‘Perhaps she thinks we haven’t shown her all that much consideration,’ said Sebastian, ‘not communicating with her or going anywhere near her, I mean. As for the bird-watchers, Father, I expect they’ll only haunt the rocks and the cliffs. Besides, some of them may even break their necks with their scrambling about. You never know your luck.’ He caught his sister’s eye and slightly shook his head. She understood him. It was not the time to mention Ransome.
The next day, Friday, was passed by the brother and sister in bathing and sun-bathing between breakfast and lunch, and by taking a windy walk directly after lunch along the west cliffs. The cliff path gave them views of a series of steep escarpments with knife-edge headlands enclosing small inlets. Up these inlets the sea leapt, tossed and foamed, assaulting a succession of black rocks, luridly streaked with bright-green, poisonous-looking seaweed, which lay like sea-monsters dangerously lurking inshore.
‘Grand, but off-putting,’ yelled Sebastian, his voice almost shouted down by the wind. ‘Let’s shelter behind that tor.’
Winds and storms had weathered the granite to a vast bare crag in whose lee some cattle were sheltering.
‘Oh, cows!’ exclaimed Margaret, backing away.
‘They won’t hurt you.’
‘I don’t like them at such close quarters. What’s the time?’
‘Nearly four.’
‘Well, we ought to be getting along to the farm for tea.’
‘You don’t really mean to take up with that, do you?’
‘We were invited and I think we could just drop in. I wouldn’t mind meeting Cousin Ransome again.’
‘Cousin… ? Oh, well, I suppose he is.’
There was no clear path to the farm from where they were. They could see the roofs of its buildings, however, for the island at this point was barely half a mile wide, so they made their way by following tracks through the bracken and soon arrived at the door of the cottage from which Ransome had emerged on the previous occasion.
He opened the door as soon as they knocked. They received the impression that he had been waiting for them. He had shaved and was neatly dressed in dark grey flannel trousers, a blue shirt open at the neck, and a heather-mixture tweed jacket.
‘I reckon I’m going to disappoint you,’ he said. ‘Connie Crimp sent for Dad and he’s had to go over to the mainland and he’s taken Lucy with him, so I can give you some tea up at the house, but I can’t introduce you to them. How did you leave things at the hotel?’
‘In rather a muddle,’ said Margaret, as they entered the farmhouse. ‘Aunt Eliza still hasn’t come back from the mainland and we’re threatened with a full-scale invasion of birdwatchers on Saturday. Oh, you know about that, of course. I think we told you.’
‘Dad and Lucy have taken the trip in Dimbleton’s little boat. They’re going across to round up my mam and tell her to get her business cleared up and get back on tomorrow’s steamer, so I knew she wouldn’t have been on today’s boat. I reckon Connie Crimp is in a bit of a taking.’
‘Yes, Miss Crimp is in the hell of a flap,’ said Sebastian. ‘Does Aunt Eliza usually go off on these jaunts and leave her to cope?’
‘Oh, you wouldn’t call them jaunts,’ said Ransome seriously. ‘There’s a lot of business to see to on the mainland. We haven’t a bank or a doctor on the island, that’s for one thing. Nor have we any newspapers, except when the boat comes in. Then there’s all the wholesale stuff. I told you what my dad, from the farm, and I, from my holding, can supply, but that doesn’t begin to add up to all that’s needed to run that hotel. Strikes me she didn’t know what she was letting herself in for when she took it on. Then the servants. Always changing, they are. Don’t like being stuck out here with only one pub and no cinema. Dull it is, and those who aren’t daft are devils.’
‘We passed some cottages,’ said Margaret.
‘Ah, yes, you would, coming this way from the hotel, but they’re only for farm-workers. Our men, well, they’re born and bred on the island, though, even then, the young ones hop it as soon as ever they can. When Dad goes, the farm will go, I reckon, because there won’t be anyone left to work it. The young fellows won’t stay, and I certainly couldn’t manage single-handed.’
‘How would you like to manage the hotel?’ asked Margaret, hoping this would be answered as though it was a different and an even more personal question. Ransome laughed.
‘I reckon Connie Crimp has her eye on the management of that,’ he said, ‘and I wish her joy of it. It wouldn’t be my cup of tea. I’d sooner own a lunatic asylum than try to run a hotel.’
‘You could always sell it, if it were yours,’ said Sebastian.
‘No chance of that, not with all that’s owing on it, if all that you hear is true.’
‘Owing on it? Is it mortgaged, then?’ asked Sebastian.
‘Oh, no, it isn’t mortgaged—not yet. It’s all the improvements, you see. Dad says not half of them have begun to be paid for.’
‘Well, let’s hope the naturalists will sub up handsomely,’ said Margaret. ‘Thanks ever so much for the tea, Cousin Ransome.’
‘You must come again,’ he said, ‘when Dad and Lucy are at home. Lucy is Dad’s wife, by the way.’
‘I suppose,’ said Margaret, when they were on their way back, ‘we’d better stay in the hotel tomorrow with The Tutor. He’ll expect us to be on hand to greet Aunt Eliza when she lands. Have you got your party piece ready? I do think she’s behaved a bit coolly, don’t you? I wonder what she’s really like.’
They were not to know. The Saturday boat came in and went out to the steamer again. It repeated this manoeuvre half-a-dozen times from ten in the morning onwards. Marius and his children waited on the cliff-top as the boat continued to land the bird-watchers, but Eliza did not appear. When it ceased its ferrying and the steamer was lost to sight round a headland, the three returned to the hotel.
‘We must somehow have missed her,’ said Marius, ‘although, even after all these years, I would have thought I’d recognise her and she me.’
They found a peevish Miss Crimp behind the desk.
‘There’s only one explanation that I can think of,’ she said. ‘Eliza must have gone straight to the farm to make sure of the eggs, milk and butter. She must realise how pressed I am and thinks she had better take something off my hands, I suppose, however late in the day.’
‘Surely somebody else could have gone to the farm,’ said Marius, answering her peevish tone with his own. ‘I should have thought her first consideration would have been to greet her own brother and his children.’
‘Consideration?’ snorted Miss Crimp, her colour high and her nostrils pinched. ‘Eliza Chayleigh doesn’t know the meaning of that word. Oh, and I’m afraid Miss Lovelaine won’t be able to take any more baths in the house. I noticed she has been bringing her things over here since you arrived. I have far too many guests in the place already. I cannot have the chalet people taking bathrooms which the residents require. There is a perfectly adequate bath-house for chalet visitors.’
‘Now about this bathroom nonsense!’ said Marius testily. ‘I am paying full rates and I insist upon all the facilities of the hotel being open to my daughter.’
‘I am sorry, Mr Lovelaine—’
‘Otherwise I cancel my booking immediately.’
‘Oh, it’s all right, Father,’ said Margaret. ‘I can manage, and we can’t get back to the mainland until Wednesday, anyhow. By that time things will begin to straighten out.’