“Alec would know,” said Frances confidently. She found herself making the same reply to a good many questions.
They arrived at Rithie and Frances explained that the remainder of the journey must be performed by bus.
“Why on earth didn’t one of you bring a car?” asked Tillie a trifle fretfully.
“Because I had no petrol,” replied her companions with one voice.
Three suitcases and a hatbox were retrieved from the van and placed in the bus which was waiting in the station yard. The bus was already full of people, but they managed to squeeze in—Frances found herself sandwiched between Tommy and a fat woman with a fish basket.
“I’m glad it isn’t onions,” whispered Tommy in her ear. “I hate onions—I know it’s extraordinary of me—the only bright spot for me in this foul war is no onions.”
They rattled over the cobbled market-place and swung round the corner, and a fisherman in a jersey bumped against Tommy’s shoulder.
“Sorry, miss,” he said.
“Quite all right,” declared Tommy, smiling at him. “You couldn’t help it, could you? Do you live at Cairn, by any chance?”
The man replied that he had lived at Cairn all his life.
Tommy’s eyes glistened and she proceeded to pump him about the place, asking all sorts of questions about houses and shops and whether one could buy fresh fish from the boats that went out from the harbour. At first the man was inclined to be suspicious and a trifle grumpy, but Tommy did not appear to notice this. She had a gay friendliness of manner which was difficult to resist, and before the bus had covered half the distance to Cairn he was eating out of her hand.
Frances now began to worry about their reception at the Bordale Arms—her own reception had been so strange. She explained this to Tommy as best she could, but Tommy refused to be cast down.
“It will be all right,” said Tommy. “Hotels are bound to take you if they have room—unless you’re drunk or something—there’s a law about it, isn’t there? Besides, that’s how they make their money. I don’t mind doubling up with Elise—it wouldn’t be the first time—Tillie snores.”
There was a good deal to be read between the lines in Tommy’s simple statements, and Frances was silent for a few moments while she assimilated the information contained therein.
“Don’t worry,” added Tommy kindly. “You needn’t have anything to do with it. You can pretend you don’t know us, if you like.”
This offer was so remarkable that Frances was struck dumb, and before she had recovered her power of speech the bus drew up outside the post office at Cairn. She was now the interested spectator of the manner in which an experienced traveller can get things done. When Frances arrived at Cairn she had been obliged to carry her own suitcase from the bus to the hotel, but Tommy, Elise and Tillie had scarcely set foot upon the cobbled street before they had provided themselves with porters in the shape of three hefty-looking boys who had been lounging against the wall with their hands in their pockets. The boys looked a trifle surprised to discover themselves laden with suitcases, but they made no objection. The small suitcase which Frances had bought in Weston, and which contained all her parcels, was seized out of her hand and bestowed upon Tommy’s boy.
“I can’t give him less than sixpence, so he may as well carry them both,” said Tommy frankly.
After this display of competence Frances was not really surprised when her new friends asked for, and received without demur, three bedrooms at the Bordale Arms Hotel.
CHAPTER VI
“Do you play bridge?” inquired Tommy as Frances came into the lounge.
“Or poker?” asked Tillie hopefully.
Frances did not. She had played backgammon with Uncle Henry, but she did not mention this.
“There are some books here,” murmured Elise, who had been wandering round the room.
“Drivel, I expect,” remarked Tommy.
Frances sat down with The Heart of Midlothian. She had decided that she must not force her company upon her new acquaintances. They were obliged to share the lounge because it was the only place to sit, but there was no need to listen to the conversation.
“Janetta Walters,” said Elise.
Frances uttered a muffled exclamation.
“What did you say?” inquired Tommy.
“Nothing,” replied Frances. “It was only—I mean, my aunt reads all her books—I used to pursue them at the library.”
“There’s a whole row of them here,” said Elise in a disgusted tone.
“I like them,” Tommy declared. “They’re frightfully funny.”
