A Cornish Summer

by Catherine Alliott

  There was a stunned silence. We all froze.

  ‘Well, that will be Truro, then,’ said Shona lightly, but her face was frigid. ‘Or did you mean halfway up a gum tree on some Caribbean island?’

  Tommy stared, stupefied. ‘God, no, I sure as hell didn’t mean that. Jesus – you surely don’t think …’ He glanced around, aghast.

  Liz and Kim didn’t speak, but I could tell they were thinking, unforgivable. Hugo’s face was puce with embarrassment, but he was calmly telling everyone what to do next, and we all listened, relieved to have the distraction, the field away in the distance now.

  ‘Right. Tommy, get on Barney right now. Shona—’

  ‘Actually, I’ll ride the grey,’ I said, leaping down and handing Shona my reins. ‘I’ve ridden her before and Shona hasn’t.’

  This much was true, although this was a very different beast to the one I’d calmly trotted along the beach with Iris when we’d brought her on a couple of summers ago. This was a nervy, frightened animal, but Shona and I both knew I was the one to get her confidence back, being more experienced, and she’d ridden Farthing loads of times and would be light and considerate. No more argument was brooked and Tommy did indeed look thoroughly ashamed as we were helped back on our respective mounts by a tight-lipped Liz, who’d dismounted. Kim then rode down along the wall, leaned over and expertly opened a gate with her whip, which, when Liz was back on, we all filed through.

  We could see the rest of the field in the distance, gathered by Larks Ridge, and we cantered silently to join them. The grey sprang ridiculously beneath me, not taking a great deal of notice of my hands and legs, but it was early days, I told myself nervously: a stop at this cover, a bit of rest and recuperation, and hopefully she’d calm down and get her confidence back. As we joined the group, some people turned enquiringly. We nodded wordlessly back. And actually, there were quite a few muddy backs; a number of people had come undone at that wall, and some possibly had mild concussion, too – it wasn’t of any great consequence.

  What happened next, though, we were later to learn, hadn’t happened in our particular hunt for many years: fifteen, I’m told. I saw Liz ride across to talk to Sean. I couldn’t see Sean’s face from where I was sitting, Lucas was in the way, but I did see it when he rode across to where Hugo, Lucas and Tommy were standing, Tommy looking much more settled on Barney and, although pale, less green. I watched as Sean spoke to them. I saw Tommy’s face go from white to bright red. The boys nodded. Then Hugo turned his bay around and came across to me and Shona, his eyes lowered.

  ‘We’re going,’ he told us. ‘Master’s orders. Tommy has been sent home.’

  6

  Tommy’s disgrace was essentially my gain, as it turned out. Roger was horrified when he heard, and insisted Tommy apologize properly to Shona, in person, the following day. Mum later heard from the Bellingdons’ daily that Tommy already had his coat on and was sitting hunched on the front steps waiting for Hugo to drive him across when Roger found him, but I can’t see it myself. Irrespective of how it happened, however, on Sunday morning, there they were: Tommy and Hugo, at the front door of our cottage where Shona was staying the night, Truro not being hugely convenient for hunting.

  It was still relatively early for two teenage girls – tenish – and Mum had to come up and wake us.

  I sat bolt upright in bed. ‘What? They’re here?’

  ‘In the kitchen. I’ll go down and make them some tea.’

  ‘Did you have to let them in?’ muttered Shona, from under the duvet.

  ‘Certainly I did. He looks wretched, actually. Now get dressed and go down.’

  ‘I just want the whole thing to go away; this is beyond embarrassing. Such a stupid misunderstanding,’ Shona said faintly.

  Down we went, though, dressing quickly and brushing our hair and definitely our teeth but no time for make-up. And there the two of them were, looking sheepish and drinking tea at our little kitchen table, Mum, diplomatically, having made herself scarce.

  They both rose from the table when they saw us. Tommy went very red and came forward.

  ‘Shona, I’m so sorry. I know what it sounded like, but swear to God I didn’t mean that. I just meant get lost, small-town girl, which shows what an ignorant, preppy jerk I am. I’m sorry for how it sounded, though. Like, the worst thing ever.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, I got that as soon as I saw your face. And I’m gutted you were sent home.’

