The Cornish Affair (29 page)

Oh
dear god,
no
. This was all becoming too Hammer House of Horror for me. I shifted uncomfortably in her grasp, and shook my head. Whatever she thought she had to tell me, I didn’t want to know. Too much information! My brain was screaming at me, and I agreed with it. I gently but firmly took her hand away from my arm.

“Thank
you Judith, but no.” I said, standing up.

She
looked shrewdly at me, “You’re just like your father, he didn’t want to know either,” she said.

Without
another word, she left the room, closing the door behind her.

I
stood staring at the closed door. Then, I marched over to it, and flung it open. Hell, this was meant to be a party for god’s sake and I wasn’t even drunk!

I
made up for lost time. I was half way through a bottle of champagne, and dancing with Richard and Olga and Bea, when the door opened and Harry and Martha came in. My eyes travelled behind them, and to my joy I saw Oliver.

I
ran over to them, kissing and hugging everyone in my excitement. Martha was wearing a dress to rival Nancy’s extraordinary attire, but looked stunning all the same.

“We
flew here!” she kept saying in her high pitched London voice, twirling around to give me the benefit of her swirling skirts.

“Fin,
darling, you look wonderful,” Harry said warmly.

“
Why, thank you kind sir!” I said, bowing to him.

Oliver
was smiling at me, and I felt like the sun had come out again. I grabbed him by the hand and pulled him over to the bar. Making the others follow me.

“Now
then, you’ve all got to drink
rather
a lot
rather
quickly to catch up.
Then
you’ve got to mingle,
then
eat something and
then
we can dance!”

I
handed them all glasses of champagne and we all clinked the glasses together.

“To
the dolphins!” I shouted.

The
toast was taken up by the rest of the room

“To the dolphins!”

I
abandoned myself, perhaps just a
tad
too much, to the party. I danced, I chatted, I flirted, I swigged champagne, and generally showed off and misbehaved all night. All the while I knew that I had the safety net of Oliver there, who seemed to be right beside me wherever I went. It was
heaven
.

Chapter Twenty Nine

It took over a week to clear up the debris from the dolphin party. I had been quite right about finding stray Wellington boots and umbrellas dotted throughout Penmorah. The only reason that weren’t stray artists or writers found there as well had been the bright idea of Will and Bea, who, being the only sober people there, had simply commandeered the mini bus and had driven everyone home in relays at five in the morning.

I
had
long
since gone to bed.

And
yes, since you might ask the question,
with
Oliver. I have to tell you that the first night together was not a huge success, mostly because I had over indulged wildly with the champagne and had not eaten anything. I also spent a very long time indeed, telling him all about the complicated business of who Bea really was. He says that I told him nine times, and with each re-telling got more and more incoherent. That, I’m sure is a blatant exaggeration, but I generously let it go.

Being
with Oliver was
wonderful
. He had scheduled a week off from filming.

Harry
and Martha stayed on for the week as well, and so did Bea. It was great fun, having all these people about the place and Nancy and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Poor old Baxter and Nelson were relegated back to their foster homes, probably much to their well hidden delight.

Martha
was
not
impressed with this arrangement, and tried to convince Oliver that his allergies were psychosomatic, and could be cured with a little therapy and or possibly acupuncture.

Oliver
gave her an old fashioned look and said that a few judicially placed needles were not even going to be
contemplated
by him, and had she considered that cat was a well know delicacy in certain parts of the world?

Martha
had shuddered at the idea of her beloved cats being served as canapés and left the subject well alone.

Nancy
and Harry spent a lot of time together closeted in the office, reading
The Life and Times of Angelique Flavell
, gales of laughter could be heard when Nancy read to him a particularly juicy titbit, such as her patent remedy for the home cure that the wayward painter had concocted for the plague. It involved the life force of a young man being mixed with pounded rose petals and powdered toad skin, and was applied
liberally
to the chest.

“Dear
God,” Harry howled with laughter, “It sounds like some of those massage bars I’ve been to in Hong Kong!”

Summer
had finally arrived; the sun and breeze did their job on the general drying out of Port Charles. Bea proved a godsend to my growing guilt of the pile of insurance claims that has been foisted on me, and dealt with them promptly and efficiently. Although she confided in me that everyone was
woefully
under insured. Even this didn’t dampen my holiday spirits. I had a
wonderful
time. We all did.

