Caught Out in Cornwall (5 page)

Katy was undressed ready for bed. She had hardly touched her tea again. Her six-year-old face, which should have been smiling, was white and pinched. Susan had tried everything she could think of to get her daughter to talk.

‘There’s nothing wrong, Mummy,’ was all she would say.

But Susan knew her daughter well. No longer
was she that happy, outgoing child she had been. Something was terribly wrong. She had her suspicions, but how could she voice them? Who on earth could she turn to if what she thought turned out to be correct? And if she did voice them and she turned out to be wrong it would cause nothing but trouble for everyone. But she had to know. The doctor had found nothing physically wrong with Katy, which was some sort of relief; it was her mental state which bothered Susan. ‘Would you like to watch some television?’

‘No, Mummy. I’m tired. I want to go to bed.’

It was only six o’clock but Katy did look washed out. That was how Doreen Clarke had put it. ‘You want to take her to the doctor, maid. And if you ask me, there’d be no harm in him taking a look at you as well,’ she had said. Susan had taken Doreen’s advice but it hadn’t solved the problem. ‘Come on then. I’ll read you a story.’

Together they went up the stairs. Susan had almost finished reading when she heard the front door open. Simon was home. He commuted to Truro where he ran a financial advisory service. She heard him drop his briefcase by the table on the woodblock floor of the hall. He would hang up his coat in the downstairs cloakroom then seek her out. She had always been grateful for his
tidiness. She kissed Katy, pulled the duvet around her shoulders, and then went downstairs to greet her husband.

‘Hello, there,’ he said as she entered the kitchen. There was no welcoming aroma of cooking, no sign, in fact, that there was going to be any food. He took a deep breath. Neither his wife nor his child had much to say to him these days. ‘We need to talk, love.’ He pulled out a stool from beneath the breakfast counter. ‘Sit down, I’ll pour us a drink.’

Susan hoped that the alcohol would help quell, rather than increase, the nausea she constantly felt. It had to come out; she had to tell Simon about her suspicions. What it would do to him she couldn’t begin to guess.

‘Is Katy in bed?’ She nodded as Simon handed her her drink. ‘So early?’ He joined her at the breakfast counter.

Susan’s stomach churned. ‘She said she was tired.’

‘Susan, what have I done? Why are you shutting me out like this?’ He assumed Katy’s attitude towards him was a reflection of her mother’s.

‘Nothing, you haven’t done anything, Simon. It’s just that I’m worried sick about Katy. You must’ve seen how she’s changed.’

‘You’ve both changed. I really thought it was something I’d done. I know I’ve been late home a few times lately but I’m trying to keep ahead of the game by ringing people at home when they get in from work.’ He reached for her hand and squeezed it. ‘You do know that there’s never been anyone else but you, don’t you?’ He stood. ‘I’ll just kiss Katy goodnight and then you can tell me all about it.’

Dazed, Susan knew she would have to do so, that she would have to tell Simon that Katy had only changed since his younger brother had been to stay.

‘Morale is lousy here,’ Jack told Rose when he rang from his office the following morning. ‘Whatever happens today I’m having a few hours off. I can’t keep going at this rate for much longer. I don’t think any of us can. Anyway, the reason I’m calling is to see if you’re free for dinner tonight. Arthur as well, if he’s up to it.’

‘That sounds great, Jack. I’ll speak to Dad right away. Shall I book somewhere?’

‘Yes, wherever you like. Make it for around seven if you can, I need a fairly early night.’

Rose could picture his handsome face, probably now grey with fatigue, and realised how much she felt for him. Until they argued,
of course. But she still wasn’t ready to commit herself and wondered whether she ever would be. She said goodbye, hung up and dialled her father’s number. He took a long time to answer. It worried her. He could be out or in the bath but since her mother’s death she frequently feared the worst.

