that’s Kraut-speak for having a bit of sense.
We met up with Clemmie and Malvoisin for dinner and found a place to go dancing, so all in all it was a pretty good sort of day, except for not spotting any sinister characters lurking in the undergrowth. I did spot old Wellieboots again, sitting in the bar of the place where we had lunch — I think he’s jolly sinister, but I suppose he doesn’t count.
Today was a bit different.
We’d fixed up to meet at St. Clement’s Bay, which Gabrielle said was her favourite place in Jersey. The idea was to get there at low tide and walk out across the sand to something she calls the Sirens’ Rock — that’s her private name for it, it’s called something different on the map. She says it’s the one that the witches used to dance round and lure fishermen onto, like you were talking about last week.
There’s another big rock in the garden of someone’s house that’s called the Witches’ Rock, but Gabrielle doesn’t think it’s the right one because it’s on dry land. She says the proper one must be one of the ones that are covered up by the sea when the tide’s in.
It’s in the bottom right-hand corner of the island, quite near where her hotel is, so it seemed a bit silly for her to drive into St. Helier to pick me up. I told her I’d get there under my own steam and got up early and walked there.
When the tide’s in it looks like you expect the seaside to look, with a sandy beach and lots of blue water next to it, all nice and neat like on a postcard. When the tide’s out it looks quite different, like a desert with damp problems — acres and acres of squelchy brown sand covered with seaweed and spiky splodges of rock all over the place, with shiny bits where the water’s got stuck between them.
I thought as soon as I saw her that Gabrielle was looking a bit under the weather, as if maybe she hadn’t slept too well. I didn’t say anything, though, in case it was just a hangover and it would be un-suave to show I’d noticed.
It takes about an hour to walk out to this rock of hers, and you couldn’t exactly call it walking dry-shod — you’ve got to take your shoes and socks off and roll your trousers up, and you still get fairly wet. Gabrielle didn’t seem to mind, though — she seemed to quite like getting wet, and by the time we got there she’d perked up a good bit.
She’d brought a thermos of coffee and some rolls from her hotel, so we sat on the rock and had a picnic breakfast. We didn’t talk much to begin with, just sat and drank coffee and listened to the sea gulls. I kept thinking what funny-coloured eyes she’d got, not green and not brown, like the bits of the sea that were stuck between the rocks and you couldn’t tell what colour they were.
And then she started telling me she thought her room had been searched last night when we were out at dinner. She said it wasn’t obvious, but she knew how she’d put-her things away and she was sure that when she went up to bed some of them weren’t in quite the right place.
I asked if there was anything missing, because after all she is a contessa and she does look like the sort of bird who might have some quite nice jewellery with her, so someone on the lookout for the odd diamond bracelet to snaffle might think she was a pretty likely prospect.
She said she didn’t think there was anything missing, but if someone was looking for jewels, they wouldn’t have found any — the only valuable thing she’s got with her is a gold fountain pen with her initials on that was a birthday present from her husband, and she always keeps that in her handbag. She didn’t think it was a diamond snaffler, though — she thought it was the chap who’d been following her at Daffodil meetings.
So then she told me all about it, and of course I didn’t let on that I’d already heard about it from Clemmie. The thing I’m a bit surprised about is that she really is rattled, like Clemmie said she was. She’s a tremendously sporting sort of bird and I’d have thought being shadowed by the Revenue was the kind of thing she’d get rather a kick out of — after all, even when the Revenue are playing rough, they’re not actually going to get physical, are they?
I suppose what’s really getting her down is not being a hundred percent sure about it. She says herself that it’s mostly just a feeling she’s got — if the person she’s being followed by came and stood in front of her she wouldn’t know it was them. So sometimes she thinks she might be going a bit loopy and imagining things.
I told her she was talking bilge, because even if she isn’t being followed, it doesn’t mean she’s loopy. People do follow people, so if you think you’re being followed by someone and you’re not, that’s not being loopy, it’s just being wrong — being loopy is if you think you’re being followed by purple elephants, unless you are of course.
Anyway, I pointed out I’d be around all the time she was in Jersey, so there wasn’t anything to worry about — I mean, either the Revenue chaps were imaginary, in which case they couldn’t do her any harm, or they weren’t, in which case if they tried to, I’d jolly well make them wish they were. She seemed quite chuffed about that and said I’d made her feel a lot better.
And after all that, what do you think the silly grummet is going to do tomorrow?
The Daffodil Settlement owns shares in a company that’s meant to be resident in Sark — I suppose you’d know what the point is, I’m blowed if I do — and that’s where the directors have got to have their board meetings, The directors are the Daffodil gang plus Philip Alexandre — that’s the chap who was supposed to have made the settlement but didn’t. He lives in Sark and owns a hotel there, and the Edelweiss outfit always use him when they need a Sark resident to be a settlor or a director or anything like that. So we’re going over there tomorrow for the directors to have a board meeting and me to give them my advice about what to do with the trust fund — flying over to Guernsey in the morning and going across to Sark on the ferry. Well, that’s what the rest of us are doing — Gabrielle’s going on her own and doing something different, and she won’t tell me what it is.
I’ve pointed out to her that if I’m in one place and she’s in another, I shan’t be able to do much about sinister chaps from the Revenue leaping out of the bushes at her, but she just looks mysterious and says I’m not to worry about her. Which is a bit much, considering she’s the one who made me start worrying about her in the first place. Honestly, Larwood, there are some birds you just can’t reason with, and if you don’t know them well enough to biff them there’s not a lot you can do about it.
I didn’t like to ask her about what happened in the Cayman Islands, so I still don’t know what it was. Is that where you went last year or was it the Turks and Caicos? All I remember is that you got goofy about some chap.
We’re reckoning to be finished in Sark in time to get the evening plane from Guernsey, so I should be back in London sometime tomorrow night, worse luck. If anything interesting happens, I’ll tell you on Tuesday morning.
Over and out — Cantrip
The arrival of Ragwort and Selena distracted Julia from her Finance Bill and me from further reflection on Cantrip’s telex message. Not until Selena had purchased a bottle of Nierstein and we were all comfortably settled round the little candlelit table did it occur to me to ask Julia whether it was in fact the Cayman Islands or the Turks and Caicos that she had visited in the previous year.
She answered, with a dreamy and distant look, that it was indeed the Cayman Islands.
EXTRACT FROM
Cayman Islands: A group of islands in the Western Caribbean consisting of Grand Cayman, Little Cayman, and Cayman Brae. A British Crown Colony settled in the seventeenth century by retired pirates, survivors of shipwrecks etc. Capital: Georgetown, Grand Cayman.
Pop.: 17,000. Total area: 100 square miles. Access: Approx. 1 hour by air from Jamaica or Miami. Principal industries: Tourism and financial services. Facilities include 400 banks and more telex machines per head of population than anywhere else in the world. Recommended season for meetings: October to March.
Note 1: An ample supply of English newspapers, which are much prized by the inhabitants of Georgetown, will ensure a cordial welcome.
“Properly regarded,” said Selena, gazing thoughtfully into her glass, “your experiences last year in the Cayman Islands could be incorporated very nicely, Julia, into this book that you and Cantrip are writing. Have you
