The Sinful Stones (21 page)

“What is it?” said their son. “Why do you carry it about with you?”

“Course I don't carry it about with me,” said the old man. “It a'n't that important. Looked it out when I heard you'd come. We've finished with it now, though, hey?”

Pibble had been staring at the paper with the timeless numbness of a gardener leaning on his fork and staring into a bonfire. He moved too late when the old claw let go. He clutched as the scrap swirled forward, past him, dipped at the gunwale, rose again and dipped into the hissing blackness beyond the boat. He flung himself to the side and held the lantern high—there it was, white and square, dipping down the lurch of a wave, so clear a mark that it might have been tossed overboard to measure the speed at which they were sailing, four feet away, a world out of reach. He watched it go, then returned painfully to his place.

“You killed him,” he said.

“Hey?”

“Twice.”

“Poppycock! He'd have gone off to fight whatever I'd said. He was that sort.”

“When he was very ill my mother sent for you. That's when you saw the house and he looked for the bit of ring on your watch-chain. You didn't want to be bothered any more. I don't know what the paper said, I imagine that they both signed an agreement not to molest you any more, and that in return for this you guaranteed to pay my mother a pension after my father was dead, enough to educate me and for us both to live on. But there's no reason for you not to show it to me if you hadn't worded it in such a way that you knew he'd have no interest in living after that. My mother wouldn't have realised. I went into his room to show him some conkers that evening.”

“Most embarrassing thing I can remember in my whole life,” said Sir Francis, “is my dad crying after he'd put one of his damned dogs down. Always did it himself. Wouldn't let the huntsmen do it. Now I've done a lot for you in your life, Pibble, and you're just beginning to see it. I'll do something more, and a damned sight more useful than drivelling on about the past. Put your hand under mine and I'll show you how to get the best out of a boat. That's something worth knowing.”

The mittened hand was cold as stone, but firm and certain. Beneath its guidance Pibble learnt the feel of the sea and the tiny adjustments of the tiller by which it is possible to present the keel to the water so that the element accepts the intruder without irritability. When he got it right he found the relationship curiously exhilarating.

“You'll do,” said the old voice at last. “You'll never be good, but you'll do. Now you can take us back to Oban. I shan't have to tell you twice, shall I, seeing how you treasure up every scrap of nonsense that falls from my lips.”

Dazedly Pibble listened to instructions about lights and islands. They were heading northeast up the Firth of Lorne, and Oban lay near the top on the right-hand side. Only three sets of lights really mattered, and he contrived to fix their names and meanings somehow amid the chaos of his mind.

“Right,” said Sir Francis. “When you see the Lady Rock light distinctly nearer to the light on the left-hand side of the sound of Mull, you can look right and you'll see another light on your right-hand side. You lash the tiller in place and go and fetch Dorrie. She'll show you how to tack to and fro till I'm ready to take you in. Don't try and sail in yourself, or you'll run us onto Kerrera like the fool you are. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, stop sitting there like a drowned hedgehog and go and get Dorrie. She can take me in and wrap me up, and then she'd better get some sleep. I'll need her at Oban.”

“Why did you send for me?”

“To get me and my book off this island before the brown boobies got their claws into it. Wrote forty damned dull letters, all the same, and put yours in with them. Knew they wouldn't open more than two or three.”

“I mean why
me
?”

“Who else was there, you prize oaf? Go and get Dorrie.”

Yes, thought Pibble, groping painfully forward, who else was there? Only one man had ever really loved the old terror, so he had sent for his son. And then betrayed him—as the scorpion in the sick fable betrays the frog that is ferrying it over the river. He
knew
the monks were opening his letters.

Dorothy was sunk in stupor, but Rita lay awake. “I hope you've slept well, countess,” he said.

Patrician disdain flashed from her eye and arched her nostril. He could see that she might well be a connection of the Howards.

“His Majesty has done me the honour of raising me to the rank and dignity of Marchioness,” she said.

“Congratulations.”

“In my own right.”

“That's nice.”

“It distresses me much, sir, to learn that you are not His Majesty's true heir.”

