Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
About the Author
Also by Susan Sallis
Copyright
Madge was four years old when she first saw the Cornish sea and fell in love with it, and it was there that her family grew and suffered and loved. It was there she and her mother went to recover from a heartrending family tragedy – there she was forced reluctantly into marriage – there she fell into a wild and passionate wartime love.
And it was there she saw her children grow and love and cope with the secret legacies the years had left them, until finally they became more than just summer visitors.
The magnificent story of a family and the woman who held them together.
Susan Sallis is the author of over twenty bestselling novels, many of them set in the West Country. She was born in Gloucestershire and now lives in Somerset with her family.
Also by Susan Sallis
A SCATTERING OF DAISIES
THE DAFFODILS OF NEWENT
BLUEBELL WINDOWS
ROSEMARY FOR REMEMBRANCE
BY SUN AND CANDLELIGHT
AN ORDINARY WOMAN
DAUGHTERS OF THE MOON
SWEETER THAN WINE
WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE
TOUCHED BY ANGELS
CHOICES
COME RAIN OR SHINE
TO
MY FAMILY
SUMMER VISITORS
MADGE HAD NEVER imagined St Ives could be so cold. Of course it was January, and they’d never been down later than October, but sometimes even in the summer the wind and rain had been such that they’d yelled into it: ‘Like November, isn’t it?’
But at its worst it had been exhilarating, never depressing. Once, just before war was declared, when she was expecting Rosemary, the skies above Clodgy had split open in a spectacular thunderstorm that had been intoxicating in its Wagnerian magnificence. Madge recalled standing on Old Man’s Head, mouth open, trying to drink the rain, and shrieking, ‘It’s warm! It’s lovely, warm, sky-water!’ And they had laughed together because water at St Ives, whether it were sea or rain, had a special unifying effect on them.
Now, twenty-five years later, she did not smile at that particular recollection. Her grimace – or so she told herself – was in response to the biting wind that shrivelled – not exhilarated – and scoured the tiny cobbled streets and sandblasted the granite cottages. No wonder St Ives looked so clean if all winter long it was subjected to this brand of sterilisation. Suddenly St Ives itself felt very old. And so did she.
She turned from Rose’s window and went to the one-bar electric fire in the immaculate hearth. She could not remember feeling so cold. Even in the war when there had been no coal to speak of, she’d kept warm by working or piling on clothes. Now, dressed in her respectable camel coat, there was no room beneath for more than a twin-set and silk scarf. She looked at the borrowed black hat waiting for her on the corner of the dining table. She wore scarves or knitted caps at home during the winter. That hat was going to offer no protection at all.
Rose came in from the kitchen across the hall and caught her expression of misery before she could wipe it off with a smile. Rose did not feel the cold any more than she felt the heat. Her nature, physical and mental, was not so much hard as completely resilient.
‘Have they opened up yet?’ she asked. She went to the window which afforded a perfect view of the chapel. She answered her own question. ‘No. Well, they’ll hang on to the last minute this weather I suppose.’ She had no time for funerals and Etta Nolla – even Philip – had been shocked that she did not attend her husband’s. But she never missed watching one from her front room window, just to see who was there and what they were wearing.
She glanced over her shoulder at Madge and gave her the same open smile she’d given her forty years ago.
‘So. You’ve come all this way for old Philip Nolla’s send-off. Seems daft to me. But you’ve got some guts, I’ll give you that.’
Madge raised her brows, surprised. Guts had not been needed, though resolution had. To come to Cornwall in January on her own entailed making complicated domestic arrangements, and organising her own travel arrangements too. But there had never been any doubt in her mind that she would come.
She spread her hands to the pale glow in the hearth and said, ‘I had to come. I’ve known Philip and Etta all my life.’
There was a funny little pause, then Rose coughed and said, ‘Yes. Well …’ and rubbed at an imagined smear on the pristine window. ‘I really meant coming here to stop. To me. Folks who knew me when I was Rose Care, still don’t have nothing to do with me now I’m Rose Foster!’
‘Oh, Rose.’ Madge could still feel embarrassed by Rose’s determined frankness. ‘Where else would I go?’
‘There’s plenty of room in the town at this time of year, young Madge. And what will Etta Nolla say when she knows you’re here?’
They both knew that Etta’s comments would probably be condemning, but Madge said quickly, ‘I should think she’d be pleased. Philip always spoke very highly of you.’
‘Aye. He would.’ Rose rested her hands on the sash and stared through the window. ‘He would that. He was a good man. And there’s going to be a good turn-out for him, too.’
Madge stood up and turned her back to the fire, hoping that some of its feeble heat might find its way inside her coat and struggle past skirt and petticoat to where there was a gap between stocking-tops and knickers. She looked at the ramrod back at the window and remembered the young woman Rose had been; supple and carelessly beautiful. The town’s scarlet woman.
Madge said carefully, ‘I wish you’d come. Philip told me how well you looked after Martin Foster when he was dying. And I could see – that day you introduced us – that you made him very happy.’
Rose turned and smiled and for a moment was the old Rose Care, thumbing her nose at her world.
‘I expect Philip told you too that I didn’t go to Martin’s funeral. My own ’usband.’ She laughed. ‘They all wanted me to go so they could cold-shoulder me. But when I didn’t … oh my dear Lord, you should ’a seen the faces that day when they went into the chapel!’
‘You watched? From the window?’
