The Day of the Storm (12 page)

She seemed to hesitate and then her footsteps quickened, determined. Her back view became, all at once, formidable. With me following she went down the passage and through the door, and we were in an attic which had been converted, by means of a skylight, to a studio, or perhaps a billiard room, for against one wall was a massive, leather-seated sofa with oaken arms and legs. Now, however, this cold and airy room was being used as a workshop, with Joss in the middle of it, surrounded by chairs, broken picture frames, a table with a crooked leg, some scraps of leather, tools and nails, and a gimcrack gas ring on which reposed an unsavoury-looking glue pot. Wrapped in a worn blue apron, he was carefully fitting beautiful scarlet hide over the seat of one of the chairs, and as he did this, was being entertained by a young and female companion, who turned, disinterested, to see who had come into the room, and was so breaking up this cosy
tête-à-tête.

Mollie said, “Andrea!” And then, less sharply, “Andrea, I didn't realize you were up.”

“Oh, I've been up for hours.”

“Did you have any breakfast?”

“I didn't want any.”

“Andrea, this is Rebecca. Rebecca Bayliss.”

“Oh, yes,” she turned her eyes on to me. “Joss has been telling me all about you.”

I said, “How do you do.” She was very young and very thin, with long seaweedy hair that hung on either side of her face, which was pretty, except for her eyes which were pale and slightly protuberant, and not improved by a great deal of clumsy mascara. She wore, inevitably, jeans, and a cotton tee-shirt which did not look entirely clean and which revealed, with no shadow of a doubt, the fact that she wore nothing beneath it. On her feet were sandals which looked like surgical boots that had been striped in green and purple. There was a leather bootlace around her neck upon which hung a heavy silver cross of vaguely Celtic design. Andrea, I thought. So bored with Boscarva. And it made me uncomfortable to think that she and Joss had been discussing me. I wondered what he had said.

Now, she did not move, but stayed where she was, legs straddled, leaning against a heavy old mahogany table.

“Hi,” she said.

“Rebecca's going to stay here,” Mollie told them. Joss looked up, his mouth full of tacks, his eyes bright with interest, a lock of black hair falling over his forehead.

“Where's she going to sleep?” asked Andrea. “I thought we were a full house.”

“In the bedroom along the passage,” her aunt told her crisply. “Joss, would you do a favour for me?” He spat the tacks neatly into his palm and stood up, pushing his hair back with his wrist. “Would you take her, now, down to Mrs Kernow, and tell Mrs Kernow that she's coming here, and then help her with her suitcases and bring her back up to Boscarva again? Would that be very inconvenient?”

“Not at all,” said Joss, but Andrea's face assumed an expression of bored resignation.

“It's a nuisance, I know, when you're busy, but it would be such a help…”

“It's no trouble.” He laid down his little hammer and began to untie the knot of his apron. He grinned at me. “I'm getting quite used to carting Rebecca about.”

And Andrea gave a snort, whether of disgust or impatience it was impossible to tell, sprang to her feet and marched out of the room, leaving the impression that we had been lucky to escape without a monumentally slammed door.

*   *   *

And so I was back where I started, with Joss, crammed into the ramshackle little van. We drove in silence away from Boscarva, through Mr Padlow's building estate, and on to the slope of the hill that led down to the town.

It was Joss who broke the silence.

“So, it all worked out.”

“Yes.”

“How do you like your family?”

“I haven't met them all yet. I haven't met Grenville.”

He said, “You'll like him,” but the way he said it, he made it sound. “You'll like
him.
”

“I like them all.”

“That's good.”

I looked at him. He wore his blue denim jacket, a navy polo-necked sweater. His profile was impassive. I felt it would be easy to be maddened by him.

“Tell me about Andrea,” I said.

“What do you want to know about Andrea?”

“I don't know. I just want you to tell me.”

“She's seventeen, and she thinks she's in love with some guy she met at Art School, and her parents don't approve so she's been rusticated with Auntie Mollie. And she's bored stiff.”

“She seems to have taken you into her confidence.”

“There's no one else to talk to.”

