Buried in Cornwall

by Janie Bolitho

  ‘I won’t. Cross my heart.’ He did so as he stood up and stretched. ‘Ought I to change?’ He looked down at his brown cords. The nap on the knees had disappeared but his Viyella shirt with its tiny brown and white checks was perfectly presentable as was the matching brown V-necked sweater.

  ‘You know I don’t mind.’

  ‘I think I will, trousers, anyway. You look so smart.’

  She turned to hide a smile. Stella knew that had she insisted he tidy up he would have refused, stating that people must take him as he was.

  ‘Hey, take it easy.’ He patted her shoulder. Stella had jumped when the door bell chimed.

  ‘Someone’s early.’ Brushing the cold metal of the rail with her hand she went down the circular wrought-iron staircase to see who it was. ‘Jenny! It’s unlike you to be so punctual.’

  ‘I was hoping Maddy would be here. She’s always the first to turn up.’

  ‘Maddy? No, you’re the first. You should’ve called for her on the way.’

  Jenny put on her helpless face, her head on one side. ‘I need a job.’ She still modelled for artists, clothed or unclothed, having the sort of looks which transposed well to canvas, but it was by no means a full-time job and many couldn’t afford to pay her at all. Sometimes she was rewarded with a meal or a painting that didn’t sell or a few drinks in one of the pubs.

  ‘Well, I don’t see how Maddy can help. Oh, come on up. You look as if you could do with a drink. I certainly could but I promised myself I wouldn’t start until someone arrived.’

  Jenny smiled behind her back, knowing the state her hostess needed to work herself up into before she could begin to enjoy the evening. ‘I just thought she might like someone to work in the shop. She could spend all her time at her craftwork then.’

  ‘Be realistic, Jenny. All right, she’s doing okay in the run-up to Christmas, but January and February? Even in the summer she just scrapes by.’

  ‘I know. But I’m desperate, anything’s worth a try. I don’t suppose you …’

  Stella raised her hands, palms facing forward. Her face was stern. ‘No chance, Jenny. Sorry.’ Stella could have afforded to employ the girl but for some reason, when Jenny was involved, there was always trouble. She wasn’t dishonest or rude, she was just one of those people who was always caught in the vortex of other people’s problems and managed to exacerbate them. But Stella was honest enough to admit that the main reason was that Jenny Manders found it difficult to keep her hands off other women’s men. The door bell rang again. ‘You’ll have to help yourself. On the side there.’ Stella indicated the drinks that were kept for their personal use before clattering down the stairs to admit Mike and Barbara Phillips and Rose whose cars had converged in the car-park simultaneously.

  Stella frowned. ‘Barbara, you know Jenny, don’t you?’ Her life was hectic and there were occasions when she couldn’t remember which of her friends and acquaintances already knew each other.

  ‘Yes. Nice to see you again.’

  Rose grinned at Jenny and accepted a glass of wine. Two would have to be her limit as she had come in the car. She knew nothing of Nick’s three-year affair with Jenny, only that there had been someone until six months ago. These were new friends, more personal details had not yet been exchanged, although the basics of their lives were no secret.

  ‘Ah, here already.’ Daniel had changed and shaved. He greeted their guests whilst keeping an eye on Stella who was now chain-smoking. He liked the Phillips. Mike was a surgeon at Treliske hospital in Truro and his wife worked there as a physiotherapist. Rose Trevelyan was another woman he admired, and not only for her looks. She was a survivor. He wondered how Stella would fare if she did not have his constant support.

  Maddy was the last to arrive. Her accent instantly placed her as an ‘outsider’, as someone from the Home Counties who had moved to Cornwall in search of the simple life, where she believed her dreamy manner and craftwork would be more appreciated. Having arrived only three years ago she was still considered to be an outsider, although she had made friends amongst the locals. Barbara, never less than elegant, smiled at Maddy’s chosen ensemble. Over thick black tights she wore brown lace-up boots and a billowing smock in royal blue with embroidery across the tight-fitting chestband which flattened her curves. Beneath the smock was a striped T-shirt in olive green and white, over it a quilted jacket in squares of differing colours. On her head was a Paddington Bear hat with a large red flower stitched to the side. Long hair cloaked her shoulders. It was fair with a slight wave but of the dryish texture which did not shine even when newly washed. She resembled a character in a nursery rhyme.

