A Cornish Summer

by Catherine Alliott

  ‘Splendid!’ said Celia. She sat bolt upright, her face glowing.

  ‘And Hugo?’ I asked urgently.

  ‘Oh, well, Hugo was sweet, of course, as always. He said he would absolutely promise to look into it, and if Ted would like to come up to the house for a proper meeting tomorrow, he’d listen to all he had to say.’

  ‘You see? Lovely.’ I sank back happily in my chair.

  ‘That didn’t mollify Ted,’ Babs said. He spat, “Listen, sure, but you lot never do anything. I’ve heard it all before.” And then he turned on his heel and stalked off.’

  ‘Rude man,’ I said angrily. ‘Again!’

  ‘But passionate,’ sighed Celia wistfully. ‘Such tremendous passion. For the environment, for marine life, for ecology – all that wonderful, worthwhile stuff.’

  ‘Like Blue Planet,’ I reminded her. ‘Which you hate. Saying it’s too blue and too fishy.’

  ‘That was before I got hooked.’

  ‘I’ll say.’ I raised my eyebrows.

  ‘No, I mean before I really concentrated and listened properly to Saint— Sir David,’ she said firmly, looking me in the eye and warning me not to let her down, should a certain marine-life lover come wandering over the dunes for a drink.

  Babs was looking from one to the other of us, clearly increasingly perplexed at the line this conversation was taking.

  ‘Hang on … you’ve written him off after one little encounter, Flora?’

  ‘I hadn’t, actually. I’ll give anyone a second chance. But I have now I know he had such a go at Hugo. Celia, as you can tell, feels differently.’ I waggled my eyebrows and grinned. ‘Coffee, Babs? I’ll put the kettle on.’

  ‘Oh … um – yes. Please.’ She frowned. Looked a little displeased.

  I got up and went inside. Filled the kettle at the sink. The radio was on quite loudly, but after a bit, I could hear fierce mutterings and hissings coming from the garden. I went to the loo while the kettle boiled. First I had to find some more loo paper, though. When I finally came out with a tray of mugs and a percolator, they both looked rather hot and cross. Celia’s face was flaming with indignation and Babs was tight-lipped.

  ‘Problem?’ I blinked, setting the coffee down.

  ‘No, no,’ Babs soothed. ‘Celia just … just took one of my ciggies. It was my last. She – she didn’t realize.’

  ‘I didn’t realize stealing was even possible,’ snapped Celia. She gave me a thin smile. ‘I didn’t realize the conservationist—’ her face momentarily twisted with rage, before she composed herself, ‘the cigarette,’ she enunciated elaborately, correcting herself, ‘had been reserved for you.’

  ‘I don’t smoke!’ I spluttered, confused.

  ‘You don’t do anything naughty since Hugo, but apparently, it’s high time you did. Apparently it’s your turn. And I’m to stand down. Your need is greater. Well, good luck with that. I’m off to start work. Can’t sit here nattering all day, I’ve got a gallery to fill.’

  And with that she went into the cottage to collect her easel and paints, leaving me staring after her, my mouth open. A moment later she came out and stalked back past us. She marched down the path that led towards the cliffs, rucksack on her back, easel under arm, canvas in hand.

  ‘What on earth was that all about?’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about her,’ Babs said airily, waving her ciggie in the air. ‘She’s sexually frustrated. I know the signs. Comes out in temper.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘She needs to get laid,’ she said firmly. She narrowed her eyes at Celia’s departing back. ‘Callum Murray’s just left his wife. He’s awfully good fun.’

  I snorted. ‘Callum Murray? Celia’s a sophisticated London girl with an important exhibition coming up. She’s not looking for a bunk-up with a local farmer – Callum’s got straw between his teeth. And anyway, I think she’s rather set her cap at Ted.’

  Babs took a long, thoughtful drag of her cigarette. Blew it out in a thin blue line. ‘Yes, but Ted may be otherwise engaged.’

  Later that morning, as I waited for Roger in the gunroom, I reflected that Cornwall did rather have this effect on people. It brought out the holiday spirit, even if you lived here, and with that came frivolous concerns like holiday romances and ridiculous crushes. The first of which, Celia, if I remembered, had had on Babs. Now they seemed to be sniping at one another. I sighed. Ah well, she’d settle down. She’d soon realize tedious normal life went on down here just the same as it did everywhere, even if one was ambushed by glorious views at every turn and the sound of the waves crashing on the sand, which got the old hormones going. In the fifties, apparently, film directors would cut to pounding surf to suggest an orgasm. I gazed out of the gunroom window trying to remember when I’d last had one of those. The huge cedar tree on the lawn spread its green skirts and cast a dark shadow across my thoughts. But not enough to obscure the view beyond. The banks of shocking pink rhododendron bushes gave way to a strip of shimmering turquoise water. I smiled. Always there in the distance. Always a glimpse. More so in Cornwall than anywhere else. Always hope.

