by Rachel Hore
There were dark places in her mind where she couldn’t go, even now. She was frightened of her feelings. But the truth, Beatrice, she told herself. The truth was always best. Time was a river, so the poet said, the past flowing on into the future. Her past was dammed in a stagnant pool.
She pushed herself up out of her chair and crossed to the window. Her feet were painful today, as if they, too, remembered. The birds had gone from the drinking bowl, but the carefree sound of their song was all around. That’s what she’d loved most, living here as a child – the cries of the birds and the sound of the sea: swishing over the sand, smashing against the cliffs, sucking itself out of secret caves and crevices. It spoke to her spirit.
Lucy walked out along one arm of the harbour as far as she could go and stared out to sea. It was a calm evening and the water shone sleek and opaque now the sun was low in the sky. She turned to look at the town, spread across the hillside. Far along the cliff she looked for the ruins of Carlyon Manor, but they were hidden by greenery. She remembered what Beatrice had said, so passionately, about her feelings for Rafe. Such a long time ago. A love that survived his death. She tried to imagine feeling like that about someone. She never had, and couldn’t imagine that she ever would.
Later, at the Mermaid, she took a history of the Second World War downstairs with her and ordered a drink and fishcakes from the cheerful woman behind the bar, who looked as though she might be Cara’s mother. At a table across the room, facing her, a man was making his way through a large helping of cottage pie, engrossed in a magazine. His hair glinted reddish-brown and she observed his slow, careful movements as he ate. When Cara’s mother took him a beer he looked up and Lucy realized it was the man she’d seen the day before on the boat Early Bird. She liked his tanned face, the cropped hair and the very blue eyes that crinkled up when he laughed at something the woman said. There was energy and strength in every movement. She wondered about him – whether he was staying at the hotel, like her, or maybe he lived in Saint Florian.
He finished his meal and as he walked past on his way out, she tried to see what the magazine was, playing her private game of working people out by what they read. Current affairs, of some sort. She glanced up at him and he gave her his friendly smile. ‘Hello again,’ he said.
‘Hi,’ she managed to reply. After he’d gone she read her book for a bit as she ate, then went up to her room. A film she’d helped make was on one of the minor channels, a love story set in wartime France. She remembered how she’d been interested in the real-life episode on which it was based. After watching it for a while she took a shower and investigated the pile of neatly ironed washing that lay on the bed. When she shook out the clean nightdress, a fragrance of roses filled the air.
Beatrice opened the ancient photograph album as she and Lucy sat together at the dining-table the next morning. ‘There, that’s my father, Hugh Marlow,’ she said. The picture was of a young man in a suit and cravat, with a moustache and an intense expression. ‘And here’s my parents’ wedding in 1919.’ Hugh, still in military uniform, stood proudly beside a neat, dark girl dressed in white lace.
‘Your mother? What was her name?’ Lucy asked.
‘Delphine. She was French.’
‘She was pretty. Where was it taken?’
‘Near Etretat on the Normandy coast – do you know it?’
‘I’ve heard of it, that’s all.’
‘It’s famous for its white cliffs, like the ones at Dover. Monet painted them. When I was born in 1922, it was still a small village. My father, a Lieutentant with the Gloucestershire Rifles, was wounded in France near the end of the Great War and sent to a hospital near Etretat. The injury to his shoulder healed fairly easily. It was the lungful of mustard gas that affected him for the rest of his life.’
Beatrice smiled. ‘I often used to imagine their first meeting. My mother said he would sit in the hospital grounds when the weather was fine and she noticed how he perked up whenever he saw her delivering fruit and vegetables in a horse-drawn cart. She was the daughter of a local landowner, you see. It’s so strange to think about one’s parents being young and in love, isn’t it?’
‘My parents met when Mum’s boyfriend’s motorbike broke down on the way back from a rock festival. Dad was passing and gave her a lift in this really smart car,’ Lucy said. ‘He was quite a few years older than her, and wore a suit, and she thought he was pretty cool.’
Beatrice looked delighted at this idea and it was a moment before she returned to her story. ‘One January morning in 1919 my mother brought a bucket of early daffodils along with the fruit and veg, but while she was hefting the thing out of the cart, something spooked the pony, the cart jerked forward and flowers and water flew out everywhere. My father staggered over to rescue her. She said she didn’t know who must have looked worse – she soaked through and weeping, or he, in bandages and pyjamas, trying to steady the horse. Not a very romantic start, was it? Though I don’t know that they were a very romantic couple.’
