A Cornish Stranger Read online

  Gabe smiled again as she opened the gate, grateful that no one had preyed on her grandmother. Jaunty had never seemed to be afraid of living such an isolated life, something that astonished Gabe. She drove through the gate then closed it behind her before travelling down the drive to park by the shed.

  Opening the door, Gabe took a deep breath. The air was damp, fragrant with the smell of eucalyptus and pine. Home. The bamboo that lined one side of the path rustled as if a strong breeze had whipped through it, but the leaves on the eucalyptus towering above were still; so, an animal, hunting, must be the cause. Gabe opened the boot and disturbed a jackdaw that complained bitterly as he flew off. She leaned against her little car and looked up at the blue sky. A few clouds rushed past the pines that protected the cabin from the harsh north wind and it felt very warm for September . . . Indian summer.

  Pulling out grocery bags, Gabe walked down to the cabin, noting the weeds sprouting where the gravel had become thin. Sometime very soon she would need to get out the strimmer and push the wilderness back a bit. She knew there was much to do. On her last visit six weeks ago she had noted the steep decline in her grandmother’s health – not that Jaunty would acknowledge it. She would have a battle on her hands to make Jaunty see that she needed Gabe. A woman of ninety-two could not live in an isolated cabin on her own and they couldn’t afford to have live-in help, not that Jaunty would even entertain such an idea. Adjusting the bags in her hands, she stopped to listen to the cry of a gull. The river was visible through the pines and the cedar-clad cabin almost blended into the hillside. This first glimpse of Jaunty’s hideaway always created a lump in Gabe’s throat. This was home, and it was so right she was doing this that she wasn’t sure why she’d left it so long.

  Late afternoon sunlight baked the cedar cladding and Gabe could see her grandmother sitting at her desk, staring out of the window at the river. A small sailing boat tacked in front of Groyne Point. It looked so peaceful. Gabe’s glance fell to the immediate surroundings. The small garden was booming with agapanthus, lavender and weeds – in the weeks since her last visit the weeds had almost overtaken the proper plants. She had serious work to do, but if the weather remained this fine it would be a joy. Turning towards the cabin again she saw the kitchen door was open, welcoming her home.

  Gabriella walked in weighed down with bags. Jaunty paused in the doorway to the kitchen, noting the dark circles under her granddaughter’s eyes. ‘I told you not to come.’

  ‘What sort of greeting is that?’ Gabriella placed the bags down, came towards Jaunty and embraced her, then pulled back and studied her.

  Too much scrutiny was a bad thing. Jaunty knew how to hide, but attack was the best method. ‘The only one you deserve.’

  ‘You’re stuck with me.’ Gabriella began to put away the groceries.

  ‘That’s enough to feed a family of five.’ Jaunty shook her head.

  ‘You said you weren’t enjoying your diet so I thought I’d cook for you and see if we can overcome the indigestion.’

  ‘Doubt it.’

  ‘I think the indigestion is because you live on biscuits, not proper food.’ Gabriella stopped and turned to her. ‘You looked tired. Go and sit in the sun while I unpack, then I’ll bring you a cup of tea.’ Gabriella smiled, yet her eyes appeared sad. Jaunty knew those eyes. They had haunted her for years.

  Jaunty went to the front of the cabin and out on to the terrace. Weeds were sprouting from between the stones. She bent to the ground but didn’t have enough strength to pull the wretched things out. They had been there too long. How had she not seen them until now?

  She sank into a chair. So much had slipped, not just the weeds embedded in the terrace. The roses had been left to their own devices for so long they looked more like ­brambles than garden delights. Had she seen them, Nonna, her Italian grandmother, would have been appalled. Tilting her face upwards, Jaunty closed her eyes for a moment. Although nearing the end of September, there was still strength left to the sun and it warmed her face. Jaunty was tired as Gabriella had said, and every day each breath took more energy; more importantly, nothing captured her interest or her appetite. She didn’t have much strength left and she needed strength to do what she had to do. Maybe Gabriella’s arrival, with all the fussing and food that came with it, was a good thing. It would build her up to finish.

