The view over rooftops took in the whole of St Ives bay. I felt my breath catch in my throat. It was late afternoon on a bright, sunny day. The cottage faced west and we could see the sun glowing orange and beginning to fall into the sea. The only outlook from the window at the back of the room, which I realised must face east, was the blank wall of the cottage above – but there was space enough in between to retain the sense of privacy and, I felt sure, to allow the morning sun to stream in. Also, the room seemed slightly larger than the one below. I couldn’t quite work out how but the estate agent explained that old St Ives had been built in such a higgledy-piggledy fashion that buildings often more or less slot into each other.
The town is not badly planned, it was just never planned at all. The reason for the tangled network of alleyways often leading to dead ends, occasional outcrops of rock, unexplained bulges in walls, and ancient cottages displaying impossible curves and angles, is simply that the early builders put a house anywhere they could find a location. Then the later builders filled in the gaps.
Maybe all this added to the magic, for Rose Cottage certainly cast some kind of a spell over Carl and me. I could feel him clutching my hand tightly. We did not speak. Instead, we allowed ourselves to be taken downstairs again, shown the kind of bathroom in which it would clearly be quite possible to sit on the toilet, wash your feet in the undersized bath and brush your teeth at the same time, then out through a tatty little lean-to kitchen into the yard. And there was the clincher.
Alongside the wall, which divided the tiny cottage from the property next door and to the right, somebody had built another lean-to, a curious makeshift construction made up of a brick base with steel panels above, framing a line of ill-fitting windows, its roof of corrugated iron punctuated by large glass skylights, which probably stood where there had once perhaps been flower beds. It was not very big – quite long, maybe fifteen or sixteen feet, but no more than six feet wide – and should in no way be confused with a modern double-glazed conservatory. Indeed you could almost see the gaps around some of the sadly deficient glazing through which the wind would surely whistle on chilly winter days. However, to both Carl and me the place practically screamed ‘Studio’. Its glass-panelled roof sloped directly towards the clear north light that artists so love and it was big enough, surely, for just one painter to work in. Particularly if he were organised and tidy, and Carl was both. Extremely so. I had seen that in London where he had worked in just a corner of a flat, which comprised only one big room. If he made a mess he cleared it up at once, his paints and brushes were kept in meticulous order in a large mahogany box, and his work was always scrupulously catalogued and neatly stored. I glanced at him. I could almost see him erecting his easel in his head.
We needed no discussion. Rose Cottage had sold itself to us. And the good news was that we could move in straight away. Indeed, when Carl offered to pay a month’s rent as deposit and three months’ in advance, the need for references no longer seemed to apply and Rose Cottage was ours. Carl had already told me that cash was not an immediate problem. He had brought with him from London a leather document case, in which he had habitually kept whatever money he had earned and managed to save, which had been concealed beneath the floorboards of his flat. He did not trust banks, he had explained to me.
We drove the van up the hill from the car park by the harbour where we had parked it, and caused traffic chaos when we had to block the road in order to unload. Rose Cottage seemed pretty well perfect to us and we had rented it ever since from an absentee landlord apparently quite content to receive a regular small income from tenants who gave him no bother.
That was the beginning. And at first almost all its promise, all of our dreams, were realised.
The first six years of our life together passed uneventfully and, by and large, were remarkably content. The early memories in particular were such happy ones, because they had brought with them a sense of peace and a degree of loving companionship that I had never thought possible.
You can’t deny your own past, of course, not to yourself, anyway. But Carl and I succeeded in settling into Rose Cottage so easily and completely that it was almost as if the place had been built specially for us – which Carl insisted it had been, albeit 200 years or so earlier.
The cottage had everything we wanted. We bought a futon sofa and turned the glorious upstairs room into a kind of bedsit. We found some wonderful old pale-gold curtains in a charity shop, which we hung in the dull downstairs room that we used as a dining room in the evenings, when we could pull the curtains and mask the room’s ugliness with candlelight.
