Cry of a Seagull (14 page)

‘The forces of darkness can never die.' He spat the words at her scornfully.

‘Nor can Favour.' Her arms pinned by the soldiers, she threw back her head and strained towards him. ‘The forces of light are stronger than the forces of darkness!'

‘Light can be extinguished.' He looked at her as though she was less than nothing. ‘Darkness can't.'

The courtyard was growing rapidly dimmer, as if night were pouring into the enclosed and fortified space. Rose could hardly see the black garments of the Lord, although his pale face glimmered eerily and she could hear his mocking laugh. She could not see the soldiers. Their heavy boots and brutish voices sounded farther away. She staggered as the grip on her arms slackened.

Was it really darker, or had something happened to her eyes? The night was in her head. Blackness swirled through all the corridors of her brain. She struggled to hold on to her consciousness, but the light had gone, and she was falling into the abyss.

She plummeted down with a sickening lurch, like a
headlong fall in a dream, and crashed awake – in daylight again. She was lying on a grassy slope, with the open sky above and space round her, not the harsh high walls of the castle yard. She had reached the valley after all. Favour would be there.

She scrambled to her feet and almost fell down again, because her head was swimming. She steadied herself to run down to the bridge over the river, but the river and the valley were not there. Below her, the placid waters of Noah's Bowl reflected the clouds. Behind her, the Lord's castle was in ruins again, ornamented with a litter bin around which people had carelessly chucked their rubbish, and the familiar broken sign that said, ‘NO CAMPI G'.

She was back where she had started. Instead of escaping to Favour, she had been flung by the Lord and his fellow devils on through the centuries, forward into her own time and place.

Her body was weak and her head ached. She felt dazed and shaky. Her legs were like jelly. She would never make it home.

Somehow she got herself down the track and managed to stagger along the road as far as Hazel's house. She rang the bell and was leaning against the back door when Hazel opened it, so that she would have fallen on the kitchen floor if Hazel had not caught her.

‘Rose – what on earth?'

Hazel put her on to a chair at the table, where she had been reading a magazine and eating crisps.

‘Sorry, Hay. I came up to ask you – ask you something.' What was it? ‘And then for some reason, I felt a bit faint.'

‘I hope you haven't got flu.' Hazel moved her chair farther away. ‘You look rotten.'

‘Working too hard I expect.' Rose managed a weak smile.

‘That hotel will kill you,' Hazel said placidly.

Hotel. Yes, of course. That was the excuse for being here. Rose told Hazel about the lunch, and Hazel agreed to come and be a waitress, if her mum would let her, and Mrs Riggs agreed that she could – if she was really any use to Wood Briar.

‘They like my work, Mummy.'

‘Glad someone does.'

‘Why do you always—'

‘Oh, please,' Rose interrupted. The old familiar argument throbbed in her head like kettledrums. ‘Could you ring Dad and ask him to come and get me?'

Next day, Rose felt all right again, although terribly discouraged, and nobody suspected what she had been through. Nobody could have imagined such a nightmare anyway, except Mr Vingo. He was still away, alas, or he might have been able to help Rose to find Favour by playing the piano so that she could hear the enchanted tune.

Abigail came over to talk to him about the song they were going to perform together on Sunday, an old number especially chosen for Mr and Mrs Yardley's Golden Wedding, the favourite tune of their courting days. Abigail had brought her guitar.

‘Well, why is he suddenly not here?' Abigail was not as understanding as Rose about Mr Vingo's mysterious disappearances. ‘If we're gonna do a great job on ‘Me and My Girl', I've got to work with him to organize my chords.'

‘Well, play it anyway,' Rose said. Once before, when Abigail had played the flute, it had brought Favour's tune with it. ‘Give me a run through and I'll criticize.'

‘Like hell you will.' Sitting on Rose's bed, Abigail slung the brightly-coloured guitar strap over her shoulder. ‘You'll listen in awe-struck silence.'

I'll listen for Favour's tune, Rose thought. Abigail tuned the guitar, strummed a few chords and began to sing.

‘The bells are
ring
– ing

For me and my girl.

