Mingled With Venom

Chapter 6

The Smugglers’ Inn

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With becoming modesty the hotel called itself The Smugglers’ Inn. It was the kind of place which attracts the same visitors year after year. It was expensive, but not ruinously so, children were not encouraged and dogs were barred. It was a family business and Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley had visited it at various times over the years and had known the proprietors, grandfather, father and son, for more than half a century. Old John Poltrethy had been dead for the last twenty years, his son Paul had retired and bought the house opposite the hotel, and the Smugglers’ was now in the possession of young Trevelyan Poltrethy, known to his constant and appreciative guests as Trev.

The original inn and the much larger annexe, which had a private bathroom to every bedroom, were separate buildings; but by an ingenious use of a passage made between the cellars of both, the lounge, the bar, the dining-room and the reception desk, which were all in the old building, could be reached without crossing over in the open air. Unless it was raining, however, most of the guests preferred to come out on to the terrace of the annexe, descend a short flight of steps and reach their objectives by crossing a corner of that courtyard which acted also as a car park.

This route was being taken by Dame Beatrice when a boorish man, thrusting past her on the steps, knocked into her and, with his momentum and his greater weight, caused her to lose her footing. She might have sustained a fall had not a dark-skinned, supple boy, who had been seated on the bottom step, leapt up and fielded her.

‘Well!’ she said, as he set her on her feer in the courtyard. ‘Whom must I thank for that?’

‘Gamaliel,’ said the youth, ‘but I like to be called Ubi.’

‘Where?’

‘Yes, Ubi for where. Where do I come from? Where am I going? The first I don’t know. The second is different. I am going to high places. I am going to be world champion.’

‘So far as I am concerned, you are world champion already. You have saved me from a very unpleasant fall.’

‘Yes, you are too old to be falling downstairs.’

‘I’m afraid you spilt your drink when you leapt up. You must let me get you another.’

‘No, because you would have to bring it out here. I am not allowed in the bar.’

‘Why, what have you done?’

‘Oh, nothing, and it is not my colour, in case you thought so. I am under age.’

‘Really? I should never have guessed it.’

‘No,’ said Gamaliel, well pleased. ‘Nobody thinks so, but there it is. I am sixteen years old and, of course, a man, but they do not allow me in bars. It is really very silly, because out here, if somebody brings me a bottle or a can, I can drink as much as I like.’

‘I hope that is not too much.’

‘Oh, no. I am very abstemious. Garnet would buy me anything I asked, but I am in training, also studying for my O levels.’

‘Oh, really? Good fortune attend you.’

‘It will. Either I pass and stay on at school to be head boy, or I fail and leave school and take up my career. My career is to be gold medallist at the next Olympic Games and then professional boxer like Muhammad Ali and into the big money.’

‘Splendid. I will get you your drink if you will tell me what you would like.’

On her way round to the bar she saw Bluebell, who was beginning to pack up her traps preparatory to returning to Seawards to cook the supper. In the bar was a thin man whose Viking head was supported on a scrawny neck balanced on an emaciated body. She ordered the beer for which Gamaliel had asked and a glass of sherry for herself.

As she made for the door the thin man caught up with her. ‘Let me take the sherry and open up for you,’ he said. He stopped when they reached Bluebell. ‘Ready to leave?’ he asked. ‘I won’t be a minute.’

Gamaliel beamed when he saw the brimming tankard.

‘Garnie,’ he said, ‘you must always catch old ladies when they fall downstairs. That is the way you get free beer.’ He tipped up the tankard, half-emptied it, lowered it, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and added, ‘Is it correct to drink a lady’s health when she buys you some beer?’

‘Certainly, Ubi.’

‘Should she reply?’

‘That is up to her.’

‘What is your name, dear old lady?’

‘Beatrice Lestrange Bradley.’

‘I drink your health.’

‘And I yours.’ She took a sip of sherry.

‘We must be off. Blue is ready to leave,’ said Garnet. Dame Beatrice, glass in hand, followed them with her eyes until they turned the corner. A car came round from the village street and turned into the car park. Three women got out.

‘We’re not stopping,’ said the largest and handsomest of them. ‘Just called by to ask whether you’ve settled in all right. Why are you drinking out here?’

‘Because a man too young to be allowed in the bar has just saved me from a tumble down these stone steps.’

‘Good for him. Who is he?’

‘The future boxing champion of the world. And now, let me speed you on your way, or you will be missing your dinner in Falmouth. Goodbye, Mrs Trevelyan-Twigg; goodbye, Miss Boorman, my dear. Enjoy your sightseeing.’

