THE GIRL FROM OVER THE SEA
Valerie K. Nelson
Lesley had come to Trevendone Manor in Cornwall from far-off New South Wales. She had seen advertisements in Australian papers which suggested that there was an inheritance waiting for the twin brother and sister who made the journey with her.
And waiting also, she found, was the man the twins nicknamed ‘the Enemy’...
CHAPTER I
‘Les, you’ve got to let me drive. I might never have the chance again ... in snow.’ The boyish voice had a pronounced Australian accent.
Lesley’s mouth curved into laughter. ‘Darling Rick, if you’re going to live in Britain, you’ll have ample opportunity of doing that! As far as I understand, it snows here more or less all the time from November to about April.’
‘But, Les...’ This third voice, a girl’s, was rather doleful. It came from Richard’s twin, crouching in the back seat of the Mini and muffled up to her eyes. ‘I thought you said it was warmer down here in Cornwall and they didn’t get snow. Didn’t you tell us something about the Riviera? That’s in the south of France and it’s lovely and warm there.’
‘Yes, I did read something about the Cornish Riviera where there are palm trees and gums—eucalyptus, they call them here. But this may be a bad spell of weather. After all, we know all about bad spells in Lactatoo, New South Wales, don’t we?’
‘We do, and we know they get snow in the Australian Alps, but the point is we never got it at Lactatoo,’ the boy beside her replied, ‘and they might never get it again here this winter. I did some homework, too, Les, and the book said Cornwall had very mild winters. So let me take over, just for kicks, there’s a mate.’
‘There’ll be next winter,’ Lesley parried, peering ahead. She could have done without this sort of weather, she was reflecting. Perhaps they should have stayed somewhere over night, but the distance had seemed ridiculously small by Australian standards. What she hadn’t anticipated was the amount of traffic on the roads and the fact that this Mini, though it was a nippy little car, wasn’t in its first youth, and needed a lot of nursing, especially as it was overloaded and in view of the wicked weather conditions they’d run into after leaving London.
‘Better let me keep the wheel, Rick,’ she said quietly. ‘We’re off the main road now and I’m not too sure of the way. The brakes are a bit tricky. I’m used to them now, but you won’t be.’
‘Listen to Grannie again!’ said the girl at the back of the car in a high, scornful voice. ‘Rick’s as good a driver as you are, Les, and you know it.’
‘But he hasn’t got a driving licence and I have,’ interposed Lesley, peering again through the gloom and the snow driving against the windscreen. If the wipers gave up...
‘As if having a licence would matter down here in this godforsaken spot! We haven’t seen another car for miles.’ Lesley bit her lower lip. She had thought they, would reach St Benga Town, the little Cornish seaside spot where they’d booked rooms, before it was dark. But it was a murky day, and they’d lost time directly they’d got off the main road. Had she taken a wrong turning somewhere?
Her green eyes were narrowed as she peered again through the windscreen. Rick was supposed to be navigating, but while they had been on the main roads directions had-been so clear that he had given up long ago.
She didn’t really want to stop to look at the map. The twins were tired and hungry and becoming belligerent. She slowed down on a level bit of road. They weren’t likely to meet anyone tonight who would demand to look at driving licences. Rick wasn’t quite seventeen, but he had been driving since he was ten in the Outback and he handled cars like a veteran. If she let him drive for a mile or two she could study the map and try to find out how far they were from their destination. The last two signposts hadn’t mentioned St Benga Town, but she had noted the names, so she should be able to spot where they now were.
‘All right, Rick,’ she said crisply, ‘stand up and I’ll slide over into your seat.’ They were both slender and lithe and the manoeuvre was accomplished in the minimum of time.
‘Take it easy—this sleet stuff is treacherous,’ she advised. ‘We don’t want to go too far on what may be the wrong road. I suppose we’d better put the lights on.’
‘Lighting up time isn’t till seventeen hours something,’ chimed in Rita. ‘I noticed it in that newspaper I was looking at when we stopped for lunch.’
