A Rather Remarkable Homecoming

by C. A. Belmond

“Grandmother Beryl?” I said with some surprise. My mother’s mum had died decades ago, so it seemed rather late indeed to speak of Grandma’s “last wishes” . . . and I wondered how time could possibly be of the essence.

  “Why don’t we all have some tea?” I found myself saying, hoping that my travel-weary brain would catch up to all this after a “cuppa”.

  Jeremy shot me one of his Watch out! looks. Because, Prince Charles or no Prince Charles, in our short time in business together, we’ve gotten into some tight spots at the behest of wealthy and powerful clients; so shortly after our wedding, we made a second set of vows to each other, this time regarding our work. To wit, we agreed on the following points: One: No more cases involving relatives; and Two: No more accepting weird invitations from the big movers-and-shakers of the world.

  This case had the dubious distinction of killing both rules with one stone.

  But Harriet looked at me gratefully now and said, “Oh, yes, tea would be lovely. It was a long drive from Port St. Francis.”

  “I’ve just had some take-away food delivered,” Rupert said to Jeremy, as if relieved to be able to be of some help now. “Cold meat and sandwiches, and scones and cake.”

  “Got any beer?” Colin asked. Both he and his mother had an accent that sounded slightly Scottish. Harriet nudged him. Jeremy looked as if he would be only too happy to pop open some ale, but Harriet shook her head firmly.

  So we all adjourned to the study, which is a nice big room smack dab between Jeremy’s office and mine. It’s where we meet up at the end of the day over a glass of wine. Jeremy’s butterscotchcolored leather chair and matching ottoman sit across from my paisley wing chair, right in front of the fireplace, with a round table beside us. Opposite the table is a horsehair sofa, and I gestured for Harriet and Colin to sit there together. Harriet patted the sofa approvingly, like someone who’s been around horses and farms all her life.

  “Shall I light a fire?” Jeremy suggested, resigned to the idea that these guests would be here awhile. Although it was June, the room was chilly from the damp weather as evening descended. I helped Rupert arrange a large tray with the tea things, and then he murmured that he had to head back to his office. With a nod to me, Rupert slipped out of the room.

  “Now then,” Harriet said briskly when everyone had filled their teacups and plates. “You’ll be wanting to know what this all about.”

  She took a hungry bite of a dainty chicken sandwich, and a sip of her tea, then she sighed with relief and began. “I am the president of the Port St. Francis Legacy Society,” she explained in a matter-of-fact tone with a touch of pride. “We are responsible for the preservation and protection of our quality of life in the village, and the welfare of our citizens.”

  “Which, these days, means that Mum and her crowd have to pick up all the slack for what the ruddy government doesn’t do,” Colin translated, slicing a scone in two and using his knife to spread whipped cream on one side, and jam on the other. Then he closed the scone as if it were a sandwich.

  “The Legacy Society is not just a bunch of little ladies who feather-dust old landmark houses,” he declared, popping half the scone in his mouth. When he was not quite finished chewing, he continued. “Mum’s group has rescued everything and everybody in town, from the post office to the hospital.”

  “True on the whole,” Harriet said with some humor, “except I do own a feather duster as well.”

  In a maternal but unsentimental way, she had quietly patted Colin’s bare knee where it stuck out from his kilts, as if she were soothing a skittish horse or a lost lamb. Colin, for his part, was tough-looking and rough-edged, with his spiky haircut and his black T-shirt blazing with red and gold lettering in a language that I couldn’t comprehend. But I could see that he was one of those wild boys who are exceptionally tenderhearted when it comes to his mother. I couldn’t help liking both of them.

  “Penny,” Harriet said, “perhaps you already know that your grandmother, Beryl Laidley, once owned a house-by-the-sea in our little village on the northern coast of Cornwall?” There was an affectionate twinkle in her eye as she mentioned my grandmother’s name.

  “Oh, yes!” I blurted out. “We know all about that house. It’s where Jeremy and I met, years ago when we were just kids.”

  “Did you really?” Harriet asked, looking from me to Jeremy. “How nice. Your gran’s property does have the most wonderful view of the sea,” she said to me.

