Coming Home (30 page)

‘Because that is what she always does when she comes to visit me. And despite her waywardness, Loveday is a slave to tradition. I am glad you are her friend. I think you are a good influence.’

‘I can't stop her being naughty at school. She's always getting order marks.’

‘She is very naughty. But charming. Her charm, I fear, will be her downfall. Now, lock the door, and let us be off.’

St Ursula's

Sunday, 23rd February

Dear Mummy and Dad,

I am sorry I didn't write a letter last Sunday, but I was away for the weekend and I didn't have time. Miss Catto was very kind and allowed me to go to the Carey-Lewises with Loveday.

Here, Judith paused, chewed her pen, and grappled with a dilemma. She loved her parents, but knew them well, and was wise to their harmless shortcomings. Which made it difficult to tell them about Nancherrow, simply because it had all been so unbelievably wonderful, and because she was afraid that they wouldn't understand.

For they themselves had never enjoyed such a glamorous life-style, and did not even have friends with large houses, who took luxury and ease for granted. Living as they did in the Far East, and bound by the strict conventions of the British Raj, they had become ingrained by rigid lines of class distinction, social and racial strata, professional seniority, and the unspoken rule seemed to be that you knew your own place, high or low, and stayed in it.

So, if she extolled, at length, the beauty and charm of Diana Carey-Lewis, then Molly Dunbar, never the most confident of women, might suspect that comparisons were being made, and that Judith was inferring that her mother was both plain and dull.

And if she went into elaborate detail about the size and grandeur of Nancherrow, the gardens and the lands, the horses in the stables, the staff of servants, the shooting party, and the fact that Colonel Carey-Lewis was a magistrate and sat on the bench, then her father, in his rather humdrum way, would maybe feel a little hurt.

And if she enlarged on the socialising which had continued the entire weekend, the casual cocktails, the afternoon bridge, the formal mealtimes, perhaps it would seem as though Judith were bragging in some way, or even covertly criticising her mother and father for their own simple and unambitious way of life. And the last thing she wanted to do was to distress them in any way. One thing was for sure. She was not going to mention Tommy Mortimer, otherwise they would panic, decide that Nancherrow was a sink of iniquity, and write to Miss Catto forbidding Judith ever to return again. Which was unthinkable. What she needed was some point of reference, an event that she could share. Inspiration struck. Jeremy Wells, putting in such an unexpected appearance, and giving up his afternoon to take Judith under his wing and show her the cove. It was a bit like having him come to her rescue for a second time. With him to write about, the remainder of the letter would be easy. She drew the writing paper towards her and started off again, the words flying across the paper.

The house is called Nancherrow, and the most extraordinary thing happened. There was a young man there for the day, shooting pigeons with Colonel Carey-Lewis, and he was called Jeremy Wells, and he was the young doctor we met in the train from Plymouth to Truro after staying with the Somervilles. Wasn't that a coincidence? He is very nice, and his father is their family doctor. On Saturday afternoon, Loveday rode her pony Tinkerbell so he very kindly came on a walk with me, and we went along the coast. It is very rocky there, with tiny beaches. Not a bit like Penmarron.

On Sunday morning we all went to church at Rosemullion and afterwards went out to lunch with Mrs Boscawen, who is Colonel Carey-Lewis's aunt. She is very old, and it is a very old house that she lives in. It is called The Dower House. It is full of very old-fashioned things, and she has a maid called Isobel who has been with her for years. The house is on a hill, so that you can see the sea, and it has a sloping garden, all terraces and hedges. One of these is an orchard, and in it is a sweet little wooden house for children to play in. It is, actually, full-sized and properly furnished, but Jess would simply love it. Mrs Boscawen (I have to call her Aunt Lavinia) took me to look at it after lunch, and we had a talk and she was very friendly. I hope that, one day, I shall go again.

Mrs Carey-Lewis says I can go again to Nancherrow to stay, which is very kind of her. I have written my bread-and-butter letter. Next weekend is half-term, and I'm going to Windyridge. We have four days off, from Friday to Monday. I got a postcard from Aunt Louise and she is coming to fetch me in her car on Friday morning and we're going to Porthkerris to buy the bicycle.

I took my Chinese box to Nancherrow and have left it there for the time being, because there is nowhere at school to put it. Mrs Carey-Lewis gave me some cowrie shells for one of the little drawers.

Work is all right, and I got seven out of ten for the History Test. We're doing Horace Walpole and the Treaty of Utrecht. Longing to hear about the new house in Orchard Road, Singapore. You'll hate saying goodbye to Joseph and Amah.

Lots of love and love to Jess,

Judith

She was at Windyridge, standing at the window of her bedroom, staring out at the view of the golf course and the distant bay, but not able to see anything very clearly because everything was drowned in soft and relentless rain. As well, her eyes kept filling with childish and stupid tears, because she suffered, quite suddenly, from the most acute homesickness.

Which was strange, because this was half-term, and she hadn't experienced such depression since Mummy had said her last goodbyes and left Judith at St Ursula's. Somehow, at school, there wasn't time to be homesick, because there was always so much to do, so much to achieve, so much to learn, to think about, and remember; so many people scurrying around, so many bells clanging, all interspersed with copious bouts of enforced exercise, that by the time she climbed into bed, that classic hour for weeping privately, she was always too tired to do much more than read for a moment or two and then fall fast asleep.

