‘I did it our last night there,’ Louise said. ‘I went along to the private flat before dinner, while my mother was busy in the kitchen and Ruth was in the bar, and raided the desk.’
The sitting-room was so austere: there were three armchairs, a plain bookcase containing the works of Dickens and some volumes on garden management, the television set and a modern desk. Louise had never seen her mother reading for pleasure though Ruth did the crossword in the Daily Telegraph in lulls during the day, sitting in a sagging chair in the office, and sometimes glanced at a thriller left by a guest. Louise had opened the desk. There were a few envelopes and some of the hotel headed paper in the pigeon-holes, and a pen and some pencils; that was all. The drawers contained string, scissors, mending equipment, a box of chocolates – a surprising touch of frivolity, that, Louise had thought, amid the practicality. There was none of the usual clutter of living – no old letters, no photograph album. In the bottom drawer, under a pile of Ideal Home magazines, was a single photograph: the wedding group. Louise had found it hard to recognise her mother in the smiling girl on her husband’s arm. She took it to her room and put it straight in her suitcase.
‘I don’t suppose your mother will ever discover it’s gone,’ Alan said.
‘I don’t care if she does,’ Louise said. She was filled with bitter resentment against her mother who had always refused, it seemed in recollection, to let her do the things she had most desired – have flute lessons, for instance, which of course would have cost money and perhaps there wasn’t enough – and who had insisted on a secretarial training when Louise had wanted to go to university. There again, expense might have been a factor, Louise had to admit, and her training had been a good and intensive one, at a private college. She had worked in the hotel, in various capacities, until she married.
‘You’ve had a terrible time,’ said Alan.
‘Oh well – things were all right at first, when we came here,’ Louise said. ‘I had no trouble getting temporary jobs and could be with Tessa in the holidays. But when I started to get these attacks, I had to stop going out, so now I type at home.’
‘It’s shock,’ Alan said. ‘You’ll get over it.’
‘Well, I hope you’re right, but I seem to be getting worse, not better,’ said Louise. She glanced at Tessa, still sitting absorbed in front of the television. ‘We had an awful row,’ she said. ‘Roddy and I. The morning he died, I mean. We kept having rows. He drove off in a terrible temper and overtook a lorry on a blind corner about six miles from where we lived. He hit another lorry coming towards him.’ She paused. ‘He took a week to die,’ she added. ‘It was dreadful.’ Almost the worst part of it had been that she hadn’t really wanted him to recover; she’d felt only horror, watching him, wires and tubes sprouting from every part of him, in the intensive care ward of the hospital. His mother had come from Majorca, and flown away again as soon as she could, which was immediately after the funeral. She’d brushed aside the question of Roddy’s business disaster.
‘And you’ve been thinking that if you hadn’t quarrelled, the accident wouldn’t have happened?’ said Alan.
Louise nodded.
It was hardly surprising that she was in a bad state, Alan thought.
‘What about friends?’ he asked. She was a nice girl. She must have friends.
‘Oh, people were very kind at first,’ she said. ‘They looked after Tessa – I had to be at the hospital, you see and all that. But then, when I found out about the money, I felt so ashamed. I didn’t want people to know.’ She’d frozen them off, she realised now, those other young women, mothers of Tessa’s friends; and when everything had been settled, she couldn’t wait to escape. She tried to tell Alan this, and he seemed to understand.
He didn’t leave until it was time for him to go home, and he said he would come again.
Mrs Cox, in her basement flat, saw his legs go past her barred windows: dark-trousered legs and feet in well-polished shoes; the legs of a man.
6
When Alan had gone, and Tessa was in bed, Louise looked again at the photograph of her father and mother. Telling Alan about her discovery had brought the shock of it back to her, and she felt restless. She paced about the flat, thinking of the time she and Tessa had spent in Cornwall. Tessa had been excited at the prospect of a seaside holiday, and Louise had set out with high hopes. People went to visit their families and were made welcome; it was part of life.
‘I’ll never learn,’ she thought, remembering. She must accept that she was a liability to her mother, and even Tessa seemed unable to evoke her grandmother’s affection.
