by Jane Johnson
‘I’m Rebecca Young. I’ve come instead of my mum, who’s…’ I can’t bring myself to say the word.
Jem’s expression becomes guarded. ‘Oh ah? She never mentioned you. Why you here?’
‘Cousin Olivia wrote to Mum to ask if she’d come down to help her.’
Jeremiah stills. Then he turns his head up to the house, scrutinizing it through half-closed eyes. ‘Did she now?’ he says softly. ‘Never mentioned it to me or the missus.’ He looks back at me. ‘Well, I’m here to see to Gabriel.’
Gabriel. I remember now that in Mum’s letter, Olivia had referred to her companion. Her unhygienic companion. Feeling some trepidation, I follow Jem to the door, which he opens up, and we enter a gloomy hallway.
Inside, the house seems huge, much bigger than it appears from outside. A long corridor between panelled walls disappears into distant murk. A staircase ascends into darkness. The place smells of mildew, and something worse. I set my suitcase down on the tiles, ready to greet my elderly relative. Jem does not announce himself but just crosses the hall and flicks the light switch. Nothing happens. ‘Agh, bleddy thing. I swear this house is haunted by spriggans.’ He goes down the hall and drags an aluminium half-ladder out from a cupboard, sets it beneath the junction box and climbs awkwardly to the top step.
‘Where is Miss Kitto?’ I ask. Jem is muttering over the thick tangle of wires and with a sinking feeling I am sure I know the answer. There was no date on the letter. How long did it sit unopened at Mum’s flat? Weeks, or months? With some cruel symmetry have they passed away within days of one another?
Jem’s voice cuts in. ‘If you could go and open up the drawing room shutters I could see what I’m doing.’
I guess at the first door on the left. The brass doorknob fills my hand, and the catch yields with a creak. As I walk into semi-darkness, a stench stings the back of my nose as sharply as mustard. And then I feel eyes on me, a distinctly primeval sensation. Is Cousin Olivia sitting in the darkness, watching me? Or does her shade occupy one of the hulking easy chairs, a malevolent ghost bent on scaring the shit out of anyone who dares to cross the threshold? The thought is so eerie I run towards the window.
As soon as I set my hand on the shutter-bar the air in the room stirs and an unseen entity whooshes past my head.
‘Bl—ack! Blackkk!’
Something brushes my face and I yelp. Hauling the shutters open to flood the room with light, I turn to face the demon… which is regarding me balefully out of a cold, white-ringed eye from the top of the standard lamp.
It is a parrot. A grey parrot with a hooked beak and a neat fan of crimson tail-feathers and I am cast back to that long-ago Cornish holiday – a big, sunny sitting room where Mum and I sat side by side on a lumpy chintz sofa eating spicy yellow bread studded with dried fruit and spread thick with butter while from the top of a bookcase a large grey bird scrutinized our every move. I had looked away, unnerved, and in that moment it had descended on outstretched wings, dug its scaly grey claws into my saffron cake, and with a loud clatter of feathers retreated to the shelves to consume its booty. Surely it can’t be the same bird? How long do parrots live?
‘That will teach you to pay attention!’ Olivia had laughed. ‘What Gabriel wants Gabriel takes.’ Turning to him she said, ‘What will our guests think? I don’t know why we named you for an angel: you are the very devil!’
‘Shut the fuck up!’ the creature retorted.
Mum had gasped and I had clapped my hands to my mouth as if it had been me, not the bird, who had uttered these forbidden words. But the old woman was laughing, and the parrot hopped from foot to foot, hugely pleased with itself, and I suddenly burst out in such giggles that even Mum had smiled.
How could I have forgotten such a bizarre incident?
The room looks smaller now, and infinitely shabbier. The chintz roses are faded to ambiguity and all the surfaces are covered in dust and guano.
Jem shows his face at the door. ‘I see you found Gabriel,’ he says and at the sight of him Gabriel lets out a banshee caw followed by, ‘Messy moose key.’ Jem grimaces. ‘You’d think it were human sometimes.’ He wags his finger at the bird. ‘Picked the lock again, did you, you old bugger? Bleddy thing ought to have its neck wrung.’ He looks at me sharply. ‘Pardon my French. Don’t suppose you’ll want to stay: lots of diseases you can get from parrots, they say.’
