He limps back upstairs and Eleanor follows. He presses the keys into her hand.
“If you have any problems, let me know. I’ll be delighted to help. There’s no telephone here, so if you need to make any calls, come to my office and use mine. If I’m not there, my daughter Agnes will look after you. If you have any questions about St Ives, there’s not much we don’t know.”
James opens the front door and steps into the street. He turns to face Eleanor, his eyes full of sympathy and respect. “Walter talked a lot about you. You were the apple of his eye. He was so proud of you, passing your exams, getting into College.”
James clears his throat, raises his hat.
“Whatever you find out about your father over the next few days, don’t let it tarnish your memories. He was a good man. It was a privilege to know him and to count him as my friend.”
“Is your name Moira? ”
St Ives, Cornwall, 1936
In spite of his stubborn refusal to talk about her father, Eleanor watches James limp down the road, feeling grateful for everything he’d done for her father.
Then she closes the door, throws off her hat and coat, and moves swiftly across the room to the French windows. She opens them, and steps onto a small balcony overlooking a narrow walkway, a thin strip of pebbly beach and the choppy green waters of the sea. Eleanor can hear the dull roar of the tide, seagulls calling in the heavy sky. The sea wind pulls at her clothes, tugging her hair back from her face.
This is the view, these are the sounds, this is the wind that must often have greeted her father. The thought makes her shudder. This is his cottage, yet the paintings here are so different to anything she has ever seen by him it’s as if they’ve been created by a stranger. Eleanor can sense none of her father’s spirit; she can’t see or feel anything familiar.
Perhaps the bedrooms might reveal an essential clue?
She turns on her heel, closes the window and moves back through the room. Her legs shake, her palms sweat. She climbs the narrow wooden stairs, imagining her father doing just the same: laughing, talking to his family, getting up in the morning, dashing down for breakfast, carrying his latest canvas under one arm and a pile of linen in the other.
There are three doors on the landing, all closed. One by one, Eleanor swings them open.
The first room must have belonged to a child. A small wooden desk and matching chair stand against the window. A single bed hunches against the wall. It has no coverlet. The walls are completely bare. Eleanor wonders about the youngster: boy or girl? How old had they been when they left? What were their names? Were they blonde or dark? Vivacious or quiet?
Questions crowd her mind. Frustrated, she pushes them away.
In the second room, a double bed and wardrobe almost fill the space. A brightly-coloured patchwork quilt covers the bed. On the bedside table stands a vase of daffodils: a gesture of welcome from James. Eleanor checks the bed. It has been made up with cream-coloured cotton sheets and pale blue feather-soft blankets. The pillows smell of freshly-cut grass.
Eleanor could indeed sleep here if she decides to… If she can make up her mind. If she can bear the thought. The stark reality. The indisputable fact. Her father spent years here: asleep, awake, wondering, talking, arguing, laughing… making love to the woman beside him. Whoever she was.
Could it have been Moira?
And if not Moira, how many other women had there been in her father’s life?
In the third room, two easels with upright chairs sit in either corner. Rough yellowing sketches in crayon, charcoal and pencil are pinned to the walls, their edges curling with age: working drawings for both portraits and still lifes. The uneven wooden floor glints back at her with a scent of beeswax polish. Through a small window, Eleanor glimpses another view of heavy cloud hanging over the sea.
But none of the rooms reveal a single solid clue about her father’s life. Instead, their scrubbed tidiness has a chilling anonymity. Eleanor doesn’t know what she’d expected, but it certainly hadn’t been this.
She walks slowly downstairs, overwhelmed by loneliness. She doesn’t want The Hideaway with its scraps of furniture, its sense of empty desolation. She hates being here alone, having to decide whether or not to sell it. She doesn’t want to choose. She resents the demands of decision-making. She loathes the responsibility of keeping a roof over her mother’s head.
