Authors: Susanna Kearsley
Mr. Rowe slid the last of the papers across his desk to me and sat back as discreetly as he could within the confines of his office to wait while I read through them.
‘Perfect,’ I said finally. ‘Thank you.’
‘Not at all.’ He watched me initial the pages and sign them. ‘And here,’ he said, pointing to one line I’d missed. ‘You are sure about this? It’s a very large trust.’
‘Quite sure, Mr. Rowe. It was never my money,’ I tried to explain. ‘It belonged to my sister, and this is what she would have wanted.’
‘But this new arrangement leaves nothing,’ he said, ‘for your personal use.’
‘I have other accounts.’ Which of course was a lie, but I said it convincingly and with a smile, and he seemed reassured.
‘Ah.’ He gave a nod.
I signed the final page. ‘There’s nothing else I need to do?’
‘No, nothing. From now on we’ll see to everything. Mr. Hallett and his sister and their heirs can rest assured that the Trelowarth Trust will be well managed; they won’t have to do a thing but let us know what monies they require and when.’
‘And you’ll explain this all to them? They’re just off to Southport today, but they’ll be back on Tuesday.’
‘Then I shall contact them on Wednesday.’
‘I have a letter here, for both of them.’ I drew it from my handbag. Passed it over. ‘If you wouldn’t mind, when you do see them, could you give them this as well?’
‘Of course.’ He stood when I stood. Shook my hand when I thanked him. ‘It’s been a great pleasure,’ he said.
‘And for me.’
I left the bank and stepped back out into the midday sunshine and the narrow crowded street. The mood of the tourists down here in Polgelly had subtly shifted, as though they had only just realized that summer was nearing its end and so too were their holidays. Gone were the leisurely couples and families, replaced by a purposeful horde who were actively looking for fun and impatient to find it, thronging the pavements and pushing through shops in their search for it.
People perched all down the harbor wall as always, with their newspaper-wrapped fish and chips and their rattling striped paper bags from the fudge shop, but even those people seemed restless now, keeping one eye on the time while they ate, no doubt very aware there were still many things left to do in the limited hours of the day that remained.
I knew just how they felt.
I was running a bit late myself when I wended my way through the crowd by the harbor and ducked through the door of the Wellington.
I’d never seen the inside of the pub, and the brightness disarmed me a moment. From the outside the Wellington looked every year of its age, whitewashed walls leaning slightly on ancient foundations, a little bit rough and disreputable—much as it might have looked back in the day when it went by the name of the Spaniard’s Rest, when Jack had come to drink rum here and Daniel had made sure his pistol was tucked in his belt before venturing in. Knowing some of that history, I’d somehow expected the inside of the pub to look a little dark and dangerous, a den fit for smugglers and thieves.
Seeing the white stuccoed walls and the honey-warm wood of the tables and booths and the light dancing in through the multi-paned windows surprised me, so much so that Oliver, already comfortably settled in one of the booths with a view of the harbor, glanced up with a grin as I joined him.
‘Not quite what you’d pictured?’ he guessed.
‘Not a bit.’
‘I know, it disappointed me too, when my Uncle Alf brought me in here for my first legal pint,’ he admitted. ‘After the way all us kids had been warned off the Wellie so long, I’d expected there’d be knife marks on the tables and a band of cutthroats in the public bar, but no such luck.’ Draining the dregs of the pint he’d been drinking, he levered himself from his seat and asked, ‘What can I get you?’
Normally I would have had something nonalcoholic at lunch, but this wasn’t a normal day. ‘Half of whatever you’re having, please.’
Oliver didn’t question my choice, crossing over to the bar to place our order with the barman while I bent to read the menu, but when he came back and took his seat again he held my half-pint ransom. ‘All right,’ he asked me, curious. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘First you ring me up and ask me out to lunch,’ he said, ‘which in itself is rather odd, you must admit. And now you’re drinking in the middle of the day. Not,’ he qualified, with roguish charm, ‘that I’m complaining about either, mind, but it does seem a little out of character.’
I pointed at my half-pint. ‘Can I have that?’
