Lonely Road (18 page)

I sent a little message of my thanks to Joan. “Of course, I’d love to, Lady Stenning,” Mollie said. “I know some lovely new ones that Pagani did last season, ever so pretty.”

“That’s a bet,” said Joan. We turned to pushing the machine towards the barn. Before the opening Stenning folded back the wings; we pushed the Moth in under cover and collected their belongings from the locker. Then we made off towards the house, the girls walking ahead of Stenning and myself.

We went inside and Mollie went upstairs with Joan; Stenning and I turned into the library for a drink. He raised it with a meaning twinkle in his eye. “Luck!” he said. “Boys will be boys.”

I met his glance. “I brought her down from Leeds three days ago,” I said simply. “She’s in this business that you want to know about. Norman had a good go at her yesterday, but he didn’t get much out of her.”

He raised his eyebrows, swallowed down his drink, and set the glass down on the table by his side. “You’ve got to keeping some damn funny company, these days,” he said. “Not but what the girl’s all right. Nice, quiet little bit—or was when I met her. But I’d never have thought to find you with the C.I.D.”

I nodded. “You’re right there. I’ve had my fill of your friend Norman in the last two days.”

I told him that we’d have a talk about it after dinner, and took him up and showed him to his room. Mollie was in her room with Joan; I heard them talking as we passed the door. It seemed that they were getting on all right; I might have known I could rely on Joan. I passed along and saw that Stenning had everything he wanted in his place; then I went to my own room to wash.

I forget what we talked about that night at dinner, but it
went all right. The party had settled down, and Mollie was no longer shy of Joan. I sat on with Stenning after dinner in the dining-room, after the ladies had gone through into the south room, and over the port I told him everything I knew about the business.

He was intensely interested. He told me that Norman had been on to him in London to find out what he had heard in Rotterdam; he had had some dealings with Norman previously in his chequered career, and knew Sir David Carter. I found that he had told Norman a great deal more about the episode in Rotterdam than he had mentioned on the yacht. It seemed to hinge about a conversation in a café on the quays, and it went somehow like this:

Stenning had gone to this café for a drink. He was with another man, some engineer or pilot from the aerodrome, and they sat down in the sunshine at a table on the pavement outside. The window of the place was open above their heads and the door was open at their side; in this position they could not be seen from inside the café premises.

They sat there for the most part in silence, not having much to say to each other, sipping their drinks and looking out over the harbour. Inside the room some conversation was in progress about a shipping contract, the majority of which they overheard through door and window. Stenning sat there on the pavement in the sun, listening idly, not taking very much in. In fact, he never really thought of it again until he spoke of carpet-sweepers to me that evening on the yacht.

The conversation was in English. One of the talkers was apparently the captain of a vessel, a young man by the voice, educated, and English. The other one was probably a Dutchman or a German, speaking English with a strong accent. Stenning never saw either of the speakers.

The contract was for shipping carpet-sweepers and relays—electrical relays, perhaps, but Stenning did not know. Fifteen sweepers and thirty-eight relays were involved; the smallness of these quantities mildly attracted his attention. Delivery was to be made to Berth No. 16
A;
an advice note had been sent to
the Professor. Stenning heard nothing to explain who the Professor was.

That was all he could remember of the conversation, which indeed had hardly attracted his attention at the time. Later on the same afternoon, however, he had occasion to go down to the docks to see to the unloading of an engine in connection with his work. Walking along the quays he recollected berth No. 16
A,
and had the curiosity to look and see what sort of vessel was involved. He found a small, single-masted sailing vessel of some forty or fifty tons, a sloop or bawley—he would not be certain which. She was an English rig. He only gave her a casual glance, for he was in a hurry. His impression was of a vessel that was little more than a smack; he retained the memory, however, of a cargo hatch. A crabber, or some vessel of that sort.

That was the sum of Stenning’s evidence. It had not provided Norman with a lot to go upon, because Stenning had seen neither of the talkers and was by no means sure that he would be able to identify the boat again. He had only looked down on her, quite casually, from the top of the quay.

Norman had made a search through the police archives at the Yard for the Professor, and had found at least fifteen. He said that every gang in his experience possessed some member, generally of a higher standard of intelligence than the others, who was described like that.

