No. Again, no.
Then what?
When the word came to him, he literally shook his head at it. Sadness. No. But yes, that was the feeling that contributed mostly to his fear, a feeling of great sadness of some tragedy past, or yet to come, a loss, an emptiness.
‘Now watch your feet, lad, we’re coming to the loop.’
He knew they were coming to the loop; there was the roar getting louder and louder in his ears, deafening now as he pressed his side against the wall and tried to avert his gaze from the two planks of wood that lay across the void to the left of him …
They were round it now and going down the slope.
Then they were in the candle room and Eddie was applying all his strength to the lever, but without much avail.
‘Here! Let me help.’ His granny had to reach up on her toes in order to grip the handle, but her added weight did the trick and now the lever slowly moved downwards and there was the grinding sound as if stones were being crushed as the rock door swung slowly open and let in the roar of the sea.
Now he was hanging out through the aperture looking down into the dimly lit cave and in utter amazement onto a face staring up at him, a black face in which the eyes looked enormous, the face of a trussed-up black boy. The trousered legs were bound, as were the wrists. The boy was lying on his side with his head turned towards them; his mouth was open and from it was protruding a piece of rag. He had a cap on his head which he seemed to be trying to dislodge now by rubbing the side of his head against the sand.
‘It’s a lad!’ Eddie yelled at his granny, who was kneeling by his side. Then springing to his feet, he grabbed the rope ladder from the wall and, pushing his granny aside, he clipped the hooks into the staples at each side of the wall below the door as he had seen her do, then threw the ladder out and into the cave. Within seconds he was scrambling down it.
When he knelt by the boy’s side and looked down into his eyes his heart seemed to leap into his mouth with shock. The next minute he was tearing the gag from the boy’s mouth and pulling off his cap at the same time.
‘Aw, Ed…die. Ed …die!’
‘It’s Daisy! It’s Daisy!’ He was yelling up to his granny now, and Mrs Flannagan’s head was bobbing as if on wires.
‘Aw, Eddie! I…I thought I was a goner. Aw, Eddie!’ Daisy’s voice broke into a wail as she burst out crying.
He had loosened her wrists and was undoing the last knot in the rope that tied her ankles when the dim light in the cave was made dimmer still by a figure blocking the entrance.
As Daisy and Mrs Flannagan yelled simultaneously, ‘Eddie! Eddie! Look out!’ Hal Kemp sprang over the cave floor, paused for a second only as he gazed in sheer astonishment at his aunt’s head and shoulders hanging out from a hole in the rock above his head; then with a snort of rage he was on Eddie.
Against the bulk of the man Eddie’s youthful strength would have had as much effect as that of an amateur against a trained boxer, but in this instance Eddie was fortified with a rage that made him momentarily equal to the man, for now he was flaying into him with his fists and his feet, and instead of Hal Kemp being able to fell him to the ground with one blow he found he was having to defend himself; and this he did, smashing his fists first in the direction of Eddie’s face, then into his body, which blows Eddie fortunately managed to ward off, coming back with some effectual punches of his own. But it was when Hal Kemp’s right hand caught him full in the mouth and his left hand swinging downwards lashed into his stomach that the breath left his body and his feet left the ground, and he writhed in agony on the rock floor. And that likely would have been the end of him, but as Hal Kemp’s boot came backwards to deliver a kick at him, Daisy, grabbing at his hand, set her teeth into it. With a yell he rounded on her, and his raised fist was about to descend on her when he suddenly stopped and his whole body became momentarily still in a pose from which it is certain he would have recovered almost immediately had not Mrs Flannagan, from where she was positioned halfway down the ladder, brought her ear trumpet down fully on his head for a second time. When his body swayed she completed her attack by swinging her arm wide and delivering the third blow just below the ear. And on this, it was as if he had been felled by an ox, for, sinking to the floor, he lay there in a crumpled heap.
‘Come on, boy! On your feet. Get up! Get up!’
