‘On Scilly?’
‘No. At a craft centre in Staffordshire.’
‘Staffordshire?’ Minty made the place sound like some kind of hell. ‘The market’s a lot different down here. And with respect, I’m guessing that was some time ago.’
Poppy covered her annoyance with a laugh, deciding a charm offensive was the best method of attack with Minty. ‘Oh, centuries ago. Actually, it was just within this century. But at least it gave me a good grounding in the way a gallery works. And, of course, I’ve done a lot of research since then. I’ve contacted some of the local artists and Fen and Jake have given me some insight into how the market operates for the Starfish and what the opportunities are …’ Minty and her mates stared at Poppy as if they were judging a wonky Showstopper cake on the Bake Off. She ploughed on anyway. ‘But above all I’m passionate about my ethos for the Starfish Studio.’
Minty arched an eyebrow. ‘Which is?’
‘High-quality pieces, carefully curated from island artists. Archie’s work will still be at the heart of the gallery alongside talented established artists like yourself and up-and-coming stars like Rowan.’
Jake spoke. ‘And of course, I’m going to start offering exclusive limited-edition prints of my own work to Poppy.’
Poppy just managed to stop her mouth from falling open. This was the first she’d heard of the offer, but Minty had fired up her wicked side and she quickly gathered herself and ran with the idea. ‘Of course. Jake only allows a handful of select galleries to show his work,’ she said, improvising.
‘A handful of select galleries?’ Minty smiled and Poppy cringed at her own words, which were all she could think of on the spur of the moment.
Minty darted a sly glance at Jake. ‘Well, if Jake has so much obvious faith in you, then maybe I might have to reconsider. I’ll certainly come and take a look at your plans, but I’m not promising anything.’
Poppy smiled sweetly. ‘Thanks. I appreciate it.’
‘So, when exactly are you leaving us again?’ Minty directed this at Jake, now that Poppy guessed she’d served her purpose as entertainment for the evening.
By now, Jake must have heard the question so many times, he could have worn a sandwich board saying: ‘I’m not sure yet.’
‘Let’s hope it’s a while. I’ll make sure I come over while you’re still around. It’s been way too long.’ Minty reached out and patted Jake’s hand. ‘You poor boy.’
Poppy wondered if Jake was squirming but decided Minty must know him very well.
‘Thanks,’ he muttered, then spoke more boldly. ‘And I can understand your concerns about new owners taking over the studio. I had my doubts when I first heard from my grandpa.’
Just in time, Poppy stifled a gasp at Jake’s frankness, but he quickly qualified his statement.
‘Now I’ve met Poppy and seen her commitment to the studio and how hard she’s prepared to work, I have total confidence that she’ll make a success of it. With the support of her artists, of course.’
Minty smiled. ‘Like I said, I’m happy to support her. If I’m confident the studio is the right home for my work.’
Poppy was rapidly wishing she didn’t need Minty’s jewellery in the Starfish. She didn’t quite know whether she liked the woman or not, though that was irrelevant to whether she exhibited her work, she supposed. Then again, hadn’t she declared that her ethos was to only show the work of artists she admired and respected? Hmm. She might have to compromise on that with Minty Cavendish.
Some of the artists she’d known back in the day had been difficult characters, to put it mildly, and you could hardly expect creative types to conform to convention. Her old boss at the craft centre had told her it was part of the job to nurture a stable of artists – even those you longed to tell to ‘shove their creations up their arses’.
‘I hope you’ll call round at the Starfish soon?’ Poppy said with a secret smile, fondly remembering her old boss’s rants.
Minty was all sweetness again. ‘Of course. I’m always willing to give the Starfish a try, if your plans are as good as they sound. Especially as Jake has given it – and you – such a glowing endorsement.’
‘Thanks,’ said Jake. ‘And if you’ll excuse us, I want to introduce Poppy to the vicar.’
The bar emptied quickly as anyone who wanted to take their boats home had to catch the tides. Shortly afterwards, Poppy and Jake themselves left, chatting about the people they’d met on the short walk back to the harbour. At the back of her mind, she couldn’t stop wondering if it was Poppy’s enthusiasm for the Starfish that had swayed Minty – or her passion for Jake.
