Francis Durbridge - Back Room Girl - By the author of Paul Temple

But he couldn’t get those neat feminine footprints out of his head. What on earth would bring a woman to No Man’s Cove? One woman and two or three men? Landing from the sea … They must have had some definite purpose … it wasn’t just a pleasure trip.

Ideas churned through his mind in quick succession, and he realized that he would do little work that day until he had found out more about the mysterious footprints.

‘What about a nice walk after breakfast, just to clear the brain, old son?’ he asked Angus, skipping along beside him. The terrier barked eagerly as he recognized the familiar word.

‘Right you are, then,’ nodded Roy. ‘But breakfast first. The most languorous female spy in christendom isn’t going to spoil my appetite.’

Angus barked his approval.

As he followed the dog, Roy found himself tingling with an anticipatory excitement he had not known since his Fleet Street days. He had been getting a little tired of crime reporting even before the war came along, so that when he joined up it was not the wrench he had thought it might be. Still, it was a fascinating job; it had something which ‘got’ you, and the old spell was on him again.

He had been lucky in the Army – if you could call it lucky to be one of the last off the Dunkirk beaches, parachute into enemy-occupied territory and fight with the underground forces. Any way, he’d come through some pretty tight corners without a scratch and collected a DSO and Bar and an MC on the way, though none of his newspaper colleagues, when he saw them during his rare leaves, could ever get him to talk about his experiences. Damn it all, was Roy’s attitude, there were some things a man should keep between himself and his God – if he had one. Roy wasn’t sure whether he had or not, but all the same he had kept his war-time experiences to himself hitherto. It was only during the past few months that he had felt an overwhelming urge to put them on paper.

He paused to help Angus extricate himself from a rabbit hole and they went on towards the chalet. They had all been glad to see him back in the Daily Tribune office, and having had his fill of physical excitement for the time being, he had returned quite happily to his old job, though it had taken him some time to pick up the threads again. There were several new faces in the office and in the police force with whom he had to deal, and the number of new rackets that had sprung up in the wake of rationing and other controls was unbelievable. Investigating them had kept him pretty busy, but after a time their meanness and pettiness had begun to pall on him and he had become restless and discontented.

‘What you need,’ Bill Darkis, one of the Home Office pathologists Roy had met while working on a poisoning case, had told him, ‘is six months’ vegetating in the country. Why don’t you rent a cottage in Devon or Cornwall and write your war experiences? Do you good to get ’em out of your system. But don’t spend all your time indoors writing and smoking cigarettes. Get out and walk or dig. Do something with your hands instead of that thing of yours you call a brain.’

Roy had laughed and said he would think about it. He had done more. The summer before this he’d used his holiday trying to locate a suitable cottage. Again acting on Bill’s advice, he had bought a bicycle and gone riding along the south-west coast, or over the moors, just as the fancy had taken him.

He had been nearing the end of the fortnight’s trip when he had found himself in Shingleton, where he stayed the night. He had set out next morning for Torcombe along the cliff road. It had been a lovely day and he had dismounted to rest and enjoy a cigarette at the head of the combe, or valley, which led down to what he saw from his map was No Man’s Cove. Through the trees from where he had leaned against the wall that ran along the seaward side of the road he could see an inviting stretch of sand, and as there was no one in sight, he had decided to slip down for a quick bathe, leaving his cycle behind some bushes on the roadside.

Going down the combe, he had been surprised to come across the chalet, which had not been visible from the road because of the trees that flanked each side of a pretty little stream which ran down the bed of the valley to the sea. After his bathe he had gone to look at it more closely. A quick glance round showed that, apart from needing a coat of paint, a few new window-panes and some other minor repairs, the place seemed sound in wind and limb, so to speak. Indeed, it looked to be the very place he was seeking; remote, prettily situated, just the spot apparently if one didn’t want to be bothered by people. (It looks as if you’ve been bothered now all right, Roy reflected a little grimly.) In one of the windows there had been a faded, dirty notice:

TO LET – CHEAP

Appy Barwell & Co.

Caterers

Harbour Road, Shingleton

So back to Shingleton he had immediately gone to call on Barwell and Co. He vaguely remembered the name, and they had turned out to be the firm whose tea-shops and cafés he had seen dotted about the coast roads and villages like a rash, with their ‘Beautiful Barwell Teas’ signs. Ugh! Still, he’d been grateful for a cup more than once.

He recalled the breezy smart-Alec of a manager, who had told him that the chalet had been a great disappointment to them. If it hadn’t been for the war, of course … The manager had shrugged. They’d opened it in the summer of 1939, and at first hadn’t done too badly, considering all the war scares, but after that season it had been hopeless. Then the evacuation from the south-east had begun and for a time Shingleton Rural District Council had installed a couple of families from London there, but successive visitors had found that the loneliness and quiet of the place had got on their nerves more than the fear of the Luftwaffe’s bombs and they had drifted back to London. Since then the chalet had been empty. The evacuees had made rather a mess of the place, but if Mr Benton was interested they could soon have it cleaned up for him and made habitable.

Roy had told him he was interested, but he had not said why except that he had been ordered by his doctor to take a long rest following a serious illness. He had said he would like to look over the place and the manager had given him the key. As he had peered into the dirty interior of the chalet, Roy had reflected that the manager had been right in one respect at least – the evacuees had made rather a mess. But it wasn’t beyond reparation if the manager would be as good as his word.

Roy had found himself liking the place from the first. It was a one-storey building, square except for two bulging outhouses, the kitchen and the usual ‘offices’, which were a trifle primitive but would pass if one hadn’t too finicky a sense of smell. The doorway faced the sea, and a covered verandah ran round three sides of the square. That, presumably, had been so that teas could be served outside, but it had also struck Roy that it would be an admirable place for writing and for sleeping out on fine nights. The interior, apart from the kitchen and the ‘offices’, consisted of one big room, with a counter and shelves running the length of the left-hand wall as you entered. The counter, of course, would have to come out, but the shelves would be sure to come in handy. In the centre of the back wall was a large, rough, but serviceable brick fireplace, which, despite the filth that had accumulated in it, looked as if it could be made very inviting.

Not bad, Roy had mused, as he had stood in the centre of the big room looking around him. A few structural alterations, a good clean-up, some paint and distemper and lots of elbow grease, a few pieces of furniture – he was determined to live as simply as possible, though he would permit himself two luxuries in the shape of the divan, which would make an ideal bed, and the easy chair from his flat – and the place would be reasonably habitable.