‘Aye, I watched.’ She turned back. ‘Like now. I’m an outsider, Madge. Always ’ave been. An’ certainly where Martin was concerned … dear Lord, I was married to him just over a twelve-month. He married me to look after him when he was dying. And I did that. And this house is his, thanks to me. I’m a lot of things, Madge, but I’m no hypocrite.’
There was a long silence while both women thought about times they had shared and could not talk about.
Then Rose said, ‘Here they come. Nearly time.’
Madge joined her at the window. Two men were unlocking the chapel doors and latching them back with great difficulty. The wind ballooned their sober overcoats and they held their hats beneath their arms.
Madge murmured, ‘Poor Etta.’
‘She’ll enjoy it,’ Rose assured her hardily. ‘She’s Cornish from the year dot and they all enjoy a good funeral.’
Madge was silent. Rose had called herself an outsider. That was certainly what Madge was. A summer visitor, like the swallows. Not used to this scouring wind and freezing cold. Would Etta resent her presence?
Rose darted her a look, then almost as if she’d picked up Madge’s thought, she said, ‘Philip Nolla will be glad you’ve come, at any rate. And looking so nice too. That hat… and the coat. The sort of thing they wear at Mennion House. County. You’ve done him proud.’
Madge swallowed sudden tears and both women stared out of the window stolidly, waiting for the embarrassment to pass.
People began to arrive. The Trevorrows in identical black overcoats, she with a veiled hat, he with a bowler. They tried to enter the chapel with dignity and were routed by the wind turning them inside-out.
‘Black boots and stockings,’ Rose commented. Then, as the bowler was only just saved, ‘Such a mortal pity men can’t use hat-pins.’
She was rewarded by a laugh from Madge. She turned briskly. ‘Well. If you’re going, I reckon it’s time to go.’ She surveyed Madge critically. ‘Bring the hat forward a bit so that your bun is outside. That’s better. Funny, there’s a bit of you that hasn’t aged at all. I can still see you with that long plait hanging down your back. And now you’re knocking on fifty.’
I’m forty-five,’ Madge protested humorously because she could have wept at Rose’s words.
‘Aye. I can give you a few years. Fifty-two next birthday. Ah well.’ She went ahead and opened the front door just wide enough for Madge to slip through. ‘Don’t you take no notice if they’re funny with you,’ she said into the wind. ‘Come straight back ’ere and we’ll ’ave a cup of tea or something stronger!’
Madge held her hat and turned to smile up into those bold black eyes that hadn’t changed in forty years. Strange, this feeling she had that Rose had always been there in her background. Yet she’d never seen her more than half a dozen times in all those years.
She went down Bunkers Hill bent almost double into the wind. Her own personal grief for Philip was just below the surface of her thoughts and was very deep; she dared not try to imagine how Etta must be feeling. Deep emotion always had made Etta tetchy; if she was short with Madge today, if that strange all-seeing stare was cold, then Madge must understand. Whether anyone minded or not, she’d had to come. She represented so many people whose lives had touched Philip’s briefly and had been changed by the contact. She had to forget herself. She had to be … thankful.
The chapel was packed, literally to the ceiling. The gallery was tiered so that the congregation in the back row had to wear flat hats to fit beneath the planked roof. Those in front hooked umbrellas over the balustrade and arranged veils and skirts. Madge wished she’d gone upstairs where her camel coat wouldn’t have stood out quite so much. Thank God Rosemary had lent her the black hat. She had refused it at first. ‘I’ll wear my brown felt. It’s warmer and just as suitable.’ But Mark, who understood the Cornish like a native, had said, ‘Don’t be daft, Ro. Mum can’t go to Philip’s funeral in a brown felt hat.’ And Rosemary had gone upstairs to fetch the hat she had bought for herself only five years before.
How right Mark had been. And, in spite of Rose’s approval, what an idiot she had been not to borrow a black coat from somewhere too. Camel might be respectable but it was a glaring contrast to the all-pervading black. She tried to sit lower in her seat, caught Mrs Trevorrow’s eye and was treated to a strange kind of smile. Pitying? Surely the Trevorrows could have no idea what Philip’s death meant to her? However, any kind of smile was better than the frozen stare she was getting from everyone else, and she returned it warmly. Immediately, like a light, it was switched off. Madge shrank into herself. So Rose was right; they were going to be ‘funny’ with her. Philip was a local hero and they were jealous of him, possessive, resentful of ‘outsiders’ like herself who might try to claim something of his memory. Yet she and all her family had been closer to Philip and Etta Nolla than anyone else. It was an acknowledged fact. They might be just summer visitors, but they’d been the Nollas’ only visitors and there had always been a special bond between them. And she, Madge, was representing all of them. She mustn’t forget that. And she mustn’t forget what else Rose had said: Philip would be pleased to see her, camel coat or no camel coat. He’d glint up at her and say slyly, ‘Fancy up-country ’at for fancy up-country woman!’
She straightened her back and smiled as she conjured up a picture of him. If he were sitting by her side now he’d reach to her shoulder and she’d catch his expressions in fleeting glimpses when he chose to lift his head and show her what he was thinking. He did not do that with anyone else; she’d realised that a long time ago. He was a very closed-in man. But he had opened for her. He teased her and let her know that she was special.
