Mrs Flannagan's Trumpet Read online

  ‘And Mr Ted Reade’—the constable stressed the mister—‘Is he a friend of your grandfather’s’?’

  He had to be careful here, so he said, ‘I…I don’t think so, not a close friend, but he knows him. Mr Kemp, that’s me grandma’s nephew, he goes out fishing in Mr Reade’s boat and others, and he hasn’t come back the night either so I just wondered if, well’—his voice trailed away as he ended—‘if they’d all gone together.’

  ‘Come on!’

  The constable now walked slowly away along the waterfront, then turned up a side street, before stopping at the third house and saying, ‘Well, go on, you’d better knock him up, hadn’t you?’

  Eddie paused for a moment before knocking on the door. There was no answer and he was about to knock again when the constable, leaning forward, gave three thumps on the panel with his doubled up fist.

  There now came the sounds of commotion from inside the house and within a few seconds the door was opened to show Mr Reade standing in long woollen linings and a short sleeved woollen vest. He was a medium sized man with broad shoulders, a clean-shaven squarish face, and a shock of grizzled brown and grey hair. He looked first at the policeman then at Eddie, then back at the policeman and said, ‘Aye, and what’s this, may I ask?’

  ‘Aye, you may, Ted, you may. Well, it’s like this. This young fellow here is lookin’ for his granda—so he tells me—an’ he wonders if you’ve got him inside.’

  Eddie cast an apprehensive glance between the policeman and Mr Reade. It was evident that they were well known to each other and that the policeman seemed to be enjoying himself.

  ‘What the hell’s this! What you up to?’ Mr Reade was nodding towards the policeman now. ‘Lookin’ for his granda! I’ve never set eyes on the youngster in me life afore.’

  ‘Well, he seems to know you, Ted, he was makin’ straight for your house, so he tells me.’

  ‘Who are you, anyway?’ As he spoke Mr Reade stepped back into the passage and, lifting a coat from a peg on the wall, he slipped his arms into it as he muttered, ‘Comin’ here this time of the night…what’s your name?’

  ‘Me name’s Eddie Morley and me granda’s Captain Flannagan from Rock End.’

  Now Mr Reade’s eyes were stretched wide. ‘Captain Flannagan? Well, I know Captain Flannagan, but what do you think he’d be doin’ in my house at this time of night? Nobody visits anybody in the middle of the night unless they’re up to something, and me, I’m a law-abidin’ citizen.’ He now raised his head and nodded it emphatically towards the policeman.

  ‘Well, I just thought…I’ve been to Captain Morgan’s and he wasn’t there, an’ I wondered if you’d seen him about.’

  ‘Seen him? Of course, I’ve seen him about, I see him about most days because where there’s boats you’ll see the captain. But thinkin’ on’t, I haven’t clapped eyes on him for the past few days.’

  ‘He’s been in bed with a cold, but…but he came down yesterday to see…well, he said he was goin’ to see Captain Morgan about making arrangements for the annual dinner but as I said he mustn’t have gone there…Me granny’s worried.’

  ‘Well, lad, I can’t help you. An’ I’m still puzzled to know why you made for here at this hour.’

  ‘Well, I thought if your boat was out…well, he could have taken a trip with you, he goes out fishin’ at times.’

  ‘Well, he doesn’t go out fishin’ with me, lad.’ Again Mr Reade jerked his head towards the policeman.

  ‘You know what I think?’

  Eddie turned and looked at the constable now. ‘I think when you get back you’ll find your granda in bed all tucked up and snorin’. It’s happenin’ all the time. Women get worried about their men and send their bairns scurrying into every pub from the docks to the pier head. Well, young fellow, I think you’d better turn yourself around and make for home, eh?

  ‘We’re sorry to have troubled you, Mr Reade.’ Again the constable stressed the mister, and Ted Reade answered, ‘Aye, I bet you are.’

  ‘Goodnight. You can go back to bed now.’

  As Eddie muttered his thanks to Mr Reade, the constable turned away and he seemed to be laughing.

  And as Mr Reade’s door closed with a thunderous bang, Eddie saw that he was indeed laughing.