“Why doesn't she go back to London?”

“Because she's only seventeen. She hasn't got the money. And I think she hasn't quite got the courage to stand up to her parents.”

“What does she do with herself all day?”

“I don't know. I'm not there all day. She doesn't seem to get up until lunchtime, and then she sits around watching television. Boscarva's a house of old people. You can't blame her for being bored.”

I said, without thinking, “Only the boring are bored.” This had once been drummed into me by a wise and well-meaning headmistress.

“That,” said Joss, “sounds uncomfortably sanctimonious.”

“I didn't mean it to.”

He smiled. “Were you never bored?”

“Nobody who lived with my mother was ever bored.”

He sang, “You may have been a headache, but you never were a bore.”

“Exactly.”

“She sounds great. Exactly my sort of female.”

“That's what most men thought about her.”

*   *   *

When we got to Fish Lane Mrs Kernow was out, but Joss seemed to have a key. We let ourselves in and I went upstairs to pack my suitcase and my rucksack while Joss wrote Mrs Kernow a note to explain the new arrangements.

“How about paying her?” I asked as I came downstairs, bumping the rucksack behind me.

“I'll fix that when I next see her. I've told her so in the note.”

“But I can pay for myself.”

“Of course you can, but let me do it for you.” He took my suitcase and went to open the door, and there did not seem to be opportunity for further argument.

Once more my belongings were heaved into the back of the little truck, once more we headed for Boscarva, only this time Joss took me round by the harbour road.

“I want to show you my shop … I mean, I just want to show you where it is. Then if you want to get hold of me for any reason, you'll know where to find me.”

“Why should I want to get hold of you?”

“I don't know. You might need wise counselling; or money; or just a good laugh. There it is, you can't miss it.”

It was a tall narrow house, boxed in between two short fat houses. Three storeys high with a window on each floor, and the ground floor still in a state of reconstruction, with new wood unpainted and great circles of whitewash splashed over the plate glass of the shop window.

As we flashed past it, tyres rattling on the cobbles, I said, “That's a good position, you'll get all the visitors coming in to spend their money.”

“That's what I hope.”

“When can I see it?”

“Come next week. We'll be more or less straight then.”

“All right. Next week.”

“It's a date,” said Joss, and turned the corner by the church. He put the little truck into second gear and we roared up the hill with a noise like a badly tuned motor bicycle.

Back at Boscarva, it was Pettifer who, hearing our arrival, emerged from the front door as Joss lifted my suitcase from the back of the truck.

“Joss, the Commander's downstairs and in his study. He said to bring Rebecca in to see him just as soon as you arrived.”

Joss looked at him. “How is he?”

Pettifer ducked his head. “Not too bad.”

“Was he very upset?”

“He's all right … now you leave that case, and I'll carry it upstairs.”

“You'll do no such thing,” said Joss, and for once I was glad that he was being his usual bossy self. “I'll take it up. Where's she sleeping?”

“In the attic … the other end from the billiard room, but the Commander did say, right away.”

“I know,” Joss grinned, “and Naval time is five minutes beforehand. But there's still time to take the girl up to her room, so stop fussing, there's a good man.”

Leaving Pettifer still mildly protesting, I followed him up the two flights of stairs that I had already climbed this morning. The sound of the vacuum had stopped, but there was the smell of roasting lamb. I realized then that I was very hungry and my mouth watered. Joss's long legs sped ahead of me, and by the time I reached the slope-ceilinged bedroom which was to be mine, he had set down the suitcase and the rucksack and gone to fling wide the dormer window, so that I was met by a blast of cold, salty air.

“Come and look at the view.”

I went to stand beside him. I saw the sea, the cliffs, the gold of bracken and the first yellow candles of gorse. And below was the Boscarva garden which, because of the stone balustrade of the terrace, I had not been able to see from the drawing-room window. It had been built in a series of terraces, dropping down the slope of the hill, and at the bottom, tucked into a corner of the garden wall, was a stone cottage with a slate roof. No, not a cottage, perhaps a stable, with a commodious loft above it.

