Winking at the Brim (Mrs. Bradley) Page 8

  “Oh, well, the usual things, actually, as though everybody didn’t know. But, of course, it would take Angela to spew it all up in public.”

  “All what?”

  “All about the Bensons setting their caps at the vicar and Godiva’s determination to compromise him to the point where he’d have to marry one of them. Of course she hasn’t managed it, but that she made the attempt is true enough, as anybody in the village would tell you. But can you blame them? The vicarage would be an ideal home for them, because, of course, they’d never think of separating, whichever one of them he married.”

  “Marjorie told me about it,” said Sally, “and seemed to think that Angela had spiked their guns by getting the job as housekeeper.”

  “Yes, with great satisfaction she pointed that out to them, I’m afraid. Anyway, she told Daddy she did.”

  “Well, I know she’s spiteful and, apparently, she’s a schemer, but so were some of Jane Austen’s heroines, weren’t they?”

  “Oh, but, Sally, that’s the least of what she said. She not only said that there were goings-on (her horrid word, not mine) between Jeremy and Marjorie, but that Nigel is much fonder of animals than he is of Marjorie—only she put it a great deal more crudely, and that’s why Daddy sent me away—”

  “Why is he fonder of animals than he is of Marjorie? I mean, how do animals come into it? What made her think of them—apart from the fact that she’s wicked all through?” asked Sally.

  “Oh, didn’t you know that Nigel is the local vet? Haven’t you noticed that wired-in bit he’s got at the back of his estate car? That’s for dogs, or a calf, or whatever.”

  “Oh, well, perhaps I have heard that he’s a vet, but I’ve only seen the estate car once, and that was when they drove up in it. They left it at the inn, but I didn’t bother to take a close look at it. By the way, how did Godiva and Winfrith Benson get here?” (She knew, but wanted to change the subject.)

  “By air to Glasgow and then by hired car. Daddy paid, much to Mummy’s annoyance, but Daddy said they needed a holiday and it might be worth while to have them on the spot to do lightning impressions—sketches, you know—of the monster. Actually, I agree with Daddy. Not about the sketches, because I don’t believe they’d do any if they did see anything frightening, but I think they need a holiday. I believe they’re rather poor.”

  Sally came nearer to liking Phyllis at that moment than she had done since their schooldays. When she remembered her own momentous piece of news, she liked her still more.

  “Did you know that Sir Humphrey is going to publish my book?” she asked.

  “Oh yes, of course. I knew he would,” said Phyllis, putting on a self-appreciative and conspiratorial smile and so becoming insufferable once more.

  “Would you like to go and have your lunch?” asked Sally bluntly. “It’s just gone twelve, so I expect it’s ready by now.”

  “Oh, I suppose I’d better, or you’ll have to wait much too long for yours. I do wish we could have it together. I think it’s too boring of Daddy to keep somebody on watch from morning to night.”

  “It’s reasonable. We don’t want to miss a sighting.”

  “Lunch is always awful, anyway. Sometimes I think it’s hardly worth while to take that rough walk, and such a long way, too, there and back, just for cold meat and vegetable salad out of a tin.”

  “Your mother cooks in the evening.”

  “Yes, but poor Mummy isn’t much good at it. Of course, it isn’t her fault. At home we have a cook and all Mummy does is the ordering.”

  “My grandmother has a cook, too—a man. He’s French and he sends in the most marvellous and delicious things. Grandmamma doesn’t even have to do the ordering. Henri’s wife sees to all that, and does a lot of the marketing, too.”

  “I wish you’d invite me there, Sally.”

  “How can I? I’m only a lodger there myself. I’m waiting to get a flat in Town. Push off and have your lunch, otherwise it will be tea-time before I get mine.”

  Phyllis was gone for longer than Sally thought reasonable, but she reappeared at last, and Sally, wasting no words, went off to appease her own hunger. Except that there was wine, she found that the lunch was as Phyllis had stated and what she herself had expected. She ate it in twenty minutes, gratefully accepted a couple of glasses of wine, then took the rough road past her own van and along the side of the loch to rejoin Phyllis at the watching-post.

