A Cornish Summer

by Catherine Alliott

  He shrugged. ‘No idea.’

  A flurry of possible scenarios hurtled into my head and flew around up there, chasing each other like a kaleidoscope. All the potential discussions they’d had – or maybe not had. Just an unspoken, tacit knowledge of the possible, perhaps. The possibility of living a double life, with a home, children, all the trappings. An affluent, normal family in Hampstead. Hugo Bellingdon, father of three, chairman of his family’s water company. Why couldn’t he still be all of that, with a boyfriend? Why? I thought of Belinda and Roger. No. Unthinkable. Not Roger. But Belinda.

  ‘I so wish you’d told me, Tommy!’ I said vehemently, balling my fists and thumping them on my knees. ‘I would have got over it. I’m not that wet, not that guilt-ridden. I would!’

  ‘Back then? When you were about to get married? Pregnant?’ He shook his head. ‘You’d never have forgiven me.’

  ‘Maybe not, but so fucking what? So what!’

  He paused. Some colour drained from his face. ‘So everything. So everything.’

  I frowned at this, confused. I shook my head. ‘What?’

  He was staring down at his knees. He looked up. Regrouped. ‘Yes, I should have done. I know I should have done. Even then, I knew it. But I had my own reasons.’

  I made an incredulous face. ‘What – that I’d have hated you? Sure, I would have done. But no more than I probably did alrea—’

  ‘Yes, but you see I minded that.’ He rounded on me fiercely, interrupting me in mid-flow. ‘I minded very much that you would never forgive me. That you would always hold it against me.’

  His eyes were blazing with a strange intensity. They burned into me.

  I blanched. Then I shrugged. ‘OK, you minded …’ I said, confused.

  ‘In fact, if I’m honest, if I’m totally, unutterably honest, it was my prime, overriding motivating factor for not telling you. Nothing to do with loyalty to Hugo. I could have got over that. Reasoned it out with him. Toughed it out. But I didn’t want your hate. I couldn’t entertain it.’ It was his turn to get up off the bench. He thrust his hands deep in his trouser pockets and walked to the edge of the quay. He stood with his back to me, staring into the water. At length, he spoke gruffly, but I could hear every word he said. ‘Contrary to popular opinion, Flora, I’ve always been very fond of you. Strange, but true.’

  I stared at his back. Brushed some hair from my eyes.

  ‘Define fond.’

  There was a silence. ‘Loved you. I’ve always loved you. I was the one who should have married you. The one who really wanted you. Properly wanted you. Not Hugo.’

  28

  The seagulls cawed in the sky and circled in the wind, filling the silence with their sound. Their swooping and diving made the stillness of his back all the more apparent. I stared at it.

  ‘Tommy – I …’ The wind whipped my hair into my face; more strands stuck to my mouth, which was open in wonder. I pulled them away. But I had no breath or words to draw on. He continued his contemplation of the blue trawler, which was quayside now. The fishermen, having unloaded their morning catch, were hauling their empty lobster pots back into the boat, preparing to turn around and sink them again for tomorrow. I watched absently. For a moment I wondered if I’d dreamed it.

  ‘But you hated me,’ I breathed suddenly, with feeling. I remembered those same blue eyes, younger and much fiercer; much more defiant, glaring at me from under his hat out hunting; shooting me a loathing look just after he’d apologized to Shona, in the kitchen, at home. Much nicer to her than to me. Always. And keeping in touch with her. Never me.

  He turned, his face pale. ‘Jesus Christ, I was seventeen when I first met you! And of course I hated you, it was my coping strategy. Don’t you know anything about men, Flora? I could see Hugo had got there first, could see he was impressed with you flying over fences. I had no idea about his sexuality then, was just quietly furious about being pipped to the post and making a fool of myself into the bargain. Business as usual, Tommy Rochester. Except, getting the girl, which even in those days usually happened. Oh, I followed up smartly with a series of “I’ll show you” girlfriends. I played fast and loose, but none of them matched up. I still saw you flying over four-foot hedges. Even back in the States.’

  ‘Tommy,’ I was flabbergasted. ‘You cannot be serious.’

  ‘Deadly.’ He looked deadly, too. He gave a twisted smile. ‘Not so Mr Transparent, huh?’