‘I’ll be back in a fortnight,’ said the member of the trio who had spoken. ‘I’m like the poor; you have me always with you.’

‘Au revoir, then, my dear Laura.’

‘Did you really almost fall down these steps?’

‘Only because an unmannerly man jostled me. Have no concern on my account.’

She watched their car drive off and then went into the hotel.

Gamaliel, carrying Bluebell’s belongings in the wake of her and her brother, said: ‘Old ladies are very kind people. Do you think this one is as kind as my grandmother?’

‘Your great grandmother, Gamaliel.’

‘That makes her sound older than she is.’

‘She was married at eighteen.’

‘How long will she live?’

‘Quien sabe?’

‘Yes, a silly question.’ He hitched up Bluebell’s easel and folding stool and followed the other two in silence up the village street.

When he had dumped his burdens in the hall and gone off to have a last swim before supper, Bluebell said: ‘That was a strange question.’

‘What was?’

‘How long will she live?’

‘Well, you gave the only possible answer.’

‘Yes, I suppose so. He does not know yet that our grandmother has asked for him and that mother has capitulated and is to stay on at Headlands and that only Fiona is to come here.’

‘I wish she were not coming here.’

‘Well, she could hardly go and stay at Campions. That would be too embarrassing for Diana, as she made clear.’

‘Yes, of course. I wish grandmother had not asked for Gamaliel. I shall miss him terribly.’

‘Perhaps he will elect not to go. He is of an age to make up his own mind, as we’ve agreed.’

‘He might have expectations if he does as she wishes. I would not attempt to stand in his way.’

‘Neither would Parsifal and I, but the decision must be made by him and by him alone. It is not as though he were our own child. If he were, I might think differently.’

‘I believe I love him better than if he were your own, but, so far as you are concerned, what is the difference?’

‘Not in the degree of my love. But if Gamaliel were my own child I think I would be selfish enough to keep him here, whatever advantages grandmother was able to give him. As it is, for his own sake, I must let him go if he decides that way. It is so petty to be poor! If we weren’t, I’d see grandmother at the devil before I’d let him go!’

‘Did the old lady he rescued show any interest in the picture you were painting?’

‘I don’t think she so much as glanced at it, although she had passed from the dining-room to the annexe while I was there and, later on, passed me again to visit Trev in his office, and returned to the annexe once more.’

‘I noticed, when she came to the bar counter when I was there, what very fine rings she was wearing. Trev told me she had booked in at the hotel for a month and that will cost her a pretty penny at today’s prices. He tells me that she runs a luxurious car and has her own chauffeur.’

‘Then I hope that I can interest her in a picture. I wonder whether she would like to have her portrait painted?’

The object of these remarks had gone to her room to get ready for dinner. The room, booked for her by her secretary, Laura Gavin, overlooked the cove and from the window she had a view of rocks and headland and the lower end of the Seawards slipway from the garden down to the strip of beach from which Gamaliel and Garnet swam and Parsifal and Bluebell occasionally splashed about in the shallows when the weather was warm.

Nearer to hand, although she could not see them, the young students who were spending part of the long vacation acting as supernumeraries to the hotel staff, were shouting and laughing in the fishermen’s tiny bay before they dried and dressed in their own little annexe in the car park before resuming their uniforms and preparing to wait at the dinner tables.

Dame Beatrice took her time and went down to dinner at eight.

Trev came up to the table. ‘Everything to your satisfaction, I hope, Dame Beatrice? Would you care for anything to drink?’

Dame Beatrice inspected the wine list and selected her half-bottle. ‘Who is that very charming young negro who went off with a man and the woman who was painting an adequate but uninspired view of the cove? He told me his name was Gamaliel, but that he prefers to be known as Ubi,’ she said.

‘Oh, he is an adopted boy. They live in that house just below the Methodist chapel which perhaps you can see from your bedroom window. The artist is the woman who adopted him.’

He went off to fetch the wine she had ordered and Dame Beatrice, with no premonition of what was to come, settled to her meal and enjoyed it. After dinner she took coffee and brandy in the dark little snuggery which was called the lounge, then went through the bar on to its narrow balcony for a last look at the sea before she retired to bed or, rather, to read in bed until she felt sleepy enough to put out the light.

In the morning she was awakened by the screaming of impatient gulls waiting for the fishermen to come in. It was barely six o’clock, but by seven she was out of the house and exploring a rough path which led from the hotel car park along the cliff. Houses clung to the hillside, with other houses, separated from them by the steep, winding hill which led out of the village towards Tregony and St Austell, rising above them, so that from where she was there appeared to be tier upon tier of white, silent edifices like a scene on a backcloth or in a dream.

