by Susan Sallis
Ellie said desperately, ‘We got each other, Mum.’
‘I know.’
‘The girls were asleep when Mr Warne came. They dun’t really seem to – to – kind of believe it.’
‘I know.’
‘The cats are with them. And Mr Warne downstairs.’
‘That’s good, Ellie. So good.’ She watched as the little girl walked ahead of her through the orchard. She couldn’t see anyone else but she knew he was there.
They put Egg on his bed in the tiny front parlour which had become his room when Ellie was born. He wore his new underpants, bought at the summer sales just last week. A sodden anorak hung from his shoulders. He was not bloated; he was not changed in any way. Someone had said he was happy to be in the sea, to be drowning in the sea, and she had wanted to spit her rejection of such an idea; yet he looked happy. She kissed his lips and could have sworn they were smiling. Ellie came behind her and wailed with terror; Lucy put her arm around her and drew her close. ‘Dun’t be frightened, my maid. Just look quiet for a bit. ’E were a lucky boy, Ellie. Two dads and three beautiful sisters.’
Ellie had cried so many tears her eyes were too swollen to see. But she did as she was bid and looked quiet. They stayed, wrapped together in silence. When eventually Ellie whispered, ‘I just want him to be alive, Mum,’ Lucy was able to say, without one tremor in her voice, ‘Perhaps he has been spared a lot, Ellie. It’s a cruel world.’
Their doctor came in from the kitchen where he had been washing his hands. He had looked after baby Bertie from his rather furtive birth in the family farm on the Connor Downs to this afternoon, when they had called him down to the cove to pronounce the all-too-familiar ‘death by drowning’. He had prescribed the tablets that kept the lad on an even keel.
He said now, ‘Your mother’s right, Ellie. He’s had a very happy life here in Pardoe cottage. But nothing stays the same.’ He glanced at Lucy Pardoe, wondering whether she had heard the rumour of the holiday camp to be sited on the north towans. She returned his look and he saw that she had heard nothing.
He said in the most matter-of-fact voice he could muster, ‘Say good night to your brother, my dear. Josh Warne has got a jug of cocoa in the kitchen. Have a mug of that with this little pill I’m going to give you. Then go upstairs and go to sleep. I’ve checked on your sisters and they’re both asleep too. Everything will seem better in the morning.’
‘It cain’t never be better, doctor.’
With difficulty the doctor separated her from her mother and piloted her into the kitchen, then returned.
‘I’ve got a pill for you too, Lucy.’
‘Dun’t want it. Not being okkard, just dun’t want it.’
He hesitated, then said, ‘I’ll leave them on the top shelf of the dresser.’ He looked down at Egg. ‘He’s safe now, Lucy.’
‘I know. But we’d a kept ’im safe too.’
‘Maybe not. Things happen.’ He did not want to burden her with anything else but often ‘things’ happened very quickly. He said, ‘Listen, girl. Buy this cottage. Just pay Chippy what he asks. But buy it.’
She was astonished. If it had been anyone else she would have been angry, told him to go. But this was Dr Carthew.
She said, ‘We en’t got money for buying cottages, doctor! You should know that!’ They had been unable to pay doctor’s bills back in the days before National Health. Dr Carthew had not bothered even to write them out.
He said, ‘I’ll lend you the money, Lucy. It won’t be for long – no need to worry about being in debt. But buy it at any price. And soon.’
He was gone. And she turned to Egg. ‘What were ’e talking about, son?’
His beautiful blue eyes were closed but the smile seemed to widen.
The girl arrived the next day. Lucy was both glad and outraged that she did not mention staying on for the funeral. She also felt a stab of surprise at the girl’s sheer ordinariness. She had expected a peroxide blonde in a very low-cut top, high heels and layers of Max Factor. This girl – Connie Vickers – wore a blue cardigan over a round-necked natural linen sundress with a matching hat. No sunglasses. Swollen eyes. Could be green or brown. Brown hair pushed tightly behind her ears. She wasn’t much to look at; Lucy was surprised that Egg had noticed her. Her fiancé was the same; brown all over. Older than her. Thin to the point of being gaunt. As she turned away from him she noticed something about the brown eyes. They were kind. And they were haunted. She thought suddenly that her eyes must look like that.
