Palmer-Jones 03 - Murder in Paradise (2 page)

They loaded the boat efficiently and quickly. The postman drove back up the road, but the old woman waited in her van to watch. She seemed in no hurry to go. There would have been room to take Jim’s car on the boat, but he had decided to leave it behind, for the time being at least. A friend would take it back to the town.

“The road’s not very good on the island,” he said. “ It really needs improving. That’s something I’ll want to sort out.”

Sarah rather liked the idea of a place with no cars and dilapidated roads. It was something else to make the island different.

“Surely we won’t need a car,” she said, but he took no notice.

The boat was loaded. Alec took Sarah by the hand and helped her aboard. He held her hand slightly longer than necessary. They were ready to go, but nothing happened. She wondered what they were waiting for. Alec had folded a rug for her, to sit more comfortably on the deck. She was sitting out of the wind and the sun felt quite warm on her face. Jim was in the wheelhouse with the other men. She could hear them talking and joking. She did not feel able to interrupt them to ask why they were waiting. The old woman with the grocery van must have decided that nothing more interesting was going to happen. Sarah watched her drive away. As she followed the van shaking up the narrow road away from Lutwick, she saw another car coming in the other direction. The men must have recognized it because they moved out of the wheelhouse and a prepared to cast off.

“Who is it?” Sarah asked. “ What are we waiting for?”

“It’s the taxi from town,” Jim said. “We’re expecting a passenger. He’s been to the island several times. He’s staying at the school house with Jonathan and Sylvia Drysdale.”

Sarah watched the new arrival with a sense of superiority, because she belonged on the island now, although she had never been there and he was only a holidaymaker. She was disappointed when Sandy greeted the man even more affectionately than he had welcomed her. Even Jim seemed to consider him a friend. The passenger was perhaps in his midsixties. He was tall and gaunt, with a long forehead and long chin. His hair was very short. He was soberly dressed and his voice when he spoke to Sandy was well-bred English. He climbed easily aboard, and apologised immediately for being late. He seemed really to mind that he had kept them waiting. The taxi had broken down, he said, and it had taken a while to get it going again. Sandy reassured him that there was no hurry, but as soon as the man was settled next to Sarah, he started the engine. Will loosened the ropes and jumped aboard.

As the boat left the shelter of the Bay of Lutwick the breeze was stronger. The sun was bright, already low in the sky.

I should remember this, Sarah thought, every detail of it. This journey to Kinness seemed much more important to her than her marriage ceremony.

“You are very lucky to have the opportunity to live on the island,” the man said to her, interrupting her thoughts, seeming to guess what she was thinking. “ Sandy writes to me occasionally to keep me in touch with what is going on. He told me about you. Naturally he is delighted.”

“Do you go to Kinness often?” she asked.

“Not as often as I would like. Jonathan, who teaches in the island primary school, was at university with my son. Jonathan shares my interest in ornithology and invited me to stay with him. You’re not a birdwatcher are you?”

She shook her head.

“What a shame. Kinness is very good, you know, but it’s desperately underwatched. I think it would rival Fair Isle if it were properly covered.”

She did not know what he was talking about. She wanted to savour every moment of her journey to Kinness and did not ask him to explain.

It took nearly three hours to get there. Sarah wanted to capture the essence of it in her memory. She knew that she would never again feel such anticipation and excitement. But after the first sharp pleasure as the boat moved away from the jetty and she thought: this is it, the start of a new life for Jim and me, she became only sleepy and a little sick. The long monotonous rolls of the boat, and the sound of the engine and the meaningless jumble of words in the wheelhouse, made her drowsy. She did not quite sleep, but she closed her eyes and thought of nothing but the movement and sound of the boat, and the increasing sense of sickness in the pit of her stomach.

She was surprised when Jim came to tell her that they were nearly there. She had almost forgotten about him. As they approached the island the swell flattened and she felt ready to take an interest in her surroundings again.

“You weren’t sick then,” he said. “ I thought that you might be sick.”