  Making their way towards that very same vista across the lawn this morning, right on cue, as if that same, unseen fifties director had whispered ‘action’, came a party of attractive specimens to grace it. The twins were first, in shorts and T-shirts, blond, skinny and brown. Theo was keeping a ball in the air with a plastic bat, and Ibby was maintaining a regular skip beside him, so that although he ran ahead in between batting he dropped the ball a lot and she steadily skipped past. They were followed by Christina, a beach bag swinging from her hand, the habitual jeans replaced by utilitarian shorts and bog-standard flip-flops. Quite long, those white shorts. Big side pockets. Not my style, but there you go. In contrast, Janey, behind her with Tommy, was certainly not foregoing her pink lippy and gold sandals, and was wearing a very fetching navy mini skirt together with a red polka dot bikini top. Beside her, Christina looked … well, a bit frumpy, I realized with a start. Janey wasn’t a mum, of course, that helped enormously, but all the same. Christina had lost that joie de vivre, that edge, that I remembered. It was as if Janey, in this particular little vignette, had stolen it. I watched her teasing Tommy, pretending to link arms but actually linking her leg around his so he very nearly fell over. I laughed as he stumbled, my voice echoing in this tall room.

  He’d done very well, I thought as he mock-cuffed her hair: he was clearly very successful. He had that expensive, American look and had grown into quite an attractive, rangy man, albeit very much in the preppy Brooks Brothers mould, swaggering off in his predictable Ralph Lauren shorts and polo shirt to the beach. Not much he could do about his foul mouth, bad temper and red hair, though. I watched them disappear from view.

  No Hugo, I realized. He must be working. Poor Hugo, he worked so hard, always had done. He was so conscientious, which was why it was deeply unfair for some outsider to criticize him, I thought, bristling with fury. What did he know about long office hours and City life? The intolerable conferences, the all-nighters sometimes. Peter told me they even had pods in the office now, so they could leave a meeting at two a.m., grab a few hours’ sleep, then start again at seven. Oh, they were well paid for a reason. It certainly wasn’t as relaxing as looking for plastic bottle tops in your shorts on the beach and getting all hot under the collar about – hello. Talk of the devil. Ted Fleming himself was approaching from the same direction the others had disappeared in, walking up from the beach to the house. But not in shorts or waders this time. He was wearing pale biscuit chinos, a blue shirt and had a leather folder under his arm. Ah, right. Clearly he was taking Hugo up on his offer of a meeting, which was interesting.

  A few minutes later, the doorbell rang. Belinda was out, I’d seen her car leave as I arrived. I waited for Hugo’s footsteps down the hall from the study. Roger’s, even. The doorbell went again, so after some hesitation I walked slowly down the hall hoping someone would beat me to it. No such luck.
As I opened the door, the surprise was on him, which at least gave me an advantage. I smiled, but didn’t say anything, which I could tell wrong-footed him.

  ‘Oh – er … I came to see Hugo.’

  ‘Come in.’ I stood aside. ‘I’ll see if he’s in.’

  ‘Right. Thanks.’ He looked awkward and it occurred to me to wonder if he thought he’d offended the hired help yesterday, now in scruffy work clothes on door duty, and not some posh totty galloping through the surf.

  ‘Oil see if Mr Bellingdon’s about,’ I said, giving it my best yokel brogue. ‘If you’ll jaast wait here …’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’ He reddened, astonished. He’d heard me speak yesterday, and I could tell he was confused.

  I didn’t exactly tug my forelock but I shuffled off and gave it a bit of a limp. Round the corner I knocked on the study door. No answer. I popped my head round. Nope. Empty. Not a soul. As I came back, I heard a door slam and voices. Hugo and Roger were coming down the passageway towards the front door, from the kitchen. Roger was looking wicked and Hugo was rushing ahead, flustered.

