Palmer-Jones 05 - Sea Fever (3 page)

Since the meeting with the Franks, George had been thinking of Cornwall as a vague, wistful dream of deep valleys and salt west wind. He knew it was romantic folly, a reaction to the hot summer spent inland. He knew Molly thought he was being weak and unprincipled.

“We’ll just talk to Greg,” he had told her in the car. “We’ll just stay one night, then come home. You can tell him how depressed his mother is. Then it’ll all be over.”

Now Rob’s words made the promise seem rash. He did need Wilson’s petrel. And what, after all, was wrong with taking a few days off for some seawatching?

“You make a commission on every place you sell, do you?” he said, unwilling to give in immediately.

Rob grinned. “ We’ll have a brilliant week,” he said. “You’ll see. You’ll never forget it.”

Gerald Matthews tried to decide occasionally why he found Rose Pengelly so attractive. He was a scientist, after all, and trained to be analytical. At first he thought that his loneliness was clouding his judgement. He had few friends of either sex, and after his time alone perhaps he would have been excited by any woman who showed him kindness. But it was more than that. Even before Rose became pregnant, he could tell that other men were fascinated by her. Quite often her house was filled by men, and as she moved among them, pouring wine, laughing, every one of them was affected by her. They become kinder, more vital, more intelligent, because she was there. The sweetest moments for Gerald were when she chose him to be her confidant. She would slip away from the crowd, pull on her jacket, and whisper to him.

“I need some fresh air. Let’s leave them to it.”

She would tuck her arm into Gerald’s, and they would walk down the lane between the overgrown hedges and out onto the rocky path to the headland. The walks over the short grass to the point filled him with joy and hope. For days he would believe that she might come to care for him. Then the magic would wear off, and he would be left with a searing frustration, because nothing ever developed from the friendship. On one of the evenings at Porthkennan he had tried to kiss her. Past the bend in the lane, so they could not be seen from the cottage, he had pulled her clumsily towards him. With a little laugh she had broken away; then she ran down the lane, leaving a trail of her footprints in the moonlight. At the coast path she turned and called to him, “ Come on, Gerald, you old slowcoach,” in her old tone, as if nothing had happened. They continued their walk to the headland.

When she told him she was pregnant, he was shattered. He had no idea she had a relationship with anyone else. He thought he was the only man she confided in. When she told him, they were sitting in the kitchen of her cottage. She was perched on the thick windowsill, staring out of the open window down the valley. It was May, and all the trees were in blossom.

“Who is the father?” Gerald demanded. He might have been a Victorian patriarch.

“That’s not important,” she said, seeming not to realise how upset he was. “Not really. I wanted to be a mother again before it’s too late.”

It was true that it was almost too late. One of the mysteries of her attraction was that she made no pretence of her age. Her dark hair was streaked at the front with grey, and her hands were rough and lined like an old woman’s hands. She had teenage children from a marriage which had finished years before.

Rose Pengelly made her living by letting her converted farm buildings to families in the summer and to birdwatchers in the spring and autumn. The house was usually chaotic, but she seemed not to mind the visitors’ wandering in, disturbing her work. She also designed knitwear and had developed a thriving mail order business. She made bright exotic jerseys with motifs of birds and butterflies. Often she wore her own creations, and as she grew larger, she favoured long shapeless cardigans and fringed shawls. She looked like an Indian squaw. Throughout her pregnancy she continued to work. She drove an old blue minivan and took cones of coloured wool and patterns to the women in the neighbourhood who knitted for her. By then it was autumn, and when Gerald came to the house, the strands of wool strung around the kitchen were orange, yellow, and brown. The birdwatchers came as usual, too.

She charged them little, and they slept in bunks in the barn. Rose provided breakfast for them, and each morning in October she was in the kitchen by the big white cooker grilling bacon, frying eggs, huge and fertile. Gerald found it hard to stay away.

