by Judy Astley
‘Get down!’ Sam ordered, looking past her anxiously.
‘I’m getting wet,’ she explained, watching horrified as the splashing died down and one by one a good dozen of the magnificent fish floated to the surface.
‘Shit. Too many,’ Chas muttered, reaching for the net. He leaned out and hauled in the first one. Theo helped him land it, shoving it quickly into a binbag.
‘They’re quite heavy too. How many shall we take?’ Theo asked.
‘Have to get all the dead ones out,’ Chas told him, pulling another from the pond and letting it slither into the bag. ‘Otherwise they’ll know something’s happened.’
‘There’s no way they’re not going to know!’ Grace pointed to the silvery corpses. ‘There’s loads of them!’
‘It’s probably not as many as it looks. We’ll get what we can, chuck some in the bushes if there’s too much and then the others will look like . . .’
‘What?’ Grace demanded furiously. ‘Natural bloody causes?’
‘Look, it’s not a precise thing. We had to take a guess. Maybe they’re not all dead, just a bit . . .’ Sam started a snorting laugh.
Chas joined in, sniggering. ‘A bit slightly ill. They might get better. If we leave them.’
Eventually they took ten fish divided between three bags. They were bulky and soft and Grace was glad she wasn’t asked to carry one. Instead she accepted the net and the bucket. Only two dead fish remained floating in the middle of the pond, out of reach. So this was a true survival skill, she thought. Appalled as she was at the shocking shiny deaths, it had been quite exciting really. And if there was a war sometime she might need to know this kind of thing. All the same, if Mo ever really did cook these fish, Grace thought she might just opt for a cheese omelette.
Twelve
HE WAS SURE to collide with the wrath of Mo for this, but Harry was willing to take the chance. Needs must, he thought as he made his way to Cygnet, going the long way round past the polytunnels and keeping his head down. There was a mild but alluring scent of dope on the air from his crops which were now, triggered by the slight shortening of the day length, forming prolific, sticky flower heads. It was going to be a good year. A profitable year. Even so, that particular sideline wasn’t going to wipe out their cash-flow problems all by its illegal little self. Whatever Mo said, holiday letting was still the business they were supposed to be running. Keeping the punters happy went with the territory. If they couldn’t at least try to do that they’d soon be left with no territory at all. Flogging a few courgettes and lettuces to the organic farm shop, collecting the surf-shack rent and undercutting the local dope dealers with a batch of quality home-grown wasn’t going to keep the twins in trainers.
Alice was already there, waiting in Cygnet’s open doorway with a notebook and pen in her hand. She was looking pretty much loosened up compared with how she’d been when she’d arrived at Penmorrow, he thought. She’d stopped doing that ridiculous thing with the collars of those horrible stripey shirts she seemed to like, turning them up high as if she was trying to keep a gale out of her ears. Instead she’d picked up some tight little tee shirts from the surf shops in St Ives and looked about five years younger. She wasn’t wearing those navy tasselled deck shoes either that smart people from London always chose as appropriate seaside wear, and was roaming about everywhere either barefoot or in cheap little pink rubber flip-flops with glittery beads across the front.
‘Have you had a look round yet?’ Harry asked, peering back over his shoulder guiltily, half-expecting Mo to leap out of the bushes and pounce on him. Cygnet was a long, single-storey timber-framed cottage (‘not unlike staying in a big garden shed’ had been one of the sniffier visitors’-book comments): Mo could show up at any of the windows, glancing in and catching him and Alice colluding about lampshades.
‘I have. It’s actually not nearly as bad as Gosling was. At least everything in here works.’
Harry almost pushed her into the cottage and quickly shut the door after them both. Aware of Mo’s hostility, Alice wasn’t too surprised and continued, ‘The bedroom windows haven’t been leaking so the paint isn’t all discoloured. All the way through you could get away with stripping out the carpets, polishing and staining the floorboards and hanging some unlined calico curtains. Those hideous old maroon Dralon things in the sitting room will have to go, and definitely the baggy-knicker blinds in the second bedroom. They’re full of spider nests. I don’t think anyone’s touched them in years.’
‘The furniture though. What about that? It all looks like something your granny might have thrown out.’
