by Rachel Hore
For a month Jake made an effort to be more cheerful, but Mel knew that his distant politeness hid unfathomable depths of misery. Somehow their life together carried on as it had done for the last few years, but it was as though they were going through the motions in their relationship. Then one night Jake just didn’t come back after a party at his old newspaper offices.
She knew at once what had happened and confronted him.
‘It didn’t mean anything. She’s not important, I’ll never see her again,’ he said, but they both knew what it meant. He had taken an axe to their relationship because neither of them could otherwise make the break.
Two days later, he piled his possessions in the back of his car, kissed her with such intensity it took all her will not to plead with him to stay, and went back to Kennington and, she imagined, the first chapter of a new novel.
The next hardest thing was visiting Anna and Freya at their home to explain. She could still see them, she insisted, but although they hugged one another and made promises, all three of them knew it would never be quite the same. And for the second time in a year, Mel went into mourning.
I must write to them sometime, Anna and Freya if you wantis c f, Mel thought that evening as she waited for the shop lasagne to heat up in the oven. She ate it at the kitchen table with a novel propped up in front of her. Later, she tried to watch a crime drama on television but, tired of the interminable commercial breaks, switched it off. She sat, curled up in an armchair, wondering what to do next. Ring Chrissie, she decided, reaching out for the phone.
‘It’s weird,’ she told her sister in answer to the questions Chrissie fired off. ‘I’d forgotten how dark it gets in the country. It’s really cut off. And this place, it’s quite spooky. Did Patrick tell you anything about it?’
‘Not really,’ said Chrissie. ‘His family are from Cornwall, like Mum and Dad. The great-uncle left the house to Patrick when he died last year. Patrick says he doesn’t know what to do with it, whether to sell it or keep it and move down there.’
‘Move? What did you say he did for a living?’
‘He runs some Internet business with a friend. Is he down there yet? He goes a lot at weekends, he said.’
‘No. At least, I haven’t seen him. What’s he look like, anyway?’
‘Mmm . . . tallish, dark reddish hair. Friendly but, I don’t know, doesn’t say a lot about himself. Not a city type, more of a jeans and sweaters man, if you know what I mean.’
‘What, with reindeer on like Mark Darcy in Bridget Jones? Sounds okay.’
‘Now, Mel, don’t go getting ideas. He’s got a girlfriend and I think it’s serious.’
‘I only meant it as a joke.’ Spotting Mel’s ideal man was a game of Chrissie’s Mel always refused to play. Because Chrissie was cosily married with children she wanted Mel to be happy in that way, too. At the same time, interestingly, Chrissie hadn’t seemed all that regretful when Mel broke up with Jake.
Now Mel changed the subject. ‘So it’s Portugal tomorrow?’
‘Tuesday, for two weeks. I can’t wait. Oh, I’ve emailed you our contact numbers.’
‘Thanks. Well, have a fantastic time. Bring me another piece of that pretty pottery.’
After Mel had put down the receiver, she sat for a moment, wondering about Patrick. What would he do, living down here in the back of beyond? She hoped, when he arrived, that he wouldn’t be the kind of landlord who hung around, interfering. She might be lonely, but she needed the time to work.
She forced herself to plug in her laptop to check she could get a connection. Everything worked beautifully. No point in looking at her college webmail, it would only disturb her, seeing life go on without her. She logged on to her personal email. There was just the promised message from Chrissie and one headed HI FROM THE BIG SMOKE from her friend Aimee, who had been away on a school trip when Mel left.
Hope you’ve got there safely and that the place is OK. What’s it like and are there chocolate croissants within fifty miles? Sorry I didn’t see you before you left but we didn’t get back from Paris until late Thursday. It went all right – none of the little darlings fell off the Eiffel Tower or into the Seine, anyway. There was only one really bad moment. A little tearaway called Callum Mitchell managed to open a bottle of wine in his dormitory on the last night. Fortunately we confiscated it before too much harm was done, but I had to have a quiet word with his dad. Funny how parents never quite believe it when you tell them that their precious kidsing-room sofaer of have misbehaved. I have to say it was odd visiting the sights with a rabble of fourteen-year-olds when the last time it was just me and Mark. Ho, hum, mustn’t dwell on the past. Let me know how you are.