More importantly, why had he offered to take some new photographs for the gallery if he wasn’t planning on staying long on St Piran’s and, as she suspected, didn’t really want to be here at all?
Chapter 13
Oh God, why had he said that? Jake was still asking himself the question when he made his breakfast the next morning and opened a pouch of cat food for Leo, who had decided to wander in as soon as Jake had opened the door.
‘Why did I say it, Leo?’ he asked, leaning against the worktop while Leo sniffed disdainfully at the dish of food. Jake’s feet were bare under the pyjama bottoms he’d thrown on in case anyone passed by the kitchen window.
Leo spared him a brief glance as if to say ‘Dunno, mate. Because you’re a bit of a plonker like all humans?’ before finally wolfing down his Luxury Hare and Badger Potage, or whatever disgusting stuff had squirted out of the pouch.
Jake decided he’d rather have toast than hare and badger so he sawed off a slice of loaf while reflecting on last night’s events at the Moor’s Head. Before they were halfway down the road from the pub, he’d apologised for saying he would have prints in the gallery without consulting Poppy.
‘I’m sorry. It just came out but Minty was being so … Minty-ish. I couldn’t resist it.’
Poppy hadn’t seemed annoyed. Far from it. She’d seemed happy with the idea.
‘It’s OK and you don’t have to do it. Even the offer was worth hearing to see her face … I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. She’s your friend and also I really do want her work in the Starfish.’
‘I wouldn’t have said she’s a friend …’ Jake had begun, then decided that it was better to keep things simple where Minty Cavendish was concerned, if that was humanly possible, since Minty’s raison d’etre seemed to be to make life complicated for anyone she came into contact with. ‘And if you do want some exclusive prints, I’m happy to provide some. If my work fits in with your ethos, that is.’
‘Happy’ hadn’t been quite the right word, in hindsight.
Poppy had laughed, and jokingly said she’d consider it: ‘But I will have to charge you the forty per cent commission.’
Jake had said ‘fine’ and they’d parted at the door of his grandpa’s cottage, laughing.
He’d watched her walk off to the studio with the moonlight on her back. Her step was light and he could hear her faintly humming a tune they’d heard in the bar once she thought she was out of his hearing. He’d closed the door behind him, still smiling, and fallen asleep with the same tune burrowing away like an earworm at his mind …
How different things seemed this morning. Leo finished his breakfast while Jake sat at the ancient kitchen table and buttered his third slice of toast. When he’d woken, rain was lashing the cottage windows and the wind was howling. Last night’s euphoria had evaporated.
Whether it was the rain or stubbing his toe on the crate of paintings, he wasn’t sure. He’d agreed to supply some prints to Poppy … which sounded simple enough – but wasn’t.
He did sell signed limited editions of his landscapes and wildlife shots through a handful of high-quality galleries. However, if the prints were to be any use to Poppy they did have to fit in with her ‘vision’ for the gallery, which meant that, really, they needed to be of Scilly – specifically of St Piran’s.
The problem was he didn’t
have a single shot of the island.
Prior to Harriet’s death, he’d had hundreds – thousands – of photographs of his family and of Harriet on the isles. Then, a few weeks after she died, in the grip of overwhelming grief, he’d erased every file from his cameras and his laptop. He’d burnt all the memory cards too and started deleting everything relating to the island from the external hard drive. He’d even tried to remove all the St Piran’s shots from his online photo storage account. Eventually he’d calmed down a little and come to realise that it would be almost impossible to delete everything he’d ever taken. There were pictures he’d shared on the internet and social media that he had no control over.
Looking back now, Jake realised the awful state he’d been in those first few months after he’d lost Harriet. He must have been trying to deal with his grief and guilt by attempting to wipe out the source of it.
Even if he could find some photos of St Piran’s from that time, he didn’t want to put them on public display. They would show St Piran’s before he lost Harriet, and the way he’d felt about his homeland then wasn’t the way he felt he about it now.
