A Deep Deceit

by Hilary Bonner

  He stared at me for a second or two, then his face broke into a grin. ‘You’re right, of course. It’s just that I am so worried and we had to meet that goddamned woman, didn’t we. She really gets under my skin.’

  ‘I noticed,’ I said with feeling.

  We had reached the Union by then, a comfortable little pub away from the sea front. Carl managed a smile in answer to my slightly acid response as he stepped to one side and quite flamboyantly ushered me into the bar.

  At first I thought things were looking up. Old Dan Nash was ensconced in a corner and, quite unlike the dreaded Fenella, Carl and I were always pleased to see him. He was one of our favourite characters, one of the last of the pilchard fishermen St Ives used to be full of before the fish stopped coming. Dan’s stories of the good old days were always worth listening to and invariably beautifully told in his low Cornish burr, which added great charm and even a kind of authority to his tales.

  On this day, though, he seemed agitated and at first uncommunicative, barely responding to our greetings.

  ‘What’s wrong with old Dan, then?’ Carl asked the barmaid as he ordered a pint of bitter for himself and a glass of white wine for me.

  ‘Reckons he’s seen the Lady with the Lantern,’ replied the girl, raising her eyes heavenwards. ‘Silly old fool; think he’s losing his marbles . . .’

  ‘I ‘eard that,’ said a voice from the corner. There was certainly nothing wrong with Dan’s hearing.

  The girl, a new face behind the bar as far as I was concerned although Carl seemed to know her, didn’t appear to care that the old man had heard her being so unkindly rude about him. She shrugged her shoulders and headed for the other bar.

  ‘Don’t worry, Dan,’ said Carl. ‘That one’s too young and stupid to have any marbles to lose in the first place.’

  Dan chuckled his appreciation and gestured for us to join him. ‘I did see the Lady, though,’ he insisted. ‘Clear as I can see the pair of you.’

  Now I was vaguely aware, from my reading of local books and archives, of the legend of the Lady with the Lantern and I wasn’t entirely sure that it was a story we wanted to hear that day. But Carl, probably thinking we were in for a good yarn that might make us forget our troubles, had already sat down on the wooden bench alongside Dan. One of the really nice things about Carl was what a good listener he was and the way he always had time for people. Normally I too was more than happy to listen to the old fishermen’s tales, and ultimately, in spite of my reluctance, I felt I had little choice but to join the pair of them.

  ‘There was a shipwreck, you see,’ Dan began. ‘Oh, two, three hundred year ago. A big ship driven on to thigee rocks beyond the island . . .’

  He paused and gestured vaguely in the direction of St Ives Head.

  ‘Many of ’em on board perished right away and as the wreck began to disintegrate still more of ’em was swept into the sea. ’Twas a filthy, dirty night. The waves came in right over thigee harbour wall and the wind was blawing a gale – bit like today, only one of the worst storms in ‘istory, they say. Nonetheless some brave St Ives lads went to the rescue. Fishermen, they was, and they manned their boat and rowed out to the stricken ship. It weren’t possible to get alongside but they approached as near as they dared and, using a rope strung between the two vessels, managed to rescue several sailors.

  ‘Then a woman appeared on the capsizing deck of the wrecked ship. ’Er seemed to be weak with fear and was supported by a group of sailors, but she clutched a child tightly in ’er arms, which she refused to pass over to any of the sailors while the fishermen attempted to rope her to safety, even though they entreated her to. Eventually, with the ship approaching its death throes, ’er was lowered into the water still holding on to thigee child. ‘Owever, as the fishermen dragged ’er through the raging sea she fainted and let go ’er grip on ’er child, which was lost.

  ‘The Lady was successfully pulled into the boat and delivered to the safety of dry land where ’er regained consciousness all right. But when ’er learned of the fate of ’er child she lost the will to live and died within hours.

  ‘’Er was buried in the churchyard over yonder, but shortly afterwards was seen to cross over the churchyard wall on to the beach and walk out to the island.

  ‘There she spent hours an’ hours searching them terrible rocks before eventually returning to ’er grave.

