Dead Water

“Nevertheless you’re in for a shock, I promise you.”

“I expect I can take it.”

“Actually, I rather wondered if we ought to ask you.”

“It was sweet of your mama, and I’m delighted to come. Patrick, it’s wonderful to be back in England! When I saw the Battersea power station, I cried. For sheer pleasure.”

“You’ll probably roar like a bull when you see Portcarrow — and not for pleasure, either. You haven’t lost your susceptibility for places, I see.…By the way,” Patrick said after a pause, “you’ve arrived for a crisis.”

“What sort of crisis?”

“In the person of an old, old angry lady called Miss Emily Pride, who has inherited the Island from her sister (Winterbottom, deceased). She shares your views about exploiting the spring. You ought to get on like houses on fire.”

“What’s she going to do?”

“Shut up shop, unless the combined efforts of interested parties can steer her off. Everybody’s in a frightful taking-on about it. She arrives on Monday, breathing restoration and fury.”

“Like a wicked fairy godmother?”

“Very like. Probably flourishing a black umbrella and emitting sparks. She’s flying into a pretty solid wall of opposition. Of course,” Patrick said abruptly, “the whole thing has been fantastic. For some reason the initial story caught on. It was the silly season and the papers, as you may remember, played it up. Wally’s warts became big news. That led to the first lot of casual visitors. Mrs. Winterbottom’s men of business began to make interested noises, and the gold rush, to coin a phrase, set in. Since then it’s never looked back.”

They had passed through the suburbs of Dunlowman and were driving along a road that ran out towards the coast.

“It was nice getting your occasional letters,” Patrick said, presently. “Operative word, ‘occasional.’ ”

“And yours.”

“I’m glad you haven’t succumbed to the urge for black satin and menacing jewelry that seems to overtake so many girls who get jobs in France. But there’s a change, all the same.”

“You’re not going to suggest I’ve got a phony foreign accent?”

“No, indeed. You’ve got no accent at all.”

“And that, no doubt, makes the change. I expect having to speak French has cured it.”

“You must converse with Miss Pride. She is — or was, before she succeeded to the Winterbottom riches — a terrifically high-powered coach for chaps entering the Foreign Service. She’s got a network of little spokes all round her mouth from making those exacting noises that are required by the language.”

“You’ve seen her, then?”

“Once. She visited with her sister about a year ago, and left in a rage.”

“I suppose,” Je

“It’s hell,” he rejoined with surprising violence.

Je

“You appall me.”

“I thought you’d better know the worst. What’s more, there’s a Second A

“Don’t!” Je

“True, I’m afraid.”

“But Patrick — about the cures? The people that come? What happens?”

Patrick waited for a moment. He then said, in a voice that held no overtones of irony: “I suppose, you know, it’s what always happens in these cases. Failure after failure, until one thinks the whole thing is an infamous racket and is bitterly ashamed of having any part of it. And then, for no apparent reason, one — perhaps two — perhaps a few more people do exactly what the others have done but go away without their warts or their migraine or their asthma or their chronic diarrhea. Their gratitude and sheer exuberance! You can’t think what it’s like, Je

“I don’t think so. And your mother? What does she think?”

“Who knows?” Patrick said, simply. “She has a gift for detachment, my mama.”

“And Dr. Mayne?”

“Why he?” Patrick said sharply, and then: “Sorry. Why not? Bob Mayne’s nursing home is now quite large, and invariably full.”

Feeling she had blundered, Je

“With doctrinal legerdemain. No official recognition on the one hand. Proper acknowledgments in the right quarter on the other. Jolly sensible of him, in my view.”

Presently they swept up the downs that lay behind the coastline, turned into a steep lane and were, suddenly, on the cliffs above Portcarrow.

The first thing that Je

“There you have it,” Patrick said. “We may as well take the plunge.”

They did so literally, down a precipitous and narrow descent. That at least had not changed, nor at first sight had the village itself. There was the old post office shop, and, farther along, the Portcarrow Arms with a new coat of paint. “This is now referred to as the Old Part,” said Patrick. “Elsewhere there’s a rash of boarding establishments and a multiple store. Trehern, by the way, is Ye Ancient Ferryman. I’ll put you down with your suitcases at the jetty, dig him out of the pub and park the car. O.K.?”

There was nobody about down by the jetty. The incoming tide slapped quietly against wet pylons and whispered and dragged along the foreshore. The dank smell of it was pleasant and familiar. Je

Patrick returned, and with him Trehern — who was effusive in salutations and wore a peaked cap with boy-and-lobster on it.

“There’s a motor launch,” Patrick said, pointing to it, “for the peak hours. But we’ll row over, shall we?” He led the way down the jetty to where a smart dinghy was tied up. She was called, inevitably, The Pixie.

“There were lots of people in the bus,” said Je

“I expect so,” he rejoined, helping her into the dinghy. “For the Festival, you know.”

“Ar, the por souls!” Trehern ejaculated. “May the Heavenly Powers bring them release from afflictions!”