Chapter 7 #2
Daisy lifted the cover off the plate and discovered exactly what she had wished for, still hot, as was the tea under its cosy.
As she ate, she pondered the situation, but she could think of no solution short of having Constable Puckle lock Peter Anstruther up in his “wash’se” until the sailor’s justifiable wrath cooled.
After lunch, the sun still shone but a cool breeze had sprung up. Daisy, quite restored after a peaceful morning in a deck-chair in the garden, decided the weather was perfect for a walk up the cliff to show Alec the view.
“Let’s take a picnic tea,” Alec proposed. “I brought a knapsack just in case.”
“Oh yes,” said Deva. “Let’s go down that path I found, the one down the cliff to the secret cove, and eat our picnic there.”
“The tide is still quite high,” Belinda objected. “The cove’s prob’ly under water.”
“The tide is going out,” Deva pointed out. “By the time we get there, there may be sand. We could go down the path anyway, to see, couldn’t we, Mr. Fletcher?”
Alec cocked an eyebrow at Daisy, who explained. “I didn’t want to try it without you, darling, but it might be fun to explore.”
“Down a cliff? Don’t forget we’d have to climb up again.” He cast a meaningful glance at her midriff.
“We wouldn’t have to race back up. I’d take it easy.”
“Well, let’s go up the track, anyway. I’ll take a dekko at this famous path.”
Mrs. Anstruther packed a picnic tea into Alec’s knapsack and they set off up the hill. The girls were quite accustomed to long walks by now, and sped ahead.
At the top, the south-west wind was boisterous.
Daisy had to hold down her skirt, and as soon as they reached the summit her hat blew off, though Alec somehow kept his cap on his head.
The girls—Daisy had allowed them to go bare-headed—chased the hat and caught it when its erratic progress halted in a tangle of heather.
Daisy decided to leave it near the path with a stone to hold it down.
“I hope the sheep won’t eat it,” said Deva with a giggle.
“I hope Sid won’t come along and think it’s been thrown away,” Belinda worried. “But he’d give it back to you, Mummy, if we told him.”
“I know he would, darling.” Daisy enjoyed the feeling of the wind tossing her shingled curls, though she knew she would pay for hatlessness with a new crop of freckles. She turned to Alec. “Well, what do you think?”
He eyed her with an admiring grin. “I always did like the informal look.”
“I meant the view.”
“That’s beautiful, too.”
They stood arm-in-arm, gazing out to sea.
Even from their height, the Channel looked rough, the great rollers white-capped as far as they could see.
Fishing boats bobbed in the middle distance, and farther out a majestic liner ploughed its way through the swells, but the wind seemed to have dissuaded the small yachts from leaving the inlet.
Seagulls hung in the air, the “rolling level underneath them
steady air,” Daisy said with a vague memory of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem, though that, she rather thought, was about a singular falcon, not plural gulls.
Walking on, Daisy and Alec stopped now and then to contemplate a particularly fine vista of the rocky coastline. At one high point they could see for miles inland, as far as what Alec claimed was Dartmoor in the hazy distance.
The girls had run ahead, with strict instructions to stay away from the edge. They came dashing back to announce that they had found Deva’s path down the cliff.
Alec’s stride lengthened. Pleased to see his enthusiasm, Daisy didn’t try to keep up, saving her energy for a possible climb to come. When she joined Bel and Deva at the top of the path, Alec was already past the first switchback, his hand shading his eyes as he surveyed the rest of the way down.
“Mr. Fletcher said to stay here till he says it’s all right to come.”
“And then go carefully. No rushing,” Belinda reminded her friend.
At that moment, Alec looked up and waved. Bel and Deva both immediately set foot on the path side by side. They looked at each other.
“I found it,” said Deva.
Bel nodded reluctantly. “All right, you can go first. I’ll help Mummy at the difficult bits.”
“Gosh, thanks, darling,” said Daisy, feeling a hundred years old.
But perhaps it wasn’t her age that prompted such solicitude.
Officially Bel hadn’t been told yet that there was a baby on the way, but she was a bright child quite capable of putting two and two together.
Children today seemed to know far more of such matters than they had in Daisy’s youth.
Deva continued downward at a prudent pace. Bel followed her, glancing back now and then to say anxiously, “Are you all right, Mummy?”
“So far, so good.” The first part was easy, though rather steep, but
soon the way turned rough and rocky. The return journey was going to be quite a toil.
The almost sheer drop to Daisy’s left was sometimes separated from the path by a rim of rock or a few tussocks of grass, sometimes by nothing at all.
She averted her gaze, keeping it firmly fixed on the next couple of yards her feet had to cross.
