High Tide At Midnight

‘I’d like that,’ Morwenna smiled up at her. As the bus lurched away again she took a deep breath to steady herself and began to retrieve her belongings. In less than five minutes she found herself standing in the darkness, the wind whipping at her hair and tangling across her face. She shivered, huddling her sheepskin jacket round her for warmth and wishing that she was just about anywhere but the chill of this unknown country road.

She began to walk towards the faint glimmer of the signpost at the crossroads, glad of the shelter of the hedge. It was raining still and the drops stung her face. When she licked her lips she could taste salt on them, and in the distance above the howl of the wind, she could hear the sea roaring.

‘Good night for wrecks,’ she murmured aloud, and grimaced at the thought. At the crossroads she turned left as Biddy had indicated and found herself in a narrow lane, bordered on either side by high hedges. It was really dark now, the faint moonlight almost totally obliterated by the mass of rushing clouds chased by the gale.

She had walked perhaps two hundred yards, practically feeling her way along the hedge, when she stopped and said flatly and aloud, ‘This is silly.’

She set down her case and the rucksack and began to unfasten the buckles. Among the oddments she had thrown in at the last moment, she thought, was a torch, although she wasn’t sure if it worked or if there were even any batteries in it. Naturally the missing article had slipped right to the bottom of the rucksack and she was obliged to repack it almost completely before she could fasten it again. Grimly she stood up at last and tentatively switched on the torch. The faintness of the glimmer of light that fell on the road in front of her indicated there was not much life left in the batteries, but it was better than nothing, and it was a heavy, comforting object to have in her hand anyway on this evening when the whole world seemed full of movement and menace and unidentifiable sounds. She shone the torch ahead of her, and her heart almost leaped into her mouth when it picked out something large and white in the hedge, something which bent and swayed in the wind. A large notice board, she realised, with hysterical relief, and what an utter fool she was making of herself. She had spent the greater part of her life living in the country, so why was she behaving like a townie, leaping at every shadow, letting her imagination play tricks. It was nonsense to think that this dark, unfamiliar landscape was rejecting her. She was letting Biddy’s warnings really get to her.

Or was she? she wondered drily a moment later as she allowed her torch to play over the lettering on the board. ‘Private Road to Trevennon Only’, it stated unequivocally. No sign of the welcome mat there, she thought philosophically, and walked on.

She had been walking for about ten minutes and wishing that the notice board had given some idea of the distance involved when it happened. The shriek of the wind had been rising steadily, and now in a sudden boiling crescendo of sound there was a loud crack just ahead of her, and with a slithering rumble a tree fell right across the road in her path.

She stood very still for a moment, then put her case down, and began to shake. She wasn’t hurt. For God’s sake, it hadn’t even touched her, but it had been close, and at this rate her nerves were going to be shot to pieces and she was going to arrive on Dominic Trevennon’s doorstep a gibbering lunatic.

What was more, although the tree on closer examination did not turn out to be particularly large, nevertheless it had blocked the road. She could climb over it, but that was not the problem. Private road it might be, but presumably people at the house had vehicles and visitors with other vehicles, and the tree had fallen awkwardly between two bends in the lane. A driver would be on top of it almost before he realised.

She caught hold of one of the sturdier branches and tugged, but to no avail. It might not be large, but it was heavier than it looked. She supposed her most sensible course of action would be to hurry on to the house wherever it was, and warn someone, trusting to luck that no one drove along the lane in the meantime.

Ironically, the wind now seemed to be lessening, as if aware it had done its worst and could now be satisfied. And behind her, in the distance, she could just hear the sound of a car engine, coming fast. Morwenna swung round, her eyes searching the darkness. She was not all that far from the main road, she told herself. There was no reason to think that the traveller would not go straight on. But even as she watched, she saw the glare of a pair of powerful headlights and knew that against all the odds the car had turned off towards Trevennon. And the driver knew the road. He was covering the narrow twisting road without a check, and any moment now he would be here, unaware of the waiting danger.

Morwenna almost hurled her case and rucksack into the shelter of the hedge and ran, stumbling, back to the bend. She stood in the middle of the lane, swinging her torch from side to side in a desperate attempt to attract attention, but wouldn’t the pitiful light it afforded be swallowed up in the darkness?

The car lights seemed to slice across the evening sky, and then with a snarl of the engine the car was upon her. She gave the torch one last wave, then dived towards the hedge, but not quite soon enough. Something grazed her—perhaps a wing—and she fell, not hard but sufficiently to wind her. The car stopped with a squeal of brakes, a door slammed and Morwenna found herself being hauled to her feet with considerably more force than she felt was necessary.

He was tall, and his hands were hard and bruising. That was the first, the most immediate impression, and more than enough, Morwenna thought feelingly, as she was dumped unceremoniously back on to her feet. He seemed to be very dark, or was that just the suggestion of the darkness around him, and he was, she realised radiating an anger that was almost tangible.

‘You bloody little idiot.’ He wasn’t shouting; he didn’t have to. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? You could have been killed!’

His grip on her upper arms was really hurting, and furiously she pulled herself free. ‘You call me an idiot!’ she blazed back at him, fright and stress making her voice younger and more breathless than she would have liked. ‘And what about you—driving like a maniac on a rotten night like this? If I had been killed, it would have been all your fault!’

