Chapter OneCHAPTER ONE WHERE IS HE?" Barney hopped from one foot to the other as he clambered down from the train, peering in vain through the white-faced crowds flooding eagerly to the St. Austell ticket barrier. "Oh, I can''t see him. Is he there?" "Of course he''s there," Simon said, struggling to clutch the long canvas bundle of his father''s fishing rods. "He said he''d meet us. With a car." Behind them, the big diesel locomotive hooted like a giant owl, and the train began to move out. "Stay where you are a minute," Father said, from a barricade of suitcases.
"Merry won''t vanish. Let people get clear." Jane sniffed ecstatically. "I can smell the sea!" "We''re miles from the sea," Simon said loftily. "I don''t care. I can smell it." "Trewissick''s five miles from St. Austell, Great-Uncle Merry said.
" "Oh, where is he?" Barney still jigged impatiently on the dusty grey platform, glaring at the disappearing backs that masked his view. Then suddenly he stood still, gazing downwards. "Hey--look." They looked. He was staring at a large black suitcase among the forest of shuffling legs. "What''s so marvellous about that?" Jane said. Then they saw that the suitcase had two brown pricked ears and a long waving brown tail. Its owner picked it up and moved away, and the dog which had been behind it was left standing there alone, looking up and down the platform.
He was a long, rangy, lean dog, and where the sunlight shafted down on his coat it gleamed dark red. Barney whistled, and held out his hand. "Darling, no," said his mother plaintively, clutching at the bunch of paint-brushes that sprouted from her pocket like a tuft of celery. But even before Barney whistled, the dog had begun trotting in their direction, swift and determined, as if he were recognizing old friends. He loped round them in a circle, raising his long red muzzle to each in turn, then stopped beside Jane, and licked her hand. "Isn''t he gorgeous?" Jane crouched beside him, and ruffled the long silky fur of his neck. "Darling, be careful," Mother said. "He''ll get left behind.
He must belong to someone over there." "I wish he belonged to us." "So does he," Barney said. "Look." He scratched the red head, and the dog gave a throaty half-bark of pleasure. "No," Father said. The crowds were thinning now, and through the barrier they could see clear blue sky out over the station yard. "His name''s on his collar," Jane said, still down beside the dog''s neck.
She fumbled with the silver tab on the heavy strap. "It says Rufus. And something else. Trewissick. Hey, he comes from the village!" But as she looked up, suddenly the others were not there. She jumped to her feet and ran after them into the sunshine, seeing in an instant what they had seen: the towering familiar figure of Great-Uncle Merry, out in the yard, waiting for them. They clustered round him, chattering like squirrels round the base of a tree. "Ah, there you are," he said casually, looking down at them from beneath his bristling white eyebrows with a slight smile.
"Cornwall''s wonderful," Barney said, bubbling. "You haven''t seen it yet," said Great-Uncle Merry. "How are you, Ellen, my dear?" He bent and aimed a brief peck at Mother''s cheek. He treated her always as though he had forgotten that she had grown up. Although he was not her real uncle, but only a friend of her father, he had been close to the family for so many years that it never occurred to them to wonder where he had come from in the first place. Nobody knew very much about Great-Uncle Merry, and nobody ever quite dared to ask. He did not look in the least like his name. He was tall, and straight, with a lot of very thick, wild, white hair.
In his grim brown face the nose curved fiercely, like a bent bow, and the eyes were deep-set and dark. How old he was, nobody knew. "Old as the hills," Father said, and they felt, deep down, that this was probably right. There was something about Great-Uncle Merry that was like the hills, or the sea, or the sky; something ancient, but without age or end. Always, wherever he was, unusual things seemed to happen. He would often disappear for a long time, and then suddenly come through the Drews'' front door as if he had never been away, announcing that he had found a lost valley in South America, a Roman fortress in France, or a burned Viking ship buried on the English coast. The newspapers would publish enthusiastic stories of what he had done. But by the time the reporters came knocking at the door, Great-Uncle Merry would be gone, back to the dusty peace of the university where he taught.
