The Man from the Sea (12 page)

Cranston’s mind worked doubtfully forward in a series of displeasing images. He found that they were so displeasing as to be in fact impracticable. It struck him that he had better tell George the truth – or enough of it to convince her that he must go off on his own. But he could do this only after they had set out. To enter into the matter at all now was impossible.

His father was composedly reading
The Scotsman
. Something that he had recently let fall echoed oddly in Cranston’s head. “Daddy,” he asked, “what was that you said about an ambulance?”

“Yes – but too late. Dead, poor old soul.” Dr Cranston, absorbed in the London letter, answered concisely.

“It’s gone back?”

Dr Cranston glanced up briefly. “Not yet, I think. I arranged for the fellow to get some breakfast at the Dinwiddie Arms. An old friend of yours – before your expatriate period.” Dr Cranston was mildly caustic. “Be civil to this girl, by the way – even if she isn’t a baronet’s step-daughter and educated at Girton.”

“Yes, of course.” Cranston gave what he knew was a juvenile scowl.

“The Australian Cranstons have the high distinction, my dear boy, of sharing a great-grandfather with yourself. And he was a younger son of–”

“Bother the Australian Cranstons… You don’t mean Sandy Morrison?”

“Certainly I mean Sandy Morrison. He left his uncle a year ago and has been driving the ambulance for some time.”

“I think I’ll go across and look him up.”

“To be sure.” Dr Cranston, because pleased, spoke as if in marked absence of mind. His feelings about great-grandfathers he found very easily reconcilable with others of a democratic cast, and both his sons had started at the village school. “Have you got enough money? I don’t know what are the conventions when a young man gives a hitch to a hiking girl cousin.” He chuckled. “But I imagine you might without offence offer to pay for a meal. Not that the Australian Cranstons aren’t extremely prosperous, I understand.”

“Is that so?” Cranston in his turn was absent-minded. “I think I’ve got enough cash.” He rose. “I’ll just say goodbye to Elspeth.”

“Say goodbye to Elspeth?” This time Dr Cranston was genuinely astonished – indeed he eyed his son rather narrowly as he left the room. Then he returned to his newspaper. Curiosity however pricked him – he was after all a man of science – and presently he found himself going on tip-toe to the door. He was edified by a cautious whispering from a back passage.

“Master Richard – for shame! I’ll do no such thing.”

“Come on, Elspeth – there’s no harm in it. Just for this once.”

“No harm, indeed! It would be clean daft – and no’ decent, foreby.”

“If you don’t, I’ll tickle you till you scream – and leave you to explain to Mummy.”

“It’s outrageous, Master Richard. If you ask me, you just weren’t enough skelpt as a bairn.”

“I wasn’t skelpt at all. Quick now – I’m in an awful hurry.”

There was a sharp giggle – at the sound of which Dr Cranston withdrew to his seat. When five minutes later his son returned to the room he looked at him somewhat doubtfully over the top of
The Scotsman
. “Really, Richard – have you been taking it into your head to woo your mother’s mature Abigail for busses?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Cranston grinned. “Or, alternatively, you’re a shocking old eavesdropper.”

“And so I am. Your disease has a learned name, my boy.”

“Rubbish.”

“Gerontophilia, or sexual passion directed towards the aged. Think better of it, sir. There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far, who would gladly be–”

“All right, Daddy – all right.” Cranston heartily wished himself in a better position to relish this liberal paternal fooling. “But I wasn’t, as a matter of fact. Kissing her, I mean.” He hesitated. “I was borrowing something.”

Dr Cranston was alarmed. “Not a ten-shilling note? You used not to be above it. But you’ve just said–”

“No – not that. Something else. Will you promise me something?”

“Perhaps.”

“Don’t make a joke of it with Elspeth. Don’t ask her when I’m gone.”

For the first time, Dr Cranston’s brow clouded. There was something in this that lay outside the family conventions, and he was obscurely disturbed. “Richard,” he asked, “is there anything in the wind? Have you been making a fool of yourself? Or are you up to something dangerous?”

“Both.” Looking at his father, Cranston said this quite suddenly. “I have made a fool of myself. And I am up to something that’s possibly dangerous – by way of getting clear.”

