A Cornish Summer

by Catherine Alliott

  Tommy threw his head back and roared. The horses, sensing the mood, danced feverishly, fighting their bits, desperate for their heads. As one, we loosened our reins and gave it to them. Off they shot. We galloped through the shallow surf along the shoreline, the wind in our faces, water up to our boots, splashing up a storm, as we thundered from one end of the beach to the other.

  9

  When we returned from the ride, clattering into the yard, the horses on a long, relaxed rein and happy to be home, the back door opened. Hugo came out to greet us, having no doubt heard the hooves coming up the drive. He crossed the yard to talk to his guests first, asking if they’d enjoyed it, poking fun at Tommy’s hat, admiring Janey’s young horse, and why oh why did my heart still do that? When I so wished it wouldn’t? Race away at lightning speed and make my chest tighten to accommodate its rickety-rackety pace? I watched out of the corner of my eye as the three of them laughed and joked together. He held Janey’s horse as she dismounted. As he came my way I’d had time to summon up an easy smile and I was impressed with my jovial tone as I vaulted off backwards.

  ‘Not tempted, Hugo?’ Unfortunately, my horse moved suddenly, so my bottom was very close to his face as I said it.

  I blushed as I turned, but luckily, Hugo’s eyes were elsewhere, lowered as he flicked a horsefly off his knee. Only Babs shot me an amused look.

  ‘No, I had things to do, sadly. Work, mostly. But I might come another time,’ he told me eagerly, clearly so keen for this to work. My heart wrenched at his continual sweetness in the face of my eternal bitterness. Hopefully it didn’t show, the bitterness. I loved Hugo too much to let him feel wretched on account of my pain, but the colossal effort this required was exhausting – no doubt for him, too. I felt for both of us, although a bit of me was aware that this was very good for us: learning coping mechanisms. Being more like my friend Josie – heavens, we might be going on skiing holidays soon, whizzing down slopes together. Not that I could ski. Or perhaps not, I thought, as Christina waved from the back door.

  ‘So annoying!’ she called. ‘Wish I could come.’

  ‘She’s allergic,’ Hugo explained.

  ‘Oh.’ I raised my voice to reach her. ‘Gosh, poor you! Rotten luck!’ I realized I was inadvertently imitating her cut-glass accent, which is a habit of mine, no doubt in an effort to ingratiate myself with whoever I’m talking to. I can go from chav to duchess in moments.

  ‘I did have one, actually, as a child,’ she called. ‘Daddy had to sell it. Brought me out in hives.’

  ‘Ah!’ I called back. It was quite hard, communicating at this distance, and I didn’t trust myself to say more. Might bring out rotten luck again.

  Nevertheless, she hovered on the doorstep. ‘Must be lovely to be riding down here again?’ she asked tentatively, as if worried that might be wrong.

  My heart lurched for her a bit. She tried so hard with me.

  ‘It was heaven!’ I assured her with a grin, meeting her, hopefully more than halfway. She broke into a delighted smile and, content, went inside.

  ‘Did you get Peter’s text?’ Hugo asked me, as I ran up my stirrups.

  ‘No? What text?’ I whipped out my phone, spinning round to face him.

  ‘He sent it to both of us. Just to say he might be coming down.’

  ‘Oh – how lovely!’ I gazed at my screen in rapture and there it was. Addressed to both of us – very rare, as if we were married – and my heart stupidly gave a palsied leap. It was short and to the point:

  Might pop down.

  ‘I’ve said, great,’ Hugo told me.

  ‘Oh yes. Definitely.’ I pocketed my phone. ‘Great’ wouldn’t begin to cover it, though, and I knew I’d go to effusive lengths later composing an enthusiastic response.

  That would make us a family, I realized as I removed my bridle from the chestnut’s face, rubbing her sweaty ears and clipping on a head collar. Something we’d never been. Well once, obviously, briefly, and thereafter, let’s face it, I’d always been the one who’d resisted. Yet somehow, strangely, it felt fine here. Maybe because we’d been a family here before, dangling Peter in the shallows in his nappy on that very same beach, watching him turn shells over in wonder with his podgy little hands. As I went to the tack room, saddle and bridle over my arm, the back lawn became visible to my right. I paused.

