“Apology accepted,” said Denning.
He’d been busy on the portrait, attempting to capture her ageing but beautiful lips. The way they parted slightly, moist and still red, as they had when she lay on his pillow and told him she loved him. Then Wilkinson had turned up, totally unexpected. It had unsettled him. He’d not seen the man in nearly three years. Had almost managed to store him in the back of his mind, in the place he kept those dark things he’d rather not think about. And now he was here, in his studio, and that same trembling unease rose like years of disturbed dust.
“Come to Porthgarrow,” he implored, in the same way he always used to, and that too Denning found unsettling. “We might form a modest colony, in time, devoted to the capture of truth and honesty, before it is forever swallowed by the stink of modernity.”
Denning smiled thinly, but it carried no warmth, no humour. “A colony?”
Wilkinson’s brows lowered, then he shook his head. “You mock me, I sense it, Stephen, but this will be the start of something truly great. You may trust me on this.”
“I never trust you.” He said it lightly enough but there was a strong element of truth in it.
He ignored the comment. “It is perfect. Porthgarrow is so remote, so small, that it is ignored by the swarm of artists that descend on places like Newlyn.” He sneered contemptuously. “Pah! Artists, they call themselves? They are but sheep, those Newlyners, following the scent of fashion! And they turn the place into a pastiche, a mockery of itself, with all their false romantic notions of the common worker. Do they shake the middle classes out of their complacency with an accurate portrayal of the plight of the poor? Is this Social Realism? No, it is not. They know that a good painting loaded with sentimentality or escapism sells well and looks fine on the walls of the wealthy.” He drew breath, his passion making his face glow. Observing Denning’s unblinking eyes, he looked at the floor, composed himself. “I have secured a decent place you might rent,” he continued, undaunted. “Inexpensive, basic in its furnishings, I admit, and unused these last ten years, but a fire to drive out the damp will soon put that to rights.”
“Sounds…inviting,” mused Denning.
“I tell you, Porthgarrow is very real, Stephen, an ancient way of life little changed by the smoke and engines of our pitiable modern existence. It is the last bastion of the true and clean and honest. Whilst she - ” he said scathingly, stabbing a hand out to the canvas “ – is all vanity and falsehood.”
“She, my dear Terrance, is Felicity Brandon, the wife of the attaché to the American ambassador, and tomorrow’s supper.” And I will be seeing her again tonight, he thought, this time the smile that spread over his lips carrying with it the remnants of a fond memory.
Wilkinson snorted in disdain, stepping to the canvas and giving it the once over with his critical eye. He bent close, his nose an inch away, then stepped back. “I see that you still use the broad brush technique, learnt in France.”
Some things are hard to forget, thought Denning. Become so much a part of you, engrained. “Too continental for English taste, I’m told,” he said. But it helped disguise the creeping lines on the woman’s face, he thought. She liked to be flattered.
“I commend your work; you capture the skin tone wonderfully, the eyes are exceptionally well rendered, and a few quick slashes of paint and you bring costume to life. No one I know can reproduce a person on canvas like you. But look, she has no soul! She lost that on the day she was born, as did all of her kind. Why do you waste your time on this trivia, Stephen? Honestly, I really can’t comprehend what impels you to paint if there is no meaning behind it. Tell me it isn’t all about the money. I shall die of shame for ever knowing you if it is!”
“This is not descending into one of those awful Parisian tugs of wars, with art the handkerchief in the middle, is it? If so, I fear I must decline. As you can see, I have work to finish, albeit of a lesser calibre than your elevated offerings.”
Wilkinson snatched up the decanter and swilled port into his glass, lifting it to his mouth and taking a huge gulp. He held up his hand in apology. The disarming child in him surfaced again and his eyes widened appealingly. “Sorry, Stephen. I’m sorry,” he gasped. “Forgive me.” He drained the glass, looked to fill it again but changed his mind, putting it down heavily. “We have shared so much, you and me.”
A simple utterance that carried with it many things unsaid. Denning’s smile faded. Yes, they shared so much. And much that he would rather forget. Why had the man come back to haunt him, like an unwanted spirit?
“You have been a steadfast companion. A true companion,” said Wilkinson.
“You mean for years I was a foil for your petulant lunges, a pincushion for your needling, your dog to kick when there were no others, and my ear an open vessel for you to pour in all your bitterness and frustrations. You care not for my art, my family, my father’s profession nor my choice in wines. If I had a wife you would find fault with her, then her pet cat and her mother.”
Why are you here, he thought? Why me? I can fathom no real reason why you should want me to accompany you. We have proved we have nothing in common but our ability to have nothing in common and what’s more would be at each other’s throats within the week. You know how what happened in Pont Aven made me feel, why I had to leave. Why come back now? What are you scheming?
Denning took up his port and slowly put it to his lips. He sipped, staring at Wilkinson’s face over the glass. He could see the man was trying to figure out if he were serious or not.
“My dear friend,” said Wilkinson, waving a hand, “you have never been a pincushion!”
