Cry of a Seagull Read online

  Joanne looked down and saw the red bucket among the stones and litter. ‘Naow.’ She imitated Derek’s disagreeable whine, and walked on upwards.

  Rose walked up out of the valley and stepped on to the damp gritty earth that was the shore of Noah’s Bowl. She did not have to turn round to know that the valley had gone and the lake was there again.

  When she came out of the thicket, the promising morning had taken back its promise. The grey rock was dark and wet. Joanne’s father was right. It had started to rain. Wait a minute. That was in the past, a year ago. This was now. The journeys with the horse were so real that it was often difficult to pull herself out of them, back into her own life.

  She turned up her collar and hurried home to help Gloria in the kitchen with breakfasts. Frying bacon and sausages and trying to keep pace with the toaster, which would burn the bread if you didn’t watch it, Rose tried to make a connection between the two beaches. What had poor unhappy Joanne got to do with little Georgie and her mother and the old man with a limp? The horse was often enigmatic, and you had to take in as much information as you could, and then try to spot the clues and put them all together and follow them into the heart of the crisis.

  Her right hand hurt, and she dropped a plate and broke it.

  ‘Clum-sy,’ Gloria said without looking round.

  ‘I’ve got a bad hand.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Gloria turned at once. She loved ailments and accidents.

  ‘Squashed it in a door.’

  Gloria sucked in her breath, as if she felt the pain herself. ‘Let’s see.’ She picked up the hand and moved the fingers. ‘Looks all right.’

  It did. The hand was not really injured, but Rose could feel the memory of the Lord’s iron grip.

  ‘Toast burning!’

  The work of the morning went on. Mollie rang up to say that Grandpa was weak, but ordering her about, which was a good sign. Rose said that everything was fine, and only told her the funny things, not the disasters, like the professor’s burned semolina and Dilys leaving.

  They missed Mollie at every turn, but they were managing all right as long as Philip stayed out of their way. In the anxiety of his responsibility, he was so interfering and bossy that they nicknamed him The General, to make the best of him with a joke.

  He was jumpy and nervous, and worried at them all the time. Rose was worried too, going over and over the people and events of her last journey. It was Hilda’s day off, so Gloria was preparing lunches. Rose was trying to help her in the kitchen and Mrs Ardis in the rooms. When her father told her for the third time to stop what she was doing and do something else, she blew up.

  ‘Leave me alone, Philip.’

  ‘Don’t call me Philip.’

  ‘Don’t nag at me then.’

  ‘It’s my responsibility to keep this place going. I’ve got to get you people organized.’

  ‘Oh—’ Rose was maddened. ‘Go and dig a grave and climb into it!’

  Joanne had got away with that, but Rose couldn’t. Her father got red in the face, as if he were very angry. Then he took her off guard by letting out his breath and saying quietly, ‘I thought we were a team.’

  ‘We are, Dad.’ Rose put her head against his chest. ‘I’m sorry, General.’

  ‘That’s all right.’ He patted her back vaguely.

  Gloria waved a kitchen knife at them. ‘Look, if you two are going to stage lovers’ quarrels and heartbreaking reconciliations, do it somewhere where you won’t be in my way.’

  ‘Is this the Wood Briar Hotel?’ A thin, pale woman came into the kitchen from the back door, and took a step back again when she saw Gloria’s knife. ‘I’ve come from the agency.’

  ‘Oh good, I did ring them to say we needed some help.’ Philip took his arms from round Rose. ‘You’re the new chambermaid. Jolly good. Come on, I’ll introduce you to Mrs Ardis and she’ll show you the ropes.’

  ‘Don’t like the look of her,’ Gloria said when they had gone. The hotel staff were always suspicious of any newcomer. ‘Isn’t he even going to interview her?’

  ‘Necessity is the grandmother of whatsit.’

  Rose went out to the verandah in front of the hotel, where Mr Vingo was sitting in his favourite sagging wicker chair, with a rug over his knees. She wanted to tell him about her journey to the stony little beach, but Toni was out there with Bernard the bearded photographer, who was playing backgammon with Professor Henry Watson.