‘Oh yes, psittacosis,’ I say, the word popping into my mouth. ‘But I’m sure it can be cleaned up.’ I look around. ‘This must be such a lovely room in summer, all these windows, and the views over the garden.’ And the rubble of the porch. ‘But it doesn’t look as if Cousin Olivia has used it in ages. Where is she?’ I dread the answer.
Jem offers an unfamiliar word, then adds, ‘Hospital. Took a tumble and broke her leg.’
I feel an inner pang at the very word ‘hospital’. How I hate them. ‘Oh no. How is she doing?’
He gives me a humourless smile. ‘If you knew her you’d be more concerned about the nurses.’
‘Bit of a termagant, is she?’
‘She’m some heller.’
He makes a move towards the bird, which allows him to approach before lofting into the air and skimming past his head to the bookcase, where it sits making a noise like a cane hitting flesh. Clack, clack, clack. It sounds taunting, triumphant.
‘I’ll wring your neck one day, boy. Killed plenty chickens in my time.’ Jem turns back to me. ‘My missus keeps house for Miss Olivia but she won’t set foot in this room.’
Is he trying to change the subject? ‘Is the hospital far? I must go and see Olivia.’
Grasping the nettle, darling: well done.
‘Truro,’ he replies.
I remember passing Truro on the train – an attractive little city gathered around a cathedral in a dip between low hills. But it seemed to take ages from Truro to Penzance and the idea of making my way back to the station, then to the hospital in Truro and back again tonight is daunting.
Jem notes my despair. ‘There be a pub with rooms in the village, you can stay there overnight. Missus can take you into Truro to see Miss Olivia tomorrow.’
I think about this for a moment. I haven’t been able to work much these past months and there isn’t much in the bank. ‘If it’s OK I’ll stay here. Olivia said in her letter that the upstairs was pristine. Would that be all right?’
Jem makes a face. ‘Suit yourself, bird. If you’m staying, you can feed Gabriel. There’s food for un in the scullery.’
And with that he is off, leaving me alone. With the parrot.
Gabriel fixes me with a black regard.
‘What on earth am I going to do with you?’ I ask.
‘Fuck off,’ he says, so quietly it is almost an endearment.
‘You are very rude.’
I pick my way across the room between the splats of guano, but as I take hold of the door handle there is a titanic thud on my shoulder as Gabriel lands on me, his claws digging through my coat. When I scream the bird echoes my cry with perfect pitch, making my eardrums ring. Then he takes off again to land on top of his cage, where he sits and preens, as if this is a fine old game.
*
Now that Jem has restored the electrics, the hall is lit by an unshaded electric light, its illumination unforgiving. The mud of years has been ground into the tiles and runners; the floral wallpaper has faded to an unalluring palette of browns, like the husks of dead wildflowers. In the hall behind the staircase a silent longcase clock stands casting the shadow of a huge sentinel. I hear neither tick nor tock from it and the window into its innards shows a pendulum hanging motionless. It’s a handsome antique, but I am rather relieved it’s not working – is there anything eerier than late-night chimes echoing through an empty house?
Beyond the clock lies a series of closed doors. I open the first one and find a dining room full of big dark furniture, chinaware laid as if for dinner, like something off the Marie Celeste.
Opposite are two n
arrow doors. The first opens in a slant beneath the stairs and contains brooms and buckets and the half-ladder Jem used. When I try the neighbouring door I find it locked, the iron handle freezing, and chilly air seeps out around my wet feet.
At the end of the hall is a door held on a latch. I depress the catch, flick on the light switch – an old-fashioned brass one with a bobble on the end – and find a damp-smelling room containing an ancient range and a pair of stained, shallow copper sinks beneath a window. On the floor sits a metal tub of what appears to be verdigris-stained copper; pushed against the far wall is a strange contraption with a wooden handle, and beside it a tiled worktop upon which sits a dish of apples and a sack labelled ‘Pretty Boy Parrot Food’.
A channel cut into the floor leads to a door to the outside. To let water out? Or worse, blood? I shiver. The room is as cold as if it has absorbed a hundred winters. It is like stepping back into another century. But I am the one who feels like a ghost.
