The Man from the Sea

by Michael Innes

  “With some madcap girl from among your neighbours – whereas it was really with his wife?” Day might have been offering this in a spirit of mild humour. “And he isn’t even wondering whether he’s been told a lie.”

  It came as an enormous relief to be alone, and halfway down the garden Cranston stopped and took a deep breath. There was a large tumbling shrub of damask roses beside him; he put his head right into it and took a deep breath of that too. It was like the action of a man escaped from a charnel-house, and it told him how vivid his sense of John Day’s condition had been. The man was really carrying his death about with him: there was no question – Cranston seemed to know it instinctively – of a lie there. And yet the horror of it did not mean that Day repelled him. When he had helped the blinded man to dress he had felt no trace of bodily revulsion. The simple physical sympathy that had established itself when Day had come lurching out of the sea and they had instantly gone into hiding together still existed. It was in itself something altogether unremarkable, and yet Cranston knew that in his present strange situation it counted for a great deal. It helped on – that was it – the insidious and surely wholly irrational sense of identification with Day which a rather sketchy correspondence in their situations had given birth to. Cranston frowned and walked on. The question was whether he would let Day down.

  Or was it? If he allowed himself to put it that way, could there be more than one answer? Must he not acknowledge that he was indeed romantic – or, in a more modern and less flattering idiom, that he was some sort of compulsion-neurotic in the making? Probably he wasn’t fit for the sort of experience that Caryl Blair had brought him – and certainly wasn’t fit for such experience with a married woman. All that he got out of it – or all that he got out of it except on the most short-term basis – was a pathologically devious sense of guilt. And just when that had been about to break the surface of his consciousness Day had walked up out of the sea. So what had happened was perfectly clear. He had instantly identified himself with one whose occasions were patently unlawful. And then had come a revelation exquisitely calculated to tune up to its very maximum of driving-power this bizarre mechanism of the mind. From the point of view of society Day’s guilt had revealed itself as enormous; there was enough of it to satisfy the more inordinate demand for self-punishment. That – Cranston told himself as he halted before the door in the garden wall – that was the way the machine ticked; that was what gave him his large vague sense of implication with the man from the sea. And probably it was a quirk of the mind that grew on one, became obsessive, ended in a total divorce from sober reality. His only chance was to cut out of it at once. He could, at a pinch, tell the whole story to his father. And yet were things so desperate? Could any mind so clever as his own – so swiftly lucid as this admirable piece of self-analysis showed it to be – stand in any substantial danger?

  Asking himself this, Cranston opened the door in the high wall and took a step outside. As he did so – as he cast no more than an absent eye on a scene which should have been wholly untenanted – the whole airy fabric of his painful yet intellectually satisfactory ruminations vanished in an instant. In their place stood objective reality – in the person of the man with the trilby hat.

  Cranston stepped backwards and softly closed the door. He was almost certain that he had not been seen. The man was standing within a few paces, but his head had been half turned away.

  There were two stout bolts on the door. They looked terribly rusty, but it was possible that if cautiously handled they could be fairly silently pushed home. He had no reason to suppose that the man with the trilby hat had managed to arm himself again. But the possibility had to be faced. Had he picked up in an outhouse as much as a pruning-knife or a sickle he would be formidable. Or even a hammer. A hammer or a sickle… Cranston checked himself and got to work on the first bolt. It slid into place with scarcely a creak. The second was more difficult. As he eased it forward he felt sweat upon his forehead. It astonished him that this fresh encounter with the enemy should so key him up. He supposed it was once more a matter of delayed reaction. He hadn’t liked that gun. Perhaps he wasn’t made for gunplay any more than for –

  A faint sound behind him made him whirl round, taut and trembling. It was Sally. She had approached to within a few feet of him and was looking at him in cool astonishment. He suddenly felt a fool. But he kept a sufficient sense of the reality of the situation to raise a finger swiftly to his lips. Then he turned back to the bolt. When satisfied that it was secure he straightened up, beckoned, and walked off down the garden. Sally followed. From the instant of his making his gesture she had been very quiet. He walked far down the garden, but to a point from which he could command a view of most of the wall he had just left. Then he stopped. “It’s the chap who had the gun,” he said. “He’s hanging around.”