Instead, Eleanor craves the impossible: to have her father back in her life. To see him, hear his voice, be able to straighten his hat, watch him work, laugh with him, hug him, brush the dusty cobwebs off his artist’s smock, bring him tea, find his pipe and watch his slender fingers filling it, sit beside him in the car, breathe the same morning air, share the same existence.
Eleanor longs to run out of The Hideaway, to race after James. She’ll instruct him to sell the cottage. She doesn’t give a jot about the price or who he sells it to. She’ll go straight back to The Porthminster and leave for Woodstock tomorrow.
She falls onto the sofa, her heart racing, fighting back tears, trying to stay calm. A small voice in her head tells her she’s being ridiculous. She must not make hasty decisions. She should give herself time to think, recover from the journey.
Perhaps if she makes a pot of tea, she might feel more at home?
Eleanor hauls herself to her feet. Her mouth tastes rotten, her head throbs. The paintings on the walls seem to crowd in on her: their colours shout, their faces leer, their lips curl in contempt.
Are they asking her to steer well clear of them? To sell them as a package to the highest bidder? To give them away as a job lot as if they’re merely decorative accessories? Not to inspect them too closely – because if she does, they might reveal something she’d rather not discover?
But isn’t that precisely why she is here?
She begins to walk up and down the room, checking each portrait, really looking at them as if they’re by a painter she’s never met.
Three red-headed children play in a room.
An elderly man with gnarled hands grips his walking stick, his faded grey eyes full of memories.
A pair of burly fishermen drink tankards of ale in The Sloop Inn on the harbour, elbows on tables, gathered fishing nets at their feet.
A mother and daughter, windswept and laughing, shelter beneath an umbrella which threatens to blow inside-out.
A young man with a baby throws her a winning smile…
Wait a minute.
The man…
Good God, it’s Daddy. Younger, more vibrant than Eleanor had ever known him, his eyes shine with happiness, his hair ruffles thick and dark. The baby boy he holds in his arms: is he Daddy’s son?
Eleanor’s heart begins to thump with life.
On the opposite side of the room, her father stares out at her again. Here he looks several years older. The baby has grown into a sturdy toddler with chubby arms and legs, hazel eyes and a mop of dark-gold hair. He’s twirling a wooden top, painted with bright bands of colour.
And then Eleanor’s eyes meet those of a single woman. Her father has painted her three times. In the first portrait she stands in the basement kitchen, the enchanting porthole window behind her, wearing a navy-and-white-striped apron. Her sleeves are rolled up over her creamy skin as she stirs a fruity mixture in a bowl.
In the second, she sits in bed reading a book, her arms and shoulders bare, her head leaning against the pillows, the colours of her skin dappled, translucent. Through the open window shines a crescent moon.
And in the third, the same woman perches out-of-doors on a wooden bench, backed by a scoop of sandy cove and a turquoise sea. A silvery-blue cloak shrugs on her shoulders. Her eyes shine: wistful, cornflower blue. Her hair hangs long, loose and black as soot. Her face, its shape, the domination of those ravishing eyes, is extraordinarily beautiful.
Someth
ing about the colour of the cloak tugs at Eleanor’s mind. She frowns, trying to remember. Then suddenly she’s there… In Regent’s Park Road, watching her father hurl across the street to tap a woman on her shoulder. A woman wearing a cloak of silvery-blue.
Eleanor says, “Are you the woman Daddy was looking for? Is your name Moira?”
Now the questions spill out of her.
“When did he paint you? Did you live here with him? And where are you now? When did you vanish from Daddy’s life? Why was he still looking for you, up until the very night he died?”
A stony silence thunders through The Hideaway, but the sound of her own voice brings Eleanor to her senses, quelling her panic and despair. She has no intention of running away. Not after her determination to travel alone and all that hellish driving through fog and hail. She’d planned a fortnight in St Ives, and that’s exactly what she’ll have.
She’ll prove to Anne, to Vera and to Jonny that she can be a responsible adult, make her own decisions, see her careful plans through to their conclusion.
