The Day of the Storm

by Rosamunde Pilcher

  “I’m sorry. I really am. It’s bad enough having to go without you making me feel a brute. And I will come back. I’ve said I will. Perhaps in the summer … he’ll still be here in the summer, and the weather will be warm and we can do things together. Perhaps you could take us out in the car…”

  My voice trailed away. Pettifer hung his cloth neatly over the edge of the sink. He said, gruffly, “The Commander said you were to have the key of the studio. Don’t know what you’ll find down there. A lot of dust and spiders, I should think.”

  “He said I could have a picture. He said I could go and choose one.”

  He slowly dried his worn, gnarled hands. “I’ll have to find the key. It’s put away for safe keeping. Didn’t want it lying around where anyone could get their hands on it. There’s a lot of good stuff down in the studio.”

  “Any time will do.” I could not bear his disapproval. “Oh, Pettifer, don’t be angry with me.”

  He melted then. “Oh, I’m not angry. Perhaps it’s me who’s being selfish. Perhaps it’s me who doesn’t want you to go.”

  I saw him suddenly, not as the ubiquitous Pettifer around whom this household revolved, but as an old man, nearly as old as my grandfather and probably as lonely. A stupid lump came into my throat and for a terrible moment I thought I was going to burst into tears, which would have made it the second time that day, but then Pettifer said, “And don’t go choosing one of them nudes, they wouldn’t be suitable,” and the dangerous moment was behind me and we were smiling, friends again.

  That afternoon Mollie lent me her car, and I drove the five miles to the railway junction and there bought myself a ticket back to London and reserved a sleeper for the night train on Saturday. The violence of the wind had dropped a little, but it was still wild and stormy, with trees down and devastation everywhere, smashed greenhouses, broken branches, and fields of early spring bulbs flattened by the gales.

  I got home to find Mollie in the garden at Boscarva, bundled up against the weather (even Mollie could not look elegant on such a day) and trying to tie up and rescue some of the more fragile shrubs that grew around the house. When she saw the car, she decided to call it a day, for as I put it away and walked back towards the house I met her coming towards me, stripping off her gloves and tucking a strand of hair into her head-scarf.

  “I can’t bear it a moment longer,” she told me. “I hate wind, it exhausts me. But that darling little daphne was being snapped to ribbons, and all the camellias have been burnt by this wind. It turns them quite brown. Let’s go in and have a cup of tea.”

  While she changed I put the kettle on, and set out cups on a tray. “Where is everybody?” I asked her when she reappeared, miraculously neat once more, down to her pearls and her matching ear-rings.

  “Grenville’s having a nap and Andrea’s up in her room…” she sighed. “… I must say, she really isn’t the easiest of girls. If only she’d do something to amuse herself instead of skulking around in this tiresome manner. I’m afraid it’s not doing her any good being down here, I didn’t think it would, to be quite honest, but my poor sister was quite desperate.” She looked around the comfortable kitchen. “This is cosy. Let’s have our tea in here. The drawing room’s so draughty when the wind’s from the sea, and we can scarcely draw the curtains at half past four in the afternoon…”

  She was right, it was cosy in the kitchen. She found a cloth and laid the tea, setting out cakes and biscuits, sugar bowl and silver milk jug. Even for kitchen tea, it appeared, her standards were meticulous. She pulled up two wheel-back chairs, and was in the act of reaching for the teapot when the door opened and Andrea appeared.

  “Oh, Andrea, dear, just in time. We’re having kitchen tea today. Do you want a cup?”

  “I’m sorry, I haven’t got time.”

  This unexpectedly mannerly reply made Mollie look up sharply. “Are you going out?”

  “Yes,” said Andrea, “I’m going to the cinema.”

  We both stared at her like fools. For the impossible had happened—Andrea had suddenly decided to take much trouble with her appearance. She had washed her hair and tied it back off her face, found a clean polo-necked tee-shirt, and even, I was delighted to see, a bra to wear beneath it. Her Celtic cross hung around her neck on its thread of leather, her black jeans were neatly pressed, her clumpy shoes polished. Over her arm was a raincoat and a fringed leather handbag. I had never seen her look so presentable. And, best of all, the expression on her face was neither sulky nor malevolent, but … demure? Could one possibly describe Andrea as looking demure?

