The Travellers Read online

  She felt restless and knew she wouldn’t fall asleep again. With infinite care she slipped out of bed without waking Tom, and carried her clothes to the bathroom to shower and dress. In less than half an hour she was walking a delighted Toby past the water sports centre. All the curtains were drawn in the houses along Castle Terrace, and she noticed that the sign on the railings around the private terrace garden had been repainted. no cycling, it said sternly. no ball games. private.

  It was a breathtaking morning. The sky, still pale in the early light, was cloudless, and its colour was deepening from the fragile luminescence of a bubble, minute by minute, to the sturdy blue of a robin’s egg. At the edge of the dunes Kate removed her trainers and tied the laces together so she could hang them round her neck. She picked her way wincingly through the marram grass and reflected that her feet were an unattractive putty white. They might be more shapely than those of the old woman she had seen, but they lacked that wonderful natural mahogany colour.

  She wandered down to the water’s edge and tested it with her toes. It still felt arctic. Perhaps if the sun shone all day it might warm a little by the afternoon, but there would be no swimming in it for weeks yet. As usual Toby was teasing the sandpipers and flinging himself with enthusiasm into the moderate breakers which were coiling over on to the shore this morning. In his tightly waved liver and white pelt he seemed impervious to the cold. Further along the beach three gulls were fighting over a dead fish at high-water mark, shrieking with fury and making vicious jabs at each other with their beaks. Linda had been saying only the day before that the gull population was increasing alarmingly along this stretch of the coast, having multiplied by a factor of ten in recent years. Kate remembered reading about resorts on the south coast where the gulls had been attacking children and grabbing food out of their hands. She hoped Toby would keep away from the gulls, who looked more than a match for him.

  Something had been nagging at her all week, drawing her to this part of the beach, where the last curve of ochre sand swept up and around the foot of the rocky headland. She had been busy helping Linda every day at Harbour Steps Cottage, and her walks with the dog had been necessarily brief, but the image of the woman standing so securely on the edge of the rock pool lingered in her mind. Her father’s inconclusive remarks about the cottage had made her more curious than satisfied, and the frisson of distress that seemed to be associated with the place merely goaded her on, as she had often been goaded in the past by challenges she set herself – to walk along a narrow fence or climb a dangerous tree, and, later, to drive a more powerful car than she was used to or venture out on to the battlements of a crumbling castle despite a sickening sense of vertigo.

  It was with almost such a sense of vertigo that she caught sight of the old woman again. This time she had her skirts tucked up and was wading around the large rocks which formed the base of the headland. Once again she was carrying a bucket (blue plastic this time), but no net, and she seemed to be gathering seaweed. Remembering the icy cold of the water on her toes a moment before, Kate shuddered at the thought of the grip of the waves on the woman’s calves. It was a wonder she was not seized with cramp. Here, so far away from help, she might collapse and drown. As Kate drew nearer to the distinctive figure, she realised that the woman was not as old as she had supposed at first, perhaps a few years older than her own mother, which would put her in her early seventies. She looked less wild and witch-like today. Her hair was tucked back neatly into a bun, and that simple change gave her at once an air of dignity. A large black dog, mostly Labrador, was climbing stolidly up the tumbled rocks above her. Toby rushed ahead towards the woman, recognising her from their previous encounter. Always affable and curious, he would want to make friends with the other dog as well, a character trait which had brought him trouble on many occasions in London parks.

  Kate quickened her step, ready to intervene if a dog fight should break out. But the black dog squatted down placidly on a cushion of bladder-wrack and sniffed noses calmly enough with Toby. Now she was only a few yards away Kate could see that the other dog was heavily greyed around the muzzle, and had legs a little bowed with age. The woman straightened slowly, easing her back, and looked up. Kate smiled.

  ‘It seems our dogs have made friends! I’m afraid Toby always believes that everyone will love him, and sometimes he gets a nasty shock.’

