A Gathering Storm (6 page)

Lucy was glad to stumble out into the warmth of the late-afternoon sunshine. In The Rowans, she had felt as if she’d been in another world, a world of the past. Beatrice Ashton had known her father and her grandmother, too. She’d been a friend of her grandmother and had known Tom Cardwell as a toddler, yet Lucy had never heard of her before. She took a deep breath of cool fresh air.

Outside in the lane she stopped to switch on her phone. There was only a message from work that she could deal with later. Nothing from Will. She stuffed the phone back in her bag and considered what to do next.

She glanced up towards the cliff path, where it snaked away into the distance. There was a light breeze blowing off the sea, bringing with it lovely harboury smells. The view was breathtaking up here, of the long headlands protecting the bay, and of the sea. Little waves broke the surface here and there – as a child, she’d been told they were the manes of horses. In the far distance, the bright sky met a bright sea dotted with white sheets of sail.

As she descended to the harbour via the perilous Jacob’s Ladder, she thought again about Beatrice Ashton. She’d been drawn to the woman, had sensed warmth and sincerity. There had been a . . . tenderness about her. But steel, too. The woman was terribly bitter about something. Lucy felt a connection. Perhaps she sensed the young girl that Beatrice had once been.

After Lucy had gone, Beatrice Ashton swallowed two pills and sipped some water, then lay back in her chair, waiting for her heartbeat to steady. Her eyes were closed, but she wasn’t asleep. Her mind was too active for that. She was thinking about Lucy Cardwell and everything her visit meant. She was lovely, Lucy, with that honey hair, the stubborn chin and the turned-up nose, scattered with freckles. Hers was a beauty of character and strength, not a painted-on prettiness. She looked forward to seeing her again.

Lucy was assured, like many of these modern girls, but there was something a little untried about her, too – uncertain, unbroken. Perhaps something still had to work its way out. Of course, it used to be that bad things happened in families – dreadful things – and everybody shut up and put up with it. None of this talking about it like today. And yet she rather envied them their closeness, today’s parents with their children.

She remembered, only yesterday, coming out of her gate to see a tourist with his little daughter on their way up to the cliff path and she’d had a sudden glimpse of herself at the same age, nine or ten. She’d never held her father’s hand in that possessive way this little girl did. And he seemed so natural with the girl, explaining something or other patiently to her. Beatrice’s parents had mostly spoken to her to give her instructions.

She breathed deeply to calm herself, and was sure the scent of old roses floated in the air. Funny how the house still smelt of them. They had been her mother’s favourite: climbing roses round the house and bowls of dried petals in every room. Perhaps the smell had got into the wood. She opened her eyes, for a moment confused not to see the room as it had been long ago, when she was a child, the china shepherdess on the mantelpiece, her mother’s French library books neatly piled on the coffee-table, her father’s walking stick near the fire, the big wireless where the television stood now.

Perhaps she should never have come back here, should have stayed in Paris after her husband died, but she had never sold the place after her father had left it to her, and the long-standing tenant had moved out and it seemed the right time. She’d just felt a terrific yearning to return to this place where, as a child, she’d been so happy. She’d thought she’d find a kind of peace here, too, but she hadn’t, not really. She was aware of the ruin of Carlyon Manor, high above the town, and remembered too much. She’d been made to keep so many secrets and they’d festered. Still, the people involved were mostly dead now. Except Hetty Wincanton, and Peter. There was no real reason to sit like a dragon on its gold.

And now the girl had come, wanting to know things, and she deserved to, though it might be painful for them both. Beatrice smiled without humour. She’d tried to tell some of her story once, after the war, but no one had been interested in the truth then. They’d twisted her words against her. She’d seen what had happened to some of the others who’d spoken out, how they’d been pilloried in the newspapers. But now that so much time had passed and the people with reputations to protect were all dead, there was more genuine interest in uncovering the truth. And yet it wasn’t so simple. It was more personal than that.

There were dark places in her mind where she couldn’t go, even now. She was frightened of her feelings.
But the truth, Beatrice
, she told herself. The truth was always best. Time was a river, so the poet said, the past flowing on into the future. Her past was dammed in a stagnant pool.

