The Crocodile Hunter by Gerald Seymour (best summer reads of all time txt) 📕

could do until it was answered. She brought water biscuits and a Scandinavian cheese, and he had the map between them, and they talked again about the sites at Stoke Fleming and Harbertonford, and the merits of Bigbury-on-Sea . . .

In old times, before he had relieved Winston Gunn of his vest, he had sent in his reports, expected minimal response, and had felt many times that he had been ignored. Since the AssDepDG had arrived in the night to cancel his retirement he had been listened to and his insights had achieved greater relevance. The sneers had wilted . . . Not that he was more liked, not that he was a part of the team. Responsibility weighed heavier, sometimes almost broke him . . . Two probationers amusing themselves at the expense of a self-proclaimed crocodile hunter. Were there glimpses of a nostril and an eye in a photograph he had dismissed?

Vera seemed to favour Harbertonford and said the views were pleasant there, and it was near to the moor and close enough to Totnes for a half day, and there was a vineyard on the Dart estuary. He did not dissuade her.

He wondered how long it would be before his message was answered and his phone wriggled on the tablecloth.

It was agreed. In his lunch-hour the following day he would telephone the site at Harbertonford, and would try to make a booking, preferably one with a concrete stand and within easy reach of the shop.

She cleared the table, usually his job, and he sat in his chair, and she had the radio quietly playing music, and he had one of the files out. It was the one listing the men and women who had gone away, been with the black flags, and who were now scattered. Deaths unreported, captures not listed, not those who begged for “another chance” and bleated of the mistakes they had made – always the victim and never themselves to blame; they were the ones who had scratched at him that evening. A bad evening, and they came more often. This file had a sticking power, and any of the men whose names were on the single sheet of paper, two columns of them, had only to be lucky once.

In a centuries-old house on the north side of the cathedral, in the heart of Canterbury, bedlam had broken out in a dormitory for small boys. A House Mother, attempting to maintain an expression of outrage and horror, swept in and called for silence, a return to their own beds, and muttered something about a “disgraceful carry-on”. A little sheepish, but not seriously so, the boys retreated. They were eleven or twelve, boys who sang treble in the cathedral’s choir. The use of such voices had been central to Christian music since the beginning of organised worship. Books littered the dormitory floor, along with clothes and bedding. The House Mother had a fair stab at conveying anger but it was an unconvincing act. They were the stars of each evening’s evensong service, so beloved of the adults attached to the cathedral and to visitors. They were the public face of the establishment that stood at the heart of a worldwide religious authority. They had sung beautifully that evening. As they had filed out of the quire area, there had been a welling murmur of appreciation from the filled pews alongside them. The performance was outstanding . . . But the boys who appeared in the guise of angels in their purple and white gowns, with scrubbed faces and their hair neatly brushed and parted, were akin to the terminally sick. Their time was coming close. Few of them would have understood the medical detail of the onset of puberty in their bodies, but all knew that a termination point loomed. Their voices would break. They would become surplus to requirements at this level. From being feted, centres of attention, they would fade away and their voices become at best serviceable and at worst unpleasant . . . They were the roses in the cathedral garden that would bloom, then fade. No longer a focus of admiration. The staff at the school that provided the scholarships for the choristers would try to mitigate the inevitable pain. At a predictable date, the voice would change. Some would take it in their stride and go on to sing with amateurs, others would buckle down to more normal school routines, some would collapse mentally and some would take on a rebel streak . . . Some would manage better than others – some would fail to absorb the rejection. They would leave the grandeur of the cathedral, where history lurked in each stone, where there were the graves of warrior princes and a decapitated archbishop, where an altar stood with burning candles to mark the stone slab where another archbishop had been hacked to death by the king’s knights, where extreme violence had mingled with prayer. For a very few of the boys the consequences of their voices changing would be drastic.

The gulls were calling and wheeling and the wind was stronger as Cammy arrived back at the parking area. He could hear the sea, could not escape its sound. He found them, sensed their relief. They started their picnic.

The teacher quizzed him. “We almost believed you had left us.”

“I had not left you. I promised to come back.”

“It is a matter of trust. You did not say where you were going.”

“Always a matter of trust. I went to get food. I told you that.”

“You took a long time. That is why we thought you were leaving us. Do you know much of trust?”

“What I know of trust is that it should only rarely be given – and then for a purpose.”

“Why should we trust you? We do not have your name. Please, why?”

Cammy said, “Because you have no one else to trust. No one.”

Not what they wanted to hear. The adults eating and exchanging glances . . . the kids had found a football among the dunes. Deflated but still serviceable. They had put down stones