The Sea Gate

by Jane Johnson

  Eventually they seem to get bored. We decide at last that they will, for cash in hand, clear away the rubble of the fallen porch. I help them load the detritus into the back of their flatbed truck, up and down the steep steps with armfuls of it. By the time we have finished we are all filthy, covered in dust and flakes of wood, and I am forty pounds lighter in the purse. I watch their truck roll away down the track, as relieved to see the back of them as to get rid of the rubble, as if they are carrying my sin away. It slipped my mind to tell Cousin Olivia what happened to her porch, and now the porch is gone. I will tell her next time I see her. I have already resolved to hire a car rather than suffer Rosie’s terrifying driving, as soon as I find the locket and am able to it take to her.

  The light is fading. I glance reflexively towards my left wrist, which always used to bear a watch before the recent acquisition of a smartphone made it redundant… and realize with a start that it no longer bears the little bead bracelet. My stomach lurches. I scan the cleared space in which I stand. If I dropped it out here while helping Ezra and Saul with the rubble then it is surely gone for ever. I run down the steps to the track below, but there is no sign of it. I have to find it: it was tucked away in Olivia’s drawer like a precious object. I put my head in my hands and give a howl of rage and sorrow. I am a walking disaster area. I cannot be trusted with anything – with mothers or porches or jewellery.

  Buck up, Becky! Mum’s voice in my head is soothingly calm. Retrace your steps.

  Back into the house I go. In the room where I found the bracelet, the room I now think of as my bedroom, I scan the wooden floor, the threadbare Turkish rug, the corridor outside, each stair on the way back down. I check the downstairs rooms, the camp bed, blankets, clothing pile, the totem table – no sign. I walk back down the hallway, checking there are no holes into which it can have fallen. At the pair of doors in the corridor opposite the longcase clock I stop. The smell of the men’s smoke is strong here, but there’s also a trace of something beyond the tobacco and marijuana, something more… foreign which draws me. I try the handle again, without success. Then I reach up to the lintel and my fingers touch something cold and metallic: a key. I suppose it’s the logical place to keep it. Even though the bracelet cannot possibly be down there, I unlock the door, flick on the light switch and go down.

  The cellar is about twelve feet square and full of boxes, tins, tools, shelves with paint cans on them – everything you would expect to find in such a space. I can’t see any obvious reason for bricking it up: there are no cracks in the floor, or the walls, or the ceiling. It’s cold down here, really cold, and it smells of damp, and stale smoke, and the sea, and something aromatic that I can’t quite place.

  Behind the shelf unit there is a door. I thread my arm into the narrow gap and pull on the handle, but it won’t open. When pushed it remains solidly closed.

  There is, however, a keyhole beneath the handle. A keyhole designed to take a large iron key.

  6

  Olivia

  August 1943

  OLIVIA GLARED ACROSS THE TABLE AT HER UNWANTED guardian. The horrid woman behaved like an aunt but was only a housekeeper. She had been evacuated down here with an infant from the bombing in Exeter. Soon after which Mrs Kitto had been called up to work in London, leaving Olivia in her clutches.

  Winnie Ogden fixed her difficult charge with what she considered a maternal look, though it did not come easily. ‘Now really, dear, do you need another slice? Remember: a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips.’

  Olivia was by no means fat, and always hungry. But even if neither had been the case she would have done what she now did, which was to snag a second piece of toast and smear it liberally with butter. Feeling the disapproval of Winnie’s gaze upon her, she levered herself semi-upright and stretched across the table for the pot of strawberry jam the older woman had placed just out of reach. Eschewing the jam spoon, she rudely dug her butter knife into it and juggled a whole berry onto her toast. This was her due, she thought. I am being held captive by enemy invaders.

  Across the table five-year-old Mary gave an exaggerated groan of disgust and rolled her pale blue eyes.

  Mrs Ogden tutted. ‘You little savage! Did your mother never teach you any manners?’ She sniffed. ‘I suppose the French have different standards.’

  Olivia gave her a death-stare as she swallowed the last of the toast. Then, because she enjoyed provoking Winnie, she said, ‘I’m still growing. If I close my eyes and concentrate I can hear my bones creaking as they stretch in the dark. It’s just like forcing rhubarb.’

  Mary stared at Olivia in horror.

  Winnie pursed her lips. ‘No need to be fanciful, Olivia. We all have to tighten our belts these days.’ She patted her flat stomach complacently.