I said, “What's that building?”

“That's the studio,” Joss told me. “That's where your grandfather used to paint.”

“It doesn't look like a studio.”

“From the other side it does. The entire north wall is made of glass. He designed it himself, had it built by a local stonemason.”

“It looks shut up.”

“It is. Locked and shuttered. It hasn't been opened since he had his heart attack and stopped painting.”

I shivered suddenly.

“Cold?” asked Joss.

“I don't know.” I moved away from the window, undoing my coat, dropping it over the end of the bed. The room was white, the carpet dark red. There was a built-in wardrobe, shelves full of books, a washbasin. I went over to wash my hands, turning the soap beneath the warm water. Over the basin was a mirror which gave me back a reflection both dishevelled and anxious. I realized then how nervous I was of meeting Grenville for the first time, and how important it was that he should get a good impression of me.

I dried my hands, went to unbuckle my rucksack, and found a brush and comb. “Was he a good painter, Joss? Do you think he was a good artist?”

“Yes. The old school, of course, but magnificent. And a marvellous colourist.”

I pulled the rubber band from the end of my plait, shook the coils free, and went back to the mirror to start brushing. Over my reflected shoulder I could see Joss watching me. He did not speak while I brushed and combed and finally re-plaited my hair. As I fastened the ends, he said, “It's a wonderful colour. Like corn.”

I laid down the brush and comb. “Joss, we mustn't keep him waiting.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

“Please.”

I realized then that this was the first time I had ever had to ask him to help me.

*   *   *

I followed him downstairs, down the hall and past the sitting-room, to a door which stood at the end of the passage. Joss opened it and put his head around.

He said, “Good morning.”

“Who's that? Joss? Come along in…” The voice was higher pitched than I had imagined, more like the voice of a much younger man.

“I've brought someone to see you…”

He opened the door wide, and put his arms behind me to propel me gently forward into the room. It was a small room, with french windows leading out on to a paved terrace and a secret garden, warm with trapped sunshine, and enclosed by dense hedges and escallonia.

I saw the fire flickering in the grate; the panelled walls covered either with pictures or books; the model, on the mantelpiece, of an old-fashioned naval cruiser. There were photographs in silver frames, a table littered with papers and magazines, and a blue and white Chinese bowl filled with daffodils.

As I entered, he was already heaving himself—with the aid of a stick—out of a red leather armchair, which stood half turned towards the warmth of the fire. I was amazed that Joss did nothing to help him, and I began to say, “Oh, please don't bother…” but by then he was on his feet and erect, and a pair of blue eyes surveyed me calmly from beneath jutting brows and bristling white eyebrows.

I realized then that I had steeled myself to finding him pathetic in some way, old, infirm, perhaps a little shaky. But Grenville Bayliss, at eighty, was formidable. Very tall, very upright, starched and barbered, smelling faintly of Bay Rum, he was a credit to his servant Pettifer. He wore a dark blue blazer, of Naval cut, neatly creased grey flannels, and velvet slippers with his initials embroidered in gold. He was also very tanned, his bald head brown as a chestnut beneath the thinning strands of white hair, and I imagined him spending much time in that little sunny secret garden, reading his morning paper, enjoying a pipe, watching the gulls and the white clouds scudding across the sky.

We looked at each other. I wished that he would say something but he simply looked. I hoped that he liked what he saw, and was glad I had taken the time to brush my hair. And then he said, “I've never been in this situation before. I'm not quite sure how we're meant to greet each other.”

I said, “I could give you a kiss.”

“Why don't you do that?”

So I did, stepping forward and raising my face, and he stooped slightly and my lips touched the smooth clean skin of his cheek.

“Now,” he said, “why don't we sit down? Joss, come and sit down.”

But Joss excused himself, said that if he didn't start work soon then he would have done nothing all day. But he stayed long enough to help the old man back into his chair, and pour us both a glass of sherry from the decanter on the side table, and then he said, “I'll leave you. You'll have a lot to talk about,” and with a cheerful wave of his hand, slipped away. The door closed quietly behind him.