Crossed Bones (12 page)

‘Where’s your car?’ I demanded crossly. ‘I didn’t see it in the drive.’

He swivelled at my voice. ‘It’s lovely to see you too,’ he returned, struggling to rise from the deck-chair. I prayed for a painful tangle of collapsed wood and limbs, but Michael managed to disengage himself without serious mishap, looking typically elegant in a cream linen shirt and a pair of stone-coloured chinos. His eyes swept over me, taking in the contours of the red dress appreciatively. ‘I took a taxi; it seemed the most sensible option to let a local do the legwork. He knew where it was at once.’

I was damned if I was to be so easily charmed; or chastely kissed. I stood there with my hands on my hips feeling suddenly furious at the effect he still had on me. ‘What are you doing here? In Cornwall, I mean.’

He turned back to Alison, grimacing. ‘I see what you mean.’

I drew up a chair a little way from the table and sat down, glaring.

‘I, ah, had a little business down here. Some property of Anna’s she wants to sell. She sends her love, by the way.’

The mention of her name made me go cold. Anna had links with Cornwall? Goose bumps stood out on my arm as if a sudden breeze had caught me. I gave him the sort of flat-lidded look I imagine cats give those they most despise. ‘Oh, I see. Freeing up a bit of capital for a second honeymoon, are you?’ I said acidly, and he had the grace to look away. ‘Where is it, then, this “property”?’

‘Mousehole village, a cottage that’s all, but derelict. Anna’s had a tenant in it for ages, and he’s just passed on. It came to her on her twenty-first birthday, but this was the first she told me of it; she’s a secretive little thing sometimes.’

‘So where are you staying?’ Alison asked.

‘I’m booked into a little hotel there. Bit pricey, but I guess I can’t begrudge my fellow Corns an honest dollar. Or even a dishonest one.’

I stared out across the garden to the valley and the sea beyond. Through the bright lattice of trees I could just make out the tower of a church above the seafront at Penzance and a little stretch of the glittering bay beyond. Mousehole lay a few miles away, past the headland which marked the westerly extent of Mount’s Bay. I recalled from Cat’s little book that it was where a fishing skiff called the
Constance
had been found washed up, all its crew missing and a ‘Turkish blade’ stuck in her planking.

‘I’d love to see it,’ Alison said. ‘The cottage. Some of these quaint old places have so much character, especially when they’ve been left to rot for a while. I could give you some advice on how to do it up, get a good price for it.’

I glared at her, willing her to stop. It was just the sort of project Alison needed to distract her from the misery of Andrew’s death; but selfishly all I could think was that every bit of profit made out of the cottage was a contribution towards Michael’s new life with Anna. If I thought about them at all (and I had tried very hard not to) I wished them poor and discontented, not rich and happy.

But Michael was animation personified. He leaned across the table and patted her arm, giving her the smile that lit up his face, the one I thought he reserved for me. ‘Great. Come down tomorrow – I can’t say I’m looking to do much with the place, just get it into shape and put it on the market as fast as we can, but I’d love to know what you think. As Julia can tell you, I’ve not much gift in the matter of interior design – my Soho flat’s been cheerfully rotting about my ears for years, but I don’t think you’d find it very quaint!’

At this point, I could stand it no longer. Pushing my chair back so violently that its feet scraped the granite with an unforgiving screech, I headed for the shelter of the house, feeling two pairs of eyes drilling into my back as I retreated.

I fled upstairs and flung myself face down on the bed, all my emotional elastic snapped and flabby. Tears that I had been holding back for ten days spilled out in a torrential flood. I made so much noise, I didn’t hear the footsteps on the stairs or the opening of the door; so when the mattress gave suddenly as someone sat down, I sprang up with my heart hammering.

Michael sat there, looking at once appalled and shamefaced. He pulled a large and crumpled handkerchief out of a pocket and wiped my face with it, smearing unglamorous strings of snot across my cheek. Furiously, I pushed his hand away and ran into the en suite, shutting the door behind me. There, I splashed my face with water and stared at myself in the mirror. Daylight is a teller of harsh truths: I never understand why people design their houses to let more of it in. Unless you have the tight, gleaming skin of a fit twenty-year-old, daylight will cheerfully illumine every wrinkle and blemish, every sag and bit of dullness, leaving you feeling like an age-old, careworn hag, even after you’ve exfoliated every atom of dead skin away, moisturized with cream that costs more per ounce than pure frankincense, and applied with care and expertise the world’s most expensive make-up. I had done all these things less than an hour ago; now I looked like a hurricane victim.

