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‘Yes. And the landscape doesn’t help – all those brooding rocks, next to the wildness of the waves. There’s a famous line from a travel book which describes that bit of road: ‘the landscape reaches a crescendo of evil at Morvah’. Very apt. Hold on, another stile. Give me your hand.’
Together we jump the warm stone stile, and continue down the dried-out mud of the footpath. We’ve barely had rain in the two weeks of David’s summer holiday. It’s been an almost flawless fortnight of sunshine. And David has been equally perfect – loving, charming, generous: taking me to local pubs, buying me wine in the Lamorna Wink, and fresh crab sandwiches in riverside Restronguet. Introducing me to his rich, yacht-owning friends in St Mawes and Falmouth, introducing me to the hidden caves of Kynance Cove, where we made love like teenagers, with sand in our hair, and little seashells on my tingling skin, and then his dark, muscled arms, turning me over.
It’s been lovely. And for this reason I’ve stayed silent about my doubts. I haven’t mentioned Jamie’s odd behaviour, the staring, the silence, that odd dream about blood on my hands, and a hare. I haven’t wanted to fracture our summery happiness with some vague misgivings. The dream, I have decided, must have derived from Jamie’s traumas, his grief. The silences are the confusion of a child getting used to a new stepmother, such a painful transition. I want to share this pain, and so dilute it.
Besides, all three of us have had a happy time this last fortnight. David’s continued presence has apparently calmed Jamie down. I have brilliant memories of David, Jamie and myself, these past two weeks, walking the coastal paths at Minack, watching the seabirds playing with the waves, or lying in the warm clifftop grass, sharing picnic sandwiches, admiring sea-pinks on the way home.
Today, however, it’s me and David. Jamie’s friend Rollo has a birthday party. Cassie is picking him up later. I’ve got precious time alone with my husband, before he goes back to work. Before the perfect summer ends.
We are still talking about language. I want to know more. ‘So did you ever try to learn Cornish?’
‘God, no,’ he says, striding along the stony path. ‘A dead language. What’s the point? If Cornishness survives as a culture it won’t be because they revive the language, it’ll be the people. Always the people.’ He gestures at the weathered scenery, the eroded boulders, the stunted trees. ‘You know these little paths were made by the miners? They would walk for hours over the moors, through the woods and heather.’ He is facing away from me now, talking into the cooling breeze. ‘Imagine that life: stumbling through the dark, walking to the mineshafts, across the cliffs. Then climbing down hundreds of fathoms, for an hour – then crawling for a mile under the sea, and digging the tin from the rocks all day.’ He shakes his head, like he is doubting it himself. ‘And all the time they could hear the ocean boulders rolling above them in the storms; and sometimes the seas would break through, pouring into the tunnels—’ He stares wildly, at the sky. ‘And then they would try to run, but the sea usually claimed them. Dragged them back, sucked them in. Hundreds of men, over hundreds of years. And all the time my people, the Kerthens, we sat in Carnhallow. Eating capons.’
I gaze his way. Not sure what to say. He goes on:
‘And you want to know something else?’
‘Uhm. Yes?’
‘According to my mother, on really quiet summer evenings, when the stamps were silent, and the family was in the Yellow Drawing Room, sipping their claret, they could hear the picks of the miners half a mile beneath them. Working the tin that paid for the wine.’
His face is shadowed by a passing cloud. I have that urge to heal him, as I want to heal his son. And perhaps I can try. Coming close, I stroke his face and kiss him, gently. He looks at me, and shrugs, as if to say: What can I do?
The answer, of course, is nothing.
Clasping hands, we stride uphill, nearing the highest point of the moors. Here is another ruined mine, with noble arches, like a Norman church.
Regaining my breath after the climb, I lean a hand on the fine brickwork of the Engine House. The view is magnificent. I can see much of West Cornwall: the dark vivid green of the woods surrounding Penzance, the grey road snaking to Marazion, and the dreaming mysteries of the Lizard. And of course the vast metallic dazzle of the sea around St Michael’s Mount. The tide is in.
‘Ding Dong mine,’ David says, slapping the sparkling granite wall. ‘Reputedly the oldest in Cornwall. It was said to have been worked by the Romans, and before them the Phoenicians. Or maybe the fairies. Shall we sit down, out of the wind? I’ve brought strawberries.’