The man was a good man. A bit like Dr Carthew. Older than the girl by quite a bit, which probably meant that later on she would have to live on her own. There would be children of course. Quite soon too, most likely, because of this . . . this . . . tragedy. And they would forget Egg, put him behind them, get on with their own lives. It was what they would all do. Even his own mother.
She said in her new harsh voice, ‘Say it quickly. Tell me quickly.’
Connie peered from under the brim of her hat. She felt Lucy Pardoe’s anger but also saw into the bottomless pit of her grief. She grabbed on to her wavering self-control and stepped away from William’s protective arm.
‘It started with the earthquake.’ She waited to see if this was the right way to go. Lucy Pardoe’s concentration was suddenly intense. Connie said, ‘It frightened him.’ She waited again.
Lucy nodded. ‘’E ’ad one of ’is seizures.’
Connie frowned slightly then said, ‘I suppose . . . yes. Then the rain came. Huge drops. We sheltered. There was spare clothing and we put it on. He was shivering.’
Lucy nodded again, remembering the anorak. This girl, silly and ignorant as she was, had done the right thing. Until she had persuaded him to get into the sea . . . until then.
Connie closed her eyes for a moment, unable to meet that concentrated stare. She whispered, ‘It stopped. Everything was so still. The shop was still there. Just the one beach hut, fallen outwards . . . strange. Like another country, like another world. I said I would have a swim. A dip. To get rid of the sand. He came with me. There was no sign of the tidal wave. None at all. We just . . . ran in.’ She stopped on a sob and opened her eyes. Lucy Pardoe was waiting. What was she waiting for?
She stumbled on, no longer sorting and measuring her words. ‘We were still wearing the spare clothes. I trod water and started to get out of the sweater and felt the sea piling up. William was on the cliff signalling. And I shouted at Philip to swim back and he shouted back that he could not swim.’ She sobbed. ‘The sea took me. And it lifted him high so that I could see him and he was . . . he looked . . . triumphant. As if he’d . . . won.’
She was shivering uncontrollably. William put his arm around her and held her tightly to his side. She swallowed another sob, coughed and said, ‘There was one more time when I saw him. We were both on the seabed. I think – I’m almost sure he was already gone. But he was smiling.’ The sob surged again in her throat and she choked out, ‘He looked . . . oh dear Lord . . . he looked happy!’
There was a long pause while she took William’s handkerchief and held it to her face and concentrated on her breathing. When she clutched the handkerchief against her cheek, Lucy said, ‘And then what ’appened? Why are you here and ’e en’t?’
William started to speak but Connie overrode him. ‘I shouldn’t be. The sea was holding us down, both of us. But William had waded right in and as it sucked back to make another wave, he saw my hair and he held on somehow . . . I don’t know how . . .’ She moved the handkerchief to her eyes again.
William spoke. ‘Mrs Pardoe, I hadn’t seen your son. When Connie told me . . . I went back. But it was hopeless. I am – we both are – so very sorry.’
Lucy transferred her stare to the man. ‘Weren’t your fault.’ She wondered whether the girl knew that Egg had fallen in love with her and if she had jumped off the cliff he would have jumped off with her and still looked happy. Had she known? Had she known?
William thought she was absolving
them both; Connie felt his grip relax. He said, ‘We have been over and over it. What always – always – comes out of it is that Philip was . . . happy.’ Lucy Pardoe narrowed her eyes and he was afraid that he had said the wrong thing again. He hurried on, ‘If there is anything – anything at all – we can do . . .’ He had his card in his pocket and he fished it out with his spare hand and held it out to her.
Lucy wanted to take it and hurl it to the ground; she wanted to attack the two of them with her nails but then something stopped her, literally stopped her. Pressure on her forearms. Then the left arm released. She took the card and stuck it in her pocket without so much as a thank you. And as she did so she noticed something. The girl held the handkerchief with her right hand; she put her left hand to join it. There were no rings on her fingers; none at all.
Lucy looked back at the man. He looked at her. She turned and went into the house and closed the door firmly.