  “This is something you’ve got mixed up with quite by chance?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that you haven’t really got the hang of?”

  “I’ve got a good deal of it now.” Cranston looked at Sally cautiously. She must have returned to the garden for the purpose of talking to him again, but now she had an air of waiting for him to take some initiative. “It’s very queer.”

  “You seem to have thrown Alex off the scent. But isn’t it a little hard on whichever of the McGilvray girls he – ?”

  “That was simply a conclusion he jumped at. I didn’t mean to put into his head any particular – particular girl.”

  “I’m sure you are thoroughly thoughtful of female reputations.”

  She had forced herself, he felt, to come out with this hard stroke. And now she had gone pale and her eyes were on the ground. He felt desperate. “Look,” he said, “it’s no good pretending. I know it’s all been too rotten–”

  “All?” She seemed strangely startled – even frightened. And then she was cold again. “Don’t let’s start on heaven knows what. Isn’t this man of yours enough to be going on with? And he seems to be on our hands as well as yours. What does the other man want to do? Kill him? Carry him off?” Sally paused. “And who or what is he, anyway? Do you know that yet?”

  “He’s John Day.”

  Cranston had spoken on impulse, but vehemently. And it seemed to be the intensity of his words, not their content, that surprised her. “Day?” She shook her head. “Somebody well known?”

  He saw that it meant nothing to her. And he guessed that it was only the skin of her mind that she was contriving to give to this whole aspect of what the ghastly night had produced. But his understanding of her went no farther than this. He had for a moment the sense of some veiled element in their disastrous relationship. “Don’t you remember?” he asked. “A scientist who bolted to–”

  “Dick!” She had interrupted round-eyed. “He hasn’t come here because of… Alex?”

  “I’m sure he hasn’t. It’s pure coincidence that he’s now hiding in the summerhouse of a fellow-scientist. And he hasn’t come back to Britain because of that sort of thing at all. He’s a dying man. He had an accident with what was, I suppose, some sort of violently radio-active material. He wants to see his wife.” Cranston paused. “Or so he says.”

  She was puzzled. “But surely a man who has gone off like that can’t simply–”

  “Of course not. He’s virtually an outlaw. And the people he’s deserted are after him too. That’s the explanation of the chap outside. Do you see now that it all makes a sort of crazy sense?”

  “I suppose I do.”

  “Could you guard Day – just for an hour?”

  Sally looked at him in astonishment. “I don’t know what you mean. I’m not a daft McGilvray.”

  “I’d only ask somebody I could trust.” Cranston hesitated. It occurred to him that she might answer “I might do it for somebody I could trust.” But she was silent, and he saw that her pallor had given way to a faint flush. “You see,” he said, “I am in a way mixed up with him quite a lot. It’s because of som
ething I feel.” He stopped again, wondering if she could conceivably guess what he was talking about. But that was too tall an order, since he didn’t really understand it himself. “You see,” he said again, “I’ve made up my mind to something. I did it the instant I caught another glimpse of that chap outside. I’m going to take Day to London.”

  “Is that right? Oughtn’t you to speak to Alex? He’s amazingly…enlightened and tolerant.”

  He shook his head – and wondered at the same time why her words sounded so very little like a testimonial. “I couldn’t do that and then ask Sir Alex to back my plan. He has responsibilities that I don’t have. If I miscalculate and am disgraced it doesn’t much matter. But you – you people must be kept clear.”

  For the first time Sally gave a small exclamation as of pain. But her voice was hard again. “No scandal at Dinwiddie?”

