‘I beg your pardon.’
‘Her. She left him here. Asked me to keep him happy.’
He climbed on the first step of the nearest bathing-machine for a better view and followed the line of her finger. There was undoubtedly someone in the water. Two people. A man and a woman bathing together. Deuced irregular. One heard that such things went on, but hardly expected to see it at Brighton in the season. Just as well they had picked one of the most isolated sections of beach.
He delved into the bag for his binoculars. Not from any indelicate motive; he merely wished to investigate a little notion that had burgeoned in his brain. The sea was choppy this morning and there was a deal of spray about. It took almost a minute’s diligent work with the glasses to locate the bathers. They were holding hands, if you please, and jumping the waves together as openly as if they were fully clad and performing a schottishe in the Pavilion ballroom.
The man wore university costume of dark blue wool, rendered skin-tight by the water. The shoulder-straps could not have been more than two inches wide. His partner’s bathing-dress of vertical red and white stripes was revealed only in glimpses, for she modestly (if such a word could be applied) endeavoured to keep her shoulders below the surface. Her hair was held in place by an oilskin mob-cap.
Then, as he watched, she was caught in the cusp of a larger wave, tipped off-balance and swept several yards inshore, shrieking in delighted panic, and ending inelegantly on hands and knees in the shallows. From there she subsided, laughing, into a sitting position, tugging down the sailor collar that had ridden up around her head. How it was that her companion was thereupon similarly upended by the action of the water and carried irresistibly towards the same spot must remain one of the ocean’s mysteries. Suffice to say that the next moment Moscrop saw the red, white and blue in a conjunction that had nothing to do with patriotism. Moreover, the colours were unconscionably slow in disentangling. When at length they did, he was able, before the bathers plunged back into the deeper water with hands still linked, to confirm his earlier suspicion. The young woman in the red and white stripes was Bridget, Jason’s nursemaid.
How confoundedly mistaken one can be about the fair sex! When he had helped her up the Aquarium steps with the perambulator, he had thought her a modest and responsible young woman. Yet here she was shamefully handing over the child to the mercies of this imbecilic bathing-attendant, in order to consort in the water with some inamorato from the hotel kitchens along the front.
He put down his binoculars. ‘Tell me, is this assignation in the waves a regular occurrence?’
‘What d’you say?’ asked the fat woman.
‘Have you been asked to look after the child before?’
‘Oh yes. Most days. He won’t come to no harm with me. I’m not over-busy, you understand.’ As if to show how capable she was, she held Jason under his armpits and dandled him at arms’ length above her head. ‘He’s a nobby little lad, don’t you think?’
‘I’m sure he is. Perhaps you have met his parents?’ One could not take anything for granted in the modern world. It was always possible that Dr. Prothero knew about the goings-on here.
‘No. I just see the girl and her brother. If they bring the young’un this way for a walk it’s no hardship for me to keep an eye on him while they enjoy themselves in the briny.’
‘Her brother, you say? Are you sure of that?’
‘Sure? Well, it’s obvious, ain’t it? He’s only a lad out there. Can’t you see through them things? I hope you ain’t suggesting I’d be a party to anything improper.’
‘Not at all. Not at all.’ But he had already put the glasses to his eyes to test the truth of her words.
Now that he looked more closely at Bridget’s companion, he did perceive a certain boyish leanness in the physique. However, the antics in the spray looked most unlike the behaviour of brother and sister. Even as he watched, an arm crept around Bridget’s waist and another lifted her at the knees. She made a show of protesting, but allowed herself to be carried, with some difficulty, into the shallower water.
‘I don’t know what it is you’re being a party to, Ma’am,’ Moscrop told the bathing-machine woman, ‘but I’m not standing here to watch it any longer.’
No question of it: the youth with Bridget in his arms was Guy Prothero.
CHAPTER 5
In the afternoon, Moscrop lay at full length on the shingle in front of the Grand Hotel, planning a criminal act. It began innocently enough, as an idle fancy of the sort everyone indulged in when lounging on a beach in the sun. The habit was universal; one arrived at the seafront and marched along the promenade, searching for the most secluded spot left on the beach. Having found it and enjoyed the sensations of sun and sea for a few minutes, one began looking to right and left and taking a mild interest in the neighbours one had sought so conscientiously to keep at a distance: the man who had removed his shoes and socks; the young woman with the bad-tempered dog; the couple complaining loudly about their hotel. As the day progressed it was natural enough to speculate on the kinds of lives such people led. How did a man like that behave in his own home; what monstrous lapses of decorum did his family have to endure? Whatever attracted a woman as pretty as she to a dog like that; did she have no friends at all? What class of hotel would satisfy those people; did they live to such exalted standards? It was a short step from that stage to the next: the occasion for contact. It arose from any trivial occurrence: the hat or parasol caught in a sudden gust and blown along the beach; the runaway terrier; the wasp-sting requiring instant attention from the blue-bag one had providently packed. From there the association prospered or perished, according to taste. But there was no denying that a public beach provided more scope for studying one’s fellow-beings and more opportunities for broadening one’s acquaintance than anywhere else except a hospital ward.
To put the facts correctly, Moscrop’s neighbours on Brighton beach were not entirely unknown to him. In his case, there was no need for speculation about their identity: they were Mrs. Prothero, Guy, young Jason and Bridget. He had tracked them to this spot with the tenacity of a border scout, even suffering himself to lunch on cockles from a stall below the pier, while Guy, Bridget and the child took lunch from a hamper. Mrs. Prothero had joined them here soon after two; the Doctor was not with her. And now Moscrop lay some thirty yards to their rear, flouting the principles on which he had based the whole of his researches.
He despised himself for it. Even the act of lying here, trying not to jump like a grasshopper each time one of them moved, was a surrender. Observation held no joys now; it was a furtive, skulking business, undignified by any connection with scientific practice. He had no choice, though. He had ceased to be a scientist the moment the white hat had danced across his lens. The last two days with his instruments had convinced him of that. Binocular-work for its own sake was now a barren occupation.
Strange how each discovery about the members of the family, however odious, had nourished his curiosity about Mrs. Prothero. She sat half-turned away from him now, flanked by Guy and Bridget, leaning her back against an upturned fishing-smack. Down at the water, a small pleasure-boat was taking on passengers and she was watching it, amused at the efforts of the ladies not to overbalance on the narrow plank bridging the foam. The hat, the same hat, responded to the tremors of her body, as she tried not to giggle openly. One unexpected sea breeze was all that was wanted to lift it off her head for him to retrieve. One small gust between himself and an introduction.
He was not prepared to wait for it. Why, he might still be there in suspense at the end of the afternoon, when they got up to leave. It was no use waiting for an act of God, like that; better, surely, to improvise your own.