Authors: Rachel Hore
Norah Varco
Mel refolded the paper with a sense of triumph. She had found him, and only a few miles away, too. The village of Zennor was up on the north coast near St Ives. What an extraordinary coincidence that the letter should arrive now. She read it again. No phone number given. Should she write to Boase first to engineer a visit or look up his number in the telephone directory? The latter would be quicker, she decided.
Tucking her letters into the back pocket of her jeans, she hefted Patrick’s post into an easier position to carry. As she did so, a piece of coloured card slid out of the pile and floated onto the path. A postcard. She picked it up and looked at the picture. A reclining nude.
La Grande Odalisque
by Ingres, she recognised. Painted when? She turned it over to remind herself. But the caption was obscured by a large signature –
Bella
, followed by several kisses.
For a moment she stopped breathing. She looked up at the kitchen window. Was Patrick watching? No. She knew she shouldn’t but she must. She read the flamboyant handwriting quickly.
Dearest Paddy
. . . Paddy?
I saw this and thought of you, as they say. Remember that day in the Musée d’Orsay? I’ve got news. Ring me or I’ll ring you.
Love, Bella xxx
She flipped the card over again and stared at the picture, that soft flawless skin, the doe eyes of the Odalisque, luscious, tempting, waiting to be found. Something else struck her.
I saw this and thought of you
. Patrick used that phrase occasionally. So it was
their
private joke, his and Bella’s.
She stomped up to the house, shoved open the scullery door and dumped the pile of post onto Patrick’s fortunately empty plate, the postcard uppermost.
He stared at her with a slight frown. ‘What’s up?’ he said.
‘Nothing,’ she answered sharply, nodding pointedly at the postcard.
He looked at it and must have recognised instantly what it meant because he picked it up, glanced at the writing side . . . and got up to stash it in the overflowing letter-rack behind the kitchen door.
She stared at him in astonishment. He was just going to ignore the issue, then? She fought for words, but none came.
He started ripping open plastic and pulling out magazines –
The Spectator, PC World
, seed catalogues.
‘Well?’ she said.
‘Well what?’ He started flicking through The Spectator. She sounded out each syllable. ‘Why is she writing to you like that?’
‘Oh, that’s just Bella’s way.’
‘That’s just Bella’s way.’
‘Yes.’ And then he said, ‘Oh really, Mel, if you could hear yourself. We’re grown-ups, aren’t we? We can’t pretend we haven’t had other relationships. I’m not going to expunge people from my life merely because I used to go out with them.’
‘Fine.’ She hadn’t heard him use this tone of voice before. Cold, dismissive. Why wasn’t he comforting her , telling her he loved her, ripping the card in half, saying Bella was silly.
But he did none of those things.
‘What was in your post?’ he said, tossing some junkmail into the recycling box. ‘Did your tax-disc turn up?’
‘What? Oh yes.’ She forced back the tears, cleared her throat and pulled her envelopes out of her jeans pocket. ‘And there’s good news. I’ve found Pearl Treglown’s grandson.’
That night they slept in the double bed in Val’s old room , where they usually slept now because Patrick complained that the bed in the cottage was too lumpy. At first Mel had thought the room creepy. ‘Don’t worry, he died in hospital ,’ Patrick had said. ‘And anyway, he didn’t sleep in this bed the last few years. He had a special orthopaedic job with levers to get him up and down.’
Patrick fell asleep almost as soon as the light was out, worn out by the day’s gardening and a slight cold. But Mel lay there sleepless in the darkness , trying to block out the sound of an owl outside and to stay her babbling thoughts. Why was she afraid of Bella? Because, she had to face the truth, Bella still had some kind of hold over Patrick. Because Bella was his business, his secret, and he wouldn’t talk about her, hadn’t done since that night nearly two months ago, when he had confessed to Mel about his heartbreak.
Besides, she knew that she was just as capable as he was of keeping secrets. He would never know how much she still thought about Jake.
But that doesn’t mean that I’m still in love with Jake, does it? Merely that thinking about him helps me get him out of my system. I’m working him through, digesting him.
Was that what Patrick was doing , too, with Bella? Just how often was Bella in touch?
