Authors: Rachel Hore
For a long moment, Pearl could not breathe; the blood stood still in her veins. When the attack passed she said nothing, too long-schooled in suppressing her reactions.
Adeline went on, as though she had spoken, ‘Yes, I know I told you your parents were dead.’ She had said her father was a fisherman lost at sea one stormy night, that her mother, a maid at the Blue Anchor, had died giving birth to her.
The bit about her mother, apparently, was true. ‘Maggie were a pretty lass, but no better than she did belong to be. She did wind that poor man round her little finger. She knew he be married but it made no difference to her. She would have him. I were all for throwing her out when she started to show but she begged me. Then you was born and she took sick and died.’
Pearl still couldn’t speak for shock. Adeline began to cough into her handkerchief again, long hollow coughs that Pearl was shocked to see brought up blood. Finally Adeline said, ‘He used to give me money – to pay for your keep. Not much, mind, but it was something. Now that’s all gone.’ She looked about her. ‘And so’s this place. I don’t know what will become of us.’
Pearl sat in silence, gazing at her fingers, grateful for the ‘us’, but struggling to reinterpret her whole life.
Not only had Arthur Reagan opened her eyes to a wider world beyond the possibilities of a fisherman’s daughter, lending her books and teaching her about drawing and painting, but he had belonged to her and she to him in a way she had never suspected.
‘Why didn’t he tell me?’ she whispered now, looking up at the wretched Adeline.
‘He said not to. Too many here knew him. What would he have done if it got back to his wife? It was her family had the money, see, and if she knew about you . . .’
‘I’m glad you’ve come, my dear,’ Jenna chattered, interrupting Pearl’s thoughts. ‘Since Joan went off to Africa last month to marry her boy, it’s been a parcel of work for the rest of us.’
‘Africa?’ Pearl asked.
‘Yes, he sailed from Plymouth a twelvemonth ago, to the mines. Then he sent for her and she’s off like a dog after a rabbit. She promised she’d send us a message to say she’d got there, but she ent yet.’
‘Maybe it takes a long time for letters,’ said Pearl, standing back to survey their work. ‘These flowers,’ she said, nodding at the arrangement of irises and narcissi, ‘they’re so pretty. Who does those?’
She began to copy Jenna, who was laying out glasses from trays on the sideboard, several different sizes and shapes for each place-setting.
‘Mrs Carey’s in charge of the flowers.’
‘Who else lives here then?’
‘Master, of course,’ Jenna said. ‘He owns the land where my pa and brothers farm. He works in the office here or goes out and about,’ she added vaguely. ‘Sometimes he rides to Penzance or Jago has to drive him.’
‘Is Charlie their son?’
‘Mr Charles to you. He’s Mr Carey’s nephew. Lived here for a few years now, since his own ma and pa died. Mr and Mrs Carey only have girls. Miss Elizabeth, she’s sixteen, and Miss Cecily is fourteen, I reckon.’
‘What does Mr Charles do then?’
‘Well, he’s supposed to be learning ’bout the estate but he don’t seem that fussed. Goes about with Mr Carey sometimes, works in the office. But he do like painting pictures. And the garden – you’ll always see him out there.’
‘Are we allowed in the garden?’
‘If Cook do give you a moment’s peace and the family aren’t out there, yes.’
Pearl nodded with pleasure at the thought of walking in those beautiful grounds and followed Jenna out to the hall to fetch some more chairs.
Past six, just before the guests were due to arrive, Pearl was filling a pan with water from the scullery when Jenna called her. ‘Mistress is wanting you, my dear. I’ll take you up.’
Pearl threw down her apron and washed her hands. They hurried up the back stairs and scampered along a carpeted corridor as guilty as two bad mice, arriving outside a door to a room at the front of the house.
‘Don’t be nervous,’ hissed Jenna. ‘She don’t bite.’ Which just made Pearl more jittery. Jenna knocked and at a ‘Come in,’ cuckooed from within, she opened the door and almost pushed Pearl into the room.
In this bedroom the carpet was soft, blue and gold curtains hung at the windows where, beyond, the front gardens were falling into shadow. The air was heavy with perfume. The mistress was sitting at a dressing-table between the windows, a jewel box open before her. She had been trying on earrings in the glow of the oil lamps, but now she laid the pendant jewels down on a lace-edged mat and half-turned.