Someone stopped by her side and looked at the empty pew next to hers. It was Jim Maddern. It was years since they’d exchanged a word, but she knew him. He had been on the periphery of their group when they were children; a link between them and Rose Care. Now his dark eyes met hers without recognition and he walked on to the front pews reserved for the close mourners, though he had little to do with the Nollas. She felt a flush break through the crust of cold over her face. She had been deliberately cut and by Jim Maddern of all people! This was what Rose had meant. As soon as the service was over she’d get back to the safety of Bunkers Hill and wait till this evening for a quiet word with Etta.
Then the harmonium squeaked to a stop and everyone began to stand up. The wind gusted into the chapel and the minister’s voice began. ‘I am the resurrection and the life saith the Lord. Those who believe …’ Madge dropped her chin and held her breath. She no longer thought of Philip alone; the words dealt with the whole of humanity, the quick as well as the dead. As the procession came slowly up the aisle it was as if she could see them all… more than a dozen of them, all caught and held in Philip’s net.
The coffin went past her. Cheap elm because Etta would have no money to spare. The lifeboat crew bore it on their shoulders. Then came Etta who was older than her husband, so must be nearly eighty. She was walking alone and leaning hard on her stick. Surely there was someone to walk with her, childless though she was?
She drew level with Madge and stopped. The mourners following, neighbours mostly, shuffled to a halt and exchanged glances. Etta lifted her stick and tapped Madge sharply on the arm. Alarmed, Madge looked up and saw that familiar, toothless grin.
‘I thought as ’ow you’d come,’ she said in a voice audible above the minister’s incantations. ‘I saved you your place.’ And she transferred her stick to her other hand and held out her arm for Madge. As in a dream Madge stepped sideways out of the pew and took the arm. Etta gave a grunt of relief and surrendered her weight to Madge. Together they walked up the aisle and took their places in the front row, and watched in silence as Philip’s unwanted physical body was lowered gently on to the coffin rests in front of the minister. There was Etta’s wreath in the obligatory shape of an anchor, lying the length of the wood; and above it, as if holding it in place, was a circlet of Christmas roses which Madge had chosen on her arrival yesterday when she had walked down Tregenna Hill from the station.
The last time she’d seen him was five months ago; last summer. She should have known then. Perhaps she had known and not been able to face it.
She’d been sitting with her back to the harbour wall, dreaming. The tide was coming in and Maddern’s pony and trap waited patiently on the shore for the first of the boats to bring in its catch. Madge wondered idly about mackerel for tea. Etta would pickle them in vinegar and they could have salad, and a mountain of bread and butter. Then, if the weather held, they could drive to Marazion and watch the sun go down behind St Michael’s Mount. It was so hot. So gloriously hot. She closed her eyes against the healing sun and could still see the white sand and the glass-green of the sea; but not exactly where the sea became translucent blue and merged with the sky.
She opened her eyes to check on this, and there was Philip signalling to her from the Fisherman’s Lodge. She moved, getting to her feet with some difficulty, gathering up handbag and book and shuffling through the sand barefoot to meet him. He opened the gate for her. Strangers were not allowed in the Lodge but she had gone there with Philip as a small girl and was reluctantly accepted.
They sat outside, backs to the wooden shack with its leaning chimney, the milling crowds shut away behind them. They could still see Maddern’s pony and trap waiting patiently by the glinting sea.
‘Here they come,’ Philip said quietly. And around Smeaton’s Pier came the first of the diminished fishing fleet, a big tub-like boat, broad in beam with a wide stern, like a child’s toy boat bobbing down a bath of water.
‘Good catch by the looks of ’en.’
The boat was wallowing under its load of fish. It berthed alongside Smeaton’s Pier with much shouting and leaping about from its crew. A boat put off from the harbour beach and the business of unloading began. Madge was reminded of an oil painting by Sargent in one of the galleries. Painted over a hundred years ago, it bridged time to the present.
Philip said, ‘Broodin’ over young Mark, are you, woman?’
‘No. Thinking of time. Some things never change.’ She smiled down on the ancient trilby. ‘I don’t think of Mark all the time, Philip.’
‘But most of it, I reckon.’
She was silent, remembering the heartache for Rosemary not long ago.
His hand came out and rested for an instant on the skirt of her sun dress. It was gnarled as the twisted ropes tethering the boats to the shore. Then he leaned forward, elbows on knees, fingers hanging loosely. ‘I think o’ young Mark as my own son. You know that, dun’t you?’
She swallowed. There were things between them that were never said.
He did not wait for a reply. ‘You dun’t need to worry about ’im, woman. Like I said … my own son.’
He did not look up and she stared down at the crinkled neck above the blue kerchief, realising how much of her anxiety for Mark Philip had carried over the years.
She cleared her throat. ‘I wish there was some way I could tell you how grateful … you’ve always been there …’
‘The shoe is on the other foot, woman. Entirely.’
But he did not look up to reassure her and she felt a pang of concern.
She said, ‘Are you all right, Philip?’
At last he flicked her one of his quick smiles.
‘Course I’m all right, little woman. Etta and me, we’ve allus been all right.’ He looked at the sea again. Jim was bucketing fish into his cart. Mackerel, silver and blue and fluid as mercury. ‘Our needs are small, d’you see. Our bodies thrive on sameness. Fish and tea.’
It wasn’t what she had meant but she was glad that the conversation was back to everyday things. ‘You should have fruit and vegetables, Philip.’
He laughed with genuine amusement. ‘Woman … woman. We’re both nearly eighty years old. Whatever we’ve ett, whatever we’ve done … must be right, mustn’t it?’
