Or squelched in mud and wet-through to the skin,
To watch for salmon leaping up the linn,
Or saw the summer snow on high Ben More,
And gathered pebbles by Loch Broom’s grey shore.
Chapter 1
Windfall
“I’ll put a girdle round about the earth.”
^ »
The town was tripartite. Behind the quay with its Customs House, its ancient, partially restored inn, its eighteenth-century town hall, the old warehouses and the low-ceilinged shops which sold chandlers’ wares, yachting gear and marine stores of all kinds, lay the original guildhall, dating from the fourteenth century.
In the old town, a house, long due for preservation, incorporated some twelfth-century features in what had been a Tudor mansion and, behind and around all this, there was a strange, heterogeneous jumble of narrow alleys, public houses, shops old and new, and what had been the delightful dwellings of the eighteenth-century merchants, now either let out in flats or with their ground-floors converted into modern shop-fronts.
The ancient high street which led, with a dog’s-leg turn, down to the quay, had been made a traffic-free shopping precinct, but north of it were the supermarkets, the gas and electricity showrooms, the new public baths, the multi-storey car park, the new library and art gallery and a complex of even more recent buildings which included a theatre, a concert hall, a restaurant and rooms which could be hired for various public functions. Behind a beautifully maintained public park flanked by a shallow lake cut off from the vast harbour (almost an inland sea) by the railway embankment, lay the third part of the town. This was largely residential, but only to those who could afford to live there. Part of it faced the open bay, shallow and islanded, which disclosed large, shining sandbanks at low tide. To the east, west and north of it rose low hills on which the most desirable houses were built. They all faced the bay, a beautiful, natural harbour for small yachts. On the further shore, as the land curved round, there was a long ridge of higher hills and beyond these again were chalk cliffs and the open waters of the English Channel.
The setting, in fact, was picturesque, interesting and reasonably secluded, and Simon and Penelope congratulated themselves upon having acquired their property (on the strength of a legacy) before house prices soared beyond the reach of anybody who was not in the millionaire bracket, although maintenance was always a problem regarding both house and garden.
However, one fine morning of a biting January day, the unexpected cheque from CABO (Come and Buy One) fell like a ripe plum through the letter-box and was brought to the breakfast table by Carrie, the only indoor servant except for the cook, whom the Bradleys could afford to keep.
Simon opened the envelope and gave what the romantic novelists used to call ‘a choking cry’.
“Has the bank gone bust?” his wife Penelope anxiously enquired.
“Not so, but far otherwise.” He handed her the contents of the envelope, whereupon she exclaimed, almost in disbelief, “Good Lord! Pennies from heaven!”
“Yes, indeed,” agreed Simon. “Noice little cheque, Liza. Wot shall us do wiv it?”
“I thought that was a joke about the fitted bath in a council house,” said Penelope, who, although beautiful and in her own sphere intelligent, had a painfully pedestrian mind. “Didn’t they keep the coal in it, or something?”
“Probably. I meant what shall we do with all this lovely lolly?”
“Couldn’t you take the Sabbatical that’s due to you?”
“And do what with it?”
“Go for a world cruise, of course.”
“What about Rosamund and Edmund? A world cruise would be murder with two kids aged six and three and a half.”
“Oh, there will be playrooms and provision for being sea-sick and a doctor on board and a ship’s hospital.”
“What visions you conjure up!”
“Well, what about parking the children on to relatives? People would be glad to have them, I’m sure.”
“For three or four months?”
“The aunts and uncles adore them.”
“They would need to.”
“Well, at least we could put out a feeler or two. I’ve always wanted to go round the world on an ocean liner. It would be a kind of holiday for the relatives as well. We could offer them this house while we are away, and then the children wouldn’t miss going to the beach. The relatives surely would jump at free lodgings at the seaside in the summer. Anybody would.”
“Are we talking about your relatives or mine?”
“Well,” said Penelope, helping herself to butter and avoiding her husband’s eye, “I was rather thinking of yours. You’re so much cleverer at talking people into things than I am.”
Simon walked to the window and looked out at the still landscape. Between the house and the stone parapet which bordered a long slope to the shore, a huddle of small boats laid up for the winter in the shelter of the shallow harbour looked like children’s toys. At low tide the sandbanks would be uncovered and even at the quay, several miles away, no ship of more than about three thousand tons could moor, and, at that, the water in the small port
