The Cornish Affair

by Lockington, Laura

  We had decided that we weren’t going to tell Richard that Olga was here, she was going to wow him at the party tonight with a grand entrance. Well, that was the plan anyway.

  Olga was taking to all this like a duck to water, she loved it. She could barely take her eyes off her own reflection, with every change she would study herself more intently.

  “My family used to say that Sonia had the beauty and I the brains… but now, I am not so sure!”

  We all laughed, and assured her that she looked great.

  “You have all been so very, very kind. I want to cry, but it is not possible, or I may ruin my face!” Olga said, wiping away a tear.

  “Stop that buster, right now!” Bea said, “Besides, we’ve got to try some clothes on, now then, what are we gonna put her in?”

  Unless she wanted some old jeans, or a very old little black dress, there was nothing that I could dredge up for her. I turned to Nancy.

  “Well, let me think…,” she stood back at looked at Olga critically. We all followed her gaze.

  Olga straightened up, and threw her shoulders back. She was not very tall, but was very curvy, with solid looking arms and legs. No doubt all that early farm work gave her the sort of body that western women have to sweat over walking machines to get. Perhaps we could all take up ploughing instead?

  “I know! I’ve got the very thing!” Nancy rushed off to her room.

  She came back moments later with a handful of peach coloured silky stuff, and hustled Olga into some clothes.

  “Good god, wasn’t that mama’s?” I asked, looking at a peach coloured silken corset. It was a gorgeous thing, handmade, with wide folded straps, and a boned bodice. It was the sort of thing that in my mother’s day would only have been worn in the bedroom, but now it was a perfect party outfit. Olga blossomed in it, and it was very flattering on her, giving her a generous cleavage and a tiny waist.

  “You mind? You mind it was your mother’s?” Olga asked suddenly, ready to tear it off.

  “No, not at all, she would have adored it being worn,” I said, smiling at her. “But what’s she going to wear on her bottom half? I mean, she can’t go round with just that on, can she? And Nancy, please don’t suggest a matching pair of crepe de chine French knickers, it’ll look as if we’re running a brothel or an underwear catalogue modelling competition!”

  Bea ran to her room, and came back holding a pair of pale tan suede jeans.

  Olga sighed in admiration, and beamed at us, showing a lot of not unattractive gold fillings.

  “Perfect!” she said.

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  The four of us stood in the library with a glass of champagne. We all, (in very different ways) looked magnificent. Nancy of course, stole the show with a wonderfully mad outfit that she’d bought in London that wouldn’t have looked amiss on Edith Sitwell or Isabella Blow. A tiara completed the over the top dress, dangling with crystal drops and pearls . Bea had a white halter top on that stopped short of her boobs, showing off a darkly tanned, flat midriff, (which did seem deeply unfair as she’d had two kids, so what was my excuse?) and a pair of hipster leather jeans.

  “Wow!” I said, when I saw her.

  She laughed, and poked her tummy, “I know what you’re thinking! But I don’t cook like you do and I am addicted to yoga, I also run and-”

  “Enough, stop now before I hate you,” I advised her.

  Samina and Sunita had arrived, and were getting ready in my bedroom. We could hear gales of giggles as they made a shy entrance in the library. They were stunning. They had on their best shalwar kameez’s and all of Pritti’s jewellery, one was in flame red and the other turquoise blue. They looked like brightly coloured birds of paradise. I was worried that they might spill stuff over themselves, but they assured me that they would be very, very careful.

  Bea was staring at them, and I went over to her, “Do you remember Samina and Sunita? You know Pritti’s daughters, they’re going to help with the food,” I said.

  Bea recovered herself, “Yes, yes of course I do,” she smiled apologetically at them, “I’m real sorry, and I know my boys hate it when they’re told this, but you were so little the last time I saw you!”

  The girls rolled their eyes at each other, and giggled again. I offered them a sip of champagne and they were suitably scandalised. They flitted off to the kitchen, ready to pile food on trays and plates.