Lesley picked up her map. ‘Where’s the torch? Oh, thanks...’ Her voice suddenly rose to sharpened protest. ‘Rick, don’t be an idiot! You can’t go at this speed on a narrow lane. I...’
The next words died into a strangled silence as the little car shot on to cross lanes right into the blinding headlights of a big black monster. It seemed as if nothing could prevent their being struck and mangled, but by some miracle the other driver wrenched his car out of their way and it spun into a sickening skid behind them and out of their view. Instinctively Rick braked much too hard on that surface and the Mini too went into a skid which landed them into a gateway which fortunately made a gap in the high bank of the lane into which they had careered.
Lesley wrenched at the door on her side and staggered out, the torch still in her hand. She felt dazed with shock, but the keen biting wind made her take deep breaths and in a moment or two she was all right. To her relief she saw that Rick had moved over to her seat and was now struggling to get out.
‘Can’t open the door my side—too near the gate,’ he gasped.
She helped him out. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
He nodded and Lesley turned to look in the back of the car where Rita, clutching her dog, was blinking in the light of the torch. ‘All right, Rita?’ Lesley asked.
The girl twin’s voice was angry. ‘If we are, Dingo and me, it’s no thanks to that speed maniac. You told him, Les...’
‘Shut up!’ Lesley spoke between her teeth. ‘Remember, I was driving. We don’t want to find ourselves in jail. Now I’m going to see what’s happened to the other car. Remember, though, whatever has happened or what anybody says, I was driving.’
Rick said nothing. In the half-light, she could see his young, sensitive face was pale and stricken. Feeling sick with apprehension herself, she flickered the light of the torch forward towards the crossing, her thin shoes squelching in the slush and mud. Why, oh, why had she come to this benighted country? she wondered in despair.
A tall figure, almost giant-like in outline, suddenly loomed up in front of her and a torch played on her face, dazzling her. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked breathlessly. ‘My car skidded. I ... I just couldn’t hold it.’
She had moved out of the torch light, but he flicked it over her again for what seemed a long, long moment. It was as .if he was imprinting on his memory her pale face with its wide-set green eyes and its soft and generous mouth.
But he was in no way softened by what he had seen. ‘A damned good job it did skid,’ he said brutally, ‘or you wouldn’t be standing here now. You must be crazy to drive over a crossroads at that speed and without lights. You’ve a passenger, I see. Then there are three of us who could have been killed. You stupid, stupid little fool! People like you should never be allowed on the roads!’
‘Are you ... is anyone hurt?’ Lesley managed to stammer out the question.
‘No, but no thanks to you,’ he returned savagely. ‘My car doesn’t seem to be damaged either, again no thanks to you.’
Lesley took a deep breath that was her expression of thankfulness that things were no worse. She wasn’t, she decided, going to eat any more humble pie to this bad-tempered, arrogant man. Maybe he had had a nasty shock, but that was no excuse for bullying her.
She said,
in a frosty voice, ‘Look, mister, if you’re not hurt and your car’s not damaged, why don’t you get going? Then I could get out of this wind and snow and do exactly the same. Get me?’
‘I ought to report you to the nearest police station for dangerous driving,’ he told her, his voice still menacing.
‘You were coming at a pretty fair speed yourself,’ she retorted. ‘As we don’t seem to be damaged, and you don’t, I suggest we both forget it and get going.’
‘Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you, madam?’ he commented in a manner that matched the north-easter whistling round their ears.
Lesley gave an exasperated sigh. ‘I’m anxious to get on. Take our number if you’re so inclined. Our name is Trevendone and our address...’ she hesitated for a few seconds and then finished grandly, ‘... is Trevendone Manor. And now goodnight.’
‘Goodnight,’ repeated the tall man in a stunned voice. ‘Trevendone Manor!’
And that’s put him in his place, thought Lesley on a moment of exhilaration. She turned to go back to the Mini and as she opened the door, she heard him shout, ‘If you’re making for Trevendone Manor ... or the village ... you’ll need to reverse and then turn left. But let me get going first, I shall feel safer.’