Viciously, I rubbed my face clean with a flannel and, without the slightest enhancement or disguising mask, went out to face the lover who had rejected me. Let him see the effect he has had, I thought; let him see the damage done.

But when I came out, I found him with his back to me, hunched over. He looked upset; I knew the contours of his body so well, I could tell even from this view that he was agitated.

‘Why did you come here?’ I said quietly, and was glad that my voice did not tremble.

He started guiltily, got up and turned to face me. In his hands he held my book, his parting gift to me.

I strode across the room and took it from him, cradling it against my chest protectively.

‘Alison’s been telling me about the book,’ he said, sitting back down with what seemed a feigned nonchalance. ‘It sounds fascinating.’

‘It is,’ I said, hugging it closer.

‘I’d love to have a proper look at it.’ He held his hand out, and for a moment some traitorous instinct in me believed he was reaching for me.

‘I’m sure you would.’

‘Julia, don’t be angry with me.’

‘I think I have every right to be angry with you, don’t you?’

‘I never meant to hurt you, truly I didn’t.’

‘Then what are you doing here, rubbing my nose in it – all that stuff about bloody Anna’s bloody cottage? How can you imagine it’s OK for you to just turn up out of the blue like this? I came three hundred miles to get away from you and now here you are, in my face, reading the bloody book you gave me as a goodbye-and-get-stuffed present!’

By now I was yelling at him, all reserve gone. He went pale; he had never coped with extremes of emotion well.

‘Calm down. Please. I wanted to know you were all right, so I phoned your mobile a couple of days ago, and Alison answered it. She said she was worried about you, so I volunteered to come down and sort out the cottage for Anna so that I could see you.’

I glared at him, thinking. Alison and I had gone swimming at the lido a couple of days ago, a lovely old Art Deco affair down on the seafront where you could paddle endlessly around an enormous seawater-filled space, gazing at the cerulean sky and St Mary’s Church and pretend you were on the Riviera. I remembered seeing Alison on the phone at one point as I lazily breaststroked my way around the deep end, but I hadn’t realized it had been my phone.

‘Very gracious of you, I’m sure.’

‘Not really.’ He shrugged. ‘Truth is, for… er… various reasons we’re going to need some extra cash.’

I had to suppress the small, mean smile that rose up inside me. Not such a bed of roses after all. Well, that was some consolation.

‘In fact, it’s a funny thing, but the book’ – he gestured towards it – ‘came from a house clearance down here. It must have been down here in Cornwall ever since when was it, 1634?’

‘1625.’ He obviously didn’t know I knew it had come from the very house we were sitting in. I could have let it go, but somehow I didn’t want to. ‘Alison said she and Andrew sent it up to you along with a load of other old books. To sell for them.’

He reddened. ‘Ah. Well, I thought you’d appreciate it, it being an embroidery book and all. Kept it for you for a while, actually, then forgot all about it until… well, you know. So, really, I gave it to you in error: in all honesty, you ought to let me have it back again when you’ve finished it, so I can sell it for Alison. Funerals cost a bit nowadays, and I gather Andrew was rather on his uppers.’

What a snake he was. As soon as he got his hands on it I knew he’d sell it, all right, but I bet the full price fetched would never make it into Alison’s pocket. ‘When I’ve finished reading it, then, perhaps,’ I lied, and watched his face soften with relief.

‘Come here, old thing,’ he said at last, holding his arms wide.

Like a mindless automaton I found myself walking towards him, and then my head was resting on his shoulder, and I could smell the ironed-linen smell of his shirt and a trace of his usual cologne, heated by his body, beneath. He cupped my head against him, and I felt the beat of his pulse quicken. The book dug uncomfortably into my breast as he held me closer, and, suddenly aware of my weak stupidity, I pulled away, cheeks flaming.

‘Go away,’ I said. ‘Don’t do this.’

He rubbed his face and I remembered how many times I had lain propped up on my elbows over him easing away the tension lines on his forehead with the pads of my fingers.

‘It’s not so easy to forget you, Julia, whatever you may think; it’s not been easy for me these past weeks.’

‘Good. Now go away.’

That night, I stayed in my room and immersed myself in Catherine’s book. Midnight passed, the moon rose, and the stars wheeled, but I did not see them. When the owl hooted in the woods at two in the morning, I was still reading, because the notes in the margin had suddenly revealed themselves to be not just a needlewoman’s daily journal but a devastating historical puzzle.

