“You probably are an idiot advising a forty-year-old woman about love … but a very sweet idiot.”
“Nicki?”
“What?”
“What do you want?”
Nicola looked at the floor, her lush hair hiding her face.
“I don't know, Anne. For a long time I just wanted to be left alone. Now, I don't know; maybe I'm tired of being alone. I'm certainly tired of being afraid.”
“Afraid? Of Jeremy?”
“No.”
“What then?”
She raised her head, pushed her hair back, and smiled—a weary smile, full of sadness.
“You know. I told you.”
Anne nodded. “That part, I guess I understand.” Nicola stood and gave Anne a hug. “Thanks, luv,” she said. Anne shrugged. “Damned if I know what for.”
She walked Nicola to the door and watched her pick her way across the farmyard to her car.
“Hey, wait!” Anne called after her. “You going to the Welly tonight?”
“Of course! Wouldn't miss it for the world.”
“Tonight then, luv.”
“Thanks again, Anne.”
Anne Trelissick shook her head and returned to the endearing rat.
Lee Trelissick was lying in wait. She'd seen the hedgers go into the Cobweb and sat on the wall opposite, waiting for Andrew to emerge. After only one pint, he did. He stood outside the door, blinking in the bright light, and considered whether to take the road home (the long but easy way), or the valley path (the short but hard way). He chose the road and had taken only a few steps before he heard the familiar greeting: “Guess what, Drew?!”
He swiveled his head and there she was. It lifted his spirits immediately.
“I don't know; what, Lee?”
“Today's Wednesday!”
“So I gathered. Thankfully, it's nearly over.”
“No, it isn't.” She was skipping along at his side now, like an eager puppy.
“Listen, kid. By my reckoning, it's coming up on five-thirty I've been here since eight this morning. Wednesday's over.”
“Uh-uh,” she sang.
He stopped on the bridge over the river.
“Okay, what?”
“Wednesday's Welly night.”
“Huh?”
“The singing.”
“I have no idea what you're talking about, and, just between you and me, I'm too tired to care.”
“The singing! Don't you know?”
Andrew started laughing. He couldn't help it. Lee was facing him with her hands on her hips, like a schoolmarm lecturing to the class dunce … which was him. She positively vibrated with impatience. He took the diplomatic route.
“Why don't you tell me about it as we walk home, Lee?”
“Okay, here's the deal. Every Wednesday night, there's singing at the Welly.”
They had just passed the Wellington, Boscastle's oldest hotel, on their way up Dunn Street. It dated back to the age of horse-drawn transport, when it had been a staging post. It was a compact, handsome construction, several stories high and vaguely Victorian-looking now, its street-side corner anchored by a round, castellated turret. It had the unusual distinction of having been built directly over the little River Jordan, the main tributary of the River Valency. Just as you stepped up to the threshold of the hotel's entrance, there was a steel grating beneath which you could hear the stream rushing through an ancient stone culvert.
“What, karaoke?”
“No, silly! Old-timey songs. Some people bring instruments, too. There's been singin' at the Welly for ages and ages,” Lee continued. “At least since the war.”
“The war?”
“You know. The big one. Before I was born.”
“World War Two?”
“Yeah, I guess. I think. Anyway … people just show up and, after a while, they just start singing … though Jack's the one who gets it going.”
“Jack?”
“Jack! The Boscastle Busker! You know … the guy with the big hat who walks around town singing?”
Andrew, focused as he was on hedge building, had missed this bit of local color.
“He sings and people give him money. For the hospital.”
“What hospital?”
“I dunno. A hosp-something, anyway. Maybe not a hospital.”
“A hospice?”
“Yes! That's what!”
Andrew felt as if he was speaking to someone through an interpreter.
“Mount-something; I don't remember. Anyways, he has loads of songs in him. But absolutely everyone goes and sings along!”
“And that includes you?”
“Yup. Mum and Dad take me, but I can't sit in the bar. I sit in a corner and no one complains.”
“So you have a pint of ale and just hang with the crowd?”
