The Tintagel Secret

by Sarah Till

  I bring the box in, it seems larger and heavier now. I quickly turn the key in the lock and stare at the contents. Two compact piles of twenty-pound notes completely fill the space inside. The walls of the box are deceptively thin, and I pull the money. I count it slowly, piling each thousand on the mattress. Nearer the bottom of the box the notes turn to fifties. All in all, there's twenty-eight thousand pounds in the box. I quickly push it back in and shut the lid. Then I go to Daisy and get the rest of Jer's papers from the side pack. Like everything, they tell a story of their own. I can see from the correspondence that he sold a house in Blackburn nine years ago. The sale papers are all there, telling me that the equity in the house was sixty-five thousand pounds, which Jer took in cash from the buyer for a 'quick sale'. So is his diagnosis letter from the hospital, chronic recurrent pneumonia, which then developed into a benign tumour. That's when he bought Daisy. Her documents are all here, a pre-owned Harley Davison. He'd been in and out of hospital and all his hospital admission letters are here and I can put together his movements in the time since I've known him. In and out of hospital with a condition that would make him suffer but wouldn't kill him, very much like my life really. It's simple. He was either in hospital, in his rented cottage in Tintagel, or with me. I guess I was his was his respite as well as his quest. Now I think about it, I saw the deterioration, but I couldn't ask him; that would have been more than one question. Besides we had more important things to discuss, things concerning truth and faith and love. And lies. And he had much more important things to grow ever closer to. Much more important.

  Twenty-eight thousand pounds. I step outside into the fading sunlight and look at the house. This would be more than enough to fix it up. I feel a tingle of disappointment and look back at the shed. The warm paraffin glow and the smell of summer flowers. I'd miss it very much. But, on the other hand, if I wanted to meet up with Kim and Ann and they wanted to come here, I would have to start living inside. Jer's given me another chance at life, another route. I'd be able to wear my own clothes, have a flushing toilet and shower every day. It sounded good in theory, but my eyes eventually rest on Macy.

  I'd start tomorrow. I'd phone the plumber and get someone to come and clear up, maybe even get it fumigated. Tomorrow. Right now, I have somewhere to go. I pull on my taped-up shoes and change into my old clothes. I pull the box out of the shed and bury her deep in carrier bags in Macy's breadth. I scrabble beneath the sunflowers and pull out the shiny gold and push it deep into my pocket. I set off down the lane in the evening sunlight, plenty of light left now. On the main road tourists avoid me and some shopkeepers slam their doors when they see me coming. Alice rushes outside to see me hugging me tightly.

  'Oh Lizzie. It's good to see you back. A familiar face.'

  I smile.

  'Don't get too used to it.'

  She looks slightly worried and touches my arm.

  'You're not leaving, are you? Don't let Julia get you down. She's gone a bit crazy, you know.'

  I nod.

  'Mmm. Maybe she's just upset. Maybe she's depressed. Whatever she is, I feel sorry for her. It's not a nice place to be at all.'

  'But you're not leaving are you? Lizzie? Are you leaving?'

  I laugh loudly, and Alice relaxes, as if I've just turned back into a familiar friend.

  'No. Not leaving. Not exactly. I've come to the end of this little journey.' I look up to the headland and see a sliver of faded yellow police tape blowing in the sea breeze. Tintagel Castle's in the distance, and the beach is my destination. 'I'll still be up at the cottage, if you want to see me. Come up any time, Alice.'

  She nods.

  'Oh, before you go, I saw your friend on the beach the other day. The Hell's Angel. You know, Susan’s ex. I think he was looking for you.'

  For the first time I feel tears coming. I feel the ring on my finger and think about Jer. Wherever he is now, he's sleeping peacefully.

  'He found me, Alice. He found me.'

  'Good. I'll see you later, Lizzie. I'll bring you some shopping in the week.'

  It goes against the grain, but I nod. It would certainly help, and I can pay her for it now. I shuffle on, and a group of boys push and poke at me. I start to hum and then sing, this time I sing Jerusalem loudly and full pitch.

  'Yer fucking mad, grandma. She's a screw loose.'