“By way of getting clear of – a mess?” Dr Cranston put
The Scotsman
down on the tablecloth. “You don’t mean you’re bolting from the consequences of some idiocy?”

“No. But I’m perhaps doing something a bit queer. It’s by way of getting square with myself.” He felt himself blush furiously. “A kind of debt of honour.”

“And that’s why you were so awkward about this girl? Shall I head her off – insist that she stop a bit?”

“No. I’ve got that fixed.”

“I think I hear her coming downstairs with your mother now.” Dr Cranston reached again for his paper. He was contriving a gallant appearance, his son saw, of having found their conversation satisfactory. “And I shall hold no converse with the outraged Abigail, my boy.”

“Thank you.”

“Drop me a line – if you feel prompted to, that is.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“You can send it to the Infirmary, you know, if it’s something with which you don’t want to worry your mother.”

“Yes – I see.”

Dr Cranston had risen and walked to the window. “Nice day for the run,” he said. “Even in an awful car like yours.”

Cranston pulled up in the village. The ambulance was still outside the Dinwiddie Arms. “I want to have a word with a schoolfellow,” he explained. “Do you mind waiting?”

Without raising her eyes from the map she was studying, George shook her head. She was still in her frock – a deep yellow frock, so that she had the appearance of a portentously enormous sunflower. “I’ll be seeing you,” she said.

“He drives that ambulance.”

“I see.” For a second she took it as unremarkable. Then she looked surprised. “Didn’t you go to Eton or somewhere?”

“I went there.” He pointed across the village street.

“Where it says ‘Infants’ ?” George was impressed.

He nodded. “Yes – and so did Sandy Morrison. I’m going to introduce him to you. We’re all three going to do something together.” He glanced cautiously at George. “At least I hope so.”

“You didn’t say anything about this at home.”

“No more I did, George.” He used her name for the first time. “But when I said I was going south alone I was fibbing.”

She was disconcerted. “But, Richard, I asked if I was butting in.”

“You’re not. You’re going to help. You see the castle on the map? I’m going to smuggle somebody out of it, and make hell-for-leather for London.”

“Do you mean that I’m going to help at an elopement?” George spoke coldly – and the effect struck him as so ludicrous that he had to smile. “I thought the Gretna Green business happened the other way on.”

“It’s a man, George – not a girl.” He paused. “It’s John Day.”

“The scientist who disappeared? And he’s now in Dinwiddie Castle?”

Cranston’s estimate of the possible usefulness of George shot up. And that was how he had come to regard her. She was a great Amazonian creature who had blundered in, and she must take her chance. He would shove her out of the affair if real peril threatened. Short of that, she was expendable. After all, he hadn’t scrupled to involve Sally – whom he had already wronged in ways that Sally might or might not know. So why not exploit this monster of a cousin? But he had been taking it for granted that the monster was shock-headed. Now he knew that he was wrong. Her way of taking the thing was in some indefinable way indicative of intelligence. “Yes,” he said. “The scientist. He walked out of the sea and into my arms in the small hours of this morning.”

“You mean that you were waiting for him? Is this Cold War stuff – with you active in it…on one side or another?”

“It was pure chance. And the Cold War aspect of John Day is over. He’s a dying man. And he wants to see his wife.”

“You’re making it your business that he should?”

“Just that. He happens to be temporarily blinded, which makes things difficult. Will you help?”

“No.” She looked at him seriously. “Not unless you convince me that you have to.”

“I don’t know if I can do that.” Cranston paused – and as he did so it came to him like a revelation that he could tell this Amazonian intruder the whole thing. Or almost the whole thing. It might be brutal. He had the sense to know that a girl may not be the less maidenly for calling herself George and striding about the countryside in inconsiderable pants. He had not the slightest disposition to believe that Britomart herself had been more virginal. So if he told her she might hate it. But at least there was nothing between them that could be damaged by revelation. “Listen,” he said. “It’s simple, really. Day feels he acted unforgivably towards his wife, and that he has some sort of gesture – and no more than a gesture – to offer her. Well, he tumbled into my arms last night only because I was out fooling with a married woman. And it wasn’t just fooling. There is something – I needn’t go into it – that makes it vile. Mine’s another unforgivable thing. And
my
gesture is to risk something, seeing this chap through.”

