by Liz Fenwick
A
Cornish
Stranger
Liz Fenwick
Title page
Contents
Title page
Contents
Part One
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Part Two
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Author’s Note
About the Author
Also by Liz Fenwick
Copyright
For Dom
Save a stranger from the sea
And he’ll turn your enemy
Loving and caring for a stranger gives
us a chance to entertain angels.
Heb. 13:1–2
Part One
Jaunty
Prologue
As a sailing boat tacked in the mouth of Frenchman’s Creek, it lost wind and the incoming tide carried the lugger onwards, bathing it in the afternoon sunlight. Jaunty squinted but it made no difference. Colour would not return to the scene. The world had become monochromatic grey, if there was such a thing. There must be, for everything was just a different blend of light and shadow. Her brain and her eyes received the same stimulus as before but something was now lost in the translation.
The sail appeared dark so she knew it wasn’t white. Maybe it was crimson. She closed her eyes, capturing the image like a faded black-and-white photograph. The lines of the boat were so familiar – but it couldn’t be Jezebel. Pain stabbed her heart, forcing open what was locked away, almost forgotten. That was too long ago and Jaunty wasn’t even sure her memories were true. It would have been a blessing if her mind had gone when she had fallen and hit her head instead of the ability to see colour.
Her chest tightened. She coughed and it eased. She looked out to the terrace where bees frantically moved from one lavender flower to another, reminding her that there was so little time. Sitting down at her desk, she picked up a pen and began to write. Her hand shook. Gone were the rounded shapes of her letters. They were replaced by jagged lines and sharp spikes where they shouldn’t be.
The time has come to tell the truth. For years the lie has been everything and the truth existed only in my thoughts. But now that the end is close, I need to explain before it is too late and the truth, such as it is, dies with me.
One
School uniforms and rucksacks filed past the graveyard gates across the street three storeys below. Even now, fourteen years since Gabe had last worn a uniform, she remembered the scratch of the woollen fabric of her kilt against her legs and the dig of the straps of her bag into her shoulders. She held the phone to her ear and it rang again. It would take her grandmother, Jaunty Blythe, at least six rings to reach the table where the Bakelite handset sat. Jaunty would not be far away, but she had become so frail of late that getting out of her chair by the big picture window was an effort.
On the fifth ring, Gabe turned towards the packing boxes scattered around her. The removers would arrive tomorrow – with a crane to get her piano out of the window. How many years ago had they done the reverse? Four years? Time flies when you’re not looking.
‘Manaccan 325.’
‘Hello, Jaunty.’ Gabe smiled. No one answered the phone that way any more. It really wasn’t relevant or precise. But it did put off cold callers if they had allowed the phone ring long enough for Jaunty to answer it. Their confusion, Gabe was sure, gave her grandmother a small bit of pleasure. And when it was the glass people calling about replacement windows or conservatories that Jaunty didn’t want and couldn’t afford, she would lapse into fluent French, German or Italian. She had never explained to Gabe how she had become fluent in so many languages. Her reply had always been, ‘I had an ear for it, dear.’
‘Gabriella, how lovely to hear from you.’
Gabe noted a breathless tremor in her grandmother’s voice.
‘How are you?’ Gabe asked, knowing that she would not receive a true answer.
‘Well enough, thank you.’
Gabe pictured her grandmother pulling her thin body up as straight as she could. Even at the age of ninety-two she maintained a remarkable posture and grace which Gabe envied. When Gabe had been on stage she’d tried to project Jaunty’s poise, to hold it to her like an invisible cloak that would protect her. She grimaced. She hadn’t performed on a stage in four years – life had taken a different route and now Gabe used that aloofness like a garment every day. It served her well.
‘I’ve just had a call from Mrs Bates.’ Gabe took a deep breath. ‘She told me you refused to have your prescription refilled.’ Gabe sat on a large cardboard box. Everything in the top floor flat was packed and ready. Not that there was much: a piano, a keyboard and, of course, a few of Jaunty’s paintings. These were Gabe’s most important belongings. Gabe had packed the boxes with her books and fragments of her old life and it had been strange sifting through old programmes, scores, press cuttings, reviews and cast photos. There had even been a dried yellow rose from the bouquet that Jaunty had sent her after her first opera at the conservatory – in year one Gabe had risen above the chorus of brilliant voices to have a solo role. Now echoes of her former self were shoved in a box labelled BITS. It wasn’t much, but then it had only been the beginning.
‘I don’t need the wretched stuff any more.’ Jaunty coughed. ‘It gives me indigestion and there is little enough left in life that I can enjoy and food is one of them.’
‘Did the doctor approve this?’ Gabe knew the answer before Jaunty replied.
‘No.’
‘Jaunty, you have diabetes. I don’t need to tell you what that means.’
‘No, you don’t.’