‘Why thank you, Mr D’Urberville.’
He chuckles. We sit down together on a rug from David’s rucksack. We are in the lee of the high moorland breeze, protected by the Engine House at our backs. The sun casts vivid warmth on my face.
A couple of hikers in lurid blue windcheaters are navigating a valley below. Otherwise we are alone. David gives me a strawberry from a plastic punnet.
I snuggle closer to my husband. Here is a lovely moment. Us, alone, together: in the sun.
He says, abruptly, ‘Don’t worry about Jamie.’
My heartbeat quickens. If there was ever a time to mention it, to speak out, this is it. But I don’t want to hurt or upset David. I’m not sure I have anything important to say, so I shall say nothing direct.
‘Jamie is still grieving, isn’t he? That’s why he is kind of distant sometimes?’
David sighs. ‘Of course.’
My husband slings a protective arm around my neck. ‘It’s not even been two years … And it was horrific as well as confusing. So he can be absent, or distracted, but he’s getting better. He’s been good these last two weeks. Please don’t worry about it. He will come to love you, and accept you.’
‘I don’t worry.’
David up-tilts my chin with a hand, as if he is going to kiss my lips; instead he kisses my forehead.
‘Are you sure, Rachel?’
‘Sure I’m sure! He’s a lovely boy. Angelic. Fell for him the moment I first saw him.’ I smile and kiss David on his lips. ‘In fact, it was when I met him that I began to really fall for you.’
‘Not when you saw pictures of Carnhallow, then?’
‘Oh. Listen. Funny man. Idiot.’
We fall companionably silent. David sucks a strawberry, and tosses the green stalk into the grass.
‘When I was a boy we used to come up here, my cousins and I, during the summer holidays. When my father was away in London.’ He pauses, then adds, ‘I think that was the happiest time of my childhood.’
I squeeze his hand, listening.
‘Endless summers. That’s what I remember, endless summer days. We’d go down to Penberth, beachcombing, looking for driftwood, old masts, crab-pots, Korean pickle packets. Anything.’ He hugs me as he talks. ‘The sea has a unique colour, at Penberth. Kind of a transparent emerald. I think it’s the pale yellow of the sand, seen through the blueness, the unpolluted waters. And there would be these amazing sunsets. Tingeing the hills and rocks with gold, filling the valleys with this purple glow. And I’d look at the shadows of me and my cousins, on the beach, the shadows getting longer and longer – going on for ever, until they were lost in the warmth, and the haze, and the midsummer dark. And then we knew it was time to go back to Carnhallow, for supper, heading home for cold meats and hot drop scones. Or strawberries and clotted cream in the kitchen. With the windows thrown open to the stars. And I was blissfully happy, because I knew my father was away in London.’
I am surprised, and touched. David is a lawyer, he can be very eloquent, but he seldom talks like this.
‘Were you really that lonely, the rest of the time?’
‘In the holidays, no. But the rest of the time? Yes. Before I toughened up.’
‘Why? How?’
‘They sent me to boarding school, Rachel, at eight years old. And there was no reason to send me away, Mummy wasn’t working. It was simply his choice. He had one son, one child – and he sent me away.’
‘Why?’
‘That’s the worst of it, I don’t really fucking know. Because he was jealous of the bond between my mother and me? Because he was bored with having me around? Mummy wanted me to stay, and there are plenty of good day schools in Cornwall. Perhaps he did it to hurt her. A pure act of sadism. And now he’s dead. So I will never know.’ He hesitates, but not for long. ‘I sometimes think the best thing a parent can do is live long enough for the children to grow up, so the kids are old enough to ask their parents, How the fuck could you get it so wrong?’
Another strawberry. Another stalk, hurled into the grass. The sun is dipping its chin in the west, turning rags of cloud to purpled gold. Some of those clouds look ominous, anvil-shaped: a summer storm, perhaps. Storms come so fast in West Cornwall, summer idylls to brutal squalls in bare minutes.
‘On clear days you can see the Scilly Isles from here,’ David says. ‘I must take you there one day. They’re beautiful, the light is marvellous. The Islands of the Blest. The pagan afterworld.’
‘I’d love that.’
He eats half of the last strawberry, then turns, and gives it to me, lifting it to my mouth. A strawberry taken from his hand. I eat the strawberry, taste its lurid sweetness. Then he says, ‘One day, perhaps, you could tell me about your childhood?’