The baby, a daughter, was born at home on Christmas Eve. Gerald visited the following day, his arms filled with presents for them both. In the kitchen was a decorated tree, and Rose’s older children drinking beer with their friends. They seemed to take their mother’s confinement for granted and hardly acknowledged him as he walked through on his way to the bedroom. There the baby lay on her back in a wooden cradle, her arms and fingers moving, anemone-like towards the ceiling. Gerald expected Rose to be different, changed by the experience of giving birth, but she was just the same. She was sitting up in bed knitting. Outside it was almost dark, and the room was warm and softly lit. She smiled at him and opened the presents excitedly, so the wrapping was scattered over the big bed and fell onto the floor. The baby was named Matilda.

At first that winter was blissful. There were weeks of clear days with sunshine and cold mornings. Occasionally there was a little frost. There were no birdwatchers in the bunk-house, and Gerald had Rose to himself. She never mentioned Matilda’s father, and he never asked. She seemed to have no contact with him. There were no unexpected visitors at the cottage. Sometimes Gerald dreamed that he might ask Rose to marry him, but he could not bring himself to do it. It was not only the fear of rejection which prevented him from proposing to her. It was the honesty which told him that such a marriage could never work. Rose was so cluttered and untidy. When her older children came home from college, the house was full of their noisy music and loud, confident voices. It was a relief then to go back to his own home, a clean modern house on an estate in Heanor.

Yet still he went back to her, and for a while he was content with her company. As the days grew longer, his mood changed, and the aching depression and frustration returned. He picked quarrels with her and stayed away from the cottage for days. She seemed not to notice his churlishness, though, and when he made an excuse to go to Porthkennan, she greeted him with her usual good temper.

He had moved to Cornwall when he was in his late twenties. He was a graduate in electronics, and before the move he had held a responsible post with a high technology company near Bath. He had come to Cornwall on his way to Scilly, as many birdwatchers did every autumn. The idea of moving there had begun as a romantic fantasy. He dreamed it would solve all his problems but at first did not take the idea seriously. It was true that he hated the tedious and undemanding work of the factory. He hated Wiltshire, too—it was so full of people and so bad for birds. And he hated the people he worked with—or perhaps he envied them their cosy family lives, their friendly games of squash, their girlfriends. It had always been hard for him to keep girlfriends. It was because he was too honest, he told himself. He refused to put on the airs and pretensions of these southerners. These southern women, with their soft ways and their poses, never appreciated honesty. He was a Yorkshireman and proud of it.

It occurred to him on one of his holidays that he could work for himself there. It might be beneath him to mend televisions and washing machines, but he could earn his living. Yet still he was reluctant to leave the security of employment and move to the south-west. It was only when an uncle died and left him some money that he decided quite suddenly to move and to set up in business for himself. The fact that he had taken such a risk still surprised him. When Matilda was born, he had lived in Cornwall for twelve years.

Some of the more open-minded birdwatchers trusted him sufficiently to give him information about rare birds in the country.

Gerald and Rose met through birdwatching. Now, after the baby’s birth, he used it as an excuse to go out with her. He would phone her to tell her about rare birds in the southwest, and he, Rose, and Matilda would travel together to see them. He was proud to be seen in their company. It showed that he was not like the other maladjusted lonely birdwatchers who had to go to Thailand or the Philippines to buy themselves women. It made him like everyone else, a part of a cosy family.

Rose had persuaded him to book for Rob Earl’s pelagic trip. “It’ll be great,” she said. “ You’ll love it. And it’ll be good to have you around here while the party is staying.” So then it was impossible for him to refuse.

“I can’t spare the time,” he said, weakening. “ Not a whole week.”

“Come just for the boat trip, then.”

“Will you come out on the boat with us?” he asked.

But she had laughed and refused to commit herself.

Jane Pym wanted a drink. It had been a long day. In the morning a client who had discharged himself from psychiatric hospital slit his wrists in the waiting room. This was not an unusual occurrence—his hands and face were covered with evidence of self-mutilation—but it made a mess, and there was a new receptionist who overreacted, so the whole day was disrupted, and later interviews were conducted to the background noise of her tears. Jane Pym was forty, an experienced probation officer, but today she felt she was only keeping control of her work by an immense effort of will. There had been other days like that, and they had always ended in disaster.