  The early afternoon was warm and sunny, the air clear and beautifully, almost frighteningly, still. The mist had melted hours before and the mountains she could see in the distance loomed sombrely against a faint, ethereal sky. Nearer at hand, on both sides of the water, green and brown hillsides sloped down to the stony shores of the loch. A promontory hid the island near the head of the loch from Sally’s view, but beyond it the mountains seemed to have gathered themselves together, as peak rose behind peak and the colours varied from purple to faintest, far-off blue.

  As Sally followed the path, the mountains changed. Their outlines hardened. They seemed nearer and, suddenly, menacing in their immobility and beauty and, save for Sally herself, there seemed to be no living creature in the universe except for a buzzard which was spiralling upwards with wide, unhurried sweeps of its rounded, finger-pointed wings. Suddenly it ceased to circle. Dropping plummet-wise as though it had sighted prey, it then flattened out and made for the head of the loch, flying horizontally and with a laboured motion of its pinions as though its broad-tailed body was almost too heavy for its wings. It began to give out a plaintive, persistent crying before it became a speck in the distant sky.

  At the same time there was an abrupt confusion in the water. A shoal of fish—salmon or loch trout, maybe—began to make its way with such a rush of speed that the water was broken with rainbow diamonds of spray and the silver flash of bellies as the scurrying fish leapt from the water in their panic.

  Suddenly conscious of what this extraordinary display might mean, Sally began to run. She had no camera with her, but she was near enough to the tent to be able to use the one she had failed to reach on the previous occasion. Phyllis was not manning it.

  Before she could begin her own upwards scramble or draw near the tent, however, another disturbance in the water followed and Sally stood, panting and transfixed, as a snake-like head on about a yard of dark-grey neck appeared above the water-line and not very far off-shore. Sally was aware of a foul and death-like smell and then of a large, pale eye in the flattened head. For an instant she felt certain that the creature looked surprised, and then, in widening circles of rippling brown water still flecked by the tempestuous rush of the fish, it dramatically and vertically submerged, but before the head disappeared and was lost to sight Sally could have sworn that the pale eye winked at her.

  CHAPTER 9

  Sally Gets Her Rights

  “Shun divisions, as the beginning of evils.”

  St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch.

  Sally’s asseveration, before she had come to Tannasgan, that she believed in the existence of loch monsters, had been made, she now realised, more from a wishful thinking than from any strong conviction that the creatures were still extant. She found herself in a quandary. She had no pictorial evidence whatever of what she had seen, and, like so many other witnesses of phenomena, feared that she would not be believed, if all she could produce was a mere eye-witness account of the sighting, without a photograph to back her up.

  Besides, the more she thought it over while making her way back to the tent, surveying the now unruffled surface of the loch, she herself began to doubt whether she really could have seen what she thought she had seen. By the time she got back to Phyllis she had almost convinced herself that the winking monster had been a figment of her imagination produced by the heavy weather, the demented shoal of fish, and the panic flight of the buzzard.

  She decided to try to find out, without asking a direct question, whether there was any support to be obtained from Phyllis who,
even if she had not seen the creature itself, might have seen something which would support Sally’s suppositions and resolve her doubts.

  There was no help from that quarter, however. She found Phyllis fast asleep in the shade cast by the tent. She had spread a raincoat on the heather, was sprawled on it, and was breathing heavily, obviously dead to the world.

  “Oh, Lord!” said Sally aloud. It must be the effect of the sparkling burgundy which, against Lady Calshott’s better judgment, Sir Humphrey had opened at lunch. She contemplated the slumbering girl with amusement, contempt, and irritation nicely combined. Phyllis, she remembered, never had been able to drink more than a glass of anything stronger than shandy-gaff without feeling the effects of it to what appeared to others a disproportionate extent.

  At the birthday party which Dame Beatrice had attended Phyllis’s glass had been filled only once, this by Lady Calshott’s orders. Sally had felt sorry for Phyllis at the time. She did not feel sorry for her now. If only Phyllis had been awake and on watch, what a story the two of them would have been able to tell, thought Sally. As it was, unless one of the others had seen something, Sally’s story lacked any corroboration and might even, she realised with horror, be put down to that same bottle of sparkling burgundy which seemed to have laid Phyllis low.