‘When you tell me why you need it.’ Leaning slightly back he looked me over, taking stock. ‘You’re either working up the nerve to proposition me,’ he guessed, ‘or else you’re getting set to break my heart.’
‘Oliver…’
‘In case you’re undecided, I say go with option number one, it’s so much more enjoyable for everyone involved.’
I told the table, ‘I won’t need to rent a cottage from you after all.’
A pause. ‘You’re staying at Trelowarth, then?’
I shook my head.
‘I see.’ He took a drink himself. ‘So, option number two, then.’
I said, ‘Oliver.’
‘What changed your mind?’
I shrugged and deflected the question because there was no way to answer it honestly. ‘I thought I’d do a bit of traveling.’
‘Alone, I take it?’
Glancing up, I saw he wasn’t expecting an answer. The smile in his eyes, though resigned, held a trace of regret.
He said, ‘Well, I
did
try.’
‘You did.’
Leaning confidentially towards me he pretended to look pained. ‘Was it the biking shorts? Were they too much?’
It felt good to laugh. I told him, ‘No, I rather liked the biking shorts. It was just that… well, I couldn’t…’
‘Say no more.’ He slid my glass across the table to me. ‘I mean, you’re not the first woman to feel a passion in my presence that’s so strong she runs away from it.’
‘Is that a fact?’
‘It happens all the time.’
He raised his menu, feigning nonchalance, while I regarded him with fondness. How like Oliver, I thought, to try to make this whole thing easy for me, when with any other man it might have been so awkward.
On impulse I told him, ‘You really are wonderful.’
He answered without looking up. ‘An unfortunate side effect.’
I had to smile. ‘Side effect? Of what?’
‘Brain damage, actually. Somebody nailed me right here with a rock once.’ He showed me the place on the side of his head and his eyes, meeting mine briefly over the top of the menu, lost their teasing light. Just for a moment. ‘I’ve never got over it.’
And then he dropped his gaze back to the menu and said, ‘Now, let’s see what you’re buying me.’
***
‘How did he take it?’ asked Susan.
I carefully helped her maneuver the last of the show roses into the van. ‘He was fine. He did get a bit drunk, though.’
‘He’s rather adorable when he gets drunk.’ With a smile she admitted, ‘I’m not sure that
I
could resist him, in that state.’ Securing the roses, she took a look round. ‘Is that all of them?’
‘I think so, yes.’
‘I do wish that you’d change your mind and come.’
‘I can’t.’
‘But you’ve never been to Southport, and the flower show’s quite fun. Besides, I’ll need someone to play with. Fee won’t have much time for me, will she?’ She emphasized that with a meaningful glance past my shoulder to where Mark stood close to Felicity, talking, beside the front door. But in spite of her complaining, Susan didn’t look at all put out. In fact, she looked well satisfied by how things were developing. ‘Do come,’ she said.
I explained that I would if I could. ‘But I can’t change my travel arrangements.’
‘Too bad. Maybe next year, then.’
‘Maybe.’
She dusted her hands on her jeans. ‘Look, you’ve been such a help. I can’t thank you enough.’
She was talking, I knew, about more than our loading the van, but I’d played such a small role in launching the tearoom that I couldn’t take any credit. I said, ‘It was nothing.’
‘Of course it was something. I mean, our new website, and all that publicity, bringing the tour groups on board. Not to mention the trouble you went to, to find me those smugglers to spice up the brochures. And now Mark,’ she said, with a nod at the van, ‘doing this. It’s your influence, Eva. We couldn’t have done it without you.’
I wanted to say, ‘Yes, you could,’ but her eyes were so earnest I kept my thoughts private and hugged her instead. ‘You take care of yourself.’
‘And you. Don’t you forget us,’ she told me. ‘Come back any time.’
My hug briefly tightened, and then I released her and said, ‘Have a good time in Southport.’
Felicity, when it was her turn to wish me well, gave me a gift.
‘I remember you liked him,’ she said, as she passed me the little bronze sculpture. My pisky, the one I had held and admired in her shop on that day when she’d told me the story of Porthallow Green and the piskies who’d taken the young boy adventuring, whisking him dancing from place to place as the mood took them. The pisky looked up from the palm of my hand with his wide knowing smile.
