Chapter Six
Flight
Lieutenant Trewin looked very different out of uniform, an ordinary
middle-aged man in jumper and jeans. He was eyeing the lighthouse
stairs apprehensively, as did most of Priddy’s rare guests. “It’s
all right,” Priddy said. “No-one climbs that lot if they don’t have
to. There’s a couple of chairs and a table in the little porch
through there, and I’ll grab you a cuppa from the keeper’s cottage.
Won’t take five minutes.”
“Don’t worry about the tea. I do want to talk to you,
though.”
“Come on through.” Priddy led him into the glass-topped lean-to
on the leeward side, where previous and more enterprising keepers
had grown their tomatoes. Maybe he’d have a go himself. It was sad
to see the pale brown skeletons decaying in their pots, although
until now it had never struck him that way. Not that he could ever
compete with cherry tomatoes on the vine, so fresh and firm they’d
popped on his palate like grapes. What were tomatoes in French? He
wondered what name Merou would’ve made up for those, to tease him
and keep him guessing...
“Priddy?”
He
recollected himself sharply. “Sorry. Sit down, please.”
“Thanks. Is Mr Merouac still here?”
Priddy banged a palm down on the table, making Trewin jump.
Two days had passed since his picnic on the cliffs. He’d spent a
good deal of that time playing back Merou’s visit, wondering if it
loaned itself to a Sixth Sense
plot denouement. He’d forgotten about Trewin. “Of
course! You saw him too.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Merou. Merouac, I mean—you saw him, met him. Talked to
him.”
Trewin
scratched his head. “Yes, I did.”
“He isn’t here now, I’m afraid. He had some family stuff to
sort out.” Priddy paused, then added, because coming from Merou it
had sounded worldly, man-to-man, “You know how it is.”
Trewin
just looked puzzled. “I do indeed, Mr Priddy. But—”
“Oh, don’t call me that, please. Makes me think you’re talking
to my dad.”
“Should I call you Jem, then? What would you
prefer?”
Mountain king. Blue-eyes. Daisy-brained sweetheart. Never
Priddy-boy, because I’m more than that, more than the pretty boy of
Rosewarne Cove. “Just Priddy,
please.”
“All right. Listen—someone from the police will be calling to
talk to you soon, but I live just upcoast by Carn Galver, so I
thought I’d look in on you on my way home. Merouac’s definitely
gone?”
Priddy
nodded. Then he caught himself, afraid he’d dropped Merou in it. “I
know he was meant to report to Hawke Lake or something. Didn’t he
do that?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“He had to leave suddenly. It sounded like a family
emergency.”
“Priddy, there is no-one called Jacques Merouac listed as a
registered boat-keeper. Parts of the vessel that ran ashore here on
Friday have been recovered, and she’s called the
Sweet Rose, not
Lyonesse. There were five
crew on board, all still missing.”
Priddy
took this in. He tried to, at any rate. He liked Trewin. But his
words were like crows in a greenhouse, flapping impotently,
bouncing off the glass. They’d got in here by mistake. Only
parakeets would do in Priddy’s lighthouse conservatory, where he
grew tomatoes and delicious, juice-packed pommes de mer. But he had
to get a grip: most likely Trewin and his SAR crew had spent their
last two days in high winds and heavy seas, scouring the waters off
Hagerawl for the missing sailors. “What does this have to do with
Merouac?”
“I don’t know. That’s what the police will be hoping you’ll be
able to help them find out. Meantime, I’m concerned that I left you
alone with him, and I want you to be careful.”
Priddy
wished he still had the note to show Trewin. Nothing could have
been less sinister. “All right. He isn’t dangerous, you know,” he
added, unable to repress a chuckle. “He left me a
picnic.”
“A picnic?”
“Cheese and marmite sarnies and a packet of
Quavers.”
“Quavers, eh? Well, I still want you to watch out. There’s no
Jacques Merouac in the Criminal Records database,
either.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?” Priddy tried to remember the last
episode of Silent Witness
so he’d use the right term. “It means he doesn’t
have any priors.”
Trewin glanced at him in amusement. “Jacques Merouac doesn’t
have any, but it’s probably not his real name. On The Road is my generation, you know, ancient
though I am. If your friend turns up again, be nice to him by all
means, but make yourself scarce and give Hawke Lake a call as soon
as you can.”
“Okay. I’m all right, though. And I’m sure you don’t need to
worry about him.”
“We’ll have to let the police be the judge of that. Of the five
people missing, three are under eighteen, and one’s a baby. It
sounds like a family trip gone badly wrong. And speaking of
family...” Trewin stood up, fastening his coat. “It’s funny, but
thinking about Merouacs and Kerouacs made me recall reading
On The Road in school,
and being in a classroom with your dad. That’s where I know him
from.”
