by Rachel Hore
‘There is an atmosphere. I’m not sure that it amounts to a haunting. Just a strong feeling of the past.’
‘Yes, I know what you mean. It’s surprising, though, given that the Careys mean nothing particularly to me. They weren’t family.’
‘No, but that doesn’t matter. It’s funny, you know. It’s a difference between people – what they see. Take Chrissie and me. When she was helping me look for a flat, ages ago, she would walk into those lovely old Victorian places and be looking to change them all around to suit. You know: “If you knock down that wall you’d have a walk-through living room” or, “Pave over the garden and build a conservatory”. Whereas I would be happy with places as they were, even if they were inconvenient. Chrissie says I have no imagination but I don’t think she has enough sometimes.’
‘You mean you look at a place and see the layers of the past and she looks at it and sees the needs of the present and the possibilities of the future?’
‘I suppose so, yes.’
Patrick said reasonably, ‘Yes, she’s very practical, isn’t she? Perhaps, ideally, one should be both. After all, our ancestors weren’t so sentimental. They would raze buildings to the ground and build new wonders. Look at Castle Howard, for instance.’
‘I wonder whether you’ll decide to come down here permanently?’ Mel asked now.
Patrick looked confused for a moment, then he said, ‘Until recently, I had decided to make it my home. A family home.’
A home for a family. His family. His children. ‘Oh,’ said Mel.
‘Bu"; font-weight: bold; a. ist not now.’ He picked up the bottle of dessert wine. ‘Have some more.’
Mel placed her hand over her glass in a sudden, defensive gesture.
He put the bottle down again and turned it, studying the label intently as though it were of sudden absorbing interest. He was silent, so Mel asked gently, ‘What happened?’
‘An all-too-familiar story of love’s labours lost.’ He stopped then growled, ‘I’m not really up to talking about it.’
‘Sorry.’
‘No, it’s me that’s sorry,’ said Patrick, taking another large gulp of wine. ‘It’s selfish of me. Chrissie told me something similar had happened to you recently.’
‘Oh, did she?’ said Mel. So Chrissie had been as indiscreet as she feared. But suddenly she couldn’t bear for the evening to descend into an alcohol-fuelled morass of self-pity and gloom. ‘It did, but I’m trying not to think about it. Let’s have some coffee. I’ll make it if you’ll show me the right cupboard.’
After that, the conversation returned to safer pastures – Patrick’s upbringing in a rambling farmhouse in the central part of the county, arguments about books they had read and films they had seen.
When
Chapter 9
Sundays, Mel reflected the next morning, padding downstairs in her nightgown, her head throbbing from too much wine, felt different from any other morning in the week. Perhaps it was the quiet. Even the birds hadn’t woken her this morning. Of course, in London, the difference was more marked. The build-up of cars began later on a Sunday, there were no workmen’s drills, no doors slamming followed by urgent footsteps echoing down the street at 7 a.m.
So the rev of a car engine, heard through the open bathroom window, came as a rude interruption of the peace. She listened to the sound recede; 8.30 Patrick was already on the road back to London. She was alone again. She splashed cold water on her skin and buried her face in her towel for comfort.
As she dressed, she tried to rationalise her feelings. You’re in a vulnerable state, she told herself severely. Just because you have a moment of – what was it, friendship, closeness? – with Patrick doesn’t mean he owes you anything or that it’s going to turn into more than a passing acquaintance. He’s obviously in no state to start a new relationship and neither are you. You’ve been on your own plenty of times before and survived, and you’ve just got to get used to it. All over again.
For there had been other men before Jake, of course there had. The longest-lasting had been Steve, with whom she had lived for five years in her twenties. Early passion cooled to something more comfortable and then they came to take each other for granted. Mel loved him, he was kind and easy to love, but in her heart of hearts she knew that wasn’t enough, and after thinking about it for many sleepless nights, she told him it was over. Afterwards she wondered whether she had done the right thing, whether a pleasant relationship with a good man was all she could realistically expect. Perhaps she was turning out like her father? Not a stayer, once the romance was gone . . .
