GFU04 - The Cornish Pixie Affair

by Peter Leslie

  Staring blankly out of the window, her eyes fell on the figure of Ernie Bosustow, tramping past on his way from the trailer to the sideshows.

  Perhaps that was the answer — he was only a boy, but he loathed Sir Gerald Wright, he knew the area, and he'd plenty of guts and defiance and determination himself... which were not bad qualities for a sidekick, in the circumstances!

  And she had to have a sidekick: courageous and resourceful though she was, April felt the need for the moral support of a second person on this adventure, even if that person was going to be only a passenger. She strode to the door and flung it open. "Ernie!" she called. "Can you come here a minute?"

  The boy strolled across. "Hallo, hallo," he said with an impish look up at her. "What happened to you? You look as though you'd been dragged through a hedge backwards!"

  "That's just exactly what did happen to me," April said grimly. "I want to get my own back on the people responsible, and I wondered... Look. Can you come in for a moment?"

  He nodded, ran across to the steps leading to the caravan door, and swung himself up. "What's on your mind, then?" he asked.

  "Ernie, I need help. I can't go into details but... you were right about Sir Gerald Wright. Not only that: he appears to be tied in with the other thing, the secret thing we're investigating — which is probably why he killed your girlfriend... not because she was embarrassing him with his wife but because she knew too much of his affairs. The point is, Sir Gerald and his people have probably captured Mr. Slate. He went up there to the house, not knowing they realised who he was... and I have to get him out. Will you help me?"

  "Right about Wright, eh? That's a bit of a right about turn for a lad as everybody suspects of murder, isn't it?" chuckled the youngest Bosustow.

  "Oh, Ernie — don't hold the police attitude against Mr. Slate and me," she implored.

  "Don't worry: I'll help you all right. If it's to avenge Sheila, like — and especially if it does that toffee-nosed bastard in the eye — I'm on! But what d'you want me to do?"

  "If they have Mr. Slate... and I'm afraid they must have by now... then they're holding him in Wright's house, beyond the radar station up on the moor. My problem is to get inside the grounds without crossing the boundaries in any of the usual ways: they have electrified fences and men with guns and so on." The girl stared at the table for a moment, absently stooped down to pick up the crumpled note from Mark, and struck a match which she held to one corner of it. "You know this region well, don't you?" she asked.

  Ernie grinned. "Bet your life. I was at school here — though the family originally comes from further north. But the old man's always said Porthallow was his real home: that's why he winters here every year."

  "Well, can you think of any way we could get in there undetected?"

  "Hire a helicopter from Goonhilly?"

  "I could even arrange that, as it happens. But it'd take too long."

  "Of course," the boy said slowly, "there's always the Keg-'ole."

  "The what?"

  "The Keg-Hole. Natural curiosity, they call it. It's kind of a cave where the sea runs into the cliffs below the old coastguard station — but inside the cave it suddenly opens out and there's the sky above you again. From the landward side, it's like a hole in the ground where you can see the sea at the bottom."

  "Why is it called the Keg-Hole?"

  "From the shape, first of all. And then again, smugglers used to run kegs of brandy ashore from the French boats there. You can tie up inside and heft the stuff up a path cut in the rock, and nobody sees you until you're up on the cliffs beyond. There's a regular rabbit-warren up there!"

  "What — smuggling just by a coastguard station?"

  "Ah, you got it the wrong way round — the coastguard station was built in that particular spot because it was used for smuggling! Once the preventive men had their look-out there, the smugglers had to find somewhere else."

  "Did I understand you to say that you could take a boat in the cave?"

  "Hell, yes — you could get a crabber in there on a calm day."

  "What about a rough day — a day like today?"

  "Too dicey — but you could run in a twelve- or fourteen-footer, easy. We often used to when we were kids."

  "You could get one in now, in the dark?"

  "Sure you could, if you knew the cliffs."

  "Could you, though?" she persisted.

  "Me? Well, that's a different matter!... Still an' all — I don't know. Why not, for goodness sake? I could try."

  The piece of paper had burned steadily down until it reached the tiny triangle held up between April's finger and thumb. She pursed her lips and blew once sharply to extinguish the flame, then lowered the crisp ash and ground it to fragments in a saucer. "Could you, Ernie?" she said softly. "And would you... to help me?"

  "Sure I would. Why not?"

  "The weather's not too bad tonight, is it?"

  "No, I guess not. Wind's dropped quite a bit, but there's a hell of a sea still running, of course. It won't be easy."

  "Where did you say we came up? — if we took the path, I mean?"

  "Just below the old coastguard station. You can't see it from the path, you think the cliff falls dead away — but in fact there's this dirty great shelf sticking out thirty or forty feet below, and the Hole's in that."

  "But that… but that's... Ernie, that's no good! We want something that takes us into the Wright property! This way, we'd have all that trouble and still find ourselves outside the stile. We might as well walk up the path!"

  "Ah — but I said the hole came out on the shelf. O didn't say we do."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Half way up the Keg, the stairway stops at a platform — and there's a passage from the platform cut into the rock."

  "A tunnel! Where does it come out?"

