Dolly and the Singing Bird (17 page)

The world exploded. There was a mind-deadening roar, a shuddering, and a jerk under our feet that sent me cannoning into his stomach. Then our Land Rover drove smartly off.

It had everything. The seaside postcard, the horse-laugh, the Mack Sennett comedy, the lovers, locked in a clinch on the removable rug.

I can tell you what it is like when it happens to you. It makes you feel sick. Sick with interrupted emotion and outrage and shock. Sick and shaken and ill.

Kenneth was the first to recover. While I was still on all fours, and the car was pursuing a racketing descent towards the crossroads and jetty, Kenneth had his fingers on the back of the driving-seat, and then on the neck muscles of the man sitting there, his hands turning the wheel. The car swerved. I shrieked. “Kenneth! Let him go! It’s a friend!”

I had my doubts even as I spoke, but I didn’t want to be a road accident victim on South Rona. Kenneth heard me. Slowly, he let his arm fall.

“That’s better, Dr. Holmes,” said Johnson gracefully. “Thank you, Tina.” Braking, he brought the car to a halt at the head of the pier.

Kenneth said nothing. But his face in the harbour lights, switched across and across by the shadow of the Rover’s windscreen wipers, was disturbingly grim. “That,” I said to him with precision, “is Johnson Johnson. The man who helped pack Mr. Chigwell away. His sense of humour conceals a love of dumb animals and a passionate feeling for cribbage.” I turned to Johnson and snapped, “Have you been in the car all this time?”

He had, of course. Prone, I suppose, on both seats in the dark.

“I fell asleep,” said Johnson agreeably. The twinkling glasses were not unamiable. But he was not looking at me. “Isn’t it rather lucky? For
I
have no inhibitions about informing against Michael Twiss.”

“You bloody little spy,” said Kenneth blankly. I wished he would either shut up or beat Johnson into a pulp. I didn’t much care which. There were times when Kenneth’s Victorian principles lost their charm. Now I said wearily, “I know. He heard everything we said. But he already knows all about Chigwell, Kenneth, and he couldn’t have handled it better. I’m sure he won’t make mischief, not now.”

“You’re sure he won’t make mischief? A man who would dream of climbing into that car and snooping on you through the whole of our…”

Words failed him. Words hadn’t failed me, but I didn’t dare use them. No wonder Johnson had set off so cheerfully in the opposite direction. It was merely the preliminary to coming cheerfully back. The show with the biggest TAM rating in South Rona. If I thought of one or two things I was grateful for, it didn’t affect my natural instinct to grind his face in the windscreen.

Kenneth, recovering his breath, said, “If he heard all that, he knows exactly how we’re placed. If you denounce Michael Twiss, Johnson, you expose Madame Rossi to all I’ve been trying to save her from… If you really have a kindness for Tina, then keep quiet and let us both go. God knows, that way I’ll pay any debt I have owing in full. And at least she won’t suffer.”

“No. But then,” said Johnson mildly, “what of all the future victims of the ubiquitous Mr. Twiss? Including Madame Rossi herself? Hennessy got in the way of that bullet, but it was probably intended for her. Or didn’t you realise Michael is finding her an embarrassment?”

I said, “Wait a minute. Who shot at Hennessy?”

“Someone with a revolver,” said Johnson brightly. “And the guards all had rifles: remember?”

“But you said Michael had something to do with it. Michael didn’t come to South Rona.”

“Oh, but he did,” Johnson said. “It was Old Home Week on South Rona tonight. The bloody place was like
Charley’s Aunt
done by the Flintstones.”

I still couldn’t believe it. “But you said you left Michael ashore at Portree.”

“I did. One can only conjecture,” said Johnson, “but I suppose he learned somewhere on shore that, far from being tucked up sleeping on
Dolly
, you had sailed into the Kodachrome on Hennessy’s
Symphonetta
. Then, when he most wanted to be on board, he’d find that
Dolly
had disappeared, too… I don’t suppose he wanted to be parted finally from
Dolly
, whatever he said. Anyway, he cadged a ferry from Cecil Ogden’s
Seawolf
. I don’t know what he told Ogden, but Victoria was ashore, having a bath and a kip-down with friends; so Cecil was quite free.

“According to the naval chaps here,
Seawolf
came in and anchored some time after we landed at Acarsaid Mor, and two men went on up to the lighthouse. According to the men there, they were Ogden and Twiss. Twiss left after a bit—he said to try and find me—and Ogden followed him later. Then they both boarded
Seawolf
and made back for Portree.

