A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs

“One thing about a man who announces his intentions through a megaphone,” she said as she sat down and stretched out her long and very graceful legs, “you do at least know where he is, and how to avoid him.”

“You came straight here, a pin to a magnet,” said Simon promptly.

She looked round the table and counted. “There are six of you here. Five would have been enough. Some,” she added, with a smile of candid interest that robbed her directness of all offence, “I don’t know yet. I’m Tamsin Holt.”

Tim did the honours. She smiled last and longest at Dominic, because he was looking at her with such startled and appreciative eyes. “Hallo! Phil told me about you. You pulled her Patrick out of the water this afternoon.”

“Did she tell you he didn’t want to come?” Dominic felt his colour rising; but the tide of pleasure in him rose with it. She was so astonishing, after Phil’s mendacious description. Glasses, indeed! The bridge of her straight nose had certainly never carried any such burden. And as for “not bad-looking ”!

“She told me maybe he didn’t even need to come. But she said she’d like to think there’d always be you around whenever he even might need you. Take it from me, my boy, you’re in. You’ve been issued with a membership ticket.” She looked up over her shoulder, where Sam Shubrough’s granite bulk was looming like one of the Maymouth rocks, a monolith with a good-humoured beetroot for a face. Half of its royal redness was concealed behind a set of whiskers which looked early-nineteenth- century- coachman, but were actually ex-R.A.F., “Hallo, Sam! Nice night for a walk.”

To judge by the small, demure glint that flashed from her eyes to the landlord’s, this meant more than it said. But then, she had a way of making everything a fraction more significant. Ever since she had sat down beside him Dominic had been trying to assimilate the complete image of her, and she wouldn’t give him the chance. She was always in motion, and all he could master was the lovely detail.

“That right, now,” asked Sam interestedly, peering down at Dominic from behind the hedge, “that you fetched young Paddy out? That’s the first time anybody’s ever had to do that. Where’d he manage to get into trouble?”

“Off the rocks of the point, just in the ebb, the worst time.”

“Go on! What possessed a bright kid like him to go out there? He knows a lot better than that.”

“He thought he saw a body being pulled out to sea there,” Dominic explained. “He went in to try and reach him. But we went in afterwards and hunted as long as we could—at least, Mr. Towne did, I didn’t do much—and there wasn’t a sign of anything.”

“A body, eh! Not that it would be the first time, by many a one. But I’ve heard no word of anyone being missing, or of anything being sighted. No boat’s been in trouble for months, this is the best of the season. You reckon there’s anything in it, Simon?”

“I doubt it,” said Simon tranquilly. “He saw something, he’s no fool. But I don’t think for a moment it was a man. Bit of driftwood, or something, even a cluster of weed, that’ll be all.”

“Well,” said Sam comfortably, accumulating empty glasses with large, deft fingers, “if it was a body, we’ll probably know by tomorrow. Way the wind’s setting now, the next incoming tide in the small hours will leave it high and dry on the Mortuary, same as it always does.”

“The Mortuary?” Simon looked up with raised brows.

“That stretch of sand this side the church at Pentarno, where all the weed builds up. Almost anything that goes out off the point comes in again next tide on that reach. Many a one we’ve brought in from there. They don’t call it the Mortuary for nothing.” He stood brandishing his bouquet of dead men, and beamed at them cheerfully. “What’ll it be, Miss Holt? Gin and tonic? Any more orders, ladies and gents?”

George claimed the round, and Dominic backed carefully and gracefully out of it, because both his mother and his father had refrained from looking at him as if he ought to.

Something remarkable had happened suddenly to the circle. The two vehement people, the two who glittered and were always in motion, had fallen still and silent together. Simon was sitting with his hands folded before him on the table, all the lines of his long-boned face arrested in a Gothic mask, the brightness of his eyes turned inward. The stillness of the energetic often has a quite unjustified effect of remoteness and sadness. Their sleep sometimes has a look of withdrawal and death. And Tamsin—Dominic could see her whole for the first time, the pale oval of her face, the broad, determined brow under the smooth fringe of red-gold hair, the thoughtful, fierce and tender mouth, a little too large for perfection but just the right size for generosity and beauty; and the eyes, very dark blue under their startling black lashes, wide and watchful and withholding judgment, fixed upon Simon. If he looked at her she would lower the more steely blue of the portcullis, and her mouth would shape a dart quickly and hurl it. But now she studied, and thought, and wondered, and could not be sure.

“Gin and tonic,” said Sam, leaning between them with the tray. “Bitter? Whisky on the rocks, that’s Simon. Mild—that’s Mr. Felse.”

Simon came out of his abstraction with a start, and reached for his whisky.

“Doing the job down at the church day after tomorrow, are you?” said Sam conversationally. “That’ll be a day for Maymouth. Nobody still kicking about it being irreverent, and all that?”

It was rather quiet in the bar. A frieze of benign local faces beamed at the corner table. A tenuous little cord of private fun drew them all close together for a moment.

“Only the cranks, Sam, only the cranks. Look at the topweight we’ve got on our side. The church sanctions it, and Miss Rachel insists on it. Tim will represent the family’s interests, and the Vicar’ll be there to see fair play. How about you, Sam? Come and make a fourth witness? Ten o’clock in the morning, sharp!”

Just for a fraction of a second those two looked each other blandly in the eye, and the Maymouth regulars grinned like gargoyles along the wall.

“Wouldn’t miss it, Simon,” said Sam Shubrough heartily. “Any time you want a strong-arm man, you call on me. Ten o’clock sharp. I’ll be there.”

From the hotel on the headland a broad path brought them to the slight dip of the Dragon’s neck, where the road between Maymouth and Pentarno clambered over the hump-backed beast that slept in the moonlight. Their path crossed it and moved on through the highest roads, half back-street, half country-lane, of the quiet town of Maymouth, towards the towered monstrosity of Treverra Place.