  One of them tried to swing Macy round, but the weight of her deceives him and he fails. I stand up straight and stare him down. He laughs nervously and backs off.

  'You gonna cast a spell on me, witchy poo? Ooo, I'm scared.'

  He’s scared, he's pale and he runs away after his friends. I press on, and soon I'm on the beach. Macy's weight makes it difficult to negotiate the steps, but I do it and soon I'm in the caves. This is where the puzzle started, right here in the Devil's hole. Their power is gone now, along with their secret, and I sit and watch the waves lap the shore. Some teenagers enter the caves and give me a wide berth. I can make out their accents, posh and high, and they sit opposite me. One of the girls is staring at me and she taps her friend on the arm.

  'Look at the poor old bag lady. So sad. Do you think she lives here?'

  He friend looks at me over her shoulder.

  'Don't look at her Carly, she's probably and alcoholic. Mummy told me about them, they hang around selling the Big Issue. They're a bit mental.'

  Carly stares a little bit more then comes over.

  'Are you all right? Can I get you anything?'

  It's my last time I'll play to my audience, so I give them what they want. I start to hum loudly, and then sing a full chorus of 'We're off to see the Wizard'. Finally, I stand up and click my heels.

  'There's no place like home.'

  I look at their faces, my distant, removed audience, and see horror. Each and every one of them is creating their own story of how to never, ever become like me. Taking in every detail of my dress, my manner, my words, my gaze and avoiding them like the plague. I turn and walk away and wander up the beach to the natural dip in the caves where Jer and I used to bathe. I park Macy up in our old cave and strip off. It almost as if he's here, just gone outside for a smoke, or down to the sea for a dip. I've woken up in this cave bathed in sunlight with his arms around me, and I can almost feel him now.

  I scrape around for some twigs and rummage around Macy for a lighter. I light a little fire and step into the natural Jacuzzi. It's huge in here without him, and I stretch out my legs and stare at the moon in the still-light sky. Then it strikes me. This is where the story ends, isn't it? A natural ending, marked by Jer's departure, and by my giving up my Top Secret. Almost. I am perfectly at liberty to change my life. I can feel safe knowing that Mia has the notes, and that Jer finally had what he believes to be the greatest treasure in the world. It's a sign. It couldn't be clearer. I lie in the warm water until it's nearly dark, then sit in front of the fire looking out at the waves. A small boat passes on the horizon and look around our hidey hole, our precious place, where we had been so happy. No time for sadness now, just for goodbyes. I get dressed again and stamp out the fire, and I swear I can hear him laughing. Change does strange things to us and I feel close to him, closer than ever, as if he's somehow here, although I know it isn't possible. No magic here; there never was. What happened here was all real; tiny fragments of two people's lives merging for a short time. It's over now and I walk away dragging Macy behind me.

  As I reach my turning I see Mia Connelly's car. She's in there with two uniformed officers and I wonder if I'm going to be arrested again. She jumps out and totters across the road. She looks different somehow, her cheeks rosy and her eyes bright.

  'Lizzie. I've been looking for you.'

  'I was on the beach. In the caves. I get about, me.'

  Mia almost smiles.

  'Mmm. That's what I want to ask you. Were you in the police station at Bodmin earlier today? Only someone came in with some evidence and I wondered if it was you? We only saw the back of this person and it looked a
bit like you, except more... well this woman had a pair of heels on and she didn't look...'

  I stare at her unblinking eyes and wonder what I should say. I didn't want to lie, but I didn't want her to know the truth either. How could I explain it? How could I explain to her the Tintagel was free, that the killing would stop now?

  'No. It wasn't me. I was at a friend's funeral.'

  She nods and sparks a cigarette and I wonder if she should really be doing that now.

  'Oh yes. Sorry to hear about your friend. Jerusalem Thomas. That's why I'm here, really. There was a warrant out for his arrest in Manchester. Seems he stole a fair amount of cash from an old man. Frank Thomas.'

  She studies my face.

  'My father. Right. That would explain all the questions.'

  I shake my head. My heart is beating fast and I wonder which way this will go. She smoked just a little of the cigarette and then throws it on the floor and stamps on it.

