Rushing to her father, Evie hugged him and kissed his whiskery cheek. ‘Thanks Dad, you’re wonderful.’
‘I wish I was,’ Davey said dourly. ‘Go on, eat your soup.’
* * *
‘You haven’t really said much, Beth.’
‘About what, Kitty? Gosh, it’s a bit chilly in here. The downpour’s eased off but the atmosphere is gloomy. I’ll fight a small fire and then make us some coffee. I’ve lots of butterscotch biscuits in the barrel.’
The friends were in the cosy sitting room of Mor Penty, having driven in Beth’s car to the cottage, a little way down-coast just above a tiny beach. Beth had talked the previous owner, a local farmer, of Mor Penty, once the tumbledown home of a nineteenth-century crab and lobster fisherman, as a holiday let, into selling it to her, for a very good price for him. Beth and Kitty had stayed here last year, and while trudging across the sand Beth had recalled a happy childhood memory of Christina bringing her to the beach for a picnic. When Beth had decided to stay in Cornwall she had wanted this place more than any other as her own. She had further updated the cottage, replacing the nautical theme of her own sea-facing bedroom with warm feminine flair. It was anathema to Beth that her former lover who had so easily dumped her, was to actually stay here. Her home, her private domain would never be the same afterwards. But she could hardly have refused the petition. As far as Kitty knew, she and Stuart had always been good friends and Beth had doted on his children. Beth was worried how she would now relate to the motherless seven-year-old Louis and six-year-old Martha.
‘You know what I’m talking about, Stuart and the children coming down. If something is wrong, Beth, please do say.’ It had not occurred to Kitty that her brother might not be welcome, but after Beth’s unenthusiastic reaction and her offhand attitude since then, Kitty was actually feeling a little guilty about her excitement over the prospect. Had her concerns for her beloved family made her thoughtless in asking Beth to rent out her home? Kitty was eager to see Stuart and the children smiling again and some healthy colour replacing the grim paleness of their faces. Understandably, Stuart had taken the sudden wanton desertion and the scandal of his wife Connie leaving him and the children very hard indeed. He was still in shock and he was unfairly blaming himself. It seemed he was always looking for something. If only he would open up and talk about his deepest feelings, but of course, it wasn’t a man’s way to do so. The poor children were equally as bewildered, and from two happy and bright little souls they were subdued and often anxious.
‘No, nothing’s wrong,’ Beth replied quickly, syringing a smile into her fraught expression. ‘I’m just a little worried that the children might be afraid when the sea is running high and the winds are blowing hard inshore.’
‘Oh, they’ll be fine.’ Kitty laughed off Beth’s disquiet, not realizing it was a hastily thought up excuse. ‘You’ve had trees planted for extra shelter and the window shutters will block out the worst of the noise. The beach and the sea will be ideal for Louis and Martha to play about on mild days, and perfect for Stuart to find some peace and come to terms with his heartbreak. We know, don’t we, just how soothing and inspiring everything on the coast can be. It has an edifying effect on a person’s soul. The children will greatly benefit from mixing with Joe, Richard and Lily. Down here where no one knows them they won’t have to bear the shame about what their rotten mother has done to them,’ Kitty ended vehemently.
‘Oh Kitty.’ Beth felt ashamed at not considering the full effects of the incomprehension and fears of young Louis and Martha. She knew herself what it was like as a young child to have to endure parents’ bad behaviour. And once she had been willing to take Louis and Martha’s father away from them. She had carried and lost their half-brother or half-sister. Shocking secrets were being kept from them. She owed these dear children more than she could possibly repay them. She must forget her horror at being faced with Stuart again and make some compensation to his children. She’d also not thought much about the upshot of it all on Kitty, other than seeing it as a tie for her. ‘I’m so sorry. I’ve centred all my time on my happy reunion with my mother and thought too little about your family’s terribly sad situation. I promise I’ll do everything I can to help. I’ll arrange for plenty of logs and coal to be delivered. You’re fully welcome to make suggestions for their comfort, Kitty. I’ll ask Joe and his gang to suggest suitable toys and games for Louis and Martha. We’ll bring over a wireless and some adult reading material, and lots of stationery for Stuart. As I remember he liked to write.’
