Lonely Road (19 page)

She turned to me at last: “It would be fun to really live upon a boat like this—for weeks, like.”

I smiled. “You’d like it?” I inquired. “It’s very rough sometimes, you know.”

She nodded. “Fancy sleeping in these little beds.…”

I took her up on deck again, and we began preparing to cast off. She was intelligent and quick about the deck; I was continually reminded that she was a dancer as she moved nimbly on the cluttered, narrow deck. Together we got the dinghy alongside, shackled the burton to her bows, and lifted her on board. It was simple getting under way in that dead calm; as soon as the engine was running smoothly beneath our feet I went forward and cast off the mooring-chain. The buoy and light line followed with a splash, and we drifted slowly clear.

Stenning cast off almost simultaneously with us. I put the clutch in and the vessel forged ahead in the thin mist, with Stenning following in our wake. He hailed us presently and I slowed down for him to come up on us a bit; he ranged
Irene
alongside, a ship’s length away as we went down the river.

“Malcolm,” said Joan, “got any salt to spare? We’ve only got a little in this pot, and I’m putting on a stew.”

I turned to Mollie. “Come and take her for a minute while I go below,” I said. She came and took the little wheel, protesting that she didn’t know about it; in the
Irene
Joan and Stenning stood and watched us, grinning. I stood with her for a minute showing her how it went, then handed it to her. “Now, keep her bowsprit on that point of land.” She took it all in, grimly serious. “Give us a decent berth,” I said to Stenning, and went down below to look for salt.

There was silence up on deck, so far as there is ever silence in a vessel under way. Once, as I rummaged in the cupboards, I heard Stenning say quietly: “Other way; put it the other way. That’s right, now steady her at that.” In the stern the motor chugged on easily; at the bows I heard the tinkling ripple from the cutwater. I made a little paper screw of salt for them and took it up on deck; we were cruising steadily beside
Irene
and heading directly for the point. “Let her come up a little now,” I said. “About a hand’s span from the point.” The vessel swung and steadied on her course.

“Like that?” asked Mollie.

I nodded. “That’ll do.”

The water of the harbour mouth was glassy calm, boiling a little here and there with eddies from the tide. Stenning ranged his vessel alongside and Joan reached out and took the salt from me, then they sheered off again. Mollie made as if to give the helm to me.

“Keep it a bit,” I said; “you’re doing fine.” I glanced ahead. “Keep on as she is; you don’t want to go too near the point.” I got out of the cockpit and went forward on the deck, and began trimming her for sea.

We passed the Battery and motored out into the Range. At sea the mist was still hanging about in wreaths, the visibility perhaps a mile. I finished my jobs forward and came aft again, and went down into the saloon to fetch a cushion for Sixpence at the wheel.

She beamed at me: “I do think this is lovely.”

I nodded: “A good game.”

In the Range we parted company with the
Irene
; Stenning was going on down west to Salcombe and the Yealm. At the Mewstone I put her round and headed up along the coast for Berry Head. It was still thick. I put her on a compass course and taught Sixpence to read the card; she was still steering the vessel, keen and engrossed. And then I rested for a little in the cockpit, leaning on the hatch and staring out ahead. I would never have believed that any girl would pick it up so soon. It was in her blood, of course; that shipwright grandfather of hers was probably the last of a long line of merchant seamen. Seafaring is hereditary, I think; I find it so with my own shipwrights in the yard.

The mist grew thinner as we drew near Berry Head; it wreathed apart to show the great, familiar bluff and I felt a faint puff of air upon my cheek. We drew abreast the Head and I put her on another compass course; the wind was steadying down into the east, a light air to the heated land. I went forward and broke out the jib; it flapped and drew lazily in the sun. I gave her the balloon foresail as well, and went back aft; I stopped the motor and we went slipping slowly on under headsails alone. I was in no mood to hurry that day.

“It’s lovely, going on like this without the motor,” Mollie said. “Quiet, like.”

