Buried in Cornwall (3 page)

‘You’re learning. You’re beginning to recognise what’s good and what isn’t. How do you tell?’

Rose frowned. ‘I don’t know. It’s just a feeling.’

‘Then you’re probably right. Can you finish this?’ Nick indicated the beef in black bean sauce.

‘No, I think we over-ordered.’ There was still a dish of spare ribs hardly touched.

‘Shall I get the bill?’

‘Yes. Look at the time, it’s almost eleven thirty. We’ll split it.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’ This was definitely not something Jenny would have offered to do. Another plus point to Rose Trevelyan.

The waiter arrived to clear their dishes. ‘Do you think you could put the ribs in a take-away container, please?’

Across the table Nick’s jaw dropped. ‘Have you got a dog?’

‘No, they’re for me, unless you want them.’

His laughter caused heads to turn. ‘Do you ever waste anything?’

‘Not if I can help it. Besides, if I wake in the night I’m always hungry.’

‘You eat them cold?’

‘I do. You should try it sometime.’ She pursed her mouth in amusement. ‘I have other habits you might find disgusting.’

‘Please, spare me them tonight. Let’s get your coat. Taxi home or shall I walk you?’

‘A taxi, it’s miles out of your way.’ Rose stopped, her arms half in the sleeves of her coat. ‘How will you get home?’

‘I’m staying with a friend in Penzance.’

‘Oh, I see.’

The waiter rang for a taxi and they stood in
the doorway at the bottom of the stairs out of the wind until it arrived. Clutching the tinfoil container of ribs, Rose was thinking about his throw-away comment. Had he already arranged to stay with this friend or had he been expecting to go home with her? He had offered to walk her back. Too late now for speculation, she thought as the familiar shape of a Stone’s taxi hove into view. Nick opened the back door then felt silly as she got into the front passenger seat and greeted the driver by name. ‘Thanks. I really enjoyed this evening,’ she said, winding down the window. ‘My treat next time.’ Then, wishing she had not been so forward, she asked the driver to take her home.

She walked up the steep path which led directly to the side door of the house, which was set into the cliffside. To reach the front door she would have had to turn right and pick her way in the dark along the uneven path, alongside which overgrown shrubs sloped down to the road. Like her friends, Rose rarely used this door and after the last heavy rain she discovered that the wood had swollen. Letting herself into the kitchen, she was thinking what a strange sort of day it had been. Still that lingering cry echoed in her head. Perhaps she was going mad or her imagination
had been working overtime, although she could not recall thinking about anything other than her work when she had heard that eerie sound. The embarrassment lingered and Jack Pearce’s reminder had been unnecessary. And what had Nick said about anyone knowing where she was? What on earth had he meant by that? Was there someone who wanted to scare her or make her look a fool?

Too tired to care, she went upstairs and got ready for bed, taking one last look at the bay and the lights of Newlyn harbour below. The moon was partially obscured by a cloud but there was still light enough to undress by. No one could see in: passing cars or the unlikely pedestrian at that time of night would be too low down beneath the overhang of her garden and any seaman would need a high-powered telescope if they had a sudden desire to watch a middle-aged widow undressing.

Rose was wary about returning to the mine but more work was required on the painting. Stella had seen it in its early stages and had confirmed Rose’s own opinion that it was good. She could not abandon it because of some imagined noise but there would not be time tomorrow. Laura, whom she had been neglecting, was coming
for coffee and there was Stella’s preview in the evening. There were also a few things she needed to do in Penzance.

There was Maddy, too, another of the St Ives crowd, whom Rose felt she would like to know better. She sensed they shared something in common, something deeper than mutual acquaintances although she had not yet worked out what. Madeleine Duke was self-supporting and could turn her hand to many things. She made ceramics and pottery and was skilful at textile printing, and she sold her goods from a little shop in a back lane in which she worked as she waited for custom. She had placed a small sign on the street corner, propped against one of the tiny cottages which made up the village of St Ives. Rose had to admit that it was a beautiful place. The sand was fine, the colour of clotted cream, and the sea, beloved by surfers, was bluer than the Aegean. If you arrived by train the breath-taking view was framed by a fringe of palm trees at the side of the line. But to live there was another matter. Unable to move for tourists in the summer, Rose would have felt claustrophobic. St Ives had its fishing history but Newlyn was still very much a working village, no quaintness unless you knew where to look for it,
nothing but the concrete edifice of the fish market and the ice factories. Most visitors drove straight through on their way to the picturesque village of Mousehole.

