The Dancing Druids

Chapter Nine

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‘And at twelve o’clock the young man met the princess going to the bath…’

Ibid. (The Golden Bird)

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So Mrs. Bradley, Laura and Gascoigne booked rooms at Slepe, and on the day following Gascoigne’s admission to their circle, Laura got up early in the morning and went down to the beach to bathe. The tide was coming in, and bathing was comparatively safe. She took off pullover, shirt, slacks, socks and vest behind rocks, and, in the one-piece sea-green bathing costume she had put on underneath the rest of her clothing, she went cautiously seawards, wearing her rope-soled shoes.

She placed shoes and towel upon a rock which, she deduced, the sea would not reach until after she had finished her dip, and waded into the water.

The sea was grey and uninviting. The tide came crosswise, from the east, into the opening, and the undercurrent was strong.

Laura, who had been able to swim since she was six, treated unknown waters with respect. Having swum, keeping level with the shore, whilst she tested the idiosyncrasies of the locality, she at last struck out for the caves on the eastern side of the bay.

The water grew deep and seemed warmer. The undertow was noticeable, but did not drag sufficiently, she thought, to be dangerous. In less time than she had allowed she was out of deep water and was wading towards an opening in the rocks.

It was a most fascinating cave. So much was soon apparent.

The sand, which, opposite the pull-in, seemed dirty and indeterminate, here was firm and hard. Not much of it was left uncovered, for the tide was coming in fast. Laura would have liked to loiter and explore, but beyond establishing the fact that on the left side as she went in there was a long ledge of slippery rock which would, at a pinch, make a path to the back of the cave, she did not wait or linger for fear of the tide. She promised herself, however, a complete exploration of the cave when conditions were good.

She chose the easy way back. This was to swim with the full run of the incoming tide and let it take her across the bay.

So crosswise did the tide set that her lazy manœuvres took her across to the opposite side and much farther west than the spit of sand from which she had entered the water.

She accepted these conditions, and was brought up opposite a cliff-fall before which some great blocks of limestone had fallen to form great rocks. Even at low tide the water scarcely abandoned them, and they were overgrown with moss-like, slippery weed and small, hard, strongly-adhering shells.

Laura had no intention of making her way barefoot over such stuff to reach her clothes, so, on gaining the rocks, she sat in the water and rested for half a minute, and then set to work to swim round, level with the shore, until she came to her shoes and her towel.

She was within twenty yards of these objectives when a boy on the beach began throwing stones into the sea. He was a lad of about seventeen, and Laura was not aware of him except vaguely until a fairly heavy pebble landed half a yard in front of her. She called out. The boy continued, without, apparently, having noticed her, to hurl considerable numbers of pebbles into the water, most of them fairly heavy.

Finding remonstrance useless, Laura, who was a person of action and short temper, duck-dived, gathered pebbles, and, finding bottom, returned the compliment with all her strength and skill. The third pebble, to her satisfaction, found its billet. The boy yelled, and put his hands to his stomach.

‘Now, then!’ called Laura. ‘Lay off! I’m coming in.’

To her intense fury, the boy, his face like that of a demon, called out and began to pelt her. Hoping that an unlucky missile would not hit her on the head, she still swam in. Then she gathered a handful of pebbles, and soon a brisk battle was in progress. To Laura’s satisfaction her aim was considerably better than that of the enemy, whom she now saw as a chunky but undeveloped boy with an unathletic body and rather a large head. When he saw that he could not defeat or frighten her he gave up throwing pebbles and took to flight. Laura, whose blood was up, followed him as quickly as she could on the shifting pebbles, but he had too good a start, and she did not catch him.

She went back and dressed. To her great surprise and annoyance, the boy, accompanied by a tall, grey-haired man, came into the hotel dining-room just as she was finishing her breakfast.

She put down her table-napkin beside her plate, got up, and went over to the table at which the boy was seated.

‘Look here,’ she said, ‘what do you mean by throwing stones at me while I was in the water this morning?’

‘I didn’t know I should hit you with the stones,’ muttered the boy. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘You didn’t hit me with the stones or with anything else,’ responded Laura. ‘I can only imagine you are not quite right in the head.’

‘Which same head,’ said Gascoigne, when Laura had returned to her own table and had given an account of the matter, ‘it will give me great pleasure to twist off his neck if I catch him annoying you, or anybody else, in that way.’ He looked across at the boy and scowled.

The boy gave him a venomous glance, dropped his eyes, muttered something under his breath, and returned to his breakfast. The grey-haired man leaned forward and talked to him earnestly and at some length. Neither of them glanced again towards Mrs. Bradley’s table.

‘I wonder why he did it?’ said Mrs. Bradley thoughtfully. ‘The boy, I mean.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. I expect he’s just a lout,’ said Laura shortly. ‘It’s a nuisance he’s staying in the hotel. Still, I shall be ready for him next time if he tries any more of his tricks.’

After breakfast the grey-haired man came into the lounge where Laura was reading the paper, and apologized for the behaviour of the boy.

‘Ivor is rather undisciplined, I am afraid,’ he added, smiling. ‘He is not my son, of course, but I have spoken severely to him, and I don’t think he will behave like that again.’

‘He’d better not,’ said Laura, very shortly. The man lingered, but Laura returned to her newspaper, and, after a moment, he bowed and walked away.

Laura was fond of swimming, and although the bay was in most ways unattractive and, at some states of the tide, inclined to be dangerous, she went in with Gascoigne in the middle of the morning, while Mrs. Bradley, armed with her shapeless knitting, sat high up on the beach on a flat rock backed by the cliff and watched them.

‘Did you ever learn to swim?’ enquired Laura, coming up out of the water at the turn of the tide and seating herself at Mrs. Bradley’s feet.