Eddie drew in a number of deep gasping breaths before he could turn onto his knees, and then, his granny at one side of him and Daisy at the other, they led him to the foot of the ladder. There his granny’s voice spurred him up as she cried, ‘Get up, boy! And you, too, Daisy. Up you go!’
Obediently now, Eddie climbed the ladder but when he reached the candle room he again collapsed on the floor. His face seemed to be swelling to twice its size, his mouth felt numb and he could taste blood. There was something on his tongue, and when he spat it out it made a pinging sound as it hit the rock wall. He had lost a tooth.
But where was his granny? He crawled now to the aperture to see Mrs Flannagan standing in the opening of the cave looking towards the sea, and he called weakly to her, ‘Gran! Gran! Come on.’ But knowing she couldn’t hear him, he willed her to turn and after a moment she did and moved quickly towards the ladder. When he had helped her through the aperture she quickly rose from her knees and, going to the lever, closed the door. Not until then did she turn to Daisy and voice the thought that was raging through Eddie’s head. ‘Where’s Penny? What’s happened to Penny?’
Looking from one to the other, Daisy shook her head and, the tears running down her face, she whimpered, ‘They…they took her along the coast, I think, to…to another boat. She cried a lot and they made her drink something.’
‘Speak up! Speak up!’ Mrs Flannagan pressed the dented trumpet closer to her ear. Then after Daisy repeated what she had already said, Mrs Flannagan exclaimed, ‘Oh dear Lord! Dear Lord!…Was she dressed like this?’ She touched the sleeve of the boy’s jacket that Daisy was wearing, and Daisy nodded, saying, ‘Aye. And there were another two lasses; they were all dressed as boys. Oh, it was dreadful, it was awful.’ Her head swung from side to side now, and again she was crying aloud.
‘It’s all right. It’s all right.’ Mrs Flannagan had her arms about her. ‘You’re safe now. Don’t cry, but try to think. Tell us everything you heard.’
Daisy now gulped in her throat and wiped her black-smeared face on the back of her hand; then speaking into the horn again, she said, ‘They’re goin’ in a boat called, I think it’s Lar Sea Queen or some word like that. It appears from what Mr Hal said…Eeh! I hate to think of him as Mr Hal.’
‘Go on, never mind about that. What did he say?’
‘Well, he was talkin’ to that Mr Van. Oh, if ever anybody was taken in in their life, missis, it was me by that man.’
‘Daisy!’
‘Aye. Well, missis, Hal Kemp had already taken two lasses along in the cart during the night, but he had to bring them back ’cos he couldn’t get them on board or something and they kept them for most of the time in the hold of some ship, and then early on this morning that Mr Van said they’d split up, something about a half a loaf better than no bread. I think he was meaning if one boat was caught the other could get away. It was Mr Denkin’s boat they put some of us on. It seemed that things hadn’t gone right somewhere and they had to use it for some of us. But there was one lass there, she said she didn’t mind, and so they didn’t tie her up or anything. She said anything was better than standin’ in a pie and pea shop fourteen hours a day for half a crown a week. And…and that Mr Van, he got her to talk to me, an’ he tried to get round me. He kept saying that if I’d been a sensible girl I would have enjoyed meself sailing on the boat and having nice food and all that.
‘You…you know what I did?’ She appealed now first to one and then to the other, and when both Mrs Flannagan and Eddie remained silent, she said, ‘I tore at his face with me nails and…and you know what he did then?’
Again they rem
ained silent, and now her head drooped and she said, ‘It…it was frightenin’, more than if he had lashed out at me; he smiled and then he laughed, and then he said he liked them with spunk and I would have plenty of opportunity to scratch and tear where I was going. Aw, missis, I was scared, I was scared silly.’ Daisy now fell against Mrs Flannagan and again the old woman’s arms went about her and her voice was tender as she said, ‘Come on. Come on; let us get out of this. Now’—she pulled Daisy to her feet—‘I’m going on ahead and you do exactly what Eddie tells you. Don’t put a step wrong. And when you get back into the house I want you to forget all about how you got there; I want you to tell the pollis that we came on you by the beach way. You understand?’
