After the meal they’d drifted into the bar where he ordered brandies, but that evening the two girls had their stilettos out for each other. He stayed with them for ten or fifteen minutes until, murmuring something about needing an early night, he’d made his escape. In the hall, he’d stopped for a chat with the manager before going upstairs. The thought of trying to telephone Sue had crossed his mind — but what was the use?
The hotel had given him the same feudal room on the first floor from which the view alone more than compensated for the lousy food. He’d been about to unlock the door when Jane’s voice called him from the end of the corridor.
‘Tim!’ He’d waited for her to join him. ‘Tim, we haven’t really said goodnight.’
‘We haven’t, have we?’ He’d brushed a long stray hair back from her face. ‘I’m sorry Jacqui’s been in a bit of a mood. I suppose it must be quite a rush for her, getting everything organised at such short notice. This has been rather pushed on to her.’
Jane had smiled, touching his cheek with her fingertips. ‘By this time tomorrow,’ she’d told him softly, ‘I’ll have her eating out of my hand, see if I don’t. Tim, I am grateful you got me this job. I suppose —’ She’d hesitated, her eyes mischievous. ‘I ought to find a way of repaying you.’
‘No, that’s not necessary — ’
She placed her fingers over his lips, stopping him. ‘Like — going to bed with you?’
‘I’d like that.’
‘But I’m not going to. Goodnight, Tim. See you in the morning!’
And with a swift kiss which landed on the side of his mouth, she’d left him.
Had she guessed he’d be relieved, he’d wondered as he went into his room. With Sue on his mind, it couldn’t possibly have been successful. Yet he’d not told her about Sue, not so far, though no doubt she’d regard it as a big scoop for that article she still claimed to be writing. No, probably the truth was she’d not been thinking of him at all, but of some hang-up in her own mind. And that, he’d told himself firmly, was her problem, not his.
Or maybe she was no more than a tease. Plenty of those around.
The sky that morning was a pale, unbroken white, and the sea was silvery, glistening like polished metal. That silver sheen also touched the long stretches of sand on which the surface water lay thinly, unable to drain away. Yet there were no jellyfish visible. However carefully they searched, all three of them spread out in a line, they found nothing.
‘Not even the ordinary kind,’ Jane grumbled. ‘It’s a dead loss.’
She and Tim carried a shovel apiece, plus one of the containers. Earlier that morning she’d spoken once more to her sister Jocelyn, who’d said they were welcome to film at her laboratory if they liked. So far she had two jellyfish sliced up into segments and preserved in formaldehyde; the other she was keeping alive in a tank. It fed voraciously on anything she gave it.
‘We’ll wait and see,’ Jacqui had said. ‘We don’t know yet if it’s worth filming.’
Tim stared around him over the wide expanses of flat sand. Again he was intrigued by those children’s footsteps. They led so purposefully towards the headland to the north of the bay. ‘Wonder what could be over there to attract them?’ he thought aloud. ‘Those kids must have been aiming for something.’
‘Take a look, d’you think?’ Jacqui suggested. ‘There’s nothing doing here on the beach.’
‘What about the harbour?’ Jane objected. ‘I said before we should look in the harbour.’
She turned to Tim for support, but he merely shrugged.
This morning it was her turn to be in a foul mood. With an irritated exclamation, she threw her shovel down and pulled off her glove to try and do something about her tangle of windblown hair which was getting in her eyes.
Jacqui pointedly ignored her. ‘Tim, I think I saw those kids when we came down here,’ she was saying. ‘They can’t be all that far ahead of us.’
‘We’re half-way there already,’ he agreed.
Within ten minutes they had reached the headland and could observe how the sandy beach gave way to a tumble of sharp rocks. As they explored them, Tim noticed how some were thickly encrusted with barnacles; centuries of sea-life had found a home there. No jellyfish, though — not even in the numerous rock pools. They went from one to the next, finding nothing.
In one pool Jane spotted an unusual shell. She squatted down and plunged her hand into the water to retrieve it, only to pull back with a sudden snort of disgust, her fingers covered with tar. Overhead the seagulls wheeled, screaming their mockery at her.
‘Thought I heard someone calling,’ Jacqui remarked. Her lips twitched as she watched Jane trying to clean her hand.
‘Birds,’ Tim said.
‘No. Be quiet a minute.’ She listened again, frowning. ‘It’s coming from over by the cliff.’
‘You’re imagining it,’ Jane told her. She swore under her breath as the tissue she was using stuck to her fingers and began to tear. ‘Oh, this stuff’s impossible!’
Jacqui began to clamber over the rocks towards the cliff. Tim followed, unsure whether he’d heard anything or not. What puzzled him was the complete absence of jellyfish, both here and on the beach. After the press stories of the past few days he’d expected to find the coast littered with them. But perhaps Alan Brewer had been right after all; perhaps it was all over, bar the weeping.
‘Oh, please — somebody!’
‘Hear that?’
Tim nodded. A child’s voice, almost drowned by the cries of the seagulls, coming, it seemed, from inside the cliff. He turned to urge Jane to follow. ‘Over here!’
‘Please!’ came the voice again, fearfully.
Jacqui was ahead of him, making for a fissure in the cliffside. Tim disencumbered himself of the shovel and specimen container and went after her. Maybe the children were hurt. Or trapped. His feet slipped on the rocks as he scrambled over them in his haste to get there.
‘Please come!’ A different child this time. Younger. The voice rose to a scream. ‘Please!’
The fissure was a sideways opening where the rock face had begun to split away from the cliff leaving a gap wide enough for them to walk through. Jacqui reached it first and was already half-way in when he arrived.
‘It’s all right — we’re coming!’ she called out encouragingly.
‘Oh, hurry…’ the child whimpered.
Jacqui half-turned and grabbed Tim’s arm, pointing to something ahead of her. The narrow passage through the rock curved sufficiently to block their view of what lay before them, but there was no mistaking that glow of pale green light. Tim felt sick as he realised what must be causing it.
‘Let me go first,’ he said quietly, almost whispering.
She looked at him contemptuously, shaking her head.
Two more steps forward… slowly… To produce that amount of light there must be at least two or three of them. Big ones, perhaps. He kept close behind Jacqui, ready to pull her clear the moment he spotted them.
One more step…
With a sudden gasp, she stopped and he collided with her, catching hold of her to steady himself. She pressed back against him and he could feel her body shaking.
‘In there!’
Directly in front of her was the mouth of the cave. He had to stoop a little to see inside; as he took it all in, his stomach churned. That cave looked like some hideous temple in a science fiction nightmare. At the far end, on an exposed ledge of rock resembling a primitive altar, stood a boy and a girl with their arms around each other, their faces betraying how frightened they were. And little wonder, for below them in the body of the cave were more jellyfish than he’d even seen gathered together before.