She pushed herself up out of her chair and crossed to the window. Her feet were painful today, as if they, too, remembered. The birds had gone from the drinking bowl, but the carefree sound of their song was all around. That’s what she’d loved most, living here as a child – the cries of the birds and the sound of the sea: swishing over the sand, smashing against the cliffs, sucking itself out of secret caves and crevices. It spoke to her spirit.

Lucy walked out along one arm of the harbour as far as she could go and stared out to sea. It was a calm evening and the water shone sleek and opaque now the sun was low in the sky. She turned to look at the town, spread across the hillside. Far along the cliff she looked for the ruins of Carlyon Manor, but they were hidden by greenery. She remembered what Beatrice had said, so passionately, about her feelings for Rafe. Such a long time ago. A love that survived his death. She tried to imagine feeling like that about someone. She never had, and couldn’t imagine that she ever would.

Later, at the Mermaid, she took a history of the Second World War downstairs with her and ordered a drink and fishcakes from the cheerful woman behind the bar, who looked as though she might be Cara’s mother. At a table across the room, facing her, a man was making his way through a large helping of cottage pie, engrossed in a magazine. His hair glinted reddish-brown and she observed his slow, careful movements as he ate. When Cara’s mother took him a beer he looked up and Lucy realized it was the man she’d seen the day before on the boat
Early Bird.
She liked his tanned face, the cropped hair and the very blue eyes that crinkled up when he laughed at something the woman said. There was energy and strength in every movement. She wondered about him – whether he was staying at the hotel, like her, or maybe he lived in Saint Florian.

He finished his meal and as he walked past on his way out, she tried to see what the magazine was, playing her private game of working people out by what they read. Current affairs, of some sort. She glanced up at him and he gave her his friendly smile. ‘Hello again,’ he said.

‘Hi,’ she managed to reply. After he’d gone she read her book for a bit as she ate, then went up to her room. A film she’d helped make was on one of the minor channels, a love story set in wartime France. She remembered how she’d been interested in the real-life episode on which it was based. After watching it for a while she took a shower and investigated the pile of neatly ironed washing that lay on the bed. When she shook out the clean nightdress, a fragrance of roses filled the air.

Beatrice opened the ancient photograph album as she and Lucy sat together at the dining-table the next morning. ‘There, that’s my father, Hugh Marlow,’ she said. The picture was of a young man in a suit and cravat, with a moustache and an intense expression. ‘And here’s my parents’ wedding in 1919.’ Hugh, still in military uniform, stood proudly beside a neat, dark girl dressed in white lace.

‘Your mother? What was her name?’ Lucy asked.

‘Delphine. She was French.’

‘She was pretty. Where was it taken?’

‘Near Etretat on the Normandy coast – do you know it?’

‘I’ve heard of it, that’s all.’

‘It’s famous for its white cliffs, like the ones at Dover. Monet painted them. When I was born in 1922, it was still a small village. My father, a Lieutentant with the Gloucestershire Rifles, was wounded in France near the end of the Great War and sent to a hospital near Etretat. The injury to his shoulder healed fairly easily. It was the lungful of mustard gas that affected him for the rest of his life.’

Beatrice smiled. ‘I often used to imagine their first meeting. My mother said he would sit in the hospital grounds when the weather was fine and she noticed how he perked up whenever he saw her delivering fruit and vegetables in a horse-drawn cart. She was the daughter of a local landowner, you see. It’s so strange to think about one’s parents being young and in love, isn’t it?’

‘My parents met when Mum’s boyfriend’s motorbike broke down on the way back from a rock festival. Dad was passing and gave her a lift in this really smart car,’ Lucy said. ‘He was quite a few years older than her, and wore a suit, and she thought he was pretty cool.’

Beatrice looked delighted at this idea and it was a moment before she returned to her story. ‘One January morning in 1919 my mother brought a bucket of early daffodils along with the fruit and veg, but while she was hefting the thing out of the cart, something spooked the pony, the cart jerked forward and flowers and water flew out everywhere. My father staggered over to rescue her. She said she didn’t know who must have looked worse – she soaked through and weeping, or he, in bandages and pyjamas, trying to steady the horse. Not a very romantic start, was it? Though I don’t know that they were a very romantic couple.’

