“And was it?”
“No, of course it wasn’t. A bit cobwebby, perhaps, but perfectly habitable.”
“That was kind of her … I must thank her.”
“Yes, she’d like that.”
The cobbled road climbed steeply away from the harbour. Emma’s tired legs ached. Suddenly, and with no word of explanation, Ben removed her bag from her grasp.
“What the hell have you got in this?”
“A toothbrush.”
“It weighs like pig-iron. When did you leave Paris, Emma?”
“This morning.” It seemed a lifetime ago.
“And how did Bernstein’s know about you?”
“I had to go there to get some money. Some sterling. I was given twenty pounds out of your petty cash account. I hope you don’t mind.”
“I don’t give a damn.”
They passed his studio, shuttered and dark. “Have you started painting yet?” asked Emma.
“Of course I have. That’s what I came back for.”
“And the work you did in Japan?”
“I left it in America for the exhibition.”
Now, the air was full of the sound of surf, of breakers rolling up on to the beach. The big beach. Their beach. And then the uneven roof of their cottage came into view, illuminated by the street lamp which stood by the blue gate. As they approached it, Ben felt in his jacket pocket for the key, and he went ahead of Emma, through the gate and down the steps, unlocking the door, and letting himself in, switching on the lights as he went, so that in a moment every window was blazing.
Emma followed more slowly. She saw at once the bright flicker of firelight and the almost inhuman cleanliness and order which Daniel’s wife had somehow created out of neglect. Everything shone, was scrubbed and whitewashed and polished to within an inch of its life. Cushions had been plumped and placed with geometrical precision. There were no flowers, but the house was pervaded with a strong smell of carbolic.
Ben sniffed and made a face. “Like a bloody hospital,” he said. He had put down Emma’s bag, and now disappeared in the direction of the kitchen. Emma crossed the room and stood at the fireplace, warming her hands at the blaze. Cautiously, she was beginning to feel more hopeful. She had been afraid that there would be no welcome. But Ben had met her train and there was a fire in the fireplace. No human being could ask for much more.
Over the mantelshelf was the room’s only picture, the painting that Ben had done of Emma when she was six years old. It was the first time in her life—and, it transpired, the last—that she had been the centre of his attention, and, for this reason alone she had borne uncomplaining the long hours of sitting, the boredom, the cramps, and his unleashed fury if she moved. For the picture, she had worn a wreath of marguerite daisies, and each day had brought the recurring pleasure of watching Ben’s clever hands make a fresh wreath, and then the pride of having him place it on her head, solemnly, as though he were crowning a queen.
He came back into the room. “She’s a good woman, that wife of Daniel’s. I shall tell him so. I told her to stock up with a few supplies.” Emma turned, and saw that he had found himself a bottle of Haigs and a tumbler. “Get me a jug of water, would you, Emma?” A thought occurred to him. “And I suppose another glass, if you want a drink.”
“I don’t want a drink. But I’m hungry.”
“I don’t know if she laid in those sort of supplies.”
“I’ll look.”
The kitchen, too, had been scoured and scrubbed and swept. She opened the fridge and found eggs and bacon and a bottle of milk, and there was bread in the bin. She took a jug off a hook on the dresser and filled it with cold water, and carried it back into the sitting-room. Ben was wandering about, fiddling with the lamps, trying to find something wrong. He had always hated this house.
She said, “Do you want me to cook you some scrambled eggs?”
“What? Oh, no, I don’t want anything. You know, it’s odd being back here. I keep feeling Hester’s going to appear and tell us to start doing something we don’t want to.”
Emma thought of Christopher. She said, “Oh, poor Hester.”
“Poor nothing. Interfering bitch.”
She went back to the kitchen, found a saucepan, a bowl, some butter. From the living-room, she could hear the continued sounds of Ben’s restlessness. He opened and shut doors, drew a curtain, kicked a log back on to the fire. Presently, he appeared in the kitchen doorway, a cigarette in one hand, his glass cradled in the other. He watched Emma, stirring eggs. He said, “You’ve grown up, haven’t you?”