Daisy paused, then glanced around the candle room as if its strangeness was only now registering with her; then she whispered, ‘Aye, aye, missis.’
As he now gripped Daisy’s hand and guided her up the incline, Eddie thought it wasn’t much use his granny trying to keep the whereabouts of the passage a secret, for Hal Kemp would open his mouth wide if he was caught by the police; and if he wasn’t he could still find a way of informing other cronies, and then whatever reason his granny had for keeping the presence of the passage secret would be brought into the open.
The policemen were in the kitchen, four of them, all of different ranks, and Daisy, looking from one to the other from where she sat by the fire, washed now and in her usual clothes, wished they would stop asking her the same thing over and over again. She had told them exactly what the missis had told her to say, and that was that Eddie had found her tied up in one of the shallow caves. Two men had brought her in the cart to the top of the cliff, then had carried her down, and they seemed to be expecting a boat. When it didn’t come they pushed her into the far corner of the cave and warned her to be quiet. But she couldn’t be anything else, because she had the rag in her mouth. Then Eddie had come along and rescued her and they had got up the cliff path by the broken steps. But what the police kept on about was the name of the ship, and for what seemed to her the thousandth time, she said, ‘I can’t think of anything more, I’ve told you everything.’
‘Well, just think, just once more.’ The tall officer was bending down to her. ‘Are you sure the name of the boat was The Sea Queen?’
‘Aye, I heard it three or four times.’
The men now looked at each other; they looked at Mrs Flannagan and they looked at Eddie; then the tall man said, ‘We’ve telegraphed to Sunderland and as far as Grimsby and there’s no boat registered there under that name.’
‘Sir.’ They all turned and looked in Eddie’s direction now, and he swallowed before he said, ‘When Daisy first mentioned hearin’ the name of the boat she said Lar Sea Queen not The Sea Queen.’
‘Did I?’ Daisy was staring at him, and he nodded towards her, saying, ‘Aye, that’s what you said the first time, Lar Sea Queen.’
‘Lar Sea Queen. Lar Sea Queen. We’re fools, it’s Le Sequin!’ One of the four was shouting excitedly now.
‘It was on the register we went through this morning. Le Sequin: port of registry, Brussels. Come on. Come on!’ The man made hastily for the door, then turned back again and, reaching out his arm, patted Eddie on the shoulder, saying, ‘Good boy. Good boy.’
They were all gone and the kitchen seemed strangely quiet until Mrs Flannagan joined her hands together and, bowing her head towards them, muttered, ‘Dear God! Dear God! Have mercy on those poor children and grant that the authorities will get there afore the ship sails. And…and bring my Penelope safely back.’
The minutes seemed to pass like hours and the hours seemed as long as days. Eddie had lost count of the times that he had gone at his granny’s bidding onto the cliff path to see if there was any sign of the coastguard or the policemen returning, and it was around noon when he yet again walked over the wet grass towards the cliff path.
He was sick with worry over Penny’s fate and the effect her disappearance would have on his mother when she found out. And as his granny had just said, she would know at least by tomorrow for the papers would be full of it tonight. Oh, how he wished his mother had taken his advice and let them stay at home, because the very thing she had feared had come about, and because of this she would blame herself more than ever.
If only he could do something. But both his granny and Daisy would hardly let him out of their sight. He had suggested that he go into the town and get news at first hand, but his granny had said, ‘No, stay here, lad.’ As for Daisy, she had stood so close to him, like a bairn seeking protection, that he had felt embarrassed.
As he reached a point on the path where he could see for some distance along the cliff path his heartbeat quickened as he saw a number of men coming towards him. Two were pushing and two were pulling a long handle flat cart. As they came nearer he recognised one of the men as the coastguard he had spoken to yesterday. Then his whole body gave a jerk as he saw what they were hauling on the cart. It was a man.
They stopped as they came abreast of him. But the men didn’t speak to him, nor he to them, for almost a minute as he stood gazing down on the dead face of Hal Kemp.
‘He’s…he’s…?’
‘Aye, lad, he’s dead. And perhaps it’s just as well for him as things have turned out.’
‘Where…where did you find him?’