Prove to herself she can do it.
Moira or no Moira. Determination must rule Eleanor’s days and nights.
The Scent of Cloves
St Ives, Cornwall, 1936
Eleanor discovers she can’t make tea because the kitchen cupboards, although freshly scrubbed, are bare. On one of the worktops sits a set of crockery, a chunky teapot, cutlery and three small saucepans. But there’s nothing to eat or drink.
She stares around the small space, trying to imagine her father there, putting the kettle on, shovelling the coal, taking a bath. Watching Moira while she stirred her cake?
No, there’s something wrong here. Eleanor can’t fit those pieces together. Her father would never have done those mundane things in such a tiny space. She can imagine him in his studio upstairs. Or playing with the child in the living room. Or standing on the balcony with the sea wind blowing through his hair.
But in this basement? It has a nasty, fusty smell to it. Eleanor wrinkles her nose. Are there rats in this kitchen? Behind the lavatory door? Hiding in the tin bath? She shivers. The room feels darker, smaller – and suddenly oppressive, as if it’s a prison from which she’ll never be allowed to escape.
A chill grips her by the throat. You could shriek your head off in this basement. Scream for help. Nobody would hear you, not even upstairs.
But that’s a crazy way to think. Why would she have even imagined it? Why?
All Eleanor wants to do is climb to street level as fast as she can…
Her heart thumping, she pounds up to the living room, throws on her hat and coat. Then she remembers the red leather purse in her handbag. She pulls it out, removes its tiny key. She looks across at the antique bureau standing in its corner, knowing in a flash where the key belongs.
She walks towards the bureau. Holding her breath, she slides the key into its lock. It’s the perfect fit. Quelling a flicker of hesitation that she’s intruding into someone’s private life like a thief, Eleanor turns the key and opens the flap.
The musty scent of cloves rises into the air from a bottle of perfume, long empty but clinging to its fragrance. On the right-hand side lies a jumble of papers, topped by a smooth grey-and-white pebble paperweight. Eleanor flicks through old invoices, a child’s drawings, tiny ink-drawn sketches, recipes, details of commissions and their prices, and shopping lists.
On the left lies a small straw basket filled with jewellery. Eleanor picks out some of the pieces. A tarnished silver bracelet, dangling with chunky charms. A necklace with the initials W and M worked in turquoise stones. A plain gold band, wide but not inscribed, rubbed and faded, too heavy for a woman’s finger. Could her father have worn it? But there are no diaries, no letters, no real clues – and certainly no clear answers to any of Eleanor’s questions.
Flushing with disappointment, she closes the desk, leaving the key in its lock. She turns away, picks up her handbag and her new keys. She’ll explore the town, get her bearings, buy some provisions. Then she’ll come back to light the fire, bring life and warmth into the cold silence. Try to forget her feelings in that basement kitchen…
She opens the door. On her fingers she can smell the faintest scent of cloves.
In St Ives, she swiftly gets her bearings. Most shops cluster along Fore Street, which runs parallel to the harbour. She buys apples at Drews Fruit Store; succulent slices of ham from Tevorrow the Butcher; tea, milk, sugar, cheddar cheese, wholemeal bread, tins of soup, rich Dundee cake and firelighters from The International Stores.
She wants to explore the harbour, but the shopping is heavy, the sky is streaked with darkening clouds and the air begins to fill with soft rain. She turns to scurry back to The Hideaway. Then she remembers what James had told her. Last December, Walter had sold some paintings to The Portman Gallery. Eleanor asks directions. Five minutes later she peers into its window. Propped on the left-hand side, one of her father’s landscapes glints back at her.
Eleanor stands transfixed. It’s a view of Blenheim’s marvellous lake at twilight, looking across the bridge to Rosamond’s Well. A full moon hangs in an aquamarine sky; the lake’s waters pick up its reflection in a shower of light. Two patient fishermen in small boats, watchful, hopeful, dangle their rods over the water.
