Palmer-Jones 05 - Sea Fever (2 page)

He spoke as if this were some unaccountable weakness.

Molly watched him curiously.

“What is your business?” she asked, and realised at once that it had been the right question. He spoke to her directly for the first time.

“Franks’ Meat Products,” the man said with pride. “We make sausage skins. They’re famous in the trade. I’ve been offered a very good price.”

“Who advised you to contact us?” George asked. Before his retirement he had worked as a civil servant with the Home Office. More recently he and his wife had started an enquiry agency. They were based in Surrey, and though they received referrals occasionally from solicitors in other parts of the country, it was unusual to be contacted by an unknown member of the public. They never advertised their services.

“No one advised me,” Franks said. He seemed surprised. “ I heard about you from Gregory, of course, when he was still at home. You’re a birdwatcher, aren’t you? You must have heard of our Gregory. I understand that he’s something of a celebrity in his own field.”

“Of course,” George said. “Greg Franks. Yes, of course.”

And he was taken back immediately to the hide in Northumberland, and the memory of the incident with the Baillon’s crake returned to him with astonishing clarity.

He was still absorbed in the daydream when Muriel Franks came in carrying a tray. She was small, nervous, sharp-featured, quite determined, it seemed, that she would get her own way.

“You will help us find Gregory, won’t you Mr. Palmer-Jones?” she said.

“I don’t think there’ll be any trouble at all,” he said. He wanted to reassure her. She seemed so tense that he was afraid she might make a scene. “You see,” he continued, speaking gently, hoping to calm her, “any of the younger birdwatchers will have his phone number. I’m sure I can put you in touch with someone who will know where he is. If I’d realised when you telephoned who your son is, I would have been able to help you then. You don’t need us to do it.”

He was wondering how much he could charge Franks for his wasted day.

“Oh, no,” Muriel said so violently that he realised the obsession with her son was a desperation. She did not really want to consult Greg about the family business. She was not even concerned for his safety. She just wanted him home with her. “ That won’t do at all. You must see Gregory. Personally.” And then, as if reading George’s mind, she added, “We don’t care what it costs. Do we, Dennis?” There were already tears in her eyes.

Her husband shrugged uneasily. Molly was surprised that he said so little. Perhaps he was fond of her and did not like to see her unhappy. Perhaps this independence was such a surprise to him that he did not know how to handle it.

“You must persuade Gregory to come home,” Mrs. Franks continued. She spoke very quickly. “Then we can discuss the sale of the business properly. We couldn’t do that over the phone. He wouldn’t take us seriously. He never does.”

She looked at her husband for support, but he turned away, as if embarrassed that she made her wishes so obvious. There was an awkward silence.

“Have you any other children?” Molly asked.

Muriel Franks shook her head violently.

“No,” she said. “Only Gregory.” She hesitated, and George was afraid she would cry again. “ We were lucky to keep him,” she said at last. “He was a sickly baby. He spent most of his first year in Frenchay Hospital. Perhaps that’s why he’s always been so special.”

Molly spoke gently. “ If Gregory hasn’t come home of his own accord,” she said, “ I don’t think anything we say could persuade him. You’d been wasting your money.”

“You don’t understand,” Muriel Franks interrupted eagerly. “That’s why we asked you to come here. Mr. Palmer-Jones has been a hero of Gregory’s since he was a little boy. I remember him saying, when he was still at home, ‘George Palmer-Jones is the only member of the British Birds Rarity Committee you can really trust. He knows more about bird identification than any man in Europe.’” She turned to her husband, her eyes bright, her voice brittle with hope. “ He used to say that, didn’t he, Dennis? All the time?”

The father nodded in sad agreement. Outside, the traffic rumbled past, and Molly thought that Muriel could not have been an easy woman to live with. Perhaps her husband’s cold autocracy was his only means of survival.

Muriel Franks turned back to George. “If you were to go and see Greg and ask him, he’d come back. I’m sure he would.”

George looked helplessly at Molly. Mrs. Franks’ determination to keep her son at home was unnatural, he thought. Greg was in his early twenties, no longer a child. She was balanced precariously between elation and depression. He was frightened of saying something which would tip her into some kind of breakdown. Throughout the exchange Dennis Franks looked on anxiously. Occasionally he reached out towards his wife, as if he was going to pat her hand to calm her, but he seemed almost frightened of touching her. He stared at George without giving any indication of what he wanted the man to say.

