The House Above the River (14 page)

“Mad?”

“Shall we say, not quite normal. It is a misfortune. It keeps him from his friends. I have been told that when she came here first there were scandals. Always young men at the château, and madame seen with them in Paimpol, in Lanion, in Tréguier. Now no one comes here to see her, and they visit very seldom. And then his mother …”

She broke off, looked at Phillipa with a considering air, and then went on, “You have heard about his mother?”

“No. His father was English. I know that. He settled here after the First World War.”

“Because he had married a Frenchwoman. A Bretonne.”

“I see. That was the reason, was it?”

“It was. And then the second war came, and he deserted her.”

Phillipa was shocked.

“What do you mean?”

“He went to England with the boy. She did not go. She refused to go.”

Phillipa protested.

“But that was not desertion! He was more use, free. I expect he wanted her to go with him.”

“She would not leave her country, her people.”

This was dangerous ground. Phillipa said, warily, “What happened to her?”

The grocer's wife sighed.

“I do not know, exactly. She went away. The château was occupied. I think she must have died. I did not come to live here until after Monsieur Henri came back from England for the last time. With his English wife.”

“I thought he came back during the war?”

“Several times, yes. The people never forgave his father for his desertion. The father died in England, after the war, and they were ready to forgive his son, and welcome him back. But he did not come, until he brought this wife.”

“I see. But you told me before that he has many friends among the fishermen.”

“That is true. They have always been his friends. That is why I am not disturbed by your news of a disappearance.”

“What do you mean?”

The grocer's wife said, in a raised voice, “Voilà, madame! It is finished, our work.”

The grocer, a stocky, black-haired man in a wide apron, came through from the shop. He scowled at Phillipa, but said nothing.

His wife poured the rest of the ground coffee into the bag, and getting up, went back into the shop, followed by Phillipa.

The daughter added the coffee to the list of various purchases she had already written down and handed the list to her mother, who turned it round for Phillipa to see.

As the latter handed the money over the counter, the grocer's wife leaned forward and began to whisper rapidly. Phillipa, trying her hardest, both to hear and to understand, was hopelessly lost. But she gathered two words of importance. One was “Henri”, and the other was “Roscoff”.

“Roscoff?” said Giles, when Phillipa, back on board, had repeated all she remembered of her conversation at the shop. “Henry may be at Roscoff, then?”

“I suppose she could have meant that. Rapid French, in whispers, is beyond me. She definitely wasn't worried about him.”

“All right. We're going to Morlaix. Roscoff is quite near there. We'll pick up the trail, if there is one, at Roscoff.”

Shuna
sailed from the Tréguier river at six o'clock that evening. There was no wind in the river, so they had to motor in the first part of the channel. The late sun shone golden on the tall white column of La Corne lighthouse; the tumbled mass of rocks beyond glowed purple and russet in the warm light.

The Marshalls kept exclaiming at the beauty of the changing scene as the yacht drove steadily forward. When they reached the sharp turn in the channel that would take them seawards, they found a little off-shore breeze and hoisted sail. The tide was under them and the wind enough for their purpose, so Giles cut the engine and
Shuna
went on, rising and falling now on the swell that carried her away from the land.

Once clear of the channel and the last barrier of rock, with the shore lights twinkling now far behind them in the blue dusk, they altered course to the west, towards the red afterglow of the dying sun. Tony streamed the log. The wind held, on their beam now, and with genoa set,
Shuna
bowled along at a good pace.

“I'll go inside the Sept Isles,” said Giles. “We keep north of Isle Tomé.”

He handed the tiller to Tony, and went below to check his course on the chart. Phillipa also went below to get the evening meal. She hoped her sea legs had not deserted her during this harbour-bound week of inaction.

When he had done his calculations, Giles went up into the cockpit again. As he climbed out the light of Les Moines lighthouse on the Sept Isles came on, swinging its powerful beam into the Channel across twenty miles of water.

“Do you see the loom of another light beyond?” he asked.