  Cranston made no direct reply. She was entitled to come out with these cracks. And yet there was something queer about them. “Shall I explain about you guarding him?” he asked. “I want to go and get the car – and at the same time cook up some story for my people at home. I can’t be certain of doing it in less than an hour – perhaps longer. And meantime there’s this chap outside. I suspect that he’s merely guessing that Day has gone to earth somewhere round Dinwiddie. But it’s conceivable that he successfully sleuthed after us in the night. Anyway, he’s almost certainly awaiting instructions and reinforcements, and is simply keeping an eye on things meanwhile.”

  “He’s very strategically placed.” Sally’s tone showed that she had been thinking quickly. “The garden wall runs right to the cliff, and in the other direction he can watch the castle road all the time.”

  Cranston nodded. “That’s true. Of course I can get away by going down the cliff on the other side. Arriving back with the car is a different matter. I’ll have to think it out. But my point at the moment is that he just might try to climb in. He’s lost his gun, but he may have something ugly in the way of a knife. And as Day seems to be really almost blinded for the time being, he couldn’t put up much of a show. So could you get a gun, and plant yourself where you could keep an eye on the summerhouse?”

  “I can always get a gun. But the garden’s an odd place to be found taking it to.”

  “Perhaps a carrion crow, or something like that?”

  “No doubt I can think of a suitable lie.” She looked at her watch. “But it probably won’t be necessary, and if we hurry we can put the whole thing through before breakfast. But must you go down the cliff – and the awkward way?”

  Sally had spoken with sudden unconcealed anxiety, and this was so overwhelming to him that he had to make an effort to answer calmly. “I think it’s my best plan. I doubt if that fellow saw me a few minutes ago, and his suspicions about Dinwiddie may at present be quite vague. But if he did see me leaving the place he would know at once that he was really hot on the scent.”

  “Very well. I’ll get the gun – my own gun – now, and go straight up the garden with it. You needn’t waste time after that. Get over the wall and down the cliff as soon as you see me. And I’ll stick on the job until I know that you’re back on it.”

  He watched her go. She seemed to draw all his vigilance and all his thought after her, so that for the moment the whole violent and actual adventure into which he had been precipitated appeared shadowy and insubstantial when set beside the mere unfulfilled intention which must be the only memorial of his relation with her. And if he had now a little involved her in the doubtful drama of John Day, it was only partly because the momentary logic of the affair had appeared to require it. He was unwilling to let Sally go, and rather than do so he had brought her into the affair as if she was a boy ready for an escapade. It could hardly be maintained that he had assigned her a post of danger, since she could summon both her stepfather and his men-servants readily enough at need. But he wondered whether he ought to have done it, all the same…

  There she was – so quickly that it almost seemed as if she must have had the gun ready hidden. She gave him a wave and they moved swiftly on converging paths through the garden, so that when he climbed the wall where it gave directly on the cliff she was no more than twenty yards away. He waved to her in turn and allowed himself to drop.

  He was on an outcrop of rock. He had remembered the precise spot where the thing could be done. The wall here was in places part of the outer ward of a former castle, and there were points at which it rose sheer from the cliff. This rendered impossible any walking round it on the outer side, nor could a view of it here possibly be commanded by the lurking man with the trilby hat. It was a climb – at least it was decidedly not a walk – down to sea level, and the state of the tide meant that he could then do a quick scramble along the rocks until he gained the beach. And there he would recover his bicycle and be home before breakfast was on the table.

  If he didn’t break his neck… It was trickier than he remembered – particularly at the start – and dropping the first thirty feet required absolute concentration. When he had accomplished this he paused and looked upwards. Sally was perched on the wall almost directly above him. She was attending to her job, for he knew it to be a spot from which there was a clear view of the summerhouse. But for the moment she was looking down at him. And he could distinguish – it was as if his senses were tuned to some state of hyperaesthesia by his task – the expression on her intent pale face. There was only one way of describing it. Despair.