Felicity said, ‘It’s insurance, to see that you’ll find your way back to us. Just tell him, “I’m for Trelowarth”.’
‘I’ll do that.’ I closed my fingers round the little figure. ‘Thank you.’
Mark stood and waited beside the front door as though knowing I’d want our goodbye to come last.
When it did, it was all at once harder and easier than I had thought it would be.
‘Summer’s end,’ he said. ‘Just like old times.’
‘So it is.’
But it wasn’t like old times, not really, and both of us knew it. Those lazy, long ago summers when the four of us children had run at our will through the gardens and roamed the Wild Wood and played laughingly all through the streets of Polgelly, those summers were gone and would not come again.
Still, the gardens remained and the roses returned, and there’d be other summers to come and new memories to make.
Mark said, ‘You used to stuff your pockets full of fudge before you left.’
I smiled. ‘I might still do that. What time does the fudge shop close?’
‘Don’t know. Just mind, if you go down the hill you have to come back up,’ he told me, ‘and I won’t be here to carry you.’
‘You’ve carried me enough this summer. All of you.’
‘Yeah well, you needed it, I reckon.’ His keen eyes were understanding. ‘Better now?’
I nodded. Wanting to be honest with him, I said, ‘Mark, I don’t know when I’ll make it back again, or even if… that is, it might be quite awhile.’ I let my gaze drop to the ground between us, feeling at a loss, and Mark stepped forwards, wrapping me within his solid arms.
‘It took you twenty years the last time,’ he reminded me. ‘However long it takes this time, it won’t make any difference.’
‘It’s not you,’ I tried to tell him. ‘I love all of you, I do. I love Trelowarth. But…’ I couldn’t find the words.
He found them for me. ‘It’s not home.’
Grateful, I rested my cheek against his for a moment and shook my head.
He took a step away and stood there looking down at me, the same old Mark, the same slow smile, the comfort of his hands still so familiar on my shoulders. ‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘I didn’t really think it would be. After all, Katrina’s ashes wouldn’t settle at Trelowarth either.’
I’d forgotten that. I felt my smile wobble but it must have had my heart in it because he flicked a finger lightly down my cheek the way he’d done when I was small and he was feeling brotherly. ‘I’m sorry that I won’t be here to drive you to the station.’
‘Claire can see me off.’
He gave a nod and leaned to kiss my forehead. ‘You take care.’
‘You too.’
It was past time for them to leave. I stayed there standing in the drive while they went off. I waved, then tucked both hands deep in my jacket’s pockets as the van blurred very briefly in my vision.
From the region of my feet I heard a mournful little whine, and looking down I saw the small dog, Samson, sitting with his gaze fixed up the road where Mark had gone. He whined again and trembled slightly, and I bent to give his head a pat of reassurance.
‘It’s OK,’ I told the dog, ‘you’ll see him soon.’
I felt the small bronze pisky weighing heavy in my hand, and in a softer voice I said again, more certainly, ‘You’ll see him soon.’
The pisky’s smile held mischief mingled with its knowing wisdom as I looked at it a moment, and I marveled again at Felicity’s craftsmanship, giving this small bit of metal such life. I remembered her saying, ‘In Cornwall, one truly feels magic could actually happen.’ And thinking again of the legend of Porthallow Green, I held tight to my pisky and gave it a try.
Eyes closed, I said, ‘I’m for Daniel Butler.’
But the wind that brushed my upturned face was all the answer I received.
Beside me, Samson whined again, and I opened my eyes. The other dogs had taken off already with the happiness of schoolchildren released from supervision, and I could see them bounding in a joyous pack along the path towards the Lower Garden.
Beyond that lay the green rise of the fields above the darker smudge of woods that tumbled down to where the black cliffs met the sea, with the wind raising ridges of white on the water as far out from land as my vision would stretch.
Above those waves the white birds wheeled and spiraled in the air and I was suddenly reminded of what Mark had said about Katrina’s ashes, and I thought back to the day when we’d released them on this hill, when they had gathered in the wind and danced away.
In search of someplace else, so Mark had thought. Except I knew now in my heart that wasn’t right. Not some
place
.
Someone.
And I thought I knew, at last, where she had gone.
