Gently in the Sun (13 page)

‘Where did she come from?’

‘Josephine?’

‘From Camden Town, by any chance?’

‘She certainly came from London, though I don’t recall what part. Esau met her on a fishing trip – it was when he was on the drifters. I have a hazy impression that they met in Ramsgate or Margate.’

‘What was her name?’

‘That’s asking too much! But if you want to know we can find it in the register.’

‘Can you remember the year she left him?’

‘Precisely. It was in the summer of nineteen-thirty.’

He was aware of the vicar staring at him gravely, a puckered little frown on the ecclesiastical brow. He had laid his pipe aside and placed the tips of his fingers together: now he was rocking them towards Gently in a manner of gentle reproof.

‘I’m not an idiot, you know, and I can guess what’s in your mind. Your colleague has already told me about that skeleton in the marrams. But it won’t do, Inspector, it won’t do at all. There’s a couple of hundred witnesses that Mrs Dawes really left her husband.’

‘A couple of hundred witnesses!’

Gently couldn’t help his incredulity.

‘A couple of hundred or
more
, and I was one of them myself. It was a seven-day wonder at Hiverton. The
village talked about it for weeks. She went off to the station in Albert Johnson’s hire car, swearing like a trooper and cursing Esau to high heaven. It was a tragedy, I admit, but not the sort that you’re thinking of.’

‘But that was the last that was heard of her?’

‘You’re wrong again. She wrote to her
acquaintances
. Our maid at the time had a letter from Josephine – it was a shocking epistle, highly ungrammatical.’

‘You saw it, did you?’

‘I did, Inspector. It made me congratulate myself on being rid of such a parishioner. After applying every conceivable epithet to her husband she declared her intention of never again leaving London. And she never did, you can be certain. There has never been a whisper of her. She couldn’t have set foot here without the whole village buzzing of it.’

‘And that was in the summer of nineteen-thirty?’

‘Yes, almost a year from the day on which I married them.’

‘Was there a child of the marriage?’

‘It was unblessed in every way.’

‘If you’ve no objections I should like to use your phone.’

The phone was in a niche under the stairs in the hall, and to use it one was obliged to adopt a semi-crouched position. As always there was a wait before Pagram came on: for what seemed like half-an-hour he was listening to the exchange’s murmur.

‘Pagram? Listen carefully – there’ve been further developments. It’s Campion’s mother that I want you to get a line on. Her name may be Dawes, a Mrs Esau
Dawes; and she may have been living with her mother in the summer of nineteen-thirty. The vital thing to know …’

He heard Pagram’s delighted chuckle.

‘This time we’ve beaten you to the punch, old horse! I’ve just taken a statement from an ex-neighbour of Mrs Campion’s. It’s all about the scarlet daughter – would you like me to read it over?’

‘Tell me when she left.’

‘Right … in the November of that year. She had a spat with her mother, if our source is to be relied on.’

‘Was she heard of after that?’

‘Not by this particular informant. She lived
next-door
to Mrs Campion until the outbreak of war, after she went to Hayes to the house of her married son.’

‘What was the daughter’s name?’

‘I tried to get it, but she couldn’t remember.’

‘
Was the daughter pregnant at the time
?’

‘Bless you, yes! Don’t you want the details?’

Gently eased his back away from the encroachments of the staircase. The lemonade had re-started his sweat, he could feel drops of it trickling down his brow. Or was the heat entirely responsible … was some of it due to a different reason? From down the hallway he could hear the vicar in conversation with a tradesman.

‘Are you with me? The daughter was married in nineteen-twenty-nine. Her mother disapproved and she wasn’t married from home. My informant never saw the man and Mrs Campion never spoke about him – the impression was that he was of the roving kind, or anyway, unrespectable.

‘She came back again a year later, not much to the joy of Mrs Campion. The old lady was a bit old-fashioned and her daughter had the reputation of being a man-eater. But the girlie was having a child, which I dare say made a difference; so she duly stayed on and had it – a girl, of course: our old friend Rachel.