Hidden beyond the impenetrable line of gorse on his right was the cliff edge. He could hear the fierce sea and the muffled pounding of the rocks far below. As they broached the highest point of the headland the gorse dropped away and they passed a solitary stone building, standing starkly on the cliff’s perimeter. There appeared to be a long wooden balcony of sorts, from which there rose what looked uncannily like a set of wooden gallows. Beyond the building there was no telling where the sky ended and the sea began, the two fused together by the growing storm. He was curious, and tempted to ask the building’s purpose, but refrained.
“Is it often like this?” he ventured. The old man glanced querulously at him from under the brim of his hat. “The weather, for August. Is it often so horrid? I was given to expect something a little more agreeable.”
The bead of water was finally wiped from his nose on the sleeve of his coat. “It’s been better,” the driver said slowly, his Cornish accent thick and warming. “And then again, it’s been worse.” He turned his gaze forward and they travelled in silence for a while. “Some would say it bodes ill,” he ventured. “The weather turned on its head like it is.”
“Like an eclipse,” said Denning absently.
“Sir?”
“The moon passing in front of the sun. For centuries they were thought to play a part in man’s destiny. You have heard of eclipses?”
The man’s mouth turned down. A tongue rolled against the insides of his cheek. “I’m a simple man, sir, not given to knowing about ‘clipses and things. And we’re a small village, cut off, you might say, from bigger things.”
He smiled. “Anyhow, my point being there’s no scientific link between the movement of celestial bodies and the fortunes of men. Or the vagaries of the weather, for that matter. It’s mere superstition.”
A frayed old crow was startled from the hedge and it whipped noisily over their heads, large, black and glistening.
The old man’s eyes watched it as it whirled up into the sky to be dragged by the wind, till it was a dot against the roiling grey clouds. “Ever thought it could be God, sir, speaking, in His way. Giving out signs?”
Denning rolled his eyes, a little impatient with the thrust of the conversation. “Superstition,” he said flatly. He didn’t want to be drawn into tiresome theological debates. This was a Methodist stronghold and he didn’
t want to begin his stay by upsetting the locals with his radical beliefs.
The driver smiled sagely. “As you say, sir. But that don’t stop people round here believing in them, signs, superstitions, whichever you like.”
The road was now following a deep gully with thickly wooded banks rising up on either flank. They crept carefully down the steep side of the headland. Gaunt trees and bushes, exposed to decades of harsh weather, lay bent and ragged overhead, the oppressive, dark tunnel they formed channelling the cold wind into their faces. Leaves rattled furiously against stems. The cloying damp gloom gave him the sensation that they were leaving one world behind and about to be disgorged into another. They emerged into the light again, but it was as if dusk had arrived early, the hills towering over them on both sides, closing in on them. Strangely the wind had dropped to a timid bluster.
“How interesting,” he remarked.
“Sir?”
“The wind has all but gone.” He looked skyward. The clouds were still being tumbled briskly across the heavens.
The man took in a deep breath that rattled in his throat. “People do say, so the old tale goes, that the Porthgarrow we know was founded by monks many hundreds of years ago, searching for the holy place where Saint Feloc stood on the headland and beseeched Archangel Michael come down from Heaven to subdue an evil spirit that warred against man. Down the valley the monks came, just as you, and found, as you, such a change in the weather that they declared it a miracle and a sign from God. The bay protected by His benevolent hand.”
“Geological serendipity. Probably the curious lie of the land.” He yawned, closing his eyes. He was growing ever more tired. He felt that even the rain and the unforgiving seat might not be able to keep him awake. “The relative shelter provided by the position of the hills, that kind of thing.”
“Aye, might be that, sir. The lie of the land. They built themselves a monastery, on the headland above Porthgarrow, dedicated to Saint Feloc. Pilgrims came from many countries to seek out Saint Feloc’s holy shrine, where it is documented many miracles of healing were performed.”
Denning adjusted his position. “Documented? Well it must be true then,” he said absently.
Tunny appraised the young man from the corner of his eye. “The monastery lasted a good many year, till Old King Henry pulled it down. There’s not a house in Porthgarrow that doesn’t hold a few stones from it, so they say.”
The driver then turned to Denning, tapped him on the arm and he opened his eyes. The man raised his hand and pointed ahead.
“And here she is, Porthgarrow,” he said.
* * * *
Jowan Connoch
The young man stepped down heavily from the gangplank and onto the dock. He took his first few steps on dry land uncertainly, like that of a man who’d taken a drop too much ale, for his sea legs, so long accustomed to the movements of the ship, took a little while to adjust. He surveyed the manic activity that was Albert Dock with disinterest; it was Liverpool, but it might have been any dockside in any developed port in the world, the same crowding of ships with a forest of masts, the same chaos of charging dockers and seamen, the same mountains of crates and boxes, barrels and livestock being craned or rolled onto the quays; the same sharp smells of the sea and of hard-worked humanity.