“I’m nineteen. Whether I’ve grown up or not, I really wouldn’t know.”
“It’s odd, your not being a little girl any longer.”
“You’ll get used to it.”
“Yes, I suppose so. How long are you going to stay?”
“Let’s say I’ve made no plans for going away again.”
“You mean, you want to live here?”
“For the time being.”
“With me?”
Emma glanced at him, over her shoulder. “Would that be so painful?”
“I don’t know,” said Ben. “I’ve never tried it.”
“That’s why I came back. I thought perhaps it was time you did.”
“You couldn’t, by any chance, be reproaching me?”
“Why should I reproach you?”
“Because I abandoned you, and went off to teach in Texas. Because I never came to see you in Switzerland. Because I wouldn’t let you come to Japan.”
“If I really minded about those things, I shouldn’t have wanted to come back.”
“And supposing I decide to go away again?”
“Are you going to go?”
“No.” He looked down at his drink. “Not for the moment. At the moment I’m tired. I’ve come back for a bit of peace.” He looked up again. “But I shan’t stay here for ever.”
“I shan’t stay here for ever, either,” said Emma. She put the toast on a plate, the egg on the toast, opened a drawer to find a knife and fork.
Ben watched all this with some agitation. “You aren’t going to be an efficient little housewife, are you? Another Hester? If so, I shall throw you out.”
“I couldn’t be efficient if I tried. If it’s any comfort to you, I miss trains, burn food, lose money, drop things. I had a sun hat, this morning, in Paris, but by the time I’d got to Porthkerris, it had gone. How could anyone lose a sun hat in this country, in February?”
But he was still not convinced. “Won’t you want to be driving around in a car all the time?”
“I don’t know how to drive a car.”
“And television and telephones and all that rubbish?”
“They’ve never figured largely in my life.”
He laughed then, and Emma wondered if there was something wrong in thinking your own father so attractive.
He said, “You know, I wasn’t sure how well this was going to work. But under such favourable circumstances, I can only say I’m glad you came back. Welcome home.”
And he raised his glass to Emma and finished his drink, and then went back to the sitting-room to retrieve the bottle and pour himself the other half.
4
The bar of the Sliding Tackle was small and snug, blackly panelled, very old. It boasted only one tiny window, which looked out over the harbour, so that a visitor’s first impression, as he came in from the glaring outside light, was one of utter darkness. Later, when his eyes became accustomed to the gloom, other peculiarities became evident, the most prominent being that there were not two parallel lines in the place, for over the centuries the little pub had settled into its foundations, like a deep sleeper in a comfortable bed, and various irregularities, like optical illusions, were apt to make potential customers feel intoxicated before they had even downed their first drink. The flagged floor sank in one direction, displaying a sinister gap between stone and wainscoting. The blackened beam, which formed the framework of t
he bar itself, sloped in another. And the white-washed ceiling had such a lethal tilt to it that the landlord had been driven to put up notices saying “Watch That Beam” and “Mind Your Head.”
Over the years the Sliding Tackle had remained, stubbornly, itself. Set in the old and unfashionable part of Porthkerris, slap on the harbour, with no space for chi-chi terraces or tea gardens, it had managed to resist the spate of summer tourism which engulfed the rest of the town. It had its regulars, who came to drink, and talk in comfortable, undemanding grunts, and play shove-ha’penny. It had a dart board and a small blackened grate where, winter and summer, a fire always burned. It had Daniel, the barman, and Fred, turnip-faced and squint-eyed, who was employed in the summer cleaning trash from the beaches and hiring out deck chairs, and spent the rest of the year blissfully drinking his takings.
And it had Ben Litton.
