Читать книгу Secret Water - Arthur Ransome - Страница 3

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The First Lord of the Admiralty was unpopular at Pin Mill.

“I hate him,” said Roger, sitting on the foredeck of the Goblin, with his legs dangling over the side.

“Who?” said Titty.

“The first of those lords,” said Roger.

“We all hate him,” said Titty.

John and Susan, perhaps, did not hate the First Lord in particular, but their thoughts about the Admiralty were as bitter as Roger’s.

“I don’t see the good of Daddy’s coming home,” said Bridget.

That was it. Daddy had come home and had been looking forward to a week or so of freedom before settling down to work at Shotley. The last thing Jim Brading had done before being whisked off home by an aunt (who had said that a young man with concussion would be better there than in a yacht, even if it had been turned into a hospital ship), had been to lend Daddy the Goblin. More: he had given Daddy a chart of a place, quite near by, where there were inland seas and dozens of islands. Everything had been fixed. The whole family of the Walkers were to sail round in the Goblin, to land at the place where Jim had marked a cross on the chart. Daddy and Mummy were to sleep afloat in the Goblin. The five Swallows and Sinbad the kitten were to camp ashore. They were going to do real exploring and make their own maps of those secret waters and unknown islands. Daddy, who had been looking forward to exploring as much as if he had not spent half his life at sea, had made a blank map on which their discoveries were to be put down. He had sent to the north for their camping things. He had got them bamboos for surveying poles. He and Mother had laid in stores as if they were planning an expedition into the desert. The little inner room at Alma Cottage was crammed with tents and sleeping bags and packages of all sorts. Everything was ready, and then, that morning, the postman had handed over the letters, and Daddy, who had been ragging John about taking a compass bearing of the coffeepot from the cruet, saw the O.H.M.S. on one of them, tore it open, and said one “Damn” as if he really meant it.

“What is it?” Mummy had asked.

“We can’t go. It’s all off. The First Lord’s chucked a spanner in the works.”

“Not really?”

He had passed the letter to her.

“There it is. They want this and they want that. It means going up to London the day after to-morrow. And they want me to start in at Shotley as soon as I get back. You’ll have to come to London with me, Mary, if you’re to get all you want in time. I’m awfully sorry, you people. It just can’t be helped. Orders is orders. The expedition’s off. No exploring for us till next year.”

It was as if the curtain had been rung down at the very beginning of the first act of the pantomime.

Breakfast was hardly over before a young man in naval uniform had stopped his little car at the foot of the lane, run up the steps to the cottage, saluted, given a message, and taken Daddy and Mummy away. John, Susan, Titty, Roger, Bridget and Sinbad, the kitten, had rowed off to the Goblin, to keep their promise to her owner and, even if they were not going to sail in her, keep his little ship clean for him.

Titty was sitting on the cabin top.

“The Admiralty just likes spoiling everything,” she said. “That lieutenant who came and took them off to Shotley was fairly gloating. I saw his horrid grin.”

“And everything planned,” said Susan. “And Daddy and Mother were just as keen on it as us.”

“By the time they let him go, we’ll be getting ready to go back to school,” said John. “Well, it’s no good sitting about. Let’s get to work and tidy her up.”

“If it wasn’t for that beastly Admiralty we’d be stowing cargo instead,” said Roger.

“Keep Sinbad out of the way,” said John. “We don’t want to sweep him o.b.”

Work made everybody feel a little better, though not much. John dipped the big mop over the side and sent the water shooting along the decks and pouring out of the scuppers in the low rail. Susan found that the Goblin’s saucepans, though clean enough inside, had smoky patches outside that took a lot of rubbing off. Roger and Titty with a tin of metal polish between them settled down to smarten up portholes and cleats. Sinbad walked about on the cabin roof and on the decks, lifting first one paw and then another and giving it a shake after treading in the damper places left by John’s sluicing. Bridget told Sinbad he ought to be wearing seaboots. There was not much talking among the others. They all knew that this tidying up of the Goblin instead of being a beginning was like the words “THE END” on the last page of a book.

