Chloe

by Freya North

  It was late afternoon. Chloë was just recounting the story of Mrs MacAdam and Fraser’s shoes to William, when the prefix of the landlady’s surname reminded her why she was at Peregrine’s Gully and put a temporary hold on her train of thought.

  ‘Mac,’ she murmured, a little alarmed, her eyes searching William’s for the course of action.

  ‘He said to meet him here?’ asked William. ‘For a rummage?’

  ‘At elevenses,’ confirmed Chloë to stress the authenticity of the arrangement and the urgency of the situation.

  ‘What were you to rummage for?’ William enquired, keeping his own curiosity at bay lest it should unnerve her.

  ‘The key!’ announced Chloë.

  ‘To what?’ asked William.

  Chloë sighed and squeezed a lump of terracotta clay. ‘I have absolutely no idea.’

  William phoned Mac who claimed to have had a funny turn, deary me. Whatever could he have been thinking? Gracious, please forgive – damned dementia! The key? But of course, right here in the cutlery drawer. Of course. Where else? Come and get it. No, not now. Tomorrow, a cup of tea? For two? Ah! For three! See you then. Oh, and lovely sandwiches, thank you.

  William walked Chloë to her bicycle. The afternoon had been treated to a glorious burst of sunshine; the sun itself a distant pink lozenge that proffered little warmth but invested the land with a clear, crystalline light. He heard himself suggesting they could walk together to Mac’s the next day.

  ‘I mean, if you like. Er, if you’d like some company.’

  ‘Heavens yes! I mean, thank you.’

  Although impressed by Chloë’s conscientious acquaintance with much of the north coastal path, this would be a section she would not have explored and William found himself keen that she should not tread it alone. Or at least, not without him.

  ‘So much nicer to share,’ said William, not actually to Chloë but out loud, none the less.

  ‘Tomorrow, then,’ said Chloë, suddenly unable to regard William directly though she knew she’d curse herself later for forgoing such an opportunity.

  ‘Yup,’ William affirmed, kicking a clod of grass and grinning at Barbara.

  FORTY-TWO

  Chloë cycled appallingly to Peregrine’s Gully, her knees as much a-quiver as her senses.

  I wonder if he’ll be as handsome today!

  She very nearly parted company with her bicycle twice but her desire to arrive in one piece, unflustered, and with her hair almost in place, was far stronger and she arrived at William’s late but unscathed.

  Heavens, he is. What am I thinking! He’s a stranger – and he’s probably utterly psychotic or else madly in love with someone else anyway.

  William, whom thankfully we at least know to be single and sensible, sat Chloë at his table with a mug of sweet tea. Worrying that she might chill, he disappeared to fetch a thick jumper. He took the stairs two at a time and wondered why his heart was racing when he was actually rather fit.

  I’m probably falling for something. The flu. A cold.

  He walked back down to the kitchen measuredly, bundled the pullover into her arms self-consciously, and blew his nose sonorously. On their way out, he introduced Chloë formally to Barbara, reading and then ridiculing any significance in the goat’s acceptance of and apparent affection for her.

  ‘Where are you from, Chloë Cadwallader?’ he asked as he guided her to the far end of the garden and straight out towards the cliffs under a scatter of kittiwakes. ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘I’m not sure really,’ pondered Chloë, hoping it did not matter. ‘How long have you lived out here at Peregrine’s Gully?’ she digressed half presuming him either to say he was xenophobic or that he would be moving in with some girlfriend soon.

  Girlfriend?

  Well, look at him! Isn’t he bound to have one? And I suppose it’ll make things easier if he does.

  William, however, informed Chloë that he and Barbara had lived there for almost seven years.

  As they walked past Pendour and Porthglaze coves, William regaled her with shamelessly embellished tales of smuggling days and was charmed by the way she marvelled and said ‘Really? Heavens!’ with such wide eyes. He cupped her small shoulders in his hands and turned her gently inland to face the mountains of West Penwith, pointing out the rocky hills of Hannibal’s Carn and Carn Galver, explaining that unfortunately the latter obliterated the lonely chimney of Ding Dong Mine from view.

  ‘Maybe you’d like to visit it one day?’

  ‘Yes, I would.’

  ‘Maybe I could take you?’

  ‘Oh! I’d like that. Thank you.’