  ‘And ’er’s never given up, ‘asn’t the Lady. ’Er still does it to this day, you see. And when the nights be stormy or particularly dark, like they’ve bin all bleddy week, ’er carries a lantern . . .’

  Dan paused, looking agitated again. ‘I saw ’er last night,’ he said. ‘Saw ’er making her way across thigee beach and off to the island, awful big sea there was an’ all, but ’er never takes no heed of that, just carries on looking for that child, searching, waving that lantern every which way . . .’

  Dan lifted his pint of Guinness to his lips and I noticed that his hand was shaking. ‘Something mighty bad’s going to happen,’ he insisted. ‘It always does when you see the Lady. There’ll be a disaster, ’tis fate, nought you can do about it.’

  He stared at us, his eyes wide with horror. I felt a shiver run down my spine. Carl was very still beside me.

  ‘Look at thigee weather,’ continued Dan, gesturing through the steamed-up window. The howl of the wind and the dashing assault of the rain could be heard clearly enough inside the bar. “Twill not abate now till ‘tis ‘appened, whatever ‘tis . . .’ His voice tailed off.

  ‘Take no notice.’ The voice from behind us breaking the spell belonged to Rob Partridge, a local policeman who spent most of his off-duty hours in one or other of St Ives’s many hostelries. Not a man to be impressed with Cornish legend, the orange-haired Partridge’s only real interests in life were reputed to be beer and horse-racing. ‘Bleddy load of tosh. I’ve told you before, Dan, about frightening the horses . . .’

  Carl and I were barely listening. Somehow the Union no longer seemed so cosy and welcoming. Without having to discuss it we emptied our glasses and stood up.

  ‘Load of tosh, you know,’ said Rob again as we left. He leaned unsteadily our way and breathed beer over us. We were not particularly reassured. Rob Partridge was not a man who inspired confidence in any direction. In fact, in spite of his uniform, he was regarded as a bit of a joke in the town.

  ‘Of course,’ said Carl.

  We barely spoke as we trudged up the hill towards Rose Cottage and that was very unusual for us. I knew Carl wasn’t quite back to normal. It might seem trivial but I suspected that the Lady with the Lamp story was still preying on his mind. He was strongly inclined to be superstitious. He believed in omens; he said he had been brought up to. He had his paints and his brushes all arranged in a certain order and if anybody ever changed anything he was convinced it was unlucky. I knew better than to touch anything, but once Will had visited us and, before Carl or I realised what he was doing, had idly moved some brushes around while chatting in the studio.

  As soon as Will left, Carl had plastered a thick layer of paint right over the top of the painting he had been working on. ‘I may as well start over again,’ he had said and I was never quite sure if he was being melodramatic or if, quite simply, he was just dissatisfied with his work.

  As soon as we were indoors Carl disappeared straight upstairs. I went into the kitchen to heat soup and make toast. Maybe some warming food would make us both feel better. The torrential rain had found its way through the roof again, and water was leaking steadily, forming an already quite substantial puddle on the floor. The sight depressed me further. I mopped up the worst of it, stuck a bucket under the leak and turned my back on it. I poured the soup into big mugs, put them on a tray along with a plate of hot buttered toast and followed Carl upstairs.

  He was sitting in one of our two window armchairs. I sat myself in the other and passed him a steaming mug. ‘The Lady with the Lantern, the bad fortune is supposed to happen to the one who sees her
,’ I said eventually.

  ‘Really,’ said Carl. ‘Why did you turn so pale, then?’

  I shrugged. ‘Sometimes I think Cornwall does it to you. I do love it here, you know that. But the place is full of ghost stories. As if we don’t have enough of our own . . .’

  I shivered again. The window was so steamed up and the cloud so thick and low that you could barely see our wonderful view over the harbour. The rain continued ferociously and the sound of it driving against the window-panes was almost like the rat-a-tat-tat of a machine-gun.

  Carl didn’t speak again. For once he didn’t seem to have any words of comfort.

  ‘We mustn’t let it get to us, not any of it,’ I said stoically.

