Chapter Eleven
As she left, she told Paul to put everyone’s drink on her tab. That, at least, she could afford. As she got to the door the old woman who had spoken up for her, came up and introduced herself as Beryl Hunkin, a distant relation unfortunately, and invited her back to her house for a cup of tea. At the door, a young woman came to see if Beryl was okay; she smiled warily at Paddy but couldn’t quite meet her eye. ‘Help your father tidy up, dear, Lady Patricia will see me home just fine.’
Paddy watched as the girl turned back into the pub and couldn’t tell if she was relieved or put off. Paddy hadn’t seen any ice on the road and the woman seemed quite steady on her feet but maybe she liked company?
‘Are you okay walking? I mean, do you need me to go slower?’
Beryl craned her neck up and chuckled.
‘Ha! When I was your age, I’d have outrun you over three fields. These days I’m not quite so fast but no, I don’t need help. Young Ella there seems to have put me in my coffin before my time. She exhausts me, with her speaking slowly and loudly and bringing me catalogues for infirmity aids. I’m not having her put all that rubbish negativity on me. No, you were my excuse. Come on then, I’m this way.’ And she started to move off at a decent pace. She turned around to tell Paddy to watch out for the seaweed, ‘It’s slippery, m’lady.’
Paddy moved to catch up. The pub sat at the bottom of the lane overlooking the small beach. Instead of walking back up the lane Beryl headed across the mouth of the beach, where the tarmac ended and the sand began, and up a stone path leading to a few cottages perched on the hillside, overlooking the sea.
‘By the way, please call me Patricia, the lady stuff is a bit formal.’
‘Right you are, miss.’
‘Patricia. Miss also sounds wrong.’
‘Very well, m’lady.’
‘No, I…’
‘The thing is,’ said the old lady, ‘I was never brought up to believe that all men are equal. Even though we are. So I’d as soon call you Patricia as I’d call Ella, Miss Trewalla. I’m afraid that’s just not going to happen, miss.’
The two walked on whilst Paddy thought about it. The girls had all warned her not to become over pally with the locals. It was important she tried to keep some sort of distance in case there were problems. Paddy had a habit of seeing the good in everyone and whilst she didn’t see an issue in it, Nick had been adamant she should try to create some space.
Imagine if you get down there, make best friends left, right and centre and then need to evict someone or something horrible like that. How on earth would you manage? Paddy had thought that was totally unfair but also completely valid.
‘I think I can cope with miss.’
‘Right you are, miss,’ and Beryl gave her a big smile.
As they walked along the cottages, Paddy peered in the windows. ‘These are empty, aren’t they?’ As the occupants had died or handed back their tenancy the estate hadn’t renewed the leases and now the properties lay vacant.
‘They are. All but me. I’m the last one and I’m not leaving!’
Paddy looked at her in alarm. ‘Of course not. Who would leave this, it’s magical? Who’s making you leave? Can I help?’
Beryl paused in front of her door. Around the front of the house lay various interesting rocks and shells, blue and green glass balls tied up in rope, a boot scraper and a small bench where the path ended. As the last cottage, she looked down over the beach. The path on the seaward side was protected by a slate stone wall studded with small green plants. As they’d arrived a black cat had slid off the wall and over the other side on to the rough brambles on top of the cliff.
‘God it’s a bit narrow up here. How do you get stuff up here? Is there a road behind the cottages?’
‘No, miss. Everything has to be carried or pulled up and I guess when I die, they’ll have to drag me down like they did with old Mrs Cloke. She died when she was seventy and everyone said that was a great age.’ As Beryl chatted she pottered around the kitchen pulling out some china cups and saucers from the back of a high cupboard. ‘Now here I am in my nineties and everyone seems to think that’s normal. I tell you, when I was a girl, ninety would have been a miracle. Mind you, I bet you think I’m ancient?’
‘Well ninety is a tiny bit ancient, isn’t it? But it’s not like you even look seventy. Must be all this healthy sea air.’
‘Aye. That and the NHS, a decent wage and a single life. Old Mrs Cloke had fourteen children, and her husband died at sea. Leaving her with nothing but hard work and grief. That’ll make anyone look old. Now, you look like you need some fattening up. Have you had Thunder and Lightning?’
