My father stood up and blew the candles out.
“Enough, Samuel. Now Major and Mrs Dyminge, would you like coffee in the drawing-room?”
I tried again.
“No, but is there? A glass factory?”
My father took Mrs Dyminge’s arm and led her out of the room as if they were at the head of a stately procession and I noticed her smile shyly up at him as they passed my chair.
“Bottom!” Sam gave it a last whirl and ran out after the grown-ups.
Only Major Dyminge and I were left at table and he shook out the napkin that had been lying on his lap and placed it by his empty bowl.
“R’co and Son, eh?” He said. “Would this be the R’co who might kill you, Rosa?”
13. Cullet, Crizzling & Murder
So I told Major Dyminge the whole story. He’d led an adventurous life and had plenty of experience of the ‘genre’. (Besides, Major Dyminge had once saved me from drowning in the sea, which none of my family would ever forget.) I hoped, in a vague kind of way, that he might have a few tips for me, but all he’d said was:
“Promise me one thing, Rosa. That you won’t begin searching for that glass factory all by yourself.”
I’d promised and then he had gone for his coffee and I’d followed Sam up to bed.
Saturday stayed fine and I did something I hadn’t done for the longest time; something I’d loved to do when I was younger. I jumped out of the drawing-room window, still wearing my nightie and slippers, and ran along the beach, certain that nobody else was up and about and that the expanses of shingle and sand and mussel-encrusted rock pools that had come up for a breather while the tide was at it lowest, all belonged to me. However, in the distance, picking his way over the tumble of rocks that lay beneath Ness Point, I made out the unmistakeable figure of my Uncle Albert, beachcombing.
Uncle Albert was in love with the sea and scarcely worked in my mother’s millinery business any more. So astonished had he been when first brought down from London to the coast, that we’d all had to run after him into the waves to prevent him from drowning himself with glee.
“He’s gone native,” my mother had remarked, not long after our arrival at St Margarets (I remember how she’d smiled to see him so happy). It was as if she had released him - as you might release a tired pit pony after a lifetime of arduous work in the dark - setting him down in a lush, green field and watching him gallop off. I didn’t wave; it would only have un-settled him.
Seagulls swooped about, taking their fill of the mussels and a tiny crab scuttled sideways when it saw me running and jumping on the wet sand. Perfect puffs of cloud sat motionless in the lively blue sky. I got as far as Major Dyminge’s boat, moored up by the jetty, and sat down beside it.
Over at the other end of the beach, where the road curved down the hill in a lush, green sweep - for holm oaks and pines and thick tangles of ivy gave St Margarets Bay quite a Mediterranean look - the girl who worked at the Coastguard pub brought some empty bottles out and put them in the pub bins. We knew each other, so I waved at her and she waved back. We weren’t completely alone on the beach, you see. Before the war, there’d been more houses and a tea-rooms and St Margarets had been rather a smart little resort until the army had taken it for a ‘battle school’, which had pretty much done for it, except for the bit of the pub that was left standing and the houses we were soon to move into. Since then, the ruins had been swept away and the New Promenade and a small slipway had been built, instead.
I ran over to the slipway, to where Major Dyminge moored his boat. The Major’s boat was his pride and joy and no wonder when she was the prettiest tub in the world. He had spent years sawing away at lengths of wood and constructed a magical vessel; like the best boat that was ever launched on Regent’s Park pond, only full-size. Her sides swelled gently and she gleamed conker-brown. It looked like he’d been applying another coat of varnish because a couple of tins of the stuff were stacked inside, along with some paintbrushes, upright in an old petrol can. When she was in use, he rigged her up with spotless white sails that my mother had made on her sewing machine. I ran a hand along The Rose of Kent’s glossy flank and wondered whether I might ask the Major to take me out in her. Perhaps we could sail through Dover harbour looking for tell-tale signs of a glass factory, whatever they might be. (Sometimes it feels as though knowing a lot about some subjects only serves to highlight my ignorance about others.) It was obvious I needed to do some research, if I was to proceed any further with my undercover work.
I ran back down the beach, brushed some of the sand off the soles of my feet and wriggled through the drawing-room window. I was heading back to my bedroom, where I kept all twenty-three volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, leather-bound and in glorious alphabetical order, plus one index volume containing an atlas.