  ‘Come and look at this, Rose.’ Mr Vingo had a book on his wide lap, open to a picture of a sweep of desert blown into ripples by the wind. ‘Beautiful, don’t you think?’

  She knelt beside him, and as she looked, the rippling sand became the waves of the sea at night, rolling gently, actually moving on the page, under the light of a three-quarter moon that showed a dark object bobbing in the water.

  Rose bent closer, staring.

  ‘Don’t stare so close to the book,’ Toni said. ‘You’ll ruin your eyes like I did, reading with a torch under the bedclothes after the nuns put the light out.’

  Rose stared and stared, but the sea had become sand and the vision was just a picture in a book again.

  ‘Your throw,’ the professor said impatiently to Bernard, who was looking at Toni.

  ‘Just a sec. Toni – hold it there a moment.’

  Toni was leaning on the verandah rail, wearing a white sweater six sizes too big, with her hands inside the sleeves. ‘You look stunning like that, shrouded in white, with the washed-out dunes behind you.’ He reached behind him for one of the cameras that were always with him.

  ‘Your turn.’ The professor rattled the dice in the cup.

  ‘Be right with you. Turn a little, Toni. Good. Look away from me a fraction more, the eyes dreaming …’

  Toni loved to pose. When Bernard had taken a photograph of Rose, standing with an armful of sheets in front of the stained glass window at the top of the stairs, she had giggled and blushed and tried to hide her face in the sheets; but he had taken the picture anyway.

  Rose sat back on her heels, bemused, and Mr Vingo shut the book and looked down at her without expression.

  ‘Where did you get that book?’ Rose whispered.

  ‘At the library.’

  ‘Did you see what I saw?’

  He shook his heavy head. ‘It’s for you to see, not me.’

  ‘In the water. A dark object, like part of a broken-up boat, or something. It was like seeing a bit of a film suddenly on the page.’

  ‘A new way of showing you clues.’ Mr Vingo nodded solemnly. ‘This is very exciting.’

  ‘Are you going to throw the dice or not, Bernard? If you’re not going to play, I’m going indoors.’ Professor Watson got up angrily, and was run into by Mrs Ardis, staggering out of the hotel door with one of the big ferns from the hall. She put it out on the steps in the rain and threw a disapproving look at Toni – ‘His assistant, ho, ho,’ was her private opinion of Toni and Bernie. She went back for the other fern and came out again with Philip Wood close behind her.

  ‘Surely you’ve got enough to do without that,’ he fussed at her. ‘Mrs Howard is asking for clean towels.’

  ‘Plants come first, General,’ she said sharply. ‘Then people.’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘Since they were on earth before we were.’ She settled the fern on to the bottom step and shook its bracts out in the rain, like shaking out a skirt. ‘And that new person you got is no use. Doesn’t know the meaning of work.’

  ‘I’ll see to her.’ Philip glanced to make sure the guests had not heard.

  Between him and Mrs Ardis, the new helper was ‘seen to’ so thoroughly that she left before the end of the afternoon, taking Ben’s small radio with her.

  Coming back from the annexe where she had joined Ben in a fruitless search for it, Rose’s eye was caught by the back of the tool shed, and she turned to look behind her, with the unlikely idea that Mr Kelly was projecting a film on to it. In the dusk, the boards were l
ighted like a cinema screen. Moving across them were the moonlit waters of the sea, low waves endlessly rolling forward, and among them, appearing and disappearing as it rose and fell, the dark object moved more slowly than the waves.

  Chapter Five

  Undefeated, The General got another helper from the agency. She was a waitress, but she was willing to do a bit in the rooms and kitchen as well. ‘Try me, I’ll do anything.’

  She was a slapdash, red-cheeked girl with coarse tawny hair and a violently energetic voice and behaviour. Her name was Tasha, but she hadn’t been in the hotel half a day before everyone was calling her Smasher or Crasher. Rose, who was famous for being clumsy, was delicate compared to her.

  A coach party was going to stop at Wood Briar and have a three-course lunch, all forty-two of them, including the guide and the driver. Help! But they could do it, and business was not so good this year that they could turn down such a big order.