At least they were not buffeted by the wind.
Some trick of conformation of cliff and headland sheltered them, and the sun felt warm.
They reached Alec. “I can’t see sand at the bottom, if there is any,” he reported, “but there are some flat rocks down there we can sit on for our picnic. They should be sheltered from the wind, and with the tide ebbing we needn’t worry about being stranded.
How are you doing, love? You don’t think it will be too much for you going back up? ”
With the girls’ pleading looks upon her, and Alec’s obvious lust for exploration, Daisy would have felt a monster if she had doubted aloud her ability to prance back up the cliff like a mountain goat. “I’ll manage very well,” she said, “as long as I’m not rushed.”
As they went on down, they came to a place where the path narrowed alarmingly in bypassing a large boulder. On the sea side, a few clumps of pink-flowered thrift clung to the top of a steep slope of scree.
Alec turned his face to the rock and worked his way past crabwise.
“It’s not difficult. There’s all sorts of little knobs and cracks you can grip if you need to,” he encouraged Deva. She and Belinda followed without a quiver and passed him.
Daisy, who had been certain her pregnancy barely showed, now felt as if she protruded at least a foot in front.
She must not show the white feather, she admonished herself, especially in front of Belinda, whose grandmother would have forbidden this adventure on the grounds that only boys climb cliffs.
“Hm,” said Alec, frowning, “maybe I’d better call the girls back. I’d forgotten the extra inches around your middle.”
“Darling, how rude! I’m not too wide yet.” She edged around the boulder, finding plenty of finger-holds but not really needing them. “See?”
He grinned at her. “Another month and we’d have had to leave you behind up there.”
“Another month and I wouldn’t have made it to the top in the first place.”
“Not too much farther.”
The path grew easier from there on, and the girls went on ahead.
Soon they called back that they could see sand below, and then they disappeared among the tumble of rocks, all shapes and sizes, at the base of the cliff.
Waves dashed against the headlands in fountains of spume, but their force seemed to be spent before they rolled into the sheltered cove.
Belinda briefly reappeared. “Mummy, there’s the absolutely best rock pool ever, with amenomes and gobies and a starfish!” She had to shout to make herself heard against the muted roar of the sea. “Come and see. Come and see, Daddy.”
“I’m going to find a good picnic place first,” Alec called back. “This knapsack is getting heavier and heavier.”
“That’s the Thermos flask of tea,” said Daisy. “Not to mention the lemon squash for the girls.”
“I won’t mention it. I just want to put it down.” He picked his way across and between the rocks towards the small beach they had spotted from above.
Daisy scrambled over to join Bel and Deva. She found them arguing over whether a tiny transparent creature with blue and orange stripes could possibly be a shrimp.
“Shrimps are pink,” Deva said dogmatically.
“Not until they’re cooked, are they, Mummy?”
No more than Deva had Daisy ever seen an uncooked shrimp. “I have no idea,” she admitted.
“If we catch one, can we take it home and cook it?”
That was an easy question. “No. Leave the poor things be. What a beautiful pool!”
“Three kinds of seaweed,” said Deva, as proud as if she’d done the decorating herself. “This pink ferny one, and the green ribbons,
and this green stuff like moss. Touch it, Mrs. Fletcher, it’s soft and silky.”
To Daisy’s relief, before she had to decide whether to lower herself to her knees to touch something that looked to her unpleasantly squishy, Alec appeared around a huge rock and called to her.
“Daisy, would you come here a minute? Come and tell me what you think of the spot I’ve found.” He was too far off for her to make out his expression, but his voice sounded strained.
The girls didn’t notice. Daisy left them trying to catch in their bare hands the little finny fish that darted from nook to cranny among the pebbles and fronds of seaweed.
“What’s wrong?” she asked as she joined Alec.
His face was set. “I saw a shoe sticking up above a rock, at an odd angle. I went closer and saw an ankle. The foot is still in the shoe. I must go and look, but I want you to keep the girls away, so that they don’t follow me.”
Feeling ill, Daisy sat down suddenly on a nearby rock. “Oh darling, not a … ! I suppose some poor soul fell overboard, or drowned while swimming, and was washed up by the waves.”
“It’s just possible someone stumbled among the rocks and knocked himself unconscious. I must go and look.”
“Yes, of course. I’ll stop them if they come this way.”
Alec was not gone long. He returned tight-lipped and rather pale. Daisy tried not to wonder what could make an experienced CID detective turn pale. A sea-bloated body chewed by fish?
“Dead,” he said. “I can’t be sure but I think it’s that chap from the inn, the landlord.”
“Oh no!” Daisy exclaimed, aghast. “Not George Enderby!”