Marazan (12 page)

By now the visitor might be sitting in the cabin of the
Irene
. The thought made me feel rotten.

There was nothing to be done, I decided, but to try and brazen it out. After all, I’d done nothing wrong—or nothing that anyone was likely to discover. I owed it to Compton to keep up the pretence for as long as possible, to gain all the time for him that I could. More than that I could not do; if they arrested me I should be powerless to help him any more, and there would be an end of my part in his fortunes.

I stayed by the well till the breaker was as full as I could carry, then tied it up, slung it over my shoulder, and staggered back with it over the hill. I set it down when I came in view of White Sound and took a long look round. I was reassured. There was nobody in sight;
the dinghy lay undisturbed upon the beach and the vessel at her anchor. It struck me that it was possible that the visit of the motor-boat had nothing to do with me after all. I might have been exaggerating my own importance.

I ploughed down through the soft sand to the beach and lowered the breaker into the dinghy. There was nothing else for me to do ashore, and the sooner I got away to sea again the better. At the same time, I was very loath to go. The anchorage is a delightful one; I would willingly have stayed there for a couple of days instead of beating about in the open sea with the wind up half the time. There was the matter of the butter, too; I was out of butter and very nearly out of margarine. There remained only a greasy and disgusting mass of lard.…

It was no good repining; it would have been asking for trouble to visit St. Mary’s to buy stores. I had enough lard to see me through, and it was time I got away to sea. I turned towards the dinghy, and then I pulled up short. There was a girl standing on the little point of rocks along the beach, about a couple of hundred yards away. She was looking in my direction.

Instantly my mind flew back to the motor-boat. I was tremendously relieved at the sight of the girl. The Scillies in the summer are full of visitors; clearly the motor-boat had brought no more significant cargo to the island than a party of holiday-makers on a picnic. This girl would be a straggler or an advance guard; somewhere in the background would be father carrying the lunch and the bathing things.

My fears had been groundless. Instantly I began to consider whether I couldn’t afford a day on shore on this island—or half a day at any rate. I might walk round the island in the morning and get away to sea in the
evening. It would be a change from sitting at the helm all day. I sat on the bow of the dinghy scrabbling the sand up into little heaps with my feet while I thought about it.

I kept an eye on the girl. She came down from the point after a little and began to walk along the beach towards me. I watched her as she came; I can remember noticing that she was very slim, and that she walked lightly.

I stared more intently at her as she drew closer … and then I knew that at all costs I should have kept clear of Marazan Sound.

She looked up as she came near. I didn’t go to meet her, but waited her coming, sitting on the bow of the dinghy on the sand.

‘Good-morning, Miss Stevenson,’ I said quietly. ‘I’m afraid I’ve made a muck of this.’

S
HE
didn’t speak at once. I remember that I sat watching her and waiting for her to say something, wondering what she would say, feeling a most almighty fool. I remember that there were kittiwakes crying and wheeling above us, and coloured butterflies flitting in and out of the speargrass of the sandhills, and a hot sun that made the water blue and sparkling, the sand white. I remember that she was wearing an old grey felt hat crammed down over her short hair, and a brightly coloured scarf, and the same brown jersey that I had seen her in at Stokenchurch. It had a little hole on one shoulder. I remember all that as if it had been yesterday; if I had the touch for painting I could sit down and paint her now as I saw her then, with the blue and white water running up behind her. I say that I could paint her as I saw her then, but the portrait would be painted better now.

At last she spoke. ‘What are you doing here, Mr. Stenning?’ she inquired evenly. There was a note in her voice that stung me up a bit.

I raised my head and looked her straight in the eyes. ‘I’m getting water for my cruise,’ I said. ‘Now I’m going to be rude. What are you?’

I guessed that that might be something of a home-thrust; she looked at me narrowly for a moment, but didn’t speak. I got out my pipe and filled it slowly while I thought things over a bit; by the time I threw the
match down on the sand I had made up my mind—more or less.