It had been hard starting over again. It was the year she turned thirty and, Saturday after Saturday, so it seemed, she had to turn up alone to friends’ weddings, to wish them well and scatter confetti with a cheerful smile on her face, before returning home to her shabby rented flat. After a few months she bought her own place and tried to exorcise her loneliness by burying herself in her work and social life, spending all her spare time decorating and making curtains and cushions, choosing furniture, having people round to dinner endlessly.
In retrospect it was not an unhappy time, but a period of adjustment, learning to rely on herself, having her own space, focusing on her job, being free to go where she wanted when she wanted. For a while she feared she was walking a psychological tightrope and mustn’t look down, but then her confidence returned.
She should, in time, be able to enjoy being single now, after Jake. But, brushing her hair in the mirror and snatching at several silver threads that glistened in the cruel daylight, she was suddenly weary of it. Meeting new men could be exciting though, as Aimee frequently told her, she treated the whole business too seriously, expecting relationships to deepen quickly or, the opposite fault, not bothering to try to get to know someone if they didn’t attract her strongly from the outset.
Where did Patrick fit into this pattern? Was she just latching on to the next attractive man who came along for fear of being alone? Would she have been drawn to him if they had met in London? She tried to imagine bumping into him at a party, perhaps thinking he was attractive, quietly charming, but not someone who would have struck an instant spark like Jake. Did that make her a superficial person? She hoped not.
There was something about Patrick that touched her. "; font-weight: bold; er. isShe remembered the gentle curve of his mouth, his strong hands working the penknife or opening a bottle and pouring wine in a steady movement, thought of his stillness when he listened to her. Yes, she already looked forward to his return. She laid down her brush and went downstairs.
When she was filling the kettle, a familiar miaowing began outside the back door. She turned the key in the lock and yanked open the door.
‘Just you and me again, cat,’ she said. Seeing its hesitancy she stood back from the doorway. The cat placed one paw over the doorsill then the other, and looked around the kitchen carefully. Then it lost courage and daintily withdrew once more. ‘Make your mind up, can’t you?’ Mel said mildly, going back to the sink. But she left the door open on account of it being such a sunny day.
A pile of books lay on the table from yesterday and as she waited for the toaster to pop she slid one off the top and started flicking through it. It was a catalogue of the works of Laura Knight. She turned the pages and it struck her not for the first time how much painting from this fruitful part of Laura’s long career represented the holiday side of Cornwall. Young Edwardian women in loose flowing dresses perched on a clifftop gazed out at the glorious shining sea spread out below; chubby children played on a beach dappled by a tracery of sun and shadow; sun-worshippers, daringly half-naked, basked on rocks. A Golden Age, before the wings of war cast their dark shadow. Once again she was struck by the liberating contrast to the sober moral realism of the Newlyn painters.
Mel frowned as she stared at the picture on the clifftop. There was something in the choice of palette, the texture of the paint, the Impressionistic way heat and light seemed to radiate f
rom the scene that reminded her of P.T.’s painting of the man in the garden. Which of the many artists who had passed through Lamorna at the time could P.T. have been? How could she find out? It would mean rereading the memoirs of other artists, combing through papers related to the house, digging amongst documents of local history.
After breakfast she
Later, she walked down to the cove and then west up a dry narrow rabbit-path that scampered along the edge of the cliff. The coconut smell of flowering gorse blended with the scent of grass and the salty tang of the air. The sun was beating down now and she was soon panting with the effort of the climb, having to watch her every step on the stony earth.
Before long she came to a large cairn, a pile of boulders raised high above the rocky promontory that jutted out into the ocean below. The disturbing feeling_elis ces came that she had seen it before – of course she had, in paintings. She peered over. To one side a faint path zig-zagged down to rocks now half-covered by the tide.
She sat for a moment in the shelter of the boulders, gazing out across the sea, her eyes instinctively searching for some detail, some solid object on the restless, shimmering surface. How many an anxious woman had waited here over the centuries, watching for the fishing boat or the merchant ship that carried her loved one home, hope failing as the hours passed. She closed her eyes. Or what must it be like up here in a storm, watching a ship being sucked helplessly towards the rocks below, unable to help the screaming, struggling sailors? She shivered and opened her eyes once more, glad of the warmth of the sun on the rocks and the present calm of the shimmering water below.