  Samson Flite, Mollie’s friend who was a caterer, would come and do most of the cooking. They opened the double doors between the dining-room and the back lounge, and put extra chairs and tables there. Rose’s school friend Hazel came on her bike from the nearby village of Newcome Hollow. She would fill water glasses and remove dirty crockery from the tables, but not carry plates of food, because it made her too hungry.

  Abigail came with her pigtail tied with a big gingham bow to match her blue and white apron, and Bernard took a picture of her with a full tray balanced on the flat of one hand above her shoulder.

  ‘I’ll try that,’ Tasha said hopefully, but Gloria warned, ‘Smasher, don’t you dare …’

  Ben, who was usually out all day, stayed in to help. He wanted to put on a bow tie and be a wine waiter, but Philip was afraid of being arrested for aiding the delinquency of a minor, so Ben helped to dole out the food in the pantry: brimful ladles of soup and artistic designs of meat and three different coloured vegetables and mashed potato with a blob of butter in the dented top.

  ‘Much more fun than eating.’

  But he seemed to have something in his mouth every time Rose went out there.

  Bernard went off with Toni to take pictures in local pubs, and the Howards went out for lunch with Mr Kelly. It had been suggested to the Mumfords that they might like to take a taxi to the Inglenook Café, but they insisted on staying, crushed into a corner, highly disapproving, and asking the busy waitresses for things that were not on the menu. Professor Watson, either deliberately to be difficult, or because he didn’t realize what was up, invited a friend from town to have lunch with him, and ordered omelettes.

  Philip made the omelettes, successfully, thank heavens, but caused havoc in the kitchen by wanting too much stove space and expecting someone else to chop parsley and chives and hand him this and that. Hazel, a slow mover and thinker, got in everyone’s way, and had her feet trodden on, and knocked her hips on doorways, and tried to take away people’s plates before they were finished. One guest had to grapple with her, like a tug of war. Smasher broke three glasses and a coffee cup or two, and spilled soup into the pocket of the Professor’s friend’s tweed jacket. But on the whole, the lunch was a wild success, and the coach party stayed much too long and didn’t want to leave when the guide insisted they had to go and view a cathedral and a folk art museum before tea.

  ‘Whether they want to or not.’ Frank Foley, the professor’s friend laughed. ‘Forcible culture. They’ve paid for it, they’ve got to do it.’

  He was a delightful man with a crinkly, smiling face, who was the librarian of the Newcome Library. He didn’t want to leave either. The Professor asked him to play chess, but when he saw how busy everyone was, he went into the scullery and helped with the washing up, while the professor grumbled himself into a nap.

  Mr Vingo was out there also, with two aprons tied on him, since one wouldn’t go round. The dishwasher was overloaded, so he and Rose were washing glasses at the sink. Drying for them, the librarian, who had known Newcome for years and years, talked about the ancient history of the town.

  When he spoke of Newcome’s beginnings as a rough settlement for the valley people who escaped from the great flood, Rose risked asking him a question about Favour. She asked it casually, standing at the sink with her back to him, so that he could not guess that the horse meant anything special to her. If you were chosen as a Messenger of the Great Grey Horse, you had to work completely alone. You could never tell anyone what you were doing, or hint that you were leading a double life. Rose could only talk to Mr Vingo because he had been a messenger too.

  ‘Oh yes, I know about the legend, of course,’ Frank Foley said. ‘There are many local versions of it, most of them pure fantasy, as far as I can see.’

  ‘But they all have a horse in them, don’t they?’ Rose prompted him to see how much he knew. ‘Mr Vingo is composing a—’ Mr Vingo slapped the flat of his hand in the sink to splash her with suds. He hated anyone talking about his work, so she changed it to, ‘I – I’m very keen on horses, you see, so I’m specially interested.’

  ‘Well, there’s no doubt that at some early date there was a war horse up at the castle that belonged to an unsavoury character who called himself the Lord of the Moor, a really bad hat, by all accounts. Got up to some pretty weird things, and some people like to think that he still haunts the castle ruins and the place where the old valley used to be. But there’s no written evidence of that, and I personally think it’s a load of superstitious old rubbish.’