  On the waterfront again, the constable stopped and, looking at Eddie, said seriously now, ‘Get back home, lad; and if your granda is there he’ll not thank you for all the nuration that’s been made about him. But on the other hand’—he paused now—‘if he hasn’t got home then the best thing your granny can do is to report the matter to the police station.’

  ‘Yes, aye, all right. Thank you…Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  On the return journey home he didn’t run, nor did he take the short cut, but he followed the road along the cliff top, and as he walked he swung his lantern from side to side, for who knew, he told himself, but that his granda had got a load on and had dropped down by the wayside and fallen asleep.

  He was still swinging the lantern when he entered the yard.

  When he opened the kitchen door his granny turned from the chair by the fire and got to her feet, and as she stared at him he shook his head.

  When she turned away and slowly sat down again, he went to her side, and, lifting up the trumpet, he spoke quietly into it. ‘He didn’t go to Captain Morgan’s, Grandma.’

  The trumpet was wrenched from his hand. ‘What?’

  He shook his head and mouthed, ‘He didn’t go there.’

  ‘Then where?’

  Again he was speaking into the trumpet. ‘I don’t know. But…but I went to Mr Reade’s, who has the boat. I thought he might have seen him or taken him out on a fishing trip, but he hadn’t seen him either.’

  She took the trumpet from his hand and let it hang slackly between her breasts; then slowly she said, ‘Never has he stayed a night away from home unless he was at sea; something has happened to him.’

  ‘No! No, Grandma!’ He shook his head. ‘He could be playing cards.’ Again the trumpet was at her ear. ‘I saw a constable and he said that when the captains got together, well, they had a sup over much and they played cards all night.’

  She took the trumpet slowly from his hand and she held it in both hers as she said, ‘He didn’t play cards, he didn’t like cards.’

  They stared at each other for some seconds before she said, ‘You must be very tired, go on to bed.’

  ‘No, no, I wouldn’t sleep. I’ll lie on there’—he pointed to the settle—‘until it’s dawn and then I’ll go out and look again. You…you go on to bed.’ He hadn’t spoken into the trumpet but she seemed to understand what he had said, for now she answered, ‘I couldn’t sleep. But if anything has happened to your granda, that’s all I’ll ever want to do, go to sleep, go into the long sleep.’

  When she turned her head from him he went to the settle and, sitting down, took off his boots; and as he went to lie down he wondered if he should tell her about his grandfather going to see Hal Kemp. But he resisted the urge because, he admitted to himself, he was afraid of her reactions—he could hear her bawling, ‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’ What he did say was, ‘Did Penny go to bed, Granny?’

  She shook her head, then pointed to a door leading out of the kitchen, which was where Daisy slept, and she said, ‘They’re both in there, she wouldn’t go upstairs alone.’

  He nodded at her; then lay down.

  ‘Wake up, Eddie.’

  Eddie! Eddie! Eddie! Eddie! Eddie! The sea was roaring through his head; he was drowning; he was struggling with someone; he was going to die, like his grandfather had died; and there was that fellow in the peaked cap again, dancing round him.

  ‘Wake up, Eddie!’

  When he sat bolt upright on the settle his grandmother stepped quickly back, exclaiming, ‘That’s it, scald me now!’

  ‘Oh! Oh, Gran!’ He was gasping as if he were still in the water. He must have been dreaming; but what a dream! He�
�d dreamt he was drowning, like his grandfather had drowned. Why…why should he dream that?…And that fellow again.

  ‘Here, drink this, it’s daylight.’ As he took the mug of tea from his grandmother’s hands, she said, ‘What is it, what’s the matter? You’re shivering. Are you cold?’

  He shook his head. He couldn’t be bothered to reach for the trumpet and say he’d had another sort of nightmare. He took two or three gulps at the hot tea, then swung his feet down to the floor and his head drooped onto his chest for a moment. Oh Lord, but he felt tired. He couldn’t remember ever feeling so tired.

  ‘What?’ He looked up at his grandmother.

  ‘Will you go out and look again? If there’s no sign of him I’m going into the town.’