  "Practically where you want! There's dozens of branches — one of 'em goes right under the Tor and leads to an underground storeroom slap under the radar station! — we used to play in it when we was kids."

  "But, Ernie — why don't we simply walk along the cliffs to this hole and climb down the stairway to the platform, and get in to the tunnels that way?"

  The boy smiled. "You don't know the nineteenth-century coastguards," he said. "Efficiency at the expense of imagination. They dynamited the stairs between the platform and the lip. You can only get to the tunnels from the sea."

  "But that would surely mean... No matter! It suits us. Let's go!"

  Snatching up the handbag, she held open the door for him to leave, and then ran lightly down the steps, slamming it, shut behind her.

  Forever in her mind, the next half hour was a kaleidoscope of movement and of colour. There was the push and jostle through the Saturday night crowd, laughing, shouting, screaming, their open-mouth faces lit harshly from the flares of the booths; the sickly warm smell of candyfloss, nutty fumes from the roast chestnut stall — and over all the strident wheeze of a hurdy-gurdy... And then they were away and running down the hill, past the thatched cottages in the lamplight, under the bridge and into the square, now filled with the headlamps of cars backing and filling to find a place because there was a film showing at the mission halt. Beyond the women in winter coats queuing for the doors to open, they were in a huddle of narrow lanes pricked out with lighted windows or the flickering green of family television... and then at last, salty in the nostrils, there was the cold push of the wind on their faces as they came out on to the quayside.

  Ernie took her arm and guided her along the Hard, past rows of gunwales straining at ropes creaking to the swell. They edged beyond a stack of crab-pots pungent with tar and rotting bait and trod along a boardwalk leading out, rising and falling with the moored dinghies to which it was tethered, to the middle of the harbour.

  At the end of the planking, he jumped down into a bright green boat with a high bow and stern post and threw the tarpaulin from the engine housing amidships. The craft was about fifteen feet long, April judged, and
wide in the beam. There was a curved half-deck which ended just forward of the engine housing, and the bulkhead blanking off the fore- part which this covered held wheel, compass and other controls on one side, and a small door leading to the sail locker on the other. The stern half of the boat was open.

  "She's a funny old craft," the boy called up to her. "Originally they built her for a miniature whaler — as an experiment, like — but she was too small. Then she hung about for years, just a hulk for kids to play in. Then Harry, my brother Harry, he got this two hundred horsepower diesel cheap — and he put the two together, and there she is."

  "No sail?" April asked.

  "No — just the engine. She doesn't even have a mast, that I know of. But she's a sprightly old tub, for all that. Do a good eighteen to twenty knots if pushed! And she's real tough. That's why we're using her instead of borrowing one of me mates' more modern craft."

  The girl jumped down into the cockpit. There were a couple of thwarts and a narrow bench which ran around the stern. Apart from these and a pair of oars lying along the duckboards, it was empty.

  As Ernie bent down and grasped the handle which turned the heavy flywheel, she looked back at the quayside. Masts, rigging and crosstrees tossed against the illumination of the streetlamps lining the Hard. The moon was up, silvering the shallow slate roofs, mellowing the thatch — and if she turned the other way, she could see the agitated water just outside the harbour mouth in its shining path.

  It certainly promised to be very rough. Even at its moorings, the boat was lifting and falling sickeningly. And as soon as the engine caught and settled down to the characteristic diesel knock, and the boy shoved them off and into the middle of the port, she realised how small it really was.

  The rollers were marching in between the piers at fairly long intervals — she could hear the continuation of them thundering on the beach at one side of the harbour — and it was not until they were well clear of the warning lights on each break water that they really hit the swell. The old boat lifted its blunt nose to the crest of every wave, hung suspended for a moment, and then crashed down into the trough with a thwack that sent the spray flying and jarred April's teeth in her head. And then the boards were pressing the soles of her feet again as they rose like a lift to the next one.

  As soon as they drew out from the shelter of the headland, the full fury of the weather seized them. April was looking out over the stern at the lights of Porthallow, clustered like fruit along the dark branch of the valley, when suddenly they slid away and out of sight and the whaler was dropping endlessly into an abyss.

  The girl swung round and gasped with amazement at the wall of moonlit water rearing over them. At the instant that it threatened to engulf them, the boat slewed, and then seemed to climb almost vertically up the slope. The vicious, curling tip of the comber hissed past, only inches below the gunwale, and then on the downward tilt, the wind snatched her breath, whistling in her ears and howling across the foam-flecked surface of the water to flick tongues of spume from the waves. "I thought you said the weather had calmed down!" she shouted, flinging herself forward and cowering down in the shelter of the bulk head beside the boy.

  He was hunched over the wheel, his wet eyes bright in the moonlight, anticipating every movement with small motions of the spokes, tiny variations in the opening of the throttle. There was a smile on his lips.

  This, April saw at once as she repeated her comment, was a young man doing what he wanted to do: pitting his skills against the elements.

  He turned and grinned at her. "I said the wind had dropped. But I warned you there was a sea running, mind," he yelled back.

  "There still seems plenty of wind to me!"

