Plotted in Cornwall

by Janie Bolitho

  The next hour or so flew by. During the afternoon Rose and her parents took it in turns to shower and change ready for the evening. At five-thirty, wearing the apple green dress she had worn to the Penhaligons’ party, Rose poured their first drink. ‘Cheers,’ she said raising her glass. ‘I’m ready for this.’

  ‘Cheers. And you look lovely,’ Arthur said, raising his in response. ‘Just like your mother, in fact,’ he added, winking at Evelyn who, elegant as usual, was dressed in a coffee-coloured dress and jacket made from shimmering material.

  Like the Penhaligons, Rose had invited her guests early because many of them had guests of their own to see to the following day, or small children who would drag them out of bed before daybreak. At six thirty precisely there was a knock on the kitchen door. Rose stood up. ‘No bets on who that is,’ she said.

  ‘Doreen Clarke?’

  Rose grinned at her mother. ‘Spot on.’ Doreen thought that if an invitation was for six-thirty, then that was exactly when she ought to arrive.

  ‘Here’s the carrot roses,’ Doreen said by way of greeting as she thrust an ice-cold polythene bag into Rose’s hands.

  ‘Thank you. What would you like to drink?’

  ‘A drop of gin for me, Cyril’ll have a beer, won’t you, dear?’

  Cyril nodded and twisted his cap in his hands. Used to his miner’s headgear for so many years, he had taken to wearing the cap after he was made redundant. Doreen always had to remind him to take it off indoors even though he felt undressed without it.

  Rose poured their drinks. ‘Go on through, my parents are in the sitting-room. I shan’t be a minute.’ She untied the bag and placed the decorative carrot shapes amongst the garnish surrounding the sandwiches, pasties and flans. Every working surface in the kitchen was covered with plates of food; the drinks she had laid out on the table.

  ‘Don’t stand there like that, Cyril, you heard what Rose said, let’s go and say hello to Arthur and Evelyn.’

  Cyril patted Rose’s arm as he walked past. He had not spoken a single word since his arrival but Rose knew that once his wife was circulating and he’d had a few more beers, he’d strike up a conversation about gardening with anyone who would listen. He hated socialising, he was only happy in the company of other ex-miners or when tending his vegetables, but he had come to please Doreen whom, despite her tendency to bossiness, he cared about deeply.

  The house gradually began to fill up. There was a real mixture of guests: friends, fishermen and their wives, and other artists. Arthur had been put in charge of the CD player. There was no room for dancing and as everyone was far too busy talking to care what they were listening to his choice of music was hardly relevant.

  It was seven thirty before Jack appeared. Rose was in the kitchen but didn’t hear his knock because Laura, dressed in a purple Lycra dress which fitted like cling-film, had a group of people laughing loudly. Whatever she was saying was accompanied by extravagant gestures made with the whole of her thin body. Her mass of curls flew wildly around her head. Even though she couldn’t hear what was being said Rose laughed too. Laura resembled some African tribal dancer.

  ‘Hello. I brought you these.’

  Rose nearly dropped the bottle from which she was replenishing drinks. With shaking hands she screwed the top back on and set the bottle on the table. Then she turned to face the man whose voice she knew so well. ‘Thank you.’ Inexplicably, she felt a lump in the back of her throat as she took the long-stemmed hot-house roses he held out to her.

  ‘Your namesake. I thought they were appropriate.’

  They were yellow, Rose noted, not red, the traditional gift expressing love. She had no idea what to read into that.

  They looked at each other wordlessly for several seconds. No one seemed to notice. How odd that now he had met someone else Jack had developed a romantic streak. Or maybe I quashed it, she admitted honestly, recalling times he had bought her gifts. Maybe Laura was right about Jack all along. Her view was that having lost David in such a tragic manner she was terrified of giving or receiving love again in case the same thing happened twice. But it was too late now. Rose had shut him out. Whatever might have been possible between her and Jack was no longer viable with Anna on the scene. The tears which had threatened did not fall. But where was Anna? There were no strange faces, nothing in the kitchen had changed, except the level of conversation was a little noisier.