“Really?” This came as a relief to Priddy. Better that than
remembering the old man for some or other act of skulduggery.
“Can’t imagine old Vigo in school, somehow.”
“Well, he kept it to a minimum. Out the second he turned
sixteen. And he seemed all right from what I knew of him, did Vigo,
but... I’m not sure I’d have cared to be a child of
his.”
“What do you mean?”
“You mentioned family stuff. You said I knew how it was, and I
really do these days—got a brood of my own, more trouble than a
parcel of monkeys. The thing is that you’ve got to have a lot of
patience, and I’ve heard over the years that Vigo didn’t. That he
was a bit handy with his fists.”
“I... I don’t really remember. No more than normal.” By the
time Priddy had visited enough of his schoolfriends’ houses to work
out that what went on in his own was far from the norm, it was too
late. He’d vanished inside himself like a hermit crab into a
borrowed shell, and there he’d grown, and now the shell was part of
him, directing the coils of his growth. It was over. It was
nothing. He never gave it thought. “I’d better go now. Got some job
applications to do.”
“Looking for something permanent, are you? That’s right. I read
in the papers about what happened to you last summer, and I was
proper sorry. It’s hard for kids from homes like yours to get their
feet under them, and—”
“That was nothing to do with my home.” Priddy had to force the
words through a tightening throat. He felt sick, and he just wanted
Trewin to go away. “That was just me screwing up.”
“Agreed, to an extent. But having a dad who’d wallop you as
soon as look at you can’t have helped. Anyway, when I remembered
Vigo, and thought about you out here all on your own, I wanted to
check in on you and make sure this Merouac chap wasn’t messing you
around. You’ve got a little scar in your hairline there—is that
recent, or...”
He
extended a finger as if to touch. Priddy jerked away. He’d been
leaning casually against an old filing cabinet, which promptly
overturned, following him into a clattering heap on the
floor.
Trewin strode over to help him. Priddy scrabbled away and
sprang back to his feet. He got his balance and brushed himself
down: tried to look as though he’d been sent by someone important
to test out cabinet stability in lighthouses. That one failed to meet our stringent standards.
“Sorry! I’m fine.”
“Are you? That looked as if it hurt.”
“No, not at all.” He set the cabinet upright, smiling brightly
at Trewin. “Don’t worry about the scar. It’s an old one. I got it
falling off a horse. Here—I’ll see you out.”
“I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“You didn’t.” Priddy remembered his manners. No-one had taught
him any, but do-unto-others was the one rule that had stuck with
him from Sunday school, and if he’d been Flight Lieutenant Trewin,
he’d have liked to know he hadn’t made a wasted trip. That his
kindness was appreciated. “It was very nice of you to come here. I
will keep a lookout for Merou, and I will look after
myself.”
He
hauled open the iron door to the outside. Trewin paused in the
doorway, rain and spray from the gun-metal waves drifting in clouds
behind him. “Merou, is it?” he asked wryly. “Very well. If you see
him, mind you call. And come and see us, Priddy, when you’ve got
yourself sorted out and you feel a bit better. The Atlantic Cadets
are generally recruiting, and some of those lads find their way to
SAR in due course. We can always use people willing to chuck
themselves into the sea.”
***
Back in
his crow’s nest, Priddy washed and TCP’d his scrapes and grazes. He
wouldn’t have bothered, except that Merou wouldn’t like to see him
in a mess. For the last forty eight hours, Priddy had taken good
care of himself. He’d wanted to prove that fresh fruit and Danishes
weren’t thrown away on him—that, given a kick-start to remind him,
he could live well. He hadn’t really minded that the weather had
closed down on Hagerawl Point like a brutal hand. He’d started on
the list of winter tasks Kit’s granddad had assigned to him,
peeling old putty from the windows that let light onto the stairs,
cleaning out the debris and gunning fresh sealant into place. He’d
rust-proofed and painted the iron door, taken advantage of a lull
in the wind to run a squeegee mop over the great lantern’s glass.
He’d started on his job applications again, this time trying to
think of a career he’d like, not the path of least resistance in
Kit’s wake.
He
hadn’t got very far with that. Well, it didn’t matter now. If he
wanted, he could apparently be an Atlantic fucking Cadet. Laughter
shook him, and he screwed down the lid on the TCP bottle before it
could spill. He was sitting on the edge of the bath in the
whitewashed, stone-cold bathroom, and could just about see himself
in the mirror screwed to the wall above the sink. The top of his
dumb, curly head, anyway. He ought to have been flattered into
red-faced, stammering soup by Trewin’s suggestion. On some level he