“I shouldn’t,” said Johnson blandly to Kenneth, “be blind to the fact that while Michael Twiss is about, Tina is really highly unsafe. That’s why I make you this unrivalled sporting offer.
Dolly
’s here. I wirelessed to Acarsaid Mor for her. Come aboard
Dolly
with Tina, and sail with us to Portree to pick up Michael on board again. Then we’ll get at the truth… How about that?”

There was a short silence. Then Kenneth said bitterly, “And how do you propose to persuade the Navy to allow me to leave?”

“I don’t,” Johnson said calmly. “The Navy need never find out that you’ve gone. They know me. They know Hennessy and I brought Madame Rossi on shore for a bet, and Hennessy got mildly hurt in a clash with the security guards, and I’ve come back to collect Madame Rossi. We spun them that tale in order to get Hennessy’s ear attended to: they’ve sent him back to his own boat by naval launch, protesting like hell. I’ve had a ticking off for getting mixed up with security, and I’ve made my peace. So long as no one prowls about their precious buildings, they’re not all that worried. They’ll never notice an extra passenger crossing to
Dolly
… and the
Willa Mavis
, if need be, can carry you back. Come aboard
Dolly
,” said Johnson. “And I’ll help you shake the truth out of Twiss.”

Kenneth didn’t take much more persuading. I could see him registering the points as Johnson made them. It was a chance. And Kenneth and I had no other, if Johnson chose to inform the base of what he had just overheard. Kenneth would have his career wrecked, if no worse, for handing out gratuitous keys, and would also probably be accused of his friend Chigwell’s murder. And I should have to face all that he was trying to spare me. Kenneth made a last effort. “But if I come… how will Michael Twiss’s confession make any difference?”

“In several ways,” said Johnson, surprised. “For instance,
we
could blackmail Michael Twiss.”

We had, as he said, no real alternative. We were at his mercy, whether we liked it or not. We did as he said.

Forgathered on
Dolly
, with the lights of the base high above us, and the lighthouse shuttering and unshuttering its monotonous warning, I took Kenneth’s hand. At least he was with me, and if one could trust Johnson there was hope, of a kind. The only trouble was, I didn’t trust Johnson.

I looked at him, as he stood, hand on wheel, watching Rupert cast off, and thought of something he had never explained. “Nancy Buchanan,” I said. “What was she doing tonight?”

“Ah, yes.” His hand moved, and responding to the thrust of the engine,
Dolly
’s bows moved slowly round and she began, gently, to nose her way out of the anchorage. No one stopped us. Lenny, crouched in the bows, waved as she took up her course. “Ah, yes,” said Johnson, and lifted his eyes from the chart. “Clear, Lenny… If you want filthy villainy, take the Buchanans. No wonder they wouldn’t let anyone down in their cabin. Little, Holmes, did we know.”

I’d had enough. I snapped, “What did they do?”

“They crawled,” said Johnson, easing the wheel, “across the whole length of South Rona, in the dead of night in a rainstorm, tripping over alarm wires with the precision of clockwork, until Bob actually fell over one of the guards who were watching him and made such a noise the poor chap had to raise the alarm. That was when the shooting occurred. And why we had so far been so little troubled.

“Then, considerably accelerated by circumstances and the general bedlam now let loose around them, the Buchanans carried out their pre-arranged plan. Bob, who is as you know an engineer, got in among the power machinery and disconnected it, while Nancy plodded on and created a diversion to let Bob carry out the next part of the plan. It was perfectly fascinating, and I’m told the Navy sat at its windows in rows and watched it like home movies.”

“They didn’t stop them?” I said. It sounded like the silliest thing yet.

“They didn’t need to,” said Johnson. “They’d had a tip-off about the Buchanans. They knew what they were going to do.”

“
What
?” I said.

“You can see. They haven’t pulled it down yet. Probably want to take pictures of it tomorrow and frame them.” Johnson, looking over his shoulder, waved generally upwards and back. We all looked.

High above the neat roofs of the camp, where the radio transmitter bore its tall web, floated a large, home-made banner, fully twenty feet long, and illuminated by all the battery spotlights the base was able to muster, as well as the intermittent glare of the lighthouse.

It said, with old-fashioned point, and less than old-fashioned spelling,
ban the bomm
.