  ‘I am so sorry, Mr Fleming, to keep you waiting.’ He hastened to shake his hand. ‘But I had to locate my father. I knew Flora would be waiting for him, you see. Sorry, Flora, I’ve tracked him down for you.’ He handed Roger over as one would a naughty child, or an unexploded bomb. ‘Now, Mr Fleming, shall we go to my study?’ Hugo extended an arm and led the way past us. ‘See if we can iron this out.’

  As they swept away to do business, I realized I now looked like the hired nurse, about to spend the day with my charge, a permanently bewildered senile father who habitually wandered off. Splendid.

  ‘Sorry, my dear,’ purred Roger, stroking an imaginary moustache like Terry Thomas. ‘Got caught up in my aviary. The love birds are breeding and I was just sorting out their nesting boxes.’

  ‘Is ten o’clock too early for you, Roger?’ I asked, as we made our way to the gunroom. ‘Make it half past?’

  ‘No, no, it’s perfect. Been up since six. It’s just, well, I was thinking, my dear.’ We went in and he hastened across to sit in his chair, in the wrong shirt and trousers, I noticed, but beggars can’t be choosers. Getting him to change would take forever. ‘Must we do it every day?’

  I smiled. ‘We’re not doing it every day, Roger, we’re pausing for Fridays and weekends. And it’s only eight sittings.’

  ‘Eight!’ His shoulders sagged dramatically and he let his head droop theatrically. ‘So boring! All I do is sit!’ He really was like a small child.

  ‘Well, you can listen to the radio—’

  ‘Read the paper?’

  ‘No, that would get in the way, but—’

  ‘Watch the box? Loose Women? I like that Penny Lancaster. Feisty bird. I’d have a go.’

  ‘It doesn’t really work, Roger.’ I’d been asked this before. ‘The eyes go a bit glazed. It all looks a bit – day room at the loony bin.’ I realized I became desperately un-PC in Roger’s company.

  He pouted. ‘Only the eyes. You could pop those in later.’

  I smiled. ‘Tell you what, let’s see how it goes and if you get a bit fidgety we’ll make it a short morning, OK?’

  He sighed. ‘Righty-ho. You know best. Only it’s dull, dull, dull.’ He pouted glumly out of the window.

  I suppressed a grin as I cleaned my brush, wondering how Belinda coped. Well, she didn’t, Babs did, and she was like a child herself. I ignored him and painted on happily for a while, my sketch good, I realized, which was a relief. Indeed, I was really getting into Roger: really getting a feel for the breadth of his shoulders and the muscle that was evidently still there – after all, he’d once been a very fit man, could still chop logs all morning – and that all-weather look was still in his face. It wasn’t all pouts and smiles. There was the great outdoors and an enquiring intelligence. A love of nature, too, particularly birds, which he’d always had, and that was in his eyes right now as he watched a sparrow-hawk sail across the sky and settle on a bough of the cedar tree. Marvellous. If he could just hold that look, that light, I’d be—

  ‘Flora?’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Fidgety.’

  I paused. His eyes were wide and innocent.

  ‘You did say …’

  I sighed. Lowered my brush and looked at my watch. ‘We’ve done precisely twenty minutes, Roger.’

  ‘Harrumph.’

  I carried on, ignoring him.

  ‘Would you settle for an hour?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ll settle for an hour and a half.’

  He rolled his eyes but I knew I’d got a deal. I painted faster. If I could just get a bit more done I could take a photo and work from that for a bit, but I wasn’t telling Roger that. And it wasn’t something I generally did instead of sittings. It was as well as. I’d have to be firmer.

  Luckily more birds had caught his eye through the window, because that special light had returned, but, when he sat up very straight and I glanced out, I realized it was of a different variety.

  ‘Pretty girl,’ purred Roger. Janey was coming back up the lawn from the beach in her bikini. I smiled and wondered if I could poke my head out and persuade her to linger, do a few cartwheels. I painted on.

  ‘Very pretty girl,’ he murmured. Out of the corner of my eye I realized she’d paused to look at her phone.

  ‘And very nice, too,’ I said.

  ‘Isn’t she?’ he agreed quickly, instantly perking up. ‘Smart as a whip. I like her enormously.’

  ‘Me too. She’s got wit.’

  ‘That’s New York for you, of course,’ he told me confidingly. ‘Sparky bunch.’ He crossed his legs as he warmed to his subject, which was not ideal as it shifted everything about, but at least he was still here. ‘Full of wisecracks and smart-alec remarks. I lived there, you know, for a bit.’ I could sense a bit of misty-eyed reminiscing coming on, which didn’t hurt. Better than a sulk. ‘Back in the seventies. Surrounded by girls like Janey in the office. Up to here in fanny.’ He pointed to his armpits.