Richard
had taken Olga home to his mother’s cottage and they were, by all accounts, blissfully happy with Olga who strode about the garden and small plot of land they had, hoeing and planting, but still wearing make-up.

The
last day of the holiday, we all went to the woods to see what destruction we could help mend there. It was a sorry state, and looked dangerous to me, with the fallen trees liable to totter to the ground with very little warning. It was no good, a forester would have to be called in. we all tramped around the outside, not daring to venture into the heart of the woods.

We
decided to walk down to the village instead, and have a farewell lunch at The Ram.

Harry,
Oliver and Martha were all catching the train first thing in the morning, but Bea was going to stay on for a while. Nothing more had been said between us, and to my utter surprise, it felt that nothing more needed to be said. We had fallen into an easy companionship, and discovered that we shared more things in common than we thought. I could tell that this pleased Nancy
enormously
and she would be found smiling fondly at both of us, prompting us to nudge and tease her about her sentimentality.

Harry
disagreed, “No-one who has just written the book that Nancy has can ever be accused of that particular emotion,” he declared. “Now, if you had said gruesome attention to detail, or an unhealthy attraction for the macabre, I would agree with you!”

We
all laughed, and made our way back to Penmorah to join the lane that led down to Port Charles.

“Martha,
do you want to change, before we go?” Bea said, nervously looking at Martha’s choice of country walking gear.

She
was togged out in an Edwardian lady’s riding habit, complete with top hat, veil,
and
a bustle.

I
sniggered. It had to be said, that Martha looked completely barking mad.

“No,”
Martha said, swishing at some nettles with a riding crop, “I’m fine as I am, let’s go!”

In
fact, Bea and I were the only people dressed conventionally, and Bea only
just
crept in under the wire, with her cowboy fringed jacket and western boots. The rest of them looked like extras from a film that had just taken a quick break, a film that might have been a horror flick. Harry was in head to toe black, and played the pall bearer, Oliver was unquestionably the mad axe man, from Scotland, with a denim kilt, and Nancy could be the avenging angel dressed in fluttering white. Me? I was probably the grave digger in my customary jeans. Perhaps I should go and change? After all, a bit of an effort was required to match up to this lot. I slipped into the house, and told them all that I’d meet them there.

Oliver
came in with me, waving the others off. I, of course, was delighted.

“How
long,
reasonably
, do you think we’ve got?” Oliver said, ripping his shirt off and throwing it across the floor of my bedroom.

“Twenty
minutes, tops,” I said, scrambling out of my jeans, “Do you think you’re up to it?”

He
was.

As
we walked down to The Ram, Oliver talked more about the idea he’d had to raise some money for Port Charles.

Soup.

Not just any old soup, of course, but a Port Charles spicy fish soup that Oliver would market through his supermarket deal. Not some ponced about poor imitation of the Marseilles classic, bouillabaisse, but an honest soup made from Cornish ingredients.

Being
surrounded by the fruits of the sea it was heartbreaking to know that the best catch went to France. What was wrong with us all? When had we stopped eating the best produce in the world, and relying on burgers? OK, OK, I promise I’ll stop, I won’t turn this into a rant against bad food and crap eating habits. Promise.

I
had agreed to work on this idea next week, and would try and hone it down so that Oliver had a working recipe. It had to be done quickly as the last advert that he was due to film was only ten days away, and he was going all out to sell it.

“Every
penny after costs goes to the Port Charles Flood Fund,” Oliver said proudly, grabbing my hand and fast walking me down the lane, pulling me past the fragrant hedgerows in full bloom. The dog roses were out, and creamy blossoms of the charmingly named ladies bedstraw mingled with the purple spikes of the foxgloves, now in full bloom.

“Slow
down,” I said, aware that my posh shoes that I’d changed into to match the linen suit I was wearing weren’t up to the job. I knew I should have stuck to jeans and a tee shirt.

“And
don’t forget, no garlic or-”

“I
know, I know, no garlic, no wine – only Cornish produce. Good god man, do you think I’m stupid or something! We’ve spoken about it enough times!” I said, poking my tongue out at him.