‘Cat… Catherine!’

She turned quickly, to find her cousin Robert standing in the hallway, wearing his Sunday best and a hangdog expression. His blue eyes were beseeching. For the past two weeks, since the Master had spelled out her destiny, Catherine had barely spoken a word to him.

‘What do you want?’

‘I’ve come to take you down to the town. Matty said the two of you were going to the chapel in Penzance to hear the new preacher, so I thought I might come with you. Besides, there’s a sea-fret hanging over the bay – I thought you’d not want to get wet –’

Cat’s chin came up sharply. ‘We can walk, thank you, it’s only two mile or so.’ She glanced down regretfully at her best stockings, the ones with the clocking at the ankles. She had embroidered them herself, and they were very fine: the thought of them getting wet or, worse, muddy, was infuriating. But she would not go with Rob if she could help it.

At that moment Matty appeared. When she saw Robert Bolitho, her face broke into a huge and happy smile. ‘I saw the trap outside; are you come with us down to the town, Rob? It’s fair mizzly out: you can’t even see the Mount through it and I warn’t looking forward to the walk, though Nell and William have already set out, I see.’

Cat sighed; there was no avoiding it now. ‘Nell Chigwine’s going to the chapel of Our Lady? Why isn’t she going down to Gulval as usual with the rest of the household? It was the one reason I could fathom out that might make joining Mother and Uncle Ned today a little more bearable, that at least I wouldn’t have to endure Nell watching me during the sermon, waiting for the preacher to make a reference to Eve’s sin so that she can smirk at me.’

Matty grinned. ‘It’ll be a change, Cat; ’sides, if I have to sit through another of Mr Veale’s long sermons I’ll likely drop off. I din’t get a wink last night with them gulls squawking their heads off on the roof right over me. The Reverend says God created all creatures with a purpose and a plan, but I can’t see what seagulls are good for at all. I rubbed my knuckles raw yesterday cleaning their mess off the courtyard, bleddy things.’

Cat leaned in towards her and said softly, ‘It’s said they cry with the voices of the dead who’ve not yet passed over.’

Matty recoiled. ‘But they’re right over my head!’ she wailed. ‘I hear them walking around!’ Her eyes filled with tears.

Rob shot Cat a furious look, then he put an arm around the distraught housemaid. ‘Let’s get you in the trap, Matty. When we get back I’ll see what I can do about clearing their nests off the roof above your room, shall I?’

Matty gazed up at him adoringly. ‘You’re a good man, Robert Bolitho. Cat don’t know how lucky she is.’

The mist was still thick as they trotted out of the drive on to the road that wound steeply down towards the sea. It swathed the countryside, trapping the heat of the land so that the air was muggy and hard to breathe. Sea-frets like this were not a rare phenomenon during a Cornish summer and would most likely burn off when the sun rose higher, but to Catherine the enclosing mist made the ride down to Penzance claustrophobic. She felt the hedges pressing in on her, the seedheads of the docks showing the rust-red of old blood, the towering foxglove stalks now bereft of all flowers, as if they had been stripped by some malign hand. She stole a glance at Rob, at his broad, blunt profile and the unruly strands of straw-yellow hair escaping from his hat. Could she bear to wake to see that face on the pillow beside her day after day, year after year, with the cows lowing in the byre behind her cottage wall and the gulls screaming on the roof overhead, and these same small horizons framing her world? Something inside her contracted. Until the Master had forced the betrothal upon her, she had regarded her cousin fondly; now she could hardly bear to sit beside him in a carriage and have people look upon them as a couple. The gypsy’s words of hope had been proved false: in a month she and Rob would be man and wife, for the banns were posted and several yards of Spanish brocade had been bought by Lady Harris from the best draper in town (who just happened to be Cat’s uncle, Edward Coode, so no doubt a fine deal had been struck), as bright as the sea that the mist veiled this day. She had not had the heart to make a start on it. To sew your own wedding dress when every time you looked at the fabric made you wish it were your shroud was not likely to imbue your gown with all the luck you would need to carry you through married life. Worst of all, her one possible avenue of escape – in the shape of the Countess of Salisbury’s visit to her mistress – had been closed down. She had been embroidering the altar cloth for the past two weeks; then last Thursday a courier had brought the letter from Lady Cecil explaining that she would be spending the summer at Framlingham and that she hoped now to travel with her husband when he came to inspect the Mount in the autumn to assess the case for new armaments. That night, Cat had folded the altar cloth away beneath the bed. She had not touched it since.