“Joss, who did this?”
But Joss did not answer me. Instead, with a strength surprising in one so hurt, he put up an arm and pulled me down so that I was sitting on the edge of his bed. My long, blonde plait of hair hung forward over my shoulder, and while he held me with his right arm, his left hand was occupied in slipping off the rubber band which held the ends together, and then, using his fingers like a comb, he loosened the strands, unravelling them, so that my hair hung like a silken tassel, brushing on to his naked chest.
He said, “I always wanted to do that. Ever since I first saw you looking like the head girl of … what was it I said?”
“The head girl of a nicely run orphanage.”
“That’s it. Fancy you remembering.”
“What can I do? There must be something I can do?”
“Just stay. Just stay, my darling girl.”
The tenderness in his voice … Joss, who had always been so tough … dissolved me. Tears sprang into my eyes and he saw these and pulled me down, so that I lay against him, and I felt his hand slip up beneath my hair and close around the back of my neck.
“Joss, I’ll hurt you…”
“Don’t talk,” he said, as his seeking mouth found mine. And then, “I’ve always wanted to do this, too.”
It was evident that none of his infirmities, his bruises, his bleeding, his cut lip, were to deter him in any way from getting exactly what he wanted.
And I, who had always imagined that loving was something to do with fireworks and explosions of emotion, discovered that it was not like that at all. It was warm, like sudden sunshine. It had nothing to do with my mother and the endless procession of men who had invaded her life. It was cynicism and preconceived ideas flying out of an open window. It was the last of my defences gone. It was Joss.
He said my name and he made it sound beautiful.
* * *
Much later, I lit a fire, piling on the driftwood so that the room was bright with flickering firelight. I would not let Joss move, so that he lay with his dark head propped on his arms, and I felt his eyes following every move I made.
I stood up, away from the fire. My hair fell loose on either side of my face, and my cheeks were warm from the fire. I felt soft with content.
Joss said, “We have to talk, don’t we?”
“Yes.”
“Get me a drink.”
“What do you want?”
“Some whisky. It’s in the galley, in the cupboard over the sink.”
I went to find it, and two glasses. “Soda or water?”
“Soda. There’s a bottle-opener hanging on a hook.”
I found the opener and took the cap off the bottle. I did this clumsily and it fell to the floor, rolling in the maddening manner of such things into a dark corner. I went to retrieve it and my eye was caught by another small and shining object, lying half under the kickboard beneath the sink. I picked it up and it was Andrea’s Celtic cross, the one that she had worn on a leather thong around her neck.
I kept it in my hand. I poured the drinks and took them back to Joss. I handed him one, and knelt on the floor beside him.
I said, “This was under the sink,” and showed him the cross.
His swollen eye made it difficult for him to focus. He squinted at it painfully.
“What the hell’s that?”
“It’s Andrea’s.”
He said, “Oh, to hell.” And then, “Get me some more pillows, there’s a good girl. I could never drink whisky lying down.”
I gathered up a couple of cushions off the floor, and propped him against them. The action of sitting up was agony for him and he let out an involuntary groan.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes, of course I’m all right. Where did you find that thing?”
“I told you. On the floor.”
“She came here this evening. She said she’d been to the cinema. I was working downstairs, trying to get the shelving finished. I told her I was busy, but she just came up here, as though I’d never said a word. I followed her up and told her to go home. But she wouldn’t go. She said she wanted a drink, she wanted to talk … you know the sort of drivel.”
“She’s been here before.”
“Yes, once. One morning. I was sorry for her and I gave her a cup of coffee. But this evening I was busy; I had no time for her and I wasn’t sorry for her. I said I didn’t want a drink. I told her to go home. And then she said that she didn’t want to go home, everybody hated her, nobody would talk to her, I was the only person she could talk to, I was the only person who understood.”
“Perhaps you were.”
“OK, so I was sorry for her. I used to let her come and get in my way when I was working at Boscarva, because there wasn’t much else I could do about it, short of bodily throwing her out of the room.”
“Did you do that this evening? Throw her out?”
“Not in so many words. But finally I’d had enough of her batty conversation and her totally unfounded belief that I was ready, willing and eager to jump into bed with her, and I lost my temper and told her so.”
“What happened then?”
“What didn’t happen? Screams, tears, accusations, routine hysteria. I was subjected to every sort of vilification. Face slapping, the lot. That was when I finally resorted to force, and I bundled her down the stairs and threw her raincoat and her beastly handbag after her.”
“You didn’t hurt her?”
“No, I didn’t hurt her. But I think I frightened her, because she went then, like the hammers of hell. I heard her clattering down the stairs on those ghastly clogs she wears, and then I think she must have slipped because there was the most frightful thumping and bumping as she went down the last few stairs. I shouted down to make sure she was all right, but then I heard her running out of the shop and slamming the door behind her, so that I imagined she was.”
“Could she have hit herself on anything? Bruised her face when she fell?”