“Ugh! Dad gave me a taste once. I stick to apple-mango juice.”
“Very wise, I'm sure.”
“So you'll be there, right?”
Andrew sighed. He'd planned a bath, a bowl of spaghetti Bolognese, and bed, but there was no denying Miss “Guess What?!”
“Sure, Lee. When's it start?”
She had started hopping with delight, but she quickly stopped, frowning. “I dunno. After supper, I know that.”
“Very helpful.”
“Well, how'm I supposed to know? I'm a kid!”
“I'm sorry. You're right. I forget that sometimes.”
This seemed to please Lee to no end.
“What'll it be, friend?”
Andrew was standing at the Wellington's famous Long Bar. Before him was an array of hand pumps, each with a name more bewildering than the next: Cornish Knocker, Betty Stogs, Keel Over (that one sounded lethal), Cornish Blonde, Figgy's Brew—all from a local brewery called Skinner's.
He looked at the barkeep and shook his head. “A pint of something, but I've no idea what.”
The nattily dressed fellow behind the bar laughed. “Common problem; embarrassed for choice is what we are here at the Welly. What do you like?”
“Amber ale. Smooth, not too hoppy.”
“That'll be Figgy's Brew, that will. Here, have a taste.” The barman pulled a short measure into a small tumbler and handed it to him.
Andrew tasted and nodded. “Perfect.”
“Strong ale, that one,” an older fellow standing next to him commented. “Four point five.”
“Alcohol percentage? That doesn't sound strong to me,” Andrew said.
“Nah. ‘Specific gravity's’ what that is.”
“What's that?”
The man leaned toward him, conspiratorially “Haven't a clue, mate; more chemistry than I ever had.” He winked.
Andrew liked the place already. You were never a stranger in an English pub. He scanned the room. The place was packed. He felt a hand on his shoulder.
“Come for the singing, lad?”
“Jamie! I thought you'd gone back up to Bodmin Moor.”
“Not on a Wednesday; not when Jack's in town.”
“What are you drinking, Jamie? My treat.”
“Well, thank you, son. Same as yours; a pint of Figgy would suit me fine.”
His drink came, and Andrew clinked Jamie's glass with his. “To the fine art and craft of Cornish hedging,” he said.
“I'll always drink to that. And to you as well. Been watching you. You've a head for it, hedging, now you've got the spaces notion down. Expect that's partly from your training.”
“We didn't have courses in hedge building in architecture school, Jamie.”
“Not what I mean. You've a good spatial sense. I think you see the hedge as a whole, in your mind, not just the stones and the spaces between them.”
“Yes. I guess I do. Probably why I'm an architect. That comes easily to me.”
“One thing I don't ken, though, lad.”
“What's that?”
“What you're doing here—building hedges when you could be making buildings. Odd sort of holiday,
if you take my meaning.”
Andrew smiled at his stone master, signaled to the chap behind the bar, and ordered another round.
“I've never made a building, Jamie.” He could hear Katerina's tirade and shook it out of his head. “I teach architectural theory; that's different.”
“Not much theory in hedging.”
“That's not true, Jamie, and you know it. You don't teach hedge building, anyway.”
“Meaning?”
“Oh, sure, you teach us the technique; but that's not what turns you on. What you really teach is a reverence for the stone. You want us to listen to the stone: not just the sound it makes when it smacks into place, but the story it wants to tell—how it was formed, what it's been through since, what it can do and can't do, what it wants to be.”
“Seems like somebody's been paying attention.”
“I have, Jamie, and it's partly because I've been trying to puzzle out something that's vaguely related.” Andrew told Jamie about his ideas about livable places, about the almost organic integrity of such places, about the honesty of simple vernacular buildings, about the beauty of working with local materials, about building to human scale, and about how this art, this way of being in the world, was disappearing in America.