  She had been: had said, with tears in her eyes, that it had made it much worse, but Mum, whose judgement I trusted, said Sean had been right. Older, more sophisticated children might now have debated this, leaning on the Aga with their tea; might have wondered whether Shona’s feelings had been taken into account, but we were gauche and young and Tommy had done what he’d come to do, looking her in the eye, cheeks the colour of his hair, and that was the end of it. Personally, I thought he could have been a bit more charming afterwards, but he wasn’t. He stared at the floor and let Hugo carry the show for the next half an hour, as he asked us about school, our plans when we left, which was next year, and as we compared subjects and groaned about Maths – Hugo and Shona – and History – Hugo and me. It was run-of-the-mill stuff. After a bit they got up to go. On the way to the door, Hugo asked me if I was going to the carols at the Fothergills’ in a few weeks’ time, which I wasn’t, but I said I was. We called cheery goodbyes as they went down the front path, then shut the door. My heart was pounding.

  ‘Phew. That wasn’t so terrible,’ I told Shona.

  ‘Total result for you. He likes you.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Oh, come on. You’ve got a date at the carols.’

  I pulled a face. ‘Bit weird? Crooning away beside him?’

  ‘Mulled wine afterwards, a snog in the moonlight? What’s not to like?’

  ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.’ But I couldn’t disguise my excitement. ‘As for Tommy …’ I rolled my eyes, feeling this was too much about me.

  ‘Oh, he was all right,’ she said, ‘for an over-privileged knobhead.’

  ‘You think? All that small-town crap!’

  She shrugged. ‘Honest.’

  ‘And then he hardly said a word!’

  ‘Oh, I don’t hold that against him. I’d have thought less of him if he’d turned on the charm. He looked like he couldn’t speak. Like he couldn’t just carry on with idle chit-chat after what he’d said – or hadn’t said. Trouble is,’ she said ruefully, ‘I’m so used to the real thing.’

  We wandered back to the kitchen. ‘Weird thing is …’ I hesitated, because it was weird, in that it was the first time we’d ever talked about it, ‘and I say this with huge guilt, Shona … I’ve never noticed.’

  ‘I know,’ she told me. ‘And shall I tell you my much bigger, guiltier secret? When your dad died – and I adored your father, as you know – a bit of me was pleased.’

  I froze. My hand was on the kettle, about to make more tea. I turned to look at her, horrified. Her eyes were full.

  ‘You were going to boarding school on that army bursary, but instead, you stayed here with your mum. You’re the only person I’ve ever met who’s genuinely never noticed.’

  My eyes filled, too, but we didn’t fly across the kitchen and hug each other: we nodded tersely, and I made the tea and she busied herself with our terrible old CD player on the shelf by the cookery books. Fleetwood Mac filtered through and we hummed along.

  Hugo didn’t mention it again either, at the carols at the Fothergills’ house, which I’d never been to before principally because I’d never been invited, but I was buggered if I was going to let a tiny detail like that stop me. I rang Babs, who I knew went every year, and asked if I could go with her.

  ‘Of course, darling!’ I could hear ice tinkling in her glass as she knocked back her six o’clock tipple. ‘Is it Sabrina’s solo rendition of “Silent Night” that attracts you? Or have you got the hots for Hugo Bellingdon?’

  ‘Sab
rina’s solo,’ I told her sternly. She roared, and I knew she absolutely couldn’t be trusted not to make trouble, but she was all I’d got.

  Babs was not a natural carol-concert-goer either, but aside from the Cheshires, this was the only event at which Belinda had to be in the same room as her, and Babs enjoyed it enormously. Sabrina Fothergill was Belinda’s best friend, but she was also Babs’ sister, and much as Sabrina regarded her as a bad influence and rarely had her in the house – which actually hurt Babs, Mum said, more than Sabrina could know – at Christmas she could not in all conscience exclude her.

  There we all were, gathered around the huge twinkling tree in the Fothergills’ splendid oak-panelled hall, various select families from the county (of which we were not one), everyone looking shiny and bright-eyed. Well, the parents anyway, thrilled to have their offspring around them for a change, and the offspring, mostly teenagers, were not that dismayed either, if truth be told, to put the alcohol and the cigarettes and the relentless competitive partying aside for a few days, with the biggest excuse in the world to be children for a brief spell. The excuse Himself was before us in the crib, at the centre of the charming nativity scene of naive wooden figures that Sabrina had arranged at the foot of the tree.

