Chapter 26

Titty barely seemed to glance at Dorothea and Ian when they came back, but she had insisted privately to Dick that they should go to bed as early as they reasonably could. Dick was therefore not entirely surprised to find that he was awake already when his daughter made the first of a series of murmurs that would escalate into a full scale wail if her breakfast was not forthcoming soon.

"I'll fetch her. You have my pillows too, sweetheart." Dick said and slipped through the slightly open door into the dressing room. Rosemary was willing to suspend plans to cry for a few minutes and Edward had fortunately not wakened. He brought Rosemary back to their bed and lay down again while Titty fed her.

He must have fallen asleep again, and slept through Rosemary's return to the cradle, because when he woke up the room was lighter. Titty had partly opened the curtains and was looking out at the view. Dick reached out for his spectacles again and reclaimed his pillow.

She turned to him. "Do you think we're worrying too much about this Crayford?"

The room faced east – more or less - and the sunlight made her cotton summer nightdress translucent. The white fabric made a white glowing cloud around the outline of her body and the light filtered through her tousled hair.

"Dick?"

"Mm – sorry. I was thinking about something else. No – I don't think we are. Something's not right – we just don't know what it is. I was thinking about this last night. Trying to guess about people. There is simply isn't enough data to go on – about them I mean. There isn't so very much to go on the other way round, either, but there is some."

"So.." Titty prompted gently.

"When we make mistakes – you and me, I mean, and Dot too, it's more likely to be because we've been too trusting. I was an idiot and told the egg collector about the divers before I'd found out what he was."

"We suspected Squashy Hat of all sorts of nefarious things, only he turned out to be Timothy."

"Did we? I mean, would we have done left to ourselves? You and Roger came to Beckfoot last, those holidays, but Nancy and Peggy had pretty much made up their minds that Timothy was a problem by the time Susan and John turned up."

Titty laughed, but softly. "And John agreed with Nancy pretty much straight away, I suppose."

"I suppose so. I wasn't really noticing that sort of thing then to be honest."

"Anyway, if Nancy were here, she'd be having us set a round the clock guard on the birds." Titty said, coming back to bed.

"You sound as if that's what you'd like to do."

"Wouldn't you?" She settled her head on his shoulder. One arm crept across his chest.

"We've got to be good visitors and so on." Dick sounded regretful.

"Ian did say he would have to do quite a bit of paper work."

"Crayford couldn't get at the eggs without a boat."

"There is that. And there'd be no point in harming the birds without the eggs, I suppose."

"Not that I can see. The point was to prove that the divers nested here for the first time."

"And you did that with the photographs." Her hand caressed his arm, not quite idly.

"All the same," said Dick, "perhaps we should keep an eye on the divers as much as we can."

"Ian warned him pretty comprehensively." Titty said.

"When is breakfast?"

"Half past eight. Ages yet. Hungry?"

"Not especially." Dick said. "Tired?"

"Not in the slightest."

Ian and Edward were discussing porridge when Dorothea arrived, damp haired, at the breakfast table.

"I like the porridge you have here. I thought I wouldn't like it. Mummy said it might have salt in it because of being in Scotland. We have milk at home. I like porridge with honey."

"I'm glad about that."

"Uncle Ian?"

"Yes?"

"Why did Mummy say it would be salty when it wasn't?"

"She didn't know there would be honey. Everyone knows that we have salt in our porridge in Scotland."

"But this has honey."

"Well, we knew that an English little boy wouldn't be used to salt in his porridge."

"Your porridge has got honey too, Uncle Ian."

"I thought it would be more polite to keep you company." Ian said and Edward nodded with equal solemnity.

"I know Edward would do his best," Titty said firmly. "but it would probably be rather too far for him. Perhaps you and Dot ought to go by yourselves. We can wander down to the nearer lochs. That won't be so far to carry Rosemary."

"And you must look after Auntie Dot. In case of any tigers."

"I can promise you that your aunt is quite safe from tigers whilst under my protection."

"What does that mean?"

"Protection? That means while Uncle Ian is there to look after Auntie Dot."

Edward nodded. "That's a good word. I like that word."

"Of course" Ian said when they had crossed the valley that the red herrings – or had they been the decoys? Dorothea could no longer remember -had walked up, driving the deer before them so long ago. "Of course, there might be tigers?" He smiled at her hopefully. She reached out and took his left hand, pleasantly warm and reassuring broad. He squeezed it gently and they carried on, across the ridge and down the slope into the valley where Nancy and John had led the sailor from Pterodactyl a dance.

"I feel completely safe with you."

"Good. I want you to be. And not bored either."

"I'm not in the least bit bored. I'm not Nancy. She's never happy unless there's something that might go desperately wrong at least. At least, she never used to be." Dorothea frowned. Something still puzzled her. Nancy had seemed quite confident and happy with her life as a naval wife in Malta. Dorothea had arrived in Malta expecting to find a quietly seething, frustrated Nancy, always on the verge of setting a cat among the pigeons, as she had been after Julia was born. Perhaps she was being kept occupied by the difficulties of learning Maltese. Somehow that seemed unlikely.