  "Oh, come now — she's not a point over Force Six! These seas are about eighteen foot, trough to crest. It's when they're shorter that you're in trouble: front half liftin' before your stern's down, and you break your back as soon as whistle!"

  The bows corkscrewed through a crest crumbling into foam, hung giddily over space, and then roared down into a trough, to thunder against the swell of the next wave with a shock that sent showers of icy spray exploding into the air. Drenched to the skin, the girl pushed the soaking hair from her eyes and screamed against the wind: "Do you think you can make it to your cave in this kind of weather, Ernie?"

  "Sure I can. We have to head out a bit because of the reefs inshore this side of the point. But there's slack water off Tregunda, and it runs powerful deep just there, which is why the old smugglers used it. It's when you get big seas on a shallow ground that it's dangerous... like the Manacles, off Coverack. That's beyond the headland on the far side of the cove: you can see the flashing light as we rise.... There! See! They've had more wrecks there than the rest of the coast put together."

  "Okay, Ernie. You're the skipper. if you think you can — Good grief! Look at that!"

  A mountainous wave rose at them crosswise, canting the boat alarmingly on her beam. At the same time another breaker speeding diagonally across its face burst with a noise like a thunderclap over the stern, cascading a torrent of sea water into the cockpit. April picked herself up groggily from the duckboards, to hear Ernie shouting: "Bail, woman! bail for your life! Get that water out or we're done for next time we hit a sea like that!"

  "What... with? What shall I bail with?" she screamed against the howling of the wind.

  Ernie Bosustow was wrestling with the wheel, steering the bucking whaler up and down the gigantic seas like a man on a roller-coaster. "...old petrol tin... stern thwart... fast as you..." she heard him shout.

  She found a two-gallon can with the top sawn off under the rear seat, and began frenziedly dipping and throwing, dipping and throwing, as they ploughed on into the gale. The next half hour was sheer nightmare. As soon as they were far enough out to clear the reefs, they had to circle round and run back before the wind, with the great combers, marbled grey and gold by the moon, sweeping past on either side. The whaler, squatting low in the water now that she was half awash, alternately buried her nose and her stern in the crests as the twin screws — now labouring, now racing as they lifted clear of the sea — slogged remorselessly on. Many times, as they sank endlessly into some trough, she was sure they would never rise again; many times, as the boat shuddered to the onslaught of an extra large wave, she was certain it would disintegrate.

  But at last she realised that the buffeting had resolved itself into a simple — if extensive — up and down motion; the shriek of the wind had died down to a whistle. She looked up from her back-breaking task. They were quite close in under the cliffs — she could make out their dark outline against the sky. Distantly to either side, she could hear the thunder of surf. She could even make out the pulsing line of phosphorescence where the rollers dashed themselves against the rocks. But straight ahead, in the freak area of slack water the boy had told her about, the sea simply rose and fell, sucking at the strata.

  She continued to bail. The boat was now riding lighter in the water, but there was still a good deal aboard.

  A moment later, aware of some subtle variation in the atmosphere around them, she straightened as they were carried swiftly forward, relapsed, and then surged on again, apparently straight at the cliff. There was a sudden acceleration, a pouring down of darkness as the moon and stars were extinguished — and then a slow spreading of unearthly green light as they floated out into the middle of an enormous cavern. The whaler had pierced the cliff to reach the Keg-Hole!

  Ernie shouted something triumphant but unintelligible — she could not hear what it was because the first syllable he uttered was caught up to echo a hundredfold in the vast chimney of rock above them, distorted and magnified as it crashed around the galleries of dripping stone to merge with the suck and slap and drip of the water and the muffled roaring of the wind above.

  There were no waves in the cavern, but the boat rose and fell sickeningly as the water ebbed and flowed — there must be an amplitude of eight or nine feet, April thought, as
she peered at a weed-slimed ledge which kept sinking into view as the craft reached the zenith of its climb.

  The boy scrambled up on to the covered bow and shouted something again. She saw he was going to try and jump on to the ledge. Three times he fended the boat off, leaning desperately against the slippery rock as it slithered past his hands. On the fourth rise, he launched himself at the side of the cavern, cleared the lip of the shelf and landed on his hands and knees. The next time the boat rose, he was on his feet, beckoning April to follow.

  The thrust from Ernie's feet as he jumped had pushed the whaler away from the wall and she had to wait several ups and downs before it had drifted near enough for her to try. Then on the next rise some subterranean current tugged the stern outwards and the bows crunched against the side, jarring the craft from end to end and casting April to the curved decking. As the sea fell away and the boat dropped once more, the gun wale dragged down the face of the rock with a splintering of timber and three of the ropes tethering padded fenders to her sides parted. Yet again the weathered planking smashed into the rock as the ledge sank into the girl's line of vision. With raw and scraped hands, she attempted to keep them apart, but the old boat was too heavy and the swell inexorably nudged her against the wall of the cave. Somewhere up in the bows she could hear water pouring into the sail-locker, swelling the load that swilled ceaselessly from side to side of the cockpit.

  The boy was crouched in the dim light on the edge of the shelf, waiting for her with outstretched hands. On the next rise, she gathered herself as the shattered bows lurched up and jumped.