Trenouth

by Bea Green

  It was only on foggy days that Trevose Head disappeared from sight. When the land mass was shrouded sadly in thick mist, the mournful tones of a foghorn would echo across the water as a warning.

  Elinor was sure she’d be fit enough to run to the tip of Trevose Head one day, but that wasn’t her goal for today. Looking at her watch she saw she’d already been running for forty minutes, which was her target time. Once she reached the end of Booby’s Bay she turned and resolutely headed back to Constantine Bay.

  When she reached the edges of Constantine Bay she ran to the top of a sand dune and then let gravity pull her down the steep slope, her legs giving way to the slipping sand. As she stumbled downwards she felt the sand pouring into the cracks in her shoes and socks.

  Unexpectedly, her ankle twisted in the loose sand and with a shriek she found herself falling and rolling down the precipitous, and unstable, mound.

  She landed shortly afterwards on a soft patch of sand at the bottom and lay there, gasping and laughing dementedly at herself, as she turned her face upwards to the sky. It was strangely comfortable lying on a bed of sand and after her vigorous run she felt no inclination to get up again.

  ‘Elinor, are you OK?’

  Elinor brushed the hair off her face and looked up into the concerned face bent over her. Two dark brown eyes, creased at the corners, stared down at her, surrounded by a freckled pink-tinged face, a flat nose and a broad mouth. It was Tony Reece.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine. Why?’ she asked perplexed.

  Tony grinned.

  ‘First I hear a shriek, and then the next minute I see this figure tumbling down the sandy slope. Then once you landed, you didn’t move, so I assumed you must be injured.’

  Elinor sat up, conscious of all the sand that must be stuck to her hair and to the parts of her body that were soaked in sweat.

  ‘So you decided to come to the rescue. That’s sweet of you.’

  ‘Not quite. I was just checking you were still alive, really.’

  ‘Why can’t you just accept you were coming to my rescue?’ asked Elinor, unreasonably irate.

  Tony looked embarrassed.

  ‘Sorry. If that’s what you want to see it as, then OK. Sure. Do you want some help to get yourself up?’ he asked, stretching down a hand.

  Elinor grabbed it and pulled herself up.

  ‘Well, I wasn’t planning on falling down the dune. But it was kind of fun,’ she said, dusting herself down.

  Tony looked up at the sand dune.

  ‘Yeah, I used to like rolling down it too when I was young boy.’

  ‘Come on then, Tony. Why don’t you do it now? Life’s short. You shouldn’t resist the impulse to have fun...’

  Tony smiled with real merriment. It seemed to take a supreme amount of effort to get a smile out of him, Elinor thought, but when it came it was well worth the labour.

  ‘It’s OK. I’ll pass, thanks,’ Tony said. ‘I get my thrills from the surf now. I was going to say to you, I think you’re doing fantastically well at the surf school. I’m glad you didn’t give up.’

  Elinor felt pleased he’d noticed her improvement. She was now managing the smaller waves relatively easily. For the last couple of weeks, though, they’d only exchanged brief greetings as they’d passed each other in the water.

  ‘I could hardly have done worse than that first day. Anything’s bound to be an improvement on that.’

  Tony looked at her jogging outfit, as though suddenly noticing it for the first time. Elinor suddenly felt self-conscious, aware of her skin-tight jogging bottoms, her waist bulging over the top, and her hefty sports bra. Annoyingly, she could feel herself blushing.

  ‘Is this part of a new fitness regime, then?’ asked Tony. ‘With rolling down the dune as part of the circuit?’

  ‘You know what they say, “a healthy body means a healthy mind”,’ she said, airily quoting the old cliché.

  Tony nodded.

  ‘You’re absolutely right. Well done you,’ he said, serious again.

  Elinor felt a mild irritation at his prudish tone and started to wonder if he ever felt the inclination to crack a joke. After a dismal start to the day she felt in need of some levity. She preferred it when he smiled, but she wasn’t about to go and roll down the dune again.

