Читать книгу The Evil at Monteine - Brian Ball - Страница 5

CHAPTER ONE

I had decided to drive on to Monteine. I wanted to speak to Richard Ulrome at Monteine Castle, International Marine Oils Promotion, Research and Projects Division.

“You’re demeaning yourself, girl,” I told myself. “You’re chasing him. If he can’t take the trouble to ring every day, the hell with him.”

The visit was to have been a pleasant surprise for him. It showed I cared about the sponsorship he was after. I had worked out what I’d tell him.

I’d be calm and polite when I told Richard I’d arrived to talk about us, and what the hell was I supposed to do when he sailed away for the Three-Oceans Race. “You think I’m going to sit at home waiting?” I intended to say. “Not me. You can’t ask me to stay home knitting sweaters for twelve whole months, can you?” Then I’d tell him he wasn’t the only man around, and what did he think of that? I was going to tell him that I couldn’t wait around for a winter and a spring and a summer and an autumn. Who can? Not me, I told myself. Not Anne Blackwell.

I was as mixed up as it’s possible to be by the time I saw the North Sea. On the North Yorkshire coast you have to drive along the tops of six-hundred-foot cliffs, and the sea fills your horizon, stretching out with a grey insistence to the Arctic. Thick cloud covered the sky. The coast, the cliffs, and the sea weren’t the cheeriest of sights, nor was Monteine Castle.

It reared up on a colossal shelf of grey stone on the highest promontory for miles. The Castle had been built around and into this grey pinnacle. Two enormous turrets surmounted a massive keep, built on three levels, each with its crenellated and castellated curtain walls. There was no sign of ruin or decay: the Castle was intact, a forbidding mass that dominated the sweep of Monteine Bay and the small fishing town six hundred feet below.

Monteine Castle was ugly and menacing, in the way that some old buildings can be. By the time I drove up the newly asphalted road that led to the lodge gates, I felt like turning back to the little town in the bay.

Not two miles from the Castle was Monteine Landing, the little town that got some sort of a living from a couple of pubs with summer accommodation and what’s left of the inshore fish. I’d seen fishing-cobbles, and red-faced men shaking with laughter as they finished their beer when I’d driven up the long, winding road to the Castle.

If I couldn’t get a bed at Monteine Landing, I’d have tea and drive back to finish my Harrogate assignment, then ring through to my son’s Aunt Gloria to have her tell him that Mummy would be back that night. I didn’t want to face Richard.

Would you believe it, he spotted my Fiat as I turned.

“Anne!” he mouthed. I didn’t hear him for I over-revved the engine the way I’d been told not to by a succession of men from Tony’s father onwards. “Anne!”

I saw him waving in the mirror. Richard has a tanned, clear skin. There’s no sign of a wrinkle though he’s in his mid-thirties. His frame has the deceptive slimness of an athlete. I thought he was undernourished when I first met him, which was at one of Freda Langdon’s parties just after he’d raced in what yachtsmen call the South Atlantic Triangle. He came in second because he’d been blown off-course by a fierce January storm. He wasn’t exactly a household word, but he was one of the top dozen of his kind.

I remember staring at him and deciding in the same instant I wanted him. A nice Scottish electronics engineer I’d been with for a month or two without any real commitment on my part saw the look I gave Richard; he said something to me about leaving, but he must have suspected at once that our affair was over.

A week after the party, the Scot conceded defeat and Richard and I had a marvellous five months. I knew I was in love with him when he said he’d entered another race, one that would take him away for the best part of a year. I tried very hard not to show my sheer dismay, then in the morning it hit me that I wouldn’t see him for weeks, then months, then a whole year,

The trouble was that I’d got used to being hurt till Richard, then I didn’t want the kicks any more. I came from a miserable home. My parents were grocers who sold out a prime site to a supermarket chain and went to live in Majorca when I was sixteen. They didn’t like me, never had; they didn’t like one another much either. My father was fifty-one when he married my mother, who herself was in her late thirties. She’d been his shop assistant. I think of them in that grocer’s shop knowing one another too well and getting married for no other reason than that I was on the way. They didn’t want me in Majorca because I was into mild drugs at fourteen and experimenting with acid at sixteen, which was when I dropped out of school, home, and everything else I’d known. I got pregnant soon afterwards and yelled for help. My parents wanted me aborted; Tony’s father agreed with them: I’d been horrified.

Yet soon after that I began to learn how to earn my living. Tony did that for me—you have the child and you accept that you have to provide. I’d managed, because I have a small talent for the design business. Life wasn’t easy, but I managed. I thought I was in love a few times, but nothing lasted, nothing mattered. I was hardened. But not invulnerable.