Frances was surprised to hear this; she had never found any humour in them.
Tillie was surprised too. “Funny?” she asked incredulously.
“Screamingly funny,” Tommy repeated, nodding her head. “I’ve read them all, so I know what I’m talking about. You see, we were in a furnished house at Hythe and there was a complete set of Janetta Walters bound in tooled leather. The first thing I did when I got there was to fall down the stairs and sprain my ankle, so I read the whole lot straight off. They’re much funnier than Wodehouse.”
“But why—”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Tommy. “It’s because they’re so crude or something. You can hardly believe that the woman isn’t writing with her tongue in her cheek. There was one that outdid all the others for sheer unadulterated sloppiness—the man was so strong and silent that he was almost dumb, and the girl was as frail and delicate as a hothouse flower—they met and fell in love at first sight, and spent the rest of the book misunderstanding each other. Then, quite near the end, when everything seemed absolutely hopeless, they got marooned by the rising tide and everything came right with a bang.”
“It sounds the most awful drivel,” said Elise.
“Oh, it is,” agreed Tommy. “Everything in Janetta’s books happens quite differently from the way things happen in real life. Did you ever hear of any real person—any one you know—getting cut off by the rising tide?”
“Never,” said Elise.
“That’s why they’re so funny,” declared Tommy triumphantly.
“They aren’t meant to be funny,” Tillie pointed out.
Frances noticed that Tillie was often left behind in arguments of this nature. She was apt to lose the point and stray from the beaten path. She had done so again, and Tommy did not bother to answer her. Tommy had lighted a cigarette and was turning over the leaves of an illustrated paper in a desultory manner. The subject of Janetta Walters seemed to be closed, and Frances was sorry, for she had been very much interested in Tommy’s reactions. She was aware that the book to which Tommy had referred, and of which she had given such a spirited résumé, was Her Prince at Last, for, although all Janetta Walters’s books were full of strong men and flower-like maidens who fell in love with each other at first sight, it was in Her Prince at Last that Edward and Rose had been marooned upon the island by the rising tide. (Frances remembered the incident well—she had had so much trouble over the book that it had been imprinted for all time upon her memory.) Edward and Rose had been obliged to spend the night on the island, but Edward was too chivalrous—or perhaps too dumb—to speak to his beloved and clear up the frightful tangle of misunderstandings which enveloped them. Edward had taken off his coat and wrapped it round the feet of his companion—it had seemed to Frances a foolish thing to do—and then he had gone to the other side of the island and left her by herself. As Rose was an exceedingly highly-strung individual and was terrified of the waves, this seemed foolish too . . . it was all the more idiotic because the other side of the island was swept by a strong east wind, and Edward, sitting there in his shirt-sleeves and musing upon the innocent beauty of his love, was unfortunate enough to contract a severe chill, which developed into pneumonia. The pneumonia solved everything. Rose, believing him to be dead, flung herself upon his breast and confessed that she had adored him for years. Edward did not die, of course—Frances had not been the
least anxious about him, for she was aware that he must recover so as to be able to marry Rose. All Janetta Walters’s books ended in marriage bells; her large and admiring public would have been disappointed if they had ended in any other manner.
Elise said suddenly: “I don’t know how you can have read them all, Tommy. They sound such tripe.”
“But I like tripe,” replied Tommy gravely. “I like tripe, but not onions.”
“I didn’t know you could have it without onions,” Tillie said.
“Brown sauce,” explained Tommy. “It’s terribly good. Midge loves it. I’ll give you the recipe, if you like.”
Once again they had strayed from the subject—it was most tantalising. Frances was wondering how she could reopen it, when Tillie reopened it for her. “I suppose it must be hard work writing books,” she said regretfully.
“Are you thinking of writing one?” Tommy inquired.
“I wish I could,” declared Tillie. “She must make thousands—Janetta Walters, I mean.”