‘If we’d ever had a granny. What’s the opposite of “extended family”?’ Alice laughed. Harry said nothing. Interpreting their upbringing wasn’t his idea of time well spent. Silently, but with gloomy dread, he followed Alice past the bathroom and into the first of two bedrooms, where the tarnished brass bed took up much of the available space.
‘There’s just too much clutter in here,’ Alice said, running her finger across the top of the chest of drawers. ‘It looks musty and crowded – all those twiddly china ornaments and dusty little lace mats. Get rid of everything except the bed. There’s plenty of shelf space in that huge alcove cupboard.’ She looked round the walls. ‘Put up some reading lights on the wall over the bed and they can put their glasses of water and their books on the window seats each side. In fact actually . . .’ Alice opened the cupboard door and tapped the wall at the back.
‘Actually what?’
‘Hang on a minute . . .’ Alice went into the next room, opened the corresponding wardrobe in the adjoining alcove, then returned to Harry. ‘I thought so,’ she said to him, ‘this isn’t really a wall at all, just a plasterboard partition thing. What I’d do, if I was in charge of this, would be to take out this whole wall, knock the two rooms into one big airy bedroom. You could easily do that in a couple of days, then paint the whole lot white, trade white though, not the brilliant one. It’s softer. Forget about catering for a family and go for the urban-couple market.’
Harry laughed. ‘And what are they, when they’re at home?’
‘When they’re “at home” they are the folks with the cash. The empty-nesters, young pre-family pairs, gay couples, pensioners who like a bit of space, anyone who wants to come out of season and look at gardens and the Eden Project. They’re everything but the bucket and spade brigade. You could do weekend breaks for that lot and charge almost as much as a full week. People who take their main holidays in hot places still like to do long weekends in this country.’ Alice jotted down a few notes then went on, almost buzzing with enthusiasm, ‘You could make this place look like a fabulous Long Island beach house. If cash was no limit I’d suggest you take the ceilings off, open it all up and line the roof with limed planks, put in tiny spotlights, all that. It could look truly gorgeous.’
Harry shoved his hands into his pockets and shifted about, looking uncomfortable. Unfortunately cash was a limiting factor. ‘Sounds astronomically expensive. Mo reckons all this doing-up isn’t worth it, in fact her words were “pissing in the wind”.’ He remembered that, it had been one of her new repertoire of astonishingly blunt phrases and had quite shocked him.
Alice sat down on the bed and shut her notebook. ‘It would be worth it in the long run. It’s more a question of chucking stuff out than buying anything in,’ she said. ‘But . . . I’ve got a feeling Mo isn’t interested in Penmorrow as a “long run” any more. Am I right?’
‘If we’re talking long run then we’d go for Truro, Newquay, Penzance at a push, maybe St Ives. That’s what Mo’s hankering after. Sometimes I see her, looking through the business ads in the West Briton, checking out the B. & B.’s for sale. Manageable places, not like this,’ Harry admitted, perching on the window seat and peeking out into the garden, sure that Mo must be within listening distance.
‘But what about you?’ Alice asked. ‘And the boys? Surely you don’t want to leave Penmorrow? You’ve been here all yo
ur lives.’ That sounded patronizing, she realized as soon as the words were out. What better reason for wanting to move on, the fact that you’d never experienced the adventure of being somewhere else? Why ever shouldn’t Mo and Harry want to do that?
In spite of this train of thought, it was still a surprise to Alice when Harry shrugged. She’d expected him to laugh and say something like, ‘Don’t be daft, where else would we go?’ but instead he simply said, ‘The boys would love to live in a town, especially now they’re coming up to their teenage years. An out-of-the-way little village like this isn’t going to be their idea of fun in a year or two. I wouldn’t mind, but . . .’ Harry grinned and gave her a sly look. ‘I’d miss my polytunnels,’ he admitted. ‘And we’re stuck really, while Joss is still around. We should have gone years ago but back then we didn’t want to. Now we can’t go anywhere because Joss won’t be able to manage all this by herself. Having no choice is what really gets up Mo’s nose.’
