Annie's Lovely Choir By The Sea

by Liz Eeles

  ‘But you’re hurt.’

  ‘I’ll be right as rain if I can sit quietly in my chair for a while.’ Her mouth sets into a thin line – and the stern headmistress is back. ‘Call Doctor Rivers. He lives in the village so he’ll come over. His number is next to the phone. Annie, I insist,’ she adds firmly when I look doubtful. ‘Do what I ask.’

  If we were in London I’d ignore Alice and call 999 but who knows how long it would take an ambulance to navigate the steep, winding lanes to Salt Bay? Especially without sat nav, which probably doesn’t work around here. Maybe a local doctor is the better option.

  I run upstairs, grab my counterpane and drape it over Alice to keep her warm before ringing Dr Rivers. He sounds bleary-eyed when he eventually answers the phone but, as soon as he hears about Alice, he barks, ‘I’ll be there at once’ and abruptly ends the call.

  Five minutes later, Dr Rivers is at the front door with a heavy grey overcoat on top of his striped pyjamas and carrying an old-fashioned doctor’s bag straight out of the 1930s.

  ‘Where’s the patient?’ he demands, ignoring any social niceties and pushing past me to kneel by Alice, who has more colour in her face, thank goodness.

  ‘Now then, what have you been up to?’ he asks gently, lifting off the counterpane and handing it to me. ‘Do you think you could make us all a nice cup of tea while I check that Alice is OK?’

  Glad to have something to do, I fold the counterpane into a pile on the kitchen table, put on the kettle and drop teabags into three mugs. My hands are shaking, partly from the shock of finding Alice but also because it’s taken me right back to when Mum was so poorly with cancer. She was too stubborn to stay in bed and I once found her collapsed on the floor with her blonde, post-chemo wig fanned out round her head like a halo. We called it her ‘angel look’, I remember, furiously scrubbing away a tear that’s rolling down my cheek. Get a grip, Annie; this is about Alice, not you. But it’s hard not to think about Mum when I’m standing in the house where she grew up. The past has a horrible habit of leaching into the present.

  When I carry the steaming mugs back into the hall, Alice is sitting with her back propped up against the wall. She gives me a faint smile and then frowns.

  ‘Mugs, Annabella? There are proper tea cups in the bottom cupboard.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that now, Alice,’ says Dr Rivers, stashing his stethoscope in his bag and clipping it shut. ‘There don’t appear to be any bones broken but I’d rather you went to hospital for an X-ray to check.’

  ‘Please don’t fuss, Stephen. I hate hospitals and I’m not leaving my home. I felt dizzy for a moment and went down. But it was all rather graceful, like a building collapsing from the foundations up, and I didn’t hit anything.’ She gives a wobbly laugh. ‘If you could help me into my chair, I can sit quietly for a while. That’s all I need.’

  Dr Rivers sighs and his bushy, grey moustache quivers. ‘All right, you’re lucky that your great-niece is here to look after you or I’d be insisting that you go to hospital. Come on, then.’ He puts an arm under Alice’s arms and beckons for me to help him.

  I slip my arm around Alice’s waist and, between us, we slowly pull her to her feet. She weighs almost nothing and the bones at the bottom of her ribs feel hard through the piled fabric of her dressing gown. With our support, she walks slowly into the sitting room and sinks onto the sofa.

  ‘Oof, that’s better.’ Alice settles herself back while I plump up the cushions and make sure her dressing gown is covering her legs.

  ‘Oh, do stop fussing, both of you.’ She puts her head back against the antimacassar, embroidered in blue and gold cross-stitch to match the cushions. ‘Where’s that tea?’

  I hand round the mugs and Dr Rivers has a few sips before picking up his bag.

  ‘I’ve got surgery this morning so must go, but call if you need me. And if you feel worse, Alice, make sure you call an ambulance if necessary.’ He glances at me and I nod.

  ‘Thank you, Stephen, for coming round,’ says Alice, lightly touching his arm. ‘You’ve always been good to me and to the Trebarwith family.’

  ‘You’re very welcome.’ Dr Rivers places his mug on a side table and walks into the hall with me scurrying after him. When we’re out of Alice’s earshot, he says quietly, ‘I’ll call round when I get back from surgery but keep an eye on her for a while and make sure she has a peaceful day with no stress.’

