A Cornish Stranger (3 page)

Going through the sitting room towards Jaunty's bedroom on the far end of the cabin, Gabe stopped to admire Jaunty's paintings hanging on either side of the wood burner. One was a study in blues, ranging from aqua to deepest cobalt, and the other was soft white tinged with lavender and pale green. Gabe thought of bright afternoons when the sun made diamonds sparkle off the surface of the river. Somehow Jaunty captured a mood or moment so precisely, yet when Gabe actually ­studied the work it looked almost like nothing more than random brush strokes. That was Jaunty's genius.

Something dropped to the floor in Jaunty's room and Gabe stuck her head through the door. Carefully she slipped in, picked up a pen and placed it on the bedside table. Gabe loved this room. It was almost as big as the sitting room, only a little bit narrower and it was puritan in its furnishings: a bed, a chest of drawers, a desk and a Windsor sack-back chair. The walls were lined with windows and behind the bed was another of Jaunty's paintings, one that reminded Gabe of the sunsets reflected in the river, all fiery, passionate reds and magenta.

The works hanging in the cabin were impressionistic and abstract, whereas the ones that had vaulted Jaunty to fame in the first place were more realistic and very slightly primitive. Someday it would be wonderful to see a retrospective of Jaunty's work. In the past, when Gabe had raised the subject with Jaunty, her grandmother had said nothing, but waved her hand in the air and gone back to whatever she'd been working on. It had been clear that Jaunty didn't want the attention that a retrospective would bring, which Gabe thought was a shame. Jaunty had earned it but she only desired a quiet life.

Gabe crept out of the bedroom and walked out on to the terrace. A light breeze stirred the treetops, then the leaves stilled as if someone had switched a machine off for the ­evening. Enter­ing the house again, she glanced through Jaunty's bedroom door. The eiderdown moved regularly so Gabe headed to the car, still laden with things from the flat. Her mouth watered at the thought of a glass of wine. She paused and leaned against the doorjamb. Did she really have the energy to do any more today? Why not just collapse on the sofa? No, she had better do it, and then she needed to compose some music for a baked bean commercial. She shrugged. This was her life now – but at least she would be living it at Bosworgy. She smiled as she set off.

 

 

 

 

 

Two

 

 

 

 

S
unlight broke through the flimsy white curtains. Jaunty had chosen the fabric years ago because of the simple daisy pattern, not because of the practicality. It didn't keep out the light or the draughts, but it was covered with embroidered daisies and there had been so many daisies in the field that summer . . . Jaunty had been eighteen in the summer of 1939 and he was beautiful. Closing her eyes, even after all these years, she could still feel his skin under her fingers. Now she touched her shrivelled hands, abused by the turpentine and the paint. One of those hands had drawn slow circles across his smooth back.

Daisies had been her favourite flower ever since. He had woven them through her hair, the flower so simple in its beauty. No shouting, just narrow petals and a glorious drop of golden yellow. If she painted the daisy's eye she would use cadmium yellow and a touch of umber.

Before the memory faded, Jaunty rose and unlocked the desk drawer and retrieved the notebook. Studying the pen in her fingers before she began to write, ink dropped on to the page and spread into it, creating an amoeba shape. The nib touched the page then lifted as singing floated in on the morning breeze. An aria from Puccini, ‘O Mia Babbino Caro'. The purity of Gabriella's voice stirred memories: Vienna, Paris, Rome, and Berlin. No, no, Gabriella shouldn't be here. With her talent the world should be at her feet as it had been with Maria Lucia, Jaunty's mother.

Gabriella should be in London, not trying to play nursemaid. Had Jaunty left this all too late? She tapped the pen on the page again and watched another drop of ink bleed into the grain of the paper. Gabriella must let her go, but it was clear she didn't know how to, so Jaunty must teach her.

I have become good at farewells. I'm almost ready to say goodbye for the last time. I don't want to go on until I don't know who I am – and I'm the only one who does know.

Jaunty looked up from the page and laughed. Why hadn't she gone loopy? That would have been simple, or at least she thought it would have been. It would have been easier for her than her world turning to grey. Jaunty rubbed her temples.

However, the last thing I want to do is to hurt you, Gabriella. But what I have to say will and that troubles me. I have barely enough oomph to rise from my bed and see the morning light on my beloved river. It is the river that saved me and it forced me to choose life. It is where I first found love and where I still seek it, foolishly.

The raspy noise of my breathing drowns out the birds and my thoughts. It is too loud and too laboured. Each breath takes too much effort, but what should I expect at my age? My body is too old, despite what my brain sometimes thinks.

Yet hearing you sing makes me feel I am eighteen again, listening to my mother. It is such a foolish thing to do, to revisit the past. It is finished, but it calls to me like the river does.

