The Serpentine Cave

by Jill Paton Walsh

  ‘Ten thousand. He says he was doing something for her. To be honest when he first turned up I thought he was some kind of blackmailer.’

  Toby laughed. ‘Threatening to tell the world what, exactly? About Gran’s respectable past?’

  Marian laughed too.

  ‘I think he’s just eccentric,’ said Toby. ‘He’s quite straight, I think.’

  ‘What’s worrying me, really, is that I wouldn’t have thought Stella would incur a debt without some way of paying it.’

  ‘But she did it all the time!’ he said.

  ‘Not in this way. Endless confusion, endless things forgotten, living hand-to-mouth – we all know what she was like. But commissioning something from a fellow artist – an old friend and pupil – which she could not possibly pay for?’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘He says “a work”. I haven’t seen it, or asked about it. I’m going up to London tomorrow to see the lawyer. He has found me some art dealer to look at the paintings, so I shall try to settle things at Barrington while I’m at it.’

  ‘Your famous orderly mind coming in handy at last!’ he said. ‘Poor Ma. Shall I come with you?’

  ‘Only if you want to,’ she said.

  Toby lay on his back on his bed, his hands linked behind his head on the pillow. He lay in darkness, listening to the rattle of his window in the wind from the sea. He had told his mother that Leo was straight, as though he felt expert on the detection of straightness or crookedness in other people. But the truth was, he thought ruefully, that if he had been as good at it as all that he should have been better at looking after himself. He had made a big mistake trusting that girl. The trouble was, you needed greedy people to deal in big money. The greedy people were alert and clever at spotting the moment – it might literally be a moment – when they should buy or sell. They got – Toby got – an immense buzz out of winning in the endless battle of wits, out of squeezing gains from the money as it flowed round the world. Clever people made money whichever way things went, like those turbo generators that got energy from both falling and rising tides. And some of them didn’t have the instinct for honesty. You couldn’t get that from reading the Companies Acts. And anyway, what was being done by the insider traders would have been well within the law a few years back. Back then, making use of scraps of gossip, passing scraps of gossip to friends, was just what was done. Only outsiders and fools lost by it. It’s hard to have instinctive revulsion for something that used to be perfectly legal and widespread. It’s stupid to pass unenforceable laws. The larger the sums of money involved, the more likely it is that the victim is a huge corporation trying a take-over bid. The less likely that the savings of little old ladies have gone down the spout.

  Toby had ridden this train of thought before. But he didn’t like the destination. He didn’t know if it was possible to prosper and make money for the company while keeping honour bright. He was very sure that his masters didn’t give a fuck for honesty; they had not suspended employees and started an enquiry from hatred of dishonesty; they had done it to cover their backs, and find out who to sack for the stupidity of breaking the rules visibly enough to draw attention to the operation. But he himself had not had an unerring enough sense. What he had done that seemed only slightly tricky at the time, could plainly be seen, with hindsight, to have been wrong. He felt now, about going back to dealing, like someone who has made one very bad error of navigation, being put back in charge of plotting a course for a ship. And he was unused to self-loathing; he had always had plenty of self-esteem.

  He groaned and sat up, to stare at the window. He could see a muted brightness behind the dark scud of the clouds. He had wanted money badly. Lots of money. He had wanted independence – freedom to live wherever he liked, work at whatever he liked. He had wanted to make a fortune by the time he was thirty. He had been one of the greedy people. He had overheard a single enigmatic remark, and based on it made a brilliant guess. He had been so absolutely right that it looked like a real leak, really inside inside knowledge. And that sort of guess had been contaminated by some of his colleagues. If you wanted independence, he realized, one way was making a lot of money; another way would be to need very little, and keep your nose clean.

  He was thinking, of course, of Matthew.