‘Yes, child. Once I swam the Hellespont, in emulation of Lord Byron and to the surprise of the Turkish authorities.’

‘Did you really? I say, tell us about it!’ said Gascoigne. ‘Did you do it for a bet, or what?’

‘I did that I did in envy of great Caesar,’ Mrs. Bradley simply replied ; and from this statement she refused to depart, neither would she add one jot or tittle to it.

Laura stared out to sea, and then swung round on Gascoigne.

‘Gerry, I’m going to climb the hills and find the hole where my smugglers’ cave comes out.’

‘Do you possess a smugglers’ cave?’

‘Of course I do! I found it this morning, before that little beast pelted me with stones. Come on! I’ll race you getting dressed.’

She won this contest, and came out from behind rocks to find that Mrs. Bradley had rolled up her knitting in readiness to accompany them.

There was a path from the hotel garden which came out on to the slope of the hill. They followed this path through a little white-painted gate and climbed upwards until they came out at the top of a green-turfed, round-headed Down which broke away to steep cliffs, clean and white, which dropped to the creaming and sullen sea.

‘Now, the cave should come out somewhere here,’ said Laura beginning to cast around. ‘It comes from the edge of the bay, but I don’t suppose it goes straight up, do you? I mean, you couldn’t get smuggled goods up a sheer perpendicular face.’

‘Probably screened by bushes,’ said Gascoigne. ‘Are there any bushes up here?’

So far as the eye could reach, there were none at all.

‘Well, the mouth is almost bound to be hidden in some way, I suppose,’ agreed Laura. ‘We must just hunt about until we find it.’

But although they hunted until lunch-time, they found nothing which could reward them. Mrs. Bradley did not join in the search. She had brought her knitting and spent the time in studying the sea and the sky from a perch she had found for herself where a dip in the turf gave an uncomfortable but adequate seat.

The afternoon was spent by Gascoigne and Laura in examining the country north of the village. Except that they produced healthy appetites for their dinner they gained nothing but fresh air and the benefits of exercise.

‘I’m browned off here,’ said Laura, when dinner was over. ‘Let’s hire a boat and scull about on the bay.’

As it was quite dark by the time she put forward the suggestion, the project was frowned upon by Gascoigne, so Laura went early to bed and dreamt of smugglers’ holes labelled Keep Out, and boats that suddenly sprouted arms and legs and ran up the beach towards her.

Next morning she was up early, and, to rid herself of the effect of these nightmares, again went down to bathe. She kept a wary eye on the shore, but there was no sign of the boy who had thrown the stones at her. She had a cold, rough, enjoyable swim, but learnt no more about the cave.

When she got back to the hotel she found the grey-haired man in the entrance hall turning over the newspapers. He looked up as she came in. At that moment the boy came downstairs. Laura waited. As he passed her she said, in almost friendly tones:

‘Hullo, didn’t see you down on the beach this morning.’

The boy tried to take no notice, but he received such a determined nudge from the man that he lifted his smouldering eyes, one of which was now black-ringed, Laura noticed, and answered :

‘I don’t care much about bathing.’

‘Ivor was not allowed to learn to swim when he was small,’ said the grey-haired man, ‘and now he is diffident about trying.’

‘Well, it is a bit awkward when you’re his age,’ said Laura frankly. ‘Even if you have private lessons in a swimming-bath you’re fairly noticeable, and, in these days, when nearly everyone can swim—look here, I’ll teach you, if you like,’ she suddenly added to the boy.

‘No, thanks,’ said the boy. ‘I don’t want to.’ He turned and walked into the dining-room. The grey-haired man glanced at Laura, smiled, shrugged, and followed him.

That afternoon Laura went down to the shore with Gascoigne and Mrs. Bradley, and met the boy, who was aimlessly bouncing a ball against a rock. The grey-haired man was nowhere to be seen. The boy greeted them furtively, glanced about him, came up to Laura and said:

‘Look out for the Druids.’

‘What the devil did he mean by that?’ asked Gascoigne, when Laura had gone to get ready to bathe.

‘Time will show,’ Mrs. Bradley replied. ‘I think his guardian ill-treats him.’

When Laura came out from behind her rock, the boy went up to her and said :

‘I say, are you going in again?’

‘I am,’ she replied. ‘What about it?’

‘Why, only… so am I, if you’ll take me on,’ he said, quickly and awkwardly. ‘I’m very good at everything when I want to be. I don’t know how it is. I suppose it’s just natural.’

‘What do you say, Gerry?’ asked Laura of Gascoigne, who looked handsomer than ever in a tiny pair of bathing trunks. ‘Shall we see how good he is at everything?’ Already she was regretting her kindly impulse.

‘He can get his things if he likes,’ answered Gascoigne, coldly surveying the boy. The boy wilted before this god-like scrutiny, muttered, and walked away. Gascoigne shrugged, and soon he and Laura were in the water. Mrs. Bradley sat down on a flat rock and watched them for ten minutes. After this interval, the grey-haired man came down to the beach and trained a pair of binoculars on a yacht which was tacking across the mouth of the bay. Mrs. Bradley waited until she felt the man was fully absorbed, and then she went back to the hotel. It had not surprised her to discover that the name of the person to whom the woman at Newcombe Soulbury had addressed the letter which Mrs. Bradley had posted was also in the hotel register. It was the interesting and sinister name of Cassius, and Mrs. Bradley had already discovered that this was the name of the grey-haired, courteous, cold-eyed guardian of the oafish and thug-like boy.

‘Come here to watch us,’ she wrote in a note she left for Laura. ‘I knew that there would be repercussions from Newcombe Soulbury. The plot thickens, child.’

She left this note with the chambermaid, with instructions to hand it to no one but Laura herself, ordered the car, and drove to the ancient city of Cuchester.