Chapter 15
I am beyond annoyed, beyond upset. Beyond relieved that my son is OK, but where do we go from here?
‘Sorry, Mum,’ Connor says.
‘It’s fine,’ I mutter as we drive through the big gates and leave the estate. I can’t even begin to retrace the route I used to get here, so we go completely the wrong way and end up at the edge of the village.
‘If your ankle’s up to it, let’s get an ice cream,’ I say.
‘Yeah, great.’
I park the car and pay and display. Connor seems to be walking completely normally as we make our way down the hill to the front.
‘You gave me quite the scare,’ I say.
‘Sorry.’
‘And what about your friend, Med? If he went back down in the tunnels then he could be in danger. You heard what Mr Penhelion said.’
‘Med’s fine. He knows all the secret ways. But he’s safe. I mean, he doesn’t live down there.’
‘Live down there?’ I frown as we join the queue at the ice-cream shop. ‘Of course he doesn’t live down there. He lives at the caravan park, right? You seem to be spending a lot of time with him, and I still haven’t met him. Why don’t we have him over for supper? You could invite his parents too.’
‘Maybe,’ Connor says, noncommittal. ‘But I haven’t been to his house or anything. We mostly meet up on the beach. Sometimes, we get an ice cream or go to the games room at the caravan park.’
‘Fine, but I’d still like to meet him.’
Connor shrugs. ‘I’ll ask. But it’s up to him, right? I mean, it’s not like I’ve got a lot of other friends here.’
I feel the familiar stab of guilt. Of course it’s good that Connor has a friend.
I’ve uprooted him and taken him away from the only life he’s known.
It’s no matter that he would be leaving his old school anyway to go to secondary school in the autumn.
Because of me, he’s spending the summer without seeing his friends, or his dad, or anything familiar.
That life doesn’t exist any more. But knowing and accepting are two different things.
Connor orders a vanilla soft serve with a flake.
I order a single scoop of chocolate. We take our haul and eat it by the front, the seagulls screaming as they swarm around the deck of a fishing boat that’s just come in.
In the far distance, I see the triple masts of the Halcyon in full sail.
It makes me think of Bess and her lover; it makes me think of Ollie.
‘Do you still like it here?’ I get up the courage to ask, fearing the answer.
‘Yeah,’ Connor answers without hesitation. ‘I do.’
‘But don’t you miss your dad, and your friends?’
‘Sort of,’ he says. ‘But I’m good here, though.’
I lean over and give my son a hug. His dripping ice cream gets all over the front of my shirt.
‘I just don’t want you to get hurt,’ I say. ‘We’re strangers here and I worry about you.’
He licks the dripping ice cream from his hand. ‘I don’t want you to get hurt either, Mum.’
‘I’m fine, honey, really.’
His ice cream drips again; he stares out past the breakwater without answering. I have the sense that he doesn’t believe me, and I have no idea why.
* * *
On our way back to the car, we pass the little museum on the high street. ‘Do you mind if we pop inside?’ I ask. ‘I want to see if there’s any information about the inn.’
‘In a museum?’ Connor looks almost impressed.
‘Well, it’s an old historic building with a past.’
‘Aren’t there lots of those around here?’
‘Yes, but you never know.’
Connor shrugs. ‘OK, let’s see.’
We go inside the higgledy-piggledy little structure. An old man with a spaniel asleep at his feet collects a pound from me (Connor is free). I have the distinct feeling that we’re the only visitors he’s had all day – maybe all week.
There are no fake pirates on display, but there are plenty of fossils and taxidermy, as well as topographical displays of the geology and archaeology of the local area.
This occupies Connor, while I go further inside to the displays on local history.
Many of the boards cover mining, but a few cover the seafaring activities in the local area.
Eventually, I find what I’m looking for: local legends of pirates and smugglers.
I read boards about the Barbary pirates from Morocco who stole thousands of Cornish citizens, including women and children, between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. The men were used as galley slaves, and the women and children sold into domestic slavery.
There’s also a board about the exploits of one of Cornwall’s most famous pirate families, the Killigrews, the head of which at one time was a woman. I recall Elspeth mentioning the family, and read about their exploits with a lurid curiosity.
I shudder to think of those desperate times and desperate people – like Old John Dog.
It’s hard to imagine this idyllic part of the world being host to such rampant murder and intrigue.
And I’m related to the perpetrators. Another wave of ancestor shame blindsides me, and I’m only glad that Connor’s too young to feel the stigma.
‘Their lot still operates here, you know.’
The ragged voice startles me; I’ve been so engrossed in reading that I didn’t notice the old man come up.
‘Pirates and wreckers?’ I smile politely. ‘Surely not.’
‘Smugglers. Rogues. Pirates. Whatever you want to call them. Time may have moved on a few hundred years, but people don’t change. They’re always after something for nothing, aren’t they? And damn whoever they may hurt in the process.’
‘That’s a bit cynical.’
‘Is it? You’re not from around here, are you?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘I mean, not exactly.’ I give him a ten-second summary of why we’re here.