‘That’s something my mum complained about – that Dad never did anything romantic. I don’t think it was the way he was. But that didn’t mean he didn’t care.’
‘Of course not,’ Beatrice said. ‘Anyway, they married a few months later. When my father relayed news of his engagement to his parents, there was quite a hoo-ha. Why? Well, for a start my mother was French and a Catholic, and that was bad enough in their eyes. Then, although his family were landowning farmers themselves, somehow Grandfather Marlow didn’t consider the fields of Normandy to be as superior as the Marlows’ rolling estates in the Cotswolds. My father wasn’t the firstborn son and heir, but my grandfather was a controlling sort of man, and the marriage created a rift between them.’
She reached for the fragile album and turned the page. Lucy found herself looking at a traditional French farmhouse with chickens and a dog in a muddy yard. ‘That’s my Normandy grandparents’ house. For a while my father was happy to stay and help out with the farmwork, but the damage to his lungs was significant, and he found it too much for him. As a small child I was carted to and fro across the Channel as my parents tried to find somewhere he could feel settled, with work he could do. I can’t imagine what stress it put on my poor mother, she always having to be the cheerful one and buck up my father.’
‘And these are your French relations?’ Lucy pointed to another photograph, of a family group.
‘Yes, these two here are Gran’mère and Pappi. Pappi looks a bit fierce with that beard, doesn’t he? He was a kind man, really. Gran’mère was one of those very capable people and she had a lot to be capable about, what with six children and the farm. These three men were my uncles, and the little girls my cousins, Thérèse and Irène. They were a few years older than me, so I was the baby.’
Beatrice then showed Lucy a photograph of Delphine standing next to a dainty little girl with thick dark hair and a shy demeanour. It had been taken in front of The Rowans.
‘There, that’s me.’
‘You looked very like your mother.’
‘Yes, I suppose I did. Moving here to Saint Florian, when I was ten, was their final attempt at a new start. My father had got some idea that he would be a writer, and a friend recommended Cornwall as a cheap place to live. They bought this house with Marlow money. Of course, he had to do something else while he made his name, so he scandalized his parents further by taking a job as a clerk in a bank at Saint Austell, and was glad to have it, given the number of people out of work. I have to say, though, that the comedown dented his pride and certainly his temper.’
Beatrice turned another page in the album. An important-looking old man in plus-fours posed by a field of cows. ‘That’s Grandfather Marlow,’ she said. ‘He sent my father a cheque every month. It wasn’t so much the cheque – after all, we were always grateful for the money – as the patronizing letter that accompanied it which annoyed my father so much. My mother, who was family-minded, made a point of taking me to visit the Marlows oc
casionally, which was good of her considering how condescending they could be. And in deference to them, my religious upbringing was a very odd mixture of Anglican and Catholic. She was quite a pragmatist, my mother.’
‘It must all have been very confusing for you,’ Lucy said. ‘That, and moving around, I mean.’
‘Oh, I never settled properly till we came to Saint Florian. I went to a local school in Normandy, but not for long enough periods to make friends. When we moved here, I went to a governess with some other girls. I could never invite them round to play, as my father hated noise of any sort. So a lot of the time there was just me – oh, and here’s dear old Jinx, my father’s dog.’
‘Is he a fox terrier?’ Lucy said, looking closely at the faded photograph.
‘A wire-hair, that’s right. Then in the summer of 1935, when I was twelve, the Wincantons came to live at Carlyon, and everything changed. This is Carlyon dreaming in the sun. I took it with my Box Brownie.’
And now Beatrice took off her spectacles and leant back in her chair. Her face wore a faraway expression as though she was looking deep into the past.
Chapter 5
Cornwall, July 1935
She’d watched the strange children from the moment they appeared that morning, but they didn’t see her at first. Or perhaps they did but were too absorbed in their own company to care about a skinny twelve-year-old girl in a home-made cotton blouse and shorts as she lurked shy as a bird’s shadow amongst the boulders and the tidal pools.