For an hour we drifted on like that, enshrouded in the mist, basking in the sun upon the hot teak of the cockpit and the hatch. Once a Brixham vessel loomed up through the haze and crossed our bows, a great tanned ketch moving slowly under full sail, majestic and imposing on the water’s face. On our beam the land showed faintly, Paignton way; occasionally we heard faint sounds of motor-horns and barking dogs. For anyone who prided himself on seamanship it was a shocking way to drift across the bay, under headsails only on a day like that. Still, it was pleasant in the sun.

Then Sixpence roused me. “Oh,” she said, “what’s that?” And pointed dead ahead.

The sun and the light wind were banishing the mist. In
front of us the confines of the bay were visible, the flat land rising up into tall cliffs at the north end. There were hills there, and a wonderful town upon the hills that followed the slopes down to the tideway; a magic town, built of white harbour walls and gleaming palaces beside the sea. All this was still half shrouded in the mist; in the bright sun it was all shot with colours, gold and blue.

“Oh,” she said again, and turned to me, entranced. “What place is that?”

I glanced ahead, and turned to knock my pipe out on the rail. “That?” I said. “Oh, that’s Torquay.”

I heard her breathe: “Torquay … ” and fell to filling up my pipe again. And so we stood like that for a little time until she took her eyes from it, and came to me, and said:

“You’re ever so good to me, Commander Stevenson. I don’t know what to say.…”

I muttered: “That’s all right.” And then quite quickly, before I knew what she was going to do, she reached right up and kissed me on the cheek.

I put an arm round her, the hand that hadn’t got my pipe and pouch in it, and held her for a minute there upon tiptoe; then I let her down again upon her feet. “That was very nice,” I said, and grinned at her. I stood there holding her like that with one arm round her shoulders while I pointed out to her the harbour and the pier; I’m not so sure that she was paying much attention. And presently I left her and went forward to uncast the stoppers on the anchor and its chain, and she went back to con the vessel in. And so that moment passed.

I dropped anchor in four fathoms about two cables from the westward harbour pier; it was about half tide. Sixpence came forward from the idle wheel and watched me veer the chain; then for a quarter of an hour we leaned on the main-boom and watched the crowds upon the shore through field-glasses.
Then we went below to change for her bathe; first on deck, I got the dinghy alongside to make it easy for her to get out.

She came on deck at last in her green bathing-dress; on the harbour wall I saw the telescopes come up at us. We dived in together; she turned and swam to the bows and hung on to the bob-stay and the chain, laughing at me, then to the dinghy and so out on deck. I went in again alone; Sixpence was for the sun and the warm woodwork of the deck.

“I do think Lady Stenning’s awfully nice,” she said as we sat there.

I blew a cloud of smoke. “That’s what I told you, but you wouldn’t have it.”

She wrinkled up her brows. “I know. But she didn’t seem like a Lady, not to talk to.”

“Well,” I said, “she wasn’t one last year.”

She pondered over this for a bit. “She was ever so nice to me,” she said at last.

Presently we went down to the saloon and dressed. Rogers had put us up a sort of picnic lunch: a dressed crab and Chablis, and some sweet or other. We took it up and ate it in the cockpit in the sun. I had put on the Primus and we had a cup of coffee after it and sat there smoking for a time, lazily studying the shore and town.

Then we went on shore. I sculled the dinghy in through the entrance to the harbour and in among the yachts moored there in rows;
Tern IV
was there, and
Coral
, I remember. We went on and left the dinghy in the inner harbour; up the steps to the quay, and there we were before the shops.

We wandered round that town all afternoon. Sixpence had reached the Mecca of her dreams, the Torquay that had meant so much to her throughout her life, and she was missing none of it. We went from the harbour to the pier and then into the gardens where the band was playing; we looked at the sunshine register and saw the veritable Station Road itself. Then we went back and found the Palais and had a look at the outside of that, and then we had to locate Bay View Hotel, where a friend of hers had spent a holiday one summer with a gentleman,
and had a lovely time. And then we went to look at shops.

