Rule Britannia (10 page)

“You could ask him,” suggested Emma, “how the fight ended, and if he and his mates took Terry into detention.”

“I couldn’t in front of Mum and Dad,” replied Myrtle, “that is, if they even let him in. And I don’t think I want to see him alone again, not after last night. It wasn’t just the fight, it was… everything.”

Yes, Emma thought, it was everything. She put herself in Myrtle’s place and thought of being in a cave on Poldrea beach with Lieutenant-Wally-Sherman. And someone she was fond of like Joe coming along and seeing her. And Joe and the lieutenant getting into a fight.

“This union thing,” said Emma, “I don’t think I believe in it, do you?”

“I don’t even know what it means to people like us,” said Myrtle. “Dad says it’s the last in the Coalition Government’s bag of tricks. But if it means the Americans can go round beating up our boys then they can all go back where they came from, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Yes,” said Emma, “but you didn’t think that way when you made the date on the beach with Corporal Wagg.” She was thinking of Lieutenant Sherman.

“No,” replied Myrtle, “but you don’t think, do you, not when you’re all steamed up and a fellow’s new?”

Then they heard her mother calling up the stairs that the kettle had boiled and didn’t they want some tea? Myrtle dabbed her eyes again and combed her hair.

“Not a word, mind,” she said, “nor at home to your gran.”

“No,” replied Emma, “but if you should see Austin—Corporal Wagg—try and find out if he knows what happened to Terry.”

The two girls went downstairs. Jack Trembath and his son, Mick, a boy of about Andy’s age, had just come into the kitchen and were hanging up their wet oilskins on the back of the door.

“Well, Emma,” said Mr. Trembath, “any word of Terry?”

Emma shook her head.

“I’m afraid there’ll be nothing for it,” said the farmer seriously, “but for your grandmother to go down in person and try to see that Marine Commander. I’ll drive her down there. It would help maybe if she had a man with her.”

“That’s very kind of you, Mr. Trembath, but we’re not so certain at home it would be a good idea. If they haven’t picked up Terry they won’t know he’s missing, and it might make them try to look for him, especially if…” she hesitated, “if he’s in any kind of trouble, been scrapping or anything.”

Jack Trembath looked doubtful. “You may be right,” he said, “but if they haven’t got him, how will you find out where he is? I tell you one thing. If that corporal fellow comes up here after Myrtle I’ll darn well get him to talk and see if he knows anything.”

He stared at his daughter, who had turned very white.

“Look,” said Emma, jumping to her feet, “thanks for the tea but I ought to get back. You never know, they might have some news.”

“Tell you what,” Jack Trembath rose at the same time, “I’ll run you back in your car and have a word with your grandmother, see if there is anything I can do. She doesn’t need to go down to Poldrea if they’re being fussy still with the roadblocks, and asking questions of everyone. Being a farmer, I can get by and explain my business where it might be awkward for her. I’ve got to go down anyway, I’ve to call in at the vet’s for something he’s made up for Marigold.”

“How is Marigold?” (Marigold was the sick heifer.)

“She’ll do… she’ll do.”

Emma said good-bye to Mrs. Trembath and Myrtle, and was halfway up the track in the car when a thought suddenly struck her.

“Would you mind very much,” she said, “taking the car back by yourself? I’ve just remembered I dropped a scarf coming across the field, and I’d better find it before it gets soaked in the rain. It won’t take me long.”

“Just as you like, my dear,” he said, “but don’t you get wet through looking for it.”

Emma jumped out of the car and he drove on alone. Lies and subterfuge again, thought Emma, who hadn’t dropped a scarf at all, but couldn’t forget what Myrtle had said about Terry running away along the beach with the marines after him. Supposing they had beaten him up? Supposing he was crouching in one of the caves, or halfway up the cliff, above high water, unable to move, not daring to shout?

She waited until the car was out of sight, then turned to the right, away from the farm buildings, and across the hill where the grazing ground sloped steeply to the cliffs below. She was wearing jeans and boots, but her light raincoat was small protection against this blow from the southeast and the stinging rain. White rollers were scudding into the bay to spend themselves on Poldrea beach, sucking at the sandbanks that formed there when the tide ebbed. She could see small parties of marines straggling along the foreshore, or drifting down from the huts and caravans they had commandeered. No smoke came from the chimneys behind the docks, and the docks themselves were bare of shipping. There were naval boats inside the harbor, and the warship itself seemed further out than usual, hardly discernible against the rolling sea. An unpleasant berth, thought Emma, with a lee shore astern of them, and she wondered if Wally Sherman was aboard and possibly seasick—serve him right—or snugly ashore in one of the harbor offices, sitting at a desk and interviewing parents of missing boys.

