‘Oh my God,’ Alex said as they turned a sharp bend that revealed, or should have revealed, the harbour and the square below. The tidal surge that had invaded the town during the night had receded, but had left in its wake lakes of water that still pooled in every slight indentation or dip, the water mirroring the freshly washed blue sky, shining silver amongst the wreckage.
‘Oh no,’ Lucy pressed her hands over her mouth. ‘My cottage, your cottage, Gloria. They’ll have been badly hit.’
‘Everyone’s place down there has serious water damage.’ Eddie greeted them, out of breath as he walked up the hill. His expression was grim, and anxious. ‘Nothing below the esplanade got away with it. I’m sorry, love, sorry, Gloria.’
‘Oh Dad, the pub?’ Lucy put her arms around Eddie’s middle.
‘It will be some time before we can open again,’ Eddie said. ‘At least we were insured, and at least we are all safe. I was talking to everyone in the town; there don’t seem to have been any major injuries, although Frankie Wassell got knocked out by a stray brick. Luckily his missus was with him, and he’s not looking too bad. They’re waiting for the roads to open so they can take him for an MRI. Helicopter job, if it’s not in the next couple of hours. Though Frankie always wanted to go in a helicopter. I told him, hell of a way to wangle a ride, Wassell.’
‘I should go and see them,’ Jed said. ‘Get down into the town and see what I can do.’
‘To be honest, Vicar, at the moment you’d mostly be in the way,’ Eddie said. ‘People are just trying to get their heads around it. I reckon there’ll be a few who need help sorting out insurance claims in a day or two, and quite a few who didn’t have any insurance at all. They’ll be the ones that need the most help.’ He grimaced at Alex. ‘I’m afraid the florist’s has taken it bad, Alex. Maisey told me to tell you she’s not sure she can do the flowers for your wedding any more. She said there’s a woman in St Austell who might able to, but it could be tricky ordering in the exact kind you wanted.’
‘Oh right, well, flowers,’ Alex said. ‘Overrated, especially at weddings.’
‘At least the dresses were laid out in my spare room,’ Gloria said, linking her arm through her daughter’s. ‘They should be fine on the first floor. My lovely new sheepskin rug won’t have been so lucky. Brian and I did so enjoy it …’
‘Shall we go and see the church?’ Alex said hastily, before Gloria could add any details of just how her mum and her rocker boyfriend had enjoyed the rug. And Tamsyn held Mo a little tighter as they approached the churchyard, the fallen cedar still barring their way into the grounds.
‘Well, at least the church is still standing,’ Jed said. The cedar that had stood watch over the town, and Merryn’s headstone, had been half ripped from its roots and toppled across the pathway, the remnants of the trapped blanket still visible beneath it. At some point, before becoming impaled on the spiked railings that surrounded St Piran’s, the tree had taken down a large chunk of the rectory roof with it.
‘Thank goodness Mo wasn’t still in that basket,’ Jed said, reaching unconsciously for Tamsyn, his hand resting reassuringly on her shoulder for a moment. She found she could not look him in the eye for fear of weeping, the shock and drama of what had happened only just hitting her. Trembling hit her body in waves, and for a moment she was afraid that her knees would give way.
‘Tam, are you OK?’ Lucy asked, as she buckled, and suddenly Jed’s arm was around her waist supporting her, and she shook her head, cradling Mo against her, closing her eyes until the world would stop shifting around her.
‘I’m fine,’ she said, allowing herself to lean for just a moment into Jed’s strong frame and regroup. ‘It’s just … Looking at that blanket; everything could have easily gone so badly wrong.’
Tamsyn steeled herself and broke away from the far too tempting shelter of Jed’s shoulder. She was a strong person and she could cope with this; after all, a lot of people had a lot worse to deal with.
‘The rectory looks pretty bad,’ she said, rebooting her composure. ‘Can’t really see how the church fared, past the tree.’
‘Let’s hope it escaped the worst of it,’ Jed said. He walked up to the great trunk of the cedar, patting it fondly. ‘Well, we can’t go in this way today. Follow me; there’s another way in.’