  ‘Ákos is very good at reading character. He understands when the intentions are good.’

  Kate drew a little nearer.

  ‘I’m fascinated by what you are doing. Is that seaweed edible? I’ve heard that some of them are, but I wouldn’t know which was which.’

  ‘This is the sea-lettuce.’

  The woman held up a wide streamer of seaweed, with ruffled edges. Its colour was a glorious uninhibited bright green, like the flesh of a newly cut lime.

  ‘Do you eat it raw or cooked?’

  ‘Raw, it is like a salad vegetable. Very good. But with this I will make soup, together with onions, and thickened with barley. Many of the seaweeds can be eaten.’

  She waded in from the water. Close to she was as tall as Kate, and might once have been taller. Kate fingered the seaweed.

  ‘It’s beautiful. But then so are lots of vegetables, don’t you think? Whenever I cut a purple cabbage in half, I can hardly bear to go on and chop it up. The cross-section of a purple cabbage is one of the most beautiful things in nature – yet you never come across a sonnet written to a cabbage, do you?’

  The woman gave a low chuckle.

  ‘A sonnet to the purple cabbage – now that is an idea I like.’

  ‘My name is Kate Milburn,’ said Kate, dropping the seaweed back into the bucket and holding out her hand. ‘As our dogs have introduced themselves, perhaps we should do the same.’

  The woman shifted the bucket to her left hand and took Kate’s hand in hers.

  ‘Sofia Niklai.’ She continued to hold Kate’s hand as she studied her. ‘Until we met the other morning, I do not think I have seen you about. You have come to live here, yes?’

  ‘I lived here as a child, but not for years now. My husband and I have just moved north from London with his job. We’ve bought Craigfast House.’

  The woman gently released Kate’s hand and shook her head.

  ‘I never go up there. Mostly I live here by the sea. I can get all I need in the village. I have hardly been out of Dunmouth for more than forty years.’

  She seemed about to say something else, then stopped herself. The dogs had wandered down from the rocks and were companionably investigating the fringe of fragile dried weed and broken shells which marked the furthest line of high water.

  ‘I suppose I ought to be getting back,’ said Kate regretfully. ‘All my family were asleep when I came out, but they’ll be wanting breakfast soon. Perhaps we’ll meet again. I hope so.’

  For a moment Sofia hesitated, then she gave a smile.

  ‘Come to see me some time, when you wish, and I will show you how to make a soup from seaweed.’

  ‘Where do you live?’

  Kate looked about, but could see no sign of the cottage which was supposed to be nearby.

  Sofia pointed. ‘Do you see that line of trees, just back from the rocks of the headland? That is the wind-break I have planted round my cottage. The winds used to be terrible, but now that the trees have grown it is sheltered. Beyond there you will find me.’

  ‘I will come,’ said Kate.

  Chapter 3

  ‘You will be very careful, won’t you?’ said Linda for the third time.

  She and Kate were kneeling on either side of the fireplace in the bookshop, watching anxiously as two cheery and nonchalant workmen began to prise the entire cast-iron framework away from the wall. They had already dismantled the range, which now lay strewn about the floor in disconsolate heaps. There was the screech of metal on metal as one of the crowbars slipped, and a large chunk of plaster fell out of the wall, showering them all with dust. Kate wiped her
face with the back of her hand, and tried to breathe without inhaling the dust. One of the men began to cough.

  ‘Don’t worry, missus,’ said the other, taking out a large red handkerchief and blowing his nose. ‘You can’t beat these old fireplaces for strength. You could drive over this with a steamroller and not see a scratch on it.’

  ‘My old man,’ said his partner, leaning his weight on the crowbar again, ‘reckons that when he was my age he was taking out three or four of these a week and sending them off for scrap metal. Nowadays, he can’t find hardly any to put back in houses, now people are wanting them again. Says if he’d just stored them away in them days, he’d be a millionaire now.’

  ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about,’ said Kate sympathetically, as, with a shudder and an avalanche of plaster and soot, the fire-surround finally parted company with the wall. The men lifted it between them and staggered across the room to lean it against the wall opposite.

  ‘Watch out, now, missus. That’ll be mucky in there.’

  The mass of debris in the dark hole was disgusting. There were three or four bodies of birds in various stages of decay, the skeleton of what might have been a rat, and several bucketfuls of greasy soot, still clinging together with the deposits of ancient cooking.

  Linda took one look, then got to her feet and went to fetch the two pairs of heavy rubber gloves they had used while disinfecting the old fish-smoking shed at the back of the cottage, which she was planning to use as a storeroom. Kate was too impatient to wait for the gloves. She began to stir the mess gingerly with a stick before Linda came back. Promising lumps proved to be deceptive, falling apart into small heaps of soot as she poked them.

  ‘Here, put these on. Those carcasses are probably riddled with germs.’

  ‘I’m not touching anything,’ said Kate, then contradicted herself by leaning forward and gently prodding with one finger. ‘Wait a minute! I think this might be it.’

  The two workmen, who had grabbed the opportunity for a quick cigarette while these crazy women combed through the ancient filth behind the fire, came back from the door and leaned over Linda’s shoulder. Kate delicately lifted something between her finger and thumb, and blew the dirt away from it.

  ‘That must be it!’ said Linda delightedly.

  Dirty as it was, they could all see that it was a ring, a heavy gold ring, chased with a pattern of spirals and set with a dark stone. Kate licked a finger on her clean hand and rubbed the stone free of dirt. A sudden glint of rich purple caught the light from the window.

  ‘An amethyst, I think,’ she said. ‘Not hugely valuable, I don’t suppose, but it’s a very attractive ring. Mrs Hennage will be so pleased. Imagine getting it back after seventy-five years!’

  All four of them beamed at each other, as if the survival of the ring had been their own personal achievement.

  * * *

  István decided to walk from the railway station to the village. The distance was less than two miles and it was a beautiful evening, balmy and still. The intense heat of recent weeks had slackened a little, and there had even been a brief shower of rain that morning, which had refreshed the trees and given the fields of maize a dull sheen in place of the weary dustiness that had covered them before. He had left his car for repairs at the garage in Sopron, where he would collect it on Tuesday morning before surgery. This was the first time in five years that he had made the journey to Szentmargit by train, and he felt relaxed but eager for fresh air and exercise.

  Grasping his small suitcase in his hand he looked about him as he came out of the station. It had been built, back in the nineteenth century, for the convenience of the manor house rather than the village, so weekend guests arriving from Vienna or Budapest to attend balls and shooting parties could alight here, to be met by carriages and driven off to the golden-ochre house which he could just make out in the distance beyond the trees.

  He set off resolutely along the road, noticing that it was in an even worse state of repair than it had been on his last visit. Within five minutes he was passing the vast wrought-iron gates of the manor, which towered above his head. Nowadays they were permanently wedged open. Weeds were matted thickly about their base, and strands of columbine climbed up the convenient scrolls, twining about the bearded heads and lascivious limbs of fauns and trumpeting out their delicate white blooms between the scabs of rust. A fresh sign indicated that visitors were admitted between the hours of 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., and between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. Magdolna had told him that the Ministry of Tourism had recently opened the building. He wondered who would want to come to visit it. Cut off by marshland on two sides, and by the river and forest on the other two, the area was remote and backward. The only access was by this single road and the station where few trains stopped.

  Even in its decay the house was beautiful. As a boy he had often climbed in through broken windows and played there, racing along the panelled corridors, and venturing – with some nervousness – across the vast floor of the ballroom crowned by its baroque plasterwork ceiling. In those days he had never seen any room of a size to compare with it, and it appeared more menacing than open spaces under a wide sky. He knew that every single movable object had been stripped from the house – the valuables by the Germans, who had used it as an SS headquarters during the second world war, and later by the Russians, who had taken, indiscriminately, objects of no worth whatsoever. The only remaining furnishings (if they could be called that) were the huge cast-iron or porcelain stoves built into the corners of each room, eight or ten feet high and heavily decorated. Their survival had been ensured by their enormous weight and unwieldiness.

