Cry of a Seagull

by Monica Dickens

  ‘Oh, my ankle.’

  ‘Is it broken?’

  ‘No, but oh, my ankle.’

  ‘Try and stand up, Mr Wood.’

  Philip groaned dramatically as Ben pulled him upright and helped him to limp back to the hotel.

  ‘Well, you know what to put in your test report,’ Ben told him. “The Chopper does wheelies.’”

  But Philip would not be cheered up. He wanted the kind of sympathy that Mollie always gave. Rose was no good at that, so while Ben went out to put away the mower, she found Louise, one of the nurses, who took Philip away, clucking and making soothing sounds.

  While her father was upstairs having an iced-water soak and a crepe bandage, Rose was behind the reception desk, sorting letters. Through the open front door, she saw a taxi stop outside the hotel. A man and a woman and a young girl got out. The man paid the taxi, and as it drove off, Rose saw that the three people were Vicky and her parents from the yacht, Princess Vicky. They came up the steps to the verandah, turned and stood looking out towards the ocean.

  So it was now. It had happened. The yacht had broken loose and was out at sea.

  Rose went out to them. They were wearing the same clothes in which she had seen them at the marina.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Someone’s got to.’ Calamity had not softened the father’s arrogance. ‘The most stupid thing has happened. We were tied up in the estuary, but my crew didn’t moor my boat properly.’

  ‘Daddy, I did!’ from Vicky.

  ‘She slipped her moorings, and the wind and current carried her along the coast. We’ve been out looking for her since dawn, and thank God she’s beached herself on a sandbank at the end of the promontory out there.’

  ‘Sandy Neck?’ Rose asked.

  ‘If that’s what they call it,’ he said scornfully.

  ‘Is the boat all right?’

  ‘As far as I can see. No thanks to idiots who can’t tie a decent knot.’

  He glared at Vicky, and his wife said, ‘Jack, stop it. You know the moorings must have been untied by that gang of teenagers who were hanging about at the marina.’

  ‘Damned insolent, they were.’

  ‘You were rude first,’ Rose heard Vicky mutter under her breath.

  ‘Ought to be horsewhipped, the lot of ’em. If they’re responsible for this, by God, I’ll get the courts to lock ’em all up and throw away the key.’

  Seeing Vicky’s nervous, weary face, Rose wondered what she was thinking about Evil and Lynette and her impulsive fascination with them. It was strange to know so much about someone, when they thought you were a total stranger.

  ‘Look.’ Vicky’s mother turned to Rose with a strained smile. ‘We’ve got to get out to the yacht before the tide comes in and floats her off.’

  ‘The taxi driver brought us here,’ her husband said, ‘but I don’t suppose you can get us a boat.’ His disparaging gaze took in Rose, the verandah littered with knitting wool and a half-finished jigsaw and someone’s frayed plimsolls, and Mrs Ardis in a smock like a striped marquee, crossing the hall with a plastic rubbish bag and a roll of toilet paper.

  ‘Of course we can,’ Rose told him in what she hoped was a crushing tone.

  She called Ben from the garage, and he took them across the dunes to the beach where the dinghy was moored.

  As he rowed the family out to his boat, Rose stood on the beach and strained her eyes to see if the donkey was on the deck of the tilting boat, grounded near the shore at the end of Sandy Neck.

  She went to Ben’s room upstairs in the annexe and found the binoculars, but she still could not see anything on the railed deck. Perhaps he was on the other side where it was tilted higher, leaning against the cabin, terrified, but still safe. Perhaps it wasn’t too late.

  ‘They’re lucky,’ Ben told Rose when he came back. ‘Not much damage. The rails are smashed at one side, and the deck is a bit scarred up, as if some of the gang might have been on board and stamped about in heavy boots.’

  He had carried the yacht’s anchor in his boat as far away as the line would reach, so that it could be winched in to pull the Princess Vicky off the sandbank as the tide rose. After taking the boat to Newcome Hollow for repairs to the rail, the family came back to Wood Briar to ask for rooms for the night.

  ‘They put us up last night in the pub where we had dinner,’ the father yawned, ‘but I didn’t close an eye. Bed was too short.’

