The Mudflats of the Dead

CHAPTER 4

INTERLOPERS

‘Why did my Summer not begin?

Why did my heart not haste?

My old Love came and walk’d therein,

And laid the garden waste.’

Arthur O’Shaughnessy

« ^ »

Camilla accepted Palgrave’s scolding meekly, but said at the end of it that ‘poor old Adrian’ had been ‘so pathetically keen’ to get to Stack Ferry that she thought, ‘Colin, darling’, that nobody would mind if she borrowed the car.

‘I didn’t like to follow you on to the marshes and ask,’ she added virtuously. ‘You don’t seem to want me to do that.’

‘You didn’t want me to refuse to lend the car to you, you mean, you sneaky little devil,’ said Palgrave. ‘Anyway, I don’t know how you got hold of the keys.’

‘You’re such a sound sleeper, darling. It was quite easy. I nipped into the parlour in the early hours and felt in your pockets.’

‘Thanks for the warning. I’ll be more careful in future.’

‘May I swim with you this morning, just to show you forgive me?’

‘I’m not swimming today. I went in on an outgoing tide yesterday and had a job getting back. I am not too keen on going in again so soon.’

‘I ought to have warned you. The bathing is safe enough, but not when the tide’s going out.’

‘So I discovered. Why didn’t you mention it?’

‘I thought a good swimmer like you knew all about things like that. I suppose you did know, but you were mad with me because of the car and that’s why you did it.’

This was so true that Palgrave did not contest it.

‘Be seeing you at supper,’ he said. ‘I shall take the car out myself this morning and put temptation out of your way.’

‘We did top up with petrol at Stack Ferry,’ she said plaintively, ‘so now you can stop being nasty. We didn’t hurt your old car!’

Adrian’s description of Stack Ferry, apart from his eulogies concerning the marine biology and marsh botany of the place, had made Palgrave think that a day spent in exploring what had once been a famous and important harbour might well be worth while, for at last he was prepared to believe that he was not to get any help with his projected novel from among the mudflats of Saltacres.

If he liked Stack Ferry and there was reasonably priced accommodation to be had there, he decided to make a booking for the following week, when Adrian’s lease of the Saltacres cottage in any case would expire.

He thought he would make a full day of his preliminary survey, so he made his own breakfast before the others were up, went along the street to a broad part of it where he had parked his car, and set off. The road still kept its distance from the sea and skirted the low hills, but the scenery gradually altered. There were several bridges to cross and at the foot of the hills there were small lakes. On the seaward side several rough tracks led down to the marshes, but petered out long before they reached the sea, and after he had passed a round barrow on the landward side, he went through a village which had a perfect little Norman church, which he visited. A few miles further on he came in sight of the town.

He drove on past the parish church, an edifice dedicated to St Nicholas, sure sign of the town’s former connection with the Netherlands, and then found a signpost which directed him either to turn sharp left for the next village or sharp right to reach the town centre. The road to the right, which he took, soon narrowed. It passed a coastguard station, skirted a considerable creek (still a couple of hundred yards wide, but obviously much silted up since the time the Dutch trading vessels had been able to sail into the town) and then the road swung right again and he could see the church tower once more.

He found a street parking place, locked the car and set out on foot to explore the town. It was an interesting and picturesque old place, important enough, in spite of its vicissitudes, to have a railway station and a bus station, and in the middle of the town there was a long green open space still known as Archery. Around it were the houses, Georgian and Queen Anne, which once had belonged to wealthy merchants and ship-owners, but were now either decayed or turned into flats.

Narrow streets led down to the quay, and there were so many holiday makers about that Palgrave became doubtful as to whether he would be able to get accommodation for the following week. He found an ancient, pleasant inn for his mid-morning beer and made enquiries. Did they let bedrooms to holidaymakers? Yes, they did. What would he require? A single room for a week or possibly a fortnight. When would he want to take it up?

From Saturday afternoon, but he was not quite sure of his plans. Would they make a tentative booking?

Yes, if he cared to leave a deposit. The town was beginning to fill up and they could let the room without any trouble.

When he was shown the room Palgrave had his doubts about this. He was conducted to it by way of the public bar and a narrow dark staircase which could lead nowhere but to the quarters usually allotted to the staff. The room, approached by a passage lighted only from overhead, was cramped and low ceilinged and contained a single bed of the least possible width, a chest of drawers, a chair and half a dozen wire coathangers hung on a brass rod behind a curtain. There were no facilities for washing. Palgrave pointed this out. ‘No room for a fitted basin,’ said his guide. ‘Bathroom on the next floor. I’ll show you. Anyway, this is the only room that isn’t booked up, so it’s take it or leave it, I’m afraid, sir.’