"I was more thinking that maybe you'd miss parties and so on."

She smiled wryly. "What with being Lady St George?"

He nodded.

"It's not like that really. I have to put on my glad rags and go to stand around with a tea –cup or a glass in my hand to launch something or other occasionally. Gerry's mother invites me to a dinner party twice a year – if we're both lucky it's when I can't go for at least one of them. Mostly writing is just writing, though. And researching."

"I didn't know you wrote non- fiction as well."

It was Dorothea's turn to smile. "I don't. But most of what I write is historical – at least it has a historical setting, I don't usually use actual historical characters. Maybe a few traits or details. Having an eighteenth century heroine who was called Wendy would be a bit of a mistake, for example – but there are also things about travelling – you can't have the wrong number of horses pulling the wrong type of carriage. And I'd certainly get letters if I made any mistakes with ships."

"One of them from Malta?"

Dorothea laughed. "I think John would mind so much he might actually write himself."

"So how do you research?"

"Now, if I'm thinking of story, or a particular period, I think of a lot of the things I might need to know and take myself to a fairly large library and look them up. A lot of little day to day things are just as easily found out in contemporary fiction – people didn't bother recording them at the time in serious works. Peter" Ian looked enquiringly "Lord Peter Wimsey – Gerry's uncle- introduced me to someone who owns an advertising agency. He's kept copies of everything they've put out, but also of lots of earlier advertising stuff. He was kind enough to let me look at them, so I filled a half a dozen exercise books with notes. I probably won't use all of them, but it helps."

"You said now. What used you to do?" Ian asked curiously.

"Plan a story and get half way through writing it, and then discover the plot wouldn't work because it would take too long for them to get from one place to another, or something like that."

"Couldn't you just alter the plot?"

"I did, but it meant altering some of the minor characters, and sometimes a major one, and rewriting a lot. It was uncomfortably close to missing the deadline. The longer I've been writing, the less research I need to do for each story. I can always go back to my old notebooks for most things now. I've done a few short stories with no extra research at all – not even the dress description."

"The dress description?"

"There's always got to be a dress description. It has to be a nice, long dress and the heroine has to be pretty. Actually, not always, but there's one editor who insists on it and since he's got the first British serial rights to the next five stories I write set before 1900, there has to be one. The magazine does sell well, so he seems to know what he's doing."

"So you would always have to live in or near a city? Even if it wasn't London?"

Dorothea shook her head. "No – most of the time writing is writing, not research. At least it is for me. It's different for other authors, I know."

They crossed the stream (burn Dorothea reminded herself). The rocks were close enough to the surface of the water to be wet. She could have managed well enough by herself, but Ian was obviously determined to help her, so it seemed better to let him.

"Thank you." she said.

"Thank you." he said, and then laughed gently at her puzzled expression. She found she didn't mind.

"I know perfectly well that you could have managed that by yourself," he explained, taking her hand again. "But I like helping you."

Several minutes later, when they were ready to carry on walking, Ian told her, "There are several small lochs up this valley – all of them quite pleasant and a nice little hollow that might be convenient to eat our lunch in."

"I didn't know they flew so far from their nests. Unless I've got it wrong." Dorothea said, watching the bird swimming on the loch.

"I don't think you have." Ian said. "I thought they were Great Northern Divers too. Nesting here, on the other side of the loch. Dad wrote in…1940 it was I think- Not long after Dunkirk anyway -to say that he was fairly sure there was another pair nesting here. His binoculars got commandeered of course."

"And so you never saw them again." said Dorothea.

"Not those, no. Strangely enough he did get a pair back, a much better pair – pretty bashed on the outside and one of the lens for the left eye cracked, but the lenses for the right eye were much better quality – or I've just got better at using them of course."

"I can't see properly through binoculars." Dorothea admitted.

"I lost mine, in somewhat different circumstances, so I'm afraid you can't practise with them."

"Those sound like the Great Northern Divers too."

"And act like them."

"We'll have to tell Dick."

"I thought maybe it would be more fun for him to find out for himself."

They arrived back, both rather sunburned, in time to see Rosemary roll herself over for the first time on the drawing room hearth rug, much to her own surprise, and to hear about Edward's walk down to the shore with his parents.

"And can I go and throw stones in tomorrow too, Uncle Ian? You've got lots of them."

"Throw all the stones you like in the sea, Edward, but I think it's going to be a wet day tomorrow."

Author's notes:

Yes, I find it improbably that any binoculars should actually have come back. Grandfather, like McGinty senior, was old enough to serve in the first world war but too old to serve in the second. His binoculars (He was a keen bird watcher.) appear to have done so, and a much less good pair eventually reappeared – to everyone's surprise.

As to the porridge – thank you to Fergus for letting the cat out of the bag on that one – and suggesting the honey.