Robert laughed. “Kind?” he said. “Well perhaps Rosemary is to the young in a negative sort of way, but Nigel! He really would take the dead fly from the blind spider. He’d let you die in the dark while he saved the tenth of a penny on electricity. Cornwall’s greatest grudger, that’s Nigel.”
“And who’s Cornwall’s biggest spendthrift?” asked Mavis Cavendish in a teasing voice. Robert ignored the remark with a certain offended stiffness.
Margaret said that Jenny had to be shown the town and taken to buy postcards and Robert Cavendish said that he would come with them. As they set off downhill to the harbor, Jenny felt light of heart, as though she were on holiday. It was the new life, she thought, the meeting of new people, the lessening of her preoccupation with Colin. They stopped on the quay and looked at the fishing boats lolling lopsidedly in shallow water and muddy sand. They were mostly working boats, sturdy, sea-stained with faded paint, but more beautiful, Jenny thought, than neat dazzling yachts.
“Come and meet Bromwyn,” said Robert Cavendish. “She doesn’t have the best postcards, but hers aren’t bad and the rest of the shop is fun.”
The Pot-shop was well situated, the first shop in a tiny narrow street leading from the harbor. The window was full of locally made pottery, glass floats in rope nets, ships in bottles. The centerpiece was a conventional oil painting of the harbor labeled “local artist” and on the back wall were pinned a display of hand-knitted sweaters, scarves and woolly caps.
“Not by you this week,” said Margaret to Robert, pointing at the oil painting.
“No, it’s Hugh’s, and not one of his best. I can’t demand the place of honor all the time, but I have been promised it for Easter.”
The shop was empty of customers. “Jenny Maxwell, Bromwyn Davis,” said Margaret formally. Jenny looked up, for Bromwyn was tall and carried herself proudly. She had straight, pale gold, shoulder length hair, dark, heavy eyebrows shading secretive brown eyes. Her pale face was beautiful and sensual yet barely animated and when she smiled, slowly, it was a very private smile. She said, “I’m so glad you’ve come. Margaret likes company and Kilruthan’s been lonely for her. Stay for a long time now that you’re here.” Jenny tried to carry on the conversation, she began to praise the shop, but Bromwyn seemed to have shrunk back inside herself; there was no longer any contact. It was as though she had a need to conserve her personality and could only expend a tiny fragment at a time.
“May we inspect your wares?” asked Margaret. And Robert, who had infiltrated behind the counter, put an arm around Bromwyn and asked in a besotted voice, “Well and what have you been doing?” Jenny noticed that they were exactly the same height.
“Dithering, changing my mind.” Bromwyn answered. “Ordering more and more Easter eggs and then dreaming that I’m engulfed in them, rolling downhill in a landslide of eggs, chocolate and china…”
Margaret led Jenny to the rack of postcards. “There are two of St. Marla, both dull I’m afraid. Look, the church or the pub with the green and half Widow Gethin’s cottage. Your mother might find them more reassuring than the moor or the cliffs, or even Ermeporth.”
“She thinks that anywhere in the country is safe,” answered Jenny. “It’s the bright lights and the wicked city which frighten her – well, as far as I’m concerned.”
The physios could share a postcard of the harbor. Mandy would like the town, taken from the sea. Her mother, as Margaret suggested, would like the village; the harbor for her father and for Cathy a view of the moor in summer. Martin and Alan could wait, but she’d send one to “all at the office” before she drifted from their minds. She longed to choose one for Colin, but what was the use? To him, it would be just a card from one of his absent birds. She paid and then looked at the terrifyingly expensive sweaters. Margaret said they must go; they had to work after tea because her publisher was muttering about deadlines.
Robert saw them out. “I shall come tomorrow to show you the sights,” he told Jenny. “Which sights we settle for will depend on the weather.”