‘Sauce!’ Rita who was hanging out of the back window muttered. “Who does he think he is? These Limeys! I thought they were all such gents.’
‘This one’s an ill-mannered bully,’ Lesley admitted, still feeling ruffled. ‘All right, Rick?’ She had clambered into the driver’s seat via the passenger seat into which the boy now flung himself.
‘Of course I’m all right,’ he said moodily, but he didn’t ask to take the wheel again, for which Lesley was thankful.
‘Let me look at the map,’ she said now. ‘I’m not going to trust that creature’s directions.’ She settled more comfortably into the driver’s seat and reached for the map, staring at it intently. ‘I think we must be on this lane. In which case he’s right. We go left from here and then we’re not so far away from St Benga Town. Thank goodness. The snow seems to be getting thicker.’
Richard and Rita were expressing their opinion of the tall man in no uncertain manner, but Lesley said nothing. She stared in front of her looking worried. Would he report that near accident as he had threatened? Oh well, not to worry, she advised herself. Her dark-faced adversary had got himself out of his ditch, all right and was just driving slowly over the crossing, so now she could reverse into the other road and follow him. But not for long, she hoped.
‘Did he mention how far it was?’ Rita groaned now. ‘I’m frozen, and so is Dingo.’
‘He was born here, so he should be used to the vile weather, or ought to be,’ grunted Richard provocatively.
‘To think if we’d gone to Sydney with Steve instead of coming here we might this very minute be riding one of the Bondi boomers,’ Rita said now.
‘You wouldn’t ride a Bondi boomer until you’re much more experienced in surfing than you are yet,’ Ricky scoffed. ‘Do you know, on a real boomer, you can be carried twenty yards to the beach. Oh boy!’
‘Neither of you would be surfing just at this moment—not at three a.m. Sydney time,’ Lesley put in prosaically. ‘As to surfing, there are some fine beaches here, or so I’ve read.’
‘But nothing like Bondi or Manly,’ said Rita scornfully.
‘They’ll be mini ones, you can bet, like their cars.’
‘How do you know when you haven’t even seen them? If members of the Sydney Surfing and Life-Saving Association are coming over here this summer to give exhibitions the beaches can’t be so bad. Steve’s coming, isn’t he, Les?’
‘So he said,’ Lesley agreed.
The twins now plunged into another noisy argument to which Lesley tried to shut her ears. They were tired and cold and you couldn’t blame them for being fractious. Her lips twitched at the thought. Odd how she always thought of these two as if they were babes in arms. For that matter, in many way’s so they were.
She drove on steadily, silently thankful that Rick wasn’t pestering her again to drive. What could have possessed her to let him do so earlier on? If they had had a real crash she wouldn’t have been able to hide the fact that he was behind the wheel. Though they’d probably all have been killed as that man had said. His great juggernaut of a car would have pulped them. He had a car that matched his personality, she reflected.
They were quite high up now, and if it had been light and clear, they perhaps would have been able to see the coast. Lights were visible and they must be those of St Benga Town. In a few minutes they ought to be at the King’s Arms where Lesley had booked rooms for two nights. That was the address she ought to have given the dark stranger—not Trevendone Manor—not yet.
The twins had thought it unnecessarily wasteful to book at a hotel, but Lesley had said thoughtfully, ‘It will give us time to survey the land and have a look-see. We might be able to pick up some local gossip about the Trevendones and about the Manor.’
They were warmly received by the hotel-keeper and his wife. ‘What a night!’ Mrs. Cleaver exclaimed. ‘M’dear souls, you’m be frozen. But the rooms are nice and warm. We had they night storage heaters put in last year and a might of difference they’ve made. Let me take you up, m’dears, and then when you’m tidied up you can come down for a bite of supper.’
They followed her upstairs. The hotel looked old, but it had been covered in white paint which no doubt was an asset so far as light was concerned but did not give an effect of cosiness. Lesley, who had visualised a Dickensian type of hostelry with oak beams and rafters, was frankly disappointed.