A yapping noise startled her. Someone called, ‘Hello!’
She swung round to see Matt standing below on the cliff path. An elderly white wire-haired terrier puffed up to snuffle at her feet.
‘Hi, Mel. Sorry about him. Stinker – leave,’ he said sternly, climbing the slope and grabbing the dog’s collar.
‘Oh don’t worry, I don’t mind dogs,’ she said. ‘Is he really called Stinker?’
‘It’s Tinker, really, but you don’t want to be in a closed room with him for long after he’s been at the beer. He belongs to my mum, but she doesn’t have time to walk him. Getting a bit tubby in your old age, aren’t you, Stinker, old boy?’
‘Wonderful up here, isn’t it?’ She turned to look back at the sea.
‘Wait till you see it with lightning flashing through the sky. It’s breathtaking.’
Mel shivered, imagining again the watchers in the storm.
‘Which way are you going?’ Matt asked, casual.
‘Oh, I don’t know, just back to the cove, I suppose. Home.’
‘Why don’t you come with me, try a different route.’ He gestured behind him across the thicket-covered cliff. ‘Through the field there’s a path goes past Mum’s hotel and, if you want a bit of a walk, on up to the Merry Maidens.’
‘The Merry Maidens?’
‘You haven’t seen the Maidens? You should. But come and have some coffee at the hotel first. Mum would love to say hi. She’s always interested to hear what’s going on at Merryn.’
‘We’ve only just met, you and I,’ Mel said, her eyes sparkling, ‘and you’re already introducing me to your mother. Maybe I ought to question your motives, young man!’
Matt smiled uncertainly, and she wondered if she had struck the wrong note. She followed him up the cliff path and inland through the bracken. Tinker lolloped fatly ahead, stopping to bark occasionally at gorse bushes.
‘Why does your mother want to meet me?’ she asked Matt, who had waited for her to catch up.
‘I said, didn’t I? Because of the house – Merryn Hall. She’s always been fascinated by it.’
‘Why in particular? Though I agree, it is fascinating.’
‘Some family reason. Great-great-aunty someone or other used to live there, I think.’ He shrugged. ‘Mum’s gran was one of eight so I get easily confused. You’ll have to ask her.’
‘Matt will fetch us some coffee, if you wouldn’t mind, Matt, my dear. I’ll come and join you both, but I must extraordinary coincidenceing me of have a quick word with Chef about tonight’s fish.’
Matt’s mother was in her fifties and as stout as her dog. She had serene dark eyes and her son’s black hair, with hardly a trace of grey, though hers was curly where his was straight. Matt’s delicate bone structure and mercurial movements must have come from some other part of the family, Mel decided. In the proprietorial way she stood in the hotel lounge, hands on hips, and the way she measured every word she spoke, Carrie Price seemed as solid as Cornish granite.
‘Back in a moment.’ Matt twisted away from his mother who was ruffling his hair. He vanished through a door behind the bar. Carrie walked back into the hall like a sailor on a swaying deck.
Mel settled into her comfortable fireside chair and looked around. The hotel was designed like an Edwardian country house, the panelled walls hung with oil paintings of cherubic children and gracious behatted ladies cradling roses. The lights were Moroccan-style lanterns, and two Knole sofas were festooned with embroidered cushions. Old-fashioned genteel comfort.
‘Matt tells me you’re staying at Merryn,’ said Carrie, returning and lowering herself with a little, ‘Oof,’ into an armchair opposite Mel. She had a soft country accent, burring her r’s, unlike her son, who appeared to have exchanged his somewhere along the way for ubiquitous Thames estuary.
‘Yes. I’ve been here a week now. Three more to go.’ And she told Carrie a little about her research.
‘I used to see Lamorna Birch’s daughter about when I was young,’ said Carrie. ‘And Cecily Carey. I remember her, too.’
