The Wind of Southmore (7 page)

“
I thank you, kind lady,” Alice rose and bowed in appreciation.
It all seemed so unreal, so like a book, that she burst out
laughing. Arlen stared at her for a few moments, unsure as to
whether the laughter was directed at her, and then, seemingly
satisfied, began to laugh herself, until the pair finally collapsed
on two rock benches in the streaming glow of the
skylight.

As Alice
gazed around her, something suddenly struck her as odd. “Why is
this underground lake fresh?” she asked, curiously. “I would have
thought it would be salt water in here.”

“
I know,” Arlen answered, sobering immediately. “I don’t know
what causes it. But it certainly didn’t come from this ocean.” She
shivered. “I’m glad. I wouldn’t want it to. I wouldn’t want to be a
part of it if it had.”

“
I know what you mean,” Alice agreed. “I’ve only been here a
few days, but there’s something –
forbidding
– about it, isn’t there?
It’s so calm and glassy on the surface, and yet you can just
imagine the – darkness underneath. The trouble.” Arlen agreed
silently, as a cold breeze seemed to infiltrate and float around
them. It was out there, waiting, somewhere beneath that surface.
She didn’t know why she hadn’t mentioned the dancers, or the girl,
who looked so like them both. Perhaps Alice would think she was
crazy, a result of her isolated upbringing and an overactive
imagination. She bit her lip, wondering what to say, when three
sharp cracks sounded like knocks against the wall. Both girls,
jumped, startled, and Alice reached for her sister in a panic. But
nothing followed the harsh raps. The breeze died down, and the
scene grew silent once more. Yet the spell was broken.

“
I think it’s gone.” Arlen rose and faced the
doorway.

“
It?
” Alice questioned, her throat
growing dry. “What was
it
?”

“
I don’t know,” Arlen seemed confused. She reached up and
automatically flicked away the long dark fringe from her eyes.
“Maybe it was just the wind.”

“
Yes, I hope so,” Alice murmured, but she didn’t feel so sure.
It hadn’t sounded like the wind to her.

“
Did you go to the beach often when you were in London?” Arlen
asked suddenly, turning and reclaiming her position on the wide,
flat piece of rock.

“
No,” Alice replied, shivering. She wondered that Arlen seemed
so easily calmed. “But then, come to think of it, I never went
anywhere much. Other than flats and hotel rooms and school.” She
paused for a few moments, meditating. “Don’t you go to school?” The
thought had struck her suddenly. The village seemed so isolated, a
good distance away from any of the Cornish cities and
towns.

“
No,” Arlen answered and shrugged. “There isn’t a school here
and nobody was ever willing to take me to one of the towns. I was
the only child in the village, you see. Too much trouble, I
guess.”

“
The only child in the village,” Alice repeated to herself. It
seemed strange, to be the only one. The only one – until now. She
remembered the birds watching her that first night, the small,
boring eyes and the telltale screams, and the mysterious driver’s
comment seemed to sound again in her ears. “Aye, the birds know.”
“Know what?” she muttered to herself. And who were they
telling?

“
What?” Arlen asked.

“
Nothing,” Alice shook herself and looked at the other girl, so
like her, sitting on the rock. “You must have led an awfully
enclosed life here,” she said softly.

“
Well, yes, in most ways, I guess,” Arlen murmured. “I’ve never
been away from here. But then, neither have most of the other
villagers.” She laughed wryly. “The glorious attractions of
Southmore! Once you’re here, you can never get away.” Alice looked
away, not really liking the sound of her words. “I’ve wanted to
leave,” Arlen said then. She raised her eyes to the glowing crystal
patch of light above them, and her voice became longing. “For so
long. I want to start again somewhere else. Somewhere that’s
alive.” She rose, walking towards a thick chunk of gleaming
stalactite and resting her dark head against its glittering
brilliance. “We’re so isolated here. I feel like I’ve grown up in a
separate world. A lost world. A whole forgotten part of the
country. The only person here who has travelled is Mr MacKenzie.
Most of the others have never even been to
St Ives
. Can you believe it? Not even
to
St Ives
. I so
want to get out. Our grandmother got out. So did our mother. I
don’t know why Aunt Maud stayed.” She stopped suddenly, and turned
to face her twin, her face an anguished mix of anger and pain. “You
know, I’ve blamed her and blamed her. For leaving me, for dumping
me here – and now, for separating us. Although I wouldn’t have
wished this existence on you,” she said quickly.

