Lonely Road (29 page)

He eyed me narrowly, this little sandy man. “The doctor was telling me she thinks the world and all of you. Don’t think because I’ve come from Liverpool that I’m the one that’s going to get her through the night. It’s you. Now, are you up to it?” He shot the question at me as a challenge, peering at me through his pince-nez.

I met his eyes. “Three nights ago I asked her if she would become my wife,” I said. “I’ll do all I can.”

He turned away. “Weel, ye can’t do more than that.” He turned again. “Just stamina, that’s a’ she wants. Ye can’t build up physique by dancing underground all afternoon and half the night, and lying abed all morn. And ye canna pump it in
with any hypodermic squirt. Good food and exercise, and plenty sleep. That’s all she’s wanting. Ye’d better give it her when this thing’s ower.”

“Just stamina,” he said. “Losh, if you pump that into her I’ll throw me anti-toxins down the sink!” And laughed at his own joke.

I made arrangements on the telephone for a room for him at my house, but it was evident he didn’t contemplate much sleep that night. And then, obediently, I went and had my tea, and at five o’clock I went into her room to battle for her life.

She was awake and smiled to see me come, and I bent down and kissed her on the lips, regardless of the nurse. It seemed to me that she was less restless than she had been before, but every bit as hot; she was noticeably weaker than she had been in the morning. I sat down beside her bed and took her hand in mine, and I began to talk to her about the first things that came into my head.

If I were to try and put down all I said to her that night I should fill many volumes of this ledger, for I talked for hours. She said very little in reply; I sat there stroking her hand and arm, and every now and then she squeezed my hand a little, and smiled up at me. I started off with what we’d do as soon as she was fit to leave the nursing home. I told her that I’d get her moved back into her own room and bathroom in my house as soon as possible, and for that she smiled, and murmured: “I’d love to be there.” And I told her how she could sit out in the sun in the garden all day till her shoulder healed, and read magazines and look out over the flowers at the harbour and the sea. And I told her that I’d get her a kitten to keep her company while I was away at the office in the mornings.

And then, without heeding that the nurse was there, I told her again that I loved her, and she lay there smiling at me with her eyes. I told her that I wanted her to marry me as soon as she felt she could, and if she felt she couldn’t just at first we’d go away together as she wanted, and we’d get married when she liked. I told her that we’d go away and have a real holiday
together, a holiday that would go on for as long as we wanted to. And that would be the first real holiday that I had taken since the war.

I told her that we’d start off at Torquay, and she smiled up at me, and whispered: “Lovely.” I said I’d have the
Runagate
round there, and we’d live in a fine hotel just up above the harbour, in a double room, and we’d spend every day sailing and bathing together, and motoring upon the moors. And she could teach me to dance really properly at night, so that she could dance with me with pleasure all our lives. She said: “You’ll learn ever so quick.”

I told her that we’d stay there for as long as ever she liked, but that once or twice we’d just run up to town to buy her clothes. And I told her that she could have her frocks designed for her, but that I wanted one that would be like the silver and blue one she had worn in the evenings at my house; she must have one like that. And I said that Joan would help her and show her where to buy the things, and where to go for everything she wanted. And then we’d come back to Torquay and she could learn to drive a car, and I’d get her a little light saloon that she could drive herself.

And then I told her, as the autumn came, we’d slip across to the New World. Because once, so many years ago, I met an old merchant skipper—not one of my men—who told me that of all the places that he had seen ail through the world there was one that was so supremely beautiful that it stood out like a mountain over all the lovely sights that he had ever seen. That was the harbour at Halifax in the fall of the year. He pictured it to me as a wide inlet between wooded hills, and full of wooded islands on the water’s face. And all these woods were maple woods, so that in the autumn they turned bright scarlet. With the calm water, the red woods, and the long, cloudless, pale blue autumn days it made a picture that that old man had carried with him all his life; he had longed to return to it again before he died. And it had bitten deep into me, too, so that I told her we would go and see it as the autumn drew on.

