Skeleton Island (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “The prefects are going to dun everybody for sixpence. That comes to two pounds. Will that be enough, do you think?”

  “Plenty. I can get two pairs of very nice stockings for that, really good ones, at nineteen and elevenpence a pair, or four pairs at nine and eleven. Which would you prefer?”

  “Can we leave it to you?”

  “In that case, I should make it the four pairs. The nine and eleven are really very good, and it would make a more important-looking present. I’ll get the shop to throw in a fancy box and spend the odd fourpence on ribbon tie it up. How would that be?”

  “Can you get ribbon for fourpence?” asked the practical Peters.

  “I expect so,” Laura answered easily. “Leave it all to me.”

  “Right. Thanks awfully, Mrs. Gavin.” (She had vetoed the word “matron” from the beginning.) “Oh, dash it, there’s the bell. I’ll have to go. We’ve got Mr. Pocock next period, and he simply froths at the mouth if anybody comes late to his lesson. Is it true we’re having a new master?”

  “Yes, quite true. He’s only just come out of hospital, though, so, if the prefects could use a bit of influence…”

  “Yes, of course. But I hope, if we encourage him, he won’t burn the hotel down like Mr. Ferrars did the school. I like it here. When do you think you could do the shopping for us?”

  “I’m free from half-past two onwards,” said Laura, “so I’ll go this afternoon.”

  “Oh, but we haven’t collected the money yet, Mrs. Gavin.”

  “That’s all right. You can pay me when you get it all in. It’s early closing on the mainland tomorrow, so it won’t be any use for me to go then.”

  At twenty minutes to three she drove out through the hotel gates, locked them behind her—thus obeying one of Mr. Eastleigh’s very few inflexible rules for the Staff—and drove southwards towards the causeway and the mainland. At about a mile from the school she was passing through the first of the ugly, stone-built villages. On the far side of it the road began to descend, fairly gradually at first, and then, when she reached the second and larger village, dignified on the island by the title of The Town, she had to embark upon that series of sweeps and bends which took the road sharply and, at some stages, almost precipitously down to the causeway.

  As the car descended, a wonderful panorama opened up. On one side lay the glorious arc of an almost semi-circular bay. On the other was the enormous bank of shingle, fifty to sixty feet high and two hundred yards across, which carried the causeway. This bank of shingle also swept round in an arc, but its grandeur lay not so much in its size and shape as in its menace. The grey sea snarled and snatched at it, for ever adding pebbles to the millions which made it into the crustacean monster that it was, and for ever, when the wind changed to the north, dragging away the tons of pebbles from its edge, as a beast of prey will tear and drag at the inanimate carcass of its kill.

  At the mainland end of the causeway the scene changed. The road still ran fairly steeply downhill, but substantial houses with gardens and garages, trees, fences, and flowering shrubs gave a general urbanisation to the scene and blotted out bay and shingle-beach until, as the car turned the bend at the foot of a steep little hill, Laura could see below her the mainland town and its inner harbour. She drove over a bridge and along some narrow streets until she came out upon the handsome promenade, with its hotels and seaside shelters, its firm and beautiful sands, its Jubilee clock, and its statues of George the Third and Queen Victoria.

  Here she left the car in a public car park and walked back to the narrow streets in search of the shops. It did not take her long to purchase the stockings and then, mindful that the prejudices of small boys involve an unalterable conviction that women must be given perfume—this in as ornate a container as the available cash will stretch to—she bought a small flask to place among the stockings, added wrapping paper in brilliant blue and gold, a couple of yards of white satin ribbon, and a vulgar but spectacular pink silk rose.

  “And if that doesn’t satisfy them, I have misread my own son’s prejudices and embryo eroticism,” she confided to the shop assistant who had helped her to choose the pink rose.

  “Perfectly, madam,” said the shop assistant, adding to the girl on the next counter, when Laura had gone, “Funny, her buying that rose. You’d have said the best quality and no nonsense about her.”

  Laura walked back towards where she had left the car, and, as she came in sight of the sea, she looked at her watch. She had plenty of time to spare before she had need to return to the school. She changed her mind about retrieving the car, turned about, and made for the inner harbour.