  'Questions?'

  I nod.

  'Yeah. He was always asking me about what I know about, well. Tintagel. The legends. And the grail, he was always going on about the Holy Grail. Still, he was a good friend to me.'

  Her face moulds into a frown.

  'Oh, Lizzie, he wasn't a friend. From what we can tell about his background he wasn’t even a Hells’ Angel, as he claimed to be. He was after stealing from you. He stole from your father and he wanted whatever you have, something valuable.'

  I think about the pile of money and the golden metal, safely hidden now.

  'But I don't have anything.'

  She nods and her head tilts to one side.

  'No. No you don't. But he was taking advantage of you, Lizzie. He wasn't a nice person. A compulsive liar, by all accounts. Hardly a word that came out of his mouth was true.' I resist the urge to smile. Yes. A complete bastard, by his own admission. 'He lived here, just up the road, didn't he? Apparently he was quite a ladies man. Dated all the murder victims at one time or another.'

  I hold my hand to my mouth, like people in the movies do when they are shocked.

  'Oh my God. You don't think.....'

  'Unfortunately we do, Lizzie. One of our officers said he moved out of his house just before he died. Packed all his stuff up into his bike as if he was moving in somewhere else. Running off somewhere. He'd been telling people that he has almost found what he was looking for. They just took it he was going back into hospital, he'd been quite ill apparently. Morphine overdose, wasn't it? Common when you're seriously ill. Or seriously guilty. I'm sorry Lizzie. But like I suspected, you could have easily been the next one. Your life was at risk Lizzie, you should have come to me when you suspected. I think somewhere inside you knew too, didn't you? That’s why you said what you did to Julia, isn’t it? Well, there’s no need to be scared any more.'

  I nod and look at the floor.

  'Anyway, stay safe. Lizzie. And if you remember anything, you know, what he said to you or anything, let me know.'

  We both know I won't and we both know that there will be no more murders. Mia's a clever girl. But not as clever as me.

  When I reach the house I make my way to the shed and brew tea. I stand outside and look at the sunflowers. It's summer o'clock, and I smile at the garden in general. A blackbird sings its evening song in the tree behind the house, and I know that tomorrow everything will change. How can it not now? Jer's money has made it impossible to stay like this. I could just keep it in the box, hide it or bury it, but that's not what he would have wanted. The wheels are in motion, and I know that in a matter of weeks I'll no longer be living in this shed. I'm gasping onto this life, like I have to everything; I've never been good with change. I stare back down the decades and see a beginning, a middle and now an end. How can I resist something that so desperately needs to become history, the loose ends tied up and bundled into the annals of time? The past.

  Finally, I lie down on the mattress, rolling back into Jer's dip. I pull his leather jacket out of the bag and heave it over me, his smell on it overwhelming even the stench of paraffin. He loved me at the end, finally. On the brink of sleep, I surprise myself awake by asking myself, honestly, did I really love him? It's a difficult one. I'd been devoid of emotions for so long, devastated by Andrew's rebuffs and haunted by Emma's demise that I'd forgotten. Had I felt something for him, somewhere, a spark of goodness against the backdrop of rugged day to day survival? Had I? I certainly loved him now, or the idea of him, now that I know he loved me. Hadn't I thought he was a philanderer, that I wasn't important? That he was cruel for leaving? All that’s over now, because he was mine at the end. I got what was mine.

  I did. The warmth I feel for him now had been simmering somewhere. My heart was in shallow grave with my little Emma, that I knew. I didn't give it away, and he didn't take it away with him. We'd shared it. We were alike, after the same things. Survival of the fittest and I had won. We'd do anything to stay alive. People like us. He'll always be here with me, tucked away inside with Stan and Andrew, and Emma. With my parents, and my siblings, even John, because he was part of the story. My story of survival.

  It's time to change it now. Morgana fades away into the distance, scrubbed along clean with Julia's paint, fading back into the story where she was made, and overlaid onto me by my father and brother. The bottleneck of my childhood, that shaped one reality, suddenly explodes into a million pieces. Tomorrow, this will all be gone, for better or for worse.

