The Death-Cap Dancers

Chapter 3: LOUSEWORT

« ^ »

‘I’m getting restless and peevish,’ said Tamsin after lunch next day. ‘It’s lovely weather and I want to go out and find something to paint. I can’t walk much because of this damned ankle, but if one of you would take me out on to the moors, I’m sure I could hirple my way well enough to get down to that beck I saw yesterday when Erica and I were out with John.’

‘So long as you go easy you’ll be all right,’ said Erica. ‘That strapping I’ve put on should hold the ankle. Isobel wants to see Long Cove Bay, so I’ll take her in my car if Hermione doesn’t mind taking you in hers.’

Hermione brought her car round and was relieved to note that Tamsin required very little assistance to get down the steps and cross the five yards of rough grass to the car. In no time they were passing the warden’s office and were out on the trail Hermione had followed with the forester and Tamsin with John Trent.

They came out by the Wayland signpost and were soon crossing the moor in the long slant which Hermione had seen ahead of her when she had realised she was lost. That Saturday evening seemed now to be a very long way behind her.

‘There should be a track over to the left just before we get to a bridge,’ said Tamsin. ‘We could turn off there, perhaps. I’m sure there ought to be something good. I want a dip in the moor with the beck going through it.’

‘Right. I’ll go slowly. Tell me when to stop and then I’ll do a scramble and come back and tell you what’s down in the dip. No point in putting that foot to the ground any more often than you need.’

The little stone bridge came into sight and the moorland track which Tamsin remembered from the day before ran out into a limitless expanse of heather. It was narrow and bumpy and Hermione drove slowly. It led suddenly and steeply downhill and then wound away upwards across a shoulder of the moor before it dipped down again to the beck.

Tamsin called a halt and said that, if Hermione was prepared to explore, this was a likely spot.

Hermione pulled up. A tiny path went off to the right and before she got very far she could hear the splashing sound of the beck. Soon she could see it not very far below her. It was bubbling over flat boulders and smaller stones and on the further side of it was a low hill with a rounded summit. The foot of the hill was strewn with more boulders and a rough path of varying width ran beside the stream and led on the right to a more distant and higher hill. A narrow stone bridge without copings, possibly a pack-horse bridge, lay across the stream and there was another and a rougher path on the other side of the water.

Hermione picked out the flattest bit of the path on her own side and went back to the car for the camp stool and folding chair they had put in the boot.

‘You don’t seem to have brought paints and things,’ she said on her return, when she had set up the stool and chair.

‘No, I don’t need them. I’m only going to make a sketch and a note of the colours. It’s enough for my kind of work. I can do the painting sitting on the balcony of the cabin.’

With Hermione’s help she managed the downward slope without too much difficulty and settled herself to her sketching. Hermione sat down and took out her cigarettes. She watched the artist at work for a bit and then said,

‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to do a bit of exploring. You’ll be all right, won’t you?’

‘Oh, yes. I’ve got the view I want. I shall need about half an hour.’

‘Good. I shan’t be long.’ She followed the path on her side of the beck and was soon mounting steadily. The path twisted and serpentined through dead bracken, grew rougher and then narrower. She stopped and looked back once or twice. Sometimes she could get a sight of Tamsin, sometimes the artist was hidden from view when the path took one of its sharp bends. The hillside was strewn with limestone boulders which looked like grey-fleeced wethers among the brown bracken. As she mounted she could see further hills.

She was gone for much longer than she had intended. When she returned by the same route — there was no other — it was to find that Tamsin had company, an eventuality she had not bargained for. Standing behind Tamsin and watching her at work was a sturdily-built man, hardly more than a youth, dressed in shorts, a leather jacket and heavy shoes. He had a rucksack on his shoulders and was wearing a rather rakish Tyrolean hat with a little red feather in it.

Hermione walked up to him.

‘Have you my friend’s permission to stand here and look over her shoulder?’ she asked.

‘It’s all right,’ said Tamsin without looking up. ‘He isn’t bothering me and I’ve nearly finished all I can do here.’

‘I could show her some better bits than this,’ said the youth. ‘I live around here and I know the moors pretty well. What would you say to a farm?’

‘A moorland farm?’ asked Tamsin.

‘Yes. That is to say, the farm itself is in a valley with pasture for sheep, but the moors rise right behind it, and it’s a really beautiful setting for a picture.’

‘How far is it?’ asked Hermione.

‘A dozen miles or so, the way I shall show you. There are one or two bits an artist might like to see on the way. Have you come far?’

‘No. We’ve got a holiday cabin in the Forestry Commission’s woods,’ replied Tamsin.

