by Julia Jones
“Technically, as long as you remain outside the dyke, you are permitted. Everything else belongs to me. Look far and wide. This is the Saxon Shore.”
He made a big gesture. He was claiming the flat meadows and the curving river wall, the scattered inland buildings and the ancient chapel.
“So do you ever allow access for research?”
She didn’t know why she was wasting her breath but she carried on anyway. “I’m doing a World War Two history project for my IB and I noticed another pillbox in one of your fields. Also I think some of those buildings might have been aircraft hangers. I have a letter of support from my college tutor.”
“The airfield is now closed. Later there will be interactive air raids, combat training and the memorabilia market. Currently I’m arranging a major commemorative event and I don’t like spies. Hand me that camera and I’ll check its contents.”
“Sorry,” she said, though she wasn’t, “My camera’s my property. To be precise, it’s my mother’s. She’s lent it to me so I can photograph any World War Two remains.”
She wondered whether he was one – a World War Two remain. His face didn’t have many lines but he could maybe have had them wiped. He looked rich enough.
She’d worked out who he was now. He was plummy voice: the man who’d been speaking on TV East that night. He surely couldn’t be Mr Farran’s brother?
“You’re accommodated on the lightship, I assume?”
Why was he still talking to her when he’d already told her that she wasn’t welcome?
“No. I’m lodging in the village.”
“At what address?”
“With Mrs Farran at Rebow Cottage.”
She watched him carefully for his reaction but his face was as expressionless as if it had been carved.
“With Iris Farran! Do, please, remember me to Iris.”
He pulled a business card from an expensive-looking wallet and held it out to her. He couldn’t be the brother – she must have heard that wrong. His eyes were peculiarly level and direct, 20:20 vision she guessed. She didn’t take the card.
It was stand-off. But anything else that either might have said was drowned by a wailing from the construction site. An alarm, harsh and clamorous. The cranes ceased moving and the clattering of power-tools stopped. She thought she glimpsed a flashing light. The old man threw down his card. He hurried back to the Polaris and drove fast in the direction of the emergency.
There was no way she was going to pick up the card. She didn’t even care that it was litter. In fact she hoped that he’d come back and find it abandoned in the dirt. She took a photo and headed back to the Firefly.
She checked the image as she went. Commander of the Saxon Shore A.F. Gold was in bold across the centre. Then there was smaller type with contact details and a job title: Chief Executive, Saxon Holdings.
Gold, not Farran. The more she thought of that half-heard quarrel between the two old people watching TV East, the more confused she became.
This man had the same surname as Dominic and he’d appeared to know a lot about the dinghy. Could he possibly be the owner?
Sails up, anchor up and an easy course across the river to the Flete.
It wasn’t enjoyable. Xanthe was struggling to remember exactly what had been said and by whom and when. She was hoping desperately that the wannabe Viking didn’t turn out to be Dominic’s cousin. Otherwise she was going to be giving Fritha back even before she was asked.
Chapter Ten
Gareth
Wednesday May 29, lw 0600 hw 1220 lw 1820 hw 0034
Xanthe had planned to do a more formal interview with Iris that evening, record it and then write it up. It seemed the safest way to keep her off the subject of Mr Farran’s death – or the magical appearance of the Igraine. She probably shouldn’t ask her anything about Dunkirk either.
“Could you maybe tell me about your childhood,” she asked Iris, once she’d shown her the dictaphone and tried explaining how it worked. “And about your family and wherever it was that you lived before you moved into Rebow Cottage?”
It was slow to start with. Iris wasn’t at all worried by the dictaphone. She obviously enjoyed talking about Broad Marsh Hall, the house her father had brought for her mother. She talked for ages about its gardens and the staff who had worked there and what perfect parents she’d had. She seemed to blame the war for everything that had gone wrong with her life: she blamed it for her father’s death and her mother’s desertion, then the sale of her home and her marriage to Eli.
“What else was I to do?” she asked plaintively.
Xanthe did her best to bite back the obvious answers: like, do some training or get a job?
“Didn’t you hope to find someone you could love?” she asked as gently as she could.
Suddenly Iris was staring as if she thought Xanthe had the Evil Eye.
“But…there was Dunkirk!” she gasped. “How could I?”
Hadn’t Iris been only about ten or eleven then?
“And I’m not going to talk about it. Ever,” she added.
Xanthe took a deep breath and reminded herself that she needed to be really sensitive.
“That’s okay. You don’t have to talk about anything at all. We can stop this session any time. Maybe you’d like to go to bed now?”
Joe was sitting on the old lady’s lap. He kneaded her leg with his paw and purred. This seemed to help her relax. She waved to Xanthe to carry on.
It was a mistake.
“So, you married Mr Farran. You must still have been very young.”
“I was sixteen after the end of the war and Eli wanted my money to rebuild the Igraine. Fisherman Farran was dead and Joe was clearing minefields. Nanny was glad enough to be kept on.”
Kept on?
“What did your mother think of your decision?”
Xanthe wasn’t sure she should have asked that one, but she did want to know.
“I’ve no idea what my mother thought. We managed everything through trustees. They put this house in my name. Eli got his money. Then I set the rules to make sure he never…bothered me.”