The studio in the backyard suited Carl perfectly. We even discovered, when trying to brighten up the shabby little kitchen by replacing the decaying brown linoleum that covered the floor with a dazzlingly colourful material, that there was a small, apparently forgotten, cellar below. Its entrance was protected by a piece of old stone right by the sink, which had at first seemed no different from the rest of the floor but which had given a slightly hollow ring when Carl had tapped the new floor covering in place. He had been delighted when he succeeded in prising up the stone with a crowbar to reveal a seven-foot-square cellar, which gave him an excellent hiding place for his cash earnings and also somewhere to store completed paintings. I had been pleased too, because, having both a vivid imagination and a love of history, I immediately conjured up an image of our cellar housing stashes of illicit contraband brought there by Cornish smugglers.
Mostly we led a very quiet life, our love for each other all that really mattered to either of us, and even the arrival of the letter did not alter that. Not to begin with. We were determined, at the end of that fateful year, that Christmas would not be spoiled. We enjoyed special occasions. We celebrated alone, as was our habit in most things, with roast pheasant and a bottle of good claret, after spending a jolly – and mercifully Fenella-Austen-free – lunchtime hour in the Sloop.
By the end of January both Carl and I had almost begun to dare to believe that perhaps both the van incident and the letter had not really meant anything. Certainly I had still somehow managed to keep any further nightmares at bay. But the peace I so hoped we had found was shattered when, one dark and cold morning, the postman brought another letter.
I suppose I had been kidding myself that there wouldn’t be any more. That it had ended as abruptly as it had begun. After all, two months had elapsed since the first letter arrived so to receive one again, just like that, was a greater shock than ever. This time the message was not only devastating but also devastatingly appropriate. ‘YOU CANNOT HIDE FROM THE TRUTH ANY MORE’, it said.
Carl and I both tried to pretend to the other that we were able to take it in our stride, but I knew deep down that neither of us was as calm as we pretended to be.
Seven
‘This can’t go on,’ I told Carl the next day. ‘I think we should go to the police. We’re both living my nightmare now. Anything would be better than that . . .’
He looked at me as if I had slapped his face. ‘No!’ he said emphatically. ‘No. I cannot risk losing you.’
I sighed. I was no longer a frightened twenty-year-old girl. Nowadays I was a frightened twenty-seven-year-old woman. Nothing had changed, really, except that I was beginning to believe that nobody could run for ever.
Carl cuddled me and told me stories, as he always did when he knew I was upset. He told me again about growing up in Key West in the Sixties and early Seventies when the artists and writers were there with a vengeance, and the whole place existed in a cloud of scented smoke from marijuana and joss sticks, and he as a small boy used to go hunting for clams on the beach accompanied by a chorus of songs from guitar-playing hippies.
Sometimes he made his growing up sound forsaken and lonely. It depended on his mood, I knew that. Sometimes he resented the haze of drugs and booze, which had engulfed his parents to the extent where they could hardly be bothered with their only son. Sometimes he romanticised it all. This was o
ne of those days. He was trying to lift me, of course. ‘Did I ever tell you about Crabman Killenny?’ he asked.
I shook my head.
‘They called him Crabman because he could sing the crabs off the beach.’
I laughed.
‘No, really, every night he’d go to the beach and sing to the sunset. His voice was so bad even the crabs couldn’t stand it. A great procession of them would make their way across the sand and up into the streets. All we kids used to go and watch. We reckoned they’d rather be squashed underneath the Conch Train than listen to old Crabman Killenny singing.’
‘Yuk,’ I said. And I laughed again dutifully.
‘No truly, I saw it with my own eyes.’
And Carl stared at me, arms outstretched, hands palms up, a picture of offended innocence.
Nobody could make me forget pain like Carl. He was just so easy to be with somehow. I loved his gentle sense of humour. He had a way of jollying me out of myself. It didn’t quite work on this occasion though, and the tranquillity of our day-to-day existence never quite returned. Any chance of that was wrecked by a series of three or four nightmares, brought on, I knew all too well, by the letters.