‘Oh, that’s all right, then. When you’ve seen the farm, I can show you a short cut home. All main road, once you come up out of the valley. All you have to do is to look out for a signpost to Gledge End. You can easily find your way from there. By the way, my name is Adam Penshaw.’

‘Tamsin Lindsay and this is Hermione Lestrange.’

A dozen miles across the moor they came to a village. It was stone-built and almost hidden away among tall trees in their autumn colouring. It had a small, squat-towered church and out beyond it, where the road rose again, was a lonely public house with a thatched entrance-porch and two of its four upstairs windows bricked up.

‘Shouldn’t think they get much custom there,’ said Hermione, as they passed it and the car took a winding, uphill road back on to the moor. ‘It’s very much isolated.’

‘Oh, it’s not all that far from the village,’ said the youth. ‘It used to be the shepherds’ pub when there were more sheep about than there are now.’

‘I think it would make a picture,’ said Tamsin. ‘One day we must have a drink there.’

The road still rose and around it, in front and on both sides, was the emptiness of the moor. On they went, up and over the hill, and Hermione was about to ask how much further they had to go when the countryside began to change. As they dipped down into the valley, the moor still rose away to the right, but there were some trees on grassy hillocks and when they reached a farm there were sheep and one or two cows grazing the sloping pastures.

The farm buildings were few. There was the farmhouse itself, red-roofed and with three chimneys. A small barn was behind it and almost adjoining the house on the side furthest from the travellers was a cattle-shed with some of the roof-tiles missing and with the farmyard midden in front of it.

Hermione stopped the car and Adam leaned forward from the back seat and asked, ‘Well, what about it, Tamsin? Do you want to get out and make a sketch?’

‘Not now,’ she said, ‘but perhaps another time.’

‘Look here, how much further are you taking us?’ asked Hermione. ‘I’m not a bit keen on driving over moorland roads after dark.’

‘Oh, you’ve seen nothing yet. Just press on a bit.’

They left the farm behind and the road mounted to the moors again. Hermione began to feel more and more dubious about the route they were taking and when the road made a hairpin bend she was moved to expostulate.

‘Oh, look here!’ she said. ‘You told us it was about twelve miles. We must have done twice that already.’

‘Ah, but you haven’t seen the view I wanted Tamsin to get. We’re almost at the junction with the main road to Gledge End. Pull up here and take a look.’

Hermione drew up at the side of the road. As soon as she had done so, the youth picked up his rucksack, which he had unslung and placed beside him on the back seat, and hopped smartly out of the car.

‘Thanks a lot for the lift,’ he said. ‘I’m staying just over there.’ He indicated a large house about two hundred yards away to the left. ‘Be seeing you.’

‘I don’t think he will!’ said Hermione furiously. ‘I’ve a good mind to get out and heave a rock at him. Of all the nerve! All he wanted was a lift home. Why couldn’t he have said so, instead of leading us this dance? Now what do we do?’

‘Keep straight on and hope he was telling us the truth about the main Gledge End road,’ said Tamsin.

‘We must be nearly at the coast!’

This proved to be the case, and when they reached the town which was signposted Long Cove Bay, there was the turning to Gledge End which the youth had promised.

‘I don’t altogether blame him,’ said Tamsin, waiting to make the remark until she deduced that Hermione had simmered down. ‘I suppose he’d have had to sleep in the heather if he hadn’t met us, and it’s not the best time of year to do that.’

Hermione snorted and made no attempt at any other reply. All the same, the main road, making some magnificent sweeps around the higher parts of the moor, was broad and well-surfaced and she realised that there was no need to go into Gledge End, for she found a narrow turning to Wayland and it was not quite dark by the time they stopped the car outside the cabin and the other two had come out to help Tamsin up the steps.

‘You’re later than we expected,’ said Erica. ‘We almost thought of sending out a search-party.’

‘We fell among thieves,’ said Tamsin. ‘Well, there was one thief, anyway. He stole our time and our petrol. Wait until Hermione gets back from the carpark and then we’ll tell you all about it.’

‘You ought to have come with us to Long Cove Bay. It’s a delightful fishing-village built in steps and slopes and all queer little corners and nooks and crannies. You’d love it. There must be lots of bits you’d like to sketch.’

‘Thanks. I think we’ve been to it, near enough. I wouldn’t mind going there again, but Hermy One is livid about this wretched youth who hi-jacked us into giving him a lift, so I don’t think I’ll suggest it at present.’