  In it, pleasure craft of all kinds, including two squat, old-fashioned paddle-steamers, were laid up until the boating season began. The inner harbour was the mouth of the river and was crossed by two road-bridges. Laura rested her arms on that parapet of the bridge which was nearer to the car, and studied the assembled craft. Among them a particularly fine, large boat stood out. She left the road bridge and strolled along the waterside street which bounded the inner harbour on its eastern side. She wanted to take a closer look at the cruiser and to find out its name.

  This, she discovered, was Pronax. The boat was a thirty-five foot diesel cruiser with a centre wheelhouse. It was Thorny-croft built and was capable of sleeping at least four people. It was moored with its fenders touching the harbour wall, and there was nobody on board. Laura stood, hands in coat pockets, staring at the boat and speculating upon its probable cost, when a big young man halted beside her and said:

  “Pretty, isn’t she?”

  “Very,” said Laura. “She’s a lovely little job.”

  “Twin B.M.C. Commander diesels, and a fibre-glass hull and, down below, wax-finished solid teak and Formica panelling. You seem keen on boats. Like to come aboard and look her over?”

  “Very much.” They went aboard and the owner showed Laura round. Pronax was a roomy boat with a well-equipped galley and plenty of storage space. Propped up at the back of the bottle shelf in the tiny dinette was a badly-focused snapshot of two young men. One was obviously her present escort. The other…She picked up the snapshot and said:

  “Well, what a small world! So you’re a friend of Ronald Ferrars!”

  The young man took it from her, glanced at it carelessly, and said:

  “I’m not, so far as I know. That’s a friend of mine named Bunting. He’s got a tenth share in this boat, but we don’t see much of him these days. I think he’s pursuing some girl. It’s rather a hobby of his.” They returned to the roomy cockpit. “By the way, this boat’s on charter, if you and your friends would ever like a trip.”

  “I’ll remember that,” said Laura, an idea beginning to take shape in her mind. “How much would you want if one hired her?”

  “All depends. Anyway, here’s my business card. If you think any more about it, let me know. Wrong time of year at present, of course, but any time you’re passing…”

  Laura drove back with her purchases and put the car away. She was about to go into school when she ran into Colin, who was looking extremely pleased with life.

  “Hullo,” he said. “Had a nice afternoon?”

  “I’ve been on a secret mission,” said Laura. She showed him her purchases, but did not mention her visit to the Pronax. She was still mystified by the uncanny resemblance that Ferrars bore to the part-owner Bunting.

  “Very jolly,” said Colin, referring to the purchases. “In my time we never went further than cheap scent or a box of chocolates. Talking of secret missions, I’m feeling a bit that way myself, as a matter of fact. I’ve just been having a little chat with the boss. You know that out-of-school activities thing?”

  There was a permanent notice on the games board. After Colin had added his name to it, it read:

  Dramatic Society, M. R. Grange

  Choir, L. T. Robson

  Stamp Club, S. G. Pocock

  Art Club, P. B. Skelton

  Archaeological Society,
R. J. Ferrars

  Natural History Society, D. K. Heathers

  Russian Circle, C. J. L. Spalding

  From half-past one until half-past two on Wednesdays, boys were expected to attend the meetings of one of the first four clubs. After that, their time was their own, provided that they were engaged upon an approved hobby or were out on an archaeological or a nature expedition. Mr. Heathers (Erica to the school) had suggested a geological society, but since this, under his leadership, was bound to end up as a series of cliff-climbing exploits, the headmaster had killed the suggestion at birth. He was not too happy about the Natural History Society, but told himself that he could not veto everything.

  When the magic words Russian Circle went up on the board, there was immediate excitement and a considerable amount of moaning, especially from the choir. Mr. Robson was a very able musician. He was also a martinet. He tested the voice of every new boy and selected or rejected it accordingly, but, once you were chosen, there was no argument, you belonged, body, voice and soul, to the choir.

  “Old Bloodybones will never let us off choir practice to learn Russian,” said one disappointed chorister to another.