“I
know you and garlic,” Oliver said gloomily, “I think you must have been terrified of vampires as a child, it’s the only explanation I can think of.”

We
turned into the road, and I saw that Mrs Trevellyon had got her new roof fixed at last. I gave her a wave, and she waved back to us from her window side chair.

We
tapped on the window of the bakers, and mimed lifting a glass to our lips to Doris, she was busy with customers, but mouthed that she’d be over in about half an hour.

“If
that’s Cornish time, make it two hours,” Oliver joked.

He
was quite right. The timing here was definitely on its own scale. A ‘rush’ job was something that could possibly be contemplated in a few days time, unless it was really,
really
urgent and then it would be after lunch. Possibly.

Oliver
pushed open the door to The Ram, and we were soon assimilated into the cheerful group of our friends. Baxter trotted over to greet me, but then slunk back behind the bar after a glance at Oliver. Oh dear.

Perhaps
Oliver would get used to the animals, eventually? I made a mental note to ask Martha where I could take Oliver for some sneaky acupuncture, but really, I wasn’t worried. I was full of supreme confidence that things would somehow just sort of work themselves out. Which just goes to show what I fool I was.

Sam
was dispensing drinks and chaffing Oliver about his appearance on TV the night before.

“Showin’
them old TV shows of yours, they are. When’s the new ones comin’ out? I knows ‘ow to make that scallop and bacon thing,” Sam said scornfully.

“Soon,
I promise. I’m doing a rabbit dish you’ll enjoy,” Oliver said, raising a glass to him.

“Hmm,
that won’t be popular,” Sam advised, knowingly. “Poor
little bunnies
,” he said in sing song voice. “More like right little bastards, if you’m ask me!”

Sam’s
culinary knowledge always astounded me. When did he do all this cooking? He was always behind the bar. Perhaps he read cookery books secretly in bed.

I
looked round the pub, expecting to see Jace, but he wasn’t there. He’d been keeping a low profile since the party, not for any other consideration other than he’d probably found himself a new girl somewhere, or maybe he just didn’t want to be around me. Even at the party, we’d had one dance together and he’d been perfectly friendly, but no more than that.

Bea
had joined Will for a game of darts, whilst the rest of The Ram viewed Martha as one might a unicorn.

They
were used to Nancy and proud of Oliver, who was after all on
telly
, they knew and liked Harry, but Martha! Well, what was her excuse to be got up like a dog’s dinner? I could almost hear the collective consciousness asking.

Martha
was oblivious to any such feelings, and sipped her cherrywood devil with insouciance. She, of course, knew all about brewing (admittedly from the fourteenth century, but I gathered it hadn’t changed that much) and was deep in conversation with Sam about micro breweries.

Doris
eventually joined us, and to my delight asked Martha in what she obviously thought of as a sophisticated way if that’s what all the London girls were wearing riding?

“No,”
Martha explained, “It’s just me, I’m afraid… I find modern clothes so restrictively dull, don’t you?”

“I
know what you mean,” Doris said, pulling at her nylon overall that she was still wearing from the shop.

I
laughed, and said to her, “Don’t worry everyone thinks that Martha is in fancy dress wherever she goes, don’t they?”

Martha
agreed, “Oh yes, I only dress this way so that people notice me you know, otherwise I’m such a dull little mouse!”

Looking
at Martha’s high bony nose, pale skin and enormous pale blue eyes, the one thing she would never be describes as is mousy, not matter what she might be wearing.

Sam
slapped on the table the ubiquitous Ploughman’s Lunch, and we all tucked in. It was redeemed however by the bread being from Doris and Isaac, the cheese from the local farm and Pritti’s spicy chutney.

“It’s
such
a good job I’m going home tomorrow,” Harry said, wiping a crumb from his chin, “Or my famous snake like thin hips will soon be of childbearing size! That pudding last night Fin! How many pints of cream did we have with it?”

Nancy
laughed and told him he was a fine figure of a man. I squirmed a bit at the mention of weight, I have to tell you. Being with Bea who was practically a health guru had made me uncomfortably aware of how much butter, cream, olive oil and other good things I used in the kitchen. She also did regular exercises and ran. Every morning.

“I
like curves, myself,” Oliver said squeezing me around the waist.