Hi, Aimee, Mel wrote back. A journey from hell, but I got here. Lamorna is very beautiful, but oh so remote, and no sign of my landlord yet. I think it could get very lonely here, especially in the evenings, but I’ll cope. It’s a more manageable sort of loneliness than in London where you feel miserable because you’re convinced that everyone else around you is having a better time than you are. Here there’s no one and nothing except cows f
Glad Paris went well – I think you’re an absolute angel to give up your holidays for the kids and hope the next time you go it will be with someone special – even if it’s only me!
Much love, Mel.
She closed the laptop and looked at the clock. Half-past nine. What should she do now? Why was it that lack of deadlines and appointments could sap your energy so?
She sighed and stood up, thinking she should finish unpacking, then noticed that one of the watercolours on the wall was askew. She went over to straighten it. It was one of the roses. She stared at it, seeing what she had missed before, that there was a small honey bee visiting one of the blooms. The artist had carefully reproduced the fine sticky hairs that picked up pollen and the veined gauzy wings.
Yawning, she went out into the hall and dragged the remaining holdall upstairs, where she turned on her radio to ward off the darkness and the ringing silence.
He found me in the garden. Frightened the life out of me, though I have a right to be here. I was doing no one any harm and it’s my time off to do with as I please. I tried to shield the paper from him, but he laughed and threw himself down beside me. ‘Show!’ he commanded, and for certain he is a charming one, for I dropped my hand. He took the paper and gazed for a long tior miles.
Chapter 3
April 1912
’Ee mustn’t mind Cook,’ plump Jenna puffed as they climbed the back stairs. ‘She’s in a paddy ’cos there’s ten for dinner tonight and the missus do ask her to make some fancy mess with the lobsters. Ee best be keeping out of her way. Oh!’ She stopped and clapped a dimpled hand to her mouth, though her eyes twinkled with mischief. ‘Sorry, I forget. Cook’s your aunt, ent she?’
Pearl, dragging her luggage up behind, looked up and smiled at the mock-stricken face above. This had to be a test. She was torn between the knowledge that her future wellbeing in this household might rest on keeping on Aunt Dolly’s good side and the desire to be liked by this cheerful young woman, who must be about her own age, eighteen. But tact had always been a well-oiled part of Pearl’s armoury. ‘She’s not really my aunt, I just call her that.’ She didn’t bother explaining that her relationship with Dolly, her stepmother Adeline’s sister-in-law, was so tenuous that, in fact, she had only met her ‘aunt’ two or three times, on rare occasions when they had come across one another in Penzance on market-day. Even then, Dolly’s attention had been on Adeline; she had until now taken little notice of Pearl.
Pearl Treglown had learned early to keep her thoughts to herself. No one could see into her mind and tell her not to be so saucy. Which is what would usually happen if Pearl stopped work to wonder at the shiny scales of the mackerel she was gutting or asked too many questions about one or other of the regulars at the inn that her stepmother couldn’t – or more likely wouldn’t – answer. Yet in the last month, Pearl had been delivered answers enough t
o make her head fair spin – and to questions she had never dared to ask before in all her eighteen years. Such as who her true parents were and why Adeline Treglown (whose husband, Cook’s brother, had died several years before Pearl was even born) had raised her. And whether she would have to spend the rest of her life drawing jugs of ale and dodging the advances of sweaty sailors in the smoky saloon bar of the Blue Anchor when she had dreams and ambitions far beyond the fish-stinking quays of Newlyn Harbour.
She had discovered the answer to this last question the hard way today, as, after a rough hug and a warning to ‘behave yourself’ from Adeline, whey-faced and thin from her illness, she had allowed Mr Boase, the weatherbeaten Head Gardener from Merryn Hall, to help her into the back of his trap. There she sat clutching a parcel of books and a shabby holdall containing the rest of her worldly goods, wedged in by several empty baskets and a large slatted crate from Penzance market in which clattered several angry crabs and two lobsters. She was, Adeline had told her, to travel the few miles from Newlyn to Lamorna to be a housemaid at Merryn Hall, where Aunt Dolly was cook. F of Newlyn and LamornaHe c watchurther than Pearl had ever travelled in her life before.