  Despair… It was by quite a long way, he now realised, that this descent was trickier than he had supposed. And perhaps Sally realised it. Perhaps she was convinced that his chance of avoiding disaster in the next few minutes was very small. And perhaps she –

  Cranston made a tremendous effort to thrust out of his mind all speculation on how Sally might, after all, care. The surest way to end up pulped and broken on the rock below was to let his mind wander an inch from his business. And perhaps that was the way that a woman – any woman – would look if she saw a man – any man – in what she judged to be mortal peril.

  He gave a reassuring wave, examined the state of his gym-shoes and their laces carefully, and started on the next bit of the drop. When he reached the bottom and looked up again it was no longer possible to see Sally. But her image was still vivid to him. He could see that expression still. Almost, he felt that it might haunt him.

  8

  It was the memory of Sally’s pallor, perhaps, that made Cranston find the appearance of the girl hiker so startling. The girl’s face was red and shining, and high on her rucksack there was sewn some species of red flag. The effect, from a little distance, was alarmingly Janus-like; approached from front or rear, she would equally present an appearance as of the blazing sun. The sun indeed was suggested by everything about her. Her hair and her khaki shorts and shirt were alike bleached by it, and her limbs – which her garments did not much obscure – were burned brown beneath a glint of fine golden hairs. If one put one’s nose to her skin and took a good sniff – Cranston supposed – one would know at last just what the sun smells of.

  But Cranston had no thought of this experiment. He had come up with her only a couple of hundred yards from his own garden gate, and he would have skimmed past her rapidly enough if she had not turned and given him a hail. She waved a map as she did so, and it was clear that she was seeking directions. Cranston jammed on his brakes and dismounted. It was something he was unable to do very graciously, for he was both in a great hurry and increasingly burdened by a sense of hopeless stupidities past and problematical actions to come. Nevertheless, as he asked whether he could help he summoned up some sort of smile. The girl had the legs of her shorts rolled up to the thigh, like the awful little trollops who scour the countryside on bicycles at week-ends. Moreover, her accent was of neither of the kinds that Cranston had been brought up to regard as socially acceptable. He had remarked this – and was attempting to square it with the fact that her shoes were sensible and her fingernails unpainted –
when the girl spread out her map in a businesslike fashion over his handlebars. “Will you just show me,” she said, “about where I am?”

  “The village straight ahead of you is Easter Dinwiddie.” Cranston put a finger on the map. “And you’re just here.”

  “Thanks a lot.” The girl looked up at the sky and then frankly at Cranston, so that he had a sensation of seeing his own features reflected on her shining cheeks. “I suppose,” she said, “that it will be another regular cow?”

  “I beg your pardon?” He was bewildered – and anxious to push on.

  “The day – really hot.”

  The girl had dropped the rucksack at her feet. He saw that the red flag had a Union Jack and the Southern Cross on it. “I’d have thought,” he said, “that you wouldn’t mind heat. You’re rather my idea of a salamander.”

  For a moment she looked puzzled, and he was sorry to have said something unintelligible and therefore unmannerly. “I mean–”

  “But of course. We’re thrice colder than salamanders in my part of the world. Fires of Spain and the line mean nothing to us. But we don’t expect to be grilled when we come to Scotland.”

  “I suppose not.” Cranston felt with his left foot for the pedal of his bike. She had squashed him and he could get on. But if salamanders were not mysterious to her, and she could bandy Donne or whoever it was, why had she looked puzzled? Suddenly he realised that it was because she had noticed his pullover and recognised it as not designed for his sex. This annoyed him. “It’s certainly going to be hot,” he said, and slung himself over his bike. “But you’ve made an early start.”

  “I was glad to. I spent the night in rather a hole. Bed and breakfast. But I didn’t stop for the second after sampling the first.”

  “The bed was a regular cow?”

  She looked at him quickly, and it was possible to conceive that she had flushed. Then she picked up the rucksack. “You can’t,” she asked briefly, “tell me where a Dr Cranston lives?”