Paddy wasn’t sure how any of that last sentence connected so she waited for Beryl to explain, until it became clear from Beryl’s look that she had nothing further to say and Paddy had to confess that she didn’t understand. The weather had been drizzly but sure she only lived across the way herself. Wouldn’t she and Beryl have the same weather?
Beryl hooted with laughter and then apologised for making fun of her. ‘It’s what we’ve always called it so you tend to, I don’t know, forget the other meaning. If that makes sense. No, miss, Thunder and Lightning is a Cornish treat.’
‘Oh, a cream tea?’
Beryl tutted from the fridge. ‘No, Thunder and Lightning is a proper Cornish treat. Scones is for the tourists.’
A few minutes later Paddy was tucking into a concoction of clotted cream and golden syrup in a soft sliced bun that Beryl called a split. Paddy wasn’t sure if it was going to be the carbs, the fat or the sugar rush that was going to kill her first, but at least she’d die happy.
‘So tell me,’ Paddy mumbled through a full mouth, ‘why do you think you have to leave? These are bloody gorgeous by the way.’
‘Well, I’ve got eyes, I know I’m sitting on a lot of money here. You could tear these cottages down and build some fancy monstrosity full of glass, like that chap on the telly with the scarf and the alarmed expression.’
‘Bloody hell, Beryl, we would never do that. In the first place we would never get planning.’
‘The rich always get planning.’
‘Okay, let’s say we got planning, why would we want to? It would ruin the village. It would be a complete waste of perfectly good houses. It would, oh I don’t know, it would be a blasphemy.’ Wiping cream off her lips, Paddy looked at Beryl earnestly. ‘We will never ever tear these houses down. Even when you are long gone and when I am long gone these houses will still be here.’
Beryl smiled at Paddy and nodded. ‘Well then, what are your plans for them? If you don’t mind me asking.’ She sipped her tea and looked at Paddy keenly. ‘If you want my advice, you’ll turn them into holiday lets.’
‘As it happens, I think I agree. We could make loads out of these, if we did them up posh like. But the lack of road is a bit tricky.’
‘Oh, that’s part of the charm. You know these up-country folks have more money than sense. They’ll say it’s charming or sweet or Lord preserve us, quaint.’
‘But what about you?’ Paddy stretched her legs out in front of the fire that Beryl had re-stoked when they came into the house. ‘Won’t you mind them?’
‘No dear, it will be nice to have a bit of company and, of course, if they’re awful, there’ll be a fresh set a week later. I rarely see anyone up here. Your grandfather saw to it that the coast path loops around the back of the village.’
Paddy already knew about this as she and Nick had looked at the maps and property details for Tregiskey. ‘Yes, we spotted that, although it seems like we have to pay for the upkeep of this section?’
‘Price your grandfather was prepared to pay for the privacy of the village and the house. And of course because the path is inland there’s less maintenance. Smart chap your grandfather.’
Wanting to change the subject from a man who threw her mother out on her ear and left his grandchildren to grow up in poverty she asked Beryl how she managed without a car and was surprised to learn that Beryl had never had one and didn’t even know how to drive.
‘Anywhere I want to go I can walk or catch a bus.’
‘What about holidays?’
‘When I was young, we’d take the train to St Ives and that was wonderful. Not like we had the money to go anywhere else. I went up to your London once, but I didn’t care for it. Smelt wrong. Never been abroad.’
Paddy was astonished; in her career she had been all around the globe. Admittedly she rarely saw anything beyond a catwalk or a hotel room, but still.
‘Besides what do I need with travelling when everything I have is here?’
‘Oh you mean like the fresh air and the Cornish skies?’
Beryl looked at Paddy like she was a simpleton and then nodded. ‘Well yes, that too as well, but I meant my books, my music and the internet. Come and have a look.’
Pushing herself out of her chair she waved Paddy to follow her as she slowly climbed the stairs. Both back bedrooms were floor to ceiling covered in books. Wherever Paddy looked there was something else that caught her eye and as she wandered into the front bedroom she saw a neat little single bed pushed into the corner. Once more the room was full of books as well as a chair and a small table by the window looking out to sea. Sitting on her bed, Beryl gestured Paddy to the window seat.