The birds are
sing
– ing

For me and my girl.

Everybody's been
know
– ing

To a wedding they're
go
– ing …'

Abigail's voice was not powerful, but true, and her American version of cockney added an unusual touch. But no hint of the seductive tune from the moor curled through the song. Rose kept expecting it to soar upwards through her head, but the song stayed on an earthly level, a popular ditty, brisk and disappointing.

When Abigail had attacked the final chords and finished with a flourish, Rose could not help saying, ‘It's not right!'

‘It is
so
right. I took the chords and fingering out of the golden oldies book. It just needs a bit of co-ordination with the piano.'

‘Sing it again, Ab.'

‘Not on your life. You don't appreciate great classical music.'

Everyone was caught up in the plans and preparation for the lunch, and they tried to get as much done as possible before Mollie came back. Even The General began to agree that perhaps – just perhaps – they might get away with it. They decorated the back lounge with streamers and helium balloons. Emerald green tablecloths, old Mrs Yardley's favourite colour, were laid cornerwise over the white cloths. Silver and glasses were polished. Wine was cooling in the cellar. Hilda spent a whole day making trifles, and Samson Flite kept turning up with artistic and luscious mousses and aspics and pies to put in the spare refrigerator. Everyone was at a high pitch of excitement. Rose pretended to be caught up in it, but inside she was ravaged by nagging anxiety.

Gully might have found a little rainwater in the bucket, but how long could a donkey live without food? If that front leg was broken, the bone might come through the skin and turn septic. If the donkey was never found alive, what would happen to the old man, whose central focus and reason for living would be lost?

It was Rose's job on Friday night to wind up all the hotel clocks that were not electric.

When Mrs Ardis found the hall clock stopped on Saturday morning, she announced, ‘I smell trouble.'

Rose could not be bothered to say, ‘I forgot.' She took the flowered cloth off the table by the hall window seat and went outside into the fresh morning to shake it out on the front steps. Off the end of Sandy Neck the glass windscreen of a fishing boat caught the early sun and winked it cheerily back at her.

‘You know what they say,' Mrs Ardis was droning when she came back. ‘A stopped clock can mean a stopped life.' Gully? Old Arthur Reade?

‘What on earth are you talking about, Mrs A?' Rose was in no mood to play up to Mrs Ardis's psychic dramas.

‘I don't want to worry you, but when someone in the family is gravely ill and a clock stops, it could mean bad news.'

The telephone rang.

‘There you are.' Mrs Ardis nodded towards it.

It was Mollie. Rose's heart jumped with fear.

‘Is – how's Grandpa?'

‘All right.'

‘Oh, thank God.'

‘Don't worry about him, darling. He's fine. Complaining a mile a minute, and he was rude to the doctor. But the bad news is that neither Ted nor Di can come this weekend after all, so I can't leave.'

‘Then we can't have the lunch party.' Rose's father had picked up the extension phone.

‘You must go ahead with it, Philip. You can't disappoint the Yardleys at the last minute.'

‘Can't be done without you.' Philip was firm, and for a moment Rose felt guiltily relieved, because she was so preoccupied with the plight of the donkey.

But when her mother pleaded, ‘Oh, Phil, surely you can manage,' Rose cut in strongly with, ‘Of course we can. We must. They've paid a deposit. Everything's almost ready anyway. Don't go feeble on us now, Dad.' She made her face into a smile, but she couldn't make her voice smile. ‘We'll be all right.'

And they were. The Golden Wedding lunch was a raving success. Even Rose's father had to admit that. The food was wonderful. The waitresses in their frilly aprons made no mistakes – not even Smasher. Ben had gone away with his father for a couple of days, but Mr Vingo turned up just in time and put on a white shirt and a dark suit that Rose didn't know he had, and performed as the wine waiter,
breathing hard over the guests' right shoulders as he filled their glasses. The elder Yardleys beamed with pleasure, and all their family and friends seemed relaxed and happy.

When the dessert plates were cleared away and coffee was poured, the speeches of congratulation began. Peter Yardley had promised to propose the health of the waitresses, so to avoid being embarrassed, Rose nipped out to the scullery to help with the monstrous pile of washing up.

