The Day of the Storm (22 page)

“Would you stay if I asked you to marry me?”

My head shot up. Something like horror must have shown on my face, for he put back his head and laughed.

“Don't look so shocked. There's nothing shocking about getting married.”

“But we're cousins.”

“That doesn't matter.”

“But we don't … I mean … You don't love me.”

It was an appalling thing to say, but Eliot took it in his stride.

“Rebecca, you are stammering and stuttering like a shy schoolgirl. Perhaps I do love you. Perhaps I would have loved you for a long time before asking you to marry me, but you've precipitated this situation by suddenly announcing out of the blue that you're going to go back to London. So if I'm going to say it at all, I'd better say it now. I want you to marry me. I think it would work very well.”

Despite myself, I was touched. No one had ever asked me to marry them before, and I found it flattering. But even as I listened to Eliot with one part of my mind, the other part ran round in circles like a squirrel in a cage.

Because there was still Boscarva, and the land that Eliot needed to sell to Ernest Padlow.

You are not my only grandchild.

“… it seems ridiculous to say goodbye and walk out of each other's lives when we've only just met each other, and there are so many good things going for us.”

I said quietly, “Like Boscarva.”

His smile froze slightly around the edges. He raised an eyebrow. “Boscarva?”

“Let's be honest and truthful, Eliot. For some reason you need Boscarva. And you think that Grenville might leave it to me.”

He took a deep breath as though to deny this, hesitated, and then let it all out in a long sigh. His smile was rueful. He ran a hand over the top of his head.

“How cool you are. The Ice Princess all of a sudden.”

“You need Boscarva so that you can sell the farm to Ernest Padlow to build his houses.”

He said, carefully, “Yes.” I waited. “I needed money to build the garage. Grenville wasn't interested so I approached Padlow. He agreed and the security was the Boscarva farm. Gentleman's agreement.”

“But it wasn't yours.”

“I was sure it would be. There was no reason why it shouldn't be. And Grenville was old and ill. The end could have come any day.” He spread his hands. “Who would have imagined that three years later he'd still be with us?”

“You sound as though you want him dead.”

“Old age is a terrible thing. Lonely and sad. He's had a good life. What is there for him to cling on for?”

I knew that I could not agree with Eliot. Old age, in Grenville's case, meant dignity and purpose. I had only just got to know him, but already I loved him and he was part of me; I could not bear to think of him dying.

I said, trying to stay practical, “Isn't there some other way you could pay off Mr Padlow?”

“I could sell the garage. The way things are going I might have to do that anyway.”

“I thought you were doing so well.”

“That's what everybody's meant to think.”

“But if you sold the garage, what would you do then?”

“What do you suggest I should do?” He sounded amused as though I were a child with whims to be indulged. I said, “How about Mr Kemback, and the car museum in Birmingham?”

“What an uncomfortably good memory you've got.”

“Would working for Mr Kemback be such a bad thing?”

“And leave Cornwall?”

“I think that's what you should do. Make a new start. Get away from Boscarva and…” I stopped, and then thought,
in for a penny, in for a pound,
“… and your mother.” I finished in a rush.

“My mother?” Still that amusement, as though I were a beguiling fool.

“You know what I mean, Eliot.”

There was a long pause. Then, “I think,” said Eliot, “you have been talking to Grenville.”

“I'm sorry.”

“One thing's for certain, either Joss or I will have to go. As they say in Westerns, ‘This town ain't big enough for the two of us.' But I'd rather Joss went.”

“Joss is unimportant. He's not worth taking a stand over.”

“If I sold the garage and went to work in Birmingham, would you come with me?”

“Oh, Eliot…”

I turned away from him and came face to face once more with Sophia's portrait. Her eyes met mine and it was as though Joss sat there, listening to every word we were saying, laughing at us. Then Eliot put his hand beneath my chin and jerked my head around so that once more I was forced to meet his eye.

“Listen to what I'm saying!”

“I am listening.”

“We don't have to be in love with each other. You know that, don't you?”