There was at least another half-hour until daylight when Rose opened her eyes at seven. Switching on the bedside lamp she pulled on the towelling robe she used as a dressing-gown in the winter, tied the belt and went downstairs, shivering. Something must be wrong with the heating. It was timed to come on at six and although it was set at a temperature low enough only to take the chill off the air, it was missed that morning. She opened the door off the kitchen which led into what had once been the larder or pantry but now served as a laundry and store-room. The light had gone out on the boiler.

‘Damn it.’ Rapidly losing patience, she saw that it needed more skill than she possessed to get it to work again. Laura’s husband, Trevor, was home from sea and there was little in the way of engines or appliances that baffled him. She’d ring before Laura came and see if he could help her out. Meanwhile coffee was needed. Filter coffee, she decided. Whilst it was running through the machine she went into the lounge and knelt in front of the grate. There were a few embers
beneath the ashes of the logs – with a bit of luck she could get the fire going quickly. Stuffing newspaper concertinas in its midst and adding a few bits of driftwood which she had picked up from the beach and which burned so well and so brightly because they were seasoned and salty, she lit a match. The flames caught immediately. Adding a few lumps of coal she waited until they, too, caught then balanced a dry log on top. Sitting back on her heels she felt the heat on her face as she listened to the snapping and hissing of kindling and solid fuel while the sparks flew up the chimney.

Outside the sky was clear, the last of the stars less brilliant as dawn approached. The moon had set an hour ago. The hydrangea bushes with their spiky twigs were bare but had borne new shoots since October and, she had read, there were camellias flowering in a nearby country house garden. As if to prove the clemency of the weather there was a jug of narcissi, flown over from Scilly, on the mantelpiece and the first daffodils would soon be appearing in bud in the shops of Penzance. There was no hint of a frost. It probably wasn’t much colder outside than inside the house at the moment. Bank, post office, library, hairdresser’s, she reminded herself.
A twice-yearly trim was something she endured rather than enjoyed.

Sporadic spluttering from the kitchen told her that the coffee was ready. It was rich and strong and just as she liked it. Gratefully she sipped the first mouthful, her hands clasped around the mug for warmth. Thankfully the immersion heater was independent of the boiler and she was able to have a bath.

In jeans and shirt and a heavy knitted sweater, she found some old woollen socks which had holes in the toes but were nonetheless warm and put them on before stuffing her feet into the leather hiking boots she wore for most of the winter. Not only were they comfortable but they were a necessity as her outdoor work often took her over rough terrain.

At eight thirty she dialled Laura’s number and was answered by a yawning female voice.

‘Did I wake you?’ Laura was usually an early riser.

‘No, I was up, but we didn’t get to bed until two. We had some friends over and – you know how it is. How did it go, with Nick? He’s not there, is he?’

‘No, Laura, he isn’t here,’ Rose said firmly. ‘Nor was he last night.’

‘Don’t get teasy, you know I have to know. Why’re you ringing, can’t you make it this morning?’

‘Actually, I need a favour. Is Trevor busy today?’

‘If you call lying about with the newspaper before wandering off to the Star for a lunchtime drink busy, then yes, he is. What’s the problem? Surely not the car?’

‘No. The central heating boiler.’ The car was relatively new, bought with a legacy of a thousand pounds an old friend had left her. It had replaced the yellow Mini which had been a gift from David and which she had hung on to for far too long for sentimental reasons. Now she was the proud owner of a blue Metro which started first time and had only had three previous owners. Mike Phillips had gone with her to choose it, claiming he knew about such matters. It seemed he did – doctor or no doctor, he had proved he knew almost as much about the internal workings of the combustion engine as he did about the patients upon whom he wielded his scalpel.