  Stella, a cigarette balanced in the corner of her mouth, replenished their drinks. Rose put her hand over her glass. ‘Not for me, thanks.’

  ‘Sure? Okay. I’m beginning to feel better already, Rose. You wouldn’t believe what these evenings do to me.’

  Rose nodded. Stella didn’t know how lucky she was to be hosting one. Turning to speak to Barbara and Mike, acquaintances once, then firm friends from the start of David’s illness when Mike had been his consultant and Rose’s confidant, she studied Maddy Duke. Rose had met her at Stella’s on several occasions and had found her to be amusing company, if a little zany, but beneath her cheerful exterior Rose guessed there was hidden pain.

  Daniel circulated with the wine bottles but Rose told him she was saving her rationed second glass for the official opening.

  ‘How’s it going?’ Mike Phillips, in causal trousers, shirt and sweater, finally got a chance to speak to Rose. He looked tired.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘I can see you’re fine, I meant the painting. Your oil has pride of place in our lounge. Did Barbara tell you?’

  ‘No. I’m flattered.’

  ‘How typical. We’re the ones who’re flattered. We had no idea you were that good.’

  ‘Hidden talent,’ Maddy said, joining them with a glass containing what appeared to be neat Scotch. ‘I bet we don’t know of half the local painters with hidden talents.’

  ‘We?’ Jenny had joined them. By her tone it was obvious she resented Maddy counting herself as one of them.

  ‘I do think of myself as local, you know. I felt at home from the minute I came here.’

  Rose sensed an animosity which she had not noticed between the two women before.

  Jenny chewed the inside of her lip but said nothing. Instead she played with her thick black hair, which hung around her face like a frame. Her skin was good and her eyes were large and luminescent but it was her mouth which attracted. Full and pink, it hinted at both innocence and sensuality. She was about to move away and speak to Stella when Maddy asked Rose how Nick was. Jenny hesitated, her shoulders stiff. Rose replied that she had no reason to suppose he was other than well, but she had seen the give-away gesture and guessed that there had once been something between Nick and Jenny – and still might be, she thought, not liking the feeling this produced although she and Nick were no more than friends and there was certainly no commitment on either side. She decided to ignore her feelings and enjoy the rest of the evening although she continued to be aware of the vaguely hostile undercurrents in the room.

  A few minutes later they all went downstairs and Stella unlocked the door. Guests were by invitation only. Stella stood at the front to welcome them into the brilliantly lit showroom whose lights now spilt out into the blackness of the narrow street. Earlier Stella had hurried her friends through the darkened gallery, allowing them no chance to glimpse her work.

  Daniel went to the back to open the wine for Julie who had just arrived and had begun to take the foil off the trays of food. This was Stella’s night, she must be allowed to enjoy the credit due to her whilst he and Julie handed around the food and drinks.

  Spotlights had been switched on and the early arrivals, glasses in hand, wandered around admiring the paintings. Rose stopped in front of one she particularly liked. If only, she thought, almost able to feel and see the waves as
they crashed over the headland.

  ‘You will.’ Stella, having silently positioned herself behind Rose, seemed to have read her mind. Ash from her cigarette sprinkled the front of Rose’s blouse as Stella placed an arm across her shoulder. ‘It’s in you. Really it is. Of course there’s a long way to go yet, and a lot of hard work in store for you. It isn’t that easy to make it to the top.’

  Rose nodded. Could it be possible that one day she would be in Stella’s position? She was about to answer when she saw Nick’s lanky figure duck through the doorway. He came straight over to her and Rose was glad there was a partition between her and Maddy and Jenny who were in conversation on the other side of it. His face lit up. ‘I didn’t say I was coming because I wasn’t sure I could make it. Once you said you’d be here I had to come.’

