The Visitor (3 page)

Jack spun round, seeming torn between coming to her side and getting his hands under Pascoe's lapels. She put out her hand to show Jack she would be all right. Her husband lurched out onto the street.

‘See what you're doing to my wife?' he shouted. ‘That's what moving will do, make her ill, not help her. And don't try and dance me round as if this has come out of the air, Pascoe. This is your doing!'

‘Now, Mr Tremain, there's no need for any of this unpleasantness. I'm simply acting as the agent for your landlord who has asked me, on his behalf, to inform you of his decision to sell these cottages to the railway company, who will then lease to other occupants.'

‘Holiday people, you mean.'

There was a pause and when Pascoe next spoke his voice had lost its local familiarity. ‘The new occupants will be staying for shorter lengths of time,' Pascoe said, ‘but that's unimportant. What matters is that these cottages need to be empty no later than the end of the month. You won't be left in the cold. Accommodation has been reserved for all Carew Street residents at the new development.'

Pearl managed to ease her coughs and sat down to quell the dizziness that would inevitably follow an attack. There was the sound of paper rustling.

‘The particulars are all there,' Pascoe said. ‘Now if you'll excuse me, I have others to notify.'

Jack called after him. ‘Is it true what I heard, that the company's bought the pilchard palace too?'

But there was no response. Jack shut the door with a bang and slumped into the chair at the other end of the table.

Pearl stared at the floured rolling pin. She had the sense that she was falling and gripped the underside of the chair to remind her body she was sitting down.

‘How can they ask us to move, after all this time?' Jack seemed to be asking himself the question rather than addressing her, for which she was glad. ‘Well, they can't make us, I'm sure. We're not leaving.' He seemed to remember the envelope crumpled in his hand then. He drew out the single sheet of paper and read it slowly to himself.

‘Where do we go?' she said.

Jack put the letter on the table and smoothed it flat, over and over. ‘Out of Morlanow,' he said. ‘They're moving us up the hill.'

She couldn't take it in. The ceiling beams seemed to be looking at her again. She was meant to be rolling out pastry. It was long past supper time. Something came back to her.

‘That's not true about the pilchard palace, that the company's bought it? Why would they want it?'

Jack hesitated, then said, ‘Matthew Tiddy told me this morning. The company's going to make it into a hotel, with Pascoe over-seeing it. Too good a place to sit unused, being on the front. Got an easy run to the beach.'

‘A hotel… but they've already got one. The Tregurtha's so big.'

‘Not big enough, it seems. And Matthew Tiddy said the palace is going to be a grand one. Going to charge a fortune. Thirty bedrooms, sea views, and a big room for dances where the old cellars are.'

‘Dances?'

‘Pascoe's going to make it just like the Tregurtha. There's to be a man playing a piano every night while people eat.'

‘They'll want fish,' she said. ‘And they'll pay a good price, hotel visitors.' She saw her son George's beautiful ling, straight from the hand line and steaming freshness on bone china plates.

Jack shook his head. ‘They want everything, these people.'

‘Why didn't you tell me about the palace?'

He drummed his crooked fingers on the table and avoided Pearl's eye. ‘Because I didn't want you to fret,' he said. ‘But now what we need to worry about is us.' He thumped the table. The rolling pin fell to the floor. ‘What are we going to do?'

There was nothing to be done. That soon became clear. They had never owned their cottage, no one on Carew Street did, and not many in the old part of Morlanow, its fishing quarter, did either. Rent was paid to their landlord, Mr James, a distant relation of the mine-owning family who had once been so wealthy they could own whole villages. Mr James' agent collected the money from the Tregurtha Hotel fortnightly, round the back by the stables. In a way, Pearl realised, it had always felt as if the hotel owned their house.

