The Sea Gate

by Jane Johnson

  ‘It’s Becks.’

  ‘I can see that from Caller ID. Where the bloody hell are you?’

  ‘Cornwall. I told you, in my messages.’

  ‘You know I never bother picking up messages when I’m working. If it’s something important people always call back. But you didn’t!’

  ‘I didn’t have a signal—’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Becky, you can always get a signal. It’s not the bloody moon!’

  ‘I’m at my Cousin Olivia’s. There’s no signal there. I—’

  ‘Who the fuck is Cousin Olivia?’

  I explain the situation and there follows a long silence. Then Eddie says, ‘I need you here.’

  For a moment, I am engulfed by warmth. Eddie has never admitted to needing me.

  ‘So when are you coming back? The house is a mess, and there’s nothing in the fridge. You know it’s my show next week and I need you here!’

  His peremptory tone puts my back up. ‘Sorry, I’m going to miss it. She’s in hospital. The old lady.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure she’s being perfectly well looked after there, whereas I’m bloody starving, living off crisps!’

  ‘Christ, Eddie, she’s ninety-two and she’s broken her leg and they’re threatening to put her in a home unless she modernizes her house.’

  ‘I’ve never even heard you mention her before. How do I know you’re not just making her up? Whereas I—’

  ‘Whereas you are unbelievably selfish! I don’t exist solely for your convenience, you know.’

  There is a pause. I have shocked him. Indeed, I have shocked myself.

  ‘Oh, Becks, I’ve been so worried about you, I’ve hardly been able to concentrate on the show at all.’

  For an instant, I almost believe he’s sincere. But then I feel my heart grow a fine, hard layer of shell. ‘I’m sure you’ll manage. I mean, we live next door to a kebab shop – you’re hardly going to starve, are you?’

  ‘But when—’

  ‘I have to go – you’re breaking up.’ The last thing I hear as I close the connection is my name, uttered on a rising wail. I have to admit to a little frisson of pleasure. I always felt Eddie was too good for me – too handsome, too successful, too confident. I’ve gone through paroxysms of anxiety that he will a) cheat on me, b) leave me c) get knocked down by a bus or d) get a terminal illness. Now, I experience an unexpected sense of freedom.

  A seagull screeches overhead and when I look up I am dazzled by the golden light haloing its wings against the sky; and all at once Cornwall saves me.

  *

  ‘Chynalls, you say?’ The woman behind the counter at the general store and post office is a middle-aged blonde with a sharp haircut and kind eyes.

  ‘Yes, up at the top of the hill.’

  ‘I don’t know any house by that name, lovey.’

  ‘Olivia Kitto’s place,’ I prompt.

  ‘Oh, you mean the Cliff House! You must be her cousin from London, right?’

  Goodness, I think, nothing is secret in a village. I can imagine Rosie coming in every day for milk and bread and a natter, trading gossip as she picks up her pension. ‘That’s right.’ Suddenly I feel guarded. ‘She needs a bathroom put in for her when she comes out of hospital: she’s only got an outdoor loo at the moment.’

  The woman laughs. ‘That generation: tough as nails! Imagine living all this time with an outdoor loo!’ She shakes her head. ‘That’s quite a big job. I’d recommend Chris George normally but he’s off in the Seychelles at the moment. Not much good to you if you need something doing now. How about trying Jeff Holmes? I’ve heard he’s very reliable. Not cheap, but reliable.’

  ‘Not Ezra and Saul Sparrow, then?’ I ask and she bends forward at the waist as if the force of her amusement has winded her. ‘Oh, no,’ she says. ‘Not Saul and Ezra.’

  I take down the number for Jeff Holmes.

  On the noticeboard outside, among the adverts for t’ai chi, crafting classes and the farmer’s market there is a printed card advertising a general builder and plumber: ‘Let us solve your problem. No job too small’. Someone has written something below this and someone else has crossed this out in biro. I gaze at the scribble and make out the scratched-out remark. ‘Go home Paki. Leave means leave!’

  I feel so incensed I take down the number and call it right away.

  *

  Jeff Holmes is the first to turn up. ‘Blimey, lead pipes, bird.’ He scratches his head. ‘That’s a heller job. They’ll all need replacing. I never seen anything like it since doing up my nan’s place.’

  ‘But it’s possible?’

  ‘Well, yes, but I’m very busy. I can probably fit you in around… November?’

  I stare at him. ‘November? But my cousin’s in hospital and can’t be discharged till she has facilities at home.’