  Hugo’s two other children were playing on the monkey bars in the long grass by the trees. Christina was striding from the house across the lawn towards them with her hands in her jeans pockets. And the funny thing was, the more I saw of this evidently happy family, the easier I found it to be around them, I’d noticed. Yes, my heart still raced the moment I saw Hugo, but I hadn’t lain awake for hours last night dissecting the evening as I did when I saw him on his own, at a parents’ evening, or a rugby match. Replaying every line, every conversational gambit in my head. I hadn’t felt a tiny bit sick today, either. I realized it helped to see them together. I’d built them up into a hugely glamorous couple, and they weren’t. They were perfectly average.

  Christina, who was now coming back across the lawn having no doubt informed her offspring of an imminent supper time, never wore more than jeans and a shirt, and not hugely fashionable ones. There was something graceless in her stride, I realized. She walked like a duck, feet out at an angle. And I’d seen her openly pick her teeth after supper last night. I didn’t see that in the studio as I painted: I only saw her in that garden in Wales, seventeen years ago, swinging from a long rope across the stream. The only girl to do it. Landing on the other side with a whoop, turning and punching the air, Hugo’s eyes shining. That’s what I saw as I stood at my easel in Fulham, beside Celia. I certainly didn’t see her throw open a window and shout:

  ‘When I say now, I mean now! Not when it suits you!’

  The window slammed shut. The twins exchanged a bored look, rolled their eyes, and slid off the bars.

  Yes, this was very good for me, this little exercise, I thought as I went back to hose down my horse. A drip, drip dose of reality, not fantasy, which Hugo, talking to Janey now, as she rubbed her grey down beside me, helped by having a quick nose pick as Janey crouched to sponge the mare’s legs. And he farts, and he’s losing his hair, and his tummy’s fatter and all those things, I told myself. Although he managed to ruin it, perhaps feeling my gaze upon him, by turning and flashing me that shy, Prince William at St Andrews smile, before shuffling inside.

  Shuffling. Good. Another splendid observation, Flora, I thought later as I made my way back down the track to the cottage. I swung my basket jauntily. The sea sparkled brilliantly ahead of me, and pink campions studded the green banks beside me like little jewels. He doesn’t stride – like his wife – he drags his feet. Always has done. Doesn’t pick them up. I will, though, I thought with a grin. Pick them up. Those little defects. They’ll mount up, you know. And soon, Flora, you’ll have a bloody great mountain which you can pore over forensically at your leisure when you get home. It will do you the world of good.

  As I turned the corner where the track forked into a long decline towards our cottage and the dunes, I saw the conservationist coming up towards me, rubber waders over his arm. Celia was right: he was rather attractive if you liked the beachcombed surfer look, which I’d obviously grown out of. And so should he have done, actually, I thought as he approached. On closer inspection he was older than me.

  ‘Lovely evening,’ I said, with a smile.

  ‘For a ride, I suppose,’ he said, eyeing my hat and boots in my basket. He stopped in front of me.

  ‘Well, yes,’ I agreed, a bit nonplussed by his tone. His face was set and tense and a muscle was twitching in his cheek.

  ‘Which totally disrupted the beach clear-up operation we had in place for this evening. Very nice of you to churn up the entire shoreline, exactly where we were planning to trawl.’

  ‘Oh, right. Gosh, sorry, we had no idea.’

  ‘Oh really? The posters around the bay escaped your notice, did they?
’

  ‘Yes, they did, actually.’

  ‘Which is odd, given that they were on every conceivable footpath and bridle path that leads down.’

  ‘Oh – no, we didn’t follow the bridle path.’

  ‘No, you just came across through the private wood and down on to the beach from wherever you fancied, because the Bellingdons own the land and they can do what they bloody well like.’

  I was thoroughly taken aback now. ‘Look, I was just riding out and following Iris. I’m sure she had no idea.’

  ‘I’m sure she didn’t. But it is the supreme arrogance of people like that to live in a complete bubble and not feel they have to follow any of the normal countryside rules or conventions, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh no, Iris isn’t like that at all. She’s frightfully hot on that sort of thing, closing gates and what have you.’

  ‘Oh, she’s frightfully hot, is she?’ His dark eyes blazed into mine.