Well at least she wouldn’t have to wonder what to cook. Mo stared at the unexpected bounty in the freezer and tried to count the fish that were bundled in untidily as if by someone in a hurry, each one wrapped neatly in clingfilm. Their eyes were still quite bright, so they must have been frozen immediately after being caught. Mo assumed Harry had put them there but was surprised he hadn’t mentioned them. Usually when he came home with an edible bargain, courtesy of a villager in the pub, he was more than eager to let her know.
Mo pulled one of the fish out for a closer look. She could see it was some kind of carp. She’d been thinking about carp, too; she was sure she’d even mentioned it in passing, though not expecting to get any. She’d thought she’d have to make do with whatever the fish van in Chapel Creek had got left over. This was a fancy creature, just like a kid’s pet goldfish but as big as, if not bigger than, a good-size bass. Bony things, these, she thought, and not what most people would choose. But they were tasty, if her memory from childhood didn’t let her down. She remembered her mother cooking some that her father had caught, remembered the catchy reek of vinegar that had gone into the water she’d soaked them in to get rid of any lingering muddiness in the flesh. She’d got her mother’s recipe somewhere among the old cookery books piled at the back of the larder. If Harry hadn’t seen fit to tell her, then Mo wasn’t going to ask where they’d come from, the same as she hadn’t asked when she’d found three brace of pheasant hanging on the porch next to the wind chimes last October, or when Harry had brought home a ragged hunk of blood-soaked deer the night there’d been a new dent in the car’s bumper. With these, she’d just have to consider their presence as a miracle. Not enough of a fish miracle to feed five thousand, but more than enough for this house full of Jocelyn’s creepy-crawly disciples.
Mo could hear Jocelyn in the sitting room holding court with her film-crew people and getting overexcited, laughing too loudly at something Patrice was saying. The right and generous thing to hope would be that she wouldn’t get too giddy and push her blood pressure up and out of control, but Mo, guiltily, could bring herself to hope for no such thing. It would be a handily quick and pain-free way (all round) for Joss to go, Mo thought, trying to square her wayward conscience. If Jocelyn simply dropped down dead, overcome by the delight of having so much squirmingly obsequious attention, then taken all round and looking back after the initial shock and sorrow of it, and after planting her in the orchard alongside Arthur, it mightn’t be such a terrible tragedy.
I never used to think like this, Mo reminded herself as she pulled the rest of the fish out of the freezer, laid them on the draining board and counted them. She looked back at her young self as a grateful little mouse, only too willing to muck in and do Joss’s bidding for the privilege of living with her and being part of this house. This house. Mo sighed as she began to unwrap the clingfilm from the fish. This house that wasn’t her house. This house that was fast outstripping its owner in the race to be decrepit and demanding. The way things were going it would fall down long before Jocelyn did. She’d found four more roof tiles that had crashed to the back terrace this morning and it was barely even breezy. God only knew what ravages another stormy autumn would bring. There was a chimney that looked distinctly askew. Whether it was any worse than the year before, she really didn’t like to guess. And the hot weather brought out the worst in the drains – well certainly a smell that didn’t seem right, not if the septic tanks were functioning properly. When, oh when would she and Harry and the boys get to escape to live in a nice snug place somewhere on a milk round, a twice-an-hour bus route and only a short hop from Sainsbury’s? Never, would be the answer to that one if Alice with her well-meaning arty-room makeovers got her way. She’d keep Penmorrow limping on till they and the collected sodding premises were all worn to dust and splinters.
‘A beach barbecue! Oh yes, super idea. Such a lovely day for it,’ Mo overheard Joss enthusing loudly to Patrice. The voice was getting nearer, accompanied by the unctuous tones of Patrice himself as the two of them came into the kitchen.
‘Mo – just the person.’ Jocelyn came up beside her and squeezed her arm fondly. ‘Oooh look at those beautiful fish! Are they for tonight’s supper? How clever of you to find something so gorgeously glittery for us.’
Mo smiled and began washing the first of the fish, slicing it along its belly with expert speed and letting its insides flop out into the bowl in the sink, very close to Patrice.
‘Ugh.’ Patrice wrinkled his nose and stepped smartly backward.