From the lounge, she heard the opening notes of Mr Vingo at the piano, then Abigail's guitar joined in, and in a moment, her voice, plunging jauntily into ‘Me and My Girl', to cheers and applause.

But to Rose, it wasn't ‘Me and My Girl'. It was Favour's tune at last, sung sweetly in Abigail's voice, with words that were no ordinary words, but instantly recognizable to Rose.

She tore off her long kitchen apron, wiped her hands on it, and slipped out of the back door without anyone noticing. She was headed down the garden for the back gate to the wood, until she realized that the beckoning tune was behind her, not ahead.

She ran round the side of the hotel and across the road to the dunes. Favour might be among the sand hills. He might be galloping towards her along the beach, or surging up out of the sea.

Favour, oh, Favour. You are going to take me to where Gully is, so that I can save him.

From the top of a hillock, she plunged down to cross a hollow, tripped over something, or was tripped, and rolled down in the soft sand to the bottom of the hollow, and over and over to a deeper, darker place far below it, where she landed at the feet of the Lord of the Moor.

She saw the pointed toe of his high-heeled boot. A wickedly sharp spur was inches from her face.

‘So, you dared to come back for more.' His voice was a cold fury. ‘We let you off latht time, but thith ith the end of it!'

‘Yes – this is it!' Rose knew that at last the climax of her adventure was near. ‘Let me through!'

She was scrambling to her feet when he knocked her down again and put his foot on the back of her neck.

‘Thith time there is no ethcape. It's too late, Rose of all the world,' he said softly, in a terrible parody of Mr Vingo's name for her. ‘There is no world for you now.'

With the weight of his foot on her neck, Rose's face was being ground into the sand. It was blocking her eyes, her nose and mouth. She could not breathe. Help me, Favour! She would die here in this deep place under the dunes, and no one would ever find her, because in
their
time and space, she would be under the drifted sand that had piled up higher and higher over the years.

With a despairing effort, she managed to turn her head just enough to get a gasp of air, and squirmed her body sideways, kicking and struggling. Her outstretched hand found a piece of driftwood and she raised it above her head and crashed it against the leg that held her down.

The Lord gave a piercing yell, a sort of whistling cry of anguish. He staggered, and his weight lifted just enough for Rose to pull herself free and roll away from him. Panting and sobbing and coughing up sand, she crawled away up a dark slope, and half fell, half ran down the other side, and into the blessed sunlight.

The horse was waiting for her on the beach. She hurled herself at him, and somehow managed to pull herself on to his back. He turned his head to nudge her foot, and his grey eye was full of light and moving colours and distant spaces. He swung his head round again, tossed it in the air and took off over the sea.

The movement of his flight became the rocking of a boat. Rose was on the sea, sitting on a lobster pot in the stern of a large fishing boat, behind an open wheelhouse in which a burly man in oilskins and heavy boots was steering.

The sun was in his face, and he shaded his eyes with a large brown hand.

‘When we get round the point, I'll head in towards the bluff,' he said.'

‘You'll have to go forward, Jean, and see if you
can spot any of our markers. If we miss any of the pots, I don't trust some of those sharp newcomers not to haul 'em up.'

‘I'll be there, Dad.' Jean, who was also Rose, although she didn't know it, was splicing the ends of two ropes together. She seemed younger than Rose, but she moved her small fingers in a deft and nimble way that Rose could never aspire to, although she had remembered the round turn and two half hitches from the
Princess Vicky
, and demonstrated this with modest pride to Ben and his father when they tied up the dinghy.

Jean wiped her nose on the back of her hand and looked up from her work towards the land. She always liked to see the hotel that stood there beyond the dunes, because it had twisted chimneys and bits of roof at different angles, and funny little gables and porches and balconies stuck on in odd places.

Jean lived with her divorced mother in a high rise block of flats near London, and when she came to stay with her father, she lived with him and her grown-up brother in a modern house of no beauty. Some day, she would live in the kind of funny old house that looked from a distance as if a child had built it out of blocks, and stuck bits on at random.