She had on jeans, thick socks and an oversized cable-knit sweater that had once belonged to Bill – she’d sequestered it years ago because she liked the dark-green colour – yet still she felt chilled. She wondered how she’d cope in the depths of winter, until she remembered that she’d be leaving Cornwall after the concert, so that was one less thing to worry about.
A loud rat-a-tat-tat made her start. At first she wasn’t sure where the rapping came from, but then, as she glanced over to the French windows, she spotted the familiar tall figure of Fergus hovering on the crumbling terrace. He was wearing a thick, dark overcoat and carrying something bulky under his arm, wrapped in plastic and tape.
‘Can I come in?’ he seemed to mouth, for she couldn’t hear his voice clearly.
She laid the concert itinerary on the floor, jumped up – almost knocking over the half-drunk cup of coffee that she’d been nursing – and went to the door.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked, fearing that something was amiss.
‘I’ve brought you something,’ he replied gruffly, shifting from one foot to another as if he wasn’t sure what to do with his body. ‘Here.’
He thrust the package that he’d been carrying into her hands, and for a moment she just stared at it, nonplussed.
‘What is it?’ she said doubtfully. It was quite large, square and flat, a bit unwieldy but reasonably light, and covered in layers and layers of wrapping.
‘It’s a present,’ he replied, ‘for you.’
‘For me? Why? Sorry,’ she said, suddenly remembering her manners, for he was still standing outside in the cold. ‘Come in! How nice! Can I open it now?’
They sat side by side on the sofa, her with the present on her lap, him in his big waxed overcoat. Keen to be hospitable, she offered him a drink, but he refused.
‘I’m not staying.’
In the past she’d have thought him rude, but not now that she knew his story and the suffering he’d endured. In fact, she thought that she could forgive him anything.
‘Where’s Wilf?’ she asked, and Fergus replied that he’d gone to a friend’s house after school. Bramble was pleased, for the boy didn’t seem to have many mates.
‘Well, go on,’ Fergus urged, nodding at the parcel. ‘It might be a bit difficult to get into, I’m afraid.’
There was, indeed, a mountain of sticky tape, and beneath the plastic, several layers of newspaper and bubble wrap. A knife or a pair of scissors would have been handy, but none were to hand and Bramble didn’t want to have to get up to fetch them. As she tore off the layers, one by one, she found her curiosity mounting, for she had absolutely no idea what was inside. Then all of a sudden it occurred to her that it might be a goodbye gift, and she was tempted to stop right there, as though that might delay his leaving; but he was waiting expectantly and she must go on.
At last she reached the bottom layer and discovered a canvas, surrounded by a wooden frame, and quickly turned it to the correct side to find out what was on it. At first she couldn’t make out a subject at all and, tilting her head to one side to see if it made a difference, she frowned uncertainly.
‘Is it one of yours?’ she asked, thinking that she recognised the bold abstract lines and bright colours, and he nodded.
Pleased that she’d got this right, at least, she tipped her head the other way, to no avail. ‘It’s, um, it’s very—’
‘It’s the wrong way round,’ Fergus interrupted, and when she glanced up she saw little crinkles on either side of his eyes and realised that he was smiling.
‘Oh,’ she said, feeling silly. ‘Of course.’
He helped turn the canvas around, and now it was easy to see that the image was of a person, a girl in denim shorts and a white T-shirt, with long, slim limbs and blonde hair. She was outdoors, in a field or an orchard perhaps, surrounded by old, gnarled trees. The grass was very green, the sun was shining and the trees were laden with fruit – ripe greengages and reddish-purple plums. It must have been the height of summer.
The girl was leaning against one of the trees, her right leg drawn up, her bare foot resting on the bark, and she seemed reflective – not sad but confused perhaps, as if she wasn’t sure what to do next, which way to go.
‘It’s beautiful,’ Bramble said, meaning it. ‘I love the quietness, the lushness. There’s a mystery about it, too.’ She looked at Fergus quizzically.
