A Little Hotel in Cornwall

by Laura Briggs

  "What did you love about here?" I asked.

  "I loved the quiet," he said. "I loved the fact that no one knew me. It was a fresh start ... a blank slate, where anything was possible. Have you ever wanted that?" he asked. "I always feel that everyone does, at one time or another. And ..." Here, he lifted a stone from the sand below and tossed it towards the water, "...there was history and timelessness in this place. I couldn't imagine any other tucked in the middle of all these things. Not without sailing away to Italy." He smiled at me.

  I rested my cheek on my hand. "All the places I used to read about ... dream about ... but never had a chance to see."

  "You can see some of them right here. Throw a stone one way, and you'll strike the beautiful Isles of Scilly — another way, you'll land it on the bay of Penzance where pirates moored." I couldn't see the movement of his hand clearly in the dark, which way he gestured. "Pirates landed at Port Hewer long ago, you know. There's even a marker on one of the beaches which supposedly marks where a ship laden with treasure sank offshore ... and maybe its crew still haunts these very beaches ..."

  Kip barked, sharply. "Don't," I giggled, briefly. "I might believe you, so tell me no fairy tales."

  "This is the land of fairytales," he protested. "King Arthur was conceived at Tintagel Castle, according to legend. Now it's only romantic stone ruins by moonlight, but if you swim that direction, you'll find it waiting on a stone summit." His hand indicated a direction in the darkness, but all I saw was the starlight, and the shimmering little thumbnail moon hanging over the sea.

  "Have you been there?" I asked. "What is it like?"

  "Ruins in the truest sense of the word," he answered. "A few walls stand as monuments ... a bridge crosses a stone ravine to reach it. Most of it lies perched atop one side of a stone mountain, just before you reach its crest. Jagged, unforgiving rocks all around you ... beyond that is the sea in the distance. It's beautiful, but it's a sad and harsh beauty, sometimes."

  His voice had grown soft and reminiscent for this story — maybe on his wild travels, this one perfect postcard location had stayed at the top of his memory pile. "We could go see it sometime, if you like," he said, looking at me. "You and I. Make a day of it."

  "Maybe," I said. "Some time." I shouldn't take him up on this offer in my last week, I knew.

  "You know who you remind me of a bit?" he asked, still studying me by the fire's dim light.

  "Not this again," I groaned. "You already used that line. Clara, remember?"

  "I was going to say Snow White this time," he answered. "Ebony hair, cream complexion, red lipstick. Perfect, really."

  "Not Cinderella instead?" I quipped, trying furiously not to blush over his previous words, and just managing it. "When I was a little girl, she was my favorite. Of course, I grew up and realized that glass shoes and fairy godmothers and balls were nothing like the story says."

  "That's absolutely true. You never meet anybody handsome and charming at a ball," scoffed Sidney.

  I was definitely sure I detected wicked playfulness in this remark. He was trying to make me blush, but I was determined to resist it.

  "I used to read Round Table stories and imagine myself as Guinevere — only without the tragedy between her and Arthur," I said. "To see a part of the legend while I'm here would be incredible." If I had a day off next week, I would go. That way I would see one true landmark in Cornwall besides the Penmarrow.

  "I used to fancy myself a knight," Sidney mused. "Rambling 'round the countryside in search of damsels in distress, going wherever I pleased in the name of king and country."

  "It sounds like that's what you grew up to do," I observed. Not completely serious about it, of course.

  "Maybe a bit," he answered. I suspected he had a cocky grin on his face for this reply. He moved his arms, laying flat on the stone now, one hand reaching down to scratch Kip's ears.

  His life of stray dogs, surfboards, and night rambles under the stars was carefree ... no worries about writing mentorships or drama with publishers in his world. In my imagination, I took a page from his book and let the wind blow through my hair from a motorbike, zipping along the Amalfi Coast in Italy. Bye-bye savings, bye-bye mentorship with a published author. Hello adventurous me.

  "Your mind must be far away right now," said Sidney. "Wandering new shores and strange places." His voice brought me back to earth — but it was his knowing tone that sent a shiver through me. Had he known what I was thinking?