  “I remember,” I said softly, thinking of the lovely stone house with its old-fashioned parlor, where, during one magical summer, I’d spent hours ensconced in a window-seat reading a strange book of dark fairy tales while listening to the far-off whispering sound of the sea.

  And in my mind’s eye, just as if it were yesterday, I could see myself as a nine-year-old, with my copper-colored hair in a ponytail, shyly walking into the garden to meet Jeremy and his parents for the first time. He was thirteen, a bit gangly but a good-looking fella even then, with dark hair and rebellious blue eyes, and the impeccable good manners of a boy who’d been raised with “all the advantages”.

  Jeremy’s stepfather was my Uncle Peter, who was my mom’s brother. So, although Jeremy had no blood connection to my family at all, he had a special place in my childhood. When we first met as kids in Cornwall, Jeremy had already heard many curious things about this American girl called Penny Nichols, and, as he later confessed to me, he was eagerly awaiting my visit.

  He’d been told that my English mother, who’d defiantly moved to America as soon as she graduated, was a children’s book illustrator, and she and my dad had written a series of picture books together featuring a little “Girl Detective” based on me. When I arrived in Cornwall, Jeremy was already convinced that I was some sort of American sleuth and celebrity.

  Typically as kids, Jeremy and I quickly teamed up in our attempt to resist the grown-ups and create our own world of play. We went swimming and biking and spent hours listening to our favorite music on the radio. Behind the house, facing the sea, there was a beautiful garden where we’d cautiously confided our hopes for the future to each other, while making our way down the narrow, pebbled garden path and the flight of steep stone steps that led to a small, hidden sandy cove.

  Running along the shoreline and darting in and out of the waves that summer, we could scarcely have known that we would meet again . . . let alone become partners in our own eccentric investigative firm, Nichols & Laidley, Ltd. Even in my wildest dreams, I couldn’t have foreseen the exciting cases we’d work on together. Using my art history skills and Jeremy’s legal background, we pursued other people’s family histories and mysteries—as well as our own—to uncover priceless lost treasures and works of art.

  Nor could we, in our youthful chats, ever imagine that we would end up married to each other! Still, as we like to remind ourselves, the little seeds of our future life together had been planted in Grandfather Nigel’s garden, long ago, during that very sweet summer in Cornwall.

  Jeremy was grinning at me now, making me blush a little, so I knew he was revisiting the same memories. But when he turned to Harriet and Colin, his manner was more businesslike, and a bit protective of me. Ever since the inheritance from Aunt Pen, we’ve had to fend off our share of aggressive kooks who come knocking at our door with “business” propositions that are chiefly designed to relieve us of our windfall.

  “It seems to me,” Jeremy told our visitors calmly in his Barrister’s Voice, “that Penny’s Grandmother Beryl sold her house quite a long time ago . . . in the early 1990s, I believe. Were you the buyer?”

  “Not exactly,” replied Harriet, unruffled by his slightly suspicious tone. She turned to me with a gentle air and said, “Penny, your grand-mum was a founding member of our Port St. Francis Legacy Society. She was very passionate about protecting our village, long before it became fashionable to do so.”

  “Really?” I glanced up curiously, for, although I didn’t know my English grandmother well, she’d str
uck me as a very conventional woman, unlikely ever to have been a firebrand, especially compared to her brilliant and dramatic older sister, my Great-Aunt Penelope, who had outlived Grandmother for many years.

  “Oh, yes,” continued Harriet. “Beryl was very forward-looking, and she could see what was happening in Cornwall . . . low wages and sky-high housing prices driving our young people away, because they can’t afford to stay.”

  Harriet glanced a bit worriedly at her son, then went on. “So, toward the end of her life, when dear Beryl was forced to move back to London permanently to be near her doctors, she decided to sell her country house to the town of Port St. Francis at a very reasonable price, with the stipulation that they lease it to our Legacy Society for twenty years, giving us the first option to buy it if the town ever needed to sell.”