Beth flushed about that. She knew far too much about Stuart’s preferences. He’d been interested in mountaineering, and in his university days he had gone on climbing holidays with his pals. He would like the Cornish cliffs and trekking for miles along them. An unexpected sharp twinge deep inside her hoped he wouldn’t be tempted to climb high up the craggy granite, especially alone, she’d hate for him to get hurt and be hard to find. No, she scolded herself – she mustn’t allow her old feelings for Stuart to be resurrected. She felt her stomach sinking more and more. How on earth was she to act when she next saw him and during all the time he was around?
‘Thanks Beth,’ Kitty sighed stridently, and Beth could see the intense relief in her gorgeous features. ‘I knew I could rely on you. It will be fun planning for their arrival. I’ll ring Stuart this evening and remind him to bring down lots of warm clothing, rubber boots and things, although I expect Miss Marchant will think of everything. Actually, Christina has said if the weather turns really terrible they’ll all be welcome to stay at the house.’ Hugging her body happily Kitty twirled about. ‘I just know we are all going to have such a wonderful Christmas.’
* * *
With her coat collar turned up against the heavy rain, Evie dashed next door to the Praed’s whitewashed cottage. Clutching a bag containing her best high-heeled shoes, which she was to wear with her bridesmaid dress, she knocked and let herself in through the back door. ‘Hello! Alison! I’m here.’
‘So I can see,’ replied a gruff male voice.
Evie froze. The Praed kitchen was empty of the female wedding party she was expecting to find gathered there, but Rob Praed was sitting under the low ceiling beams, at the long oilcloth-covered table, near the front window. A plate was pushed aside from which he had eaten a late cooked breakfast. The pleasant smells of bacon and toast filled the large room. Evie’s spirit dropped like a stone to see he had a thick bandage wound halfway up his thickly muscled right arm. She was sorry he had been hurt, but this meant he was unlikely to go outside and attend to the boats like the other fishermen were.
‘Oh,’ she couldn’t help squirming in her shoes. ‘Alison is expecting me. She said to just come in if the weather was rough.’
‘Yeh, so she said. She’s just slipped out to get me the West Briton, and then she’ll bring along old Mrs Coad. The old dear gets nervous on the wet ground, Alison said. Though she’s only got to come from the other side of the house,’ Rob pegged on scathingly.
‘Judy’s not here yet then? Or Lily?’ Evie referred to Alison and Rob’s sister, Judy Crewes and their nine-year-old cousin. Evie stayed rigid on the spot. She would rather be in the company of the dirty, smelly Gabby Magor, than this hard-hearted man.
‘Can you see them?’ Rob uttered with mounting scorn. ‘Well, take your coat off and come in properly. I’m not going to eat you. Alison said to get yourself a cup of tea and sit down and wait. You can pour me another.’
‘Rude devil,’ Evie muttered under her breath. She was feeling uncomfortable but she wasn’t afraid of the high and mighty Rob Praed. Taking off her coat she hung it up with the others hanging on the coat rack on the wall. Putting her bag down on the old-fashioned wooden settle, she strode to the table and picked up Rob’s giant-sized blue mug without glancing at him but she noticed his bandage was badly bloodstained and grubby. She would ask Alison and not him how he had come by his injury. She assumed it likely had something to do with the trouble that o
ccurred on Our Lily that Davey had mentioned. She could smell surgical spirit and coal tar soap on Rob. He was badly in need of a shave. In another couple of days he’d have the start of a full black beard. His hair too needed a trim and was presently unruly. Grudgingly, she thought it would make him appear something like a handsome pirate.
She didn’t want tea herself. The stuff in the dark green and cream teapot was well brewed and she liked only fresh and not very strong tea. She knew Rob took his tea as it came. He had told her so last summer when he had showed a liking for her. He had even sent her a letter from Newlyn, where the fleet had moored up each weekday early morning after offloading each night’s first annual pilchard shoals, asking her if she would like to go to a tea room with him. She had thanked God she had been spared more of his deceit by Beth’s timely intervention, but she had until then been flattered by his interest, and she had wanted to meet him as he’d asked.
She padded back to the table and plonked the full mug down beside him. He was gazing down as if brooding over something. That didn’t surprise her. He used to be more easy-going but the mean streak in him was taking greater precedence. His thank you was a grunt. She glared at him, and he caught her narrowed eye. ‘What? Do want a tip?’
