Cry of a Seagull (3 page)

‘It could be one of a lot of people,' she murmured over the vegetable dish, ‘but how do I
know
? I've thought and thought about it till I've got brain fever.'

‘That's why you're a messenger.'

‘Because I'm stupid?'

‘Because …' Mr Vingo shovelled in more pie and breathed heavily, his eyes beginning to bulge ‘… you're not.' He put down his fork and looked up at her with a satisfied grin.

‘And because your mother … without a doubt … makes the finest steak and kidney pie in this hemisphere.'

By the time they had cleared the main course, Mollie should have been at the serving hatch dishing out the apricot soufflé.

Rose went back into the kitchen. ‘Where's Mum?'

‘Called to the phone,' Hilda said. ‘She put the soofull back in the fridge.'

‘Well, get it out again, you silly cow.' Gloria grabbed the dishes from her and took them into the pantry, and they got everyone served with soufflé and sponge fingers, and the cheese tray handed round.

They couldn't start the coffees because the coffee hadn't been made. Rose frantically started up the urn with hot water, which she wasn't supposed to do. Henry Watson wanted tea. ‘Not that kind.' He pushed the cup away like a petulant child. ‘The herbal kind your mother makes for me.' The Mumford twins had gone to the upstairs lounge where they had their special chairs, and were ringing the bell for coffee every three minutes.

‘Come on, you rotten urn.' Rose slapped the shiny cylinder to try to make its red light come on. The lounge bell buzzed again out in the passage and she told it furiously, ‘Shut up!' and felt her mother's arm go round her shoulders.

Mollie flicked a hurry-up switch on the urn that Rose had forgotten, and flipped a lever on the bell that cut it off at the start of another buzz, like a bilious Mumford hiccup.

‘Where were you when we needed you?' Rose grumbled at her, but then she saw Mollie's face. ‘What's happened?'

‘It's Grandpa.' Mollie pushed back her hair. ‘That was Uncle Ted on the phone.'

‘What's wrong?' Rose was fond of her mother's father, who was opinionated and demanding, but at least you knew where you were with him.

‘He's ill.'

‘Dying?' No one close to Rose had died yet. She was terrified of losing somebody she loved.

‘No, no, he'll be all right, but—'

‘Get a move on Mrs W.' Gloria pushed by them with a tray of coffee-cups. ‘The animals are getting restive.'

Up in their own apartment, Rose and her father sat at the table, and Mollie looked at them anxiously. When she had
broken it to them that she had to go and take care of Grandpa, Rose's first thought had been ‘Why now? I'm at the beginning of a mission for Favour – I can't take on any more at the hotel.'

But the sight of her mother's worried face made her feel selfish and vile, so she took the white hamster out of his cage, to calm herself with the feel of his supple, silky little body. She sat looking down at him, circling her hands so that Dougal could keep running forward from one to the other. Philip had his long face propped in his hands, with no expression of his feelings.

‘Why can't your brother help?' he asked.

‘Ted's too busy, you know that.'

‘His wife?'

‘One of the children is home from school with glands. Di can't possibly get away.'

‘What happened to Mrs Whatsername, that neighbour?'

‘Daddy's turned against her. She talks too much and he says she has a moustache and her hands are clammy. Ted's tried a few people, but it's so hard to get anyone, and the doctor says he can't be alone.'

‘How long for?' Philip's face and voice were still expressionless. Was he very angry?

‘The doctor says he'll be laid up for a week or two.'

‘Oh God, we're sunk,' Rose said. ‘Two weeks, with all the Easter trade? Look, you disappear for fifteen minutes tonight, and the whole system falls apart.'

‘I thought we could hire a temporary manager,' Mollie said. ‘There's an agency where—'

‘No!' Philip took his face out of his hands and banged on the table.

‘It's her father.' Rose glowered at him. ‘If you were ill, I bet you'd want
me
.'

‘Of course.' Suddenly his deadpan face livened into a smile and he amazed them by saying, ‘But we don't need an outsider. We'll manage on our own.'

‘How?' Hilda, Mrs Ardis, Gloria, Dilys … Rose began to panic. Her father never shared the running of the hotel, so how—

‘I'll help,' he said. ‘I'll keep the books, do the ordering, chat up the old fogies.'