And at Nancherrow, speaking of her parents and Jess in the course of conversation, politely answering polite questions, had aroused no pangs of yearning nor need. In truth, during that magic weekend, she had scarcely thought of Mummy and Dad, as though they were part of a disappeared world which had temporarily ceased to exist. Or perhaps because Judith, wearing Athena Carey-Lewis's clothes, had taken on some new identity which had nothing to do with family; a person absorbed only in the present, and the next exciting thing that was going to happen.

Now, she thought of Nancherrow in a wistful fashion, wishing that she were there with Loveday, in that place filled with sunshine and flowers and light, instead of Aunt Louise's soulless house stuck up on the hill, and with only three middle-aged women for company. But then common sense came to her rescue, for the whole of Cornwall was being drenched with rain, and Nancherrow would be suffering with the rest. There had been much gloom in the dormitory when they awoke to the dismal weather, and mackintoshes and rubber boots had been ordered as the rig of the day. At ten o'clock, the boarders streamed out of the front door and splashed through puddles to the various cars which waited to bear them away for the mid-term holiday. Aunt Louise, always punctual, was there in her old Rover, but no car had yet arrived for Loveday and she had complained bitterly because she was forced to wait, kicking her heels, until somebody turned up.

(In a way, that was a good thing because Judith did not particularly want to have to introduce Aunt Louise to Diana. The two ladies would have little in common, and Aunt Louise would doubtless make snide remarks about Mrs Carey-Lewis all the way home.)

Despite the weather, however, it had been quite a good morning. They had stopped in Penzance to do some shopping, and gone into the bank to get spending money for Judith for the weekend. (But not money for the bicycle, because Aunt Louise had promised to pay for that.) And they had gone into the bookshop and had a good browse, and Judith had bought a new fountain pen, because some girl had borrowed hers and ruined the nib. Then they had coffee in a tea-shop, and ate Kunzle cakes, and then come back here. The journey, through the rain, sitting beside Aunt Louise as she had clashed her gears and pressed her polished brogue hard down upon the accelerator, was hairy, to say the least of it, and Judith had closed her eyes and expected instant death as Aunt Louise overtook a lumbering bus on a bend, or sped over the narrow brow of a hill with no idea of what might be coming on the other side. But somehow they had reached Penmarron, and the longing for Riverview and Mummy and Jess started as they drove through the village, because it seemed all wrong to be staying on the main road and not taking the turning that led, by way of lanes, down to the estuary and the railway station. And when they got to Windyridge, that was all wrong as well, the house rearing up in front of them through the swirling mist, and the treeless, manicured garden offering no sort of welcome or comfort.

Hilda, the housemaid, had come to the door to help carry suitcases. ‘I'll take them upstairs now,’ she announced, and Judith followed her thick black cotton legs, and although she knew the house as well as she knew Riverview, this was the first time she had ever stayed here, and it was strange and alien and didn't smell right, and all at once she longed to be anywhere else in the world. Just not here.

And for no practical reason; simply a sort of emotional turmoil, a panic of misplacement. Because her room, Aunt Louise's erstwhile spare bedroom, was very nice, and her possessions, brought from Riverview, were neatly disposed or hidden away in cupboards and drawers. And her desk was there, and her books on a shelf. And flowers on the dressing-table. But nothing else. And yet, what else was there to want? What else was there to fill this terrible void that felt like a great hole in her heart?

Hilda had made a few banal observations about the dirty weather, the proximity of the bathroom, the fact that lunch was at one, and then departed. Judith, left alone, went to the window and succumbed to these ridiculous tears.

She wanted Riverview, and Mummy and Jess and Phyllis. She wanted all the familiar sights and sounds and smells. The sloping garden and the view of the peaceful estuary, filling and flowing with the tides, and the day broken by the reassuring chunter of the little stream train. The shabby charm of the flower-filled sitting-room, and the sound of Phyllis clashing pots in the scullery as she prepared vegetables for lunch, to the perpetual accompaniment of Jess's piping voice. Smells were even more invidious and nostalgic. The clean mixture of Vim and Yardley's lavender soap which emanated from the bathroom; the sweet scent of privet from the hedge by the front door; and the gusty tang of seaweed at low tide. And cooking smells, mouth-watering when you came indoors hungry. A cake in the oven, or onions frying…

It was no good. It did no good. Riverview had gone, let to another family. Mummy and Dad and Jess were away across the oceans on the other side of the world. Crying like a baby would not bring them back. She found a handkerchief and blew her nose, and then unpacked, wandering around the room, opening drawers and doors, locating clothes and finding something to wear that wasn't uniform. No cashmere sweaters here. Just an old skirt, and a Shetland pullover that had been washed so often it was no longer scratchy. She brushed her hair, and was calmed by this, and tried to think of cheerful things. The new bicycle, to be bought in Porthkerris this afternoon. Four days of freedom from school. She would cycle to the beach and walk on the sand. Perhaps go and see Mr Willis. She would telephone Heather and make some plans with her. The prospect of seeing Heather again was enough to cheer anybody up. Gradually her misery dissipated; she tied her hair back in its ribbon bow and went downstairs in search of Aunt Louise.