  I gazed back then nodded slowly. ‘Oh, I see. Yes, I get it. This is some sort of chippy class-war aggression, is it? Your beach party’s been spoiled so you blame the toffs?’

  ‘I blame the people who assume that because their land extends to the coast, they have a perfect right to treat the beach as theirs, too.’

  ‘Well, why don’t you go and tell them, instead of taking it out on me?’

  ‘Oh, I fully intend to. I was on my way.’

  ‘Good. Well, if you’ll get out of mine, I’ll be on my way too.’

  I didn’t wait, and instead, stalked around and past him. God. Bloody man. How rude. How dare he? I made myself not glance back. I mean, obviously he was cross, and I remembered now seeing the students in the dunes, no doubt ready with their buckets and – no, not spades – all manner of collection paraphernalia, nets and jars, perhaps. But to accost me when I clearly had no idea. And I’d apologized immediately. I knew I had. No manners. None whatsoever.

  I opened the little gate that led to the cottage and strode up the path, annoyed that my pleasant evening had been ruined and that my admittedly always rather pivotal mood had been tipped the wrong way, just when it was inching so accommodatingly in the right direction. I shut the front door behind me with more vigour than I might usually. Celia was in the little strip of kitchen at the far end. The French doors were open to the garden, music was blaring, and she was cooking a stir fry, already halfway through a bottle of white wine. I flung my basket on the sofa and headed for one of the glasses she’d put ready on the breakfast bar.

  ‘Rude man,’ I told her, needing to share. She turned, surprised, spatula in hand.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That conservationist chappie.’

  ‘Oh really? Why?’

  I told her. She turned back to stir the chicken and vegetables in the pan, thoughtful.

  ‘Yes, well, I can see his point, actually. Especially if there were signs.’

  ‘We didn’t see the signs, Cele.’

  ‘No, because, as he said, the Bellingdons aren’t like normal people.’

  ‘No, not because of that, because we simply came another way. That doesn’t make them abnormal – God.’

  ‘No, but that is the difference, isn’t it? It’s why you came another way.’

  ‘You see what this is about, don’t you? Not just a genuine mistake, but a seething great jealousy and resentment for people like the Bellingdons. And yet here you are, backing him up, but very happy to lap up their hospitality!’

  I glared at her across the breakfast bar. There was a silence. Celia was sensible, though, and knew what this was about. Hugo and Peter were tangled up somewhere in the defensive armour I’d pulled on for the occasion.

  ‘It’s complicated,’ she conceded eventually. ‘But you must admit, there’s a certain arrogance—’

  ‘Iris is not arrogant.’

  ‘Belinda is.’

  ‘Yes, Belinda is,’ I agreed. ‘Since we’re going off piste and including non-riders here, to support the argument.’

  ‘Roger?’

  ‘Oh Christ, why stop there – and actually, no, not at all. Roger does masses for the community. Chairs the local lifeboat charity, fundraises and what have you. Belinda too – in fact, she probably does more.’

  Celia sniffed. ‘Noblesse oblige.’

  ‘Yes, OK, but you’d be pissed off if they didn’t, wouldn’t you? If they sat in their ivory tower and didn’t get involved in raising money for the new classroom at the local junior school, but it’s riding horses – galloping horses – across a beach where students have gathered that pisses people off. It reeks of privilege.’

  ‘Because of the horses.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘If they’d been bikes …’

  I shrugged. ‘Well, he’d have stopped us.’

  ‘Motorbikes?’

  ‘Illegal. But thuggish, more than arrogant.’

  ‘Quite. Not sure where this is going.’

  ‘Neither am I.’

  ‘Drink?’

  ‘Please.’

  She poured me one and let me calm down. I perched at the bar and took a long glug of cold Chardonnay, watching as she drained the noodles, the steam rising in billowing clouds from the sink.

  ‘Attractive, though, isn’t he?’ she said at length, still with her back to me.

  ‘No, not at all. I don’t go for that overgrown beach-boy look.’

  ‘He’s a professor.’

  ‘So I’ve been told.’ Who told me? I couldn’t remember.

  ‘Lovely eyes.’

  ‘If you don’t mind the craggy outreaches around them.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘He’s spent too long outside. You could practically see the salt in those wrinkles.’

