Chapter 11
The money is gone.
How?
Still breathless from running back after the long workday, William stands panting before the shelf where he’s always kept the crude jar that must have swallowed every cent he now desperately needs.
He slams the torn newspaper down on the table, then parts his fingers, forcing himself to look at the picture of the house he built for his Helen, with that wretched title over it in bold lettering.
NOTICE OF SALE BY AUCTION
By order of the Mortgagee
Messrs. Hardesty & Rowe, Auctioneers, are instructed to offer for sale by Public Auction…
The grainy image makes the house look so simple. So ordinary. An offering unworthy of the woman with ringlet curls and laughing eyes.
He must go to her. To save her with his own hands, to fix the problem. But he cannot stop picturing that artist sprawled on the floor after his temper exploded again, her red lips in an O of shock.
With a growl, he hurls the jar to the floor. The crash detonates image after image in his brain, fragments of bridges and homes and men. He stares at the mess, chest crackling with pain.
“Why did you let me break them, God? Why?”
He screams at the ceiling, then beats the rocks until his fists are numb and throbbing.
As his heart pounds, the muck churns and swirls inside him, finally erupting in a great, guttural yell that he lets loose through the cottage.
It bounces off the walls, ricocheting on stone, yet it’s muffled from the world by the cliffs and the surging noise of waves. But now it’s out.
Then the pervasive calm of Dunn Cottage seeps into his soul as it always does, replacing what he’s just purged. Faint, spinning, he collapses into a chair, head in his hands.
In the quiet his gaze falls upon the shattered pieces around his boots.
One more broken thing. It’s as useless as the dirt it came from.
But he can’t leave it there, as broken shards hurt people.
He shoves them away with his boot and something on a larger shard catches his attention.
There’s a signature. Is it art? Is it worth something?
That girl would know. He saw several earthenware pots on the rickety shelves at the art studio. Rather costly, if he recalls.
But he’s gone and ruined that connection.
And the vase.
His muscles are bunched across his chest and shoulders and through his calves.
Frustration tightens into restlessness. He throws on a cloak, dashes out into the muddy day, and sets off at a run.
As his boots pound, he focuses on the blood flowing through his body and the strength settling into his limbs.
He runs seven miles from St. Ives to Penzance.
His days are full of work at the docks, his evenings with volunteer cleanup work from the war, like plenty of other local men.
What the bombs and battles have destroyed, he can help build up again.
It’s hard, healing work. But most of the time, it’s merely hauling away what’s irretrievably damaged to make room for the new. Life has a lot of that.
Like Helen. Perhaps she will remarry. He’s never considered that possibility, but now the thought hovers, thick and menacing. Out with the broken, in with the new. Cresting green hills, running alongside sheep, he breathes in the moist air as the drizzle begins.
Helen.
He owes her everything. Once upon a time in his youth he flitted about from one position to the next, scraping out an existence.
And then she came along with her gentle energy and channeled his genius into something useful.
He went to work at the Birmingham Electrical Engineering Company, assembling generators until the supervisors watched him rebuild an entire motor by hand and pulled him into engineering work. All because of her.
He’ll never forget it.
And now he puts his skill to another use. As darkness descends and William strains to see the metal supports of the bridge being rebuilt, a well-dressed man approaches with a hand outstretched. “I hear you’re the one managing the bridge rebuild.”
William stares at the man’s smooth, dirt-free hand, blinking as his mind goes blank.
“Right clever, you are. More than the other lads about the coast.” He smooths his hands down his suit jacket. “I’m not in a position to offer pay, but would you take room and board?”
“No, thank you.”
“Wouldn’t you fancy a real bed? Roof and walls?”
Pity. Charity. William rakes one dirt-crusted hand through his wild mane of hair and feels burning heat on his neck. The man believes him homeless.
Money, he’ll take—for Helen. But he’ll accept no amount of comfort for this work.
Fish mongering brings in his coin. This, rebuilding what the war destroyed, is to bond together the broken pieces of his soul.
Restitution for the many bridges he blew up in Germany—sometimes with enemy men still on them.
