The Death-Cap Dancers

There was no rain on the following day and plans had just been made for a whole day out, with a pub lunch, when there came a knock at the door. Erica, as usual, was the one to answer it. She came back to say that a boy wanted to know whether he could guide Tamsin to any more beauty spots.

‘I suppose he’s the boy you picked up yesterday,’ she added.

‘Do you want to speak to him?’

‘No, we don’t,’ said Hermione, ‘except to thank him kindly and tell him to clear off.’

‘Sorry,’ said Erica, returning to the door, ‘but all our plans are made. Did they take you in at the Youth Hostel?’

‘Oh, yes. I’d booked, but I got out of the coach at Gledge End when I ought to have stayed in for Long Cove Bay, so it was a real bonus meeting your friends.’

‘Yes, but not for them. Well, thanks for calling, but please don’t bother any more.’

‘I’ve hired a motorbike, so any messages you want run, shopping, errands—’

‘No, thank you. We can manage perfectly well for ourselves.’

‘I wonder how he found out where we were staying?’ said Tamsin, when the door was shut.

‘You as good as told him, I expect,’ said her sister.

‘But there are over thirty of these cabins. He can hardly have tried every one until he found ours.’

‘I suppose you told him your name. He had only to go to the office and say he had a message for you. Erica booked the cabin, but all our names are in the warden’s book. You can’t stay anywhere incognito unless you’re a member of the criminal classes.’

‘Oh, well, we’ve given him the bird, ’ said Erica comfortably. ‘I expect he was surprised to meet me on the doorstep. He probably thought Tamsin and Hermy were here on their own. Ask me and I’d say he’s a poisonous little reptile. You get to spot them when you have to employ a certain amount of casual labour, as we have to do on our building sites when the pressure of work is heavy. Well, which car are we going to use? No sense in taking both as we’re going to stick together today.’

It was Tamsin who had mapped out the route. As none of the others minded where they went, she had selected two subjects for her sketches. One of these involved a seascape, so, after a midday snack at a pub in a seaside town about thirty miles from the forest, she and Hermione boarded a pleasure steamer which made the coastal trip to a famous headland while the two older women explored the town.

Hermione was studying the coast through binoculars when Tamsin said, ‘Stand by! Here’s that boy Adam again.’

However, he did not attempt to come up and speak to them and it was with a slight sense of triumph that they reported this to the other two whom they met again on the quay.

‘He’s accepted the brush-off, then,’ said Erica. ‘Good for him.’

‘A bit of a coincidence, though, his choosing to come to this place on the day we’ve chosen to come here, and to catch the boat those two were on. The trips run every hour, weather permitting, and today the weather does permit, although it must be very near the end of the season,’ said Isobel. ‘I think the wretched youth was trailing us.’

‘Oh, forget him!’ said Hermione. The next stop was at an ancient abbey on the further side of Gledge End. Tamsin, who had seen photographs, wanted to sketch the view of the ruins which was to be obtained through the great rounded arch of the gatehouse. They found the place without difficulty and she remained in the front seat of the car to make her drawing through the glass of the windscreen while the other three explored the ruins.

She sketched in the archway. It was complete in itself although the walls in which it had been set were in ruins, and she was making rapid, expert strokes to indicate the broken arc where a rose window of the abbey church had been partly demolished to leave only a finger of masonry pointing to the sky, when she was interrupted. The driver’s door was pulled open and Adam Penshaw inserted himself into the driver’s seat.

‘Carry on! Carry on! Don’t mind me,’ he said. Startled — for she had been too much absorbed in her work to hear him come up, Tamsin dropped her pencil. As he bent to pick it up she snatched out the car-key which was opposite him and dropped it into her jacket pocket.

He knew what she had done. He laughed as he handed back the pencil.

‘Did you think I was going to run off with you?’ he asked. Tamsin made a few quick strokes to her sketch of the sky-pointing finger of church masonry before she answered him.

‘No, of course not,’ she said, ‘but I never trust an adolescent sense of humour.’

‘Oh, come, now! Don’t you like me?’

‘It is not a question of liking or not liking. I don’t want to seem unkind, but look here, now. My sister and I see all too little of one another when her school terms begin. We don’t live together, you see, because I still live at home, whereas she has to live reasonably near her school. She has always been friendly with Erica, but, there again, they see all too little of one another because their homes are so far apart. Can’t you understand that a small group of women sometimes want and even need to be on their own and to enjoy female companionship and a single-sex natter now and again?’

‘What about Hermione?’ he asked, ignoring her plea. ‘Where does she come in?’

‘She is a bird of passage. She rescued the perishing when I hurt my ankle and she rescued you. We are very glad to have her with us, but I warn you that she doesn’t want a young boy horning in on our holiday any more than we do.’

‘I’m not a young boy, dammit!’

‘All right, then, be a grown-up gentleman and get out of the car. Just leave us alone. Forget us, there’s a nice person.’ She spotted Erica, who was crossing the front of the ruins. ‘The others are coming back,’ she said. He took the hint and skipped out of the car. This time she heard the engine of his motorcycle (a sound which must have gone unnoticed by her when he had arrived) and he careered off.

‘He seems to have taken a fancy to you,’ said Erica, when she had come back to the car and had been told of Adam’s invasion of it. ‘It looks as though one of us had better stay with you in future. What a nuisance the wretched boy is! Oh, well, let’s hope you’ve really choked him off this time.’

Such was not the case, but Adam made only one more attempt to seek their society. This happened on the same evening. They were late enough home from their excursion to decide to combine tea and supper and then to sit about until ten or when they felt ready for bed.

The weather was changing by the time the meal was over; by eight o’clock the wind had got up and before nine the rain was lashing the windows. Woodwork in the cabin creaked and moaned and occasionally let off a sharp, protesting crack.

‘You’d think it is still alive,’ said Tamsin.

‘What is?’ asked Hermione.

‘The wood this place is made of. You know, there’s something creepy about a forest in this sort of weather. It’s as though the living trees were calling out to the dead ones.’

‘Oh, go to bed and pull the coverlet over your ears!’ said Isobel. ‘That’s what I’m going to do.’ The wind gave a sudden howl and there was a crash as a particularly rough squall hit the french doors. ‘ “It’s the wild night outside”. That’s from Campbell of Kilmhor, my favourite one-act play.’

‘ “Is the rain still coming down?” ’quoted Tamsin in her turn.

‘ “It is that, then”. What’s the bit about some poor lost soul coming up to the door, and we refusing it shelter?’

‘Oh, you two!’ said Erica. ‘Shut up! You make me go all goose-flesh. Let’s do the washing-up.’

‘Can’t it stay till morning?’ asked Isobel.

‘No, it jolly well can’t. If I begin to let you lot slack off, this place will be a pigsty by Saturday.’

Adam’s last visit to them was heralded by a furious battering on the french doors, a sound which outdid even the fury of the storm.

‘Oh, Lord! What now?’ said Erica, who had been the last to get into bed when the washing-up was done.

‘It’s only the wind,’ said Tamsin.

‘It certainly isn’t.’ The almost frenzied banging came again. Erica rolled out of bed, pulled on her dressing- gown and went into the lounge. ‘Who is it?’ she called out.

‘Let me in! My bike’s conked out and I’m soaked to the skin. Open the door!’

‘I can’t. We’re all in bed!’