‘Then there happened this spat between them and the daughter once more slung her hook. She went off in a towering passion, leaving her baby and junk behind her. Her mother thought she’d be coming back for them, but when she didn’t, wasn’t too surprised. So the baby stayed there and was brought up by its grandmother. It was known from the beginning as Rachel Campion.

‘Those are the facts, old man, less the picturesque trimmings. My informant, needless to say, put the least favourable construction on them.’

It had to be the same woman! Gently clutched at his moist receiver. Every detail fitted pat, there wasn’t a single trace of discrepancy. And she
had
come back to Hiverton, back to that lonely grave in the marrams. And nobody had missed her at Hiverton. Nobody had missed her at Camden Town.

‘Hallo? I want something else done.’

‘I could hear you thinking it up.’

‘The local police have sent in some dental
impressions
. I’m pretty well certain that they belong to Rachel’s mother.’

‘Oh no – don’t shove that on to us!’

‘Will you see what
you
can do?’

‘Why not? The taxpayers expect something for their
money. By the way, as you sit there sweating in Northshire …’

Pagram’s voice grew suddenly fainter and more distant, and in its place Gently could hear a soft and sibilant drumming. For an instant it grew louder and resembled something familiar; then, as though a switch were pulled, it was cut off entirely.

‘Recognize that, old man?’

‘Would it be the sound of rain?’

‘Rain is right – if you make a habit of the British understatement! The stuff is fairly whirring down. We’re in the middle of a freak storm. Over the City way it’s as black as ink, and there’s a lot of lightning without any thunder. And here’s a tip – keep your mac handy: the stuff is heading straight up-country.’

Gently jammed the receiver on its cradle and hurried back to the vicar’s den.

‘That register … I’d like to see it.’

‘Come with me then. It’s kept in the vestry.’

Even a townsman could spot it now, the terrific weather that was breeding. The southern sky was all in a haze, and northward the landscape as fragile as glass. There was a tense, galvanic stillness. The clamour of a blackbird sounded like a threat. On a distant farm, seeming unable to stop itself, a cock was crowing again and again.

‘I could smell this coming all day.’

The vicar was forced to take two strides to Gently’s one.

‘There was scarcely any dew – did you happen to notice it? In this weather it’s a sign that we’re going to catch it.’

‘I had a feeling, too.’

‘Ah! You’re country-bred, aren’t you?’

‘Do you keep the church locked?’

‘Good gracious no. Whatever for?’

As he led him up the aisle the vicar gave his chuckle again:

‘Talking of that and Bob Hawks puts me in mind of something else. I caught him in here yesterday, and what do you think he was after? The date of his mother’s wedding!
If
she was wedded would be more like it!’

‘You mean?’ Gently caught him by the arm. ‘He was in here –
looking at the register
?’

‘Just so, as large as life. I had to laugh about it afterwards.’

Gently almost ran into the vestry. The register was lying on a chest of drawers. Quickly he flickered through the pages of life, hope, and mortality. The name stood plump and plain: it was Josephine Rachel Campion. And beside it, like an evil omen, lay a single, tarry thumb mark.

H
E WAS STILL
nearly running when he got to the beach, but he had known, at every step of the way, that he was making haste too late. His instinct had been right – he should have fastened himself to the Sea-King! It was useless now to pretend that he didn’t know how Esau worked.

From the top of the gap, panting, he saw the whole tragic tableau. The rays of the pre-tempest sun drew it in almost psychic luminosity. The sea was as green as grass and the beach shining white. The men on it were as dark brush strokes, the boat, a knifed daub. In the sky, a breathless bowl, there echoed a single, trembling sound: it was the chanting of the motor as the boat put out from shore.