Even as she spoke, she knew she was not being totally fair. He had seen her pitiful attempt to cause a diversion and had managed to stop, in spite of the speed he was driving at, almost within the car’s length. But this had been the final straw in a pretty abysmal day, and now reaction was taking its toll of her.

‘Your logic fascinates me,’ he said with a cool contempt that seared its way across her skin. ‘May I point out to you that this is in fact a private road, and under those circumstances one expects to be preserved from the antics of lunatic hitch-hikers. And might I also suggest you make your way back to the main road, and ply your trade there.’

‘I was not hitch-hiking!’ She was furious to find that she was shaking like a leaf. ‘What I was doing was trying to save your life, or at least trying to prevent you from being injured. That, of course, was before I met you.’

There was a long electric silence.

‘You’d better explain,’ he said grimly. ‘Oh, not your last remark. I’ve managed to work the implications of that out for myself.’

‘There’s a tree down,’ she said tonelessly. ‘Just round that bend. I was going to warn someone at the house, then I heard you coming, and thought I’d better stay and warn you instead. Only all I had was that damned torch, and the batteries aren’t too good—and now they’ve gone all together.’ She began unavailingly to push the switch on the torch backwards and forwards as if her very insistence could make it work again.

There was another silence, then he said abruptly, ‘Wait here.’

He walked across to the car, climbed in and started the engine. He drove the few feet to the bend, then stopped. Another pause, then she heard his footsteps returning.

He said without emotion, ‘It seems I owe you an apology.’

‘Well, don’t let it ruin your life.’ She tried to sound flip, but the quiver in her voice betrayed her, and she heard him sigh, swiftly and sharply.

‘But that still doesn’t explain precisely what you were doing on this road in the first place,’ he said. ‘What happened? Did you miss the main road in the dark? This lane only leads to….’

‘To Trevennon,’ she finished for him wearily. ‘I know. I can read, actually, if the print is big enough. And I haven’t missed my way, though God knows it would have been easy enough. I’m going to Trevennon. I have to see Mr Dominic Trevennon.’

She heard his startled intake of breath and wondered resignedly if she was to be the recipient of another Awful Warning about Mr Trevennon’s intolerance of casual callers and general irascibility, but when he spoke his voice sounded cool and disinterested.

‘Indeed, and has Mr Trevennon the pleasure of expecting you?’

‘No,’ she admitted. ‘And I’ve already been warned that he’s arrogant and awkward and imagines that he’s some uncrowned king of Cornwall, but all the same, I’m going to see him.’

‘I can’t imagine why,’ he remarked. ‘Judging by the description you’ve received of him, I would have thought it would have been infinitely preferable to keep your distance.’

‘I have to see him, she said abruptly. ‘I want to ask him a favour.’

‘Do you think he sounds the kind of man likely to provide favours for chance-met strangers?’

‘On the face of it, no.’ Morwenna shook her head. ‘On the other hand, he’s obviously a supreme egotist, and he might just be flattered to think someone has travelled half way across England to ask him to do something for them. Besides, I’m not wholly a stranger to him.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t count on it,’ he said bitingly. ‘And what do you mean—you’re not “wholly a stranger"?’

But Morwenna was already regretting that she had said so much.

‘I’m sorry, but I think that’s my business,’ she said, biting her lip. ‘And I don’t doubt you’re a lifelong friend of his and that you can’t wait to get down to Trevennon and tell him what I’ve said. Well, go ahead. I don’t suppose that in the long run it will make much difference anyway.’

‘As a matter of fact,’ he said slowly, ‘at this precise moment, I’m wondering whether I’ve ever known him at all. As for proceeding with all haste to Trevennon to drop you in it, may I remind you that the road is blocked by a tree. Besides, I’m going to make a detour round to the farm to get Jacky Herrick to bring his tractor down to shift it, so if you hurry you should arrive at Trevennon with your version first.’

‘A tractor?’ Morwenna let her voice register exaggerated surprise. ‘You mean you’re not going to pick it up with one hand, and toss it lightly into the hedge?’

She was sorry as soon as she had said it. There was something about him that got under her skin, but that was no excuse for behaving with gratuitous rudeness.

When he spoke, his voice was cold with anger. ‘If I was in the mood for tossing anything into a hedge, believe me, young woman, you’d get priority over any tree.’

‘I think we’ve already established that,’ she said ruefully, wincing a little as she moved forward.

‘Are you hurt? The car hardly touched you….’

‘Oh, please don’t bother about me.’ She felt as if one side of her was one terrific bruise. ‘I still might manage to finish fourth.’

‘Stand still,’ he ordered abruptly. ‘You might have broken something.’

She stood, teeth clenched more with anger than with pain as he completed a swift but comprehensive examination of her moving parts.

‘Thank you,’ she said with awful politeness when he had finished. ‘You should have been a vet.’

‘I won’t complete the analogy,’ he returned with equal courtesy. ‘Although several members of the animal kingdom do suggest themselves. Which reminds me—when you get down to Trevennon, watch out for the dogs. They’re not trained to encourage strangers.’

‘Oh God!’ Morwenna, retrieving her case and rucksack from the hedge, swung round to look at him. It was maddening that it was too dark to see his face properly, let alone the expression on it, and she could hardly ask him to stand in the car headlights for a moment so that she could judge whether he was joking. He hadn’t done a great deal of joking up to that point, certainly, and there was no reason for him to start now, so the dogs probably existed. She moistened her lips uncertainly. ‘Do—do they bite?’