“Oh. Well. Anyway, His Majesty would be grateful if you would help him back to the cabin now.”

“I am his to command.”

She rose from the canvas and sped into the dark, balancing without trouble against the lurch of the boat. Pibble stumbled after her.

“Brought the loony, hey?” shouted Sir Francis. “Where's Dorrie?”

“Miss Machin's asleep. I hear, Sire, that you have raised our passenger to the rank and dignity of Marchioness, in her own right. Also that it is now learnt that I am not Your Majesty's true heir.”

Sir Francis laughed.

“Rum do,” he croaked at last. “If I'd my time over again I'd do a few years' work on second sight. Time somebody sorted it out, hey? You take the tiller, Pibble, and do your damnedest not to drown us. Lend me your arm, m'lady.”

It was a dreary night. Under Pibble's unguided hand the boat became oafish again, but in these smaller waves it mattered less. The dark shore of Mull seemed barely to change its shape, but imperceptibly they worked up the long funnel of water that pierces to the heart of Scotland. The Garvalloch lighthouse neared, its blink flicking below the black curve of the sail. Sir Francis was due out again soon after that, and Pibble dreaded having to face him again. But he didn't come. The Firth narrowed. The waves changed their shape as the tide turned. The night wheeled on. An hour before time he lashed the tiller into place and went to wake Dorothy. Rita was crouched on the floor, asleep, her head in the old man's lap; the crooked hand drifted to and fro through her glossy locks. Dorothy was snoring, but sat up the moment he shook her, glanced at the unlikely lovers, sniffed and followed him out.

“The bottle's in the tin which had the kite in it,” he said.

“Ta.”

“D'you mind if I talk to you?”

“Carry on.”

He told her what he'd told Sir Francis. He was concerned to make it sound as real as possible, because he'd never tell anyone again.

“What did Frank say?” she said when he'd finished.

“Nothing either way.”

“Then you're not far off. If you'd been wrong, he couldn't have borne not to tell you what an idiot you are. Have a drink before I scoff the lot.”

He took a small mouthful from the bottle and handed it back to her. She'd got through the equivalent of about six doubles while he'd been talking.

“What are you going to do?” she said. “Nothing.”

“He's a sod,” she said, “and he will be till he dies. Anything homosexual between him and your father d'you think?”

“No,” said Pibble, unmoved. “Evidently my father adored him, and I think he felt some sort of regard and affection for my father. My father gave him half a gold ring in 1914, and he carried it on his watch-chain for fifty years.”

“So that's what that was,” said Dorothy. “Blast, I've got the hiccups. I tell you what I think—his mother died when he was born, his father was a clod, none of us whores were any more to him than rubber women at night and servant gals by day, but your father was something else, like that bit in
Alice
where she has to get down on the floor to peek along the passage into the garden she can't get into because she's too big. He knew he'd missed something he ought to have had, and he couldn't bear it. And it frightened him, too, I bet, the idea of anyone having a sort of claim on him he couldn't pay off. I know Frank.”

“He bought my father off in the end.”

“Only by the money part of it. Pardon me. The other part of it's been fretting him all his life, like a boil on the back of your neck you can't help fingering.”

“I get the impression,” said Pibble, “that when he first came to Clumsey Island he took the Community's ideas rather more seriously than he does now. He told me he got to know the jargon well at one time.”

“What the hell's that got to do with it?”

“Well, I think his conscious motive for coming was to get away from reporters and to evade taxes, both of which he managed. But here were this lot who in a mad sort of way stood for the same things as my father stood for. He was a bit unworldly, and he was certainly a good man. These people were extremely unworldly, and claimed to be immeasurably virtuous. Possibly the sheer exaggeration of their claims seemed—well, you talked about Alice's door—they may have seemed for a bit to offer a door big enough for someone Sir Francis's size to go through.”

“You just can't tell with the old bastard,” said Dorothy. “But he didn't stay holy long. He knew it was crap, and didn't mind saying so. But when that old Professor wallah sent him the newspaper cutting about you, the boil started to itch again and he couldn't resist picking it. But he was still scared. He
wanted
to feel that he couldn't trust you. He wanted you to be acting from dirty motives, and that would prove, pardon me, that would prove, oh, Christ, where was I?”

