"Cooper, Susan - Dark is Rising 01 - Over Sea, Under Stone" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cooper Susan)

Chapter 4


A white morning haze lay over the sea, and down in the harbour the boats shifted idly on still water, bright under the sun. Jane peered down from her window. The fishing-boats were deserted, but she could see two small figures clambering from a dinghy beside the quay.

Simon said, behind her: 'I brought this for you to look after, if you really aren't coming.' She turned and saw him holding out a grey woollen sock. It looked peculiarly stiff and cylindrical. 'What on earth's so special about your socks?'

Simon grinned, but lowered his voice. 'It's the manuscript. I couldn't think of anything else to put it in.'

Jane laughed, took the sock and pulled the manuscript out half-way. But even though she handled it gently, the edges cracked and crumbled ominously as they caught in the wool. 'Hey,' she said, alarmed. 'If that's going to happen every time, the whole thing'll fall to bits in a week. It was all right up in the attic, lying there for years without anyone touching it, but if we're going to carry it around -'

Simon looked anxiously at the curled parchment, its battered edges dark with age, and saw cracks that had not been there before. He said, troubled: 'But we'll have to handle it so much if we're going to find out what it means ... wait a minute, though. That room -'

Leaving Jane baffled, he seized the manuscript and ran downstairs to the small dark door on the first floor landing which led to the passage they had discovered on the way to the attic. It was still unlocked. He stepped down into the tiny passage, and across to the bare, austere room that they had decided was the captain's bedroom. It was just as it had been the day before, and the telescope was still lying on the window-sill.

Simon picked up the case, and unscrewed it. The thread of each half was bright and untarnished, shining with a faint film of oil; and the copper lining inside, when he held it up to the light, glinted dry and clean. He dropped the rolled manuscript inside. It fitted perfectly, resting snugly between the two halves when he screwed them together again. Simon looked thoughtfully round the room, as if it might tell him something. But there, was nothing but the silence and the mysterious lived-in emptiness, and he closed the door again, gently, and ran back upstairs.

'Look,' he said to Jane. 'Might have been made for it.'

'Perhaps it was,' said Jane, taking the case.

You'd better hide it somewhere,' said Simon. 'What about the top of our wardrobe?'

'I'll think of a good place,' said Jane thoughtfully.

But Simon, halfway back to his own room already, hardly heard her; already his mind was racing ahead to the day on the Witherses' yacht. And by the time he, Barney and Father were gone, in a-great scuffle of argument over oilskins and pull-overs and bathing-trunks, Jane was almost beginning to wish she had changed her mind and gone too.

But she said firmly, to Simon's final fears: 'No. I'd only spoil it all if I got sick.' And instead she stood watching-from the window as they ran down to the quay, and the little dinghy bobbed out to the tall, slim white yacht.

Her mother, easel under one arm and a bag of sandwiches and paints in the other hand, looked at her doubtfully. 'Darling, are you sure you aren't going to be lonely? '

'Goodness no,' said Jane stoutly. 'I shall just wander about, it'll be fun. Honestly. I mean you don't get lonely when you're painting, do you?'

Mother laughed. 'All right, independence, you wander. Don't get lost. I shall be up above the harbour on the other side if you want me. Mrs Palk's going to be here all day, she'll get your lunch. Why don't you take Rufus for a walk? '

She went out into the sunshine, her eyes already vague with the shape and colour of her painting. Jane felt a wet nose push at her hand, looked down at Rufus's large hopeful brown eyes, laughed, and ran off with him down into the village, through the small strange streets and the Cornish voices lilting from the doorways of the shops. But all the morning she felt curiously restless, as if something were jostling to push itself to the front of her mind. As if, she thought, her mind were trying to say something to her that she couldn't quite hear. When she brought Rufus home, to collapse in a panting red heap in the kitchen beside Mrs Palk, she was still thoughtful and subdued.

'Nice walk, lovey?' said Mrs Palk, sitting back on her heels. She had a bucket of soapy water beside her, and her face was red and shiny; she had been scrubbing the grey slate floor. 'Mmm,' Jane said vaguely. She fiddled with the bow on her pony-tail.

'Have 'ee's lunch ready in just a minute,' Mrs Palk said, scrambling to her feet. 'My, just look at that dog, proper wore out. Needs a drink of water, I'll be bound -' She reached for Rufus's dish.

'I'll go up and wash.' Jane wandered out through the hall, the cool dark passage with the sunlight shafting in on one of the old maps that Polly Withers had exclaimed over with delight. Miss Withers ... why should she and her brother have seemed sinister? They were perfectly ordinary people, there was no real reason to think otherwise. It was kind of them to have asked everyone out for the day on the yacht ... Odd, though, that remark she had made about exploring, and finding things ...

Finding things. Half-way up the stairs, Jane remembered with a sudden shock of guilt that she had left the manuscript alone all the morning, shut in its new case in the drawer of her bedside table. Should she have taken it with her? No, don't be silly, she thought; but she scuttled up the stairs and into her room anxiously, and felt a surge of relief as she saw the case lying quietly glinting in the drawer.

She drew out the brown roll of parchment and took it to the window, gingerly straightening it out. The lines of cramped black lettering gave her the same shiver of uneasy excitement that she had felt in the attic, at that moment when suddenly they had all three realised what they were looking at. She peered at it, but the squat chunks of words were no more legible now than they had been then. She could just make out the initials of the words that Simon had said were Mark and Arthur.