  It had at least been a calm day. Flat calm, or so he had thought, clambering down the granite steps from the quay to the deck of Matthew’s boat. But as soon as they rounded the quay the boat began to buck and dip on an unbreaking ground swell that had been invisible from the shore, at least to Toby’s uninformed eye. White wings of foam spread and folded rhythmically under the prow. The little boat didn’t ride like the yachts Toby had sailed, but butted straight through, getting knocked about by the water. There was a grinding sound from the engine, and a smell of engine-oil and fish. Toby was wearing bright yellow waterproof overalls, Matthew’s second pair, a bit too large for him. Matthew stood at the wheel in the little cabin and set a course that swung round the Island, and past Porthmeor Beach. The town shone at them in the bright light – the white Tate, the grey flock of headstones in the cemetery, the glinting windows of the house rows. Beyond the grey tumbled boulders on Clodgy Point, however, the land was dark; the facing cliffs cast into shadow by the morning sun. The deck bucked under Toby’s feet, and his sense of speed disorientated him; they left a churning white trail of wake, and seemed to be speeding in the water, but the folded and broken panorama of shadowy cliff moved only slowly past them.

  Before they reached the lobster pots Toby was feeling queasy. It was hard work. The rope ran over a rusty windlass, turned by hand, yanking the heavy sodden pots out of the water. Most were empty; Toby had to put a chunk of fish into each one, and throw it back. It sank away from him into the glassy depth, disappearing in a trail of bright bubbles, and he hauled up the next one. There were some lobsters – little ones, but saleable, Matthew said. There were some crabs. And there were some crawfish, which Matthew said were dandy eating. Toby laboured, turning the winch handle, heaving the pots around, aching in every muscle. Matthew, having dropped anchor by the pot lines, and run up the mizzen sail to head them up into the wind, stood by, talking, and telling Toby what to do. Toby could see he was being put upon, and gritted his teeth. He could by will-power keep from stopping work, but could not help his breakfast spewing suddenly on the deck. He was folded in two, retching. Matthew grinned, heaved a bucket of sea onto the deck and swilled the vomit overboard.

  ‘Not many more,’ he said. He began to lend a hand, doing some of the lifting, while Toby wound the winch. They worked on for what seemed like another age. Then suddenly the last pot had been baited and slung overboard. Matthew fetched up a thermos of hot tea, and when Toby shook his head, insisted.

  ‘Caan’t take ee in looking green, boy,’ he said. ‘Caan’t ’ave it seem as though I’ve been aworking you ’aard.’

  Toby drank the hot black tea, and ate a bite of something called ‘a heavy’ – a dense yellow bun that more than lived up to its name. It was kill or cure; it would settle his stomach or come back up again at once, he supposed. He tried to take his mind off it by asking questions.

  ‘Is there a living in fishing, Matthew?’

  ‘Ess. Yes; if you don’t be greedy. Depends what you mean by a living. Not what you’d call a living, maybe.’

  ‘So what’s a living according to you?’

  ‘Well, I got a cottage in Downalong. Belongs to an uncle of mine. I can get by. Now if I was to start wanting a big car …’

  ‘What about a girlfriend?’

  ‘I can get along with a St Ives girl. Couldn’t afford an up-country girl, but then I wouldn’t want to.’

  ‘Where does up-country start?’ asked Toby. He probably wasn’t going to be sick again.

  ‘East’ards of the Bar,’ said Matthew. ‘Scillies is all right. Likewise over to Penzance. But going with someone east’ards of the Bar means trouble. That’s what Gran says. I go by what my Gran says.’
r />   ‘Where’s the Bar?’ asked Toby, nearly sure he was being sent up.

  ‘Hayle Bar,’ said Matthew. ‘About five miles up-country. Anything this side of that’ll do. Let’s go along in now. Wind’s freshening. It’ll be coming rough.’

  When the boat started moving again he gave the wheel to Toby. They butted their way through the swell. The town came into sight again, a spatter of whites and greys and ochres and bright glinting windows spread out along the shadowy landmass, below the steeple on the hill behind it. They chugged along past the sweep of surf breaking on Porthmeor, and the white complex shape of the Tate.

  ‘Preferred the gasworks, myself,’ said Matthew.

  ‘I like it,’ said Toby, abandoning diplomacy, feeling comfortable with Matthew.

  ‘Outside’s better’n what’s in it, I’ll give you that,’ said Matthew.

  ‘What about the Alfred Wallises?’ asked Toby. ‘He was a St Ives man, wasn’t he? Painted seine fishing and things? Don’t you like him?’