I go back into the hallway to explore further. The next door offers a kitchen of sorts, comprising a ramshackle collection of wooden cupboards, an old range, a butler’s sink and an armpit-high fridge bearing an Electrolux banner in a typeface no one has used in fifty years. The pale-blue interior contains complex mouldings inhabited by a milk bottle, something in a brown paper bag that turns out to be half a loaf of bread, a dish of butter, half a packet of chocolate digestives and some eggs. I lift the bottle and sniff it cautiously. How long did Jem say Olivia had been in hospital? Weeks? But there’s no mould, and it doesn’t smell sour. Someone has been using the kitchen, maybe Jem’s wife when she comes to clean the house. I am somewhat comforted: at least supper is sorted. The central door of the range is still warm to the touch and when I look inside I can see the glow of embers, as if someone has just been here, stoking it.
Once more I have the feeling of eyes upon me, and when I spin around I see above the wooden table a portrait of a young woman with a piercing black gaze. Her sleeves are rolled up and there’s some muscle on her forearms, which are folded: guarded and defiant. She’s wearing what appear to be men’s clothes and her face has an emphatic bone structure. I forget the eerie sensation, captivated by the skill of the artist. There’s a lot more texture in the painting than you’d expect, as if the oils have been laid on with a palette knife rather than a brush. The style is loose and daring, the application of light done in bold blocks of cadmium.
Continuing my explorations, I discover two further rooms, one entirely panelled with books, with a leather armchair pulled up beside an inglenooked woodburner; the other containing a camp bed covered in blankets and a candle-lantern on a makeshift table beside it. A pile of clothes in the corner are in need of a wash, and behind a hand-painted screen depicting Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden there is an exceptionally large, but thankfully empty, Victorian Flow Blue chamber pot. My grin is short-lived as I remember the bit in the letter about the polar trek to the ‘privy’. Oh, dear God. I am overtaken by an urgent need to pee.
I run upstairs and open door after door. Bedroom. Bedroom. Box room. Bedroom. Linens cupboard.
No bathroom.
‘I am not,’ I say out loud, running back down the stairs, ‘using that bloody pot. I would rather die!’ My voice disappears into the empty spaces of the house.
From the front sitting room comes a sardonic cackle.
The scullery door gives out onto an unevenly paved area, the stone underfoot rosetted with lichen. In the falling gloom, through the still-falling rain, I spy a brick shed. I make a run for it and push the door open. Lurking within is a toilet of cracked porcelain. Spider webs drape the dark spaces between the high cistern and ceiling, map out territory between the bricks, festoon the toilet roll holder with its roll of shiny Izal. I shudder. Perhaps the pot after all? No: I simply can’t.
I feel for a light switch. There is no light switch. I feel the walls of my self-control begin to crumble.
Pull yourself together, Becky, the voice of my mother chides me gently.
Sitting in the dark on the cold Bakelite seat, watched by myriad arachnid eyes, I curse my impulsiveness. It appears I have travelled not just three hundred miles, but three hundred years back in time.
3
THE NEXT MORNING I ROLL OFF THE BED IN THE LEAST mildewy of the upstairs rooms, pad to the window and pull back the heavy curtains, expecting to look out into a grey landscape and lashing rain. Instead, I feel the sun on my face, like a benediction. Sea and sky fuse at the distant horizon. Spangles of light glitter like spilled treasure, undulating with the rolling of the waves. Far out, a single crabber ploughs across the bay, as squat as a child’s toy. To the east, St Michael’s Mount, misty as legend, a barely sketched Disney castle rising out of the sea.
This is the Cornwall I have always imagined. The sense of wildness and isolation, of fairy tale and possibility. There is a luminous quality to the air as if everything has been renewed overnight. No smell of diesel fumes or frying onions from the kebab shop, no rumble of buses or aeroplanes. No shouting neighbours or wailing children, no booming bass from the flat upstairs. Nothing but the cry of a solitary seagull perched on the hedge in the lane below.
When it lifts off into the blue air I see what appears to be the top of a gate, an indentation in the hedge below the house. I wonder what it opens onto?
