Midnight Dolphin (18 page)

The man with
the book hidden in his jacket made his way towards the
door.

‘
Oh Mr
Edwards!’ called Rachel’s mum with friendly familiarity. He turned
guiltily towards her. ‘Two pounds please.’ The man
frowned.

‘
I….’ began
the man hesitantly.

‘
I think
you’ll find that the book you picked up is marked two pounds.’
Rachel’s mother smiled in a brisk manner and tapped impatiently on
the counter with her pencil. She nodded in the direction of the
man’s jacket where the bulge of the book was now distinctly
visible.

With great
reluctance the man eventually opened up his wallet and extracted
two one pound notes.

‘
See you soon
Mr Edwards!’ called Rachel’s mum brightly as the shop door-bell
clanged shut behind him.

‘
Mum that book
would have only been marked at seventy five pence’ admonished
Rachel with a smile. Her mother grinned.

‘
Serves him
right for trying it on with us.’ She looked up at Megan who was
still on the ladder. ‘Well done you!’

Once Rachel’s
mother locked the shop door and turned the sign to ‘closed’, they
went upstairs. Bilbo Baggins got up languidly from his sun-spot in
the window, stretched and then followed them up the narrow stairs
in the hope of getting fed titbits.

Rachel’s Mum
made cheese sandwiches from crusty, home-made bread which she
proudly announced she’d made that morning. Megan, who preferred
ready-sliced white bread found them almost indigestible but bit
through the rock-hard crusts, too polite to say what she really
thought of them.

‘
Right’ said
Rachel’s mum eventually. ‘Rachel you go and get the Reverend
Smith’s journal out of the locked case and we can all go off to see
Toby Smith.

‘
I must say
I’m quite intrigued to see his house’ she went on. ‘Of course he
comes in to the shop occasionally and we do chat sometimes. He’s
got quite a reputation and it’ll be good to get a better look at
him in his own habitat, so to speak. I’d been biding my time before
approaching him about the journal, but this is as good a time as
any’ she went on, almost thinking out loud. So if he wants to buy
the Reverend Smith’s journal back, then so much the better!’ she
added brightly.

The three of
them clambered back into the old Citroen. Megan wondered if Bilbo
Baggins might join them, but he strolled on over to the Owl Pub
instead.

‘
He’s quite
partial to the occasional pork scratching’ said Rachel as they saw
him go. ‘There’s always some afternoon drinker or other willing to
indulge him.’ Megan felt a mixture of anticipation and nerves as
they drove the short distance up the hill to Toby Smith’s house.
What would they find there in his loft?

‘
My dear Mrs
Greenwood’ exclaimed Toby Smith as he opened the door. ‘How lovely
to welcome you into my home! Do come in, do come in all of you.’ He
gestured to usher them into the hall. He and Rachel’s Mum
immediately started chatting. Before long the two adults were on
first name terms and Rachel and Megan felt almost forgotten. They
all went through to the large sitting room with its grand piano,
stereo and piles of jazz records.

‘
What a
beautiful room Toby’ exclaimed Rachel’s Mum, looking through the
expanse of window into the walled garden beyond.

‘
Why thank you
Sophie’, Toby Smith beamed in reply. ‘The house has been in the
family for at least three generations, but I’ve tried to give the
old place a lighter and more airy feel since I inherited it. Of
course I live most of the year in London but I normally spend a few
months down here, especially over the summer.’ Rachel’s Mum laughed
in appreciation.

To Megan,
perched on a small formal-looking sofa next to Rachel, Toby Smith
seemed to inhabit a completely different world of comfort and
leisure. It was difficult enough for her parents to scrape enough
money together to rent a cottage for a fortnight and to own not one
but two homes would be impossible for them.

Megan felt
rather gauche and ill at ease sitting there on the sofa, watching
the adults talk. Fortunately she wasn’t required to say very much
at all. It seemed as though Toby Smith and Rachel’s mum were very
keen to laugh at whatever the other said, and she couldn’t help
noticing that Rachel’s Mum was wearing more make-up than she’d seen
her wear before.

