Cry of a Seagull (11 page)

‘
Oui, mon Generale
,' Mrs Ardis said, ‘when I've had my cup of tea.'

Rose, who had been checking the account books in her mother's absence, knew that they needed to keep the Mumfords' expensive double front room filled, but she didn't do much to please the twins either.

She had been showing off Dougal, the hamster, for the benefit of two animal-loving French nurses, who were staying overnight.

As an alternative to his exercise wheel, she could put him
inside a big clear plastic ball, with air holes, and by running up the sides he could travel all over the floor in the rolling ball.

Shrieks of French laughter from the back lounge as Dougal trundled about. Cries of ‘Oh, look at ‘
eem! Ah, le petit souris – viens ici, Dougalle
!'

The nurses went off for their afternoon sightseeing. Rose was about to pick up the hamster, when the office telephone rang. She went out to answer it, and as she was talking, she heard piercing screams from the hall, where the Mumfords were drinking their after-lunch coffee.

‘Please hold on a moment.'

From the reception desk, Rose saw that Dougal had rolled his way out of the lounge to where the twins were sitting. They were screeching and flapping their arms about, their legs stuck out like dolls and their feet off the floor.

‘Sorry.' Rose rushed out to pick up the hamster before he was deafened, and took him back to the telephone.

‘Sorry will get you nowhere,' Miss Audrey said. ‘Send your father to me. We're leaving next week.'

The General was getting a bit sick of running the hotel. He had started to take half days back at the laboratory, and was spending more time on his own work.

Hilda's spaghetti sauce was famous. It brought in local people who liked Italian food, and Rose put candles in raffia-covered Chianti bottles on the dinner tables.

Wednesday was spaghetti night. The sauce was made, and tasted by everyone who passed through the kitchen. Hilda was about to start boiling her cauldron of spaghetti when Philip announced that this was a perfect time to try out his new gadget, the ‘Pasta Testa'.

Hilda had filled the big pan with water, but Philip said, ‘No, no, no, you must empty it and measure out exactly eight quarts.'

Hilda pretended not to hear. She lit the gas and Philip turned it off.

‘Excuse
me
.' Hilda glared at him with her one good eye through her thick glasses.

‘Measure it out. Exactly two gallons. You'll see. Guaranteed perfect spaghetti.'

‘I've never had any complaints.' Hilda's shoulders went up. She was getting huffy. But he made her measure the water and weigh the spaghetti, and when it was in the boiling water, he hung a plastic strip over the side of the pan, marked like a ruler.

‘When the surface sinks to this level, it means the spaghetti has absorbed the right amount of water. Brilliant, isn't it?'

‘I'd call it something else.' Hilda was getting furious. She rocked from foot to foot, always a bad sign.

‘Come on, let's just try it.' Philip was too enthusiastic to see that Hilda was upset.

‘Can't see a blooming thing.' When she bent to read the marks, her glasses steamed up. She reached for a fork to lift out a piece of spaghetti and taste it, as she always did, but Philip pushed her hand aside excitedly, and as he bent to read the plastic Pasta Testa, it melted in the boiling water and curled up into a spiral.

‘Damn! I thought it would work. Ah well, another great gadget bites the dust.'

‘Let me get at the pan. You'll ruin my spaghetti.' Hilda was wiping her glasses on her apron. She looked close to tears.

‘Don't worry, we'll use the old method from my student days.' He fished out a length of cooked spaghetti and hurled it at the wall. ‘If it sticks, it's done. There you are, Hilda.' He gestured theatrically to the long white worm on the wall. ‘Done to a turn!'

But Hilda had gone to her room.

Philip strained the spaghetti into the sink, scalding his finger, and one of the nurses put a bandage on it. He was pleased with himself, but Rose was on edge, and fretted through the work of serving the spaghetti and salad and the fruit and cheese.

Hilda's upset had triggered off all Rose's doubts and anxieties. At one point she went out to the verandah to cool off, staring across the road and listening to the night-time
sea. She felt very alone. If only Mollie were here! Even though she could never tell her anything about the horse, she needed the comfort of her mother's presence. Things didn't go wrong when Mollie was around, and Rose had more confidence, because her mother believed in her.