  Rose touched Mr Vingo’s hand under the soapy sink water, for she had seen the fiendish Lord and the devils and fearsome wraiths, more terrible than any local superstition could imagine.

  ‘If you like horses,’ the librarian said, ‘you may know about the old statue of the horse in the north end of the town.’

  ‘Where?’ Rose turned round.

  ‘In that run-down area the council is always wanting to clean up. The old cattle yard, it once was, but it’s more or less a junkyard now, and the statue is broken and quite filthy. Most people don’t know it’s there. It may not even be the same horse as the Lord of the Moor’s legendary charger – what was its name? I’ve read it somewhere, but I’ve forgotten.’

  Favour. She would not tell him.

  ‘Chuck me a dry tea towel, Rose, if you will. Fascinating isn’t it, these local legends that weave themselves around history like tangled vines?’

  If you only knew how fascinating. Rose found him a tea towel that was only slightly damp, and smiled confidently into his nice friendly face. If you only knew what I know – that Favour is still alive for all time, and I am his messenger!

  Rose had worked so well, that next day The General gave her the morning off. She was up early just the same to run on the beach with Ben.

  ‘Paint’s dry on the boat,’ he told her, as they slap-slapped along the hard wet sand. ‘We’re going to take her round from the harbour and moor her off Sandy Neck, opposite the hotel. You can come with us then, since you don’t have to work.’

  Rose didn’t say anything. She ran on, looking straight ahead.

  ‘I said, come with us.’ Ben turned his head towards her.

  ‘Ben, I can’t, I—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Something I’ve got to do.’

  ‘Got to do, got to do,’ Ben said angrily, in time to his strides. ‘Whenever I want you for something, there’s always something else you’ve got to do. You’re working yourself into the ground, Rose. By the time you’re my age, you’ll be an old woman.’

  ‘This isn’t work.’ Nothing connected with the horse was work.

  ‘Well, good, then you can come. I want to show you how to run the boat. We’ll go out to sea and put out some lines and trawl for a bit.’

  ‘Oh, Ben.’ Last summer, he had let her come fishing, but he would never let her handle the boat. If she had to turn the chance down now, would he ask her again? Oh, Ben. Did anyone else in the world have to suffer the agony of being torn between two loves?

 
‘I’ve got to go to Newcome with Mr Vingo.’

  ‘I’m going to do my sprint now.’ Ben’s jaw was stuck out and his eyes looked far ahead, as if Rose didn’t exist.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ben. Perhaps—’

  He turned his head to give her a smile that wasn’t a smile, but just a movement of the set mouth. ‘Forget it,’ he said, and ran on away from her.

  Jim Fisher was going into Newcome with the van for supplies, so Rose and Mr Vingo went with him on the hard high front seat, and asked him to drop them off at the northern end of the town.

  ‘Know where the old cattle market used to be, Jim?’

  ‘Before my day, and I’ve been here all my life. Wait though.’ Jim was a slow speaker, so when he said, ‘Wait,’ you waited a long time. ‘Seems to me my dad used to tell some old tale about meeting a girl at the market once. Carried baskets of eggs for her, and broke em.’ Pause. ‘Maisie, her name was.’ Jim took time off to chuckle.

  ‘So where was it? That’s where we want to go.’ Rose was doing the talking, since Mr Vingo was hanging on to the door, out of breath because Jim drove the van stop and go, braking for red lights at the last minute and taking corners as if he were driving a Roman chariot.

  ‘Somewhere round here. There’s that old church. Never build that up again, they won’t. Let’s see, we’ll have to cross the canal. Filthy old gutter, that is. What do you two want to come round here for anyway?’

  ‘It’s a historical project,’ Rose said. ‘For my holiday homework.’

  ‘Well, be careful.’ Jim stopped the van outside the gaunt grey church, which had its door and windows boarded up, and the top knocked off the steeple. The pavements were littered with newspapers and rubbish. An old lady wearing two hats and several frayed scarves crept along, weighed down by carrier bags full of what looked like dirty rags. A small group of boys leaned sullenly against the wall of a corner pub and looked at nothing with dead eyes.

  ‘Who’s looking after who?’ Jim called down from the van to Rose and Mr Vingo.