‘I’d really love to join you, as long as you don’t mind me playing gooseberry,’ Arthur said when he finally answered the phone. He had responded in the affirmative so quickly that Rose wondered just how lonely he was. He tried not to show it, nor to make any demands upon her time, but she knew exactly what he must be going through, and he had lived with her mother twice as long as she had done with David. At least he was no longer hundreds of miles away. And thankfully, through his previous visits, he already knew quite a lot of people in the area. ‘We’ll call for you about half six. There’s no need to dress up.’ Rose had decided upon Chinese. They all enjoyed it and Jack would be too exhausted to appreciate a more formalised meal. Several new restaurants had opened in Penzance over the past year or so, including one owned by the hotelier and sixties ex-supermodel, Jean Shrimpton, and her husband.

Although it was still very early she tried ringing the restaurant and left a message and her number on their answering service. As she hung up, Rose realised that it was Friday and that time was running out for Bethany Jones. She tried not to think about it.

There was work to be done; some general housework, which she loathed, washing to go into the machine and then the choice of sketching some more wild flowers, planning the next oil painting or taking some photographs. Few people realised that the quality of the light in Cornwall could be as clear in the winter as in the summer. But how else could the postcards of St Ives or Hayle Towans, for instance, show a blue sky, a turquoise sea fringed with white spume, cliffs adorned by palm trees above the fine, pale gold of the sand whilst the beaches were devoid of people? That day was such a day. Rose decided not to waste it. She would work outside somewhere. When the light altered she would continue in the attic.

It was so mild it might have been May. Throughout the month there had been rain and a few days of gale force winds but the real storms would come later, probably in January.

Rose programmed the washing machine,
hoovered and dusted each room and cleaned the bathroom. Once the clothes and linen were flapping on the line strung between the shed and the branch of a tree, she collected her gear from the larder leading off the kitchen. With a fridge and a freezer installed, the old marble shelves had long since become redundant. The room now served as storage space.

She had mistimed her departure. The roads were busy; not that there were any traffic jams – they only occurred in the height of the summer. She drove to Hayle and parked on the wasteland by the old harbour. She took out her satchel, locked the car and walked to the top of the Towans. From where she stood, her feet slipping in the powdery sand which was held in place by the gently waving marram grass, she saw only the sparkle of the sea, now aquamarine, the greenness of the land on the opposite bank of the mouth of the River Hayle and the whiteness of the beach. The colours of nature defied description. Not a solitary person was in sight, not a single bird could be seen. The only sounds were the gentle lapping of the incoming tide against the shore and the whisper of the grasses as an unfelt breeze stirred them.

Rose adjusted her camera and looked through
the viewfinder. ‘Oh, perfect,’ she said after her second shot when a small fishing vessel entered the mouth of the river, its sole crewman at the tiller. She took several more shots in quick succession, not wishing the boat to be in the centre of the photograph. It would draw the eye and thus detract from the beauty of the scenery and it would also appear too contrived. Already the morning had produced satisfying results.

There was plenty of time to drive to the other side of St Ives Bay and, hopefully, achieve similar results.

At Carbis Bay the breeze was more noticeable and there were small waves breaking. The surf was nowhere near strong enough for actual surfing, which usually took place on one of the other beaches even during the winter now that wetsuits were freely available.

The few walkers on the beach, wearing jackets or jumpers, gave a surreal quality to the scene when contrasted against the blue sky and golden sand. A dog ran in and out of the white froth running up the sand, barking ecstatically as it did so. A small child ran to join it. Rose stood very still and only realised she had been holding her breath when a woman ran after her, scolding her for getting her shoes wet. For a split second she
had imagined the child was alone. It was then she recalled what Doreen had mentioned.