  ‘Not at all. Soon, perhaps?’

  ‘Soon as you like – shifts permitting.’

  ‘Oh? Where do you work?’

  ‘The Good Life – in St Ives, it’s a wholefood café.’

  ‘You don’t!’

  ‘I do!’

  ‘A-bloody-mazing.’

  Tramping onwards, slaloming through the gorse, Chloë told William about Skirrid End, about Table Mountain and the Sugar Loaf and she remarked that though these Cornish hills were undeniably lower, they were certainly not lesser. She declared them to retain the quintessential grasp of mountains; a remoteness, a stillness, a solemnity and grandeur.

  ‘Do you know, they remind me of Wales, of Scotland – an irrefutable Celtic tone, I think, underlining and uniting.’

  Heavens, am I prattling? Does he even find me interesting?

  While Chloë racked her brains, accordingly, for another topic of conversation, William interjected: ‘Actually, my father lives in Gwent, quite near Crickhowell.’ William liked very much the way Chloë spoke of the land with such reverence. Wasn’t that rare for a woman? Or those he had known at any rate.

  ‘Crick?’ Chloë murmured. ‘That was just around the corner.’

  ‘Before your sojourn in Northern Ireland?’ William reminded himself out loud, chancing too upon the image of the pony-trekker with Chloë’s hair, of the brooch in the fruit bowl at the farmhouse.

  It couldn’t have been! Could it?

  ‘Yes,’ confirmed Chloë, ‘before Antrim and most recently, bonny Scotland.’

  ‘And which place did you like the best?’ asked William, wondering where he had put the letters she had written him from Ballygorm. ‘Which is your favourite and to which will you return?’

  ‘I loved them all,’ she sighed a little sadly, ‘and hope to go back to each some day. For a visit. A holiday.’

  ‘To live?’ furthered William, presuming that she’d say ‘Scotland’.

  Probably has some bloke waiting for her, kilt and all.

  An image of ‘Loop Loop Go Home’ daubed on the redundant grain silo near Ballygorm shot across Chloë’s mind. Home? Where? She shook her head and shrugged her shoulders. William was surprised by his relief and hoped it was not audible.

  ‘And Cornwall?’ he said softly after a quiet moment, not wishing to press, not wanting to pry, but oddly keen to know everything right now.

  ‘Cornwall is last on Jocelyn’s itinerary,’ Chloë explained.

  ‘And do you like it here?’ he asked, gazing over the sea as if her answer would not matter. He did not like the ensuing silence. And the fact that he did not like it alarmed him rather.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Chloë, glancing at William’s cheek and repressing a startling urge to touch him. ‘I do like it here. I think. So far.’

  William strode on ahead, walking backwards and grinning at Chloë.

  ‘Do you believe in fairies, Cadwallader?’ he called, thrusting his hands into his pockets and springing lightly on the spot. ‘In pixies and the little folk?’

  Chloë caught up with him and wiped her nose briskly on the borrowed jumper, squeezing her thumb and forefinger into the corners of her eyes to pinch away the tears elicited by the wind.

  ‘Why yes,’ she said gravely while the sunlight spun copper from her hair and brushed gold and pink over the right side of her face, glinti
ng in the rivulet coursing down her cheek, ‘I rather think I do.’

  ‘Good,’ declared William, who would have liked to kiss her but walked on staunchly instead, forwards this time and in the right direction, ‘Mac will be pleased.’

  ‘Do you believe in giants?’ she asked some time later and once they had caught their breath back from an arduous climb. ‘William?’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ he reasoned, ‘though I’ve never had the pleasure.’

  Chloë waited a few seconds, wondering whether it was wise to confide.

  ‘I have,’ she said furtively; and her tales of Finn McCool took them right to Mac’s door and on into his sitting-room. On their arrival, she spied Gulliver’s Travels lying now on the occasional table, on top of The Times and underneath Mac’s spectacles. She watched carefully as William fanned the pages and admired the binding. The photograph, it appeared, was gone.

  The key was a clumsy iron piece with simple teeth and a plain punched end. To Chloë’s delight, it was tied to a brown tag but the message was hardly ambiguous. ‘No. 3 Penbeagle Street, St Ives’ was all it read. Mac could elaborate no further.

  ‘Did Jocelyn not say anything else?’ Chloë implored.

