A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs

water filtered down from the walls and channelled the sand of the floor.

They reached the seaward end of the tunnel, where the low, screened entrance hole shrank to thigh-height, and doubled upon itself midway in an optical illusion of solid rock. They crawled through on hands and knees, and stood upright again in the upper reaches of the Dragon’s Hole.

When they had dropped down the slopes of shale and shell to where the light of the September day penetrated, there were still a few children playing on the sand, but even these were being called away to lunch by parents and elder sisters. The midday quiet was descending on Maymouth’s beaches. Far down the glistening shore the tide had turned, and was beginning to lip its way back towards the town, but it would be two hours yet before it covered the cavern again.

“You could come and have lunch with us,” said Dominic, “if you’d like to. Tamsin’s staying. We could ring up your mother and tell her.” But he made the offer rather hesitantly, and was not surprised when it was politely refused. Paddy hadn’t seen his mother for all of three hours, and there are times when three hours is a long time. Moreover, he had to demonstrate, rather than claim, that he was a responsible person who paid attention to the times of high and low tide, and could be trusted not to take any more chances.

“Thanks awfully, but I think I ought to go home.”

“Well, come and have an ice with us, anyhow.”

Paddy jumped at this offer. They climbed the steep path from the harbour to the Dragon’s Head, and turned in by the first pale cliff- track towards the Dragon Hotel.

“Better put this with your guinea,” said Tamsin, extracting the thin gold ring from her pocket. “I don’t suppose it’s anything much, but hang on to it, and time will show.”

“Do you think we should tell Mr. Hewitt about it? I told him I was coming to have another look at the passage, but he wasn’t much interested.”

“Question of priorities,” said Dominic with courteous gravity. “Tell him about it, but leave it till he’s got time for it. He’s probably got a dozen lines to follow up, and some of ’em more urgent than this. He’ll work his way round to it.”

They were walking close to the grassy edge of the cliff, where it overhung the beach and the harbour. Paddy looked down, from the painted operetta-set of Cliffside Row to the mouth of the blow-hole. The children were all gone now, the whole sickle of moist shore was empty. Only one lance of movement caught his eye.

From the narrow alley behind the cottages darted the figure of a girl, hugging the shadow of the cliff. She had tied a dark chiffon scarf over her candy-floss torch of pale hair, but Paddy knew her all the same, by her fawn- coloured sweater and Black-Watch-tartan legs. She ran head-down, hugging something small and shapeless under her arm. Because of the overhang he lost sight of her for a full minute, then she reappeared close to the deep shadow of the Dragon’s Hole, and darted into it, and vanished.

He opened his mouth to call the attention of his companions to her, and then after all he held his tongue, and walked on with them in silence. But he couldn’t get Rose Pollard out of his mind. And the more he thought of her, the clearer did it seem to him that she had been in the act of launching herself on this same errand earlier this morning, and then had drawn back when she saw them go down the beach ahead of her, and enter the cave. She had watched them every step of the way, he recalled now the stillness and tension of that small figure standing at the edge of the sunlight. The tide had dropped just clear of the entrance then, the beach had been otherwise almost deserted, only they had prevented whatever it was Rose wanted to do. Almost certainly she had watched them emerge again into sunlight and walk back to the harbour steps and the cliff path. Then, with the last of the playing children called home to lunch, she had found the coast clear at last.

For what? He had known her since he was a small boy, she had acted as baby-sitter several times for his mother, and he had liked her because she was kind and pretty and soft, and he could twist her round his finger, stay up as long as he liked, make all the mess he wanted in his bath, and ignore the finer points of washing. She wouldn’t have the resolution to do anything dangerous or underhanded, and she wouldn’t have the wits to cover it up for long even if she tried it. Unless, perhaps, for Jim she could rise to things she wouldn’t dare attempt for herself? It was her father who was dead, and she hadn’t liked her father any better than anyone else had, and Jim had detested him, because of her. But they couldn’t have done anything bad, he wouldn’t believe it. They were both too open, not for darkness and secrecy. Not for caves! Rose was frightened of the dark. What was she doing there?

Mute and abstracted, he ate his way through a cassata, and made his farewells. But once he was out of sight of the hotel terrace and back on the cliff path, it was towards Maymouth that he turned. He slid recklessly down the whitening, late-summer grass to the harbour, clattered down the steps, and homed like a racing pigeon into the gaping mouth of the Dragon’s Hole.

She wasn’t in the open part of the cave, he knew that intuitively as soon as he crept into the dark interior. There were no echoes, only the very faint and ubiquitous murmur of water, that was inaudible when there were voices and movements to drown it. She might have gone right through into the haven at Pentarno, which would still be dry at this hour; but he scrambled purposefully straight through until the daylight met him again, and the great waste of the beach and the dunes lay within sight, and there was no Rose to be seen crossing the sands.

In his heart he’d known all along where she must be. He abandoned the stony channel, and climbed inland, as quietly as he could, until he stood hesitating unhappily over the entrance to the tunnel.

He couldn’t follow her in there without meeting her face to face, and somehow he couldn’t bring himself to precipitate a situation like that, at least not until he knew what he was doing. He looked round him for the best cover, compressed his slight person into a screened corner as close as he dared to the passage, and sat there silently, his arms wound round his knees, his heart thumping. She couldn’t possibly stay long, whatever she had to do there, because she had to return by the same way, and to make good her retreat from the cave before the tide engulfed it. But if she didn’t come, what must he do? Get out in time himself, and tell Jim? But Jim must surely know already. Husbands and wives were in each other’s confidence, weren’t they? Tell Hewitt, then? Or ought he to stay there and take care of Rose? But he couldn’t do that to his mother, not again! He was getting hopelessly confused as to where his duty lay.

Rose spared him a decision. Before he heard her footsteps he saw a thin, pale pencil of light filter out of the rock wall, and waver across the shaly floor. She was hurrying, perhaps afraid of the tide, though she had still plenty of time by his reckoning. He heard the pebbles rasping, and uneven, running steps suddenly ending in a soft thud, as she threw herself down to creep through the low opening. The light of her torch leaped and fluttered with every thrust of the hand that held it. She clawed her way through, careless of the noise she made, as though a demon had been hard at her heels. When she scrambled to her feet, he saw the flickering light cast from below upon her pale hair, from which the scarf had been dragged back on to her shoulders. He saw her face twisted hopelessly into a child’s mask of anguish, smeared with tears, the soft mouth contorted, the round chin jerking.

She blundered away from him down the slope, slipping and recovering in her frantic haste, and he heard the