‘Ah, good. I need you to do my hair.’
Pearl moved forward to stand behind the mistress and, hesitantly, began to draw the pins from Mrs Carey’s thick tresses. Earlier, in the sunny drawing room, the crown of hair had reflected chestnut, but in the fading light it appeared dark brown, threaded with white. It fell past her shoulders and Pearl began to brush with the silver-backed hairbrush the mistress passed her, in long languorous strokes.
Mrs Carey closed her eyes and began to hum. She looked, thought Pearl, watching her in the mirror, as though a hundred and one thoughts were passing through her mind. There were dark shadows under her eyes, and her skin was dry and tired. She smiles a lot and frowns much, too, Pearl decided, reading the lines written on her face. She looked up at her own reflection in the mirror, scrutinising the oval face, the strong straight nose. She was pleased with her large round dark eyes, the lines of her eyebrows like a painter ’s sure brushstrokes, but thought her mouth too wide. Under her white cap, the unruly dark hair, trained back in its bun, blended into the shadows.
Her young rosy face above her age-pale mistress’s in the mirror looked like an illustration for a lesson on the fleeting nature of time, and clearly this struck Mrs Carey too when she opened her eyes. She stared for a moment at the contrast of mistress and maid before her and snapped, ‘That’s enough now. I’ll show you how I like it to be.’
But as she taught Pearl how to lift, roll and pin the coils of hair into a flattering halo, she grew kind.
‘You’re gentle, that’s good. Joan was neat but she did pull so.’
‘I used to do my stepmother ’s hair,’ Pearl ventured. ‘It would calm her.’
‘She is ill, Cook told me. I’m sorry. How is she?’
‘The doctor says it could be months or only weeks. I . . . I don’t know.’
Mrs Carey nodded sympathetically. ‘We will pray for her. We have prayers after breakfast, you’ll know. And attend church up at Paul on Sunday mornings – all of us.’ Paul was the village a couple of miles away, towards Newlyn. ‘There’s a chapel here in the village and it’s your business if you go there as well in the evening. Some here do.’
‘Chapel people didn’t like us selling the drink.’
‘Ah,’ said Mrs Carey, ‘I have to say I wasn’t sure about the inn myself, but Cook was sure you were a good girl. I expect you to prove her right.’
Pearl raised her eyebrows in surprise as she met her mistress’s firm gaze. Aunt Dolly had always betrayed so little interest in Pearl when they met and now, it seemed, the woman must have argued her case. And yet, she thought, remembering the previous few hours, Cook seemed terse with everyone. It must be her way.
Mrs Carey opened a blue velvet box and passed Pearl the delicate diamond choker within. As Pearl fastened it around her mistress’s neck and made small adjustments to her hair, the older woman patted the powder puff to her face one final time.
‘One of the artists died in the fire, I hear,’ Mrs Carey said. Pearl forced herself to carry on her task without even catching her breath. ‘Not someone Charles knew, I gather.’
‘Beg pardon, madam?’
‘My nephew is a painter, did you know?’ But before Pearl could answer there was a rap on the door. It opened and a burly middle-aged man in shirtsleeves stomped in. ‘Fix these damn cuffs, will you, my love?’ he barked at Mrs Carey, looking Pearl quickly up and down. ‘Who’s this then?’
‘This is the girl from Newlyn I told you about, Stephen,’ Mrs Carey explained to her husband, as she threaded a cufflink. ‘You may go now, Pearl,’ and Pearl fled.
Pearl wasn’t asked to serve in the dining room that night, but to watch how it was done as she hurried back and forth for Jago and Jenna, weighed down with entrée dishes and vegetable bowls, piles of dirty plates and fistfuls of empty bottles.
As she blew out her candle and lay on her lumpy bed waiting for sleep to overtake her, exhausted but her mind racing, the memories of the day tumbled together in her mind. The jingle of the horse’s harness, the swaying of the cart on the potholed road, the clang of kitchen pots, the rich cooking smells , the steam and heat of the kitchen, light twinkling through fine crystal, the scent of flowers, skirls of ladylike laughter , the wine on the men’s breath as she helped with the coats.
All this was a hundred miles away from this morning, hurrying past the fish spread out on the beach, last night’s catch, men and women haggling, seagulls squabbling for scraps and the sea a brooding monster after the night’s winds, crashing on the shore.