  ‘Roger …’

  ‘Sorry. Can’t say that these days. Back then you could, and get a smarter remark back. They’d whip you every time. Ha! One girl, Lauren, used to perch on my desk in a very tight skirt and stare at me for ages. Frightfully disconcerting. “What are you doing?” I’d say. “Roger, honey, one day, guys like you will be extinct. I’m getting an eyeful of an endangered species while I can.” Ha!’ He barked. ‘Splendid! Ah look – she’s off.’

  Janey was popping her phone in her basket and sauntering on again. She suddenly saw us and waved. Came across to the open window.

  ‘Look at you, for God’s sake. Creating, while the rest of us can only gape in wonder. Am I disturbing?’

  ‘Not at all, we’ve nearly finished.’ I smiled. ‘Roger’s got ants in his pants.’

  ‘Oh really?’ She looked at him sternly in her bikini. She had a very full bosom and she folded her arms under it to swelling effect. His eyes shone. ‘Well, you sit tight, Roger the Dodger. You’re the one who’s commissioning this portrait, right? How’s Flora supposed to paint you if you’re jumping around all over the shop? Ten more minutes,’ she told him firmly, wagging her finger at him. ‘Then I’ll beat you again at tennis.’ She gave him an enormous wink and sauntered off.

  Roger sank back weakly in his chair, defeated. ‘She’s a goddess,’ he whispered. ‘I’m putty in her hands. But I’ll beat her, don’t you worry. Only lost by one game yesterday.’ He gazed dreamily into space, a slight smile on his lips. I made the most of his haze.

  We both came to at the same moment. The study door opened down the passageway. Muffled voices could be heard coming down the corridor. Roger stiffened. He sat up straight and cocked an ear, alert as a pointer.

  ‘Bloody know-it-all,’ he seethed. ‘Coming up here and telling us how to run the show.’

  ‘He’s only trying to save the planet, Roger,’ I said, playing devil’s advocate.

  ‘O
h, I’m aware of that. And I’m as environmentally conscious as they come. Scratch me and I’m very green. Why d’you think I maintain and replant all the hedgerows? Pick up litter on the beach – most mornings I’m down there bagging the stuff. And remember the tar? Remember that terrible oil spillage? The tanker? That Bulgarian bastard, illegally washing out his fuel tank at sea, releasing all that oil then steaming on to avoid charges in port?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Who was it who took a sample from the oil, eh? Got it analysed and traced it back to the country of origin. Even found out which tanker was responsible, not that the buggers did anything about it.’

  I nodded. There was a more furious light to his eyes now, but a light nonetheless. I worked with it.

  ‘Remember down on the beach that night, after Alvern Tremain had come running up to tell us? Woke us all up?’

  I was silent. I did. And I remembered Roger instantly throwing on his clothes and running down.

  ‘Tried to get Hugo to come.’

  I worked on silently.

  ‘He never did like the water.’

  I didn’t say anything. It had been a huge bone of contention, Hugo’s lack of enthusiasm for anything aquatic. His fear, even, of the sea, whilst Roger practically lived in it. And I knew Roger had worked day and night during and after the spillage, whereas Hugo had … well, he’d manned the phones. Somebody had to. It was bedlam here. Coastguards, police, journalists, camera crews, and since Hugo hadn’t gone down that night, I had, with Mum, Babs, Iris and all the locals. Even Belinda had been on the beach. And he’d looked after Peter. Somebody had to. Pointless both of us staying behind. And I was good in the water, and didn’t mind it at night, either. I remembered being in a boat with Roger and Babs, just one light on the prow. How he’d reached right in and brought up a baby seal in his bare hands, covered in oil. I remembered how he’d actually cried. Sworn a lot, too, but cried, nonetheless, as we’d desperately tried to clear its airways, Babs crouched in the bottom, breathing into its nostrils as she tried to resuscitate it. Oh, they’d had their adult moments, those two. But Hugo had been good with the TV people, assuring them of no risk to the filtration plant, whereas Roger, tall and commanding and covered in tar and oil coming up from the beach, had just roared at them. Told them all to bugger off. As I’m sure Hugo was being good now, I thought. Polite. Diplomatic. Soothing. Roger’s ear was still cocked and when he heard the front door shut, he gave a loud shout.