  He looks vaguely guilty but determined to stick to his story. ‘Sorry, got a lot of work on. I could pencil you in in case we get a cancellation.’ We agree on this, though I know we are just going through the motions, and off he goes, whistling, relieved to escape.

  Dejection edges in. Of course it is going to be a nightmare. No one appears to have touched the house for a century. It’s probably a job only for a property developer, someone with plenty of ready cash and their own workmen. What have I got myself into? Rather than give in to despair, I visit Gabriel with a peace offering of the grapes Olivia rejected. He glares at me balefully from his cage. ‘If I let you out you have to promise me you’ll go back in again without a fight,’ I tell him. He bobs his head as assent, but I suspect it’s to get a better view of the grapes. ‘Go on then.’ I open the door and he hops onto his doorstep, ruffling his feathers as if preparing for flight.

  ‘Ala, ala,’ he says and gives a soft whistle. ‘Esme hand.’

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re on about,’ I tell him.

  He gives me a sardonic look, then steals the grape and flaps off to the bookcase. ‘If you stayed you could’ve had three grapes,’ I tell him.

  I refill his water and seeds and make a solemn vow to take on the cleaning of the room while he regards me haughtily, then tucks into his treat as if to demonstrate that one grape in the talon is worth more than two in my hand.

  I am still grinning as I shut the door on him and walk out into the hall to find a figure peering through the stained glass. I can’t help but give a little yelp. The figure takes a step back. I remember the postcard, and hurry to open the door.

  ‘I did not mean to alarm you.’ His brown eyes are wary.

  I offer my hand. ‘I’m Rebecca Young,’ I say.

  ‘Reda,’ he replies, taking my hand. Then he places his other hand on his chest and gives a tiny bow, strangely courtly. ‘Reda Medjani.’

  ‘You’re the builder I called?’

  ‘I’m the plumber and general builder. My brother Mo is in charge but he is working in Penzance at the moment.’ His English is clear but accented. He sounds French, looks Mediterranean.

  I like him immediately. He is polite and solemn and goes from room to room, making notes, quiet and thorough. I take him down to the cellar and explain Olivia’s instructions to brick it up. He shakes his head, puzzled. ‘Why would she want to do that?’ He touches the wall, examines his fingers. ‘It seems dry: a good place for storage.’ He looks around. ‘I would have thought it a useful addition to the house.’

  ‘I think she’s concerned about safety,’ I say. ‘There’s some instability in the area.’

  He raises his eyebrows. ‘I doubt shutting the cellar up will solve that.’ But he goes around, looking at the floor, the ceiling, making pencilled notes. ‘We could put acrow props in, and then breeze-block up the doorways if that’s really what she wants. But I wouldn’t have thought it’s your top priority.’

  We go back upstairs, which feels a relief after the chill of the cellar. There’s something oppressive about it – maybe just the idea of the whole weight of the house bearing down above me, maybe I h
ave claustrophobia. Reda takes out a laser measuring device and goes to make more detailed notes on the required conversion, so rather than spy on him I take myself off to strip the guano-encrusted covers from the sofa in what I know I regard as Gabriel’s room, under the watchful eye of the parrot, who has miraculously allowed me to entice him back into his cage. I will wash the covers by hand as a first step, I decide: too shameful to hand them over to a laundry in their current state. I take the filthy bundle outside into the garden and shake the covers out, careful to be upwind of the noxious dust clouds that billow off them. I leave them to detoxify in the sun and go back in, almost walking right into Reda, since the contrast between the sunlight and the interior has rendered me half blind. From his fingers dangles the lost bracelet.

  ‘I found this,’ he says. ‘It looked as if it had been lost.’

  It is such a relief to see it again that I all but snatch it from him and close my fingers over it. As I hold it a wave of warmth suffuses me, as if someone has told me all will be well, that all bad things will pass like a storm, that the sunshine will return. I hug it against my breastbone, smelling its faint, reassuring scent, then slip it back over my wrist.

  When I look up he’s watching me curiously. ‘You are Muslim?’

  The question is so unexpected I burst out laughing. ‘No, why?’

  ‘That’s a misbaha.’

  I am none the wiser.

  ‘Muslim prayer beads,’ he explains. ‘They look very old, beautifully made. It’s hard to find such nice ones nowadays.’

  ‘They belong to my cousin, the old lady who lives here.’

  ‘Is she Muslim?’

  I wrinkle my brow. ‘No…’ How odd. Then I remember something. ‘But she’s well travelled. She mentioned that she had walked in the Sahara.’

