Distant Voices

The car coughed momentarily, a frequent occurrence from its bronchial engine, and Harriet clutched the wheel more firmly, ignoring the subdued groan on her left. The wheels were sending up a fine spray and in the strange slanted evening light it was sometimes hard to see where the road ran. The water flowed impartially before them disguising their route in a silver tissue of reflections.

They gained the upslanting firmness of the island with undisguised relief, stopping momentarily to gaze back over their shoulders at the winding road through the mudflats. Already the tide had ebbed away and in places the causeway was drying in the cool sea wind.

Harriet groped in the glove compartment, leaning without apology across her friend. ‘Where’s the address? I want to get to the guesthouse and have a bath.’ Maps and books were rummaged unceremoniously to the floor.

Cathie tightened her lips a fraction. ‘I think, dear, you’ll find that you put it in your bag,’ she murmured at last, half apologetic.

‘Rubbish. Why should I do that?’

Cathie smiled bitterly. ‘Because you said I’d be sure to lose it if you didn’t.’ She watched as Harriet turned to the back seat for the battered leather hold-all she was pleased to call a handbag. Sure enough the instructions were there.

‘Humph!’ That grudging snort was the nearest Harriet ever came to apology, the glitter in Cathie’s eyes the nearest to triumph.

The car shuddered forward again, and they began to thread their way through the network of lanes which led to the island’s only village.

The guesthouse was not hard to find. It stood out at the end of a row of whitewashed fisherman’s cottages, a modern bungalow with cream and red paint and ornamental scrollwork on the nameplate, Castleview, which hung on a gibbet by the front gate.

Harriet parked the car with its near-side wheels in the thick lushness of the hedge and sat back, squinting at the house.

‘Castleview indeed.’ She craned her neck to see if the claim were true. ‘I do hope it’s going to be all right. One can never tell, booking from so far away. Well, what are you waiting for?’

‘I can’t get out this side, dear.’ Cathie moved round slightly and slid half an inch to the right to show she intended climbing across the handbrake, as soon as Harriet had herself moved. Beyond her the heavy greenery pushed against the car window.

Harriet gave a little smile. For a moment she considered making Cathie slide across. Then she relented. She made a great show of restarting the car, backing off the verge, waiting for her passenger to disembark, and then reburying the car in the hedge. Then at last she herself climbed stiffly from the driver’s seat.

The air was strong: a combination of salt and honeyed ripeness from the heavy hedgerows and the evening breeze off the cool of the sea. She sniffed loudly and allowed herself to grin happily at the scarlet and golden remnants of the shrouded sun as it sank into heavy bruised cloud on the inland hills.

Then she turned her attention to the bungalow before them.

‘I can’t think why they were allowed to build such an ugly house,’ she commented tartly. She pulled her tweed jacket down neatly over well-padded hips. Her right eyebrow had risen an indignant half-way to her hairline.

Cathie, knowing the signs, licked her lips quickly.

‘It does seem out of place,’ she ventured.

Already Harriet had opened the gate and was making her way up the concrete path. Half-way to the door she stopped.

‘Look at this garden,’ she appealed, not so much to Cathie as to the limpid blue of the evening air. ‘Geometric! Could have been designed by a town clerk with a ruler.’

Town clerks were for some reason one of Harriet’s pet hates. She blamed them for most of the twentieth century’s more uncomfortable problems.

She waved her hands at the neat beds of salvia and the short-haired grass. ‘You know,’ she confided over her shoulder in an echoing stage whisper, ‘I shouldn’t be at all surprised if they have flying ducks over the fireplace.’

‘Ssssh!’ Cathie glanced in agonised embarrassment at the heavy lace curtains, and then permitted herself the luxury of wondering quickly why they bothered with net curtains with such a large front garden and such a deserted lane which was in any case firmly hidden behind the high hedge.

Harriet rang the bell and smothered a giggle as the pretentious chime rang out in the silence. ‘I wonder if we could transfer to one of the cottages,’ she hissed, as somewhere in the distance a dog began to bark. Cathie smiled nervously. Someone was coming. She patted her fair hair into place.