  ‘Why are you here?’ Jaunty blinked.

  Her grandmother’s eyes were not as bright as Gabe remembered. The radiant blue had clouded and faded. Jaunty turned to look at the creek and Gabe recalled all the times she had found her grandmother staring at the river, not the view but the water itself. For hours on end Jaunty would gaze at the creek or the river, not painting or sketching, just looking, as if she were searching for something. The sea had nearly taken Jaunty’s life towards the end of the war, but in the end it had saved her by putting food on the table.

  ‘I want to be here.’ Gabe knew there was no point in reminding Jaunty how tight money was. Jaunty knew and that’s why she’d been living on cheap biscuits.

  ‘No, you are here because I am dying.’ The weary eyes focused on Gabe.

  Gabe paced the terrace, wondering how she was supposed to respond to this. In a way it was true. But there was more to it than that.

  Jaunty laughed. ‘I am no longer fit for purpose. Nothing works properly any more and sometimes it doesn’t work at all.’ Jaunty flexed as she straightened her top. Her grandmother still dressed, as Gabe had always seen her, in her navy sailing smock and trousers, plimsolls on her feet, white for summer and black for winter. Halfway to standing Jaunty stopped and dragged in a breath and Gabe could see the spasm of pain that crossed her grandmother’s face, but she didn’t move. She knew Jaunty didn’t want her help: it would only make things worse, make them stand out. Independence was the thing that Jaunty valued above all else.

  Jaunty was all the family that Gabe had had since she was thirteen. They’d gone from a family of three – Jaunty, Gabe and Philip, her father – down to two in an instant when her father had died on an explosion on an oilrig in the North Sea, and soon it would just be Gabe. There was nothing she could do to alter that. However, she could make what time they had left special. She hoped that her being here could ease some of Jaunty’s discomfort, even just a little. Jaunty turned as she entered the cabin and smiled. ‘It’s good to see you.’

  Gabe forced herself to remain in the garden as her grandmother made slow progress back inside. It was one thing wanting to help and another to make her grandmother feel worse about how far she had declined, so rather than race to Jaunty’s side, Gabe began pulling up the weeds that had sprouted between the paving slabs. She could tell the weather had been good because many came out easily, scattering dry soil on to the terrace, but a few were more persistent; their roots had ventured deep, their stems breaking at the surface, sure to grow again.

  Jaunty’s eyelids fluttered and eventually the sparse lashes rested on the thin skin. Her breathing became more regular, moving the faded eiderdown in shallow undulations. Gabe backed out of the room, leaving the door ajar. How many times had she crawled under that eiderdown, scared of something in the night? Too many times to count. Jaunty was so slight now she was barely visible on the bed. The mattress below her was ­ancient and moulded to fit Jaunty’s younger form because Jaunty had ceased turning the mattress years ago, around the time Gabe’s father had died.

  Standing just outside Jaunty’s bedroom, Gabe looked closely at the sitting room. Although the covers on the chairs and sofa were faded, the room was cosy. Gabe had always loved the ­almost square, utilitarian shapes of the chairs and the rectangular sofa. They must have been expensive to last so well all these years. A pine-scented breeze came through the open French windows and the sky was brilliant crimson on the horizon, fading to pale blue as she looked directly up when she stepped outside. The air had cooled and pink shades still washed the few clouds lingering
above the hillside.

  ‘Red sky at night, sailors’ delight. Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.’ As Gabe uttered the words she frowned. She really didn’t know if they held any truth. Despite spending so much of her life here in Bosworgy she had never sailed; rowed yes, but sailed, no. Her father had never sailed either, as far as Gabe knew. She wondered if this was because of Jaunty. Her grandmother’s relationship with the sea was complex. She would swim and she would row as far as Helford but never further and she would stare at the sea endlessly. Jaunty had never spoken of her experience to Gabe but Gabe’s father, Philip, had told her of Jaunty’s bravery many times. He had been so proud of what his mother had done during the war and of her success as an artist. Sadly, he had never been too detailed about Jaunty’s war years or maybe she had just been too young to be interested. Maybe Jaunty would talk about it if Gabe asked now.