When the world quiets, he hears their tight screams. Sees their catapulting bodies against the night sky, the explosive brightness of the blast.
The stuffed shirt jerks his head toward the expanding bridge structure, supported by complex scaffolding of William’s design. “The work you’re doing here, it’s—”
“Voluntary. Like the others.”
“You cannot simply—”
“You wish me to go?”
“No, of course not, but—”
“Then leave me to it.”
He limps off with long strides, wading into the shallows and then scaling the scaffolding. Why does anyone need to make it complicated? Accept the help or don’t.
He pounds a wedge in with a mallet. Once, twice…
and stops. Darkness leaks into his thoughts again with the familiar movement.
He repeats the action and it’s muscle memory.
He breaks into a sweat and memories cascade until a wave sprays him, cooling his skin.
He forces himself to do it again, the swing and tensing of muscles hauntingly familiar.
He braces for an explosion…but the air echoes with silence.
“Ho, there!” A burst of activity sounds above, and there’s a scuffling.
William swings up a level and moves toward them. “What’s the trouble?”
“Just a pest,” says a man watching nearby, broad hands on his hips. “A rodent caught in the trusses.”
One man extracts the mud-covered rat and holds it out. Just before he hurls the thing into the water, a pitiful whimper sounds. It isn’t a rodent’s squeak.
“Wait.” William peers down into the blinking, crusty eyes of a very scared kitten, back legs dangling as it struggles for a foothold. “That’s no rat.”
“Here, then. You deal with it.”
The terrified bundle is dropped into William’s hands. He jostles to keep from dropping it, then grips the soaking wet, flea-ridden body away from his coat as the creature’s feet—with tiny knives for claws—clamber for a foothold.
He flicks his scarred thumb across the crusted eyes, clearing away mucus and allowing the lids to blink open, revealing two watery green and gold orbs. Mew! The creature looks right at him as if giving an order.
Definitely a cat.
“Blasted hard to catch, that one,” said one of the men, hand rubbing the back of his neck.
“What am I to do with it?” William asks.
“Give it here and I’ll drown it.”
The little being gives a shiver. William’s hand loosens its grip on the bony creature and it latches on to William’s coat, burrowing into its ragged depths, fleas and all.
William cringes and attempts to pry the treacherous toenails loose from his worn sweater.
Another pitiful mew, then it keeps still.
He dares not even flinch, lest those tiny weapons reappear.
“Sure, I’ll uh…I’ll handle the problem,” William says.
“It’s time I’m off home anyway.” Darkness cloaks the shore and the torches do little to illuminate the work, which means it will soon be unsafe to continue.
“That’s the most words you’ve said at one time,” says one of the men, and the others laugh.
Shoulders hunched, William turns toward land where he can dispose of the troublesome creature and head home. It isn’t squirming anymore.
William walks, strides lengthening, and soon he’s moving toward the road, and this tiny bundle—which is now oddly vibrating—has only burrowed in deeper. And he hasn’t disposed of it. It has created a warm spot through his clothing.
Soon William takes off at a run again, hunched against the moist air that promises more rain, and he realizes he’s taking the creature home.
There’s no better place for the small bundle of fur and bones, for Dunn Cottage is, as the inheritance letter stated, the perfect sanctuary.
He cannot wait to be back to it. Cool and dark, remote, forgotten.
Low and close like the hug a body sorely needs.
Not a companionable hug, but the sort that holds together brittle, fractured pieces.
Which is him, now.
And the rat-kitten.
In the humid darkness, William sprints through the German countryside, dodging splintered wood as the bridge detonates behind him. He drops the mallet and the flint that had caused such devastation.
They are the enemy, those men. He’s stopping the Germans.
Screams sound in the night, shrill and panicked, as more fuses ignite under trusses. Objects and men tumble in the air, mere shapes highlighted by moonlight. Fourteen bridges he’d detonated. Three with men still on them.
He bursts through the forest, batting like mad at the branches attacking him. No…thorns. Brambles. Rising up to slice his flesh.
He strikes again and—
Mrewwww.