  She shivered as a cold breeze started gusting, pulling yet more strands of hair out of her long ponytail.

  ‘OK, then. I’m going to head back and get changed. I’m due at Barbara’s this afternoon.’

  ‘Barbara’s?’

  ‘Barbara Bligh. I’ve just started working on a painting at her studio.’

  Enlightened, Tony looked pleasantly surprised. More than that, he looked pleased for some unexplained reason. Elinor couldn’t understand why, but refrained from questioning him about it.

  She zipped up her top and looked around for the start of the path leading to Treyarnon Bay.

  ‘Hold on a minute, Elinor. As you’re a newcomer around here, I wondered if you’d fancy joining us for a drink at The Farmer’s Arms on Friday night?’

  Elinor pondered this. Having declined so often Leo’s invitations to The Farmer’s Arms, she felt it would be a little churlish to then turn up at Tony’s behest. But then again, she didn’t have many acquaintances in Cornwall and she did miss having people to socialise with.

  ‘Who’s “us”?’ she asked curiously.

  ‘Mostly the surfer crowd. It’s never too late a night as most of us like to catch the waves early in the morning, before heading off to do other things at the weekend. Like surf school.’

  ‘What time do you all meet?’

  ‘Most of us are there by half past eight.’

  ‘Thanks for the invitation, Tony. I’ll think about it... I might see you there. My uncle tends to go on a Friday night, too, so I could always accompany him. Anyway, I’m really going to have to go. I’ve totally cooled down now and I’m keeping you from your surfing, too.’

  Tony clearly agreed, so they walked companionably along the beach together until Elinor saw Tony’s surfboard tossed down on the sand a short distance away. After a quick farewell, Tony then began to jog towards the sea and Elinor started the long walk home in eager anticipation of a hot shower and a cup of coffee.

  25

  ‘Barbara, do you know Tony Reece?’ asked Elinor as the pair of them got stuck into their paintings at the studio.

  ‘Yes, I do. I’ve known him for a long time. Why?’

  ‘He was behaving a bit oddly this morning. When I said I was going to be in the studio with you this afternoon, he seemed almost overly pleased. It was a bit weird.’

  Barbara chuckled to herself.

  Elinor stopped what she was doing and looked across at Barbara, trying in vain to comprehend why Barbara would find Tony’s odd behaviour so funny.

  Barbara caught her eye and smiled.

  ‘Tony’s such a sweetheart. He’s as transparent as they come. He’s like a glass, you can see straight through him. He has no filter or guile. Which is the nicest thing about him. However, I keep telling him his lack of reserve is bound to get him into trouble one of these days.’

  ‘I see,’ responded Elinor untruthfully, accepting Barbara’s glowing report on Tony but not really understanding how this would make him pleased to hear that Elinor was visiting Barbara. She felt faintly dissatisfied with Barbara’s nebulous response to her query.

  She shrugged petulantly and picked up her brush again, resolving to get lost in her painting once more.

  The CD player in the corner was belting out ‘Take On Me’ by A-ha. Barbara clearly liked to stick to the old classics but Elinor didn’t mind. She was quite often so absorbed in her painting she didn’t notice the music.

  Elinor started to mix up the different coloured paints on her palette, trying to match up the colour to the exact tint she had i
n mind for the surfboard in her painting.

  ‘Tony was friendly with my partner Glenn,’ volunteered Barbara unexpectedly, a little while later, after they’d been painting in silence for a while.

  She put down her brush and swung round on her stool to face Elinor. Realising that Barbara had decided to explain things a bit more, Elinor stopped painting and listened politely to what she had to say.

  ‘They used to go fishing together. In the beginning, I never liked it when they brought back freshly caught fish. I started having nightmares after trying to gut the first fish Glenn caught. A sea bass it was. I still remember it to this day. After that Glenn made sure he gutted and filleted the fish before he came back home. I’m pretty sure he probably gutted the fish on the rocks before arriving here with it.’

  ‘Gross.’

  ‘Yes, although there’s truly nothing like the taste of freshly caught fish.’