“I believe I could write fairy tales,” said Tommy thoughtfully. “Let me see . . . Once upon a time there was a fairy princess and she had four husbands and—”
“She was a film-star,” interrupted Elise.
“No,” said Tommy. “You don’t understand. She had four husbands all at once—on her permanent staff, I mean.”
“Keep it clean, Tommy.”
“Oh, of course,” agreed Tommy. “I mean, only people with minds like sewers will be able to read anything between the lines.”
“I suppose that’s why you liked Janetta Walters?”
“I believe it was,” said Tommy with a surprised inflection. She hesitated for a moment and then went on with her story. “The princess was called Princess Carginamel, and—”
“Why?” inquired Elise.
“I hoped you’d ask that,” said Tommy. “It was because she was sweet with a little bit of ginger inside.”
“She was full of gin, you mean?”
“No, ginger is much more subtle,” replied Tommy firmly.
“I love ginger,” said Tillie in a dreamy voice. “You can’t get real ginger here—except at Fortnum’s—it was when we were at Hong Kong that I developed a taste for it.”
“You get it at Sierra Leone,” put in Elise. “It grows almost like a weed and has a pretty flower. The boys used to bring in the roots and scald them. It was black ginger, of course—Ned loved the stuff, but it was rather strong for me.”
Frances had given up all pretence of reading, and was listening to the conversation with all her ears. She was being given a peep into lives so different from her own that they might have been lived by a different species of being, and because they were so different they fascinated her. The indubitable fact that Aunt Zoë would have disapproved of her new friends made their society all the more adventurous and desirable. Frances had never before met people who talked nonsense with the grave demeanour of judges, nor people who spoke of Hong Kong and Sierra Leone as if these places were just round the corner, and as if it was all in the day’s work to travel half-way round the world and back again. Frances remembered the case of Mrs. Bagnet, who, left in another quarter of the globe with nothing but a grey cloak and an umbrella, made her own way home to London and turned up fresh and smiling at the end of her journey. Now, as then, following the drum seemed to entail travel on a wide scale.
“What are you thinking about, Miss Field?” asked Tommy suddenly.
Frances blushed. She said: “I was thinking what different sort of lives you have had—different from mine. I’ve never been anywhere or seen anything. It must be so interesting to go all over the world and meet all sorts of people.”
“We don’t, really,” replied Tommy. “I mean, we go about but we don’t meet other people very much. We go about together—it’s silly, really.”
“You don’t seem quite real, somehow,” said Frances.
“Perhaps we aren’t real,” put in Elise with a thoughtful look.
“What do you mean?” inquired Tillie in surprise.
Frances came down to breakfast in good time. She had put on her trousers and polo jersey and was feeling a trifle self-conscious. The trousers were not as comfortable as she had expected—there was a strange flappy feeling about the legs—but whether they were comfortable or not she was determined to wear them, for they were symbolic of her new life. She was half-way through her breakfast when Mrs. Crabbe and Mrs. Liston appeared. They said “Good-morning” and sat down and began to talk about food.
“We ought to get plenty of fish, at any rate,” said Elise, pointing to the sea.
“Have you found out about milk for Jennifer?” asked Tillie Liston.
They discussed milk earnestly, and were still discussing milk when Tommy Widgery came in. She waved to Frances in a cheerful manner and sat down with the others.
“How did you sleep, Tommy?” asked Tillie.
“With my eyes shut—how did you?” replied Tommy, smiling.
“With her mouth open, of course,” said Elise quickly.
Tillie laughed—she did not seem to mind being teased. “The beds are really quite decent,” she said.