Gabe closed her eyes, hoping this was just Jaunty having a moment of stubbornness. Despite her age and her diabetes, she had been in good shape until quite recently. ‘OK, I won’t tell you. I’ll be there tomorrow evening and we’ll talk about it then.’
‘I don’t know why you’re doing this. I’m fine on my own. This is foolish! No, it’s downright stupid.’ Jaunty took a raspy breath. ‘The young should be in London and living, not becoming hermits in remote cabins.’
Gabe sighed. ‘You lived there when you were young.’
‘Things were different. I was a war widow with a child, not a single woman.’
‘So you’ve said, and you can say it again tomorrow and each day thereafter.’
‘Am I repeating myself ?’
‘Only when you have a point to make.’ Gabe knew Jaunty wouldn’t let go of this and she also understood that Jaunty didn’t want to accept that financially they could no longer afford to run two homes. Her grandmother was no longer painting and had only a small pension, and Gabe’s income fluctuated – composing music for commercials wasn’t steady – so selling the flat in London made sense. She didn’t need to be there to do her job and it would give them a good financial buffer.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow night – and keep taking your pills. Mrs Bates will be round shortly with your supply.’ Before Jaunty could argue, Gabe put the phone down. She couldn’t escape the feeling that her grandmother was giving up. It wa
s one of the reasons Gabe knew this move to Cornwall was the right thing to do. Jaunty needed help, but she was too set in her ways to let anyone from the village assist with more than running errands and a bit of cleaning.
Out of the window Jaunty could see the creek, the opposite shore, and the river beyond. These views kept her sane and had been her constant companion for almost seventy years. There had been so much to hide. This place, the water and the trees, had helped to conceal her secrets. The river hadn’t changed and the view had only differed with the addition of several farm buildings and a few new houses built across the river. The creek and the riverbed had silted up as the rains had washed the fields, yet to her eye the soul of the river, the water itself, remained the same. She laughed. Of course that was completely wrong. The water refreshed with each tide and every heavy downpour. The unaltering but all-changing nature of the river was her life. It held her memories, and its beauty had provided inspiration and solace.
Rotating the pen, she studied her fingers. Once they had been one of her best features, but now rheumatism and liver spots covered the thin skin and her joints looked overlarge on the long digits. She moved the pen above the paper. Where should she begin? There was so much to tell and even now she wasn’t sure if she wanted to. What was the benefit? There was none, she thought; it would just provide the relief that would come from confessing. Except, maybe, Gabriella needed to know. It might help her.
I was born Jeanette Maria Christina in Rome. I was baptised by Pope Benedict XV, which made my mother’s family very happy and angered my father’s parents. Their only consolation was that I was not the son and heir they so desperately wanted, and my early life was spent almost exclusively in Europe.
Jaunty looked up, picturing the large apartment in Milan with its grand windows and its smell of ground almonds, until what was actually in front of her erased the past. An egret walked along the opposite bank, its stark whiteness dramatic against the mud. Jaunty couldn’t feel the colour any more. It was as if the world were flat. She was empty and the mud was mud, not crimson, Prussian blue, Hooker’s green and burnt umber with a hint of indigo. The egret was white or, more correctly, held simply the absence of colour, nothing more. She blinked, hoping that the subtleties would come back but the bird was still white and the mud simply dark. She wrote on.
For most of my early childhood, I had governesses and travelled with my parents as they followed my mother’s career. They were sunlit years of freedom, music and colour, particularly purple. It was my mother’s favourite and she wore every shade from the grey-washed lavender to the deepest imperial hue.
Happiness fills me when I look back. I was spoiled and adored. Europe was my playground and schoolroom. Languages surrounded me and I slipped effortlessly from one to another, unaware of doing so. My parents’ love for each other embraced me and nothing punctured the bubble of our life except the annual trips to England to my father’s family.
My paternal grandparents lived in Cornwall, in Polruan House which was set on the upper reaches of the Lynher River. When I was very young it seemed like an enchanted place, with lawns that swept down to the water and hills covered in dense woodland. My memories of those early visits were coloured with happiness and laughter. But then as I grew up and my grandfather died, the atmosphere changed. My mother stopped coming with us and I sensed that my grandmother was not delighted with me in any way. As my parents had not had another child, I was simply a reminder of my father’s failure to produce an heir. So each year we would come to Cornwall and cold silence filled the beautiful rooms along with the watery sunlight.
As the years passed I took to the river with my father. He taught me to sail in an old dinghy and on the water or in the boathouse we were free from his mother’s silences and pursed lips. She never smiled. So my father and I excelled at spending our days in a boat, no matter what the weather. At the end of each visit I would return to my mother who would shake her head at my brown, freckled face. She would complain to my father that he had ruined my chances of finding a husband with such tanned skin and my father and I would laugh . . .
The phone rang. Jaunty sighed and stopped writing. Who was interrupting her now? She needed to write this down before it disappeared, but the phone was ringing on and on and on. She capped the pen and used both hands on the arms of the chair to push her body upright. Each joint clicked into place and she grimaced with every step she took towards the phone.
