The Empty House

  “A little. But that’s part of the fun.”

  Cara considered this. She did not like getting her face wet. Without her spectacles things became blurred and she couldn’t swim with her spectacles on.

  “What else did you do?”

  “Oh, we used to go out in the car, and go shopping. And if it was warm we used to sit in the garden, and Alice used to have friends to tea, and people for dinner. And sometimes I used to go for walks. There are lovely walks there. Up to the hill behind the house, or down into Porthkerris. The streets are all steep and narrow, so narrow you could scarcely get a car down them. And there were lots of little stray cats, and the harbour, with fishing boats and old men sitting around enjoying the sunshine. And sometimes the tide was in and all the boats were bobbing about in the deep blue water, and sometimes it was out, and there’d be nothing but gold sand, and all the boats would be leaning on their sides.”

  “Didn’t they fall over?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why?”

  “I haven’t any idea,” said Virginia.

  * * *

  There had been a special day, an April day of wind and sunshine. On that day the tide was high, Virginia could remember the salt smell of it, mixed with the evocative sea-going smells of tar and fresh paint.

  Within the shelter of the quay the water swelled smooth and glassy, clear and deep. But beyond the harbour it was rough, the dark ocean flecked with white horses and, out across the bay, the great seas creamed against the rocks at the foot of the lighthouse, sending up spouts of white spray almost as high as the lighthouse itself.

  It was a week since the night of the barbecue at Lanyon, and for once Virginia was on her own. Alice had driven to Penzance to attend some committee meeting, Tom Lingard was in Plymouth, Mrs. Jilkes, the cook, had her afternoon off and had departed, in a considerable hat to visit her cousin’s wife, and Mrs. Parsons was keeping her weekly appointment with the hairdresser.

  “You’ll have to amuse yourself,” she told Virginia over lunch.

  “I’ll be all right.”

  “What will you do?”

  “I don’t know. Something.”

  In the empty house, with the empty afternoon lying, like a gift, before her, she had considered a number of possibilities. But the marvellous day was too beautiful to be wasted, and she had gone out and started walking, and her feet had taken her down the narrow path that led to the cliffs, and then along the cliff path, and down to the white sickle of the beach. In the summer this would be crowded with coloured tents and ice-cream stalls and noisy holiday-makers with beach balls and umbrellas, but in April the visitors had not started to arrive, and the sand lay clean, washed by the winter storms, and her footsteps left a line of prints, neat and precise as little stitches.

  At the far end, a lane leaned uphill and she was soon lost in a maze of narrow streets that wound between ancient, sun-bleached houses. She came upon flights of stone steps and unsuspected alleys and followed them down until all at once she turned a corner out at the very edge of the harbour. In a dazzle of sunshine she saw the bright-painted boats, the peacock-green water. Gulls screamed and wheeled overhead, their great wings like white sails against the blue, and everywhere there was activity and bustle, a regular spring-cleaning going on. Shop-fronts were being white-washed, windows polished, ropes coiled, decks scrubbed, nets mended.

  At the edge of the quay a hopeful vendor had set up his ice-cream barrow, shiny white, and lettered seductively “Fred Hoskings, Cornish Ice-cream, The Best Home-made” and Virginia suddenly longed for one, and wished she had brought some money. To sit in the sunshine on such a day and lick an ice-cream seemed, all at once, the height of luxury. The more she thought about it the more desirable it seemed, and she even went through all her pockets in the hope of finding some forgotten coin, but there was nothing there. Not so much as a halfpenny.

  She sat on a bollard and gazed disconsolately down on to the deck of a fishing boat where a young boy in a salt-stained smock was brewing up tea on a spirit lamp. She was trying not to think about the ice-cream when, like the answer to a prayer, a voice spoke from behind her.

  “Hallo.”

  Virginia looked around over her shoulder, pushing her long dark hair out of her face, and saw him standing there, braced against the wind, with a package under his arm, and wearing a blue polo-necked sweater that made him look like a sailor.

