Cry of a Seagull

by Monica Dickens

  Farther down the beach, where Brian and Simon and Marion had disappeared, there was a little group of donkeys, waiting to give rides. There hadn’t been donkeys on this beach within Rose’s memory. She had only seen them in old picture postcards.

  Mrs Thomas and Georgie were dozing when the three older children hurtled back, demanding donkey rides.

  ‘Last year, you said it was boring, duckies.’

  ‘It is, but we want to.’ Brian stood with his legs apart and his hands on his hips, bossing his mother.

  ‘There’s a baby donkey there with its mummy,’ Marion said. Georgie woke in an instant. ‘Baby ee-aw, Georgie ride baby ee-aw!’ So the mother allowed herself to be pulled from her chair and they all ran along the beach, Ruth and Rose carrying Georgie, because Mrs Thomas wanted to run in zigzags like the others and jump rocks and dash in and out of the sea. Her childish enjoyment reminded Rose a bit of Mollie, except that this woman was unpractical and pretty useless.

  Georgie, excited, clutched Ruth too hard, and easy-going Ruth amazed Rose with a flash of temper and a vicious slap on the baby’s wet rompers. Georgie bawled, and Ruth said, ‘Shut up!’ fiercely, and Rose felt that she was tense with anger.

  She got herself under control before they reached the others. Mrs Thomas had collapsed laughing against the little fence where the donkeys were tied. She leaned there and watched her children squabble over who would ride which donkey.

  ‘Now then, now then.’ The donkeys’ owner, a stocky man with a limp and a red, weathered face, sorted them out on to three grey donkeys, which went ambling unwillingly off, a lad with ginger hair and freckles alternately tugging at their heads and flicking at their uncaring behinds with a light stick.

  The brown mother donkey was harnessed to a little cart like an armchair on wheels, with a high back and cushioned seat. She rested her patient nose on the back of the velvety dark brown foal who stood close to her. His huge violet eyes were ringed with soft white hair, giving him a clownish look.

  ‘Baby ee-aw!’ Georgie wriggled out of Ruth’s arms and toddled up to the foal, who jumped away and swung back his exaggerated ears defensively.

  ‘Now then, my love.’ The donkey man took her hand. ‘You mustn’t frighten little Gully.’

  ‘Georgie on baby ee-aw! Want it, want it, want it!’ The child set up a clamour, and her mother said, ‘She’s persistent, you must say that for her.’

  ‘We’ll put her on old Neptune,’ the man said, when Brian turned his donkey back because it was boring. He lifted Georgie into the felt saddle, and Ruth led her off, wobbling, her round imperious face gone suddenly chalk white with alarm.

  ‘Better hang on to her leg.’ Rose warned Ruth inwardly, but Ruth was wandering vaguely along, and when old Neptune stumbled in the soft sand, Georgie tumbled off, and the donkey almost stepped on her as he regained his balance.

  ‘Poor old Neptune.’ The donkey man picked up the toddler and limped over with her to her mother. ‘He’s getting on, like me. Weak on his pins. Have to put him out to grass, which is where I’ll be next year if the Council has their way and moves my pitch further away from the holidaymakers. And now my boy Fred, he wants to leave Newcome, like they all do, so I don’t know how I’ll manage, with my leg.’

  ‘Life’s hard,’ Mrs Thomas agreed absently.

  ‘Too right, it is. This is a dying business. If I have to retire, there’ll be no more donkeys on Newcome beach. And then perhaps the Council—’

  Georgie shut him up by roaring, ‘Baby ee-aw!’ and beating her mother about her uncomplaining face.

  She put the child in the little cart, and the donkey man got in, put an arm round her, and slapped the reins on the furry brown back with the dark stripe.

  ‘Get up, Coral!’ and off they jogged. The foal trotted alongside, bumping his mother from time to time, and then bounding away to put down his white nose and kick up his gawky back legs. When he got too far away, he stopped and brayed for her, with a sound like sawing wood.

  When Fred came back with Marion and Simon, Ruth climbed on to Mermaid’s back. Good. Rose had always wanted to ride a donkey. Ruth dangled her legs and trailed her feet in the sand. She wanted to go straight along the beach, but Mermaid pottered down to the water’s edge, where she dropped her mouse-coloured head and stepped delicately on her small narrow hoofs into the sea.