  ‘Will she be OK?’

  ‘For the moment. She’s a tough old girl; she’s had to be. But she shouldn’t be left alone at all for a few hours.’

  ‘Of course. I can look after her today.’ It’s the least I can do before heading back to London, just so long as she doesn’t start depending on me.

  Dr Rivers pauses on the doorstep. ‘It’s worrying that these falls are becoming more frequent.’

  ‘Have there been others?’

  ‘A few. But you’d better ask Alice about those, doctor-patient confidentiality and all that.’ He pulls the overcoat more tightly round him and glances up at the sky which is streaked with pink and gold. ‘It’s going to be a nice day now those clouds have shifted. I’ll see you later Annabella, and call if you need me.’

  ‘What did Stephen say to you?’ asks Alice sharply when I hurry back into the sitting room to check on her.

  ‘Nothing. Just that I need to keep an eye on you because you’ve fallen before.’

  ‘Hardly! There have been a few little trips, that’s all. Stephen does tend to be overdramatic at times.’ She puts down her tea and closes her eyes.

  ‘Would you like me to help you into bed?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ murmurs Alice, with her eyes shut. ‘I’ll sit here for a while and catch my breath.’

  Within a few minutes she’s fast asleep, or I presume she is. It’s hard to tell because her skin has a greyish tinge and you never know how old people will react to a shock. So, copying something I’ve seen Maura do with Harry, I put my face close to Alice’s to make sure she’s still breathing. At first there’s nothing but, as I’m about to panic and start doing chest compressions, she gently exhales and her breath warms my cheek. That’s a relief!

  Suddenly she opens one beady eye and stares straight at me. ‘I’m not dead yet, Annabella.’

  ‘Oops, just checking.’ Alice might have the body of an old woman, but her mind is still sharp as a tack.

  Chapter 10

  Alice dozes on the sofa for an hour while I throw on some clothes and do a few jobs around the house. It’s good to be helpful and it also gives me the chance to have a good look round. I’m not really nosy, I tell myself, peeping round doors. I’m just curious about this house and its history. And the family who’ve lived here for generations? Maybe.

  Tregavara House isn’t huge but there are five bedrooms, a dusty dining room that looks unused, a small scullery as well as a kitchen, and a cellar behind a scuffed, black door. There’s nothing in the cellar, when I carefully navigate the wooden steps, except for a few bottles of wine and some boxes of books which smell of mould. I don’t linger there because drops of water are hanging from the low ceiling and the stone walls feel cold and wet, which is alarming with the sea only a few metres away, especially as some of the stones are loose where the mortar has powdered with age.

  The cellar, and the whole house in fact, could do with updating and renovating – sympathetically, so it doesn’t lose its coving and cornicing and lovely old-fashioned windows. But sympathetically usually means expensively and Alice doesn’t look like she can afford it. Which is a shame because the house oozes faded splendour and could be magnificent if a shedload of dosh was spent on it. With some TLC it might even make a fab B&B, though I can’t imagine Alice sharing the Trebarwith ancestral home with emmets.

  After a while, Alice wants to get dressed so I follow her up the stairs to her bedroom, arms poised in case she topples backwards. So far I’ve resisted the temptation to peek into Alice’s bedroom because her door was shut and it didn’t fee
l right but I’m itching to see inside because, let’s be honest, I am dead nosy.

  Alice’s bedroom doesn’t disappoint. It’s like the cover of a Regency romance novel. Her bed is magnificent – a mini four-poster with a dark wooden canopy, plumped-up pillows and a rose-coloured satin counterpane. There’s a dark pink upholstered chair with stout, wooden legs against one wall and a huge wardrobe covered in carvings that must have been a nightmare to get through the door. Her stone-framed window looks out over the sea and the cliffs which are dotted with seagulls.

  ‘This is David,’ says Alice, picking up a black and white photo in a silver frame from her bedside table. She rubs her thumb gently across the face of a stocky man in a dark suit who’s standing next to a young woman in a long, full-skirted dress. ‘It was taken the day we got married in Salt Bay Church. The suit belonged to my father and David hated wearing it. He was a fisherman who ran a boat out of Perrigan Bay so he was more used to wearing oilskins and Guernseys.’