She laughed too, ruefully. Neither of them wore glasses, neither of them had ever been to a hospital; they were bent with rheumatism, but they still walked the beaches daily.
Their silence was companionable from then on. They watched people gather around Jim’s cart to buy the mackerel; he pocketed the money eagerly. His father still paid him pre-war wages for his part in the fishing business. Another boat came around the jut of Smeaton’s Pier and the whole business of berthing began again. The heat soaked into them like balm and Madge closed her eyes, reliving the total security of childhood when there had always been someone else to plan tomorrow.
The cemetery, clinging to the cliff above Porthmeor beach, was a nightmare of freezing wind, but it was exactly the place Philip would have chosen; within sight of the sea but far above its clawing fingers. Madge supported Etta at the graveside, unable to slip away, physically held by those black-gloved fingers.
Afterwards they gathered in the house: the Trevorrows; the Gurnards and the Madderns; old Mrs Peters and Miss Lowe who delivered pamphlets and tracts. Mrs Fosdick from next door had pushed chairs in anywhere, and they sat back to back, cheek by jowl, while cups of hot sweet tea were passed over their heads and potted meat sandwiches put on their laps. When Etta saw a free hand or knee she would place a photograph in or on it. ‘That’s Philip when he was with Jem in the ole lugger.’ ‘There’s Philip there, behind that easel thing. One of they artists was always painting him.’ She handed a bundle to Madge. ‘Take them. They’re mostly your brother and your pa. Used to make my life a mis’ry they did.’ But she drew her mouth inside-out as she spoke, in silent, reminiscent mirth.
Mrs Fosdick passed Jem Gurnard a plate of sandwiches and ignored Madge. Etta immediately took the plate from her and sat down on the slippery sofa, sharing the sandwiches solely with Madge and talking to her alone.
‘I well remember they cricket matches on Porthkidney sands. Your pa. ’E liked bowling best. Yonkers didn’t ’e call it?’
‘Yorkers,’ Madge said faintly, wishing she was in the kitchen at home, cutting up vegetables for the casserole they always had on a Thursday. For the first time in her life the cottage’s smell of fish made her feel queasy.
‘Ah. That were it. Yorkers. ’E bowled ’em sort of lovingly, didn’t ’e? D’you remember that, my girl? ’E’d put us all over the beach, jus where ’e wanted us, then ’e’d run up ever so careful-like an’—’
Mrs Trevorrow said, ‘Well, if everyone is ready, I think Mr Trevorrow had better begin. We have an engagement this evening.’
Madge would have made her excuses then, she had no wish to hear Philip’s last Will and Testament. She half rose, but Etta pushed her back down and put photographs and sandwich plate firmly on her lap.
She said, ‘Let’s hear it then. Though I reckon there’s not many ’ere what doesn’t know it already.’
Mrs Trevorrow addressed the chandelier which hung so incongruously above the table.
‘If you are imputing that my husband discusses the business of his clients—’
‘Oh be silent, woman. Philip wrote his wishes on a piece of paper in this room with the help of Mr Fosdick for a scribe, and with two witnesses who could ’ave told anyone. The paper was put in your man’s safe. That’s not being a client!’ She hunched an irritable shoulder. ‘Get on with it. Get it over.’
Whether or not Philip had been a client, Mr Trevorrow was determined to do him justice. With much shoving, he ousted Jim Maddern from his place at the plush-covered table, made enough elbow room for himself to scatter a few papers around, picked out the relevant one, adjusted his pince-nez, and proceeded to read.
‘I, Philip John Sebastian Nolla, being of sound mind, do hearby bequeath all my wordly goods to Mark Briscoe, on the understanding that my wife, Etta Margaret Nolla, may continue to live in Zion Cottage until her death.’ He paused until the various muttered exclamations had died down, then went on without expression. ‘I know this will disappoint my partners in the Forty-niner, and I ask them to understand. I am going to make it all legal-like with Mr Trevorrow, but I want them to know that this is my real true wish and they would oblige me by not questioning it.’ Mr Trevorrow looked up, avoiding Madge’s gaze, and commented, ‘It was indeed witnessed by two friends, and again by my two clerks. Although it is not couched in legal terms, it is, nonetheless perfectly valid.’
There was a long silence in Etta’s parlour. Madge understood now why she had been ostracised during the funeral and since her arrival in the house. She could understand their resentment; Philip was giving away a slice of St Ives, and to an outsider; a summer person.
And then Mrs Fosdick said cuttingly, ‘Well. Well, now we know, I suppose. We often wondered whether young Mark’s trouble was anything to do with the St Ives hip. Now we know.’
Madge’s stomach heaved against the fish smell. It was dying out now, but in the old days many St Ives people had been born with dislocated hips and, untreated, had swayed their way through life accepting their disability without question. Philip had been one of them. But how on earth could anyone, however evilly inclined, associate Mark’s ‘trouble’ with the St Ives hip? She choked and put a hand to her mouth.
