King of the Sea

Chapter 30

Chapter 30

Hilda left them, saying she had letters to write. The moment the front door had closed behind Lawrence, Catherine grabbed Neil's arm. "Come on, quick! Get your hat and cane and come with me. I'll explain as we go." And she dashed off to get her own hat and parasol.

"Just popping round to Aunt Daphne's," she called out to her mother. "Neil says he wants a breath of air, too.

"Don't be late for dinner," was her only reply. "That's a relief," Neil said as they set off down the road. "I thought she'd be eager to hear all about my wonderful time at sea and ask me things she could put in her next letter to Papa. Is he home, by the way? I saw they're refitting Phoenix. He did jolly well to save her."

"He came back last week," she replied, "but he went to Belfast the very next day. Thet's where they're building the Hilda of Troy." "That's not funny, you know." He laughed.

"Anyway, why are we taking this walk? What's all

the mystery?" She half lowered her parasol, collapsing it enough to aim it like a rifle. "Bang!" she said.

He followed her aim as she put it up again. "The

Beast!" he said. "Shall we catch up with

He took a stride or two before she caught his jacket and pulled him back. "No, you'll spoil it."

"Spoil what?"

"You'll see."

When they reached the Circus, Neil said, "What's he going that way for? I thought he said Aunt Daphne's."

"You'll see," she promised again. She made him wait until Lawrence had disappeared into Upper Street. "We must be careful. I think he's beginning to suspect I know something."

"Funny," Neil told her. "I was just beginning to suspect the opposite! Anyway, I'm not sure it's ethical to be spying on our brother like this. How would you bally well like it?"

"Hah!" she snorted. "I'm spied on all the time. I can't put a foot out of doors without saying where I'm going or having a maid to chaperone me." "You're growing up, that's why. Anyway, it's

different for females.

"Who chaperones the maids, then? And who'll chaperone the chaperones of the maids, eh?" He did not think the question worthy of reply.

"Talking of maids," he went on as they, too, started down Upper Street, "what was all that about little Emma Harding? Blot her copybook, did she?" He took her arm to create the sort of intimacy in which she might blurt it out.

She blurted it out, all right! "Oh," she said airily, "I started my monthly periods, you know, and Emma tried to comfort me by saying that for many girls it was the happiest week of the month and Mama chose

to misinterpret that and gave her the boot." She was delighted to feel his arm go rigid at her side.

For Neil it suddenly seemed the whole day had changed tempo and even colour. Details in the scene - cracks in the paving stones, piles of dog dirt suddenly assumed a supernatural reality and he thought he could hear windy, echoing chords of unearthly harmonies. "I say, Kathy!" he exclaimed.

"What?" she asked with provocative indifference. "Well! I mean to say!"

"It's perfectly natural," she said crossly.

After a pause he said, "I suppose so. All the same. Bally private, what?"

She jerked his elbow, bringing him to a sudden

halt. "Watch the Beast!"

Neil was just in time to see his brother, who was a furlong or so ahead of them, fish out a key and open a door. "Eh?" he exclaimed.

"Now," she said, "you know the Beast as well as anyone what d'you suppose that's all about?"

He stared at her, then back down the street, then at her again. He shook his head. "Is he running a little shop on the side, or something?"

To be sure, he was well aware of the most likely explanation, but he could hardly trot that out to his little sister! However, she now more or less confirmed it by replying, "Something on the side, anyway."

He stared at her in horror. "You've changed, Kathy! What has been going on these last few months?" He turned and took a pace or two back the way they had come. "I'm not sure I like any of this." Then he took a pace toward her again and stared deep into her eyes. "Why are you showing me this? And half-telling me? What's your game?"

Even at the time he realized the question was something of a landmark in their relations with each other. He knew she was secretive and devious, of course - like all the females he'd ever met; but this was the first time he'd allowed she could be devious in a grown-up manner. It was no childish prank she was playing. She did not bite her lip and grin like a naughty schoolgirl though she was still quite capable of behaving like that in more appropriate circumstances. She was a woman, thwarted of a secret, and it pained her as much as it would a female twice her age.

He suddenly felt a sharp compassion for her. He remembered his recent humiliations at sea that feeling of not-belonging, of being excluded by people who did not even pay you the compliment of intending it. To help her, he took a great leap in the dark for even if he was wrong, it would loosen her tongue and give her a chance to parade her grown-up knowledge. "This isn't in any way connected with... what we were talking about a moment ago, is it? A certain young serving wench?" She showed the child who still dwelled within her

then by throwing her arms around him and giggling

in glee. "Clever! Clever old Neil!" "Oh yes," he replied scornfully. "Drop a hint weighing a ton and clever old Neil can always hear it fall!"

But from that point on the matter became extremely delicate; hints were weighed in fractions of an ounce. "I'll tell you one thing," he said, taking her arm firmly and leading her away up the street toward the Circus and Highbury Fields. "I'm certainly not staying to spy on him now!"

When they were safely on the Fields, and out of sight of Upper Street, he went on, "So, what it amounts to is that Mama booted poor little Emma out. And she's taken lodgings in Upper Street ... presum ably found some living-out position ... and the Beast calls on her from time to time. It's rash of him, I must say. I'll find some chance to have a word in his ear before I sail again."

"He calls on her from day to day," she said evenly. "Worse and worse! Oh calamity!" He parodied the sort of melodrama he used to write for the three of them to perform as children. "But don't worry your dear little head about it any more, Little Face, eh?" "He pays her rent," she continued stolidly.

