Winter Wishes (2 page)

“Do you want me to shag Little Rog and get him to do the repairs for free? He’s been trying to chat me up ever since the Polwenna Bay calendar. I draw the line at Big Rog though, Jules, even for you,” Issie joked.

At least, Jules hoped she was joking; you were never totally sure with Issie Tremaine. A law unto herself, whirlwind Issie partied hard, drank even harder and broke hearts right, left and centre. Half the young men in the village were in love with her and the other half were trying their best to get over her. It wasn’t difficult to see why. Issie shared the Tremaines’ blessed gene pool and had the same hyacinth-blue eyes, high cheekbones and golden hair that reminded Jules so painfully of Issie’s brother, Danny. Today, with her blonde braids caught up with a green ribbon on the crown of her head, and dressed in a flowing claret-coloured velvet coat and purple wellies, Issie looked like a modern-day pisky – and she was equally capable of causing havoc. The Pollards might be a sly pair, and they certainly weren’t averse to making an extra pound or two where they could, but they didn’t deserve an encounter with hurricane Issie. Besides, Jules was still trying to live down the Polwenna Bay naked calendar. In fairness it had raised a lot of money for St Wenn’s, but the bishop had been less than impressed with the whole idea; he’d given Jules a stern warning about inappropriate ways of raising funds. Pimping out her parishioners in order to get the roof fixed would probably result in excommunication!

“Err, I’m joking!” Issie said, catching Jules’s worried expression. “You obviously have a really great opinion of me. Little Rog? As if! In his dreams!”

Alice caught Jules’s eye. “We’re never quite sure with you, young lady. Let’s be honest, you’re not always the best behaved. Or the most sensible. I worry about you.”

Issie tossed her head and snorted. “Please! I’m twenty-two, not two, Granny. Anyway, you’re only saying all this because I’m a girl. It’s actually quite sexist. You wouldn’t bother if it were Nick. Or Zak.”

Issie’s brothers were just as golden and gorgeous as she was – and if village gossip was to be believed, they got through girls like Jules was getting through chips these days.

“Oh, I’m equally worried about them, believe me,” said Alice grimly.

“And then there’s Dad,” Issie continued, squeezing between her grandmother and Jules and threading arms with them both. “He’s as bad. I caught him on Skype on his laptop, talking to some woman in America. She must have been about my age. He slammed the lid down when he saw me. It was hilarious.”

Alice’s face clouded and she suddenly looked every one of her seventy-nine years. Jules’s heart went out to her: she knew just how much Alice fretted about her son.

Jimmy was as charming and attractive as his brood but had never really grown up. Despite having been widowed in his early forties, he remained the Peter Pan of Polwenna Bay. He spent money as though it was going out of fashion and was inclined to pass his time propping up the bar in The Ship, pulling holidaymakers and generally squandering his talents as well as his cash. He liked to gamble, smoked too much and told stories taller than the Empire State Building. Still, he was so much fun and so good-natured that people tended to forgive him anything. Jules found Jimmy entertaining but she could certainly understand how he drove the more responsible members of his family to distraction.

“Dad was like a naughty kid,” Issie said, skipping in front of them now. “Oh, come on, Granny: it’s funny,” she insisted, when Alice didn’t comment. “You look just like Jake when you scowl. Dad doesn’t mean any harm.”

Alice exhaled and Jules squeezed her arm in solidarity. They’d had some long talks about Alice’s fears that her son would gamble away the boatyard, and Danny had told her enough stories about his unreliable father to convince Jules that this was a very real possibility.

“He never means any harm, my love, but that doesn’t seem to stop him causing it,” was all she said.

Issie bit her lip. “I didn’t mean to upset you, Granny. I was just messing about. I was going to say that it must run in the family, that was all. Like Black Jack Jago.”

Alice laughed. “Oh, Issie! Whatever next? That’s just a story.”

“No! It’s true! You know it is! You’ve got the necklace to prove it, haven’t you? The one made from Spanish treasure.”

Jules looked from grandmother to granddaughter, feeling more at sea than the Polwenna fishing fleet.

“What’s all this? Who’s Black Jack Jago? Something to do with Betty Jago from the village shop?”

The older woman nodded. “Somewhere along the line, I should think. This is Polwenna, Jules: we’re all related somehow. Jack Jago was my great, great, great grandfather on my mother’s side, as well a notorious Polwenna Bay smuggler and wrecker and, by all accounts, an all-round bad egg. I’ll tell you all about him, but you really should take it with a giant pinch of sea salt. Come on, it’s getting late, so let’s keep walking and I’ll tell you the tale.”

