The Girl by the River (37 page)

He needed to go for a walk and clear his mind. At times like this he missed having Jonti to go with him. ‘I’m going for a walk,’ he said, ‘and by the way, Kate – I
have dreams too, and they’re not about making bird boxes all me life.’

Kate gave him a hug and a kiss. She straightened his collar a little and looked at him adoringly. ‘You’re wonderful,’ she said.

Freddie walked down towards the station, his hands in his pockets, thinking about his dream. It was one of those times when he felt something was going to happen.

A few people were standing along the sides of the road, and the church bell was tolling. A funeral cortège was coming slowly up the hill. Freddie stopped, respectfully, to let it pass by,
and noticed a coffin with no flowers on top.
How sad
, he thought.

A man from the quarry was standing next to him, watching. ‘Whose funeral is it?’ Freddie asked.

‘Ivor Stape. From The Mill.’

The long hot summer began to break in the last week of August. The wind changed, the sea changed, and the surfers talked knowingly about ‘the return of the
Westerlies’, and the highest tides of the year drove the sea over the harbour wall and into the town. A huge swell, from a hurricane thousands of miles across the Atlantic, sent enormous
waves towering into Porthmeor Beach and surf flew high over the Clodgy rock. But the sun still shone, and the fairy gardens in the shelter of the rocks were warm from the heat of the granite and
the dry earth.

Art spent a lot of time surfing the massive waves while Tessa just played and splashed around in the foam. She didn’t want a surfboard, didn’t feel she could balance on one, but
loved being in the sea. Her body was tanned, her chestnut hair had strands of sun-bleached gold, and her face was rosy and alive. She had never felt, or looked, so good. Yet she still slept alone
under the stars, with the cat nestled into her shoulder.

One morning when Art was in the sea, Paul turned up with all his stuff crammed into a huge rucksack. He swung it down from his shoulders and sat down on the sand next to Tessa. She felt awkward
with him now, sensing his jealousy of her friendship with Art.

‘Don’t look so worried, Tessa,’ he said, and his hazel eyes looked at her with resignation. ‘I’m heading off – back to London.’

‘You are?’

‘Yeah – don’t look so shocked. I’ve had a great summer – but I don’t want to be stony broke forever. I want to build something – I’ve got to give
it a go – work, I mean. Conforming. Going straight. Shaving my head and wearing a suit.’

‘That’s so sad,’ Tessa said, studying the disappointment in his eyes.

‘Yeah – it is, and it isn’t. I want to study music – and London is the place.’ Paul fixed his eyes on hers. ‘But it’s not over, Tessa, between us. I
know you’re with Art now – but if it doesn’t work out, here’s my London address. Look me up sometime – please?’

‘Okay,’ Tessa said. ‘I’ve got a friend in London, so I might be there sometime.’

‘I think you’re fantastic, Tessa. Look me up – when – when he breaks your heart.’

‘Oh he won’t!’ Tessa said, but Paul stood up, heaved the rucksack onto his shoulders and walked off without another word. She sat holding the card he’d given her, with
mixed feelings. She liked him. But there was no comparison. She loved Art, blindly, unconditionally, and forever.

There was a sense of summer ending. The hippie commune was starting to disband as people drifted away, going back to university, or home, or moving inland for the winter. Tessa knew she
wouldn’t be able to continue sleeping out, and every night now felt like a gift.

On the last hot day, when people were talking about a storm coming in, she and Art walked the coastal path towards Zennor. ‘It’s now or never,’ Tessa was thinking. She’d
got herself on the pill, thanks to Lou who knew a doctor who didn’t ask questions. Art had been fantastically patient with her. Soon she would be sleeping in the bus with him. She wanted it
to happen in the place she loved, in the deep warm grass between the rocks with the glittering waves pounding at the shore.

She was terrified she would do it wrong.

‘You have to trust your body, Tessa,’ Art said. ‘It knows exactly what to do – and yours definitely does.’

She was terrified that the image of Ivor Stape would haunt her at the last minute and turn off the magic.

‘I am stronger than him,’ Art said reassuringly. ‘I’m alive and here for you, Tessa – darling.’

She loved it when he called her ‘darling’. Spoken in his quiet voice, echoed in his eyes, ‘darling’ was a transformational word.

There would be fear.

But, on the other side of fear, there would be magic.

She sensed his excitement as he lowered her into the grass. She loved that he didn’t hurry. Art took it slowly, kissing and touching and murmuring to her. She loved the tantalising way he
paused to look into her eyes and tell her she was beautiful, the most beautiful woman on earth.

She loved the way he said, ‘I’d like – to make love with you – now.’

The resonance of the ‘now’ seemed to open a stream of magic within her. And, once it began its tingling journey, she couldn’t stop. She didn’t even remember how or when
her clothes had come off. She just let go, and loved the hard, hot feel of him inside her, the way he sighed and groaned with pleasure, the way she cried out with joy, again and again, until the
stream of magic became, at last, the ‘brimming river’.

Freddie was sipping his mid-morning cuppa when he saw a man in a suit coming up the path, a long brown envelope in his hand. ‘Whoever is that?’ He waited for the
envelope to come through the letterbox, but the man rang the doorbell. As usual, Freddie let Kate go to the door while he sat in the kitchen, listening.

‘Are you Mrs Barcussy?’

‘I am, yes. What can I do for you?’

‘Is your husband here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good – then I need to see both of you. It concerns your daughter, Tessa.’

‘You’d better come in,’ Kate said, and Freddie heard the fear in her voice. What had Tessa done now? He glanced uneasily at the man who stood awkwardly by the kitchen table,
tapping the long brown envelope. Kate pulled out a chair. ‘Do sit down.’

