She remembered, only yesterday, coming out of her gate to see a tourist with his little daughter on their way up to the cliff path and she’d had a sudden glimpse of herself at the same age, nine or ten. She’d never held her father’s hand in that possessive way this little girl did. And he seemed so natural with the girl, explaining something or other patiently to her. Beatrice’s parents had mostly spoken to her to give her instructions.
She breathed deeply to calm herself, and was sure the scent of old roses floated in the air. Funny how the house still smelt of them. They had been her mother’s favourite: climbing roses round the house and bowls of dried petals in every room. Perhaps the smell had got into the wood. She opened her eyes, for a moment confused not to see the room as it had been long ago, when she was a child, the china shepherdess on the mantelpiece, her mother’s French library books neatly piled on the coffee-table, her father’s walking stick near the fire, the big wireless where the television stood now.
Perhaps she should never have come back here, should have stayed in Paris after her husband died, but she had never sold the place after her father had left it to her, and the long-standing tenant had moved out and it seemed the right time. She’d just felt a terrific yearning to return to this place where, as a child, she’d been so happy. She’d thought she’d find a kind of peace here, too, but she hadn’t, not really. She was aware of the ruin of Carlyon Manor, high above the town, and remembered too much. She’d been made to keep so many secrets and they’d festered. Still, the people involved were mostly dead now. Except Hetty Wincanton, and Peter. There was no real reason to sit like a dragon on its gold.
And now the girl had come, wanting to know things, and she deserved to, though it might be painful for them both. Beatrice smiled without humour. She’d tried to tell some of her story once, after the war, but no one had been interested in the truth then. They’d twisted her words against her. She’d seen what had happened to some of the others who’d spoken out, how they’d been pilloried in the newspapers. But now that so much time had passed and the people with reputations to protect were all dead, there was more genuine interest in uncovering the truth. And yet it wasn’t so simple. It was more personal than that.
There were dark places in her mind where she couldn’t go, even now. She was frightened of her feelings. But the truth, Beatrice, she told herself. The truth was always best. Time was a river, so the poet said, the past flowing on into the future. Her past was dammed in a stagnant pool.
She pushed herself up out of her chair and crossed to the window. Her feet were painful today, as if they, too, remembered. The birds had gone from the drinking bowl, but the carefree sound of their song was all around. That’s what she’d loved most, living here as a child – the cries of the birds and the sound of the sea: swishing over the sand, smashing against the cliffs, sucking itself out of secret caves and crevices. It spoke to her spirit.
Lucy walked out along one arm of the harbour as far as she could go and stared out to sea. It was a calm evening and the water shone sleek and opaque now the sun was low in the sky. She turned to look at the town, spread across the hillside. Far along the cliff she looked for the ruins of Carlyon Manor, but they were hidden by greenery. She remembered what Beatrice had said, so passionately, about her feelings for Rafe. Such a long time ago. A love that survived his death. She tried to imagine feeling like that about someone. She never had, and couldn’t imagine that she ever would.
Later, at the Mermaid, she took a history of the Second World War downstairs with her and ordered a drink and fishcakes from the cheerful woman behind the bar, who looked as though she might be Cara’s mother. At a table across the room, facing her, a man was making his way through a large helping of cottage pie, engrossed in a magazine. His hair glinted reddish-brown and she observed his slow, careful movements as he ate. When Cara’s mother took him a beer he looked up and Lucy realized it was the man she’d seen the day before on the boat Early Bird. She liked his tanned face, the cropped hair and the very blue eyes that crinkled up when he laughed at something the woman said. There was energy and strength in every movement. She wondered about him – whether he was staying at the hotel, like her, or maybe he lived in Saint Florian.
He finished his meal and as he walked past on his way out, she tried to see what the magazine was, playing her private game of working people out by what they read. Current affairs, of some sort. She glanced up at him and he gave her his friendly smile. ‘Hello again,’ he said.