‘See here, Miss Stevenson,’ I said. ‘I’m going to speak pretty plainly. I’m getting mixed up in a lot of funny business that I don’t understand and that I don’t like. Don’t mistake me. Compton pulled me out of a damned unpleasant crash, and I’m out to help him all I can. I’ve already broken the law for him in every position. If the police got me now they could plant about five sentences on me for various things I’ve done since I shot off on this trip. I don’t care two hoots about those. What I do care about is that there’s a lot going on behind the scenes that you know all about and that Compton knows all about, and that I know damn-all about. I mean Mattani, and Marazan, and all that.’

She started. ‘Who told you about Mattani?’

‘You did,’ I said. ‘At Stokenchurch. You were talking about it so loud that evening while I was writing my report that I couldn’t help picking up bits of it. I told you then that I didn’t want to know what you were up to. Well, I’ve changed my mind. I want to know what I’m in for. That is, if I’m to carry on. If you like I’ll give up now and go home. I don’t want to do that; I’d very much rather carry on and see Compton through this thing and out of the country. I mean that. But if I do that, then I’ve got to know what’s going on. You see? You’ll forgive me speaking straight to you about this. It seems to me that you’ve got something fishy going on here, something that’s a thoroughly bad show. Something that’s dangerous. I ran up against it in Exeter. Now if I’m to carry on I want to know what I’m in for.’

She was evidently puzzled. ‘In Exeter?’ she said.

I told her about the note that I had found in my bed addressed to Compton. ‘That’s the sort of thing that
shakes a man,’ I said. ‘It put the wind up me properly.’ Then I told her how I had been knocking about the Channel till I had run short of water. ‘I didn’t see how this particular Marazan Sound could possibly have any interest for you or Compton,’ I said. ‘I thought that there must be another one, or that I hadn’t heard right. It seems that I was wrong.’

She nodded. ‘This is the place,’ she said. ‘You know it well?’

‘Not well,’ I said. ‘I’ve anchored here once or twice.’

She turned, and looked out over the blue, rippling water to where the
Irene
was lying quietly at her anchor. ‘Will you take me on board?’ she said.

I pushed the dinghy down the sand, paddled out with her through the shallows till she floated, and rowed off to the vessel. The saloon was in a terrible state. I had used it as a lumber store during the days that I had been at sea; on the floor of the saloon was all the movable gear from the deck, the buckets, petrol-cans, boom crutch, companion, and all the hundred and one oddments that are invariably falling overboard unless they are below. The remains of my breakfast lent a sordid appearance to the scene. I got the bucket and chucked the plates into it, and passed it through into the forecastle. Then I came back to the saloon and cleared a space on one of the settees for her to sit down.

‘You won’t mind if I do the lamps,’ I said, and began to swab round one of the sidelights with a pad of waste.

There was a silence, so far as there is ever silence on a small vessel. A bee had invaded the cabin and was noisily investigating a jam-pot; I suppose he had come from distant Tresco. The vessel swung slowly on her heel with a faint grating and a scrunch from the anchor chain. A warm patch of sunlight slid across the floor
and up my leg; away aft the rudder was clunking gently in the pintles. Presently the girl spoke.

‘Denis saw Mattani yesterday,’ she said. ‘I am expecting him in Hugh Town by this evening’s boat.’

I grunted. ‘And who may Mattani be?’ I inquired.

She didn’t answer; I could see that she hadn’t got over my arrival in the Scillies yet. That seemed to have shaken her. She was suspicious, though what she suspected me of doing I couldn’t make out.

‘If I tell Denis that you are here,’ she said, ‘will you meet him this evening?’

I glanced up at her. ‘Very glad to,’ I remarked. ‘But what if some inquisitive person comes and asks me who I am before this evening?’

‘You mean if the police have followed you?’

I nodded.

‘I think that would be the best thing that could happen now,’ she said wearily—‘for everybody.’

I nearly dropped the lamp. ‘I’m damn sure it wouldn’t be the best thing that could happen to me,’ I said indignantly. And then I stopped, because I saw that she was serious. I think it was then that I first realised that I was no longer playing a game of hide-and-seek that I could take up and throw down when I liked. I hadn’t taken this business seriously up to date; to me it had been merely the excuse for a holiday of a novel and diverting kind. Now I was beginning to see it differently. The first thing I saw was that though I might not have been taking it very seriously, other people had; in this girl’s face I could see that she was most miserably anxious. Whatever it was that she was afraid of, she had the wind right up. I was most awfully sorry for her.