  ‘How long were you married?’

  ‘Forty-three years.’ Alice sits down heavily on the bed. ‘He passed away thirteen years ago from a heart attack, soon after we moved back here to look after Sheila following the storm. This is Sheila with Samuel.’ She picks up a photograph of a middle-aged woman on a sofa beside a man I recognise from the newspaper cutting. The woman is wearing a frumpy beige dress with a brown cardigan and has sad eyes. ‘It must be strange seeing the grandparents you've never met.’

  She hands the picture to me but I put it straight back on the bedside table, as if the silver frame is burning my skin. There are too many ghosts in this house and the threads of my uncomplicated life are beginning to unravel and entangle with this family I’ve never known. A family who never wanted to know me until now, when I might be useful.

  ‘I’m going back to London tomorrow, Alice.’

  Alice looks up in surprise from the wedding photo she’s still holding. ‘For good?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry. Thank you for inviting me here and for having me to stay but my life is back in London.’

  ‘Of course, but I thought you might be curious about your roots and your mother’s early life. This used to be her bedroom, you know. I could tell you about what happened between your mother and her parents, and the difficult years after she left Cornwall.’

  ‘I know all about those,’ I say bitterly. ‘We went from flat to flat with no money and no support. I loved my mum, even though she wasn’t always easy to live with and she obviously didn’t live up to what her parents expected of her. But how could anyone abandon their own child and grandchild? That was a monstrous thing to do.’

  Alice opens her mouth and then snaps it shut. ‘So your mind is made up?’ She puts her wedding photo on the bed with shaky hands and steadies them in her lap.

  ‘It is. I’m sorry, Alice. I’m sure you can make other arrangements for the help you need.’

  ‘I’m sure I can, and you’re probably right that it’s best not to rake up the past. What’s done is done and it’s all too late anyway.’ She swings her legs onto the bed and lies on top of the covers, her arms across her chest as though she’s in her coffin. ‘I think I need another little rest before I get dressed. Perhaps you could walk to the newsagent’s to pick up my magazine.’

  ‘Dr Rivers said you weren’t to be left on your own.’

  He also said she should avoid stress, I suddenly remember, wishing I could take back what I’ve just said. I’m leaving tomorrow and it would have been kinder to leave Alice with the Disney version of my life with Mum; the version that I’ve been peddling to my friends because explaining the chaotic reality is too unsettling. And what’s the point, anyway?

  ‘Stephen is a good doctor but he worries too much. I’ll be perfectly fine here on my own,’ snaps Alice without opening her eyes. And she doesn’t move while I go out of the room and quietly close the door behind me.

  It’s still early but a pale sun is throwing shadows across the garden and the sea looks like a heaving vat of molten green glass. Its constant motion is soothing and I stand at the harbour for a while, looking across the water to boats that are specks on the horizon.

  One small boat has come into harbour and two men in oilskin trousers are unloading their catch. One of the men breaks off from his tuneless whistling and nods at me. ‘Good morning. Nice day for it.’

  ‘Morning. It looks as if you’ve caught quite a few.’ A large plastic tub near my feet is piled high with flapping fish and I feel faintly uneasy about watching them in their death throes.

  ‘We’ve only been out for a while and had a good catch today. There’s more than we need but Roger might take some of the mackerel off our hands.’ The man gives the tub a shake and the fish inside it move in a silver wave.

  ‘You’re staying at Alice Gowan’s, aren’t you?’ He stares at my face, trying to work out who I am. ‘It’s good Alice has some company. That’s a big place for an old lady to be rattling round in on her own.’

  ‘I’m just here for a few days. I’m leaving tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s a shame.’ He peers more closely at me before picking up a fish that’s slithered onto the stones and throwing it back onto the pile. ‘I’m Peter, by the way. What did you say your name was?’

  ‘It’s Annie.’

  ‘Annie what?’

  ‘Annie Trebarwith.’

  ‘I thought as much.’ Peter’s face lights up and he nods. ‘You’ve got a look of the Trebarwiths about you. How are you related to old Alice?’

  ‘I’m her great-niece.’