George had gone very still, and for a moment he thought she was going to say nothing at all. And when she did speak it was with painful constraint. “I can’t say I didn’t ask for it – your story. Which doesn’t mean that you should have told it, all the same.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Or am I being a fool? Probably I am… And what do you mean by risking something?”

“Being killed, for one thing. There was shooting last night. The chaps to whom he’s given the slip are out for his blood – and that of anybody holding in with him.”

“Very understandably, I’d say.”

“Yes. But there’s another risk, less easy to express. If Day had murdered somebody, or was a wicked blackmailer, or a defaulting financier or something of that sort, I’d only be risking – and inviting you to risk – being uncomfortably packed off to gaol. But behind Day – and willy-nilly all around him still – the issues are tremendous. He may have vitally important information which some Cabinet Minister, or old colleague, or efficient policeman could show him he ought to come out with. I may keep him away from these people only to see him successfully hunted down and killed by his former employers. And there are other possibilities. I’m risking – well, having to admit that I’ve been an irresponsible ass in rather a big way.”

“It’s an awkward situation, Richard – I agree.”

“It’s a regular cow, George.”

She faintly smiled. “We’d better get on. What do I do?”

“Could you impersonate a Scottish housemaid?”

“Better, I suppose, than I could impersonate a Scottish countess. But I couldn’t manage the accent.”

“That won’t matter. You’ll only be talking to a foreigner – and then no more than a few words.”

“Don’t housemaids in this part of the world dress in a particular way?”

“I’ve got the proper clothes in the back. I borrowed them from our maid at home. Only I’m afraid they’ll be on the small side.”

“But I’m used to giving rather skimpy effects?” George was amused at the discomfort this thrust occasioned him. “Do I have to do things with your Sandy Morrison?”

Cranston shook his head, and climbed out of the car. “No. But if I can’t nail him to do his own turn we’ll have to think again. Sit tight. I’m going in to try.”

“Hullo, Sandy.”

“Good morning, Mr Cranston.”

This was unpromising, and Cranston took cautious stock of his erstwhile fellow scholar. With one hand Sandy was frugally rotating a crust in the last of the bacon fat on his plate, while with the other he drained a large mug of tea. They had dressed him decorously in some approximation to uniform for the purpose of driving the ambulance – but he was discernably Sandy Morrison still. He was freckled and snub-nosed and tousle-haired, with a dour pious expression and a glint of dangerous mischief in his eye. Cranston contrived to look at him insolently. “Is that the way they’ve taught you to talk, you silly loon?”

Sandy set down his mug. “It isn’t often that we have the pleasure of seeing you in the north, sir.”

Cranston advanced and towered above him. “I could take you by the lug,” he said, “and haul you behind the kirk, and hammer you till you were roaring like a two-headed calf, Sandy Morrison. And that would learn you good morning and pleasure of seeing you in the north.”

Sandy got to his feet. “And could you that?”

“That I could – as I did the first day that ever I had sight of your ill features – Sandy Snotnose.”

“Then come awa’ – Dickie-Big-Doup.” Sandy was breathing wrathfully.

Cranston sat down. “Sandy,” he whispered, “are you for a splore?”

“The devil take you, Dick.” Sandy sat down too. His expression was now less pious than sanctimonious, but the glint in his eye was correspondingly wilder. “Can’t you see, man, that they’ve turned me respectable? The ambulance is probation. If I pass I’m to have the hearse.” He paused and dropped his voice. “Is it salmon?”

“Nothing of the kind. It’s just to drive your ambulance up to the castle and through the gates. And to bide there a while not much noticing things. And then to come away again.”

Sandy looked apprehensive. “Is it something to dae wi’ a quean?”

“It is not. I’m not one that goes after women.”

“It’s no’ to dae wi’ her leddyship there?”

“No.” Cranston had a moment of panic. His madness – his late madness – must have become gossip already. “I want to smuggle a man out of the place, Sandy – and without some that may be watching knowing it.”

“I’m to be back at the Infirmary in the forenoon.”

“And so you shall be.” Cranston rose. “I’ve got my car – and somebody in it who’s helping me. I’ll drive to the head of the glen and park in the quarry. Do you follow in five minutes, Sandy. After that, the whole thing won’t take half an hour.”