Star Creek

by Pamela Kent

  STAR CREEK

  Pamela Kent

  When Helen’s father died, she was grateful to Roger Trelawnce, his old friend and now her guardian, when he offered her a temporary home in his Cornish manor house—and it was not long before she found herself looking on him as much more than a guardian.

  But that was before she discovered the existence of Mrs. Valerie Trelawnce.

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE London train stood quivering in the station, panting and vibrating all down its long length rather like a long-distance runner brought suddenly to a halt. Helen had seen the word BODMIN, in large letters, on the station platform, and she had hastily dragged her suitcase down off the rack and collected the rest of her somewhat scattered belongings. She had been drowsing over a paperback when the train stopped, and now in a panic she scrambled out.

  There were only a few people leaving the train. The rest were going on to Truro. Amongst the few who had alighted a tall man stood glancing alertly at the carriage windows, and when Helen glanced at him and recognised him immediately a sensation of acute shyness clamped down on her.

  What ought she to do? Go up to him and say, ‘I’m Helen! ... I’m Helen Dainton!”

  He matched the description her father had given of him exactly. Taller than most men, with broad shoulders and narrow hips, a well-held, arrogant, dark head, rather beautifully chiselled features, one or two patches of frost in his hair—at the temples; and—of course an empty sleeve.

  The sleeve was tucked inside a pocket of his casual jacket. He was hatless and indifferent to the people around him, remote and withdrawn, as if he disliked people in any case, particularly when they were inclined to thrust and jostle their way towards the barrier, and their suitcases brushed against him as they passed.

  Helen drew near to him and touched his arm timidly.

  He looked down at her, his eyes dark as agate beneath frowning black brows.

  “Mr. Trelawnce?” she said.

  He answered immediately, “Yes.” He seemed surprised for a moment, and then mildly amused. “I thought I had everyone under observation, and it struck me there was no one who answered to your description. But I couldn’t have been really looking, could I?”

  “No,” she said, and turned faintly pink. She was wearing the hat and the suit she had said she would wear ... navy blue, with crisp touches of white, and a white gardenia attached to the front of the suit. It was not a real gardenia, but it was a very good imitation, and, in any case, a real gardenia would not have survived the journey. Her hair was mid-brown and curled softly and rather entrancingly under the brim of the hat, and her eyes were grey ... widely spaced, long-lashed, normally serene grey eyes.

  “I’m Helen Dainton, Mr. Trelawnce,” she said breathlessly.

  “So much,” he informed her, with that slight, aloof smile of his, “I had already gathered.” He glanced down at her suitcase that she had deposited, because it was heavy, on the platform between them. “Is this all your luggage?” he enquired.

  “It’s all the luggage I’ve brought with me,” she answered. “I left my trunk at the airport to be sent on. As a matter of fact, I couldn’t find my keys, and I had to leave it for customs inspection.”

  He nodded, indifferently, and lifted a hand as a signal to the porter who had accompanied him on to the platform to pick up the suitcase.

  “I suppose you can manage those trifles you’re carrying?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes, of course.”

  A sleek, black car awaited them outside the station. A uniformed chauffeur left the driving-seat to relieve the porter of the suitcase, and although the latter did not appear to receive a tip from Roger Trelawnce he could not have behaved with greater subservience, or shown greater deference, as he closed the door upon them.

  “Well, and how is Paris?” Trelawnce enquired, as the car slid smoothly out of the station yard.

  He had settled himself comfortably in his corner of the car, his head back against the pale grey upholstery, his strange agate eyes attracted by the scenery as it slipped past his window. Helen, who was feeling extremely nervous and self-conscious, was hardly put at her ease by his attitude of indifference. Her father had warned her that members of the Trelawnce family were not easy to get to know, but they were reliable friends once you had overcome their reserve and gained some clear idea of what lay on the other side of it. But at the moment she had no idea at all, and it seemed to her that Roger was as withdrawn from her as the stars, and just a little inhuman.

