opened a drawer and extracted a metal disc. ‘I shall require,’ she said, ‘seven,’ and laid two half-crowns and a florin on the desk. The hall-porter completed the number.

‘No, no, no!’ Major Barrimore expostulated, bouncing out from the interior. ‘We can’t allow this. Nonsense!’ He waved the hall-porter away. ‘See that a dozen of these things are sent up to Miss Pride’s suite,’ he said and bent gallantly over his guest. ‘I’m so sorry! Ridiculous!’

‘You are very good,’ she rejoined, ‘but I prefer to pay.’ She opened her reticule, swept the discs into it and shut it with a formidable snap. ‘Thank you,’ she said dismissing the hall-porter. She prepared to leave.

‘I don’t approve,’ Major Barrimore began, ‘I – really, it’s very naughty of you. Now, may I – as it’s your first visit since – may I just show you the easiest way?’

‘I have, I think, discovered it from the literature provided and need not trespass upon your time, Major Barrimore. I am very much obliged to you.’ Something in her manner, or perhaps a covert glance from his employer, had caused the hall-porter to disappear. ‘In
respect of my letter,’ Miss Emily said, with a direct look at the Major, ‘I would suggest that we postpone any discussion until I have made myself fully conversant with prevailing conditions on my property. I hope this arrangement is convenient?’

‘Anything!’ he cried. ‘Naturally. Anything! But I do hope –’

‘Thank you,’ said Miss Emily and left him.

The footpath from the hotel to the Spring followed, at an even level, the contour of an intervening slope. It was wide and well-surfaced and, as she had read in one of the brochures, amply provided for the passage of a wheeled chair. She walked along it at a steady pace, looking down as she did so at Fisherman’s Bay, the cottages, the narrow strip of water and a not very distant prospect of the village. A mellow light lay across the hillside; there was a prevailing scent of sea and of bracken. A lark sang overhead. It was very much the same sort of afternoon as that upon which, two years ago, Wally Trehern had blundered up the hillside to the Spring. Over the course he had so blindly taken there was now a well-defined, tar-sealed, and tactfully graded route which converged with Miss Emily’s footpath at the entrance to the Spring.

The Spring itself, its pool, its modest waterfall and the bouldered slope above it, were now enclosed by a high wire-netting fence. There were one or two rustic benches outside this barricade. Entrance was effected through a turnpike of tall netted flanges which could be operated by the insertion into a slot-machine of one of the discs with which Miss Emily was provided.

She did not immediately make use of it. There were people at the Spring. An emaciated man whose tragic face had arrested Jenny Williams’s attention at the bus stop and a young woman with a baby. The man knelt by the fall and seemed only by an effort to sustain his thin hands against the pressure of the water. His head was downbent. He rose, and, without looking at them, walked by the mother and child to a one-way exit from the enclosure. As he passed Miss Emily his gaze met hers and his mouth hesitated in a smile. Miss Emily inclined her head and they said ‘Good evening’ simultaneously. ‘I have great hopes,’ the man said rather faintly. He lifted his hat and moved away downhill.

The young woman, in her turn, had knelt by the fall. She had bared the head of her baby and held her cupped hand above it. A
trickle of water glittered briefly. Miss Emily sat down abruptly on a bench and shut her eyes.

When she opened them again, the young woman with the baby was coming towards her.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked. ‘Can I help you? Do you want to go in?’

‘I am not ill,’ Miss Emily said and added, ‘thank you, my dear.’

‘Oh, excuse me. I’m sorry. That’s all right, then.’

‘Your baby. Has your baby – ?’

‘Well, yes. It’s a sort of deficiency, the doctor says. He just doesn’t seem to thrive. But there’ve been such wonderful reports – you can’t get away from it, can you? So I’ve got great hopes.’

She lingered on for a moment and then smiled and nodded and went away.

‘Great hopes!’ Miss Emily muttered.
‘Ah, Mon Dieu!
Great hopes indeed.’

She pulled herself together and extracted a nickel disc from her bag. There was a notice by the turnstile saying that arrangements could be made at the hotel for stretcher cases to be admitted. Miss Emily let herself in and inspected the terrain. The freshet gurgled in and out of its pool. The waterfall prattled. She looked towards the brow of the hill. The sun shone full in her eyes and dazzled them. She walked round to a ledge above the Spring and found a flat rock upon which she seated herself. Behind her was a bank, and, above that, the boulder and bracken where Wally’s green lady was generally supposed to have appeared. Miss Emily opened her umbrella and composed herself.

She presented a curious figure, motionless, canopied and black and did indeed resemble, as Patrick had suggested, some outlandish presiding deity, whether benign or inimical must be a matter of conjecture. During her vigil seven persons visited the Spring and were evidently much taken aback by Miss Emily.

She remained on her perch until the sun went down behind the hill and, there being no more pilgrims to observe, descended and made her way downhill to Fisherman’s Bay, and thence, round the point, to Miss Cost’s shop. On her way she overtook the village police sergeant who seemed to be loitering. Miss Emily gave him good evening.

It was now a quarter to seven. The shop was open and, when Miss Emily went in, deserted. There was a bell on the counter but she did not ring it. She examined the welter of objects for sale. They were as Patrick had described them to Jenny: fanciful reconstructions in plastic of the Spring, the waterfall and ‘Wally’s Cottage’; badly printed rhyme-sheets; booklets, calendars and postcards all of which covered much the same ground. Predominant amongst all these wares, cropping up everywhere, in print and in plastic, smirking, even, in the form of doll and cut-out, was the Green Lady. The treatment was consistent – a verdigris-coloured garment, long yellow hair, upraised hand and a star on the head. There was a kind of madness in the prolific insistence of this effigy. Jostling each other in a corner were the products of Miss Cost’s handloom; scarves, jerkins and cloaks of which the prevailing colours were sad blue and mauve. Miss Emily turned from them with a shudder of incredulity.

A door from the interior opened and Miss Cost entered on a wave of cottage-pie and wearing one of her own jerkins.

‘I thought I heard – ’ she began and then she recognized her visitor. ‘Ae-oh!’ she said. ‘Good evening. Hem!’

‘Miss Cost, I believe. May I have a dozen threepenny stamps, if you please.’

When these had been purchased Miss Emily said: ‘There is possibly no need for me to introduce myself. My name is Pride. I am your landlord.’

‘So I understand,’ said Miss Cost. ‘Quite.’

‘You are no doubt aware of my purpose in visiting the Island but I think perhaps I should make my position clear.’