Straight out to sea it was heading, leaving a rulered wake behind it. The surface was now so oily and placid that one could trace every arrowing ripple. Esau was standing to his helm, his upright figure stiff and implacable: he wore no cap over his silvery locks and they lifted slightly in the gentle air. On the beach they
were mostly fishermen, but with a sprinkling of hangers-on. All of them were watching silently and in attitudes of bewildered awe.

Gently plunged down the shallow slope, his feet dragging heavily in the sand.

‘Ahoy there … Esau Dawes!’

His voice sounded hoarse and futile.

‘Ahoy there …
Keep Going
! Ahoy!’

The strange acoustics made the sandhills ring with it. But one might as well have hailed the moon as to hail the departing Sea-King. All the reply was the putter of his engine, growing momently, inexorably fainter. On the air was a whiff of exhaust, on the shingle the print of the keel. Esau had beaten him by five short minutes, but they were as final as five long years.

‘It’s no good shouting – he won’t hear you.’

The fishermen were watching the intruder oddly. Did they know, these alien men, what had made the
Keep Going
put out? Spanton stood there biting his lip. Hawks could hardly get near enough to the sea. Pike, with one or two of the others, was muttering something under his breath.

‘But in heaven’s name … why let him do it?’

They had obviously assisted Esau to launch. The blocks, down which the boat had ridden, still lay in position on the beach.

‘He said he’d got some business.’

‘What – with this lot coming up?’

‘You don’t ask Esau what he’s doing. If he wants to launch, that’s up to him.’

But they knew, of course they did: they were
showing it like so many children. Without the exchanging of a word they had divined the state of affairs. Esau was launching, and that was enough they were fishermen and understood. They huddled
together
in a defensive knot and threw strange glances at the policeman from London.

‘Right – then we’ll launch another boat.’

There was a shrugging and shaking of heads.

‘As a police officer I’m ordering you to give me assistance!’

‘What’s the use of that, when we couldn’t
blessed-well
catch him?’

It was Pike who volunteered the explanation:

‘He’s got a Perkins petrol engine aboard her. On a sea like this she’ll do eleven knots … there isn’t one of us others can make eight between us.’

‘You – Spanton! How much fuel did he have on board?’

‘Full tanks.’ The young mate didn’t bother to look round.

‘How far will that take him?’

‘To Holland if he wants to go there. But you don’t need to worry – he’ll never get to Holland.’

‘Let him go!’ snarled Hawks. ‘It’s his own affair, isn’t it? He knows his own business or nobody can’t tell him.’

‘The glass has dropped to nothing.’

‘He’s got eyes in his head! Let him go, I say – what’s the sense in bringing him back?’

A gust of hot air whirled suddenly over the beach: it tossed up scraps of litter and hissed spitefully through
the marrams. It was followed by a moaning sound, hollow and frightening. The sun was now trapped in a net of the haze.

‘You hear that, Jimmy?’

Like blood was the sun. A pulsating ruddy eye, it seemed to boil behind the wrack. To the south the horizon was shuttered under mountains of solid darkness, their outriders advancing with malevolent rapidity. The noose of a hunter! On the glassy lake they were closing, on the clockwork toy that clattered naïvely over its surface.

‘It’s going to come on a-rummun.’

‘When you hear the Old Man groan …’

How had the air, from being torrid, grown cold so quickly – as though someone had opened the door of a gigantic refrigerator?

Dutt came plugging over the beach:

‘I’ve brought the car up the track, sir. Inspector Dyson’s gone to telephone to Air-Sea Rescue. He took one look down here, sir.’

‘Air-Sea Rescue!’

‘That’s right, sir. From Starmouth. He reckons that they might be able to get here.’

It was the barest of possibilities. The launch could be there in half-an-hour. From Starmouth, by sea, it wasn’t more than seven or eight miles. But then they had to get their hands on Esau – and then they had to get home again. And meanwhile, like the wrath of God …

Who could calculate the chances?

‘Is this something to do with us, sir?’