‘That’s something my mum complained about – that Dad never did anything romantic. I don’t think it was the way he was. But that didn’t mean he didn’t care.’

‘Of course not,’ Beatrice said. ‘Anyway, they married a few months later. When my father relayed news of his engagement to his parents, there was quite a hoo-ha. Why? Well, for a start my mother was French and a Catholic, and that was bad enough in their eyes. Then, although his family were landowning farmers themselves, somehow Grandfather Marlow didn’t consider the fields of Normandy to be as superior as the Marlows’ rolling estates in the Cotswolds. My father wasn’t the firstborn son and heir, but my grandfather was a controlling sort of man, and the marriage created a rift between them.’

She reached for the fragile album and turned the page. Lucy found herself looking at a traditional French farmhouse with chickens and a dog in a muddy yard. ‘That’s my Normandy grandparents’ house. For a while my father was happy to stay and help out with the farmwork, but the damage to his lungs was significant, and he found it too much for him. As a small child I was carted to and fro across the Channel as my parents tried to find somewhere he could feel settled, with work he could do. I can’t imagine what stress it put on my poor mother, she always having to be the cheerful one and buck up my father.’

‘And these are your French relations?’ Lucy pointed to another photograph, of a family group.

‘Yes, these two here are Gran’mère and Pappi. Pappi looks a bit fierce with that beard, doesn’t he? He was a kind man, really. Gran’mère was one of those very capable people and she had a lot to be capable about, what with six children and the farm. These three men were my uncles, and the little girls my cousins, Thérèse and Irène. They were a few years older than me, so I was the baby.’

Beatrice then showed Lucy a photograph of Delphine standing next to a dainty little girl with thick dark hair and a shy demeanour. It had been taken in front of The Rowans.

‘There, that’s me.’

‘You looked very like your mother.’

‘Yes, I suppose I did. Moving here to Saint Florian, when I was ten, was their final attempt at a new start. My father had got some idea that he would be a writer, and a friend recommended Cornwall as a cheap place to live. They bought this house with Marlow money. Of course, he had to do something else while he made his name, so he scandalized his parents further by taking a job as a clerk in a bank at Saint Austell, and was glad to have it, given the number of people out of work. I have to say, though, that the comedown dented his pride and certainly his temper.’

Beatrice turned another page in the album. An important-looking old man in plus-fours posed by a field of cows. ‘That’s Grandfather Marlow,’ she said. ‘He sent my father a cheque every month. It wasn’t so much the cheque – after all, we were always grateful for the money – as the patronizing letter that accompanied it which annoyed my father so much. My mother, who was family-minded, made a point of taking me to visit the Marlows occasionally, which was good of her considering how condescending they could be. And in deference to them, my religious upbringing was a very odd mixture of Anglican and Catholic. She was quite a pragmatist, my mother.’

‘It must all have been very confusing for you,’ Lucy said. ‘That, and moving around, I mean.’

‘Oh, I never settled properly till we came to Saint Florian. I went to a local school in Normandy, but not for long enough periods to make friends. When we moved here, I went to a governess with some other girls. I could never invite them round to play, as my father hated noise of any sort. So a lot of the time there was just me – oh, and here’s dear old Jinx, my father’s dog.’

‘Is he a fox terrier?’ Lucy said, looking closely at the faded photograph.

‘A wire-hair, that’s right. Then in the summer of 1935, when I was twelve, the Wincantons came to live at Carlyon, and everything changed. This is Carlyon dreaming in the sun. I took it with my Box Brownie.’

And now Beatrice took off her spectacles and leant back in her chair. Her face wore a faraway expression as though she was looking deep into the past.

Cornwall, July 1935

She’d watched the strange children from the moment they appeared that morning, but they didn’t see her at first. Or perhaps they did but were too absorbed in their own company to care about a skinny twelve-year-old girl in a home-made cotton blouse and shorts as she lurked shy as a bird’s shadow amongst the boulders and the tidal pools.