  ‘Not a lot,’ said Matthew. ‘I’ll tell you a thing about him. My auntie used to live across the yard from him. She uster cook a hot dinner for him now and then – he was a poor broken down old man at that time – and he would give her a picture each time. Know what she did? She used to chop them up for kindling, and put them by the stove ready. The value of the gift was as kindling. Now there do be two in there!’ He gestured over the gunwale towards the fast disappearing Tate.

  ‘What do you like?’ asked Toby.

  ‘I like what my Gran ’as,’ said Matthew. ‘She got a lovely picture of the sea by Mr Olson over the mantelpiece, and a nice one of the harbour by Mr Park over the sideboard in the back room. I like both them.’ Toby was silenced, not having heard of either artist, and fearing the worst.

  As they passed the Island, looking stark and rocky from the outer side, for it turned its soft green slopes inland, Matthew took the wheel. He swung them offshore, giving a wide berth to the rocky point, and took them gently into harbour. They nosed up to the steps at the end of the quay, and carried the boxes of catch up the steps.

  A reception committee of grinning young men awaited them.

  ‘’Ow d’you get on, Mathy?’ asked Bass.

  ‘He’ll do,’ said Matthew.

  Toby said, stiff with up-country politeness, ‘Thank you, Matthew, I enjoyed that.’

  And Matthew said, ‘’Ang on, you idn’t done yet. You be coming to see my Granny.’

  How remote St Ives is depends whether you measure by miles or by hours. An early morning train gets you into London by two. There is plenty of time to think on such a journey.

  Marian took a taxi from Paddington to the lawyer’s offices. This was a shabby building at a smart address. The Dickensian smell of old documents seeped into the waiting room from the yawning spaces beyond. The rooms had once been grand and well proportioned; now they were divided by frosted glass screens into depressing tall cubby holes. Marian had to wait before being ushered into the carpeted and undivided warmth of a partner’s office, a worn leather armchair facing the desk, and the offer of a cup of coffee.

  The lawyer – he had come to Stella’s funeral – shuffled papers on the desk. He looked ill at ease. He would greatly prefer, no doubt, to announce large unexpected fortunes to astonished legatees; Marian knew he could have no such duty this afternoon.

  ‘I’m afraid I have bad news for you, Mrs Easton,’ he said.

  ‘How bad?’ Marian asked.

  ‘It could be worse, to be honest with you,’ he said glumly. ‘She has left no debts. It’s almost as if she had calculated to the nearest penny how far she could go, but her affairs were in such disorder I can hardly believe—’

  ‘She never did any calculating that I am aware of,’ said Marian, musing, ‘and yet … she did very greatly value her independence. She would have calculated any looming threat to that.’

  ‘Well, to put you in the picture. There are no less than three mortgages on the house. When it has been sold, assuming it can be sold at valuation, there will be just enough equity left in it to cover transaction costs, and the small bequest to the Lifeboat Institution. We have found some money, in a building society account that has not been touched for fifteen years, that will discharge the remaining debts, but there will be nothing left, I am afraid, for the main beneficiaries – that is for you and your children. I am so sorry.’

  ‘We were not expecting money,’ said Marian. ‘Except – she had incurred a debt of honour, for a sum of ten thousand pounds, that I thought she might have made some provision for.’

  ‘I’m afraid testamentary law doesn’t work like that. All the assets are balanced against all the debts. There’s a precedence of claims. Of course, if there were a surplus, it would be up to you—’

  ‘But there isn’t.’

  ‘Alas, no. You do inherit her chattels, her furniture and effects, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Well, her furniture …’

  ‘No fine antiques?’

  ‘All very old and battered. Perfectly serviceable, but … What about her paintings?’

  ‘Well, painting, would certainly be effects,’ he said, cheering up. ‘But it seems that they are all there is.’

  ‘There’s a real appropriateness to that,’ Marian told him.

  Matthew’s Granny lived a long way up the town, at a place called Penbeagle. Matthew went first to Stevens’s fish shop, just behind the harbour, and bought a mackerel for his Gran’s tea. ‘If she asks if I catched it, and I say ess, hold your face still and don’t say different,’ Matthew said. Toby trudged up the steeply sloping road beside Matthew, through the Victorian terraces – the town had exploded in size when the railway reached it, to judge by the architecture – past the Leach Pottery and the fire station, and right at the top they found themselves in a spreading colony of bungalows and little houses, a council estate.