  All afternoon I had rushed round Penmorah, clad only in a sarong tied above my breasts, my hair piled on top of my head, carving ham, lying out shellfish on beds of ice and seaweed, chipping my nail varnish and generally faffing around. I’d hoovered the entire house to within an inch of its life, so that Oliver, when he arrived wouldn’t start wheezing. Now it was all done.

  Now was the nerve wracking part.

  Supposing no-one came?

  Oh god, banish that thought and have another drink. I glanced round the library, and was pleased by what I saw. Nancy had draped greenery wherever she could, and we had lit hundreds of night lights. The serried ranks of glasses and bottles on ice gleamed in the candle light, along with the fruit pyramid which gave the white covered trestle tables an air of unaccustomed grandeur. The smell of all the scented candles, air freshener and perfume (a cheap bottle of Paris by Night that I’d unearthed from the back of my bathroom cabinet) that I’d sprayed was a bit overpowering, but at least it masked the deadlier smell from outside, which praise the lord, had gone. Sort of. And if we had a north wind.

  Richard and Will were due to arrive to man the bar soon, and I could tell that Olga was getting nervous.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, “You look fabulous!” Which was true. Nancy and Bea had transformed her.

  “Perhaps I should go and check on the animals?” she whispered to me.

  I’d cleared spaces in the attic for Nelson and Baxter, kept well apart, and had tied Baxter to the legs of a very heavy broken mahogany table. I’d supplied them both with small helpings of their favourite snacks (sunflower seeds and cheese respectively), bowls of water, and then had dashed up with a radio, in case they got lonely. It was a bit like running a three star animal motel. I expect Baxter would have quite liked to watch the pay as you view adult channel, but I thought that was going too far.

  “No, you stay where you are, I wanna see Richards face when we introduce you, Bea said delightedly, stepping back to admire her own handiwork with the make-up she’d painted Olga with.

  Nancy was fiddling with her tiara, “I just know that this is going to give me a headache soon, perhaps I’d better have another glass for anaesthetic effects?”

  Bea laughed and I went to the table to grab a bottle and top her up. I think we were all starting to feel nervous. Nancy was fiddling with her tiara, and Bea couldn’t stop staring at the girls who were flitting about with nibbles. Only Olga had seemed to take stock of herself in the looking glass, finding herself to be not wanting now. She was standing still and straight, clutching her glass and smiling serenely.

  I heard the kitchen door open, and the cheery shout of Richard and Will arrive.

  “In here!” I called, shooting a nervous look at Olga.

  She smiled and looked expectantly towards the door.

  Richard was through the door first, Will hot on his heels.

  “Christ!” Richard exclaimed, staring at all of us. His eyes travelled over all of us, and he practically had to pick his jaw from the floor. Will stood transfixed in the doorway, blushing and smiling sheepishly at us, his eyes taking us in, but mostly, it has to said, gaping at Bea.

  I drew Olga forward and said, “This is Will,” he grinned and looked at the floor, “and this, this is Richard. Richard this is your, umm, friend, Olga!”

  It was worth the wait.

  They smiled shyly at each other, and the whole room collectively held its breath.

  Olga was great, with much aplomb, and not a little hint of teasing, she said to Richard, “Hello… I am happy to meet you in the person at last, althou
gh you have perhaps changed a little from your photograph?”

  Richard blushed and stammered and generally looked so uncomfortable that I whisked everyone away and made Will get behind the bar and open another bottle.

  I heard the front door make it’s very own peculiar banging and creaking as it opened, and went into the hall, ready to welcome guests. People began to arrive, slowly at first, in dribs and drabs, but soon the pace of the evening began to pick up. Before long there was a pile of boots, umbrellas and raincoats littering the hallway. I gazed at the ever growing pile with a feeling that maybe I should have marked them somehow as I could see a great deal of confusion happening at the end of the party.