  ‘But you were so—’

  ‘Mean?’

  I remembered his mocking eyes at Oxford, as I’d arrive from the train station and Glasgow; walking to Hugo’s room across a grassy quad where Tommy and his friends would lie reading; how he’d ignore me. Later, in London, in smart restaurants, as I dithered over the cutlery, failed to get to grips with an artichoke. Latched on to other insecure girls. Always a snide look from Tommy.

  ‘I told you: a defence mechanism. I loved you back then and goddammit this trip over here was a mistake and I knew it would be because I still love you now. I’m gutted to realize it but, shit, it’s a relief to say it. Maybe I’m purged? Maybe that’s all that was needed, to spew it all out? Who knows. Anyway, that’s me done making a fool of myself again. Twice in two decades. Give my regards to Professor Fleming, Flora. He’s making a nuisance of himself in so many ways.’

  And with that he turned on his heel and walked away. I watched him go. My eyes followed his back in amazement, his pale-biscuit linen jacket. I thought of running after him, of taking his arm, swinging him round and saying his name – ‘Tommy!’ But then what? What was there to say? I was as staggered by this revelation as by the one about Hugo, and actually … I couldn’t believe it. Oh, Hugo being gay I believed, all too clearly – that dawn came storming up – but Tommy Rochester in love with me? Man about town, lothario, a girl in every port, joker extraordinaire, Peter’s naughty godfather, Hugo’s fast friend – he was so unlike me. The introspective, reclusive painter who’d wasted her best years pining and hiding in a garret with her excuses for not living, whilst he – he’d lived. Sailed, hunted, skied – shagged, for sure – but he’d packed his life with successful work and friends and travel. No. He was having me on.

  Or was I the one girl he couldn’t have, who hadn’t responded to his charms? The one that got away? Ergo he wanted me? Maybe that was it. Testosterone-fuelled, competitive spirit surging to the fore. I remembered girls at Oxford, hanging on his every amusing word in the college bar as he held court, still in his rowing kit, always surrounded. Not by me. Was I simply a challenge? Was this something male and macho, some unfinished business? Whatever it was, it was a myth he’d nourished and kept alive, as people do. As I’d nourished the myth of Hugo. Tommy might think he loved me – loved me, for Christ’s sake, crackers! But he didn’t. Of course he didn’t. And now it was spoken, he’d feel as much of a fool – he’d even said it, maybe I’m purged – as he had done all those years ago.

  I got up slowly. The sun had gone behind a cloud and it was getting cooler. My knees were stiff and I realized I’d been sitting there for some time. Something about those eyes, though. Fierce and true beneath a mop of still-fiery, still-russet hair. If only I hadn’t seen those. If only he hadn’t turned round; had carried on looking out to sea. I walked down the quay towards town.

  I sat in the car for a while before I started the engine. I felt frozen in my seat, staring out, deep in thought. Then, abruptly, I reached for the ignition, and drove home. Determinedly putting Tommy to the back of my mind, I thought about Hugo. About how, actually, he’d probably managed to have a relatively happy life. With Christina. Who was a lovely, kind, generous person, as he was. And who’d given him the cloak of respectability he craved, to pass under the radar, to pass muster with his family. As no doubt he’d given her. Had they recognized each other’s sexual ambiguity when they first met, that time in Wales? Had that been part of the attraction? Even though he’d been with me and Christina had been with Sam? Had a light bulb gone on in their heads? Subl
iminally, perhaps. And maybe it had crept up on them later, as a more conscious thought, after Hugo had married me. Overwhelmed them with possibilities.

  I realized now I couldn’t have done it. Couldn’t have lived with a gay man. I loved Hugo so much, but I could not have done that. Oh my God – why hadn’t anyone recognized that? Known that I’d find it impossible? Except … nobody knew. Apart from Tommy, who lived in America, and who apparently had his own reasons, and Christina. No one close to me, anyway. And Peter would want to deal with the situation himself, on his own, I knew that. Without his mother adding her cloying, maternal worries about his welfare. He’d want to contain it, too. Wouldn’t want me asking how he felt about it every five minutes, worrying he had even more baggage. In time, with maturity, who knows, he might have told me; might have realized it was a way of setting me free, but right now he was a teenage boy dealing with his own problems. Yes, possibly with time. Because although I always resisted seeing his father and purported to hate any contact, Peter had the emotional intelligence to know the truth, the relationship between love and hate, and how they could be the same thing. Not unlike another boy of about Peter’s age, who, years ago, had figured that one out, too, on a cold winter’s morning, just a few miles from here, over rolling green hills and steep valleys. Or so he’d told me.