‘No problem, I’ll bring him with me. See you later.’

Rose hung up. She had known Laura since they were in their early twenties but it felt as if they had always known one another. There were
times when Laura would preface a remark with something along the lines of ‘Remember Miss so-and-so who taught us in the third year?’ or quote the name of a school-friend as if they had actually been to school together. Laura had never left Newlyn and had vowed that she never would. Before marrying Trevor she had travelled but she had always been glad to return. It had shocked her when her boys, one by one, had moved away.

Rose had finally been accepted. She had, after all, married a Cornishman and kept his name and she had not tried to impress but had made a slow integration into the community. Doreen Clarke, a more recent friend, once told her, ‘You’m all right, maid, you don’t give yourself no airs and graces like they London people.’

Rose did not bother to explain that she came from Gloucestershire and had lived in the middle of nowhere, surrounded only by verdant English countryside and cows and sheep, and that trips into Swindon or Cheltenham were a rare treat. Her father had been a country farmer who had lived through the good times before BSE and European intervention; he had hunted with hounds and had, so her mother told her, been on a protest rally against the anti-hunting campaign. Rose found it hard to believe that her conventional, rather
self-effacing father had put himself so much in the limelight. He had retired whilst still in his fifties and sold the farm. He and his wife had then bought a small stone cottage with a manageable garden and spent the intervening years doing all the things they had not had time for before. Rose saw the problems other people her age had with elderly parents who were frail or senile and knew she was lucky. On the other hand she suspected a lot of it was to do with their attitude. They did not believe themselves to be old or incapable of doing anything they chose. There was, she had long ago realised, no point in discussing her past at all with Doreen, who would not recognise the difference between London and the Gloucestershire countryside because anyone from across the Tamar was ‘one of they’ and therefore a Londoner.

As Rose loaded the washing-machine, changed the bed and tidied up, the sun came up, a wintry yellow but promising another fine day. She finished some paperwork until the washing-machine had ended its cycle then piled the clothes into a basket and took them outside to hang on the line she had strung from the shed to the highest branch of a tree. Towels flapped in the breeze coming off the sea, an easterly breeze, she noticed, no wonder it was colder.

The shed at the back of the garden had been cleared out and the rubbish taken to the dump. Anything serviceable she had given to the charity shops in Penzance. With a Calor gas heater installed and the door and windows made draught-proof, it was where she had recently taken to working if the light was right. At other times, if she wasn’t painting in the open air, she used the attic which she had had converted many years previously. One half had been partitioned off to use as a dark-room for her photography work, although it was little used lately, and the other half with the sloping window in the roof was perfect for colouring her sketches as it was at the side of the house and therefore faced north.

The last item of clothing had been pegged firmly to the line just as she heard the familiar voices of Trevor and Laura, who had arrived on foot. Their faces were pink and they were both in heavy jackets. Laura, despite her height and thinness, was typically Cornish in appearance. She possessed deep, dark eyes and naturally rosy cheeks and her long dark hair, loose today, flew about her face in untidy clumps. She had never been able to control the natural wave. Trevor was an inch shorter than his wife, his face weathered with lines radiating from his brown eyes. His
hair, too, curled and was worn long although of a lighter brown than Laura’s. Through the beard he had not shaved off in all the years that Rose had known him, his lips were red and full. A tiny silver cross dangled from his left ear.

‘What’ve you broken this time, Rose?’ were his words of greeting.

‘The boiler won’t light. It just went out. I didn’t touch it,’ she added defensively although she had fiddled with it that morning.

‘I’ll take a look.’ With the familiarity of an old friend Trevor let himself into the house and went straight to the boiler and removed its cover. The two women followed. Rose shut the door and put the washing basket on the draining-board before getting out milk and sugar. She reached for the tin of biscuits she kept for guests, knowing that Trevor would eat some. Laura, too, had no mean appetite but she never gained an ounce of weight. Rose was also naturally slender but tended not to eat at all at stressful times.