Nor did the supper come up to her expectations. Cold boiled ham and salad was a poor substitute for that huge steaming bowl of soup she had imagined or that sirloin of juicy beef carved by their host, their plates piled high with lovely fresh vegetables.
So much for Mrs. Travers who had lived near them at Lactatdo and had once spent a year in Britain. She had told them that one of the places where they would find the real ye olde England, especially out of the holiday season, was Cornwall.
She evidently hadn’t stayed at the King’s Arms in St Benga Town. Still, there was a roaring fire in the hotel lounge and after they had eaten the three sat sleepily watching it. But soon Lesley decided they would all be better for an early night and for once the twins raised no protest. Lesley and Rita were sharing a two-bedded room and Rick had been given a smaller one at the end of the corridor. The rooms were tolerably warm and there were hot water bottles in the three beds. So With very little in the way of conversation they undressed and crept between the brushed nylon sheets where the twins were soon asleep.
But Lesley tossed and turned and slept only fitfully. She was too tired, she supposed, and had too much on her mind. When she finally slept she dreamed about the hot dry country they had left so recently; about the snow which they had seen for the first time today and about that ogre of a man who in her dreams seemed to be pursuing her in a big black monster of a car through narrow lanes. In the end she had to turn, cornered, and he gripped her shoulders and said harshly, ‘You’re a liar and a cheat, Lesley Arden.’
She woke up cold and shivering, wondering how he knew she was Lesley Arden and not Lesley Trevendone. But she had been dreaming. She clutched her hot water bottle, but it had cooled and gave, her very little comfort. Oh, for that warm sunshine back home!
She crept out of bed and went to the window. Sleep seemed very far away now and she wondered how long it would be before she could get up. She wished she hadn’t had that stupid dream and that she could forget that near-accident last evening.
One couldn’t really blame the man for being angry. Rick had been going much too fast, but she was the real culprit for letting him drive at all. After all, he was only sixteen, though he had handled the old Hudson on the station at Lactatoo ever since he was ten. Still, a remote sheep station in Lactatoo New South Wales wasn’t England.
The man couldn’t have se
en who was really driving or he would have confronted Rick. Yet he had made that deliberate pause when he had first looked at her in the light of his torch.
Lesley shivered with something that wasn’t the chill of the bedroom. She pushed the curtains aside. There were yellow street lamps making queer topaz flowers in the dark. There was a wind howling rather eerily and the angry roar of a storm-racked sea.
As Rita had said, it was a far cry from Bondi Beach in Australia. Had she been wise in bringing the twins here? But she had promised Margaret Trevendone she would do so, and it was too late to back out now. It was pointless to look back.
But even so, her thoughts were going back, at least as far as yesterday. That man! Had he really been so tall and broad, or was it her imagination that was painting him as a giant, the ogre-of a fairy tale?
Would he report them to the nearest police station? She had told him their name, given him an address. Again Lesley found herself regretting that last bit of bravado. He didn’t seem the sort of man to let anybody get off lightly. He certainly wasn’t the courteous kindly Englishman one sometimes read about—the ‘gent’ of whom Rita had spoken. Far from it. That strong line of jaw revealed in the light of her torch, that hardbitten expression reminded Lesley far more of a forthright Aussie rather than one of those effete Englishmen. But this was Cornwall, and people said the Cornish were different—they were Celts. When you crossed the Tamar you were in a foreign country ... or so they said.
Lesley shivered and let the curtain drop. She crept back into the bed which now seemed warm after the cold air by the window and the damp sleet outside. She curled up into a tight ball under the thin eiderdown and soon she was asleep.
It was still dark when she woke again. Winter nights were so long in Britain, the days so short. Not that February was winter, surely. She thought again about that neighbour Mrs. Travers who had told her about Cornwall. ‘Spring comes early down there. You’ll find snowdrops and violets there when the rest of the country is covered in snow.’ The climate must have changed since Mrs. Travers’ time, thought Lesley wryly.
The Girl From Over the Sea Page 1