‘
Why don’t you
two keep chatting over tea whilst Megan and I go and take a look in
the loft?’ Rachel broke in on the adult’s cosy
tete-a-tete.

‘
Excellent
idea’ replied Toby Smith, who seemed only too pleased to have
Rachel’s mum’s undivided attention. ‘Once you’ve finished you can
come back down and join us for tea’ he went on. He stood up and
Megan noticed that he appeared to be holding in his rather ample
stomach. ‘Let me show you two up.’

He led them
out of the sitting room back into the hall where the wide, elegant
staircase swept upwards. Megan could see from the wood that it must
be as old as the house, and it creaked slightly as they proceeded
upwards.

‘
I haven’t
really had a good look around the loft for years’ he said as they
walked upstairs. I occasionally push the odd cardboard box in there
but really it could do with a proper sort-through. There must be a
hundred years of junk stuffed up there.’

At home her
parents loft was accessible only through a small hatch in the
ceiling at the top of the stairs which her dad used a ladder to
reach. She liked to go up there with him when she could, but there
were no floor-boards and she had to be careful to step from joist
to joist, otherwise she might put a foot through the plaster
ceiling into the room below. Toby Smith’s loft, she was certain,
would be a rather grander affair.

At the top of
the stairs there was a big picture window looking down on the
walled-garden below. The walls were wood-panelled up here and Megan
half expected to see a suit of armour standing to attention in the
corner. An old and worn carpet ran up the passage leading from the
stairs and Megan thought that Toby Smith’s redecoration had not
reached this far. He led them down the passage, talking loudly as
they went.

‘
The servants
would have lived up here once upon a time’ he said, smiling back at
them, ‘but of course I don’t have servants now. Just a lady with a
vacuum cleaner who comes in once a week to do battle with the
dust.’

At the end of
the corridor there was another window, and then a small, cramped
door to the left. Toby Smith produced a big old key from his pocket
and opened the door. It creaked eerily as he pushed it
open.

‘
Well it’s all
yours you two’ he said, flicking on an ancient looking electric
switch. Behind the door Megan could see a tight little staircase
that twisted round up out of sight. ‘Last time I looked there were
some chests where you might find the Rev’s journals, but to be
honest I can’t exactly say where they are. You’ll just have to
rummage around and see what you come up with. Mind your heads
now!’

Rachel went
first and Megan followed, feeling a surge of excitement as they did
so. They could hear Toby Smith padding back down the corridor in
his suede shoes.

At the top of
the stairs, they found themselves in a cavernous room under the
eaves of the roof that seemed to extend all the way across the
house. There was one bare light bulb but fortunately there were two
small windows set into the roof which let the afternoon sun stream
in. Megan could see motes of dust floating in the air and promptly
sneezed.

‘
Wow, what a
lot of stuff!’ exclaimed Rachel as they both looked around. They
were practically cut off by a wall of tea-chests stacked three-high
in front of them. To their right there was an old television and a
record player a bit like the one that Megan’s parents had at home.
A pile of magazines were propped up untidily to their left, in
imminent danger of sliding over on top of them.

‘
This stuff
doesn’t seem so old’ said Megan, looking around her.

‘
My guess is
that the further we go that way’ Rachel said pointing in towards
the depths of the loft, ‘the further back in time we
go.’

‘
We could be
up here for ages’ whispered Megan. Rachel giggled.

‘
I don’t think
that old Toby is going to mind. He’s taken a bit of a shine to my
Mum.’ Megan was appalled. She didn’t think grown-ups that age
should get up to that kind of thing.

‘
But he’s so
old!’ she exclaimed, aghast.

‘
Oh he’s only
about fifty’ Rachel replied, and my mum’s forty-five, so they’re
not so badly suited age-wise.’ Rachel smirked again. ‘You know
what, I think Mum quite likes him too. She and Dad divorced about
three years ago and it would be good for her if she met someone
nice.’ Megan pulled a face and gave a convulsive shiver, as though
she were shaking off a particularly off-putting thought.

