Harnessing Peacocks (13 page)

‘It was built by a crazy old man who hated Cornish granite so he imported these dark red bricks from Devon and built a street of brick houses, dark brick with yellow bricks round the windows.’

‘Yuk!’

‘That’s what my mother thinks, but it’s so ugly I love it. It’s hideous and frowning and secret and built up a very steep hill.’

‘Reahly.’ He could see her uvula.

‘All the houses have nylon curtains and gardens at the back, and there’s an alleyway between the gardens and the backs of the houses in the next street, which is built of granite like the rest of town. Ours is called Wilson Street.’

‘Reahly,’ said Mrs Reeves, sitting at the tiller, steering the boat across the water to Tresco.

Silas sat quiet after his outburst, listening to the snap and crunch of the boat on the water, rather enjoying the bouncy movement but disliking the smell of stale fish. He wondered whether the oily, smelly bilge would slop up as it threatened to and wet his hostess’s feet. It did not.

‘Here we are,’ she said, quelling the engine.

Silas helped carry the baskets to the cottage which the Reeves had rented for the holidays. Jennifer Reeves moored the boat and carried her share of baskets without showing any strain. Silas followed her into the cottage, deciding she was a good ten years older than Hebe.

‘If you unpack the baskets I will put everything away.’ Gosh, what efficiency. Not that Hebe wasn’t efficient, Silas told himself, she just didn’t make it so obvious.

‘Put the baskets in the porch. I shall have a drink and get us some lunch. That be nice?’

‘Thank you very much.’ He stacked the baskets in the porch.

‘Not there, silly, everybody will trip over them. Up on the shelf.’

‘Sorry.’ He stacked them on the shelf. Why hadn’t she said ‘shelf’ in the first place.

Jennifer dripped drops of angostura and poured herself a generous gin.

‘My father was in the Navy,’ she said,

Silas looked blank.

‘Pink gin, Silas, pink gin.’

He watched her take a swallow, wondering what she was talking about.

‘That’s better. Now for lunch. There’s a stew—baked pots and fruit. Do you?’

‘Lovely.’

‘Shocking of me. Didn’t offer you. Would you like a Coke?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘The boys always help themselves. Want to go to the loo? Like to see your room?’

‘Thank you. Yes please.’

‘I’ll show you.’ She led the way. ‘You’re all in this big room together, you won’t mind that, will you?’

‘Of course not.’ Just like school, he thought. Hope I like them. He looked doubtfully at the four beds.

‘When you’re ready come and eat. Here’s the bathroom. Mercifully there’s another loo downstairs. I’m not keen on people peeing in the garden, one might sit—kills the grass, too.’

Silas rejoined her. In silence they ate a very good stew, baked potatoes and fresh fruit. He helped her clear the table, stack the dirty plates in the dishwasher.

‘All mod cons in these cottages.’

‘Yes,’ he said, putting in the last plate.

‘Right, then. You unpack and explore. I’m going to have my rest. They will be home for supper, if not before. You’ll be all right?’

‘Yes, thank you.’

Jennifer Reeves went upstairs. He heard her drop her shoes, gentle thuds on the floor and her voice saying ‘Aah’ in relieved tones. She turned on a radio for Woman’s Hour. Silas crept upstairs into the assigned bedroom. Three beds were rumpled. He put his duffle bag on the fourth, searched for a jersey and trainers, put them on. He looked out of the window. It was still raining and he debated whether to keep on his jeans or change into shorts. He changed.

He followed a path uphill from the shore to find some sort of view. The path was bordered with tamarisk and fuchsia, the air soft and salty. He began to enjoy himself.

He explored, finding Trescoe Abbey Gardens, wandering dazed by the exotica, loving the surprises, avoiding other people. Presently he left the gardens and, after a long tramp, found a sickle-shaped beach empty except for birds. He sat on a rock and watched the water, a blue-green he had not seen in Cornwall. A boat rowed by a girl came slowly into view. A man sat in the stern with a fishing rod, casting a fly. Silas watched as the man caught and played mackerel as though he were on a lake fishing for trout. The man and the girl talked in low voices. Silas was not the only watcher, for seals’ heads bobbed inquisitively quite close to the boat. Silas had never seen seals. The boat went slowly out of sight, the man and the girl still talking in quiet voices. Silas watched the seals watch them go. The rain had stopped. He undressed and walked down to the water and waded in. He did not want to splash and alarm the seals, who might still be close. He swam out from the beach, then turned to look back at the white sand, grey rocks and the low cliffs ornate with purple heather. Near the shore there were overhanging clumps of thrift, their grey seed heads like the woolly heads of pantomime footmen. The water was cold; he swam for the shore. He had no towel and liked the way his clothes clung stickily to his body. Carrying his shoes he walked inland. Presently the sun came out. He lay in the heather listening to the gulls, watching a kestrel hover. Lulled by the sound of gulls and breakers thudding on rocks round the headland, he fell asleep. When he woke the sun was hot on his face and the salt from his bathe drew the skin tight. He rubbed his hands on his cheeks, making a small dry noise, echoed close by; beside him on a flat rock was an adder. Silas lay watching the beautiful creature as it moved away into the heather, making a thin papery sound. He closed his eyes. The ecstasy of the adder on top of the sighting of seals was almost too much. Feeling hungry, he got up to walk back to the cottage. He had come further than he thought; the sun was slanting from the horizon and gulls flew towards their evening haunts.