Etta said loudly, ‘Now listen to me. This is Philip’s last wish. I knowed about it and I agreed to it. Philip an’ me, we ’ad no fam’ly as you all know. They was our family – ’ she put a hand on Madge’s shoulder, ‘an’ better than most real fam’lies they was too. All we’ve bin able to give ’em is their ’olidays. An’ they’ve ’elped us over all our ’ard times agin and agin. We couldn’t do nothin’ in return. Till now. They’re summer people and that’s the way they will allus be. But young Mark is summat different. ’E en’t a summer visitor. We can give ’m summat. An’ that’s what we want to do. An’ if I ’ear anything more about it, I’ll start a spate of gossip myself. Oh yes. I know a bit about most of you. We all know a bit about each other I reckon, and we keeps our counsel. But counsels can be unkept. If necessary.’
Madge sat with bent head. But Etta did not actually deny what Mrs Fosdick had implied. And Philip himself had said that Mark was like his own son. Had Philip twisted the truth until he deluded himself that that was true? Did Etta believe it?
Madge concentrated on controlling herself while the mourners filed out. The very air was full of their resentment and anger. Some of them managed a civil farewell to Etta; no-one spoke to Madge. She might not have been there.
When she and Etta were alone at last she still could not look up. She put one hand over her eyes.
‘I don’t know what to say, Etta. Your home. The Forty-niner. We can provide for Mark. You must know that. He won’t be able to accept this – he can’t accept it. It will confirm … people will think … he can’t accept it!’
‘Don’t you be too sure, my girl. Philip knew what he was doing.’
‘If only he hadn’t done this, Etta. Don’t you see – don’t you realise what Mrs Fosdick meant? We can’t ever come here again!’ Her voice rose to a wail of despair, but Etta, as always when confronted with anguish, chose to ignore it.
‘Don’t talk rubbish, girl. And help me put these chairs back in the passage. Ernest Fosdick will come and take them tonight. I think Philip would have been pleased with it all, don’t you?’
‘Yes. I’m sure. But Etta—’
‘I’m not talking about it no more, Madge, and that is that. My strength is all gone somewhere, and I want a proper cup of tea and my kitchen fire.’
She led the way into the back quarters where the range glowed comfortingly, shoved the kettle on to the trivet and sank into the chair that had always been Philip’s. Madge saw that her face was a network of deeply etched lines and her eyes were red-rimmed with weariness.
‘Etta, I understand how you feel …’ She stood miserably in the doorway, ‘But you do realise what people are thinking? They’re not just angry because Philip willed his property to an outsider. They think he’s done it for a reason. They think …’
‘That young Mark is Philip’s son?’ Etta laughed grimly. ‘No, they don’t. They want to think it, yes. It makes it more int’restin’. But if they think that, they’ve got to take Philip off that pedestal they put ’im on. An’ they wun’t do that!’
The kettle began to spit into the coals. She hauled herself up.
‘Dun’t be ’ard on them, Madge. Folks is only ’uman. There’s allus bin a bit o’ gossip round Philip an’me. It never worried us, you know that. An’ Mark will revel in it – all of it. Philip knew that. That’s why ’e did it. It will give Mark a place ’ere, like ’e’s allus wanted. A place to live and a right to live in it.’ She made the tea and sat back down with an audible gasp. ‘Now. Are you ’avin’ this pot with me, my girl? Or ’ave you got to be packin’ up your traps to get back ’ome tomorrow?’
It was crystal clear which reply she wanted, and Madge knew that any further discussion would be dismissed as ‘useless talk’.
She said in a small voice, ‘I suppose I must go and pack. I’ll write to you. I’m only round at Rose Foster’s if you …’
‘Rose Foster? What possessed you to go there?’
‘She’s respectable now,’ Madge said defensively. ‘Philip thought a lot of her too.’
‘Aye. He did. He thought a lot of most people. He valued people. Even the bad ones. Even … even himself.’ She glanced up. ‘That’s something you could learn from ’im, Madge.’
‘I …’ Madge wondered how much Etta knew. ‘Yes. But Philip was good. Through and through.’
Etta smiled into the fire. ‘Aye. Perhaps he was.’ She sighed sharply. ‘Now get off to Bristol, Madge, and tell ’em what’s ’appened. I want young Mark to come ’ere afore I joins Philip. I can do for’im till then. An’ after … well, after will take care of itself.’
‘Mark is working, Etta. He can’t give up a perfectly good job and just come here like that.’
‘Why not? This is ’is ’ome now. An’ ’is share o’ the Forty-niner will bring in enough for ’im to live on, if you’ll ’elp ’im out now and then.’ She sipped gratefully. ‘Goodbye, Madge. Close that door as you go out, there’s a draught like a knife coming down the passage.’
Madge did as she was bid and walked for what she knew would be the last time down the long passage to the front door. In spite of the funeral, it was as cluttered as ever. Sheets, probably Philip’s sheets, hung over the line to air, and the borrowed chairs took up most of the floor space. The tears, which she had held in check all day, started to flow. She walked into the centre of the cobbled court, and tipped her head to stare blindly up at the dormer window which had been a lookout in the days when the cottage was first built, and Philip’s bedroom every summer when ‘the family’ had come to stay.
‘Philip,’ she whispered. ‘What have you done?’
She swallowed her tears, afraid that Mrs Fosdick would see her in the gloom, then she walked slowly to the harbour wall to gaze across the wind-chopped water to where the Forty-niner tossed on her anchor. She understood why he had left everything to Mark, she understood only too well. But what would happen now? Was this the end of her summers here? And was that perhaps what Philip wanted too?
THE TRAIN JOURNEY from Bristol was endless. Eight hours of sulphur-tasting salmon sandwiches and bitter Thermos tea, itchy liberty bodice and pencil-and-paper games with Neville which she never won and never expected to win. Her role as baby of the family and a girl at that, was clearly defined.