He didn’t call back till the following morning.
I worked the times backwards: if it was nine here, that would mean in L.A., it was one in the morning.
��Eva?’
I heard the sounds of a party around him—the clink of a glass and an outburst of laughter and over it all the pervasive loud beating of dance music.
‘Bill, hi.’ I sat at the edge of my bed. ‘Thanks for getting back.’
‘I would have called you earlier, but I was on the set, and then it got too late. I figured you’d be sleeping,’ he explained. A pause. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine. I’m fine. And you?’
The party sounds receded slightly as though he had stepped away a pace or two in search of a more private corner. ‘I’m managing. You know.’ Another pause. ‘You’re still in Europe?’
‘For the moment, yes. In Cornwall, at Trelowarth. Did Katrina ever talk about Trelowarth?’
‘Yes.’ He knew where I was headed. ‘That’s the place, then?’
I nodded, forgetting that he couldn’t see me. ‘I scattered her up in her favorite spot, up on the hill at the Beacon.’
‘Good choice.’
‘No, it wasn’t.’ I gripped the phone tighter and lowered my head, and in a stumbling rush I told him what had happened, how the ashes had refused to settle, swirling on the wind and chasing out across the sea. ‘You wanted her to be where she belonged,’ I said, ‘but Bill, it wasn’t here.’
‘Hey.’ From the hoarseness of that single word I guessed what it was costing him to try to reassure me. ‘Sure it was. I mean, where else—?’
‘With you.’ I heard my voice break, just a little, and I steadied it to tell him, ‘She belonged with you.’
For several heartbeats afterwards the muted party noises were the only sounds that carried down the line. Perhaps, like me, he was imagining Katrina’s ashes blowing westward over the Atlantic. Heading home.
‘I just… I wanted to apologize,’ I said. ‘I got it wrong. You were the great love of her life, Bill. Where
you
were, that’s where Katrina would have wanted most to be. That’s where she should be.’
His lighter clicked, and I could hear his deep pull on the cigarette and then the long exhale. ‘She still is, Eva. She’s here with me every day. You didn’t get it wrong.’ Another pause, and I could sense that he was searching for the words that would convince me of that, grant me absolution. After half a minute more he said, ‘Trelowarth’s just a place, you know?’
Trelowarth
, said Daniel’s voice, warm in my memory,
is rooms gathered under a roof, nothing more
.
My eyes stung. ‘Yes, I know.’
We left it there.
***
I’d been afraid the day would stretch unbearably. This was still new and strange to me, this knowing what was yet to come, and thanks to Claire I knew that what was coming would not happen until dark. I’d thought the waiting might be my undoing, but the fact was there were still things left to finish, and the knowledge that I wouldn’t have another chance to finish them made every hour fly faster.
It took me till that afternoon to get the files in order that I’d wanted to leave Susan, so she could take care of any future PR work herself. And when I’d switched off the computer there was still the packing left to do.
The afternoon had given way to evening almost before I had noticed, and by the time Claire came round after supper I was only just then finishing the final task of pinning up my hair.
She sat and watched me. ‘I must say, you do that very neatly, Eva. Who taught you how?’
‘Fergal, actually.’
‘The Irishman?’ She placed him with a nod. I’d told her all about the people living at Trelowarth in the past, and Claire had an efficient memory. ‘It sounds as though he helped you quite a bit this summer.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He did.’
‘I’m glad. It makes a world of difference, having someone to confide in.’
There was something faintly wistful in her voice that made me feel a twinge of guilt at leaving her, until I realized that I wasn’t really leaving her alone.
I thought about that evening in her garden when she’d told me what the future held in store for me, and how she’d come to know it. She’d begun a little curiously in my view, by asking whether I remembered when she’d told the story of the Grey Lady who’d vanished at Trelowarth.
‘Yes, of course,’ I’d said.
‘Do you remember when I said it happened?’
‘Yes, before your parents’ time, you said.’ And I’d looked up at her in sudden realization.
Claire had met my eyes. ‘My parents, dear, aren’t born yet. Not in this time.’
‘And the Grey Lady…?’
‘Is you.’
