Palmer-Jones 05 - Sea Fever Page 2

  Muriel returned reluctantly to her seat. “ I don’t know,” she said. “Not exactly. About twelve months ago. He’s phoned since then, but he’s not been back to stay.”

  Dennis came to her rescue. “ He was always hard to keep at home,” he said. “ Even as a lad.”

  “Has he ever been in trouble with the police?” Molly asked.

  “He was charged once,” Franks said. “It was soon after he’d left school. We didn’t find out until later. We thought he’d disappeared on one of his birdwatching trips. He was in a bail hostel in the city. But he was found not guilty in the Crown Court. He hasn’t got a criminal record.”

  “What was he charged with?”

  “Burglary,” Franks said. “He was supposed to have broken into a house.”

  “It was all lies,” Muriel Franks interrupted. “The case was thrown out. He should have come to us and told us all about it. We would have understood. We always did. We only found out he’d been in court because there was a fire in the hostel, and Greg’s picture was in the paper. He was a hero. He saved someone.”

  She seemed about to launch into the details of Greg’s heroism, but, with one of her sudden swings of mood, changed her mind.

  “All this isn’t important!” she said impatiently. “I can tell you exactly where Greg will be this weekend. You should be getting ready to meet him, not talking about the past.” She sprang once again to her feet. “A letter came here a while ago by mistake,” she said. “ It wasn’t personal—I wouldn’t ever open his personal mail—but I thought it might give me some idea where he was. I knew it would be useful. I’ll get it for you!” She hurried from the room.

  Dennis Franks moved uneasily in his chair. On the road outside there was the squeal of brakes and the sound of a horn.

  “I don’t know what to do for the best,” he said. “She’s set her heart on seeing him. I know he’ll not stay, but when he comes, he always puts on a big show—brings her flowers and that—so he makes her happy for a while. I’m afraid she’s made herself ill. She’s always been wrapped up in him. Perhaps when I retire, I’ll be able to help her more.… It’s a difficult age for a woman.…”

  He coughed a small, embarrassed cough, and they waited for Muriel Franks to return.

  She rushed back into the room, breathless and eager, waving a folded piece of white paper. In the other hand was a brown envelope. She handed the paper to George, who read it carefully. The letter was a receipt and confirmation of booking. It was from a travel agency which specialised in natural history and birdwatching, based in Bristol. It said that a place had been reserved for Gregory Franks on the pelagic trip which would leave Heanor on August 27th. Accommodation had been booked at Myrtle Cottage at Porthkennan for the remainder of the week. It was signed by Rob Earl, the agency’s resident ornithologist.

  “I didn’t understand it,” Muriel Franks said. “What is a pelagic trip anyway?”

  “Pelagic is an American expression,” George said, “ It’s a boat trip especially organised to allow birdwatchers the best possible views of rare seabirds.”

  But as he spoke, he was staring at the letter like a boy at a forbidden box of matches. It was a temptation. Of all birds he loved seabirds best. To George, a child brought up in the Midlands, they had represented the freedom of seaside holidays. Now he was drawn by the mystery of their life at sea. There was a challenge to find out more about them.

  “Will you go?” Muriel Franks demanded. “ We’ll pay all your expenses. Will you go to Cornwall to talk to Gregory?”

  In the stifling room, surrounded by traffic noise, in the company of these unhappy people, Cornwall was suddenly irresistible. George knew he should wait, discuss the thing with Molly, that to go would only encourage a neurotic woman in her fantasies, but he could not help himself.

  “Yes,” he said, trying to sound as if the decision had been a difficult one to make. “ Yes, we’ll go.”

  Rob Earl was fast asleep, dreaming of teeming Wilson’s petrels and shearwaters as big as vultures which flew so close to him that he could reach out his hand and feel the rush of wind as they passed. He was in his office, leaning back in his chair with his feet on his desk. He had come to work with a hangover. The night before, he and his boss had become stupendously drunk. When his boss had offered to take him out for a drink, he had been afraid that it was to give him the sack. It seemed a luxury for a provincial chain of travel agents, even one specially involved with birdwatchers, to employ a resident ornithologist. In fact, it was to tell Rob that the agency was being bought out by a Bristol businessman. “ We need fresh capital,” he had said in an attempt to persuade himself and Rob that the move was a positive one. “He’s promised me there’ll be no major changes. We’ll be able to expand. That must compensate for any loss of independence.”