Frances saw very little of her new friends that day. They were busy with their own affairs, and she did not want to bother them. It was a damp, misty sort of day, so Frances decided to spend the morning writing letters (she ought to have written before, but letter writing seemed such a waste of time when the sun was shining and Cairn was waiting to be explored). She wrote to her uncle and aunt saying that she was very comfortable and was enjoying her holiday, and then she proceeded to write to Dr. Digby. There was no real need to write to Dr. Digby, of course, but Frances felt that he would be interested to hear how she was getting on. She intended to write him a short note, thanking him for his help and telling him that her holiday was a tremendous success, but once she had started to tell him about her holiday her pen raced on . . . the truth was she needed a friendly ear, and Dr. Digby was the only real friend she had. When Frances had finished her letter and read it over she was quite surprised at herself. Shall I send it? she wondered. Will he think it odd of me to write such a screed? She hesitated for a moment or two, but finally decided that it would be foolish not to send it after having spent most of the morning writing it. At the end of the letter she wrote a postscript saying that she had decided not to go back to the Wheelers when her holiday was over, and asking Dr. Digby what sort of work she should do. “You know my limitations,” wrote Frances modestly. “I cannot do typewriting nor drive a car, and I should be no use in an office. Have you any idea what I could do?” She signed the letter and folded it up and put it in its envelope.
After lunch it was still gloomy and misty, but Frances put on her oilskin coat and went downstairs. Mrs. MacNair was in the hall—she was a short, plump woman with dark hair and brown eyes.
“Are you going to the post, Miss Field?” she asked, smiling at Frances in a friendly way.
Frances replied in the affirmative. As she had her letters in her hand it was fairly obvious that she intended to post them, but the little exchange of words was not altogether superfluous; if it did not convey any information it betokened a friendly feeling.
The hall of the Bordale Arms was an odd place—so Frances had found—for there was nearly always someone there, either passing through or lingering in it in a purposeless sort of way. In fact, the only time Frances had ever entered the hall without finding someone there was the occasion of her arrival at the place. She had found, too, that the moment any sort of conversation began the doors round the hall would immediately open and heads would appear. Mr. MacNair would appear from the bar, or Annie from the pantry, or sometimes the cook—a large, comfortable-looking woman with snow-white hair—would open the kitchen door and beam placidly upon the conversationalists. Alec, also, had a habit of appearing suddenly and unexpectedly at the window which opened into the yard, or from the dining-room with a handful of cutlery, or from the lounge with
a coal-scuttle . . . it was all very friendly. today was no exception to the rule. No sooner had Frances replied that she did intend to sally forth to the post office than Annie emerged from the pantry and Alec from the lounge.
“Is Miss Field going out?” inquired Alec.
Miss Field repeated that such was her intention.
“Sheila should get out,” said Annie. “Will I put on my things and take Sheila for a wee turn, Mrs. MacNair?”
“You’ll get on with your work, Annie,” replied Mrs. MacNair firmly.
“I would take her,” said Alec, “but I’ve a lot to do.”
“Perhaps she would like to come with me,” suggested Frances.
“She would not go with you,” said Mrs. MacNair.
“No, indeed,” agreed Alec and Annie with one voice.
Frances opened the door and went out. She had made the offer on the spur of the moment, because she was feeling friendly towards the MacNairs, and she was a trifle hurt at the manner in which it had been rejected . . . she had been well snubbed. As she walked up the street to the post office she wondered again who Sheila was. It seemed odd that she had been living in the same house for nearly a week and had never set eyes upon her.
The bright colours of Cairn had vanished today. The mist was thickening, and it was scarcely possible to see across the street. Frances did not walk far, and perhaps it was just as well, for the mist played strange tricks with her and she had some difficulty in finding her way back to the hotel for tea. Later in the evening her three new friends initiated her into the mysteries of vingt-et-un, and Frances, who had never played a game for money in her life, was amazed and thrilled beyond measure to discover that she had won tenpence from her more experienced adversaries.
CHAPTER VII
Frances did not sleep well that night. She awoke several times and heard a sound which reminded her of distant traffic. It could not be traffic, of course, because this was Cairn—not Wintringham Square—it must be some sort of engine, a pump or an electric-light plant.
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