Chapter 37 Unplumbed Depths
Unplumbed Depths
We had celebratory champagne at dinner and Cariad was allowed a little sip, which went right to her head, so she became giggly, until she’d eaten enough to counteract it.
Afterwards we took our coffee into the sitting room, but Cariad went straight to bed voluntarily, since she is now deep in the world of Harry Potter and Hogwarts.
Opal, who was still inclined to be detached and huffy, announced that no one need drive her to the station next morning because she’d run into Verity on the landing and she’d very kindly offered her a lift, which would be much easier since, she presumed, she would be taking all their equipment back with her.
She cast Pearl a reproachful look, but her sister said indignantly that she’d already offered to take half of it with her.
‘There’s no need now, Pearl, if Verity’s driving Opal home. It’s very kind of her,’ said Nerys cheerfully.
‘Not really, I’m contributing to the petrol,’ Opal said.
‘If Verity felt so washed out that she couldn’t come down to dinner, is she up to the long drive to London?’ asked Kate.
‘Oh, I think she’s OK really, she’s just had enough of this place, like me,’ Opal said rudely.
‘Dear girl, we’ll miss you so much,’ said Noel gently, and Evie gave him a sideways grin.
It was the first time I’d heard Noel say anything that could be remotely construed as even mildly critical of anyone, but I was sure he had hidden depths, which my mother was busily engaged in plumbing.
‘I’ll give you a hand loading things into the car in the morning,’ offered Pearl, and Toby said he’d be more than happy to help, too.
‘I can manage,’ Opal snapped. ‘And since we’re leaving really early, I’m now off to bed!’
We all watched her go without regret.
Then Evie said to Nerys, ‘I think perhaps some of the family might like to go to bed early, too, because I’m going to send you some bedtime reading if you give me your email addresses.’
‘What on earth do you mean?’ asked Nerys.
‘That I’d like you to read Arwen’s letters to Milly tonight, because there are issues in there we need to discuss and I propose we have a family conference right after breakfast tomorrow.’
‘What kind of issues?’ demanded Nerys uneasily, and Timon, who was sitting next to her, put his arm around her shoulders.
‘You’ll see,’ said Evie enigmatically. ‘I assume you’ll want Rhys there at our conference?’
‘Yes, and Uncle Noel too,’ Nerys said.
‘Well, I’ve already got Noel’s email address, so if the rest of you give me yours, I’ll send the letters document over to you all when I go to bed, and you can burn the midnight oil a little.’
They did so, and then Evie said, ‘It will be better if we don’t discuss anything until we meet after breakfast.’
‘I’ll come over early,’ Noel said. ‘If you’re emailing that document soon, I think I’ll go home now.’
The others had been listening, looking rather mystified but intrigued.
‘Pearl, you’ll have to go down to the studio on your own in the morning, but I know you’re dying to see how your pieces have come out of the kiln,’ Timon said.
‘OK,’ agreed Pearl, and Toby said he’d start work a bit later so he could go down with Pearl and see how her first ceramics looked.
Kate looked absolutely eaten up with a curiosity that was doomed never to be assuaged, as she hungrily watched Evie follow Noel out of the room.
I suspected the family were going to have a sleepless night, just as I had when I’d read those letters.
*
I can’t say I slept well, either, because unlike the rest of the family, I knew there was yet more to come at the conference from Milly’s journal, even if not exactly what.
So I woke very early next morning, filled with a strange mixture of happiness because Rhys and I were in love, and apprehension.
There was no way I could work, and it was still dark outside, so I made myself a cup of coffee and sat down with my laptop to check my emails … only to find that Evie had relented about Milly’s journal and had sent it to me in the early hours.
But only to me, she said, and I was not to mention any of it to anyone before we all met up after breakfast, not even Rhys.
With a feeling of increased trepidation, I opened the document and began to read Milly’s journal, which began in St Melangell on a note of bittersweet happiness.
31 July 1919
Edwin has just told me that he and Arwen are engaged – and while this isn’t a surprise to me, since I realized they loved each other long before they did, yet it is still bittersweet.
I’ve always known that Arwen doesn’t love me in the way I love her, and never will, so I must welcome this closer tie between us …
1 August 1919
When Efa gave me Arwen’s distressed, tear-stained, and hasty note, I scanned it over twice, trying to read between the lines.
The scene with Caradoc had clearly been a dreadful one – yet I wondered – reading again where she said she’s realized marriage is not for her and begged me to tell Edwin of this, and her hope that we could resume our old friendship on the same footing – if perhaps he had let his passions run away with him this morning and frightened her.
