Gold by Gemini (22 page)

It had to be the seal pen.

I rose, creeping out of bed and tiptoeing about.

I
SHOULD HAVE
spotted it earlier.

His hiding-place. had to be near Groundle Glen. Had to. Otherwise, why stay here? His diary said ‘. . . it’s convenient.’ There was only the old railway line and the seal pen. I’d walked the length of the tracks several times and seen nothing. There was one place I’d never inspected close to, though. And that was the seal pen. Courage, Lovejoy.

I was out at first light. No signs of life from Algernon’s bungalow. Janie slept on. I hurried down towards the bridge and climbed up the path to the diminutive railway. There wasn’t another soul awake among the bungalows. I was clear away. I trotted on.

In the dawn light the seal pen scared me more than ever before. The cleft seemed to run a thousand miles down to where the sea struggled over the stone barrier. Most of the palings on the narrow wall had rusted to jagged points with fallen pieces lying obliquely to trail nastily into the sea. I wondered if any seal had ever managed to escape. Surely they must have wanted to. It was like a bad stage set nicked from Wagner’s Teutonic worst.

A concrete platform with a wonky railing was the
only sign of civilization where the railway ended. I was frightened. The ledge was pretty dangerous even on a calm sunny day. What it looked like on a stormy night didn’t bear thinking of. I edged my way cautiously on to the platform feeling like a figurehead on a ship. I’d never seen so much sky around.

The heather and the grass had created a bulge where the tiny rails ended. There were probably buffers under there, overgrown. A circular rim set in the concrete level looked oddly familiar, reminding me: a gun emplacement, probably anti-aircraft. They’d built the platform wider and stuck an ack-ack weapon on top, for the war. Which miserable gunner battery had snapped up this particular posting? Poor sods. They’d have had to struggle back along the railway in the dark even to fill a kettle from the leaky tap at the ruined brick hut. Well, at least they could have used the little train for hauling shells. To me they were heroes as brave as any fighter pilot. I looked down again. The nightmare cleft had deepened a few miles since my previous glance. Did it go up and down with the sea? Was its water connected underneath all that stone and rusted iron? There was a noise behind me. A sheep, rolled its mandible at me over the wire fence.

‘Bloody fool,’ I said. ‘Go away. I’m scared enough as it is.’

It didn’t shift. I’ve never been able to tell people off.

The cage on the other side of the inlet was set on a lower level than the platform where I stood. A dice-tumbler, I suddenly realized. That’s what it reminded me of. Another Bexon joke? It had been constructed on a slight prominence, giving it for all the world the appearance of an iron pulpit projecting out over the seal pen. There was no way in except through the
top, where the metal staves were curved towards their common centre. You could get in but you’d have a terrible time getting out.

I could see across into it. Some rubble. Double iron doors in the cage, one shut with a grille at eye level, the other ajar. Maybe it was a further wartime addition, which suggested there was another way in from the landward side, probably with steps cut down into a tunnel. That’s how they made entrances to dugouts in the trenches. Soldiers don’t change much.

At one time there had been a catwalk across. I could hardly bear to look. Not that I’m scared of heights, but there’s a limit. It had deteriorated over the years to a crumbling bar of weathered concrete, spanning the sixty or so feet across the gorge. Most of the iron struts and handrail were gone. The entire thing was rust-stained, giving it a horrid toothiness I found distinctly unnerving. The inlet must be like one great mouth if you looked from the sea.

The noise again behind me. The sheep hadn’t gone.

‘Can you see anywhere else it could be?’ I asked. It said nothing. You get no help.

Getting round to the other side would be bad enough, let alone climbing down to the iron pulpit.

‘Shift,’ I said. The sheep stepped away from the fence.

Intrepid ramblers obviously came along this way, along – the overgrown railway track. It was only about as wide as a small path anyway. The only safe way round the inlet was to climb up the steep hillside into the sheepfold, walk over and descend from the hillside on to the cliff-top again. I did it, clinging to the barbed wire for all I was worth and not looking down.

I was quite calm and pleased until I glanced back
at the old gun platform. Had I just stood on that? And looked
down
?

The platform was as thin as a match, a little white scar marking a rising mass of jagged rocks. Below, sea waves, pretty docile until they swept casually round the headland, rose into white claws and scrabbled viciously at the volcanic rock. It made my feet tingle. And Bexon’s gang had somehow built a seal pen in this savage place. More annoying still, he’d come back to see it years later.