  Yet despite his words he drank with a depressed and determined ferocity, and Rob felt obliged to keep up with him. He had no idea what the change of organisation would mean to him, but his boss wanted to buy him drinks, and he was prepared to drink them. They ended up in a scruffy old pub at the top of Cromwell Road, and Rob could not remember walking home.

  As he spent the morning answering the phone and checking airline timetables, he supposed he was getting too old for such excess. At lunchtime he shut his office door, took his phone off the hook, and went to sleep.

  He woke to the sound of his secretary next door, banging inexpertly at a typewriter. Laura was employed under the youth training scheme. Rob frowned. It was not only that the noise irritated his hangover. He cared about his work. It offended him to send letters thick with Liquid Paper to his customers. He needed a break, he thought. He had spent too long in the office. He looked forward to a week in Cornwall. He began to drowse again, when he heard Laura talking. There were other voices which he recognised, and he wondered for an instant if he was dreaming again.

  “George!” he shouted through the closed door. “What are you doing here? Where are you going? Have those bloody Cornish birders been suppressing again? Why are you the only foreigner they’re prepared to talk to?”

  The door opened, and George and Molly walked into the office. George looked at the recumbent figure behind the desk. Permanent employment had failed to give Rob Earl an air of respectability. He was unshaven, hollow-eyed. Molly had always liked him but thought he was reckless and a little dangerous.

  “You’re getting paranoid. It’s nothing to do with the birds.” George spoke sternly, perhaps because he needed to convince himself that he was there strictly on business. By his side Molly stood quietly, discreetly disapproving. She thought there were other ways of helping Muriel Franks than to drive to Porthkennan. In the car there had been an argument. “At least it’s only indirectly to do with birds. We want your help. And perhaps the Cornish birders tell me about rare birds because I don’t call them ‘bloody Corns.’”

  Laura had begun to type again. Rob looked at his watch. “The pubs are open,” he said. “ Let’s have a drink, and you can tell me all about it. I haven’t got long. I’m going to Porthkennan to stay with Rose Pengelly this afternoon.”

  “We haven’t time for a drink,” George said. “And I know about Porthkennan. We’re here on business. We need to talk to Greg Franks. You are still expecting him on the pelagic you’ve organised?”

  Rob rummaged through the papers on his desk and pulled out a typed list. “Yes,” he said. “He confirmed the booking last week.”

  He looked up at George and smiled. Molly thought again that he was dangerous. “ Why don’t you come with us, George?” he said. His voice was quiet and persuasive. “ There’s nothing more exciting than seawatching, nothing in the world. There’s a spare place on the boat and plenty of room at Rose Pengelly’s. You still need Wilson’s petrel, don’t you, George? People on the last three pelagics I’ve organised have had brilliant views. Then we’ll spend the rest of the week in Cornwall with the first migrants coming in, and regular trips to Porthkennan Head for the seawatching
if the weather blows up. If it’s business, why don’t you put it down as expenses? Claim it back from the taxman.”

  Since the meeting with the Franks, George had been thinking of Cornwall as a vague, wistful dream of deep valleys and salt west wind. He knew it was romantic folly, a reaction to the hot summer spent inland. He knew Molly thought he was being weak and unprincipled.

  “We’ll just talk to Greg,” he had told her in the car. “We’ll just stay one night, then come home. You can tell him how depressed his mother is. Then it’ll all be over.”

  Now Rob’s words made the promise seem rash. He did need Wilson’s petrel. And what, after all, was wrong with taking a few days off for some seawatching?

  “You make a commission on every place you sell, do you?” he said, unwilling to give in immediately.