  Yes, thought Olivia, there’s nothing there, is there? Not an ounce of fat, or love, or joy. That’s how you’d have the whole world. It was impossible for her to imagine Mrs Ogden ever having married, made love with a man, given birth. Impossible. She still did not believe there had ever been a Mr Ogden. And if there had been he was probably, judging by his offspring, a hobgoblin.

  ‘When are they arriving?’ she asked.

  ‘Afternoon train.’ Winnie sighed. ‘Wretched creatures. What does Farmer Roberts want with London girls anyway? They won’t know one end of a cow from the other.’ She gathered the plates and cutlery. ‘In the village they said a Land Girl on the farm at Perranuthnoe got herself in the family way. They don’t know how to keep their knees together, these city girls. They’ve got the morals of snakes. I know you have some of your mother’s French blood, and goodness only knows what French girls get up to, but don’t you dare go fraternizing with them!’

  Olivia regarded Winnie’s scrawny back murderously. ‘It would be jolly hard to fraternize with them, given that they’re female. Also, snakes don’t have legs.’

  Winnie turned, her lips set in a hard line. ‘Mary, you may leave the table. Go upstairs and make your bed.’ She watched as the child climbed down off the chair and reluctantly left the room. As soon as she was out of earshot, Winnie placed her hands on the table and leaned towards Olivia. ‘You think you’re better than us, that’s your trouble, my girl, but I shall make it my business to teach you otherwise,’ she said with quiet menace.

  Olivia pushed herself away from the table, taking perverse pleasure from the scrape of the chair legs against the floor. ‘You’re quite right,’ she said beneath her breath. Louder, she said, ‘I’ll go down to the station with Jago when he goes to fetch them in the car.’

  ‘He’ll be taking the cart. They aren’t royalty.’

  Olivia made a face. ‘They’ll think we’re peasants.’

  ‘They’ll just have to take us as they find us.’ Winnie cleared the table, denying Olivia the chance at a third slice of bread. ‘Besides, you have chores.’

  ‘They won’t understand a word Jago says. I can translate for them.’

  ‘They can’t expect everyone down here to speak Received Standard. Now get along and make up their beds. Beat the rugs and put water in the ewer. I’ve cut one of the old towels in half – you give them one each. There isn’t any soap: they’ll have to get used to our backward country ways.’

  She swept out of the room with an armful of crockery. Olivia glared after her. ‘It’s pure slavery,’ she muttered.

  Outside in the orchard she took her frustration out on the rug, giving it a thrashing that raised clouds of dust that eddied in the sunlight and made her sneeze. A pair of cats – escapees from the neighbouring farm – watched from a safe distance, eyes narrowed to golden slits, curious as to what their favourite human was doing and hoping she might stop it soon so that she could filch them some bacon rinds. With one particularly solid thwack the beater did exactly what it had been threatening to do from the start, the head splintering away from the handle, to dangle like a dead thing. Olivia looked at it in disgust then threw it aside and loped round the back of the house, past the tumb
ling nasturtiums, their gay orange and yellow trumpets fat with tiger-striped caterpillars, past the outhouse to where the garden rakes, hoes and apple-pickers were stacked. She selected the sturdiest rake and finished the task with some gusto, imagining Winnie Ogden begging for mercy with each strike – shoulders, bum, backs of legs.

  When she looked back towards the house, she saw a face at one of the upstairs windows, watching. Mary: the resident spy. No doubt the tale of the broken carpet-beater would already be on its way to her mother. It was a survival technique the poor thing had acquired to curry favour with a mother who didn’t seem to give two hoots for her, but it didn’t endear her to Olivia.

  There must be more to life than household chores and running errands, something more challenging, more exciting. She imagined Mummy up in London, the collapsed buildings and running people, the fire sirens and stretcher bearers, the searchlights and the shrill of falling bombs with a sort of horrible thrill. Oh, for some adventure, for that sense of a life lived on the bright edge between the daily grind and dark extinction. It was so dull down here. Nothing ever happened. Perhaps, Olivia thought with a gleam of hope, she’d be allowed to go up and join her mother. She might get a job at the bank and wear a suit and shoes with heels, and a little hat adorned with a feather like Mummy, not the handknitted tam Winnie made her wear everywhere to contain her unruly mop.