They had travelled down by train, and were met by Dave, the odd-job man, with the brake. He greeted them warmly, and when they reached the hotel, took their bags into the hall and set them down.
There was no one about.
‘Your mother’s resting, I expect,’ Dave had said, before going to put the brake away. ‘Miss Graham’s around somewhere.’
Louise and Tessa stood in the hall and waited. Should they ring the bell on the counter, like any paying visitor, Louise had wondered, and a lump had come into her throat. For a hysterical moment she thought she was going to burst into tears, and then Ruth appeared through a door at the back of the hall.
‘Louise! Well – there you are then! The train was on time, I see. Was it fun, Tessa? Had you been on a train before?’ she said.
Louise had forgotten Ruth’s briskness, her crackling energy.
‘Ruth,’ she said faintly. ‘It’s good to see you.
They never kissed. It was impossible to imagine Ruth being demonstrative in any way.
‘Come into the kitchen and I’ll put the kettle on,’ said Ruth. ‘It’s almost time for tea.’
They all trooped out to the kitchen, part of the extension built the year Louise left school. Long stainless steel surfaces lined the room in a clinical fashion; the cooking area was grouped in a central island. In a smaller room off the main kitchen was an old scrubbed table and some wooden chairs; this had been the original kitchen and was where the staff had their meals.
Soon Louise and Tessa were eating scones, with strawberry jam and clotted cream. There was fresh sponge cake.
Louise had finished her second cup of tea before her mother came into the room. She stood up at once.
Mother,’ she said awkwardly, and took a step forward.
You look pale,’ said her mother, not approaching. Her tone seemed to accuse. ‘And Tessa. Well, child, have you no kiss for your grandmother?’
She stood waiting for Tessa to move towards her. The child glanced at Louise, who nodded, and then slid off her chair and advanced.
Mrs Hampton bent down and offered her cheek, then sat at the table herself and accepted a cup of tea from Ruth. Silence fell, as Tessa resumed her chair. Louise’s appetite faded.
‘We’ve been sitting for hours in the train,’ she said. I thought we’d go down to the beach before it gets dark.’
‘Take your things to your room first,’ her mother instructed.
Yes, of course,’ Louise said. ‘Where are we sleeping?’
They were to occupy the humblest of the double bedrooms, which overlooked the back entrance and was subject to the noise from the staff as they arrived, some on scooters, each morning.
‘Won’t we be able to look at the sea?’ Tessa asked.
Louise had hoped they would have a front room and had allowed Tessa to share this idea. She knew that the room they had been allotted had an excellent view of the hotel’s dustbins.
‘I expect the hotel’s too full for us to have a front room,’ she said. ‘You can choose which bed you’d like, Tessa.’
‘Tessa will have milk and biscuits upstairs at six,’ Freda Hampton had pronounced.
Louise had clasped her hands together. She had begun to tremble.
‘Mother, Tessa is six and a half. Milk and biscuits isn’t enough for her. She has an egg, or baked beans – something like that – for supper. I’ll
get it for her. We don’t want to be any trouble.’
She saw herself, years ago, a little older than Tessa was now, in her attic room at the Welsh hotel which was the first home she could remember and where Ruth and her mother had met. Her mother was the cook. Louise’s supper was two digestive biscuits on a thick white plate and a glass of milk, carried up on a round tin tray.
‘Hmph. Does she?’ her mother was saying. ‘Well, she can have whatever’s on the menu for entreé, and vegetables, if she wants them. I’ll put it out for her. I’m not having you getting under my feet in the kitchen, Louise. You’ll keep out of the way. And so will you, Tessa – out of the way of the staff and the guests.’
Tears had brimmed in Louise’s eyes. She remembered creeping along the landing at that other hotel, to leave her tray at the top of the stairs for the maid to fetch. She would sit on the top step listening for sounds from below, and had once been found there, asleep, when the maid came up at nine.
‘Come along, Tessa,’ she said. ‘We’ll go and unpack. Then we’ll go for a walk. Do you remember me telling you that there used to be donkeys in the field down the road? Perhaps they’re still there. We’ll look, on the way to the beach.’