Half an hour passed. The owl must have gone off hunting somewhere, but still she couldn’t sleep. Her stomach rumbled and after a moment she slid out of bed, pulled on her dressing-gown and padded downstairs . The darkness pressed up against her and it was a relief to flip on the light switch in the kitchen . She poured herself some milk from the fridge and fumbled in a tin for a biscuit. Her eye rested on the overflowing letter-rack.
No, she mustn’t. She bit into the biscuit.
Yes, she must.
She lifted out the pile of letters with both hands and sat down with them at the table.
When she had finished riffling through them, relief fought an odd feeling of disappointment. There was only one communication from Bella – the postcard that had arrived today. She shoved everything back in the rack, hoping it looked the same. Then she sat sipping her milk and feeling both ashamed and relieved.
The next afternoon found Mel’s car bumping down a potholed lane to a remote stone farmhouse standing lonely on the side of a hill near Zennor.
The house had that same deserted look of many of the windswept buildings on the peninsula, as though they had long ago dispensed with the bother of keeping up appearances. Crouching firm in the face of winds and stormy weather took up all their strength. As she raised a hand to lift the door-knocker, a bolt cracked back and the door opened to reveal a stocky, white-haired man with a face as weathered as his home.
‘Mr Boase?’ Mel said.
‘Come in, my dear, come in,’ he said, opening the door wider and waving her inside. She followed his unsteady, bow-legged figure into a sunny living room with whitewashed walls and a large open fireplace. The only pictures on the walls, she noticed with disappointment as she settled herself on a small sofa, were a framed Victorian sampler and two prints of country scenes. Nothing that looked to be by Pearl.
Richard Boase lowered himself into a battered armchair by the fireplace, then made to get up once more, a dazed expression on his face.
‘I’m sorry, I should offer you a cup of tea . . .’
Mel demurred quickly, offering an excuse.
He sank back in the seat, then clasped his hands together against his chest, as though in pleading prayer. ‘My wife always . . .’ His eyes flickered to the empty armchair opposite. A needlework box stood on the small table beside it, too tidy, unused.
Mel guessed immediately. ‘When?’ she asked gently.
‘She passed away three months ago,’ said Boase, studying his calloused hands, touching the overlong nails. Mel tried not to notice that his shirt wasn’t ironed.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she murmured. ‘I’m intruding on your grief. Perhaps I shouldn’t have come.’
‘No, no,’ he said, his tone firmer now. ‘I like to see people. My daughter, she lives in Canada. Came home for the funeral, but had to go back. Got her own family to look after, you see. My son comes sometimes but it’s a long drive from Bristol.’
‘Did Mrs Sennen say why I’m here?’ When she had telephoned that morning, he had been expecting her call. Norah’s niece, it appeared, had given him due warning.
‘About my grandmother, is that it?’
‘Yes, Pearl Boase.’
He nodded. ‘Never met her, of course. Died when Pa was a boy.’
‘Did your father ever talk about her?’ She explained the purpose of her visit briefly. ‘Do you mind if I ask you a few questions? I’m sorry, perhaps it’s not the right time for you.’
‘I don’t mind,’ he said. ‘I can’t stop thinking about what’s gone. Nice to have someone to tell it to. My grandmother . . . Pa didn’t remember her well, but my grandad used to talk about her. But he didn’t tell Pa the most important thing of all, not till he was dying. What he had to say would have been a matter of shame, of course, back then.’
‘What would?’
‘What Pearl did, what I’m about to tell you. I know you young ones don’t find these things shocking any more, but when I was a boy you kept quiet about ’em . . .’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Mel, confused.
‘John Boase, the man I called Grandfather, turned out he wasn’t my pa’s real father at all. When Pearl married him , she was carrying another man’s child.’
Mel stared at him, bemused. She had pulled a notebook and pencil out of her bag, but now they lay beside her, forgotten. Another man’s child. So this would explain the short five months between Pearl’s marriage and Peter’s birth.
‘Seems the man in question was a young gentleman from Merryn Hall.’
‘One of the other servants, you mean?’
‘No, one of the master’s family. Not the master himself – I don’t mean him. His nephew. Name of Charles Carey.’
‘Charles? I know about him,’ breathed Mel. The image of the good -looking young man with the moustache rose in her mind.
‘Course, he couldn’t marry her. His family wouldn’t let him. But my grandad, John, was Head Gardener there. He was in love with her. Didn’t mind about the baby. Always treated Pa like his own lad. Pa was torn in half when he heard the truth. My ma told me he seemed changed after that. Unhappy.’