I sat on for some time in the dining-room discussing it with Stenning, but we didn’t get much forrader. Finally the clock struck ten, and roused me to the time. It was over an hour since the ladies had gone out and left us talking with the port. I got a little worried then that Sixpence might have fallen down and hurt herself with Joan, and so I rose, and we went through to the south room.

As it turned out, I need not have been alarmed. We found them playing the gramophone and talking about knitted cross-stitch jumpers, or something of that sort, and eating a box of chocolates that Joan must have brought down with her. I could see that they were getting on all right, and I heaved a
sigh of relief. I had had visions of finding them silent in opposite corners of the room; one never knows with girls. Or I don’t, anyway.

It was a warm, still, summer night. We walked out on to the terrace in the dusk and stood there looking out over the Range, talking idly about the chance of the weather and the sea in the next few days. Stenning was going west next day in the
Irene;
I had other plans, myself, and thought of taking Sixpence east.

In the dim light she came to me, and said: “Please, Commander Stevenson, I think I’m going up to bed, if you don’t mind. I do feel ever so sleepy.”

“Right-o,” I said; “I’m going soon myself.” I paused. “I thought if it’s a fine day to-morrow we’d have an early breakfast and take
Runagate.”

She looked up at me, puzzled. “Please—I didn’t understand.”

I smiled. “It’s the name of my yacht,” I said.
“Runagate
. I thought we might go sailing all day if it’s fine. Would you like that?”

She beamed at me. “It would be ever so lovely to do that. I’ve only been in a sailing boat once, and it was quite rough, and ever such fun.” She paused reminiscently. “The gentleman that took me, he was sick.”

Stenning laughed. “Red hot!” he said.

She laughed with him. “He
was
cross—what with being with me, and the others laughing at him.…” Her voice drifted away to silence in the dusk; a veil dropped upon the story of that pleasure party. “Good-night,” she said, and moved quietly away into the house.

I turned to Stenning and Joan. “We’d better get off early,” I said, thinking of the tides. “Breakfast at eight—not later, or we’ll find ourselves sweating out over the flood.”

“I thought of that,” said Stenning. “We’ll sail together.” I took a turn or two with them upon the terrace before going up. At the corner of the house, in Mollie’s room, I saw the light come on and shine out in the night. I saw her shadow
move and pass upon the curtains of the room. I knew that Joan was watching, too; I stirred and glanced at her, and our eyes met.

“Malcolm,” said Joan, “who is she?” Her curiosity, I suppose, was irresistible. “I mean,” she said, “it’s so unlike you to have anyone.”

I eyed her grimly. I knew I had to face this questioning, this prying into my affairs. “She’s just a girl that I picked up in Leeds and brought down here,” I said defensively. “I gave her ten pounds to come.”

Joan laughed softly. “You are a funny old stick,” she said, quite quietly. “You needn’t think you’re going to kid me she’s that sort of girl, or you’re that sort of man.” She paused. “As a matter of fact, she told me all about her work, and how you came to meet. But then there was a lot more that I didn’t quite get the hang of; I don’t know that she really understood it all herself. All about her brother, and a fire in a motor-lorry, and the police, and staying on to have a holiday with you.”

She stopped, and there was a little silence on the terrace; Stenning had walked a little way away. “Well,” I said, “she seems to have told you all there is to tell. I haven’t anything to add to it.”

She stood and eyed me for a moment. And then, quite unexpectedly, she said: “I think you must have been rather a dear.”

I stood by the parapet looking out over the harbour mouth; the moon was coming up in a calm night, and there were wreaths of fog or mist down by the sea. “Stenning will tell you all I know,” I said at last. “I got involved in this when I was drunk, and played a dirty trick on her. And then I didn’t like it when I’d done it. That was all.”

I didn’t feel inclined to tell her any more, and she didn’t worry me to do so. So we took a turn or two upon the terrace, till Stenning said: “I vote we go to bed.”