‘But—' Rose and Mollie said together.

‘I'll take some time off work. Hilda and Gloria can manage a lot of the cooking. I can make omelettes at a pinch, and bake my famous gingerbread.'

‘I can do bread and butter pudding.' Rose caught his enthusiasm. ‘And remember those barbecued chickens I did, and the curry?'

‘Blew the top of everyone's head off.' Mollie was torn between doubt and gratitude.

‘Well next time I'll use less curry powder.'

‘How can I go?' Mollie struggled with her two loves and duties. ‘I've got to go, but I can't go.'

‘You can,' Philip said. ‘You must.' Rose had never seen him look so noble. ‘We'll manage together, won't we, Rose?' He reached out to her across the table.

‘A team.' She put the hamster into her jacket pocket and shook his hand.

It was unnerving to see Mollie drive away, but it was exciting to be a trustworthy team, and Rose had not felt so close to her father for years.

He was up early, and spent the morning in the office or behind the reception desk in the hall.

‘Well, I must say.' Audrey Mumford stopped at the desk for her Sunday paper. ‘It's nice to see you helping out for a change.'

‘Thank you, Miss Mumford.' He remembered that he had promised to be nice to the old dum-dums. ‘I'm letting my wife take a few days off. Meanwhile, I am in charge.'

‘Well.' Audrey's small, suspicious eyes drilled through him like gimlets. ‘Then I'll know who to come to if any-thing's wrong, won't I? For a start, you can give me my correct paper. This belongs to Mrs Howard. She takes it for the crossword, though she never finishes it.' Although wrapped up in their own concerns, the twins made it their business to know what everybody else read or ate or did. ‘If you're to be in charge, you will have to pay a bit more attention to the guests, won't you?'

‘Ah yes, well well, ha ha.' Rose, watering plants in the hall, could see that his fists were clenched with the effort to be polite. ‘If they were all as easy and charming as you …'

‘Don't overdo it, Dad,' Rose said when Audrey had gone. ‘They'll smell a rat.'

‘They smell it anyway,' he said. ‘Miss Angela's already been along to complain about the bacon.'

‘It was a bit greasy, but Hilda got flustered.'

‘Are you?'

Rose shook her head.

‘Nor am I. It's fun.' He winked at her. ‘We'll cope.'

A young man with a beard arrived with a lot of camera
equipment, and a beautiful girl in amazing clothes. He was preparing an illustrated feature about this area for a local magazine, and the girl was his assistant. Philip got them successfully booked in and sent them up to their rooms, calling Jim Fisher, the outside helper, from his tea break in the kitchen to carry the girl's heavy bag.

Gloria was not here today, so Rose would have to help Hilda to cook lunches, if only to keep her father, in his first flush of enthusiasm, from having a go at Yorkshire pudding.

She rang Abigail to say she wouldn't be able to go riding.

‘Ben there?'

‘Yes, but that's not why. He's down at the dock, scrubbing the decks and scraping barnacles.' Rose told Abigail about the crisis, and good old Ab – what a friend – said at once, ‘Hold everything. I'll be right over.'

‘But you were going to ride.'

‘This is more fun. I'll ride over anyway, so Crackers will get a workout.'

There was a lot to do. Fortunately, Mrs Ardis chose to work on Sundays, because she didn't want her aggravating daughter-in-law to visit her then, although she always behaved like a martyred saint.

‘You can make me work on the Sabbath,' she told Rose in her holy voice, ‘but you can't make me risk a slipped disc by doing double beds alone.' She clutched her back. ‘A little Christian charity, please.'

After the beds, Rose and Abigail ran three loads of laundry and served morning coffees and found the Professor's library book and laid tables and filled salt cellars and dashed in and out of the kitchen to peel potatoes and chop cabbage and give a quick turn to the Yorkshire pudding batter, waiting in the big bowl of the electric mixer. With Mollie gone, you could see just how much she did, while still managing to be calm and smiling to the guests and always ready to stop for a chat.

Going to the upstairs lounge to collect coffee-cups, Rose went mad, shifting from foot to foot while Professor Watson
insisted on telling her what he thought was a funny anecdote. She rattled downstairs with the tray of china, and Mrs Ardis called her from the dining-room to open a stuck window.

‘
He
said to air the place out, but I'll not risk that disc for him, or anyone else.'