  Barbara loudly smacked her lips together and gestured expressively like an Italian. Barbara was a true foodie. Elinor smiled at her briefly and turned back to her painting as Barbara continued to talk.

  ‘It’s such a sublime experience eating fresh fish. You can taste the nourishment and the richness of the sea so much better. So much more so than in a fish that’s been sitting in the sunny window of a fishmonger’s all day.’

  Elinor mumbled an assent. She was now engrossed in working the lines of the surfboard in her painting with one paintbrush and, with yet another paintbrush, trying hard to portray the white surf of the wave splashing against it.

  ‘He still brings me fresh fish on occasion,’ mumbled Barbara in a provocative voice, casting a sly look in Elinor’s direction.

  ‘Sorry, Barbara, could you repeat that again? Who brings you fish? Tony Reece?’ asked Elinor crossly, reluctantly detaching herself mentally from her all-encompassing, self-absorbed focus on her painting.

  For an insane moment Elinor wondered if Barbara was trying to make her jealous. Wondering why she should wish to do so left her feeling perplexed and vaguely suspicious. She quickly dismissed that idea from her mind.

  Frustratingly, she wasn’t finding it easy to pick up on the cryptic messages Barbara was trying to send her, with her covert little glances and teasingly random comments.

  Elinor’s concentration on her painting was such that every verbal distraction seemed to her as irritating as a buzzing fly. A fly that seemed to be attracted by the smell of her sweet perfume and was refusing to leave her in peace.

  She reluctantly put down her paintbrushes and strived to engage in the conversation once more, looking enquiringly at Barbara.

  ‘I was just saying Tony Reece brings me freshly caught fish occasionally. It’s lovely. I’ll have to invite you round next time he does that,’ repeated Barbara patiently.

  ‘That’s nice of him. It does make you wonder how he finds the time to be a GP, to teach surfing, to go surfing himself and also to go fishing.’

  ‘He only works three days a week.’

  ‘Still.’

  ‘He’s a man of many talents,’ giggled Barbara naughtily.

  Elinor looked at her thoughtfully.

  ‘I’m sorry, am I missing something here, Barbara? Is there something going on between the two of you?’ she asked, suddenly wondering if Barbara and Tony were an item. That would explain a lot.

  ‘No, not at all!’ said Barbara, sobering up straight away and looking alarmed. ‘I’m just messing with you, that’s all, darling. There’s really not much to say. Tony and I are old friends and Tony would’ve been glad to know that you come here, solely because it’s company for me. Does that answer satisfy you?’

  Elinor didn’t reply because she felt slightly ashamed at her unaccustomed persistence. She couldn’t explain why she’d so wanted an answer to her question in the first place.

  ‘He often feels compelled to drop by and see me since I’ve been on my own. I guess it’ll make him feel better to know you’re keeping me company now,’ said Barbara, lifting up her glasses and tiredly rubbing her eyes.

  Barbara, with her bright pink glasses sitting on top of her head, was back to looking as innocent as a small child again. The pale pink stripes in her hair glistened in the sunlight beaming down from the strange cupola above her.

  Elinor paused for a long moment before turning to the picture in front of her once more. She couldn’t help thinking that Tony and Barbara were in cahoots about something, and she began to wonder if they’d been talking about her behind her back. Possibly she was just being her usual paranoid self, she thought, shrugging her shoulders again.

  In a fairly harmless and frivolous way, Barbara seemed to be enjoying teasing Elinor with the obliqueness of her comments about Tony Reece but Elinor was finding Barbara’s mischievousness intensely annoying, especially when all she wanted to do at the moment was paint.

  It was time to change the topic of conversation, decided Elinor, hoping that by doing so she’d be able to concentrate on her painting once more.

  ‘It sounds to me, from what everyone around here says, that you’re never short of company,’ Elinor observed.

  ‘It’s true that in the summer months I’m mobbed with visitors but in the dreary winter months things get very quiet, as you’ll have noticed. It gets quite depressing,’ commented Barbara, finally turning her attention back to her painting once more, much to Elinor’s relief.