‘Some good manners wouldn’t be amiss,’ she returned frostily. She spun round and moved to the settle at the other end of the room and positioned herself on the long knitted cushion so she wouldn’t have to look at him. What a pathetic, small-minded man you are, she thought, to turn against me so sourly after Beth showed you up for exactly what you are, a wicked wretch.
The staircase, as in her own kitchen, came down into the side of the room, and something long and large suddenly flew out of the dark confines underneath the stairs, where Rob’s fishing gear was stowed. ‘Oh!’
‘Damn it!’ Rob shot to his feet, spilling tea over the oilcloth. ‘One of your bloody fleabags is in here again. It must have crept in when Alison went out. Keep it out of here or I’ll kill the stupid thing.’
Evie was up on her feet too, recognizing her cat Smoky. ‘You will not!’ she flew at Rob. ‘You had better not ever hurt one of my cats or I’ll make you sorry.’
‘Oh yes,’ he advanced on her until he was just a breath away. ‘And exactly what will you do to me, little Miss Quiet Homebody? Threaten me with a knitting needle?’ His dark eyes were blazing in anger and mockery.
Evie wasn’t going to let him enjoy himself at her expense. She glared at him, not straight eye to eye for she was a good deal shorter than his towering bulk. ‘It takes a very small and dismal man to threaten to hurt an innocent little animal. Why are you like this anyway? Last year you rescued Smoky when he got stuck in a drainpipe. You were really concerned for him. Why are you now taken so against him?’
‘I hate stinking cats, always have. Scratchy, demanding things. They’re only fit for catching rats. People must be mad keeping them indoors and making such a stupid fuss over them.’ In any other circumstances, Rob thought, Evie would be scuttling away from him. Right now she wasn’t budging an inch. ‘You really aren’t a little mouse at all, are you? Tell me, if your hoity half-sister hadn’t put the kibosh on it, would you have gone to the tea shop with me? Were you at all interested in me, Evie, even a tiny bit? Are you not totally under Davey’s thumb then, as everyone thinks?’
‘What I do, and the way I am is none of your business,’ Evie bit back. Abruptly leaving him she went to Smoky, gathered him up and after giving him a quick cuddle she let him outside. Pursing her lips she retook her seat on the settle and gazed down crossly at the linoleum on the floor. She’d wait this way until Alison and Mrs Coad, the elderly widow who lived on the side of the Praeds’ cottage came in.
‘Mmm, interesting, you’ve just answered my question,’ Rob drawled, and grinning in malicious amusement he sat himself down close beside Evie. She didn’t shunt away from him but leaned her head to the side. With their hostile sparring ended he breathed in the soft fragrance of her. He found it captivating, found Evie captivating. At that moment he thought how he’d love to capture her completely. It would be innocence and sweetness at its best yet she had some fire in her.
He said, deliberately huskily, ‘You know Evie, last year it came to my mind that you’d make the perfect fisherman’s wife. I still think that. I had a way past Davey’s objections, and I still have, even though he doesn’t think so. He thought he’d got the better of me, but not long ago I realized his ruse. I didn’t care that he’d tried to outwit me, but I do now. You know Evie I really would like to have you. If you fancy moving in here you only have to say, married of course. I know you’re too strait-laced and honest to consider any other way. Why don’t you think about it?’
Evie turned her head to him and now they actually were eye to eye, and Evie didn’t flinch. She had never uttered a curse but for the first time in her life she wanted to tell someone to go to hell. ‘What do you mean you had a way to get past my father’s objections? What ruse are you talking about?’
‘Now Evie,’ he put his mouth up to her ear and she shuddered and edged away. ‘If you want to know all that, you’re going to have to get close to me. Very close.’ He got up and returned to the table, sat down and drank the stewed tea in his mug.
‘I’d rather die,’ Evie hissed at him. ‘And I don’t care what you meant.’ She did mind and she was troubled about it. She couldn’t mention it to her father but she would to Beth. One of the best things about having a relationship with her sister was having someone to share her concerns with. ‘You’re a pathetic bully Rob Praed, not manly at all.’