“Not me,” she said. “ I’m an islander now, don’t forget.”

“There are lots of folk from the island who get seasick.”

She took his hand to claim him again and to reassure herself that he belonged to her, not to the men in the wheelhouse. She made him sit by her and point out the features of the island. He began in a distant, dutiful way, but became more involved as the boat moved closer to the cliffs. She had seen a map of Kinness and knew its shape. They were approaching it from the north-east. It was roughly egg-shaped but tilted, with the longest part running north-east to south-west. The only natural harbour was on the west side—a small bay sheltered by two points. The boat would go down the north-east length of the island, round Ellie’s Head, a round, high headland, and halfway up the west side to the harbour. Kinness was three miles long and two miles wide.

She stood up and leaned against the deck rail to get a first close view. The wind blew the spray on to her face. She took Jim’s arm and pulled him close to her. He had a name for every cliff and valley and field. The north of the island was high and hilly, used only for grazing and peat. There were no crofts there, and the lighthouse which could be seen from Baltasay was automatic.

“The light was only made automatic about five years ago,” Jim said. “Before that lighthouse men from the Northern Lights Board lived there with their families. My uncle was assistant keeper and used to cycle up the island for his watches. It was great fun to go with him.”

He pointed out the cliffs where he had collected gulls’ eggs, and where the puffins bred, and the hill where he and his family always dug their peat. She listened to the enthusiasm in his voice and thought: it was right for us to come back here to live although he pretended that he wasn’t sure if he wanted to. He loves it.

He described the Hill Sheep Gather when they collected all the sheep for shearing, and showed her the seals hauled up on to the rocks at the base of the cliff. It was all she had dreamed of.

The land began to flatten and she saw the church and the school and low stone houses. At the very south of the island, above a rocky beach, he showed her the white house which would be their home. Then the
Ruth Isabella
moved north again and around one of the long curved headlands which protected the harbour from westerly gales, and Jim disappeared to help to bring the boat alongside the quay.

She had hoped that the islanders would do something special to mark her arrival, but it was all much more spectacular than she had imagined. She did not know that most of the islanders came to the harbour every boat day, and she thought that the whole of Kinness had turned out just to welcome her. There was a crowd and they all seemed to be waving and smiling. A banner reading
JIM AND SARAH WELCOME HOME
had been strung along the wall by the jetty. She felt like visiting royalty.

The other passenger tactfully left the boat first, quietly with no fuss, and disappeared into the crowd. Sarah stood, savouring the attention, the magic of being there, and waited for Jim to join her. He jumped on to the quay first. Instead of giving her his hand to help her ashore as she had expected, he took her into his arms and swung her on to the quay. The crowd cheered.

Other men went on to the boat then, and started to unload it. Sarah expected Jim to go with them to help, but he took her hand and led her off to introduce her to family and friends. She had met his immediate family at the wedding, but everyone wanted to take her hand, kiss her cheek. Jim stood close beside her, as if she might need protection from those people who only wanted to be friendly.

George Palmer-Jones, the elderly passenger, stood at the back of the crowd and watched with interest. He could not decide whether Sarah would settle on the island or not. He rather thought that she would not. He watched as Agnes, Jim’s mother, tried to introduce her youngest child to Sarah. The child, Mary, would not have it. She pulled away from her mother’s hand and would not look at Sarah. George thought that Mary was playing up on purpose because she knew that Agnes would be specially upset if there was a scene today. The girl’s face was red with the exertion of the tantrum, but she had a gleam in her eye as if she were enjoying herself immensely. Mary was twelve, but she behaved at times like a six-year-old. George thought that she was disturbed, but not as disturbed as she pretended to be. Perhaps if her deafness had been recognized earlier, or if Agnes had agreed to send her to a special school on the mainland, she might have been different.

“Come to meet your new sister-in-law,” Agnes said. She spoke very slowly and looked directly at Mary so that the girl could lipread. “ This is Sarah, Jim’s wife.”

“Don’t want to!” Mary said. It seemed to George that she emphasised the nasal, toneless quality of the voice. She was exaggerating her deafness.

