Stephen Morris (33 page)

He moved forward to where the two girls were still watching the afterglow of the sunset. ‘Come,’ he said, and there was nothing of the man of business about him now. Only an old man was speaking to the two girls; a man tall, white-haired, and a little old-fashioned in his manner.

‘Come,’ he said. ‘We must get back to the hotel. They must be down by now. I think by the time we get back to the hotel we shall find a message from them from Ireland.’

He turned to Sheila and offered her his arm. ‘Will you come with me?’ he said.

The girl took his arm and they went stumbling over the heather towards the car.

‘All evening,’ she said, ‘I’ve been watching the gulls. They do it so easily – so effortlessly. All along the cliff.’ She turned to the old man. ‘It’s worth it, isn’t it?’ she said pathetically.

‘My dear,’ said the baronet, ‘you should ask them.’

And that was all that anybody said until they reached the hotel.

Rawdon dropped them at the porch and took the car round to the garage. Sir David ushered Helen and Sheila into the hall. He dropped his hat on to a peg and turned to face them.

‘You must go upstairs and go to bed,’ he sad incisively. ‘I promise you that I will come and tell you the moment we get any news.’ They stood before him like two children, mesmerised by their own trouble, by his sharply-defined features, by the clear enunciation of his words. ‘You understand? You are to go straight upstairs
and get your things off and go properly to bed. And go to sleep. Good night.’

Without a word they turned and went upstairs.

To everyone in pain there comes a breaking point, the point where fortitude breaks down. As often as not the crisis is precipitated by some discomfort of the most trifling description, the last straw in very fact. To Sheila as she lay in bed came the last straw. For three hours she had lain tossing from side to side, feverish and hot. Now as a crown to her misery came an irrational booming in her ears, a droning that she knew she could not stifle from her head.

And then, suddenly, she knew that Dennison was dead. She had reached the breaking point.

For a minute she lay stupefied, then came diversion. Through the thin partition between her room and Helen’s, she heard the bed creak suddenly, heard a footstep on the floor, and heard a window flung up. Then there was silence for a little; the girl opened her eyes and lay listening.

Somewhere down the passage another window opened, a door slammed, and then there was Rawdon bellowing in the passage outside her room to Sir David in the manager’s office.

‘Fisher! I say, Fisher! All right. They’re coming in now.’

Sheila leaped from her bed and opened the door. ‘Where are they?’ she asked.

Rawdon turned to her with a broad grin. ‘Listen,’ he said.

Faintly they heard the booming rising and falling gently on the night air, and a little louder.

‘That’s them coming in,’ he said in his soft little voice. ‘Go and put something on – you’ll catch cold.’ He
tapped at Helen’s door; they went in and stood together at the window. Helen was leaning on the window-sill.

Outside the moon was bright, the air very still. Beneath their window lay the river, black and mysterious, running out of sight into the darkness. From the night came the roar, louder now, droning and pulsating. Suddenly it ceased.

‘Shut off,’ said Rawdon quietly. ‘They’re putting down into the harbour.’

For an interminable time there was no sound. It must have been three minutes or more before there was a sudden sharp burst of engine, clearer now, and much closer. Then, after a long pause, came a gentle rumble rising and falling, now and again shutting off altogether. Rawdon relaxed his attitude and stood erect.

‘All over now,’ he said. ‘They’re on the water – taxiing into the beach, I should think.’

He bent again to listen. Far away down the estuary sounded the rumble, subdued and steady. It broke into a roar, died, and roared again. Then came a curious, slow coughing noise, a choking murmur and then silence, perfect, absolute.

Helen turned to Rawdon. ‘What did they put the engine on like that for?’ she asked.

‘Climbing up the beach. Now watch – they’ll send up a flare in a minute to show us where they are.’

For a quarter of an hour they stood by the window, staring into the darkness, watching for the signal. At last Rawdon stood up and looked at his watch.

‘Half-past one,’ he said. ‘They must have run out of Very lights.’ He turned to Helen. ‘I’m going down to see if I can raise a motor-boat,’ he said. ‘I don’t know that we shall be able to do much before dawn.’

Dennison sat beside Morris, cold and stiff. He had long ceased trying to peer ahead into the darkness and, but for an occasional glance over the side at the coast they were following, concentrated his attention on holding the electric torch steady on the compass. The torch was the only provision for night flying that they had made; it had been put in as an afterthought. Already the light was very low, but it would last them out.

He leaned over Morris to scrutinise the dim coast. They were flying on a compass course at about three thousand feet, the coast just visible on their beam and below. As Dennison leaned near Morris he could hear him singing something above the roaring of the engine, and smiled a little. Morris had a habit of singing old-fashioned Puritan hymns to pass the time; occasionally he would beat time with the unoccupied hand upon his knee.

Dennison touched him on the arm and pointed seawards to a light. He raised himself in his seat and placed his mouth close to the other’s helmet.

‘Lundy,’ he shouted. ‘North End. We ought to pick up Hartland in a minute.’

Morris nodded without making the effort to reply, stooped, took Dennison’s hand and directed the torch to the watch and to the petrol gauge. Then he replaced the hand in its former position with the light on the compass and nodded cheerfully.