I found the entrance to the tunnel cut through to the pulpit, and the steps I predicted. The hillside had slid gently into it, simply folding the passageway in the rock. There was no way through. Worse, clearing it would take a million years. Two million, on my own.

My rope had some iron things on that the man in the ship chandler’s yesterday had said would hold on to anything. A likely tale. I latched them mistrustfully to the tunnel upright, a beautiful thick post reinforced with a metal bar for a hinge. It was set solidly into concrete top and bottom, a lovely great piece. ‘Stay there,’ I told it, ‘and don’t budge. Please.’ For extras I made a couple of knots (well, eight, actually) around the opposite post in case. I’d previously examined every inch of rope a few hundred times, peering for flaws and hidden gaps. Now I did it again, rubbing it through my hands and feeling for any old razor blades or chewing insects I’d overlooked. It seemed all right but suddenly very thin. Had I put on weight? Thoughtlessly, I’d had a glass of milk, which now made me mad. I’d have been just as strong without, at least for a few hours, and I was bound to be heavier. How stupid to eat like a horse. My school science came rushing frantically to my aid. A pint of water weighs a pound and a quarter. But it had only taken one bloody lightweight straw to break that
biblical camel clean in two, and everybody knows how tough camels are. I tried spitting out to make myself lighter but my mouth was dry. I drew deep breaths to get rid of some water vapour from my soggy fluid-crammed lungs but only made myself so giddy I had to stop. I tried peeing, politely turning towards the vacant sea away from the sheep, but couldn’t wring out a drop. I’d dried up. Maybe I was so dehydrated with fright I’d faint and fall, turning over and over, towards the . . .

‘Now, Lovejoy,’ I said. ‘Be reasonable.’

How reasonable is it, I heard myself begin to answer back sharply, to dangle . . .? I moved quickly to the edge and found the double bush of heather I’d picked out as a marker. With luck I’d be directly over the iron pulpit. I slithered untidily down, clinging to the rope and babbling incoherently with fear. Not that I was really frightened, not too much. It’s daft to let yourself get too scared. I shrieked with terror when the rock surface momentarily vanished underneath me. I hung in space staring upwards. The crest was only a few feet away. I seemed to have been going down for hours.

You mustn’t look down. That’s what they say. Then how the hell can you see where you’re going? I had to. I forced my gaze along to my elbow, then made it leap the gap to the wall of rock. It travelled down on its own from there. Down. Down. My belly seemed to leave me and vanish, falling. My legs prickled. The sea was green, so deep and green. Mad white rims poked and swirled. The concrete gums and iron teeth seemed actually to be moving, gnawing erratically at the sea’s body and running white blood back into the ocean. But the most fearsome thing of all was the iron pulpit. It was only twenty or so feet from where I swung but its very oddness and its nearness set me moaning. The
hole at the top was smaller than I’d imagined. The rest of the cage was disproportionately larger. Funny, that.

A lunatic wind whistled round the rocks from seaward, making me dangle a few degrees from the vertical. I should have looked to see how much rope I’d got. I tried to but couldn’t. How long I hung there I don’t know. What finally started me moving down again was a sudden spasm of fear. My hands were sweating. They might slip and set me falling, turning over and over, towards the . . . I edged down under my own weight inch by inch, thinking suddenly, Dear God, does sweat dissolve nylon? I might land down there in the iron pulpit, find the stuff and finish up trapped with half a ton of melted rope.

My moaning was interrupted by a scream. It was me. I looked down. The top curled iron staves of the cage had touched my foot. I found I’d curled up on the rope, my body balled as tight as possible in a spasm of reflex clutching. Stupid sod. I forced my reluctant leg out and crooked my foot around one bar. It seemed staunch enough. I pulled myself nearer. There was enough rope to reach. I could trail the end into the cage with me. Even if it came undone from inside the cage sooner or later it would flail within reach under this huthery wind. Hanging for dear life on to the line with my left hand, I grabbed at the pulpit with my right hand and held on to the lovely strong iron. It’s extraordinary how you want to keep curling up. I tried to bring the rope and my left hand nearer but only succeeded in clinging like a sloth to the cage’s ironwork. Sweat poured down my face yet I was grinning with delight at all this success. Even the rope was miraculously behaving, having somehow looped itself over my shoulder. I needn’t look any more. The worst part was
straightening both legs and dropping into the cage. I found I’d kept hold of the line, probably not trusting the concrete floor of the cage. It may sound daft but at least it’s careful.