For the first time since Tony’s father asked me to have an abortion as the price of his marrying me, I was absolutely desolated. A year without Richard? No, I’d yelled. I did the whole feminine thing, the yelling and the bawling, then the outrage.

Richard had been firm. The race was the culmination of his life’s work. He said he was leaving in the morning for Monteine Castle to talk over the sponsorship International Marine Oil had offered. His yacht would fly International’s house flag. If he won, they’d get marvellous publicity; and they were a large, generous combine. I told Richard they could have him.

I sulked when he left in the morning. He rang that evening, but I said the kind of stupid things that one is ashamed of even before they’re out of one’s mouth. He didn’t ring Tuesday or Wednesday; on Thursday I panicked.

I’d intended visiting my Northern contacts—that’s what I told Gloria, Tony’s father’s sister, who loves my boy as much as I do—and I rang around making appointments and began my Lincolnshire—Yorkshire—Cheshire—Lancashire circuit, which normally takes three days. I held out till Friday afternoon, when I finished buying in Harrogate, before setting off to see Richard.

When I saw him waving, I began to laugh aloud. The Fiat’s tyres squealed as I braked.

“Anne!” he called again. “I love you!”

I let out the clutch at once, the Fiat stalled, and he had the car door open in a moment.

“If I hadn’t seen the way you came along the drive I’d have said I was dreaming, Anne.” He flicked the seatbelt release and disengaged me from the straps. I was out of the car and in his arms without any effort on my part. He kissed me and I knew I’d wait a year or whatever he said.

“I tried to get in touch this morning, Anne—I didn’t want to ring until I was fairly sure I’d do for the job.”

“Job!”

So far as I knew, Richard was visiting Monteine Castle to arrange some kind of sponsorship deal with a multinational oil combine. Richard was a good bet to win the Three Oceans Race, and whatever happened they’d got their money’s worth.

Over his shoulder I saw a tall, blonde-haired woman of maybe forty-five or so regarding us with some interest. She pretended to be looking elsewhere when I caught her stare. There was something about her tiny smile that disturbed me. I pulled away.

“That woman’s watching,” I said.

Richard turned. She walked towards us. “Hello, Monica,” he said. “Anne’s here.”

I had been talked about. No woman likes it.

“I’m Monica Sievel,” the woman said. She had been handsome once, but now her square, angular face looked ravaged. “I work here.”

I put on my cool look. “How do you do?”

I knew that I disliked and distrusted her intensely the moment I looked at her smoothly made-up face and saw the carefully guarded caution in her eyes.

This woman was inimical to me. I felt it, a skin thing, and I saw it in her eyes. She would do me harm. And Richard. He grinned at her.

“Monica’s one of the staff—drinks like a fish and knows all my secrets. I was just telling Anne about the job—oh, I know it’s unofficial!” he said, as she was about to interrupt. “Nothing signed and sealed yet, and I’m not to discuss it with anyone as Falco said, but Anne’s special! She doesn’t know it yet, but Ulrome’s got her future planned. Come on, Anne, let’s have a drink!” He stopped suddenly as he was pulling me along. “Monica, the house-rules allow guests, don’t they?”

Her charm and ability to handle any and every situation made a nonsense of my first reaction, She tucked her arm into Richard’s and said that house-rules didn’t exist at Monteine Castle.

“Richard’s got to bring you to dinner,” she said firmly. “One of the privileges of living in a castle is that occasionally one can act with an altogether aristocratic open-handedness. Anyway, International can afford it.”

I looked for a wedding ring, saw none, and wondered why she hadn’t married. I wondered if she was attractive to men, then immediately I thought of Richard without me for three days, and that wasn’t a line of speculation I wanted to go into.

She had already gauged my feeling with an exact nicety that proved her intelligence, and set out to disarm me at once.

“He mentioned you,” she said. “There had to be someone special.”

Even after her charming invitation, I had the urge to grab Richard by the shoulders and push him hard into the car and drive off. Then I thought of Richard, and myself no longer alone, and the woman was so obviously good-natured and sincere that I told myself not to be a fool.

I looked at Monteine Castle again. It didn’t look so forbidding, it gave an impression of strength and nobility. A few seagulls wheeled around the cliffs. The thick grey clouds were breaking up and I could see a patch of blue sky, miles away over the sea. A strong shaft of sunlight caught the towers, making a picturesque scene more vivid. Why had the Castle seemed menacing, in that one instant? It didn’t now.