The reporters would liked to have known that, too. With their nostrils attuned for a killing, they were watching the event with a dour pertinacity.

‘For the moment, I want him back.’

Dutt accepted the hint without pressing his senior. The fishermen, who couldn’t have heard what was said, seemed to shrink a little closer in their obstinate huddle. A wind, now hot, now cold, was gusting wailfully up the beach: on the terrible pall to the south a net of lightning had started to flicker.

‘You won’t see no Air-Sea Rescue!’

They could hear the thunder in distant explosions. The sea had gone black only a few furlongs away, and in a moment the first raindrops were beating on their faces.

‘Look at it – ask yourself!’

Hawks was shaking in his glee.

‘There ain’t nothing going to fetch him – no, not nothing in this world. In a minute it’s going to blow like it never blew before!’

‘You shut your trap up, Bob!’

Young Spanton had turned on him in a fury.

‘Don’t you talk like that to me.’

‘Shut your trap, or I’ll knock you down!’

Hawks’s reply was lost in the uproar: the thunder was suddenly over their heads. A whirlwind of rain lashed down on the beach and immediately, it seemed, they were surrounded by darkness. There was a general rush for shelter, though everyone was drenched: it may have been the darkness that sent them all running. Their feet made leprous tracks in the newly-darkened
sand, while above them the thunder was sundering the very air.

Somebody had the key to the net store and into this the fishermen tumbled. There was little room inside except what was taken up by gear. The door was slammed and secured with a cord: a hurricane lamp was found and lit. The rain, pelting down on the sheet-iron roof, made a continuous roar between detonations of thunder.

‘Damn my hat, but it’s a clinker!’

The wind shrieked over the little hut. From its corrugated eaves there were produced a variety of whistlings.

‘We won’t never beach her again.’

‘Nor he’ll never get to Holland!’

‘Watch your tackle there, old partners – there’s a Dutchman got amongst us.’

For they weren’t alone in their cluttered den – Gently had managed to squeeze in behind them. A bedraggled figure in his clinging shirt, he stood with his back to the clamouring door. The fishermen silenced themselves directly. Pike, reaching up,
trimmed
the flickering hurricane. Every second or so it was bleached out by lightning: there was a small, cracked window which faced the sea.

‘Robert Hawks! I want to talk to you.’

The lean fisherman glared at him without coming forward. Under the smoky, yellowish light of the hurricane his features looked sharper and unnaturally savage.

‘I haven’t got nothing to say.’

‘Oh yes, I think you have.’

‘You know better than me, then!’

‘It’s to do with Mrs Dawes.’

For an instant the thunder crashed, making any response impossible. Outside a can or something broke loose: it went banging and clattering away up the marrams.

‘Mrs Dawes – what’s that to do with me?’

Hawkes’s face had changed, it was sullen and wary. His mates’ eyes had faltered from Gently to him – Spanton, especially, was regarding him intently.

‘That’s what I want to know.’

‘I can tell you straight out! I don’t know nothing about Esau’s missus.’

‘
Why did Esau kick her out
?’

‘Just you swim out and ask him.’

‘I’m asking
you
, Hawks.’

‘And I say I don’t know!’

Another bout of thunder, lightning sizzling on its tail. The hut blazed and seemed to disintegrate in the white blinding charge. When the glow of the
hurricane
took over again it showed Hawks, struggling futilely, in Gently’s massive grip.

‘Once more – I’m asking you!’

‘Take your hands off me!’

‘
Why did he kick her out
?’

‘How should I know more than the rest!’

Gently struck him across the face. Nobody made an attempt to stop him. A silent, motionless court, they stood like figures in a Dutch interior – a Rembrandt that changed to El Greco when the lightning destroyed the lamp.

‘I’ll report you –!’

‘Answer the question!’

‘I tell you straight—’

Gently hit him again. The twisted lips spat blood and showed the teeth in a vicious snarl.