  ‘It’s mine, actually,’ Babs told me when I admired it. ‘Belonged to our paternal Danish grandmother. But Sabrina claimed it on the grounds that I don’t have children to enjoy it. Hold on, here we go.’

  A hushed silence had fallen, and Sabrina was opening her mouth to sing her legendary solo, eyeing her murmuring sister furiously. It wasn’t that she couldn’t sing, but why was she singing on her own? If a solo was called for, why not a child? And her voice had that terrible shaky vibrato so that ‘Heavenly peaaace …’ seemed to go on forever. Babs lit a cigarette, which struck me as unbearably funny, and every time she exhaled, it was with a bored, exhausted breath. I stared at the Persian carpet, knowing my only hope was to think hard about global warming or the economic deficit, but my shoulders were beginning to shake. Every time Sabrina hit a high note, Babs exhaled more wearily, and when she’d finally finished I had tears streaming down my face. I wiped them carefully with one finger before I looked up, but when I did, it was straight into Hugo’s highly amused eyes on the other side of the tree. He was grinning with delight at my predicament, absolutely beaming, and refusing to look away, even when I pretended to study my hymn sheet for the next carol. When I looked up, there he was again.

  ‘You were in serious trouble,’ he told me later, when we were indeed supping mulled wine and having a cheeky fag on a freezing little bench on the terrace outside.

  ‘I’m afraid Babs has that effect on me. She’s just the naughtiest girl in the school.’

  He didn’t say anything and I realized what an incredibly crass thing I’d said.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he said, seeing me suddenly confused and tongue-tied. ‘I’m totally used to it. And actually, it’s a relief to talk about it. Etta doesn’t feel that way, but I do. I’d rather it was out there. Can’t bear everyone privately thinking, I wonder how those kids feel about it.’

  I glanced up at him, my face asking the question.

  ‘I don’t,’ he said truthfully. ‘I mean – really think about it. And it would be cruel to say Mum brought it on herself, but Dad had a chat with me when he realized I knew. Apparently Mum shut up shop almost immediately after I was born.’

  Half of me couldn’t believe I was having such a grown-up conversation, the sort you might have after a year of going out with someone, and half of me was riveted.

  ‘But why? Isn’t that just asking for trouble?’

  ‘Exactly. What was Dad supposed to do?’

  ‘Of course, you’ve only got his word for that,’ I reminded him.

  ‘Except they have separate bedrooms. Have done ever since I can remember.’

  ‘Oh.’ I thought back to my own parents, with their tiny double bed, the laughter reaching right to my room down the hall.

  ‘Mum has insomnia, apparently, and Dad snores and likes a really hard mattress – that’s the party line. But still.’

  I nodded and we both dragged thoughtfully and frightfully maturely on our cigarettes. Golly, I was in the know. And I wouldn’t tell a soul. Not even Shona. That lasted until Tuesday.

  Suddenly Belinda put her head around the French windows. ‘Oh, there you are, Hugo. The Maxwell-Clarks are going, would you come and say goodbye?’

  Hugo muttered something as he stubbed his cigarette out on the York stone, but he dutifully got to his feet and went in. As he passed his mother, who was holding the door open for him, she gave me a thin, frosty smile. I knew exactly what it meant. Don’t even think about it. The door shut firmly after her. I finished my cigarette and, after a bit, went inside too.

  Obviously, the subterfuge appealed to both of us. Hugo got the vibe, too. We’d yet to kiss, but we managed that at the end of the Christmas holidays, at some terrible Pony Club dance at which neither of us would normally be seen dead. Then we managed much more at my house, when Mum went to visit her sister in Devon.

  The logistics of a long-distance relationship also appealed: perhaps there was a mutual desire to tick that box without too much pressure. He was away at school and could claim a girlfriend, as I could claim a boyfriend at my all-girls high school in Truro. We telephoned regularly and chatted for hours, but exams were upon us and we rarely met. He went somewhere worthy for the first part of his gap year, six months in India building an orphanage – which he told me he was convinced was knocked down when he left for the next batch of wealthy gappies to rebuild – and after I’d worked in a local restaurant, I went Interrailing with Shona, then helped at my old school in the art department. By now Hugo was training to be a ski instructor in Verbier with all the right sort of girls. Oh, Belinda was on it. Somehow, though, we both kept the faith, and I have to say, I never really doubted him. This was in the pre-Facebook days, before I could torment myself with shots of him being drunk and outrageous and draped in silky blondes but, if anything, he was more territorial than me, and would ring to see how Mr Parker was shaping up.

