Chapter 20
AJ should be easy to spot, but when I leave the Sloop, there’s no sign of his familiar suspenders over a white shirt.
Only the groan of rigging and the gulls crying.
The heavy questions I have for him drive me forward with bold, eager steps along the wharf, but it’s as if he disappeared—or I imagined the whole scene.
I keep walking, head down. A shadow moves along the shore below—a solitary figure, barefoot, his white shirt tugged by the wind, and I know it isn’t AJ. And yet…
My scalp prickles. The dream hovers in my peripheral vision like a moth I cannot quite see.
Is it? Can it be him?
I climb down to where the massive sea pummels the empty shoreline then innocently recedes in foamy shallows, over and over again. I squint, trying not to stare at the lone man on the beach, but unable to look away. Gulls scream overhead.
But his face is not familiar. This is an aged man, more father than suitor. A book is tucked beneath his arm and he stands for far too long, staring out across the water as if he sees something I do not.
I sit on a flat boulder and lean back, closing my eyes, trying to breathe.
More than ever, I need my memories back.
I need solid footing to face whatever I find about my husband.
Fine sand sprays my bare arm and I tuck my hair away in a move that’s so familiar I want to cry.
I close out the world and let my senses take over.
A deep breath, and suddenly I hear in my head the songs that could only belong to this place.
Sing us the song of a girl lost to sea,
Who was she, that fair lass, to me?
Bidding farewell, ’twas too much to bear.
She wouldn’t stay put, my lass—
Might she go looking for thee?
I am the girl. My rock is eroding beneath me and I’m about to be lost at sea. Would I go in search of myself? The song…it’s so familiar, but I cannot place it. Cannot see what’s around it, though it’s important.
I smell flowers—heather—lacy and floral and everywhere, and I think of the man on the beach with the kind brown eyes, and of AJ. I shove up on the rock with my feet, but it’s wet and I inch down. There’s nothing to grab, nothing to anchor me.
A tap on the shoulder, and someone’s here—not Ansel, but the older man who was across the beach. “Good day to you,” he says, his eyes watchful as if he is trying to decide how to tell me something.
“Good day.” I smile. “What might I do for you, sir?”
He’s tall and gruff, but the harshness is worn around the edges. He smiles and it’s a sad smile. “Care for company, dear?”
I move over to give him space on the rock. Perhaps this is how things are done in Cornwall. He exhales, settling on the edge and leaning back. Then he tells me he’s visiting and asks if I am too. I tell him yes. It seems easiest.
He’s watching me, studying my face in between words exchanged.
I cannot think why. The conversation is stilted until we begin talking about poetry and the enchantment of Cornwall.
I ask what exactly has struck him about this place, still waiting for whatever it is he’s come to say to me.
He sits back, staring over the crashing waves.
“I met a lady here years ago, and back then I believed I’d found heaven on earth.
” He shakes his head. “That was so long ago, though. I see it all differently now.”
“It’s us who changes, not the landscape.” I look over the hidden cove where my younger self likely ran about, clambering over rocks and splashing in the surf.
“You’ve visited before, have you?”
I watch his face. “I grew up at Dunn Cottage, actually, just up that hill, but I’ve not been back for some time. I know the melody of this place as if I’ve never left.”
He reveals nothing, but gives a firm nod. “Rather a magical place, isn’t it? I’m a rational man, but even I was charmed.”
“Did you marry her, then?”
He shoots me a quizzical look.
I smile, happily settling into someone else’s story for a moment. “I can read it upon your face. Your tragic love story.”
“Like a seer?”
I shrug. “Like an observer. You met someone here, and you fell in love.”
His eyes flick back and forth over my face. “Yes. Yes, I did marry her. Or a version of her, I suppose.”
“You see her with different eyes, then.” I know something about that. “Time does that.”
His eyebrows rise. “You’ve not the years to know of such things.”
“I’ve years enough to be wed.”
“And disillusioned, from the looks of it. I know that expression.” He leans over his knees. “Oh that the shifting shadow of Cornwall’s ghosts doth shape his memory, his vision of the lass with the long red hair. So unspoiled was she, so wild and free…”
Such beautiful words. His heart has clearly been broken…but by his wife? I glance down at my knees, still curled up close. “Did you find her much changed? This great love of yours?” I hold my breath, anxious for his answer.