Further along the path she came to some steep stone steps, but she passed these, pushed her way through long, flowering grasses and blackberry trails and came upon another flight of steps, but these led downwards and were so little used that they were grass and weed grown.

She descended cautiously and came to the little stream which marked the garden boundary of a fairly large house. There were stepping stones across the stream, but it ran fast and turbulently and, in any case, if she crossed it she would be trespassing.

As she stood there studying what appeared to be another tiny cove even smaller than the one beside which the hotel was built, a youth and a woman came out of the house and made their way towards the water. He was the dark, beautiful young man whom she had met on the previous evening. The woman was a stranger. Hers was a tall, slim figure dressed in a towelling bath-robe which reached to her knees. Her legs and feet were bare and as she let go of her clutch on the front of her robe to push aside an untrimmed bush on the other side of the garden, it was clear that the robe was her only garment. The boy was in bathing trunks and he was running and leaping ahead of her until he was suddenly aware of the visitor.

He checked, stared and then came over to her. The tall woman walked on, entered the cave which opened out by the far side of the cove and emerged wearing a bikini. She stood looking irresolutely at the incoming tide and then nerved herself and waded in.

‘Do you want to come across?’ the dark-skinned boy said winningly. ‘Take my hand and don’t slip on the stones.’

‘No, I am content to be where I am, thank you, Ubi,’ she replied.

‘All right. Then I shall join Fiona. She has come to live with us. My great grandmother wants me in exchange, but I shall not go.’

‘You have a choice?’

‘Oh, yes. There is nowhere to swim where my great grandmother lives. Besides, I won’t leave Garnet. What would he do without me?’

‘I cannot think. Enjoy your swimming. I am going back to breakfast.’

‘Could I have breakfast with you at the hotel? It will be a better breakfast than here, and I don’t have to go to school today.’

‘It will be a pleasure to give you breakfast and your companion, too, if she would like to come.’

‘Oh, yes, that will be great. I will let the others know.’

‘Very well. I will go back and make the arrangements. When may I expect you?’

‘In one hour. I myself could make it sooner, but—’ he jerked his head towards where Fiona, a timid naiad, was floundering about in four feet of water on a spasmodic, tentative breast-stroke— ‘you know what ladies are like.’

He ran back towards the house and shouted. The artist who had been painting a view of the cove on the previous day came out on to the lower balcony. Dame Beatrice climbed up the smugglers’ steps and, from the top, looked down again. The cliffs hid Fiona’s splashing struggles from her view, but out in the open she saw a dark, bobbing head which might have been that of a seal.

‘Laura would be hard put to it to keep pace with that boy,’ she thought. She cackled gently to herself. ‘I must make sure that it is a better breakfast than he gets at home. Fiona has gone to live with them and it was to have been in exchange for Ubi, but he has jibbed. Well, we should not be short of conversation at the breakfast table.’

Neither were they. Fiona said little, but Gamaliel more than made up for her taciturnity and by the end of the meal Dame Beatrice knew all about the family dinner party and the distribution of the family among the three houses. Fiona seemed indifferent to Gamaliel’s naïve disclosures and when, at the end of the meal, she thanked Dame Beatrice and stated that she had better return to Seawards to help Bluebell with the household chores, all the boy said was:

‘Yes, you go. Tell them I will be back soon to study and learn. I am hoping that Dame Beatrice will show me over the hotel. I have never been inside it before and I have to learn about staying in hotels because of my future career.’

Dame Beatrice, amused and rather touched by his ingenuous approach, took him into the dimly-lit lounge, out through the picture-windowed bar (closed, so early in the day) on to the bar terrace. She also showed him the entrance to the sauna bath which had been built underneath the broad terrace which ran round two sides of the annexe. He saw the annexe entrance hall and the flight of stairs which led down to the passage between the annexe and the dining-room in the old part of the house and then she showed him her bedroom and bathroom before she returned with him to the courtyard and the car park.

‘But, of course, you won’t stay in a place like this when you are world champion,’ she said. ‘You will stay in cities which have hotels the size of palaces.’

‘But they won’t be better than this?’

‘Oh, no, they won’t be better than this.’

‘It is strange, the way you became my friend.’

‘Why strange?’

‘Because you are the third lady who has been pushed in the back like that.’ He gave her details.

‘You are right to call it strange,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘People seem to be very clumsy at times.’

‘Oh I think the other incidents were meant to end in death,’ said Gamaliel calmly. ‘There is a smell of death around these parts, don’t you think?’

‘No, only of decaying shellfish,’ said Dame Beatrice, cackling.