Holidays at Home Omnibus
Page 116
Madge didn’t tell her she already had, and had arranged to see him before suggesting Delyth went with her. ‘I’ll ask him. He’ll meet us if he isn’t working.’
The March day was dry and coldly bright. From the train they saw the countryside slowly waking up to spring. In a field where they normally saw swaying corn, they were surprised to see scores of tents, and soldiers busily attending to vehicles parked on the periphery of the once-quiet field.
Madge shivered. ‘Can you imagine us in the middle of something like that?’
‘Better than the boring shop and evenings feeling in the way while Mam whispers “sweet nothings” to Uncle Trev!’
‘Don’t you call him Dad?’ Madge teased.
‘That’ll be the day!’
Leaving the newly sprouted Army camp behind, they headed south, then turned west to make their way through the coastal strip of small towns and villages before getting out in the centre of St David’s Well. Perhaps later they would make their way to the beach, but first there was Charlie to meet, and hopefully an encounter with Maldwyn.
Vera was not at home, but Mrs Denver told them where to find Maldwyn. ‘Up in the woods, he is. Gathering wild flowers for Mrs Chapel’s shop.’ She gave them directions, and after some hesitation they decided to try to find him. They set off for Dallow Woods, not far from the town, and found him with a basket filled with primroses, blue and white violets, and small sprigs of hazel with their tiny catkins ready to grow. He had also gathered a few branches of horse chestnut with their sticky buds. These would open slowly and give a wonderful display of rich green leaves, something he knew Mrs Chapel would enjoy.
He seemed uneasy when he saw them, and looked around as though being watched.
‘Expecting someone?’ Delyth asked. ‘We’ll clear off if we’re intruding.’
‘No, of course not.’
‘You don’t seem very pleased to see us.’
‘I still worry about that lorry, and you being pushed into the hedge. While you’re with me I’m always afraid of something similar happening.’
‘You don’t have to worry about me.’
‘But I do. Until I find the person who played those tricks I won’t feel happy about being with you.’
‘Is that why you went off so hurriedly on the day of the wedding?’
He went on picking flowers, tying them in bunches of fifteen, dropping them carelessly into his basket, wondering whether it was safe to tell her about the letter and other incidents. He told her a little, but not of the warnings aimed at her. ‘So I want you to stay away from me, make people think you and I are nothing more than casual friends, until the man is caught … I like you. I like you a lot, and once this is over I hope you and I—’ Madge and Charlie approached and he didn’t finish, but the look in his dark eyes behind the heavy spectacles told her more clearly than words what he had been about to say.
Maldwyn had to go back to the shop and put his bunches in water, so, persuading him he was worrying about nothing, they arranged to meet at the beach where they hoped to find a café open. When he arrived, he found Madge and Charlie but no sign of Delyth.
‘She just disappeared,’ a frantic Madge told him. ‘We went along the cliff path, as it was such a nice day, and Charlie and I went to look down at some birds we thought were plovers. When we came back to where she’d been standing she was gone.’
* * *
It wasn’t Mrs Denver whom Vera told of her situation. She went to talk to Marged. Vera knew she would have a sympathetic hearing and some sound advice.
‘The first thing you must do is tell your family,’ Marged said when the problem was explained.
‘No! And that’s for definite!’ Vera replied.
‘All right, we’ll leave that for the moment, but I think you’ll have to face it very soon. Now, what about your young man? You have tried to find him?’
‘No luck there. I’ve written time and again but there’s no one of that name at the address he gave me. He told me false, and I’ll never see him again,’ Vera said, trying to hold back tears.
Marged comforted the girl and gently tried again to persuade her to go home.
When Vera returned to Mrs Denver’s the police were there. At first she thought something had happened to Mrs Denver, and immediately her thoughts were for herself. How would she manage with a child and no place to live? She hadn’t told her kind landlady about her condition but knew she’d be able to persuade her to let her stay.
Once she learned that Delyth was missing and people were searching for her below the cliffs, Vera forgot her own worries and asked how she could help. With other volunteers she walked through the woods where the four friends had gone to pick wild flowers earlier that day, wondering if Delyth had perhaps lost something and gone back to retrieve it. It was a theory no one believed, but everything had to be checked, however unlikely. The police enquired at the station and at her home in Bryn Teg, but no one had seen her since that morning when she had left with Madge. Police, coastguards, walkers, owners of small boats and many townspeople including Huw and Bleddyn Castle and Peter Gregory, searched the most likely, the possible, the unlikely and the downright stupid places, but without success.
When darkness fell on that bright spring day, no trace of Delyth had been found.
* * *
Delyth was not far away. She was locked in a dark place smelling of the sea and stale fish and that, together with the wooden structure, told her she was on a boat.
She had been grabbed, with a hand covering her mouth to prevent her from making the smallest sound, dragged roughly down to the water’s edge and pushed into the small niche where black-market goods had been found. Impatiently pushed and slapped, she had then been tied and gagged.
Afterwards she wondered how the man had managed to tie and gag her without apparent difficulty. She was so scared and confused she hadn’t made any effort to fight, or so it seemed to her in the hours following, when she went over the sequence of events that were so confused and eventually reduced to a blur.