  ‘Anna couldn’t make it, she sends her apologies,’ Jack said, reading her mind. ‘May I?’ He picked up a whisky bottle.

  ‘Of course.’ Tall, dark and handsome, Rose thought as she watched him pour his drink with strong hands. It ought to have been a cliché, she thought, but in Jack’s case it wasn’t. She could smell his clean, masculine smell and felt a desire to touch him. ‘She’s not ill, is she?’

  ‘No.’ A flicker of a smile crossed his face. It was typical of Rose, she just had to know. He would bet she had been longing to meet Anna. But Jack hadn’t spoken to her, they had agreed to wait until after Christmas, by which time Jack should have come to a decision. To his surprise Anna had already told him she had other plans, that she was going to a friend’s house. There would be three of them, three women, all now single, who planned to spoil themselves for a change instead of catering to men and families. Jack had been surprised but not particularly bothered. To him each day was much the same as the next. It had been different when his boys were small.

  ‘Come and say hello to my parents.’ Rose almost took his hand, but didn’t. Her mood had lifted. Jack was there and he’d come alone. ‘Dad’s the DJ but it’ll be mostly jazz and I know you like it.’

  They moved through the throng of the people Rose knew. Geoff Carter, the gallery owner, was deep in conversation with Maddy Duke, Rose’s friend from St Ives. She was, as usual, dressed in a bizarre assortment of clothes and the tangle of mousy-blonde hair which hung down her back was adorned with tiny glittering clips. She ran a gift shop and produced much of the craft herself.

  Rose looked around and felt almost superfluous at her own party, but maybe that was the way a good hostess should feel. There was no need to introduce people, they either already knew one another or had been introduced by someone else.

  Trevor looked flushed. He’d probably had a few drinks before he arrived. Rose hoped it wouldn’t lead to another row between him and Laura, but then, Laura wasn’t stinting herself in the kitchen either.

  ‘Jack, lovely to see you.’ Evelyn reached up to kiss his cheek.

  Arthur extended his hand. ‘Hello, Jack. Benny Goodman. One of my favourites.’ He nodded towards the CD player in the corner.

  ‘One of mine, too,’ Jack said, aware that Evelyn was trying to peer around him.

  ‘Is your, uh, young lady here?’

  ‘No. She couldn’t make it.’ Jack bit his lip. Like mother, like daughter. Evelyn, too, wanted to know why not but he wouldn’t satisfy their curiosity. Couldn’t, in fact, he realised, because he had no idea where he stood with Anna. And yet, deep down, he was glad he had come on his own. It would have been hard for Anna, meeting a whole new group of people, many of whom Jack had known for most of his life. But was that the only reason he felt glad? He would think about it later.

  Someone slapped him on the shoulder. ‘Good to see you.’

  Jack turned around. Rose had disappeared. ‘Hi, Barry, quite a do, isn’t it?’ He nodded at the assembled group comprising Doreen Clarke and her husband, Maddy Duke and Geoff Carter and the other various people that Rose had collected along the way. They all liked her, and she them, and for such a disparate group that said a lot about her.

  ‘Rose knows how to entertain.’

  Jack nodded. It was true, but Barry was always so defensive of her. Barry would certainly know about Anna. Surely he didn’t disapprove, not if it left the coast clear for him.

  ‘Did you come on your own?’

  It was obvious he had but in true Cornish fashion the question had to be asked. ‘Yes, I did.’
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br />   Barry pushed his glasses into place. It made no difference. Rose would never love him in any way other than as a friend. For years he had had to content himself with that knowledge. ‘Can I get you another drink?’

  ‘Good idea.’

  Rose was in the kitchen dispensing serviettes, plates and cutlery. ‘Barry, would you tell everyone they can come and help themselves?’ she asked.

  It was only when people were doing so that Jack had a chance to speak to Rose properly. They were at one side of the kitchen, near the door. ‘I wondered if Joel would be here. You said his parents would be away and I know you, every lame duck, etc.’