  CHAPTER 29

  The next day everything did change. I woke up and telephoned the plumber, who came out the same day and gave me an estimate for eight thousand pounds to rewire and re-plumb the whole house. It would take two weeks and he would get started straight away. I made myself scarce in the daytime by visiting Alice. I had a cold shower very early each morning and fetched some smart trousers and a jumper from the box in my bedroom. The black shoes had worn in and stopped rubbing now, and when I saw my reflection in the shop windows, my handbag slung over my shoulder, I was surprised.

  Alice and I made friends. Real friends, not the kind where she feels sorry for me and I let her look after me. We were sitting outside in the summer sunshine when she told me about her mother.

  'She was a manic depressive. That's not what they called it then, but now I recognise it. Full of optimism one day, packing for trips we never went on because she would just crash and burn. She committed suicide. I'd left home, in my first year at university, and then she... When I came back here it was like she'd never existed. Empty.'

  It was like that for me at first, and Alice's words had stirred me. I took her hand and patted it.

  ‘I have to ask you something, Alice. You knew my friend Jer, didn’t you?’

  She reddened and I suddenly felt a familiar rage.

  ‘Mmm. The thing is, Lizzie, he wasn’t a nice person. All that creeping about with different women. Very strange. I didn’t really like him. We had a bit of a thing, a couple of dates, but he was always going on about the Holy Grail, wouldn’t shut up about it. Asking me what I knew about it, if I’d heard any local stories. Quite boring really. Not my thing. So it was nothing serious. You were close, weren’t you?’

  I nod.

  ‘Close enough. We knew each other very well. I did wonder why you weren’t at his funeral.’

  She sighs.

  ‘Well I’m sorry for your loss. I expect we’ll both have to speak at the inquest. But I didn’t like him at all. No one did. You can only keep up with his sort of lies for a short time. And word around the village is that he killed those women. Seems like we were both lucky.’

  I feel a deep relief and a weight lift from my shoulders.

  'Yes. Yes we were. Never mind love, we all get through best we can.'

  When the house was done, Alice and I set about the cleaning. It took four days before it was ready to sleep in. We sorted through the tents and the boxes of sunglasses, sun cream and camping equipment and got the life-boat charity to come and pick up anything usable. At the end of the
fourth day we were faced with the patch of land at the back of the shed I'd been using as a toilet. Alice wrinkled up her nose at the smell.

  'Did you really go there all the time?'

  I nodded.

  'Yes. All the time. No choice. A bit tricky in the night though.'

  She goes into the shed and bring out a handful of seeds.

  'Meadow flowers. Let's see if we can mask the smell.'

  She laughs loudly and we turn away as the seeds land on the last scraps of my shame. The man from the Council turned up and laid mouse traps, and we shooed away the pigeons that had been living on the landing. All the spiders were gone, all the paintwork was shiny and new, and even the walls were dusted. I could see it in Alice's face, her longing for a house like this. I knew she was living in a small room at the back of the shop, having rented out her house to tourists, so I asked her if she wanted to stay here. I had no children and she had no parents. It made sense, to me anyway, to do the best we can. Maybe it's our own twisted kind of make-do-and-mend story, but aren't they the best kind, the ones goodness comes out of?

  I parked Macy up for a final time one month after the house was finished. I pushed her up sideways against the far garden wall and lined her with some green carrier bags, the very best of bags, and shovelled soil into her. I planted strawberries and geraniums, mint and parsley, a good eccentric mix of everything, and they grew and grew until she was over laden with colour. The sun would reflect on her mirrors in the morning and cast a glitterballesque reflection onto the front of the shed. I'd cleared out my shed a little but left it mostly how it was. I put an advertisement in the newspaper to sell Daisy and was overwhelmed with people coming to view her. There she stood, on the road outside Coombes Cottage every day, hordes of men passing her and patting her seat. We were both waiting, Daisy and I, for the right person to come along. We'd both know when they got here, and sure enough, one hot afternoon he strode up the lane. Tall and sunburnt, his worn jeans matched his worn face, and he had a tight bandana around his greying hair. He strode up to me and shook my hand hard.