I didn’t waste time dressing, but pulled out the relevant volume, sat cross-legged on my bed and looked up Glass. There was a satisfyingly lengthy entry (which I will now proceed to summarize).
In short, I discovered that the basic ingredient of glass was sand, or ‘silica’ to give it its proper name, and that other minerals were added to it, creating a glass recipe known as ‘batch’. Those other minerals being, generally, soda ash and limestone. After the batch had been mixed, it was then melted in a furnace, which had been fired to an extremely high temperature. If uranium were to be introduced, it would have been as an oxide, and - as Uncle Tristram had said - its purpose would be to add colour to the batch. All sorts of colours could be produced with different metallic oxides: violet-blue with the addition of cobalt, peacock-blue with copper, pale pink with tellurium (to give three examples).
I also learnt quite a bit about crystallisation, and the unusual ability of glass not to form crystals – although, should crystals be desired, a controlled amount could be introduced, creating a type of glassware that was a combination of the best bits of glass and pottery and, therefore, jolly strong. Then there was the vast subject of sandcasting, pressing and moulds (which I won’t go into here) and a host of interesting new words: such as cullet, being broken or waste glass suitable for re-melting, crizzling, being deterioration in the fabric of the glass and annealing, being gradual cooling to prevent cracks.
I rolled the lovely words around in my mouth with pleasure and lapped up every fact that Britannica had to give me. Even so, I wanted more - encyclopaedias always skimmed the surface. Dover Library did its best, but was unlikely to have anything more in-depth on the subject. There would be books I could send off for, of course, although I was sadly short of funds . . but then I was forced to remind myself that I wasn’t actually going to be manufacturing any glass, personally. Facts were all very well - facts were wonderful - but I had a tendency to overdo the lapping until I was stuffed to bursting and immobilised by them.
I had to try to think in a more general way, if I was going to progress with a plan. I replaced the encyclopaedia in strict, alphabetical order and made a start at getting dressed. As I was putting on my dark-green linen shirt and a pair of Capri pants, I went over some of the information that I already knew (for me, going over information is much like re-running a spool of film). The image of Magnus’ Uncle Reg immediately popped up. Uncle Reg leaning across the pub table to offer me a lift home:
“Dover?” He’d said. “What a coincidence. I’ve a factory down there, would you believe?”
I shook my head to dislodge the picture. How interesting that he’d used the word ‘factory’ when I’d just learnt the correct term was either ‘glasshouse’ or ‘glassworks’; he hadn’t wanted to give too much away. But that was just semantics. The main thing was, wouldn’t we have heard of a big glassworks in Dover? Or anywhere near Dover? Because it had to be a big affair. From what I could gather, modern glass was always produced on an industrial scale simply because the furnaces had to be so incredibly powerful.
Halfway through tucking in my shirt, it struck me that I’d missed something crucial. I thought back to Mr Orcha
rd’s office at Heaviside Import/Exports and the dictation I’d struggled to take down while that American tickled my neck. They’d been drawing up a contract to export one million pieces to America. One million pieces of substantially sized yellow glass! Only a truly enormous concern could produce such an amount for a single order and a glassworks that size couldn’t possibly be based in our part of Kent without any of us having heard of it. I sat down on the edge of my bed and thought it through. Uncle Reg had two companies. The company on the contract was Dilko Arkonnen Vas-Glas & Ceramics, Finland and they were evidently huge and perfectly capable of producing one million pieces of glass to export to Sambaware Enterprises, Cape Prince of Wales, Seward Peninsula, Territory of Alaska, USA. So what did R’co & Son Glassware, Dover do?
I began to brush my long, tangled hair, an activity that always helped me to think. There was something else that was troubling me. Just why had my uncle said that the huge quantities of uranium were most probably being exported to the Soviets when Sambaware Enterprises was an American company? (Not that Alaska was a fully paid up part of the United States, being only a territory.) I paused with the hairbrush in my hand and looked at the fool in the mirror. Alaska?!
