'Compton has been one of Britain's most original and consistent novelists since the late Sixties, but he has never received the attention he deserves...Compton's prose is fine-tuned, his human insights sharp, and his narrative pace filled with the weird synchronicities and dissonances of how violent things usually happen' INDEPENDENT
Release date:
May 19, 2022
Publisher:
Orion
Print pages:
208
* BingeBooks earns revenue from qualifying purchases as an Amazon Associate as well as from other retail partners.
‘I do not believe,’ said Lucy Anderson, married to Ben at last, ‘that you can go anywhere or do anything without murder immediately rearing its dreary head.’
‘I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration, love.’
‘Well, I don’t.’ She turned from the yacht’s rail and pinned him down. ‘In the last three years, Ben, how many murders?’
He counted humbly on his fingers.
‘Four,’ he said. Then eagerly—‘But before that I had years and years of no murders at all.’
‘Three years, four murders … and not even all of them in the same place so that we could simply move away from the affected area.’
Ben thought of something.
‘But I wasn’t married then,’ he said.
‘And?’
‘Well, I am married now. Things will be different now. I promise you.’
She squinted at him, the evening sunlight in her eyes. The sun was setting behind the hill up above the town. The fronts of the gaudy little houses were in deep shadow.
‘You see,’ he explained, ‘before I met you I spent quite a lot of my time being bored. When a crime of some kind turned up I was only too glad to go chasing off after it.’
‘And now that we’re married you won’t ever be bored again?’
‘I don’t expect so.’
‘What a beautiful view of marriage you must have, darling.’
‘No, honestly, Lucy, the only crimes we’ll have to do with now will be in my books.’
She was silent for a moment, her silence expressing incredulity. They leaned beside each other and stared down into the water, their elbows touching. The water was clear five feet down to the bottom, seaweed slowly waving, the works of an old broken wireless, and on the surface the empty sardine tin that Lucy had thrown out of the galley porthole more than five minutes before. The tide had an hour to go to high and was slackening. It was early summer, the small steep town behind them already packed and sweating. What with fitting out Iolanthe and getting away from London the real start of their honeymoon had been delayed until that evening when they were setting off for France. Not that they really needed a honeymoon, not after knowing each other for so long.
‘What you really mean,’ said Lucy, ‘is that now we’re married even if someone came and waggled a murder under your nose you’d simply look the other way?’
‘Of course I would. Unless it gave me a good plot. … Then perhaps I might—but even then only in a distant, thoroughly literary manner.’
Lucy moved closer, and put her arm round his shoulders.
‘I don’t believe it.’ She blew in his ear.
‘It’s true. It must be to do with maturity or something. I’ve grown out of it. I just wouldn’t be interested. In fact, I’d be actively anti-interested.’
‘You’re sweet.’
‘Especially now we’re on our honeymoon.’
‘You’re still sweet.’
‘Sweet things,’ he said, ‘are bad for you. Fattening. And they rot your teeth.’
They were both admittedly being twee. But they were newlyweds, and newlyweds when alone together seem to have an unselfconscious freedom to react in ways that under different circumstances would make them be sick on the floor.
‘No murder then?’ said Lucy.
‘No murder.’ He looked for supporting evidence. ‘It’s my being a crime writer that does it. Once we’re in France there’ll be no reason for me to become involved, even if there is a murder. In France nobody’ll have the faintest idea who I am. Or what.’
‘Even in England nobody ever knows who you are,’ said Lucy. ‘Not till you tell them.’
‘I can’t think why I ever married you.’
‘Besides’—she was suddenly serious—‘I thought one of the main points of our getting married was that you should prove to be fattening.’
This brought him up short. She was quite right—this had been in both their minds. He tried to imagine her with a baby. He tried to imagine himself with a baby. … Perhaps they would call it Hawley Harvey, after Dr. Crippen.
‘Once we have a family,’ he said, ‘dabbling in real murders will be right out of the question. I shall have to be at it day and night churning out the synthetic ones so as to be able to feed us all.’
‘It hasn’t happened yet, love. So you do have a few months’ more freedom.’
‘During which time we will be cruising down the coast of France to Spain and back again. Well out of the way of itinerant murderers.’
‘I do hope you’re right, darling. After last time I never want to see a policeman or a gun or a corpse ever again.’