  When he was about ten he had found the way into the inner web of hidden corridors from which, in the old days, an army of servants had fuelled and cleaned these stoves, completely out of sight of the family and their guests. The service door had been concealed behind panelling in the kitchen, so that even from the working end of the house it had been hidden away. He had wandered there for hours, until his pocket torch had grown dim and he had had some moments of blind terror, thinking that he might never escape again. The smell of that secret place had stayed with him – a warm smokiness, as if the great stoves had only just gone out. There in the warren of service corridors a few objects had still remained, undiscovered by either Germans or Russians. There had been several candle lamps, set down by the last servants to have worked here. There were dirty shovels and buckets, used for carrying ashes, and one basket of logs, still waiting to be burned, dry as tinder. In one corner he had found an old and worthless one pengö coin and just inside the door which led back to the outside world an old pair of cracked leather slippers, worn by some long-dead stove attendant, creeping about behind the tapestried walls while on the other side music had played for balls or confident men with whiskers had sat over their glasses of brandy, plotting moves in the endless chess game of politics.

  So at least he had imagined it. He realised that such scenes might have reflected the past of the house in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but he knew very well that the events it had witnessed throughout the last eighty or ninety years had been very different. He wondered what the official guides in their uniforms, with their bright impersonal smiles, told the tourists.

  Beyond the ruined garden of the house the road ran through an arm of the woods; then the village farmland opened out. Fields of sunflowers yearned westwards, towards the last light of the evening. The maize was still small, held back, he thought, by the lack of rain. He could see the river now, and before it the village. There were no buildings here less than a hundred years old. Even collectivisation had not brought the vast barns found in the richer parts of the country. The houses were small and squat, sitting down like broody hens in haphazard groups with roads of beaten earth between them. The metalled road, on which he made his way down the sloping ground, petered out in front of the church with its onion-shaped dome, which lay at the near end of the village, beside the square and opposite the Blue Heron
, the village csárda.

  Some of the cottages were thatched with reeds gathered from one of the islands in the river, which had provided local people with roofing material for centuries. Others had shingles, cut by the village carpenter from wood gathered in the nearby forest. What the houses lacked in sophistication of architecture they made up for in the shades of their colour-washed walls. The same golden ochre, peeling on the mansion house, glowed freshly here, and deep rose red, citrus yellow, umber, mint green and pale shell pink were jumbled together in a riot of colour he could almost taste. Strange, how he had run about here as a child, never noticing it. Now, whenever he returned, the sight of all that joyous affirmation lifted his heart. The fields might be poor, the river dangerous and the marshes a forbidding barrier, but the village asserted itself with all the vigour of the wild, hypnotic gypsy dance, the csárdás.

  Their grandparents’ house – Magdolna’s house now – was painted a rose pink. Not the bright colour of the newly opened flower, but softly faded, like a bloom of late summer about to shed its petals. His sister had retained the old thatched roof for the warmth it provided, although it needed more frequent repairs than the wooden shingle roofs. He could see her now, standing before the house and silhouetted against the brightness of the river. A small, compact woman, not beautiful, but serene, somewhat withdrawn inside her own imaginative world. She would not walk up the slope to greet him. He saw her shade her eyes against the low rays of the setting sun and wait for him.

  ‘Good,’ she said, when he reached her. ‘It is good to have you home again.’ Then she reached out her arms and hugged him warmly.

  * * *

  Beccy turned up unexpectedly in Dunmouth a day early, having been given a lift with friends part of the way and having hitched the rest. It was Friday lunchtime, and she found Kate about to leave the house for the bookshop.