I opened the Britannica with the atlas inside, going straight to the index at the back and ‘S’ for Seward Peninsula. (They say pulses can quicken and I felt it happen.) The Seward Peninsula was just below the Arctic Circle, in north-western Alaska, and only the tiniest sliver of blue sea separated it from eastern Russia. And there was Cape Prince of Wales at the far west of the Peninsula, like a finger pointing across the Bering Strait and nearly, so nearly, scraping its nail on dry land. It was like looking at a map of the English Channel, for just as St Margaret’s Bay was the closest point to France, so Cape Prince of Wales was the closest point to Russia.
I felt as if I were just beginning to catch up with HQ. The ‘bad Yank’ who’d tickled my neck - Mr B Dexter, as I recalled from the contract - was a link in the chain of manufacture and supply that led, eventually, to the Soviets. How tortuous it all was, though! Why make yellow glass in Finland, bring it to England, export it from here to sub-Arctic Alaska and then ship it over the Baring Strait to Russia, when Finland shared a border with Russia in the first place? Was Finland on the wrong side of the country, I pondered? Could it be that the uranium was specifically needed on the furthest reaches of Eastern Russia, where it ran up to the Bering Sea? I studied the map, mouthing the place names: Chukotskiy Poluostrov, Korvakskoye Nagor’ye, Kamchatka. To me, they were as outlandish as the mountains of the moon, unimaginable regions of ice liberally sprinkled with the letter ‘k’.
I slapped the great volume shut and slotted it back into the bookcase that had come free with the encyclopaedias. I could research Chukotskiy Poluostrov until the cows came home but it was the ‘English connection’ that I’d discovered; that was where I’d stolen a march on HQ. As far as they’d been concerned, the glass had travelled from Finland to Heaviside Import/Exports without a hitch, and all under the eagle eye of that native Finn Arko Arkonnen. But they had been wrong. Something else was going on, here in Kent, something the smugglers desperately wanted to keep hidden - enough to falsify information about Vas-Glas and it’s managing director and insinuate it into the files of HQ, and enough to make trad jazz-loving, myopic Reg Arkonnen from Hull impersonate a Scandinavian. Underneath the secret negotiations to smuggle uranium-laden glass to the Soviets there was another secret altogether. An even more dangerous secret.
I was thoughtful at my late breakfast and let Sam show me the new additions to his immense cigarette card collection with barely a murmur. He chattered on until his best friend, Bill Hawking, arrived, carrying a football, to claim him.
I wandered outside and hoisted myself up onto the sea wall, watching Sam and Bill dribble the ball down the promenade. Sam had his mouth open, talking non-stop, and was hurling his short body about with unnecessary effort, while Bill scarcely appeared to run, but dipped his smooth, fair head and scooped the ball with a long leg in one, economical movement. It was rather like watching a sparrow hop around a great wading bird. Bill was only a year older than Sam, but many inches taller and quiet and serious where Sam was garrulous. He lived in a council house in the village with his mother, who’d never been married and never been tempted to put a curtain ring on her wedding finger, either; she was a dark dynamo of a woman, brim-full of organising energy, who ran every village event going.
The Hawkings (and the Dyminges) had ties with our family that reached back into the past, to long before I was born. When we’d moved to the house on the beach, Major and Mrs Dyminge and the Hawkings had all come, too, like a job lot. Mrs Dyminge was especially close to Bill Hawking - as close as any grandmother - and he would run down the zig-zag cliff path to the beach to see her, before he collected my brother for a game of football.
The wind had got up and, behind the two boys, the sea slapped up against Ness Point, turning grey when a dark cloud hid the sun and then blue once more as the wind sent it about its business.
“No Channel swimmers today?” Mrs Dyminge straightened up with a trowel in her hand, her white hair blowing in all directions.
“I didn’t see you there, Mrs Dyminge,” I clutched at my heart, as one does when taken by surprise.
“You were many miles away. Don’t let me disturb you.”
She bent to her work, pulling tufts of interloping grass from a clump of green thrift. I swivelled round on the wall and watched her for a minute.
“How can you tell what’s grass and what’s thrift?” I asked. “To my eyes they look just the same!”
“Thrift hugs the ground, as if it’s forever in the teeth of a howling gale. Grass will do that, too, but one day it will aspire to grow taller. Its aspirations give it away.”