  Gabe picked up the weeds she had pulled out earlier and, climbing the steps to the old shed, she put them down on the bonfire pile then walked to the car and collected her suitcases. She had to find out the exact state of Jaunty’s health. Her grandmother was evasive but Gabe was sure that Mrs Bates would be able to bring her up to speed. That woman managed to know everything and always had. It was Mrs Bates who had known when she and Jenna Williams had been scrumping pears from a house in the village.

  In her room, Gabe smiled at the things still on the bookshelves above the windows. There was the prize she’d won for singing at school. Her father had been so pleased. He’d loved her voice and had encouraged her singing for as long as she could remember. She was sure he wouldn’t be happy at the turn her life had taken, but she hoped he would have understood if he were still here. On the chest of drawers sat a picture of her at a piano with her father turning the pages. She remembered it all so clearly. She had just finished singing his favourite Scottish ballad, ‘Ailein Duinn’, and little had she known then that the sea would take her father from her. She had only known that the sea was important in their lives, mostly because of the cabin’s location perched above the water.

  As she unpacked she began humming the tune, before singing the words. She hadn’t done any vocal exercises today so her voice wavered at first.

  How sorrowful I am

  Early in the morning rising

  Ò hì, I would go with thee

  Hì ri bhò hò ru bhi

  Hì ri bhò hò rinn o ho

  Brown-haired Alan, ò hì, I would go with thee

  If it is thy pillow the sand

  If it is thy bed the seaweed

  Ò hì, I would go with thee

  Hì ri bhò hò ru bhi

  Hì ri bhò hò rinn o ho

  Brown-haired Alan, ò hì, I would go with thee

  If it is the fish thy candles bright

  If it the seals thy watchmen

  Ò hì, I would go with thee

  Hì ri bhò hò ru bhi

  Hì ri bhò hò rinn o ho

  Brown-haired Alan, ò hì, I would go with thee

  I would drink, though all would abhor it

  Of thy heart’s blood after thy drowning

  Ò hì, I would go with thee

  Hì ri bhò hò ru bhi

  Hì ri bhò hò rinn o ho

  Brown-haired Alan, ò hì, I would go with thee

  As she sang the last note she looked out of her window and the water of Frenchman’s Creek was glass-like in the fading light. Now that she was here permanently, she would learn to sail. It couldn’t be that hard and with the river on her doorstep it would be a shame not to. Tomorrow she would go to the sailing club and find out about lessons.

  In the kitchen she grabbed a scrap of paper. As always, this was recycled paper from a sketch or painting that Jaunty had rejected. There had always been evenly torn fragments by the phone. Nothing was ever wasted. Gabe wondered how many works hadn’t reached Jaunty’s exacting standards over the years and had become the shopping list or even one of Gabe’s own pathetic attempts at art. She looked up to the far kitchen wall to see her own framed painting of a summer picnic and laughed at her rendition of Jaunty, her father and herself with a cake bigger than they were in the centre. Her priorities were clear. Cake was everything.

  She wrote down ‘sailing lessons’ then looked in the cupboard to see if the ingredients were there for her to bake a cake for Jaunty tomorrow. She was sure she could do some form of cake that would be diabetic friendly, low in sugar, high in slow-release carbohydrates. It was a challenge she could rise to. Gabe grinned at her unintended pun as she mentally listed the key ingredients, then sighed as she wondered what her grandmother had been eating because the cupboard was bare except for a few soup tins, some terrible biscuits and a loaf of stale bread growing a life of its own. This was not good at all. If she had had any doubts about moving down here they disappeared.

  Going through the sitting room towards Jaunty’s bedroom on the far end of the cabin, Gabe stopped to admire Jaunty’s paintings hanging on either side of the wood burner. One was a study in blues, ranging from aqua to deepest cobalt, and the other was soft white tinged with lavender and pale green. Gabe thought of bright afternoons when the sun made diamonds sparkle off the surface of the river. Somehow Jaunty captured a mood or moment so precisely, yet when Gabe actually ­studied the work it looked almost like nothing more than random brush strokes. That was Jaunty’s genius.