The only thing to do was to take some new pictures: could he do that, when that view was coloured by grief and unhappiness? Some people might think that it couldn’t hurt to look at a place through a lens, as long as he didn’t actually revisit the scene of the accident. He was already here, for God’s sake, with the studio, the harbour, the cottage and sea in front of him every day.
Choosing a location and a subject, truly looking at it – interacting with it – was a totally different matter though. While taking pictures, he couldn’t help but think very deeply about his subject matter or the way he felt about it. A stone, a wave, the grass – they weren’t simply inanimate objects to him; here, they seethed with memories and emotions and Jake worried he might be pulled back into the abyss.
The rattle of the cat flap startled him and Leo entered the room. The cat stalked off, spraying the doorframe on his way out, but his arrival had at least snapped Jake out of his maudlin thoughts.
He went upstairs to get dressed, ready for the day’s work at the Starfish Studio. The crate of Grandpa’s paintings sat in the bedroom. He wasn’t exactly sure what the paintings would show, but he was certain that many memories lay inside, waiting to be unlocked. Everything seemed to be conspiring to keep him on St Piran’s: Grandpa’s paintings, helping Poppy to renovate the studio, and now, the need to take more photographs. He’d moved so far out of his comfort zone in the past few days …
Was that wholly a bad thing?
Jake didn’t know the answer, so he decided to focus on practical matters and get over to the studio and start work.
After dragging on jeans and a T-shirt, he looked around for some footwear and found one of his new Adidas trainers wedged under the divan. He could have sworn he’d kicked off both the previous evening before he got undressed, but there was no sign of the other.
‘Oh, for God’s sake …’ He said it out loud, on his hands and knees hunting under the bed. ‘Ow!’ He caught his head on the corner of the crate as he straightened up.
Feeling sick for a moment, he sat on the bed, rubbing his head. He had to shift that thing into Grandpa’s room. It was like the crate in Raiders of the Lost Ark: glowing and throbbing with some mystical power. When he eventually did open it, he half expected evil spirits would fly out and melt his face.
Suddenly laughing at the craziness of his own thoughts, he padded downstairs, wondering where the hell the other trainer was. He didn’t remember throwing them around the cottage when he’d got in from the pub last night … Surely it wasn’t in the kitchen … No one could have moved it … no human anyway …
‘Oh. Shit.’
Leo was back inside now, sitting in a pool of sunlight in the kitchen, looking distinctly smug. And there was his other trainer, neatly upturned in the centre of the litter tray – and if Jake wasn’t mistaken, it was carefully concealing one of Leo’s poos.
Chapter 14
‘Oh, he’s been doing that trick again, has he?’ Fen nodded sagely at Jake who’d thumped into the studio moments ago, ranting about having found his trainer in the litter tray.
Poppy, who had been arranging some of Rowan’s pots on the new display cubes, transferred her attention to the conversation.
‘It’s a natural feline instinct. He must think he needs to hide it from a predator,’ said Fen.
Jake snorted in disgust. ‘I’m not the predator. He is.’
‘He’s only a cat,’ said Fen patiently. ‘And you’ve invaded his territory – don’t forget that.’
‘It’s my house!’ Jake glared at Leo, who was lounging on a plinth as if he was the prize exhibit.
‘Archie’s house,’ Fen corrected.
‘Whatever. He still stole my shoe and used it to cover up his crap. He hates me. No, worse, he disrespects me. In fact, I’d go so far as to say he holds me in utter contempt. And that was after I bought him that hare and badger mush that costs twice as much as normal food. Well, he can make his own bloody hare and badger potage from now on or catch a mouse or something.’
‘Oh, Jake, don’t get upset. I’m sure Leo loves you deep down and he’s only doing what cats do. As for a mouse, he’s never been one for dragging in live catches and what’s all this about you giving him strange cat food with badger in it? You know he only likes the Rabbit and Tuna Select.’
‘It looked like hare and badger to me. I’m sure I spotted bits of bristle and an ear. There might even have been a stripe in there.’