Doreen knew Susan Overton who was the daughter of Ann Pascoe, the lady who gave Rose’s hair its twice yearly trim. Rose and Ann were not friends in the conventional manner but after fifteen years they knew as much about one another factually as it was possible to know. It was over two months since Rose’s last visit to the hairdresser’s, so whatever was troubling Ann’s daughter had occurred since then because, otherwise, Ann would have mentioned it. Doreen had expressed concern about Ann’s granddaughter, Katy, who would, Rose calculated, be about six now. ‘She’s gone awful quiet lately, an’ she’s white as a sheet. Susan don’t know what to do with her,’ Doreen had said before going on to mention something about a doctor. Rose, her mind on something else at the time, had imagined that Katy had probably been suffering from one of the various childhood illnesses. But on reflection she realised that Doreen, who had brought up her own children, would not have expressed such concern if it had been as simple as that. Children’s personalities changed in that way when something bad had happened to them. Rose could not imagine that the parents were involved. She had met them
only once, which was not time enough to make a judgment, but Doreen knew them intimately and babysat for them on occasions. She trusted and liked them and always said that Katy was a ‘treat’ to look after; that she was a happy, friendly and obedient little girl. That was until recently. And Beth had gone missing. Could there possibly be a connection, she wondered. Adults were capable of doing terrible things to children, for their own gratuitous pleasure or for profit. However ridiculous he might think her suspicions to be, Rose wondered whether she ought to mention them to Jack.

She barely noticed the drive home because there were so many things to think about. Apart from Beth and Katy there was the problem of Christmas. Dad and I could have a quiet time alone, or I could invite Jack to liven us up a bit, she told herself. On the other hand, it might be painful for Arthur to see them together when he was so recently bereaved. The obvious answer was to ask him. And there was the usual dilemma of what to paint next. She had once vowed never to depict St Michael’s Mount in any medium. It was the most drawn, painted and photographed scene in Cornwall, possibly in the whole of the West Country. Yet she had been on Marazion
beach actually contemplating doing such a thing. She wondered if the mysteries of Cornwall had been at work, if something other than a desire to sketch the crashing seas had drawn here there on Tuesday, if some sort of premonition had motivated her. Myths and legends abounded and things happened which were seemingly inexplicable. That could have been one of them. Rose had developed the innate curiosity of the Cornish, the need to know everything about a person, but until that moment she had believed she had not picked up their superstitions. Driving along the A30 in the winter sunshine, she suddenly recalled one other winter afternoon. She had been sketching the Merry Maidens which lay just west of Lamorna in the hamlet of Boleigh; the name meaning a place of slaughter. There, so Laura had told her, Athelstan finally vanquished the Cornish in 936. Nearby, in a field, exists a circle of nineteen stones, said to be maidens who dared to dance on a Sunday to the tune of two pipers who were also turned to stone. The pipers stood some distance away. One of its attractions to Rose was that there was nothing else there at all. People could come and go as they chose. There was no entrance fee, no hut selling guidebooks or souvenirs, no refreshment van,
not even a car park. It was simply those nineteen stones in a circle in a field. Nothing had altered in hundreds, possibly thousands of years.

That afternoon she had been the only person there and was therefore able to park in the limited space in the gateway by the stile. The sun had been slurring then, too, and she had almost finished the sketch when a cloud passed over the sun and she got the feeling she was not alone. When she looked around there was no one there and no other car had stopped. Her hair had prickled her scalp and she had had to stop herself from rushing back to the car. The moment soon passed but she had never forgotten it. Something indefinable had been at work.

By the time she got home the heating had come on, giving the house an even more welcoming feeling than usual. She hung up her jacket, removed the spool of film from the camera and replaced it with a new one. After a cup of tea she would finish the Morrab Garden palm, filling it in with colour.

While the kettle boiled she checked the answering machine. There were two messages. The first confirmed her booking for a table for three at seven at the Ocean Palace, the second was from Doreen. ‘I need to see ’e, maid. It’s not desperately
urgent but I’d like a word. I could come over about four. My afternoon lady’s in bed with flu so she’s asked me just to do the downstairs today. I’ll come anyway. If you’re out, then you’re out and if you’re busy I’ll push off again.’