‘Some night, when you’re not expecting it!’

He aimed a wicked kick at the groin. Gently shortened his grip on the canvas slop and shook the fisherman as though shaking a rat.

‘Answer me!’

‘How should – don’t hit me!’

His teeth were rattling in his head.

‘Everyone can tell you – it was to do with other men!’

‘
Which other men
?’

‘How should I – don’t hit me any more!’

‘
Why did she come back
?’

‘She didn’t!’

He attempted another kick.

For a moment Gently seemed to be crushing him under the weight of gigantic shoulders. Hawks, driven down on his knees, had his face turned full to the lamp: his eyes were cursing Gently, cursing from the depths of a fathomless hell.

Large eyes … dark eyes … eyes crazy with passion!

They were the eyes of Mixer’s photograph: they were the eyes of Rachel Campion.

With a motion that echoed Esau’s Gently hurled the fellow from him. He fell in a tumbled heap at the feet of his silent comrades.

‘And to think you helped him launch …’

Spanton kicked some loose sand at his face.

The little hut was savaged with lightning: when they could see again, Gently was gone.

He was halted outside the hut by a spectacle of unimaginable grandeur. Leaning against the howling wind, he stared seaward in awed unbelief.

The storm had by this time overrun the entire sky, sealing every horizon with its driving black squadrons. The sea had begun to make and there were breakers pounding the beach. The darkness was so complete that it might as well have been midnight. Excepting at one spot – and that was the phenomenon which astounded him! At about a mile out to sea there was an area of angelic light. Above it the clouds had hollowed into an enormous, twisting cauldron, down which, in slanted lines, the sun was pouring its silver fire.

And there was something in that area! – he sheltered his eyes from the sheeting rain. A fleck, no larger than a tiny white bird, showed where the
Keep Going
was still plugging along. Into the storm centre Esau had put her. He was riding the calm at the heart of the hurricane. The storm, which confounded the hearts of men, was friend and brethren to the white-bearded Sea-King.

Gently hurried down the gap to join the
rain-battered
Wolseley. Dyson, wearing a borrowed oily, had just arrived from the village.

‘No luck with Air-Sea Rescue – Dawes has had it, I’m afraid.’

‘Where’s the nearest lifeboat station?’

‘Castra, but if you’re thinking …’

And then, as Gently let in the clutch:

‘Where does Dawes come into this business,
anyway
?’

The nearest phone box was the one by the Beach Stores. It was cascading water, both inside and out. The instrument, at first, sounded dead as a door knocker; then it burst into life with a fizzing of interference.

‘Castra Lifeboat Shed.’

He was put through immediately. At the other end it was the cox’n who came on the line.

‘Put out in this lot! Do you know what you’re asking me?’

‘Just listen a moment until I give you the details.’

He explained the circumstances briefly, the cox’n answering him in grunts. At the end he was hung up with curt instructions to wait. Rain was coursing down the panel at the back of the box and from the roof, which appeared to be cracked, a trickle descended on his shoulders.

‘Right you are, now I’ve had a look. I reckon it may be going to clear. If you think your man can hang on for, say, another hour or more …’

‘I shall have to come along with you.’

‘You! Are you used to these capers?’

‘I might be able to persuade him … anyway, it’s a chance I shall have to take.’

It didn’t look any clearer as they hissed along the Starmouth Road. Gently was having to use his lights and to hold the car against the buffeting wind. Twice the lightning blazed from the road, apparently right
beneath their wheels: he had to brake to a crawl each time until his eyes became readjusted.

‘Did Dawes ever marry, by any chance?’

Now Dyson was probing away at the problem. Dutt they had left at Hiverton with a pair of glasses, borrowed from Neal. He was to watch from the coastguard lookout, to which a telephone was still connected. If he observed any change of course he was to pass it on to Castra.

‘He’d’ve been much younger, wouldn’t he?’

‘Where exactly do we turn?’