“No,” he says simply. “I merely came to know more of her. The childish impetuousness, the demanding obstinacy. The deep, dark depression that was as intense as her happiness the moment before.” He pulls out his book, which is a half-filled journal, and he scribbles something, then stares off again to the sea.
“But…she is also the bonny young lass, barefoot with wild red hair flying out behind her as she races her horse along the sand.”
Heat swirls in my midsection, cheeks flaming. How does one reconcile opposites within the same person? “You came here to remember that side of her, didn’t you? To fall under Cornwall’s spell again.”
A grunt and a nod. “I shall only think of her as I knew her here. That’s who she will be to me, and the rest…well, it hardly matters.”
“I’m afraid it does matter. Your wife was not merely half a person. It takes every stone in a mosaic to give the whole picture.”
The man nods, pondering my words. “We’re all of us as multifaceted as a gem. Sometimes the sun strikes this part, sometimes the other.”
“And sometimes people cloak some of the facets.” I dig in the sand with a stick. “I know what it is to hold a false gem. It’s so similar to the real thing, yet…worthless.”
“Gems are worth what the owner believes they are. If it’s beautiful”—he shrugs—“wear it. Keep it.” His voice quivers at this last part. “Cherish it.”
He clears his throat. “I beg your pardon, my lady. We’ve not even been properly introduced, and I’m telling you how to conduct your affairs.”
I give a weak smile. “I welcome wisdom from any direction.”
But then he’s studying me again, as he had when he approached, staring at the birthmark below my lip. “Your face is familiar, I dare say. It’s why I came closer. I couldn’t be certain.”
“Oh?” I want to lay hold of my past. I do. But dread lingers at the thought of actually facing what I’ll find there.
“My name is Thomas. You may call me Thom.”
“Thom,” I say. “Merryn Winthrop.”
“Ah! Yes, Merryn. The girl from the sea.”
Goosebumps rise on my arms. “What do you mean?” I was called that before. By someone.
“Why, that’s what your name means. Merryn—from the sea. I’m particular about names, and how they fit the person wearing them. One of the quirks of a writer.” He laughs, then turns somber. “Go home to your husband, my dear Merryn. Try to look upon him as you did when the magic befell you.”
Ansel. The lively disruption I needed…and the anchor my soul had found. “We met in Pittville Park, the most unromantically named place in all of England, and it was I who proposed to him.” I don’t wish Thom to know it happened after only three weeks. “There was no magic.” Only my impetuous nature.
“Of course there was.” He shifts on the rock. “The magic of falling in love.”
A jolt in my heart.
“You did have that, I’m certain. Otherwise you wouldn’t feel it this deeply when he disappointed you.”
AJ danced about my heart, sweeping it up in his spins and twirls. He charmed me quite easily into loving him. And now I’m free-falling, scrambling for something, but there’s nothing solid to hold.
He brightens a bit. “I know where I’ve seen your face, Merryn of the sea. A painting hanging in that gallery at Newlyn. I believe I stopped and stared at it until I lost track of time.”
A portrait—of me? I duck my head to hide my surprise.
“It is a painting done by one who truly sees…and loves you. Anyone can tell.” He touches my shoulder. “Go home to your husband, dear Merryn. Let memory shape who he is to you—the good memories.”
I shiver, and then a tidal wave of memories sweeps over me. I can’t grasp details, only the sensation of a great, engulfing love that saturates my mind, then pulls it back out to sea. But it isn’t AJ who painted me.
“Go and look at the painting again and see what he sees. How very much he adores you. Think on that and the rest will fall away when you’re not even paying attention.” He rises. “Give it time, luv. Don’t write him off too soon.”
Which one? Which one?
He strides across the sand again, hands in his pockets, this man so full of regret.
One day, I fear, I shall become exactly like him.
I wonder where his love has gone, but some part of me knows.
Thom’s downcast face expresses the story silently and completely.
Love stories flash like a brilliant star, intense and explosive. But then there’s only darkness.
AJ is in the cottage, performing the perfectly ordinary task of cooking dinner, and the normalcy is disorienting.
He has brought us fish—loads of it—and he’s frying it in an ancient pan over the hearth…
and humming. He isn’t angry now. To be sure, he doesn’t even look the sort to be angry.
But he’s wearing the same cheap trousers held up by suspenders that I saw on the man leaving the telephone booth.
I stare at that face to which I’ve grown so accustomed, which I enjoyed so immensely, as the fire casts a warm glow over his features. The shadows hit him differently, and he suddenly seems a stranger.