“Yes, I suppose she could. There was a packing case full of china standing at the bottom of the stairs. She could have collided with that … Why do you ask anyway?”
I told him. When I had finished he let out a long, incredulous whistle. But he was angry too.
“The little bitch. I think she’s a nymphomaniac, do you know that?”
“I’ve always thought so.”
“She was always talking about some guy called Danus, going into the most gruesome of intimate details. And the bloody cheek of telling everyone that I had asked her to go to the cinema with me. I wouldn’t ask her to empty a dustbin with me … What’s happened to her now?”
“She’s been put to bed. Mollie got the doctor.”
“If he’s worth his salt he’ll have diagnosed self-induced hysteria. And he’ll prescribe a good walloping and send her back to London. And that’ll get her out of everybody’s way.”
“Poor Andrea. She’s very unhappy.”
As though he could not keep his hands off it, he reached out to touch my hair. I turned my head and kissed the back of his hand, the lacerated knuckles.
He said, “You didn’t believe her, did you?”
“Not really.”
“Did anyone else?”
“Mollie and Eliot did. Eliot wanted to call the police but Grenville wouldn’t let him.”
“That’s interesting.”
“Why?”
“Who was it who brought Andrea home?”
“I thought I’d told you. Morris Tatcombe … you know, the boy who works for Eliot…”
“Morris? Well I’ll be…” He stopped in mid-sentence, and then said again, “Morris Tatcombe.”
“What about him?”
“Oh, Rebecca, come along. Pull yourself together. Use your wits. Who do you think gave me this beating?”
“Not Morris.” I did not want to believe it.
“Morris and three others. I went along to The Anchor for a glass of beer and a pie for my supper, and when I was
walking home, they jumped me.”
“You knew it was Morris?”
“Who else would it be? He’s always had this grudge going for me ever since we last crossed swords and he ended up on his backside in the gutter. I thought his putting the boot in this time was just a continuation of our running feud. But it seems that it wasn’t.”
Without thinking I began to say, “Eliot…” and then stopped, but it was too late. Joss said quietly, “What about Eliot?”
“I don’t want to talk about Eliot.”
“Did he tell Morris to come after me?”
“I don’t know.”
“He could, you know. He hates my guts. It fits.”
“I … I think he’s jealous of you. He doesn’t like your being so close to Grenville. He doesn’t like Grenville being so fond of you. And…” I looked down at my drink, turning the glass in my hand, feeling suddenly nervous. “There’s something else.”
“From your expression one would think you’d murdered somebody. What is it?”
“It’s … the desk. The desk downstairs in your workroom. I saw it this morning, when you were telephoning.”
“I wondered why you’d suddenly gone cantering out into the rain. What about it?”
“The desk and the Chippendale chair. They come from Boscarva.”
“Yes, I know.”
His calmness shocked me. “You didn’t take them, Joss?”
“Take them? No, I didn’t take them. I bought them.”
“Who from?”
“A man who runs an antique shop up beyond Fourbourne. I’d been to a sale about a month ago, and I dropped in to see him on the way back, and I saw the chair and the desk in his shop. By then I knew all Grenville’s furniture and I knew they’d come from Boscarva.”
“But who took them?”
“I regret to have to shatter your innocence, but it was your cousin Eliot.”
“But Eliot knew nothing about them.”
“Eliot most certainly did. They were in one of the attics, as far as I remember, and he probably imagined they’d never be missed.”
“But why…?”
“This is like playing the truth game. Because Eliot, my love, my darling child, is head over heels in debt. That garage was financed by Ernest Padlow in the first place, it cost a bomb and it’s been losing money steadily for the past twelve months. God knows what use fifty pounds would have been to Eliot, a mere drop in the ocean one would have thought, but perhaps he needed a little ready cash to pay a bill or put on a horse or something … I don’t know. Between you and me, I don’t think he should be running his own business. He’d be better working for some other guy, being paid a regular salary. Perhaps, one evening, when you’re sitting over drinks at Boscarva, you could try and persuade him.”
“Sarcasm doesn’t suit you.”
“I know, but Eliot makes me edgy. Always has done.”
I felt, obscurely, that I must stand up for Eliot, make excuses for him.
“In a way, he thinks that Boscarva and everything in it already belong to him. Perhaps he didn’t feel it was … stealing…?”
“When did they realize the things were missing?”
“A couple of days ago. You see, the desk belonged to my mother. Now it belongs to me. That’s why we started to look for it.”
“Unfortunate for Eliot.”
“Yes.”
“I suppose Eliot said I’d taken them.”
“Yes,” I admitted miserably.
“What did Grenville say?”
“He said that you’d never do a thing like that.”
“And so there was another monumental row.”
“Yes.”
Joss sighed deeply. We fell silent. The room was growing cold again, the fire beginning to die down. I got up and went to put another log on it, but Joss stopped me.
“Leave it,” he said.
I looked at him, surprised. He finished his drink and put the empty glass down on the floor beside him, and then pushed back the blanket and began, carefully, to get out of bed.