  "I was considering a reckless idea," I said.

  "How reckless?" he asked. "Sometimes those are the best ones."

  This time, that devil-may-care smile didn't thrill me. "Maybe it's because I've been watching someone who lives by expectations and rules," I said. "I feel like flouting those conventions...but at the same time, I know what my life looks like to outsiders. Just a lot of small jobs and long hours chasing after dreams I can never catch."

  "I thought you were finding the key to your dreams here." Sidney drew himself upright, his feet touching the sand again.

  "That's what I said. But I don't actually think I am," I said. "I think it's not what I've pictured it being. I think ... I'm tired, and that I should go to bed." This was the anticlimactic end to my tale: a dull statement that neither solved nor changed anything.

  Sidney rose and held out his hand. "It's not even midnight," he said. "It's a waste of a beautiful gown to go now."

  "My beautiful gown has seen enough excitement for one evening."

  He helped me to my feet. "I prefer the afternoon dress you wore, anyway. With daisies to match." He hadn't let go of my hand, which, quite suddenly, felt both thrilling and awkward. Heat crept from my wrist to my cheeks.

  "I ..." I hesitated. "I ... should go. Get some sleep."

  "You should," he answered, emphatically.

  I almost laughed. I made myself be serious again, and tried to make my fingers withdraw from Sidney's hold. Think of Ronnie's logbook pages meticulously documenting winter sightings of chickadees in New York — in the past, its recollection killed my most romantic thoughts whenever I felt things were moving too quickly in a relationship. The mundane realities of another human's passion.

  But it wasn't working this time. When Sidney gave my hand a gentle, almost imperceptible pull, my body responded by leaning towards him, instead of pulling away. I drew myself up before him, standing on my toes as my glance traveled his face, noticing the smallest details of his features to log them in my memory banks for the future. Then our eyes met; and, after a brief, separate hesitation by each of us, our lips met, too.

  A soft, tender brush of my skin against his. A touch more than a kiss — a half kiss, then. The caress just before the main attraction, sparked by curiosity and impulse. We both drew back a little, our eyes meeting again.

  Blame it on the moonlight, on the two glasses of champagne, or on the orchestra's song. It could have been any of those things which made it happen.

  "Maisie," said Sidney. Quietly, tenderly, but I could see the smile in the corner of his lips, begging to reappear. It was not a serious one.

  "Goodnight." I pulled my hand away from his, gently. I gathered my dress as I turned away.

  "Goodnight," he called after me. Halfway up the stairs, I turned to see Sidney and Kip still below on the beach, visible in the light of the dying fire. He was gazing at the sea, and not me, skipping rocks across the waves.

  I made sure I was gone before he could notice me looking back.

  ***

  "Look — there it is. See, on the third tree branch? Look a little more to the right ... it's a blurry grey shape behind those leaves."

  I lowered the binoculars with a sigh. "I can't see anything," I said to Ronnie. "It's all green to me."

  "That's because you're not focusing. That's why you always missed good sighting opportunities, Maisie," he said. "All right, let's document this one: nuthatch at two thirty." He opened his bird sighting book and wrote on one of its pages.

  On my one
day off from my secret identity, I had been roped in by Ronnie's former promise to 'show me around' Cornwall — which meant sitting on a blanket in a clearing at the edge of the oak glen bordering the hotel's garden and park, watching the nesting activities of native birds.

  "This is exciting — we've seen two separate species sharing a single territory," said Ronnie.

  "Exciting," I mumbled. Not exactly my choice of words on the subject.

  My mind was far from Ronnie's twig nests and hatchlings at this moment. My brain was working on finding a solution for last night's half kiss with Sidney. Random attractions were not my thing. Random kisses were definitely not my thing. He was charming, handsome, and good at saying things which seemed both intriguing and sincere. But I didn't know him. Not really know him, the way I should before taking the plunge. Why was I being stupid enough to like him so much?