  ‘We’ve got an extra long one. I can put you in the annexe,’ Rose said efficiently.

  ‘Do you run this hotel all by yourself?’

  Rose blushed. ‘My mother’s away at the moment, and my father has sprained his ankle. You can have the front downstairs room and bath, and your daughter can have the single next to it.’

  ‘Oh – just to have a bath and lie down and sleep!’ the mother sighed gratefully. ‘Come on, Vicky.’

  ‘All right for some people.’ Her husband lowered his bushy naval eyebrows, and put his yachting cap on over the eyebrows. ‘I’ve got to go off to the police.’

  He had hired a car in the village, and Rose asked him if he would give her a lift into Newcome. ‘Something I’ve got to pick up.’

  ‘Where? I can’t be tacking about all over the town while you do your shopping. I’ve got an appointment with the Chief Superintendent at the police station.’

  ‘I can walk from there.’

  When she got out of the car, he ordered, ‘Be back in half an hour, otherwise I’ll drive off without you.’

  He would too. He was a hard man. Normally, Rose would be afraid of him, but having experienced what it was like to be his daughter, she knew that his bark, although embarrassing and infuriating, was not dangerous.

  Once out of sight, she scurried through the streets and across the bridge to the lane that led to the marina.

  The paddock was empty. The gate was open. Nothing in the lean-to shed. The donkey had gone.

  The old man came to his door at once when Rose knocked, but the light went out of his eyes when he realized that she had not come with news about his donkey.

  ‘I’m leaving the gate open,’ he told Rose in a voice that was feeble and creaky with unhappiness, ‘in case he wanders back. I don’t know how he got out, but he may not be able to find his way home. Getting on in years, my poor Gully is.’

  He was so glad to have someone to talk to that he did not ask her how she knew about the donkey. He was very frail and frightened. His hands shook and his eyes looked as if he had been crying, and sometimes as he talked, tears welled up and ran down the deep lines in his weathered face.

  Rose tried to reassure him. ‘I’m sure Gully is all right,’ she told him; but having seen the vision of the donkey lying exhausted at the edge of the water, she was not so sure.

  The man’s name was Arthur Reade. He told her about his old days on Newcome beach, just as Rose had seen it on that first journey when she was Ruth.

  ‘Like my children, those mokes were. Neptune, Mermaid, Sailor, Coral, Little Gully – all got names from the sea, you see. They were my life. Gully learned to pull the cart when his mother’s back got bad. Lovely turn-out. He was a real picture.’

  He showed Rose a photograph of the brown donkey with the white nose and the white spectacles harnessed to the little cart that Rose remembered, with a child even younger than Georgie perched proudly on the seat, holding the reins.

  ‘My granddaughter, Judy. She loved coming down to the beach. But I had to give up that business for one reason and another.’ He waved a hand vaguely, as if he had forgotten. ‘Then I made a bit of a living taking the donkeys to fetes and birthday parties, and we tried a few of the fairgrounds – that was where Gully got his taste for peanuts. But the crowds were too rough for them. I had to give that up. They’re all gone now, old Neptune, Mermaid, Sailor, Coral.’ He went through the names as if he was saying a prayer. ‘All but my little Gully, my best friend. I always keep a tin of peanuts for him, there by the door, and when I whistle,
he gives me a bray and comes up for them. But now I don’t know if he ever – I don’t know. They do steal horses and donkeys for slaughter, you know. Dog meat.’ His voice broke. He couldn’t go on. He bowed his old white head in his knotted hands, and wept the tears of his broken heart.

  It was ghastly. Rose was torn to shreds inside, but she had to leave him, or Vicky’s father would go back to the hotel without her.

  ‘Don’t give up hope,’ she told him. ‘I’ll try to help you.’

  ‘Will you?’ Arthur’s dry, bony hand grabbed hers. His faded blue eyes searched her face. ‘Will you bring my little Gully back to me?’

  Oh, Favour, what have you got me into?’

  ‘I’ll try. I’ll look for him. I promise. Keep hoping,’ she told him when she left. But she did not feel very hopeful herself. As she went out into the lane, she turned and saw the bent old man standing in the doorway, gazing dejectedly at nothing.

  Oh God. Was this going to be the one mission where she would fail?