“We’d better have a whisky first,” I said. Joan said good-night to us, and moved towards the house. I went with her
to the window; on the threshold of the room she turned to me, and said:

“You’re very lucky, Malcolm. I think she’s simply sweet.” Then she was gone before I could reply, before I could ask her to explain herself.

I went with Stenning to the model room, and we had our whisky there. He wanted the
Irene
got up on the slip as soon as he came back; he said she wanted caulking at the stern-post. She didn’t, as it happened; what she wanted was new stuffing at the stern tube gland. I fixed up this with him, and then we too went up to bed.

I was up early the next day, but Sixpence was before us. I heard her go downstairs as I was shaving, and saw her in the garden with the Rogers’ dog. It was a misty sort of morning with blue sky above; not a breath of wind. I knew what that would mean for the day’s sailing—getting up sails that flapped about and didn’t draw, and trundling along under power most of the day. Still, it should be calm enough, and it seemed to me that there might be a little wind from the east to bring us home in the late afternoon.

I found her in the garden when I got down, and walked with her for a little time among the rose-beds on the dewy paving. Then we went back into the house; Stenning was there in sea clothes, dirty flannel trousers and a fisherman’s jersey. Then Joan came down in much the same sort of getup. I saw Sixpence looking at them furtively, and smiled. “You’re not dirty enough for this game,” I said.

“I didn’t know,” she murmured. “I thought you always did yachting in white clothes.”

“Not this sort,” said Stenning. “That’s only when you don’t know how to sail a boat and have to have a crew.” I think that was unjust, but Stenning hates a crew. So do I for that matter; paid hands are nothing but a nuisance on a boat.

She said again: “I didn’t know. I thought yachts always had a crew, like on the pictures.”

Joan laughed, and helped herself to sausages. “They don’t do any washing-up upon the pictures,” she observed. “Or perhaps
that’s what the crew’s for. My experience is that a woman’s place upon a yacht is at the tub.”

We finished breakfast and collected all their gear together with a hamper of our own containing lunch, packed everything into the Bentley, and set off for the yard. Down by the harbour everything was wreathed in mist, thin, with a visibility of half a mile or so. I knew that this would clear off as the day went on; we often have it that way in the summer-time.

At the yard we separated. Joan and Stenning started to unload their stuff into their dinghy, and I went into my office for a few minutes to go through the post. There wasn’t very much to do; I came out presently and saw them pulling out to the
Irene
. My pram was at the steps; I took Sixpence down and put her in the stern-sheets with the hamper, took the sculls, and set out towards
Runagate
in the next berth.

Sixpence sat trailing her fingers idly in the water as we went. “It’s lovely here,” she said, quite quietly. The mist curled round the hills in slow, thin wreaths; the day was very still. I glanced over my shoulder. “That’s the vessel,” I remarked to her. “The white cutter.”

I brought the dinghy alongside, stood up, and held her off from the topsides. “Hop on board,” I said; she slipped nimbly from the little pram on to the deck and stooped to take the hamper that I handed up to her. I let the dinghy drop astern, and followed her on deck. “What do you think of her?” I asked.

She stood there for a moment very still upon the deck before replying, looking round about. “It’s all so … clean,” she said at last. She looked along the sweet sheer to the bows. “It’s beautiful,” she said. “The way that she goes up like that in front.”

I stared at her in surprise; she had picked on one of the outstanding features of the vessel. “You’ve never seen a boat like this before?” I asked. “Nor been to sea?”

She shook her head. “Only in the speed-boats at Bridlington, and that time we went sailing that I told you about.”

I pursued the point of curiosity. “How did you know that
it was right for her to be like that? That sheer up to the bows?”

She stared at me in perplexity. “The sea wouldn’t come over so much, would it?”

I stood and looked at her. “You must have had to do with ships to know that much,” I said. “Think, now.”

She shook her head. “Only my grandpa. He used to work in some place where ships were built, in Scotland. But he died when I was small.”

I nodded slowly, and we went below. She followed me, wondering, as I showed her through the ship. The forecastle, she thought, was terribly small to do the cooking in. She fell in love with the saloon, with the satinwood panels, with the little racks and cupboards, with the recording aneroid in springs. She didn’t quite know what to say about the sleeping-cabin, with the engine casing down between the bunks.