Alone on the verandah, with the clatter and voices from the dining-room behind her, Rose found herself indulging in a childish wail. ‘I want my mum!'

The sea sounded louder at night. Somewhere out there … ‘Tell me,' she asked Favour silently. ‘Tell me – when is it all going to happen?' This was one of the worst emotional ordeals she had gone through as a messenger – knowing about disaster in advance, but not knowing how far away it was.

Instead of being in the hotel, she should be out at the marina to see whether the donkey was safe in his field.

She gripped the verandah rail. ‘Show me another vision,' she begged the horse out loud. But Favour did things his own way. He told you what to do. You did not tell him.

Rose and Gloria and Smasher did breakfasts, because Hilda did not come down, and when she did, it was to get on the bus and take a few days off to stay with her sister.

It was oven-cleaning day, so The General asked Jim to come in from the garden to do this dirty job.

Jim, usually so calm and amiable, was already a bit annoyed by Philip's agitated way of constantly interrupting him in the middle of a job and asking him to do something else.

When The General brought him indoors – ‘Just come and give the women a hand, there's a good chap-' Jim said slowly, ‘Well, I don't
mind
,' (he did) ‘but I don't want to get behind on my outside work.'

‘It can wait. There's a crisis here.'

‘So there will be outside if I don't finish mowing that lawn. It looks like a hay field.'

‘Oh well, if that's all, I'll finish it myself. Good chance to try out the new Chopper.'

The Chopper was a lawnmower that had been sent to him for testing. It was like a motorcycle with a covered rotary
blade underneath, and you sat on it and rode about the lawn, collecting cut grass in a catcher box at the back. Philip had tried to get Jim to try it, without success. Jim, who had had a hard life, did not trust anything that claimed to make life easier.

Philip started the motor of the new machine with a deafening roar, and after a while, Rose and Ben went out to watch him careering happily back and forth at the end of the lawn. He let go of one side of the handlebars to wave at them triumphantly, and as he leaned back, his weight and the weight of the grass-catcher tipped up the front of the Chopper and his other hand let go and he was flung on to the grass.

He lay flat on his back without moving. That's it, Rose thought. That's all we need. He's broken his skull, or the mower's cut off his leg. But he was not badly hurt. He was making the most of his accident. As Rose and Ben ran up, he opened his eyes and groaned.

‘Oh, my ankle.'

‘Is it broken?'

‘No, but oh, my ankle.'

‘Try and stand up, Mr Wood.'

Philip groaned dramatically as Ben pulled him upright and helped him to limp back to the hotel.

‘Well, you know what to put in your test report,' Ben told him. “The Chopper does wheelies.'”

But Philip would not be cheered up. He wanted the kind of sympathy that Mollie always gave. Rose was no good at that, so while Ben went out to put away the mower, she found Louise, one of the nurses, who took Philip away, clucking and making soothing sounds.

While her father was upstairs having an iced-water soak and a crepe bandage, Rose was behind the reception desk, sorting letters. Through the open front door, she saw a taxi stop outside the hotel. A man and a woman and a young girl got out. The man paid the taxi, and as it drove off, Rose saw that the three people were Vicky and her parents from the yacht,
Princess Vicky
. They came up the steps to the verandah, turned and stood looking out towards the ocean.

So it was
now
. It had happened. The yacht had broken loose and was out at sea.

Rose went out to them. They were wearing the same clothes in which she had seen them at the marina.

‘Can I help you?'

‘Someone's got to.' Calamity had not softened the father's arrogance. ‘The most stupid thing has happened. We were tied up in the estuary, but my crew didn't moor my boat properly.'

‘Daddy, I
did
!' from Vicky.

‘She slipped her moorings, and the wind and current carried her along the coast. We've been out looking for her since dawn, and thank God she's beached herself on a sandbank at the end of the promontory out there.'

‘Sandy Neck?' Rose asked.

‘If that's what they call it,' he said scornfully.

‘Is the boat all right?'

‘As far as I can see. No thanks to idiots who can't tie a decent knot.'