  There appeared to be little point in trying to arouse the sleeper, so Sally provided herself with a paperback and a chair, put her binoculars down beside her, and settled for a peaceful afternoon. The book was not so absorbing that it distracted her mind unduly, and every few minutes she looked out over the water. She had no expectation, let alone hope, that the monster would put in a second appearance, but she thought that, if the boat party had anything to report, they might pay her another visit. Anything, she thought, to convince her that she had not dreamed the whole thing, but that she really had seen that blackish, snake-like head and neck, that wicked, opaque, and winking large pale eye!

  However, nobody came. At four o’clock Phyllis came round from the back of the tent and said,

  “Oh, here you are! Did you have a good lunch?”

  “Well, at any rate, you did!” said Sally sternly.

  “Yes, I’ve been asleep,” said Phyllis. “It was the burgundy. I was so sick and tired of Mummy’s horribly boring food that I asked Daddy whether we couldn’t have a drink to help it down. I knew he’d brought some wine because, back at the hotel, he gave each caravan a couple of bottles and told them to celebrate with it if we got a sighting. Mummy wasn’t very keen on my having a drink, but I think Daddy was ever so pleased. He’s keen on wine and he said a sparkling red wouldn’t hurt anybody, and, of course, it didn’t, except to make me sleepy, but that’s the heat as well, I think. I didn’t know it could ever be so hot and close in Scotland.”

  “I expect it will lead to rain. Well, off you go for your tea.”

  “Bless you,” said Phyllis. “What a bore it is to have to walk there and back, though. Don’t you honestly think we could use your van?”

  “Well, look,” said Sally, “I’ll tell you what.” She herself was beginning to tire of the walk in such weather as they were enjoying. “If you’ll do exactly as I say…”

  “Oh, of course, Sally darling. You know I will.”

  “All right, then. When you get to the van you may drive it as far as Sir Humphrey’s caravan—that will save you a bit—and on the way back here you may leave it where the so-called road peters out. After that, the path is so rough and so narrow that I’m not risking either my tyres or of one of us sliding the van into the loch. All right?”

  “You really are a lamb!” cried Phyllis. “I’ve always wanted to drive one of those things.”

  This concession on Sally’s part had an unexpected result. Phyllis obeyed her instructions to the letter and Sally herself found the benefit, for the new arrangement halved the length of the walk, although the site which her van now occupied was not as attractive or as convenient as the one she had chosen originally. However, she was well pleased in most ways with the change and its manifest convenience, although Sir Humphrey demurred at an arrangement which, as he pointed out, would leave Sally even more alone at nights than the previous one had done.

  Lady Calshott, who had been opposed to the first choice of site for Sally’s van, approved volubly of the new one.

  “It was all very well for Angela to have that long, rough walk to and fro,” she said, “but I could tell that it was already proving too much for Phyllis. Angela is very tough mutton, as one may infer from this hill-climbing and hiking she seems to like so much. Phyllis, I’m afraid, is my poor, delicate, shorn little lamb, and I’m grateful to you, Sally, for your thoughtfulness.”

  “Well, really!” exclaimed Miss Barton, who had returned to the caravan, as usual, for her supper. “I can imagine better ways of expressing oneself, Mildred. Mutton, indeed! Thank you very much for the compliment!”

  Sally forbore to point out that it was Phyllis’s importunity and not her own good nature which had brought about the change of venue for the motorised caravan, but that night, when the evening meal was in its concluding stages, Sir Humphrey said,

  “My wife and I feel, Sally, that you’ve been rather let down over this business. The agreement was that you should use your van to act as liaison officer between the various parties and myself. Owing to Angela’s having altered her own arrangements since the scheme was first mooted, things have had to change, but now that you’ve been kind enough to let Phyllis move your van about, and so shorten the walk to and from your tent, my wife suggests that you and she should take turn and turn about with the watching or, alternatively, that you should pay daily visits to the other tents and caravans, once in the morning and again just after tea, in case anyone has anything to report. Instead of your van, my wife and Phyllis could use our car. The only stipulation is that you shall be prepared for tent duty from seven until nine each evening, so that Mildred may return to this caravan to cook our evening meal. I myself can manage the lunches, as no cooking is involved. What do you say? Which would you prefer?”