“It’s a matter of priorities,” said Marcus, as he and Robert set forth in the Alvis to run Ben Litton to earth. It was so fine that Robert had put the hood down, and so Marcus wore, with his habitual black overcoat, a tweed cap like a mushroom that looked as though it had been bought for some other person. “Priorities and timing. At mid-day on a Sunday, the first place to look is the Sliding Tackle. And if he isn’t there, which I very much doubt, we’ll go on to the studio, then he’ll be at the cottage.”
“Or maybe, on such a wonderful morning, just out and about?”
“I don’t think so. This is his drinking time, and as far as that is concerned, he has always been a creature of habit.”
Still only March, it was indeed a freak day of unbelievable beauty. The sky was cloudless. The sea, driven obliquely into the curve of the bay by a buffeting north-west wind, lay streaked before them in every shade of blue, from deep indigo to palest turquoise. From the top of the hill, the view stretched to infinity, distant headlands merging into a haze that suggested the full heat of midsummer. And below, down the twisting road, the town dropped steeply, a jumble of narrow cobbled lanes, and white-washed houses, and bleached, crooked roofs, clustered around the harbour.
Each year, during the three months of summer, Porthkerris became a small hell on earth. Its inadequate streets were jammed with cars, its pavement overflowed with underdressed humanity, its shops spilled over with postcards, sun hats, sand-shoes, shrimping-nets, surfboards and inflatable plastic cushions. On the big beach the tents and the bathing huts went up, and the cafés opened, their terraces crammed with round iron tables, speared by umbrellas. Orange banners flapped in the wind, advertising Raspberry Sticks, and Frozen Chocolate-Coated Clusters and other horrors, and if these were not sustenance enough, there were Cornish Splits for sale, and pasties, filled with soggy grey potato.
And around Whitsun, the amusement arcade opened up, with pin-ball machines and juke boxes blaring, and perhaps another cluster of ramshackle but picturesque houses would go down before the bulldozers, to clear the space for yet another car park, and the residents, and the people who loved the town, and the artists, would be horrified witnesses to this rape and say, It’s worse than ever. It is ruined. We can stay no longer. But each autumn, once the last train had borne away the last peeling-nosed invader, Porthkerris settled back, miraculously, in its normal tempo. The shops put up their shutters. The tents came down, and the beaches were washed clean by the winter storms. The only flags which flew were lines of washing, flapping from house to house, like pastel-coloured bunting, or propped high over the greenswards where the fishermen spread their nets to dry.
And it was then that the old magic reasserted itself, and it became easy to understand why a man like Ben Litton should return time and time again, like a homing pigeon, for refreshment, and the security of familiar things, to be caught up once more in the painter’s obsession with colour and light.
The Sliding Tackle was at the far end of the harbour road. Robert drew up outside its crooked porch and killed the engine. It was very warm and quiet. The tide was out, the harbour full of clean sand and seaweed and screaming gulls. Some children, coaxed out by the sunshine, played with buckets and spades, watched over by a couple of knitting grannies in pinafores and hairnets, and a scrawny black cat sat on the cobbles and washed its ears.
Marcus got out of the car. “I’ll go and see if he’s inside. You wait here.”
Robert took a cigarette from the packet on the dashboard and lit it, and watched the cat. Above his head the inn sign creaked in the wind, and a gull came and sat on it and eyed Robert with malevolence, screaming defiance. Two men came down the road, walking with the slow righteous gait of a restful Methodist Sunday. They wore navy blue guernseys and white cloth caps.
“’Morning,” they said as they passed.
“Lovely day,” said Robert.
“Yes. Lovely.”
After a little, Marcus appeared once more. “All right, I’ve found him.”
“What about Emma?”
“He says she’s back at the studio. Whitewashing.”
“Want me to go and get her?”
“If you would. It’s…” he glanced at his watch, “twelve-fifteen. Suppose you’re back here at one. I said we’d lunch at one-thirty.”
“Right. I’ll walk. It’s not worth taking the car.”
“Can you remember the way?”