“I always imagined it was important.”

“It doesn't happen to everyone. Perhaps it won't ever happen to you.”

It was a chill prospect. “Perhaps not.”

“In that case,” his voice was very gentle and reasonable, “would a compromise be such a bad thing? Wouldn't a compromise be better than a nine to five job for the rest of your life and an empty flat in London?”

He had touched me on the raw. I had been alone for too long, and the prospect of staying alone for the rest of my life was frightening. Grenville had said,
You were made for a man and a home and children.
And now they were all there, waiting for me. I had only to reach out my hand, to accept what Eliot was offering me.

I said his name, and he put his arms around me, and drew me very close, kissing my eyes, my cheeks, my mouth. Sophia watched us and I did not care. I told myself that she was dead, and Joss I had already put out of my life. Why should I care what either of them thought of me?

*   *   *

Eliot said at last, “We must go.” He held me away from him. “You must have a bath and wash all those dirty marks off your face, and I must get the ice out of the fridge, and be all ready and dutiful to pour drinks for Grenville and my mother.”

“Yes.” I drew away from his arms, and pushed a lock of hair out of my face. I felt deathly tired. “What time is it?”

He looked at his watch, the strap that I had given him still shining and new. “Nearly half past seven. We could stay here all night, but unfortunately life has to go on.”

I got wearily to my feet. Without looking at the portrait I took it up and put it back in its hidden, dusty corner, along with the cobwebs and the spiders, its face to the wall. Then I picked up other pictures, at random, and piled them around and against it. Everything, I told myself, was just as it had been before. We tidied up in a cursory fashion and covered the canvases with the fallen dust-sheet. Eliot switched off the standard lamp, and I picked up the torch. We went out of the studio, turning off the light and closing and locking the door. Eliot took the torch from me, and together, following the bobbing circle of light, we went up the garden, stumbling a little over hidden verges and tussocks of grass, mounting the shining wet steps of the terrace. Above us the house loomed, lighted rooms glowing behind drawn curtains, and all around us was the wind and the silhouettes of leafless, tormented trees.

“I've never known a storm to last so long,” said Eliot, as he opened the side door and we went inside. The hall felt warm and safe, and there was the good smell of the chicken casserole that we were to have for dinner.

We parted, Eliot heading for the kitchen, and I upstairs to shed my filthy clothes, draw a bath and wallow in warm, scented steam. Relaxed at last I thought about nothing. I was too tired to think. I would fall asleep, I decided, and probably drown. For some reason the idea of this did not alarm me.

But I did not fall asleep, because as I lay there, I heard, above the noise of the wind, the sound of an approaching car. The bathroom faced over the back of the house, the drive and the front door. I had not bothered to draw the curtains and the headlights of the car flashed for a second against the dark glass. A door banged, there were voices. Thus disturbed, I climbed out of the bath, dried myself and started across the passage to my room, but stopped dead when I heard the raised voices carrying up the stairwell from the hall.

“… found her half way up the hill…” a man's voice, unrecognized.

And then Mollie, “… but my dear child…” This was interrupted by a wild cacophony of sobbing. I heard Eliot say, “For heaven's sake, girl…” And then Mollie again. “Come in by the fire … come along now, you're all right. You're safe now…”

I went into my room, pulled on my clothes, buttoned the neck of the brown caftan, brushed and plaited my hair, all in the space of moments. I painted on a layer of lipstick—there was no time for more—thrust my bare feet into sandals and ran downstairs, screwing on my ear-rings as I did so.

As I reached the bottom of the stairs Pettifer appeared through the kitchen door with a face like a thundercloud and bearing in his hand a glass of brandy. It was indicative of the gravity of the situation that he had omitted to put it on a silver salver.

“Pettifer, what's happened?”

“I don't know what's happened, exactly, but it sounds as though that girl's having hysterics.”

“I heard a car coming. Who brought her home?”

“Morris Tatcombe. Says he was driving home from Porthkerris when he found her on the road.”

I was horrified. “You mean
lying
on the road? Had she been hit by a car, or something?”