“I don’t know that I could be so persuasive,” George said at last.

“You could!” Muriel cried. “Tell him that if we decide to sell the business, a share of the profit would be his. Of course all our money will go to him in the end, but we could make something available to him now. But we need him here to discuss it.”

Molly thought that the purchase of her son’s affection was a strategy she must have tried before. Molly and George looked at one another, each hoping the other would have the courage to disappoint the woman. There was a strained silence, which Muriel Franks took suddenly and irrationally as consent to her plans. She leapt to her feet, her face flushed with triumph.

“I knew I could make you understand if you came here and met us,” she said. “You don’t know what this means to me. I don’t think I could carry on without the hope that I might see Greg again soon.”

Then George knew that the decision had been made for him, and that he would find it impossible to refuse the work. Dennis Franks looked on with silent bewilderment and pain.

Muriel remained standing, as if she expected them to leave at once to find her son. She had expected immediate and dramatic action. Molly looked at her with concern.

“We’ll need to know a little more about Gregory,” she said. “When did he first leave home?”

Perhaps they could help, she thought, just by allowing the woman to talk about her son. Perhaps that was more important than persuading Greg that he should show her a little consideration by visiting her occasionally and letting her know where he was staying.

Muriel returned reluctantly to her seat. “ I don’t know,” she said. “Not exactly. About twelve months ago. He’s phoned since then, but he’s not been back to stay.”

Dennis came to her rescue. “ He was always hard to keep at home,” he said. “ Even as a lad.”

“Has he ever been in trouble with the police?” Molly asked.

“He was charged once,” Franks said. “It was soon after he’d left school. We didn’t find out until later. We thought he’d disappeared on one of his birdwatching trips. He was in a bail hostel in the city. But he was found not guilty in the Crown Court. He hasn’t got a criminal record.”

“What was he charged with?”

“Burglary,” Franks said. “He was supposed to have broken into a house.”

“It was all lies,” Muriel Franks interrupted. “The case was thrown out. He should have come to us and told us all about it. We would have understood. We always did. We only found out he’d been in court because there was a fire in the hostel, and Greg’s picture was in the paper. He was a hero. He saved someone.”

She seemed about to launch into the details of Greg’s heroism, but, with one of her sudden swings of mood, changed her mind.

“All this isn’t important!” she said impatiently. “I can tell you exactly where Greg will be this weekend. You should be getting ready to meet him, not talking about the past.” She sprang once again to her feet. “A letter came here a while ago by mistake,” she said. “ It wasn’t personal—I wouldn’t ever open his personal mail—but I thought it might give me some idea where he was. I knew it would be useful. I’ll get it for you!” She hurried from the room.

Dennis Franks moved uneasily in his chair. On the road outside there was the squeal of brakes and the sound of a horn.

“I don’t know what to do for the best,” he said. “She’s set her heart on seeing him. I know he’ll not stay, but when he comes, he always puts on a big show—brings her flowers and that—so he makes her happy for a while. I’m afraid she’s made herself ill. She’s always been wrapped up in him. Perhaps when I retire, I’ll be able to help her more.… It’s a difficult age for a woman.…”

He coughed a small, embarrassed cough, and they waited for Muriel Franks to return.

She rushed back into the room, breathless and eager, waving a folded piece of white paper. In the other hand was a brown envelope. She handed the paper to George, who read it carefully. The letter was a receipt and confirmation of booking. It was from a travel agency which specialised in natural history and birdwatching, based in Bristol. It said that a place had been reserved for Gregory Franks on the pelagic trip which would leave Heanor on August 27th. Accommodation had been booked at Myrtle Cottage at Porthkennan for the remainder of the week. It was signed by Rob Earl, the agency’s resident ornithologist.

“I didn’t understand it,” Muriel Franks said. “What is a pelagic trip anyway?”

“
Pelagic
is an American expression,” George said, “ It’s a boat trip especially organised to allow birdwatchers the best possible views of rare seabirds.”

But as he spoke, he was staring at the letter like a boy at a forbidden box of matches. It was a temptation. Of all birds he loved seabirds best. To George, a child brought up in the Midlands, they had represented the freedom of seaside holidays. Now he was drawn by the mystery of their life at sea. There was a challenge to find out more about them.