He saw all through a fevered haze. The malaria he’d contracted in South America still rippled through his body like the wake of a huge ship long past. He was in his twenty-third year, but he looked older. Life had not been easy and his body wore its troubles like a jaded coat. He dropped his canvas bundle to the cobbles, wiped away the sweat from his forehead and face on the arm of his jacket, the sounds of the dock coalescing into one large, bubbling cauldron of noise that his mind found difficult to make sense of. He launched himself into the strong currents of the flowing crowd of people, allowing himself to be taken along with it, feeling unable to steer his own course. He came up against a high wall of crates, lately in from Canada, sunk his spinning head into his cupped hands. He knew he needed somewhere to lie down, soon, to let the fever pass, and with this singular focus in his mind he wandered away from the dockside, pausing only to ask where he might find rooms for rent.
He found himself in the back streets and alleys. It was no quieter. There were many releases and distractions for a newly returned sailor, paid off and pockets bulging with wages, from illicit gambling houses and roving prostitutes to the many pubs and inns offering cheap beer and spirits. He knew of many a man who’d stepped ashore, spending months of hard-won wages in a few short days, only to sign on as poor as a church mouse on the next ship out.
But he had no appetite for such brief pleasures. He spotted a sign in a window advertising a room for rent, and forced his tired, illness-weakened frame to plough through the crowd towards it, fixing it in his sights like a beacon in fog.
“Are you drunk?” asked the woman who met him at the door. She had a strong Welsh accent
There were established communities of both Welsh and Irish in Liverpool, he thought absently, and he must have wandered into a tiny Welsh enclave. “I have a fever,” he explained drowsily. “It will pass soon enough.”
“I don’t accept anything in the house that will pass on to others.” She was a large woman, built firm, like a heavily padded mattress. She filled the doorway. Her expression told him she’d had a long life dealing with anything the docks could throw at her.
“It’s the last dregs of malaria,” he said weakly. His vision was swimming and he couldn’t make out what her facial response to this was. “I need somewhere for a few days, to lie and recover.”
“Your name?” she asked tersely.
Strangely he found he had to think hard about it. “Jowan Connoch, recently paid off the merchant ship Corncrake.”
“Cornish, are you?”
“Yes.”
Perhaps she had a son out at sea also, or husband, or simply an unexplained affinity for the Cornish, for the tone of her voice melted almost imperceptibly as she grunted something passing for acceptance and bade him follow her inside. As they ascended a complaining wooden staircase he was vaguely aware of her reeling off a list of instructions and various rules of the house, all of which came at him like the blustering of wind across the deck and he could make no sense of it.
The next thing he was conscious of was splashing water onto his hot face from a chipped bowl, cupping the warm liquid in his hands and holding it to his parched lips. He all but collapsed onto the bed, fully dressed, and remained there, the fever clouding his mind. One moment he shivered uncontrollably, till his teeth, arms and shoulders ached as if punched; the next he was awash with sweat, tearing at his shirt, unable to breathe and gasping for breath and water, but too weak to rise from his bed to satiate his thirst.
He was plagued with nightmarish visions, but worst of all was falling into the sea, the waves folding above his head, his mouth filling with rank salt water. He sank into the depths where dead men’s hands plucked at his body, grasped his legs and hauled him further into the icy void. Deeper still he plummeted, till his feet touched the sandy bottom. All around him was an unfathomable blackness, broken only by a shining disc far ahead. It moved closer to him, till he saw it become her face, and he felt a great happiness engulf him. She was a child, as he remembered her, and the next instant he was on the outskirts of Porthgarrow again, by the old stone cross.
He looked about him. He knew this place well. It was exactly as he remembered it. Reverend Biddle had told him as a child that the cross was the ancient way marker to Porthgarrow. It hadn’t always been here, according to Biddle, who had pulled down a dusty old book from a high shelf to show him that he wasn’t making it up. The monks had fashioned it to guide pilgrims, merchants and believers from many foreign lands to the monastery in Porthgarrow, and to make way for it they had torn down a pagan stone block that had stood at the crossroads for over two thousand years, long before Christ had been born. So Reverend Biddle had said, slamming the book closed
with a loud clap of finality.
All children, and most people in Porthgarrow, had their own additional stories about the cross. So many were circulated that he didn’t know which to believe. Murderers, smugglers, witches, highwaymen, demons, dragons, piskies – all were reputed at some time to have had connection with it.
“It was here that he put a dagger to his broken heart and killed himself,” she said, and he was drawn to look at her. He smiled. She spoke with an assuredness that seemed to ooze from her very pores.
Her name was Jenna Hendra and he’d been completely under her spell. When they were both older, for he had only been nine years of age and she ten, they planned to marry. He watched as her small hand touched the stone cross, and her eyes widened with excitement and mock sorrow. In his mind he saw the blade pierce the man’s chest and he touched his own.
“Love is that powerful?” he asked, as if he were that same nine year old boy again and he were forced to play his part all over again.
The House of the Wicked (a psychological thriller combining mystery, murder, crime and suspense) Page 2