Jack and Pearl were regular with the money. It could never be said they didn't pay their way, even though some weeks were tight. Her mother and father had done the same. The Tregurtha had been in Morlanow ever since Pearl could remember. It was built by the railway company when the train came, years before she was born. Mrs Tiddy had worked there when the fish stopped coming in. She told the wildest stories about it. The dresses the women brought with them on their holidays – feathers and brocade, and silk so soft it felt like water, Mrs Tiddy said. She used to run her hands through them when she was doing the rooms. She had always had such nice hands. Pearl would never have been allowed to work in the rooms, even cleaning. She'd always been untucked, untidy, even when she was trying, and the Tregurtha only took on the most presentable. There had been no shortage of people needing work when the palace closed.

Eileen called round the day after the letter came. She was younger than Pearl and still sprightly in her flowery dresses. She had come to Morlanow as a visitor herself, stepping off the train many years before. She married Simon Pendeen and had lived in the village for so long that Pearl sometimes forgot she hadn't been born in Morlanow. On the days she allowed herself to think about the past she was sure Eileen had been at school with her and Mrs Tiddy. Simon had been dead a long time.

‘I heard,' Eileen said, in an affronted voice, ‘that Pascoe's going to smarten these up.' She gestured round the good room. ‘Laying proper floors, having electric lights. Even taps inside.' She slurped her tea noisily, as if that was making her angry too. ‘Why haven't we had water inside? You've been having to make do with the pump, carrying buckets yourself – ' Eileen raised her voice ‘ – when you shouldn't.' There was a thump from Jack in the kitchen beyond.

‘I don't mind the pump,' Pearl said. ‘I'd keep everything as it is, to stay.'

‘It doesn't look like you'll get much choice,' Eileen said. ‘I'll help you with the packing.'

Packing. The thought of boxes made it all seem so real, suddenly. Pearl was going to have to put things in boxes and take them out of the front door, into daylight for the first time in years. She would have to shut the door behind her and not come back. How could this be true? Eileen didn't seem to feel the same sense of strangeness. She was cross, of course, tapping one of her heels on the slate floor and shaking her head with little agitated movements. But that was Eileen. Never one to give in easily. Pearl admired her for that, though of course she would never say so. Eileen didn't hold any truck with such soft talk. Pearl admired her for that too. Mrs Tiddy weaselled, poking about in people's business, but Eileen asked directly. You knew where you were with Eileen. She was looking at Pearl now. What had they been talking about? Packing.

‘We can share a cart, take things up to the new houses together,' Pearl said.

Eileen hesitated then put down her cup. ‘I can't be all the way up there when I've got the shop to run,' she said. ‘It'd take me all morning to get down to town, and you know how often I'm late opening as it is.' She looked different suddenly, a young woman with her own business and the determination not to move. Eileen's skin looked smoother and her hair darker. Pearl felt old and untidy next to her.

‘Where will you go, if not up there?' Pearl said.

‘David will have me,' Eileen said. ‘If he wants the shop he'll have to. I told him that.' Eileen's son was desperate to stay in Morlanow, Pearl knew, and the shop – when Eileen finally decided she couldn't run it any more – would let him. If he could keep his sister Margaret out of it, that was. Pendeen's was a prize catch. Eileen would be well looked after. There would be no room for Pearl and Jack in their son George's loft, though. It was tight for him and his wife Elizabeth, only meant for storing sails during the winter. Every inch of Morlanow seemed full of people without enough room these days. How many would stay in her house, when she was gone? What would they do to her kitchen?

‘Don't look so downcast,' Eileen said, patting Pearl's knee. ‘You'll be at the seafront as much as you are now, I've no doubt. And it might be better up there, quieter, as Pascoe says.'

Pearl nodded. ‘I don't like the cars. They fill the street and press so close when I'm walking.'

‘There you are then,' Eileen said. ‘You'll be away from all that up the hill.'

‘The lad's here, at last,' Jack called. He grumbled on about George's lateness. Pearl left him to the crates inside. She went out and saw boxes and parcels at nearly every front door on Carew Street. Some people had moved earlier that week but most, like she and Jack, had waited until the last possible day, still hoping that something would happen, that some letter with a change of heart would come. Mrs Tiddy had gone days earlier, without calling round first. She had had to give up her cleaning work at the station because the walk down to town everyday would be too much for her. Pearl would have to keep herself busy with Mrs Tiddy around all the time, and be more careful about swimming.