She picked up their cases and Tessa followed her up the back staircase.
‘Is Grandma pleased to see us?’ Tessa had asked, helping to put garments away in a drawer. ‘She seems rather cross.’
‘I’m sure she’s pleased,’ Louise said firmly. ‘But I expect she’s tired. She’s very busy. She’s got to get dinner ready for all the people staying here.’
There were donkeys in the field and after speaking to them, Louise and Tessa went on down the cliff path to the shore. The tide was out, and the sand, grey and wetly gleaming, stretched before them, with pools and rocky outcrops here and there. Tessa ran to the water’s edge, watching the wavelets lap back and forth, and then began clambering over the rocks looking for crabs. Louise followed, the tension of their journey and the anticlimax of their reception beginning to wear off as she joined in the search, slithering on the wet seaweed. In the distance, a man dug for lugworms. On the horizon, a tanker passed. Round the point was Portrinnock, the small harbour town with its fishing boats, and beyond, on the headland, the lighthouse.
It was good to be back, Louise had told herself firmly as they returned to the hotel, with Tessa running on ahead down the rough path between clumps of gorse and bracken. It was good for Tessa to run freely about without fear of cars and to breathe in this pure air. They were lucky to be able to come here for holidays, free.
Her mother had never suggested that they should return for good, after Roddy died.
‘You must stand on your own feet,’ she had said, after the funeral. ‘I did just the same, long ago, when I was left on my own.’
Louise was still trying to do it.
Tessa was tired after the journey and was co-operative when Louise took her off early to have her bath. She came down by the back stairs, in her pyjamas and dressing gown, to have her supper.
Her grandmother put before her a perfectly poached egg, milkily opaque, sitting on a nest of spinach and surrounded by triangles of thin toast. Tessa sank her knife into the egg and caused a turgid river of yolk to flow slowly over the hill of spinach.
‘Don’t play, child. Eat it up,’ said Freda Hampton.
‘It looks so good,’ said Tessa calmly, apparently undismayed at her grandmother’s curt tone.
Louise had tensed at her mother’s remark, ready to fly to Tessa’s defence, but it wasn’t necessary; the child was not at all alarmed by what Louise interpreted as an implied rebuke. She’s quite tough, Louise thought, looking at Tessa with admiration.
Tessa soon disposed of the egg, and a fresh pear, which Freda had peeled for her and sliced thinly. She said goodnight to her grandmother, not offering to kiss her but holding out her hand, which Freda, looking rather surprised, clasped briefly. Louise went upstairs with her, and stayed in their bedroom reading to her for some time, until at last she could delay her own return to the adult world no longer. She was just about to go down as she was, in her jeans, when she recollected herself and turned back. Tessa expressed great surprise as she watched her put on a dress and apply a little make-up.
‘Are you going to a party?’ she asked.
‘No. But I might help Ruth in the bar,’ Louise said. ‘Your grandmother always likes people to be tidy. Now, Tessa, you’ll be all right, won’t you, darling? The landing light is on, and if you want me I’m only just down one flight of stairs.’
‘I know, Mummy,’ said Tessa. ‘But I won’t be sick, or anything. I’ll be fast asleep in a twink.’
That was the evening Louise had learned that her father might still be alive. The news had overshadowed the rest of their visit. Somewhere, an elderly man by now, he’d been living his life all these years. What did he do? On her birth certificate he was described as a clerk. Where was he now? Louise constantly wondered about him.
The days had passed quickly. Louise had helped where she could; during the slack season some of the hotel staff were laid off and Ruth was glad of help in the office where Louise understood all the work. There were a few guests, most of them casual ones staying for only a few nights while they snatched a late touring holiday. The weather, as so often in October, was good.
The morning after her abortive attempt to learn more about her father from her mother, Louise had taken the brake into Portrinnock to do the shopping. The errands done, she and Tessa had gone on foot down the hill to the jetty.
‘There used to be smugglers here, long ago,’ Louise had said. ‘Men bringing brandy and silks and things in from France. They hid it in caves.’