In a minute they picked up Hartland Light. Morris stirred in his seat, throttled the engine a little, and put the machine on a slow downward slant. Dennison caught his eye and nodded. This was the last lighthouse on the coast before the entrance to the river; both were afraid of overshooting Padstow and flying on in search of it, uncertain of their bearings.

Morris brought her down to a thousand feet and flew close along the coast, scrutinising every bay. At this height the visibility was better; they could see every beach and headland and even the cottages on the cliffs, bright in the moonlight. After a quarter of an hour Dennison touched the pilot’s arm and spoke again.

‘This is Pentire Head,’ he shouted. ‘It’s a mile on the other side of this – one mile.’

Morris nodded and held up one finger in comprehension. They passed the head; before them lay a gap in the coast. It was Padstow Harbour.

Morris beat his hand cheerfully upon his thigh.

Dennison raised himself in his seat again, and pointed. ‘Put down well inside the low point,’ he said, ‘because of the bar.’

Morris settled himself into his seat, nodded again, and pulled back the throttle. The roar of the engine died from behind them; silence leaped up from the darkness and hit them shrewdly. Dennison put his head over the side and peered downwards. Already they were nearly over the mouth of the harbour; they sank rapidly towards the level, faintly corrugated water.

Lower and lower they sank. Silently they flitted between the points and into the mouth of the river.
Morris sat tense and motionless, straining his eyes forward in an attempt to read the dim surface of the water. Gently he flattened the glide and settled to the surface. Suddenly, at the last moment, he thrust the throttle hard open. The engine burst into life with a roar; Morris swung the machine through a small angle, shut off the engine, and sank down on to the water.

The machine took the water with a crash and a heavy lurch to starboard. Morris was flung from his seat on to Dennison; a cloud of spray came over them, the water foamed along the gunwale. One wing-tip dipped perilously into the water; Morris, half out of his seat, thrust violently upon his controls. The machine steadied on to an even keel and lost way upon the surface.

‘Damn it,’ said Morris. ‘I must have put her down cross wind after all. Feel if she’s making any water.’

Dennison stopped and felt beneath his feet, and listened.

‘All right,’ he said.

They looked towards the shore. ‘There’s a beach that we can put her up on over there,’ said Dennison. ‘There – just beside that hill. The town’s the other side – over there somewhere. We can’t get near it. It’s all rocky over there.’

‘Get the wheels down,’ said Morris. Dennison began to wind the wheels into the landing position; Morris opened up his engine and turned towards the beach.

The machine, running at ten knots, took the beach with a lurch and a jar, rearing her long bow up the sand. Morris gave her a burst of engine; she wallowed forward and crawled out of the water upon her wheels and up the beach. Another burst, and she was ploughing through powdery sand above high water level. The sand, caught up by the propeller, beat stingingly against their faces.

Morris leaned clumsily forward to the instrument-board
and switched off the engine. The rumble died to an irregular, intermittent coughing; the engine choked and came to rest. From all sides the silence closed in upon them strangely, so that their tiniest movements made a rustling that their stunned ears were able to detect and wonder at.

For a long time they sat motionless in the machine. At last Morris put up a hand and tugged feebly at the straps of his helmet. Dennison followed his example, unfastened the chin-strap with fumbling hands, and pulled the helmet from his head.

Morris sighed deeply, tried to raise himself from his seat, and sank back with a spasm of cramp. ‘Poop off a Very light,’ he said.

Dennison felt for the pistol in the rack beside his seat. Pistol and rack were gone. ‘I smashed against it when we landed,’ he said. ‘I expect it’s gone down into the bilge.’

With an effort he heaved himself from his seat, drew his legs over the gunwale, and dropped down on to the sand. Morris followed him; they stumbled painfully a little way along the beach, working their cramped muscles. Presently Dennison climbed back into the machine and searched vainly for the pistol; it had slipped somewhere into the recesses of the hull beyond his reach.

‘Leave the bloody thing,’ said Morris from the beach. ‘It will be light in a few hours. I’m going to lie down up in those sandhills. Chuck down the seat cushions and my helmet.’

Dennison dropped down from the cockpit and they went ploughing through the heavy sand to the dunes at the top of the beach, clumsy in their fleece-lined suits.

They found a hollow and threw themselves down. Morris scraped a hole for his hip, drew up the deep fur
collar about his ears, and shifted the leather cushion beneath his head.

‘Thank God that bloody job’s over,’ he said sourly, and fell immediately into a heavy, restless sleep.

Slowly the dawn came. The east grew grey, then rose colour as the light spread over the estuary. In the sand-hills one or two birds began to stir and twitter in the spear-like grasses; on the edge of the grassland appeared the dim forms of the rabbits in little clusters. A shaft of sunlight struck the summit of Stepper Point; the sleepers stirred and blinked uneasily at the night.

Dennison roused, raised himself on one elbow, and watched Morris go stumbling down to the water’s edge. As he walked he loosened the heavy collar from his neck and pulled the suit open a little. He reached a little pool of sea water in the sand, knelt down beside it, and began to bathe his face.

Dennison sat up and looked about him, moistening his dry lips. His mouth was dry and gritty with the sand, and his head, enveloped in fur, was hot and stuffy. He pulled the helmet off and threw it on the sand, stooped down, and began to unfasten the flying-suit from his ankles and wrists. Presently he wriggled out of it and felt better.