  “Let’s go and ask the Man about it,” suggested his friend. This was entirely in order. Mr. Eastleigh had few of the attributes of Caesar, being essentially kindly and well-disposed, although these characteristics had to be heavily disguised at time; but he could be appealed to, and the appellants were certain of a patient hearing.

  “You see, sir, if my parents knew I had the opportunity of learning Russian, and couldn’t take it because I’m in the choir, sir, they’d be very disappointed, sir, so could I be excused the choir, sir, and learn Russian, sir?”

  “Not without Mr. Robson’s consent, Mannering. You must go and put it to him.”

  “It wouldn’t be any good, I’m afraid, sir.”

  “No, I don’t really think it would,” agreed the Man, with a slight smile. After the tenth choir member and six of the art club had convassed his views—the dramatic society and the stamp club consisted of devotees rather than of run-of-the-mill members—Mr. Eastleigh, deciding that Russian would look rather well on the school prospectus, sent for Colin.

  “I think, Mr. Spalding,” he said, “that we will dispense with the Russian Circle. Perhaps, instead, you would assist Mr. Heathers with the Natural History Society. I think you told me that you had no head for heights. This will put a useful check on the boys.”

  “You don’t think the Russian Circle a good idea, sir?” asked Colin, flushing with disappointment and chagrin.

  “I think the teaching of Russian such a good idea that I propose to time-table it, my dear fellow. You will give every form three periods a week in place of the French and German lessons I have put you down for.”

  Colin walked on air. His habit of writing love poems to Fiona was a waste of time, he decided. Henceforth all his leisure would be devoted to a further study of the Russian language. He explained all this to Laura, omitting, however, to mention his abandonment of his Muse.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Rented Lighthouse

  “…very little company, the more was the pity.”

  “I was very uneasy and alarmed, as you may fancy…”

  Laura had not been required to give up her room and take that vacated by Miss Beverley. All that happened was that Mrs. Eastleigh, reunited with her husband, moved into the suite consisting of bedroom, connecting sitting-room and private bathroom allotted to himself from the beginning by the headmaster, and Mr. Grange moved into Mr. Noble’s vacant room, which was better than his own. Colin was given Mr. Grange’s room. He was sorry, in a way. It faced south and commanded a view of the lighthouse and made him think too much about Fiona and what he thought of as his disloyalty to her now that he was in love with Laura.

  It was at the end of his second week at the school that he invited Laura to go home with him for the week-end. He gave the reason with only part of the truth, for he nursed his new passion in secret, he thought, telling himself that she could never be his; that his love was doomed to be “the desire of the moth for the star, of the night for the morrow.” However, hoping against hope, he said:

  “I say, I wish you’d come to the lighthouse this week-end. You’d make the place tolerable.”

  “Tolerable for whom?” asked Laura, although she was sufficiently well acquainted with the unabateable egoism and unconscious selfishness of very young men to know the answer before he gave it.

  “Why, for me, of course,” said Colin, surprised. “Although, naturally,” he added, “it will be a good thing for Fiona, I dare say, to have another woman about the place. Shall we use your car or mine?”

  “Does Mrs. Spalding know you’ve invited me?”

  “Yes, of course, and my father, too. They’ll like to have you. They know it was your doing that I took this job. Will you come?”

  “I’d love to see the lighthouse.”

  “That’s settled, then. I can take you on Friday, after school, and we can come back together on Monday morning.”

  “Oh, no, I’m not going to let your people in for having to sleep me. If it’s all right with Mrs. Spalding, I’ll come on Saturday to lunch or tea, whichever your parents suggest.”

  Colin looked disappointed.

  “That won’t be much,” he said.

  “I expect it will be quite enough for your stepmother,” said Laura. “It’s all right to have an extra person to meals; it’s quite another thing to have to find them a bed and give them breakfast next morning.”

  Colin knew that the only possible arrangement, as his stepmother had pointed out, would be that Laura should have his room, and that he himself would be obliged to sleep on the settee in the living-room, so he agreed that perhaps she knew best, and added that she would find his father dull.