‘Shouldn’t you be filming this, Patrice?’ Mo asked, giving him a look of sly challenge. ‘If you want the authentic Penmorrow experience, that is . . .’
‘Well I suppose I might if Joss was doing it.’ Patrice crept a little closer to take a cautious look, though making sure he stayed outside innards-splashing range. The stench from even the smallest drip would linger horribly in denim.
‘Oh don’t ask me, sweetie.’ Jocelyn moved away, reaching for her cigarettes from the dresser shelf. ‘Mo is the expert when it comes to cooking. I couldn’t begin to compete.’
‘No, really it’s all right! If you want to do some of this I’ll save you the last two. It’s only a matter of slit and scoop.’ Mo offered the bloodied knife to Patrice but, to his obvious relief, Joss’s attention had skipped ahead.
‘Mo, darling, will these fish be all right to barbecue?’ she asked. ‘Patrice wants us all on the beach later this afternoon for a few shots and a bit of a chat about the time we played cricket on the sand with the Attenboroughs. He wants the whole family this time, at about five when the trippers have gone for their caravan teas and the light is still good.’
Mo decided that barbecuing seemed as good a way of cooking these fish as any. She would, she thought, adapt her mother’s old recipe, wrap them whole in foil parcels with some of Harry’s shallots, plenty of pepper and a splash or two of white wine. They weren’t the type of fish you could even begin to fillet. It was only to be hoped that Jocelyn wouldn’t be so busy being a star for Patrice that she forgot about being careful to avoid the bones.
Grace had lost her little gold watch. Noel had given it to her on her birthday two years before and although it wasn’t what she’d have chosen for herself (she should have hinted for a purple Baby G or a chunky Animal one) she wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings by having to admit she’d been careless enough to let it fall off.
Where the watch had fallen off was the big problem. Grace sat on the Gosling sofa with Monty purring on her lap while she bit the skin around her right thumbnail and worried about where it could be. She’d had it before the weekend, she was sure. She’d had it all the time she’d been reading Angel’s Choice – she remembered looking at it late in the afternoon when she’d finished the book, and being surprised that it was nearly six o’clock and still so hot on the beach. She was almost certain she’d had it when they’d climbed up the rocks to Sam and Chas’s cave and when they’d made the fire for the shells.
There was one scary possibil
ity that she was going to have to think really hard about. Suppose, just suppose, it was up the hill in that garden by the fishpond? She wished she could remember exactly what she’d done there. She remembered putting her hand into the water to see if she could catch a fish the other way that Sam had been telling her about, ‘tickling’ he’d called it, by keeping really still till one of the fish sort of sat over her hand and then scooping it out. It would have been her right hand that she’d put in. She wore her watch on her left wrist. She couldn’t at all remember if she’d put both hands in the water. All she recalled was that she’d given up very fast on trying to catch a fish that way – just in case the stuff the twins had put in the water was so toxic that she’d get gross skin blotches and some fatal foul disease.
Grace put Monty onto the cushions beside her and went upstairs to search through the clothes chaos on her room floor again. The watch must be somewhere. If it wasn’t in the house this time, she decided, she’d go up to Hamilton House on a day when it was open to have a look round by the pond. If it was there, she wanted to be the one to find it. Otherwise, someone else might pick it up and hand it in to someone who’d decide it was evidence. They’d have no trouble finding her, her mother, of course, had had her full name, in accordance with school regulations, engraved on the back.
After hot days when holidaymakers had almost fought for space on the beach and trampled each other’s territory with ball games and giant sandcastles, the shore became quiet again soon after five in the afternoon. The trippers folded the windbreaks, packed away the beach toys and left to bath and feed their tired and hungry children. This was the time the boy in the car park stopped charging for any car with a local number plate and a roof rack full of surfboards. The surf shack became busy with local custom, the bodyboarders and surfers arriving to catch the last of the afternoon’s waves before the evening calm descended on the sea. Theo had taken to hanging out with them and joining in, well able to talk the surf talk even if his competence in the sea lacked their years of practice. Alice, walking down the path from Penmorrow with Mo and Aidan, could see him now, sitting on the café’s front rail sipping something from a can and watching a couple of experts choosing the waves.