And yet, despite all that she had lost, she had a hope that she could be happy here in Merryn Hall, that there was kindness, beauty, and the succour of daily work to heal her.
She felt under the bolster and her fingers closed around the little paintbox her father had given her. Then rolling over, listening to the hoot of owls, she slipped into sleep.
It wasn’t until the following Friday that Patrick Winterton arrived, although every day Mel listened out for a strange car in the drive, wondered if today he would come.
She spent a productive week, engrossing herself in her work. On the Monday she visited the Victor Pasmore art gallery in the old fishing town of Newlyn, though the beautiful small building itself had been of more interest to her than the modern conceptual artworks currently showcased within. It was easy enough, standing alone on the wind-bludgeoned cliff, staring across to St Michael’s Mount, to sense the appeal of the place for the artists of a century ago. Today’s fishermen wore luminous waistcoats rather than traditional Guernsey sweaters and woollen hats, and a single company now dominated the distribution of the fish at a modern covered market, where once fishermen and their wives had cried their wares on the shingle, but the place had the same sober sense of purpose that it must have done one hundred years before, and memorials of recent tragedies bore witness to the continued dangers of bringing in the harvest of the sea.
Tuesday and Wednesday she studied paintings in Perlee House art gallery in Penzance and spent hours reading in the Morrab Library,. It was fascinating to discover how the local fishing community had seemed to accept the invasion by painters from the Midlands, London and elsewhere in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Indeed, many had become models for the sometimes tragic tableaux the artists created –
In the Midst of Life We Are in Death
was the title of one painting,
A Hopeless Dawn
another. Mel supposed the modern equivalent was being filmed in your daily routine for reality TV.
By Friday, she realised that she had hardly spoken to anybody for days, unless she counted asking a librarian for a book or the man on the meat counter at the supermarket for sausages. A walk down to the beach is what I need, she thought, and I’ll see if Irina is in for a chat.
Apart from several hurried visits to the shop for papers and milk, she hadn’t been near the cove again. The day was bright and sunny, and Mel found herself noticing things she had missed on her first walk – late daffodils growing wild, a crumbly old millhouse, the millpond, despite recent rain, little more than a stagnant pool. When she reached the tiny village hall, she saw a poster advertising an art exhibition. After a moment’s hesitation, she went in.
It was warm and light inside, the high roof and the many windows giving an exhilarating sense of space. The walls were crowned with bright modern prints of Cornish scenes represented by flat blocks of colour. Not great works of art, but they were lively and decorative.
There was no one else in the room, though she could hear the hiss of a kettle and a chink of china from through a side door, so she enjoyed walking dreamily around by herself, taking time to look at all the prints. The final few pictures were different: half a dozen photographs of the sea hung by themselves in a corner. Unusual, dramatic. She liked them.
‘Sorry, I didn’t hear you come in.’ A young man in a crumpled Oxford shirt and shabby cords emerged from the doorway, bearing a steaming mug. He frowned slightly, narrowing his dark eyes. ‘Do I know you?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Mel uncertainly then remembered. ‘Unless . . . yes, we have sort of met. You were one of the divers, weren’t you?’
‘Down at the cove last week – yes, that’s where I’ve seen you.’
‘Did you find anything?’
‘Nah,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Like pea soup down there.’ He placed his mug on the trestle table by the door, his lips curved in what might be a smile or just a natural quizzical expression. He was of average height, aged perhaps thirty, with a small dark face and a lean, compact figure. Mel remembered him in his wetsuit. She could imagine him emerging from the water, sparkling water droplets sliding off his short dark hair. Sleek as a seal or a merman. In a graceful movement, he slid into his place behind the table and selected a typed catalogue, which he held out for her with a theatrical flourish.
‘Is this your work?’ she asked, looking around at the paintings.
‘Just the photos. The paintings are by a friend of mine,’ he said.
‘The photos are good,’ Mel said, peering again at the sea pictures. ‘Specially that one with the boulders.’
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘It’s a hobby really, though I’d like to spend more time on it.’
‘What’s stopping you?’
‘Oh, everything else I do. My job, the diving, surfing.’
‘What’s your job?’
‘Work at a surfing shop in Penzance. I kip in a mate’s flat over the shop. But I was brought up in Lamorna so I’m here a lot. Mum’s on her own now, you see. She runs a hotel up the road and always needs help. What about you? On holiday, are you?’