She is so level-headed and independent that she always seems older than her years, but she is still only eighteen, after all.
I put this to Edwin, who did look a bit shamefaced, but insisted Arwen had returned his embraces and seemed happy when they parted.
He thinks her changed attitude towards their engagement is due only to the row with Caradoc, who probably said some vile things to her, and he seems confident he will change her mind once we have got her safely away.
Perhaps she will … but she sounded resolute and she’s very stubborn when she has made up her mind about anything.
I can’t wait to get her safely away from here tonight!
6 August 1919
When Arwen arrived at our rendezvous on Friday evening, I’m sure Edwin was as shocked as I was at her distressed appearance. She was quite frantic that we get away immediately.
I’ll never forget that seemingly endless journey back to Cornwall, taking a much less direct route than that by which we had come, over some very bad roads. Luckily it was a clear summer’s night with a bright, almost half-moon helping light the way.
As the hours passed and there was no sign of pursuit, I think we all relaxed.
It was late evening when we left Arwen at our friend’s remote cottage on Bodmin Moor, in the care of an elderly and very deaf housekeeper, who had been told she was convalescing from an illness.
She clung to me for a moment at parting and even managed to smile at Edwin, but it was difficult to drive away and leave her there.
*
I’d long finished reading the journal when the gong rang for breakfast, but was still sitting there, my laptop open and tears streaking my face at the poignancy of Arwen’s last months of life in Cornwall.
Despite the application of a lot of cold water, my eyes were still red when I went downstairs, and Rhys gave me an anxious look as I went in.
It was a depleted party without Verity and Opal. I’d been too engrossed in the journal to notice any sounds of their departure in the early hours. Cariad had already been dropped off at the castle by Tudor because she and Mel were going to a children’s craft session at the local history museum.
Nerys looked rather strained and Timon kept giving her anxious glances, while Noel, who arrived just after I did, sat next to her and patted her hand from time to time.
From the look he and Evie had exchanged when he arrived, I thought they’d already been in contact with each other, despite her insistence that nothing be discussed until the meeting.
Rhys took my hand under the table and squeezed it, murmuring, ‘Don’t look so worried, Ginny. I’m sure Evie can’t have ferreted out anything too appalling!’
I tried to smile at him, but my face wasn’t working properly. I didn’t much fancy my porridge this morning either and gave up on it almost immediately.
Toby and Pearl went off to the pottery together and Kate, who had eaten her way through her usual gargantuan breakfast, soon followed, with a backward look full of thwarted curiosity.
I expected her twisty little crime writer’s mind would supply a more lurid answer to what we were going to discuss privately than the real one.
We went into the large sitting room and Timon switched on the log-effect fire, which gave the room a cheerful air of cosiness, even if none of us was feeling very cosy just then.
Evie took her usual seat next to it and waited for the rest of us to settle on the sofas around the coffee table, before she began to speak.
‘I assume you’ve all now read the letters that Arwen sent to Milly and have discovered, as I did, two very unpleasant truths about Cosmo Caradoc’s character?’
No one replied, but Nerys nodded mutely.
‘First, let’s deal with Caradoc’s appropriation of Arwen’s paintings as his own work.’
‘That was a complete shock,’ Nerys said.
‘I did already know that Arwen had helped him a bit in the studio, just with backgrounds and details, and that he’d also encouraged her to try copying his style.
But to find out that he signed some of her paintings and sent them off to the exhibition as his own work is … well, unthinkable for any true artist!’
‘It would appear that his ego was too big for him to appreciate that point,’ said Timon. ‘I already knew from Nerys that Arwen had helped in some of Caradoc’s paintings, but I can’t understand any real artist or writer putting their name to someone else’s work.’
‘Yet the appropriation of female artists’ work by men has so often happened in the past, as evidenced in my TV series and books,’ pointed out Evie.
‘And so far I’ve only touched on the tip of the iceberg.
But even when it came to helping Caradoc with his own work, while Arwen had been happy to do this for her father, she was most definitely reluctant to do so for him. ’
‘That’s hardly surprising, because now I’ve seen some of her work, I can appreciate the way she had already developed her own very original style,’ said Nerys. ‘It’s no wonder she didn’t want to become a ghost artist for Cosmo.’
‘Ghost artist,’ murmured Evie, appreciatively. ‘I must remember that one.’ Then she focused her mind back to the matter in hand, sitting up a little straighter in her chair.
‘Arwen wasn’t prepared to put up with that, or with Caradoc’s advances to her. We need to discuss this obsession of his, which led to his increasingly inappropriate behaviour towards her, and culminated in that final scene on the cliffs.’