A horse slumbered by her gate, its ears drooping sideways. Pearl smoothed its nose, whispered into its hair. George came from round the back of the cart and kissed her cheek.

‘We've got him for the day,' George said. ‘Willis doesn't need him back 'til the light goes.' Her son was thin but lean rather than frail; muscular beneath his fishing smock. He smelt of salt water and tar from caulking his boat. It was another hot day and his face was slick with moisture. It was sharply angled but warm, friendly. He was eager to help, whoever needed it, whatever needed doing, and that showed in his expression somehow. He had very dark eyes and a smile which was broad and real when it came, but which could vanish quickly, making him look young, though he was getting on himself.

‘Are you ready?' George said.

She shook her head against the warmth of the horse. He squeezed her shoulder then she heard him go inside. Raised voices drifted out to the street. She pressed her face deeper into the warmth of the rag and bone man's horse.

George lifted the boxes and crates onto the cart. Jack watched, his swollen, empty hands mimicking George's. Pearl slipped back into the house. She went from room to room, trying to memorise the lay of each step, the shape of each wall. The furniture had left patches of discolouration against the wallpaper and the paint, as if the pieces had seared themselves into the structure of the house. But the paper would be stripped and the paint painted over. It would be as if she had never lived there.

She heard the back of the cart lashed up. Jack told George the rope was loose. More arguing. She took a mussel shell from her pocket. In the corner of the kitchen was a cracked floorboard. Pearl pushed the shell into the gap, forcing it out of sight. She stayed crouched over the wood, breathing in the years of cooking, washing clothes, and waiting. The cairn on the beach came from the same need to leave a physical trace, a marker. It felt right to use a shell here. The sea had always been with her, even inside the house.

A hand touched her elbow.

‘Come on, time to go,' Jack said.

She hadn't heard him come in. He helped her to her feet but as she wiped her face he turned away.

Eileen came to see them off. She'd packed them a cold lunch and presented it to Pearl as if she was going on a picnic, rather than moving away.

‘Now don't you go getting any airs and graces once you're a grand lady on the hill,' she said. ‘I don't want you thinking you're too good to come into my shop.'

Pearl grasped her hand and saw that Eileen too was trying not to cry. She couldn't say anything so pressed Eileen's hand back and nodded. George gave the horse a slap on the rump and the cart lurched forwards. Eileen waved for a moment then turned back into her cottage. Even today there was no fuss. Eileen would get on with her move. She wouldn't stand around moping. Pearl steeled herself to do the same.

She and Jack sat in the cart with their boxes and bundles while George walked at the horse's head, encouraging the animal with clicks and soft words she couldn't hear. The hill that led up to the new house was steep and they had to stop several times to let motor cars pass. Pearl sat facing the town, watching it grow smaller. The bulk of Morlanow was hidden from view until you were almost on top of it. Then whitewashed houses appeared like mushrooms, crammed into the small cleft of the cliff, vying with each other for light and air as if they were still growing. The roofs were all grey slate, all the same size. For a long time they had formed one block of colour from this distance but now there were gaps where the workmen had broken and re-made the village into a town. Everything sloped towards the harbour. The sea was too vast next to the clustering buildings; it seemed strange that the waves had never washed Morlanow away.

Finally they turned off the main road. The new houses formed a terrace which was perched on a ledge jutting from the cliff, close to the top. A lop-sided sign proclaimed the row
Wave Crest
, but the houses were so far from the seafront it was hard to make out the waves at all. They were exposed to the wind here, and it was cooler than it had been in the town. It would be wild in the winter though, Pearl thought. The winds around this coast were vicious. The visitors were long gone by then; they never saw the storms or the fog. The railway posters would always seem true if you came to Morlanow only in summer.