The Yellow Glass (17 page)

I was thoughtful at my late breakfast and let Sam show
me the new additions to his immense cigarette card collection with barely a
murmur.
 
He chattered on until his best
friend, Bill Hawking, arrived, carrying a football, to claim him.
 

I wandered outside and hoisted myself up onto the sea
wall, watching Sam and Bill dribble the ball down the promenade.
 
Sam had his mouth open, talking non-stop, and
was hurling his short body about with unnecessary effort, while Bill scarcely
appeared to run, but dipped his smooth, fair head and scooped the ball with a
long leg in one, economical movement.
 
It
was rather like watching a sparrow hop around a great wading bird.
 
Bill was only a year older than Sam, but many
inches taller and quiet and serious where Sam was garrulous.
 
He lived in a council house in the village
with his mother, who’d never been married and never been tempted to put a
curtain ring on her wedding finger, either; she was a dark dynamo of a woman,
brim-full of organising energy, who ran every village event going.

The Hawkings (and the Dyminges) had ties with our
family that reached back into the past, to long before I was born. When we’d
moved to the house on the beach, Major and Mrs Dyminge and the Hawkings had all
come, too, like a job lot.
 
Mrs Dyminge
was especially close to Bill Hawking - as close as any grandmother - and he
would run down the zig-zag cliff path to the beach to see her, before he
collected my brother for a game of football.

 
The wind had
got up and, behind the two boys, the sea slapped up against Ness Point, turning
grey when a dark cloud hid the sun and then blue once more as the wind sent it
about its business.

“No Channel swimmers today?”
 
Mrs Dyminge straightened up with a trowel in
her hand, her white hair blowing in all directions.

“I didn’t see you there, Mrs Dyminge,” I clutched at
my heart, as one does when taken by surprise.

“You were many miles away.
 
Don’t let me disturb you.”
 

She bent to her work, pulling tufts of interloping
grass from a clump of green thrift.
 
I
swivelled round on the wall and watched her for a minute.

“How can you tell what’s grass and what’s
thrift?”
 
I asked.
 
“To my eyes they look just the same!”

“Thrift hugs the ground, as if it’s forever in the
teeth of a howling gale.
 
Grass will do
that, too, but one day it will aspire to grow taller.
 
Its aspirations give it away.”

“That sounds very wise.”

“Wise, dear Rosa?”
 
She chuckled.
 
“No.
 
Just old, I’m afraid.
 
Old enough to have watched plenty of grass
grow under one’s feet . . there, that’s done.
 
And jolly boring it was, too!
 
I
must go and make a cup of coffee immediately.”
 
She fluttered a finger at me in a sketchy wave and set off with her
trowel.
 
“Oh, by the way.”
 
She halted on her garden path.
 
“I remembered who gave me my Scandinavian
platter.
 
It came to me in the
night.
 
Yes . .”
 
She narrowed her eyes and the sharp planes of
her lean, tanned face seemed to spring into focus.
 
“I must say, I didn’t warm to her awfully, clever
though she was.
 
Mmm . . undeniably clever.”

“One of your students, you said?
 
Was
it Mystery, Murder and Mayhem?”

“Oh, Mystery, Murder and Mayhem, without a shadow of a
doubt.
 
She had a talent for it; one of
those women who look like butter wouldn’t melt, as they say - neat as two pins
with a closed face - but put a pen in their hand and they dredge up stuff you
certainly wouldn’t show to your granny.
 
I was rather shocked, although I tried not to let it show because it was
so terrifically well done.
 
I suppose I
must have succeeded because she turned up on the last day and presented me with
the platter, which came as a pleasant surprise.”

“But
who
was
it?”

“Well, she was a secretary in London, a married woman
with a holiday home towards Ringwould; one of that group of brand new
bungalows, you know.
 
‘Sea-Surf’, or
‘Sea-Turtle’, something in that line.
 
I
expect they’re very nice.
 
Very
convenient.
 
One wouldn’t have to worry
about stairs and nasty falls, of course . .”
 
She looked dubious.

“But
who
was
it, Mrs Dyminge?”

“They were here for the summer - last summer, it was -
and her husband was working locally and she was at a bit of a loose end, she
said . .”

“But . .”

“Mrs Dilys Arkonnen.”

I stifled a gasp.

“Yes,
that
was it.
 
I remember the name quite
distinctly because I brought up Tove Jansson and
Finn Family Moomintroll
[33]
,
which Bill and I’d absolutely adored, but it didn’t seem to ring any
bells.
 
Silly really . . I daresay it was
only her husband who was the Finn.
 
Anyway . . ” she wiped her hands on her tweed skirt absent-mindedly,
leaving a long streak of mud behind, “I doubt she’d be at home; holiday people
do
come and go so.”

“That’s marvellous, Mrs Dyminge.
 
You’ve been the most tremendous help!”

“Have I?”
 
She
beamed.
 
“I wish you would take
my
platter, Rosa, I really do.
 
Go on.
 
Why not?
 
I’d simply
love
it if you would . .”

“Frances!”
 
The
low growl of Major Dyminge’s voice issued from behind the front door of Coast
Cottage.

 
I packed a rucksack with provisions, put on
some plimsolls and wheeled out my old bike.
 
The spokes and handlebars were brown with rust (all metal rusted super
fast by the sea, even if it hadn’t been abandoned for the last three years, as
was the case with my bike).
 
I stopped
outside the house to see what I could do with a hanky and some spit and Major
Dyminge caught me at it.