“
But it would have been better if we had been together,” Alice
murmured. “Where is she now?”

“
I don’t know,” Arlen replied shortly, staring hard at the
shimmering froth of bubbles rolling into the lake. The rainbow
beams flowed from the skylight, bathing the great natural hall in a
glowing fountain of colour. She shrugged. “She’s not interested
in
me
, anyway. What
about
your
life?
You basically know about me. When the folks split up, Mum copped me
and dumped me on Aunt Maud the first chance she had.” She glanced
around her and sighed. “So I’ve been
here
all my life,” and the laugh that
accompanied the statement was very half hearted.

“
My father didn’t exactly lose sleep over me either,” Alice
confessed softly, staring at her shoes. “He was always off
somewhere on business.”

“
What did he do?”

“
I’m not sure. But it was something shady. It’s
true!
” she cried, as Arlen
burst out laughing. “He used to go off and meet these people in
pubs and things. We used to travel around a lot, although we always
stayed in the big cities, mainly London. I’ve always suspected he
was on the run from the police. I remember he used to have his
‘business partners’, as he used to call them, over for card nights
and things, and I would never be able to go to sleep because the
cigarette smoke would come drifting through into my room, and I
could smell stale beer and hear them all yelling loudly at each
other, half drunk, and telling dirty jokes. And sometimes I’d creep
out of bed and watch them through the cracks in the
door.

“
A couple of times, the ‘partners’ weren’t his usual crowd,
but
really
dodgy
looking men, and he always used to tell me to be quiet because he
was discussing business. But I listened, and I could hear them
talking about cargoes and valuable jewellery and some sort of
antique items he’d been holding onto. And he always seemed to be
trying to make a deal with them.

“
He used to go off sometimes and leave me alone at nights, even
when I was quite small, saying he had to meet someone at some port
somewhere. Mrs Landers, the lady who ran the B&B where we were
staying one time, used to come upstairs and play Cluedo with me,
and she used to say it was a disgrace that a man like that should
have custody of a child.”

“
Was she nice?” Arlen asked.

“
Oh, she was lovely. I used to wish and wish that she was my
mother,” Alice half laughed, raising her face and looking towards
the skylight. The beams of radiance illuminated her features, and
Arlen wasn’t sure for a moment whether she was crying. “Sometimes I
used to pretend – that she was my mother, I mean. I used to imagine
and imagine what my real one was like.” She looked over at Arlen,
unable to keep the sarcasm from her voice. “It doesn’t sound like
she was much.”

“
I’m sorry,” Arlen whispered.

“
Oh, it’s not your fault,” Alice told her, and resumed her
story quickly. “We didn’t stay there long though. Some policemen
came round on an investigation – he was often being questioned. And
we moved that night without telling anybody, although somebody must
have found out because we were shot at.”

“
You’re joking!” Arlen gasped, her eyes wide.

“
No,” Alice assured her. “And the next thing I knew, he was on
his way to the airport and I was on my way to Aunt Maud’s. That’s
as much as I know about it.” She gazed around her, cynically. “He’d
probably have been safer here!” and the laugh was bitter, its
brittle sound echoing around the room like a staccato
waterfall.

A shadow
dimmed the sparkling colours around them. Arlen twisted sharply,
and Alice jumped. A pebble moved, and the girls watched, hardly
breathing, as it slowly rolled from the small, tunnel-like opening
of the cave into the room, and dropped with a sharp pistol-crack
into the cool, clear waters of the underground lake. A dark shape
emerged from the entrance, transforming before their terrified eyes
into the tall, blue-eyed figure of Robbie MacKenzie.