  She stood up. “Hallo.”

  “I thought it was you,” said Eustace Philips, “but I couldn’t be sure. What are you doing here?”

  “Nothing. I mean, I just came for a walk, and I stopped to look at the boats.”

  “It’s a lovely day.”

  “Yes.”

  His blue eyes gleamed, amused. “Where’s Alice Lingard?”

  “She’s gone to Penzance … she’s on a committee…”

  “So you’re all alone?”

  “Yes.” She was wearing worn blue sneakers, blue jeans and a white cable-stitch sweater, and felt miserably convinced that her naïvete was painfully obvious not only in her clothes but her lack of small-talk as well.

  She looked at his package. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came in to pick up a new rick cover. The wind last night blew the old one to ribbons.”

  “I expect you’re going back now.”

  “Not immediately. How about you?”

  “I’m not doing anything. Just exploring, I suppose.”

  “Don’t you know the town?”

  “I’ve never got this far before.”

  “Come along then, I’ll show you the rest of it.”

  They began to walk back along the quay, in no hurry, their slow paces matched. He caught sight of the ice-cream barrow and stopped to talk.

  “Hallo, Fred.”

  The ice-cream man, resplendent in a white starched coat like a cricket umpire, turned and saw him. A smile spread across features browned and wizened as a walnut.

  “’Allo, Eustace. ’Ow are you?”

  “Fine. How’s yourself?”

  “Oh, keeping not too bad. Don’t often see you down ’ere. ’Ow are things out at Lanyon?”

  “All right. Working hard.” Eustace ducked his head at the barrow. “You’re early out. There’s nobody here yet to buy ice-creams.”

  “Oh well, early bird catches the worm I always say.”

  Eustace looked at Virginia. “Do you want an ice-cream?”

  She could not think of any person who had offered her, so instantly, exactly what she wanted most.

  “I’d love one, but I haven’t any money.”

  Eustace grinned. “The biggest you’ve got,” he said to Fred, and reached his hand into the back pocket of his trousers.

  He took her the length of the wharf, up cobbled streets at whose existence she had never even guessed, through small, surprising squares, where the houses had yellow doors and window-boxes, past little courtyards filled with washing-lines and flights of stone steps where the cats lay and sunned themselves and attended to their ablutions. They came out at last on to a northern beach which lay with its face to the wind, and the long combers rolled in jade green with the sun behind them, and the air was misted with blown spume.

  “When I was a boy.” Eustace told her, raising his voice above the wind, “I used to come here with a surf-board. A little wooden one my uncle made me, with a face painted on the curve. But now they have these Malibu surfboards, made of fibreglass they are and they surf all year round, winter and summer.”

  “Isn’t it cold?”

  “They wear wet suits.”

  They came to a sea wall, curved against the wind with a wooden bench built into its angle and here Eustace, apparently deciding that they had walked far enough, settled himself, his back to the wall and his face to the sun and his long legs stretched in front of him.

  Virginia, consuming the last of the mammoth ice-cream, sat beside him. He watched her, and when she had demolished the final mouthful and w
as wiping her fingers on the knees of her jeans he said, “Did you enjoy it?”

  His face was serious but his eyes laughed at her. She didn’t mind. “It was delicious. The best. You should have had one too.”

  “I’m too big and too old to go walking round the streets licking an ice-cream.”

  “I shall never be too big or too old.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Seventeen, nearly eighteen.”

  “Have you left school?”

  “Yes, last summer.”

  “What are you doing now?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Are you going to University?”

  She was flattered that he should imagine she was so clever. “Goodness, no.”

  “What are you going to do, then?”

  Virginia wished that he had not asked.

  “Well, eventually, I suppose, next winter I’ll learn how to cook or do shorthand and typing or something gruesome like that. But you see my mother has this bee in her bonnet about being in London for the summer and going to all the parties and meeting all the right people and generally having a social whirl.”