  “I mean,” she went on, “if that’s all right by you, Auntie Mollie.”

  “Well, of course. What are you going to see?”

  “Mary of Scotland. It’s on at the Plaza.”

  “Are you going by yourself?”

  “No, I’m going with Joss. He rang me while you were out gardening. He’s going to give me supper afterwards.”

  “Oh,” said Mollie, faintly. And then, feeling that further comment was expected of her, “… how are you going to get down there?”

  “I’ll walk down, and I expect Joss will drive me home…”

  “Have you got some money?”

  “I’ve got 50p. I’ll be all right.”

  “Well…” But Mollie was defeated. “Have a good time.”

  “I will,” she flashed us both a smile. “Goodbye.”

  The door swung to behind her.

  “Goodbye,” said Mollie. She looked at me. “Extraordinary,” she said.

  I was concentrating on my cup of tea. “Why so extraordinary?” I said casually.

  “Andrea and … Joss. I mean he’s always been quite polite to her, but … to ask her out…?”

  “You shouldn’t sound so surprised. She’s attractive when she cleans herself up and bothers to smile. Probably she smiles at Joss all the time.”

  “You think it’s all right, letting her go? I mean I do have responsibilities…?”

  “Honestly, I don’t see how you could have stopped her going. Anyway she’s seventeen, she’s not a child. She can surely look after herself by now…”

  “That’s just the trouble,” said Mollie … “That’s always been the trouble with Andrea.”

  “She’ll be all right.”

  She would not be all right, and I knew this, but I could not disillusion Mollie. Besides, what did it matter? It was no business of mine if Joss chose to spend his evenings making firelit love to an adolescent nymphomaniac. They were two of a kind. They deserved each other. They were welcome to each other.

  When we had finished tea, Mollie tied a neat apron around her waist and started preparing dinner. I cleared away the cups and saucers and washed them up. As I was drying the last plate, and putting it away, Pettifer appeared, bearing in his hand a large key which looked as though it might unlock a dungeon.

  “I knew I’d put it somewhere safely, found it in the back of a drawer in the Commander’s bureau…”

  “What’s that, Pettifer?” Mollie asked.

  “The key to the studio, Madam…”

  “Heavens, who wants that?”

  “I do,” I said. “Grenville said I could go down and choose a picture to take back to London.”

  “My dear child, what a task you’ll have. The place must be in the most terrible mess, it hasn’t seen the light of day for ten years.”

  “I don’t mind.” I took the key which weighed heavy as lead in my hand.

  “Are you going now? It’s getting dark.”

  “Aren’t there any lights?”

  “Oh, yes, of course, but it’s very cheerless. Wait till tomorrow morning.”

  But I wanted to go now. “I’ll be all right. I’ll put on a coat.”

  “There’s a torch on the hall table, you’d better take that as well, the path down the garden is quite steep and slippery.”

  And so, buttoned into my leather coat, and armed with the torch and the key, I set off, letting myself out of the
house by the garden door. The wind from the sea was still violent, carrying with it squalls of thin, cold rain, and I had to struggle to get the door closed behind me. The dismal afternoon was turning early to darkness, but still there was enough light to pick my way cautiously down the sloping garden, and I did not turn on the torch until I reached the studio when I needed its beam to find the keyhole.

  I fitted the key and it turned reluctantly, needing oil; the door swung inwards, creakingly. There was a damp and musty smell, a suggestion of cobwebs and mould, and I quickly put my hand inside and felt for the light switch. At once a single naked bulb, high in the roof, sprang to a chill and insubstantial life, and I was surrounded by leaping shadows, for the draught caused the long flex to swing to and fro like the pendulum of a clock.