  She stood there, and nothing would make her move. She only wanted a salt soak for her legs, but Ruth was roused to anger by her stubbornness, and Rose again felt her lose control and go hot with vicious rage. She roared like Georgie. She smacked the donkey’s ribs with her hand. She leaned backwards with all her weight on the reins. She tugged the right rein savagely. She tugged the left rein. She see-sawed the bit so that the cheek ring went through the donkey’s mouth, while Rose begged unheard, ‘Don’t! Don’t!’ Finally Mermaid sagged at the knees and sagged at the back end and lay down blissfully in the shallow water. Ruth shrieked and cursed, and stepped off as she rolled over.

  Rose came back into her own life standing in the sea with her shoes and socks full of water. Her journeys with the horse took no time, in terms of earthly time. She waded out on to the sand just as Ben turned to run back to her, and fell in beside him, hoping he wouldn’t notice the squelching of her feet.

  Ben and his father went off to Newcome Hollow harbour, and Rose was busy with the work of the hotel, but all day she puzzled and worried about the events on the beach, which must have happened long before she was born. What did it mean? The horse never took her anywhere without a purpose, and somewhere in that scene must lie the clue to what she had to do. One of those people was in great trouble or danger, and it might be any of them.

  It might be Ruth, with her sloppy unawareness and her frightening flashes of vicious temper. If she was thirteen or fourteen then, she must be about forty now, and if she hadn’t got herself together, she might have grown into a child batterer. Georgie might have got into some trouble because she was spoiled and wilful and not properly supervised. Perhaps she was even dead, and the poor mother still overwhelmed with guilt and anguish because it had been her fault. The donkey man seemed to have a lot of worries on his mind. Perhaps he was going to lose his livelihood, or become crippled. Perhaps freckled Fred was going to go to the bad.

  ‘Why is Favour so baffling?’ Rose did not see Mr Vingo until dinner time, so she discussed the situation in snatches each time she came to his corner table.

  ‘Or, why are we so baffled? Thank you, Rose, that pie looks delicious. Favour can’t do all the work for you. The challenge is that by overcoming each difficulty and danger, you will find the knowledge and strength for the conquest of evil.’

  The dining-room was busy tonight. As well as the hotel guests, several people had come from outside, as they often did, now that Wood Briar and Mollie’s cooking were getting a local reputation. Rose, in her blue and white check waitress apron, was working with Dilys and Gloria. Doleful Dilys, who came at weekends, was a Newcome University student whose love life was always in a mess. Gloria was a cheery, energetic woman: one of the regular staff, who knew all the workings of the hotel like the back of her hand. They could never manage without her.

  Rose was held up by the Howards, who had a granddaughter of her age and wanted to keep her chatting. Gloria always made her serve the dodos, so she had to spend time with Professor Watson, who dropped all his pills on the floor and fussed about his special steamed fish, and with the Miss Mumfords, who had never eaten a single meal in this hotel without complaining – not one single meal in all the four or five years they had been here. Finally, she could nip back to Mr Vingo’s table with the excuse of offering him seconds of sprouts.

  ‘It could be one of a lot of people,’ she murmured over the vegetable dish, ‘but how do I know? I’ve thought and thought about it till I’ve got brain fever.’

  ‘That’s why you’re a messenger.’

  ‘Because I’m stupid?’

  ‘Because …’ Mr Vingo shovelled i
n more pie and breathed heavily, his eyes beginning to bulge ‘… you’re not.’ He put down his fork and looked up at her with a satisfied grin.

  ‘And because your mother … without a doubt … makes the finest steak and kidney pie in this hemisphere.’

  By the time they had cleared the main course, Mollie should have been at the serving hatch dishing out the apricot soufflé.

  Rose went back into the kitchen. ‘Where’s Mum?’

  ‘Called to the phone,’ Hilda said. ‘She put the soofull back in the fridge.’

  ‘Well, get it out again, you silly cow.’ Gloria grabbed the dishes from her and took them into the pantry, and they got everyone served with soufflé and sponge fingers, and the cheese tray handed round.