She hid behind her mother and began to kick and scream. Sarah did not know how to react to the girl’s rudeness. She did not want her first day on the island spoilt by unpleasantness. She wished that Agnes would take Mary away. She was confident that she would win Mary round if she had the girl to herself. She was good with children. She had enjoyed her spell on the paediatric ward. She wanted children of her own. Lots of them. Of course her children would not be difficult or deaf.

She smiled at Agnes.

“Don’t upset her,” she said. “ There will be plenty of time for Mary and I to become friends. I’m sure that we will be.”

Behind her mother’s back, Mary was sticking out her tongue and rolling her eyes, but Sarah pretended not to notice.

When Sarah moved on to greet another group of islanders, Mary left her mother and ran along the quay to where George Palmer-Jones was standing. He was nervous of her unpredictable behaviour, but during his holidays on Kinness she seemed to have become attached to him and his wife. She always came to the school house to visit them at least once during their stay. He usually left his wife to deal with the child and now he did not know what to say.

“That’s a very pretty scarf you’re wearing, Mary,” he said. It was pretty. It was green silk with a batik pattern in black and white. “Where did you get it?”

She understood him immediately.

“It’s a secret,” she said. Then, after a pause: “Do you like secrets?”

“Very much.”

“So do I. Will you be at the party tonight?”

“Yes.”

“Will you dance with me? Nobody else will, except Daddy.”

“Of course.”

“I’ve another secret too. I’ll tell it you at the party. I want to see Uncle James with the lorry.”

She was gone. She ran down the road which led to her home, without waiting for her family, long legs and pigtails flying, the green silk scarf streaming behind her like a banner.

The men had finished unloading the boat. The diesel, gas, and provisions were stacked on the tractor and trailer. Jonathan Drysdale, the teacher, had been working with them. He left the other men, without a word, and joined George Palmer-Jones.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said. “We’ll have to hang around a bit longer if you don’t mind, until James comes with the lorry to take away the newlyweds. It’s all nonsense but I’ve been told by some upstart in the Education department in Baltasay that I should participate more in community affairs.”

They did not have long to wait. The lorry was big and very old. It had once been a coal lorry on the mainland. It had been on the island since Palmer-Jones had begun to visit. When it came down the hill to the quay now, driven by Jim’s uncle James, George could see that it had been transformed into a vehicle of magnificence. There were heart-shaped balloons tied to the cab and the whole base of the lorry was covered in pink and white paper flowers. There was a throne of flowers for the couple to sit on, and their names were sprayed in silver paint on the bonnet. It had become a carnival float of a lorry.

How embarrassing! thought George Palmer-Jones as the young people were carried on to the lorry. But the girl’s loving it. I hope that she doesn’t expect it to be like this always.

“I’m sorry about all this,” Jim said to Sarah. “I didn’t expect quite so much fuss.”

“It’s lovely,” she said.

It’s over the top, Jim thought. They never did this when Alec brought Maggie back to the island. What are they trying to do?

Then he saw a face in the crowd which he recognized. She’s here, he thought. I didn’t see her before. She must have been avoiding me. No one told me that she was here. So that’s why they’re making so much fuss. It’s their way of saying sorry.

The lorry pulled away to take them home. Small children in their Sunday-best jerseys ran beside it and cheered. Sarah threw paper flowers to them and released the balloons.

When the lorry disappeared over the horizon, the people at the quay began to disperse. Most of them walked home. The tractor and trailer would deliver most of the goods, then end up at Kenneth Dance’s post office and stores. He would sort the mail and deliver it later. An old man and his sheep dog perched on the back of the trailer to get a lift down the island. The women and children walked back slowly together. The children were excited and dragged the balloons on strings behind them, but it was the same as every boat day. The women were talking about the preparation for the wedding party, but there were dances and parties throughout the autumn. The unloading of the boat had taken longer than usual—the sun was already low behind Ellie’s Head—but with the disappearance of the lorry and the new arrivals everything had returned to normal.