  Chapter Ten

  On the way home, Vicky’s father grumbled about the police.

  ‘When I described the boy who was so offensive, and that cheap-looking girl, the superintendent said, “I know them.” “Go and get them,” I said. But the wretched man mumbled and waffled and said, “They’ve never done any serious stuff yet, and I don’t believe they’d mess about with a boat.”

  ‘“Well, they did,” I told him. “We’ll keep an eye on them,” he said. “Sooner or later, we’ll get them for something serious that we can charge them with.”

  ‘“You can charge them with damaging my boat,” I told him, and he said, “Don’t worry, Captain, we’ll certainly make enquiries.” Make enquiries! I’ve heard that one before. That’s all the police ever do – totally useless.’

  He turned in to the car park behind the hotel.

  ‘I hope they catch them,’ Rose said with feeling.

  ‘If they don’t, I’m writing to my M. P. I’m going to make such a stink in this town, they’ll wish—’

  But Rose had opened the door and jumped out. She had seen her mother’s red car parked in its usual place.

  Aunt Di was staying with Grandpa, and Mollie was home for the weekend.

  Rose flung herself at her. ‘Oh, I’m so glad you’re back! You wouldn’t believe—’

  ‘Everyone’s been coming at me with tales of disasters.’ Mollie laughed. ‘But I think you’ve all managed marvellously. You tell me some good news.’

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘That’s the best news.’ Her mother hugged her.

  With Mollie back, things immediately stopped going wrong at Wood Briar. Philip’s swollen ankle shrank miraculously. The staff calmed down, and the Mumfords forgot about leaving. Hilda came back, and Philip apologized to her, and Hilda said, ‘Least said, soonest mended,’ and took off her coat and put on her apron and started to make a Lancashire hotpot.

  Mollie rang up Professor Henry Watson, and finding that he was lonely and uncomfortable in his new lodgings, persuaded him to come back to Wood Briar. She made a jam sponge for Audrey and Angela, and sympathized with Mrs Ardis’s grievances and told her it would be impossible to run the hotel without her.

  With her mother in charge, Rose could escape on her bicycle to search all the beaches between the hotel and Newcome.

  If Gully had fallen or jumped off the boat after it went aground on the sand bank, he would be on Sandy Neck or Long Beach. He wasn’t and neither of them looked anything like the beach that Rose had seen in the vision. If he had gone overboard before the boat drifted towards the land, changing tides and currents could have carried him anywhere.

  Along the road that ran by the shore, she stopped at all the places where there were inlets and little beaches, hoping each time to find Gully. She imagined him as she had seen him on the cinema screen, collapsed at the edge of the sea, the small waves breaking over him, his head stretched out on the wet sand. Was there still time? Would she find him in time to save him?

  He might already be dying, his scrappy mane lifted and dropped by the shallow water, like a drowned person’s hair.

  Each time, there was nothing there. In one or two places, there was someone out walking, throwing bits of driftwood for a dog; otherwise only the seagulls, wheeling and diving and rising again with their lonely cry.

  Like discontented Joanne, who had watched them from the beach with her hated family behind her, Rose envied the gulls their freedom. The could go anywhere, search the whole coastline. Why wouldn’t the horse let her become a seagull? As she rode home fast with the wind behind her, Rose tried to imagine that she could hear a donkey braying. But there was nothing. Only the seagulls. If they knew where Gully was, they could not tell her.

  Peter Yardley of the locally well-known Yardley family came to dinner with his smart, good-looking wife. They were at one of Rose’s tables, but Tasha, who was always more fond of doing someone else’s work than her own, decided to add their dirty plates to a pile she was carrying out to the kitchen.

  The pile was too high. As she turned away from the Yardleys’ table, it began to topple.

  ‘Whoops – help!’ Smasher had never learned to be quiet in the dining-room.

  A fried tomato slid off the top plate into Mrs Yardley’s lap, and the wobbling pile of china and cutlery would have crashed to the floor, hitting her on the way, but just in time she put out her hands and caught the messy top plates, so that Smasher could get the bottom ones back under control.