‘That’s your bed there, and your uniform,’ Jenna said, recovering her breath from the climb. They were standing in a sparsely furnished attic room with a sloping ceiling and bare-plastered walls. The late-afternoon sun poured warmth through the single sash window. ‘And you can put your clothes in them drawers there. I be getting back now before Cook kills me.’ And she galumphed down the wooden staircase again.
Pearl gazed around her new bedroom. Her room at the inn had overlooked a dark back street and smelled of mildew, winter and summer. Here, at least, it was dry and bright. But, though Jenna had laid out a few things of her own on the other drawer chest – a hairbrush, an animal of some sort roughly carved in wood, a small sewing box – this room was impersonal, so clearly just a place to sleep. Suddenly, it was all too much for her. Here she was in a strange place, starting a new life, and with so many anxieties and regrets crowding in, all she wanted was to throw herself down on her rickety iron bedstead and weep.
Instead, she took a deep sobbing breath and set about unpacking, laying her few clothes in the drawers Jenna had shown her. Her elderly towel she draped on a wooden rail next to Jenna’s, her wash bag and hairbrush she left on the chest of drawers. She wasn’t sure what to do with the books so she stacked them on the floor together with the paintbox, paper and sketchbook Mr Reagan had given her, to think what to do about later.
There was clean water in the jug on the wash-stand. She tipped some into the bowl and splashed it on her face and neck, patting herself dry with her towel. Then she turned her attention to the uniform. A starched white apron, collar, cuffs and cap lay in a neat pile on the bed. She looked down at the rough brown dress she was wearing and brushed at some streaks of mud with a corner of the towel. That would have to do. There wasn’t time to change now and, anyway, she only had one spare work dress.
As she fiddled with the new cuffs, something scraped at the window, startling her. She glanced up in time to catch a flurry of white feathers as the bird wheeled away. Feeling suddenly stifled, she moved to the window and heaved open the sash, welcoming the sudden cool breeze on her flushed skin.
The attic looked out south-west down the gardens at the rear of the house, although from this angle she could only see the tops of trees, banks of rhododendron just coming into bud, a line of laurels and a rectangular pond with a curious little building to one end. The air smelled of earth and things growing, not the salt and fish she was used to, and apart from the chatter of birds there was silence. At home there had been always the sound of water lapping against the sea wall or the rush of the wind, the eternal cries of seagulls and the shouts of the fishermen.
This new place was miraculous to her: that people should live in such a huge house in the middle of a sort of park. She hadn’t seen the main parts of the house yet, but the high-ceilinged kitchen was so light and clean compared with the hot grimy gloom of the Blue Anchor. Even the backstairs up which Jenna had led her were clear of dust, while the staircase of the pub had been cobwebbed and splashed with candle grease even before it had become blackened by the recent fire.
She turned away from the window to survey her new home once more and it was then she noticed the piece of newspaper dropped on the floor. She picked it up and unfolded it, sitting on the bed to read it for the twentieth time . . .
So absorbed was she in her thoughts, the sound of Jenna’s boots clumping up the wooden stairs hardly registered. She jumped up, and as the maid burst panting in his motherer of to the room, she thrust the paper in the drawer and slammed it shut.
‘Come on now, Cook wants ee something desperate. The missus is home, and Mr Charles, and they’ve brought company. You’re to help Cook take in the tea.’ Jenna screwed up her eyes shortsightedly as she looked around the room, noticing the new arrangements. She moved over to the pile of books by the bed. ‘Wha’s this then?’ She picked the one off the top, a collection of poetry by Christina Rossetti, and opened it, a frowning look of concentration creeping across her face. Her lips moved silently, then she shook her head.
She can’t read, it occurred to Pearl suddenly, and she gently took the book from Jenna’s hand. The other girl’s face had a closed look.
‘Just something somebody gave me.’ Pearl placed it back on the pile then started towards the door. Sharing a room with Jenna was not going to be straightforward. It would be comforting for Pearl to have a friend her own age in this new world where she found herself, but the wariness clouding the other girl’s eyes threatened to sour the friendship before it began.