I think we made that journey to Portree in absolute silence. We weren’t very talkative, either, when we found no Michael Twiss waiting to walk into our arms on the pier. For whatever reason, he hadn’t wanted to come back to
Dolly
. He had stayed on
Seawolf
, picked up Victoria, and was off on the next stretch of race in Cecil Ogden’s string-netted chicken coop.

I wasn’t surprised, when I thought about it. And the more I thought about it, the more it concerned me. If he hadn’t abandoned the race altogether, it was because he still had hopes of showing a profit. And I didn’t want the profit to be my sudden demise, or Kenneth’s. For Kenneth’s death, one couldn’t deny, would be very convenient indeed. If an accident happened to Kenneth, the blame for
Lysander
would go to his grave.

In the early hours of Sunday morning, after a brief debate carried by Johnson, we put off the engine, raised sail, and followed
Seawolf
on the next stage of the race, to the island of Rum. This really was my last sail, though I didn’t know it, on
Dolly
.

I was tired to the bone. And although my world might be turned upside down in the next twenty-four hours, I was past thinking about it. I slept, half-dressed where I lay on my bed, and didn’t waken until well after breakfast time, when the crash of a jarring boom sounded overhead and there was a jolting lurch, first to one side and then to the other, while every block on
Dolly
clattered and banged. It was dark, and until I switched on the little light by my bed, I thought we were still in the night.

When I saw the time, I jumped to my porthole and looked. Outside was a world of grey smoke, eddying and swirling above greasy water flowing in coils and whorls, which appeared and disappeared like oil under the grey, lightless veil. We were in the tidal race at the narrows of Kylerhea, the narrow sea passage separating the mainland from the south coast of Skye; and at the wrong state of the tide.

There is some comfort in adequate clothing. I had white kneeboots with me, and a white quilted tabard that slips over a hooded ski-suit in wool. I dressed, thrown this way and that against the side of my bunk as I did it, and went out into the cockpit.

Johnson was at the helm: a bad sign even if you cared for Johnson, and since the previous night I had reservations. At that moment he had eyes for nothing but the swirl of the current just ahead; and as the sails shuddered above me, slackly banging, I realised that, to add to the discomfort, the wind had almost totally dropped. Then he noticed me and said, “Did you sleep the sleep of the just? I’m sorry about this. We’ll be through fairly soon, but it’s going to be a wearing journey to Rum. There’s fog pretty consistently forecast, and we’ve still got the swell from the storm. Lenny’ll make breakfast, if you can stand it.”

He and Rupert and Lenny had had, I suppose, relatively little sleep between them since we left Barra. Rupert, I saw on entering the saloon, looked a bit hollow-eyed, but he had just come off duty, and disappeared very soon into the spare cabin forward, leaving Lenny and Johnson on deck.

I did not want breakfast. I sat down in the saloon opposite Kenneth, who was sitting slack-tied, his head tilted back against Johnson’s rough-weave cushions, expelling cigarette smoke in cancerous clouds. Under the table at his feet was a mess of upset cigarette butts and ash, and a chart thrown down from its ledge. I saw all the fiddles were up, and a table cloth, folded neatly in its place in the galley, had been soaked before being used. I had slept through some unpleasant weather.

Kenneth, I could tell from his face, had not slept at all. As I sat, his head came down, and putting out his cigarette quickly, he reached for my hands. It was then that he asked me to marry him, and I refused.

No one spoke much, after that. Once past Kylerhea, the boat was thrown about less, but still she rolled and pitched over the swell. Lying, one felt the pressures, like a massaging hand, move from side to side under one’s body, and up and down one’s shoulder and spine. The sea smacked the boat with strange, wash-board thuds, mixed with a dull twang, like the sound of a ’cello. It reminded me, that persistent, irritating sound, of some slow-motion hand laundry, surging, trickling and rinsing all round
Dolly
’s boards. The other boats, now well ahead of us, would be suffering. Including Michael. It was odd, I thought, that one life, or two, might depend on Michael Twiss’s weak stomach.

Then the fog came down, and it was afternoon when we crept into the anchorage of Loch Scresort, in the island of Rum.

Rum is an island of the Inner Hebrides, now wholly owned by the Scottish Nature Conservancy, who conduct experiments there. It is a mountainous, pear-shaped island, about eight miles across, and the only buildings of interest, including wardens’ houses, post office, farm, school and school-teacher’s house, are placed at intervals round a wide bay, which is the only anchorage the island possesses.