  Harriet paused now to let this information sink in, and to sip more of her hot tea. “You see, back then, we all agreed that this was the best way to give our Legacy Society time to raise funds to buy the house,” she explained. “Beryl could easily have sold it outright to a private buyer, and I daresay for more money. But your lovely grandmother said she’d rather count on our group to do good things with the place for everyone in the community. I am proud to say that the house has been used as a woman’s shelter, a seniors’ and veterans’ center, a day-care nursery, and it was even where we launched the town’s organic farmers’ market.”

  Colin interrupted now, taking a great big gulp of tea, which he drank “black”.

  “And if it weren’t for Mum’s group, there’d be plenty of babies and old folks who wouldn’t be alive today, that’s the God’s truth of it,” he said, eyeing Jeremy more keenly than his mother had.

  “For awhile, we really did your grand-mum proud,” Harriet said to me, her eyes shining. “To the locals, it was a place to go in good times and bad.”

  I had been listening attentively, noticing that every time Harriet mentioned Grandmother Beryl, it was with the warm tone of someone who deeply missed a close friend, and who had, against all odds, kept the house as a shrine to their shared good intentions. I couldn’t help being touched by this.

  Harriet said warningly now, “But I must tell you that there are plans afoot for your grandmother’s house that we do not like.”

  “Don’t sugar-coat it, Mum. Tell ’em the place is about to be razed to the ground!” Colin broke in impatiently.

  I gasped, and Jeremy looked up sharply in surprise.

  “And furthermore,” Colin said darkly, “life in the entire village as we know it could be totally destroyed! Fact is, everybody in Port St. Francis thinks that you guys are the only ones who can stop it.”

  Chapter Two

  “Who’s going to knock down my grandmother’s house?” I demanded indignantly.

  “The town,” Colin blurted out. “They own it, and they want to sell it to somebody else for more money.”

  Jeremy regained his composure first. “So, I take it that your lease on Beryl’s house is near its end now?” he asked. “And that your Legacy Society is not in a position to buy?”

  “Right on both counts,” said Harriet promptly, “but I’m afraid it’s a bit more complicated than that.”

  She turned to me. “You see, earlier on, we were able to help the town buy some of the property surrounding your grand-mum’s house, thanks to the kindly donations of our supporters, who stipulated that the town give our Legacy Society the same kind of lease on all the new property. Oh, we had some great plans for the house and the land!” she exclaimed, and I had to smile at her enthusiasm.

  “What did you have in mind?” I asked.

  “Our dream was—is—to restore the house to its former glory, and then, on the new property, to build some reasonably-priced housing for our young people so they can raise their families there,” Harriet responded. “We even hired an architect to draw up the plans. We want Port St. Francis to remain a vital place, where folks can walk or bike to everything they need—shops, post office, dentists—instead of having to drive miles and miles to other towns just to mail a letter or see a doctor!”

  She paused for breath, then continued. “We’ve got it all worked out. It would all be a very ‘green’ use of energy, while still making everything cheerful, homey, and beautifully appealing to the eye, to raise the spirits and well-being of the folks who live there. This, we hope, will help Port St. Francis become a new, really selfsustaining eco-village, one that works with the environment, not against it.”

  “Ohh!” I said. “An eco-village! Like the Prince’s trust, right?”

  Now it was all beginning to make sense. I’d been reading about how Prince Charles had, for many years, devoted himself to advocating and assisting in the planning of such eco-villages, and to organic and sustainable farming. At first, the usual naysayers had hooted and jeered and called their prince a “tree-hugger” who ought to mind his own business and just hang around Buckingham Palace, doing only ceremonial things, like pinning medals on heroes and shaking hands with foreign visitors. But over time, even the most cynical Brit admits that the Prince’s vision has become a vital step forward to insure the survival of future generations.

  “But I don’t understand,” I said. “Your plan sounds wonderful, and you even have the support of Prince Charles. So, what’s the problem?”

  Colin leaned forward with a fierce look in his eyes. “Because whenever you get a good idea started, the big-boy bastards from the City wake up and smell the money,” he exclaimed, unable to control his fury any longer. “Some hotshot international real-estate developers have blown into our town with plans of their own. They say they want to do the same thing as Mum—create what they call an ‘eco-bos’—”

  At my blank look, Harriet translated for me. “Bos is Cornish for ‘home’, basically,” she explained.