She had been lying on her stomach, staring into a pool where fairy fronds of lime and scarlet weed gently undulated and fish darted like shards of crystal. Along the sandy bottom staggered a pink-shelled crab. There was a miniature cave in the rock, scooped out by the sea, and decorated with barnacles and exquisite curled winkles. It might serve as a palace for a tiny mermaid. A sea palace! Beatrice imagined herself very small, with a glittery tail, swimming down with the fish to shelter amongst the snowy pinnacles and the tender anemones. How happy she would be, riding the white seahorses with their coiled tails . . .
A hyphen of electric blue shot out from the cave and pulled her out of her delicious day-dream. One scoop of her net and a moment later the tiny fish was zigzagging round her bucket above a hermit crab and a giant limpet she’d captured in earlier raids.
A shout echoed from somewhere up the beach. She whipped round to see the elder boy come first, leaping out of the dunes, screeching like the Riviera Express, towel, shorts, jersey and shoes all flung to the ground in a heap as he ran down the beach in his drawers. White dune dust flew from his heels, then he gained the harder sand of the foreshore and sprinted on and on, into the wind, towards the sea. Perhaps he imagined the cheers of spectators, for when he finally splashed into the shallows he punched the air in a triumphant gesture then turned as if to an audience, panting, hands on hips.
Now came the others, the younger boy dark and thin where the elder was fair and hearty, struggling out of clothes and sandals. Then he, too, was running, imprinting his own, lighter footprints on the sand, careful always to avoid his brother’s firm ones. Next, a sturdy brown-haired girl of perhaps six or seven in a swimming costume. She jumped from a dune, fell, picked herself up, crying uselessly to the boys to wait, then dashed off down the beach after them. Finally there appeared the older girl, straw sunhat in hand, her movements dreamy, serene, her long gold hair blowing out behind like a heroine in a thousand legends and Beatrice, watching, held her breath. The girl picked her way barefoot across the grassy hillocks with self-absorbed grace. Her journey to the sea was winding, for she kept stopping to pin back her hair, examine shells, or simply to whirl about in the wind. Beatrice stared at her, amazed, thinking she’d never seen such a beautiful creature. Reaching the water’s edge, where the smallest child waded, the golden girl knotted up the skirt of her dress before paddling in the shallows and waving at the boys, who were already capering far out among the breakers.
‘Edward, Peter.’ Her cry carried to Beatrice on the wind, bouncing off the cliffs, echoing around. ‘Mummy said . . .’ Beatrice couldn’t make out what Mummy had said but imagined it to be something about not going out too far. But the boys dived like dolphins under the waves and kicked spray at one another and ignored their sister who gave up after a bit and instead helped the smaller girl draw pictures on the sand with driftwood. Beatrice returned to her pool and concentrated on levering a blood-coloured anemone away from a rock.
‘Hello there!’
When she looked up again, the golden girl was coming towards her, glowing with life, her hair flying out everywhere. Beatrice rose to her feet, brushed sand from her shorts, and waited for the girl to reach the rocks.
‘What are you doing?’ the girl called, placing a bare foot on the lowest rock and craning her neck to see. ‘Ouch. Can I come over?’
Beatrice looked down at her own sensibly sandalled feet and said doubtfully, ‘If you want.’ The golden girl plotted her way painfully across the barnacled rocks. She was like the mermaid in the story Beatrice often read, who was given human legs but condemned always to feel she walked on knives.
‘Oh, you’ve got an an-em-one,’ the girl cried, reaching her and peering into the pool. ‘I love an-em-ones! Their mouths are like people’s when they kiss you.’
Beatrice gazed at her in astonishment. She considered the talcum-powder pecks her English grandmother gave her and the smacking kisses from her French relations and thought their mouths were nothing like anemones. She hated it worst when people pinched her cheeks as though testing whether she was fat enough to eat. She imagined they must find her disappointingly scrawny.
The girl was talking away in a quite uninhibited fashion. ‘I have to say an-em-one slowly because I nearly always call them anenomes. It’s Greek. Mummy’s name is Oenone and that’s Greek too. Some people don’t know how to say “In-ony”, because it’s spelt funny.’ She laughed, her face open, happy. ‘Edward, he’s the biggest, does Greek at his school so he always says words right. I wish he wouldn’t laugh at me, though. It’s not my fault girls don’t do Greek or Latin. I think it sounds more fun than boring old geography. At which Miss Simpkins says I just don’t try. What about you?’