  Rob grinned. “ We’ll have a brilliant week,” he said. “You’ll see. You’ll never forget it.”

  Chapter Two

  Gerald Matthews tried to decide occasionally why he found Rose Pengelly so attractive. He was a scientist, after all, and trained to be analytical. At first he thought that his loneliness was clouding his judgement. He had few friends of either sex, and after his time alone perhaps he would have been excited by any woman who showed him kindness. But it was more than that. Even before Rose became pregnant, he could tell that other men were fascinated by her. Quite often her house was filled by men, and as she moved among them, pouring wine, laughing, every one of them was affected by her. They become kinder, more vital, more intelligent, because she was there. The sweetest moments for Gerald were when she chose him to be her confidant. She would slip away from the crowd, pull on her jacket, and whisper to him.

  “I need some fresh air. Let’s leave them to it.”

  She would tuck her arm into Gerald’s, and they would walk down the lane between the overgrown hedges and out onto the rocky path to the headland. The walks over the short grass to the point filled him with joy and hope. For days he would believe that she might come to care for him. Then the magic would wear off, and he would be left with a searing frustration, because nothing ever developed from the friendship. On one of the evenings at Porthkennan he had tried to kiss her. Past the bend in the lane, so they could not be seen from the cottage, he had pulled her clumsily towards him. With a little laugh she had broken away; then she ran down the lane, leaving a trail of her footprints in the moonlight. At the coast path she turned and called to him, “ Come on, Gerald, you old slowcoach,” in her old tone, as if nothing had happened. They continued their walk to the headland.

  When she told him she was pregnant, he was shattered. He had no idea she had a relationship with anyone else. He thought he was the only man she confided in. When she told him, they were sitting in the kitchen of her cottage. She was perched on the thick windowsill, staring out of the open window down the valley. It was May, and all the trees were in blossom.

  “Who is the father?” Gerald demanded. He might have been a Victorian patriarch.

  “That’s not important,” she said, seeming not to realise how upset he was. “Not really. I wanted to be a mother again before it’s too late.”

  It was true that it was almost too late. One of the mysteries of her attraction was that she made no pretence of her age. Her dark hair was streaked at the front with grey, and her hands were rough and lined like an old woman’s hands. She had teenage children from a marriage which had finished years before.

  Rose Pengelly made her living by letting her converted farm buildings to families in the summer and to birdwatchers in the spring and autumn. The house was usually chaotic, but she seemed not to mind the visitors’ wandering in, disturbing her work. She also designed knitwear and had developed a thriving mail order business. She made bright exotic jerseys with motifs of birds and butterflies. Often she wore her own creations, and as she grew larger, she favoured long shapeless cardigans and fringed shawls. She looked like an Indian squaw. Throughout her pregnancy she continued to work. She drove an old blue minivan and took cones of coloured wool and patterns to the women in the neighbourhood who knitted for her. By then it was autumn, and when Gerald came to the house, the strands of wool strung around the kitchen were orange, yellow, and brown. The birdwatchers came as usual, too.

  She charged them little, and they slept in bunks in the barn. Rose provided breakfast for them, and each morning in October she was in the kitchen by the big white cooker grilling bacon, frying eggs, huge and fertile. Gerald found it hard to stay away.

  The baby, a daughter, was born at home on Christmas Eve. Gerald visited the following day, his arms filled with presents for them both. In the kitchen was a decorated tree, and Rose’s older children drinking beer with their friends. They seemed to take their mother’s confinement for granted and hardly acknowledged him as he walked through on his way to the bedroom. There the baby lay on her back in a wooden cradle, her arms and fingers moving, anemone-like towards the ceiling. Gerald expected Rose to be different, changed by the experience of giving birth, but she was just the same. She was sitting up in bed knitting. Outside it was almost dark, and the room was warm and softly lit. She smiled at him and opened the presents excitedly, so the wrapping was scattered over the big bed and fell onto the floor. The baby was named Matilda.