“I'm not sure.”

“Probably not yet. It doesn't matter. We're on course, and we'll see some buoys before long. Once past Tomé, we simply carry on between the mainland and the Sept Isles.”

“Triargot was the other light you were thinking of, wasn't it?”

“That's right. We leave Triargot to starboard, too, and go right on towards the Isle de Bas, until we have cleared all the rocks this side of the bay of Morlaix. Then we can go in and find the entrance channel.”

“Let's hope this wind holds. We couldn't be more comfortable.”

Giles shivered.

“It's getting damned cold.”

“Doesn't it always, at night? If you're going below you might chuck me up another sweater, too.”

Phillipa was gratified to discover that she was not disturbed by the boat's movement. With the wind so light, and the sea fairly calm, they were not much heeled over, so that cooking was less of a battle than it sometimes was. She produced a good hot meal of soup, followed by stew, previously cooked in the river and now warmed up. This disposed of, they all three sat in the cockpit, letting the fears and shocks and worries of the last few days slide from them, stripped away by the unhurried lift of endless waters under
Shuna
's hull, and the carved beauty of her sails in the moonlight.

None of them wanted to miss the pleasures of this lovely night, but after a few hours Phillipa's head began to droop and nod, and Tony could not repress his yawns.

“You two had better get some sleep,” Giles ordered. “I'll rouse you out if I want you.”

“Better have proper watches,” Tony suggested.

“I'll see. I couldn't sleep now if I tried, but I'll call you in three hours or so. We'll be there around first fight.”

Giles was glad to be alone. The last few days had been chaotic. Not only had his past erupted like a cold abscess suddenly incised, but his future, too, had rushed violently at him, demanding recognition. In a revulsion of feeling he was ready to throw up the whole of his tangled responsibilities. He wished he had never gone to Tréguier, or that he had gone creeping up the river in the fog that first morning. Then none of this would have happened. He would never have known that Miriam was up there in the house above the river, with her strange husband, and her even stranger personal conflict. He would never have met Susan, who had unfrozen his heart, so painfully, so completely.

He looked at his boat, lovely on the dark sea. The bright track of the moon glittered beside him, running away towards the mainland, a black shadow, three miles off. On the other side, the long chain of islands, two miles away, glimmered palely.
Shuna
and he were complete in their isolation. Together they harnessed and fought the wind and the sea. Aboard her he lived as he never experienced living on shore, at his job. Except on those occasions, rare and unexpected, when a new idea came to him, some new way of solving a problem in engineering. Those creative moments were exciting. They gave him a sense of power and fulfilment. But this communion with his ship and with the impersonal forces that both sustained and menaced her, went further. It went beyond imagination, inventiveness, all that comprised human brain and human skill, to a far deeper contact, a much fuller comprehension. And how could Susan share in this? How could she break into that region where he and
Shuna
explored together? And if she could not come there, would it not be a betrayal of them all to attempt it?

His thoughts became darker as the night went on, turning more to Miriam than to Susan. His old love's failed marriage seemed somehow to be linked with a failure in himself. And Henry, too, had been betrayed. He went over the events of the last five days. The bitter struggle at the château had both shocked him and confirmed that cynical attitude to marriage he had held from the time of his broken engagement. As the moon dipped towards the west he was amazed to remember the confident way he had determined in his own mind to marry Susan. He scarcely knew her. One girl was very much like another. Thank God he had not committed himself very far.

His thoughts began to run together, in confusion, inconsequent. He invented conversations between himself and Susan, with Miriam and Henry. Checking his course and the log automatically, at intervals, he did not realise how far towards sleep he was drifting, until he heard Phillipa's voice, so loud it seemed to him like a bellow through a megaphone.

“Giles, you're absolutely nodding off! Have some cocoa.”

He took the big mug from her gratefully, warming his icy hands against its side, as he sipped the thick scalding fluid.

“Rum in it,” he said, hoarsely. “Good girl, Pip.”