“I’m coming with you and no arguments,” he waggled a
finger at me.

“What?
 
Why?”
 
This was a bit much.
 
“I’m only going for a gentle bike ride,
Major.”
 

“No you’re not.
 
You’re going to see Mrs Dilys Arkonnen, who is connected to Arko, who
might, or might not have a glass factory in Dover and might, or might not be
going to kill you.
 
Tell me I’m wrong.”

A tremendous sense of annoyance swelled in my
breast.
 
This was
my
adventure . . no -
more
than that - this was my
work
.
 
They’d had their time and now it was my turn.

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything more,
Major!”
 
I said, hotly.
 
“It’s not admissible under the Official
Secrets Act of 1939, you see.”
 
And I
swung my leg over my rusty bicycle.

He pushed his misshapen hat back on his head and
glared at me with his working eye, which was such a piercing shade of blue it
was as if it had sucked the power out of the other eye when that one had given
up the ghost.

“Official Secrets Act, what tosh!
 
I’ve been racking my brains to try to
understand why that young thief, Tristram Upshott, has involved you in this
business and I’ve drawn a complete blank.”
 
He waggled his finger at me again and his bristly eyebrows shot up and
down in an alarming fashion.
 
“This is
nasty
stuff, do you hear me, Rosa?
 
Nasty.
 
And I won’t have you shooting off all by yourself thinking you can right
all the wrongs of the world, however much you may want to . .”

“Thief?”
 
I
yelled (having not heard anything he’d said since he’d said
that)
.
 
“My Uncle’s not a thief.
 
How
dare
you call my uncle a thief?!”

“Och!”
 
He
shrugged his shoulders in irritation.
 
“That’s by the by; water under the bridge.
 
I expect his old skills come in very useful
in his new profession.
 
What I meant to
say, Rosa, was . .”

“I don’t care what you meant to say!”
 
I got the pedals moving and pushed off,
slowly, wobbling along the promenade and towards the road.
 
“Leave me alone, you horrible old man!”

 
The fire of righteous indignation propelled
me up the steep, cork-screwing road from the bay, but, by the time I’d reached
St Margaret at Cliffe, I was starting to wish I hadn’t said that and the
feeling grew with each turn of the pedals, until it had become a rock that
weighed me down all the way through the village and up to the Dover Road and
beyond.
 
How could I have said such a
thing?
 
I’d have been nothing but a few
scraps of white bone buried in the bed of the North Sea, if not for the Major.
 
How I hated myself.
 
I gave up pedalling by Oxneybottom Wood and
sat down under a tree to have my picnic.
 
I stuffed myself with chocolate buns and a
thermos flask full of cocoa, which I suppose I should say turned to ashes in my
mouth (they didn’t, they tasted divine), but I still didn’t feel much
better.
 
I felt so down I wanted to run
through the trees and then keep going, on and on over the ploughed fields and
through the villages.
 
On and on and
on.
 
(When people say, ‘I didn’t know
where to put myself’, they speak metaphorically, of course.
 
Not me.)
 
I tipped the thermos upside down to drain the last drops of cocoa into
my mouth and sighed.

My picnic had made me feel drowsy and I lay down with
my face up-turned to the afternoon sun, my thoughts skittering off in a million
directions.
 
Assuming she was there, what
could I
possibly
say to Mrs Dilys
Arkonnen, who was (presumably) Reg’s wife and Magnus’ aunt?
 
And what if Uncle Reg were at home, too?
 
There was a thought!
 
Perhaps I’d knock on the door and find the
whole family enjoying a leisurely weekend lunch together, Acker Bilk playing on
the gramophone in the background and Magnus annoying Aunt Dilys by smoking his
roll-ups at table.
 
Crumbs.
 
I rolled onto my side and fell asleep.

 
Heaven knows how long I slept, but I woke up
stiff as a board all along my right side, with a twig stuck to my cheek.
 
I was cold, too and more than a bit
disorientated until I caught sight of my rusty bike and empty thermos and
remembered my mission.
 
The whole thing
suddenly seemed pretty daft and I nearly turned back towards home, but for the
little niggle of pride; I needed to achieve something -
anything
, just to say I’d been to the bungalow would do - before I
apologised to Major Dyminge.
 
So I limped
over to my bike, stuffed the thermos back in my rucksack and continued my
journey to ‘Sea-Surf’ or ‘Sea-Turtle’, or whatever the Arkonnen’s holiday
bungalow on the Ringwould road turned out to be called.

At some point in my sleep I’d arrived at the sensible
decision
not
to knock on the front
door (in case Uncle Reg was around) but to scout about and see what I could see.
 
What I was hoping to find was anybody’s guess
- including my own - but, as I’ve already explained, I possess good noticing
skills.
 
So that was what I was going to
do; be as low-key as possible and notice.

Bungalows had been cropping up all over the area, but
few of them were as grand and white and hot off the assembly line as ‘Seaspray’
proved to be.
 
I sailed right past it to
begin with because I thought it was just too big to qualify as a bungalow and
was more of a mansion.
 
However, when
none of the other bungalows proved to be called ‘Sea-Anything at all’ and I’d ridden
through Ringwould as far as the lane to Kingsdown, I turned right round and
followed a tractor back along the road.
 
This time I noticed the sign by the gate, so I cycled a bit further along,
propped the bike up against a pillar box and ran over to the front wall,
ducking down low in case anybody happened to be looking out of the net
curtains.
 
Nobody was about in the road,
thankfully, so I bobbed up and down behind the wall, trying to take in as much
as I could.