  Mr Parker was thirty-ish, single, had damp hands, and palpitated with nerves behind his glasses whenever he spoke to me. He lived with his mother and was the art teacher. Nevertheless, at an all-girls school, where even the Very Average Gardener became The Fit Gardener, collective breath steaming up windows as he pruned the roses, and then, in a leap of hormones, The Really Fit Gardener, Mr Parker was often up for discussion. Not just amongst the girls, either, but also in the predominantly female staff room where the only other male teachers were over fifty. I’d play to the gallery on the phone to Hugo.

  ‘He let me wash his brushes yesterday. And tomorrow we’re getting messy with clay. But there’s only one wheel, so I’m thinking Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore?’

  ‘Definitely. And you should sleep with him afterwards. Demi would.’

  ‘I should, shouldn’t I? Can’t think why I haven’t already. Got your grouse moor sorted yet?’

  ‘Coming along nicely, thanks. Bubbles seems to have one in Scotland and Millie’s family have one in Yorkshire. Both eminently marriageable. I’m wracked with indecision.’

  ‘Yorkshire’s a bit gritty,’ I told him. ‘I’m not sure I can see you there with all that muck and brass. You’re a bit too sensitive.’

  ‘You’re right. And I’ve always rather hankered for a kilt. As you know, I’ve got great legs. Bubbles it is.’

  I’d spend the rest of the day in a flushed, smiley, post-flirtatious haze after our chats, and even though our university choices were equally insane, geographically speaking, his being Oxford and mine the School of Art in Glasgow, we stayed the course.

  He loved coming up to Glasgow – he flew, of course, having more of an allowance than I did – and I could tell that, despite already being well travelled, something about the muscular architecture, the tough, seemingly terrifying and incomprehensible but hilarious locals, the p
overty, but also the hard graft, spoke to him in a way that the deliberately sheltered part of India he’d been exposed to, the luxury of the mountains and the gentle, rural nature of our joint childhoods, hadn’t. He liked nothing more than drinking in the pub above which I lived with three other students, and where the tough Glaswegians finishing their shifts at the dock would sink pints amongst the outrageously flamboyant art students. It was an eclectic mix and even Shona, who was pretty unshakeable, found it eye-poppingly odd when she came to stay one weekend.

  ‘OK, don’t look now,’ she murmured into her lager. ‘But that one at the bar with the eye make-up is so obviously gay, but he’s kissing a girl. Hugo, I said don’t look.’

  Hugo’s glance came back. ‘Colin’s straight, actually,’ he told her. ‘But he’s an installation man, so he’s always a piece of art himself. Last time I was here we had a long conversation about how for his final piece – one third of his degree, by the way – he intends to walk naked into his tutor’s office and discuss Picasso’s early cubism, thereby recreating the scale of shock it engendered on society at the time.’

  ‘Excellent,’ she breathed. ‘Might try that in my Geography practical.’

  Whilst I took personal pride in Hugo’s delight in my new city, I, on the other hand, found Oxford rather intimidating. Obviously, it was stunningly beautiful and I joined the goggle-eyed tourists marvelling at what we’d previously only seen on Morse – the honey-coloured architecture, the flashes of emerald green quad through doorways – but the people were so flipping clever. An idle conversation in a pub could turn on a sixpence, so that I was out of my depth within moments. And they weren’t showing off, either. It was just the way they could go seamlessly from the delights of cheesy chips from Ivan’s van to the complexities of Occam’s razor in seconds flat. Oh, and posh – Hugo and Tommy’s crowd, anyway. Oh yes, Tommy was there. Being loud and outrageous as usual, and, if I was feeling mean, very much a conscious card, as my father would say. Bright-eyed and flushed with drink, he’d invariably be the one standing on a barstool, conducting some pissed rowers in a rowdy boating song, until the landlord chucked him out.