  ‘Yes, Grandma.’ He rose to his feet.

  ‘It’s a rough morning; it’s raining and the wind’s blowing. The weather’s coming in with the tide. There’s an oilskin in the cupboard in the hall, put it on.’

  He turned from her and went out of the kitchen and into the hall, and as he got into the stiff oilskins he thought, Where do I start? Where do I look? It would be much better if she went straight to the police station now.

  As he entered the kitchen again, Daisy was coming out of her room; she was yawning widely and her eyes were full of sleep, but on the sight of him, she said, ‘You didn’t find him then?’ And when he shook his head, she said, ‘It’s as the missis says, there’s something fishy afoot and I’d like to bet me bottom dollar Mr Hal’s in it.’

  The mention of Hal Kemp’s name made Eddie pause as he was going out of the back door. Should he tell his grandmother where his granda had gone yesterday afternoon and put up with her reactions? It was a strain to talk to her about anything and at the moment he certainly didn’t feel up to it, he was so blooming tired. He would tell her when he came back. By then the wind would likely have blown the cobwebs out of his mind, but at the moment he didn’t seem able to think clearly.

  The rain wasn’t heavy but the wind was high and blowing in from the sea and it carried the mournful sound of a ship’s horn to him. He stood peering over the wet grass and down the slope towards the edge of the cliff. His grandfather couldn’t have fallen over. No, of course not. He tossed his head at the mere idea. What would make his grandfather walk along that slope when he was always warning him and Penny to be careful of it? But further along the cliff top where the road almost touched the edge. What about there?

  He turned his steps in the direction by which he had come home a few hours earlier, and now he walked as near the edge of the cliff as he considered safe. Every now and again he stopped and looked over, but there was no sign of a huddled form lying on the sands, or among the rocks, but from this point his view of the coastline, to the far left of him, was interrupted by the cliff jutting out towards the sea.

  It was when he was about to turn towards home again that his attention was caught by a boat lying some way offshore. It wasn’t the fact of the boat alone that made him continue to stare at it, because it was no unusual sight to see boats dotted here and there far out on the waters doing a bit of inshore fishing, but there was a sculler bobbing up and down near this boat and there were men seemingly busy on the deck of the boat and in the sculler too.

  He rubbed the rain from his eyes, narrowed them and strained his gaze forward. They were dropping a big package into the sculler. Almost immediately the sculler was being rowed away from the boat, and towards…where? From where he was standing he judged that the sculler was making for the cove below the house, the cove that seemed to belong to the house; it was the only sheltered cove on this stretch. He had only once been round there and he didn’t like it; he’d had to drop down over the groyne that Daisy had told him about and he had thought the place had an awesome feeling.

  Halfway down the cliffs the rocks jutted well out from the rest of the coastline. Yet the beach itself was narrow.

  The foot of the rocks had been scalloped here and there into small caves, all shallow with the exception of one. This one he had stood inside and looked upwards to where a cleft had split the rock, probably halfway up the cliff face, for it showed a thread of daylight. A watermark running round the inside of the cave indicated that the tide reached almost up to his own head and he judged that it was from here the sound of the sea carried into the house because it must be almost in a straight line with it.

  Had his grandfather been fishing all night after all and was coming home the shortest way? Eeh! He wouldn’t like to be him when he entered the house, his granny would eat him alive.

  He was now running back along the cliff path, but when it veered away from the edge and dropped into the little valley he left and continued along the cliff where the land was still flat. That was until he saw the sculler being beached.

  Coming to an abrupt stop, he wiped the rain from his face and stood peering down towards the beach. Ahead of him was a windswept stunted bush; it was situated about a hundred yards from where the cliff top began to slope steeply away. When he reached the bush he knelt down onto the sodden grass and, keeping his head low and close to the twisted branches, he peered forward. As he did so his breath caught in his throat and he seemed to hold it there as he watched two men lifting the package from the sculler. For what he had imagined to be a package was a man, a man all limp and dangling.

  He couldn’t make out, from this distance, and because of the rain, if the man had white hair and a beard, but whom he did make out and recognise was one of the men.