  “I believe,” said Eustace, “it’s called ‘Doing the Season.’”

  His tone of voice made it very clear that he thought as little of the idea as she did.

  “Oh, don’t. It gives me the shivers.”

  “It’s hard to believe, in this day and age, that anybody bothers any more.”

  “I know, it’s fantastic. But they do. And my mother’s one of them. She’s already met some of the other mothers and had ghastly tea parties with them. She’s even booked a date for a dance, but I’m going to try my hardest to talk her out of that one. Can you think of anything worse than having a coming-out dance?”

  “No, I can’t, but then I’m not a sweet seventeen-year-old.” Virginia made a face at him. “If you feel so strongly about it why don’t you dig in your toes, tell your mother you’d rather have the price of a return ticket to Australia or something?”

  “I already have. At least I’ve tried. But you don’t know my mother. She never listens to anything I say, she just says that it’s so important to meet all the right people, and be asked to all the right parties and be seen at all the right places.”

  “You could try getting your father on your side.”

  “I haven’t got a father. At least I never see him; they were divorced when I was a baby.”

  “I see.” He added, without much heart: “Well, cheer up—who knows—you might enjoy it.”

  “I shall hate every moment of it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I’m useless at parties, and I get tongue-tied with strangers, and I can never think of anything to say to young men.”

  “You’re thinking of plenty to say to me,” Eustace pointed out.

  “But you’re different.”

  “How am I different?”

  “Well, you’re older. I mean you’re not young.” Eustace began to laugh and Virginia was embarrassed. “I mean you’re not really young, like twenty-one or twenty-two.” He was still laughing. She frowned. “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-eight,” he told her. “Twenty-nine next birthday.”

  “You are lucky. I wish I was twenty-eight.”

  “If you were,” said Eustace, “you probably wouldn’t be here now.”

  All at once it turned dark and cold. Virginia shivered, and looked up and saw that the sun had disappeared behind a large grey cloud, the vanguard of a bank of dirty weather which was blowing in from the west.

  “That’s it,” said Eustace. “We’ve had the best of the day. It’ll be raining by this evening.” He looked at his watch. “It’s nearly four o’clock, time I made for home. How are you getting back?”

  “Walking, I suppose.”

  “Do you want a ride?”

  “Have you got a car?”

  “I’ve got a Land-Rover, parked round by the church.”

  “Won’t I be taking you out of your way?”

  “No. I can go back to Lanyon over the moor.”

  “Well, if you’re certain…”

  Driving back to Wheal House, Virginia fell silent. But it was a natural, companionable silence, comfortable as an old shoe, and had nothing to do with being shy or unable to think of anything to say. She could not remember when she had felt so at ease with a person—and certainly never with a man whom she had known such a short time. The Land-Rover was an old one, the seats worn and dusty and there were stray scraps of straw lying about the floor and a faint smell of farmyard manure. Virginia did not find this in the least offensive—rather, she liked it because it was part of Penfolda.

  She realized that she wanted, above all things, to go back there. To see the farm and the fields in daylight, to inspect the stock and be shown around, perhaps to be allowed to see the rest of the farmhouse and be asked to tea in that enviable kitchen. To be accepted.

  They came up the hill out of the town, where the houses of the old residential area had all been turned into hotels, with gardens bulldozed into car parks, and glassed-in porches. There were sun-rooms and palm trees, dismal against the grey sky, and municipal flower-beds planted with straight rows of daffodils.

  High above the sea, the road levelled out. Eustace changed into top gear and said, “When are you going back to London?”

  “I don’t know. In about a week.”

  “Do you want to come out to Penfolda again?”

  This was the second time that day that he had offered her what she craved most. She wondered if he were psychic.

  “Yes, I’d love to.”

  “My mother was very taken with you. Not often she sees a new face. It would be nice for her if you’d come and have a cup of tea with her.”

  “I’d like to come.”

  “How would you get out to Lanyon?” asked Eustace, his eyes on the road ahead.

