The Secret of Crickley Hall (7 page)

'Yesterday, soon after we arrived. Just how old is he?'

The barman's forehead creased as he took a moment to think. He scratched his chin. 'Oh, he must be… well, I don't know for sure, but he's got to be nearly eighty by now. Served overseas wiv the army at the end of the last world war, so he must be getting' on a bit.'

Gabe whistled softly through his teeth. 'And he's still working?'

'Like I say, as a kindness. No one likes to sack him, y'see. He helps out at the church en' all, but nothing too heavy, just tending the churchyard, collectin' hymn books after Mass, that sort of thing. He's a dear old chap, set in his ways, though, determined like. Won't retire no matter how many times it's been suggested. He's harmless—won't give yer no bother.'

'He's sweet,' chimed in the barmaid.

'Customer wants serving, Frannie.' The barman gave a nod towards a customer waiting further down, two empty glasses before him on the counter. Giving Gabe one final smile, Frannie went off to take the customer's order.

The barman leaned one elbow on the bar. 'I'm the landlord of the Barnaby,' he told Gabe, 'and anything yer want to know about the area, just drop by and I'll try to oblige. If I'm not around, my wife, Vera, or our Frannie will be.'

Warmed by the man's friendliness, Gabe smiled. 'That's kind of you. I guess we'll be okay.'

'Well, don't hesitate. We could do with some new faces around 'ere. Good luck to you and yer family, Mr…?'

'Gabe Caleigh.' Gabe extended a hand across the beer mat and the landlord shook it.

'Sam Pennelly's me name. Enjoy yer stay, Mr Caleigh. Yer in a beautiful spot up there in the gorge.'

Gabe poured the rest of the tonic into its glass and was about to turn away, both glasses in his hands, when a thought struck him. 'Out of interest, how did Devil's Cleave get its name? It's kinda dark for such a wonderful place.'

Now the landlord had both elbows on the bartop as he leaned forward as if to speak confidentially. 'Centuries ago,' he said, his broad face serious, his voice husky, 'the Devil, hisself, tried to cut his way inland from the sea to flood all the villages hereabouts. First he took a bite out of the cliffs and that's how Hollow Bay came to be. Years of land erosion have widened the bay, of course. Anyway, they say after he took his first bite he attempted to gnaw his way up to the moors, but his teeth eventually got worn down to the gums and he couldn't get no further so, frustrated like, he sloped off back to sea swearing to have his revenge one day. And he did, but I'll leave that for another day, Mr Caleigh.'

The landlord straightened up and Gabe grinned at him, then froze the grin as he realized Pennelly's expression remained serious. For a beat or two there was a silence between the two men and Gabe was bemused.

Then the other man chuckled, his face breaking into a broad, yellow-toothed smile.

'Sorry, didn't mean to get a rise from yer,' the landlord apologized, continuing to smile, 'but that's how the tale goes. There's a lot of nonsense legends in these parts and they make good conversations round a roaring fire on winter nights.' He had one last chuckle before saying, 'Nice to meet you and your family, Mr Caleigh. You're always welcome at the Barnaby, so don't you stay away. You take good care of those girls of yours, now—all three of 'em I mean.'

Pennelly strolled off to talk to some customers at the other end of the bar and Gabe brought the drinks back to the table.

Eve looked up at him as he placed the glass before her. 'You seemed to be having a nice chat,' she said, and it was really a question: what were they talking about?

Gabe took his seat. 'Yeah, nice people. But I think the guy was twisting my head at the end.' He supped his beer.

'How did the guy twist your head, Daddy?' asked Cally, taking her lips from the straw she was using.

'Oh, he was just telling me how Hollow Bay and the ravine were made.'

'Gorge,' corrected Loren, who liked her father to speak proper English on occasion (she did this not out of embarrassment but because she genuinely thought she was being helpful, even though all her friends thought his American accent was cool).

'Tell us how, please,' Cally demanded noisily draining the last of her drink.

Gabe lowered his own voice as he told them the tale of how Hollow Bay and Devil's Cleave got their names.

9: THE PROJECT

'See it out there?'

Hunched in his coat against the steady drizzle, Gabe pointed over the stone harbour wall and Eve and the girls followed his direction. Loren and Cally wore yellow, hooded plastic macs while Eve had on her parka, deep blue in colour and drawn in at the waist to give it shape. While she and the girls had the hoods of their coats up, Gabe had stuffed his woollen beanie hat into one of his reefer jacket's pockets, because sometimes he enjoyed the feel of rain or wind on his face and head. His hair was already darkened by the hard rain, but his only concession to the weather was to pull his coat collar up round his neck.