‘In the mouth of the cave down there. We saw him bobbing about some time ago but couldn’t do much until the tide was on the turn. We got him just before it took him out.’
Eddie swallowed deeply. The blows his granny had levelled at him must have stunned him, and then the tide came in. But…but what about the other man in the boat? His granny had glimpsed that there was another man waiting off shore in the sculler. Why hadn’t he come back for him? The only explanation he could give himself was that the man hearing the commotion in the cave must have thought it was a police trap, or some such, and had gone off, leaving his accomplice to his fate. But what would his granny say? How would she take it when she knew that the blows she had rained on her nephew with her trumpet had so knocked him out that he hadn’t recovered? And yet the trumpet wasn’t all that heavy. But heavy or not she must have brought it down with some force, and on a vital spot.
‘Where…where are you takin’ him?’
‘That’s the point, lad. Don’t know whether we should take him to the house’—the man made a motion with his head—‘or go on to the mortuary.’
‘I…I would go on if I were you. Me granny’s been through a lot these last few days and she’s worried sick about me sister. I…I don’t think she could stand any more, not at present.’
‘You’re right, lad, you’re right. Anyway, under the circumstances I don’t suppose he’d be welcome in her house again, dead or alive.’
‘No, you’re right there.’
As he watched the men moving away along the cliff path he felt no tinge of remorse that Hal Kemp was dead. As the man had said, it was likely all for the best because if he had been caught he would have rotted in prison for years, and likely gone through hell there from other prisoners, for even the worst of wrongdoers hated men who in any way harmed children.
Now he had the task of breaking the news to his granny.
A few minutes later he was standing in the kitchen and finding it difficult to know where to start. He stood staring at her until she cried at him, ‘What is it? What have you heard? Tell me, boy, what have you heard?’
She now put the trumpet, the mouthpiece of which was no longer round but had one side dented almost to the middle, to her ear and Eddie cried into it, ‘It’s all right; it isn’t news of Penny. It’s…it’s Hal Kemp.’
The ear trumpet was whisked away and Mrs Flannagan now demanded, ‘What about him?’
‘He’s dead.’
She read his lips and her mouth opened slightly and she repeated, ‘Dead?’ and he nodded once.
‘How?’
He swallowed twice before he said, ‘Drowned.’
�
��What?’
He was again speaking into the trumpet. ‘He was drowned.’
They stared at each other until she said, ‘That fellow in the boat, he mustn’t have come back then?’
He shook his head.
‘I must have knocked him out.’
Slowly now he put the trumpet to her ear and said, ‘Well, if you hadn’t, I know one thing, you would have been two grandchildren short at this minute because he meant to do for me. I could see it in his face.’
Again they were looking at each other, and now, her head nodding slightly, she said, ‘Yes, you’re right there.’ Then she jerked her chin upwards as she exclaimed, ‘Oh, don’t worry, boy, don’t you worry, me conscience isn’t going to trouble me on that account. Oh no. The only thing I’m thinking at this moment is, it was too easy a death for him. By aye, it was that. And I hope the other gentleman doesn’t escape so easily; I want to see justice take its course there, and a long course at that. And all those in league with him…’ Her head was wagging on her shoulders as she ended, ‘I’ll go up now and tell your grandfather, and if I know him he’ll want to pin a medal on me for getting rid of the scum.’
Both Eddie and Daisy watched her turn around and march up the kitchen and out through the door and Daisy, her voice holding a tone of awe, whispered, ‘She’s marvellous, isn’t she. Wonderful!’
Marvellous! Wonderful! He wouldn’t have used those terms in connection with his granny. Tough is the word he would have used, real tough. She wasn’t womanly at all; although he had seen her soften once or twice of late, her reactions to most things were more like those of a man.
‘Would you get me a bucket of coal in, Eddie?’
He turned and looked at Daisy. She had never before asked him to do anything for her. ‘Aye. Yes.’ He went and picked up the brass scuttle that was standing to the side of the hearth, and when he passed her she said, ‘I’m…I’m afraid to go into the backyard.’
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