  "I wish my mobile's camera hadn't blurred that photo earlier. That glimpse we had might have been of a third one." Digging through his padded carrying case for his binoculars, he produced a field guide of native Cornish birds and began thumbing through it, searching for a match.

  I sighed. Why was I spending my one day off with my ex-boyfriend — a textbook example of how a little spark of attraction can go so desperately wrong in life?

  "Ronnie," I said. "I'm not staying at the hotel as a guest."

  "Hmm? What did you say?" He didn't look up from his bird illustrations.

  "I said, I'm not a guest. I'm working there. I'm a maid at The Penmarrow Hotel this summer."

  He looked up earnestly now. "Are you joking?"

  "No, I'm not." I sat up straight on the blanket, so I could look him in the eye. "I didn't tell you because I knew how you felt about your father's opinion of me, and he was coming here to the hotel. Truth is, I'm not here writing with a famous author, or in the running for the publisher's prize. I lost my chance, so I came here to Cornwall to track down my … my favorite author, and ask them to mentor me."

  I was a little ashamed, because saying this last part out loud made me realize just how ridiculous it sounded. Ronnie looked both offended and shocked.

  "What on earth — are you crazy, Maisie?" he said. "You're here because you're celebrity chasing?"

  "I'm not celebrity chasing," I replied, although slightly miffed by his tone. "I'm desperate and unemployed, and my dream was at stake. Something you obviously don't and can't understand. People who fight for their dreams sometimes clutch at straws. So I took somebody else's place as a maid at the hotel."

  "Why not go back to school? Why not get a different writing grant and write a book?" said Ronnie. "Why do you have to make beds and scrape gum out of sinks?"

  "I can't just 'get' another grant," I said. "It's not that simple. I don't need another student loan to pay off, either. Besides, what's so wrong with this job? How is it any worse than being a starving artist for the sake of my novel?"

  "It just ... sounds better," said Ronnie. "I thought with this prize, you were on the verge of ... of having what you wanted."

  "Of being somebody," I surmised. "Like you." I looked him in the eye. Ronnie blushed and looked away. I could still tell that he rolled his eyes.

  "It's not the same," he protested.

  "You're right, it's not," I said. "Starving artist, published writer — I am still always going to be the girl who waited tables and scraped gum off surfaces. When are you going to see that?"

  "I see the real you. Honestly," said Ronnie, hastily. "It's not about changing for me."

  "Your family is always going to feel that way about me, though," I said. "If you like a friend for who they are, Ronnie, you have to respect the experiences that made them that way."

  "Is it so wrong to want my father to finally accept you?" said Ronnie. "Look, I know what he said to you last night." He couldn't make eye contact anymore for these words. "But I think he was still a little impressed that you were finally going to be a serious writer."

  "What, because a 'real professional' was going to read my work?" I made air quotes for this middle part. I laughed. "Ronnie, why do you care so much? You don't want to date me anymore. We can't relive the past. What your father and the rest of them think of me is pretty unimportant to me."

  "I don't want them thinking ... I don't like the past being a — a page I have to avoid," he concluded, lamely, after a pause.

  "You don't want me to be a mistake," I said, softly. "That's the problem, isn't it? I'm a mistake, and they hold it over your head that you dated me."

  Ronnie closed his guidebook. "You don't understand what it's like, having to live up to their standards," he said, bitterly. "I can't do it, no matter how hard I try. But I can't be anything else. Honestly, Maisie — I tried. But you were wrong about me. This is who I am." He looked at me pleadingly.

  I reached over and squeezed Ronnie's arm, sympathetically. "You don't have to worry. I won't tell your father the truth about me," I said. "Not if you don't want him to know. But I can't pretend to you, not if you really want to respect me for who I am."

  I had too many secrets right now. Riley the porter had probably told all the rest of the staff that I had crashed the Roaring Twenties' ball last night. As for Sidney Daniels — he could be thinking anything right now, and what if that 'anything' included a casual romantic fling with me this summer?

  "It'll just be for a few days, until he leaves for London," said Ronnie, breathing a sigh of relief. "I wish it didn't have to be this way, but ... thanks, Maisie."