Although it was only three in the afternoon, the winter light was beginning to fade and wisps of sea mist were wrapping themselves around the trees like scarves. As Jules’s wellies sploshed through the puddles she looked up at the canopy of leaves high above, the exact colours of toffee and treacle and caramel, and imagined that she was inside a giant jar of confectionery. It really was a magical setting, so still and ancient, and as Alice spoke Jules could easily picture another time. She visualised the smugglers’ ponies, and could almost hear the muffled sounds of their hooves on the dank woodland floor as they were led through the cover of the trees and down to the beach below, where galleons waited to unload lace and brandy and tobacco.

“Black Jack Jago wasn’t content with smuggling,” Alice said. “He was greedy, and his heart was as black as those dark nights when he and his henchmen would set out with a lantern and lure ships onto the rocks. Once the ships had foundered, he and his men would wait for the cargo to wash up on the shore and spirit it away – after they’d finished with any survivors, that is.”

Jules’s mouth fell open. “You mean that really happened? People seriously wrecked ships on purpose? And murdered anyone who swam to shore?” She’d heard the tales, of course, and drunk the odd pint of Wreckers Ale in the pub, but she’d always imagined it was just folklore.

“Oh, it’s true all right. Not one of the most glorious episodes in Polwenna’s past, but it certainly happened. Times were hard and people were desperate. The locals believed that anything washing up on the beach was theirs by rights. You look at the beams in Seaspray next time you’re up – they’re made from teak that washed up in the bay in the nineteenth century.”

“Some people still think that,” Issie pointed out.

Her grandmother nodded. “Very true, my love. It’s in some people’s blood, I think. Do you know, Jules, not so long ago a ship went down at Whitsand Bay and there was lots of timber washed up. Everyone was down there helping themselves and tying planks to their cars and vans.”

Jules had a sudden insight into human nature, and was a little alarmed by just how easy it was to imagine many of her parishioners up on the cliffs, armed with lanterns.

“Anyway,” continued Alice, warming to her narrative and clearly enjoying having an audience, “the story goes that a Spanish treasure ship,
Isabella
—”

“That’s the ship I’m named after!” Issie couldn’t contain herself. She must have heard the story a thousand times and Jules couldn’t help smiling at her excitement; it transformed her from a young woman to a wide-eyed child, and Jules was struck by just how young Issie really was.

“Yes, indeed,” Alice nodded. “Anyway,
Isabella
was supposed to have all kinds of treasure intended as a gift for the queen of Spain – treasure with a curse on it too, by all accounts – and when she was blown off course her captain started heading for Plymouth to shelter and get the ship repaired. That was the last anyone heard of it. The story goes that it never got as far as Plymouth. Instead, Black Jack wrecked it here on the Cornish coast. He hid the treasure in the caves beneath the cliffs, then made his way home through the smugglers’ secret passage.”

“The cave on the beach?” Jules was intrigued. She’d explored it and there hadn’t seemed to be anything at the end of it except for a rock fall. “There’s a secret passage?”

“Not any more. It’s blocked now, but it’s supposed to run under the village,” Issie told her.

“Wow,” said Jules.

“It’s only a story,” Alice reminded them, seeing that her audience was getting carried away. “It’s not true.”

“It might be true. There was a tunnel too,” Issie insisted. “Jonny St Milton says he went through it as a boy.”

“Jonny St Milton always was a fibber,” Alice scoffed. The twist to her mouth as she spoke and the sharpness of her tone were so out of character that Jules was taken aback. Interesting. Was there history here?

“So what happened?” she asked.

“The legend goes that Black Jack was returning to the cave through the passage to collect his loot when the curse of the treasure struck and the tunnel collapsed. Black Jack Jago was never seen again, and neither was his loot. The wreck was never found either, but they say that on a stormy night she can be seen out at sea and that Black Jack haunts the cave, guarding his ill-gotten gains.”

Although she knew this was all nonsense, Jules shivered. That cave was cold and dank and shadowy. Who knew what was lurking in its dark depths? And whoever knew that Alice could spin such a good story?

“You’ve missed out the best bit,” Issie complained. “Tell her about the proof.”