Filled with sudden energy, I pull on jeans and trainers to go with the T-shirt I have slept in and run downstairs. Even the outhouse holds no horrors for me. I leave the door ajar and sit there with sunlight angling across my thighs, looking out at tumbles of red and orange nasturtiums, their peppery smell scenting the air. I wash my hands in the scullery, wiping my hands dry on a tea towel, and dash out of the front door, through the debris of the collapsed porch and down the steps, and across the narrow track where the taxi dropped me the previous day – and yes, there it is! Strangled by weeds and brambles, but tantalizingly present, a little wooden gate, its paint flaking charmingly.
The latch is rusty but lifts cleanly from the keeper. Great whorls of convolvulus and goosegrass wind in and out of the strakes. I pull them away by the handful and run my hand over the carved top bar wonderingly. Beyond it, steep earth steps, just visible between overgrown vegetation, lead down to the sea.
I slip through the gate and turn to click it shut, and as I do my eye is caught by a series of oblique squares – diamonds one inside another, like a string of eyes – that have been cut all the way down the open side, giving the plain back a rich artisan touch. The house has no indoor bathroom, indeed no luxuries at all, yet someone has lavished attention on a little rustic sea gate! It is a delightful incongruity.
The pitch of the path is fearsome, but I odge down on my haunches, brushing nettles aside with my feet as I go, steadying myself by catching hold of exposed twists of hawthorn roots, and finding them polished as if from long use as handles. I think about the people who have used this path and these roots before me – Olivia as a child, her parents, their parents. And my mother. For among the other papers I found near Mum’s armchair were other letters from her cousin, reminiscing about Mum’s childhood holidays in Cornwall, how she had stayed here at Chynalls with Olivia and my grandparents. How Mum’s father was related to Olivia’s mother in some way: a branch of the family that lost contact, if Mum and I are the only ones left to whom the old lady can turn. I can imagine women bundling up their skirts, crabbing down just as I am, picnic baskets balanced in their laps, while their children scramble towards the sea, as nimble as monkeys. As I touch the rocks and roots, I imagine my mother touching them as she must have as a child, and a lovely arc of connection runs through me like electricity.
At last the vegetation gives way to bare cliff and I can see a tiny cove embraced by two arms of rock beyond which the surf boils and bashes. A moment later I am down on the pebbles, looking out to where white-gold sand is buffered by wave-smoothed boulders littered with strands of bladderwrack and kelp. I breathe in the sharp, clean air, gaze out at the s
parkling sea. It is as if the world is saying: time for a new start.
Taking off my trainers, I walk to the lace-edged water and am briefly shocked by the cold, then enjoy the sensation of the waves as they withdraw, sucking the sand from between my toes. A boat heads eastwards beyond the necklace of rocks, trailing a cloud of white gulls. It could be any time, and no time. I am in the moment, and life is good.
I walk up the beach to poke between the pebbles and seaweed, picking up a pretty stone or a piece of cloudy green seaglass, finding conical spiral shells of purple and pearly white; little round winkles as bold as brass and gold as gorse; blue-black mussel shells paired like dark angels’ wings, and once a tiny white cowrie, no bigger than the nail of my little finger, the curve of its delicately corrugated lips leading into rosy depths, like a secret smile.
In the rock pools translucent shrimps dart out of fissures towards curtains of green weed, chased by little blennies. Anemones as round and shiny as jellies cluster below the waterline; colonies of barnacles encrust the sides. I take a lone limpet by surprise, moving it a couple of millimetres before its great yellow foot clamps down to anchor it fast. It occurs to me that the last time I played like this – happily, purposelessly absorbed – I was a child.
At last, my stomach growls, desperate for coffee and toast. I decide to walk down into the village to buy provisions, and see if Eddie has called me back. The thought brings with it a dull pain. He has not answered my many calls, maybe has not even listened to my message, though I checked my phone all the way down on the train. I know he must be busy, finishing his pots, head down in the studio. When he works it is with total focus. I love to watch Eddie work: his skill and artistry make my heart swell with pride. And when his hands caress the clay as the wheel turns I remember the way those hands have touched my body, though not always with such care. Is it possible to feel jealous of clay?