  "Just do me a favor and don't tell anybody why I'm really here," I said, climbing to my feet. "I would prefer to tell them about the real me on my own."

  "Where are you going?" said Ronnie. "This could be an ideal spot for viewing the feeding habits of the green woodpecker." He checked the time on his phone. "You could fill in the spaces in your birdwatcher's guide with some extra species if you hang around."

  He never did learn that I used my little book for other things, and had never documented so much as a robin. "I can't waste a day this beautiful sitting on a blanket," I called back, as I took the path leading under the trees, away from Ronnie and his field guides. "It's meant to be explored, Ronnie."

  "Explored?" he echoed, in disbelief. "But — but there are some elusive species nesting in this oak, Maisie."

  The shady path through the woods emerged somewhere close to the village — I could see its shops and cottages in the distance, and the tower of the church, along with the vibrant pinks, reds, and purples in bloom in the gardens. I climbed over a low stone wall between the scrubby clearing of tall grass and a cluster of local cottages. The roof of the manse's shed was peeking above a tall hedgerow in the distance, the packed streets of the village shops evident on the horizon beyond it, splashes of grey, white limestone, green fronds and deciduous foliage looking pale and soft in the sunlight.

  The shed doors were fastened closed, three dogs asleep in the sunlight of the paved court. I knocked on the green front door twice, but there was no answer. One of the dogs — Mick or Bugs, I had no idea which one — was lying in the sun in the untidy garden. The plump hound wagged its tail, then struggled to its feet.

  "Where's your owner?" I asked. "Is he around here somewhere?" A tail wag in response as the dog licked my hand.

  The dog ambled off in the direction of the next street, and I followed it down a lane of close-built houses clustered together, in a part of the village thick with paving stone yards, small gardens, and a few houses perched on the wooded incline which must surely be a cousin in the family tree of the hotel Penmarrow's hill.

  Past these, on the outskirts of the village bordered by bright purple-raspberry hued hedges in bloom, was a cottage which looked shut up and untended for the summer. It stood behind a small grove of trees, its timber as old as the stand behind the Penmarrow, and clearings; behind it was a valley of wild weeds and stone, gorse and dark green fronds. A glittering mirror pond, half circled by another stand of trees, as I glimpsed the back garden through the sa
plings and untidy side lawn.

  The lane ended here — there were three more dogs asleep on the front steps, including one-eyed Kip. My guide joined them, flopping down with a grunt in a sunny spot near an unweeded flower bed. From inside came strains of classical music and the murmur of voices. I heard someone laugh.

  Hesitantly, I knocked on the door. A moment later, Sidney answered it.

  "Maisie," he said. Differently from the last time, of course — a little more seriously, and with surprise. "What are you doing here?"

  "I ... followed your dog here." I was beginning to wonder if this was a big mistake. "I wanted to talk ... but I think I should wait until later."

  He wasn't alone; over his shoulder, I saw a man about Sidney's age sitting in the cottage's front room. What I had mistaken for an armchair was actually a wheelchair, turning slowly to face the front door also.

  "I'm sorry." I felt embarrassed for barging in like this. "Am I interrupting?"

  "This is my friend Dean," said Sidney. "Come in, if you like." He glanced at his friend, as if asking permission, although he'd already made the offer.

  "That's okay," I said. "I didn't mean to interrupt. I'll just come by your place later —"

  "I could grant Sidney permission to have a private conversation on my doorstep," said the man in the sitting room, dryly. "If he's brief about it. Go on," he nodded to Sidney.

  "Thanks." Sidney grinned, then stepped outside and shut the door. "What did you want to talk about?" he asked me, settling himself in a comfortable leaning position in the doorway.

  "I'll be brief, I promise," I said. "But I wanted to talk about last night."

  "You mean — what didn't happen, I assume?"

  "I don't know what you had in mind with that — sort of kiss — but I know what I have in mind," I said, taking a deep breath. "And it's not a summer fling, or a temporary romance with a stranger."

  "A stranger." He repeated my words. "That would be me in this example. Wooing you into a temporary romance?"