  ‘Well caught!’ She grinned at Mrs Yardley, unabashed. Rose rushed up with a cloth, and Mollie went to the Yardleys after dinner to apologize. They were nice enough to laugh and say it did not matter.

  ‘Good thing I’m wearing a red dress,’ Mrs Yardley said.

  ‘But that’s done it,’ Rose said when she was upstairs with her mother and father. ‘They’ll never come here again.’

  ‘Crasher will have to go,’ said Philip. ‘I should never have taken her on.’

  ‘Yes, you should,’ Mollie said. ‘She’s clumsy, but she means well.’

  ‘You always see the best in people.’ Philip complained, as if that were a bad habit. ‘We can’t afford to lose customers, with business so bad.’

  ‘It will pick up,’ Mollie said. ‘This is just the slump before the summer invasion. You’ll see. We’ll be worn out with the rush before long.’

  ‘That’ll be the day.’

  ‘I’m tired already,’ Mollie said. ‘I’d better go to bed if I’m to do early teas.’

  ‘You’re not,’ Rose told her. ‘Mrs Ardis and I will do the early stuff. You’re going to have a lie-in.’

  ‘Lovely.’ Mollie was as good at accepting favours as at doing them. ‘It will be great not to be woken at six by your Grandpa’s bell to ask me what time it is.’

  ‘Can’t he see the clock? His eyes are all right, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes, but he likes to get me in there so he can complain that he hasn’t slept a wink, although he’s been sound asleep when I’ve been in during the night to try to give him his pills. He’s a bit difficult. He says he’s not any better, and I tell him that if he believed he was better, he would be, and he tells me that when I’m so jolly it makes his teeth ache.’

  ‘Sounds like me,’ Philip said.

  ‘Sometimes he does, a bit.’ Mollie laughed. ‘Why not? They say a woman often marries a man who’s like her father.’

  ‘God help you, then, Rose.’ Philip said.

  ‘I could do worse.’

  It was so comfortable to be the three of them together again.

  At eight the next morning, the phone rang.

  ‘Sorry to ring so early.’ It was Peter Yardley. ‘But I’ve got to get this settled. Who’s that?’

  ‘Rose Wood.’

  ‘Oh, it was you who looked after us at dinner last night?’

  ‘Yes.’ She hoped he didn’t think she was Smasher.

  ‘Good. It’s like this. It’s my parents’ Golden W
edding next Sunday. The family was going to give a dinner for them, but neither of them really likes to go out at night. So we suddenly thought – I’m sorry it’s such short notice – why not a lunch?’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Yes, if you can. Could you possibly? We want something pretty special.’

  Rose took a deep breath and gripped the phone. ‘How – how many people?’

  ‘Twenty or thirty. Would it be too much?’

  ‘No,’ Rose said, before she could think about it. ‘But why – I mean, aren’t you – I mean, it was awful about the plates last night, and the tomato.’

  ‘We thought it was funny,’ Mr Yardley said easily. ‘We really like your place, you know, especially the service. Will you be one of the waitresses at the lunch?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Great. Shall I talk to your mother about the details?’

  ‘I’ll ask her to ring you.’ Rose took his number and reeled away from the phone grinning. ‘Will you be one of the waitresses?’ he had asked, and she had said, ‘Yes,’ and he had said, ‘Great.’

  She ran upstairs to her mother.

  ‘Sorry to wake you, but it’s the Yardleys!’

  When she told them the plans for the party, ‘something pretty special’, Philip sat up in bed, groaned about his ankle, and told Rose severely, ‘You shouldn’t have agreed. It’s much too grand for us, totally out of our league. Mollie, you’ll have to ring them back and say No.’

  ‘Rubbish.’ Mollie was wide awake and getting out of bed. ‘If I can get Di or Ted to stay with Father again, I could be back here on Saturday morning. Where’s my dressing-gown? I’ll ring Mr Yardley now and get it all fixed. Samson can come and help with the cooking, and we’ll make a shopping list, and Rose can get in the stuff during the week. Oh, it will be marvellous.’

  ‘It’s biting off more than you can chew,’ Philip groused from the bed.

  ‘Nonsense, we must do it. You say business is bad – well, here’s our chance. The Yardleys are big spenders. They’ll invite people who’ll come back here if it goes well.’