Taking a moment to peep under the outsize sunhat that Sue had found for Mo, to find her peacefully oblivious, Tamsyn followed the small group around the side of the graveyard, down a narrow path and into Kissing Alley, which ran behind the church. Halfway down the alley there was another gate, which led to a tiny, Gothic-looking oak-panelled door, which would not have been out of place in
Alice in Wonderland
. Tamsyn smiled as she saw it, amazed that during all the time she had spent down here, she had never noticed it before. A fact made all the more surprising when she considered what very bad and boring kissers most teenage boys were, back then. As Jed found a huge bunch of keys in his jeans and commenced jiggling and rattling them, looking for a particular key, she allowed herself a moment to wonder what she’d be able to notice, or not, if it had been him she was kissing in Kissing Alley. Did kissing fall into his ‘not before marriage’ rule, she wondered, before catching herself and stopping that particular train of thought dead.
‘You OK?’ Gloria asked her. ‘You look a bit flushed.’
‘Do I?’ Tamsyn looked surprised. ‘Must be the portable heater I’ve got strapped to my front.’
Finally Jed located the right key and with some effort turned it in the lock, pushing the fiercely squeaky gate open, repeating the process on the secret-looking door in turn, which it turned out was not made for very small Cornish pixies at all, but in fact led down two steep steps directly into the vestry. The interior of the small room was oddly quiet and cool, and smelt of must and dust, but it looked untouched by water damage or the storm’s fierce gales.
‘So far, so good,’ Jed said, opening the door that led out into the church.
The scene that greeted them wasn’t nearly as comforting.
The first thing they saw was one of the Victorian oak doors hanging from a broken hinge, leaning against the font. Soon after the door was either blown or forced in, it looked as if the church had become a temporary reservoir for the fast-flowing water that had gushed down the hillside; its tiled floor, still glazed with dirty river water, was silted in mud debris and bits of branches. The force of the water must have been quite strong, because some of the pews had been shoved into one another and lay zigzagged at jagged angles across the aisle that in just two days Alex was due to walk up as a bride. A tidemark could clearly be seen against the whitewashed walls, the hangings and artworks. It all looked as if it had been dipped in mud, and everywhere there were little sodden islands of hassocks that had been sewn and embroidered by families for generations, some to commemorate town events, some to remember loved ones. Tamsyn recalled her granny working so hard on her prayer cushion, after Tamsyn’s father had died. One of these bedraggled and sorry lumps had his name on it.
‘The window, too,’ Jed said, pointing to a beam of golden sunlight that flooded in through a jagged break in one of the church’s three stained-glass windows. ‘There must have been quite an impact to shatter it completely.’
‘Oh,’ Alex said, simply pressing her hands over mouth, her eyes filling with tears. ‘Oh no.’
‘Oh, darling.’ Tamsyn watched as Gloria wrapped her arms around her daughter, kissing her cheek. ‘There, there.’
‘It’s OK,’ Alex sniffed, wriggling free of her mum’s embrace and brushing away her tears. ‘It’s fine. I mean, it’s not fine; the poor, poor church. But really, it’s just a wedding. It’s just a day, it can be any day, we can rearrange it, it’s fine … Maybe we’ll have an autumn wedding, or a Christmas one. It’s not important, really, when it happens, just that it happens. I’m fine, I really am. I am not the sort of silly woman who’s going to have a meltdown about postponing her …’
But anything else Alex might have said was lost between sobs, as she furiously attempted to brush away the tears that would not stop coming.
‘What’s wrong with me?’ she hiccuped. ‘I’m not this shallow!’
Tamsyn felt a sudden rush of warmth towards the girl who was trying so hard to pretend that the idea of not marrying Tamsyn’s brother in two days’ time wasn’t breaking her heart. She really loves him, Tamsyn thought. What a lucky man Ruan is to have loved, and been loved in turn, twice in his life. Perhaps the idea of romantic love that her mother kept banging on about wasn’t quite so old-fashioned or outmoded as she pretended to think it was. Bernard wasn’t made that way; he would never cry over a wedding being postponed, well, perhaps if it meant he didn’t get to wear his favourite pair of duck-egg-green breeches that had a strange sort of crotch that started just above the knee … that might make his eyes smart a bit.
‘You know what,’ Jed walked down into the church and looked around, pushing a few pews back into position, his boots squelching in the silt. ‘We don’t have to cancel the wedding, not really. Not as long as the weather is going to hold, which the weather forecaster said it is going to do. The church is filthy and it stinks, and the window’s broken, yes. And sure, right now the outside is a bit like a bog, but all it needs is to be spruced up a bit. A good scrub down, some flowers, some ribbons and, before you know it, it will be absolutely ready for a wedding. A nice, airy wedding, too, with half a door and most of a window gone.’