  ‘How does your Gran come to be living up here,’ asked Toby, ‘so far away from you?’

  ‘Council,’ said Matthew. ‘They condemned the house she was in, and rehoused her up here. And now that house she uster ’ave belongs to a teacher from Birmingham. All fancied up. It’s empty half the year.’ He opened the glazed plastic door – it didn’t seem to be locked – and the two young men stepped in.

  ‘Gran?’ Matthew called. ‘I’ve hooked him and fetched him up here, along of this bit of mackerel.’

  ‘Put him in the best room a minute, Mathy,’ said a voice from the back. Toby stepped into the living room. Flowery wallpaper; a glass-fronted cupboard with china plates, and some trophies; on top of it a row of photographs. School photos of smiling children – one of them recognizably of Mathy; it could easily have been of Toby himself. Some graduates wearing gowns and holding scrolls; someone on top of a mountain. A print of The Light of the World framed in gilt hung over the sofa; and over the gas fire a painting of boats in the harbour – to Toby’s eye a surprisingly good painting, academic and expert, and rather good at a certain kind of late afternoon light. He was staring at the signature, trying to decipher it when Mathy carried in a tray of tea, and his Gran came padding behind him in bulging carpet slippers.

  ‘Let’s be looking at ee, then,’ she said.

  A thin old lady with a dowager’s hump, peering at him. She must have been a tall woman, because even crooked with age, she didn’t have to look up to him much. She had very dark eyes, like Mathy’s, like his own. She was wearing a soft hand-knitted cardigan and a silky blouse with an agate brooch at the neck. She took her time.

  Then, ‘Ess,’ she said. ‘You do be like a Vanson.’

  ‘What’s a Vanson?’ asked Toby.

  ‘I am,’ said Matthew’s Gran. ‘Mrs Bessie Vanson. And so is Mathy – Matthew Vanson.’

  ‘I thought you were Mathy Huer?’ said Toby, blinking.

  ‘That’s my nickname,’ said Mathy. ‘Huer. There’s maybe four or five Matthew Vansons in St Ives. I’m Huer, and then there’s Bass – that’s my uncle; and then ther
e’s Tommy Dolphin, that’s my cousin, and my other cousin’s called Bounder, and—’

  ‘Don’t run on, Mathy,’ said Mrs Vanson. ‘Have him sit down and I’ll pour tea.’

  The tea was strong and black, and served with some very dense yellow buns – more ‘heavies’, no doubt. Toby ate and drank, and his eyes wandered to the photograph.

  ‘That was about when Mathy got called Huer,’ Mrs Vanson said, following his glance. ‘He talked about the pilchards coming back. My doing. I was always talking about it, though it was down to nearly nothing when I could remember. My mother remembered them taking in millions, and bringing them through the streets in cartloads. Lovely old times, she said. I’d like to have seen it. The Huer used to watch for the shoals coming into the bay, see.’

  ‘You never saw a pilchard, I suppose?’ said Toby.

  ‘Only in a tin,’ said Mathy.

  ‘Now then,’ said Mrs Vanson. ‘What we have to work out is, where you come in the family. I’d like to have that cleared up before we have wild rumours running about.’

  ‘The trouble is, that I don’t know,’ Toby told her. ‘My Gran was Stella Harnaker. She was a painter, and she worked here for a bit. But we just don’t know who our grandfather was. We have an oil-painting of him – or of someone, rather, that we think might be him. And a friend has told us that the picture is of someone called Tremorvah. Thomas Tremorvah.’

  ‘Well, there is Tremorvahs related to us,’ said Mrs Vanson. ‘Related by marriage, that is. But I thought I should know of all the childer there ever was of that branch. What was your mother’s name?’

  ‘Marian.’

  ‘I never head of any Marian Tremorvah.’

  ‘I don’t think my grandparents were married. My mother is called Marian Harnaker. Well, Marian Easton since her marriage. Perhaps it was all hushed up.’

  ‘Well, I do remember there was some talk once. Something to do with Tremorvahs. But you’re going back more’n fifty years, now. Half the people who might know a thing are gone. Now here’s a question for you, my handsome. If there was something to cover over, do you want to know it? If your mother arose from someone doing what they shouldn’t?’