‘Where’s your cap?’ Jenna asked now, brisk, and Pearl, flustered, snatched it from the wash-stand where she’d dropped it and, ducking to glimpse herself in a cracked oblong of mirror on the wall, pinned it to her head. Then without further ado the two girls hurried downstairs to the kitchen.
‘But I heard it from Robert Kernow, they’re laying off more workers at the mine.’ The voice clearly audible through the slightly open door was a young man’s, passionate.
‘Oh, Charlie, no more politics now, please. Sidonie’s bored, aren’t you, my love?’ a woman’s voice protested, as Jago, the trainee footman, knocked smartly on the door and pushed it wide to admit Cook with her laden tray. Pearl, following behind with the silver Georgian teapot and hot-water jug, thanked her stars she was used to carrying heavy jars of cider.
Whilst not daring to stare round, Pearl absorbed with amazement that they were in a blue and white room like a palace with tall windows looking out onto sun-drenched gardens beyond. There was a proper carpet on the floor. When she found the courage to raise her eyes she saw there were three people sitting in the room. A young man in a tweed jacket occupied one of the fireside chairs. A plump matron in a gold tea dress sat in another, close to the white fireplace where flames leaped and crackled. The third, an elegant dark-haired woman, was perched imperiously on a small sofa, stroking a small whippet dog cuddled up beside her.
Pearl was too shy to do more than glance at her. Instead her eyes fixed suddenly upon an enormous painting above the mantelpiece, of a man in a wide hat sitting on a horse. It was only with great effort that she stopped her jaw hanging open. She’d seen a painting very like this before, in one of Mr Reagan’s books that must have been lost in the fire. Despite what she had since learned, she still thought of him as ‘Mr Reagan’.
The lady on the sofa spoke in the bossy voice Pearl recognised from a moment ago. ‘Move the table over here, would you, Jago.’ She must be the mistress then. Mr Boase, who had driven her here, had referred to her as Mrs Carey, but being of the strong and silent school had said little else useful. The mistress was still pretty, not young but not old either, fashionably dressed in a pale green gown. Her almond-shaped eyes slid across Cook putting down the tray to scrutinise Pearl, waiting behind.
‘Oh good, you must be the new gir
l,’ Mrs Carey said, not unkindly but matter-of-">‘Are you sure?er of fact.
Pearl wasn’t sure if an answer was required to this statement, but Cook decided for her. ‘Yes, mum. But the gloves don’t fit, that’s why she’s not wearing un.’
The round-faced matron Mrs Carey had called Sidonie, giggled, but Mrs Carey ignored her. She studied Pearl and nodded, apparently satisfied.
‘Never mind, she’ll do to wait at dinner. She’s tall, that’s good.’
Pearl felt her face burn. How dare they discuss her as though she were a dog or a horse. She was aware of the interested eyes of the young man, Charlie, upon her and stared hard at the gold lines bordering the carpet, wishing she and the silver vessels could drop right through it.
Later that night, sitting under the oil lamps with the other servants around the long kitchen table, she was too exhausted to do more than push around on her plate the fatty pieces of lamb left over from the dinner party.
‘They ate all that seafood, eh, Mrs Roberts? You should have seen how the mistress’s eyebrows shot up when the parson asked for another helping.’ Jago – Pearl hadn’t worked out whether this was his first name or his last – smiled broadly at Jenna and winked at Pearl across the table. He was sitting in his shirtsleeves, having changed out of the tailored jacket and cravat Mrs Carey insisted he wear at table. The mistress had tried to get him to wear proper livery on occasions such as these, Jenna had told Pearl as they laid the table earlier, but Jago had refused point blank. He was a thin young man with narrow shoulders and a slight limp, possibly in service because he was not strong enough for farming, guessed Pearl. He appeared to have varied duties in and about the house, cycling off to deliver letters to the Post Office, performing odd jobs, polishing the bright Newlyn copper pots, looking after the fires and generally waiting on the family. In the absence of a butler, he, like Pearl and Jenna, answered to Cook, whose caustic comments rarely dented his chirpy manner. Only Jenna’s blank ignoring of his clumsy advances seemed to be able to do that.