A Rather Remarkable Homecoming

by C. A. Belmond

  It was an impressive amount of land, and Harriet gazed at it with some pride. “We wanted to build our new-home clusters ’way over there, where you see the barns and silos,” she said, pointing east.

  Jeremy had been sizing the whole thing up, and now asked, “Who owns the property to the west, on the other side of the stone wall?” He indicated an area just beyond Grandfather Nigel’s free-standing garage that was half hidden in the trees, near a low, crumbling farmer’s wall that seemed to mark a boundary between the end of Grandmother Beryl’s property and someone else’s fields.

  “Ah!” said Harriet. “The earl! Actually, for centuries, ALL of this property—including your grandmother’s house, Penny—and most of the other houses up and down this part of the coast were part of one great estate belonging to the earl’s ancestors. Goodness, they were a long line of earls. But over the years, bit by bit, each earl sold off parts of the estate.”

  Jeremy said slowly, “I remember now. Isn’t there a manor house out on the headland?”

  “Exactly,” Harriet said. “And it still, to this day, has an earl in it.”

  Something about the way she said that struck me as funny, as if the earl was an owl stuck in the rafters of some drafty old stately home. “He shows up at county fairs,” Harriet mused. “Likes to see the animals. He’s about thirty-four years old.”

  “But I remember a much older man living there,” Jeremy said, puzzled. “He rode his horse across the meadows. He carried a whip, and if we crossed his path he was pretty terrifying.”

  “Ah, that would be the tenth earl,” Harriet explained. “He was the grandfather of our current earl, but the old man died years ago. The current earl—he’s the twelfth—has his hands full just keeping the manor going, because the upkeep is staggering. I hear that he lives in only one small suite of rooms, and rents out the rest of the manor house to movie companies, big corporate events, and weddings whenever he can. And, the main floor of the manor is open to the public once a week.”

  Harriet pointed to the section of the earl’s property that abutted Grandmother Beryl’s area. “The Mosley brothers want to buy a serious chunk of the earl’s land, too, for their development. They want to combine all this”—Harriet made a grand sweep of her arms to indicate Grandma’s house, the town’s land and the earl’s meadows as far as the eye could see—“to make one big real-estate package. They won’t buy it in bits. They want it all, and everything at once. And I must tell you that we fear the earl is very close to signing on the dotted line.”

  “Ohh,” I said, finally understanding what was at stake. I glanced apprehensively at the surveyors, who were still marching around with that annoying proprietary air.

  “Would you like to see the backyard?” Harriet asked, moving us away from the land at the front of the house and back toward the yard in the rear. “The garden is really still quite lovely.”

  The area behind Grandmother Beryl’s house had a wide lawn and garden, bordered at the far end by a much higher, more decorative stone wall. I instantly recognized this lovely spot where we once all gathered in the afternoon to have iced tea and play badminton and croquet. But now the patio was carpeted with fallen leaves and branches, and the iron chairs and table were rusted.

  “Grandfather Nigel would have a fit if he saw this,” I whispered to Jeremy, who nodded.

  The lawn was no longer the neat, fastidiously clipped yard of my memory, and the grass had grown so tall that Jeremy had to gallantly hack a path across it with one of the fallen branches. Ahead, a short flight of stone steps led to a lower, terraced area where Grandfather Nigel had kept his flowers.

  “Look!” I cried. “Grandpa Nigel’s garden.”

  For, despite all the neglect and time gone by, and all the storms and animals and insects that had overtaken some of it, a tangle of honeysuckle had survived, and I could make out masses of climbing roses and shrub roses. The azalea and forsythia was already flowering, and there were promising buds on the hollyhock and hydrangea. Hazel, hawthorn, bluebells and elder were still growing sturdily here.

  “There’s Grandfather Nigel’s gardening shed!” I said nostalgically, pointing to the little hut at the right.

  “Actually,” Harriet said, “that was originally a kippering shed. To cure or smoke fish.”

  Now, as we walked to the very edge of the garden and peered over the wall, we could see the little private sandy cove below, and the great grey-green-blue sea that came crashing in, depositing foamy curls of water that swirled around the rocks and skittered across the patch of sand, looking like white lace. Gulls were swooping overhead in the open sky, which was bright with streaks of blue and milky white clouds that muted the yellow sun. I inhaled deeply and tasted the invigorating salty sea breeze that rippled my hair teasingly, like a friend.