She reached the old coastguard footpath above the cliffs and looked down at the boiling cauldron below. It was about half-tide, and the stretch of beach where she and the boys bathed in summer was deserted. The cliffs between here and Poldrea were not high; anyone who knew his way like Terry could easily have scrambled over the rocks at low tide, even at night, and made his way to safety. She climbed down to the beach and walked to the further end. There was a cave here where they sometimes picnicked after swimming, and the overhanging ledge gave shelter from a shower. Not today, though. The rain drove inside. There was nothing on the beach but seaweed and broken bottles, and a dead gull smothered in tar. She had come on a useless mission.

She climbed back again to the cliff path, and walked along it and over the stone stile that led to a continuation of Mr. Trembath’s grazing ground above the cliffs. The land sloped very suddenly here in places. Mr. Trembath used to say that in his grandfather’s day there had been some mine-prospecting hereabouts which came to nothing, but the soil had loosened since, and in winter when rains were heavy it could be dangerous to walk too near the edge, the ground might crumble under your feet and you could pitch headlong to the beach below. Emma turned to the higher ground. The rain was driving straight into her face and it was pointless getting soaked to the skin in an impossible quest, besides, Mr. Trembath would be talking to Mad by now, and telling her that Emma had only gone to pick up a scarf in the top field.

Then she saw a little figure running towards her out of the rain. He came from the direction of the wood that hugged the cliff-side further to the east, a wood that had once formed part of the farm acreage but was now a sort of no-man’s-land, a bone of contention, if the truth be told, between Jack Trembath and a summer visitor who had bought up three deserted cottages at the bottom of the wood and wanted to develop the site. Lawyers argued and so far had come to no decision, and meanwhile a curious character known to herself and the boys as the beachcomber had established squatter’s rights in a hut built on a promontory at the far end of the wood. The summer visitor did not know of his existence, and though Jack Trembath knew he did not care.

“Let him live there if he likes,” he said, “it doesn’t worry me. He keeps an eye on the sheep, what’s more, if they stray.”

Emma stood still as the small figure paused in its headlong flight, and catching sight of her ducked behind a gorse bush, as if to avoid being seen. Emma waited. The figure did not move. It was one of their own boys, she was certain. Too big for Colin. Too small for Andy. What was he doing out here all alone, without the others, without Joe, in the driving rain? She ran quickly up the hillside to the line of gorse bushes, and she was right, it was Sam crouching there, wet through.

“Sam,” she said, “where have you been? You know you’re not allowed out here on your own, especially after what’s happened, and in this weather.”

She dragged him to his feet and held onto his hand. Sam, despite his friendship with his roommate Andy, and his reverence for Joe, was sometimes odd man out. His kinship with wild animals, with birds, was stronger than his feeling for fellow-humans. Perhaps it was his eye affliction that made him seem, at times, an outsider in the family circle. Perhaps it was subconscious memory harking back to the days when he had been a battered baby.

Sam did not answer immediately. He allowed his hand to remain in Emma’s, he did not attempt to pull it away. Those eyes of his, wherever they pointed, seemed to penetrate.

“I know where Terry is,” he said.

Emma swallowed. I mustn’t scare him, she thought, I mustn’t say anything hasty or stupid, I must remember what Mad has always said, that Sam is more sensitive than the others, that you have to weigh every word or he shies off.

“That’s good,” she said slowly. “I went looking for him on the beach but he wasn’t there. I hope he’s hiding somewhere safe.”

Sam nodded. “He’s got a broken leg but he’ll be all right.”

He mustn’t be rushed, he mustn’t have questions flung at him. Joe should be here, he would know what to do. She waited, and then she spoke again.

“A broken leg. Then he can’t walk.”

“No, that’s why I was running up home. I thought I could get some as’prin out of Dottie’s medicine cupboard, it would ease the pain. I wasn’t going to tell Dottie what it was for.”

“Why not? We’ve all been so worried about Terry. Madam ought to know about the broken leg.”

“It’s not that I mind Madam knowing, or Dottie either, but I don’t want the soldiers to know. They might come and take Terry away. Or they might shoot him, like they shot Spry.”

What must I do, Emma asked herself, to try and make him talk? Terry may be lying out there on the cliff somewhere, not only with his leg broken, but perhaps ill, dangerously ill.