She couldn’t imagine a sixteen-year-old behaving like that.
“And I bought myself a pony.”
That made more sense.
“You didn’t…want a family?”
“That would have been disgusting!” she said.
Xanthe should have stopped the session there. Instead she tried what she thought was a different subject. “Could you tell me more about your father, Augustus Gold? He sounds very…dashing.”
God knows where she’d dredged that word from but it worked for Iris.
“My father was better than dashing: he was famous. When he came back from abroad – that was in the first war – he built top-secret boats on Oveseye. They were his own design and faster than anything else, and the government used him to rescue people out of Russia.”
This sounded amazing. Except that it turned out that Iris didn’t know anything about the top-secret boats and who her father had rescued from Russia. She did know that he’d invented some process that had made him very rich, but by the time he married her mother he wasn’t inventing any more, he was mainly just spending the money.
Her mother was from some ridiculously posh family and sounded a complete pain in the butt. In fact she made Xanthe feel almost warm towards Madrigal Shryke. At least Maddie was ambitious and determined and trying to achieve something – by whatever foul means. Iris’s mother only seemed to want to give dinner parties and spend money and whinge about her servants. Before abandoning her child in the middle of a war.
“My mother wouldn’t live on Oveseye – she couldn’t stand being cut off by the tide – so my father bought Broad Marsh Hall. The previous people had lived there for centuries but they’d let it go awfully. My parents were reb
uilding and making everything the best – stables and tennis courts and big garages and a landing strip. There were walks all the way to the creek. But the war spoiled everything.”
“And you were their only child. You didn’t have any older brothers or sisters?”
“I really don’t want to talk about my family. Who gave you permission to ask all these questions? I’m not interrogating you.”
Mrs Farran pushed the cat violently off her lap, flapped her hands and kicked out to shoo it away.
“I’m s-sorry,” Xanthe stuttered. “Maybe we’ve gone off topic. I was interested in hearing about your father.”
“Well he wouldn’t have thought much of you. He’d spent time in the colonies. He knew you needed to keep the natives in their place.”
It took a moment before Xanthe got it.
Then she pressed save and stood up.
“I’ll say good night then, Mrs Farran. I hope you can get yourself upstairs without my help. It’s a pity, isn’t it, that you’ve lost your ebony walking stick.”
“Oh…” a soft, deflated, moaning sound. “Oh no, no…don’t leave me here. I can’t manage by myself. I never exactly wanted him to die…”
“What did you do?” Xanthe was horrified, shocked, bewildered, fascinated.
“Nothing. I did nothing. What could I do? I allowed you to do it all.”
Iris was clutching her chest now.
“Oh, oh, oh!”
She’d fallen backwards in her chair and was staring up at Xanthe with her little girl’s eyes.
“It was you who locked him out into the night.”
“You said that you were frightened. You said he had somewhere else to sleep.”
“But you had summoned the Igraine!”
Xanthe felt like chucking a jug of water over her.
“I’m phoning your nephew. Now!”
Dominic’s phone rang and rang. Then it went to voicemail.
“It’s about your aunt,” was all Xanthe said.
Mrs Farran was hyperventilating and rocking herself from side to side. She supposed she should call the number she’d been given for the out-of-hours doctor.
Then Dominic’s number rang back. It was Martha.
“I’m sorry Xanthe, Dom’s not here.” She called him Dom – did that mean they were an item? “One of the kids has gone walkabout. He’s out looking.”
“OMG! Who?”
“Siri, the little girl with mutism. But what about you? You weren’t just ringing for a gossip?”
“It’s his aunt. She might not be well.”
“Can you explain a bit more? Does she need a doctor?”
Iris was listening and shaking her head.
“We’ve just had a really bad conversation. She keeps telling me I’ve got dark powers – like I’m some sort of alien. But it’s more than that. There’s other things. I even think I ought to talk to the police again. But she’s Dominic’s aunt, not mine.”
She heard Martha sigh. “That’s all we need.”
Iris had gone quiet now. She looked small and frail and was sort of mumbling at the knuckle of her thumb as if it was a comfort mechanism. For no reason Xanthe remembered the child’s voice she’d heard – or imagined – last night. The child who’d been left with people who were not her own.
Little Miss Oy-ris. Our own personal Crock of Gold. I hope you’re a-listenin, Eli, me boy.
There were undercurrents and deep troubles here that she didn’t understand.
Joe was rubbing against the old lady’s ankles – which was forgiving of him considering how she’d been kicking out just a few moments ago.
Martha continued talking. “I didn’t think it was fair to ask you to stay there in the first place. Dom likes to send her occasional lodgers to help her earn some money. It’s okay if it’s birders. She keeps the house immaculate and she can look quite sweet. I’m so sorry Xanthe. I’d come and take over but I can’t leave here. Jonjo’s out looking too, so I’m responsible for the kids.”
“That’s okay. I’ll cope. It’s probably my fault – Siri, I mean – I shouldn’t have left her earlier.” The moment she said that she knew it was the truth. “I suppose you’ve looked round by the dinghies and in the rigging store,” she added.