A sucking thwwwwip of pressure and he’s jarred awake. He’s in his bed. In Dunn Cottage, drenched in sweat, swatting at tiny paws.
Panting, he grabs the kitten and dangles it before him, smoothing back his damp hair. There are thin red slashes across the backs of his hands. A few that are bleeding. He shoves out a forceful breath as his heart pounds, trying to calm it. “You rotten bugger, you.”
He sets the creature on his quilt but it climbs his nightshirt, swatting at his face, claws retracted now.
“Why not show a bit of gratitude for the roof over your head, eh?” He rises, still trembling from head to toe.
Tucking the kitten into the crook of his arm, he trots down to the main level, fully aware that the tiny creature has saved him from the recurring nightmare.
But then his gaze falls upon the crumpled newspaper on the refectory table. He jerks with the sudden stab of guilt and dislodges his small guest. The claws come out again, clinging to his clothing…and the skin beneath.
Unhooking the tiny daggers and settling the tiny new master on the newspaper, he smooths a damp cloth over the kitten’s eyes, removing the new layer of crust that has built up, and feeds it bits of fish from a can.
“Rather spoiled, demanding food in the middle of the night. I suppose you’ll require a drink to wash it down now, won’t you?
” But the creature handles that matter itself, jumping down from bench to floor and trotting over to a curved pottery shard.
Bracing its paws on either side, it laps up the water that’s dripped from the leaky roof and purrs, drawing immense comfort from the discovered drink.
A broken thing, put to use.
It shakes its head and, before William can move it to safety, steps delicately between the remaining pieces of pottery, unscathed and unconcerned. Then it makes a dash and crashes into William’s boot.
“Resourceful little thing, aren’t you?” His voice is gruff.
The pathetic fella looks up, twisting its head to the left. Mew?
William scoops up the creature, who isn’t even big enough to climb his trouser leg, and peers into its dirty face.
“I suppose you can stay. For now, at least. Until you go and cause me too much trouble.” But he knows, looking at the tiny tufted black ears, the eager face, that it’s unlikely to come to that.
William bathes the kitten in a dented pot and discovers the gray paws are actually white, as is its chest. “A fine gent, are you? White gloves and livery.”
Scrubbed clean, fed, and warmed, the tiny creature looks decidedly charming and cozy.
That’s likely how it then ends up allowed into William’s bed, which he makes up on the couch this time.
Sometimes the nightmares are less powerful down here.
He offers it a spot beside the couch, then by his feet, but the creature happily romps to his pillow and curls in next to William’s head, kneading the fabric and rumbling its appreciation.
As William’s mind begins to fold down into sleep again, the kitten rubs its face along William’s whiskered cheek.
He jerks at the touch, then braces himself and allows it to continue nestling into his beard that suddenly bends and flexes against his skin in new ways.
It’s odd, having his beard disturbed. Delightfully so.
“You wouldn’t be so keen on me if you knew. ”
But the bonny creature continues shoving its head harder and harder into William’s jaw, nuzzling the underside of his chin and purring. “You’re a soft little thing,” he croons into its fur, and the kitten nose-bumps his face a few times. “How Helen would love you.”
He pictures her snuggling the kitten, holding it to her cheek and speaking softly. How many lost and bedraggled orphans did she bring home throughout their marriage? Too many to count—including himself.
He stirs and realizes there’s a smile on his lips, but it fades into the shadows of his cold, lifeless home.
Memories can drown a person—the good ones, even, because they’re gone.
He’s looking instead into Merryn’s soulful gray eyes casting a deeply understanding look down at him from the portrait. They share a lostness.
And there is a distinct feeling, in those moments when he can nearly hear her voice, that he knew her once. Should know who she is.
The coins are gone. The artist who might authenticate the portrait, hiding.
But perhaps he shouldn’t have bothered looking for Rupert Covington at all. One other person can authenticate that painting—the subject herself. And they are, in some way, connected. He just isn’t certain how.
He should return to Newlyn. This time with different questions. Artists are a talkative lot, especially when it comes to local lore. With any luck he will find out where this woman with the lost look—is she drowning in memories too?—has gone.
Is she still lost?