callmemadam | Rereading 12: Monica Edwards part five

Is anyone still with me on this read? I don’t mind because it’s a useful record for me.

This is another book about night time haunting. The first scene is the church’s annual ‘harvest of the seas’ service, which all the local fishermen attend because it would be bad luck not to. This year is different because catches are so low that the fishing folk can barely make a living. Tamzin finds out that it’s because ‘they Frenchies’ are not only poaching in Westling’s waters but using illegal small-mesh nets. Her first thought is to talk to Jim about it. Remembering their adventures in The White Riders, they plot a haunting by a ghost ship, a sort of Flying Dutchman, to frighten the French away. Jim’s old boat The Thunderer will be made seaworthy again and dressed with white sails to look ghostly. This time, they tell their parents first and all seems set until Rissa’s parents say it would be all right if the vicar went, too. Tamzin finds that her ever-surprising father has not only known all along about the poaching (‘Vicars hear things,’ as he says in an earlier book), but is willing to join in, as it’s for the good of his parishioners.

They need tar, ropes and sails and all cost money In no time there’s a regular working party, including Mr Grey, painting and hammering away. Even Diccon is allowed to sit on a cradle suspended from the side, happily painting with tar (he’s only seven!) Roger makes a war drum and practises producing eerie sounds on his mouth organ. Rissa will swing the banshee wailer they used when they were White Riders. Meryon gets hold of some headlights to light up the sails and Tamzin provides some broken stained glass for spooky colour changes and a bee smoker. They’re a cheerful team on the whole (Hookey Galley is never cheerful). The first rehearsal goes well and as it’s only a practice, Mrs Grey and Diccon join in, along with Billingham, who quickly reverts to being a ship’s cat. Everything seems set for more haunting but then Jim ‘changed me mind’. Why? And why does he disappear for a few days to ‘Aunt Ada’s’? Tamzin observes that Snowey Peplow hasn’t been around, either and remembers Mrs Merrow saying that Snowey looked like a saint but would stop at nothing and she wonders … (One of the nice things about these books is that almost all the inhabitants of Westling have known each other since they were children.)

Of all people, it’s Smiling Morn who suggests that they get ‘that Hookey Galley’ to take them out while Jim is away. He agrees; he may be disagreeable but he’s a fine sailor. There will be red sails this time but otherwise, everything as before. They close with a French boat, a coastguard launch appears and there’s a general melee before everyone is back on the Sarah, including Jim, who was on the French boat (up to his old tricks) but: no vicar! He’s been taken hostage. The adventurous side of the scholarly Mr Grey is the great revelation of this book. He can steer a boat, is a strong swimmer and ‘once played rugger for Oxford’. You’d never believe he’d of took to a rough life so natural, wouldja? observed Snowey …and him so righteous.’ ‘Thass because he’s righteous that he done it,’ said Jim …’But I count he enjoy it, all the same.’ said Snowey.

No sleep for poor Mrs Grey that night, with a missing husband. Jim assures her he knows just where the vicar is and will get him back. Next day, the rescue party sets out, ready to do battle if necessary, like the Sussex men of old, to get back what is theirs i.e. ‘parson’. They arrive at a secret French port and a deserted village. Making their way to the church, they find it packed and Mr Grey, speaking French, just winding up a service. He joins the others cheerfully and says he supposes there will now be a night sailing. You have to remember it’s only ten years since the end of the war and who knows what Mr Grey got up to? The news is good and bad: he has persuaded the French villagers to give up poaching but also, to the disgust of Jim and Snowey, smuggling. This is a really exciting story.

I remembered this one as a favourite, then found parts of it quite boring. I think I like the middle period books because Tamzin, Rissa, Meryon and Roger are so used to doing things together and all the teasing and jokes are quite funny. It’s another book about conservation. It starts quietly enough with the four friends towelling themselves after a swim. Then Tamzin notices that her towel is black and her hair oily. It’s the same for the others and they realise there’s quite an oil slick on the water. Tamzin sees a black object, which she thinks is a bird, with its wings oiled up. They find three and Meryon says, correctly, that it would be best to put them out of their misery as soon as possible. Tamzin wants to try to save them and the poor birds are taken back to the vicarage and put in hen coops. Then something odd happens. Diccon is found talking to a strange man who says he’s keen on birds. He refuses any tea and when the others return, they find the man and the smallest bird gone. Next morning, Tamzin is grieved to find the two larger birds dead, as everyone else predicted. Then her mother reads her a snippet from a newspaper about a road accident in which a man was killed and also a bird which was in his car. Apparently, it was a Bonaparte’s Gull, extremely rare. Mrs Grey has to persuade Tamzin that none of it, especially the man’s death, could possibly be her fault.

Down in the village, talking to Jim, they find that tourists are being kept away from Westling because the oil seems worse there than elsewhere. It’s also bad for fishing and boulder collecting. Meryon predicts that Tamzin is off on another crusade. They learn that a bird expert lives not fat away and a friendly chap offers to take them over in his motor boat. When it can’t take them far enough, they decide to take ‘the little train’, which is the Romney Hythe & Dymchurch railway. Now comes the most exciting part of the book. The engine driver hits his head on a low bridge and the terrified passengers are on a runaway train. Meryon (naturally) clambers over the roofs to the cab and manages to stop it. He’s embarrassed by all the fuss and thanks so they disappear as quickly as they can to meet the birdman, who shows them how he looks after oiled birds. They realise it could be an expensive business.

Diccon is very excited because he has seen oil ‘going plop’ and is convinced there is a broken oil tanker under the sea. The others wonder if it’s actually a seam (?) of oil, disturbed by a small earthquake they had recently. Ah ha, Mr Piper (the man who shared their carriage on the train) is an oilman and comes hurrying down to investigate. Great excitement as a derrick goes up and drilling begins. Meanwhile, more birds are being rescued and Tamzin can never reconcile herself to the deaths. Diccon is bitterly disappointed about the tanker and he and some of the Lillycrop children start digging elsewhere. They do hit metal and Meryon swiftly moves them all out of the way in case it’s a bomb. All the time, the rather sinister figure of Hookey Galley can be seen up on the hill, gazing down. The metal turns out to be a pipeline containing oil, laid during the war but never used. And Hookey has been siphoning it off and selling it, the twister. Mr Grey, who seems to act as village policeman as well as vicar, forces him to donate what money he has left to a Westling charity fund, ha, ha.

The bird rescuing campaign continues but really, there’s a limit to how interested one can be in the exact way to clean up oily birds. Another plus for Monica Edwards in her environmental campaign, though.