  With what appeared to be a considerable effort of will, he found his voice then. ‘I know, and I’m sorry, Suzanne, I just can’t bear to think of our happiness, our life together being wrecked by some sicko who’s trying to destroy us.’

  ‘We’ve just got to get through this,’ I consoled. ‘We don’t even really know what any of it means, do we?’

  ‘I suppose not,’ he replied in an unconvinced sort of way.

  ‘And you really can’t bounce around the town accusing people like you did Fenella Austen,’ I remonstrated.

  He sighed. ‘I know. I’ve never liked that woman, though.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean she’s writing us threatening letters, or that she scratched the van.’

  ‘She’s capable of it, I’m sure.’

  ‘Maybe. But I’m not certain it would be her style. She hasn’t got the subtlety.’

  Carl almost glowered at me. ‘Subtlety. You call those letters subtle?’

  ‘More subtle than throwing insults at a living, local legend in front of half of St Ives,’ I commented.

  He smiled wryly. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ he acknowledges. ‘I know you’re right, I’ve already admitted that.’

  ‘Carl, I thought the idea was that we would always keep a low profile, that we didn’t want to be noticed too much, didn’t want to get involved . . .’ I let the words tail off.

  He smiled again, in a rather more relaxed way this time. ‘Never again, I promise.’

  He held out his hand. I took it. I felt his fingers squeezing mine.

  ‘I’ll tell you this, though, Suzanne,’ he continued, and his voice sounded strong and determined again. ‘I won’t have you hurt by anyone.’

  For the first time in my life with Carl I found myself afraid. Not of him, of course, but for him and what he might do to protect me.

  I had to convince him that I could cope, that I was not being destroyed by what was happening to us. So I had somehow to keep the nightmares at bay, because I could not conceal what they did to me.

  The only way I survived at that time was by burying my head in the sand. I didn’t have one-hundred-percent success, of course, but I was surprised to find just how well I seemed able to cope once I had put my mind to it. It was a bit like pulling the blankets back over your head on those mornings when you really feel unable to face the world. It seemed to come to me quite naturally – maybe that was my background.

  One way and another I managed another two-and-a-half-month spell without a nightmare. In spite of Dan Nash’s insistence on the meaning behind his sighting of the Lady with the Lantern, the storms, which indeed raged throughout most of February, did eventually subside without any major disaster hitting either us or, in fact, anyone we knew in the town. Life returned to some kind of normality. We did not go back to the Sloop, preferring the Union or the Golden Lion, or almost any of the others now that Fenella Austen seemed to have turned the old waterside inn into ‘her bar’.

  Only one or two of those who witnessed Carl’s outburst and his reference to poison pen letters even mentioned it to us again and we made light of it, both of us muttering something about a joke that had gone wrong and been misunderstood.

  Mariette heard about it, of course, and I spun her a yarn about an old friend of Carl’s who had thought he was being funny. I wasn’t quite sure she believed me, but she seemed to accept it.

  St Ives seemed to forget quickly, but we never quite could. Shopping in the town one day, we saw Fenella coming towards us and I dragged a reluctant Carl into a store in order to avoid her.

  He was quite angry with me.

  ‘You owe her an apology, Carl, you know that,’ I remonstrated.

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned if she’s getting one and I’ll be damned if I’ll skulk around town because of her,’ he snapped.

  He could admit to me that he had been wrong to accuse Fenella in such a manner, but he certainly wasn’t going to admit it to her, it seemed. He could be very stubborn, could Carl.

  When I was out and about on my own I kept my eyes well peeled for Fenella and managed to dodge her successfully for weeks on end. I was more embarrassed than anything else but I also knew I was no match for her in the verbals department. I would never willingly take on the likes of Fenella Austen.

  The idea of getting a job had gone completely out of my mind right from the moment our van had been vandalised, but as Carl buried himself in his work – that had always been his main way of dealing with our problems – my lurking desire for some kind of outside activity rose to the surface again. And one beautiful early April day, when the sun was shining brightly and every patch of garden in the town seemed to be ablaze with daffodils, my spirits were so uplifted that I was moved to mention to Mariette that if ever there was an opening at the library I would be interested. After all, following a winter that had been unusually bleak for Cornwall, it seemed as if the whole world were being reborn, so why shouldn’t I be too?