Coming up from the jetty he met Michael Reeves with his father and two boys of about his and Michael’s age. They were talking in loud voices, carrying bits of impedimenta from the boat and their day’s sailing. Michael hailed Silas loudly.

Michael’s father said, ‘Hullo, how are you? Nice to see you. Got here all right, I see. Hope my wife looked after you, fed you and that sort of thing. Been exploring, have you? Sorry to leave you, we couldn’t miss a good day’s sailing, knew you wouldn’t mind,’ in a louder, deeper voice than Michael’s.

Nobody introduced him to the two other boys, whom he later knew as Ian and Alistair.

Michael and his father wore crushed and dirty linen hats which had once been white. Ian and Alistair wore blue denim hats which were too small for them, having borne several seasons. Michael’s father wore red Breton fisherman’s trousers with patched knees and all the boys wore very tight denim shorts like Silas, but old and dirty so that he felt awkward. The whole party wore Guernsey jerseys like Mrs Reeves and smelt of boats and sweat. Silas wished Hebe had not said, ‘Your jerseys will do but take my old white thing if you want to.’ The old white thing was a Guernsey. Silas felt vaguely resentful towards Hebe. His own jerseys were serviceable but not Guernseys.

Michael and his friends jostled in the porch, talking loudly, shouting about the day’s sailing to Jennifer in the kitchen, who shouted back, and above the cacophony Julian Reeves boomed that what he needed before anything else was a stiff whisky.

‘Help yourself, then, I’m getting the nosh.’ Jennifer clattered pans, ran water into the sink. ‘Boys, boys, put your filthy boots in the porch, the floor was washed this morning.’

Michael and his friends kicked off yellow rubber boots and threw them down in the porch. A reek of hot feet drifted into the cottage.

‘Take your boots off, darling.’ Jennifer addressed her husband; ‘Mrs Thing did the floor.’

‘Okay, okay.’ Julian Reeves stepped out of his boots and stood pouring whisky into his glass. Silas silently took the boots and put them with the others.

‘Brought boots, did you?’ Michael addressed him.

‘No, I didn’t know I’d need them.’

‘We can lend you some, I expect.’

‘Go and change your filthy shorts before supper and for God’s sake wash,’ Jennifer shouted at Michael who was standing close beside her. Michael muttered. Silas followed him and the other boys upstairs. They started rummaging in the chest of drawers.

‘Quite glad to change,’ the boy Silas would subsequently know as Ian said, stepping out of his shorts. ‘These things squeeze my parts.’

Alistair and Michael laughed.

‘Large parts run in the family,’ said Ian encouraged. ‘Father says his are much admired.’

‘Who by?’ enquired Silas, feeling left out.

‘Our father has a mistress, thinks we don’t know. Haven’t heard mother’s opinion, suppose she takes them as they come.’

‘As they come.’ Alistair, younger than Ian, laughed lewdly.

‘My mother continually expects Pa to have a mistress. It’s her constant dread,’ said Michael, intent on keeping his end up. ‘Actually he wouldn’t dare. He gets slapped down if he so much as looks at a girl.’

‘Supper’s ready,’ Julian Reeves shouted up the stairs in a foghorn voice. The boys pattered downstairs in bare feet. Silas slipped off his shoes and followed them.

Jennifer doled out large helpings of a stew similar to the one they had eaten at lunch on to Habitat plates and everybody started eating.

Julian Reeves opened a bottle of wine and helped his wife and himself, then offered the bottle to Silas.

‘Thank you.’ Silas held out his glass. Julian filled it three quarters full. The other boys helped themselves to Coke. Silas felt he had made a
faux pas
and shyly gulped his wine.

Julian and the boys regaled Jennifer with their day’s sailing, constantly interrupting and contradicting one another.

‘We thought we’d sail round the Bishop’s Rock tomorrow if the weather holds. Like that, Silas, eh?’

