Maurice Drake - The Mystery of the Mud Flats

The boat was in a state to match its owner. It couldn’t have had a coat of paint for two years, and to make matters worse the beach children had been playing in it and left it half full of pebbles, seaweed and sand. With the girl looking on, I started to clean out some of the rubbish, and the man and woman strolled along the water’s edge to join us. Feeling ashamed of myself and my shabby craft, I kept my head down and went on with my work till the man spoke.

‘An old boat?’ he said, civilly enough.

For an answer I mumbled some sort of assent.

‘Is she tight?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I only bought her yesterday. She’ll take us that far without sinking, I suppose.’

He said no more and we pushed off. The filthy tub leaked like a basket, of course, and the water was level with the bottom boards before we reached the Warren. I saw what was going to happen when we started, and rowed my hardest to get across before their feet were wet, but facing them I had time to look them over and see what sort of people my first customers were. The other woman was a beauty—a real beauty, of the big, placid type. She said very little on the way across, just trailing one hand in the cool water now and again, and listening to the talk of the others. The man struck me favourably. He was tall and gaunt, with a bit of a stoop in the shoulders. His clean-shaven face was sallow and he wore spectacles, which gave him the air of a student of sorts. His big square mouth was immovable as the slot in a post office, save for an occasional movement at the corners that seemed to hint at a laugh suppressed. A man you took to at sight: straight as a line, you could see he was.

The girl who had waked me was of a different class from the other two. Now that I could see her more plainly I saw that she had a likeable little face enough, but you couldn’t call her a beauty anyhow. Big eyes and short upper lip were her best features; her nose was a snub, and she was well freckled, and wore her hair in a club sort of short pigtail. Her dress was shabbier than the other woman’s, and I took her for a paid companion, or rather a poor relation, which would account for their tolerating her impudence. She was full of life, chattering nonsense the whole way across.

I’ve learnt since that that young woman’s manners do occasionally cause embarrassment in well-bred circles. Blood will out: her grandmother was a mill hand, and the grand-daughter’s thrown back to the original type. She’s told me since that ‘Guttersnipe’ was one of her school nicknames, and like most school names it’s deadly appropriate. She’s got the busy wits and the quick tongue of the gutter, combined with the haste in action and the discerning eye for essentials that lifted her forefathers out of it.

The Warren beach was steep, and when they got out of the boat they had to scramble up a high slope of sand. The girls reached the level beach at the top and were out of sight at once; the man lingered to pay me. He hadn’t anything less than a shilling, and I couldn’t change it.

‘Take the shilling and call it square,’ he said, blinking at me through his spectacles.

‘The fare’s twopence a head. I don’t take charity,’ I said rudely.

‘No need to be rude, my man,’ said he. ‘Either you can trust me or you can take the shilling and bring me the change later. Here’s my card. I’m staying at the Royal.’

‘I don’t know when I shall be ashore again,’ I told him. ‘When are you going back to Exmouth?’

‘In about an hour, I expect. The ladies are going to bathe.’

‘Then I’ll wait till you come back and put you across again,’ I said. ‘That’ll make up the shilling’s worth.’

He nodded and scrambled up the beach after his womenfolk. No sooner was he out of sight than the younger girl’s head appeared against the sky and came slipping and sliding down over the steep bank of sand again. When she reached me she was breathing fast as though with running.

‘How old are you?’ she jerked out.

‘Twenty-eight.’

‘You were drunk last night, weren’t you?’

‘I was.’

‘You fool!’ she said.

Words can’t tell the scorn in her voice. It brought me up all standing, as though she’d slapped me in the face. Literally I couldn’t answer her; before I’d thought of a word she’d scrambled up over the slope again and was gone, leaving me staring after her like a baby.

When I got my wits about me I don’t know when I was in such a rage. The cheek of the little slut!

One thing I would do. I’d show her I was independent, at all events. Somebody else could row them back and spend my sixpence. I got into the boat again and pushed off to where the Luck and Charity lay at anchor.

It’s queer the way one’s resolutions change with one’s moods. ’Kiah was getting breakfast, but I kept mine waiting whilst I had a shave with his awful razor. After a wash I felt better and got overside and had a swim. Scrambling aboard the small boat her looks disgusted me, and I tidied her up as best I could, next thing, and put a couple of cushions from the cabin into her.

Doing this I heard a clock at Exmouth strike nine, and remembered it was eight o’clock when I had left Exmouth beach. I don’t pretend to explain it, but almost before I knew where I was I was rowing back to the Warren beach to await my fares.

I’d been thinking hard about the ckeeky girl, you may be sure, and a good breakfast and a wash had revived my self-conceit. Her slanging indicated that she took some interest in me, I thought, and I made up my mind I’d rout out my last decent suit of clothes and go ashore in the evening and try and pick her up on the promenade. Her behaviour had confirmed me in my notion that she was some sort of dependent, and I thought I could furbish up sufficient togs to impress her with the fact that I was a yacht owner. I’d take the starch out of her, I reckoned. No denying she’d waked me to an interest in her.

They kept me waiting half-an-hour longer. Whilst I was waiting I remembered the card the man had given me and searched my pockets till I found it. ‘Mr Leonard Ward’ was the name, and the address ‘Mason College, Birmingham.’

When they came down the beach the little girl gave me one look up and down, and then sat in the boat with her back to me all the way across, ignoring my existence. The man Ward gave me my shilling and offered to pay me for waiting, which I declined, and the three of them were strolling up the beach together when I was seized with a diabolical impulse.

‘Here,’ I called after them; and as they turned round, ‘You—the little girl. Miss—Pamily, is it? I want you.’

Her face went crimson, but she walked back to me.

‘My name is Brand,’ she said, very stately.

‘Pamela Brand?’ I asked.

‘Pamela Emily Brand. And what do you want of me, pray?’

‘I want to ask you something—two things. Why did you go for me just now like you did?’

‘Because I hate waste,’ she said. ‘What’s the other thing?’

‘Will you meet me this evening?’

It was her turn to be struck speechless now; she couldn’t get any redder than she was already. She looked over her shoulder to see if the man Ward was within call, and then, her face quick and alive with resentment, leaned over and with her open hand fetched my face a smack you could hear fifty yards down the beach. She’s a lady, I tell you! And before I’d recovered, she was marching off with her nose in the air—just boiling with rage, I knew; and I laughed aloud, for all my stinging cheek. I’d drawn her. I’d teach her manners—the gutter-bred little prig.

Rowing back to the Luck and Charity I resolved more than ever to go ashore and seek her out that very evening. Now that she was piqued, I knew she would welcome any advance on my part as giving her an opportunity for revenge. So the first thing I did after scrambling aboard was to look out my best suit of clothes and give them a brush up. Then I turned in to get an hour or two of decent sleep.