She had explained it all again to me, how in the future she would meet an old man in the village who would tell her of the woman who had disappeared before his eyes when he was young. And he would know exactly who I was. He’d know my name.
She’d told me his name too, and I had tried to take it in, but even so I’d had to stop her midway through her tale to make sure I’d heard her correctly.
‘And
he
was the old man you met in the pub,’ I’d said, just to be certain, ‘the old man you rented this cottage from.’
‘Yes.’
‘But you said that the cottage had come to him through his wife’s family. And she’d been a Hallett.’
‘That’s right.’ Claire had waited patiently, her gaze expectant on my face, until I’d sorted through the possibilities and reached the only answer.
‘Susan.’ I had been surprised at first, but then it seemed so right that I’d repeated it with pleasure. ‘His wife was Susan.’
Claire had nodded. ‘It was, he said, a very happy marriage. He had lost her just the year before I met him, and he clearly still adored her.’
I had thought a moment, making sense of everything. ‘So you believe him, then. That I’m the Grey Lady?’
‘Oh yes. He might have been a very old man when we first met,’ she’d admitted, ‘but there wasn’t any problem with his memory. Everything he ever told me would happen did happen, my darling. And he was quite sure about this. As I said, he was there.’
‘
Will
be there,’ I’d corrected her vaguely. ‘I haven’t gone anywhere yet.’
I’d looked towards the sundial with its butterfly forever frozen on the brink of flight. Below them waved the ring of bright geraniums I’d helped Claire plant—the only mark I’d left upon Trelowarth in this time, and even that was passing. Soon the blooms would fade and nod and die and no one would remember them. ‘Aunt Claire,’ I’d said, asking the question she hadn’t yet answered, the one that most mattered to me.
‘Yes?’
‘Did she ever come back, this Grey Lady who vanished?’
Claire had turned to me fully that time, and our eyes had met. ‘No,’ she had told me, ‘she never came back.’
And I’d felt a small catch of emotion then, tight round my heart, feeling almost like hope.
I could feel it again, growing stronger as I covered my hair with the white linen pinner and turned around now to face Claire so she’d have the full effect. ‘There.’
‘Very nice.’ Claire looked me up and down, admiring the lines of the dress. ‘He chose that for you, did he? Clever man. The color’s lovely.’
The green had a soothing effect on my nerves as I lifted the skirts to adjust them and took a look round to make sure I’d done everything. Both of my suitcases sat neatly packed on the furthermost bed. ‘I suppose,’ I said slowly, ‘I’m ready.’
We each took a suitcase and carried them down the short way to the first landing, setting them down while I sprang the stiff panel that hid the old priest’s hole. ‘You’re sure this will be OK?’
‘Darling, it’s been here for centuries now without anyone knowing. It’s quite the safest place to leave things,’ she said. ‘Better than a cupboard.’
To prove it she tucked one case neatly away in the narrow dark space, taking care not to pull at the delicate fabric of Ann’s faded gowns that we’d hung in here earlier, next to the coat that had been the man Peter’s and Daniel’s silk banyan that I’d first brought back. I slid the second case into its place and positioned Felicity’s pisky on top of it, leaving him there with his all-knowing smile to watch over things as I stepped back a pace, letting the panel swing closed again.
Someday, I thought, when Trelowarth House fell to the elements, some archaeologist might stumble over those twenty-first century cases of clothes sharing space with an old bloodstained coat and the banyan and two eighteenth-century gowns and might wonder about them, and try to form theories explaining the puzzle of how they had come to be there in one place… but I’d lay odds that none of the theories would ever come close to the truth.
And the walls held their silence, no whispers this evening as I followed Claire down the staircase and through the bright kitchen and out the back door with the dogs coming too, keeping close to our heels in a tail-wagging pack, ever curious, seeking excitement.
They seemed to find it in the scents that rode the cooling night breeze blowing shoreward from the sea, and with their noses bouncing happily from air to ground and back again, they snuffed their way around the yard, some venturing with interest to the stable building doorstep, no doubt hoping that their master had returned.
I stayed with Claire and went no further than the honeysuckle vine that climbed the wall beside the kitchen window. There was light here slanting out across the softness of the grass and casting shadows through the vine’s leaves in a finely tangled net that made a pattern on my green silk gown.