  ‘Not that this tired old brain can remember,’ apologized Mac.

  ‘So you actually knew her godmother then?’ William asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Mac, ‘in our glory days.’

  ‘What a coincidence,’ marvelled William.

  ‘Isn’t it just,’ agreed Chloë.

  ‘It is indeed,’ Mac confirmed.

  ‘Tell me tales, please, from the glory days,’ Chloë begged, snuggling deep into a chair while Mac nodded sagely and flipped through the memories as if leafing through a vast photo album.

  ‘Sounds as if she was a special character,’ was all William could contribute.

  ‘You’d have loved her,’ said Mac to William.

  ‘She’d have loved you,’ furthered Chloë, half aloud but loud enough.

  Number Three Penbeagle Street. Chloë repeated the four words to herself frequently during her shift that evening. Number three. What a lovely day she had had. Penbeagle Street. He’s called William, Jane, and he was just as nice on second viewing. On a par with the fudge brownies. No. 3. Two cappuccinos for the window table. Penbeagle St. Measly tip!

  ‘Night-night! See you tomorrow. Oh? Well I’m on an early so I’ll see you the day after, then.’

  Number Three Penbeagle Street. Where was it? What did it mean?

  But I’m exhausted and cold. It’s too dark. Don’t want to go on my own in the dark. I have the key, the key to Number Three.

  Wonder what Number Three might be the key to?

  Chloë went to sleep in William’s jumper even though she was quite warm enough. She woke, however, very early and sweltering, and wriggled free from it. Sleep, it soon transpired, was to elude her until the next night-time. She padded over to the window and looked out over Porthmeor, cradling William’s jumper in her arms. She buried her nose in deep. It did not smell of William, not that Chloë knew his scent just yet, but it smelled lovely; clean, of someone else’s choice of fabric conditioner. She folded it neatly and placed it on top of her chest of drawers. Half an hour later, she decided she had cooled down sufficiently to slip it on again.

  Later, when it was morning proper and a decorous time to greet the day, Chloë scolded her reflection before and after brushing her teeth.

  ‘Why oh why did I witter on about fairies and giants and heavens knows what else?’

  I’ve blown it.

  William had also woken with the dawn but he had risen with it. As he kneaded and wedged a batch of particularly uncompliant clay, he cursed himself with every push.

  ‘Why on earth did I bring pixies and the like into the conversation?’ he chastised under his breath. ‘She’ll think me quite soft.’

  I ought to be more formal, Chloë decided over her breakfast cereal, appropriately reserved, I think.

  ‘I think I should be just a little aloof,’ William announced to Barbara, ‘guarded,’ he furthered, ‘hold back somewhat. I’ll call her tomorrow, then. The day after, perhaps. Probably.’

  Chloë, it transpired, had cycled down Penbeagle Street on most days, having never known its name. It was narrow but bright and led straight to the front after dog-legging halfway down. Cobbled, there was no pavement, and a gully that started at the left coursed its way over to the right by the end of the street. It played havoc with the ball-bearings on Chloë’s bicycle. She passed two Tea Shoppes with pastel shutters at the windows, a bookshop, a butcher’s shop guarded by a plaster model of a chipped but cheery cleaver-brandishing butcher, a small shop selling prints and art books, another which stocked everything a fisherman might require. The buildings jigsawed into a lopsided terrace, formed over the years because of spacial necessity rather than during a specific building epoch or according to a particular architectural style. Penbeagle Street was pretty and quintessentially Cornish.

  Number Three was the penultimate house on the west side. A single-storey building, its door was a dusty mustard colour, the paint clinging on in a precarious mosaic of cracks. The number ‘3’ itself was delineated by a darker and uncracked mustard; an imprint of the number plate, long gone. There seemed to be no windows, just an expanse of chipboard emblazoned with a warning against bill stickers and declaring ‘Tamsin loves Jake’ in small, neat letters, in the bottom right corner. Otherwise it was bare and gave no clue to the interior.

  The notion that there was indeed an interior, was huge and daunting. Chloë regarded the key, then the keyhole, and decided she would be late for work if she stayed, even though she would arrive early if she left. She arrived early at the café and stayed on past her time. She cycled back via a longer route which bypassed Penbeagle Street. When she returned to her room, she slipped on William’s jumper, said ‘Hullo, back in a mo’ ’ to Mrs Andrews and went directly to Mrs Stokes to ask if she might make a phone call.

