She greeted us most happily and ran off to wash the dough and. flour from her hands.
“Has she been with you long here in the kitchen?” Sir John asked.
“About the quarter part of an hour,” Mrs. Sarton responded.
“Then the mysterious visitor should be coming along soon.”
“That I wouldn’t know, sir. I do the cookin’ and the cleanin’ and leave the magistratin’ to him.” She cocked her head then in an attitude of listening. ”But unless I’m mistaken, I hear Berty moving round where he keeps his papers upstairs. He went up to find something for you, sir.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, he should be down soon.”
Clarissa came back, wiping her hands upon a towel, announcing that she was ready to be taken for a tour of the town. Well, as her guide, I took my leave of Sir John, and in company with Clarissa, allowed myself to be taken back down the hall to the door by which we had entered. Mrs. Sarton insisted on letting us out that she might again turn the locks from the inside.
As we departed the house, she waved us an enthusiastic goodbye. ”The town’s got itself a bad name from all the smuggling done here. But there’s much pleasure to be had in Deal. Enjoy yourselves, both of you.”
Then did she shut the door behind us, turn the key, and throw the bolt.
“Isn’t she wonderful?” said Clarissa to me.
“Why yes, I suppose she is,” said I. ”You certainly seem to have come to know her well in a very short time.”
“That’s the sort of person she is. I feel as if I had known her all my life.”
“Hmmm, well, I see.”
“Why, oh why, must you be so … so …
And I? Well, I shrugged in answer, indicating, I suppose, that I did not know why, nor did I think it a matter of great import that I did not know. We had reached an impasse of sorts, one which had far more to do with the differences in our personalities than with anything of a material nature. It was often so with us.
We had walked but a short distance and were near to the corner of King Street. A man who looked quite familiar came round the corner. I studied his face as I tried to decide where it was I had seen it before. Then, of a sudden, I knew: he was Dick Dickens, to whom I had been introduced by Mr. Perkins; Dick Dickens, the smuggler turned customs officer. He passed us with no more than a wise nod. I, not knowing how else to respond, nodded back to him. What was he doing here? To me, it seemed quite evident that he was on his way to a meeting with Albert Sarton and Sir John Fielding. Dickens, it was, who had become the source of information about the owling trade. Could he be trusted? Though I had my doubts, Mr. Perkins seemed to take him as he presented himself. Well, I had in a sense been invited to stay away from their meeting with him. Let them do without me and my misgivings, thought I.
“Don’t you want to hear about her?” asked Clarissa.
“About who?”
“Why, about Mrs. Sarton-about Molly. Who did you suppose I meant?”
“Certainly, I’d like to hear more, if there’s more to know. I fear my mind was elsewhere.”
“Obviously,” said she. ”But now that I have your attention, I’ll tell you a thing or two that you don’t know. First of all, Molly was cook at the house of Sir Simon Grenville until that arrogant fellow Jacques came over from France and robbed her of her position. Lady Grenville insisted that she must have a French cook, and so there it was, practically a condition of the marriage. She would brook no argument in the matter.”
“When did all this come about?” I asked, interested now, almost in spite of myself.
“A little over a year ago. That was when Sir Simon wed the beauteous Marie-Hélène, and it was also about the time that Mr. Sarton came to Deal as the new magistrate. That was how they happened to get married.”
“I don’t follow you,” I said, ”not at all.”
“Well, it’s simple enough. Cut loose as she was, with nowhere else to go, she presented herself to the new magistrate and asked if he needed a cook. Well, she knew very well that he did-for he himself, being a man, knew not the first thing about cookery, of course. But Mr. Sarton-‘Berty,’ she calls him-was quite smitten by her, red hair and all, and so he hired her on the moment. Six months later they were to be married-and that caused a great many problems.”
“Of what sort? I’d not heard of any of this.”
“Didn’t I tell you it would all be new to you?” said she smugly. ”Well, there was trouble on his side because his father and mother had hoped and expected he might marry the daughter of a rich man, who would herself bring a considerable fortune into the marriage, money that might be used to provide him with an entry into genteel society.”
“Well, there’d be little chance of that, I suppose.”
“Little chance indeed! She’d been living under the same roof with him as his cook. That was cause for scandal.”
“But they hadn’t actually been … that is …”
“Well, she didn’t go into that-but after all, they were in love, weren’t they? But it did bring them down a bit round town. A magistrate simply does not go about marrying his cook, you know. The bishop was reluctant to let them be married in St. George’s, which is, of course, where the magistrate of the town should be married. And of course Sir Simon could not play host to them.”
“But why not? He was more or less Mr. Sarton’s sponsor here in Deal.”
“He and Lady Grenville could hardly set a table for their former cook, could they?”
“I suppose not,” said I as I thought about it for a moment. ”It does account for a lot, does it not? They did eventually marry, though?”
“The wedding was held in a little side chapel and snubbed by all the best people in Deal.” Clarissa sighed. ”Isn’t it a beautiful story, Jeremy? Love conquers all! I do believe I shall use it as the plot for my first novel. I wonder if she would mind?”
Again she sighed. Actually, she sighed quite a number of times during the telling of Molly Sarton’s tale.
“Indeed,” said I, ”you certainly got a lot out of her in a short time.”
“It’s true, isn’t it? But you know, I believe she’s lonely. She seems to have no one to talk to. I came along, eager to hear, and she simply came out with it.”
Then did Clarissa stop of a sudden and look about her, as if noticing her surroundings for the first time.
”Dear God,” said she, ”it is the sea, isn’t it?”
Indeed it was, for we stood on Beach Street quite near the pier, where a few fishing boats of differing shapes and sizes jittered in the glittering water.
“You may call it the sea or the Channel, whichever suits you best.”
“I’d no idea we were so close.”
“Didn’t you smell it? Nothing quite like the smell of the sea. But come, let’s walk out on the pier and look at the boats, shall we?”
And that we did, finding much to laugh at as we went upon our way: at the gulls, for instance, which seemed the most pompous of birds as they strutted about boat and pier; and at rest, they seemed to strike heroic poses as they stared out over the sea in the direction of France.
In general, I led Clarissa along the route I had traveled the day before. The difference, of course, was that together we traveled at a more leisurely pace, thus finding more to see, more to notice, along the way. It was in that way far more enjoyable than yesterday’s brisk race to the castle and back.
At the fish market, Clarissa exclaimed over the variety of seafood which was on display. She pointed to the mussels, the skates, and the ugly eels and crabs.
“Do people really eat such?” she asked.
“Oh, they do indeed,” I assured her, ”and live longer for it-or so I hear.”
And then did we travel on along the sand, examining closely what the sea had left at the waterline. And on to Deal Castle, where the great cannon pointed out toward France. We walked carefully round the moat, daring only to peek down at its murky depths, which seemed more frightening than the sea itself.
On our return I guided us down High Street, where Clarissa shopped in every window either side of the street. She had a talent for it and high standards, as well: though her interest was easily captured, in the end