  “Yeah, well,” Colin said, “these jackals want to grab the whole caboodle: your gran’s house, and all the land Mum’s group acquired, and even some other nearby property as well! In a way, Mum’s Legacy Society laid out the bait—by attaching your grand-mum’s house to all that surrounding land—so it’s now a big, juicy, tempting parcel for these vultures.”

  Harriet gave her son a reproachful look, then turned to me. “Our friend has helped as much as he can, but you might say we’re not the only worthy cause on his dance card,” she said, alluding to H.R.H. “You see, part of the problem is that your Grandmother Beryl’s house is falling into disrepair,” she added with a regretful tone. “You must believe me when I tell you that we really tried to keep it up, but there never seemed to be enough funds, and finally the place was no longer up to code for our group to safely use for our offices and meetings. So the town has put us on notice that they can’t afford to keep the house, and they say they must sell it to the highest bidder.”

  “Which is a total black-hearted lie,” Colin interjected heatedly. “The Legacy Society was forced to abandon the house,” he explained, still looking outraged. “It’s all politics. See, years ago, when your grandmother was dealing with the town officials, they were all like-minded folk. But a lot of them got old and died off.”

  “I’m afraid that’s true,” Harriet admitted, looking less cheerful for the first time.

  “Now we’ve got some flash new politicians from the City who have ‘retired to the country’ but they still want to wheel and deal and keep making piles of money,” Colin said bitterly. “The rest of the town council is either too corrupt or just too lily-livered. You should have seen the First Minister, and some of the town officials, lapping it up when the big-money developers showed up to wine and dine them and ferry them about in a limousine. Amazing how little it takes for a politician to sell his own ass—”

  “Soul,” Harriet corrected quickly. “Sell his soul to the devil.”

  “Well, once those fools on the town council got a whiff of the big money, they saw that their main obstacle was Mum’s group and their option-to-buy,” Colin went on. “So, next thing you know,
the Legacy Society gets a little visit from the building inspector, who tells them that the chimney isn’t up to code; or there’s termite damage somewhere, or an electric whatsis is a hazard that has to be fixed immediately. Every week, somebody new showed up, looking for another infraction, no matter how minor, as an excuse to bleed the group dry of all their funds. What the officials couldn’t find wrong they made up, and it cost big legal fees to fight; so even when you win the case, you lose the war. And finally the town got what it wanted—they forced Mum’s group out and declared the house uninhabitable.”

  “It became a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Harriet said sadly. “The house has now lain empty for years, so naturally it’s at the mercy of the elements, and we have no more money to fight it. Our option expires at the end of the summer.”

  Colin had fallen uncharacteristically silent now. The fire in the fireplace sizzled with what sounded to me like moral indignation.

  When Jeremy finally spoke, he did so gently but directly. “Would it really be so bad if the big shots got their way? Wouldn’t it at least stimulate the local economy and provide jobs?”

  “Pah!” Colin said scornfully. “They plan to bring in cheap immigrant labor to build it all. You want to see what the developers have really got in mind?” he asked cunningly.

  Harriet covered her face with her hands. “Oh, Colin,” she said, “some day I fear you’re going to get yourself into real trouble.”

  Defiantly, Colin looked Jeremy in the eye and said, “This is all confidential, right?”

  Jeremy nodded. Colin nudged his mum, who reached into her bag and pulled out a sheaf of folded papers, which Colin triumphantly plunked on the table before us.

  I peered at them curiously. The plans were printed on a thin, parchment-like paper, and when unfolded, they took up most of the table.

  “Exhibit A,” Colin said, stabbing at the architectural sketch laid out with a map of the area. “Mum’s original plan. Here’s your grand-mum’s house, which they’d use as an historical inn, with offices for the Legacy Society. On the adjoining new property, working with ecological surveys, the Society would build a few housing clusters right here. All the rest remains public and protected land.”