“It would prove that the door was never there at all and so he hadn't missed anything.”

Mysteriously Dorothy started to sob in the dark, hiccuping between the sobs. Suddenly she said, “How much further do we have to go up this bloody lake?”

Guiltily Pibble looked about him. Three lights, evenly spaced, shone on the left, and two more close together on the right.

“We're supposed to go to and fro here until he comes out again,” he said. “Unless you feel competent to steer us into Oban Harbour. That's it, over there.”

“Not bloody likely,” she said.

So there was an hour's meaningless work, tracing a half-mile triangle round and round in the Firth. Pibble fetched the gnawed remains of the loaf from the cabin and bit at it dry-mouthed. At last a strange cry, liked the mating call of some goose, rose from the bows. Without a word Dorothy staggered aft, helped the hunched bundle of spiteful genius across the netting, and took her bottle up to the foredeck. Sir Francis looked about him, snorted, took the tiller out of Pibble's hand and steered for the twin lights.

“Going back to catch a few pick-pockets now?” he snarled.

“Yes.”

“Forget the whole thing, hey?”

“If I can.”

“There's some sense, even in a numbskull.”

They didn't exchange another word during the long reach south. Sir Francis snapped out orders for the two tacks that took them into the narrow sound, but Dorothy did the work, singing
Smoke Gets in your Eyes
, hiccupping between lines. She had a rather pleasant tenor.

Lights blazed on the quay, and voices clamoured. Two launches creamed out. A searchlight glared. Pibble could see the ambulance now, and the squad of journalists, and the film cameras, and more lights flicking on as the generators boomed.

“Ahoy!” called a loudspeaker from the larger launch. “Is Sir Francis Francis aboard?”

“Yes,” shouted Pibble.

The other launch raced beyond them and closed in like a coursing greyhound on its hare. A camera crew stood tense on the bucketing prow.

“Get the mainsail down, you buffoon,” called Sir Francis.
Pibble worked the winch and it fell, flapping; he heaved and clawed its nail-tearing hardness into a quiet heap. The boat drifted towards the quay with exquisitely judged slowness. A dozen reporters, notebooks and tape-recorders at the ready, were poised for the jump. Pibble summoned his last gill of authority.

“Keep off, all of you!” he shouted. “We're coming ashore!”

There was a mild thud, which almost tossed Dorothy overboard where she stood swaying in the bows, but she clutched at the forestay, steadied, and with a wild gesture threw a coil of rope into the middle of the mob. It caught a man with a microphone full in the face and became entangled with his wires, but somebody made it fast. Sir Francis shouted and pointed with his stick at another coil in the stern, so Pibble picked that up and threw it on to the quay. It tautened jerkily.

There were four rusted iron rungs to climb up the sea-slimed stone, and Sir Francis took two minutes to manage them, snarling like a hurt bitch at the officious arms that tried to help him. He turned at the top and shouted down.

“You! Pibble! Bring my parcel.”

It lay on the lockers in the cabin. He picked it up and then shook Rita by the shoulder. She woke, sat up and recoiled from his touch all in one movement.

“We've arrived,” he said, wishing that he could have kept the sourness out of his voice.

Head high, without thanks, she stalked across the netting and climbed the ladder. At the top she hesitated, bewildered by the glare of the crowd, long enough for Pibble to hoist himself up beside her; then she swooped across the cobbles to nestle against the old scarecrow. A flurry of flashlights popped, in whose spasmodic glare she looked like a Millais heroine in an electric storm, serene and pale and not long for this world. Sir Francis grabbed her to him, ginning, and with delighted rudeness answered the questions flung at him by the scum of the earth.

Pibble watched the scene from the top of the ladders, turning the parcel over and over in his hands, feeling the flexible weight of that exquisitely penned manuscript under the brown paper. Suppose he were to drop it in the harbour, quietly now while no one was watching him: the salt and oil would soak through to obliterate all that spite and pride, and Sir Francis alone would know that it wasn't an accident, as he, Pibble, alone knew what had happened to Father. That would be a just punishment, surely …