A Gathering Storm (7 page)

She had been lying on her stomach, staring into a pool where fairy fronds of lime and scarlet weed gently undulated and fish darted like shards of crystal. Along the sandy bottom staggered a pink-shelled crab. There was a miniature cave in the rock, scooped out by the sea, and decorated with barnacles and exquisite curled winkles. It might serve as a palace for a tiny mermaid. A sea palace! Beatrice imagined herself very small, with a glittery tail, swimming down with the fish to shelter amongst the snowy pinnacles and the tender anemones. How happy she would be, riding the white seahorses with their coiled tails . . .

A hyphen of electric blue shot out from the cave and pulled her out of her delicious day-dream. One scoop of her net and a moment later the tiny fish was zigzagging round her bucket above a hermit crab and a giant limpet she’d captured in earlier raids.

A shout echoed from somewhere up the beach. She whipped round to see the elder boy come first, leaping out of the dunes, screeching like the Riviera Express, towel, shorts, jersey and shoes all flung to the ground in a heap as he ran down the beach in his drawers. White dune dust flew from his heels, then he gained the harder sand of the foreshore and sprinted on and on, into the wind, towards the sea. Perhaps he imagined the cheers of spectators, for when he finally splashed into the shallows he punched the air in a triumphant gesture then turned as if to an audience, panting, hands on hips.

Now came the others, the younger boy dark and thin where the elder was fair and hearty, struggling out of clothes and sandals. Then he, too, was running, imprinting his own, lighter footprints on the sand, careful always to avoid his brother’s firm ones. Next, a sturdy brown-haired girl of perhaps six or seven in a swimming costume. She jumped from a dune, fell, picked herself up, crying uselessly to the boys to wait, then dashed off down the beach after them. Finally there appeared the older girl, straw sunhat in hand, her movements dreamy, serene, her long gold hair blowing out behind like a heroine in a thousand legends and Beatrice, watching, held her breath. The girl picked her way barefoot across the grassy hillocks with self-absorbed grace. Her journey to the sea was winding, for she kept stopping to pin back her hair, examine shells, or simply to whirl about in the wind. Beatrice stared at her, amazed, thinking she’d never seen such a beautiful creature. Reaching the water’s edge, where the smallest child waded, the golden girl knotted up the skirt of her dress before paddling in the shallows and waving at the boys, who were already capering far out among the breakers.

‘Edward, Peter.’ Her cry carried to Beatrice on the wind, bouncing off the cliffs, echoing around. ‘Mummy said . . .’ Beatrice couldn’t make out what Mummy had said but imagined it to be something about not going out too far. But the boys dived like dolphins under the waves and kicked spray at one another and ignored their sister who gave up after a bit and instead helped the smaller girl draw pictures on the sand with driftwood. Beatrice returned to her pool and concentrated on levering a blood-coloured anemone away from a rock.

‘Hello there!’

When she looked up again, the golden girl was coming towards her, glowing with life, her hair flying out everywhere. Beatrice rose to her feet, brushed sand from her shorts, and waited for the girl to reach the rocks.

‘What are you doing?’ the girl called, placing a bare foot on the lowest rock and craning her neck to see. ‘Ouch. Can I come over?’

Beatrice looked down at her own sensibly sandalled feet and said doubtfully, ‘If you want.’ The golden girl plotted her way painfully across the barnacled rocks. She was like the mermaid in the story Beatrice often read, who was given human legs but condemned always to feel she walked on knives.

‘Oh, you’ve got an an-em-one,’ the girl cried, reaching her and peering into the pool. ‘I love an-em-ones! Their mouths are like people’s when they kiss you.’

Beatrice gazed at her in astonishment. She considered the talcum-powder pecks her English grandmother gave her and the smacking kisses from her French relations and thought their mouths were nothing like anemones. She hated it worst when people pinched her cheeks as though testing whether she was fat enough to eat. She imagined they must find her disappointingly scrawny.

The girl was talking away in a quite uninhibited fashion. ‘I have to say an-em-one slowly because I nearly always call them anenomes. It’s Greek. Mummy’s name is Oenone and that’s Greek too. Some people don’t know how to say “In-ony”, because it’s spelt funny.’ She laughed, her face open, happy. ‘Edward, he’s the biggest, does Greek at his school so he always says words right. I wish he wouldn’t laugh at me, though. It’s not my fault girls don’t do Greek or Latin. I think it sounds more fun than boring old geography. At which Miss Simpkins says I just don’t try. What about you?’