“Will you go?” Muriel Franks demanded. “ We’ll pay all your expenses. Will you go to Cornwall to talk to Gregory?”

In the stifling room, surrounded by traffic noise, in the company of these unhappy people, Cornwall was suddenly irresistible. George knew he should wait, discuss the thing with Molly, that to go would only encourage a neurotic woman in her fantasies, but he could not help himself.

“Yes,” he said, trying to sound as if the decision had been a difficult one to make. “ Yes, we’ll go.”

Rob Earl was fast asleep, dreaming of teeming Wilson’s petrels and shearwaters as big as vultures which flew so close to him that he could reach out his hand and feel the rush of wind as they passed. He was in his office, leaning back in his chair with his feet on his desk. He had come to work with a hangover. The night before, he and his boss had become stupendously drunk. When his boss had offered to take him out for a drink, he had been afraid that it was to give him the sack. It seemed a luxury for a provincial chain of travel agents, even one specially involved with birdwatchers, to employ a resident ornithologist. In fact, it was to tell Rob that the agency was being bought out by a Bristol businessman. “ We need fresh capital,” he had said in an attempt to persuade himself and Rob that the move was a positive one. “He’s promised me there’ll be no major changes. We’ll be able to expand. That must compensate for any loss of independence.”

Yet despite his words he drank with a depressed and determined ferocity, and Rob felt obliged to keep up with him. He had no idea what the change of organisation would mean to him, but his boss wanted to buy him drinks, and he was prepared to drink them. They ended up in a scruffy old pub at the top of Cromwell Road, and Rob could not remember walking home.

As he spent the morning answering the phone and checking airline timetables, he supposed he was getting too old for such excess. At lunchtime he shut his office door, took his phone off the hook, and went to sleep.

He woke to the sound of his secretary next door, banging inexpertly at a typewriter. Laura was employed under the youth training scheme. Rob frowned. It was not only that the noise irritated his hangover. He cared about his work. It offended him to send letters thick with Liquid Paper to his customers. He needed a break, he thought. He had spent too long in the office. He looked forward to a week in Cornwall. He began to drowse again, when he heard Laura talking. There were other voices which he recognised, and he wondered for an instant if he was dreaming again.

“George!” he shouted through the closed door. “What are you doing here? Where are you going? Have those bloody Cornish birders been suppressing again? Why are you the only foreigner they’re prepared to talk to?”

The door opened, and George and Molly walked into the office. George looked at the recumbent figure behind the desk. Permanent employment had failed to give Rob Earl an air of respectability. He was unshaven, hollow-eyed. Molly had always liked him but thought he was reckless and a little dangerous.

“You’re getting paranoid. It’s nothing to do with the birds.” George spoke sternly, perhaps because he needed to convince himself that he was there strictly on business. By his side Molly stood quietly, discreetly disapproving. She thought there were other ways of helping Muriel Franks than to drive to Porthkennan. In the car there had been an argument. “At least it’s only indirectly to do with birds. We want your help. And perhaps the Cornish birders tell me about rare birds because I don’t call them ‘bloody Corns.’”

Laura had begun to type again. Rob looked at his watch. “The pubs are open,” he said. “ Let’s have a drink, and you can tell me all about it. I haven’t got long. I’m going to Porthkennan to stay with Rose Pengelly this afternoon.”

“We haven’t time for a drink,” George said. “And I know about Porthkennan. We’re here on business. We need to talk to Greg Franks. You
are
still expecting him on the pelagic you’ve organised?”

Rob rummaged through the papers on his desk and pulled out a typed list. “Yes,” he said. “He confirmed the booking last week.”

He looked up at George and smiled. Molly thought again that he was dangerous. “ Why don’t you come with us, George?” he said. His voice was quiet and persuasive. “ There’s nothing more exciting than seawatching, nothing in the world. There’s a spare place on the boat and plenty of room at Rose Pengelly’s. You still need Wilson’s petrel, don’t you, George? People on the last three pelagics I’ve organised have had brilliant views. Then we’ll spend the rest of the week in Cornwall with the first migrants coming in, and regular trips to Porthkennan Head for the seawatching if the weather blows up. If it’s business, why don’t you put it down as expenses? Claim it back from the taxman.”