  ‘Didn’t know she had one. But it’s nice to meet you, Annie.’ Peter wipes a chapped, red hand across his sweater and holds it out for me to shake. ‘It’s good to know you’re one of us!’

  One of us? I’m not part of this strange little community just because bits of shared DNA are buried in the clifftop cemetery. Mum certainly didn’t feel that she was ‘one of us’.

  But I don’t fancy debating the ins and outs of belonging with Peter, who’s elbow-deep in flapping fish, so I say goodbye and head away from the quay to the newsagent’s.

  Jennifer is outside the shop straightening a rack of blow-up beach toys, though I don’t know who in their right minds would buy them in January. She stops rearranging the brightly coloured plastic when she sees me.

  ‘Are you here for Alice’s magazine? I’ve kept it for her under the counter. Come with me.’ Inside, she stoops with a loud ‘oof’ and pulls out a copy of Bird Watching. Funny, I never took Alice for a twitcher. ‘How’s Alice doing? I haven’t seen her for a few days. Is she still feeling unwell?’

  ‘She had a fall this morning so she’s having a rest.’ As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I regret telling Jennifer, especially when she purses her lips and folds her arms across her sturdy breasts.

  ‘I keep telling her she’s too old to be in that big house on her own. Poor Alice. She’s had a lot to cope with, what with losing her husband like that and her brother in the Great Storm, and there was the baby of course.’

  ‘The baby?’

  Jennifer’s eyes sparkle as she realises she’s in possession of juicy gossip. ‘Her little boy who died of measles back in the 1960s. She almost died of grief, that’s what Mavis says. Mavis is in a home now. Gone a bit, you know’ – Jennifer taps the side of her head and opens her eyes wide – ‘mental.’

  ‘That’s terribly sad. About Alice,’ I clarify when Jennifer looks uncertain. ‘Very sad about Mavis too, I’m sure.’

  ‘Yes, very sad. Poor Mavis,’ says Jennifer, waving her arm dismissively. ‘So you didn’t know about the baby, then? That’s strange. How exactly do you know Alice?’

  ‘I’m her great-niece.’

  ‘Fancy that,’ says Jennifer, huge bosom heaving. ‘I didn’t know she had one. You must know Toby, and are you related to Samuel and Sheila?’

  ‘My mum was their daughter.’

  ‘Heavens! Not the mythical Joanna! Well, that’s a turn-up for the books.�
� Jennifer looks as though she’s about to combust with excitement and I decide that I don’t like her very much.

  ‘I’d really better get back to poor old Alice.’ I shove the magazine into my bag and leave Jennifer standing in the middle of the shop, her mouth opening and closing like one of Peter’s fish.

  I don’t want to leave Alice for too long but I take a detour on the way back and go past The Whistling Wave. I’m hoping to see Kayla because I’d rather not disappear without saying goodbye. But when I look through the window the only person behind the bar is Roger, who’s pulling a pint and chatting to customers. Maybe it’s her day off. That’s a shame.

  ‘I didn’t take you for a peeping Tom.’ Kayla has sneaked up behind me. ‘Or maybe you’ve got a thing for Roger. He’s a darling – a lazy darling and he’s three bangers short of a barbie but apart from that he’s a really decent bloke.’ She puts down the bucket of water and mop that she’s carrying. ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘I was hoping to see you before I leave tomorrow.’

  ‘You’re leaving so soon? That’s a shame.’

  ‘I need to get back to London but I wanted to say look me up if you’re ever in the city. Here’s my phone number and email address.’ I pull a scrap of paper from my jeans pocket and hand it over. ‘I can return the favour of showing you round.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe.’ Kayla shoves the paper into her apron pocket. ‘I kind of hoped you might be staying for a while ‘specially as you told me that Alice is family. You still haven’t seen Cornwall at its best. You haven’t been to Salt Bay beach yet and I thought we could try out the nightlife in Penzance.’

  ‘Perhaps next time,’ I lie, wondering what on earth nightclubs in Penzance are like. ‘I can’t stop for a drink because Alice had a fall this morning and I’m keeping an eye on her.’

  Kayla shoves her mop into the pink plastic bucket and wrings out a stream of steaming water. ‘Poor Alice, but it’s good that you were around to look after her. She’ll have to manage on her own from tomorrow.’