  ‘She’s good, isn’t she?’ Rose ignored the compliment because there was a sudden silence on the other side of the partition.

  ‘Better than she realises. You like this one?’

  ‘Very much.’ Rose accepted her second drink and took a canape from one of the trays Julie was handing around.

  ‘How’re you getting home?’ Nick didn’t seem at all interested in the exhibition but he had probably attended so many, including his own, that it wasn’t much of a thrill for him.

  ‘I’ve got the car.’

  ‘Ah. Never mind. Are you all right? After yesterday, I mean?’

  ‘Yes. Must’ve been my imagination.’ She paused, and was unsure what then made her blurt out, ‘I’m going back tomorrow if the weather’s fine. I really want to finish that painting.’

  ‘Yes, you must,’ Stella insisted, having heard the last remarks as she approached them.

  Rose moved away, intent on seeing the rest of Stella’s new work. Nick followed, knowing that two pairs of eyes were on their backs.

  Rose stopped to admire a small canvas, as yet unframed. It was an amusing piece showing a half-naked woman of a certain age; a little raddled, a little overweight but, judging from the smirk on her Picasso-style face, completely uncaring as she painted her own portrait from a full-length mirror. Rose wondered whether Stella intended it to make a statement or whether it was a work of pure fun. Her own smile faded as she overheard Jenny’s words.

  ‘Oh, there’s no doubt about it, he’ll have to take me back. How can he not? I am his responsibility, after all.’

  ‘Is that what you really want?’ Maddy asked, her voice clipped. ‘Think about it, Jenny. You’re the one who’s always saying there’s no going back. And there’s … well, there’s you know who to contend with.’

  Rose felt suffocated and wanted to leave. With a determined stride she went out to the little kitchen and placed her glass on the fridge and her paper plate and serviette in the bin-liner put there for the rubbish, before returning to thank Stella and Daniel for inviting her.

  With what she hoped was a cheerful wave to the others she walked out of the shop and straight back to the car. He’s making a fool of me, she thought. And for the first time since she had met them Rose felt that maybe she didn’t fit in with these exotic people after all, that there were things about them she didn’t understand, and that she had no desire to join in their sexual games. For a moment she felt a pang for the faithful, reliable Barry Rowe who had yearned for her since before she had met David but who could never be more than a friend. Like Laura, he had been neglected lately and Rose wondered if she was becoming selfish. By the time she pulled into her drive she realised she was being melodramatic, that what had happened at the mine shaft had left her edgy and more than a little suspicious. On the other hand Nick had offered no more than friendship and if it was Jenny he wanted they could still remain friends. Rose had done nothing to jeopardise his relationship with the younger woman.

  Both Laura and Barry had been delighted that she was finally doing what she had been born to do. She was not deserting them, she was simply picking up a career where she had left it off.

  Turning her key in the lock she decided she was glad to be home.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Jenny Manders was one of the last to leave the gallery. She was quietly seething. How dare Nick be so obvious about Rose in front of her and the people who had known them as a couple. Maddy hadn’t wasted any time before making one of her bitchy comments. And what did Rose Trevelyan have that she didn’t? She could paint, that was all. I may only be a model, Jenny thought, but I’m fifteen years her junior and better looking. But despite an excess of wine which had made her bitter, she acknowledged the unfairness of her thoughts. Rose was a nice woman. Even Alec Manders, her father, known for his taciturnity and meanness of manner, had seemed drawn to her on the one occasion all three had met in the street. And who the hell does Maddy think she is to be so judgemental when all she produces is tat for the tourists, and she has the gall to imagine she’s one of us.

  Jenny’s pride in her roots was genuine. Unlike many of her contemporaries she had tried life in London and had also spent two months in Paris, mixing with artists on the Left Bank and posing for them. Something in her cried out to be accepted by such people. Although she recognised that she had no talent herself, she fed on those who did. Disappointment had followed disappointment. The Frenchman with whom she had lived for seven of those eight weeks had thrown her out as soon as he was satisfied with the work he had produced using Jenny as his model. Good work, too, for which she would get none of the credit. She had sat shivering for hours in the daytime and shared his bed at night, and all for nothing. With Nick, because it was the longest relationship she had sustained, she had believed it would be different, that he would eventually marry her or at least keep her as his mistress. She would have had the best of all worlds; being amongst the people she admired and both working for and living with an artist, one who could provide a proper home for her.