While her friends went further afield looking for her she was made to sit on a cold, rough surface, and she felt water slowly lapping around her feet. It was painfully cold but she couldn’t move to warm herself. She had been gagged and tied then pushed ahead of the man, who hit her occasionally, and when she fell over in about a foot of water, spluttering and helpless, had hauled her up roughly and hurried her on. Still with her hands tied, the man close behind her, she was forced to climb a ladder, something she did willingly, afraid of the water that had become deeper and now reached to her thighs.
Later, much later, when the town was dark, she was carried over ground that was uneven and smelled of the sea. She knew she was on a beach and she struggled, convinced she was going to be thrown in to drown.
She cried softly, angry with herself for not struggling and making herself heard. Surely there had been time between the first sounds, the intimation of danger, to the moment that huge hand slapped across her mouth, for her to call for Maldwyn?
Treated like a parcel, she was dropped and lifted, then dropped again and ended up alone in this boat. She had dozed a little and awoken to the revival of fear.
The boat was stirring slightly, lifting up and gently dropping back. She listened for the sound of someone coming. ‘Maldwyn,’ she whispered against the gag that was still tight across her mouth. ‘Maldwyn, please come and find me.’
The movement of the boat was caused by the tide coming in and gradually floating the craft. Her fear increased as she wondered if the boat had been holed, and she was going to feel the water rising until she died. But as the hours passed and she began to feel stiff and sore, she realised that drowning was not going to be her fate. Perhaps starvation was.
She had a woollen covering of some kind tucked around her, but it wasn’t enough to keep away the chill. The wood of the boat was wet and the cold was eating into her bones. Panic, as she imagined being left there until death came, made breath
ing difficult and the gag seemed to be choking her. She tried to calm down, reciting poetry, thinking of Maldwyn and of her mother, but she found no comfort. She was going to die.
The searchers gave up around midnight. They gathered in various houses, planning a more thorough search the following day. At the police station. Maldwyn was once again a suspect. He went over everything that had happened, starting with the near-miss with the lorry when he and Delyth were together. He showed them the letter warning him to get out of the shop, and they took samples of his handwriting, asking him to copy the note several times.
When he suggested that Arnold Elliot might be doing these things in order to buy Chapel’s flowers, they laughed. Mr Elliot was a respected businessman and he didn’t need to resort to such behaviour. But they interviewed him anyway.
For Maldwyn the questions and analysis were a frightening waste of time. Every minute they sat here asking stupid questions added to the time before Delyth was found. ‘How could you think these things were down to me?’ he shouted in frustration. ‘I was the one the lorry was aimed at!’
‘That could have been a near-accident and nothing to do with the rest of it,’ a police inspector said, watching his reaction to the suggestion. ‘That could have given you the idea; the rest could certainly have been down to you!’
‘Please, just find her,’ he pleaded. ‘She could be in real danger. Help her, please!’
‘There are plenty of people searching, and as soon as it’s light others will join in. What you can do is admit your part in it before you face more serious charges.’
* * *
The sea moved gently under the boat. Exhaustion overcame Delyth and she dozed again. A sound woke her and she tried to free her hands, crying in frustration at her helplessness. The boat moved differently, tilting wildly. Someone was on board. It was dark. It might be a fisherman checking his nets. Making as much noise as she could, achieving little more than mewing like a small kitten, she looked towards the door of the tiny cabin.
She heard voices, and the sound of cans and metal objects being moved around. Someone had come, and was searching for her. Then the door opened and the flickering light of a torch span around the cabin, but no one entered. As the door closed again, she tried to move the boat, lifting her body and dropping it, trying to make a noise, but the voices faded, the boat moved jerkily and then was still.
Hours later, when she guessed it was the middle of the night, the sounds were repeated. Again she stared in the direction of the door and saw, in the light of a small lantern, not Maldwyn, but a strange man with a scarf covering the bottom of his face. He unbound her mouth and her hands, tying one wrist to a ring on the boat’s side first. She screamed and shouted and begged him to let her go but he told her they were too far off shore for anyone to hear them and, taking out food and a flask, he put them beside her.
At first she refused to eat. ‘I’m not eating anything you bring. I insist you take me home,’ she said, trying to be strong, ashamed at the wavering fear in her voice.
‘Up to you, Delyth Owen, but I’ll be tying your hands again when I leave and you’ll be looking at it, smelling it, wanting it and unable to reach it. Like that, would you? Hungry, seeing the food and not being able to touch it?’
She reeled off a list of questions, asking what he wanted, why she had been brought there, promising all the money she could raise if that was what he wanted, but he just grunted and gave one flat reply, ‘Maldwyn knows.’
He waited while she ate, then retied her hands, leaving the extra rope on her wrist ready, she presumed, for the next time he came.
She was filled with ever deeper despair now. His organisation of food and drink suggested he intended to keep her there for a long time. No one knew where to find her. She could be here until she died. Then an extra panic added to her misery. What if he had an accident? Died, even? Then she would die too. She was completely dependent on just one man. No one else would find her if he didn’t return, and on a whim he might decide just that.