He was pointing at a metal column topped by a square-shaped box that rose from the sea like a sentinel just over two miles from the harbour boundary. A scarcely visible ladder ran down its length into the choppy waters.

'How can you fit in there, Daddy?' asked Cally peering up from beneath her hood. 'It's very tiny.'

Gabe grinned. 'It's bigger than it looks. That's where I'll probably be next week, checking it out.'

'It's too far to swim,' she said, frowning.

What they couldn't see was the important submerged part of the structure, two giant twin rotors resembling aircraft propeller blades attached to either side of a steel monopile which was set into a deep hole drilled into the seabed. Essentially it was a brilliantly conceived device for harnessing power from the sea itself, using tidal flows to turn the rotors.

It was situated where full advantage could be taken of the Bristol Channel's high tidal current velocities; because sea water was eight hundred times more dense than air, quite slow velocities of water could generate significantly more energy than whole crops of surface windmills, and with considerably more regularity and predictability. Gabe's company APCU Engineering (UK) was but one of a consortium of varied companies involved in the production and financing of the prototype, with the UK's DTI and European Commission also partly funding and supporting the enterprise. The parent company, whose invention this was, was aptly named Seapower. The end view was to create whole lines of such marine turbines just off the coast of countries and continents around the world, most of them linked to national grids.

However, as cost efficient and energy productive as these marine current turbines would be, there was a downside, and this was one of the reasons APCU's engineering skills had been sought for the prototype. Maintenance and repairs were, to say the least, challenging, and APCU's engineers had suggested that if the structure's rotors and drive chain could be raised above the waterline when necessary, then maintenance and repair could far more easily be carried out working from a surface vessel. Gabe, who many times in the past had helped design and worked on offshore oil rigs, had been sent to Devon to replace a colleague who had had to resign from the project for health reasons. The temporary assignment was to assist in solving the various but crucial technical problems involved in such an operation.

Loren tugged at his elbow. 'Dad, won't it be awful working out there all day? What if there's a storm?'

'Uh-uh. I only have to visit the actual site now and again. Most of the problems are gonna be worked out on paper. S'why I brought my laptop and printer with me.' The AutoCAD computer program was a boon to the engineering industry, solving problems that used to take hours, if not weeks, in seconds. 'Most of my work time's gonna be spent at the company's local office in Ilfracombe.' Ilfracombe, some ten or twelve miles away, was the nearest big town to Hollow Bay. 'And then a lot of work I can do back at the house, so you'll probably be seeing much more of me than usual.'

'But you brought your laptop too, Mum,' Loren said, turning to Eve. 'Why do you need yours?'

'Oh, just to keep hooked up to a few magazines back in London. You know I still do occasional freelance work.'

'But you haven't for a long, long time.'

'No, and it's time I got back to doing something useful.' God, Eve thought to herself, as if writing trivia for women's magazines was anything useful. At least if some assignments did come up they would keep her mind occupied for a while. She desperately needed distraction and she intended to call some of the mags she'd written for in the past. Perhaps an article on moving to the countryside, or making friends in a completely new environment. Perhaps something on how it feels to lose a beloved child. No, not that—she could never do that.

Cally, who was barely tall enough to see over the harbour wall, tugged at Gabe's hand, impatient to move on. 'Can we go now?' she pleaded. 'Chester will be lonely on his own.'

Feeling wicked, they had locked the whimpering dog in Crickley Hall's kitchen: it would have been even more heartless to leave Chester tied up by his lead in the rain while they had lunch. Besides, they had spoiled him last night when Gabe had brought him up to their bedroom and allowed him to lie at the end of the bed (Gabe had felt Chester continue to shiver in his sleep before he, himself, had dropped off). Leaving the dog alone today might just cure his nervousness. Of course, equally, it might just make him worse. With an inward sigh, Gabe turned away from the sea and led his family back up Hollow Bay's main but narrow thoroughfare.

Towards the end of the street and almost opposite an iron and concrete bridge that crossed the swift-flowing river, they came upon a shop whose broad sign above two large plate-glass windows proclaimed it T. Longmarsh, General Store/Newsagent, and Eve, her arm linked through Gabe's, brought them to a halt.

'I need to get something for tonight's dinner,' she told Gabe. 'And for tomorrow's lunch.'