Eleanor remembers her father’s charcoal sketch for it, done during last summer’s warm spell. But she has never seen the finished painting before. Her first impulse is to buy it as a present for Jonny. But she hesitates, unable to tear her eyes away. As she stands there, the lights in the gallery flick off, its door opens and closes. Keys rattle. Humming to himself, the owner walks briskly away.
Eleanor stares after him, watching as he greets a companion. The men move off together. The second man wears floppy blue trousers, a casual leather jacket and a straw hat perched at a rakish angle. Although she can’t see his face, Eleanor has a peculiar feeling she’s seen him somewhere before. But this time, memories of Regent’s Park Road do not help.
A Taste of Freedom
St Ives, Cornwall, 1936
When Eleanor draws back her curtains at The Porthminster Hotel the next morning, she feels as if she’s woken to a different world. A perfect sunrise lights a cloudless sky, shining an orange ribbon across a calm and dazzling sea. Gulls preen and strut on her balcony. A ship crawls slowly across the horizon’s delicately pencilled line.
Longing to walk on the beach, she is in St Ives by half-past eight, before many of the shops have opened. She walks all morning, taking the narrow path down to the stretch of Porthminster Beach, its mustard-yellow sand firm and damp beneath her boots. She explores the harbour and its cluster of small shops.
She watches the sturdy fishermen calling to one another, laughing, hauling their heavy nets. Their horse waits patiently, its legs deep in water, its cart filling with the morning’s catch. An artist wearing a paint-stained smock and straw boater sits with his easel by the harbour wall, absorbed in his work. Eleanor wonders whether her father ever worked by this waterside.
She buys coffee from a stall, relishing its scent, warming her hands on the steaming cup. People nod and smile at her as they pass, but nobody speaks to her. They give her space, respecting her solitude.
She walks to the end of the harbour, round its corner to the intimate semicircle of Porthgwidden Beach, with its smooth pebbles: granite-grey, pink, cream. Then she’s at the top of The Island where she can see for miles, hear the ocean roar, taste the salt spray. Down again, and she’s on the long strip of Porthmeor Beach, noticing how each of St Ives’ beaches has its own different character.
By one o’clock Eleanor’s ravenous. She returns to the café she’d found yesterday, choosing a leek-and-bacon pie, tea and a thick slice of Cornish fruit loaf.
And then it’s time to return to The Hideaway – and to make up her mind.
The moment
Eleanor steps inside, she knows she wants to stay. The previous evening she’d left a few possessions scattered about. Her map of St Ives lies on the table, with her supper plates and the red leather purse. The coal fire has died but she can easily light it again.
Now she longs to leave The Porthminster and make The Hideaway her home, if only for a few days. She relishes the challenge. It’ll also save her a fortnight’s hotel bill. Counting the pennies has become second nature.
So, she’ll set up house here. Fill the tin bath every morning, keep the range alight, cook simple meals, read, walk, sleep in her father’s bed. She might never get another chance.
The furious manageress of The Porthminster Hotel faces Eleanor across the reception desk. “Have you ever run an hotel, Miss Drummond?”
Eleanor shifts uncomfortably from one foot to the other. “I’ve never had the opportunity.”
“Well, let me tell you that customers such as yourself are a nightmare. First you book two rooms for two weeks. Excellent. Delighted to have you both. Then you cancel one of the rooms—” she holds up a hand to stop Eleanor interrupting. “I understand the circumstances… But now you wish to leave us tomorrow!”
“I’ve inherited a cottage,” Eleanor stutters. “Until I saw it yesterday, I’d no idea whether I could live in it, whether I’d even want to. But now I’ve seen it, I do.”
“I see.” The manageress sighs. “Very well. I’ll have your bill ready for you after breakfast.”
“Please accept my apologies.” Eleanor picks up the key to her room and turns away.
The Choice Page 19