“I don't know. Probably just had a tumble.”

At the far end of the hall the drawing room door burst open and Mollie came towards us, half running.

“Oh, Pettifer, don't stand talking, hurry with the brandy.” She saw me standing, quite at a loss. “Oh, my dear Rebecca, what a terrible thing, quite terrible. I'm going to ring the doctor.” She was at the telephone, thumbing through the book, unable to see because she had somewhere mislaid her glasses. “Look it up for me, there's a dear. It's Doctor Trevaskis … we ought to have it written down somewhere, but I can't find…”

Pettifer had gone. I took the telephone book and started to look for the number. “What's happened to Andrea?” I asked.

“It's the most ghastly story. I can hardly believe it's true. What a mercy Morris found her. She could have been there all night. She could have died…”

“Here it is. Lionel Trevaskis. Porthkerris 873.”

She put a hand to her cheek. “Oh, of course, I should know it off by heart.” She lifted the receiver and dialled. While she waited she spoke to me, swiftly. “Go and sit by her, the men are so useless, they never know what to do.”

Mystified and oddly reluctant to know the details of Andrea's unhappy experience, I nevertheless did as she asked me. I found the drawing room in something approaching a shambles. Grenville, apparently nonplussed, stood in front of the fireplace with his hands behind his back and said nothing. The rest of them were grouped around the sofa; Eliot had given Morris a drink, and they watched while Pettifer, with commendable patience, was trying to trickle some brandy down Andrea's throat.

And Andrea … despite myself I was shocked and frightened by her appearance. The neat sweater and the pressed jeans in which she had set out so gaily were soaking wet and smeared with mud. Through the tear in the jeans I could see her knee, cut and bleeding, vulnerably childlike. She had lost, it seemed, a shoe. Her hair clung, like seaweed, to her skull, her face was blotched with crying, and when I said her name she turned her head to look at me from pathetic, streaming eyes; I saw with horror the great bruise on her temple, as though she had been savagely struck. The Celtic cross on its leather thong was also lost; torn off, perhaps, in some unthinkable struggle.

“Andrea!”

She gave a great wail and heaved herself over to press her face into the back of the sofa, spilling the brandy as she did so, and knocking the tumbler clean out of Pettifer's hand.

“I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to talk about it…!”

“But you must!”

Pettifer, exasperated, collected the glass and went from the room. I told myself that he had never liked the girl. I took his place beside her, sitting on the edge of the sofa, trying to turn her shoulders toward me.

“Did somebody do this to you?”

Andrea flung herself back at me, her body convulsed. “Yes!” She screamed at my face as though I were deaf. “Joss!” And with that she dissolved once more in a welter of sobs.

I looked up at Grenville and was subjected to a stony, unblinking glare. His features might have been carved from wood. I decided there was no help to be expected from that quarter. I turned to Morris Tatcombe.

“Where did you find her?”

He shifted, one foot to another. I saw that he was dressed as though for a night on the town. A leather jacket, decorated with a rash of embroidered emblems, and spotted with rain, skin-tight jeans and boots with high heels. Even with high heels the top of his head scarcely reached to Eliot's shoulder, and his long hair hung damp and lank.

He tossed this back, a gesture both aggressive and self-conscious.

“Half way up Porthkerris Hill. You know, where the road narrows and there isn't a pavement. She was half way up the bank, half in the ditch. Lucky I saw her, really. Thought she'd been hit by a car, but it wasn't that. Seems she had this row with Joss Gardner.”

I said, “He asked her to go to the cinema with him.”

“I don't know how it all started,” said Morris.

“But this, it seems—” said Eliot gravely— “is how it ends.”

“But…” There had to be some other explanation. I was about to tell them this when Andrea let out another wail, like some aged sibyl keening at a wake, and I lost my temper.

“Oh, for goodness sake, girl, shut up!” I took her by her shoulders and gave her a little shake so that her head bobbed on the silk cushion like a badly stuffed rag-doll. “Stop making that dementing noise and tell us what happened.”