  His profile was turned from her, and it was the sort of profile that, as an artist, she would have loved to reproduce on canvas, or see cast in bronze. In the British Museum there were ancient Egyptians who looked like him ... had that faintly oblique look about the eyes; that straight nose, and mouth with the faintest suspicion of sensual curl to the corners of the firmly closed lips. He had a good jaw, and, in the main, it was a hard mouth ... But there was nothing friendly about him.

  She wished there was.

  “Paris is very much as, I imagine, it always is,” she replied.

  He turned his head and, for the second time, he regarded her with mild surprise.

  “How cryptic,” he remarked. “Don’t you like shops, and things like that?” His eyes travelled over the suit she was wearing. “You look to me to be very well dressed.”

  “Of course I like shops. But—” and she bit her lip—“Paris is very expensive.”

  “And has never been anything else,” he agreed. He inserted his one hand inside his coat and produced a gold cigarette-case. “Will you smoke?” he asked.

  ‘No, thank you. But—” and she leaned forward impulsively—“can I light yours for you?”

  Instantly his eyes froze her. She felt as if she had come up against a solid wall of unfriendly agate, and even his tone held a quality of disdain.

  “Please understand that I can do everything for myself,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” she faltered. The cigarette was lighted, the match dropped into the ash-tray, the case returned to his pocket, all with a degree of speed and efficiency that astonished her. He flicked ash into the ash-tray.

  “You are studying art, I believe?” he said.

  “I have been studying art. But naturally my father’s death has altered all that. We—we were never very well off, and—”

  “Now you are even more badly off?”

  She flushed and felt the colour burn hotly under her skin.

  “I wrote to you, Mr. Trelawnce,” she exclaimed, “because my father wished it. He had an idea that you ... well, you were friends, I believe, at one time?”

  “I was an impressionable young man, and he was a very clever tutor,” Trelawnce conceded. “Mathematics was a subject I failed to fall in love with, and could never grasp, and he made it possible for me to overcome these disadvantages. Without mathematics I couldn’t even consider becoming a doctor, and I made up my mind to be a surgeon when I was about ten years old. So, you see, your father put me in his debt ... And he greatly increased that debt when, while he was staying with me at Trelawnce Manor, I got into difficulties during an early morning bathe, and he towed me back to shore as if I were a piece of flotsam. Naturally, I’ve held him in quite high esteem for the past ten or fifteen years.”

  Helen glanced at him, and twisted her gloved fingers together awkwardly.

  “I thought it was something like that,” she said, “although I never quite understood. But when my father first became ill he wanted me—he wanted me to write to you then, but I thought it was a little too soon. I mean ... I didn’t want to trouble you at all, unless...”

  “You were left as you were, without any money, and without any friends?” His cool smile deprived her of the need to go on, but it did little to relieve her em
barrassment. “I understand perfectly, Miss Dainton, and as far as I’m concerned you came to the right shop. You can stay at Trelawnce Manor as long as you like. You can live there for the rest of your life if you wish. It’s a large house, I occupy a very small corner of it, so it will make not the smallest difference to me.” But a faint hardening of his jaw, and a positively frosty sparkle of detachment in his eyes made her wonder whether this was really so. “My housekeeper will provide you with all the chaperoning you need ... And I have explained the situation to her, of course.”

  “But, Mr. Trelawnce,” she said, her fingers positively writhing as they clung to one another—for support she might have suspected, had she attempted to analyse her emotions just then—“I haven’t any intention of being a burden on you for long! It was just that ... after my father’s death, and after his long illness—it is very expensive being ill in Paris,” her fingers literally bruising one another, “I was glad to have someone to turn to, somewhere to go! But only for a short time! Of course I’ll get myself a job, and I’d rather have a job in England.”

  He shrugged.

  “There is no need for you to get yourself a job. I thought you were an artist.”

  “I am, and I’m hoping to put my training to good use. I could be a commercial artist.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather paint a sunset? Or a stormy day at Trelawnce...? We get some wild weather sometimes, and the sea is a challenging subject if you’re a good artist.”