They left him at the shop door and made their way back to the car by a new way through the side streets. “There,” said Margaret, puffing a little from the uphill climb, “you’ve met the Forrests and the Cavendishes and Bromwyn. There are still the Carrs. They’re rather a sweet young couple and more your age. They both teach so term-time is difficult for them, but they’ve promised to come over for supper soon. And there’s Bernard Hawker, of course, but I don’t think, somehow, that you’d be very interested in him…”
4
The Walk On The Moor
Jenny was breakfasting in the dining room. She had spent a slightly nervous night behind her locked door, for, though Margaret had behaved as a model employer all day, there was still Nigel Forrest with sinister potential And she had frightened herself with a new theory that “use of resident secretaries” was part of Margaret’s rent. But, apart from the occasional clank of the central heating and a tormented wind, which had found its way into the valley at first light and clattered the loose sheets of ancient corrugated iron on the outhouses, the night had been peaceful.
She sat in the dining room with the door open, wishing that the newspapers would come and thinking of Colin. She was full of anger – the fury of the scorned woman, she told herself. It had taken her by surprise; she hadn’t known that she could feel like this; instead of sadness and self-pity, instead of sobbing for Colin she was hating him, quarreling with him, casting him off. But quarrels in which one spoke both dialogues were almost as exhausting as real ones and she did wish that the papers would come.
Mrs. Gethin was cleaning the hall, she had vacuumed the rug and now she was polishing the boards. Watching idly, Jenny wondered why the comer by the front door was being neglected. All the operations, sweeping, polishing, dusting ended short of the comer where the tall blue Chinese jar, which held the walking sticks and umbrellas, stood. It seemed out of character, as a short acquaintance had taught her that Mrs. Gethin was thorough. She began to watch more attentively and saw that it was the jar itself Mrs. Gethin was avoiding. She was eyeing it nervously, no, it was more like awe or religious dread. But why? The jar looked quite innocent. Was there something inside it? She felt a little chill run down her spine. There was something there that wasn’t harmless, something that Mrs. Gethin both venerated and feared, something with the hypnotic quality of a rattlesnake. And she couldn’t go and look because though Mrs. Gethin had finished the hall she was now hard at work on the stairs. Jenny cleared her breakfast and wrote her postcards. She filled them with enthusiastic descriptions and not one word of dread or doubt.
She had to wait until Margaret was at work in the writing room and Mrs. Gethin vacuuming steadily upstairs before she left her typewriter and hurried across the hall. She peered into the tall, Chinese jar and felt a mixture of disappointment and relief. Nothing. No snakes, no mummified objects, just sticks and umbrellas. What on earth was the matter with Mrs. Gethin? A black umbrella, a long, elderly red one and one in Margaret’s favorite emerald green, three countrified-looking walking sticks, one with a spike, and a pole – just a straight pole, but carved. She held it up for a closer look. Oh, she thought, suddenly enlightened, they’re sexy carvings. What are they called? Phallic symbols. She wondered where Margaret had found it. On her travels probably. It looked primitive, the property of an African witch doctor, she thought and then began to laugh silently over Mrs. Gethin’s horror. She went back to her typing with a feeling of relief. Someone who was so upset by a few phallic symbols might also feel the need to warn young girls against nonexistent “goings-on” and nameless evils. She thought of her locked door, her worries about lesbianism. One day, when she knew Margaret better, she’d tell her; they’d have a giggle about it. It really was rather funny.
At lunch, Margaret seemed anxious to discuss the book. It was going well. Confusion, deception and misunderstanding grew with every page but she was worried about the end. How was Richard to discover the wet
nurse’s villainy and his own high birth? She had killed off all the characters who might have sent for him as approaching death, awakening conscience, reproached them for keeping silent. Letters found in chests were too obvious, corny, besides the fact that Nicholas had burned the family castle to the ground during one of his drunken orgies.
“Something about a birthmark is stirring at the bottom of my mind,” said Margaret. “You see Richard’s mother didn’t die in childbirth, she lived to hold her little one in her arms. It was puerperal fever that carried her off four or five days later. Now, she could have written a very full description of the little one to her sister, Abigail – you remember that she was married to the Comte de Toiras. Well, now on the death of the Comte, Abigail could hand all the estates to her son and return to end her days among her own people, complete with revealing letter, which mentions the birthmark. Of course Nicholas will just keep mum, but if Anne’s there she will have seen the birthmark on Richard when she nursed him through the fever that followed his wound…” They were having second cups of coffee and still discussing the birthmark when there was a knock at the front door.