He’s too clean
, Freddie thought, looking at the man’s well-scrubbed nails.

‘I’m Elliot Rutherford and I’m a lawyer, from Rutherford and Barnes, Solicitors in Monterose,’ he began, and Kate reached across the table and held Freddie’s hand
tightly.

‘It concerns your daughter, Tessa, in connection with the will of the late Mr Ivor Stape of The Mill.’

Freddie tensed. ‘We don’t want nothing to do with him, or his will,’ he said forcefully, ‘and Tessa’s not here. She’s – away.’

‘Well – legally, I have to give you this.’ Elliot Rutherford pushed the envelope across the table.

Freddie pushed it back. ‘We don’t want anything from Ivor Stape. You can take it away with you.’

‘No – I can’t do that. I am bound by law to make sure that you read it,’ said Elliot Rutherford, ‘and if you refuse, then I am duty bound to open it and read it to
you.’

‘Is it bad news?’ Kate asked.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Then I shall read it.’ Kate took the envelope and opened it. She pulled out a document on expensive, cream paper, and unfolded it. She stared at Freddie. ‘It’s his will.
Ivor Stape’s will – what’s that to do with us?’

‘Read clause 17, over the page,’ said Elliot Rutherford. ‘I’ve marked it in red for you.’

Freddie watched Kate’s eyes scanning the text. Then she looked up at him with one of heart-stopping smiles. ‘Everything’s all right, Freddie. And guess what?’

‘What?’

‘Ivor Stape has left Tessa a plot of land! Ten acres, on the edge of the woods – oh – fancy that, Freddie!’

Elliot Rutherford smiled at Kate’s enthusiasm. ‘Tessa can’t have it until she’s twenty-one, so you are to be the custodians – hold it in trust for her.’

‘Where exactly is this land?’ Freddie asked. ‘Have you got a map?’

‘I have. There – it’s shaded in red.’ Elliot Rutherford unfolded the map and slid it across the table.

Freddie put his glasses on and studied it. ‘Ah – I know those fields. That’s good land – lovely land. Next door to Lexi’s place.’

Unexpectedly, Freddie had one of his visions. He saw spirit people around the table. Granny Barcussy, Annie, his father Levi, Kate’s father Bertie, all of them nodding and smiling, and
little Jonti sitting at Bertie’s feet. Freddie’s bitter thoughts melted away, and light flooded in as he saw the last piece of his dream fall into place.

‘I believe Mr Stape added a note to that clause,’ said Elliot Rutherford. ‘You might want to read that too.’

Kate and Freddie bent over the document, their heads close as they read the codicil attached to clause 17. ‘Well!’ said Kate. ‘What a surprise. He’s apologised –
and said that Tessa told him how much she loved the stream, and that’s why he left her the land.’

‘That middle field has got a stream in it,’ said Elliot Rutherford.

‘Ah – I know,’ Freddie said, and he looked at Kate. ‘That’s a spring. And it’s the source of the Mill Stream.’

Kate hardly recognised the young woman who stood at the door. ‘TESSA!’ she gasped, and held out her arms.

‘Mum!’

They hugged, and laughed, and hugged again.

‘You look – so different. I can’t believe it,’ Kate said warmly. She stood back and looked at her daughter with pride. The light blue denim jacket and flared jeans suited
Tessa, and so did the gold-blonde streaks and the crinkly ribbons and beads in her hair. Her face was suntanned and alive – and she was laughing! But what amazed Kate was the radiance in her
pale blue eyes. They were full of light, the way they had been on that day so long ago when she’d been dancing in the rain.

‘That’s because I’m happy, Mum,’ Tessa said.

‘But you – you look – transformed,’ Kate said. ‘You look like a goddess in a painting.’

Freddie was overwhelmed when he saw Tessa. ‘That’s my girl!’ he muttered, holding her. ‘I’m glad you’ve come home.’

‘Art is here too,’ Tessa said, smiling at Art who stood back quietly, enjoying the reunion.

Kate gave Art a hug while Tessa and Freddie were gazing at each other, both smiling from ear to ear.

‘You’re very welcome, Art,’ Kate said. ‘Did you drive all the way from Cornwall in your wonderful bus?’

‘Yeah – took us three days, but we had a great time. Camped on Dartmoor under the stars.’

Kate took Art’s hands. ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘from my heart. You’ve transformed our little Tessa into a shining star.’

Art grinned. ‘No hassle.’

Later that day, Art and Tessa sat on the grass at the source of the Mill Stream. The water glinted in the mellow October sunlight as it gushed out of the hillside. The land
smelled of apples and wood smoke, and the air had a chill of autumn. Spindleberries and sprays of rosehips hung over the spring, tendrils of old man’s beard, purple elderberries and
bryony.

Tessa had brought a peace rose from the garden, and they sat looking at its creamy petals, flushed with pink, a huge flower, voluptuously soft.

‘It could float all the way – down to the river – and out into the Atlantic!’ Art said.

‘Who knows – it will have to cross the dark mill pool,’ Tessa said, ‘like I did. It’s part of the journey.’

Together they threw the rose into the spring, and watched it go twirling away down the bright stream.

‘Love and peace,’ Art said. ‘May it travel far.’

The words of Madame Eltura will be revealed in the third and final book of this family saga, which will tell the inspiring story of Tessa’s struggle to fulfil her
destiny.

Thank you to my agent, Judith Murdoch, for believing in me; the great team at Simon & Schuster UK, and to Beth Emanuel for her dedicated help in preparing the
manuscript.