Work went steadily on all morning. Decks grew spotless. Coils of ropes were re-coiled so beautifully that they looked like carved ornaments. John and Susan joined the polishers and porthole after porthole that had been dull with salt and verdigris glittered in the sun. Even Bridget did her bit and rubbed at a porthole till she could see her face in it.

Now and then barges with their tall sails towered past, going up to Ipswich with the tide. Yachts came in from the sea, and the workers on the Goblin watched each in turn round up into the wind, with someone on the foredeck dropping the staysail and reaching with a boathook for a mooring buoy.

“Gosh,” said Roger at last, “isn’t it awful not to be going anywhere after all.”

“Hullo,” said Titty. “Look at that little boat, just like Swallow only with a white sail.”

“Two of them,” said John.

“Three,” said Roger. “There’s another just leaving the hard. Getting her sail up.”

The two small white sailed dinghies met the third, and then all three ran together through the fleet of moored yachts. Work stopped aboard the Goblin. There was a girl in one of the boats and a boy in each of the other two. They sailed close by.

“Pudding faces,” said Roger, not because of any special likeness to puddings in the faces of the helmsmen, but simply because he envied them.

“PUDDING FACES,” SAID ROGER. “PROBABLY GOING SOMEWHERE AND WE’RE NOT”

“They’d call you a pudding face if they knew you’d been to Holland,” said John. “Gosh! They did that pretty neatly.”

The three little sailing dinghies had run up alongside one of the anchored yachts, a big yellow cutter, two on one side of her and one on the other. There was not the slightest bump. Eggshells would not have been cracked if they had been hanging over the side instead of fenders. Sails were coming down, and presently the three skippers climbed aboard the big yellow cutter, and disappeared one after another down into the cabin.

“Pudding faces,” said Roger again. “They’re probably going somewhere, and we’re not.”

The sight of those little boats reminded them of other little boats on the lake in the far away north.

“I wonder what the Amazons and D’s are doing,” said Titty.

“Houseboat battle anyway,” said Roger. “And they’ve got Timothy to walk the plank as well as Captain Flint.”

“Bother everything,” said John. “It wouldn’t have mattered so much if we weren’t all ready to start.”

“Hang that first lord,” said Roger. “I say, I wish we had him here, with a good springy plank and the water thick with sharks.”

“Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.”

Susan’s alarm clock that had been brought aboard the Goblin went off down in the cabin.

“Come on,” said Susan. “I set it for ten minutes to one. Daddy and Mother’ll be back and you know how Miss Powell hates people to let her cooking get cold.”

In two minutes they were all in the dinghy and John was pulling for the hard.

Daddy met them at the top of the hard.

“Well, what have you been up to?” he said.

“Cleaning up the Goblin,” said Roger.

“Polishing,” said Bridget.

“I wish I could take her for a sail,” said Daddy. “But I can’t. I’ve got to go back to Shotley this afternoon. That lad’s coming for me after lunch.”

“That beast?” said Titty. “That gloating beast?”

“Oh come, Titty,” said Daddy. “He can’t help it. Even sub-lieutenants are God’s creatures, though it’s hard to believe it sometimes.”

They were just following Daddy up the steps to Alma Cottage, when Titty saw a woman coming down the lane and waving to them. She stopped.

“Isn’t this for your mother?” said the woman, holding out a letter. “Postman left it at mine by mistake.”

Titty looked at the envelope. “Yes,” she said, and then, seeing the postmark, she ran up to the cottage calling, “Mother, Mother, here’s a letter from Beckfoot.”

Mother was already at the round table in the parlour, cutting slices of roast mutton. She took the letter and looked at Daddy. “Oh dear,” she said, “I do hope it’s to say ‘No’.”

“No to what?” asked Roger.

“Just something I asked her,” said Mother. She opened the envelope, took out the letter, read it through, and passed it across to Daddy. “What on earth am I to say?” she asked.

“Is one of them ill?” said Susan, seeing Mother’s face.

“Oh no, it’s not that,” said Mother. “They’re all quite well and Mrs. Blackett sends her love to you.”

“What about the D’s,” said Titty.

“They’ve gone home.”

“Oh well,” said Titty. “There’s still Timothy and Captain Flint.”

Daddy finished reading the letter. “Can’t be helped,” he said. “Impossible. I can’t get out of going to London, and it’ll take us all our time anyhow, and I shall be up to the ears after I get back....”