  Upon arrival she was given sherry by Howard, then shown over the bungalow by Fiona. Lunch, out of tins, which made a change from school meals (and also, although not such a welcome one, from the French cooking of her employer’s chef), was followed by a visit to the lighthouse tower. Fiona declined to join in climbing the stairs which led up to the lantern room and the gallery, and Colin, with his accepted abhorrence of heights, did not suggest himself as a member of the expedition.

  Laura, always observant, noted with interest the glance which Fiona gave him, and the slight petulant frown which accompanied it, when he said that he would go for a walk. She announced that tea would be at half-past four, and that, meanwhile, she was going to put her feet up for an hour, after Colin had helped with the washing-up. The couples parted at the base of the tower, and Laura soon realised what Colin had meant when he represented his father as being dull. The tower although neither as high nor as streamlined as the new lighthouse some nine hundred yards away to the south-west of it, was high enough to make talking a thankless process on the winding iron staircase as it went on and on, and up and up. It was lighted here and there by rectangular windows of double thickness, but, as all the living-quarters were at ground level, there were no rooms in the tower itself except storage spaces. Even the lamp room, so-called, was not a room in the accepted sense, but an inside balcony surrounding the magnifying glass of the light.

  There was a door from the lamp room to the gallery which surrounded it, and this Howard opened and, having difficulty in getting his breath back after the climb up the stairs, he did not speak, but signed to Laura to step out into the air. This she did, to meet a tearing south-west wind which threatened to blow the hair off her head.

  “Let’s get round to the lee side!” bellowed Howard, finding breath enough to yell these words into her ear. He led the way, and, with the bulk of the lamp room between her and the wind, Laura gazed at the view with considerable interest and with much less discomfort than she had experienced on emerging from the lamp room.

  The view consisted mostly of sea, for on this side the lighthouse overlooked the huge bay which the island helped to shelter. As she lo
oked about her, however, she realised that from the gallery not only the bay but a distant view of the school came into her orbit. There was no mistaking it, for a misguided architect of the nineteenth century had chosen to give it the appearance of an American film producer’s idea of a castle. The entrance doors were beneath a massive tower, and lesser towers, abominably pinnacled, formed the wings of the building, and these, together with the entrance tower, now provided classrooms, dormitories, Staffrooms, and the headmaster’s private suite.

  “You get a good view of the school from here,” she said. Howard handed over the glasses through which he had been watching the Channel Islands boat cutting her way towards port.

  “A splendid view,” he agreed. “Alter the focus if it doesn’t suit you. There is independent adjustment on both eyepieces. Of course, I don’t bother much about looking at the scenery. I am a bird-watcher and an astronomer—the latter in only a very small way, of course. Birds are my major interest. I am hoping for great things in the course of my tenancy here.”

  Then it began. Having begun, it went on and on and on, until it seemed to Laura that time stood still and there was nothing left in the world but Howard and his flat, bleating, one-toned, middle-aged voice telling her about birds, and other birds and more birds. Laura was not prepared to go as far as Bertie Wooster’s friend Mr. Corcoran, whom birds bored stiff except when broiled and in the society of a cold bottle, but by the time she had been standing on the lighthouse gallery for the best part of an hour and a half, she could understand Corky’s feelings.

  There was no doubt that Howard Spalding had made a close study of his subject. He told Laura, early on in his monologue, that the island, with its entire lack of what he called beaches, was a dead end so far as waders were concerned, but of other seabirds he gave full details and a faithful account.

  “I have listed no fewer than eighteen species which I confidently expect to observe before we leave here next Easter,” he told her. He proceeded to enumerate them, supplying a considerable amount of information about each one. He began with the Manx shearwater and concluded with the Sandwich tern. Between these he regaled Laura with accounts of the life-cycle, breeding habits, migrations, and habitat of Cory’s and the sooty shearwater, the fulmar and the cormorant, the Pomarine skua, the great black-backed, the lesser black-backed, the Mediterranean, and the little gull, and, as well as describing the Sandwich variety, he enlarged upon the history of the whiskered, the gull-billed, and the Caspian tern.