When Andrew stopped long enough to take a pull from his pint, Jamie said, “Seems to me you're living in the wrong country, lad. Around here, that stuff still matters. There was a while there we almost lost it, like the Cornish language, but we found it again and it's getting stronger. I'm not sure people like Casehill will ever get it. He's a ‘quick-and-dirty’ bloke; cement it together and move on. But Burt does—knew his dad, I did. And this Newsome fella. He's got loads of lolly, but he wants to do the right thing on his land. I respect that. But what're you gonna do, build Cornish hedges in Philadelphia?”
Andrew laughed. They both did. The ale helped.
“I don't know, Jamie,” Andrew said. “I didn't even really know I was searching for something until I got here. It's like you told us this morning: You can find a stone to fit the space, or you can find a space to fit the stone. I used to think I was the stone. Now I think maybe I'm the space that needs filling.”
Jamie's face crinkled like a piece of brown paper. “That's a step toward enlightenment, lad.”
“Are you a Buddhist, Jamie?”
“Nah. But I'd like to be.” His face crinkled again, and Andrew threw his arm around the wiry old fellow.
“You're already there, Jamie; trust me.”
“Drew!”
Andrew turned to find Lee at his side. Anne and Roger were weaving though the crowd. The bartender, whose name was Brian, and who seemed to know everyone, came around the end of the bar and bent at the waist.
“Now, missy, I'll need you to be movin' toward the family area, you know,” he said gently.
“It's not missy, it's Lee, as you well know, Brian Shaheen!” Lee said, her chin stuck out like the prow of a ship.
“An apple and mango for the lady, please, Brian,” Andrew said. “I shall escort her.”
Brian grinned. “Only doin' my job, gov'nor.”
“Are you buying my daughter drinks, sir?” Anne said as she reached the bar.
“I am indeed, and her patient and lovely mother as well, if I may be so bold.”
“A pint of Cornish Blonde would be very welcome, I'm sure,” she replied with a mock curtsy.
“Was there ever a more comely Cornish blonde than thee,” Andrew countered with a bow, for Anne Trelissick was by way of being a “looker.”
“You flirtin' with milady?” Roger asked, appearing at Andrew's shoulder.
“Sir! You malign my character!” Andrew replied with theatrical formality. “I am merely articulating the obvious”—he swept his arm in a circle encompassing the room—“as anyone here may vouchsafe.” Heads nearby nodded appreciatively.
“Can I have my apple-mango now?” Lee demanded. Those within earshot dissolved into laughter. Lee got her drink and vanished. Andrew introduced Anne and Roger to Jamie, only to learn they knew him already.
Then, apropos of nothing, an unaccompanied baritone voice rang out from the rear of the long room.
Come all jolly fellows, that love to be mellow,
Attend unto me and set easy;
A pint when it's quiet, come lads let us try it,
For thinking can drive a man crazy.
By plowing and sowing, and reaping and mowing…
Andrew moved away from the bar, following Jamie, and was amazed as voices around the room picked up the tune. By the time the leader got to the chorus, it seemed to Andrew half the crowd had chimed in.
I have lawns, I have bowers, I have fields, I have flowers,
And the lark is my morning alarmer;
So you jolly boys now, here's health to the plow,
Long life and success to the farmer…
Jack Vaughan was a slender, handsome man of about sixty, with a shiny, balding pate, a short, neatly trimmed, graying beard, brilliant blue eyes, and an almost beatific face when he sang. His voice was splendid; the song flowed out of him, sweet and clear, like a breeze freshening the air in the crowded room. And his friends and neighbors joined him. Beside him, singing alto harmony, was an apple-cheeked woman Andrew took to be Jack's wife. Opposite them at their table was a stockier fellow who occasionally played guitar with a deft touch and filled in the tenor harmonies. The crowd, some thirty strong, fell into two groups: those who sang all the stanzas along with Jack, whom Andrew took to be locals; and those who only chimed in at the chorus, whom Andrew figured were visitors, like him. Some distance away, he could see Lee singing, too. He wondered what happy bit of magic, what curious throwback to another decade, made her want to be here, with adults, singing old folk songs and sea shanties.