  I went in and shut the door behind me and the shadows, slowly, were stilled. Around me, dust-covered shapes loomed in the half-light, but across the room was a standard lamp, with a crooked, broken shade. I picked my way over to this, found the switch and turned that on, and at once everything looked a little less forlorn.

  I saw that the studio had been designed on two levels with a sleeping gallery at the south end, reached by a stair like a ship’s ladder.

  I went half-way up the ladder and saw the divan and the striped blanket. Over the bed was a window tightly shuttered, and a pillow had shed feathers, perhaps the work of some marauding mouse. The remains of a small dead bird lay, twig-like and dehydrated, in the corner of the floor. I shuddered slightly at the desolation, and descended again to the studio.

  The wind banged and rattled at the huge north window. A complicated contraption of strings and pulleys worked the long curtains, and I struggled with these for a moment, but was finally defeated by their mechanics and left the curtains closed.

  In the middle of the floor was a model’s throne, with a sheeted shape in the middle which proved to be an ornate gilt chair. The mice had been at the seat of this, too—scraps of red velvet and horsehair were scattered about, along with mouse-droppings and a great deal of dust.

  Under another sheet I found Grenville’s workbench; his brushes, his trays of paint-tubes, palettes, knives, bottles of linseed oil, piles of unused canvases, grimy with age. There was also a little collection of objets trouvés, small things which, perhaps, had taken his fancy. A sea-polished stone, half a dozen shells, a bunch of gulls’ feathers, probably collected for the practical purpose of cleaning his pipe. There were curling, faded snapshots, of nobody I recognized, a blue and white Chinese ginger jar filled with pencils, some bottles of fossilized Indian ink, a scrap of sealing wax.

  It was like prying, as though I were reading another person’s diary. I put back the sheet and went on to the true purpose of my visit, which was the stack of unframed canvases standing around the wall, each with its face turned inwards. These had been dust-covered too, but the sheets had slipped, draping themselves about the floor, and as I dislodged the first pile my fingers touched cobwebs, and a huge, disgusting spider went scuttling across the floor and lost itself in the shadows.

  It was a slow business. Five or six at a time, I lifted out the pictures, dusted them off, leaned them in rows against the model’s throne, shifting the rickety standard lamp so that the light should shine on them. Some were dated, but they were stacked away in no sort of chronological order, and for the most part I could tell neither when nor where they had been painted. I only knew that they compassed the whole of Grenville’s professional life and all his interests.

  There were landscapes, seascapes—the ocean in all its moods—charming interiors, some sketches of Paris, some that looked like Italy. There were boats and fishermen, street scenes of Porthkerris, a number of rough charcoal sketches of two children, whom I knew were Roger and Lisa. There were no portraits.

  I began to make my selection, setting aside the pictures which I found particularly engaging. By the time I had reached the final pile, there were half a dozen of them propped against the seat of a sagging couch, and I was dirty and cold, with grimy hands and cobwebs clinging to my clothes. With the good feeling of a task nearly completed I went to sort out the last pile of canvases. There were three pen and ink drawings, and a view of a harbour with yachts at anchor. And then …

  It was the last canvas and the biggest of all. It needed two hands and all my efforts to lift it out of its dark corner and turn it around to face the light. I held it upright with one hand and stood back, and the face of the girl leapt out to meet me, the dark, tip-tilted eyes smiling with a vitality undimmed by the dust of the years that passed. I saw the dark hair and the bumpy cheekbones and the sensuous mouth, not smiling, but seeming to tremble on the brink of laughter. And she wore the same fragile white dress, the dress that she had worn for the portrait that hung over the fireplace in the drawing room at Boscarva.

  Sophia.

  Ever since my mother had mentioned her name I had been fascinated by her. The frustrations of never knowing what she looked like had only increased my obsession. But now that I had found her and we were face to face at last, I felt like Pandora. I had opened the box and the secrets were out, and there was no way in the world of packing them back and locking the lid once more.

  I knew that face. I had talked to it, argued with it; seen it scowl and smile; seen the dark eyes narrowed in anger and glint with amusement.

  It was Joss Gardner.