Set in a park inland from the bay is Kinloch Castle, in which the Nature Conservancy and other scientists like Kenneth live and have their laboratories, some inside the house, and some in the grounds. Apart from the scientists’ wing, the house remains fully furnished as it was when it was built as a shooting-lodge seventy years ago.

The Warden’s house was the Cruising Club’s checkpoint. A confrontation with Michael Twiss was our primary objective. And Kenneth Holmes, Johnson had decided, should be our decoy. Kenneth, whom Michael did not yet know to be here. As
Dolly
felt her way into the bay, I said again, to Johnson, “But will he be safe? How can you protect him?”

And Johnson, staring into the thick white atmosphere, said, “I shall be behind him, wherever he goes. Don’t worry. We haven’t rescued him from his old-fashioned chivalry, you and I, to throw him into the bun-mixing machinery now. There’s
Symphonetta
.”

It was, too, with her black stern and tall spars like a phantom, far on our right. She had come in, I judged with my new expertise, in the last half-hour: her sails were neatly stowed, but two of the boys were still working on deck. I waved as we passed and someone—Shaw? Roberts?—waved back. Beyond that, there was a squat shape identifiable as
Binkie
, with no sign of the Buchanans on board; and then, what we all were straining to see —Ogden’s
Seawolf
, with Michael Twiss, we assumed, still on board.

We slid up beside her and executed, without fuss, the complicated manoeuvre of anchoring. Kenneth stood without moving, binoculars to his eyes. He was just saying, “No one there. They’ll be on shore, too,” when a voice at sea-level remarked, “Ahoy,
Dolly
! I’ve got a passenger of yours. Did you know? And looking down, we saw
Seawolf
’s little pram, with Cecil Ogden in it, alone.

Beside us, Lenny materialised with the companionway, and Johnson’s most unctuous voice said, “Does that mean you’re carrying our Mr. Twiss? Oh, good show. We wondered rather where he could be… Do come aboard.”

But Ogden’s head vibrated gently under its pixie cap. “You’ll want to get ashore to check in. The rest are all there. They’re dead set on exploring the Castle, but the lights are off. I’ve just come back for my torch.”

It was a wonder, I thought, that he had one that worked. Then I saw a number of objects packed under the dinghy bench: an old Tilley lamp, a coil of wire, and a hand brush and dustpan among them, with more under the tarpaulin behind. He had also two big milk churns full of water, and a bloodstained parcel of venison. The Nature Conservancy, clearly, was sustaining
Seawolf
on the next leg of her journey.

I don’t know whether Ogden noticed our amusement, or cared. He had had a good deal to drink but not quite as much, I thought, as usual. On his long, knuckle-bone face was an expression of irony, and his eyes were half closed against the smoke of his drooping filter-tip as he looked up. “Twiss is on shore with Victoria, if you want him. I don’t mind keeping him, if you don’t. I gather there was a bit of a tizzy.”

“Not yet,” said Kenneth, his voice deep. “But there’s going to be.”

“Dr. Holmes.” Johnson made the introduction and added, in face of the open curiosity on Ogden’s face, “It’s a matter of dispute between Mr. Twiss and Dr. Holmes.”

I was grateful for that, but Ogden was hardly likely to believe it, having chased Stanley Hennessy and me, at Michael’s urgent request, all the way to South Rona; and knowing that Michael and I had fallen out already over Kenneth. I wondered if Ogden suspected that Michael was responsible for shooting poor Hennessy’s ear, and if that was why
Seawolf
had left so promptly, with Michael aboard.

But whatever Ogden thought about us, he showed no more interest, having remembered, clearly, his leaking parcel and other acquisitions to unload on board. He pushed off busily as Johnson stepped into
Dolly
’s dory, and with Rupert at the helm and Kenneth and myself sitting aft, we made for the shore. Then, with leisure to look about, I saw that the fog filling this big sea loch was lifting, and that for the first time I was looking at the low woodland, the piled, shingly beach and the grotesque mountains of Rum.