‘Oh now, Mrs Ardis, don't start.' Rose struggled with the window, which overlooked the outside verandah.

‘Start what, pray?' Mrs Ardis had switched to her uppish voice, high in her nose, head of wild hair thrown back, fettered by a purple scarf, mauve eyelids closed.

‘Well, I mean – ah, got it!' The window flew up. ‘Getting outraged and all that. This is a crisis, you know. We're all in it together.'

‘Has
he
suggested I'm not pulling my weight?' Mrs Ardis's nostrils widened like a horse scenting trouble.

‘No, no, no, you're wonderful.'

Mrs Ardis and Philip maintained a low-grade warfare at the best of times. If it exploded into full battle, all was lost.

‘Then do your work, Miss Rose,' Mrs Ardis said grandly, ‘and I shall do mine. You can start by removing that tray off my polished sideboard.'

In the hall, Rose's father called to her to carry a sample case upstairs for a newly arrived salesman.

‘I'll just put the tray in the kitchen.'

‘Put it down
now
.' Philip looked flustered, fumbling about with papers. ‘Take this gentleman up to number fourteen – er, let's see, yes, fourteen.'

‘I thought you said fifteen,' the salesman said.

‘Did I? Yes, well – no, let's see, where's the key? You'll have a view over the dunes to the sea.'

‘Jolly good,' the man said. ‘Pity I'm only here for one night.'

‘Are you? I thought you were booked for a week. Rose, where did you put the key of number fourteen?'

‘It's occupied.'

‘Fifteen, I said.' He recovered himself quickly. ‘The key of fifteen, let's see …'

‘On the hook,' the salesman said.

‘Ah yes, of course. Excuse me. Terribly busy …'

Although she hated paper work, Rose thought perhaps she should run the office and let her father carry the trays and bags.

Abigail made the gravy. They didn't have gravy with everything in Chicago, so she was especially drawn to it as a way to feel British.

When she melted the beef dripping, it smelled of the strong hamburgers on Newcome beach, and Rose was Ruth again for a dizzy moment, caught half-way between two worlds, as if the people on the beach were calling her to come back.

When Abigail asked, ‘Where's the flour?' Rose answered vaguely, ‘Oh – somewhere,' as if she were Ruth, before she came to herself and said, ‘There, by the wooden spoons.'

Lunch was a success. Rose and Abigail and Dilys served more than twenty people smoothly, in spite of Philip hovering anxiously behind the serving hatch and going round the tables, bending from the waist to ask, ‘Is everything all right?'

‘Why shouldn't it be all right, Philip?' Ben's father boomed.

The Mumfords, bent over their plates like dormice, looked up in alarm. Toni, the assistant to the bearded photographer, giggled and whispered to him.

The Yorkshire pudding rose like a crisp-roofed cathedral. Abigail's gravy was rich velvet, and Hilda's beef and roast potatoes were superb.

‘Nothing to it,' Philip said afterwards, stretched out in a chair upstairs, exhausted from doing nothing. ‘Can't see why your mother makes such a production of it.'

While Rose was living her hectic practical life, part of her was still in that other life, which was even more urgent. Constantly in her mind were the clear images of the scene on the beach. Ruth, Georgie, the mother, the donkey man with the limp, the hush … hush sound of the sea, breaking gently on the shingle, the baby's cries, Brian's confident shouts, music from the old pier, the little donkey's rusty
brays. The details of dreams don't stay with you, but she never forgot anything about the scenes to which the Great Grey Horse took her.

When Abigail went out to get Crackers from the little fenced yard Jim had made for him next to the shed, Rose went with her, and walked on into the wood when Abigail rode off. She stood and listened. The tops of the trees jostled and gossiped to each other far over her head, and the fresh green pine needles assailed her with the tarry scent of spring. And what else? A hint of scorched meat from the long-ago beach snack bar.

If the horse called her now to find him on the moor, she would only just have time to run along the sheep track to the valley and get back in time to serve teas.

Rubbish, Rose – what are you thinking about? To be a messenger is all. The horse comes first. Teas come nowhere. But someone has to do them. Like Mollie, she was torn between two claims on her. When the treetops brought her no hint of the tune with which Favour often called her, she didn't know whether she was disappointed or relieved.