And then that damnable affair cropped up again. It was in the main street that it happened; I wish to God we’d gone back to the boat. We’d got about half-way along a line of shops, with Sixpence studying entranced a great variety of articles from furniture to shoes, when we came to a window that displayed a considerable amount of ladies’ underwear. I stood there while she glued her nose against the pane, hoping that nobody I knew would pass that way. And suddenly she plucked my arm.

“Oh, look,” she said. “That’s where Edna works.”

She pointed to a ladies’ dummy elegantly attired in nothing but a corset, and inadequate at that. “Slimline corsetry,” she said. “That’s where she works. I wonder if she made that one?”

I didn’t understand. “Who’s Edna?” I inquired.

She turned to me. “Didn’t I tell you about her in the Leeds Palais? She’s Billy’s girl.” She paused. “Only she doesn’t seem to care about him, not like he does her.”

There seemed to be a sort of silence then; in the busy street the traffic moved about us, but before the window we were very still. This was the first that I had heard of this young woman, but I knew just what it meant. If anyone could tell where Billy was, it would be this girl Edna in her corset factory.

I think she saw that it was something serious. “I hadn’t heard of her,” I said at last. “Where is it that she works?”

She said: “It’s Hammersmith. But I did tell you, back in the police station that day. I
asked
if Billy’d gone to Hammersmith.”

She had, and I had shut her up, and then I had forgotten it. By some chance it had not come out in Norman’s questioning that this girl might know where he was; this was the first that we had heard of her.

“Do you think she’d know where Billy is?” I asked.

Something of the hard and anxious look that she had had in the dance-hall came back to her as she looked up at me. A
shadow had come to dull the brightness of our day—God knows, it isn’t often that one gets a day like that. It might have happened at some other time.

“I think she would,” she said.

We turned and went back to the dinghy at the harbour steps.

W
E
went on board at once. Outside the harbour a light breeze had sprung up from the north-east; I set to work and got the anchor short, and got the main on her alone. Then with the engine ticking over and with Mollie at the helm I broke her out and set the jib and foresail, and stood out into the Bay.

I kept her off the wind and sailing free until I had the anchor catted and all square forward; then I came aft and luffed her for the open sea. Mollie was by me in the cockpit as we crossed the Bay; I taught her how to steer the vessel on a wind and how to mark the trembling of the luff. But all the glamour of that day was gone. It was still bright and sunny, a calm sea and a steady sailing breeze: the fault was in ourselves.

Once she turned to me and said: “Please, Commander Stevenson. Shall I have to go and tell the police about Edna and Billy now?”

I did not answer for a moment, but stood staring at the land down Brixham way, still wreathed about with summer haze. And then I looked at her, and smiled. “I hadn’t thought about it much,” I said. “One thing at a time. In any case, we can’t do anything till we get home. Let’s forget it all till then.”

And I stooped down and got a mackerel line from the locker, and showed her how to reel it out, but she was listless and depressed. We caught a couple close off Berry Head, but she was still distraite; I silenced the flutter of the fish and cursed myself that we had gone ashore at all. Better, I thought, if we had been content to look at Torquay from the sea, and so we rounded Berry Head and bore away for home.

It was seven o’clock by the time we were back at moorings off my yard. We came to them under power; to save time I
had got the main down as we passed the Battery. I made all square and got the dinghy up, and sculled ashore with Mollie to the steps. In silence we drove up together through the town; I sent her up to change when we got in, and went and had a bath myself before we dined.

It was a little difficult at dinner with the servants there. I forget what we talked about; I only remember that Mollie was restless and uncomfortable. I fancy that I must have sat there talking at her easily, a steady, even flow of meaningless conversation about ships and harbours while I thought of other things. I could not make up my mind whether to let Fedden know at once about this new development, as I should have done. I was sick of the police and their ways. Moreover, I had no idea how far her brother might be implicated in this thing. It would certainly be better if he had a talk with Jenkinson before the police got hold of him.

It was a cloudless summer evening. We finished our dessert and went out on to the terrace, looking out over the Range. Rogers brought out our coffee there, and then we were alone, and I could come straight to the point that we wanted to discuss. “This girl Edna,” I remarked, and she looked up quickly at me. “Do you know where she lives? Could you take me to her, for example?”