It was no good. Poppy exploded with laughter. Her sides were hurting and tears streamed down her face.
Jake glared at her, then he laughed too. ‘I suppose it is quite funny. When it’s not your trainers.’
‘It’s h-hilarious.’ Poppy dragged a tissue from her jeans pocket to wipe her eyes.
Jake was smiling and put his arm around Fen. ‘I’m only joking,’ he said. ‘Sort of, but Leo definitely doesn’t love me. He only loves you and Grandpa. And Poppy …’
Fen sighed. ‘You can’t be loved instantly by everyone, Jake. You’ll have to work a bit harder to win Leo over. He probably senses you don’t like him, so no wonder he hid his business from you.’
‘I’ll try to understand him more.’ Jake crossed his heart sarcastically then dodged out of the way as Fen flicked her duster at him.
Poppy giggled as Fen chased Jake with the duster. Although he’d ranted about Leo, he’d soon seen the funny side and his sense of humour was catching. Dan would have gone berserk if any cat had put one of his precious trainers in a litter tray and would probably have tried to have Leo rehomed.
After the joke had been stretched as far as it could, Fen shared more tales of Leo’s escapades while they worked, with Jake adding a few stories of his own from his wildlife trips. The laughter and banter were a welcome interlude and Poppy felt more optimistic about her future than she’d done for months. Finally, she felt as if she might actually make a go of a move that had seemed madness even a few days ago.
Her optimistic mood grew over the weekend and well into the following week, as the studio gradually started to turn from chrysalis to butterfly. By Friday afternoon it was a sparkling, whitewashed version of the dingy space that had, just over a week before, made her want to get straight back on the ferry to the mainland. With Jake and Fen’s help, she’d prepared and repainted all the gallery walls.
Earlier in the week, she had taken a brief break from the work to go to St Mary’s with Kelly who had a working boat for her business. Kelly had introduced her to the small DIY merchant on St Mary’s and she’d bought a few essentials from there, but she had to manage her small budget carefully, so she decided to renovate the display plinths and shelving units herself.
Most people on the islands tended to keep unwanted items in sheds and outbuildings in case they were needed by their own family or neighbours at a later date. Fen and Jake invited Poppy to root through the ‘jun
k’ stores behind the cottage and Poppy managed to find a few bits and pieces that way, as well as on the isles’ online ‘swap’ site. Some upended old fish boxes, once ‘repurposed’ with a tasteful pale green paint, had proved ideal for displaying smaller items such as cards and as plinths for larger items.
The existing plinths had been repaired by Kelly who’d also carried out more minor work on some of the windows and the door too. The local electrician had also removed the harsh strip lighting and fitted new lighting that bathed the artwork in a soft, flattering light.
Maisie had sent over the roofer who’d been working for the Gull Island Trust to make a few repairs to the roof. In return, Poppy had promised to set up a website for the roofer and to help redesign the builder’s merchant site in return for free delivery of the materials. It was such a different way of working to the cut-throat world she’d been used to, where everything was costed and analysed to the tiniest margins. Profit was far less important than simple survival, and she soon realised exactly why you couldn’t manage out here without help from your neighbours and helping them in turn.
The smell of new paint was still strong, but at least the whiff of damp had almost gone. Archie’s paintings had been rehung on the walls and the colours of his seascapes really popped against the white backdrop. Poppy had also arranged some of the existing pieces on the new plinths just to give a flavour of how the gallery would look.
She’d decided to open every day from the launch until October half-term to make the most of the holiday season. After that, the gallery would be closed, apart from by appointment, until the following February half-term, so she’d have to make enough money to tide her over the winter months.
With the gallery shaping up, she set up meetings with potential artists and continued to spread the word about the launch, which was now less than two weeks away.
Fen admitted that Minty’s jewellery used to be on show in what was now a dusty and cracked glass case, so Poppy had the broken panel reglazed and polished the glass until it gleamed. She found some driftwood and pebbles from the beach and arranged a couple of pieces from other artists around the natural materials.
Summer on the Little Cornish Isles Page 14
