Beatrice then showed Lucy a photograph of Delphine standing next to a dainty little girl with thick dark hair and a shy demeanour. It had been taken in front of The Rowans.
‘There, that’s me.’
‘You looked very like your mother.’
‘Yes, I suppose I did. Moving here to Saint Florian, when I was ten, was their final attempt at a new start. My father had got some idea that he would be a writer, and a friend recommended Cornwall as a cheap place to live. They bought this house with Marlow money. Of course, he had to do something else while he made his name, so he scandalized his parents further by taking a job as a clerk in a bank at Saint Austell, and was glad to have it, given the number of people out of work. I have to say, though, that the comedown dented his pride and certainly his temper.’
Beatrice turned another page in the album. An important-looking old man in plus-fours posed by a field of cows. ‘That’s Grandfather Marlow,’ she said. ‘He sent my father a cheque every month. It wasn’t so much the cheque – after all, we were always grateful for the money – as the patronizing letter that accompanied it which annoyed my father so much. My mother, who was family-minded, made a point of taking me to visit the Marlows occasionally, which was good of her considering how condescending they could be. And in deference to them, my religious upbringing was a very odd mixture of Anglican and Catholic. She was quite a pragmatist, my mother.’
‘It must all have been very confusing for you,’ Lucy said. ‘That, and moving around, I mean.’
‘Oh, I never settled properly till we came to Saint Florian. I went to a local school in Normandy, but not for long enough periods to make friends. When we moved here, I went to a governess with some other girls. I could never invite them round to play, as my father hated noise of any sort. So a lot of the time there was just me – oh, and here’s dear old Jinx, my father’s dog.’
‘Is he a fox terrier?’ Lucy said, looking closely at the faded photograph.
‘A wire-hair, that’s right. Then in the summer of 1935, when I was twelve, the Wincantons came to live at Carlyon, and everything changed. This is Carlyon dreaming in the sun. I took it with my Box Brownie.’
And now Beatrice took off her spectacles and leant back in her chair. Her face wore a faraway expression as though she was looking deep into the past.
Chapter 5
Cornwall, July 1935
She’d watched the strange children from the moment they appeared that morning, but they didn’t see her at first. Or perhaps they did but were too absorbed in their own company to care about a skinny twelve-year-old girl in a home-made cotton blouse and shorts as she lurked shy as a bird’s shadow amongst the boulders and the tidal pools.
She had been lying on her stomach, staring into a pool where fairy fronds of lime and scarlet weed gently undulated and fish darted like shards of crystal. Along the sandy bottom staggered a pink-shelled crab. There was a miniature cave in the rock, scooped out by the sea, and decorated with barnacles and exquisite curled winkles. It might serve as a palace for a tiny mermaid. A sea palace! Beatrice imagined herself very small, with a glittery tail, swimming down with the fish to shelter amongst the snowy pinnacles and the tender anemones. How happy she would be, riding the white seahorses with their coiled tails . . .
A hyphen of electric blue shot out from the cave and pulled her out of her delicious day-dream. One scoop of her net and a moment later the tiny fish was zigzagging round her bucket above a hermit crab and a giant limpet she’d captured in earlier raids.
A shout echoed from somewhere up the beach. She whipped round to see the elder boy come first, leaping out of the dunes, screeching like the Riviera Express, towel, shorts, jersey and shoes all flung to the ground in a heap as he ran down the beach in his drawers. White dune dust flew from his heels, then he gained the harder sand of the foreshore and sprinted on and on, into the wind, towards the sea. Perhaps he imagined the cheers of spectators, for when he finally splashed into the shallows he punched the air in a triumphant gesture then turned as if to an audience, panting, hands on hips.
Now came the others, the younger boy dark and thin where the elder was fair and hearty, struggling out of clothes and sandals. Then he, too, was running, imprinting his own, lighter footprints on the sand, careful always to avoid his brother’s firm ones. Next, a sturdy brown-haired girl of perhaps six or seven in a swimming costume. She jumped from a dune, fell, picked herself up, crying uselessly to the boys to wait, then dashed off down the beach after them. Finally there appeared the older girl, straw sunhat in hand, her movements dreamy, serene, her long gold hair blowing out behind like a heroine in a thousand legends and Beatrice, watching, held her breath. The girl picked her way barefoot across the grassy hillocks with self-absorbed grace. Her journey to the sea was winding, for she kept stopping to pin back her hair, examine shells, or simply to whirl about in the wind. Beatrice stared at her, amazed, thinking she’d never seen such a beautiful creature. Reaching the water’s edge, where the smallest child waded, the golden girl knotted up the skirt of her dress before paddling in the shallows and waving at the boys, who were already capering far out among the breakers.