The small panes of the windows above her desk framed the view on three sides. To the south Frenchman’s Creek filled with the tide. Directly in front of Jaunty the river wound west towards the setting sun; to the north the banks of Calamansac were slowly being covered with water. She opened the desk drawer and pulled out the notebook. Sunlight fell on the pages, brightening them, and Jaunty looked out of the window. The sky was almost cloudless and she knew it would be cerulean touched with a hint of rose madder but all she saw was a graded grey sky.
Colour. It has gone. I can’t see it. Life is becoming dark and that which lit my life has gone. My memory is failing and the reason I am still here is you, Gabriella.
There was so much to say, so much in her head, confusing her mind and her fingers. Jaunty scanned what she had written the day before and continued on.
I thought those days would never end. I grew tall and slim – I had my mother’s dark hair and my father’s blue eyes – and I was more Italian than English. Yet when I hadn’t been sailing my complexion was fair ‘like a china doll’ my Italian grandmother, my nonna, would say. She would run her thumb across my cheek then kiss the tip of my nose, and if I close my eyes I can still feel the tickling caress across my cheek and her scent, rose and cinnamon, becomes fresh, as if she is here. She had a passion for both: her house and garden were filled with roses and in her cooking she loved using cinnamon.
Steam twisted away from Jaunty’s tea. She couldn’t think of Nonna without hunger. Even if she walked to the kitchen for a biscuit it wouldn’t remove the emptiness in her. She sighed.
At sixteen, I was sent to England to go to school and become respectable enough for my English grandmother. I was against this plan from the start because I didn’t like her and she didn’t like me. Cheltenham Ladies’ College was not going to rectify that situation. It was like being put into a straitjacket, except that it was there that my love of art was first properly harnessed and trained. Well, you see, painting was acceptable for the granddaughter of Lady Penrose – but only as a hobby.
My drawing tutor had spotted the promise in me. She encouraged me and I spent every spare moment in the art studios experimenting with every medium available. The freedom of oil, clay and metal after years of pencils, watercolours and crayons opened my eyes and my future. Everything was new and exciting.
Jaunty ran her fingers over what she had written. Did this really matter? For years she had convinced herself that the truth wasn’t important, that the lie hurt no one. And in all these years no one had uncovered the secret. She sighed. For a time she had almost forgotten it herself because the fiction was more believable. So did anyone need to know? She could let the truth die with her and who would care? Weren’t some things better left unsaid and unknown? But no, no. Lately the compulsion to be honest had grown overwhelming; she knew she needed to tell Gabriella and the world the truth.
The racket of stones on the track announced Gabriella’s arrival. Jaunty would have done almost anything to prevent her granddaughter from moving here, but Gabriella was as stubborn as she was herself.
‘But my death will speed her back to the living. When I am gone she won’t stay here.’ Jaunty spoke aloud and glanced about the room. ‘There is nothing for her here but memories.’ Her glance fell on a picture of her son, Philip. They had lost him so long ago now.
Jaunty stood. As she willed her body to do as it was told, she could almost count each vertebra as it sought alignment. Most days she coped with the pain, but on some,
when the dampness from the river seeped into the cabin, the freezing of her joints would make her cry out. Thankfully, until now, no one had been here to listen. And recently the memories made her cry out too. How could she stop them from coming into her thoughts? She must for Gabriella’s sake.
The Helford gig went upriver towards Gweek, the sound of the cox’s instructions drifting in through the window. Once essential for commerce, racing the pilots out to boats, the gigs now carried on for sport. Most days Jaunty saw the various crews pass the creek, practising, and all she could do was watch. Jaunty sighed and put the notebook in the desk drawer. Locking it, she put the key into her smock pocket. She didn’t want Gabriella to see it until she was gone and that would come quickly enough.
Gabe rolled her head back and forth as she put the window down, enjoying the fresh air. She was almost there. Passing a tractor she waved at the farmer and continued down the lane. The last stretch always took too long, yearning as she did to be home at Bosworgy, the house above the water. It was far from the world, safe. It had always been that way. As she passed the turning to Orchard Lane and Penarvon Cove, she took the track and slowed to glance out towards Falmouth Bay. Over the years the trees had grown, almost obscuring the view but not quite. She grinned, feeling the tension drift away in the clear air.
The track was potholed and her overstuffed car complained as she hit each one despite her efforts to avoid them. Putting the car into second gear, she descended, passing three walkers enjoying the sunny afternoon. A few hundred yards more and she arrived at the gate. She stopped the car and climbed out. Righting the sign that warned trespassers to beware, she wondered again what they needed to watch out for. Here there was simply a reclusive artist living on her own; there were no mean dogs or even a big bloke, just an old woman. Thankfully, over the years the only trespassers had been occasional lost ramblers to disturb Jaunty’s life of art and solitude.