She was dazed when they reached the tiny junction of St Erth; she had almost forgotten that there was a world outside the railway carriage. But as she tumbled on to the platform conscious only of the elastic on her hat biting into her chin, the enchantment started to work. There were trees lining the station; they did not have leaves, they sprouted sabres. There were enormous pebbles bordering the burgeoning flower beds – obviously they were magic pebbles because they glinted crystal and blue in the fast-setting sun and the flowers were laying their heads on them as if they were pillows. And the air was different. She’d never considered air as an entity before, not in the whole four years of her life. It was part of the world; she breathed it; there could be lots of it, especially in Park Street in the winter; or there could be not much of it, in which case a feather filched from one of the sofa cushions would float up to the ceiling and bob around like a paper boat on the River Avon. This air was completely different. It did not only smell different, it actually tasted. The awful aftermath of sandwiches caking up her mouth began to dissolve; her hair, stiff and tight under her panama, loosened and lifted; her soot-lined nostrils were soothed, and her ears heard it.
‘Oh … oh … oh,’ she sighed. ‘It’s like Fairy Twinkle Land.’
Neville scoffed loudly, and her father smiled in his lofty indulgent way, but her mother, who read nightly from the big book about Fairy Twinkle and who had sewed a sampler for her daughter which read ‘Be good sweet maid and let who will be clever’, hugged her and said, ‘You’ve been such a good little girl all day long. Such a good, good little girl.’
They climbed wooden steps, crossed a bridge, and found what Mother called ‘the little train’ waiting for them. People sat with picnic baskets and dogs and shouted to each other. Not because they were angry, but because that was how Cornish people conversed. Father’s colleague at the office who had recommended St Ives had warned them about this. And he had also said they wouldn’t understand a word that was said. Marjorie understood everything and found it fascinating. They shouted about the weather and the pilchards and the luggers up north. Marjorie knelt on the seat so that her mouth was close to her mother’s ear, and whispered, ‘It’s a shame the poor buggers won’t be here to see the pictures, isn’t it Mama? They must be such pretty pictures.’
Mother glanced apprehensively at Father who did not always appreciate Madge’s mis-hearings.
‘Little girls shouldn’t listen to grown-up conversations. But luggers are boats, my darling, fishing boats. And they won’t miss seeing pictures. It’s the pilchard catch they’re talking about. Now, no more listening.’
But Marjorie loved listening, and it was irritating that many of the grown-ups she knew, talked in whispers or spelled out words as if deliberately trying to shut her out. The Cornish people weren’t like that. They shared what they said; she didn’t have to listen, not really.
Mother turned her towards the window. ‘Look, darling. There’s St Ives. Isn’t it beautiful?’ And Madge looked, and listened, and breathed, and fell in love.
They had booked in at Zion Cottage with some trepidation. The Nollas had never taken summer visitors before and the Bridges had only stayed at boarding-houses in Weston-super-Mare and Rhyl. Father’s colleague had told them that ‘rooms and service’ was the best way to do it in Cornwall. You got the full flavour of the place without having to put up with their fish diet. The rooms came at seven and six each per week, and you bought your own food for the landlady to cook. She also cleaned, made beds and put up with buckets, spades and sandshoes in her hall. He had given them the address where he and his family had ‘gone native’ last summer; but Mrs Warner had decided that foreigners weren’t worth the money and had passed Alfred Bridges’ letter on to the Nollas. They had had two bad pilchard years and although Philip Nolla took his lugger up to the North Sea each summer, the income was always uncertain. Etta Nolla decided to supplement it with summer letting. But they would have to take her as they found her.
The hall which would accommodate their holiday impedimenta was a passage boarded with ship’s timbers and strung with washing lines. The sitting-room, suspended above the fish cellar, creaked like a boat’s cabin and wasn’t much bigger. Above the circular plush-hung table a delicate chandelier swayed and tinkled when anyone breathed, and curios of a lifetime spent by the Atlantic were packed on shelves, window-ledges and fireplace. Shells, driftwood carvings, ships in bottles, sepia photographs, lace antimacassars, polished crab claws, ships’ bells … all jostled for place. Mother breathed something about the amount of dusting, but it soon became apparent that Mrs Nolla did not dust. Madge knew that it was the original Aladdin’s cave.
Phillip Nolla was still ‘taking herring’ off the Northumberland coast; with the slackening of the pilchard harvests most of the St Ives luggers went north for the summer months. He might well be home in time to look over the foreign family who were paying so handsomely to share his home. It became obvious very quickly to the Bridges that they were on approval. If they gave satisfaction they would be welcome next year. If not, no amount of rent would secure their rooms again.
Etta lived in the back in conditions so primitive that at first Marie Bridges was shocked, and then full of admiration. The ‘back’ was built right into the living rock and had no window. Light came from the open door into the passageway, and from the trap in the floor which led via a ladder to the old fish cellar. One wall contained a cooking range, another a long table and storage shelves. Dry goods were kept in an airless little pantry beneath the stairs, perishables down in the fish cellar. Water and toilet arrangements were also down there. In the bedrooms above were elegant chamber pots, china basins and ewers. Etta was won over immediately by Alfred Bridges’ first edict. ‘Neville, you will take down the slops each morning and bring up fresh water for Mrs Nolla.’