I try not to flinch at this.
He goes on, ‘I know you’ve told me a bit of it. You’ve told me about your father, the way he treated your mother, but you haven’t told me much more.’ He looks at me, unblinking, perhaps seeing the anxiety in my expression. ‘Sorry. Talking about my past – it made me think of yours. You don’t have to tell me anything, darling, if you don’t want.’
I look at him, also unblinking. And I feel a huge desire to yield, and confess. Yet I am blocked, as always. Can’t tell, mustn’t tell. If I do tell everything, he might shun me. Won’t he?
David strokes my face. ‘Sorry, sweetheart. I shouldn’t have asked.’
‘No.’ I stand up, brushing grass from myself. ‘Don’t be sorry. You should want to know, you’re my husband. And one day I will tell you.’
I want this to be true. I so want this to be true. I want to tell him everything, from my tainted entrance into university to the dissolving of my family. I will telleverything.
One day. But not today, I don’t think. Not here and now.
Does David detect my sadness? Apparently not. Brisk and confident, he gets to his feet, and tilts his head to the west. To those darkening clouds, busily turning blue to black. ‘Come on, we’d better get going, before the rains kick in. I told Alex I’d have a quick drink with him at the Gurnard’s, last chance before I go back to work. You can drop me off.’
Afternoon
I do as I am told.
We climb in the car and I drive through the stiffening wind, and then the sharpening rain, to the clifftop pub, the Gurnard’s Head, where David leaps out of the car, and shouts through the weather: Don’t worry, I’ll get a taxi. Then he runs, sheltering under his rucksack, into the pub. Off to see Alex Lockwood. A banker, I think. He’s certainly another one of those wealthy friends of David’s, those tall guys who smile politely at me in yachty bars, like I am a quaint but passing curiosity, after which they turn and talk to David.
Pulling away from the pub, I accelerate down the road – hoping I can get to the house before the lightning starts. Because this is definitely a big, late summer storm, racing in from the Atlantic.
By the time I reach the final miles to Carnhallow the rain is so heavy it is defeating the wipers. A proper cloudburst. I have to slow to five, four, three miles per hour.
I could be overtaken by a cow.
At last I make the gate to the Kerthen estate and the long treacherous lane down Carnhallow Valley, through the rowans and the oaks. I dislike this winding track during the day and it is seriously dark now: storm clouds making night from day. I’ve got the headlights on, to help me through the murk, but the car is skidding, accelerating on the wet and fractured concrete, it’s almost out of control.
What’s this?
Something runs out into my lights. It is a blur through the rainy windscreen, a grey smear of movement – then a swerve of my wheel, and a queasy thump.
Jerking the car to a stop, the wind is salty and loud as I open the door, as I run up the track, heedless of the rain, to see what I hit.
A rabbit is lying in the grass, lit by my headlamps. The pulsing body is shattered, there are red gashes in its flanks, showing muscles, and too much blood. Way too much blood.
Worst is the head. The skull is half-crushed, yet one living eye is bright in its socket, staring regretfully, as I cradle the broken form. A milky tear trickles down, and the animal shudders and then, as I crouch here on the grass, it dies in my arms.
Filled with self-reproach, I gently drop the body to the ground, where it lolls, lifeless. Then I look at my hands.
They are covered in blood.
And then I look at the animal. I take a long frightening look at its sleek, distinctive, velvety ears. It’s not a rabbit. It’s a hare.
110 Days Before Christmas (#ulink_97f24041-3694-5e47-8e01-b1009702d2f3)
Lunchtime
I’m lying to my husband.
‘I told you, I’m going shopping. We need some food.’
His sceptical voice fills the car, disembodied. Calling me from London. ‘Shopping in St Just? St Just in Penwith?’
‘Why not?’
He laughs. ‘Darling. You know what they say, the seagulls in St Just fly upside down because there’s nothing worth crapping on.’
I chuckle, briefly. I’m still lying, though. I’m not telling him why I’m shopping, not yet. Not until I know.
‘What’s the weather like down there?’
I gaze through my windscreen as the car rolls along the coastal road. The stunted church tower of St Just is a grey silhouette on a grey horizon. ‘Looks like it’s going to rain. Bit chilly, too.’