‘As a girl I would stand here and watch the sea and when I saw a shoal of fish in the bay I would holler down the lane and wave a white flag on a stick to the men in the village. They would rush out in their boats and we’d all come down to the beach to help them haul the nets in. All the children would be stood in the water, their skirts and trousers soaked by the waves as we rushed to haul on the nets. Our mothers would be behind us filling the baskets as fast as they could before the next boat would land its catch.’ Her face had softened with the memory and Paddy could almost see the scene unfolding on the beach below. ‘Oh, they were fabulous days. But then the fish left and the village dwindled. The young men had died in the wars and those that came back needed a more reliable trade than fishing. The big house no longer needed so many staff either. By the seventies, there wasn’t a single person in the village that relied on the fish to put food in their bellies and only a handful were employed to work up at Kensey.
Beryl paused and Paddy looked at her, the old woman’s face lost in memories. She looked back out to sea, not wishing to intrude, and waited quietly for Beryl to continue. This village was as pretty as any Paddy had ever seen, but poverty was no respecter of location. She knew what it was to be poor and exhausted.
‘Those were tough times. I worked in the nearby school and made my money that way. Eventually they retired me, and me and my books have been exploring ever since. And I still watch the sea. Although these days I send my observations to the local conservation groups. I am what they call a citizen scientist.’
Paddy grinned back at her.
‘Recently, I’ve noticed we have a new mermaid in the bay.’
‘I may be from ‘up-county’ but I’m not a total idiot,’ said Paddy. ‘There’s no mermaids in these parts.’ And then with a twitch of her lips, ‘they’re further west.’
Beryl slid a CD into the player and tones of Wagner began to softly seep out of the speaker. ‘This particular mermaid likes to swim to a soundtrack.’
Paddy’s head spun away from the window, her hair flicking out, and she looked at Beryl in dismay. ‘You can hear my music from over here?’
‘Don’t worry, it’s only from up here. You can’t hear it at all down by the pub or the lane, but stuck out here, high on a limb, the sound travels across the water.’
Paddy was mortified. In London she had always been mindful of neighbours, it was truly the only way to live in a city. Keep to your own space, don’t intrude, don’t spread. But in her little cove she had thought herself utterly isolated and had lived as a wild woman, free of care and not thinking of anyone else. And all the time she had been disturbing this lovely woman’s peace.
‘Wipe that look from your face, girl. Don’t you dare dream of turning it down. New pleasures are few and far between for me but hearing Mozart or Mussorgsky float across the water is one of them.’
Paddy stole a quick grin at her.
‘I know it’s crazy, but it’s like I’m swimming back into the arms of someone noble and wonderful.’
Beryl laughed. ‘I was never much for romantic fancies but it certainly is wonderful swimming out there. Have you discovered the seals yet?’
‘Oh aren’t they wonderful? I sing to them, and I sincerely hope you can’t hear that because that is not one of my talents.’
‘Well, we can’t be good at everything, girl. What do you expect?’
Paddy grinned quietly; as the pair of them had relaxed into each other’s company, Paddy had spotted her being call Girl and Maid, which was a slight softening on Miss, and suited her fine.
‘If you swim across this bay here, and carry on there’s a lovely arch you can swim through plus a few caves, but you’ll need a high tide. Maybe, I’ll even join you in summer? But now look, you see those clouds?’ Beryl pointed to a collection of small dots of clouds covering the western horizon. ‘Those are called mackerel clouds; it means there’ll be no swimming tomorrow.’
Paddy looked dubious, and Beryl went on to explain how clouds could be read to foretell the weather and then went on to discuss tides and waves, until Paddy’s head was spinning. Eventually Beryl got up from the bed and walked to the back bedroom calling Paddy to follow her. She scoured the shelves until she found what she was looking for and handed it to Paddy. ‘Here, take this, then you won’t need to try and learn it all at once.’ Paddy took the book and thought the title The Cloud Collector’s Handbook, sounded just the ticket. Plus it looked really pretty. ‘Now,’ said Beryl as she started to walk back downstairs, her finger tightly gripping the banister, ‘I’m tired after entertaining my betters and I need a nap.’ Seeing Paddy’s worried frown she dropped a quick curtsy and laughed. ‘Go on, girl, I always have a lunchtime nap and unless you want to see if my snoring sounds worse than your singing, I suggest you go home.’
Reassured, Paddy headed out the door, promising to return the book as soon as possible. Just as she went to leave, she noticed the addition of two beer bottles to the collection of flotsam by the doorway. Handing them to Beryl she wondered what sort of milkman the village employed and whether he could be encouraged to add her to the round.