Barbara and Denny were glad to go along with their mother’s wishes and ‘get on with things’. The terror of the night before gradually died as the weather changed from heated copper to leaden skies and they sat at the kitchen table and cut out strings of paper dolls and made them dance like the Merry Maidens around the pepper pot. People kept coming. The undertaker, Mr Strange, who would prefer to be called a funeral director, was the first. Then came the vicar, who was new. His name was Matthew Hobson. He wore a navy blue fisherman’s jersey over a blue shirt, no sign of a dog collar; he was young and keen and ‘non-judgemental’. In other circumstances Lucy might have grudgingly approved of him, but he was too cheerful now. Too understanding. And he was still under thirty so how could he possibly understand?
He said, ‘Obviously I know very little of the parish. Could you tell me something of your family?’
He said, ‘Non-attendance at church does not mean you do not believe in God, Lucy. You work the land. You know God much better than I do.’
He said, ‘Church attendance is at an all-time low. It could be that you would find comfort in St Petroc’s. It is open. Stand inside by yourself – or with the children. Listen. See what happens.’
He said, ‘Really, I have no real choice, have I – not with a name like Hobson. I either believe in God or I believe in God.’ He laughed enormously and then stopped as the girls looked up, frightened. He smiled at them. ‘It is very easy for me. And I think, from what I hear, that it was very easy for your brother too.’ He leaned towards them. ‘Can you tell me why you call him Egg?’
Lucy said, ‘It was his name. Egbert.’ She moved to the parlour door. ‘Does ’e want to see ’im now?’
He followed her in willy-nilly and leaned over the coffin that Mr Strange had supplied. ‘Ah . . . so young . . . so beautiful.’ He straightened and began to pray as if he were talking to Egg, getting to know him, saying hello and goodbye at the same time. Lucy felt tears, proper tears, fall down her face without anger. She had not wanted Egg to go back with Mr Strange and wait in what he called his Chapel of Rest, but when Matthew Hobson suggested that he should wait in St Petroc’s where Egg and the girls had been christened, she thought about it and nodded once.
‘You can go in at any time and be with him.’ He looked past her at the girls huddled in the doorway. ‘Ellie tells me you go to Sunday school sometimes so you know the ropes. You can explore wherever you like.’ He addressed Lucy again. ‘I will call on Mr Strange right away, Lucy.’ She made a sound of protest; no one called her Lucy. He misheard, perhaps deliberately. ‘Tears are good, my dear.’
The girls went with him to the lane. Denny confided that one of the cats was also called Matthew and he said it was a good substantial name for a cat and came from the Bible. Barbara said, surprised, ‘I knew that. He kept a pub, didn’t he?’ And the man-Matthew gave his loud inordinate laugh again and glanced over her head at her mother, who was smiling. She too had gone to Sunday school and on a much more regular basis than her daughters.
Mr Strange came back with his hearse and took Egg out of the front door. Then the neighbours started. They brought eggs, and a new loaf and a pan of rabbit stew and their children brought bunches of daisies and buttercups and one boy in Ellie’s class at school had made a garden in a biscuit tin. The house was full. Lucy polished the table where the coffin had left a scrape mark and put a clean cloth over it and laid out the presents with the biscuit-tin garden as a centrepiece. People looked at that and knew it all represented Egg Pardoe.
At two o’clock it began to rain. Ellie took three sou’westers off the hooks on the kitchen door and the children pulled them well down almost to their shoulders and went off to St Petroc’s to see Egg. Lucy tidied and washed and cleaned ready for next week, when it would all happen again after the funeral. There had to be an inquiry first but that never took long. The sea gave them life and it gave them death. The coroner was very used to this kind of inquiry. Death by drowning.
She shook mats and ran her mop around the boards of the parlour. She scrubbed the flags in the kitchen. She laid tea on the kitchen table; some of the goodies brought this morning. She would make bacon and eggs too. They had not sat down together for a proper meal since Monday. And that had been a different life anyway.
Someone tapped on the streaming window. She looked up and saw it was Chippy Penberthy. She took off her apron. She fingered William Mather’s card in her pocket. She went to the door.
She hardly heard him for some time. She had heard so much of it already, the embarrassed fumbling condolences – one of the farmhands had actually brought a verse from Patience Strong and read it out to her. The strange thing was that until then she had always enjoyed reading Patience Strong’s poems.