  ‘Hullo?’

  Lovely voice.

  ‘Will-iam? Chloë here. Cadwallader.’

  Lovely voice.

  ‘Hey! I was going to call you. Not today, but tomorrow rather. Or the day after. Well, probably today actually!’

  Laughter. Short, clipped, slightly embarrassed.

  Silence. A little too long.

  ‘Well, anyway,’ said Chloë, clearing her throat, ‘I was wondering if I could ask you a favour?’

  ‘Shoot!’

  ‘I couldn’t quite do it, you see.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Go in all by myself. To Number Three Penbeagle Street.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘I stood there for a while. It’s all boarded up. The key fits. But I don’t want to turn it alone, you see.’

  ‘I do see. Not sure what you might find?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Spiders? Mice?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘I could do tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Brilliant. I’ll see if I can change shifts. Thank you already, William. What time? Thank you. Look forward to it.’

  ‘Me too.’

  Despite all her intentions, when Chloë heard the doorbell ring the next morning, she skipped down the stairs and flung open the door, greeting William with a radiant smile and an effervescent ‘Hullo there!’ For his part, William forgot to suck in his cheeks and creased his face instead into an enormous grin which caused dimples like great crevasses and furled his lips right away from his teeth. There they stood, slightly breathless, sparkling away at each other. Mrs Stokes hovered out of sight but observed it all through a crack in the door.

  ‘Nice-looking couple,’ she said to the saucepan with a wink as she heard animated laughter line the pathway and disappear only with the chug of a car engine.

  FORTY-THREE

  Hitherto, of course, Chloë had not expected to come across a rather attractive man in Cornwall. Certainly not one who could cause an almost forgotten flutter d
eep within her. But there again, she had not foreseen Cornwall providing her with a friend in the making, in Jane. Nor presenting her with a lifestyle that evidently suited her, and a landscape which provided such a decorous backdrop to it all.

  While William dragged his heels to the bank, Chloë reorganized her shifts.

  ‘A-gain!’ Jane exclaimed, feigning shock and unable to conceal excitement. A local boy for Chloë? Good; perhaps she’d stay. ‘Still on a par with the brownies?’

  ‘Over par,’ Chloë illumined.

  ‘But how does he rank with the banoffee pie?’ Jane asked suspiciously.

  ‘Say, one and a half times as nice,’ Chloë decided after much carefully contrived deliberation, ‘that is, at this point in the proceedings.’

  Jane nodded and said ‘Proceedings, hey!’ with a mouth full of biscuit mixture. ‘So what does he look like? Come on, come on!’

  Chloë twisted her face as if she had to think hard. ‘Not bad,’ she reasoned slowly, wondering whether William’s hair was tawny, as in owl, or wicker, as in basket.

  ‘Not bad?’ Jane mulled, pleasantly exasperated. She offered the bowl of biscuit mixture to Chloë who tunnelled her finger in.

  ‘More chocolate chips,’ she suggested. Jane agreed and then sent Chloë on her way with a wink and ‘Be careful! Enjoy!’

  ‘He’s just a nice bloke,’ Chloë reasoned at Jane’s raised eyebrow, ‘and he likes walking.’

  Chloë tried the key tentatively, as if it could not possibly fit. She was surprised, almost a little disappointed, when it turned easily. William stood discreetly on the other side of the street, busying himself by half-heartedly reconciling his cheque-book; but as Chloë pressed persuasively against the door, she looked over her shoulder and beckoned him with her eyes. Inside, they stood in silence, in darkness and in dust. It was not long before they cleared their throats and declared ‘Heavens, let’s get some air in here!’

  Accustomed to the gloom, they made out a narrow door at the back of the room and found that the key worked this lock too. As they creaked the door open, a glance of light swung into the room; a long, gossamer triangle in which dust particles danced with relief. They saw chipboard on the inside of the back wall and, with a short plank which lay at his feet, William levered it away. An arched window, whose fanlight was a garland of stained glass, was revealed. They took stock of the room. It was utterly bare. But its proportions were pleasing and Chloë felt her smile broaden. Without speaking and without being asked, William went back outside the building and prised away the chipboard from the front. Another window was uncovered, no stained glass but a fine double sash all the same. Only one pane was cracked.