  “I could borrow Alice’s car. I’m sure if I asked her she’d let me borrow it. I’d be very careful.”

  “Can you drive?”

  “Of course. Otherwise I wouldn’t borrow the car.” She smiled at him. Not because it was meant to be a joke, but because all at once she felt so good.

  “Well, I’ll tell you,” said Eustace in his deliberate way. “I’ll have a word with my mother, find out which day suits her best, give you a ring on the telephone. How would that be?”

  She imagined waiting for the call, having it come, hearing his voice over the wire. She almost hugged herself with pleasure.

  “It would be all right.”

  “What’s the number?”

  “Porthkerris three two five.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  They had reached home. He turned into the white gates of Wheal House and roared up the drive between the hedges of escallonia.

  “There you are!” He stopped with a great jerk of brakes and a splattering of gravel. “Home safely, just in time for tea.”

  “Thank you so much.”

  He leaned on the wheel, smiling at her. “That’s all right.”

  “I mean, for everything. The ice-cream and everything.”

  “You’re welcome.” He reached across and opened the door for her. Virginia jumped down on to the gravel, and as she did so, the front door opened and Mrs. Parsons emerged, wearing a little suit of raspberry-red wool, and a white silk shirt, tied like a stock at the neck.

  “Virginia!”

  Virginia swung around. Her mother came across the gravel towards them, immaculate as always, but her hair, short and dark, blew casually in the wind and had obviously not been attended to that afternoon.

  “Mother!”

  “Where have you been?” The smile was friendly and interested.

  “I thought you were at the hairdresser.”

  “The girl who usually does me is in bed with a cold. They offered me another girl of course, but, as she’s the one who usually spends her days sweeping hair off the floor, I declined with thanks.” Sti
ll smiling, she looked beyond Virginia to where Eustace waited. “And who is your friend?”

  “Oh. It’s Eustace Philips…”

  But now Eustace had decided to get out of the car. He jumped down on to the gravel and came around the front of the Land-Rover to be introduced. And, hating herself, Virginia saw him through her mother’s eyes; the wide powerful shoulders beneath the sailor’s sweater, the sun-burned face, the strong, calloused hands.

  Mrs. Parsons came forward graciously. “How do you do.”

  “Hallo,” said Eustace, meeting her eye with an unblinking blue gaze. Her hand was half-way out to shake his, but Eustace either didn’t see this or chose to ignore it. Mrs. Parsons’s hand dropped back to her side. Her manner became, subtly, a fraction more cool.

  “Where did Virginia meet you?” The question was harmless, even playful.

  Eustace leaned against the Land-Rover and crossed his arms. “I live out at Lanyon; farm Penfolda…”

  “Oh, of course, the barbecue. Yes, I heard all about it. And how nice that you met up again today.”

  “By chance,” said Eustace, firmly.

  “But that makes it even nicer!” She smiled. “We’re just going to have tea, Mr. Philips. Won’t you join us?”

  Eustace shook his head. His eyes never left her face. “I’ve got seventy cows waiting to be milked. I’d better be getting back…”

  “Oh, of course. I wouldn’t want to keep you from your work.” Her tone was that of the lady of the house dismissing the gardener, but she continued to smile.

  “I wouldn’t let you,” said Eustace, and went to get back into the car.

  “Goodbye, Virginia.”

  “Oh. Goodbye,” said Virginia faintly. “And thank you for bringing me home.”

  “I’ll ring you up some time.”

  “Yes, do that.”

  He gave a final salute with his head, then started the engine, put the Land-Rover into gear, and without a backward glance, shot away, down the drive and out of sight, leaving Virginia and her mother standing, staring after him, in a cloud of dust.

  “Well!” said Mrs. Parsons, laughing, but obviously nettled.

  Virginia said nothing. There did not seem to be anything to say.

  “What a very basic young man! I must say, staying down here, one does meet all types. What’s he going to ring you up about?”