The lady of the house, Mrs Cosby, was large and red-cheeked and determinedly jolly. She beamed benevolently at her guests as she led them across the house to show them their rooms. ‘I’ve no one here now, but a gentleman come for the birds and yourselves,’ she explained cheerfully. ‘The season’s more or less over, you know, once the kiddies are back at school.’

She threw open a door. Inside was a small room with a single bed, a blue straw-plaited chair and a dressing table.

Harriet glanced at the window. The lace net curtain reached only half-way up the window here, a gesture showing that this was the side of the house with, some fifteen feet away, a thick holly hedge blanketing the view. She did a lightning toss-up in her mind. ‘You’d better have this one,’ she murmured to Cathie over her shoulder.

Cathie nodded gratefully.

Harriet’s own room was on the opposite side of the corridor. She breathed a sigh of relief as the door was flung open. Her gamble had paid off. The half span of intricate net showed a view over miles of mudflats, and at the end of the promontory, the castle reflected stilly in the low of the tide.

She carefully regulated the broadness of her smile.

‘The gentleman is next door to you here,’ Mrs Cosby was saying. ‘And the you-know-what is opposite, there.’ She coyly indicated a door on which was a small enamelled label bearing the inscription, This is IT!

Cathie saw her friend’s mouth twitching and prayed she would be able to suppress whatever remark was about to burst forth.

‘I’m afraid –’ Harriet began, and then continued to Cathie’s extreme relief, ‘that we’ve left our cases in the car. I hoped perhaps your husband … when you get to our age, it’s hard to carry things.’ She eyed Mrs Cosby closely. The woman was probably Cathie’s age – perhaps a year or two younger.

‘Oh, I’m a widow. I thought I told you in my letter.’ Mrs Cosby fell into the trap at once. ‘But never mind, I dare say I can carry them for you. If there’s anything too heavy I’m sure that Mr Danway will fetch them up later when he comes in.’

‘Mr Danway?’ Harriet had thrown her jacket on the bed – a gesture of possessiveness.

‘My other guest. A strange one, he is, but very quiet. No trouble at all. Now, my dears, tea is at six as a rule, but as you were late arriving I’ve put it back today. Just this once.’ Her expression was suddenly threatening. ‘It’ll be ready in about ten minutes, if that suits?’

She did not wait to hear them agree.

Harriet watched the door close. At once came the expected outburst. ‘This is IT indeed! Do you think she knows there’s such a word as lavatory?’ She sat on the bed and gave a gentle experimental bounce.

‘Hush dear. As a matter of fact it’s a bathroom. I looked.’ Cathie walked to the window and raised the net to look a little wistfully at the view.

‘Have you got a screwdriver?’

Cathie jumped and looked round apprehensively. ‘What for?’

‘To unscrew the notice of course. No? I’m sure there’ll be one in the car. Come on. At least help me get that net curtain down.’

‘You can’t.’

‘Who is going to stop me?’ Harriet stood and gave orders as Cathie struggled to pull the hook of the curtain wire over the screw which held it. At last she managed it, panting. The wire dropped to hang down the side of the window, the net a heavy bridal train, trailing to the floor. ‘I hope Mrs Cosby’s not offended.’

‘Why should she be?’ Harriet sat down heavily at the dressing table and began to rub her face with the licked corner of her handkerchief. ‘Ought to be glad I’ve let some light in!’

Five minutes later they were summoned by gong to the guests’ sitting room. Four tables stood regimented on the carpet, two by two. Only two were laid; one for one and one for two.

Cautiously they sat down. Harriet peered into the teapot and sniffed. ‘I knew it. We should have brought our own tea. I wonder what she’s going to give us?’ She peered at the other table. ‘She’s made him wait to have it with us, old devil. I bet he’s usually in the pub by now.’

Cathie had already helped herself from the loaded toast-rack. She was buttering enthusiastically as their hostess came in with a heavy tray. She was hungry and not even Harriet’s scornful remarks about her weight – Cathie was the lighter by a good ten pounds – were going to put her off her food this evening.

‘Is your other guest going to eat with us?’ Harriet asked pointedly as Mrs Cosby began to unload her tray onto their table.

‘Oh yes, I daresay,’ she answered comfortably. ‘I just heard him come in.’ They waited in silence till she’d gone back to her kitchen, then Cathie leaned over the table. ‘Do you think he’s a boyfriend?’ she simpered a little.