  Rose grinned. She was flushed and a little flustered but Jack knew this was from the effort of ensuring her guests were all right. ‘He’s staying with a friend and his family. Besides, it’s hardly his sort of thing. Look, Jack, I know this isn’t really the time or place but Louisa came to see me. No, don’t say it.’ She extended a warning hand. ‘I didn’t invite her. That family seems to have a penchant for turning up on my doorstep unannounced. Anyway, she never got to the point of her visit. All she really told me was how much she loved her husband, or maybe that’s just what she wanted me to hear.’

  ‘Rogues have a certain charm for some women, and they often command more loyalty than they deserve.’

  ‘Yes. Quite.’

  Jack raised an eyebrow, unsure what the enigmatic remark meant.

  Rose studied him, unsure whether she ought to go on. He leant, one arm against the door-frame, looking down at her. He was casually dressed in tan trousers and a yellow shirt unbuttoned at the neck. He had discarded his brown flecked jacket because of the heat generated by such a big crowd. ‘Anyway, there was a letter in her bag with a foreign stamp.’

  ‘Rose, you didn’t…?’

  ‘Of course not. What on earth do you take me for? The bag was open beside her.’ She turned to hand Cyril Clarke a plate. ‘Dig in,’ she told him. ‘I don’t want anything left over.’

  ‘I will, maid. ’Tis a lovely spread.’

  Rose and Jack were silent, watching with admiration as Cyril filled his plate to overflowing and carried it to a corner of the kitchen where he ate, standing up and without spilling anything.

  ‘Aren’t you eating, Rose?’ Laura’s hand hovered over a plate. Trevor stood beside her filling his with whatever was within his reach.

  ‘Later, when everyone’s helped themselves.’

  ‘What about you, Jack?’

  ‘Later.’ He wondered why she was looking at him in such a peculiar manner. Her expression was almost a leer. He had known her since childhood; she had only ever treated him like a brother. ‘Okay,’ he said, turning to face Rose. ‘Tell me about this letter.’

  Rose shrugged. ‘I’m not sure there is anything to tell. But because Louisa showed no signs of concern when Frank disappeared I wondered, maybe, if she knew where he was all along.’

  ‘Come off it, you thought he was dead, that he’d been transported to the mists of Bodmin Moor in a deep freeze.’

  Put like that it sounded ridiculous. Rose blushed. Jack frequently made her feel uncomfortable. ‘Yes, well, that was then.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Now I think he’s abroad. I think he took off in his boat. I think Louisa might know exactly where he is.’

  ‘Then why isn’t she with him? Why not go too, especially if, as she claims, she loves him so much?’

  ‘Because they couldn’t both disappear at the same time, not if some crime has been committed.’

  Rose had a point, but as far as the police were concerned Frank Jordan was not wanted in connection with any crime. But nothing seemed to explain Wendy’s presence at the farmhouse or Miranda’s decision to disappear then reappear at a time when solicitors were seeking her father. Like Rose, he suspected her reasons for leaving in the first place went far deeper than any she had ever admitted to. ‘When Miranda came here that first time, what did she want to talk to you about?’

  ‘About Joel, about arranging to meet him.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘No. The only other thing she said was that she was too embarrassed to face her aunt and uncle.’

  ‘It’s a shame they’re away I’d have liked to have spoken to them. And the second time, when she came with Joel. What did she talk about then, apart from the boat, I mean?’

  ‘It’s odd. They came as a sort of deputation, as if they had some hard facts but then decided against telling me what they were. Miranda hedged. She said she believed something bad may have happened to her father and then, with a throw-away line, she said she had suspected her mother of having something to do with it but now she knew better.’

  Jack nodded and went across to the table to refill their glasses. The kitchen was a little less crowded now and the noise level had dropped as people were eating. He poured white wine for Rose although it was no longer chilled. Handing her her glass he asked, ‘Rose why would a near stranger like Miranda come to you to confide such a thing?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. People do sometimes.’

  Indeed they do, Jack thought. But this time he believed Rose to be wrong, that no matter how deep they dug, there would be little to be found. The overseas letter probably had an innocent explanation; a distant cousin, a pen-friend, an old school mate.

  ‘But why say it at all? Why bring her mother into it if she thinks she’s innocent? I believe Miranda knows something is wrong but she isn’t sure what. I think she was looking to me, as an outsider, to help her. I think she finally came to realise that she couldn’t hide from whatever ghosts were haunting her and she came back to face them.’