‘Were there pirates, too?’ asked Tessa.
‘Oh, probably, anchoring out at sea and coming ashore in their longboats for plunder,’ Louise agreed.
There were gulls pecking at garbage in the harbour, but the tide was in and the sun shone, and it looked very pretty. A man on a ladder was painting the exterior of one of the cottages, and a woman at an easel was painting the scene. Louise and Tessa admired the handiwork of both practitioners for a while, and then walked on up the hill to the headland from where they would be able to see the lighthouse on a distant point.
A woman came out of one of the cottages on the steep hillside as they drew near. The moment she and Louise saw one another, they rushed towards each other, the woman setting down her basket to clasp Louise to her. Then she turned to kiss Tessa.
‘Well, my lamb,’ she exclaimed. ‘Aren’t you getting like your mummy? Come along in, both of you, and I’ll put the kettle on while you tell me your news.’
It was Mrs Tremayne. Louise had gone to school with her sons Tom and Dick; she had spent hours, as a girl, in her small white-painted cottage.
‘But you’re just going out, Mrs Tremayne,’ Louise said.
‘Psh – what does that matter? The shopping can wait, said Mrs Tremayne.
She had always had time, Louise remembered: time to listen; time to bind up a cut leg; time to admire a shrimp haul and boil it for tea.
Louise had allowed herself and Tessa to be shepherded into the cottage, where the walls were a foot thick and the windows small to keep out the gales. The interior was dark after the bright day outside. Tessa blinked and looked round. There was a lot of heavy furniture: big chairs, a table in the centre of the room, photographs on the mantelpiece.
Mrs Tremayne made tea in a large brown pot and poured Tessa a glass of rich, creamy milk. She cut slices of dark fruit cake for them both.
‘We were talking about pirates as we came along,’ said Louise.
‘Plenty of them still about, fleecing the tourists,’ said Mrs Tremayne. ‘Not that I count your mother among them, mind, Louise. She’s after the carriage trade, and why not?’
Mrs Tremayne’s husband had been lost when out with the lifeboat: he’d won a medal, which was kept in a leather case on the mantelpiece. Tessa, wandering round the room with her sli
ce of cake, looked at it with interest, and at the pictures of men in oilskins and sou’westers that hung on the wall.
‘How’s Tom?’ Louise asked.
‘Oh – doing well. In line for headmaster now,’ said his mother.
At one time Mrs Tremayne had thought her elder son, Tom, and Louise might make a match. She’d had mixed feelings about it for the girl was a shy, timid little thing, not the sort to prod on an ambitious man with his way to make in the world. She needed supporting herself.
Tom had married a capable girl, but life had not been so kind to Louise, Mrs Tremayne reflected. However, she had this nice little girl, who didn’t seem shy and was well-behaved, which must go down well with her grandmother. Louise had met her husband when he was staying in Portrinnock on holiday – not at her mother’s hotel but at the George in the town. The young man had thought he was on to a good thing, folk had said at the time, knowing Louise’s mother had the prosperous hotel on the cliff. They’d hardly seen Louise since the wedding, and here she was now, a widow.
‘I’ll tell Dick you’re here. He’ll take you out in his boat, I expect – you’d like that, Tessa, wouldn’t you?’ she added, turning to the little girl, who nodded. ‘Dick’s always glad of a willing crew.’
‘Does he still live at home?’ asked Louise.
Dick, Mrs Tremayne’s younger son, was a coastguard. He’d hacked off her hated plaits one day, with his penknife, while they pretended she was a damsel captured by pirates. There had been a terrible row afterwards and her mother had said that she wasn’t to play with the fishermen’s children. She’d kept her meetings with Tom and Dick secret, then.
‘He does,’ said Mrs Tremayne. She told Louise about a recent swoop by customs men and police on a yacht found to be carrying drugs. Dick had been involved with its capture, she said. The customs men and the coastguards were getting very good at detecting modern smugglers.
‘It’s evil,’ Mrs Tremayne said. ‘Drug-smuggling, I mean. It’s not like a bit of brandy, which does no harm –in fact, it often does good, if you’re chilled.’
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