  Elinor hadn’t told Barbara about the dramatic clifftop suicide that had occurred outside Trenouth that morning, which might have changed Barbara’s perspective somewhat on the lack of excitement in Cornwall during the long winter months. But today Elinor didn’t feel in the mood to talk about it. She was doing her usual trick of burying tragedy underneath layers of self-preservation.

  ‘Yes, I did notice the other week that a book fair is considered the most exciting event to happen at this time of year,’ muttered Elinor, mixing up some oil paints on her palette.

  ‘I know. It’s a little tragic isn’t it? I’m very grateful for your company. I like having people around but Cornwall’s a wasteland over the winter months.’

  Barbara put her brush down and stretched sleepily. She started sifting through her brushes to locate the right-sized brush for her next bit of painting.

  ‘Half the homes here are holiday homes,’ she continued, looking at her canvas once more with half-closed eyes. ‘It’s a real problem because it makes it hard for villages and towns to be a community, when people are only here for short-term holidays. Let alone the fact that these wealthy people who own the holiday homes price out the locals. At least the local councils are slowly starting to address the issue, only allowing new housing to be available to people buying a first home or a main residence.’

  ‘Are homes here that expensive?’ asked Elinor curiously.

  ‘Any home on the coast, with a view of the sea, would expect to be in the million pound bracket.’

  ‘Wow. So that means Leo’s sitting on a gold mine.’

  Barbara laughed.

  ‘Leo doesn’t need money to make him content. He’d have been just as happy if his house was worth nothing. He’s a rare breed who’s actually happy with his life and what he has.’

  Elinor pondered this for a few moments in silence. It was true that Leo’s innate ability to be fulfilled was a treasure in itself. Painting did the same for her. It fulfilled something deep within her soul that nothing else could.

  Conversation in Barbara’s studio came to a halt as the pair of them allowed their imaginations to be transported magically into the images developing on their canvases, and in what seemed to be no time at all the dusk had settled outside, reminding them it was time to stop painting and get some rest.

  26

  Elinor drove back to Trenouth after her painting session with a pleasurable feeling of deep satisfaction. Her picture was going well and it was a relief to realise she had
n’t lost the ability to paint during the sabbatical she’d given herself over the last year.

  She put the radio on at full blast and sang back at the tunes belting out of the speakers. She drove past the field of cows and up the driveway to Leo’s house.

  Oddly, given it was already dusk, there were no lights on in the bungalow. Elinor frowned to herself. It wasn’t like Leo not to be in at this time of day. She felt her spirits sink as she wondered if Leo had been searching for that wretched smuggler’s tunnel again. Still, the only way to find out was to see if he was in the house.

  Elinor switched off the engine, pulled the handbrake on and gathered up her bulky shoulder bag that contained, amongst other things, her preliminary sketches and photographs. She sighed and went up to the front door, fumbling with the heavy key in the lock and cursing as always the stiffness of the old door.

  As soon as she was inside the front door she switched the lights on. She dumped her heavy bag onto the bench in the hallway and made her way through to the dining room.

  Elinor found Leo sitting on one of the dark green armchairs and in semi-darkness. He was looking out of the window and sitting so still he could’ve been carved in stone.

  Elinor switched on one of the lamps.

  ‘Leo?’ asked Elinor, worried. ‘Are you OK?’

  Leo stirred and slowly turned to look at her. Elinor walked up and plonked herself on the sofa next to him.

  ‘I found the tunnel.’

  ‘Really? You found it? Well, that’s fantastic. You always said you knew there was one.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Leo, not looking particularly pleased with his discovery.

  Elinor studied his face, trying to figure out what was going on inside his head.

  ‘You don’t sound terribly excited about finding it,’ said Elinor finally, in a gross understatement. ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘I think I might just have opened Pandora’s box, to be honest with you, Elinor. It’s a discovery that’s shaken me. What I saw at the mouth of the tunnel has me troubled and I’m really not sure what to do about it now.’