‘
I know, I
know’ replied Rachel, ‘Best not to think about it. Now, let’s see
if we can find the Reverend Jeremiah Smith’s journals.’

To make up for
being left alone, Mum and Dad promised to take Bethany
rock-pooling. She loved to peer into the limpid clear pools left by
the receding tide and search for any stray fish or crabs that might
be caught there. Because their cottage was next to a wide sandy
beach, there hadn’t been much opportunity to look at rock pools so
far. Dad grumbled a bit but Mum was keen to go to a cove that she’d
read about in her guide book. Armed with her wire-hooped net on a
bamboo pole and a sandcastle bucket to keep anything Bethany
caught, they set off.

Mum had some
difficulty finding the public footpath that led to the cliff edge,
but eventually she spotted the right one. Dad parked the car off
the road by the stile next to the field gate and they started out
on foot. They’d made a picnic and although Bethany wasn’t very keen
on egg and cress sandwiches, she was looking forward to the cheese
and onion crisps and little cocktail sausages skewered together
with pineapple on little toothpicks that Mum thought would be a
nice idea.

The path cut
across a small field occupied by a few scattered sheep that eyed
the three of them indignantly. Bethany ran on ahead. There it was;
Old Man’s Cove, with a small crescent of pebbly beach with rocks
and pools exposed on each side with the low tide. It looked an
awfully long way down the steep path and they gingerly picked their
way down it, clinging on to clumps of grass occasionally for fear
of sliding down. Eventually they got to the bottom. Dad wasn’t very
keen on sunbathing on a pebble beach and sat on a boulder in his
shorts and check-shirt under a panama hat, reading a paperback. Mum
pottered around with Bethany for a while, peering into rock-pools,
before she too retreated up the beach to flop down on one of the
large towels she’d spread out over the pebbles. Presently Mum
called to Bethany to come and share the picnic with them. Bethany
tried to eat as few egg and watercress sandwiches as she could,
whilst stuffing herself with as many crisps and cocktail sausages
as she could get away with. She drank orange squash from a bottle
whilst Mum and Dad drank coffee from the plastic, screw-on cups
that came with their large tartan-checked thermos flask. Dad said
the coffee always tasted strange from the thermos, but he drank it
anyway.

After the
picnic Bethany was keen to get back to her rock-pooling, whilst Dad
said that he and Mum were going to lie down and have a snooze. He
made Bethany promise not to get too close to the water’s edge, but
then left her to her own devices. Soon she could hear Dad’s light
sonorous snore above the gentle waves breaking on the
rocks.

Bethany
crouched down and stared intently into the clear waters of the rock
pool. There were a few strands of seaweed, and in amongst them she
occasionally glimpsed a handful of tiny fish that darted this way
and that when her shadow fell across them. She’d managed to catch
one fish with her net, which now hung gloomily in her plastic
bucket full of sea water, but she wanted to snare a second one to
keep it company. Every time she swished her net through the water
though, the fish darted away to the safety of the little crevices
that pitted the rock pool and all Bethany seemed to catch was sand.
She’d had more luck with the tiny hermit crabs that inhabited
discarded winkle shells and which lumbered laboriously around with
their house on their backs. She’d caught two of those but decided
to release them back into the rock pool to continue their journey.
They’d hide, rock-still in their adopted homes for a minute or two
before tentatively putting out their legs and continuing their slow
journey.

Bethany had
hoped to find a seahorse, but Dad said he didn’t think you could
find them on the Cornish coastline. She’d bought a dried-out
seahorse with her pocket money from a souvenir shop by the harbour
in Merwater, but Dad said they were probably imported from abroad.
There were plenty of limpets stuck to the rocks there, although
they weren’t very exciting to look at, and she’d spotted spiny sea
urchin which she knew would be painful if she stood on
it.

Bethany was so
absorbed in the perfect miniature world of the rock pool at her
feet that at first she didn’t notice the movement in the sea a few
meters away from her. Suddenly though she heard a clicking noise
and glanced up. There in front of her, a short distance from the
rocky outcrop where she was sitting, was a smiling dolphin,
regarding her with friendly eyes.