  ‘You seem to have been doing an awful lot of thinking, Rose. Now I’ll tell you what I think. I think you won’t be satisfied until, well, to coin a phrase, until you know the ins and outs of the cat’s backside.’

  ‘In that case I think I’ll circulate,’ she said with a toss of her head. Bugger him, she thought as she flounced off, I just wish he’d take this seriously.

  In the sitting-room she handed out the presents she had bought for Laura, Trevor, Barry and Maddy and received some of her own in return. She placed them beneath the tree. Jack had brought flowers, she had nothing to give him in return but, at that moment, she was glad.

  The party went on longer than she had anticipated. At eleven thirty Rose and Evelyn stood in the kitchen surveying the wreckage. Litter covered every surface. Rose had insisted that Doreen and Cyril and Barry Rowe took some of the left-over food home with them.

  ‘Let’s get stuck in,’ Evelyn said, slipping on Rose’s apron before taking a pair of rubber gloves from beneath the sink. She began on the glasses whilst Rose filled a bin-liner with paper plates and half-eaten food. Arthur was busy tidying the sitting-room.

  ‘Amazing,’ he said when he finally joined them, a glass of malt whisky in his hand. ‘No cigarette burns, no mess on the carpet. What civilised friends you have.’

  ‘Not all of them,’ Rose muttered as she carried the plastic bag outside to the bin. Jack, she recalled, had left without bothering to say goodnight.

  15

  Michael was surprised to feel nervous as he approached the farmhouse. He supposed the all-female household would be watching him closely. However, Miranda greeted him warmly, throwing her arms around him as soon as she opened the door, and her mother and aunt seemed friendly, if not effusive in their welcome. It would be a quiet Christmas but that didn’t matter as long as he was with Miranda.

  ‘Let me show you your room,’ she said as soon as he stepped into the hallway ‘Then I’ll explain the peculiarities of the house. It’s fun, actually, a bit like living in a previous era.’

  Once he had been taken all around the house and told how things worked, he wondered why the two women had chosen to live as they did. Keeping the fires going and the lamps trimmed or whatever they did to them must be time-consuming.

  In the kitchen he turned to Miranda, placed a finger under her chin and tilted her h
ead towards him. ‘I love you,’ he said simply. ‘I only realised how much once you had left. Have you missed me at all?’

  Miranda nodded, head down now, the ringlets of hair falling forward and hiding the feelings she knew would be reflected in her face. ‘Michael, I’ve had a long chat with my mother. I’ve decided I want to go to university after all.’ She looked up and grinned. ‘But that doesn’t mean I don’t love you.’

  ‘No problem then.’ Michael grinned back. It was what he had wanted to hear. ‘No matter where you go we can still see each other most weekends.’

  ‘Yes, we can. Come on, let’s go through. They’ll be gasping for a sherry or something and they won’t start without us. Hopefully we can induce some Christmas cheer into my Aunt Wendy. I don’t know what’s the matter with her lately.’ Miranda had matured enough to know that although she loved Michael now things might be very different once she started studying again. They would both meet other people, possibly fall in love with one of them, but for the moment she was happy. For the moment there was Christmas to get through then she would consider having another talk with Rose Trevelyan. Something was wrong, Miranda knew that. Even her mother was being cagey. Mrs Trevelyan, she was certain, would get to the bottom of whatever mystery her family had created. And when Uncle Roger and Petra returned she would face them, too. It was time things were out in the open.

  It soon became obvious that Louisa liked Michael, and even Wendy’s stiff attitude softened a little in the presence of the young man. No one mentioned Frank Jordan. Michael was curious; all he knew was that the man had walked out on his family about the same time as Miranda arrived in London. He had thought Christmas might have brought her father to mind.

  They ate lots of good food, took long walks and returned to the blazing fire tired and content to play Scrabble or cards or simply to talk. Despite the quiet way in which they spent their time, the three days passed quickly.

  ‘I can’t believe I enjoyed it so much,’ Michael said on the day he left. He had promised to spend the New Year with his own family.