  Bolstered by this pleasant fantasy, she whipped through the rest of her chores, waited till Mrs Ogden was engaged in some business with the warden, and slipped out of the house and away down the lane, where she waited at the junction for Jago to come by with the cart.

  ‘Mistress din’t say nuthin’ bout thee coming.’ Jago squinted at her suspiciously. She hated it when he called Winnie that. Still, she smiled her most winning smile and produced a small bar of Bournville, which she had been keeping for just such an occasion. The horse nickered with interest, straining its head towards her. Olivia rubbed its nose with her free hand. ‘Sorry, old thing. Next time, eh?’

  Jago’s eyes gleamed as he took the chocolate from her. Then he tapped his nose. ‘Not a word, eh, bird?’

  ‘Loose lips sink ships.’

  They laughed. It was one of Winnie’s favourite sayings. Olivia hopped up beside him.

  ‘Toovum furriners?’

  Most Cornish folk were content to use this term for those who came from beyond the natural border of the River Tamar. Jago applied it to anyone who came from east of Camborne.

  Olivia nodded. ‘Yes. I don’t know their names. Tuppence and Ha’penny?’

  Jago grinned, his teeth dark with Bournville. ‘Fatty and Nora?’

  They made up names for the Land Girls all the way to the station. Olivia’s favourite was Dandelion and Burdock, which Jago had rudely rendered as Piss-Pants and Sticky Bobs, the local names for these plants. Olivia was still giggling as they trotted along the seafront at Penzance, even as she thrilled at the idea of being in the presence of people who came from where her mother was working, who might even have met her, been served by her in the bank. And there was no difficulty identifying the two Land Girls amongst the homecomers and the men in uniform, who eyed Olivia with more curiosity than her Aertex shirt and baggy shorts warranted. They stood looking around uncertainly outside the station: one of them tall and willowy with elaborately sculpted blonde hair, a slick of scarlet lipstick and a pair of heeled shoes; the other a short girl with a cloud of brown curls.

  ‘Shoulda bet on Fatty and Nora,’ Jago said unkindly.

  Olivia snorted, and ran over to them. ‘Are you the Land Girls for Treharrow Farm?’

  The dumpy one grinned, showing a wide gap between her teeth. ‘Hello, ducks. I’m Beryl Hopkins and this is Marjorie Allison.’ The blonde inclined her head but didn’t say a word, as if she deigned to speak only to aristocracy. Olivia took an instant dislike to her.

  ‘I’m Olivia Kitto. You’ll be staying at my house – Chynalls, in Porth Enys. That’s a Cornish name, though there’s hardly anyone speaks Cornish any more. Chynalls means the house on the cliff, and Porth Enys means the port of the island! It’s just below the farm so it’ll be easy for you to get to work. And this is Jago Sparrow, and the horse is Nell. One of you can sit up with Jago and the other one can come in the back with me. It’s not too grubby, honest.’

  Marjorie stared in disbelief at Jago and the cart, clearly feeling she had stepped into the Middle Ages. ‘I shall sit up front,’ she declared to Beryl. ‘You can go in the back with the… girl.’ Walking past Olivia, she handed her bags to Jago as if he were a porter at the Ritz and climbed up, with Jago eyeing her neat bottom for longer, Olivia thought, than was strictly necessary.

  ‘Righty-ho,’ said Beryl. She hefted her own bags into the cart and jumped up after them. ‘Dad’s a coalman. Bit of dirt dun’ bother me.’ She stared around at the view. The air was so clear you could see as far as the Lizard to the east and Penlee Head to the west, the sea glittering with spangled light. ‘Ain’t never seen so much bloomin’ water in all me bloomin’ life,’ she said, wide-eyed, and Olivia grinned, proud that her home was showing itself off to its best advantage, decked out in its finest cerulean blue and gold.

  ‘My mother’s working up in London, on Threadneedle Street, do you know it?’ she asked Beryl as they took the hill towards Gwavas.

  Beryl grinned. ‘That’s the city. I come from Lewisham.’

  This was disappointing. ‘What’s the bombing been like? Mummy doesn’t tell me much: I don’t think she wants me to worry.’

  ‘Not too bad at the moment, ducks – I reckon our boys have seen ’em off. I got a young man in the RAF, not flying, but ground crew, and he tells me all sorts.’

  ‘Beryl.’ A sharp rebuke from the front seat.