  ‘A salty dog,’ she purred, turning and sipping her wine. She smacked her lips and stared dreamily into space. Then she absently spooned our supper on to plates.

  ‘Blimey, at this rate you’ll be sailing away in a beautiful pea green boat. How’s Edward?’ I asked pointedly.

  ‘Edward.’ She sighed. Lowered her spoon. Her shoulders slumped too and I really wished I hadn’t asked. She adopted her own defensive tone, similar to the one I’d just put on for the Bellingdons. ‘He’s fine, actually. But we’ve decided we need some space.’

  ‘Oh, OK.’ I nodded. ‘When did you decide that?’

  Edward, I knew, had decided it months ago, and had kept her dangling, and very much at his beck and call and imminent disposal, ever since.

  ‘You mean when did I join in with his decision?’ She gave me a knowing look as she resumed spooning the veg. I smiled.

  ‘Yeah, OK.’

  ‘This afternoon, actually.’ She looked shifty. Then she grinned. ‘When I came back from painting, I sent him a text. Told him it was over.’

  My mouth dropped. I blinked in surprise. ‘Really? Oh good. Good, Cele, I’m glad!’

  I wanted to say, Thank the Lord. He was never right for you, never treated you properly, always left you depressed and upset, but I knew these things came back to haunt one. What was it girls said to each other in these circumstances which showed solidarity and boosted confidence but didn’t entirely decimate the ex? Oh yes. I wrinkled my nose and looked thoughtful as we sat down to eat, perching on stools opposite one another at the bar.

  ‘You could do better.’

  She smiled and raised her glass. Twinkled at me across it. ‘Thanks. I fully intend to.’

  10

  Babs sauntered down to the cottage the following morning. She’d clearly added us to her morning routine of surf, little tryst with Roger, shower, and then breakfast with the girls in their sunny back garden.

  Her eyes were bright with mischief as she came through the back garden from the dunes. She sat down at the table, crossing her skinny brown legs in her shorts. Piggy jumped up on her lap. ‘I say,’ she said, helping herself to a croissant, ‘you’ll never guess what happened yesterday. You missed all the drama.’

  ‘Oh?’ I buttered my toast. ‘
The livid conservationist?’

  She shot me an astonished look. ‘Yes! How did you know?’

  ‘I met him on his way up to the house. He wasn’t particularly amused then.’

  ‘I should say not. And, my dears, I can’t tell you how impressive he was. Strode into the yard where we were all still hanging around, eyes flashing – he’s got marvellous chocolatey brown ones – and really tore everyone off a strip. And not just about the riding, either. Apparently Hugo’s company is holding back on filtration equipment and giving more money to shareholders instead, which is why the leakage here is so bad. He really gave it both barrels. And of course I know he’s right because Roger’s been worried about the shareholders getting greedy, not that he’s got anything to do with the water these days.’

  ‘Was Roger there?’

  ‘No, just Hugo.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Well, you know Hugo. He stammered and went a bit pink – he’s not exactly a natural orator – and said something about trying to find some middle ground and how hard it was to please everyone. Ted roared in with, “Yes, and you end up pleasing the pockets of your bloody board members!” Hugo said that wasn’t true but that obviously he was under tremendous pressure from both sides – which didn’t help. Then Tommy cruised in, rather smoothly actually, and said that as a shareholder himself, and, having been to the last board meeting, which admittedly was poorly attended, he was acutely aware of Hugo’s efforts to turn the company around and be more environmentally friendly. He said a scientist and a marine biologist had been appointed to the board and at least two of the old guard had been sacked. He said that actually, Ted should inform himself of the facts before storming up here and complaining about one disaster, then conveniently tagging on another, which is far more complicated.’

  ‘Excellent!’ I purred, momentarily supporting the lesser of two evils. ‘Good for Tommy.’

  ‘And what did Ted say?’ demanded Celia, rooting for her man.

  ‘Ted said he was thoroughly informed, actually, because one of the marine biologists was an erstwhile colleague of his at Imperial College who’d said his appointment to the board was pure tokenism. He said he didn’t have a voice and that it was a gesture from Bellingdon Water to appear environmentally committed, but that they weren’t interested in what the experts had to say at all, only profits.’