  ‘Sooner than you think,’ she replied. It transpired that the young man who had the most junior job was employed only on a temporary basis and was soon leaving to go to university.

  I decided I would again mention to Carl the possibility of my taking a job and I would do it that very evening, probably over supper. But just as we were about to dish up the pan-fried dabs Carl had bought from our lovely fishmonger, while I had been at the library chatting to Mariette, there was a knocking on the front door.

  ‘Bound to be Will, probably inviting himself to dinner again,’ remarked Carl in an unconcerned kind of way. ‘It’s OK, there’s plenty for him . . .’ We were used to Will turning up unexpectedly, after all we had no telephone, nor had we ever found any real need for one.

  I opened the front door and, as Carl had predicted, there stood Will. Nonetheless, I had not the slightest intention of inviting him in, in spite of what Carl had said. I really wanted to talk to Carl alone before it was once more too late.

  Will waved a bottle at me. ‘Pink champagne, how about that?’ he announced. ‘Won it in a raffle. Thought maybe I could persuade you both to share it with me?’

  He grinned at me confidently. Too confidently. I was vaguely irritated by his presumption. ‘I’m sorry, Will, we were just sitting down to supper and we really do need to be on our own tonight,’ I heard myself say. If he hadn’t irritated me and if I hadn’t been so intent on talking to Carl, I might have been a little more gracious.

  The grin froze on Will’s face. For a moment he looked dumbfounded. Well, we always made him welcome. But his features quickly relaxed. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about it. I was just passing. Another time, aye?’

  ‘Yes, as ever. Another time.’

  He gave a kind of half-salute with his free hand and turned away.

  I felt guilty then. ‘Sorry, Will, you don’t mind, do you? Just bad timing tonight, really . . .’ My voice tailed off.

  ‘No problem,’ called Will over his shoulder. “Course I understand. I’ll keep the champagne for the next time you pop round to the gallery. How’s that?’

  I muttered my agreement at his retreating back and closed the front door.

  Carl was just putting a big platter of dabs on the table. ‘Why did you turn him away?’ he asked mildly. ‘I told you there was plenty. I thought you l
iked Will.’

  ‘I do, but he does take liberties,’ I said, perhaps a little grumpily. ‘In any case, there’s something I want to tell you.’

  ‘OK.’ He gestured me to sit down and help myself. ‘Fire away.’

  ‘You know I mentioned once before that I liked the idea of getting a job?’ I began tentatively as I ladled a dab on to my plate.

  He nodded but did not say anything.

  ‘Actually there’s one going in the library,’ I went on. ‘Mariette seems to think I could get it if I wanted . . .’

  I didn’t quite finish all that I had intended to say and there seemed to be a long silence before Carl replied. ‘Well, I think that’s a wonderful idea,’ he said.

  My heart soared. If, upon reflection, his smile was strained, I did not notice it at first. I just knew I was beginning to really yearn for outside stimuli. But before I could tell him how delighted I was with his reaction, Carl started to speak again. ‘I’m just so sorry that it’s not possible,’ he said very quietly.

  It was almost like a slap in the face. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked him haltingly.

  ‘Suzanne, you know very well it won’t be possible,’ he repeated.

  ‘I don’t. Why not? Carl, please, oh please, Carl.’ I heard myself imploring him.

  ‘Suzanne, how can you have a job?’ he asked. ‘You’d never cope and you don’t even have a National Insurance number . . .’

  Worse than that, I realised I didn’t even quite know what a National Insurance number was.

  Carl put down the forkful of dab he was about to put in his mouth, reached out with his hand to squeeze mine, and said again how sorry he was. He leaned across the table and kissed me gently on the end of my nose. For once I found him patronising more than anything else.

  ‘It’s not the end of the world, my Lady of the Harbour,’ he coaxed. ‘Anyway, aren’t I enough for you any more?’