  I was glad of the journey. Glad it took nearly an hour to get back to Trewarren; it gave me some time to absorb the shock, but also, to welcome it gladly. Hugo’s culpability in the water pollution and its ramifications still loomed, but my mind flew selfishly to my own life. My new emotional life, which I would so welcome. I could be friends with Hugo and Christina; could even envisage suppers together, barbecues in their garden, all the things I never could before. And I’d have lunch with Hugo, tell him that: tell him if only I’d known. Watch his eyes, still dear, beloved eyes, widen with recognition, with relief, over his Dover sole at Wheelers where we’d meet in the City. Realize that, if only he’d told me! But Hugo was one of the few people who had no idea I had still been in love with him. Just that I was bitter and avoided his family. Although it wouldn’t take a genius to work it out.

  But there were other repercussions to full disclosure on his part. He might not want Peter to know. Or, he might have wanted to tell him himself, when he was eighteen, or twenty-one, perhaps. Or not at all. This last struck me as entirely possible. Hugo was not a brave man. Plus it’s a huge thing for a child to absorb. Would still be, it occurred to me, for his other children, Theo and Ibby. It suddenly struck me as a profoundly selfish thing to do, but that was another story. My mind was on my own story. Because, actually, how could I have known, I who had my heart plastered permanently to my sleeve, and not told Peter? My mother, Celia? How could I have walked around with something that huge? Hugo would have known that I couldn’t.

  The car windows were down and I took great gulps of salty sea air as I came off the main road and followed the familiar country lanes. The high banks and towering hedges precluded any glimpses of the fields: the stunning, rolling green vista was only teasingly revealed in quick glances through a five-bar gate, or from a particularly high hill, before a vertiginous drop down into a hollow. Very occasionally, as I climbed a hill, a sliver of silver blue, a tiny glistening triangle, would flash in the distance. When I was young, and we’d been away, I’d shout from the back seat that I’d seen it, and Dad would pretend he hadn’t, but I knew he’d seen it first. Glimpse by glimpse, it would become a stretch rather than a sliver, the centrepiece, framed by the hills, beckoning me on as it did now.

  Eventually I reached the bend in the road with a run of white bungalows, the garage, and Rod Cooper’s store. I swung sharply round into the estuary itself, following it down from the mouth. It was immediately apparent from the crowded water that the finale of the regatta was in full swing. After the serious sailing races and the prize-giving came the novelty races: the swimming, the rowing, the windsurfing, culminating in what was now underway, the fishing-boat race. Crabbers, with throbbing engines, all billowing dark smoke, with whole families aboard, often third and fourth generations of fishing folk, were manoeuvring as close to each other as possible, to lob flour bombs into each other’s boats or faces. It was a riotous, hilarious debacle, but as fiercely competitive as the sailing races – in some cases more so.

  This last race of the day would be followed by the final toot of the harbour master’s horn, and then the huge barbecue on the beach, organized by so many families, and to which everyone, locals and tourists alike, was welcome. The whole community took part, with the Bellingdons taking centre stage. The thought of setting eyes on Hugo and seeing him in a new light was something I very much looked forward to. Despite the colossal problems brewing for him, for an entirely selfish moment I just welcomed seeing him in a way that didn’t make my heart race and my tummy turn over. It would be so liberating. This was a different kind of love.

  I drove up a car-lined lane and left my car in a little-known spot in the driveway of a deserted house. Local knowledge. Then I walked down to the front. Inevitably, Bellingdons were all I saw, in their green Bellingdon Water aprons, and not the person I was actually looking for, who was not Hugo, but Ted. Lovely though it would be to see Hugo, Ted was the reason I’d hotfooted it down here. I badly needed a word with him. I’d messaged him en route, asking him to meet me quickly, but had got no response. Unsurprising, given there was no reception in this particular neck of the estuary, so I’d seek him out.