“That sounds very wise.”
“Wise, dear Rosa?” She chuckled. “No. Just old, I’m afraid. Old enough to have watched plenty of grass grow under one’s feet . . there, that’s done. And jolly boring it was, too! I must go and make a cup of coffee immediately.” She fluttered a finger at me in a sketchy wave and set off with her trowel. “Oh, by the way.” She halted on her garden path. “I remembered who gave me my Scandinavian platter. It came to me in the night. Yes . .” She narrowed her eyes and the sharp planes of her lean, tanned face seemed to spring into focus. “I must say, I didn’t warm to her awfully, clever though she was. Mmm . . undeniably clever.”
“One of your students, you said? Was it Mystery, Murder and Mayhem?”
“Oh, Mystery, Murder and Mayhem, without a shadow of a doubt. She had a talent for it; one of those women who look like butter wouldn’t melt, as they say - neat as two pins with a closed face - but put a pen in their hand and they dredge up stuff you certainly wouldn’t show to your granny. I was rather shocked, although I tried not to let it show because it was so terrifically well done. I suppose I must have succeeded because she turned up on the last day and presented me with the platter, which came as a pleasant surprise.”
“But who was it?”
“Well, she was a secretary in London, a married woman with a holiday home towards Ringwould; one of that group of brand new bungalows, you know. ‘Sea-Surf’, or ‘Sea-Turtle’, something in that line. I expect they’re very nice. Very convenient. One wouldn’t have to worry about stairs and nasty falls, of course . .” She looked dubious.
“But who was it, Mrs Dyminge?”
“They were here for the summer - last summer, it was - and her husband was working locally and she was at a bit of a loose end, she said . .”
“But . .”
“Mrs Dilys Arkonnen.”
I stifled a gasp.
“Yes, that was it. I remember the name quite distinctly because I brought up Tove Jansson and Finn Family Moomintroll[33], which Bill and I’d absolutely adored, but it didn’t seem to ring any bells. Silly really . . I daresay it was only her husband who was the Finn. Anyway . . ” she wiped her hands on her tweed skirt absent-minde
dly, leaving a long streak of mud behind, “I doubt she’d be at home; holiday people do come and go so.”
“That’s marvellous, Mrs Dyminge. You’ve been the most tremendous help!”
“Have I?” She beamed. “I wish you would take my platter, Rosa, I really do. Go on. Why not? I’d simply love it if you would . .”
“Frances!” The low growl of Major Dyminge’s voice issued from behind the front door of Coast Cottage.
I packed a rucksack with provisions, put on some plimsolls and wheeled out my old bike. The spokes and handlebars were brown with rust (all metal rusted super fast by the sea, even if it hadn’t been abandoned for the last three years, as was the case with my bike). I stopped outside the house to see what I could do with a hanky and some spit and Major Dyminge caught me at it.
“I’m coming with you and no arguments,” he waggled a finger at me.
“What? Why?” This was a bit much. “I’m only going for a gentle bike ride, Major.”
“No you’re not. You’re going to see Mrs Dilys Arkonnen, who is connected to Arko, who might, or might not have a glass factory in Dover and might, or might not be going to kill you. Tell me I’m wrong.”
A tremendous sense of annoyance swelled in my breast. This was my adventure . . no - more than that - this was my work. They’d had their time and now it was my turn.
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything more, Major!” I said, hotly. “It’s not admissible under the Official Secrets Act of 1939, you see.” And I swung my leg over my rusty bicycle.
He pushed his misshapen hat back on his head and glared at me with his working eye, which was such a piercing shade of blue it was as if it had sucked the power out of the other eye when that one had given up the ghost.
“Official Secrets Act, what tosh! I’ve been racking my brains to try to understand why that young thief, Tristram Upshott, has involved you in this business and I’ve drawn a complete blank.” He waggled his finger at me again and his bristly eyebrows shot up and down in an alarming fashion. “This is nasty stuff, do you hear me, Rosa? Nasty. And I won’t have you shooting off all by yourself thinking you can right all the wrongs of the world, however much you may want to . .”
The Yellow Glass Page 13