  They couldn’t start the coffees because the coffee hadn’t been made. Rose frantically started up the urn with hot water, which she wasn’t supposed to do. Henry Watson wanted tea. ‘Not that kind.’ He pushed the cup away like a petulant child. ‘The herbal kind your mother makes for me.’ The Mumford twins had gone to the upstairs lounge where they had their special chairs, and were ringing the bell for coffee every three minutes.

  ‘Come on, you rotten urn.’ Rose slapped the shiny cylinder to try to make its red light come on. The lounge bell buzzed again out in the passage and she told it furiously, ‘Shut up!’ and felt her mother’s arm go round her shoulders.

  Mollie flicked a hurry-up switch on the urn that Rose had forgotten, and flipped a lever on the bell that cut it off at the start of another buzz, like a bilious Mumford hiccup.

  ‘Where were you when we needed you?’ Rose grumbled at her, but then she saw Mollie’s face. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘It’s Grandpa.’ Mollie pushed back her hair. ‘That was Uncle Ted on the phone.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Rose was fond of her mother’s father, who was opinionated and demanding, but at least you knew where you were with him.

  ‘He’s ill.’

  ‘Dying?’ No one close to Rose had died yet. She was terrified of losing somebody she loved.

  ‘No, no, he’ll be all right, but—’

  ‘Get a move on Mrs W.’ Gloria pushed by them with a tray of coffee-cups. ‘The animals are getting restive.’

  Up in their own apartment, Rose and her father sat at the table, and Mollie looked at them anxiously. When she had broken it to them that she had to go and take care of Grandpa, Rose’s first thought had been ‘Why now? I’m at the beginning of a mission for Favour – I can’t take on any more at the hotel.’

  But the sight of her mother’s worried face made her feel selfish and vile, so she took the white hamster out of his cage, to calm herself with the feel of his supple, silky little body. She sat looking down at him, circling her hands so that Dougal could keep running forward from one to the other. Philip had his long face propped in his hands, with no expression of his feelings.

  ‘Why can’t your brother help?’ he asked.

  ‘Ted’s too busy, you know that.’

  ‘His wife?’

  ‘One of the children is home from school with glands. Di can’t possibly get away.’

  ‘What happened to Mrs Whatsername, that neighbour?’

  ‘Daddy’s turned against her. She talks too much and he says she has a moustache and her hands are clammy. Ted’s tried a few people, but it’s so hard to get anyone, and the doctor says he can’t be alone.’

  ‘How long for?’ Philip’s face and voice were still expressionless. Was he very angry?

  ‘The doctor says he’ll be laid up for a week or two.’

  ‘Oh God, we’re sunk,’ Rose said. ‘Two weeks, with all the Easter trade? Look, you disappear for fifteen minutes tonight, and the whole system falls apart.’

  ‘I thought we could hire a temporary manager,’ Mollie said. ‘There’s an agency where—’

  ‘No!’ Philip took his face out of his hands and banged on the table.

  ‘It’s her father.’ Rose glowered at him. ‘If you were ill, I bet you’d want me.’

  ‘Of course.’ Suddenly his deadpan face livened into a smile and he amazed them by saying, ‘But we don’t need an outsider. We’ll manage on our own.’

  ‘How?’ Hilda, Mrs Ardis, Gloria, Dilys … Rose began to panic. Her father never shared the running of the hotel, so how—

  ‘I’ll help,’ he said. ‘I’ll keep the books, do the ordering, chat up the old fogies.’

  ‘But—’ Rose and Mollie said together.

  ‘I’ll take some time off work. Hilda and Gloria can manage a lot of the cooking. I can make omelettes at a pinch, and bake my famous gingerbread.’

  ‘I can do bread and butter pudding.’ Rose caught his enthusiasm. ‘And remember those barbecued chickens I did, and the curry?’

  ‘Blew the top of everyone’s head off.’ Mollie was torn between doubt and gratitude.

  ‘Well next time I’ll use less curry powder.’

  ‘How can I go?’ Mollie struggled with her two loves and duties. ‘I’ve got to go, but I can’t go.’

  ‘You can,’ Philip said. ‘You must.’ Rose had never seen him look so noble. ‘We’ll manage together, won’t we, Rose?’ He reached out to her across the table.

  ‘A team.’ She put the hamster into her jacket pocket and shook his hand.