Which was fair enough.
‘I’ve promised, Lucy. You ought to know by now that I always keep my promises.’
Their insistence was all the more forced since they both knew somewhere inside themselves that they were wasting their time, their breath, and their promises. They were both of them fated to be involved in murders. It was almost as if they had been created for no other purpose than to be involved in murders. Their married life, blissfully happy, stretched in front of them punctuated sharply at least once a year by an out-and-out, gun-and-corpse-and-policeman murder. They leaned together on the rail and pretended not to notice.
Iolanthe lay in Fowey harbour. The water was still, the reflection of her long blue hull distorted only slightly in the last of the slow swell that rolled imperturbably in from the sea beyond the harbour mouth. On the anchorage set aside for visitors there were five other boats, their bows turned to the flooding tide, their bow ropes beginning to slacken as high water approached. There was a tubby red-sailed yawl in from Mevagissy. There were two small cutters, both owned by bearded single-handers who ignored the outside world—and each other—and spent their entire time caulking seams that were already caulked and scraping down spars that didn’t need it. There was a thoroughly ramshackle motor sailer made from a converted ship’s lifeboat. And there was a newish motor cruiser that looked like a cocktail cabinet. None of them was as big as Iolanthe, and in Ben’s eyes none was as beautiful.
Iolanthe had been a motor fishing vessel. Sixty foot long, she was thick and sensible, with a broad beam, a high bow, and enough sheer to make her seem slimmer than she actually was. She carried steadying sail and was powered by two big diesels. She had three double cabins, a large saloon, a very convenient galley, bathroom and lavatory. She had been fitted with refinements like a power-operated anchor winch, so that it was feasible for Ben and Lucy to think of handling her on their own. She was Ben’s joy. Lucy, till six months ago a very city person, was more doubtful. Ben also had been a city person, but being a man, he said, he was naturally more adaptable. He had read several of the right books, and certainly had managed the cruise down the coast from London without any major crisis.
If one overlooked not knowing about the Portland Race so that all their second best china had been broken in Iolanthe’s wild and unexpected plunging.
Across on the cocktail cabinet Ben noticed signs of activity. She began to rock on the water as if someone was throwing heavy suitcases about inside. A hand came from a porthole and emptied coffee grounds. Skylights were opened and closed while voices argued beneath them. The boat rocked some more. Finally the main hatch was slid back and Mr. Sveringen heaved himself out into the cockpit. He began taking down the blue awning with the scalloped edge that was supported on white metal rods above the stern section of the boat. Mr. Sveringen had the misfortune to be immensely fat. Also his three companions for some reason called him ‘Legs’. Legs Sveringen. His fatness might have made him sinister, while his nickname might have helped him to be comic. In fact he was neither. He was wheezing, and cockney, and slightly pitiable.
Inevitably Legs Sveringen got into trouble with the scalloped awning and had to be helped. It was Mrs. Jones who came to help him. She disentangled the grunting fat man, folded the awning as precisely as an army blanket, and stowed it neatly in a locker under one of the cockpit seats. She then showed Legs how to demount the white metal rods and stow them as well. Leaving him busy with a job he couldn’t really make a mess of she unhitched the dinghy from astern and led it forward up the side of the boat. If anybody should have been called ‘Legs’ it was Mrs. Jones. She hauled the dinghy on board—it was fibre-glass and hardly weighed more than a suet pudding.
‘Shouldn’t we do that?’ Lucy said suddenly, making Ben jump.
‘Get our dinghy up on deck? I don’t see why. It’s going to be calm all the way over. It’d only be a blasted nuisance when we reach the other side tired out and wanting to go ashore.’
‘You were watching so closely I thought you must be hoping to learn something.’ Cold.
‘Not my type, darling.’ Jolly. ‘You know I don’t like the skinny ones.’
Mrs. Jones tied the dinghy down on the cocktail cabinet’s foredeck. She looked across at Iolanthe, saw she was being watched, and waved.
‘Going out on the top of the tide,’ she shouted.
‘So are we,’ shouted Ben.
‘That’s about now, isn’t it?’
‘Another three-quarters of an hour.’
‘Near enough.’
Lucy nudged Ben.
‘D’you suppose she’s the one who’s in charge? I’d have thought it’d be the yachty one.’