 

Gabe sat on a tree trunk near the creek, clutching her mug, listen­ing to a symphony of morning sounds just as she had spent most of the night listening to Jaunty's uneven breathing. Gabe had held her own while waiting to hear her grandmother's, which meant she'd had virtually no sleep and the first thing she had done when she'd woken, exhausted, had been her exercises to try and release the constriction across her chest.

At least here in Bosworgy she wasn't plagued by the nightmares that haunted her in London. The therapist had said that they might never go and that was when Gabe had given up therapy. She couldn't see the point if it wasn't going to help her sleep at night. In fact, the nights after a session had been the worst. Dragging the whole thing up, over and over, making her live through it again. Each time it was more dreadful than before and she hadn't thought that was possible. Lying awake at night, not being able to fall asleep, reliving each moment, wondering whether, if she had done something differently, would it not have happened? So fruitless, because it had and it couldn't be changed now.

Here she would be able to leave it behind, begin again. Life was simpler at Bosworgy; well, at least Jaunty's way of life was. Everything was pared down. No television, only the radio to bring the outside world into the cabin. Gabe sighed and let her shoulders relax.

The air was thick with fog that hung a few feet above the creek and yet the water below was so clear she could see the rocks on the bottom and a small crab scuttling away. Swimming was her sanity; it had always brought clarity of thought. Discarding her towelling robe she went carefully to the steps. She was home again, and that's all that mattered.

Checking the thick rope was still sound and securely tied, she made her way down a few of the steep steps carved out of the rocks and dipped her foot in the water, wishing it were warmer. And while the wind blew gently from the south, it didn't carry any heat at this early hour and so the air was cool too.

The tide was on its way out but still high. Everything revolved around the tides living this close to the sea, she thought. She made circles with her foot in the water but there was no way to make this less painful so she took a shallow dive into the creek. The coldness of the water sucked the air from her lungs and she broke through the surface, gasping, then struck out in a fast crawl across the creek to the other side. The temperature really wasn't too bad. In fact, she knew from experience that the river was at its warmest at this time of the year, but her body hadn't believed that when she dived in.

She swam back and forth until her tension disappeared, then flipped on to her back and floated while the current pulled her out into the river. She could hear the distant thud of a fishing boat engine and the cry of a gull above. Fog still hung heavily over the surface of the water, trapping the silence. She was fully out into the main part of the river and when she turned her head she could just make out Jaunty's studio tucked in the trees. From this angle, the pines that protected it looked as if they were taking a bow.

Gabe smiled then turned over again. With the tide on its way out, she would have a good workout to swim back to the steps, but she was looking forward to it. From an early age she had swum in the river, even if a wetsuit was needed at certain times of year. Her father had never worn one and called her a sissy, but she didn't care. No matter what he said it was bloody cold in mid-January. Jaunty always stated it wasn't that the temperature of the water changed so much during the course of the year, it was the air and the wind howling at you when you stepped out that made the experience painful. Gabe shivered at the memories of Christmas morning swims – always fun but often freezing.

Kicking double time, Gabe managed to make the turn into the creek where the pull of the current was less intense. She was out of shape. How could two weeks of not swimming have made the tide so hard to beat? She didn't know and on a peaceful morning she didn't care. She changed to breaststroke and enjoyed the serene atmosphere. A cormorant dived towards the water but pulled up before it pierced it.

Stillness enclosed the creek and she made her way past the steps and the quay in the silence. Branches hunched to touch the surface of the water, and in the low cloud Gabe imagined she could see ghosts lingering by the banks. The thud of the fishing boat's motor grew louder.

Something touched her foot and she squirmed, but knew it would most likely be one of the many grey mullet that lived in these waters. Halfway, she stopped and turned around, seeing that the mouth of the creek was now obscured by the fog rolling in, and everything was muffled. Magic. If only she could block out the rest of the world so easily. She shook her head and began a brisk crawl back to the steps.

Out of the water and wrapped in her robe, Gabe stared at the river, watching the fog begin to dissolve as the sun grew stronger. It was going to be a glorious day. Hopefully the piano would arrive early and she could then go for a long, solitary walk. Her heart lifted as she climbed up to the cabin. The sky was blue, the sun was warm and the north shore was bathed in golden light. It was good to be home.

 

Moving the sofa to the side of the room, Gabe pushed her hair out of her eyes. It just wasn't going to work. No matter how she tried she wasn't going to fit a grand piano into the sitting room unless she lost the dining table, which was too big for the small but functional kitchen. Everything about the cabin spoke about Jaunty's practical way of life. The kitchen contained only what it needed, nothing more than a sink, a stove, a fridge and a large dresser. No space was wasted or overfilled. It was as though Jaunty's surroundings needed to be plain to let her imagination soar.