  Chapter Three

  It was unnerving to see Mollie drive away, but it was exciting to be a trustworthy team, and Rose had not felt so close to her father for years.

  He was up early, and spent the morning in the office or behind the reception desk in the hall.

  ‘Well, I must say.’ Audrey Mumford stopped at the desk for her Sunday paper. ‘It’s nice to see you helping out for a change.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Mumford.’ He remembered that he had promised to be nice to the old dum-dums. ‘I’m letting my wife take a few days off. Meanwhile, I am in charge.’

  ‘Well.’ Audrey’s small, suspicious eyes drilled through him like gimlets. ‘Then I’ll know who to come to if any-thing’s wrong, won’t I? For a start, you can give me my correct paper. This belongs to Mrs Howard. She takes it for the crossword, though she never finishes it.’ Although wrapped up in their own concerns, the twins made it their business to know what everybody else read or ate or did. ‘If you’re to be in charge, you will have to pay a bit more attention to the guests, won’t you?’

  ‘Ah yes, well well, ha ha.’ Rose, watering plants in the hall, could see that his fists were clenched with the effort to be polite. ‘If they were all as easy and charming as you …’

  ‘Don’t overdo it, Dad,’ Rose said when Audrey had gone. ‘They’ll smell a rat.’

  ‘They smell it anyway,’ he said. ‘Miss Angela’s already been along to complain about the bacon.’

  ‘It was a bit greasy, but Hilda got flustered.’

  ‘Are you?’

  Rose shook her head.

  ‘Nor am I. It’s fun.’ He winked at her. ‘We’ll cope.’

  A young man with a beard arrived with a lot of camera equipment, and a beautiful girl in amazing clothes. He was preparing an illustrated feature about this area for a local magazine, and the girl was his assistant. Philip got them successfully booked in and sent them up to their rooms, calling Jim Fisher, the outside helper, from his tea break in the kitchen to carry the girl’s heavy bag.

  Gloria was not here today, so Rose would have to help Hilda to cook lunches, if only to keep her father, in his first flush of enthusiasm, from having a go at Yorkshire pudding.

  She rang Abigail to say she wouldn’t be able to go riding.

  ‘Ben there?’

  ‘Yes, but that’s not why. He’s down at the dock, scrubbing the decks and scraping barnacles.’ Rose told Abigail about the crisis, and good old Ab – what a friend – said at once, ‘Hold everything. I’ll be right over.’

  ‘But you were going to ride.’

  ‘This is more fun. I’ll ride over anyway, so Crackers will get a workout.’

  There was a lot to d
o. Fortunately, Mrs Ardis chose to work on Sundays, because she didn’t want her aggravating daughter-in-law to visit her then, although she always behaved like a martyred saint.

  ‘You can make me work on the Sabbath,’ she told Rose in her holy voice, ‘but you can’t make me risk a slipped disc by doing double beds alone.’ She clutched her back. ‘A little Christian charity, please.’

  After the beds, Rose and Abigail ran three loads of laundry and served morning coffees and found the Professor’s library book and laid tables and filled salt cellars and dashed in and out of the kitchen to peel potatoes and chop cabbage and give a quick turn to the Yorkshire pudding batter, waiting in the big bowl of the electric mixer. With Mollie gone, you could see just how much she did, while still managing to be calm and smiling to the guests and always ready to stop for a chat.

  Going to the upstairs lounge to collect coffee-cups, Rose went mad, shifting from foot to foot while Professor Watson insisted on telling her what he thought was a funny anecdote. She rattled downstairs with the tray of china, and Mrs Ardis called her from the dining-room to open a stuck window.

  ‘He said to air the place out, but I’ll not risk that disc for him, or anyone else.’

  ‘Oh now, Mrs Ardis, don’t start.’ Rose struggled with the window, which overlooked the outside verandah.

  ‘Start what, pray?’ Mrs Ardis had switched to her uppish voice, high in her nose, head of wild hair thrown back, fettered by a purple scarf, mauve eyelids closed.

  ‘Well, I mean – ah, got it!’ The window flew up. ‘Getting outraged and all that. This is a crisis, you know. We’re all in it together.’

  ‘Has he suggested I’m not pulling my weight?’ Mrs Ardis’s nostrils widened like a horse scenting trouble.