“Listen, Sam,” she said, “you know how you look after the squirrel, and the pigeon, and all sorts of other animals, but they have to be somewhere warm and sheltered, they can’t be left out in the rain with a broken limb or a broken wing. The limb has to be set.”

Sam considered her for a moment, or, rather, considered the sky.

“Mr. Willis has set the leg,” he said. “He used to know firstaid, though he says he’s a bit rusty. But he doesn’t want the soldiers to know where Terry is either. He hates them as much as I do.”

Mr. Willis… Mr. Willis…? Emma had never heard of a Mr. Willis.

“You know,” said Sam, suddenly impatient, “the beachcomber. I thought of him directly we all stopped talking. He’s a friend of mine. So I went to tell him about Terry. And Terry was there, in his hut. Mr. Willis found him on the beach last night and carried him there. Come and see.”

The hut in the woods had been a summerhouse originally, erected before the 1914–18 war by a former landowner who had lived at Trevanal and was a keen bird-watcher. During the Hitler war it was taken over by the Home Guard as an observation post. It later fell on lean times, the planking began to rot, and the whole structure might have fallen in had not the beachcomber appeared on the scene, established his squatter’s rights and made the summerhouse weatherproof, dry, and comparatively snug. Emma now learned, as Sam led her through the wood to the promontory, that he and Andy had frequently called on the beachcomber but had kept the fact secret.

“He doesn’t much like people,” confessed Sam, “he says they’re nosey, and I agree with him. He’s been all sorts of things in his life. A ship’s carpenter, a farm laborer, he’s worked in a zoo, in an electric shop—he’s got his own radio he made himself.”

Emma wasn’t interested in the life history of the beachcomber, all she wanted to know was how Terry had broken his leg and if he were in pain.

“You must be polite,” urged Sam as the roof of the hut emerged through the trees. “He doesn’t like girls or women, he says they’re noisier than men.”

Emma had visualized a dark, broken-down, makeshift sort of dwelling, shrouded by overhanging trees. She was mistaken. The beachcomber had cleared a fair space around his home and had tilled a vegetable plot behind it. The spring running down the side of the cliff formed his water supply, and he was filling a pail of water as Emma and Sam came upon him. He turned at bay, then relaxed at the sight of Sam.

“This is Emma,” said Sam, “I met her in the field. She was looking for Terry and I had to tell her. She’s very trustworthy.”

“How do you do?” said Emma.

She had only seen the beachcomber in the distance before. He had his own way down to the shore from his lair, a steep path which he had cut himself out of the cliff face, and when she and the boys had come upon him on the beach he was generally bent double, filling a basket with seaweed or driftwood. Winter or summer he would be dressed the same, in an old jacket green with age, flannel trousers thrust into seaboots and a peaked cap pulled low over his craggy features. Colin had had the effrontery to say last summer, when they were all on the beach and the recluse had appeared at the further end poking about the rocks with a long-handled stick, that he looked like Mad.

“You know what,” he cried delightedly, “he’s Madam’s brother, and she lets him live in the hut in the wood and it’s a great secret.”

This story had gone the rounds for a time at home, to Mad’s amusement. She would allude to it as her “guilty secret,” but then as the summer passed, and the treks to the beach became less frequent, the man who was squatter, beachcomber and hidden brother was forgotten, except, so it now seemed, by Andy and Sam. That his name was in reality Mr. Willis came as something of an anticlimax.

He looked less formidable without his cap. He had mild eyes and was wearing spectacles. He had a shock of white hair, and must be well over seventy. He looked fixedly at Emma for a moment, and then he said, “Do you want to see the boy?”

“Please.”

“Come in, then.”

He turned and led the way into the hut. Emma was struck by his voice—it had a sort of lilt to it, was it Welsh? And then, once inside, after a rapid glance about her—the place was neat and dry, with a glowing log fire—she had eyes and thoughts for no one but Terry. He was lying on a camp bed against the wall, near to the fire. She ran to him and knelt beside him. His eyes looked enormous in his white face.

“Terry darling,” she said, “what happened? We’ve been so worried. Thank God you’re here…” She glanced up at the beachcomber standing in the doorway. “We were afraid the marines might have picked you up.”

Terry tried to smile, but she could see he was in pain. Happy-go-lucky Terry, who never had anything wrong with him, he seemed so vulnerable suddenly, and so much younger than herself or Joe.

“I’d be a stiff by now but for Mr. Willis,” he said. “I don’t know how he did it, but he brought me up here on his back, at least that’s what he says. I don’t think I was conscious half the time.”