Andrew was well into his third pint, and singing the chorus of “John Barleycorn,” when a voice in an upper register joined him. He knew the voice even though it had never sung for him before. The song ended.
“Hello, sailor,” Nicola said. She was wearing a simple but flattering raw linen wrap dress tied at the hip, and heels.
“Not me; I get seasick,” Andrew said with a grin.
“When you're sailing, or when you're drinking?”
“Yes.”
She punched his shoulder, and suddenly he was reminded of the way adolescents poked and shoved in their awkward early attempts at physical intimacy. Was that what he and Nicola were—middle-aged adolescents?
“Do you always sing harmony?” Nicola asked.
“Guess so. Used to drive my mother nuts. We'd be riding in the car, listening to the radio, and she'd ask why I didn't sing the melody like everyone else. I just sing what I hear, which is usually the bass harmony line.”
“You could be a regular here, with that voice.”
Andrew feigned shock. “I believe that was a compliment!”
“Christ, I think you're right; I must be slipping.”
“Careful; you have a reputation to protect.”
“A reputation?”
“You know: prickly, pugnacious.”
“I prefer to think of it as proactive.”
“Get 'em before they get you?”
“Something like that.”
“Is it so unsafe out there?”
“You have no idea.”
“No. I suppose I don't. Then again, I'm not a woman.”
“Yes, I noticed that.”
“Did you, indeed? What was the clue? The fact that I'm a monosyllabic mouth breather? The way I slope along, hairy knuckles dragging, drool dripping from the corner of my mouth? Maybe it was the club in my hand? Like those Neanderthals you warned Lee about?”
She looked down at her drink. “I'm pretty sure you're not one of them.”
“Ah, but you can't be sure, can you? My wife left me, after all.”
“Look,” Nicola said, looking directly at him. “I'm sorry about last night.”
“Sorry for what? Sorry for sharing
a lovely meal with me? Sorry for giving me the gift of your company? Sorry for being so pleasing to the eye?”
“You know what I mean.”
“If I do, I don't remember.”
“Okay, I give up. I'm sorry I drank so much of the wine. That's what I meant, of course.”
“Speaking of which, how about another drink?”
Nicola smiled. “I wouldn't say no.”
Andrew slipped through the crowd to get their drinks. Nicola waved across the room to Lee, who was sitting on the steps to the upstairs sitting room. I wouldn't say no, Nicola repeated to herself. Freudian slip? She'd been saying “No” for years now. “No” was her armor. “No” was her stockade, her weapon against … what? Her fears? If it was, it wasn't working; they still shimmered in the air around her, like an aura. And what was it about this Andrew fellow that suddenly made her wall feel as permeable as mesh netting?
When he returned with her gin and tonic, she was nodding her head to the music, but not singing. She looked far away.
“You okay?” he asked.
“What? Oh yes, fine! Just enjoying the scene. Thanks for the drink.”
“You said last night you've only been here a few years, but you seem very at home.”
“Yes … yes, I suppose I am.”
“You hesitated there for a moment.”
“You're right. I do love it here, truly, and people have been so sweet to me. But if I'm honest, I have to say I miss St. Ives—and Trevega House, too, for that matter. Partly, it's just the light in that part of Cornwall, but light means a lot to me. Someday some scientist is going to figure out what it is about the light in St. Ives, but artists have understood it intuitively for more than a century. It's just clearer, truer. And let's face it, St. Ives is a bit more cosmopolitan than Boscastle—for Cornwall, at least. Lots of galleries and shops and cafés and a community of painters that just doesn't exist here. Plus … well, Jeremy's Dad made me feel more at home there than I ever felt in Boston. I suppose that sounds weird.”
“Not at all. Will you ever go back?”
“No as long as Jeremy's around. Plus, it's got so expensive I couldn't afford it. I didn't have to worry about that before.”
“You lost a lot more than a marriage, didn't you?”
Nicola looked at Andrew and put her free arm through his, giving it the slightest squeeze. “Yes. Thank you for understanding that.”
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