“That’ll be Robert for you,” said Margaret. “Let him in, Jenny dear.”
But it wasn’t Robert. A man of about the same height, older, with pink cheeks and silver hair and dressed in a dark suit, stood there instead.
“Ah, good afternoon. You must be the new secretary Miss Maxwell, isn’t it?” He bustled in. “May I introduce myself, Bernard Hawker. I’ve lived in these parts all my life. The little Hawkers were the terror of the neighborhood once, but time’s a great soberer. Oh, I’m a proper old sobersides nowadays, aren’t I, Margaret?” he added as Margaret appeared in the hall.
“Bernard! How nice,” said Margaret. Which for her, thought Jenny, amounted to a very unenthusiastic welcome.
“Coffee?” offered Margaret. “We were just having some.”
“I don’t mind if I do. You ladies of the world make such delicious coffee, it’s guaranteed to gladden the heart of a stay-at-home old bachelor like me.”
“I’ll put the kettle on,” said Jenny. She had just made the new pot of coffee when there was another knock at the door and this time Robert Cavendish, dressed as a country gentleman in breeches and stockings, stout shoes and a tweed hacking jacket, walked in.
“Go and dress in your least Londonish clothes,” he told her. “We are about to ascend Brown Willy. The local mountain,” he added as Jenny looked at him blankly. “One thousand, three hundred and seventy-five feet high, which is nothing much, but requires reasonable shoes.”
“Will you take the coffee in to Margaret and Bernard then?” she asked, adding another cup and saucer. “That’s for you, Margaret already has one.” Robert made a face, but took the tray obediently. As she changed into jeans and desert boots, two sweaters and her short scarlet coat, Jenny wondered nervously about this expedition. Alone on a mountain with Robert Cavendish! She hoped it was all right. But surely Margaret would have dropped a motherly word of warning if it wasn’t? She had said that Mavis turned a blind eye to his goings on, perhaps that was a warning. And then there was Mrs. Gethin. A new thought struck her; did the white slave traffic still exist? Could Margaret really make her money by procuring girls for brothels? The novels be just a front? Margaret would make a good Madame, Jenny had seen a film…
Robert was calling impatiently from the hall. “Come on,” he complained as she ran down, “we’ll be benighted at this rate and the moor’s no place for the likes of us after dark.” He hurried her to the car. It was in character, thought Jenny, that he should drive a white Citroen. “I’m not really in such a tearing hurry,” he admitted as he drove up the drive, “but I can’t stand Bernard’s conversation for more than five minutes at a stretch.”
“Who is he?” asked Jenny.
“Well he describes himself as a mortician, what you and I would call an undertaker, but he’s ashamed of his calling and compensates with long tedious stories about his ancient connections, his Cornish blood. If only he’d talk shop or gossip about his clients we’d all be fascinated. Now, tell me,” he went on as they clattered over the cattle crossing and were on the moor, “which of the obvious places, Tintagel, Polperro, Bocastle have you seen?”
“None of them, nothing. I’ve never been to Cornwall before.”
“Where did you go for holidays when you were a child?”
“The south coast mostly, Scotland twice. Our most adventurous trip was to Skye. Last year I went to Spain with friends…” Jenny suddenly wished that she’d done more; that she’d worked as a secretary in Melbourne or New York or hitched to Yugoslavia with Alan (her mother had objected). Even Martin had worked on a kibbutz, and Mandy had got to Persia with a boyfriend who had a Landrover.
“We’re going to cheat,” said Robert Cavendish. “There’s quite a good track here which should have dried out in the wind, I’m going to drive up it as far as I can; otherwise it’s a long walk before you get to the climb. Though ‘climb’ is giving it a dignity it doesn’t deserve, a scramble is more like it.”
The wind was very rough, and Jenny watched the small stunted trees and the bushes bend almost double as they found themselves in its erratic path. And the sky with its background of clear though very faint blue, changed constantly as a succession of plump gray clouds scudded, wind-punched, across it.
Out of the car, Robert and Jenny were added to the wind’s victims. It cut with a sharp pain that was almost self-numbing, it deafened and froze the ears, it snatched away the breath and the senses.