Perhaps she should plead illness and go home. But Roger would be at home, and she was more disturbed by him than by her clients. She made a large mug of instant black coffee and began to see the people who were waiting for her.

The first client was a young man, a heroin addict who asked to be referred to the drug dependence unit of the hospital which had previously housed the wrist-slitter. Jane listened without sympathy or involvement. She was good at her job, but she had seen too many young addicts. Now they bored her. She no longer believed in their declarations of imminent reform. It was never that easy.

Then there came routine enquiries from the mother of a prisoner who wanted details of the probation coach which carried visitors to the nearest remand centre, and from a young mother whose gas was threatened with disconnection. Jane dealt briskly with the immediate problems and ignored the glances, the hesitation, as her clients went out. They were hoping she would ask: “Is there anything else? How can I help you?” so they could unload onto her the loneliness of their lives, the stories of husbands’ infidelity and children’s ingratitude. At least Roger and I never had children, she thought, as she hardened her heart and showed them to the door.

Just before lunch one of her favourite customers came in. From her office Jane could hear Mary down the corridor calling cheerfully to the receptionist, who was still sniffing into her handkerchief. Mary was an elderly Irish woman, an alcoholic who had no permanent address and was often seen wandering around one of Bristol’s modern shopping centres. She always dressed in layers of clothes, like a Russian grandmother, and in the hot weather, she smelled. She wanted money. She only ever came to see Jane when she wanted money.

“Where are you living now, Mary?” Jane asked. There had to be the pretence of an interview before she handed over the cash. It was a ritual they both understood.

The woman winked. “I’ve got friends,” she said proudly. “ I’ve always got somewhere to stay.”

Eventually Jane had given her money. She had a sudden foolish impulse to take Mary out for a meal. She wanted to feel her gratitude and childish happiness in the shared experience. She realised just in time that would have been unprofessional, so Jane just saw her to the door, slipped a few pound coins from her purse into the wrinkled brown hand, and wished her luck.

“Good luck to yourself,” the old woman said, “though you’ll not be needing it, a fine lady like you!”

And they say that the Irish have second sight! Jane thought.

In the afternoon she left the grimy office on one of the city’s bleakest housing estates and drove to a smart village just beyond the suburbs to interview a separated mother before writing a contested custody report for the divorce court. The woman was educated, superficially civilised but more bitter and dishonest than any of Jane’s clients from the criminal court. Jane returned with relief to the office. She had more in common with the separated mother than she liked to admit, and the similarity disturbed her. She began to write the report but could not concentrate and knew she would have to complete it while she was in Cornwall.

At five-thirty Jane hovered in the tearoom, hoping that one of her colleagues would suggest that they should go for a drink after work, but everyone else hurried away, and she was forced at last to go home.

She knew as soon as she walked in through the door that Roger was furious. There was a pile of suitcases in the carpeted hall, and he was waiting for her. The house seemed lifeless and empty. Watching his anger, she felt as detached as she had been when interviewing the heroin addict. She could recognise how good-looking he still was despite his grey hair and lined face. She could remember how she had loved him.

“You know I wanted to start early,” he fumed. “ You promised me you’d be back on time tonight. It’ll be midnight before we get to Rose Pengelly’s.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. She
was
sorry. She liked Rose. She liked Cornwall.

He looked at her suspiciously. “ You haven’t been to the pub with all your friends from the office?”

She roused herself to self-righteous anger, too.

“No,” she said. “ Of course not. I’m a probation officer, not a teacher. I don’t have twelve weeks’ holiday and finish work at four o’clock in the afternoon.”

“No,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

She could not tell what he was thinking but knew he was not sorry. He never regretted anything. He was humouring her. He often treated her as one of the difficult adolescent girls he taught at school. She knew he hated teaching the girls. He could shout and rage at the boys or tease them with his sarcastic good humour, but he was afraid of making the girls cry.