She showed her gratitude plainly when she told him, ‘There are a litter of Nollas in St Ives. My name is Etta and my man is Philip.’
She was a small, wiry woman, all bone and sinew. Her hair was already turning grey and screwed painfully into a bun on the top of her head. She wore black; high necks and long sleeves; a shawl for outdoors. She was one of nature’s stoics. And she preferred men to women; Neville and Alfred got smiles from her, however grim. Marie and Madge were usually treated to a tight-lipped approach which could soften into indulgence or explode into exasperation as the situation demanded. That first evening it was the latter.
Madge, as a reward for being such a good, good little girl, was kept up late and allowed to join in the family walk to Porthmeor. Directed by Etta, they strolled up Virgin Street to Barnoon and walked along the top of the cemetery. The view was breathtaking; the sun just drowning in the sea. They lifted Madge on to the wall to get her first glimpse of the Atlantic.
‘America is over there – ’ Alfred told her, jabbing a finger at the horizon.
But as she peered, a fly, drunk with sun and summer evening, zoomed straight into her eye.
‘Oh it hurts,’ she sobbed. ‘Oh it does so hurt!’
‘That’s because it’s come all the way from America!’ Neville joked.
‘Do be quiet Neville,’ Marie begged. ‘Oh my darling!’ She appealed to her husband. ‘What can we do, Alfred?’
‘Her own tears will wash it out,’ he said sensibly. ‘Home to bed. That’s the answer.’
As they entered the cottage, Etta emerged from her back room at all the commotion. She screwed up one corner of a not-too-clean handkerchief and poked at Madge’s eye. The commotion increased.
‘She should have gone straight to bed,’ Etta declared, giving up. ‘No good ever came of keeping a child out of bed after six o’clock!’
Madge wept anew at this lack of sympathy and Marie said, ‘Oh Etta, she’s been such a good little girl all day long – such a shame—’
Etta was mollified by the use of her name. She said, ‘Come and sleep in the little truckle bed I’ve made up for you, my maid. ’Tis like a canoe.’
Suddenly, just as Alfred had said, the fly was washed out on a wave of salt tears, and the pain went away. Madge gave her wide, painful smile, and held out her arms to this new friend.
‘Come with me. Please come with me, Etta. You’re a real proper Cornishwoman.’
The words were filched from her father, but Etta did not know that.
‘From the mouths of babes …’ she murmured, herding Madge up the stairs. They knew they would be welcome next year.
Alfred Bridges was a strange mixture of modern and Edwardian. He revered, even worshipped, his wife, but his treatment of Etta Nolla was as one man to another. Etta – and later Philip – became his henchmen, and as such came with them on most of their expeditions. Etta baulked at sitting on the beach; she was averse to sand. But she was soon taught how to hold a bat and how to field a cricket ball. When her advice was sought about good picnic sites, she would smile her grim smile and say, ‘It do depend on whether you’re taking the bat and stumps. If not, there’s a little rocky cove just beyond Zennor there.’
‘Caves?’ asked Neville, wide-eyed.
‘I reckon. They caught smugglers there when I were a girl.’
‘Golly!’
‘But if you want a proper cricket match, you can’t beat Porthkidney. Just b’low the golf links.’
Alfred considered. ‘Not really enough of us for a proper match, Etta. We’ll go and look at the smugglers’ cave.’
Neville whooped his delight and Etta said seriously, ‘Reckon we can make up a team when Philip gets ’ome, Mr Bridges. There’ll be six of us then. And we could get little Jim Maddern along, an’ p’raps Jem Gurnard. Dependin’ o’ course.’
Everyone knew that meant depending on whether the Bridges were considered acceptable or not. Meanwhile the picnic hamper was lugged along the cliff path and for the last mile Madge was carried on her father’s shoulders. She could see Neville’s dark brown head bobbing among the fern in front, closely followed by Etta’s topknot, while behind, her mother’s old-fashioned boater floated genteelly over the top of the foliage like one of the many gliding gulls, and her voice emerged from it in ecstatic exclamations at the view.
Since that first night when Madge had been adjured to admire the view and had succeeded only in collecting a fly in her eye, she had been suspicious of views. But now, quite suddenly, the sheer magnificence of the meeting of land and sea hit her in the eye with far more force than the fly had done. She rode her father’s shoulders as if they were the wings of a bird; she saw the cliffs and the ocean as her true environment. She was four years old but already she knew that the beginning of human life had happened here, on the edge of the water. She felt it in the bones of hands and feet, in the bellows inside her chest. She was conscious for the first time of her physical being, its wonderful intricacies, its one-ness with everything else. At that moment she thought she could have taken flight from her father, dived into the sea with the seals, dug her fingers into the ferny earth and grown roots. Instead she cradled her father’s skull in her plump arms, lowered her cheek to the bald spot on his crown, and wept.
Her parents were concerned.
‘Madge, what is it?’ Father lifted her down and held her away from him commandingly. ‘Tell me why you are crying, child. Come along now.’
‘I don’t know …’
‘Alfred dear – let me hold her. My poor baby—’
‘Marie, she must explain properly. She is quite old enough to identify a problem causing her such distress. Now, stop crying, Madge, and think. No, I’m not cross with you, dear, I merely wish to discover the trouble so that I may alleviate it.’
‘Alfred. She cannot possibly understand—’
But Madge understood that her parents were disagreeing, and she was the cause of it. She swallowed her tears, gulped, then gasped, ‘I was so sorry for everything. The world. It’s so beautiful, you see.’