“God!” said Robert Cavendish. “It’s even worse than I expected. Still, now we’re here, come on.”
Jenny pulled her collar round her ears and followed as he set off at a brisk pace up the track. Bracken, last year’s brown and beaten down, heather and yellowish grass all grew patchily, dragging a living from the poor soil of the boulder-scattered slope. The track was easy walking, it looked as though carts had gone that way for centuries, but it led away over the shoulder and not directly to the summit of Brown Willy; so presently, they left it and began to pick their way over the jumble of boulders which lay in a protective half-circle between them and the summit. The climb grew steeper; Jenny was out of breath and needed a rest – London stairs were not an adequate training for this. She began to flag and the distance between them increased, but Robert kept resolutely on, fuming only occasionally to shout an encouraging word.
Jenny encouraged herself with the thought that Mandy would have balked at this. She would have taken one look, one buffet from the wind, and then insisted on being given a cream tea in Bodmin instead. But it was really quite exciting, quite exhilarating, this battling against the wind. Leaning into it, she wondered what it would feel like to be a bush or a tree and lean away from the wind, straining at your roots, or a sailing boat balancing against your keel. The climb grew steeper still, the boulders larger and more densely packed. Her chest was hurting, she had no breath left; she had to stop for a moment. Robert looked around and waited but he didn’t come back to her. She got up and climbed on, over the last fringe of boulders and up the gray rock slabs to the summit. Winds assailed from every side, or so it seemed to Jenny, mopping her streaming eyes. She looked obediently where Robert pointed, struggling to catch the information he offered against the roar of the wind. Shouting about the sea, he turned her around, but both views were gray and blurred and indistinguishable seen through her tear-filled eyes. He showed her the other hills, Garrow and Ro’tor and then he shouted, “This is no fun at all; shall we go?” Jenny nodded gratefully. They slithered down the rock slabs and picked new ways through the boulders. They walked together this time and occasionally Robert turned to offer a helping hand. They were almost back to the track when he pointed to a great outcrop of rock.
“Let’s shelter in the lee of that for a minute,” he shouted. “Anything to get out of this wind.” The rock was warmth and shelter and soundproofing all in one and there was an intense relief
in no longer having to resist the noise and buffetings. “Sit down,” said Robert seating himself on a flat stone slab from which a yellow lichen and a stunted stonecrop were drawing life.
“It was lovely,” said Jenny. “Lovely to do, but equally lovely to stop doing.”
“Like most things in life,” said Robert.
“Most things?” questioned Jenny reflectively.
“Yes, think of eating; how repulsive the most exquisite meal would become if it went on forever and that lovely moment when comfortably replete, you push back your chair and say ‘now let’s have coffee.’ And Day. Only small children scream at the thought of day ending, at coming off the beach or in from the garden. The adult is dying for a drink, or a quiet look at the paper, longing for the oblivion of sleep.”
“I’ve been to dances which I didn’t want to end,” said Jenny.
“An admission of immaturity. You wait, before long your legs will be aching by a quarter to twelve, you’ll have heard all the conversation before and all those trendy young men will be balding, talking of school fees and tax problems. If one lives long enough I believe that one even relinquishes life quite gracefully.”
“I usually enjoy things,” said Jenny, “but perhaps that’s a sign of immaturity too.”
“I enjoy being with you,” said Robert “When I think of all the secretarial horrors poor old Margaret might have acquired from her advertisement…”
He put an arm around her and gave her the besotted look he had given Bromwyn in the shop.
“Let’s go,” said Jenny getting up. Robert looked offended.
“You’re very prim, Miss Maxwell,” he complained. “Not at all the sort of reaction one expects from a swinging Londoner.” Jenny began to walk on, he caught up with her. “You’ve a steady boyfriend,” he suggested. “You’re committed, engaged—” he snatched her left hand and inspected it. “No.” He looked at her hopefully, but Jenny marched on without speaking. “Ah, wait a minute, I’ve got it – the friend in Penzance. That’s why you’ve come to Bodmin, to be near him.” Jenny shook her head. Robert put his arm around her and pulled her to a halt. “Look, don’t be so standoffish, I only want to be friends.”
A Place With Two Faces Page 4