“The boys were there all afternoon with Jonjo. They were just hanging about, fiddling with bits of equipment, trying things. You’ve started something with those children, Xanthe.”
“I hope that’s good – but where were K-J and Siri then?”
“They’d gone to their cabin. I don’t think Kelly-Jane’s well. I was in the office and we took our eyes off them. We were negligent.”
“So do you think I should call the doctor for Mrs Farran?” Iris was watching her intently. “Though she does seem to have quietened down.”
“I’ll ring the pub,” said Martha. “Gareth’ll be there. They can send him over. You don’t want to have to deal with that old witch.”
Iris Farran might have had had the last hot water bottle she was going to be getting from Xanthe. Result!
“That would be totally excellent. But who’s Gareth?”
“My brother. He and Dom don’t hit it off but he’s okay. Rough diamond, possibly.”
“And he knows Iris?”
“Everyone knows everyone in Flinthammock. Anyway we’re Farrans too. Leave it with me. Give the old bat a glass of water. Or use your ‘dark powers’ and magic her into a toad or something.”
Suddenly Xanthe wanted to laugh. She felt about a squillion times better. That was the first time she’d talked to Martha without Dominic or Jonjo there.
“That’s so good. You will update me about Siri won’t you?”
“Yeah, will do.”
Martha sounded sombre now. What was it with those kids?
Xanthe settled the old lady back on the sofa with a glass of water within reach, tucked a rug round her, then took out a notebook to begin her activity log. Joe the cat hopped neatly up and pushed himself next to Iris.
“I don’t know what I said to upset her,” Iris began whispering in the cat’s attentive ear. “She’s very changeable. I suppose it’s because she isn’t English.”
But it had been Iris who had flipped.
Xanthe couldn’t remember which question had triggered her sudden hostility. It would be on the dictaphone somewhere…
Then Gareth Farran arrived: short and dark and smelling of diesel. He nodded to Xanthe and held out his hand. It wasn’t especially clean.
“Thanks for coming,” she said, shaking it.
He was maybe later thirties, forties? His hand felt leathery and strong. He’d got a half a finger missing.
“I don’t think she’s really ill. It was mainly that we had a falling-out.”
“Don’t you worry, lass. She’s got quite a tongue on her, has Auntie Iris. Have you had your tea yet? I was about to go up the chipper when I’d finished my pint.”
“No, I haven’t eaten anything this evening.”
The apple and the sausage roll seemed a long time ago.
“And she’s never got much in her larder.”
He pulled a crumpled £10 note and some coins from the back pocket of his jeans. “Why don’t you pop along to the Happy Haddock and fetch us a couple of portions of cod and chips and I’ll have her tucked up in bed by the time you’re back.”
He gave the money to Xanthe and turned to Iris. “I hear you’re not so good tonight, Auntie. Let’s get you upstairs and you can have your bite of supper on a tray. Off you go, lass,” he said over his shoulder to Xanthe. “It’s up the hill and left past the Plough and Sail. You’d better ask for two large portions between the three of us – and the cat’ll want his share. I’ll have mushy peas and curry sauce with mine. You’re not on a diet or anything are you?”
“No,” she said
. “No, I’m definitely not.”
She couldn’t imagine how she’d ever not wanted food.
They ate the fish and chips with their fingers, directly from the paper – though Gareth shifted Iris’s portion onto a fluted china plate with a dancing shepherd and shepherdess. He seemed to know his way around the Rebow Cottage kitchen because he also produced a couple of sturdy blue-striped mugs into which he poured their tea.
“Eli’s,” he said. “She didn’t usually offer him porcelain – and I reckon he preferred these anyway. All right for you – or do you want the feminine variety?”
Xanthe’s mouth was full. She held out her hand for the large, warm mug. It made her feel as secure as if she was sitting in the cockpit of Snow Goose.
“You don’t know,” she said later, “how good that was.”
Each succulent white flake had lingered on her tongue and then been swallowed with a golden crunch of perfect batter or the slight saltiness of a floury chip. She hadn’t binged; she knew she wouldn’t throw up. She’d simply eaten her first completely normal meal for weeks.
“I will admit that I don’t exactly feel like doing aerobics at the moment but I’ll be totally cool looking after Mrs Farran if you need to leave. She’s an old lady and she’s lost her husband. I’m sort of struggling to understand her attitude…but that could well be me. My sister says I’ve got the emotional intelligence of a World War Two landing craft.”
“Funny girl, your sister, then.”
Gareth crumpled his paper into a salty, faintly greasy ball and left it on one of Iris’s fragile occasional tables. He stretched himself out in the plain leather armchair that Xanthe assumed had been Eli’s. Joe was straight onto his lap, cleaning his whiskers.
“Martha told me what Auntie Iris said to you,” he continued “and there’s no call for them sorta comments.”
That was a relief. She’d been worrying that she’d overreacted. She felt safe to think aloud. “I haven’t figured what set her off. I was going to check on the recording. We were mainly talking about her father and she seemed okay with that – until I asked her whether she was the only child. Then she flipped. I wondered whether somebody’d died? You know – an extra sibling or a twin or something?”