Palgrave paid the modest deposit, went down to lunch and found the meal satisfying and well cooked. In the afternoon he cruised around in his car, visited a stately home, had his tea there, dined at The Stadholder, his inn, and got back to the Saltacres cottage at just after nine. Here a surprise awaited him.

The others were out – at the pub, he supposed – but his studio couch had been opened up and the bed made, and on that bed were a pair of alien pyjamas and a nightdress, and at the foot of the bed two suitcases not his own. He could make nothing of this display, but he found it disquieting and waited impatiently for the return of Adrian and Miranda.

When they came in, Adrian looked apprehensive and Miranda flustered and embarrassed.

‘Oh, you’re back, Colin,’ she said, with an attempt at brightness. ‘Would you like some supper?’

‘I’ve dined, thanks. I say, Miranda, what’s all this?’ he waved his hand at the suitcases. Miranda waved her own hand in agitation.

‘I know! I know!’ she wailed. ‘But, Colin, what could I do?’

Adrian shot an apologetic glance at Palgrave and, in the craven manner of most men faced with a domestic tangle, muttered something about changing into his slippers and went upstairs.

‘Well,’ said Palgrave, ‘what could you do about what?’

‘There has been an overlap in the letting. These people say they have it in writing that they booked the cottage for a fortnight from today and we have it in writing that it is ours until midday on Saturday. Adrian, always despicable, poor boy, when there is trouble, says we must move out and go home. I said to him — ’ Palgrave sat down on the bed and she came and sat beside him and took his unresponsive hand – ‘I said what about Colin? What about Camilla? Both pay their way and expect to be here for the rest of the week.’

‘True enough. And so?’

‘I do not give way. We have as much right to the cottage as these other people. I suggested that there should be a compromise and after a little argument they saw that there was nothing for it but to agree.’

‘How many of them are there?’

‘Only the two of them, Colin, a doctor and his wife.’

‘So what’s the compromise?’

‘Well, a simple one, really. The woman can sleep in Camilla’s room. There are two beds in there. You and the man – he is young and clean and charming – will share the studio couch.’

‘I’m damned if we do!’

‘Oh, Colin, it is only for a night or two.’

‘If it was only for one night the answer is still the same.’

‘Well, the only other thing,’ said Miranda, ‘is for the new ones – they are Londoners and very nice people – to have the studio couch, and for you to take the other bed in Camilla’s room. You could rig up a blanket as a screen between the beds. Adrian would help you.’

‘And how long is that going to keep Camilla out of my hair?’

‘Oh, Colin, you said you could deal with her and I’m sure you can.’

‘Look, Miranda, I see your difficulty but I want no part in helping you out of it.’

‘At least come into the kitchen and be friendly. We will all talk it over with them and see what is best to be done.’

‘Oh, they’re in the kitchen, are they?’

But when he went into the kitchen a further shock awaited him. He had raised a startled query when he had learnt that the interlopers came from London, but reflected that, after all, London is a large and sprawling place. All the same, he had lived in it for several years and taught at one of its schools. It would be just his rotten luck that these people might even be the parents of one of his pupils. Meeting parents on Open Days or at Parent Teacher Association meetings was bad enough. To encounter them on holiday was intolerable. Something told him that disaster loomed.

He could not refuse to accompany Miranda to the kitchen, but there the situation was even worse than he had anticipated, for he recognised one of the newcomers at once. The girl was Morag Kintyre, to whom he had been engaged and whom he had discarded in favour of his Muse. She greeted him calmly, but with a thrust from a verbal dagger which she did not even know she was holding.

‘Hullo, there, Colin!’ she said. ‘When are we going to see your second book reviewed? We’ve been looking out for it. It isn’t everybody who knows an author. Cupar, darling, this is the famous Colin Palgrave I’ve often talked about.’

‘My second book is not quite ready yet,’ said Palgrave, forcing himself to adopt a light tone. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he went on, addressing Miranda, ‘I’ve had all I can use, I think, in this place, so I’m moving on tomorrow. Actually I’m clearing out tonight, so you two – ’ he smiled at the married couple – ‘couldn’t have come at a better time if you want to take up your option.’

‘Oh, dear!’ said Morag, her face falling. (She was prettier than Palgrave had remembered.) ‘Don’t say we’re turning you out!’

‘We can surely fix up something for a day or two,’ said her husband.