Alice laughed. “It’s hardly proof, sweetheart. Just a great family legend.” To Jules, she added, “Although Black Jack was never seen again, a handful of gold coins were said to have mysteriously appeared in the family home on the night he vanished. Over the years most of them have been spent, but I still have one as a necklace. Or perhaps I should say that
allegedly
the necklace is made from one. Of course, it’s just another tall tale. It certainly used to entertain Issie and the others when they were children, though.”

Personally Jules thought it would have given her nightmares. Maybe there was something to be said for growing up on a featureless housing estate after all?

“You can call it a tall tale if you like but I totally believe it – and one day I’ll prove it’s true,” declared Issie staunchly. “All legends have got some truth in them. Look, we’re at St Wenn’s Well, aren’t we? That’s another legend with some truth in it.”

Jules grinned. “Not quite as grisly as Black Jack Jago! St Wenn was a pretty peaceful woman, and I don’t think she did much apart from sit by the stream and pray.”

They’d reached a clearing in the woods where a small stream chuckled over pebbles, and where a moss-smothered Celtic cross marked a deeper pool of water. Although it was autumn, the leaf canopy was a vivid green here, and there was an odd stillness that Jules felt owed more to Cornwall’s pagan roots than the Church of England might want to admit. Cornwall was crammed full of obscure saints, as many as sinners it seemed, and each had their own story. They tended to be linked to sites that had once been part of a much older religion.

In this particular place, little scraps of brightly coloured fabric were tied to the ash and willow trees that dipped their roots in the stream, as markers of wishes and prayers from people who had visited.

“They say that if you put your hand in the stream and make a wish here for true love then St Wenn grants it,” Issie said earnestly. “Everyone comes up here to wish.”

Jules rolled her eyes. “Oh please!”

“You can laugh if you like but I’m having a go.” Defiant, Issie crouched down and dabbled her fingers in the water. “Oh! It’s cold! OK, St Wenn. Please bring me a fit millionaire and preferably not one married to my sister!”

Alice said quietly, “Do you know, I’ve not been here for years. Not since I was here with—”

She stopped abruptly and her cheeks grew quite pink.

“Don’t stop now. It’s getting interesting, Granny!” Issie teased. “I take it we’re not talking about Granddad? Who was it? Come on. Spill!”

But Alice wouldn’t be drawn. “Have you been here before?” she asked Jules.

Jules shook her head. To be honest, she wasn’t into superstition and she’d been far too busy to seek the place out, but now she was in the mossy dell she was curious about the saint who had lent her name to Polwenna Bay’s church.

“She’s supposed to be related to one of the Apostles, isn’t she?”

“That’s right,” Alice said. “I’m not sure quite how she ended up in Cornwall, but then lots of people seem to wash up here eventually.”

Issie glanced at her watch. “Make a wish then, you two. It’ll be dark soon.”

“I’m a bit too old for all that!” Alice objected.

“Don’t be so boring. And Jules, before you protest all that religious stuff, this is a holy place.”

Alice held out her arm to Issie. “You’d better help me, then: I’m not quite as agile as I was the last time I did this!”

Clutching her granddaughter tightly, Alice leaned over the stream and dipped her hand in. “And before you ask, I’m not telling you anything about who I may have used my wish for!” she called over her shoulder.

“Hope you used it on me. If somebody decent doesn’t turn up soon Little Rog may start to look like my best option,” grumbled Issie. “Go on, Jules, your turn.”

Feeling awkward, and not wholly convinced that this was a great idea, Jules bent over the stream. There was no denying what she longed for, but she knew there was no way she should even be thinking of it, let alone wishing for it. She was utterly torn. And yet, from the moment her fingers dipped into the cold clear water, the words flowed from her soul as naturally and as freely as the stream flowed from the earth and into the sea.

She simply couldn’t help it: Jules wished with all her heart for Danny.

Chapter 2

By the time the three walkers had returned to Polwenna Bay the sun was slipping below the horizon, casting a final ray of light that made the sea sparkle. The sky flowered with hues of fuchsia and peony and poppy, lights began to twinkle in cottage windows, and on the chimney pots seagulls hid their heads beneath snowy wings. Soon the evening shadows would be draping themselves across the village. In the winter Polwenna Bay tucked itself up for the night early, its curtains closed against the darkness, and sent plumes of woodsmoke rising into the starry skies. The fishing fleet was already in: the chug of machinery landing the day’s catch echoed up from the harbour, and voices drifted on the breeze as the men called to one another.