Gabe peered through the window. 'Okay, let's see what they got. S'all freezer-packs by the look of it.'

Cally had taken time to stand in the kerbside gutter and stamp her Wellington boots into the stream of water that rushed towards a storm drain further along. Loren jumped away to avoid being splashed.

'Hey, Cally, quit it,' Gabe warned. 'You can look at the books in the store while we shop.'

'Bummer,' Cally complained as she stepped back onto the kerb and Gabe had to hide his grin as Eve frowned at her.

Loren giggled, but knew better than to encourage her sister's take on Bart Simpson, so turned away as if honestly interested in the window display. Eve mounted the step into the store's porched entrance and the wood-framed glass display cabinet next to the door caught her eye. Inside it were cards of various sizes and colours, each bearing handwritten or typed messages advertising second-hand goods or services for purchase or hire. She glanced over them with casual interest. There were plumbers, gardeners and garden tools for hire, a pram, used cars and kittens for sale. There were ads for a veterinary service, estate agents and local dentist on view, and more items for sale such as an 'almost new' Apple computer and a Singer sewing machine, cottages to rent, and a church jumble sale announced for a date long since passed. There were faded cards for a psychic reading, an undertaker, speckled pullets, a lime distributor and a reconditioned tractor.

'We going in, hon?' Gabe prompted from the rain-soaked pavement.

Eve had been lost for a moment—such moments were becoming more and more frequent lately—taking in the cards without registering any in particular. A bell tinkled above the door when she pushed through.

The shop was crowded with small freezer units and shelves loaded with confectionery and tinned food, alongside stationery, the smaller kind of DIY products—glues, picture hooks, nails, saws and hammers—with stand-alone magazine and book racks taking up much of the floor space. Jars of sweets, miniature displays of mints and chewing gums, and local and national newspapers shared space with a cash machine on the counter, behind which a plump woman of middle years and severe countenance had become alert to her new customers.

Eve, Gabe, Loren and Cally piled in, dripping wet, a fresh breeze blowing in with them, carrying rain through the porch and over the threshold. Gabe hastily closed the door behind them to preserve the warmth inside.

'Pretty nasty out there,' he said half apologetically to the woman behind the counter, who merely stared back at them through horn-rimmed glasses. 'Yep,' he answered himself under his breath, 'it's pretty wild.'

Eve nudged him with an elbow and he feigned interest in a bookrack close by. Eve immediately went to one of the two freezer units, smiling hello to the shopkeeper as she passed by her. Shrugging off her hood, Cally trotted over to the shelves of sweets and chocolate bars, while Loren went to the magazine carousel.

Gabe, standing by his own book carousel, glanced around the store and wondered at the cornucopia of goods on offer. Bags of dog food leaned against one wall, the shelves above filled with lemonade, Coke and Fanta bottles; affixed to card displays on the walls were combs, hairgrips, packs of women's tights, hairbrushes and cheap digital watches. More shelves were stacked with soap powders and detergents, dusters and mops, firelighters and sunglasses, loaves and bread rolls. The place seemed to cater for all needs and, judging by the abundance of stock, did a brisk trade, although at that particular moment there were only three other customers: a stockily built old lady wearing a pink see-through ankle-length mac, who was ambling over to the counter clutching a ready-sliced loaf in one arm and a pack of PG Tips in the other, while behind the magazine carousel where Loren was studying teen magazine titles there lurked a girl of about Loren's age and height but stocky, and a taller, older boy. They were taking peeks round the carousel at Loren, ducking back whenever she looked their way.

Shy kids, Gabe thought, browsing himself. One of the titles before him caught his eye.
The Great Hollow Bay Flood
the title said and, curious, he picked out the front copy. It was a slim, soft-covered edition and he flicked through the first few pages. It seemed the harbour village had suffered a devastating flood during the Second World War, when buildings had been destroyed and many lives lost. He became more interested and thumbed through to the pages of black-and-white photographs that showed the village in the flood's aftermath. The images were grim: houses totally demolished, vehicles turned over onto their backs in the main street, workmen clearing rubble, giant boulders in the streets, broken walls, debris of wrecked homes and buildings littering the mud of the foreshore along with overturned fishing boats. Later photographs depicted excavators and cranes clearing the wreckage, military vehicles bringing in troops (as there was a war on at the time, Gabe assumed that these were drawn from the reserves), diggers bearing loads of rubble and wood, and fresh scaffolding being erected. It must have been one hell of a night, he thought.