‘Matt said you had a connection with the family, or the house anyway.’
‘Yes. My mother’s mother had a sister older than her, worked there as a maid. Way back, we’re talking about, before the First War. Before she married. Great-aunt Jenna’s long dead now, of course, but I remember her talking about the parties they had. Lovely affairs, she said, with lights and music and fireworks. In those beautiful gardens.’
‘The gardens must have been wonderful once. What did she say about them?’
‘Oh, I don’t really remember, except there was a cave – a grotto, she called it. Full of candles, it was, hundreds of them, like Christmas.’
‘Lovely. Have you always lived round here, Carrie?’
There was a break in the conversation as Matt emerged from the bar with a tray, and poured them all coffee with hot frothy milk.
Carrie adjusted her cushion and nestled more comfortably into her chair. ‘Phew. What a morning. It’s nice to be waited on for a change. Yes, to answer your question, my dear, I was born up the valley in Paul village. Matt’s father inherited the hotel from his own parents and we’ve been here ever since we married, though Matt’s dad passed on five years ago.’
‘I was born in the Honeymoon Suite, as Mum never tires of telling me,’ Matt put in, rolling his eyes.
‘It was a quiet time of year and I’d always loved that room,’ explained Carrie. ‘Anyway, I heard Mr Winterton had got Merryn, but I haven’t ever met him. Do you know what he’s planning to do with the place? It’s terrible it’s so rundown, such a lovely house.’
‘I’ve only just met him, as a matter of fact. But I believe he wants to live there himself.’ A thought struck Mel. ‘Did your great-aunt ever talk about an artist connected to the house back before the wars? Someone of Newlyn and Lamornaing me of with the initials P.T.?’
‘P.T.? No, that doesn’t mean anything to me. Aunt Jenna used to talk about the family. There were Mr and Mrs Carey and two daughters. Then there was some relation, a young man – the girls’ cousin, I reckon – lived there for a bit, too. But he blotted his copybook somehow. Got sent away.’
‘That’s intriguing, Mum,’ said Matt. ‘What did he do? Catch Aunt Jenna behind the rose-bushes or steal the teaspoons?’ He twinkled wickedly at Mel, who smiled back.
‘No, no, I’m sur
e it was nothing like that.’
‘I suppose we’ll never know,’ said Matt. ‘Too long ago and everyone dead.’
‘Norah’s still alive – Jenna’s daughter. Not that I see her much. Lives up near Truro. Ah, that was lovely,’ said Carrie, putting down her empty cup. ‘It’s nice to see you, my dear, and I hope you’ll call in again, but I’d better get back to work. We’re full this weekend. Matt, can you stay and wait at dinner?’
‘Sure, Mum, but I won’t stay over. I’m on early shift at the shop in the morning.’
‘I’m always telling him,’ Carrie confided to Mel, ‘he ought to live here. I really need his help, and then, when I retire, this place can be his.’
Behind his mother, unseen by her, Matt grimaced. One would always be second string working for Carrie, Mel imagined.
‘I ought to be getting back myself,’ she said, trying not to laugh. ‘Thanks ever so much, Carrie.’
She walked with Matt out towards the front door and stopped in surprise. A familiar figure now stood behind the reception desk.
‘Irina! I didn’t know you worked in this hotel.’ The woman looked tired and her eyes seemed rimmed with red.
Irina looked from Mel to Matt, who was lurking behind, waiting to say goodbye. ‘And I didn’t know you knew Matt,’ she said. ‘I’ve worked here some months. Carrie is kind and allows me to come when I can.’
‘I’ve been meaning to ring,’ said Mel, ‘to see if you wanted to meet up for lunch one day.’
‘I’d love to, but I can’t this week, I said I’d be here. How about the evenings? Maybe you would like to come to supper at my house. Thursday or Friday?’
‘Thursday would be good,’ said Mel. ‘Thank you.’
As she hurried down the steep path to the road she thought about Irina and about the maid, Jenna, and secrets locked in the past. Then she remembered how she had intended to walk on to the Merry Maidens, whatever they were. That would have to be for another day now.