  “I’m not bad.” She forgot her self-consciousness for a moment, and leaned almost eagerly towards him as the luxurious car threaded its silent way through the Cornish lanes. “I love the sea, too ... I’m dying to see your house. My father told me it’s a very beautiful old house, and it stands at the head of a creek.”

  “Star Creek.” He brushed out his cigarette in the ash-tray, smiled at her with a touch of indolence. “If you know nothing about Cornish creeks you’ll be enchanted by Star Creek. It’s a place of mystery on a summer day, attractive even in winter. The water laps softly ... Some people might think it a sinister sound. And the woods are always silent, and shadowy ... and carpeted with bluebells in the spring,” he added unexpectedly.

  Helen’s eyes brightened, and some more of the tension seeped out of her.

  “It sounds romantic,” she said. “And the house itself? Is that as romantic?”

  “It’s my family home,” he answered. “I can’t ever remember a time when I didn’t return to Trelawnce ... for holidays when I was at school; when my father died and, later, when my mother died. It’s linked up with all the important events of my life ... And when I lost this,” touching his sleeve, “I returned to it for good.”

  Helen was once more in the difficult position of having no clear idea what she ought to say. Her father had warned her that Trelawnce without his arm was not quite the Trelawnce who had climbed mountains as if he had a pair of wings attached to his shoulders, and rowed in the university boat race. Not unnaturally he had become embittered, because it had meant the end of his career. He was no longer able to pursue his calling as a surgeon.

  An up-and-coming surgeon, too, according to reports that had been spread about him.

  And at the time that he lost his arm he had very little money of his own. Trelawnce was in a bad state of repair, and he had only a couple of servants living there with him. Now, according to society journals and gossip columnists, it was a place of pilgrimage. Holidaymakers parted with half-crowns to be shown over the grounds, and a film had recently been shot in the grounds—a smuggling film; and the house itself had looked benign and beautiful in Technicolor.

  Helen had seen the film in Paris. She and her father had gone to it together. And now, all at once, they were travelling up the drive (the mile-long drive that approached the house from the high-road and the inland side) and a solid wall of rhododendrons in full flower pressed in on them from either side. There were tall trees in the park with motionless branches in the warm May air, and violets and primroses hidden in the underbrush. And. soon they were skirting emerald lawns, and a dignified stone terrace with time-worn steps that overlooked a positive sea of young spring foliage that dipped downwards towards the valley and the creek that flowed outwards to the sea. The smell of the sea hung in the atmosphere, and was like a taste of excitement to anyone who loved it and was inclined to fall beneath its spell.

  The housekeeper came out on to the steps to greet them. She was a pleasant-looking woman in black, whose name was Mrs. Pearce, and she was accompanied by an outsize mastiff who seemed to have eyes only for its master ... which was somewhat of a relief to Helen, who was unaccustomed to large dogs.

  “Don’t ’ee worry about Nimo,” Mrs. Pearce advised, in broad Cornish accents, understanding her first reaction. “He’s as meek as a lamb, although he do look fierce, dear of him. Nimo wouldn’t hurt a fly,” patting the enormous head, and indicating to Helen that she should do the same. “There! Now you’ve been introduced, miss. You don’t need to worry about him.”

  The chauffeur carried Helen’s case into the hall, and Trelawnce followed and looked questioningly at his housekeeper.

  “Miss Dainton’s rooms are ready for her?” he said.

  “Of course,” she answered. She seemed to have a kind of amiable disregard of formality, and she was obviously not in the least in awe of her master. “They’ve been ready for a week, and more. Come this way, Miss Dainton. Shall I help you with those?” relieving her of her light impedimenta.

  Helen was trying to take in the impressive picture that the stone-flagged hall made, and she saw that there was a coat-of-arms above the fireplace. Sunlight streamed through an enormous window, but even so the hall seemed full of shadows. It smelled strongly of age, too ... age and daffodils, arranged in copper bowls and vases, and the ever-present and eternal scent of the sea, that came in through the open church-like door.

  “Come along, Nimo,” Roger Trelawnce said, laying his one hand on the great dog’s neck, and disappearing with him into a book-lined room, the door of which was also standing open. He said nothing further to Helen—not even that he would see her later. And she followed the housekeeper up the stairs.