“Joss, you mustn’t…”
I flew to his side, but he pushed me away, and slowly, with infinite caution, got to his feet. Once there, he grinned triumphantly down at me, a bizarre sight, bruised and battered, and dressed in bandages and a crumpled pair of jeans.
“Into battle,” he said.
“Joss, what are you going to do?”
“If you’ll find me a shirt and a pair of shoes, I’ll get dressed. And then we’re going to go downstairs, and get into the truck and drive back to Boscarva.”
“But you can’t drive like that.”
“I can do anything I want,” he told me, and I believed him. “Now find my clothes and stop arguing.”
He would not even let me take Mollie’s car. “We’ll leave it there, it’ll be all right. Someone can fetch it in the morning.” His own little truck was parked around the corner, up a narrow alley. We got in, and he started the engine and backed out on to the road, with me giving directions because he was too stiff to turn around in the seat. We headed up through the town, along streets that had become familiar to me, over the cross-roads and up the hill.
I sat, staring ahead, with my hands clasped tightly in my lap. I knew that there was still something else we had to talk about. And it had to be now, before we reached Boscarva.
For some reason, as though he were immensely pleased with life in general, Joss has started to sing.
“The first time ever I saw your face
I thought the sun rose in your eyes
And the moon and stars…”
“Joss.”
“What is it now?”
“There’s something else.”
He sounded shocked. “Not another skeleton in the cupboard?”
“Don’t joke.”
“I’m sorry. What is it?”
I swallowed a strange obstruction in the back of my throat.
“It’s Sophia.”
“What about Sophia?”
“Grenville gave me the key of the studio so that I could go and choose a picture to take back to London. I found a portrait of Sophia. A proper one, with a face. And Eliot came to find me, and he saw it too.”
There was a long silence. I looked at Joss but his profile was stony, intent on the road ahead. “I see,” he said at last.
“She looks just like you; or you look just like her.”
“Naturally enough. She was my grandmother.”
“Yes, I thought that was probably it.”
“So the portrait was in the studio?”
“Is … is that why you came to live in Porthkerris?”
“Yes. Grenville and my father fixed it between them. Grenville put up half the capital for my shop.”
“Your father…?”
“You’ve met him. Tristram Nolan Gardner. He runs an antique shop, in the New Kings Road. You bought a pair of balloon-back chairs from him. Do you remember?”
“And he found from my cheque that I was called Rebecca Bayliss.”
“Right. And he found out, by cunning question and answer, that you were Grenville Bayliss’s granddaughter. Right. And he found out that you were catching the train to Cornwall last Monday. Right.”
“So he rang you up and told you to meet the train.”
“Right.”
“But why?”
“Because he felt involved. Because he thought you seemed lost and vulnerable. Because he wanted me to keep an eye on you.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“You know something?” said Joss. “I love you very much.”
“Because I’m being stupid?”
“No, because you’re being marvellously innocent. Sophia wasn’t only Grenville’s model, she was his mistress as well. My father was born at the beginning of their relationship, long before your mother arrived. Sophia married, eventually, an old friend she’d known from childhood days, but she never had any more children.”
“So Tristr
am…?”
“Tristram is Grenville’s son. And Grenville is my grandfather. And I am going to marry my half-cousin.”
“Pettifer told me that Sophia meant nothing to Grenville. That she was just a girl who’d worked for him.”
“If it meant protecting Grenville, Pettifer would swear that black is white.”
“Yes, I suppose he would.” But Grenville, in anger, had been less discreet. “‘You are not my only grandchild!’”
“Did Grenville say that?”
“Yes, to Eliot. And Eliot thought he meant me.”
We had reached the top of the hill. The lights of the town were far behind us. Ahead, beyond the huddled shapes of Ernest Padlow’s housing estate, lay the dark coastline, pricked with the tiny lights of random farms, and beyond it the black immensity of the sea.
I said, “I don’t seem to remember you asking me to marry you.”
The little van bumped and lurched down the lane towards Boscarva. “I’m not very good at asking things,” said Joss. He took his hand off the wheel and put it over mine. “I usually just tell people.”
As once before, it was Pettifer who came out to meet us. As soon as Joss switched off the engine of the van, the light in the hall went on, and Pettifer opened the door, as though he had known instinctively we were on our way.
He saw Joss open the car door and ease himself out, in obvious discomfort and pain. He saw Joss’s face …
“For heaven’s sake, what happened to you?”
“I had a difference of opinion with our old friend Morris Tatcombe. I probably wouldn’t look like this except that he had three of his chums with him.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine. No bones broken. Come on, let’s go in.”
We went indoors and Pettifer closed the door.
“I’m glad to see you, Joss, and that’s the truth. We’ve had a proper how-do-you-do here and no mistake.”
“Is Grenville all right?”
“Yes, he’s all right. He’s still up, in the drawing room, waiting for Rebecca to come home.”
“And Eliot?”
Pettifer looked from Joss’s face to mine.
“He’s gone.”