‘It’s you,’ he said, pre-empting her next question. ‘I wanted to paint you the moment I saw you in the orchard. Before then, in fact, but that was when I decided I’d definitely do it.’
‘That time you saved me from the runaway lawnmower?’ She was amazed. ‘I thought you disliked me. I thought you’d decided I was the stupidest person alive.’
‘Young and irresponsible, yes. Stupid, never.’
As his deep-set eyes met hers, they seemed to turn from black to brown to sea-green, and all at once something that Maria had said came back to her and her heart leaped. Fergus! Of course! He was the other person who had brought Lord Penrose joy. He’d loved the artist well enough to lend him the cottage for free and to leave the French doors open so that he and Wilf could let themselves in...
‘Thank you,’ she said quietly, trying to conceal her excitement. ‘I’ll treasure it always.’
He didn’t smile but seemed relieved, as if he’d feared a different reaction. ‘I was going to keep it, but I thought it was right you should have it. Call it a record of your earliest days at Polgarry and a memento of our brief time together.’
His words reminded her of the harsh truth, and instantly the spell was broken.
‘I don’t want you to go,’ she said simply. ‘I can’t cope here on my own.’
‘Of course you can.’ He sounded quite angry. ‘You’ll make a success of this, I know. I can see you hosting all sorts of events in the future. Polgarry will probably become famous, a thriving hub of music and creativity. You’ll be the toast of Tremarnock, the whole of the South West.’
She shook her head. ‘This place is falling down around me, you know that. A few festivals aren’t going to keep the manor warm and dry. Besides, I don’t...’
She stopped speaking because she became aware that he was sitting very close to her, so close that their shoulders and knees were almost touching and she could hear the rise and fall of his breath. He was leaning inwards, his dark, troubled face turned towards her, and all of a sudden she was mesmerised by the small, pale scar in the centre of his lower lip. If she touched it with her finger, felt its rough edges, she might just be able to smooth them away.
Fergus must have guessed what she was thinking, for he reached up and brushed her cheek. In one swift movement she took the painting from him and propped it behind her, and before she knew it her hands were clasped behind his head and she was pulling his mouth on to hers. She was willing them to a place where there were no worries, where she could forget all about Matt, forget that she was selling Polgarry and would shortly be returning to the house that she’d longed to leave behind. A world where she would take care of Fergus and they could both be safe and happy. This was surely her destiny; it was what her grandfather would have wanted.
Lost in make-believe, it took her a moment or two to realise that he was unlacing her fingers and loosening her hands around his head.
‘Fergus, I—’
‘Don’t,’ he said, pulling back.
‘Why?’
‘I can’t. I’m sorry...’
He rose abruptly and a cold hand gripped her intestines and squeezed tight.
‘Stay here with me,’ she pleaded. ‘You and Wilf. You can paint and I’ll get a job. We won’t need much; we’ll manage somehow. I can make you better...’
‘You don’t understand,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I can never love another woman. That side of my life’s over, finished. My heart broke when Julia and Felicity died. The only things that matter to me now are Wilf and my work. Nothing more. They’re what I get up for every morning and what I
go to sleep thinking of.
‘I can’t ever give you what you want. I felt sorry for you; I apologise if you feel I misled you. You’re young, with your whole life in front of you. You deserve the best. Go and find someone your age. Go back to Matt.’
At the mention of his name, a sense of rage, self-pity, shame and powerlessness washed over her. All her hopes and dreams, it seemed, had come to nothing, all her plans turned to dust.
‘You can take your painting back. I don’t want it.’ She hated herself for hurting him, yet wished to cause maximum damage nonetheless.
Fergus’s shoulders drooped. ‘Do you mean it?’
‘I’ve got too many paintings already, and it won’t fit with the others; it’s too modern.’