  I walked along the crowded front, looking in the most likely places. Outside the Mariners I saw Peter, drinking with Adam and a few others. He gave me a wave. Just along from them were Janey, Celia, Edward and Babs, rocking back on their heels and roaring with laughter, everyone well oiled now, before the barbecue. It was cooler since the sun had gone in, and Celia and Edward were in matching blue Sunnyvale Spa sweatshirts, which made me smile. Celia saw me and waved me across urgently.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ she yelled. I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled back through the crowd: ‘Five minutes! I’ll be back!’

  She nodded and went to help Janey, who’d had an unfortunate stumble, doubled up with mirth as she was at her new English girlfriends’ humour, and needing an arm. Lord, they were pissed. I went down the slipway to the beach, looking about. Lots of students had spilled over from the pub, but … I strained my eyes into the distance – no Ted. Back up the slipway I went. Further along the beach, perhaps, near the dunes, and the cottage, which I’d just driven past. I walked on.

  As I rounded the corner, the wide, sandy stretch opened up before me, full of bustling activity. Preparations were in full swing here, awaiting the crowds to wander round, at their leisure, from the Mariners. I saw Belinda and Christina beetling about with bowls of salad; Ibby and Theo were helping, too. I stopped a moment. So strange to see people in a new light. I watched Christina, whipping cling film from a plate of bread rolls on a long trestle table; regarded her with real affection, for the love she’d given Hugo, and for what must have been a confused and anxious time of her own, too. Everyone in their own little worlds. No one sensitive enough to recognize the worlds of others.

  Roger was holding court near the shore with his best buddies: a retired general and the lord lieutenant of the county. All three were great golfing and sailing pals and had glasses of something brown and sticky-looking in their hands. They were collectively off their trolleys, brick-red in the face, pickled with alcohol, fun, and the sheer exhilaration of there being every excuse – duty done in the morning and wives too busy to notice now – to stay here and drink until they literally toppled over. I ducked, but he’d seen me.

  ‘Flora!’ he bellowed.

  There was no escape. I pottered across and said hello. I was greeted warmly – a little too warmly, sweaty cheeks and huge stomachs – with kisses from his friends. Roger told them about our little project.

  ‘It’s a masterpiece!’ he roared. ‘Going to submit it to the BP Portrait Awards.
The National Gallery will be clamouring for it, eh, Flora? See it up in lights!’

  ‘Oh, heavens, no, I don’t think so, Roger, but I’m glad you like it. Um, actually I must get on, I’m looking for—’

  ‘Like it? I love it! Hundred times better than all those ghastly oils in the hall. All those bogus dismal fools Belinda found in some auction, Pa and Grandpa excluded, of course.’ Bogus. I didn’t know that. Buy an ancestor, eh? He was pissed. ‘And what’s more,’ he went on, his face in mine, prodding his chest, ‘it’s of me!’ His eyes popped with pleasure. ‘Me!’

  I laughed. ‘It certainly is, Roger. Although it’s not quite finished yet.’

  ‘Argggh! No more!’ He staggered about theatrically, clutching his heart like King Lear on the heath. ‘No more sittings!’

  ‘No, we’re done with that, actually. I’ll just have a few days in the cottage with it, work on the background, that type of thing. I don’t need you. Oh! There he is.’ I’d spotted Ted in the distance, heading up towards the dunes. Possibly in the direction of the car park.

  ‘Scientist chappie?’ Roger followed my eyes. ‘Nice man. Got integrity. Spoke to him earlier. Need more like that on the board. Marine biologist, that sort of thing. Frightfully knowledgeable, could talk to him for hours. Hey!’ His eyes came back to me and lit up. ‘Might be just the ticket for you!’

  ‘Oh, er – I must go, I—’

  ‘Got to find you a man, Flora. Too pretty a filly to be on your own. Hey – wassisname – Ed? Hey, Fleming – oh, look out, she’s off anyway! At a trot! Chase him! Run!’

  I was legging it, followed by a roar of laughter and a bellow of ‘Run! Run – you’ll catch him!’ from the naughty boys.

  Ted turned at their voices, which wasn’t ideal – I was bright red with embarrassment – but it did at least stop him. As they continued to dissolve with glee into their drinks, he waited for me, grinning.