“Nothing to it,” put in his rescuer. “I’ve borne heavier loads than you on my back and will do
so
again.”

It
was
Welsh. The lilt was unmistakable, the upward turn at the finish of a sentence. Emma turned back to Terry.

“I’ve seen Myrtle,” she told him. “I was at the farm just now. She told me about the fight between you and Corporal Wagg. Nobody else knows. Is that how you broke your leg?”

“No, not exactly,” murmured Terry—speech came slowly, because he was in pain. “They came after me, he and about four others, and I ran as fast as I could to shake them off. The tide was beginning to flood, which was my saving, really, because they started to flounder about in the shallows and I gave them the slip by scrambling up Little Hell and hiding there by the gully in the cliff face, so they lost me and must have gone back to Poldrea beach. Then like a fool I slipped, and went crashing down about twenty feet to the bottom of the cliff. I couldn’t move, and guessed by the pain what I’d done. I lay there for nearly an hour, or so it seemed. Then Mr. Willis turned up.”

The beachcomber took up the story. “No, boyo, it wasn’t an hour, it was thirty minutes, more like. I was watching the charade on Poldrea beach from the cliff path above, and I saw them give chase to you. I was planning to come down and face them myself, when they turned on their heels. I thought you’d packed up and gone home. It was only that I keep a store of driftwood near the gully that made me turn aside and I saw you lying there, with the tide coming up on you. I couldn’t leave you, could I?” He pulled aside the blanket and showed Emma the left leg with the splints around it. “I was an orderly in a naval hospital once. I know this is only a rough job, and the boy should by rights be in hospital. But how to get him there? And what of these roadblocks they have all over the place? They gave it out again, not half an hour ago. Picking up boys, they say, for questioning.”

Sam had joined the bedside consultation. “Terry’s better here with Mr. Willis than he would be at home,” he said. “The marines are always coming up to our place. That Lieutenant Sherman is a friend of Emma’s.”

“He’s not,” said Emma fiercely, “truly he’s not.” She turned to the beachcomber. “We had to be civil to the officers when they called. They used our stables over the weekend, we couldn’t refuse. But my grandmother, far from making them welcome, was, well… almost insulting. She says it’s a complete con on the part of the government to pretend it’s a union between ourselves and the Americans, that it’s a takeover bid or worse, a full-scale invasion.”

Mr. Willis stared at Emma with interest. “Your grandmother said that?”

“Yes, she did.”

He scratched his white head and smiled. “I’ve not been inside a theater these forty years, but I remember her well. She’d have been in her prime. A comedy it was, I’ve forgotten the title… Now, boyo, what’s to be done with you? I’d keep you here until your leg mends, but it should be in plaster.”

“Wait,” exclaimed Emma, “our doctor is coming to see my grandmother some time today. I’ll have to tell him.”

“She’s not ill, is she?” interrupted Terry anxiously.

“No, she wants to find out what he knows, what rumors are flying around, what’s true, what’s false. He’s a personal friend besides being a doctor, Mr. Willis. You know Andy? Andy’s parents who were killed in an air crash were friends of Dr. Summers, that’s why my grandmother adopted Andy. He knows Terry, he knows us all.”

Mr. Willis looked thoughtful. “He may be your friend, but how would he react to these circumstances? Roadblocks, passes and the like. The U.S. forces are in control. They may be keeping a watch on the hospitals too. I can give you my word no one will come looking for Terry here. And if they did…” He looked up at the wall above Terry’s camp bed. There was an old shotgun hanging there. “No American marine would cross my threshold.”

He almost could be Mad’s brother, thought Emma, he has the same determination, the same territorial pride. She squeezed Terry’s hand, and with sudden understanding of her thoughts he squeezed it back and smiled despite the pain.

“Mr. Willis,” he said, “I don’t want to get you into trouble. We seem to have caused enough as it is. I’m pretty certain Dr. Summers can be trusted. But it’s for you to say. This is your place, not ours.”

Mr. Willis looked at each of them in turn. Then down again, at the leg in splints. “Whichever way it goes, you’ll be a casualty for some weeks. No scrapping or bonfires for you. Maybe you should see that doctor.”

It was decided that Emma and Sam should return to Trevanal, and Emma would tell her grandmother that Terry was with Mr. Willis.

“Mind how you go now,” he warned her outside the hut. “You can’t tell what those fellows would be up to, they might be around. I’ve some broth here simmering I’ll give the boy directly, but he hasn’t much appetite.”

“I can’t thank you enough,” Emma told him. “Terry was the first of what my grandmother calls her brood. He means so much to her.”