And then we’d go on to New York and see that greatest city of the century, so great that the foreigner is faintly home-sick when he leaves. I told her that we’d stay there, possibly, till Christmas-time, learning about America, and seeing how they lived. I told her, if she liked, we’d go across to Hollywood and see how films were made.

And then I told her that we’d come back home and go to Switzerland. Because by that time her arm would be quite strong again and she could learn to ski, and I told her about the snow and ski-ing and the skating, and the sitting in the blazing sun to eat your lunch on the veranda of the hotel above the snow. I told her about the joy of running on good snow in the sunshine, sweeping in stemming christies down the slopes to the inevitable drink of ice-cold milk in the chalet at the bottom. I told her about the hotels and the snow mountains, rose-coloured in the sunset, and I told her about the people that she’d meet, and the dancing in the evenings, where nobody would be so good as her.

They came in then to do something to her, Dixon and McKenzie, and they sent me from the bed. After a quarter of an hour they went away, and I came back to her and took up my tale again where I had left it off. And I told her that in the spring we’d come back home and live at Dartmouth, with the sea and with my ships all summer, because that is home, and one cannot be travelling all the year through. And I told her that I’d teach her how to sail, and that I’d get a little sailing dinghy rigged for her so that she could take her friends out up the river bathing, because it’s warmer up there. And all her friends would come and stay with us from time to time, girls on their one week’s holiday from the grey cities of the north. And she whispered: “I’d have Edna first, if I may.”

And then I told her that we would stay at home for all the summer months, close to the sea, and I would show her the fun of cruising in the English Channel and the West of Ireland. And perhaps, if she wanted to, we’d have one month of that away, and take the car to France, and run down to the south through Chartres and Arles and Avignon, until we reached the
sea, to live the Lido life a little at some bathing-place. And then back home again, to stay a week in Paris at a quiet place I know that overlooks the Bois, and she could get some shopping done. Then we’d go home, and be at home for August when her friends had holidays.

And in September we might go to Scotland for a little shooting, with some friends of mine.

Evening drew on, and she lay smiling at me there, seeming to drift into a doze, and then rousing again to squeeze my hand. McKenzie came in from time to time to see how she was getting on; the temperature showed no sign of going down. “Ye’ll keep her interest,” he ordered once in a soft tone. “Just keep her interest, and give me drugs a chance.…”

I went on talking to her, and I told her that we’d finish up our two-year honeymoon by going round the world. Because I never had seen India, and very little of the East at all, and I was longing to go there with her. I told her that we’d go there with no very settled plan, but that I wanted to
go
up into Kashmir to see a man who was at school with me, and that I wanted to work down into Ceylon to see the pilgrimage to Adams Peak among the flowers. And then, I said, we’d go on over to Malay and on from Singapore to the South Seas. And there we’d charter a schooner to get off the beaten track, and we’d go cruising through the islands towards Honolulu at the end. Then we would cross to San Francisco and up into the Canadian summer in the Rockies, two years hence, and so to Montreal, where I have many friends. And so we’d come back home, after our honeymoon, to settle down to work again, to stay till we were tired and longed to see the world again beyond the sea.

She lay there quiet, in a sort of dream. And about nine o’clock I bent towards her lips, and heard her say: “I wish the others could have seen us, dear, just once. None of them ever had a gentleman friend like I’ve had.”

I sat with her till far into the night. Then they made me come away, and Dixon took me home.

I
DO
not think I need put down the events of the succeeding week in any detail. A reliable account of the two inquests came out in
The Times
, and is available if I should want to look it up—a most improbably contingency. The other newspapers were only fit to burn.