  Her mother had disappeared when she was three years old but she did not learn of the circumstances until she was seventeen. Renata Trevaskis was a beauty, descended from true Romany stock. She had married Alec Manders on her eighteenth birthday but soon became restless and dissatisfied with married life and a small child whose upbringing was mostly taken over by her mother-in-law with whom they had had to live. She started drinking, encouraged by Alec’s mother who had never liked her. A year later rumour had it that she had run off with another man, a holiday-maker from somewhere up country. It had surprised no one, knowing the awful restrictions she had had to live under in the strict Chapel environment of the Manders’ home.

  Agnes Manders was a martinet and had brought her son up to attend two church services every Sunday. He had, over the years, acquired his mother’s views and opinions on everything. Oddly, considering that he believed that women should obey their menfolk, he had always been dominated by his mother. She was the strong one, the one who put food in their mouths and clothed them after his father had died in a mining accident. Because she told him so often, he had grown to believe that she was almost a saint.

  Jenny, too, had been brought up on discourses of her grandmother’s virtues along with constant reminders of how much she resembled her own mother and that, therefore, she had bad blood in her.

  ‘Why did you marry her, then?’ she had asked her father defiantly when she was told her mother’s history. The reply had come in the form of a stinging blow across her cheek. Her grandmother, who had been in the room, had hands like steel hawsers.

  Once Renata had gone, Jenny’s father and his mother tried to curb her natural exuberance but no punishment worked for long. Apart from the time she spent in school she mostly roamed the streets, avoiding the house whenever possible. She suspected it was a relief to both of them when she went away.

  As she strolled up the hill, moonlight shining on the cobbles, Jenny pictured her father. He was a squat but well-muscled man, handsome in a lived-in sort of way. A bit like Charles Bronson, Jenny thought, having recently seen a video of one of his films at Stella’s. It was easy to see why Angela Choake, a divorcee, h
ad been attracted to him. As soon as Alec’s mother had been buried she had moved into the house as her father’s wife. Jenny was still in Paris at the time. She had not returned for the funeral, neither had she grieved. She had not loved her grandmother and knew that her own existence had been a thorn in the old woman’s side.

  Jenny had tired of the sanctimonious ramblings knowing that, for a very long time, it had been her father who was the real provider. He had turned his hand to anything; fishing, mining and back to fishing until he had finally established himself as a reliable jobbing builder.

  It was not until a fortnight after her return to St Ives that Jenny learnt that her father had been seeing Angela Choake for many years, but until the demise of her grandmother they had not been out together in public. This led Jenny to understand the power the old woman had had over her son. She had alienated him against his wife and his own daughter. Angela, she thought, was all right. She could have done far worse for a stepmother. Naturally her father had legalised the relationship before allowing Angela to move into the house.

  Jenny’s return to Cornwall had not been a success. She had moved in with a friend and her husband but, uncomfortable in the midst of their obvious happiness, she left after a month, taking work wherever she could find it and sleeping wherever there was an available bed, occupied already or not.

  Then she met Nick and life took an upward turn. That, too, had ended in disaster. She was penniless once more but too proud to let on that she was sleeping in a squat with three other homeless people whom she barely knew. Jenny did not blame anyone else for her position, nor did she blame herself. She put it down to fate. If she could just get some work things might be better. Work – or a man who was prepared to keep her, that would be even more favourable. All she required was a bit of comfort. But maybe it wasn’t too late with Nick. He had not ignored her tonight and was usually friendly if they met by chance and he had gone out of his way to ask how she was. After Rose Trevelyan had left, it was true, but perhaps that meant more than if he had done so whilst she was present. Failing Nick she would fall back on her original plan.