  Port Charles had done itself proud. Sam was in a white dinner jacket, complete with buttonhole, looking remarkably debonair, the overall effect spoiled somewhat by the green corduroy trousers that he also had on. Doris and Isaac looked exactly like a couple from that long defunct TV show, Come Dancing and were shiny and awkwardly stiff in their unfamiliar finery.

  I received a lot of compliments, well, I took them to be compliments about my appearance. Mostly, I think people were in shock, they’d only really ever seen me in jeans. Perhaps like newscasters, they didn’t know that I’d got legs.

  The artists from St Ives arrived in a mini bus, which I thought showed a remarkable organisational skills, till I discovered that they had ‘borrowed’ it from the local school, who were unaware of the arrangement.

  The writers showed no such enterprise, turning up in a series of taxis and broken down looking old bangers.

  I was dashing about, introducing people, and fending off the inevitable comments from the arty lot about the last time they were all here. A florid faced man with long white hair and bad breath put his arm round my waist and would not let go.

  “Oh, my dear… I remember it so well! Your darling mother and father were the supreme hosts… I stayed three weeks once and finished my wonderful book on the life and times of Branwell Bronte, I’m sure you’ve read it? It was a popular, although deeply misunderstood book of its time, due to a resurgence any day now…Penmorah was always so welcoming to us writers… breakfast in bed, and a drink at the stroke of noon! Have you taken on the mantle of responsibility to the clerks of history? The scribblers of mans follies? Have you?”

  I leant backwards to avoid the fumes and tried to wriggle away. “Umm, no! I’m just giving a party , that’s all!” I said brightly, shuddering at the thought of taking him breakfast in bed.

  He looked sadly at me and shook his head. Probably in sorrow at the inhospitable ways of Penmorah now.

  I escaped upstairs for a while, and sat on the top stair as I had when a child to observe the grown ups at play. I leant my head between the banisters and watched the guests in the hall. I saw Jace slink in looking very cool in a long white Indian shirt and white trousers, all he needed was the cane and he could look like his father, Rasheed. Miranda was there, too, in a truly hideous cheesecloth hippie dress that had seen better days, although to be fair, she’d obviously tried to tart it up with the addition of far too many necklaces that impeded her movements rather, as they swung heavily round her neck and got tangled with her hair. Her children, thank god, were not in sight. Perhaps she thought they’d cramp her style, but I did make a note to ask her later (in a caring sort way, you understand) if she thought that leaving them alone with a babysitter was a creative, motherly thing to do?

  I felt very comfortable up here, and although I knew I should be downstairs, I had no inclination to move.

  Half the fun of the party was in the planning and dreaming of it, not the reality of it. Half of me wished that I was ten again, and that soon my father would creep up the stairs with a plate of fruit and chocolate and tuck me up in bed.

  There was a hubbub in the hall and a lot of laughter, and I craned my neck to see who had arrived, hoping that it was Oliver, along with Harry and Martha – naturally! It wasn’t, it was Breadpudding, her leg in a cast and complete with crutches that she used very professionally. The laughter was at the cast on her leg, which had some very rude graffiti on it, that even I could read from up here.

  “It has nothing to do with me!” I heard her refined tones cut through the general noise in the hallway, “Ay awoke and it was all on there – some people have no sense of decency!”

  I smiled, and sipped at my drink.

  This was the sort of party I’d wanted, so why wasn’t I feeling more in the mood? I saw Bea make her way through the hall, stopping to greet Jace. I looked down with interest; they made a fantastic looking couple…

  Oh dear god.

  They did make a great looking couple, because… well, they looked so alike! That’s who she had reminded me of – Jace!

  No, it couldn’t be? Could it? How? I gripped my glass and leant forwards studying them intently.

  They were standing close together, and from here I could see a huge similarity about them, it was a fleeting thing really, expressions, skin tone, hand movements, the set of the eyes, the curve of a jaw bone. I stood up, shakily.

  My movement caught Bea’s eye, and she turned to look at me. We gazed at one another for a moment, and I knew I was right. I didn’t know the details, but I wasn’t too sure that I wanted to. I turned away from her, breaking the look that passed between us and walked into my bedroom.