I asked Claire, ‘Are you sure we’re not too late?’
‘Darling,’ she said, ‘you can’t possibly miss it, there’s no need to worry.’
I realized she was right, that while for me the whole event had not yet taken place, in Claire’s time it was something done and finished with, belonging to the past; the moving finger had already written what must happen.
But that knowledge, reassuring as it might be, didn’t make me feel less nervous.
‘Yes, but when—?’ I left the question hanging, because just then one of the dogs raised its head and gave a shortened bark that brought the other dogs to quick attention, all their noses turned in the direction of the road.
Like them, I heard the footsteps on the gravel drive. Claire did as well.
‘Quite soon, I should imagine,’ was her answer as she turned to greet our visitor as he came round the corner of the house. ‘Good evening, Oliver.’
And in that single moment I knew everything she’d told me had been true.
Oliver came round the side of the house and glanced up at Claire’s greeting.
‘Hello,’ he said, fending the happily leaping dogs off with one hand as I saw him both notice my gown and, with typical nonchalance, choose not to comment beyond a quick nod and a cheerful, ‘Nice frock.’ He stepped closer and flashed his endearing smile. ‘I thought with everyone gone off to Southport, you might be in need of some company.’
Claire said, ‘I see you’ve brought wine.’
There was something about how she said that, some note in her voice that reminded me this was a night she herself must have waited a very long time for—this night when she’d finally be able to sit down and talk, really talk, to the man who would become her friend and confidant; the man who would one day be Susan’s husband, and the man whom she would meet again some sixty years from now, when he was old and she was young.
She wouldn’t know him then, of course, because for her it would be their first meeting, but Oliver would recognize
her
. On that day she walked into the pub, he would approach her, and he’d offer her the cottage, and he’d share with her the story of the Grey Lady he’d once seen disappear before his eyes, here at Trelowarth. Eventually, he’d tell her more.
He’d be as good a friend to her in her own time as he would be in this one after they sat down and talked tonight, and I was pleased to know that by my leaving I was bringing them together.
‘It does make a world of difference,’ Claire had told me, ‘having someone to confide in.’
She would have that soon, I thought.
But for the moment Oliver was still in total ignorance of what was yet to come.
He looked down at the bottle he was holding. ‘Yes, it’s only the one bottle, I’m afraid, but—’
‘That will do,’ Claire told him, ‘for a start.’
‘I’m sorry?’
She didn’t explain. She only reached to take the bottle from him. ‘Here, you’d better let me hold that, dear.’
And just in time. The air around me had already started changing, and the breeze had stopped, and at the edges of my vision all the colors of the landscape had begun to run, the honeysuckle vine washed grey against the stone walls of Trelowarth House.
I had the sense of movement to the side of me and, turning, I could see a shape that might have been a man approaching. Unaware of me at first, he nearly passed me by before he stopped, and I could see that it was Fergal now. I saw the quick flash of his grin as his head lifted slightly and although I couldn’t hear him it appeared that he was calling out to someone in the house.
Oliver’s voice seemed to come from a very great distance. ‘My God,’ he said. ‘Eva…’
Claire calmed him, ‘It’s all right. She’s fine.’
A sudden brightness flashed behind me and I turned instinctively towards it, blinking, watching it resolve itself into a shape I recognized: the warm light of the open doorway with one shadowed figure framed within it.
Daniel.
Looking at him then I knew there was no need to wonder anymore where I belonged. There lay my home, I thought, and all the comforts I could want, and come the spring when all the Duke of Ormonde’s plans to raise a great rebellion in the west of England had been set aside for schemings of a newer sort, the
Sally
would raise anchor on the turning tide and sail towards the south, to Spain perhaps, or the Canary Isles, where no one would remark upon my accent and where Fergal could indulge his taste for sack and maybe find a Spanish woman who could match his wit and temper.
What did it matter that our lives would leave no mark upon Trelowarth? That the path through the woods which had led to the cliffs where the
Sally
lay moored would be needed no longer, and little by little the years would reclaim it, the trees growing over the trails of our feet until no one would know we had walked there at all?