He sighs. ‘Yes, the summer’s pretty much over. But it was good, wasn’t it?’ His pause is earnest. Hopeful. ‘Everything is OK now, everything is getting better, with Jamie, you’re feeling better.’
‘Yes,’ I say, and again I lie, and this lie is probably more important. I am certainly not feeling better: I am still thinking of the hare I killed. I haven’t mentioned it, to anyone. As soon as the accident happened, I cleaned the car and quickly disposed of the body,I wiped the blood from my hands, and then I tried to wipe the event from my mind. My first reaction had been to call David, tell him, share the story. But a minute’s thought told me that, no matter how trivially disturbing, it was probably better to stay silent. The moment I broached the subject, even as a passing and frivolous remark – oh your son said this and then it really happened, how funny, it could appear, to David, that I actually believe his son can foresee events, is clairvoyant, is a Kerthen from the legend. My remarks could make me sound mad. And I must not sound mad. Because I am not mad.
I don’t believe that Jamie has any power. The accident was an uncanny coincidence: animals die on the narrow, rural, zigzagging Penwith roads all the time – badgers, foxes, pheasants, and hares. I’ve seen dead hares before, they always make me sad; hares somehow seem much more precious than rabbits. Wilder, more poetic, I love the fact they live in Penwith. But they do get killed with regularity, as people speed round those granite-walled corners. My encounter on that rainy lane through Ladies Wood was, consequently, Jamie’s anxieties conflating with a simple accident. Yet it still faintly haunts me. Perhaps it was the way the body lolled in my hands. Like a dead baby.
‘Rachel?’
‘Yes, sorry. Driving.’
‘Are you OK, darling?’
‘I’m fine. Gotta find a parking space. I’d better go.’
He says goodbye and says let’s Skype later and then he drops the call. I scan the streets for a place to slot my car. It doesn’t take long. It’s never that hard to park here. Remote, regularly battered by the weather, the ‘last town in England’, one of the last places in Cornwall to speak Cornish, St Just-in-Penwith on the best of days has an empty and melancholy feel: bereft of its mines and miners but not their memories. But it is also the nearest town with the shop I need, the nearest to Carnhallow, and I need this shop right now.
Pushing the car door open I sense the inevitable dampness in the air. It is threatening to mizzle: that specific form of fine Cornish rain which is half-mist, half-drizzle. Like a spa treatment, but cold.
The pharmacy is down the fore street, at the corner of which is the medieval church; the central square is eighteenth-century shopfronts and big Victorian pubs – which retain hints of that wealthier mining past, the days of count-house dinners and hot rum punch, the days when adventurers and stockholders would celebrate the boom days of another copper lode, when giddy mine-captains would bring their sweethearts into the saloon to drink their gin-and-treacle.
Crossing the road, feeling the odd sensation that I am being watched, I press the door. It opens with an old-fashioned chime.
The girl at the counter gives me a look. She’s young. Very pale.
Slowly I make my way around the scented pharmacy. The girl is still looking at me, but hers is a warm, friendly glance. I realize with a sense of surprise that she’s almost my age: I spend so much time alone, or with David, I sometimes forget that I am also young. Only thirty.
The beautiful tattoo of a mandala on her neck implies she might be arty, or musical, the kind of friend I would usually make, without a worry, in Shoreditch. Maybe she’s working here to support a creative career; either way she looks fun and alternative. I’d like to go up to her and crack a joke and have a laugh – make a friend. It’s what I would have done in London.
But I’m still struggling to make real friends here, and I’m not sure why. Over the last weeks and months Cornwall, or Carnhallow, or the Kerthens, have somehow muted me. Or maybe it’s Jamie; the boy absorbs my emotions, even if we barely communicate.
The shelves do not have what I want. I am going to have to brave a conversation. With a glitch of anxiety in my throat, I approach the counter.
‘Do you have any um, um, pregnancy testing kits?’
The girl gazes at me. Perhaps she can tell how important this is from the crack in my voice. Pregnancy is my escape from worry and the growing sense of pointlessness: I will become a new mother, meet other new mothers. I will have a proper role and a real job and something extraordinary to give to David and Jamie. I will forget my anxieties. And I will make my husband happy: I know David is very keen for me to fall pregnant.
I am five days late, as I realized this morning, staring in confusion and tingling hopefulness at the calendar.
The girl is frowning.
‘There aren’t any kits on the shelves?’
