Alan Hunter - Gently in the Sun

‘You haven’t got no right. Esau, listen… I’m warning you!’

Esau, deaf as the Ailsa Craig, continued his preparations for leaving. He shut his clasp-knife and put it away. He wrapped up his pigtail in a scrap of oilcloth. Pipe and matches went each into a stowage, and finally he drained what was left of his beer.

‘I tell you, Esau!’

Esau patted his pockets.

‘If you lay a hand on me!’

Esau took him by the arm.

There was no fuss about it and not another word. Hawks, the wind quite out of his sails, was walked out like a child. Somebody grabbed the tankard from him, somebody else gave him his cap. The whole business was so quiet that one could scarcely believe it had happened.

‘Phew!’

The publican made a gesture of wiping his brow.

‘I thought there’d be trouble there, Esau or no Esau. That Hawks… he’s a wicked so-and-so, even when he’s cold sober.’

‘They’ll be all right, will they?’

‘Oh yes! You don’t know Esau. You might say he’s the skipper here — they all pay attention to him. And one time him and Hawks were mates on a drifter together.’

At first they wondered how Gently would take it, but he continued to lean, apparently unmoved, at the bar. Eventually Spanton rescued his mouth organ and the dart players cleaned their board. The publican, in a great bustle, filled a great many empty glasses.

If anything, the incident seemed to have cleared the air a little. The exclusive grouping of the company was beginning to relax. Gently, pipe between his teeth, listened amiably to the publican’s chatter; one would have thought his only interest there lay in a pint in congenial company.

‘Then, of course, you never saw her alive.’

Was it Hawks or was it Dawes whose departure had eased the tension?

‘Not that she ever came in here, mind you.’

Or was it just that they’d weighed him up, deciding that probably he wasn’t a trouble maker?

Spanton had succeeded in collecting a crowd round him. He’d got one of the ancients singing ‘The North Sea Fisherman’. After that it was ‘Stormy Weather, Boys’, of which they all knew the chorus: Aaron Wright sang the verses, and it was the unexpurgated version.

Yes, the tension had relaxed — but wasn’t it now, perhaps, too boisterous? From one extreme it had gone to the other, like a fit of malarial fever. Every moment it was growing noisier, more hectic, more reprehensible.

‘How much is on the slate?’

‘Come on, don’t be awkward!’

‘Just take it out of this, will you?’

‘Well, if you say so.’

Had he missed something important by the skin of his teeth?

Outside the long twilight had commenced under a pale sky. Stars prickled overhead, and the coppery west suffused opalescence. Round a shrub in someone’s garden moths tapped and buzzed eagerly, while bats, scarcely audible, pipped as they flickered high above.

At the turn by the council houses he almost ran into a couple of lovers. They were leaning over a bicycle, heads together, very quiet. Then again, by a field gate, another silent couple. Their eyes followed Gently but they didn’t draw apart.

On such a night as this… two evenings ago. Hadn’t the Bel-Air been nearly empty and Mixer, presumably, in Starmouth?

An alien fragrance reached his nostrils as he approached the gates of the Bel-Air. Dawes, another ghost of the twilight, sat solemnly smoking on a hedge bank.

‘You wanted to see me, did you?’

The white head nodded very slightly. After an instant’s hesitation Gently sat down on the bank beside him. It was a pleasant conference seat: the bank was tall with summer grasses.

‘Bob Hawks… I wouldn’t pay much regard to him.’

The voice was like the man, slow, but full of grave decision.

‘He’s had his trouble, Bob has, and sometimes it makes him hasty. But I’ve had a word or two with him. I can answer that he’ll watch his tongue.’

‘What sort of trouble has he had?’

Dawes didn’t appear to hear him. One had the impression that he was unused to being questioned, that wherever he found himself his word was the law. Having made his pronouncement, he sat a long time silent. The smoke proceeded from his mouth with a clock-like regularity.

‘If that’s all you’ve got to say…’

‘Don’t be in a hurry.’

He hadn’t even looked at Gently, just sat there staring at nothing.

‘You were talking to that boy.’

‘Simmonds, you mean — the one with the tent?’

‘I was wondering how much he told you.’

‘Naturally, that’s confidential.’

Another silence, this time more irritating. At the mention of Simmonds Gently’s interest had been sharply roused. But he could see that it was useless to try hurrying the old autocrat. For years, very probably, Dawes had ruled the Hiverton roost.

‘Did he tell you he got a thrashing?’

For answer Gently shrugged.

‘So he didn’t — I thought as much. They don’t like to admit it, these youngsters.’

‘Who gave him the thrashing — you?’

Dawes puffed impassively four or five times.

‘Him up there who they say you’ve got an eye on.’

‘Mixer — the man who was with her?’

‘He found them together in the tent.’

Now there was room for a pause — Gently was frankly taken aback. So there had been more to the Simmonds story — apparently, a very great deal more! Simmonds had been leading him up the garden… as a matter of fact, he had almost convinced him.

‘How do you know about this?’

‘Saw it happen. From the net store.’

‘When?’

‘Last Tuesday, just before tea.’

‘Describe it to me.’

‘That’s all there is to it.’

‘How long had they been in the tent — how did Mixer come to find them?’

Esau shifted his long legs as though to express his disapproval. Nobody badgered him like that, the slow movements seemed to say.

‘I’ve seen him once or twice trying to find them up the marrams. Tuesday he hung around near the tent — have you seen that old pillbox? So then they came back and went into the tent together. He ran across there like a madman and hauled the boy out by his ankles.’

‘And the woman — what about her?’

‘She came out of her own accord.’

‘Didn’t she try to intervene?’

‘She might have said something, but that’s all.’

‘And when it was over?’

‘Why, he marched her off with him. They came by the store and went off towards the guest house.’

‘What were they saying as they passed you?’

‘Nothing I heard. But they looked the more for it.’

‘When was the next time you saw her?’

‘Under the sacks by Bob Hawks’s boat.’

‘Who else saw it happen?’

‘There wasn’t only me.’

‘Then why didn’t you report it?’

‘Didn’t think to till I saw you with the boy.’

Esau scratched a leisurely match, his pipe having died on him. The bobbing flame lit his stem features with their viking-like cut. In his ears he wore gold rings, his beard was brushed to a point. His blue eyes seemed permanently fixed on some far-distant horizon.

But they saw plenty, those eyes, there was no doubt about that.

‘And what else do you know?’

‘Nothing — about your business.’

‘I shouldn’t think you’re one to miss much.’

‘Nor one to talk about it, neither.’

‘Perhaps I’d better remind you.’

But Gently could see it was a waste of time. The Sea-King of Hiverton had concluded his audience: there was nothing more to be got from him but steady puffs of smoke.

Still, he hadn’t done so badly for his first day on the case. Gently got to his feet feeling that things had woken up a little. He’d got a handle now, both for Simmonds and for Mixer — especially on the latter he could put a little pressure!