They would wake up one morning, go to call him for breakfast, and find that he was not there. And then they would hear no more of him until the next time, perhaps months later, that he appeared at the door. It hardly seemed possible that this summer, in the house he had rented for them in Trewissick, they would be with him in one place for four whole weeks. The sunlight glinting on his white hair, Great-Uncle Merry scooped up their two biggest suitcases, one under each arm, and strode across the yard to a car. "What d''you think of that?" he demanded proudly. Following, they looked. It was a vast, battered estate car, with rusting mudguards and peeling paint, and mud caked on the hubs of the wheels. A wisp of steam curled up from the radiator.
"Smashing!" said Simon. "Hmmmmmm," Mother said. "Well, Merry," Father said cheerfully, "I hope you''re well insured." Great-Uncle Merry snorted. "Nonsense. Splendid vehicle. I hired her from a farmer. She''ll hold us all, anyway.
In you get." Jane glanced regretfully back at the station entrance as she clambered in after the rest. The red-haired dog was standing on the pavement watching them, long pink tongue dangling over white teeth. Great-Uncle Merry called: "Come on, Rufus." "Oh!" Barney said in delight, as a flurry of long legs and wet muzzle shot through the door and knocked him sideways. "Does he belong to you?" "Heaven forbid," Great-Uncle Merry said. "But I suppose he''ll belong to you three for the next month. The captain couldn''t take him abroad, so Rufus goes with the Grey House.
" He folded himself into the driving seat. "The Grey House?" Simon said. "Is that what it''s called? Why?" "Wait and see." The engine gave a hiccup and a roar, and then they were away. Through the streets and out of the town they thundered in the lurching car, until hedges took the place of houses; thick, wild hedges growing high and green as the road wound uphill, and behind them the grass sweeping up to the sky. And against the sky they saw nothing but lonely trees, stunted and bowed by the wind that blew from the sea, and yellow-grey outcrops of rock. "There you are," Great-Uncle Merry shouted, over the noise. He turned his head and waved one arm away from the steering-wheel, so that Father moaned softly and hid his eyes.
"Now you''re in Cornwall. The real Cornwall. Logres is before you." The clatter was too loud for anyone to call back. "What''s he mean, Logres?" demanded Jane. Simon shook his head, and the dog licked his ear. "He means the land of the West," Barney said unexpectedly, pushing back the forelock of fair hair that always tumbled over his eyes. "It''s the old name for Cornwall.
King Arthur''s name." Simon groaned. "I might have known." Ever since he had learned to read, Barney''s greatest heroes had been King Arthur and his knights. In his dreams he fought imaginary battles as a member of the Round Table, rescuing fair ladies and slaying false knights. He had been longing to come to the West Country; it gave him a strange feeling that he would in some way be coming home. He said, resentfully: "You wait. Great-Uncle Merry knows.
" And then, after what seemed a long time, the hills gave way to the long blue line of the sea, and the village was before them. Trewissick seemed to be sleeping beneath its grey, slate-tiled roofs, along the narrow winding streets down the hill. Silent behind their lace-curtained windows, the little square houses let the roar of the car bounce back from their whitewashed walls. Then Great-Uncle Merry swung the wheel round, and suddenly they were driving along the edge of the harbour, past water rippling and flashing golden in the afternoon sun. Sailing-dinghies bobbed at their moorings along the quay, and a whole row of the Cornish fishing boats that they had seen only in pictures painted by their mother years before: stocky workmanlike boats, each with a stubby mast and a small square engine-house in the stern. Nets hung dark over the harbour walls, and a few fishermen, hefty, brown-faced men in long boots that reached their thighs, glanced up idly as the car passed. Two or three grinned at Great-Uncle Merry, and waved. "Do they know you?" Simon said curiously.
But Great-Uncle Merry, who could become very deaf when he chose not to answer a question, only roared on along the road that curved up the hill, high over the other side of the harbour, and suddenly stopped. "Here we are," he said. In the abrupt silence, their ears still numb from the thundering engine, they all turned from the sea to look at the other side of the road. They saw a terrace of houses sloping sidewa.