Hermione returned from the carpark with her equanimity restored. She had encountered John Trent, told him the story and they had laughed about it. She had mentioned the large house for which the youth had been making after he had jumped out of the car and she had described the rest of the locality and the turning on to the main road to Gledge End.

‘John says the house is a Youth Hostel,’ she concluded, ‘and the beastly boy would never have made it if we hadn’t picked him up, so I suppose we did our good deed for the day, however inadvertently. Oh, and John says that it’s worthwhile to take a look at the big notice-board in the reception centre from time to time, especially if the weather turns wet, because there is often some sort of entertainment laid on for the cabin people.’

‘Well, I expect it would only be a sing-song or the local pop group,’ said Isobel, ‘but it might make a change from sitting indoors and listening to the rain on the roof.’

There was no rain on the following day and plans had just been made for a whole day out, with a pub lunch, when there came a knock at the door. Erica, as usual, was the one to answer it. She came back to say that a boy wanted to know whether he could guide Tamsin to any more beauty spots.

‘I suppose he’s the boy you picked up yesterday,’ she added.

‘Do you want to speak to him?’

‘No, we don’t,’ said Hermione, ‘except to thank him kindly and tell him to clear off.’

‘Sorry,’ said Erica, returning to the door, ‘but all our plans are made. Did they take you in at the Youth Hostel?’

‘Oh, yes. I’d booked, but I got out of the coach at Gledge End when I ought to have stayed in for Long Cove Bay, so it was a real bonus meeting your friends.’

‘Yes, but not for them. Well, thanks for calling, but please don’t bother any more.’

‘I’ve hired a motorbike, so any messages you want run, shopping, errands—’

‘No, thank you. We can manage perfectly well for ourselves.’

‘I wonder how he found out where we were staying?’ said Tamsin, when the door was shut.

‘You as good as told him, I expect,’ said her sister.

‘But there are over thirty of these cabins. He can hardly have tried every one until he found ours.’

‘I suppose you told him your name. He had only to go to the office and say he had a message for you. Erica booked the cabin, but all our names are in the warden’s book. You can’t stay anywhere incognito unless you’re a member of the criminal classes.’

‘Oh, well, we’ve given him the bird, ’ said Erica comfortably. ‘I expect he was surprised to meet me on the doorstep. He probably thought Tamsin and Hermy were here on their own. Ask me and I’d say he’s a poisonous little reptile. You get to spot them when you have to employ a certain amount of casual labour, as we have to do on our building sites when the pressure of work is heavy. Well, which car are we going to use? No sense in taking both as we’re going to stick together today.’

It was Tamsin who had mapped out the route. As none of the others minded where they went, she had selected two subjects for her sketches. One of these involved a seascape, so, after a midday snack at a pub in a seaside town about thirty miles from the forest, she and Hermione boarded a pleasure steamer which made the coastal trip to a famous headland while the two older women explored the town.

Hermione was studying the coast through binoculars when Tamsin said, ‘Stand by! Here’s that boy Adam again.’

However, he did not attempt to come up and speak to them and it was with a slight sense of triumph that they reported this to the other two whom they met again on the quay.

‘He’s accepted the brush-off, then,’ said Erica. ‘Good for him.’

‘A bit of a coincidence, though, his choosing to come to this place on the day we’ve chosen to come here, and to catch the boat those two were on. The trips run every hour, weather permitting, and today the weather does permit, although it must be very near the end of the season,’ said Isobel. ‘I think the wretched youth was trailing us.’

‘Oh, forget him!’ said Hermione. The next stop was at an ancient abbey on the further side of Gledge End. Tamsin, who had seen photographs, wanted to sketch the view of the ruins which was to be obtained through the great rounded arch of the gatehouse. They found the place without difficulty and she remained in the front seat of the car to make her drawing through the glass of the windscreen while the other three explored the ruins.

She sketched in the archway. It was complete in itself although the walls in which it had been set were in ruins, and she was making rapid, expert strokes to indicate the broken arc where a rose window of the abbey church had been partly demolished to leave only a finger of masonry pointing to the sky, when she was interrupted. The driver’s door was pulled open and Adam Penshaw inserted himself into the driver’s seat.

‘Carry on! Carry on! Don’t mind me,’ he said. Startled — for she had been too much absorbed in her work to hear him come up, Tamsin dropped her pencil. As he bent to pick it up she snatched out the car-key which was opposite him and dropped it into her jacket pocket.

He knew what she had done. He laughed as he handed back the pencil.

‘Did you think I was going to run off with you?’ he asked. Tamsin made a few quick strokes to her sketch of the sky-pointing finger of church masonry before she answered him.

‘No, of course not,’ she said, ‘but I never trust an adolescent sense of humour.’