“Of course.” He had been before, twice, to Porthkerris, chasing up Ben Litton for some reason or other when Marcus had not been available to do it for himself. Ben’s phobia about telephones and cars and all forms of communication, presented, from time to time, the most hideous complications, and Marcus had long since accepted the fact that it was quicker to make the journey from London to Cornwall and beard the lion in his den than to wait for an answer to the most impassioned of reply-paid telegrams.
He got out of the car and slammed the door shut. “Do you want me to tell her what it’s all about, or shall I leave that pleasant task to you?”
Marcus grinned. “You tell her.”
Robert pulled off his narrow tweed cap and dropped it on to the driving seat. He said, amiably, “You bastard.”
He had had a letter from Emma, a week or two after she passed through London.
Dear Robert,
If I call Marcus Marcus, I can’t possibly call you Mr. Morrow, can I? No, of course I can’t, not possibly. I should have written at once to thank you so very much for the lunch and for letting me have the money, and for letting Ben know that I was on the train. He actually came to meet me at the station. Everything is going wonderfully well, so far we haven’t had a row, and Ben is working like a fiend on four canvases at once.
I didn’t lose any of my luggage except the sun hat, which I’m sure someone stole.
My love to Marcus. And you.
Emma.
Now, he made his way through the baffling maze of narrow streets and tightly-packed houses that led to the north shore of the town. Here, there was another beach, a bleak and unprotected bay only esteemed for the long surfing rollers which poured in, straight from the Atlantic. Ben Litton’s studio faced out over this beach. Once, long ago, it had been a net store and its only access was a cobbled ramp which sloped down from the street to a double, black-tarred door. There was a printed sign with his name, and an immense iron knocker, and Robert took hold of this and banged it, and called “Emma.”
There was no reply. He opened the door, and it was immediately almost torn from his hand by a gust of wind which poured, like a torrent of water, through the open window on the far side of the studio. Once the door had slammed shut again behind him, the draught subsided. The studio was empty and bitterly cold. There was no sign of Emma, but a step ladder and white-wash brush and bucket bore witness to her recent occupation. She had finished the whole of one wall, but when he went to touch it with his hand, he found that it was still cold and damp.
From the middle of this wall protruded an ugly old-fashioned stove, empty now and unlit, and beside it a gas ring, a battered kettle, and an upturned orange box containing blue and
white striped mugs and a jar of sugar lumps. On the opposite side of the room stood Ben’s work table, littered with drawings and papers, tubes of paint, and hundreds of pencils and brushes all contained on sheets of corrugated cardboard. The wall above this table was dark and dirty with age, and smeared with the scrapings of countless palette knives, that had built up, over the years, into a crustaceous shell of colour. At the top of the desk was a narrow level shelf, and on this ranged a selection of objets trouvés which at some time or another had caught Ben’s eye. A stone from the shore, a fossilized starfish. A blue jug of dried grasses. A postcard reproduction of a Picasso; a piece of bleached driftwood, carved by sea and wind to abstract sculpture. There were photographs, a fan of curling snapshots, arranged in an old silver menu-holder; an invitation to a private view that had taken place six years ago, and, finally, a heavy, old-fashioned pair of binoculars.
At floor level, the walls were stacked with leaning canvases, and in the middle of the room the current work stood, easeled and shrouded with a faded pink cloth. Turned towards the empty stove was a sagging sofa, draped in what looked like the remains of an Arabic rug. There was also an old kitchen table, with its legs cut short, and on this a tin of cigarettes, and an overflowing ashtray, a pile of “Studios,” and a green glass bowl, full of painted china eggs.
The north wall was all glass, squared off by narrow wooden partitions and designed so that its lower portions would slide aside. Along the foot of this was a long seat, piled with cushions, and from beneath this protruded further ill-assorted flotsam. The spars of a boat, a stack of surf boards, and a crate of empty bottles, and, in the middle, beneath the open window, two iron hooks had been screwed into the floor, and on to those were looped the spliced ends of a rope ladder. This disappeared out of the window, and Robert, going to investigate, saw that it dropped straight down to the sand, twenty feet below.
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