  11

  All at once I was bitterly cold. It was dark now and the studio was icy, but as well I could feel the blood drain from my face like water out of a basin; I could hear the laboured thumping of my own heart, and I started, violently, to shiver. My first instinct was to put the portrait back where I had found it, pile some other canvases on top of it and hide it, like a criminal trying to conceal a body, or something worse.

  But in the end I reached for a chair and arranged it carefully, so that it supported Sophia’s portrait like an easel, and then I backed away on shaking legs and carefully lowered myself on to the sagging seat of the aged sofa.

  Sophia and Joss.

  Sophia the enchanting, and the baffling Joss, whom I had finally learned was not to be trusted.

  She went to London, she got married, she had a baby, I think, Pettifer had told me. Then in 1942 she was killed in the Blitz.

  But he had not mentioned Joss. And yet Joss and Sophia were so obviously, inextricably linked.

  And I thought of my desk, my mother’s desk that she meant me to have, hidden away at the back of Joss’s workshop.

  And I heard Mollie’s voice. I don’t know why Grenville’s so taken with Joss. It’s frightening. It’s as though Joss were able to exert some hold over him.

  Sophia and Joss.

  * * *

  It was dark now. I had no watch and I had lost all track of time. The wind drowned all other sound, so that I did not hear Eliot coming down the garden from the house, picking his way through the darkness because I had taken the torch. I did not hear anything until the door burst open, as though on a gust of wind, causing the light to start up its demented swinging, and frightening me nearly out of my wits. The next instant Rufus bounded in and flung himself up on the sofa beside me, and I realized that I had company.

  My cousin Eliot stood in the open doorway framed in darkness. He wore a suede jacket and a pale blue polo-necked sweater and he had slung a raincoat around his shoulders like a cloak. The cruel light drained all the colour from his thin face, and turned his deep-set eyes into two black holes.

  “My mother told me you were down here. I came to…”

  He stopped, and I knew that he had seen the portrait. I couldn’t move, I was too petrified with cold, and anyway, now it was too late to do anything about it.

  He came into the studio and closed the door. The leaping shadows, once more, were slowly stilled.

  We neither of us said anything. I held Rufus’s head, instinctively seeking comfort in his soft, warm fur, and watched while Eliot shrugged off his raincoat, dropped it across a chair, and came s
lowly to sit beside me. His eyes never left the portrait.

  At last he spoke. “Good God,” he said.

  I said nothing.

  “Where did you find that?”

  “In a corner…” My voice came out as a croak. I cleared my throat and tried again. “In a corner, behind a lot of other canvases.”

  “It’s Sophia.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s Joss Gardner.”

  There was no denying it. “Yes.”

  “Sophia’s grandson, do you suppose?”

  “Yes. I think he must be.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned.” He leaned back, and crossed his long, elegant legs, suddenly relaxed, like a knowledgeable art critic at a private view.

  His obvious satisfaction puzzled me, and I did not want him to think that I shared it.

  I said, “I wasn’t looking for it. I’ve been wanting to know what Sophia looked like, but I had no idea there was a portrait of her down here. I just came to look for a picture because Grenville said I could have one to take back to London.”

  “I know. My mother told me.”

  “Eliot, we mustn’t say anything.”

  He ignored this. “You know, there was always something funny about Joss, something unexplained. The way he turned up in Porthkerris, out of the blue. And the way Grenville knew that he was there; the way he gave him a job, and the run of Boscarva. I never trusted Joss farther than I could see him. And the desk disappearing—the desk that should have come to you. It was all fishy beyond words.”

  I knew that I should tell Eliot then that I had found the desk. I opened my mouth with the intention of doing just this thing, and closed it again because somehow the words would not be spoken. Besides, Eliot was still talking and had not noticed my incipient interruption.

  “My mother swore he had some sort of a hold over Grenville.”

  “You make it sound like blackmail.”

  “Perhaps, in a modified form, it was. You know, ‘Here I am Sophia’s grandson, what are you going to do for me?’ And Pettifer must have known as well. Pettifer and Grenville have no secrets from each other.”