She struggled and tried to ease her hands out of the rope: wet, dirty, smelly rope, but strong. Too strong for her to loosen, even if she could get her teeth to it. She wished she hadn’t been gagged, and tried to push it down by rubbing the back of her head against the side of the boat; after a while she realised it was less tight. More wriggling and it dropped below her chin; she cried with relief at the small victory.
* * *
The police let Maldwyn go and before he went to the beach, where he still hoped to find a clue to Delyth’s capture, he went to see if Mrs Chapel was all right. She was sitting in a chair, talking to three or four friends, all waiting for news of Delyth being found safe and well. The news of her disappearance had spread through the town and everyone was anxious for more details.
He told them what had happened and, after swallowing a slice of bread and jam and a cup of tea Mrs Chapel had prepared for him, he stood to leave.
‘Will you be all right, Mrs Chapel? Is there anything you need before I go?’
‘Well, I can’t find my shawl. You know I like it around my knees. If you can find it, or get me something else, I’d be grateful.’
He ran up to her flat and looked for her favourite blanket, made from crocheted squares, but, impatient to be off, he didn’t search for it too diligently. He ran back down to the shop carrying another blanket, which he wrapped around her. ‘Now don’t try to do everything, mind. I’ll see to the orders when I get back. Just as soon as Delyth is found.’
‘Don’t worry about the shop, Maldwyn. Just find her.’
* * *
Huw was finishing the inspection of Castle’s Café. It was approaching the time when they would start painting and freshening things ready for the new season. He stepped out of the café on to the cliff path and as he locked the door he looked around him, wondering where the missing girl might be. He decided to walk along the path, just in case there was a sign of her. She might have fallen and been knocked unconscious, and now be trying to get back to the path. He knew the police and the other services would have checked thoroughly, but in the heart of every searcher was the hope that he would be the one to find her.
He stood for a while at the place where she had disappeared, then went back and took a different path, up to the top of the promontory. There he walked across to a small bay further along. There was no beach. The sea was never less than a couple of feet deep, the cliffs were sheer and no one went there.
He stood for a while, listening, calling her name and feeling a bit foolish doing so, but imagining the thrill of hearing her answering. Out to sea he could make out the defences put there against the threat of invasion. This part of the coast was not a likely place for a landing, although it had been a look-out point for the Home Guard and their hut was still here. There were two boats anchored, one way out beyond the breakers and not far from the barrier. They didn’t usually get that close. The Army was likely to blow them out of the water if they drifted within reach of the barrier, suspicious of messages being passed between spies and the enemy.
The sea was quiet, moving against the rocks below with little excitement, no foaming white protest at the restriction of the cliff face. He looked at the two boats: one was quite still on a glassy sea, its almost perfect silhouette mirrored in the water; the other was moving, disturbing the calm of the sea, and he idly wondered why.
* * *
Delyth was cold and very hungry. The shawl that the man had placed around her had slipped during her struggles to move the boat in the hope of attracting attention. She had no idea of the time. The man wouldn’t come until darkness had fallen, and the hours stretched painfully and miserably before her. If only Maldwyn would guess where she was and come for her. But she knew there was no reason why he or anyone else should look for her in a boat right out on the sea.
* * *
When Maldwyn met up with Huw and several others, Madge was with them. She had been unable to leave until her friend was found. They w
ent over the same ground, moving every bush and crawling through the grass and the brittle stalks of last year’s wild flowers in the hope of finding some clue. Then they went into one of the cafés not far from the beach and comforted themselves with hot drinks and sandwiches. There they were joined by Mrs Chapel’s nephew, Gabriel.
‘My aunt told me your girlfriend is lost. Want any help looking for her?’
Maldwyn stared at him and when Madge had gone to ‘powder her nose’ he asked, ‘You don’t know anything about all this, do you?’
‘About your girlfriend running off? No, of course not. But I do know about you trying to steal my auntie’s shop from me.’
‘That’s nonsense. I did nothing to persuade her. She told me you weren’t interested.’
‘I want my auntie’s shop. I’m entitled. You’re not.’
‘Are you responsible for Delyth’s disappearance?’
‘No, you are. Stealing my inheritance, being nice to her until she gave you what’s rightfully mine.’
‘You’re wrong! She didn’t think you were interested,’ he repeated. ‘Please, tell me where to find Delyth. This is all a mistake!’
‘No mistake. This is down to you stealing what’s mine. I want the shop so I can sell it. Why should you have it?’
‘If you know something, you have to tell me. What d’you want me to do? I’ll do anything.’ As realisation came he gasped. ‘It was you, wasn’t it? The lorry, everything. Frightening her, warning me to get out. It’s the shop, and you all along.’
‘All you have to do is write to that solicitor and tell them you won’t accept the shop, and want me to have it. That might refresh my memory, help me remember where I’ve taken her.’
Maldwyn turned and called to the policemen who were outside with the others. As he began to shout, Gabriel grabbed his arm and whispered warningly, ‘Don’t. My memory might take days to come back if the police upset me with a lot of questions. Cold she’ll be, and with no food. Pity for her.’