  “Oh, the second arrangement, please,” said Sally, ignoring a pleading look from Phyllis.

  “Begin tomorrow morning,” said Sir Humphrey, “and then the rest of the day, until seven in the evening, is yours to do with as you please.”

  “And it will be lovely for Phyllis and me to be together again, darling, won’t it?” said Lady Calshott, beaming at her daughter.

  “Yes, lovely, Mummy,” said Phyllis, looking dejected.

  “Oh, just one thing,” said Sir Humphrey. “How would Sally like to use my car for getting about, and leave you two the motorised caravan, what?”

  “Oh, no, thanks,” said Sally, who had remembered a point of some importance. “I’d rather stick to the van, if you don’t mind, and for a very good reason. My van is all provisioned up, so that, if I get lost in the wilds, I’ve got sustenance. But I’ll walk to the village after breakfast, if you like, Sir Humphrey, and bring your car here for the others to use. How would that be?”

  “Excellent. Would you also call at the post-office to see whether there are any letters?”

  “I could do that,” said Angela Barton. “I’m going there, anyway.”

  “Yes, but you wouldn’t want to walk back here with them and then go off on your travels,” said Sir Humphrey, looking surprised at Angela’s offer. “Sally will pick up any correspondence for me, I’m sure.”

  On the following morning, breakfast over, Sally left the van and almost pranced off across the bridge to return to the inn and pick up Sir Humphrey’s car and any letters.

  She had barely crossed over the narrow stone bridge when she heard her name called. Turning, she saw Angela Barton following her. Politeness compelled her to wait until the sour little woman caught up with her, and they continued the walk side by side.

  “I’m expecting a letter,” Angela explained, “so I thought I would call at the post-office, although not for Humphrey’s letters. Then, if you wi
ll give me a lift, I think I will ask Jeremy Tamworth to take me across the loch in that boat they have. He promised he would when I was at their caravan last time. I can begin my hike from there. According to the map, one should be able to reach the head of the loch and then follow the river from that side. There seems to be some kind of road.”

  “But how will you get back?” asked Sally, not that she wanted to know, but it seemed only civil to make some effort at conversation.

  “Oh, not the same way, of course,” said Angela, who seemed unusually amiable that morning, “but one can cut off northwards after about three miles. There is a bus route, I’m told, which will bring me near enough to Tannasgan.”

  “The buses may be few and far between, don’t you think?” asked Sally.

  “I would be prepared to sit by the wayside and wait for a couple of hours, rather than take any more part in that ridiculous watching for the monster,” said Angela. “There is no such creature.”

  Sally had nothing to say in reply to this, and they went into the post-office together.

  Sally had already heard from Laura and hoped that this time there might be a letter from her parents or her grandmother. The type-written envelope was from Hampshire. That meant either Laura or Dame Beatrice. She put it into her handbag and noted that Angela had also been handed a letter which, in her turn, she tucked away to read later. There was no mail for Sir Humphrey.

  They reached the inn yard, picked up Sir Humphrey’s Ford, and Sally drove back to his caravan, accompanied, after all, by Angela.

  “Can I give you a lift anywhere?” she asked Angela, as she was about to walk to her own van.

  “Oh, I may as well come with you to see what the others are up to,” Angela ungraciously replied.

  “Any excuse for a nasty little bit of snooping, I suppose,” thought Sally. “O.K. Get in,” she said.

  They by-passed the first caravan and then its tent, and moved on to the second caravan which was situated about two miles further on. There she and Angela got out and Sally walked up to the caravan and hammered on the door. To her great surprise, it was not one of the young people who materialised, but Major Tamworth in pyjamas and dressing-gown and wearing overnight stubble on his cheeks and chin.