His eyes raked the cloudless skies. "I think must have fallen under a misapprehension there, you little one. Unless Furnival's have started paying him a salary at last." "He doesn't work for Furnival's any more. He's been elected to the Baltic and he's now a clerk with Turnbull and Trotter. Five guineas a month." "Good for him." Neil contained his surprise and stuck to the point. "But he couldn't do much on five

guineas a month."

"He doesn't have to. He bets on horse races. And he wins a lot more often than he loses. Between five and ten guineas a week, in fact." "How d'you know all this?" he asked in despair of

outflanking her.

"He keeps it all in a little book, in the second drawer down in his room."

"All this about Emma, you mean?"

"No. All his bets. He takes The Pink 'Un every day, you know, and puts it in the waste paper basket by the tram stop. He's saved more than three hundred pounds already."

Neil stopped and stared at her. "You're making this up, surely!"

"Not a word of it. I'm sure he keeps a book about Emma, too. In the bottom drawer, but I can't pick that lock and I've tried every key in the house on it."

"Kathy!" Now his horror had a focus. "D'you spy

on us all?"

She grinned and said "Of course not!" in such a way that he couldn't be sure. "I would, though," she added, "if you started having secrets like that from me. I don't think we should ever have secrets from each other, do you? I think we should always tell each other everything. What harm would there be if I knew what was going on with the Beast and Emma?"

He chose not to answer that. "I only hope you don't go rooting through my drawers," he said. "If I ever catch you, I'll break your arm. Are we actually going to Aunt Daphne's? You forgot the album after all."

"I want to keep it another week," she replied. "We can call and tell her so. And if, sometime during this hol, you could ..."

"Not hols any more, Little Face," he reminded her. "It's called shore leave nowadays, don't you know."

"Anyway, if you could pump her a little sometime, about the Beast and Emma, you know ..." "Good heavens! Is she in on it too? How far do the

ripples spread?" Catherine explained how Aunt Daphne's involve ment had come about. It left her brother wishing he were just a year or two older. He'd certainly put a flea in his aunt's ear about the shameless way she had involved his little sister in these distressing affairs.

"Only," Catherine went on, "I'm sure he told her something that day I left him to escort her home. And she's gone tight as a limpet ever since then."

Notwithstanding her belief that siblings should nurse no secrets, she felt it unnecessary to explain why she wanted to keep the album another week. It contained a long-ago photograph of her father, posed at a dinner given for the master and crew of his first vessel, the one that had gone down on the Goodwins. It dated from the days when people had to hold a pose for about three hours or something ridiculous, so they used to fix their gaze on something they'd find easy to maintain. And her father had chosen to stare at a rather pretty young girl sitting at the master's right. And the pretty young girl had chosen to stare back at him. And the pretty young girl wasn't the Hilda Watson he had later married!

Now couple that with the fact that Aunt Daphne always wrote the names of the subjects on the back of each photograph, and then copied the list in white ink underneath before sticking it in - but not with this photo! Uniquely it carried no dramatis persona underneath. Now there was an intriguing mystery! There must be some way of softening that glue and of sticking the photograph back in its place without Aunt Daphne ever noticing it.

AWRENCE LAY ON his bed smoking a cheroot from a packet he'd been given by a Dutch captain whose vessel he had placed very profitably. He wasn't enjoying the taste but he admired the picture he formed in his own mind: languid, serene, a young man in control of his world and at peace with himself. He hadn't kicked his shoes off, either. His mother would flay him alive.

"All right, give us one," Neil muttered, as if his brother had been pressing cheroots on him at every other word.

"I thought you said you didn't like them."

"They're all right once in a while. Russian cigarettes

are phenomenal. They've got paper tubes." "I know. Several chaps on the Baltic smoke them."

"Yes, congratters on that, by the way. A member, eh! You must be the youngest ever."

"I suppose I am," Lawrence replied, as if the thought had never occurred to him. "They couldn't keep me out, see. I made too many good deals." He sighed. "That's going to be my trouble in life - I'm just so b****y good at everything I turn my hand to. Ow!" He rubbed his arm where Neil had punched him. "I was going to give you one," he complained as he offered the asked-for cheroot, making it seem that his brother had punched him for being so slow about it. "Never mind your Russian cigarettes, what are the Russian girls like? I imagine them all mysterious and dark-eyed and they've got forests under their arms and their bush goes right up to their navels. Is that right?"

Neil laughed between puffs to get his cheroot well alight. "They give a fellow a bally good jig, I can promise you that." He leaned back, making the wicker chair creak alarmingly.

"You two boys!" their mother called from the landing below,"don't stay up talking all night now. I want to go to the early service tomorrow so we can meet your father off the train." "Aye aye, Mater!" Lawrence cried.

Neil said quietly, "The old man is sure to like that! Remember the day she took us all to Southampton to welcome him ashore?"

"And no smoking in the bedrooms!" she added.

Lawrence blew a large, slow ring and pushed a

smaller, faster one through it. "Of course not," he

called back.

In the bedroom next door, Catherine froze and prayed that her mother wouldn't come up to see her. She had just managed to lift the photo and the room was full of steam. Hastily she scribbled down a list of names off the back of the card, not just that of Billy Bright and his daughter Jenny (or she could be a niece), but everyone - because you never knew. And that was how she discovered that the man in half shadow at the end of the back row was Uncle Brian. It was hard to believe it but at least it explained why the photo was in Aunt Daphne's album. But it still didn't explain why this was the only photo in the album in which the sitters were not named in white ink underneath.