‘Oh yes, lovely.’

‘Silas tells me he lives in a very interesting street. ‘Jennifer was refilling her glass. ‘Apparently he lives in the town. I hadn’t realised.’ She fitted an aitch into the word, ‘reahlised’.

‘What’s the street called?’ Julian asked in an expansive voice.

‘Wilson Street. It was Lord Kitchener Street but they changed it to Harold Wilson Street a few years ago.’

‘Golly! Under the Labour government?’

‘He’s got a bungalow at St Mary’s, you know.’ Jennifer was deprecating.

‘What a funny thing to do.’ Ian’s mouth was full of stew.

‘I wonder why.’ Passing cheese and Bath Oliver biscuits, Jennifer eyed Silas speculatively, as though he were responsible for the renaming.

‘He did something for the town. It was a way the Council had of saying thank you.’ In the ensuing silence Silas refused a Bath Oliver and helped himself to bread.

‘Takes all sorts, I suppose.’ Jennifer buttered a biscuit, munched, caught her husband’s eye. ‘Early to bed tonight if you are Bishop’s Rocking tomorrow. Clear the table, will you, boys.’

‘Okay,’ said Michael, Ian and Alistair. ‘Okay.’

Silas opened his mouth and shut it again.

Jennifer stood up. ‘Pub?’ she signalled her husband.

‘Of course.’

Silas watched his host and hostess stroll out into the dusk.

‘Let’s get this done.’ Michael started clearing the table. Silas helped. Ian and Alistair made vague movements without contributing.

‘Your family Labour, then?’ Ian enquired.

‘Labour?’ Silas was puzzled.

‘Ya, Labour not Tory. You know, Wilson Street, I ask you. Goes to show.’

‘What?’

‘Reds under the bed and so on.’

‘Don’t be stupid, Ian.’ Michael hedged his bets, remembering he was host.

‘I have a pot under mine.’ Alistair was gleeful. ‘Used to wet my bed.’ He sounded almost proud.

‘Kiddo.’ Ian was dismissive.

‘What’s on the box?’

They moved into the next room to sprawl and watch a Western on ITV. Ian turned up the sound but carried on a desultory conversation with Michael. To the accompaniment of saloon doors swinging, guns firing, the rattle of the stagecoach and galloping hooves, Silas learned that Michael’s family often joined forces with Alistair and Ian’s in the holidays, that they regularly skied at Megeve, that they had spent last summer holidays in the Canadian Rockies and that there were plans afoot for a trek in Ladakh the following year, although it was possible that Alistair would be considered too young to go.

‘You can always go to Uncle H in the Highlands,’ Ian consoled his younger brother.

‘Piss the Highlands,’ shouted Alistair above the background music of the film, voicing the anger and frustration of younger brothers. It all sounded very glamorous beside holidays spent in the dark brick Harold Wilson Street and expeditions to see Mr Quigley with Giles.

‘Why the hell are you not all in bed?’ Jennifer Reeves shouted when she came back from the pub.

‘It’s their holidays,’ Julian was alcoholically amiable.

‘Up, up you all go,’ cried Jennifer, as though addressing recalcitrant dogs.

Silas took a long time going to sleep. He would have liked another blanket. He would have liked his quilt and Trip nestling furry and purring against his stomach in his own bed in his mother’s house in the absolutely hideous street called Wilson Street. He wondered whether the rumour that the street had not been renamed out of gratitude but out of spite might not be true. He woke twice from his uneasy sleep to listen to the wind buffeting the cottage and to the sea growling.

A
VAILING HIMSELF OF LOUISA’S
open invitation to fish, Rory Grant, having eaten a solitary supper, took his rod and drove the ten miles to the point where Louisa’s stretch of water began. He parked his car, tucking it into the side of the road, pulled on his gumboots and, standing in the quiet of the August evening, put up his rod. Choosing a fly from his flybox, he listened to the gurgle of water flowing under the bridge and the evening sounds, the imagined rustle of bats hunting over the water, the rhythmic chewing from a group of recumbent cows who watched him benignly as he climbed a stile and began his slow progress along the river, casting his line over the water with the flick of wrist and movement of arm of inborn talent. As he cast his line he cast his cares. The mesmeric flow of the water brought solace and comfort to his insecure soul. When a trout rose to the fly and he struck, excitement took over until he had landed it, killed it with a sharp knock on the head and put it in his bag. He almost resented the interruption to his peace. By the time he had fished up the river it was nearly dark. He had caught four good fish. He stood looking up at Louisa’s house, debating whether to go home without calling on her or whether to visit. He decided on the latter.