  ‘Oh for heaven’s sake, Marj, it’s not like she’s a Jerry spy, is it?’

  ‘Loose lips. And don’t call me Marj, it’s common.’

  Beryl rolled her eyes conspiratorially at Olivia. ‘Miss Hoity-Toity,’ she mouthed.

  Olivia determinedly imagined ‘Marj’ shovelling cowshit up at the farm, and smiled.

  They passed the quarry and the workers’ cottages at Roskilly, trotted briskly through the village, where heads turned to watch them, details registered to pass on to family and neighbours, and took the steep hill towards Chynalls. As they neared the junction something shot across the lane in front of them, making Nell shy so that the cart skittered sideways. Marjorie gave a terrified yelp as Jago hauled on the reins and brought the horse under control. Olivia clambered over the luggage to see what had caused the kerfuffle, and there was Mamie, Farmer Roberts’ little girl, sitting on the other side of the track, howling. Her knees were grazed and there was goosegrass in her hair.

  Olivia jumped out of the cart and ran to Mamie, brushing her tears away, pulling the goosegrass off her. She took her hands in her own but Mamie pulled them away and kept wailing.

  ‘What is it? Tell me. Did someone hurt you? Did you fall over? Did someone push you? Tell me and I’ll thump them for you.’

  Mamie gazed up at Olivia shyly, then gave her a wobbly smile. She dug in a pocket and held something out on her palm. A Callard & Bowser toffee.

  ‘Who gave you this, Mamie? Was it Leo, or Nipper?’

  Mamie’s little black eyes widened. She threw the toffee at Olivia, leaped up and took off running.

  Olivia glanced back at the cart to see Marjorie’s pencilled eyebrows arched in disdain, Beryl with her hands to her mouth, Jago frowning. ‘I’ll make sure she gets home safely,’ she said, and belted after Mamie. Best not to arrive with the Land Girls anyway, given Mrs Ogden’s prohibition.

  She gazed both ways at the junction, uphill towards the farm, down towards the village, but there was no sign of Mamie in either direction. The girl had a knack for disappearing and she knew every hedgerow and pathway, every hiding place and animal track, which was why Olivia was concerned. Someone had upset her. She decided to walk up to the farm.

  It was late afternoon and the
sun was dipping, but its heat had banked itself up in the earth; it made the air in the narrow road fuggy and hard to breathe, charged the lively hedgerows, the singing birds and bright foxgloves, which leaned out on either side like an honour guard. Olivia both loved and hated the countryside around Porth Enys. It was familiar and beloved, the changes brought by the seasons intimately known to her, documented with every step. She knew when the elderflower came out and passed over, when the briar rose blossomed and honeysuckle twined; when the wheatears and swallows arrived and when they flew the scene. She knew the best places to lie in wait to watch fox cubs play and baby rabbits lollop out of their burrows; where the badgers made their holts, where the weasels looped and ran. She knew where the setting sun spread its rosy light upon the sea; she knew the secret ways down to hidden coves and sunbathing spots along the coast. To see her beaches now rimmed with barbed wire, the pillbox at the end of the Crackers, to watch young men – important and soldierly with their guns and binoculars – marching all over her beloved places made her both furious and sad. They were supposed to be there to guard against invasion, and yet to Olivia their very presence was an invasion.

  Of course no one else saw it quite the same way. That was also why she hated being here. Here, many people tended to look no further than their noses, became incensed about tiny things, were fascinated by other people’s business, and on the lookout for nasty rumours rather than good news. Some people were warm and kind and helpful, but others were sharp-tongued and prescriptive, always harking back to some nostalgic ‘better time’ when people were nicer, days were longer, bread was cheaper and cream creamier and the place wasn’t overrun by foreigners.

  After Dunkirk, Robbie Borlase and Jethro Sparrow, Jago’s nephew, along with Jeremiah, his son, had gone down to Falmouth to watch the French refugees come in to harbour. They’d gleefully taken spoiled food meant for the pigs with them and had boasted on their return to any who would listen, ‘We give ’em a right good pelting.’ Robbie had sought her out to beg some ‘Frog language’ off her before they went, knowing her mother’s provenance. ‘“Lâche, lâche!”’ we yelled at ’em,’ they’d told her the next day, proud of their stand. ‘Damn cowards, leaving our brave boys to die defending their own bleddy soil that they all up and left, running like rabbits.’