Arlen
just gazed at him, disbelief visible on every inch of her face as
he lowered his long frame into the hole and stared around him with
wonder in his expression.

“
Hey, this is great!” he said as a greeting, his voice loud and
alien in the large room. The sound seemed to bounce in rejected
echoes off the glistening spears that hung from the roof, lost and
whirling around the walls and the twins until it was sucked into
nothing by the huge bright skylight above. “What is this
place?”

Alice bit
her lip nervously. Arlen’s first reaction had been stunned
disbelief, but now she was angry. Cold and fierce, her face was as
hard as the rocks surrounding them, her eyes stony and strangely
glittering in the reflected, dancing light of her beloved granite
icicles.

“
What are you doing here?” she demanded, and her tone was
unforgiving.

“
I – I don’t know,” he seemed a little taken aback. “I was just
exploring the beach, looking for caves. You know, just regular
holiday stuff. You don’t get too many caves in London.” He sounded
almost apologetic. Alice couldn’t help but feel sorry for
him.

“
But what brought you here?” she asked gently, painfully aware
of Arlen’s furious look.

“
I’m not sure,” he shrugged. “I was just walking down the beach
– you know, looking around – and then I saw a light in the cliff.
And when I climbed up to examine it, I found this crevice in the
wall and I crawled through and – here I am,” he finished, a little
lamely. He didn’t know why Arlen seemed so upset. Anyone would
think he had committed a crime.

Arlen was silent and stiff, although her heart bled with an
intense, savage fury. How dare he. How
dare
he. This was
her
place.
Hers
. No one had set foot here but she
for who knew how many years. She had found it, she had claimed it,
she had
invited
Alice to it, and now –

The red
waves rose and bubbled before her eyes and she shot forward
suddenly with a strange, bitter cry, until Robbie thought that she
would run full tilt into him. But she swerved as she reached him,
and disappeared through the small hole as though she had been
sucked through it.

“
What’s with her?” Robbie asked, confused. “Do I look that
bad?”

But
Alice, with a fleeting, exasperated glance at him, was
gone.

“
Hey, it was a joke!” Robbie called back, racing after her. He
slipped through the crevice as quickly as was possible for his
long, lanky frame, and followed Alice’s path up the shadowy
cliff.

The scene
outside had darkened considerably, and the sky was the thick, soupy
colour of oil. Robbie looked up, disturbed. Heavy and brooding, it
seemed to be waiting for something, secretly watching from beneath
its forbidding brow of black clouds.

Arlen was stalking steadily ahead of them, her footsteps firm
and determined on the wet, sandy rock. She did not notice the path
her feet took, or the way the soft tongues of water lapped
seductively at the shore below her. All she could think about was
the intrusion. “How
dare
he,” she muttered again to herself,
savagely.

Her anger
swelled as Robbie’s cheerful voice echoed in her mind like a broken
record, and the wind seemed to hear her rage and chuckled
delightedly, surging around her as if singing the sound of her
fury.

“
Arlen, wait!”

The
voices came from behind her, and she whipped around suddenly, her
hair flying in the gale, dark strands biting at her face and her
eyes black with the glare of her anger. She could see Alice, moving
as fast as she dared along the narrow channel of stone, and Robbie
behind her – Robbie, who had invaded.

Around
her the winds soared and sang in a mighty crescendo, and the waves
rose and roared as if in chorus, and all she could remember were
Robbie’s blue eyes as he had entered the cave.

“
What is she doing?” Alice cried, terrified, as she watched
Arlen stand still and upright on the edge of the cliff, the gale
sweeping around her in a scream, although she seemed not to notice
it. The waves below were growing more and more agitated in the
storm, hurling against the cliffside, higher and higher, and the
rain spattered in stinging pellets on their faces. Alice was
speeding, half sliding as she scrambled up the cliff path, which
shone in the dark damp like polished marble, her sandy footsteps
swallowed quickly by the tongues of cold, white foam that steadily
rose as the waves grew higher. She had to reach Arlen before –
before –