‘The Cross Keys.’ He shakes his head and tsks. ‘You ought to be looking at that board there.’
He points to a board further on in the exhibit. The display is dominated by a huge facsimile of a three-masted ship.
‘Have you seen her?’ he says. ‘They say from the windows of Cross Keys, you can see the Halcyon.’
‘I’ve… um, seen the replica. Not the real one, obviously.’ I laugh at my own joke. The old man, however, is stony-faced.
‘They say the ghost of the real ship appears from time to time. No one knows when she’ll navigate the clouds and find her way back. It’s a riddle that we can’t ever solve.’
‘A riddle?’
‘Her captain told his lover that he would sail through fire and storm, sail through death to the ends of the earth, but that he would return to her. The poor maid waited and waited. He came too late, and she’s still waiting.’
I can’t see a riddle in that, but his words remind me of something Bridget, of all people, said the night we arrived. ‘If Bess is still waiting,’ I say, ‘then why isn’t her spirit haunting the inn?’
The old man spreads his hands. ‘That’s something we’ll never know. Who can say what happens in the world beyond? Not me – at least, not yet.’
‘Very wise,’ I say. ‘Though, apparently, Victoria told Cliff that “the answer to the riddle is hiding in plain sight”.’
‘Did she?’ He peers at me closely. ‘Now that is a conundrum. And so are you, if you don’t mind my being blunt. Elspeth is right – you don’t look much like a Kernick.’
‘So I hear.’ I shrug. ‘I guess it’s because I’m a distant cousin. How do you know Elspeth?’
I’m expecting the answer to be along the lines of ‘everybody knows everybody’, and really just keen to change the subject. But the old man grins widely, exposing gums and missing teeth, and his answer surprises me. ‘Elspeth and I were married for almost forty years.’
‘Married?’
‘Aye, that’s right. And we’re still good friends. But to tell you the truth, I think her eye’s roved elsewhere.’
‘You think she and Cliff are a…’ I trail off. Surely, my mentioning it is a bit gauche.
‘Oh, don’t worry, maid.’ He waves a hand. ‘I don’t mind. When we find love in this life, we have to trust it, no matter the twists and turns. Elspeth and I had our time. I just want her to be happy.’
‘That’s… very noble of you.’
He shrugs. ‘Maybe. Because if I’ve learned one thing from history, it’s that there’s no point holding on to something when it wants to be free.’
‘I guess that’s right.’ I feel like the old man’s words are picking at the scab of my own wounds. ‘And Bess Trevelyn should have been able to marry the man she loved.’
‘Aye, but there are no “shoulds” in history – only what happens, what doesn’t happen, and who lives to tell the tale.’
‘“History never seems like history when you’re living through it”,’ I surprise myself by repeating the quote I heard from Will.
‘True enough,’ the old man says.
‘And anyway,’ I continue, ‘Victoria left the inn to me, so now I’m somehow part of the story. But I don’t know exactly how. And everyone says we bear a resemblance to the girl in the painting. Can you shed any light on that?’
He stares at me again. ‘No… not really. You do look like her, I’ll give you that.
But Bess was the last of the Trevelyns.’ His frown deepens.
‘There were lots of goings-on around that time. There was a ship that sank off the coast of Brittany, then a schooner called the Seagull was commandeered from Fowey, supposedly by French pirates. Then there was the business with the Halcyon and her disappearing cargo. A few crates and barrels washed up from the wreck but nowhere near what she must have been carrying, given that she’d just been to the Indies.
It was spirited away.’ His frown deepens.
‘There are many things about that night that we’ll never know the truth of. ’
‘Did you say there was a ship called the Seagull?’
‘Aye,’ he says. ‘She was taken from the harbour right under the nose of the watch. There were rumours at the time that the perpetrators were home-grown Cornish. But it looked better officially to blame the French.’
Before he can say any more, a family with two sticky, sandy kids comes in.
Clearly, I’ll have to come back another time.
As the old man hobbles towards the till, he turns to me again.
‘As for your forebears, if you go back far enough, almost every Cornishman and woman share the same blood. Kernick, Penhelion, Trevelyn. I suspect any resemblance just means you’re one of us. ’
‘Thanks,’ I say, oddly touched. ‘It’s nice to feel welcome.’
‘Aye, you are,’ he says. ‘But because of that, it’s only right to tell you that you need to take care. Like I said before, out at that remote spot, not all the skullduggery is in the past.’
‘So you said. But what exactly do you mean?’ I cross my arms. ‘People keep warning me, but not saying what I ought to be worried about.’
‘Just keep your wits about you,’ he says. ‘And make sure you heed the messages of the past.’
‘It’s hard to do that when I don’t know what the message is. But if Old John Dog or his ghost have a message for me, then I’m all ears.’
I mean it as a not very funny joke, mainly to hide my own discomfort. But he doesn’t take it that way.
‘I hope that’s true, maid,’ he says. ‘Best you stay on the alert.’