‘I have given you my reasons, my dear. My salary is sufficient for our needs, but not for anything more. The children are a great expense, as you know, in spite of grants and so forth, and I shall have nothing whatever to leave them—or you, either, if I should chance to pre-decease you.’
‘Your life is insured in my favour.’
‘Most inadequately, my dear, with money at its present value and with the way things are tending. But let us not talk about that. What I want to discuss—’
‘Is this proposed holiday on Eliza’s island, I suppose, but I do not want to discuss it. My mind is firmly made up. I shall take a little holiday on my own, I expect. I will not even wait to see the rest of you on your way. I shall leave about ten days before you do, I think, Marius. I cannot bear the idea of your going cap in hand to your sister because you think (and against all reason, at that! ) she may have something to leave you.’
‘It is not against all reason, Clothilde, as you would know perfectly well if you stopped to think. When Lizzie quarrelled with my parents, they turned her out of the house as soon as she was fit again after Ransome’s birth, but my father settled a sum of money on her to be held in trust until she married. He and my mother were horrified at what she had done and, as there was no possibility of the child’s father being in a position to marry her unless his wife died, they thought the prospect of a dowry might attract a suitor.’
‘But apparently it has not done so. Does Eliza benefit in any way from the money?’
‘You know she does not. She gets nothing while she remains single, and at her present age there seems little likelihood of her marriage.’
‘So what are you trying to tell me?’
‘That, at her death, the money—and it must have amounted to something substantial by this time—comes to me. You know all this already.’
‘Then why attempt to curry favour with Eliza if you are to benefit, in any case, from her death?’
‘It is because I am to benefit, Clothilde. You may be sure that Lizzie knows of this provision and it goes against the grain with me that we should have been at odds with one another, and, I think, because of it. If only we could link up again as brother and sister, I would feel that I was entitled to what she had to leave. As it is—’
‘Oh, you are too pure-minded to live! What utter nonsense! No, really, these are scruples gone mad! It is not as though you haven’t done all you could and, in my opinion, more than you ought, for Eliza, since you inherited your father’s estate. Surely you are entitled to anything you can get from her when she goes?’
‘I shall feel happier when we are friends again, Clothilde. That’s why I’m so thankful that she herself has made the first move towards a reconciliation.’
‘Tchah!’ said Clothilde. ‘Well, I do not intend to be here when you go. I should be too angry. I think I shall go to my cousin for a bit. I imagine you will have no objection to that?’
‘To Marie? Good heavens above!’
‘I have no other cousin, and it will not hurt her to put me up—free of charge, incidentally!—in return for her visits here with her hanger-on. I do not propose to remain here for a month on my own while you and the children go off on this scavenging expedition to Great Skua. And, talking of that, I may have fish of my own to fry.’
‘Is that a threat, my dear?’
‘No, neither is it a warning.’ Her wintry expression softened. ‘I only hope we shall both obtain what we want, that’s all, so no hard feelings, Marius.’
chapter three
Rooms and Views
‘The homely house that harbours quiet rest,
The cottage that affords no pride nor care,
The mean that ’grees with country music best…’
Robert Greene
« ^ »
Two weeks later a long train journey, a rough crossing and a small open boat which smelt strongly of stale fish, brought Marius and his children, on a Wednesday afternoon, to a long wooden jetty which projected beyond the discoloured sands of the beach. Behind the beach rose bare and formidable cliffs up which, as Marius noted without enthusiasm, there climbed in steepish gradients an unmade track-like road. There was only one consolation. He had been informed by his sister, when she answered his letter of acceptance, that there would be porterage for suitcases if those were left on a wooden platform at the foot of the cliffs.
The island was called Great Skua because of a theory, not particularly borne out by fact, that from the mainland it resembled in shape and general colouring that predatory piratical sea-bird. As Sebastian had surmised, it was nothing more than a vast piece of granite rock, although a faulting of slate had made the landing-place possible, but the island, to the tired and sea-tossed visitors, looked about as welcoming as a prison.
The steamer from which the passengers, with some difficulty, had been transferred to the odoriferous landing craft, was to proceed further up the mainland coast, but, with Marius, Sebastian and Margaret, five other passengers had been disembarked on to the end of Great Skua’s primitive jetty. One of these was in uniform and was the relief keeper of the island’s north-west lighthouse; two (an older and a younger man whose ages appeared to be in the region of sixty and thirty respectively) appeared to be indigenous to the place; and of the remaining couple one was a very thin, small, elderly woman with sharp black eyes, yellow claw-like hands and a beaky little mouth. This she pursed up in silent condemnation of the scenery before turning to speak to her companion.
This companion was a far more striking figure, a Valkyrie of heroic proportions, tall, ruddy of countenance, handsome, vigorous, and apparently more favourably impressed by her surroundings than were the rest of the visitors. When the passengers were landed, she carried, with jaunty ease, two heavy suitcases to which were strapped waterproofs, a shooting stick and two hook-handled ashplants. She had a camera slung over one shoulder and a leather-strapped handbag on the other, and she tramped triumphantly across the heavy, dingy sand of the beach like William the Conqueror invading England. She dumped the suitcases on to a wooden platform similar to that provided in country districts for the reception of milk-churns and, with her small, elderly but energetic companion, began to climb the steep cliff-path.
Marius, carrying his own two suitcases, and Sebastian carrying his own and his sister’s and with a rucksack on his back, followed more slowly across the sands and, having dumped everything except Margaret’s camera and handbag (the only impediments her solicitous brother had allowed her to carry) the Lovelaines began to toil up the cliff-road in the wake of the two women. These had detached the two ashplants from their baggage and were making good use of them as aids to the ascent of the hill.
‘Wish we’d thought of walking-sticks,’ said Sebastian. ‘Do you know that old lady, Father? I had an impression, when we were on the steamer, that you thought you did.’
‘I know her by sight and reputation,’ Marius replied. ‘I have attended some of her lectures. She is Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley, consultant psychiatrist to the Home Office and a criminologist of note.’
‘Who’s the Amazon with her? Not her daughter, surely?’
‘She has no daughter, so far as I am aware. Her son is Sir Ferdinand Lestrange, the well-known Queen’s Counsel. The younger woman is probably either a travelling companion or her secretary.’
‘She’d make a pretty efficient body-guard, too,’ said Sebastian. ‘Gosh! What a pace they’re setting up this confounded hill! It’s enough to kill the old lady.’