‘You mean Duke?’ Ben had a memory for names. ‘He’s not yachty. I’d like to bet you he’s an out of work actor. Whiskers and all.’
‘I wonder what his real name is. Duke something, or something Duke. … It was a funny sort of introduction.’
‘A member of the impoverished nobility, I thought. Modestly travelling incognito.’
‘I don’t think you liked him, Ben.’
Ben didn’t answer. Lucy was right—he hadn’t liked the man introduced to them that morning as Duke. Something about his eyes, perhaps. … Legs Sveringen had been joined in the cockpit by Harry Wevil, who brought with him a whiskey bottle and a glass. Sveringen made an elaborate pantomime of refusing. Nothing but a high muddled murmur reached Ben and Lucy, but Harry quickly gave up and went below. Back to Duke, who they knew was less fussy about drinking out of hours. The time was five o’clock.
Ben had met the four from the cocktail cabinet on shore earlier that day. He had been waiting outside the butcher for Lucy and they had been on their way from the railway station. Mr. Sveringen had stopped and asked him the way to the Town Quay. Mrs. Jones had pulled at the luggage he carried, saying she remembered perfectly well and it was just along on the right. Mr. Sveringen had immediately put down the suitcase and sat upon it. The road from the station was long, and too steep for his perspiring, overloaded body. They had conversed. Ben had told him the Town Quay was just along on the left. Lucy had come out of the shop. Introductions had been made. Mr. and Mrs. Ben Anderson—Mrs. Jones, Mr. Sveringen, Mr. Wevil, and Duke. It emerged that both parties were hoping to cross to France that evening. There was however no risk of them having to travel together since the cocktail cabinet cruised—according to Mrs. Jones—at fourteen knots. Against Iolanthe’s more dignified nine. So that they could afford to be civil to each other now, knowing that they were very soon to part.
They walked together slowly down to the Town Quay. Emerging from the shadows of the narrow street the Quay seemed as bright as a film set. And the usual film set extras lounging about in Cornish fishermen costumes and eager tourist shorts. Mrs. Jones deported herself with careful grace, as if afraid that the director might have her in camera when she wasn’t prepared.
‘That’s our ship,’ said Harry Wevil. ‘Isn’t she a beauty?’
‘She’s very shiny,’ Ben admitted, determined to be honest.
‘Everybody falls in love with her,’ Harry said. ‘I reckon she’s like a poem in plastic.’
He was small, and exquisitely dressed. His voice was almost American, but not quite. His spectacles, however, were wholly transatlantic.
‘She’s a Falmouth boat,’ said Mrs. Jones. ‘Duke and I brought her up last week-end. Harry and Legs have jobs in London and couldn’t get away.’
‘I deals in copper,’ said Legs, with a sad sigh. ‘Sheet or scrap. Cash paid. Any amount. Alley off the Battersea Park road.’
Ben decided that Legs Sveringen was the money behind the expedition. There had to be some reason why the others needed him. But if Mr. Sveringen was the money, it was Mrs. Jones who was most certainly the brains.
‘We leave on the evening tide,’ she said. ‘There’s a lot of stocking up to be done. You will excuse us?’
She climbed competently out across the moored rowboats to where their own dinghy lay. In her tight pink trousers she was obviously of an aggressive disposition. She confirmed Ben in his long-held opinion that no really nice woman ever wears tight pink trousers. But Mrs. Jones made no attempt to be nice—she was young and female and extremely well developed, and she found niceness an irrelevant concept. And against his better judgement Ben was tempted to agree with her.
It seemed that the bewitching excellence of her body was matched by the organising excellence of her mind. Her habit was obviously to see immediately what had to be done, and then do it. The men of her party stood on the edge of the quay and fidgeted, made to feel inadequate.
‘I like a woman that’s handy,’ said Harry Wevil. ‘Don’t you?’
He meant the opposite. No man likes to be made to feel inadequate.
Mrs. Jones hauled the stern mooring into their dinghy and cast off. She began to skull round to the steps. Ben knew Harry would never have spoken like that if she had been near enough to hear him. Though the note of irony was faint, she still wouldn’t have liked it. … The tide was so low that the bottom three steps were silted up with mud. She brought the dinghy alongside without a bump and held out one hand.
‘. . .
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