Beatrice was startled at this long, complicated speech, but managed to say, ‘I like geography,’ as she loved examining maps and saying the strange names of cities and rivers to herself, but sensing the girl’s annoyance she added quickly, ‘Well, some of the time.’ She was torn, frightened of displeasing this extraordinary girl by disagreeing with her, but still sore from a recent misunderstanding when her mother believed her to have lied. ‘Always tell the truth, Béatrice,’ she had remonstrated in her accented English. ‘Even if it makes trouble. Your integrity is the most valuable thing.’
She was relieved to see the girl was still smiling. Close up, Beatrice could see her large clear blue eyes and just the faintest smattering of freckles across her creamy skin. She must be the same age as herself, or slightly older – thirteen, perhaps – already tall, with long languorous limbs. She held herself confidently, too. Her shirt was tight across her chest, and when she crouched down to poke about in the bucket, there was something self-aware about the movement. ‘I’m sorry, do I talk too much?’ she said, her face now an appealing frown. ‘Nanny says that empty vessels make most sound. Gosh, I say, look at that stripey fish. It’s so pretty I could just eat it up. Not literally, of course. I mean, it’s just a heavenly blue, don’t you think? I love all animals but horses best of all.’
‘Oh, so do I!’ Beatrice couldn’t help bursting out.
‘Do you keep a horse? We have two, but they’re Mummy’s, though I’m allowed to ride Cloud. He’s only a pony but it’s quite true, Jezebel does bite. Cloud’s name is Claud really, but Cloud is a grey – which means white – so it suits him so much better. Don’t you agree?’
Before Beatrice could admit that, no, her family didn’t have horses, nor was it likely they’d ever have one in a thousand years, a boy�
��s deep voice called, ‘Angie!’ and she saw the other children hurrying towards them over the sand. They waited in a line, where the rocks began. The little girl said, ‘Angie, you’ve got to come. Now.’
Edward, the eldest, who studied Greek, stood arms akimbo. He said, ‘Good afternoon,’ to Beatrice in a polite, very grown-up way. Then to Angie, ‘I say, would you and Hetty go and get our shoes and things. I vote we go round to the other cove.’ All five of them looked to where a passage of bare sand had opened up between the sea and the jagged rocks of the headland. ‘I want to find that cave Daddy told us about.’
Peter, the next in age, was examining a small cut on his arm. When he glanced up at Beatrice his black eyes were expressionless, unreadable. She stepped back, flustered, and her foot knocked the bucket. ‘Oh, watch out, silly,’ cried Hetty. They all saw it rock then settle.
‘What’s your name?’ Angie asked.
‘Beatrice,’ said Beatrice, pronouncing it the English way.
‘Goodbye, Beatrice. Look, Hetty, stay here with the boys. I’ll be quicker. You’d better not go without me, Ed,’ she warned. She set off up the beach in the curious loping stride of someone not used to running. Hetty stared into Beatrice’s pail and then up at her stolidly, before turning and following her brothers back to the shoreline. There Edward filled time by practising cartwheels on the sand and Peter hurled pebbles into the waves with what Beatrice considered excessive force. Up by the dune, good-natured Angie could be seen stuffing towels, clothes and shoes into a straw bag. She hurried back to her siblings and the four of them ambled over towards the other cove, not even turning to wave to Beatrice.
She’d visited the other cove with her parents, but had been repeatedly forbidden ever to go there by herself because it got covered up so quickly by the tide. It occurred to her now that she should have warned the children, but they were already too far away to hear.
She watched until they were out of sight, then turned back to her task, hauling her bucket over to the next big rockpool. There, three pretty pebbles gleamed in the depths and she almost forgot about the children as she fished these out one by one, thinking they’d look well in her collection box at home. Then she sat back against a boulder, took an apple and a greaseproof package out of a shoulder bag and ate ginger biscuits while she made notes in an exercise book about her afternoon’s finds. She drew the fish and a picture of a mermaid swimming in the palace she’d imagined. Then she put away the notebook and spent some time fishing for a particularly elusive crab in a large shallow pool, the surface of which kept being ruffled by the breeze. It would be a good hour before she needed to return home to tea.