“That’s right, Trehern. Easy does it. Careful man,” Major Barrimore chattered. “Heave me that line. Splendid!” He dropped the loop over a bollard and hovered, anxiously solicitous, with extended arm. “Welcome! Welcome!” he cried:
“Good morning, Major Barrimore,” Miss Emily said. “Thank you. I can manage perfectly.” Disregarding Trehern’s outstretched hand, she looked fixedly at him. “Are you the father?” she asked.
Trehern removed his cap and grinned with all his might. “That I be, ma’am,” he said. “If you be thinking of our Wally, ma-am, that I be, and mortal proud to own up to him.”
“I shall see you, if you please,” said Miss Emily, “later.” For a second or two everyone was motionless.
She shook hands with her host.
“This is nice,” he assured her. “And what a day we’ve produced for you! Now, about these steps of ours. Bit stiff, I’m afraid. May I…?”
“No, thank you. I shall be sustained in my ascent,” said Miss Emily, fixing Miss Cost’s shop and then the hotel façade in her gaze, “by the prospect.”
She led the way up the steps.
“ ’Jove!” the Major exclaimed when they arrived at the top. “You’re too good for me, Miss Pride. Wonderful going! Wonderful!”
She looked briefly at him. “My habits,” she said, “are abstemious. A little wine or cognac only. I have never been a smoker.”
“Jolly good! Jolly good!” he applauded. Jenny began to feel acutely sorry for him.
Margaret Barrimore waited in the main entrance. She greeted Miss Emily with no marked increase in her usual diffidence. “I hope you had a pleasant journey,” she said. “Would you like to have luncheon upstairs? There’s a small sitting-room we’ve kept for you. Otherwise, the dining-room is here.” Miss Emily settled for the dining-room but wished to see her apartment first. Mrs. Barrimore took her up. Her husband, Patrick and Jenny stood in the hall below and had nothing to say to each other. The Major, out of forgetfulness, it seemed, was still madly beaming. He caught his stepson’s eye, uttered an expletive and without further comment made for the bar.
Miss Emily, when she had lunched, took her customary siesta. She removed her dress and shoes, loosened her stays, put on a grey cotton peignoir and lay on the bed. There were several illustrated brochures to hand and she examined them. One contained a rather elaborate account of the original cure. It displayed a-fanciful drawing of the Green Lady, photographs of the spring, of Wally Trehern and of a number of people passing through a sort of turnpike. A second gave a long list of subsequent healings, with names and personal tributes. Miss Emily counted them up. Nine warts, five asthmas (including Miss Cost), three arthritics, two migraines and two chronic diarrheas (anonymous). “And many many more who have experienced relief and improvement,” the brochure added. A folder advertised the coming Festival and, inset, Elspeth Cost’s Gifte Shoppe. A more businesslike leaflet caught her attention.
The Tides at Portcarrow
The tides running between the village and the Island show considerable variation in clock times. Roughly speaking, the water reaches its peak level twice in 24 hours and its lowest level at times which are about midway between those of high water. High and dead water times may vary from day to day with a lag of about 1–1 3/4 hours in 24. Thus, if high water falls at noon on Sunday it may occur somewhere between I and 1:45 p.m. on Monday afternoon. About a fortnight may elapse before the cycle is completed and high water again falls between noon and 1:45 on Sunday.
Visitors will usually find the causeway is negotiable for 2 hours before and after low water. The hotel launch and dinghies are always available and all the jetties reach into deep water at low tide.
Expected times for high tide and dead water will be posted up daily at the Reception Desk in the main entrance.
Miss Emily studied this information for some minutes. She then consulted a whimsical map of the island, with boats, fish, nets and pixies; and, of course, a Green Lady. She noted that it showed a direct route from the Boy-and-Lobster to the spring.
At five o’clock she had tea brought to her. Half an hour later, she dressed and descended, umbrella in hand, to the vestibule.
The hall porter was on duty. When he saw Miss Emily he pressed a bellpush on his desk and rose with a serviceable smirk. “Can I help you, madam?” he asked.
“Insofar as I require admission to the enclosure, I believe you may. I understand that entry is effected by means of some plaque or token,” said Miss Emily.
He opened a drawer and extracted a metal disk. “I shall require,” she said, “seven,” and laid two half-crowns and a florin on the desk. The hall porter completed the number.
“No, no, no!” Major Barrimore expostulated, bouncing out from the interior. “We can’t allow this. Nonsense!” He waved the hall porter aside. “See that a dozen of these things are sent up to Miss Pride’s suite,” he said and bent gallantly over his guest. “I’m so sorry! Ridiculous!”
“You are very good,” she rejoined, “but I prefer to pay.” She opened her reticule, swept the disks into it and shut it with a formidable snap. “Thank you,” she said to the hall porter, and prepared to leave.
“I don’t approve,” Major Barrimore began, “I — really, it’s very naughty of you. Now, may I — as it’s your first visit since — may I just show you the easiest way?”
“I have, I think, discovered it from the literature provided, and need not trespass upon your time, Major Barrimore. I am very much obliged to you.”
Something in her manner, or perhaps a covert glance from his employer, had caused the hall porter to disappear.
“In respect of my letter,” Miss Emily said, with a direct look at the Major, “I would suggest that we postpone any discussion until I have made myself fully conversant with prevailing conditions on my property. I hope this arrangement is convenient?”
“Anything!” he cried. “Naturally. Anything! But I do hope—”
“Thank you,” said Miss Emily, and left him.
The footpath from the hotel to the spring followed, at an even level, the contour of an intervening slope. It was wide and well-surfaced, and, as she had read in one of the brochures, amply provided for the passage of a wheeled chair. She walked along it at a steady pace, looking down, as she did so, at Fisherman’s Bay, the cottages, the narrow strip of water and a not very distant prospect of the village. A mellow light lay across the hillside; there was a prevailing scent of sea and of bracken. A lark sang overhead. It was very much the same sort of afternoon as that upon which, two years ago, Wally Trehern had blundered up the hillside to the spring. Over the course he had so blindly taken there was now a well-defined, tar-sealed and tactfully graded route, which converged with Miss Emily’s footpath at the entrance to the spring.
The spring itself, its pool, its modest waterfall and the bouldered slope above it, were now enclosed by a high wire-netting fence. There were one or two rustic benches outside this barricade. Entrance was effected through a turnpike of tall netted flanges, which could be operated by the insertion into a slot machine of one of the disks with which Miss Emily was provided.
She did not immediately make use of it. There were people at the spring: an emaciated man whose tragic face had arrested Jenny Williams’s attention at the bus stop, and a young woman with a baby. The man knelt by the fall and seemed only by an effort to sustain his thin hands against the pressure of the water. His head was downbent. He rose, and, without looking at them, walked by the mother and child to a one-way exit from the enclosure. As he passed Miss Emily his gaze met hers, and his mouth hesitated in a smile. Miss Emily inclined her head and they said “Good evening” simultaneously. “I have great hopes,” the man said rather faintly. He lifted his hat and moved away downhill.