‘No, honestly, it’s all right. I’ve already settled for a room in a pub at Stack Ferry. I was over there today and liked the place. Besides, now that my basic theme is settled, I need to be on my own to get the book finished.’

‘But what about tonight?’ asked Miranda.

‘Not to worry. I shall be all right. Why don’t we all go to the pub and get matily bottled? The drinks are on me. We’ll have a farewell party.’

But, the impromptu party over, and himself uncomfortably settled with a rug on the back seat of his car, he wished he had not been quite so precipitate in refusing the offer of the second bed in Camilla’s room. If she had shown an embarrassing desire for his company, well, he had dealt drastically enough with that situation twice before, so he supposed he could have dealt with it again — ‘if she dared to try it on, the little tramp,’ he told himself, pulling the car rug around him and trying, for perhaps the twentieth time, a slighly rearranged position on the back seat.

With an attempt to fill his mind with something other than his own bodily discomfort, he began to think about Morag, but found neither ease nor pleasure in his thoughts. What right, he asked himself, had she to marry somebody other than himself and then to look so happy and relaxed about it? What right had she to look so much prettier, her dark hair silkier and more shining, her eyes deeper and more lustrous, her mouth more tender and alluring than ever he could remember any of these disturbing things? She had not been like this when she was supposed to be in love with him. In fact, he had often been discomfited by her tough, uncompromising outlook.

His thoughts became intolerable. He cast the inadequate car rug aside, put his shoes on, opened the car door and got out on to the road. The moon was up, the sky was clear, there was a night wind blowing across the marshes. He remembered Camilla’s urge to swim by moonlight. ‘Right on the broad lovely track of it, and I could swim for ever and ever,’ she had said to him once. ‘Moonlight on the sea makes me crazy. I could die for the sheer, crazy joy of being drowned in it.’

As though the memory of the girl’s wild words had conjured up the girl herself, there she was, actually walking towards him along the deserted road.

‘I guessed what you were going to do when Adrian told me you had taken them for a farewell party,’ she said, coming up. ‘Guess what I’m going to do.’

Palgrave laughed.

‘Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania,’ he said. ‘I suppose you’re going swimming.’

‘Come with me, do! It’s warmer in the sea than out of it, once the sun goes in.’

‘Oh, all right,’ he said. ‘It will help to get through a bit of the night. It’s damned uncomfortable and draughty in the car. One has to leave a window open to let some air in, and I’ve nothing to cover me up except one small rug that’s only meant to go over my passenger’s knees.’

‘Well, poor old Colin had the chance of something better, I expect, and turned it down,’ she said mockingly. ‘Afraid for his precious virtue, was he?’

‘No. He just doesn’t go to bed with schoolgirls, as I’ve told you before.’ By this time they were on the causeway which led across the marshes. The moonlight made everything unreal. The dunes, in the distance, were black and silver; the creek was full of stranger and lovelier light than the sun’s rays ever discovered; the distant sea, which, to Palgrave, had seemed almost silent by day, had now found an eerie voice and, as they approached it, a luminosity apart from the flooding moonlight, for every creaming little wave was tipped with silver as the incoming tide lazily tossed it on to the shore and then gently but inexorably pulled it back again.

Camilla slipped off her jeans and sweater and ran across the sand. Palgrave undressed more slowly, shivering as the night wind made its first impact upon his naked body. Then he too ran across the strip of muddy beach and splashed his way to water deep enough for swimming. As he warmed up, he began to enjoy himself.

‘Swim with me!’ Camilla called out. ‘You be the dolphin and I’ll be the boy on your back.’

He swam over to her, put his hand on her head and thrust her under. When she surfaced, laughing and pushing the hair out of her eyes, he asked, coming behind her, taking her by the elbows and towing her along on her back:

‘Is that the game you were playing with the boyfriend the other morning?’

‘What other morning?’

‘No, it couldn’t have been. You were paddling and skylarking, not swimming. The tide was going out.’

‘How do you know anything about it?’

‘“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings.”’

‘Oh, don’t come the little schoolmaster over me! Catch me if you can!’ She freed herself from him by suddenly sitting up, for he was not so much grasping her elbows as supporting them. As he was about to retort, for he felt the implied contempt in her remark, he went under and came up choking. He soon recovered and after another short, fast burst out to sea, he splashed ashore, dried himself on his shirt, put on the rest of his clothes and floundered his way across the marshes, leaving the girl still in the water.

When he reached the road the thought of spending the rest of the night in the car, cramped, uncomfortable and cold – for now he lacked even his shirt, which was too damp to put on – made him think longingly of that other bed in Camilla’s room. In any case, his suitcase was still in the cottage. It would supply him with a dry shirt. He would have plenty of time to nip indoors and put on the clean shirt, whether, in the end, he slept in the bed or not.