  Moments later there was a knock on my door. It was Bea, as I knew it would be. She opened the door and walked over to me. She stood in front of me, and said, “You know, don’t you?”

  I wasn’t sure what I knew, but I nodded and looked away.

  She sighed, “OK, this isn’t the best timing in the world… but please believe me when I tell you that it has taken me many years to get to grips with this myself. Do you mind if I sit down?”

  I gestured towards the bed, I preferred to remain standing myself. It might prove easier to run from the room. I was pretty sure that whatever it was that she was going to tell me was going to be something I didn’t want to hear. I felt like a child who was about to stick her fingers in her ears and sing loudly.

  “OK, well, you know that I was born in Paris? Well, that-”

  “Just tell me!” I shouted at her, “Just tell me! Spare me the details and the personal history, just tell me!”

  Bea looked at me in surprise and said under her breath, “You always did have a quick temper, just like Michael.”

  I gave her a murderous glance which she flinched away from.

  She put her hands up to ward me away from her, and said placatingly, “Take it easy… OK. Nancy is not my mother. Dorothea had an affair with Rasheed when Michael was in Australia. She went to Paris to stay with Nancy and gave birth to me. They concocted the story between them that I was-”

  “Impossible!” I shouted. “This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my life, what possible reason you could have to make all this up is beyond me…” as I was shouting and blustering I knew that it was true. Hadn’t I just seen the evidence with my own eyes? Jace and Bea were brother and half sister… so what was she now to me? A half sister too, I suppose.

  I sank down on the bed beside her. I found that I was trembling, though with what emotion I didn’t know.

  Bea stroked my back, and I pulled away from her.

  “Don’t touch me…I have to think. Tell me more,” I said shakily.

  I heard the story.

  Dorothea had met Rasheed in London at a party and instantly fallen for him. They had conducted the affair successfully, my father not once knowing about it. Then, my parents came back to Penmorah. Dorothea was heartbroken to have to leave her lover, and when the opportunity came for Michael to go to Australia, she had encouraged him to do so. Rasheed moved in with her, here.

  Then the unthinkable had happened, she became pregnant.

  She sent Rasheed back to his wife, Pritti and escaped to France and the safety and comfort of her sister Nancy. And somehow, somehow persuaded her to take the baby as her own. They made a vow
that they would never tell anyone, and that Nancy would raise Bea as her own daughter.

  “All my life I knew that Dorothea didn’t like me, and I never knew why… I was so jealous of you as a child, you were everything that I wasn’t allowed to be. You ran wild here, whilst I was at school all the time–”

  “You loved it,” I interrupted.

  Bea laughed sourly, “I was making the best of it, I thought if I made school sound exciting enough you’d want to go and then I could come and live here as well.”

  We sat in silence for a while, till my heart beat was approaching normal.

  “How long have you known?” I asked.

  “When Nancy came out to visit last year, she told me,” Bea said, “And that put a lot of things into perspective for me, all my life I did the right thing. Married the right man, took the right job, became a perfect mom, none of it was done for me. Then it all kinda fell into place, I can’t explain it really.”

  I turned to look at her, her eyes were full of tears, and instinctively I put my hand out to comfort her. She gripped my hand, and we sat for a while like that.

  “Why did Nancy tell you? I mean, why then?” I said.

  Bea took her time in answering, I could tell that she was choosing her words with care, so I concentrated on what she was trying to say.

  “It had a lot to do with you. After Thea and Michael died, she thought that you wouldn’t survive without them. So, she stayed here with you, and I think, over the years it became her home too. She’s frightened, Fin.”

  “Frightened of what?” I said.

  “Frightened at what you’ll do without her. No, don’t look at me like that! She’s not dying or anything, but she’s getting older… and really, the one person that the promise was made for is dead. The sisters made the promise so that Michael would stay with Thea. There was never any question of him accepting another man’s child.”