Palmer-Jones 05 - Sea Fever Read Free Page A

was staring at the letter like a boy at a forbidden box of matches. It was a temptation. Of all birds he loved seabirds best. To George, a child brought up in the Midlands, they had represented the freedom of seaside holidays. Now he was drawn by the mystery of their life at sea. There was a challenge to find out more about them.
    “Will you go?” Muriel Franks demanded. “ We’ll pay all your expenses. Will you go to Cornwall to talk to Gregory?”
    In the stifling room, surrounded by traffic noise, in the company of these unhappy people, Cornwall was suddenly irresistible. George knew he should wait, discuss the thing with Molly, that to go would only encourage a neurotic woman in her fantasies, but he could not help himself.
    “Yes,” he said, trying to sound as if the decision had been a difficult one to make. “ Yes, we’ll go.”
    Rob Earl was fast asleep, dreaming of teeming Wilson’s petrels and shearwaters as big as vultures which flew so close to him that he could reach out his hand and feel the rush of wind as they passed. He was in his office, leaning back in his chair with his feet on his desk. He had come to work with a hangover. The night before, he and his boss had become stupendously drunk. When his boss had offered to take him out for a drink, he had been afraid that it was to give him the sack. It seemed a luxury for a provincial chain of travel agents, even one specially involved with birdwatchers, to employ a resident ornithologist. In fact, it was to tell Rob that the agency was being bought out by a Bristol businessman. “ We need fresh capital,” he had said in an attempt to persuade himself and Rob that the move was a positive one. “He’s promised me there’ll be no major changes. We’ll be able to expand. That must compensate for any loss of independence.”
    Yet despite his words he drank with a depressed and determined ferocity, and Rob felt obliged to keep up with him. He had no idea what the change of organisation would mean to him, but his boss wanted to buy him drinks, and he was prepared to drink them. They ended up in a scruffy old pub at the top of Cromwell Road, and Rob could not remember walking home.
    As he spent the morning answering the phone and checking airline timetables, he supposed he was getting too old for such excess. At lunchtime he shut his office door, took his phone off the hook, and went to sleep.
    He woke to the sound of his secretary next door, banging inexpertly at a typewriter. Laura was employed under the youth training scheme. Rob frowned. It was not only that the noise irritated his hangover. He cared about his work. It offended him to send letters thick with Liquid Paper to his customers. He needed a break, he thought. He had spent too long in the office. He looked forward to a week in Cornwall. He began to drowse again, when he heard Laura talking. There were other voices which he recognised, and he wondered for an instant if he was dreaming again.
    “George!” he shouted through the closed door. “What are you doing here? Where are you going? Have those bloody Cornish birders been suppressing again? Why are you the only foreigner they’re prepared to talk to?”
    The door opened, and George and Molly walked into the office. George looked at the recumbent figure behind the desk. Permanent employment had failed to give Rob Earl an air of respectability. He was unshaven, hollow-eyed. Molly had always liked him but thought he was reckless and a little dangerous.
    “You’re getting paranoid. It’s nothing to do with the birds.” George spoke sternly, perhaps because he needed to convince himself that he was there strictly on business. By his side Molly stood quietly, discreetly disapproving. She thought there were other ways of helping Muriel Franks than to drive to Porthkennan. In the car there had been an argument. “At least it’s only indirectly to do with birds. We want your help. And perhaps the Cornish birders tell me about rare birds