He sighed, long and deep. ‘Very well.’ Then he bent down, picked up his work and tucked it back under his arm. The paper that he’d wrapped it in was still strewn all around but he didn’t bother to pick it up.
She watched, dumbly, as he took several strides across the room and hesitated at the French doors.
‘We’re leaving on Friday.’
So soon? She’d thought that he might at least wait until after the festival, after Christmas even.
‘I’ll drop by in the next couple of days to say goodbye to Wilf then,’ she said shakily. ‘I expect you’ve already told Maria your plans?’
Fergus nodded.
‘So that’s all settled.’
‘Yes.’
It took him a moment or two to wrestle with the lock on the French doors, which eventually flew open, letting in a blast of chilly air. She didn’t move; she wasn’t going to humiliate herself further.
He turned and looked at her before he left, willing her to understand, to meet him halfway at least, but she pretended not to notice. She bent down on her hands and knees to gather up the strewn newspaper, and it was only after he’d disappeared that her tears fell thick and fast, turning the newsprint to unsightly splodges of black, white and grey.
23
SHE COULDN’T WATCH them go. They left early, just after the sun had risen, and she’d already told Wilf that she wouldn’t be there to wave them off.
‘I can’t spare the time. Sorry, darling, but I’ve too much work to do,’ she’d lied, kissing him on the top of his head. ‘Send me a postcard when you arrive.’
She’d been aware that Maria had been busy for the past few days making sandwiches, biscuits and pastries for their journey, but she hadn’t commented. In fact, she and the housekeeper had barely exchanged more than a few words for what seemed like an age. Bramble had guessed that Maria was waiting to find out about her employer’s long-term plans, for since the conversation in the television room they hadn’t discussed the property or the housekeeper’s position again. Maria had taken only a passing interest in the festival and had spent most of her time cooking, pottering in the kitchen garden or resting in her room. Perhaps she missed Cassie; she certainly seemed to have a better relationship with her than with her boss.
As Bramble lay in her four-poster, picturing Wilf and Fergus piling the last things in their van and locking up the cottage for the final time, she wondered if she’d ever felt so bleak and desolate. The thought of giving herself to Fergus, of dedicating her life to healing his wounds, had seemed for one wild moment to be the answer to all her problems, but she was certain now that true happiness was beyond her. The only thing keeping her from jumping in the car right this minute and driving back to London was her determination to see the festival through to the end. Then and only then would she be able to say that she’d done something worthwhile here, that she’d left her mark.
Knowing that Tabitha wouldn’t come till the afternoon, Bramble could so easily have pulled the covers over her head and stayed where she was. However, keeping busy seemed preferable to brooding, so she allocated herself the unenviable task of going through Lord Penrose’s study, something that she’d been putting off for weeks.
The study was situated in the east wing of the manor, near the morning room, and the door was usually kept firmly shut. She’d only ever been in once or twice and had left again quickly, because it was so dusty and oppressive, stacked from floor to ceiling with shelves groaning with files, crumbling old books that appeared not to have been touched for years, strange objects that might have been collected on foreign travels or given as gifts perhaps, and other sundry items. If there had ever been anything valuable in there, it had long since been given away or sold, leaving only tat and mess, items that no one in their right mind could possibly want.
On one wall, beneath the leaded glass window, was an ugly pedestal desk, Victorian perhaps, with four drawers on either side with decorative brass handles and a studded, battered green leather surface. Bramble had once peeked in the drawers and closed them again quickly, for they were stuffed with crumpled letters and bits of paper, cracked fountain pens that had leaked black ink, staples, broken rubbers and stray drawing pins.
She had gleaned, from the debris, that Lord Penrose must rarely have ventured in here himself, at least in his later years, and she doubted that she’d find anything noteworthy. However, before leaving Cornwall for good she felt duty-bound to go through his personal papers, saving anything that she fancied as a keepsake and throwing out the rest.