Beatrice was startled at this long, complicated speech, but managed to say, ‘I like geography,’ as she loved examining maps and saying the strange names of cities and rivers to herself, but sensing the girl’s annoyance she added quickly, ‘Well, some of the time.’ She was torn, frightened of displeasing this extraordinary girl by disagreeing with her, but still sore from a recent misunderstanding when her mother believed her to have lied. ‘Always tell the truth,
Béatrice,
’ she had remonstrated in her accented English. ‘Even if it makes trouble. Your integrity is the most valuable thing.’

She was relieved to see the girl was still smiling. Close up, Beatrice could see her large clear blue eyes and just the faintest smattering of freckles across her creamy skin. She must be the same age as herself, or slightly older – thirteen, perhaps – already tall, with long languorous limbs. She held herself confidently, too. Her shirt was tight across her chest, and when she crouched down to poke about in the bucket, there was something self-aware about the movement. ‘I’m sorry, do I talk too much?’ she said, her face now an appealing frown. ‘Nanny says that empty vessels make most sound. Gosh, I say, look at that stripey fish. It’s so pretty I could just eat it up. Not literally, of course. I mean, it’s just a heavenly blue, don’t you think? I love all animals but horses best of all.’

‘Oh, so do I!’ Beatrice couldn’t help bursting out.

‘Do you keep a horse? We have two, but they’re Mummy’s, though I’m allowed to ride Cloud. He’s only a pony but it’s quite true, Jezebel does bite. Cloud’s name is Claud really, but Cloud is a grey – which means white – so it suits him so much better. Don’t you agree?’

Before Beatrice could admit that, no, her family didn’t have horses, nor was it likely they’d ever have one in a thousand years, a boy’s deep voice called, ‘Angie!’ and she saw the other children hurrying towards them over the sand. They waited in a line, where the rocks began. The little girl said, ‘Angie, you’ve got to come. Now.’

Edward, the eldest, who studied Greek, stood arms akimbo. He said, ‘Good afternoon,’ to Beatrice in a polite, very grown-up way. Then to Angie, ‘I say, would you and Hetty go and get our shoes and things. I vote we go round to the other cove.’ All five of them looked to where a passage of bare sand had opened up between the sea and the jagged rocks of the headland. ‘I want to find that cave Daddy told us about.’

Peter, the next in age, was examining a small cut on his arm. When he glanced up at Beatrice his black eyes were expressionless, unreadable. She stepped back, flustered, and her foot knocked the bucket. ‘Oh, watch out, silly,’ cried Hetty. They all saw it rock then settle.

‘What’s your name?’ Angie asked.

‘Beatrice,’ said Beatrice, pronouncing it the English way.

‘Goodbye, Beatrice. Look, Hetty, stay here with the boys. I’ll be quicker. You’d better not go without me, Ed,’ she warned. She set off up the beach in the curious loping stride of someone not used to running. Hetty stared into Beatrice’s pail and then up at her stolidly, before turning and following her brothers back to the shoreline. There Edward filled time by practising cartwheels on the sand and Peter hurled pebbles into the waves with what Beatrice considered excessive force. Up by the dune, good-natured Angie could be seen stuffing towels, clothes and shoes into a straw bag. She hurried back to her siblings and the four of them ambled over towards the other cove, not even turning to wave to Beatrice.

She’d visited the other cove with her parents, but had been repeatedly forbidden ever to go there by herself because it got covered up so quickly by the tide. It occurred to her now that she should have warned the children, but they were already too far away to hear.

She watched until they were out of sight, then turned back to her task, hauling her bucket over to the next big rockpool. There, three pretty pebbles gleamed in the depths and she almost forgot about the children as she fished these out one by one, thinking they’d look well in her collection box at home. Then she sat back against a boulder, took an apple and a greaseproof package out of a shoulder bag and ate ginger biscuits while she made notes in an exercise book about her afternoon’s finds. She drew the fish and a picture of a mermaid swimming in the palace she’d imagined. Then she put away the notebook and spent some time fishing for a particularly elusive crab in a large shallow pool, the surface of which kept being ruffled by the breeze. It would be a good hour before she needed to return home to tea.