The bay was shallow. Under the school-teacher’s window the red deer were grazing, their rumps seaweed-yellow and umber. They looked up as we slid to the slipway, and I could see their long, soft spread ears like a hare’s, and the large eyes, under their light padded arcs. Then they sprang off, but gently, with a flash of pink and yellow and green from the tags in their ears. For this was an island which culled its deer and also preserved them; and where no grass was unstudied. “Where,” said Johnson, who had been pursuing this train of thought mildly all the way over from
Dolly
, “only man can be vile, verminous and unsound genetically, and still never be shot.”

The walk to the Warden’s house lay along the southern arc of the shore. Rupert was ahead, hurrying to enter
Dolly
’s time of arrival. Kenneth, Johnson and I followed at leisure, and I thought I knew why. It was to allow Rupert to reach the rest of the party and to spread the news that Kenneth was with us. Rupert was baiting the trap. Kenneth here was walking doggedly into it.

In steamy fingers, the sea mist was lifting. Speaking personally, I could never have built a house on that island. It was volcanic, said Kenneth, but the volcanos were extinct, which merely meant a lot of peaks and depressing black rocks and heather. The shooting-lodge people in their day had planted shore woods of birch and sycamore and Scotch pine and larch, with half-naked foxgloves and wild blue delphiniums growing under; but I shouldn’t have bothered. If you want sport, you can get sport in the sun.

Kenneth told us as well, as we walked, how a hundred and fifty years before all but one family had been cleared out to America, so that Rum could become a single sheep farm. Soon after that, it had been sold as the deer forest it had been until recently. I wondered what happened to the four hundred who went, and if their great-great-granddaughters had maybe heard me sing in Carnegie Hall and assumed that I had come the easy way, from a long line of gentry.

It was at the main jetty, a big curving pier lined with red oil drums of rubbish, that we discovered Victoria. Tied up at the jetty was the big Conservancy launch, the
Sioras
, and her dinghy in two neat shades of green, the tarpaulin turned back. Ogden had mentioned, back there, that the thrice-weekly ferry from the mainland was due in later that day. And beside the
Sioras, Seawolfs
dinghy was moored, with Victoria just climbing into it.

Johnson hailed her, with less than his usual tact. “Hallo! Your lord and master back on shore again?”

Her long, swinging hair hid her face as she prepared to cast off, but her exceptionally clear voice was angry. “If you mean Cecil Ogden, he’s gone up to Kinloch Castle with his torch.” And she sat down, slamming the rowlocks into their holes.

Johnson said, in that mild tone we had all learned to distrust, “The Warden’s a good chap, Victoria. I shouldn’t worry. The odd handout is part of his job.”

Victoria had an oar in her grip. “I wish they wouldn’t. Once Cecil put it all to good use, but he’s getting lazier and lazier. Soon he’ll just be a scavenger.” The bitterness in her voice silenced him. She looked at us then, defiantly, and said, “Where’s Lenny?”

“On
Dolly
. Fishing off the stern with a murderer,” said Johnson. “But at your service, as ever. Something wrong?”

“Battery,” said Victoria abruptly. Lenny was a genius with electricity, I had learned, and generous with his help. I did not understand Victoria’s tone until Johnson said, “My, my!” with irony. “And I was about to congratulate you on having the brightest lights in Portree.” And as Victoria for some reason flushed an unbecoming beetroot, he added, “Hence the walkout?”

Victoria was still scarlet. I could see Kenneth couldn’t understand either. “It isn’t a walkout,” she muttered. “Not yet. I’m just going back on board
Seawolf
.”

And taking the dinghy, of course. It might not be a walk-out, but it was an effective declaration of independence. Except that, wrapped up in his eccentric preoccupations, Ogden would hardly notice the worm had revolved. And could always cadge a lift, I supposed, in
Symphonetta
’s dory, or
Binkie
’s or ours. He would have to, for I saw, as the mist continued to lift, that in fact ours were the only four yachts, barring the
Sioras
, in the loch.

We left Victoria, and resumed the rough, stony path round the bay. We saw no one. The path passed an oil store, became a bridge over a rushing stream joining the sea on our right, and passed a lime kiln, as old as the Castle. A midge stung, a needle-prick, and another; and suddenly there were voices, and we all drew breath and relaxed, for there was only a small tented encampment on the shore, and a smudge fire, and two lads in hooded anoraks bent over it, preferring suffocation to midges. They had come perhaps with the last ferry, and were going back later that night, having tramped the two permitted nature trails and defeated the midges. On the sodden hills, half-invaded by mist, I had noticed one or two others, but these had rifles. It was, Johnson said, the season for culling the deer.