Miranda had given him a key to the front door of the cottage and, a Londoner and so accustomed to take such precautions, he had always locked the front door before he went to bed. He assumed that the newcomers would do the same. He had the key in his trousers pocket, so he entered as noiselessly as he could and groped for his suitcase, but it had been moved to make room for the luggage of the new tenants and it took him a few moments to find out where it had been placed.

He located it stealthily at last, picked it up and crept up the stairs and into Camilla’s room. Here he took off and packed the things he was wearing and put on a suit and a smarter pair of shoes. To do all this he had to put on the light and he was wryly amused to note that Camilla, in what he supposed had been a hopeful spirit, must have pulled the two single beds close together so that they looked like a double.

The temptation to get into one of the beds and sleep was strong. He even reached the stage of pulling the beds apart and flinging back the covers of the one nearer the door, but recognising immediately the compromising nature of this policy if he intended to keep the persistent nymph out of his arms, he put the temptation aside, took a look at himself in the fly-blown mirror over the dressing-table and decided that he needed a shave and that there might be no other opportunity for this before he presented himself at the hotel in Stack Ferry and asked whether he might take up his option earlier than had been arranged.

He crept down the steep stairs and went into the kitchen. Here he heated some water, took off his jacket, shaved, patted on some aftershave lotion, repacked the suitcase whose contents he had had to disarrange and then, picking up the suitcase once more, he stole into the sitting-room and went towards the front door.

This time he saw that a shaft of moonlight had fallen across the studio couch. It picked out a man’s bare arm lying outside the coverlet and across a stubbled cheek and stiff red hair.

‘Must be a sound sleeper, especially for a doctor,’ thought Palgrave. ‘Surely my groping around for my suitcase when I first came in ought to have woken him up?’ Of Morag there was no sign. Palgrave supposed that she was taking a moonlight stroll. The moon had always fascinated her, he remembered, and during the months of their engagement he had remonstrated with her more than once about her moonlit walks and the possible danger of taking them alone. She had never given way, he remembered.

Palgrave stood looking down on the sleeping man, the man who now slept nightly with Palgrave’s woman. Turbulent thoughts and crazy fantasies passed through the watcher’s mind. Suppose that Cupar died? Suppose there was a rail crash or a street accident? Suppose a gang of murderous young thugs set upon him and killed him? If Cupar ceased to exist, perhaps Morag would turn to Palgrave for comfort and from comfort to love and from love to marriage. His wild thoughts ran away with him.

‘And there’s my book!’ Palgrave suddenly said aloud. ‘I didn’t intend to write a thriller, and I shan’t. This will be a psychological novel of sex and violent death. Eureka! I really believe I have it!’

Because he had said the words aloud, he disturbed the sleeping man. Cupar snorted, rolled over and opened his eyes. Palgrave retreated into the shadows and waited for the other to settle down again. Then he made for the door and, baggage in hand, sneaked out without actually latching the door behind him. Morag and Camilla would be returning sooner or later, he supposed. He half wondered whether he would meet Morag on the road, for he had given up all intention of trying to sleep in his car. The road, however, was deserted and there was nothing moving on the marshes except the tall plants along the shores of the creek. They were swaying and whispering in the moonlight and seemed to be dancing to the soundless music of a gentle but persistent off-shore wind.

Palgrave walked to his car, put his luggage in the boot and took the driver’s seat. He fastened his seat-belt and decided to drive westwards along the coast road. There was nobody about. Morag, if she was out walking, must have gone in the opposite direction, he supposed, or else she was out on the marshes or among the dunes. Possibly she, too, had gone for a swim.

There was no sign of Camilla, either, but this was not surprising. Both the dunes and the pebble-ridge would hide her from his seat in the low-slung car, whether she was still in the water or not. He did not suppose she was still swimming. The tide had been nearly at the full. Either it was slack water by this time, or else the tide was on the turn. She surely would be out of the water by now. He half thought of leaving the car and going down to the beach to make certain of this, but just as he was about to unfasten his seat-belt, he saw what he took to be Morag. She had been wearing white trousers and a white cardigan at the farewell party, and it was a white form which appeared in the distance flitting over the marshes.

‘Must be a will o’ the wisp,’ he thought, ‘Gases rise over marshes. I shall have to put Morag out of my mind. Curse young Camilla and her sexy urges!’ He let in the clutch and drove in the moonlight towards Stack Ferry.