‘It must have been a terrible shock,’ ventured Mel. ‘Suddenly having to reevaluate everything about himself.’
‘Specially since he lost his ma so young,’ said Mr Boase. ‘She didn’t have any living relatives . Born the wrong side of the blanket herself and them both dead, her ma and pa.’
Mel finally picked up her pencil. ‘Pearl was illegitimate, too? Do you know her parents’ names? Where they were from?’
The old man looked into the empty fireplace, unseeing. Then he said, ‘No. But my pa reckoned her father was one o’ them artist chappies.’
‘What?’ Mel put down her pencil again, trying to make sense of this. ‘At Lamorna?’
‘No, down the coast at Newlyn.’ ‘But that’s extraordinary. Mr Boase, did you know that your grandmother was an artist? I mean,’ she amended, ‘that she painted?’
‘Yes, course I did,’ he said simply . ‘My sister in London, she’s got some of the paintings. That’s what she is – didn’t you know? Ann’s an artist, too. It’s her you should be talking to, not me.’
.
***
February 1914
‘I have to talk to you.’ Pearl had placed a fresh pot of tea on the table before Charles and began, with quiet movements, to load a tray with abandoned breakfast plates. Charles, last down to breakfast this frosty February morning, lowered his newspaper and looked at her, wary. Pearl averted her eyes under his scrutiny and continued to stack cups and saucers, then picked up the tray and waited for what seemed like a long moment for the nausea to pass. Running footsteps outside. She said, in desperate tones, ‘I must see you, please, sir.’ Then, like a cornered animal, head snapping round as the footsteps stopped. ‘
Please
.’
The door knob turned.
‘The laurels at five,’ Charles said in a low voice. ‘If you can get away.’ The door opened and Cecily bounced in. She stopped when she saw Charles and Pearl, a secret smile on her face; then, her eyes fixed on Pearl, she crossed the room and wrapped her arms round Charles’s shoulders.
‘Please, Charley,’ she said, parodying Pearl’s beseeching tone. She knows, thought Pearl, the room starting to spin around her. But surely she couldn’t have heard, she couldn’t have heard through a closed door.
‘Please, Charley, you will come with us to the Pascoes’ tonight, won’t you?’
Please, Charley, please, Charley
.
‘What’s happening at the Pascoes’, my sweet?’ said Charley, folding his paper as well as he could under Cecily’s embrace, his voice to Pearl as if at a distance or in a dream.
‘Oh, you
know
. We’ve been practising and practising. Victoria Pascoe and me and her brothers are doing our Greek tableau. And Elizabeth will be singing. Say you’ll come.’ Cecily’s high voice scraped like metal over stone.
‘Pearl, are you all right?’ Charles stood up, pushing Cecily aside. The tray crashed onto the table as Pearl swayed and slid to the floor.
‘I thought you weren’t coming.’
‘You’re shivering. Here, have my coat. I’m sorry, I was over at the Birches’ and forgot the time.’ The mantle of rough wool settled heavy on her shoulders, then he dropped down beside her on the stone bench and they sat in the secret darkness amongst the laurel hedges, listening to the sounds of the garden settling around them, the restless play of wind in the branches, the rattle of a blackbird’s cry.
‘Are you all right? After this morning, I mean. I was worried.’
His arm around her in the darkness was comforting. They would go away together. They’d have to, now that she knew for certain.
‘You’re breeding, girl, ent you?’ Jenna’s voice reverberated in her mind. When Pearl had fallen, fortunately it was Jenna who answered Charles’s urgent bell-ringing, who had summoned Jago to clear up the broken crockery, had helped Pearl upstairs.
It felt worse if she lay down, so Pearl had sat on her bed, fighting the sick empty feeling, puzzling at the tingling in her breasts. Jenna sat opposite her on her own bed and studied her.
‘Your face is like pastry and you’ve a look in your eye. You’re breeding, ent you? Who? How far along is it?’
Pearl shook her head.
Jenna came and knelt down and grasped the girl’s arms, not ungently, and thought a minute. ‘It can’t be long. We both had our courses at New Year, remember? You had the gripes, didn’t yer? I should have noticed you’d missed.’ It was impossible in this small space not to be aware.
‘Who’s done this to you, girl?’ She thought a moment and said in a wobbly voice, ‘Not Jago?’