Carl and I still didn’t have a clue who might be responsible. For a start, there was no one whom we could possibly imagine knew anything about us that might lead him or her to behave in such a way.
‘Who could hate us that much?’ I asked Carl one Sunday morning.
He shrugged. ‘I wish I knew, Suzanne. The most hateful person I know around here is that damned Fenella Austen.’
It wasn’t the first time he had mentioned her name and I wished he wouldn’t. There was no logic in focusing on Fenella and I told him so.
‘But what if we’ve got it wrong; what if we’re being threatened because of something that has happened here in St Ives? Maybe Fenella resents us, resents me. You know what artists can be like. I sell better than she does nowadays.’
‘Carl, you’re not exactly Damien Hirst, thank God. We barely get by. And there is absolutely nothing about either of us since we’ve been in St Ives that anybody could use against us, you know that.’
Carl grunted his agreement. But he seemed to be totally preoccupied, perhaps even obsessed, with finding the letter writer. And it was that, probably, which led him to behave later that day in a rather hot-headed manner, which was quite out of character.
I understood that Carl could not bear anything that threatened our lives together. But I had had no idea of his intentions when he suggested we visited the Sloop, and indeed, still do not know for certain that he had actually intended to do what he did.
I was trying not to think about our problems when we walked down to the pub at lunch time. It was a wet and blustery February day, and there were virtually no holidaymakers around. The bar was jam-packed full of locals, most of whom we knew at least a little and who knew us.
I might have guessed that, one way or another, something was going to break soon. Although Carl did not have nightmares, he seemed possibly to be more disturbed by the anonymous campaign against us than I was. He insisted that he was upset only because he knew what it was doing to me, that he wasn’t worried himself, but I knew very well just how on edge he was all the time.
We shrugged off our wet coats and propped our umbrellas in a corner among a pile of them, which were already steaming gently. Predictably enough, Fenella Austen was at the bar holding court. She did the rounds of all the pubs in St Ives, but recently seemed to have been using the Sloop more than any other, much to the irritation of Carl and me who had a big soft spot for the place. Equally predictably, she was already well oiled even though it was only just one o’clock. As Carl approached the bar to buy our first round of drinks she paused in mid flow, took a deep draught from her glass, which was filled almost to the brim with a substance that looked suspiciously like only very slightly diluted whisky, and put her free arm round his waist.
‘Ah, my favourite boy wonder,’ she drawled, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
At first Carl did quite well. He gave her a small, icy smile. ‘Some boy,’ he said mildly.
Then, as ever, her hand slipped down to his backside, which she squeezed in her customary familiar manner. The bloody woman seemed to have a fixation with Carl’s bottom and I suspected he was not in the mood to put up with it. I was right. There was a brief moment of calm before the storm and I found myself wondering if it was much the same kind of thing as Mariette and her waiter’s bum. Just as I was deciding that there really was no comparison all hell broke loose.
‘You are a p-poisonous old woman and if you d-don’t take your hand away from my a-arse I’ll stuff it up your own,’ I heard Carl say.
I could hardly miss it. He shouted at the top of his voice. Carl hardly ever raised his voice, hardly ever swore and was never crude or uncouth. I had never even heard him say ‘arse’ before. The stammer, which occurred only very rarely by then and under extreme stress, somehow made his outburst all the more devastating. I was flabbergasted. The silence was suddenly deafening. All eyes were on Carl and Fenella. Apart from anything else, taking on Fenella was unheard of. She had not achieved her almost legendary status in St Ives without good reason.
Slowly she put her drink down on the bar and turned to face Carl directly, quite deliberately keeping her left hand on his bottom, so that her face was just inches from his although a little above. Fenella was exceptionally tall, particularly for a woman of her age. She was well over six foot and on that Sunday morning was wearing high-heeled shoes. Carl had to peer up to look her in the eye. ‘You silly little man,’ she said eventually and for her quite quietly, and certainly very calmly.