  “See that house over there?” Harriet said, pointing to a white Edwardian structure sitting high atop a distant hill to our right. “That belongs to our resident theatre expert, Trevor Branwhistle. He’s a wonderful actor who worked for years at BBC radio. What a voice that man has! Anyway, he’s the man for you to see about the history of your grandmother’s house. He says that, way back in the late 1500s, Beryl’s house had some interesting tenants—a group of performers known as ‘The Earl’s Players’,” Harriet said with a twinkle in her eye.

  My bloodhound instincts were instantly aroused. “Harriet,” I said, “is that the reason that you think we might turn up something historically significant enough to save this place?”

  Harriet’s eyes widened hopefully now. “Well . . .” she said carefully. “I wanted Trevor to be the first to tell you, but . . . it just so happens that William Shakespeare may have slept here!”

  There was a long silence, during which Jeremy now gazed at her with undisguised disbelief. Harriet pretended not to notice this. “It’s all very exciting,” she continued, “but you must let Trevor explain it when he returns. He’s doing a series of lectures in Ireland. But he’ll be back on Monday, and he’s agreed to meet with you then. You will stay on here through Monday, won’t you?” she asked, and for the first time a note of anxiety crept into her voice.

  “Yes,” I said. “Trevor e-mailed me, and we’ve already set it up.”

  “Great!” Harriet said. “Then I must be getting back to town. Take your time here, have another look round, think about whatever furniture you want to keep, and let me know as soon as you can. I’ll have Colin pick it up for you in his truck and we’ll hold it for you at the theatre.”

  She smiled at us now. “Goodbye, then. I’ll leave you two alone now with your memories!”

  Chapter Seven

  After Harriet departed, Jeremy and I made our way along the narrow, pebbled weedy garden path. It was here that, long ago as kids, we had confided our hopes and dreams to each other . . . while dodging the summer’s bees.

  “You were very defiant when you told me you wanted to be a rock guitarist,” I reminded him. “And I wanted to be a painter. It didn’t quite work out that way, did it?”

  “At least we found each other,” Jeremy said. “So, I’ve got no regrets.”

  “Me, either,” I said.

  Cautiously we descended the steep flight of stone steps leading down, down, down to the tiny cove, where the water came lapping up to the sheltered beach. We took off our shoes, rolled up our pants, and walked on.

  “Wow,” I said as we picked our way across. “The cove is so little, tucked away like this. Somehow it loomed larger in my imagination.”

  We paused at the shoreline, gazing at the sea in silence for a bit. “Do you think there’s really any chance that William Shakespeare slept here?” I asked.

  Jeremy rolled his eyes. “I don’t think there’s a bookie in London who would take odds on that,” he said. “Which leaves you and me between a Cornish rock and a Celtic hard place.”

  “Just wait till we meet Trevor Branwhistle!” I said, for it occurred to me that we had stepped into a party of Mad Hatters who possibly had
spent too much time out on the Bodmin moors with the constant wind whistling spookily in their heads, while they told each other outrageously tall tales.

  We resumed walking, moving beyond the cove to an area of shoreline that was flanked by a big blackened horseshoe-shaped rock formation, like an upside-down letter “U” that was jutting out into the sea. We would have to pass under it to continue our walk.

  But here the tide was suddenly crashing more wildly and raucously, and I instinctively paused even before Jeremy said, “Tide’s coming in. We can’t go much farther, or we’ll get stuck.”

  Slowly we made our way back, and when I shivered, Jeremy put his arm around me to shield me from the brisk wind that was chillier now that the sun was setting. Climbing up those stone steps was a bit more strenuous than coming down, and I could feel my leg muscles getting more of a workout.

  When we popped back up into the garden, Jeremy, seeing that the surveyors were coming into the yard, said, “Let’s take the shortcut to the road. I don’t feel like seeing those stupid guys.”

  “What shortcut?” I asked, intrigued. Jeremy leaped up onto the top of the tall stone wall that rimmed the edge of the garden, then took my hand and said, “Follow me.”