They held the first at Dartmouth upon the two Gordons and the Superintendent. Norman gave evidence in a restricted sort of way. I think that he had had a conversation with the coroner before the case came on, for nothing came out that was of any consequence. They called me next and I swore by Almighty God that the evidence which I should give to that inquest should be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; an oath which I took with every intention of committing perjury. But all the evidence they wanted from me was quite formal; I told them something of Mollie and her brother, and their lives. Only one question I remember clearly, when the coroner said delicately: “Are we to understand that these two were related to you in any way, Commander Stevenson?”

I raised my heavy head. “I had asked Miss Gordon if she would do me the honour to become my wife,” I said. “I don’t know if you call that a relationship or not.”

That passed with a little buzz of interest in the court, and next morning I saw a placard close outside my own lodge gates:

Q-BOAT CAPTAIN’S TRAGIC LOVE FOR MYSTERY DANCING GIRL

Stenning and Joan had wanted to come and stay with me to see it through, but I had told them, brutally perhaps, that
I would rather be alone. And so they stayed down in the town, and I went back to build up my old life, working upon the drawings of the little cruiser I am building now, and working all day in my office at the yard.

The verdict in the first inquest was one of “Wilful murder against some person or persons unknown”. It could not be fixed upon the people drowned in the wreck of the bawley, as neither Stenning nor I, nor anyone, could give more than presumptive evidence that the bawley we had come upon not far from the Eddystone had anything to do with the affair. So the thing rested till the inquest on the bodies from the wreck was held, over at Pentressan, some days afterwards.

And that produced little but identification. Three bodies were washed up within five miles of the coast, and it seems reasonable to suppose that that is all there were. The cause of death in every case was drowning.

The first was a young man called Peter Marston. He was twenty-three years of age, and had left Cambridge about ten months before. His father came down to identify the body, a grey-haired, venerable old man, from Colchester. He was much cut up. They were people of some means, and the boy, since leaving Cambridge, had followed no occupation. He was interested in the fishing industry. The bawley was his property, and he used to cruise in it a great deal, but his father knew little of the companions that he had upon these trips. The father had never before seen any of the other bodies.

The second body was that of a man between thirty-five and forty years of age, dark-haired, wearing a dark suit and boots of continental manufacture. There was no name upon the clothes, but in the pocket there was a love letter from a woman, addressed to Alexander Kurn, Poste Restante, Rotterdam. This letter was in a mixture of Russian and German, and bore no address. That was all, except that a small automatic pistol was found in the hip pocket.

The third was a man of about thirty, pale and thin. This man was known to the police, who identified him as an alien called Aukitch, who had been deported from this country for
a case of robbery with violence. He was believed to be a Russian Jew.

This inquest was quite short, the verdict being “Death from Misadventure,” as I had supposed.

So those inquests passed, a little inconclusively perhaps, but no one had a shadow of a doubt that justice had been done. By that time I had lost interest in a great degree in the inner meaning of the business. I only wanted to be left alone, to get back to my rut and to forget the last six weeks. But I went down one day to the police station when Norman was there, and had a little talk with him about the business.

They had been to Trepwll, and had removed what they had found. They found a barn half full of munitions—thirty-two light machine-guns, a number of cheap automatic pistols, a few bombs, and a great amount of ammunition. And they found a farmer who protested that he knew nothing of the contents of his barn, and they were forced to the conclusion that he spoke the truth. He had leased his barn to a man called Palmer for the warehousing of goods, and he knew nothing of the nature of the goods inside the packing-cases. He knew that some of them were carpet-sweepers, because he had
seen
the labels.

The police had removed what they had found, and had contrived to hide the matter from the Press.

And there the matter, Norman said, must rest till after the election, now only a fortnight off. There was no evidence at all of any destination of the arms; they had been brought to the barn and stored, and no one from the district had been near the place. At the Yard they suspected that the arms had come from Russia, and they were certain that the introducers of the arms were dead, drowned in the bawley. He agreed that there must be some local agent in the Glanferis district who had some knowledge of the business, but so far they had found no trace of him. And, acting on instructions from above, they did not intend to prosecute their search for him just at the moment.