I filled the little tank with paraffin from a can and set it in the lamp. ‘See here, Miss Stevenson,’ I said, ‘I know you think I’m playing some funny business on
you. Well, I’m not. I don’t know what it is that you think I’m up to, but whatever it is, I’m not doing it. That’s the first thing. The second thing is this. I’d better see Compton this evening. I suppose your trouble is that you can’t tell me about Mattani till you’ve seen him. Is that it?’

‘That’s it,’ she said.

‘Well, don’t let that worry you,’ I remarked. ‘I’ll see him this evening and we’ll have a chat about things.’

She hesitated. ‘I think you ought to know, Mr. Stenning,’ she said, ‘that he carries a pistol—as a precautionary measure.’

I laughed.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘I hope he’s got a licence for it.’

On deck one of the halliards was flapping merrily against the mast; through the planking of the hull I could hear the water tinkling along the topsides. I finished cleaning the second lamp and deposited them both in the forecastle.

‘Cheer up, Miss Stevenson,’ I said. ‘Really, I’m only a sheep in wolf’s clothing, though I don’t expect you to believe me.’

‘I believe you now,’ she said. ‘At first I thought you must be one of Mattani’s people.’

I laughed. ‘Well, don’t you go taking any chances,’ I said. ‘You say Compton arrives by the afternoon boat. I’ll be on the look-out for him on the beach there any time after six o’clock. Then he can tell me what’s happening if he wants to, or else—well, anyhow, he’ll let me know what he wants to do. Will that be all right?’

‘That will do, I think,’ she said. ‘He’ll have to come here, anyway.’

‘You might tell him to keep his finger off the trigger,’ I observed. ‘Nasty dangerous things—I never did hold with them. Though it would be almost worth while
being punctured to find out what it is that you find so interesting about this place.’

She moved out of the saloon and went up on deck into the little cockpit. I followed her. On deck she stood for a moment looking over towards Marazan.

‘It’s quite shallow over there, isn’t it?’ she said.

‘I think so,’ I replied. ‘A small boat can get about in it all right.’

‘Not a steamer?’

‘It depends how big she was.’

‘Seven hundred tons.’

‘Good Lord, no. I suppose a seven-tonner could get in at high tide, but she couldn’t lie there when the tide fell. It’s no earthly use as a harbour, if that’s what you mean.’

‘No,’ she said wearily. ‘That’s what the boatman told me. I didn’t believe him till I saw it. But we know that it has a use. Mattani uses it, because it’s so quiet, I suppose, so desolate.’

I wrinkled my brows a bit over this. ‘What does he use it for?’ I said.

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. But Denis may have found out by this time.’

I turned and looked out over the pool, mellow and rippling in the morning light. ‘He could have a pretty good bathe in it, anyway,’ I remarked, ‘if he’s that way inclined. Fishing, too—I bet those rocks outside are full of conger. Birds … study of wild life.’ I knocked out my pipe upon the rail and turned to face her. ‘I don’t think we shall do much good discussing it till I’ve had a talk with your cousin. But I’d like you to know that whatever he has to say, you can count me in on this.’

She turned away. ‘I don’t see why we should drag you into our—our family dissensions,’ she muttered.

I got the dinghy up and rowed her ashore to the beach.
She walked up over the island towards her boat; I sat in the dinghy rocking gently in the shallows and watched her till she was out of sight. Then I put back to the vessel. She was lying quietly to her anchor; as a precautionary measure I let out a little more chain. After that I furled the mainsail. Then I sat down for a moment in the cockpit, and stared absently down into the saloon. Apparently the urgent necessity for me to lie low was over; I was beset by an uneasy feeling that there was a storm of some sort brewing that was going to burst before the police had time to get upon my track. I’ve never been a man to go about looking for trouble; I’m not like that. This time it seemed to me tolerably clear that I’d gone and got myself mixed up in some unpleasantly violent and illegal business that was intimately connected with my present anchorage. I didn’t like it a bit.

Joan Stevenson had warned me that Compton was carrying arms. That worried me; half unconsciously I began to cast about for weapons of defence on the
Irene
. I only succeeded in unearthing a battered and unreliable-looking fire extinguisher. This I rejected.