  We proceeded like tightrope-walkers along the wall as it curved around and then joined the lower, more jagged border that marked the property line separating us from the earl’s land. Grandfather Nigel’s garage was a hop, skip and jump away, and we landed with a thump on a more wooded area at the back of the garage, where the scent of pine was strong. I saw a neat stack of firewood that must have been waiting here for ages.

  Jeremy was staring at a row of overgrown hedges smack against the garage, nearly ten feet tall now, which had become wild and so took up most of his “shortcut” to the front of the property.

  “Hmm. Let’s see if we can squeeze in between there anyway. Walk sideways,” Jeremy advised, taking my hand and leading me, just as he had when we were kids that summer, pretending to be spies and deliberately sneaking into tight spots as if we had enemy agents after us in hot pursuit. With our backs to the hedges, we inched along the rear wall of the garage.

  “Ouch,” I complained as my hand scraped something round and metallic on the garage’s wall. “What’s this?”

  Jeremy peered closer, then laid his palms against the wall, tracing his hands around a wide rectangular area. “Looks like there’s some kind of door here,” he noted. “A little one. It only comes up to my chin. It’s got waxy stuff all around it. What you touched is a metal ring, like the kind that pulls open a trap door. Look. Can you stand back a bit? I want to see if this thing actually opens.”

  I had to scrooch myself even flatter in order to slide by Jeremy’s chest. As I brushed against him, he murmured, “Mmm. You feel good,” and he kissed me.

  “No smooching on a caper,” I said with mock severity, kissing his shoulder as I passed it.

  Then I waited as he beamed his pocket flashlight beneath the metal ring and discovered a padlock. It was so cheap and worn that he could use his keys to break the thin loop of metal. But he had to tug hard at the recalcitrant door, which did not want to swing open on its rusty hinges. He couldn’t make it swing all the way open, because of the hedges, but he got it just far enough so he could squeeze inside as he shone his flashlight there.

  “Watch your head,” Jeremy advised when I sidled through the opening like Peter Rabbit, stooping down under the low doorway.

  Immediately we were faced with a narrow wooden staircase. I followed him up, mindful of the kinds of critters that do not like to be surprised or disturbed after years of peaceful solitude in dark, dank places. The area smelled musty and claylike, like a tomb, I thought. We had to remain hunched over while climbing the stairs so we wouldn’t bang our heads on the sloped ceiling above the steps.

  “This staircase was made for pixies,” I muttered, gingerly touching the cold, damp stone wall as I ascended. When we reached the top, the stairs simply ended in the middle of a very large, open attic area, and we could now only just barely straighten up to our full height.

  Jeremy made a sweep of light so we could take it all in—three little school desks, the kind with a flat writing surface at the right arm; two bookcases with three wide shelves each; a very big chalkboard with fat broken pieces of colored chalk still in the rim; a double easel so that an artist could paint on either side, both having round wooden wells for pots of paint. On the wall nearest the stairs there were two small shuttered windows that would overlook the garden if opened. There was a tiny sofa, and even a small tea table, with four little chairs and a girlish tea set of china pot, cups, creamer and pitcher.

  “It’s a playroom!” I exclaimed delightedly. “A perfect secret hideaway for kids. Maybe Grandfather Nigel made this for his children. Do you suppose my mother and your stepfather played here? Mom never said anything to me about it.”

  Jeremy said, “No, Peter never mentioned it, either.”

  We moved farther inside, still crouched like two hunchbacks wherever the ceiling sloped. I peered more closely around the room.

  “Here’s an antique hoop,” I noted. “But Jeremy, it’s much older than our parents’ time. It’s the kind that little girls used to run with, carrying sticks to make them go, just like Louisa May Alcott did.”

  “Who?” Jeremy asked.

  I ignored him and continued prowling around, examining everything I found.

  “Old roller skates,” I reported gleefully. “The metal-andleather kind you have to strap on to your shoe, with those metal wheels that make your feet go numb when you skate.”

  “Ha-choo!” Jeremy responded, having kicked up dust when he pried open the shutters, which had only a simple wooden board that slid across them to keep them closed.