Although Gabe knew the cabin already existed when Jaunty had moved here after the war, it could have been designed for her grandmother. The kitchen and utility room were outside Gabe's bedroom on the south side, while the sitting room was next to Jaunty's bedroom on the north, and the cabin looked west with just a few small windows on the east side, which backed into the hill. Virtually everything about the place ­focused on the river, with almost every glance from the windows providing yet another view.

Gabe leaned on the dining table and looked out at the bright day. It was so hot it could be midsummer. She opened a few windows and dodged a sleepy wasp. Turning, she sighed. The piano wouldn't fit in here. There was, of course, Jaunty's studio, perched on the edge of the cliff among the pines overlooking the river. It was almost as big as the cabin, but it hadn't been used much recently and would most likely be damp. The question was how damp, because pianos and damp didn't make good companions.

This morning, sitting near the mudflats on the old quay, she had heard the music of the creek as the tide began to pull the water from the banks. It had soothed her as it tapped, gurgled and popped its way out to sea. The fog had trapped the sound, which clung to the shore like horns, muffled. She had lost track of the time, listening to the array of tones, and a composition had begun forming in her head, a sonata of the tides.

Gabe shifted the small sofa slightly. Jaunty was dying and Gabe was OK with that. She swung around. No, she really wasn't, but she had to be. Jaunty, at ninety-two, wasn't going to live for many more years, probably only months, and Gabe would try and make them the best that they could be.

In the kitchen the water for Jaunty's egg had reached a fierce boil. For Jaunty the egg must be placed into the water only when it reached this point, then cooked for three minutes exactly. Gabe set the silly yellow duck timer she had given her grandmother the Christmas Gabe had been ten. Life was better then; she'd still believed in Father Christmas and her father had been alive. Innocence had not been lost.

Gabe sighed. Some days she felt she'd been born under a bad moon. Her mother had died from an infection three days after she'd given birth to Gabe; when she was thirteen her father had died; and four years ago, when her career was just about to make a giant step forward . . . well, she had walked away.

The timer rang. She scooped the egg from the water and placed it in an eggcup, quickly covering it with a hat. She and Jaunty had made the hat together twenty years ago and she grinned, looking at the wonky shape. She had never been very good at crafty-type things but that hadn't stopped her trying. Gabe placed the single egg, the china teapot, and toast on a tray, everything just as Jaunty liked it. Gabe couldn't change her grandmother, but maybe if she built up Jaunty's strength she would enjoy what time she had left.

 

‘Good morning.' Jaunty walked from her bedroom into the sitting room, rubbing her hip joints, hoping they would loosen and ease her movements. Breakfast was on the table and Jaunty smiled, but Gabriella was wrinkling her nose, a clear sign that something was troubling her. She had done that repeatedly when her father had died and she was trying to be brave. When tears would threaten she would screw up her nose to hold them back and though Jaunty would say they were better out than in, the child had always tried to control her emotions. That self-control had not been a major problem at thirteen, but now it was.

Just looking into Gabriella's eyes sent Jaunty back in time but she needed to focus her mind on the present, she told herself. Yet everything about Gabriella tugged Jaunty backwards. She took so much from her great grandparents – her vibrant red hair was the same shade Jaunty's father's had been, and the purity of her singing came from Maria. All that was missing from Gabriella's voice was the depth that Maria's had had, the depth acquired from time and practice.

Lowering herself into a ladder-back chair at the table, Jaunty could see up close how much Gabriella had let herself go. She took no time with herself. The glorious flame-coloured locks were scraped back in a careless chignon and the porcelain skin was dry for the lack of a bit of moisturiser. It was as if Gabriella were hiding. But how could a woman so ­naturally beautiful, so striking, hide? She had hair the colour of a sunset, yellow-orange eyes and a voice that could bring down God from heaven. Why was she concealing it all? There had always been an air of fragility about her – of course, losing her mother just after she had been born had not helped, but this – this carelessness of self had a deliberation about it that made Jaunty uneasy.

‘You slept in.' Gabriella joined her at the table with a mug clasped in her hands. Chewed fingernails topped the long elegant fingers and Jaunty ran her own over the scars in the oak table top. In a previous life the table had been a door that someone had discarded but Jaunty had salvaged it, stripped it of its chipped paint, then waxed it until it glowed. It had served as the dining table, but more frequently as a work surface, and in the early years, before the studio was built, she had painted and sketched here.

‘I stayed in bed watching the morning light bounce off the north shore,' Jaunty lied, but her room, in the mornings, with the sound of the gulls and the waves, was like being on a boat, something that soothed and stimulated at the same time. The water beckoned her, called to her in the way it could to one who had experienced its power. It had let her go all those years ago, but her time was coming to an end and it was demanding payment for the years of reprieve. Would her death pay her other debts? No.