“It’s kind of you,” I said, “but I’d thought of staying in the village, There’s a pub,” I said. I explained about the circuit. Tomorrow morning I’d go on to my two Lancashire artists, then motor through to Cheshire. I said I’d dropped in because I’d happened to find myself near; not much of an excuse, however one looked at it. “Richard, I’m tired, why don’t we go down and get a room for me?”

“But they’ve got guest rooms here! It’s a marvellous setup—Monica, can you fix it?”

The woman’s eyes were calculating again; the warmth had gone. It was just a flicker, but I thought I saw that glint of menace again. She recovered immediately.

“Of course!” she said. “Why didn’t I think of it—it’s far too late for you to start worrying about a room at the Landing.”

I saw the look and didn’t like what I saw.

I began to prepare my apologies, but Richard gave me no time. Besides, I was full of cautious elation, a good deal of curiosity, and just a touch of fury because Richard had given me such a bad time, leaving me to believe he’d come to Monteine Castle to fix the race sponsorship. He hustled me into the passenger seat. “Anne, we’ll have a large one to celebrate—in you get, Monica,” he said.

“No thanks, darlings—you drive on. I haven’t had a breath of fresh air all day. It’s rained nonstop. You two go ahead. I want a few minutes out here. If you go to the bar, I’ll know where to find you when I’ve arranged Anne’s room. See you soon!”

She walked away and turned to the rear of the Castle.

Richard flicked through the gears, and in seconds we were before a pair of iron-studded oak doors. Richard hadn’t stopped talking—how wonderful the opportunity was, something about the Bahamas and interviews; but I was rather dazed. After all, I’d come to bitch at him and tell him that our relationship was over and by his choice. He was to have circumnavigated the globe. I thought I was inured to shock, and found I wasn’t.

Richard was about to hurl himself from the car.

“Wait,” I said. “Sit there till you’ve answered my questions.”

“Yours to command,” said Richard. “I could do with that drink, though—”

“Quiet! You didn’t tell me about any job. Why not?”

“It’s the Ulrome way, my love. I didn’t want you to get too excited about the prospect.”

“You could have told me. What is this job anyway? And don’t say it’s going to keep us apart!”

“No chance,” he said. “Would you believe it, International were looking for an adviser for their West Indies offshore concessions. They want someone who’s got a practical knowledge of conditions in the Caribbean. Then there’s the liaison aspect of the job. They want their man to know his way around Government circles. And, darling, it so happens that my extensive acquaintance includes half of the hoi polloi of Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad, and the other, smaller islands, to say nothing of the Bahamas, which, by the way, is where International’s Caribbean base is located. And, quite unofficially so they say, they’ve got their man. At a very high rate indeed. And how’s that for a washed-up sailor with an overdraft few banks can afford?”

“But you wanted to sail! You wanted to do the three Oceans Race!”

“I wanted you too, Anne.”

“But you’d have to live there!”

“How do the Bahamas grab you?”

I thought of myself and Tony and Richard on a long white beach, the kind they show in the brochures. Unreality and dreams, I thought. Things had never gone right for me.

“You’d never be happy in a job like that.”

“I had to grow up sometime,” Richard said. “The last of the Ulrome money’s gone. Sponsorships aren’t easy any more. Better sailors are getting the big combines to back them. I don’t want to start taking seasick tourists out for weeks in the Med, and I’m damned if I’m going to smuggle cigarettes and the rest of it. I could be out of debt in six months, Anne. And I think I could be worth their money. Offshore drilling is a hazardous game. I know the waters like my own backyard. They won’t be getting a bad bargain.”

“Let’s get this straight,” I said, trying not to sound and look as delighted as I felt. “You came here to be interviewed for a job in the Bahamas with the International Marine Oil Company, and they’ve offered you a job?”

“Not formally. Off the record, yes.”

“You told me you were going away for a year—”

Richard held me again. “I thought about it and decided I couldn’t leave you.”

No woman I know could have been other than flattered, exhilarated, and generally overwhelmed. Richard was the Richard Ulrome, the man whose name was synonymous with adventure, courage, and the extremes of physical danger. I was the woman for whom he was giving up a chance of sailing in the longest single-handed race ever.

He grinned. Naturally he didn’t remind me of my tantrum, but he couldn’t help a slight dig at me. “In a couple of minutes you’re going to be telling me that you want me at sea. Before that happens, let’s get you watered and fed. How does a Campari soda sound?”

I told myself I was a silly cow as we got out of the car. Nevertheless, I couldn’t believe, deep down, that it would all come good for the two of us, not that easily.

“We’d have to get married,” he said.

I began to believe it all.