For a moment Alfred stared at this child of his who, please God, would never know war, then he clasped her to his shoulder, rested his chin on her ordinary brown hair and closed his eyes. Somehow she had inherited the things he knew; the shadow behind the sunlight.
He said firmly, ‘No need to feel sorry, Madge. It will always be here. However much we try to muck it about it will always be here.’
Marie put her arms around them both.
‘She is so senstive,’ she murmured, deeply thankful that Alfred understood.
Madge had already lost her moment of epiphany. She dried her face briefly on her father’s linen jacket and lifted her head.
‘Don’t tell Etta,’ she begged. ‘Please don’t tell Etta that I cried again.’
They smiled and assured her they would do no such thing. Marie took her hand and began to lead her through the shoulder-high fern.
‘I think you and I will have to work hard to gain Etta’s respect,’ she said.
It was the first time she had acknowledged that she and Madge were equal females. Father often referred to Neville and himself as ‘We men’, but to Mother, Madge had always been a very precious, very little, girl.
The picnic was a great success.
There was a great deal of driftwood on the enormous pebbles at the shoreline, and Madge scurried about with Neville, slipping and sliding on the rocks unheedingly, to build a huge pyre. Neville tried to shock her by asking her to look for a dead gull – ‘Give it a proper funeral, Sis,’ – but she shook her head and said inspirationally, ‘It’s a signal fire, Nev. Like in your comic. We’re shipwrecked, see, and we have to keep a fire going day an’ night—’
‘I know about signal fires, Madge! It’s my comic!’ But Neville was just as keen as she was and he prevailed on Etta to feed the fire while he and Madge climbed a finger of rock and waved the picnic tablecloth.
Marie would have ordered them away from such dangers, but Alfred restrained her smilingly.
‘They won’t try to do more than their capabilities,’ he murmured. ‘Neville must be permitted to chance his arm. And this is an important step forward for Madge. She’s coming out of her chrysalis.’
‘Yes. Well. I want them to be good friends in spite of the age difference,’ Marie conceded.
‘When he’s twenty-four and she’s twenty, there will be no age difference,’ he said strongly. And she smiled, believing him.
By the time Philip Nolla returned from the north, Madge had established a reputation as a budding tomboy. Neville, sensing competition as well as companionship, tested her to the limit. She could climb cliffs, scramble around rock pools and walk the cliff paths as well as he could himself. Neither of the children were allowed out of their depths in the sea, but Madge was not scared of the giant rollers and would either bob over them like a cork, or sit on the sandy floor of the ocean and let them guggle harmlessly over her head. She did not realise as yet that Neville removed himself hastily when a wave built itself up above his head; so far he had managed to cover his retreat with war whoops, but Madge’s courage – which obviously came from stupidity – annoyed him greatly.
One afternoon towards the end of the holiday, they were on Porthmeor beach as usual, the children in the sea, Alfred and Marie in deckchairs outside the canvas bathing tent which they had hired for the fortnight. The picnic hamper, covered with a damp towel to keep the contents cool, served as a footstool for Marie, who if the truth were known, partially shared Etta’s dislike of the all-encroaching sand. Etta was not with them; she rarely joined them for their afternoon bathes and that day was awaiting Philip’s arrival from his three months at sea.
A wave broke beyond the children. It looked enormous but Madge knew it would flatten out by the time it reached them. Neville never quite believed that and began to retreat. ‘Come on Madge – it’s coming!’
‘It’s only little, don’t run away, Neville.’
He said furiously, ‘I’m not running away, stupid! It’s a game. Don’t you know that? You have to see who can go the fastest. The wave always catches you. You always lose!’
But he stood his ground and sure enough the wave surged around his waist harmlessly. The next one began to pile up inexorably. Madge paddled legs and arms like fins and watched it coming. Neville said nervously, ‘It’s the seventh. The seventh wave. I’ve been counting. We ought to race this one, Madge. Come on.’
Against all instincts Madge put her feet down and tried to stride back to the shore. Neville, much taller than she was, lifted his legs crazily clear of the water and lept ahead of the wave like an ungainly ostrich.
That was how Philip Nolla first saw them all. The boy leaping clear of the clawing sea; the girl suddenly and horrifically disappearing beneath it; the parents, either indifferent or totally ignorant, sitting placidly high up the beach drinking tea from Bakelite cups.
Like many others who get their living from the sea, Philip could not swim. And his respect for the moods and vagaries of the ocean was akin to fear. But his instinct to save the small girl surmounted all that. He struggled through the dry sand frantically, then tore along the firm wet shoreline and plunged fully clothed into the next wave. His heavy boots filled with water and his trouser legs pressed coldly against knees and thighs. He shuddered convulsively and pushed on. Then, just to his left, a white bathing helmet suddenly bobbed to the surface, and beneath it a small face, curved and dimpled like a sprite’s, smiled beatifically at him.
‘Isn’t it bootiful?’ Madge asked. ‘All bubbly like lemonade sherbet!’
He hardly heard her words. He grabbed her and lifted her to shoulder height; her knitted costume provided a good grip; he turned and struggled out of the water and there were the parents and Neville, wide-eyed and alert at last.
Philip put Madge down carefully.
‘You all right, my girl?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’ Madge thought it was all a game. She surveyed this small, soaking new arrival with delight. ‘Are you Philip?’