Then and only then did she remove her hand from Carl’s bum, swing back round on her heels and return her attention to her glass of whisky. Not a bad performance for someone who was definitely at least half cut, I remember thinking.
There was a strangled giggle or two here and there but conversation had started to begin again when it became apparent that Carl was not going to be dismissed so lightly. ‘I said you were a p-poisonous old woman,’ he yelled and this time there was almost a note of hysteria in his voice. ‘Poisonous, as in p-poison pen.’
With a weary sigh Fenella turned towards him again. ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ she asked, her voice only very slightly slurred.
‘You know d-damned well what I’m talking about,’ said Carl, still yelling.
‘Really,’ countered Fenella, who sounded dangerously calm. ‘Well, then, why not at least enlighten the rest of the bar. I’m sure everyone else is bewildered even if I, allegedly, am not.’
‘She’s been sending poison pen letters to me and my wife,’ shouted Carl.
Fenella raised her eyebrows. ‘And what did I say in these letters, pray?’ she asked.
‘You know what you s-said,’ he told her.
‘Now let me think,’ replied Fenella and tapped a finger against her pursed lips as if she were musing. ‘I know. Perhaps it was something devastatingly truthful like how you are a no-talent no-hoper married to a silly bitch with no personality?’
The words were devastating. Her voice was one of polite enquiry. I tried to stop Carl taking this any further, but it was too late. He rose to the bait. ‘You’re a vicious old has-been,’ he bellowed at her. ‘You’re jealous of me and Suzanne, that’s why you’re doing this to us . . .’
A collective gasp echoed around the bar. I knew that Carl had gone too far.
The barman, hearing the danger signals, came belting round from the lounge bar just in time to see Fenella throw her whisky in Carl’s face. She was not even pretending to be calm now. ‘Don’t you ever speak to me like that,’ she stormed. ‘This is my bar in my town and I want you out of it.’
Carl began to wipe whisky from his face with the back of one hand. God knows what might have happened next but I didn’t wait to find out. I knew I had to be decisive for once in my life. I grabbed Carl by both hands and, pulling w
ith all my strength, dragged him towards the door.
His legs started to move in the right direction before he became aware of what was happening. Nonetheless he opened his mouth to protest.
‘Don’t argue; for once do as I say,’ I commanded. ‘We’re leaving.’
Suddenly overcome by the scene, perhaps, he complied almost meekly.
When I got him outside I realised, or rather the driving rain made us both realise, that we had left our coats and umbrellas in the bar. Cornish weather is not always as benign as summer visitors think. The weeks since Christmas had been bleak. On this occasion the wind and rain were blowing directly inshore, carrying with them an icy saltiness that chilled to the bone. A particularly vicious gust caught us full in the face, quite taking my breath away. ‘Just don’t move,’ I managed to gasp to Carl, as I dashed inside to fetch protection from the foul weather.
By the time we had pulled on our coats and abandoned even the thought of trying to erect our umbrellas, I had gone off the idea of a lunchtime drink completely.
Unfortunately, Carl had not.
‘Let’s go up to the Union,’ he said, brushing aside my protests.
‘Just don’t go accusing anybody else, will you?’
‘I’m not a c-complete damned fool, Suzanne,’ he snapped, still stammering slightly.
‘Then why are you behaving like one?’ I heard myself counter before I had time to think.
It was about as near as we had ever got to a quarrel. Certainly my sharp answer, every bit as uncharacteristic as Carl’s outburst in the pub, had stopped him dead in his tracks. ‘Is that what you think?’ he asked.
I turned to look at him directly, his shoulders hunched against the wind and rain, his hair sodden, droplets of water running off his nose and chin, the expression in his eyes full of concern. Everything Carl did was governed by his huge capacity for love and loyalty. I knew that, and adored him for it, but I decided not to capitulate. I had gone this far, I would have to see it through. ‘Yes, I do,’ I said. ‘You’re not a fool, Carl, anything but. You have just behaved like one, though.’
A Deep Deceit Page 9