‘From a mouse to a cat,’ Rob jeered. What would you be like I wonder if I pushed you metaphorically up a drainpipe? Would you screech as much as your bloody cat did when I did it to him for real?
‘Uh!’ Resolving to ignore him from now on, Evie pulled her shoes out of the bag.
He was smiling to himself when Alison ushered in Mrs Coad. The elderly widow, who sat outside the cottages on warm days with Evie, and with Judy Praed before her marriage, knitting fishermen’s jerseys to augment the family income, had been invited to offer her wise advice on the dress fittings, and for her to gain some company. Evie rose. ‘Shall I make us a fresh pot of tea, Alison?’
‘Yes, please, Evie, I told Rob to ask you to do that and to pour yourself a cup while you’re waiting. I’ve put the cups out.’ Short and clear-featured, Alison helped the slightly bent-over, shuffling Mrs Coad out of her numerous warm wrappings and hung them up. ‘Rob, come and get your newspaper. I can’t believe you forgot to give my message to Evie. I’m glad she’s somehow managed to wring a smile out of you at last. You’d better go up to your room. I’m sure you won’t want to stay with us women and Lily, when Judy arrives with her.’
Rob took the newspaper off Alison ungraciously then stood back as she led Mrs Coad, still wearing her black bonnet and a doubled-over crochet shawl, to the armchair near the hearth. ‘I’m going out,’ he muttered darkly.
‘No you’re not. You can’t,’ Alison said stridently. ‘The district nurse is calling to look at your arm. It needs more attention than the bandage Uncle Lofty put on it. She’ll probably chide you for refusing to let me put on a clean bandage. She’ll probably send for the doctor to put some stitches in it. Good job we pay in the medical insurance every week. She might be here any minute. I’ll send her up to you. On the other hand she might be hours so you’ll just have to be patient and wait. Anyway, you can’t go off gadding about, you might get an infection.’
The door opened and in came Judy Keane and the tomboy, chatterbox Lily Praed, youngest child of Lofty. Forgetting her wet coat and boots, Lily made a beeline for Rob. ‘How’s your arm? Dad said you were lucky it wasn’t ripped off. There was blood everywhere on the deck, he said. He’s some mad with you. Said you weren’t paying attention and suddenly let go armfuls of net. Everyone went down and Linford was lucky he wasn’t dragged over the side. He’d have drowned; the sea was so steep and breaking. Dad’s said he
don’t want you back on the boat ’til your arm’s better, or you’ll be a li’bility.’
‘Uncle Lofty said that about Rob?’ Judy, who was a sparkier version of Alison, made disapproving noises. ‘But—’
‘I did nothing wrong! I’ve never lost concentration on the boat ever! It’s not my fault my arm’s in a mess.’ Rob’s face grew ever darker with wrath. ‘If that’s the way Uncle Lofty’s thinking of me, I’ll get my own boat. One thing’s for sure I’ll never fish on Our Lily again. No one treats me like this!’ Storming off he thumped up the stairs and his bedroom door was heard being slammed shut.
‘Well! Somebody’s not telling the truth. Will need to be sorted out sharpish.’ Mrs Coad said, clutching her well-rounded bosom, shocked by the fierceness raised in the man she had watched grow up from a ‘dear little tacker’. ‘That tea ready yet maid?’
‘Yes, something’s up somewhere,’ Judy frowned, rubbing her brow while looking anxiously up the stairs. ‘Rob’s never been afraid to own up to his shortcomings.’
Evie glanced overhead where the ceiling board above told of Rob pacing angrily about his room and flinging things about. The news would soon spread all over the cove. When her father got home he would be full of indignation over Rob’s apparent disgrace. Dangerous negligence among the fishermen brought a cloud over the community. Rob had protested his innocence over the incident, it was why he had been brooding, and once again he had been publicly humiliated, in front of women too. Alison, with her arms round a trembling Lily, was looking deflated. It had taken the shine off what should be a happy event for her. If things weren’t put right, and it must be left to the men, if Rob was not reconciled with his uncle and cousins then her wedding might end up being the first celebration the close-knit Praed family would undertake estranged, in a half-empty chapel.
Evie began pouring out the tea. She couldn’t help feeling sorry for Rob.
Reflections Page 3