Fat chance of that, Rose thought as she grinned. But she wanted to speak to Doreen so it might as well be today.

It was nearly half-past four when Doreen did arrive. She rapped on the glass of the kitchen door. Like Rose, and all her friends, she used the side entrance, off the drive where she parked, rather than walk around the narrow path to the front door which, through lack of use, had a tendency to stick.

Rose had finished in the attic. She had used a delicate wash for the palm with a background that merely suggested a blue sky and other foliage. She had also had time to develop the roll of film, which was now pegged up to dry. When Doreen knocked she was in the sitting-room studying one of her numerous plant books, determined to name the palm tree. She got up and went to let her in.

‘If you’re busy, I won’t stop,’ she said in her forthright way and, as always, without any form of salutation.

‘I’m not, as it happens. I’ve done all I can for the moment.’ There might even be time to make prints of the negatives before it was time to get ready to go out. David had converted part of the attic into a darkroom. There, Rose had taught herself the techniques of developing and printing and was now an expert in both sides of photography. She plugged in the kettle again. Doreen never refused the offer of a cup of tea, neither did she ever come empty-handed.

‘I’ve brought you some of Cyril’s brussel sprouts. Cambridge, I think he said the variety was called. Anyhow, they’re early ones. We’ve had some, they be ’ansome. Cyril says the other ones aren’t any good until later, after a bit of frost, not that we get much of that down here. And there’s one of my lardy cakes. I know how you do love ‘en.’

‘Thank you.’ Rose suppressed a smile. She rarely ate sweet things. What Doreen meant was that she would expect some, suitably warmed up and spread thickly with butter, with her tea.

‘If you remember, I was talking about Susan Overton the other day. Well, little Katy isn’t right yet, Rose. The doctor can’t find anything the matter with her but even I can see the change in her. It’s as if she isn’t the same person any more.
I can’t bear to see such a lovely family being so miserable. He’s suffering, too, is Simon.’

‘That’s odd. I was going to ask you about them. I’ve been thinking so much about Beth and, well—’ she stopped. It was impossible to mention to Doreen what she feared. It would probably do more harm than good.

But it was Doreen who voiced the fears. ‘It’s a wicked world, maid. I was wondering if Katy had been interfered with. Perhaps I’m as wicked as some of they out there for even thinking it, but it does happen. And, like you say, with that other small chiel missing it makes you wonder if there’s some pervert around.’

Rose sighed. ‘It had crossed my mind, too.’ She placed the teapot on the kitchen table before removing the slices of lardy cake from the oven. Their appetising doughy smell rose from the heat. Doreen took a piece and smothered it in the rich, gold local butter Rose bought from a farm shop. It melted into the yeasty texture. She took a bite before speaking again. ‘Is there anything we can do?’

‘I really don’t know. I mean, how does anyone go about finding out such things?’

The shrewd look which Doreen gave her told Rose what was coming next. ‘You could mention
it to Jack Pearce. Casual like, when you’re talking about this, that and the third thing. He’ll know if there’s anyone like that around in the area. They have these lists now, I believe. Will you do that, maid? Will you ask him? Just a hint, like. He’ll know what to do.’

‘Okay.’ She had half intended to do so anyway. Having told Doreen she would mention it, she had to keep her word.

Neither of them mentioned the subject again. They had said all that needed to be said. There was no point in dwelling on it. The conversation turned to more personal matters. Doreen’s jaw dropped when Rose told her about Barry and Jenny. ‘He’s got hisself a woman? I’d never have believed it less’n you’d told me. Well I never. I always thought it was you he was after. Of course, I could see he had no chance. And there’s no need to blush, girl, some things are obvious to others. Still, you’ve got Jack, and a good man he is, too. Don’t ask me how you did it. You’ve got your looks and your figure, I’ll grant you that, but I wish you’d take my advice and wear a frock more often, or, at least, a skirt. And I don’t mean that skimpy little denim thing you wear in the summer. You’d never catch me in jeans or trousers.’