“He does her credit, then,” said the beachcomber. “Terry has plenty of guts. There’s life in him still for many more scrapes.”

Emma and Sam threaded their way through the wood and up to the plowed field above, and so home. It was still blowing hard, and raining too. They shed their boots and raincoats in the porch, and Emma heard the dining room clock strike eleven. So much had happened since Jack Trembath had telephoned around seven, half the day seemed to have gone already. The television was on in the library, an unusual thing for Mad—it must be she wanted to hear the latest news bulletin. Her grandmother was standing in front of the set, and when Emma appeared she switched it off.

“More complications,” she said. “Two explosions near Falmouth. There’s a contingent of marines down there too, apparently, and of course they’re blaming the dockers. Where on earth have you been? Jack Trembath brought the car back ages ago, and he’s gone back to the farm for his Land Rover, and is going to scout around Poldrea to get more news. He said you’d lost a scarf or something.”

“I’ve found Terry,” said Emma.

Her grandmother stood very still. Then she suddenly seemed to shrink, and her eyes went misty and small. She put out her hand to Emma.

“Oh, thank God,” she said.

They sat down together on the sofa, and in a moment Mad had recovered.

“It was really Sam’s doing,” Emma explained. “He had the brilliant idea where to look.”

She poured out the whole story, and before she had finished Mad was quite herself again, and began her thing of walking up and down the room, a habit of hers when deep in concentration.

“It must have been instinct that made me telephone Bevil,” she said. “He probably won’t be here until sometime this afternoon, but I didn’t expect he would. Do you think Terry will be all right until then? Is he in frightful pain?”

“I don’t think so.” Emma spoke uncertainly. “He’s being very plucky and Mr. Willis has put the leg in splints, but he obviously needs to be seen by a doctor.”

“Mr. Willis,” Mad said. “Extraordinary name for a beachcomber. It doesn’t suit him at all. Welsh, do you say? I shall call him Taffy.”

“Mad, you can’t… He’s rather a dignified old person, once you see him with his cap off, in his own lair. The hut was very tidy too.”

“What on earth has that got to do with it? Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief, Taffy came to my place and stole a piece of beef… Oh yes, he won’t mind, he’ll take it as a compliment.”

Emma thought otherwise, and she hoped to heaven her grandmother would not advance upon him quoting that insulting old rhyme. Now Terry had been found, broken leg and all, Mad’s spirits had risen to their usual heights.

“You know what?” she announced, looking out at the streaming rain. “I shall go down to the hut now, before lunch. You stay here and hold the fort. Sam’s already been, I’ll take Andy.”

“But Mad…”

She had already gone out of the room, though, and was shouting to the whole house that Terry had been found. It was so unwise, thought Emma, it ought to be kept secret until after the doctor had called and given his advice.

“… a terribly nice man,” Mad was saying to Dottie. “Not eccentric at all, he was trained as an orderly in a hospital, he just likes living by himself, that’s all. What? Oh, retired, I suppose. He’s a Welsh bard or something.”

Emma went into the kitchen. “Mad, we’ve got to be discreet about this. No one must know Terry is there, or has broken his leg. There are roadblocks everywhere, as you heard on the news, and the marines are still looking for boys and young men who might have been involved in that fracas last night on Poldrea beach. And now since the explosions they’ll be doubly watchful.”

“I know, I know,” said Mad impatiently. “Call Andy for me and we’ll be off.”

She had been gone about half an hour when Emma, who for want of anything better to do was dusting the music room, heard the sound of a car. She looked out of the window and her heart missed a beat. It was the marine staff car and Lieutenant Sherman was driving. Oh no… Oh, please, no… He climbed out of the car, opened the gate and walked swiftly up the garden path. Emma stood in the hall, uncertain what to do. She had better face him. Dottie might lose her head.

“Hullo,” she said, but rather coldly, without enthusiasm.

“Hi,” he said. Then smiled, and saluted. He looked very professional. “I’m sorry to hear about your grandmother,” he said. “I called to enquire how she was.”

“My grandmother?” repeated Emma. What on earth did he mean?

“Bush telegraph. News travels fast in these parts. I hope she wasn’t too much shaken by the events of last night. We got quite a number of the hooligans, I’m thankful to say.”

“On the contrary,” replied Emma, “she wasn’t shaken at all. Mr. Trembath drove us all home and she was in excellent spirits.”

“Oh,” he said, looking surprised, “then her heart attack came later? Well, I hope it’s not too serious, and we can absolve ourselves from blame.”