‘Oh, come, now! Don’t you like me?’

‘It is not a question of liking or not liking. I don’t want to seem unkind, but look here, now. My sister and I see all too little of one another when her school terms begin. We don’t live together, you see, because I still live at home, whereas she has to live reasonably near her school. She has always been friendly with Erica, but, there again, they see all too little of one another because their homes are so far apart. Can’t you understand that a small group of women sometimes want and even need to be on their own and to enjoy female companionship and a single-sex natter now and again?’

‘What about Hermione?’ he asked, ignoring her plea. ‘Where does she come in?’

‘She is a bird of passage. She rescued the perishing when I hurt my ankle and she rescued you. We are very glad to have her with us, but I warn you that she doesn’t want a young boy horning in on our holiday any more than we do.’

‘I’m not a young boy, dammit!’

‘All right, then, be a grown-up gentleman and get out of the car. Just leave us alone. Forget us, there’s a nice person.’ She spotted Erica, who was crossing the front of the ruins. ‘The others are coming back,’ she said. He took the hint and skipped out of the car. This time she heard the engine of his motorcycle (a sound which must have gone unnoticed by her when he had arrived) and he careered off.

‘He seems to have taken a fancy to you,’ said Erica, when she had come back to the car and had been told of Adam’s invasion of it. ‘It looks as though one of us had better stay with you in future. What a nuisance the wretched boy is! Oh, well, let’s hope you’ve really choked him off this time.’

Such was not the case, but Adam made only one more attempt to seek their society. This happened on the same evening. They were late enough home from their excursion to decide to combine tea and supper and then to sit about until ten or when they felt ready for bed.

The weather was changing by the time the meal was over; by eight o’clock the wind had got up and before nine the rain was lashing the windows. Woodwork in the cabin creaked and moaned and occasionally let off a sharp, protesting crack.

‘You’d think it is still alive,’ said Tamsin.

‘What is?’ asked Hermione.

‘The wood this place is made of. You know, there’s something creepy about a forest in this sort of weather. It’s as though the living trees were calling out to the dead ones.’

‘Oh, go to bed and pull the coverlet over your ears!’ said Isobel. ‘That’s what I’m going to do.’ The wind gave a sudden howl and there was a crash as a particularly rough squall hit the french doors. ‘ “It’s the wild night outside”. That’s from Campbell of Kilmhor, my favourite one-act play.’

‘ “Is the rain still coming down?” ’quoted Tamsin in her turn.

‘ “It is that, then”. What’s the bit about some poor lost soul coming up to the door, and we refusing it shelter?’

‘Oh, you two!’ said Erica. ‘Shut up! You make me go all goose-flesh. Let’s do the washing-up.’

‘Can’t it stay till morning?’ asked Isobel.

‘No, it jolly well can’t. If I begin to let you lot slack off, this place will be a pigsty by Saturday.’

Adam’s last visit to them was heralded by a furious battering on the french doors, a sound which outdid even the fury of the storm.

‘Oh, Lord! What now?’ said Erica, who had been the last to get into bed when the washing-up was done.

‘It’s only the wind,’ said Tamsin.

‘It certainly isn’t.’ The almost frenzied banging came again. Erica rolled out of bed, pulled on her dressing-gown and went into the lounge. ‘Who is it?’ she called out.

‘Let me in! My bike’s conked out and I’m soaked to the skin. Open the door!’

‘I can’t. We’re all in bed!’

‘Let me in, I tell you! I’m nearly drowned!’ The hammering came again, a positive fusillade. This time it had an effect, but not the one which Adam intended. Another voice, deeper than his own, said, ‘What’s all this?’

‘Oh, John! John Trent!’ shouted Erica. There was a yell and an indeterminate scrabbling noise. Then John Trent called out, ‘All right, ladies! All clear now!’ Erica opened the door. John Trent, torch in hand, was on the verandah. Erica pulled him inside.

‘Oh, dear! You are wet!’ she said.

‘Nothing to speak of. What was all that racket?’

‘That was the wretched boy who’s been dogging our footsteps for the past two days. We thought we’d got rid of him.’

‘You don’t value him, then?’

‘We’re sick to death of him.’

‘Oh, that’s all right, then. I’ve just chucked him over your verandah railings.’

‘Oh, dear!’ said Tamsin, distressed.

‘Don’t worry. I’ll retrieve him and bed him down in our shack. He can have the spare bunk and I’ll chase him away in the morning with a flea in his ear that he won’t forget. I’m sorry he’s made such a nuisance of himself. I’ll see it doesn’t happen again. ’