  His eyes become curves of shining light. ‘She sounds like a remarkable person. May I?’ He reaches out and takes my hand in his, turns it to examine the beads. A warm thrill runs through me and I feel myself blush. ‘Imagine,’ he says, ‘how much work went into the making of this misbaha. How much love and attention. We have lost the ability to craft things in the modern world. No one has the time any more, or the money to pay for that time. Where I come from there is still a strong artisanal culture. People still make things and pride themselves on the perfection of their craft. But it’s becoming a dying art even there.’

  ‘Where’s there?’

  ‘Just outside Oujda.’

  I have to admit I have no idea where Oujda is.

  ‘In the north of Morocco,’ he informs me. ‘My family are still there and across the border in Algeria.’

  ‘Do you see them often?’

  ‘The Moroccan cousins, yes, but it’s more complicated to see my Algerian family – the border has been closed since the sixties.’ He looks away, suddenly shy.

  ‘What brought you to Cornwall?’ I ask. Who is this unfamiliar woman, falling into easy conversation with a stranger?

  ‘Oh, this and that,’ he says, eyes on his notepad. ‘Family, mainly.’ I follow his gaze, half-expecting to see his notes running from right-to-left in the Arabic way. But instead his writing is neat and even upside down I can pick out such English words as pipes and drains.

  ‘I’ve come down from London,’ I say, pushing my envelope, but just then his phone rings. Goodness, a handsome, apparently capable, plumber with phone signal!

  ‘I have to go,’ he says after exchanging a few words in a language I do not recognize and closing the call. ‘Look after that misbaha. I’ll text you an estimate. We’ll do a separate one for the conversion and the plumbing, and one for the cellar work.’

  ‘You think it’s all possible then?’

  ‘Everything is possible. It will require hard labour but Mo and I are not afraid of that.’

  ‘And if I accept your quote when could you start?’

  He gives me the most devastating smile. ‘Right away.’

  As I watch him pick his way back down the path my thumb plays over the smooth wood of the misbaha’s beads and it feels as if a missing piece of the jigsaw of the world has been fitted back into the puzzle, bringing the whole design together.

  *

  My good mood continues until I get ready for bed that evening. When I peel off my jeans something falls out onto the floor – a stone. The one I found a few days ago, that poked me in the shoulder as I made my way down the tunnel from the cellar.

  It is a sort of off-white, a couple of inches long. I bend and pick it up and peer at it curiously. It is lighter than I had expected, and smoother too. It feels rather nice as I run my thumb down it. Until it flexes, then bends in the middle.

  Pebbles are not jointed. Pebbles do not articulate.

  A crab claw, I tell myself. That’s what it must be.

  But crab claws are pink, aren’t they? Or is that only when they’re cooked?

  I know it is not a crab claw. I drop the object as if it is fire-hot. It lies on the threadbare Turkish rug pointing accusingly towards me.

  It’s a bone. A finger bone. A human finger bone.

  My mind runs in frantic circles, jabbering crazily. There are human remains in the tunnel under the house. Is it part of a skeleton? Is it ancient, historic? It is rather disgusting, but also rather fascinating. I wonder if there’s a local museum I can take it to for dating.

  Then I remember Olivia’s instruction to BRICK UP THE CELLAR and I go cold from the crown of my head to the pit of my stomach.

  Oh, Olivia. What have you done?

  8

  Olivia

  1943

  THE SUMMER WAS PASSING EXTREMELY SLOWLY, AND Sundays were the worst. Olivia hated Sundays. Who on earth thought it was a good idea to have a day of rest and then make you get up early to go to church?

  For a long time she lay in her narrow bed contemplating exactly how much trouble she would be in if she sneaked off through the sea gate for a swim. It was so tempting. Sunlight was piercing the edge of the blackout blind: it was going to be hot. Her mind wandered to her conversation with Mummy on Friday evening. Just three minutes – it was all you ever got because of the need to keep the phone lines clear. How evasive she had been when Olivia had asked when she was coming back. ‘Not for a while, darling, but I’ll do my best to be back for your birthday. Sixteen: I can’t quite believe it. Do you know, last week a young man I met thought I was twenty-five? Sweet boy. He looked so smart in his uniform—’

  ‘Can I come up to London to see you then?’ Olivia had cut in desperately, before the time ran out. ‘I won’t be a nuisance. We could go shopping.’ She had been saving her clothes ration, just in case.

  ‘Not right now, darling,’ her mother said briskly. ‘Let’s talk about it next time. Must go. Tell Jago to turn the engine of the Flying 8 over, won’t you? Toodle-pip, Olivia.’ The connection cut.