The sun crept across the sky. The tide was on the turn now. She could feel the tension of it, sucking and pulling in secret places under the rocks. She wondered idly where the other children had got to and whether they knew about incoming tides. Edward was older; she thought he must know. She’d wait for a while longer just to see, but she’d be in trouble if she were late home.

She stared over at the passage to the next cove. It was narrower than it had been. Every now and then, a wave would nearly reach the jagged black rocks of the headland. But then several would fall short and she’d decide she was being hasty.

Time to go. She swung her bag across her shoulder, lifted the bucket of sea creatures and the net and started up the beach, but each step was reluctant. When she reached the far side of the dunes and gained the path back to St Florian, something made her turn round. A cry, she was sure it was a cry. It might be one of the children. She couldn’t go on, couldn’t just leave them there in danger.

She left her things by the path and retraced her steps, but when she reached the place where the passage had been, she saw that the sea had nearly covered it. They hadn’t come back. They’d be drowned.

She eyed the vicious rocks, imagining where her hands and feet could fit, and looked down in dismay at her soft hands. She wouldn’t have to go very far – if she could just see the children and warn them . . . She placed her sandalled foot on the lowest ledge and began to climb.

Oenone Wincanton, whose name was pronounced ‘In-ony’, came to tea with Beatrice’s mother the next day. Beatrice skulked in the hall, listening at the door.

‘Your daughter is obviously a tomboy. Ah, the dear thing, she sounds just how I used to be.’ Angelina’s mother gave a delicious rippling laugh and Beatrice couldn’t help smiling. ‘I had brothers, you see, and the things we used to get up to would simply make your blood freeze. That’s why you must let me help. Don’t worry, your little Beatrice will turn out beautifully with me, you’ll see.’

Beatrice narrowed her eyes. What did Mrs Wincanton mean by help?

‘But you know where we found her,
madame
,’ she heard her mother say in her accented English. ‘On the cliff! It makes my heart stop to think of it. Anything dangerous or daring and she cannot resist.’

When Beatrice had failed to return home the previous evening the Marlows had sounded the alarm. A search party found her as it was growing dark, clutching for dear life to a rocky overhang, unable to go either up or down, soaked by icy spray and terrified, while the Atlantic Ocean churned beneath. Oenone Wincanton had been with them.

‘All your little girl would say was, she wanted to save the children. So plucky of her. No reason for her to have known about the steps, of course. It’s impossible to see them if you don’t know where to look.’

Beatrice knew now that a secret set of steps, cut into the cliff, led up from the second cove to the grounds behind Carlyon Manor. The Wincanton children had simply climbed them and had been home safe and dry twenty minutes after they’d disappeared from Beatrice’s sight. How foolish she felt.

She slumped against the panelling and hurt her elbow on a shelf. ‘Ow!’

‘Who’s there?’ Her mother’s heels tapped on the wooden floor. Beatrice scrambled into the dining room just in time.

‘
Béatrice?
’ her mother’s voice called into the hall.

‘She’s in there, the minx,’ Cook said, appearing at the kitchen door with a fresh pot of tea. She scowled at Beatrice.

‘
O ma fille
,’ Delphine Marlow said, scrutinizing the girl. She never frowned – frowning caused wrinkles, she liked to say – but Beatrice
felt
her frown. ‘Run up and brush your hair,
mignonne.
Madame Wincanton would like to see you.’

In the drawing room, Beatrice wasn’t sure where to put herself so she hovered by the fireplace, standing first on one leg, then on the other, and peering at the visitor from under her lashes. Oenone Wincanton looked Beatrice up and down with an amused expression. She was so lovely and elegant, the girl thought; you could see where Angie got her good looks. Mrs Wincanton’s hair was honey-coloured, but a couple of shades darker than her daughter’s, and piled up in an artless coil – not fashionable at all, but beautiful all the same – and her eyes were a pure blue, like pieces cut out of a sky. Beatrice realized where she’d seen her before: racing a dainty bay mare across the shoreline, with an older, soldierly-looking man on a great black hunter in hot pursuit.

She wasn’t wearing her riding habit today, but a trim tea costume in navy and white. Pearls gleamed at her ears and her throat. She laid down her cup and saucer and patted the sofa beside her. Beatrice shuffled over and slid onto the edge of it, her hands hot under her thighs until, seeing her mother’s
moue
of displeasure, she took them out and folded them on her lap. The
moue
transformed itself into the faintest of smiles.