  Something dropped to the floor in Jaunty’s room and Gabe stuck her head through the door. Carefully she slipped in, picked up a pen and placed it on the bedside table. Gabe loved this room. It was almost as big as the sitting room, only a little bit narrower and it was puritan in its furnishings: a bed, a chest of drawers, a desk and a Windsor sack-back chair. The walls were lined with windows and behind the bed was another of Jaunty’s paintings, one that reminded Gabe of the sunsets reflected in the river, all fiery, passionate reds and magenta.

  The works hanging in the cabin were impressionistic and abstract, whereas the ones that had vaulted Jaunty to fame in the first place were more realistic and very slightly primitive. Someday it would be wonderful to see a retrospective of Jaunty’s work. In the past, when Gabe had raised the subject with Jaunty, her grandmother had said nothing, but waved her hand in the air and gone back to whatever she’d been working on. It had been clear that Jaunty didn’t want the attention that a retrospective would bring, which Gabe thought was a shame. Jaunty had earned it but she only desired a quiet life.

  Gabe crept out of the bedroom and walked out on to the terrace. A light breeze stirred the treetops, then the leaves stilled as if someone had switched a machine off for the ­evening. Enter­ing the house again, she glanced through Jaunty’s bedroom door. The eiderdown moved regularly so Gabe headed to the car, still laden with things from the flat. Her mouth watered at the thought of a glass of wine. She paused and leaned against the doorjamb. Did she really have the energy to do any more today? Why not just collapse on the sofa? No, she had better do it, and then she needed to compose some music for a baked bean commercial. She shrugged. This was her life now – but at least she would be living it at Bosworgy. She smiled as she set off.

  Two

  Sunlight broke through the flimsy white curtains. Jaunty had chosen the fabric years ago because of the simple daisy pattern, not because of the practicality. It didn’t keep out the light or the draughts, but it was covered with embroidered daisies and there had been so many daisies in the field that summer . . . Jaunty had been eighteen in the summer of 1939 and he was beautiful. Closing her eyes, even after all these years, she could still feel his skin under her fingers. Now she touched her shrivelled hands, abused by the turpentine and the paint. One of those hands had drawn slow circles across his smooth back.

  Daisies had been her favourite flower ever since. He had woven them through her hair, the flower so simple in its beauty. No shouting, just narrow petals and a glorious drop of golde
n yellow. If she painted the daisy’s eye she would use cadmium yellow and a touch of umber.

  Before the memory faded, Jaunty rose and unlocked the desk drawer and retrieved the notebook. Studying the pen in her fingers before she began to write, ink dropped on to the page and spread into it, creating an amoeba shape. The nib touched the page then lifted as singing floated in on the morning breeze. An aria from Puccini, ‘O Mia Babbino Caro’. The purity of Gabriella’s voice stirred memories: Vienna, Paris, Rome, and Berlin. No, no, Gabriella shouldn’t be here. With her talent the world should be at her feet as it had been with Maria Lucia, Jaunty’s mother.

  Gabriella should be in London, not trying to play nursemaid. Had Jaunty left this all too late? She tapped the pen on the page again and watched another drop of ink bleed into the grain of the paper. Gabriella must let her go, but it was clear she didn’t know how to, so Jaunty must teach her.

  I have become good at farewells. I’m almost ready to say goodbye for the last time. I don’t want to go on until I don’t know who I am – and I’m the only one who does know.

  Jaunty looked up from the page and laughed. Why hadn’t she gone loopy? That would have been simple, or at least she thought it would have been. It would have been easier for her than her world turning to grey. Jaunty rubbed her temples.

  However, the last thing I want to do is to hurt you, Gabriella. But what I have to say will and that troubles me. I have barely enough oomph to rise from my bed and see the morning light on my beloved river. It is the river that saved me and it forced me to choose life. It is where I first found love and where I still seek it, foolishly.

  The raspy noise of my breathing drowns out the birds and my thoughts. It is too loud and too laboured. Each breath takes too much effort, but what should I expect at my age? My body is too old, despite what my brain sometimes thinks.