When Chippy’s words came through it was quite a relief to realize that he was talking business. He was talking rent. And somehow he was also talking about his wife. She looked at him properly and realized his face was bright red.
‘I wouldn’t want ’er knowing, Mrs Pardoe. I wouldn’t want anyone knowing in fac’. People do put the worst kind of side to this sort of private arrangement an’ Mrs Penberthy’d surely jump to the wrong inclusions.’
Lucy frowned. ‘’Ow would that be, Mr Penberthy?’
‘She d’know ’ow much I admire you, dear lady. You kep’ two men – and young Egg as well – very ’appy. An’ if you allow it, you could keep a third man very ’appy.’ He gave her a ghastly smirk. She could not believe the implications behind that and had to physically hold her hands still in her lap to stop them flying up and smacking his face so hard he’d go from red to purple.
But not now. Not yet anyway.
She lowered her eyes. ‘I’m not very clever, as you well know, Mr Penberthy. Can you just run through again what you bin saying? My ’ead is all over the place and I’m not sure I understood you the first time.’
‘Course I dun’t mind, Mrs Pardoe.’ But he was struggling. He took a huge breath and blurted, ‘You wun’t be able to run a pig now, will you? Nor try y’r ’and with strawberries nex’ year. I cain’t do nuthin’ about ’elping you that way. But I can ’old your rent down for six months. P’raps.’
‘P’raps?’
He was becoming purple. ‘I likes y’r comp’ny, Mrs Pardoe. We gets on.’
She looked down at her hands, commanded them to stay still.
‘Since I bin a widow, you bin kind to me, Mr Penberthy. Did you mean that come Michaelmas you wun’t put the rent up as usual?’
‘I do mean that, Mrs Pardoe.’
She managed a smile. She had to be careful. What was more important to Chippy Penberthy . . . money or friendship? Plus the opportunity to get away from Mrs Penberthy for a couple of hours each day.
‘I’m real glad we’re talking honestly together,’ she began. ‘An’ I’m glad I ’ad already made up my mind to talk to you before . . . before . . .’
‘Before the accident, Mrs Pardoe?’
‘Yes.’ She glanced at him and away. She did not want him having a stroke. ‘Dan’l an’ me . . . we put a bit
aside whenever we could. ’E wun’t one to spend money needlessly.’ There had never been enough to put anything aside but Chippy weren’t to know that. She drew another breath, pushed her hands into the folds of her skirt and crossed her fingers. ‘I d’ reckon there’s enough in the Post Office to be a deposit on an ’ouse. An’ there’s some new ’ouses goin’ up in Truro what would be very ’andy now our Ellie is starting ’er new school.’
He was silent, amazed.
She risked letting one hand creep up to his shirtsleeve. ‘We shall miss our neighbours and friends. I shall miss you . . . Chippy. But I kin get a job easy in Truro. Woolworths or the Co-op.’
He said, ‘I cain’t see you anywhere else but right ’ere. They do call this place Pardoe Cottage. Dan’l did live ’ere as a boy. It en’t right, Mrs Pardoe. It en’t right for you to move all that way.’
‘I could visit. Sundays p’raps.’
He started on a long ramble about keeping an eye on the place, keeping an eye on the girls, keeping a very special eye on her. She waited for a pause and then spoke doubtfully as if answering a suggestion he had just made.
‘I know what you do mean, Chippy. But this is a big place. The garden, the orchard. And now the bean patch . . .’ She glanced up at him again, noted his frown and came quickly to the point. ‘Our savings en’t that good. We couldn’t afford to buy Pardoe Cottage.’ She let her gaze wander over the rows of lettuce and said wistfully, ‘That’s just a dream. No one can make dreams come true. Not really.’
He looked at her down-bent head, the centre parting in the thick hair, the coiled plait. He felt breathless somehow. Drunk with power. He fished into the folds of her skirt and found her hand and held it tightly as if he might fall off the old kitchen chair without it.
‘I can make that dream come true, my lovely!’ She did not withdraw her hand and he saw a wonderful future. A big lump of money in the bank and a woman eternally grateful to him. He could tell Mrs Penberthy he had to go up to Bodmin on business and stay a night or two right here in Pardoe Cottage. He had lusted for this woman ever since she married Dan’l but she was always out of his reach. Now . . . now things were different.