  They had beached the sculler well up the little cove because the tide was running in swiftly, and within seconds of lifting the burden from it they disappeared from his view. But they seemed no sooner gone than they were back, and it was something about the way the second man pushed the boat off and jumped in that confirmed Eddie’s belief that this man was Hal Kemp.

  What must he do?

  Go back to the house and tell his granny? But they couldn’t get into the cove from the beach…and he couldn’t swim round that groyne, he could hardly swim at all. Half a dozen breaststrokes and he was finished. All that water in the river and he had never learnt to swim properly. He shook his head at himself.

  Should he dash back into the town?

  No, it was too far, for by the time he got there and they got a boat out the cave would be full.

  He stayed no longer to think, but found himself racing inland towards the house.

  When he reached the yard he skidded on the stones and nearly fell onto his face, and then thrusting open the top half of the kitchen door he grappled with the latch on the lower half, then tumbled into the kitchen.

  For a moment he stood gasping and unable to speak as he looked from his granny to the man standing near the table. He looked at him as if he were an apparition, a good apparition, for it was Mr Reade.

  ‘What is it, boy? What is it?’ His grandmother had him by the shoulders, and he gulped in his throat and, thrusting his arm back to the kitchen door, he stabbed his finger towards it before he managed to bring out, ‘A man! They’ve dumped a man in the cove just below. They…they brought him in a sculler…two men…from a bigger boat…’

  ‘Get your breath, lad. Take it easy.’ It was Mr Reade who now had hold of his shoulder. ‘You say they’ve dumped somebody in the cove? Did you see who it was?’

  ‘Aye. Well, I’m not sure. I don’t know who the man was that they dumped. It might be—’ He glanced at his grandmother, then turned his face to the side as he added, ‘Me granda, but I think I recognised one of the men in the sculler. It was Hal Kemp. You know, who lives here. And I know me granda went looking for him yesterday because of something I told him about Hal Kemp. I found out he was up to something with the Belgian man.’

  When his granny pulled him round to face her and said, ‘You think it’s your granda down there, and Hal Kemp dumped him?’ he didn’t at first question why she should have apparently heard him.

  ‘Yes, Grandma.’

  ‘My God! But why? Why?…
The tide…the tide’s in.’

  He watched her as she pressed her fingers tightly over her mouth then cupped her face with her two hands. When she looked towards Ted Reade he shook his head and said, ‘I couldn’t get a boat round there in time, Maggie; if he’s out helpless he could be drowned. The only way is down the cliff. Have you any rope, long rope, strong?’

  He was looking at Eddie now, but before Eddie could answer his granny said, ‘There’s no rope long enough and there’s no stay on that slope to hold a rope.’ She now closed her eyes tightly for a moment as she gripped her brow with one hand. Then she looked from one to the other and said, ‘What must be, must be. Come this way, both of you.’

  She was running now, up the kitchen and across the hall, but as she went to mount the stairs she turned her head to where Daisy was coming out of the dining room and she cried at her, ‘If…if anybody comes, Hal Kemp or anybody, say I’m in me bed, bad.’

  ‘In your bed bad, missis?’

  ‘Yes, girl, just that, in me bed bad. Don’t forget, I’m in me bed bad and I can’t see anybody.’ And on this she ran up the stairs as if the years had fallen from her and she was a young woman once more.

  By the time he entered his granny’s bedroom, closely followed by Mr Reade, it seemed to Eddie that his mind had ceased to function, except that it told him that perhaps he was still in the nightmare, because if he wasn’t mistaken his granny had certainly heard what he had said when he had his face turned from her; and she had also heard Daisy right across the hall. But now she was turning towards Mr Reade and, her words tumbling over each other, she said, ‘Ted, swear to me here and now on this.’ Reaching out she grabbed a Bible from the bedside table and thrust it into his hand. ‘Swear to me, what you’re going to see will be kept to yourself. No matter what happens it will be kept to yourself.’

  ‘Well, if you want it that way, Maggie, I’ll swear, but you needn’t bid me swear on the Bible. I’ve trusted you afore this so I think you can trust me now.’