I examined the interior, avoiding the ghastly spectacle of the seal pen barriers directly below and trying not to hear the sea sounds sucking and gasping. Everything looked fairly solid. The metal was rusted but mostly intact and hard. I couldn’t bend it or shift any of the palings. Cast iron, the old Bessemer process. The concrete only reinforced living rock, I saw, so the chances of the base giving way under my weight were virtually nil. It was exactly five feet wide. That was where my luck ended. The stone, concrete and ironware hadn’t been displaced or touched since the whole thing was first made. Bad news, Lovejoy.

Which left the recess. Presumably the tunnel ran to emerge somewhere back there. I examined the iron wartime doors first. Both were rusted in place. That’s modern metal for you. Rubble had fallen from the walls and made it difficult for me to squeeze in. I could hear water trickling and dripping in the dank blackness. Would there be bats? Peat. It stank of peat. Did peat give off fumes like those that gassed you in coal mines? I had a pencil torch. But, I worried, are those little bulbs electrically insulated so they can’t touch off an itchy explosive gas? Why the hell is all this never written on the bloody things? They always miss essential instructions off everything you buy nowadays. I was so angry I took the risk, cursing and swearing at manufacturers. No bang. The light showed me a brick-lined space about four feet wide. The start of the tunnel. The sea down below gave a louder shuffle, which made my heart lurch. A few soldierly graffiti indicated the last
time anyone had stood there. Dust covered the floor. The tunnel’s infall began a couple of paces from the iron doors.

It had probably been deserted after the war. Weather, perhaps mostly rain and seeping water, had weakened the tunnel walls. Bexon could never have been here. I edged back into the daylight, still pressing the surface with my foot as I went. No sun seemed to strike into the sea-washed cleft. You’d think they would have built the seal pen to catch a lot of sun, if only for yesteryear’s holidaying spectators. Lord, what a day out it must have been. I’d have paid not to come. I wasn’t unduly perturbed when I didn’t see the rope exactly where I’d left it. Ropes hanging free swing about, especially in winds. Actually I couldn’t remember knotting it carefully on an iron upright but I’d worked it out. I’d soon catch it as it flicked, past.

I looked about from the cage. The sea had risen somewhat but could never reach the pulpit. There was no sign of a tidal mark this high. Safe as houses. The trouble was I couldn’t see the rope at all, flicking about or otherwise.

Oddly it didn’t concern me much at first. It was probably caught up somewhere, maybe on a clump of heather or on a small scag of rock face. It had to get blown free sooner or later, hadn’t it? Hadn’t it?

‘Lovejoy.’ Rink was waving from across the crevasse.

I didn’t answer immediately. All I could think of was rope.

‘Yoo-hoo,’ he called. Not a smile. That’s the sort of character you get in antiques nowadays. No soul. He’d won hands down and not even the glimmer of a grin. He was alone.

‘What?’ It took me two goes to croak it out. It
suddenly seemed a long way over there. And back up the cliff. And down. It was a hell of a long way to everywhere. Bleeding hell.

‘Find it?’

‘No.’

‘Then good luck, Lovejoy. That’s all I can say. Good luck.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’ll need it.’

He sat on the platform. The swine had a hamper. He took out some sandwiches and a flask. He seemed prepared for a long siege. It all seemed so exasperatingly strange at that moment. There was Rink, in his smart suit, noshing an elegant picnic breakfast. And there was me, stuck in an iron pulpit like a caged fly in a gruesome grotto. His very appearance of normality was grotesque.

‘I can climb out, Rink,’ I managed to squeak after swallowing a few times.

‘No, Lovejoy.’ He was maddeningly calm. ‘No. Look at the cliff.’

I’d already done that. I didn’t need to do it again.

‘Where’s the rope?’ I called lamely.

‘Quite safe.’ He poured a hot drink for himself. ‘Don’t try.’

In a panic I jumped and caught on the incomplete roof of the pulpit. Better to try climbing out now while I was fresh than after being trapped a whole day – week? Something cracked sharply. The rocks nearby my left side spattered with ugly suddenness. My cheek ran warm. I dropped back. Rink was smiling now. He had a double-barrelled shotgun.