  At first that winter was blissful. There were weeks of clear days with sunshine and cold mornings. Occasionally there was a little frost. There were no birdwatchers in the bunk-house, and Gerald had Rose to himself. She never mentioned Matilda’s father, and he never asked. She seemed to have no contact with him. There were no unexpected visitors at the cottage. Sometimes Gerald dreamed that he might ask Rose to marry him, but he could not bring himself to do it. It was not only the fear of rejection which prevented him from proposing to her. It was the honesty which told him that such a marriage could never work. Rose was so cluttered and untidy. When her older children came home from college, the house was full of their noisy music and loud, confident voices. It was a relief then to go back to his own home, a clean modern house on an estate in Heanor.

  Yet still he went back to her, and for a while he was content with her company. As the days grew longer, his mood changed, and the aching depression and frustration returned. He picked quarrels with her and stayed away from the cottage for days. She seemed not to notice his churlishness, though, and when he made an excuse to go to Porthkennan, she greeted him with her usual good temper.

  He had moved to Cornwall when he was in his late twenties. He was a graduate in electronics, and before the move he had held a responsible post with a high technology company near Bath. He had come to Cornwall on his way to Scilly, as many birdwatchers did every autumn. The idea of moving there had begun as a romantic fantasy. He dreamed it would solve all his problems but at first did not take the idea seriously. It was true that he hated the tedious and undemanding work of the factory. He hated Wiltshire, too—it was so full of people and so bad for birds. And he hated the people he worked with—or perhaps he envied them their cosy family lives, their friendly games of squash, their girlfriends. It had always been hard for him to keep girlfriends. It was because he was too honest, he told himself. He refused to put on the airs and pretensions of these southerners. These southern women, with their soft ways and their poses, never appreciated honesty. He was a Yorkshireman and proud of it.

  It occurred to him on one of his holidays that he could work for himself there. It might be beneath him to mend televisions and washing machines, but he could earn his living. Yet still he was reluctant to leave the security of employment and move to the south-west. It was only when an uncle died and left him some money that he decided quite suddenly to move and to set up in business for himself. The fact that he had taken such a risk still surprised him. When Matilda was born, he had lived in Cornwall for twelve years.

  Some of the more open-minded birdwatchers trusted him sufficiently to give him information about rare birds in the country.

  Gerald and Rose met through birdwatching.
Now, after the baby’s birth, he used it as an excuse to go out with her. He would phone her to tell her about rare birds in the southwest, and he, Rose, and Matilda would travel together to see them. He was proud to be seen in their company. It showed that he was not like the other maladjusted lonely birdwatchers who had to go to Thailand or the Philippines to buy themselves women. It made him like everyone else, a part of a cosy family.

  Rose had persuaded him to book for Rob Earl’s pelagic trip. “It’ll be great,” she said. “ You’ll love it. And it’ll be good to have you around here while the party is staying.” So then it was impossible for him to refuse.

  “I can’t spare the time,” he said, weakening. “ Not a whole week.”

  “Come just for the boat trip, then.”

  “Will you come out on the boat with us?” he asked.

  But she had laughed and refused to commit herself.

  Jane Pym wanted a drink. It had been a long day. In the morning a client who had discharged himself from psychiatric hospital slit his wrists in the waiting room. This was not an unusual occurrence—his hands and face were covered with evidence of self-mutilation—but it made a mess, and there was a new receptionist who overreacted, so the whole day was disrupted, and later interviews were conducted to the background noise of her tears. Jane Pym was forty, an experienced probation officer, but today she felt she was only keeping control of her work by an immense effort of will. There had been other days like that, and they had always ended in disaster.

  Perhaps she should plead illness and go home. But Roger would be at home, and she was more disturbed by him than by her clients. She made a large mug of instant black coffee and began to see the people who were waiting for her.

  The first client was a young man, a heroin addict who asked to be referred to the drug dependence unit of the hospital which had previously housed the wrist-slitter. Jane listened without sympathy or involvement. She was good at her job, but she had seen too many young addicts. Now they bored her. She no longer believed in their declarations of imminent reform. It was never that easy.