“In water?” said Roger.

“In work,” said Daddy, and then, seriously, looking at Mother. “You’ll just have to tell her the sort of fix we’re in.”

He folded up the letter and passed it across the table. Mother folded it up and put it in its envelope.

As she did so, she found that it would not slip in comfortably. There was something in the way at the bottom of the envelope. She turned the envelope upside down, and shook out a narrow card with a picture on it. There was no writing, not even an address, only a skull and crossbones in one corner and a picture of dancing savages.

“I expect this is for you people,” said Mother, and gave the card to Susan.

NANCY’S MESSAGE^[1]

[1]	See page 263 for Semaphore Alphabet.

Susan looked at it. “What’s that first one, John?” she said.

“Left arm over his head. Right arm pointing at half-past ten.... That’s T.... The next one’s H.... Both arms straight out.... That’s R.... Half a minute....”

“Let me see too,” said Titty.

John pulled a pencil out of his pocket and scribbled a letter of the alphabet under each of the dancing figures. T.H.R.E.E ... M.I.L.L.I.O.N ... C.H.E.E.R.S.... “Three million cheers.”

Commander Walker burst out laughing. “Right under your very nose,” he said. “We ought to have that young woman to teach signalling to naval cadets.”

“Three million cheers,” said Titty. “What for? She must have done something and thinks we know all about it.”

“Captured the houseboat I should think,” said Roger. “Or drowned the Great Aunt. She wouldn’t send three million cheers about nothing at all.”

Nobody at Pin Mill felt like three million cheers. They felt about Nancy’s message almost as Roger had felt about the “pudding faces”. It was not fair. Three million cheers, indeed. Who could be expected to cheer about anything on a day when the best plan ever made had been wiped out by stony-hearted Lords of the Admiralty.

From the round table in the parlour they could see through into that inner room, with the bamboo poles for surveying leaning up in a corner, the bundles of blankets, the cases of provisions, the tent rolls and all the other things they had got ready for the expedition.

Titty got up from her chair and quietly closed the door.

Dinner was hardly finished before Daddy was taken off to Shotley again. And then Mother said she could not come out with them, because of letters to write. Bridget and Sinbad played in the garden. The others had no heart for boats, and went for a walk along the woods above the river. But even there, they could not forget what had happened. Yachts were coming up the river. Yachts were going down. Each one of them was going somewhere, or coming back, and Roger, until the others told him to shut up, kept telling them he was sure this yacht or that was carrying an expedition like the one Daddy had planned, on its way to the very islands they had meant to explore.

And then, when they had come back for high tea at Miss Powell’s they learnt that something had happened that had made Daddy at least feel quite different. Tea was over before he came in smiling to himself.

“Get out,” he said jovially as if nothing was wrong with the world. “Committee meeting with your Mother.”

They went, and as they went, heard just two sentences.

“Been sending a few telegrams,” said Daddy. “Must have sent half a dozen I should think. One thing after another.”

“Have a look at my letter and see if it’ll do,” said Mother.

“It won’t,” said Daddy. “Not after my telegrams.”

“Oh Ted,” said Mother. “What have you gone and done?”

And then they heard their father’s cheerful laughter. Cheerful and rather mischievous.

“Daddy’s up to something,” said Titty.

“I say,” said Roger. “You don’t think he’s thought of a way of dishing the first of those lords?”

They went back aboard the Goblin, watched Roger’s pudding faces racing their three dinghies, gave another rub round to the portholes, and finally, though there was really no need, lit the Goblin’s riding light before coming ashore. She lay there, with her light twinkling below her forestay, just as it had twinkled in the evening when they had been at anchor with Jim Brading in command.

“Awful to think we shan’t sail until next year,” said Titty.

“But if Daddy’s squashed that lord ...” said Roger.

“He can’t have done that,” said John.

Daddy was putting away a map as they came in. He and Mother went upstairs together to see Bridget into bed.

“They’ve got a secret,” said Titty.

“They’ve got lots probably,” said Susan.

“Something to do with us,” said Titty. “Didn’t you hear what he was saying?”

“What did he say?”

“He said, ‘Better keep mum about it till the morning’.”