Priscilla shrinks and wilts if anybody so much as looks in her direction and is hardly what one would call an armful, anyway, and Fiona is utterly terrifying, apart from the fact that she quite obviously despises the male sex and is half a head taller than either of us, besides having a presence (to put it politely) which blots out the landscape.
‘So what with Priscilla (I have a hunch she writes poetry!) almost swooning at the sight of us, Fiona utterly despising us, and Susannah, that glorious goddess, unaware, it seems, of our existence, we are dependent on the motherly kindness of the plump, unruffled Mrs Saltergate. She and Saltergate talk of taking a holiday cottage in the village instead of staying for two months in their hotel. If that comes off, we may be able to wheedle her into getting our bibs and tuckers washed for us, otherwise we shall have to use the launderette in the nearest town, and that costs money.
‘On the surface, everybody seems to conform to one known type or another, so I do not think any one of them would be worthy of your scalpel. Meanwhile Tom and I are confident that, between Saltergate’s reconstructions and Veryan’s excavations, our well will get itself expertly uncovered and then our real fun will begin. We were somewhat taken aback at first when we found there were to be all these cuckoos in our nest, but now, although I think both parties will work Tom and me until our sweat bedews the hillside – Veryan has already laid off two of the four workmen he had hired to do the digging – our gains will more than off-set our losses. Perhaps you will pop along and watch us at work some time? It will be a scene to strike pity and terror into the human heart.’
2
Castle in the Sand
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From the keep there were views of the sea. To the north-east were the shallow waters of the wide estuary beyond which Laura had seen the castle. To the south-west was the open sea in the direction of Holdy Bay, although the town itself was tucked away behind its hills.
Between the castle and these two wastes of water were the moors. The village at the foot of the castle hill had begun as a collection of huts for the Saxons who had toiled to build the Norman castle. It now lived by tourism. There were no farms in the immediate neighbourhood, for there was neither agricultural land nor pasture. In fact, it was difficult to understand why the village had survived into the twentieth century to enjoy the benefits of the tourist trade and the invasion and almost total takeover by retired people of rather more than average means.
Malpas Veryan and his companion, Nicholas Tynant, had taken rooms in the slightly larger of the two hotels, and Edward and Lilian Saltergate had booked in at the other. Both parties were old acquaintances and, although they could hardly be called close friends, a mild tolerance existed between them, although they were not attached to the same university. Dr Susannah Lochlure had joined the staff at Edward Saltergate’s college and the two girls mentioned in Bonamy’s letter to his godmother were nominally in her charge and shared a hired caravan with her for what was anticipated to be the time which would be spent on the work on the castle ruins.
On this first full morning at Holdy, however, nobody felt any inclination to begin labouring on the hill, so, having fraternised over dinner at Veryan’s hotel on the previous evening, the whole company, including Bonamy and Tom, was now a few miles from the castle at a quiet strip of the coast about halfway between Holdy village and the town of Holdy Bay.
Malpas Veryan, a long, lean man with a talent for complete relaxation when he was not feverishly working, was sprawled on the cliff-top, his eyes closed against the almost intolerable blue of the sky. Beside him sat Nicholas Tynant, a more compact, athletic figure, pipe between his teeth and his arms round his knees while he watched the scene below him. Edward Saltergate, squatting on the firm sand, was using a bit of pointed stick to mark out a plan of what he thought Holdy Castle would have looked like before Cromwell’s artillery got at it, and the four women and the two young men, Bonamy and Tom, were disporting themselves in the ocean.
There were sea-pinks, the hardy tufts of thrift, in the little hollows and on the ledges of the cliff. On the cliff-top where the two dons were taking their ease, the short but untrimmed grass was scented with thyme. Occasionally Nicholas looked down at the painstaking cartographer below him, but for the most part he watched his Aphrodite as she challenged the waves.
Now and again a seagull flew past, but all the wading-birds, the ringed plovers, dunlin, sandpipers and sanderlings, had disappeared from the flat, wet shore, frightened away first by the bathers as these ran across the sands and into the sea, and then too deeply suspicious of the crouching figure of Edward to return for the molluscs, the small Crustacea, the marine worms and the rest of their natural food.
After a lapse of time which had been registered by nobody, Edward straightened himself and walked slowly round his sand-map. Then he walked to the edge of the water and called out to the bathers that he was ready.
Malpas Veryan sat up, Nicholas Tynant put his long-cold pipe in his pocket, and then both men got to their feet and, by means of a flight of wooden steps, descended the cliffs. In the sea, Susannah, with a flash of white arms, sculled shorewards on an incoming wave and the others soon joined her on the beach, splashing through the last of the ripples as the long, lazy, incoming tide followed them on to the sand as though reluctant to let them go.
The bathers picked up towels and began drying their hair and their arms as they followed one another up the beach, an incongruous quartet of women and two golden-armed Iollans, the graceful, straight-limbed youths.
‘
said Veryan.
‘ “I saw a frieze on whitest marble drawn,” ’ said Nicholas, looking at the white limbs of his so-far unattainable beloved. The swimmers formed themselves into a semicircle around the sand-map. They continued rubbing their hair and arms, but the actions were automatic. Their interest was in what lay at their feet. Edward Saltergate expounded. He still held the sharpened stick with which he had been working and he used it now as a pointer.
‘Of course, this rough plan is on the flat,’ he said. ‘You may find it rather different when you tackle the real thing on the slopes of the hill. Here at the top is the keep. There is still quite a lot of it standing, as you saw yesterday afternoon. At the foot of my sketch-plan are the remains of the outer gatehouse, still rather impressive, and the remains of the walls of the outer bailey lie between these two buildings and enclose a large space of a very unusual shape.
‘In my survey last week, I made out the remains of the flanking-towers in this outer wall. I think there would have been ten of them altogether, and I do hope that we shall locate them all. The most important (and enough of it remains for identification) is this one at the end of the middle bailey. It would have been circular and, except for its entrance, enclosed. The other towers were semicircular and were merely lookouts and defence posts to prevent