He glared at Vicky, and his wife said, ‘Jack, stop it. You know the moorings must have been untied by that gang of teenagers who were hanging about at the marina.'

‘Damned insolent, they were.'

‘You were rude first,' Rose heard Vicky mutter under her breath.

‘Ought to be horsewhipped, the lot of 'em. If they're responsible for this, by God, I'll get the courts to lock 'em all up and throw away the key.'

Seeing Vicky's nervous, weary face, Rose wondered what she was thinking about Evil and Lynette and her impulsive fascination with them. It was strange to know so much about someone, when they thought you were a total stranger.

‘Look.' Vicky's mother turned to Rose with a strained smile. ‘We've got to get out to the yacht before the tide comes in and floats her off.'

‘The taxi driver brought us here,' her husband said, ‘but I don't suppose you can get us a boat.' His disparaging gaze took in Rose, the verandah littered with knitting wool and a
half-finished jigsaw and someone's frayed plimsolls, and Mrs Ardis in a smock like a striped marquee, crossing the hall with a plastic rubbish bag and a roll of toilet paper.

‘Of course we can,' Rose told him in what she hoped was a crushing tone.

She called Ben from the garage, and he took them across the dunes to the beach where the dinghy was moored.

As he rowed the family out to his boat, Rose stood on the beach and strained her eyes to see if the donkey was on the deck of the tilting boat, grounded near the shore at the end of Sandy Neck.

She went to Ben's room upstairs in the annexe and found the binoculars, but she still could not see anything on the railed deck. Perhaps he was on the other side where it was tilted higher, leaning against the cabin, terrified, but still safe. Perhaps it wasn't too late.

‘They're lucky,' Ben told Rose when he came back. ‘Not much damage. The rails are smashed at one side, and the deck is a bit scarred up, as if some of the gang might have been on board and stamped about in heavy boots.'

He had carried the yacht's anchor in his boat as far away as the line would reach, so that it could be winched in to pull the Princess Vicky off the sandbank as the tide rose. After taking the boat to Newcome Hollow for repairs to the rail, the family came back to Wood Briar to ask for rooms for the night.

‘They put us up last night in the pub where we had dinner,' the father yawned, ‘but I didn't close an eye. Bed was too short.'

‘We've got an extra long one. I can put you in the annexe,' Rose said efficiently.

‘Do you run this hotel all by yourself?'

Rose blushed. ‘My mother's away at the moment, and my father has sprained his ankle. You can have the front downstairs room and bath, and your daughter can have the single next to it.'

‘Oh – just to have a bath and lie down and sleep!' the mother sighed gratefully. ‘Come on, Vicky.'

‘All right for some people.' Her husband lowered his bushy naval eyebrows, and put his yachting cap on over the eyebrows. ‘I've got to go off to the police.'

He had hired a car in the village, and Rose asked him if he would give her a lift into Newcome. ‘Something I've got to pick up.'

‘Where? I can't be tacking about all over the town while you do your shopping. I've got an appointment with the Chief Superintendent at the police station.'

‘I can walk from there.'

When she got out of the car, he ordered, ‘Be back in half an hour, otherwise I'll drive off without you.'

He would too. He was a hard man. Normally, Rose would be afraid of him, but having experienced what it was like to be his daughter, she knew that his bark, although embarrassing and infuriating, was not dangerous.

Once out of sight, she scurried through the streets and across the bridge to the lane that led to the marina.

The paddock was empty. The gate was open. Nothing in the lean-to shed. The donkey had gone.

The old man came to his door at once when Rose knocked, but the light went out of his eyes when he realized that she had not come with news about his donkey.

‘I'm leaving the gate open,' he told Rose in a voice that was feeble and creaky with unhappiness, ‘in case he wanders back. I don't know how he got out, but he may not be able to find his way home. Getting on in years, my poor Gully is.'

He was so glad to have someone to talk to that he did not ask her how she knew about the donkey. He was very frail and frightened. His hands shook and his eyes looked as if he had been crying, and sometimes as he talked, tears welled up and ran down the deep lines in his weathered face.