‘But … really?’ Alex snuffled loudly as she surveyed the scene. ‘You think it’s possible?’
‘I do,’ Jed said. ‘We just need to get all hands on deck, that’s all. Let everyone know what’s happened and what needs doing, and I bet you we’ll have twenty or thirty people here by lunchtime, ready to help clean up and get the church ready again.’
‘There, you see, love?’ Gloria said. ‘You see, it will be OK. I can help with decorations. I’m thinking maybe a few glitter balls, and oh, Vicar, maybe we could paint it? You know, liven it up a bit. Have you ever thought about a nice gold on the walls, Vicar?’
‘Yes, but so many houses have been flooded, homes destroyed. What makes our wedding more important than anything else?’ Alex shook her head. ‘No, it’s not right. We need to sort out people’s homes first. The wedding will have to wait. I’ll get over it. No one tell Ruan I was this upset, I don’t want him to think that I’ve been hiding the crazy all this time.’
‘I don’t think anyone could accuse you of hiding the crazy,’ Lucy teased her gently, soliciting a small, watery smile from Alex.
‘Well, of course you’re right,’ Jed nodded. ‘Of course we need to reach out and help everyone in need, but that’s what’s special about Poldore, Alex. Community. There are many pairs of helping hands here, more than enough to go round, and the top half of the town was barely damaged at all. And I truly think that doing something that helps bring about a joyous occasion will lift everyone’s spirits, especially when it’s something for you and Ruan.’
‘And,’ Tamsyn mused as she looked around the space, her designer’s eyes seeing past the dirt and damage, ‘as much as I love the idea of gold paint, Gloria, what we could do, after we’ve cleaned it up, is just embrace the broken door and the shattered window. We can bring Cornwall into the church, fill it not only with flowers, but garlands of the fallen branches. Most of them are still laden with blossom. We can save a lot of the stuff that has been torn down and blown about. We could put ivy up the pillars, wild flowers along the pews. I think with the warm air blowing through the hole in the window and the broken door, it will be almost like a woodland wedding and a church wedding all at once. It can be stunning,
better
than you imagined. And it sorts out the problem of the flowers in one fell swoop. You could even have a wildflower bouquet.’
‘You think so?’ Alex asked her.
‘I do, actually. We can get Keira on to it. She did half a degree in theatre design before she got whisked off her feet into marriage, and she hardly ever puts her talents to good use.’ Tamsyn nodded, smiling, as she saw her vision unfold before her. She caught Jed’s eye and saw a look of appreciation, which gave her a curious little fizz of happiness. She liked it when he approved of her.
‘I suppose we could ask,’ Alex said, her tone brightening just a little. ‘But only if people don’t mind, and only if …’
‘Oh, shut up,’ Lucy said. ‘Seriously, if you were any more noble we’d have to borrow the halo off that saint over there and stick it on your head. When are you going to pull a Bridezilla on me, stamp your feet and demand stuff? I’ve been waiting for a hissy fit for months now, and there’s been nothing. You can’t really be that nice.’
‘I’m saving that up in case anything has happened to the dresses,’ Alex said. ‘Honestly, all my life I never thought I’d care about wearing a dress. It’s funny what getting married does to you.’
‘Come on then,’ Gloria said. ‘I’ve got my galoshes on, so let’s get out there and rescue those dresses.’
‘Are you coming, Tam?’ Lucy asked.
‘Um, no. I think any further down might not be a good idea for Mo, not if the streets are still underwater. Good luck, though, with the dresses. I can’t wait to try mine on.’
‘I just know the lilac puff sleeve is so going to suit you,’ Lucy grinned.
Out of nowhere, Alex came over and hugged Tamsyn and Mo all at once, and kissed Tamsyn on the cheek.
‘You know, there are no puff sleeves,’ she told Tamsyn. ‘It’s all just a joke those three cooked up to torment you with. But I can’t let it go on. You are too nice to be threatened with outdated sleeves and bad colour choices.’
‘What did I do?’ Tamsyn shifted uncomfortably. ‘I didn’t do anything. I just stood here. With a baby. And talked about indoor trees.’
‘You came here,’ Alex said. ‘You don’t know how much it means to Ruan that you came. He might not have said anything, but I know it means a lot. And I’m so glad you did. I feel like you’re a lucky charm.’
‘Lucky?’ Tamsyn laughed. ‘I turn up, there’s the worst storm in recorded history, the church and town are wrecked and someone abandons a baby who barely escapes with her life!’