Tony struggled into the cockpit, shivering as he exchanged the snug atmosphere of the cabin for the chill air above.

“We're hardly moving!” he exclaimed.

“I know. Breeze died about an hour ago. I expect we're going backwards. We were just making against the current when it turned.”

“Oughtn't we to do something about it?”

“I didn't want to disturb you two.”

“You were practically asleep yourself, you mean?”

“Why not have a break?” Phillipa urged.

“I'll wait a bit and see if we get a puff. There was a suggestion of something from the north-west a few minutes ago.”

In half an hour a very gentle air was rippling the water from the north. They re-set the sails and Giles went below. But his drowsiness left him as soon as he lay down on his bunk. He was on deck again long before he was needed to direct the navigation into the Morlaix river.

They anchored at Pen Lann, just outside the river. It had been a slow passage from midnight onwards, and they had too little time left to get up the river and into the lock at Morlaix before the lock gates closed. So they settled down to wait for the afternoon tide, and Giles slept at last, long and heavily. The Marshalls, waking in the middle of the morning, took the dinghy ashore and bathed in the clear water among the rocks.

They reached Morlaix in the late afternoon, and tied up inside the dock. Giles went off at once to arrange for the repair of his anchor chain and stanchions. This did not take long.

“They can't do anything today, but they'll send a chap along early tomorrow morning,” he said.

“What shall we do now?” asked Tony.

“Explore,” said Phillipa.

“Roscoff,” said Giles. “There's a train in half an hour. Electric. We'll dine in Roscoff.”

They arrived in the little port just before seven. The station was some distance from the quays, and the road uninteresting until they reached the old part of the town, with its picturesque houses in narrow streets. Giles would not let them linger over these sights, but pressed on towards the harbour.

This consisted of two basins, set parallel with the sea outside, which at this point in the coast ran in a comparatively narrow channel between the mainland and the Isle de Bas.

The larger and more seaward of the two basins held a number of big fishing boats, moored against the quays. These were much larger than any of the craft the three friends had seen in the Tréguier river. The second basin, less well maintained, because, being nearer the land, it dried out for longer periods in each tide, held only small craft, mostly moored to buoys, with “legs” fastened to their gunwales to take the mud and keep them upright when the water had gone. But there was one yacht there, flying a British club burgee at the masthead, and a visitors' French flag at the yard-arm. Giles exclaimed at sight of her.

“I know that boat,” he said. “Belongs to an artist chap. Calls her
Palette
, of all unsuitable names for a yacht. What's his name, now? I know—Hurst. Jim Hurst. Met him last year in Audierne.”

They went along the high wall of the quay towards
palette
. Between them and the next basin's quayside there was a low wall on which fishermen were spreading their enormous nets. They looked at the strangers, but did not seem interested. Tourists were expected, and as Phillipa had changed into a summer dress, the visitors wore a very ordinary look.

They found Jim sitting on his cabin top, painting a view of the town across the water. He did not look up as they stopped on the wall above him. No doubt he was used to people staring at him as he worked.

“Hullo, Jim!” Giles called.

That made him turn. He had a deeply bronzed face, shaggy hair and a beard. He was wearing a very dirty white sweater and cotton khaki slacks.
Palette
had the same scruffy appearance. Her paint was chipped, her varnish faded and worn by sun and salt. She looked as if she had been there for a long time.

Jim laid down his tools on the cabin top and balanced his canvas against the combing of the cockpit.

“Armitage, isn't it?” he said, in a pleasantly deep lazy voice.

“That's right.”

“Come aboard.”

“Aren't you working? We don't want to disturb you.”

“The light's nearly gone. Anyway, I've done enough for one day. Half a sec, I'll fix the ladder.”

Palette
was tied to the wall along a piece of it that had no ladder, but Jim had his own ladder, which he now lifted against the quayside. They all climbed down. The Marshalls were introduced. Giles asked how long Jim had been at Roscoff.