  Toodle-bloody-pip, Olivia thought. Such a ghastly phrase. She supposed it was very ‘London’.

  Hearing the sounds of the rest of the household stirring, Olivia threw herself out of bed and rolled up the blind. The sun hit her full in the face and she closed her eyes and bathed in it. Beryl and Marjorie would be bickering over who got to use the hot water first, not something that much concerned Olivia. ‘Have a lick and a spit,’ Daddy would say. It was impossible to think he was back in North Africa with his life in danger again.

  *

  By the time she appeared at the breakfast table everyone was seated, sipping their tea, or in Mary’s case, yesterday’s milk: Sunday was the only day Olivia didn’t run up to the farm for fresh milk. At the sight of her, Marjorie burst out laughing. ‘Heavens! What are you wearing?’ Even Beryl suppressed a smile. When the Land Girls had first arrived Olivia had harboured hopes that Beryl might be an ally in her war of attrition against Winnie but Marjorie and Winnie had seemed immediately to be on one another’s wavelength, and Beryl was too much in Marjorie’s thrall to step out of line.

  ‘Go and change at once, Olivia!’ Winnie puckered her lips
.

  ‘What’s the matter? It’s all clean.’

  ‘You can’t wear trousers to church.’

  ‘Other people do.’

  ‘Men wear trousers, not young ladies.’

  Olivia shrugged. ‘They’re comfortable, and it’s too hot for stockings.’

  ‘Well, put some socks on then.’

  ‘My legs rub together when it’s hot.’ When it was hot her thighs chafed, a reminder of her weak and inferior femaleness with every step: something she didn’t feel at all when she wore sensible clothing.

  ‘You shouldn’t eat so much,’ Marjory said snippily.

  ‘If you ate a bit more you wouldn’t have to stuff your bra with cotton wool.’ Olivia took no prisoners. Leaving them mouths agape, she ran back upstairs, ate a couple of biscuits she had squirrelled away for such emergencies (since Winnie’s punishments largely took the form of Olivia being shut in her room without food, which seemed to happen with inordinate regularity, no doubt to stretch the rations) and savagely tore through her wardrobe and chest of drawers, emerging at the last moment in a formal cotton dress she hated, sun hat, plimsolls and ankle socks. And underneath her skirts a pair of French knickers she had filched off the washing line. They were Marjorie’s and (apparently) expensive. Their disappearance had caused a great to-do and accusations levelled at the postman, the ARP warden and even Jago, while Olivia sat uncharacteristically quiet, giving her task of potato peeling her entire attention. She came down the stairs now, keeping her skirts tight as she descended so that no flash of the white silk would give the game away, and off they went up the hill to the church at St Pol de Leon. Winnie considered herself too posh for chapel, not even Mount Zion, which was Wesleyan.

  *

  Olivia’s eyes wandered across the congregation. Such a diverse, yet unrepresentative, collection of folk, people whose paths under normal circumstances would never have crossed. Land Girls from London, Yorkshire, Suffolk, and even as far as Cumbria, lipsticked to the nines, since you never knew which young men might be home on leave. Four of the POWs were seated at the back, with Farmer Roberts and his son Leo flanking them as if on guard. The farmer was responsible for his prisoner workforce, on and – as on this rare occasion – off the farm, but down here at the end of the world it was unlikely any of them could escape: there was nowhere to go but Penzance station or the sea, and you’d never get as far as the former without a couple of hundred pairs of eyes on you and a hundred busy tongues reporting on your whereabouts. She sneaked a glance at the Dark Man, as she thought of him, which seemed more polite than the names the farm lads called out – Oi, Blackie, and worse. She was not the only one watching him: two of the Land Girls from Gwavas Farm were shooting him looks from under their lashes, then catching each other in the act and dissolving into giggles. But he appeared oblivious to their attention, and sat there staring into space, his expression closed and unhappy. He did not, Olivia noticed, join in with the hymns, or the congregational responses, and while the vicar gave his sermon, he closed his eyes. Olivia liked his face – a narrow wedge defined by sharp cheekbones and a long straight nose. Clean lines, she thought, easy to draw. She committed the shapes and planes of him to memory and wondered again why he was here. He didn’t look European, but neither was he as dark as some of the American GIs stationed over at Hayle, whose arrival had caused a stir among the local populace who had issued dire warnings about little brown babies and social exclusion. He must have quite a story to tell but all she knew was that he’d been interned at the St Columb camp and passed on to work at the farm, where everyone avoided or insulted him because of his difference. Even Leo was pressing himself hard against the end of the pew rather than risk touching his side.