  I was grateful for the whiff of fresh sea air that wafted in, and the spill of sunlight that made it easier for us to see. Dust and sunbeams danced together in the shaft of new natural light.

  Jeremy was now examining the three desks, each having a little cubbyhole to stash schoolbooks beneath the writing surface. He poked around inside them and found an old, dried-up fountain pen, and dust-covered erasers.

  I had drifted over to the bookshelves, which had simple wooden-and-glass doors, and I discovered a few worn-out children’s books and piles of old magazines and newspapers.

  Carefully I pulled down a stack of papers, shaking off the considerable dust. I tossed them onto the sofa and stared at the newspaper headlines, squealing as I read each one.

  “Jeremy, look at this!” I exclaimed, holding them up:

  Charles Lindbergh Lands Safely in Paris, Sets New Record in World’s First New York to Paris Flight . . . “Black Friday” in Germany as Berlin Stock Exchange Crashes . . . Isadora Duncan dies in Nice, France at age 50, strangled by her hand-painted Russian silk scarf . . . First movie talkie “The Jazz Singer” to open this fall.

  “Know what?” I demanded. “These are all from the summer of 1927.”

  “Interesting,” Jeremy muttered distractedly.

  “It’s more than interesting!” I said. “It means this room definitely wasn’t made for our parents, because Mom’s not that old.” As I perused the newspapers, I found a notebook hidden in the fold of one of them.

  “Let me have that flashlight,” I said.

  “Torch,” Jeremy corrected as he gave it to me.

  I beamed a circle of light on the thick, faded ruled notebook, a kind that kids wrote their school lessons in. But where a student was supposed to put his name I saw only one word scrawled in bold, childish black capital letters: PRIVATE. I actually hesitated a minute.

  “You’re not going to let something like that stop a nosey Girl Detective like you, are you?” Jeremy demanded, peering over my shoulder.

  The notebook cover flapped open easily enough. On the first page, three lines contained a firm declaration written in a careful schoolgirl script:Herein lie the Articles and Minutes of the

  Cornwall Summer Explor
ers’ Club.

  Private. Do Not Disturb.

  This Means You.

  “Keep going,” Jeremy prompted.

  The lined pages inside were so yellowed and old that I had to handle them as carefully as a museum restorer does. I touched only the edges, using just the tip of my fingernail to flip to the next page, which contained a dramatic pledge that I read aloud:

  “We, the founding members of the Cornwall Summer Explorers’ Club, do hereby solemnly swear to be loyal, fearless and true, and to never, ever reveal the secrets of this society to anyone else, especially grown-ups. We will keep all secrets and reveal no tales of the C.S.E.C., no matter how old we become. We mark this occasion with a signature in our heart’s own blood . . .”

  And sure enough, there were three childish signatures, signed in fountain pen, but each accompanied by a little brownish smeared fingerprint.

  “Holy cow,” I said, taken slightly aback. “Is that—?”

  “A blood oath!” Jeremy said, fascinated, gazing at the names below:Penelope Laidley, President

  Roland Laidley, Sergeant-at-Arms

  Beryl Laidley, Treasurer

  “Ohmigosh!” I exclaimed with glee. “It’s a secret society founded by Great-Aunt Penelope, and Rollo’s father, and Grandmother Beryl!”

  “It means this house belonged to Beryl’s family when she was only a little girl,” Jeremy said. “I never knew that.”

  “Just look at all the notations. Pages and pages of them!” I said admiringly. “Some bright little mind really spent a lot of time on this. It’s full of oaths and secret passwords and very meticulous entries for a whole summer, like a diary.”

  I rapidly scanned a few random pages, and saw that these were not so much diary entries as they were rather formal “minutes” of the club’s meetings. It seemed to me that there was something about the handwriting that was familiar; yes, it bore a strong resemblance to Great-Aunt Penelope’s adult script that I’d seen in her letters. These “minutes” were all written in a tone of great solemnity and pride, recording whatever daring-do adventures, outings and escapades that she and her siblings had experienced—jaunts into town by auto, or treks with bicycles across farms, even a special boat trip to an island area where the “club” watched schools of dolphins leaping like well-coordinated ballet dancers up and over the ocean’s waves.