Armed with a roll of black bin bags, she settled on the worn leather-bound chair and pulled open the top right-hand drawer. Inside she found a pocket diary, dated 1961, with her grandfather’s signature on the first page. He couldn’t have used the diary for long, however, as the only entries were in January and February, and even these told her little, save that in those days at least he did have a social life: ‘Dinner with Margery and Raymond, eight p.m.’; ‘Burns Night – Henry and Maud, seven thirty’. She chucked the diary away.
The papers in the other drawers meant nothing to her, just jottings; lists of items, perhaps to take on holiday; scribbles to the bank manager that had never been sent; the beginnings of letters – ‘My dear Anne...’; the odd postcard from a friend. These, too, went into a bin bag. She was beginning to think that she could empty the whole desk without bothering to check when she noticed for the first time a small brass ring, set flush into the leather surface so discreetly that most people would miss it.
Curious, she extracted the ring with a little finger and was surprised to find that it turned into a miniature handle, which when pulled opened the lid to a hidden compartment, almost as wide and deep as the upper part of the desk itself. Inside was a square parcel, clumsily wrapped in dusty brown paper, and on the front, in capital letters, was a name, written once again in Lord Penrose’s hand, and beneath it the words ‘Fragile. Handle With Care’.
Bramble stared at the name and a tingle ran up and down her spine, for there was no mistaking it: ‘BRAMBLE CHALLONER’. She felt suddenly as if Lord Penrose had risen from his grave and handed her the package himself.
Her fingers trembled as she tentatively removed the wrapping, remembering Fergus’s present of only a few days before. She wasn’t sure whether to expect a gift or a curse. Inside the brown paper there appeared to be a bundle of dirty, yellowing fabric. Feeling slightly disappointed, and wondering if this was her grandfather’s idea of a joke, she picked up the material.
Underneath lay a small oil painting within a narrow gilt frame. The image was of fruit in a blue bowl, resting on a white linen tablecloth beside a simple blue-and-white teapot. The paint was slightly damaged in places, but something about the work pleased her immensely. Perhaps it was the primitive vitality of the shapes or the intense, undiluted colours. She was no expert, but could see that it was nothing like the rather dull, static portraits that hung around Polgarry; it oozed individuality and panache.
Glancing down, she saw that in the bottom right-hand corner was a signature written in swirly black letters. The surname rang a bell, and for a moment she felt excited, but then she reminded herself that it was probably a copy. If so, though, why would Lord Penrose have hidden it here? And why g
ive it to her? It was a mystery indeed.
Jumping up, she quickly scanned the books on the shelves around her, frustrated that the titles appeared to have been put there randomly, with no logic. It was clear that her grandfather had once had a taste for novels that were now mostly long forgotten, as well as books on birds and wildlife, but as she cast her eye along the rows she finally alighted on a small collection about art – the Renaissance, impressionism, surrealism and so on. Among them was an encyclopaedia of famous painters through the ages, listed in alphabetical order. Feeling strangely light-headed, she knelt down, opened the book and flicked through until she found the page about a French painter of the late nineteenth century, a post-impressionist who bore the same moniker as her artist.
His subject matter was wide and varied: portraits, landscapes, cityscapes, still lifes and, in later years, spiritual and mythological themes executed in a different, even more exuberant style. As she gazed at the numerous images, starting with his earliest works and moving through his life, her focus fell on a picture from 1864: ‘Still Life with Teapot’. It was the same as her picture!
Her head swam and for a moment she thought she might faint. Turning back to the page in front of her, she read, ‘His work was influential to many modern artists... bold, colourful design... only became popular after his death...’ The words barely registered. What to do? Keep calm, said a voice inside her. Get a grip and take this step by step.
Fired, suddenly, with new-found energy, she jumped up, carefully rewrapped the painting in its rags and paper, put it back in the hidden compartment and laid the encyclopaedia on top. Then she forced herself to walk, not run, into the morning room where she picked up the corded phone.
Tremarnock Summer Page 34