  CHAPTER TWO

  SHE was surprised and delighted by the luxury of her rooms. Two of them—a sitting-room and a bedroom, separated by her own private bathroom. And from the windows the view over the grounds was a delight.

  “Mr. Trelawnce wanted you to be comfortable,” Mrs. Pearce informed her complacently. She kept her hands folded over her stomach and her jingling bunch of keys, as if it was an habitual attitude. “I suggested this corner of the west wing because it’s out of the way, and you won’t be disturbed. And you’ll get to look upon it as your own little corner of the house.”

  Helen looked at her in faint surprise.

  “You don’t mean that I’ll be expected to remain up here in these rooms? I mean—” she glanced around her at the off-white carpet, the flowered silk curtains, the deep and superbly comfortable-looking chairs, the elegant little rosewood writing-bureau, and at the fire of apple logs binning in the grate. “I mean, it’s awfully kind of Mr. Trelawnce to make me so comfortable, but I will be free to—to roam about the house if I want to...?”

  The housekeeper pretended to discover a speck of dust on an occasional table, and she clucked in displeasure.

  “These girls! When I was a young maid o’ no more than fourteen I wouldn’t ha’ dared to do my work so badly! But all they think of nowadays is how many nights a week they can go off dancing to Lostwithiel.” She glanced at Helen quickly, furtively, and then away. “You can roam about the house, miss, but I wouldn’t advise you to do more than use the dining-room and the drawing-room if you feel like sitting in it sometimes—although Mr. Trelawnce never uses it—as well as these rooms of yours. It’s a big house, and you might get lost in it.”

  “Oh, but I wouldn’t dream of trespassing where I’m not wanted,” Helen avowed hastily. “It was simply that I thought ... well,
I wondered whether I would have my meals with Mr. Trelawnce?”

  “Oh, yes, of course, miss,” still intent on looking for dust. “Breakfast is at whatever time you want it, lunch at one, and dinner at eight. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have it up here in your sitting-room if you’d prefer it.”

  Helen looked, and felt, perplexed.

  “Mr. Trelawnce does live here alone, doesn’t he?” she asked.

  Mrs. Pearce darted another furtive look at her.

  “Why, bless you, yes, miss. Whatever made you think he didn’t?”

  “Nothing,” Helen admitted. “Except that—” And then she decided to say no more.

  Mrs. Pearce pounced on her coat that had been thrown over the back of a chair, and carried it through into the bedroom.

  “As a matter of fact, we’re having rather a special dinner tonight,” she confessed. “Roast duck and apple sauce as well as sage stuffing, and a special fish soufflé beforehand, and meringues and cream and hot chocolate sauce afterwards. Mr. Trelawnce has such a sweet tooth, and he loves hot chocolate sauce. Colonel Wince may look in, and Mr. Perry Trelawnce ... but that’s not certain.”

  “Who is Colonel Wince?” Helen enquired. “And is Mr. Perry Trelawnce a relative?”

  “A cousin.” Mrs. Pearce decided to turn down the bed while she was in the bedroom. “Colonel Wince is just a neighbour.”

  Helen had a tray of tea brought to her in her sitting-room—by a rosy-cheeked Cornish girl who actually looked quite pleased to see her. She was plainly interested in her clothes, which she was in the act of unpacking, and she wondered whether she was planning to visit Lostwithiel for a dance that night.

  After she had drunk her tea and consumed the dainty sandwiches that accompanied it, Helen decided to risk losing her way in what was admittedly a very vast house and make her way downstairs and so out into the grounds. It was a delightfully still, warm May evening, and she could actually fancy that she heard the water lapping away down there at the foot of the hill where the creek began. There was fitful birdsong, because the sun was still slanting across the emerald lawns and the tops of the trees, and even on the terrace there were patches of molten gold where the evening light fell softly. But down in the silent woods it must be very shadowy, and it must smell strongly of fresh growing things, and leaves that had lain there for many seasons, and would continue to lie there and rot away gradually throughout many more.