I drove slowly and allowed my mind to clear. I passed a farm where a child was fetched in from the step. A pair of cows was grazing in the field beside the road. They looked towards me. A curtain twitched in the farmhouse window, and a woman’s face appeared. Gloria stood in the link-box and watched the cows. Her tail wagged and her tongue hung from the corner of her mouth like a leaf.
As we drove into Zennack more children were whisked away. Cats glided over fences and on to roofs. Mrs Boundy watched from the post office window as I steered across the square, past the pub and the pavement benches to Dunn’s Builders’ Yard of Zennack.
Mr Dunn came from a shack in the corner of the yard, rolling up his sleeves and licking doughnut sugar from his lips. He was a fat and bald man. His pate was covered with a light dusting of cement. He didn’t care if I had murdered men or stolen women from their homes and sold them to passing slavers. If I paid his account on time or, better, cash in an unaddressed envelope, then I was his friend. ‘Michael,’ he said. ‘Good morning. Gloria.’ He patted the dog. ‘Still busy?’
‘Yes,’ I said. We shook hands, and I said, ‘I need some timber. Two by fours.’
‘I’ve got short lengths I could let go cheap.’
‘What are short lengths? How short?’
‘Three, three and a half foot.’
‘Okay.’
‘I’ll show you.’
We crossed the yard and went inside a low shed. Wood was stacked to the roof and cement dust columned in the light. I stood back while he pulled the timber from its racks, and laid it on the floor. He had a tape measure, and used it quickly. Gloria stood outside and stared at a child that stood by the fence. Everything was very businesslike. Mr Dunn did not ask me any personal questions.
I went to the post office and asked if Dan was in the village.
‘He’s gone to Plymouth,’ said Mr Boundy. ‘Won’t be back till tomorrow morning.’
‘Plymouth?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh,’ I said.
‘You need a taxi?’ I don’t know if this was a question or a statement of fact. You need a taxi.
I said, ‘I’ve got this woman at the Port. She turned up yesterday.’
He smiled and his teeth yelled at me. I took a step back. He said, ‘We know.’
I looked into Mr Boundy’s eyes. He was Cornish and had the dull look of men who have lived in one place so long that they think it is the only place. I have known people like this with their clenched hearts and their whispers. Mr Boundy was harmless but not to himself. He popped his tongue into his cheek. I said, ‘Elizabeth Green’ to him.
‘Missing You, wasn’t it?’
I nodded.
‘Load of rubbish,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t make head nor tail of it. Lost the thread completely. You know it was on telly last month?’
Missing You is a simple story. I said. ‘Tomorrow morning?’
‘Yes.’
‘There’s no one else who could…’
‘Insurance,’ Mr Boundy interrupted.
‘What?’ I could hear Mrs Boundy shuffling around in the back room.
‘It’s insurance, isn’t it? If you’re a fare-paying passenger and you have an accident, who’s going to cover you?’
‘What if she’s not paying?’
‘No one’s going to do it for free.’
‘I’ll pay.’
Mr Boundy smiled now, and smoothed his greasy hair. He had a moustache and was about fifty years old. I knew what he was going to say before he said it, roughly. ‘Desperate, are you?’
I stared at his mouth.
‘You’ll have to wait. Tomorrow morning. He’ll be along, no worries.’
‘Don’t forget, will you?’
‘No,’ he said.
I moved from the counter to the corner of the shop where he keeps a small selection of fruit and vegetables. I looked at his scraggy carrots, bought a pound of apples and asked if he had any lemons.
‘Lemons?’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘I think so,’ and he came and found one hidden behind the bananas. ‘We always keep a few.’ He wrapped it. ‘You haven’t bought one before, have you?’ and I knew he was going to ask why, but I gave him a hard stare, the captain’s look, and he didn’t say anything else.
I left the post office and as I crossed the square to the tractor, Mrs Bell came from her guest house and raised her hand. ‘Michael!’ she called, and this time there was no way to avoid her. She waved and I waved back. The sun was weak in the sky, and not very warm. She was wearing a blue apron over a floral dress, and a woollen hat. I went to meet her.
Mrs Bell’s eyes were too big for me, too moist and wanting. She doesn’t believe any of the stories about me, even though I insisted that most of them could be true. I stayed in her guest house for a few nights in the winter, while I was buying my house. She fed me huge breakfasts, offered me exclusive use of the top bathroom and gave me the biggest bed in the place. She told me that I was to make her house my house. I tried to tell her that I couldn’t do that but she insisted. I didn’t want to argue, so I thanked her though I didn’t mean it. She owns a dog called Vauxhall, a retired greyhound.
I told her my story and she took me into her confidence by telling me her husband’s story. He had worked as a rigger for the Electricity Board. One day he had been working on a feeder line from Penzance to St Ives. He was harnessed up all right, but as he was moving his braking clip from one spar to the next, he lost his grip. He was one hundred and twenty feet up. He tried to find a footing, slipped, shouted and dropped ten feet. Now he was balanced on a crossbeam, clear air behind, struts to the front. He tried for another grip but twisted, tipped sideways and fell another ten. Here the beams were broader and the pylon wider. One of his harness clips clattered on to his head and began to play out beneath him. He grabbed it, clipped on, fell again and hung in mid-air with nothing between him and the ground. The harness held but he was being strangled one hundred feet up. ‘Help…’ he wheezed to a man twenty feet below, who looked up, yelled to a third and started to climb. Mr Bell was unconscious on arrival at hospital, in April 1965, and remained in a coma for six weeks.
When he awoke on a sunny June day, Mr Bell announced to Mrs Bell that he had had a revelation. Evil in this world was being channelled into homes down electricity cables, and was seeping into people through radios, light-bulbs, twin-tub washing machines and irons. It was his mission to spread this news. He got up, dressed quickly and discharged himself from hospital.
The doctors explained that his condition was caused by lack of oxygen to the brain, and after a series of adventures in St Austell and Indian Queens, Mr Bell was committed to a hospital where he died three years later, having revised his revelation to include water. ‘Washing is the worst thing you can do to yourself,’ was one of the last things he said to Mrs Bell. She mourned for six months then sold their place in St Austell and bought the house in Zennack. She had always wanted to do bed and breakfast. ‘Looking after people. Giving them a good breakfast. That’s what counts.’
‘It’s one of the things.’
‘I knew a man like you before,’ Mrs Bell said to me. I didn’t ask where. ‘I could trust him. You can’t trust anyone in this village. That’s what I miss.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Confidences.’ She reached out and touched my sleeve, and gave me a longer look than she had to. ‘I expect on board a ship you had to be careful what you said.’
I said that you did.
‘And I miss just sitting, just enjoying someone else’s company. Not having to say anything…’
‘I know what you mean,’ I said, and at that moment I knew I’d said the wrong thing. I gave her the wrong signals, but she smiled and nodded as if I had the nicest face and had said the wisest thing.
Now she offered me a cup of tea. She had the kettle on. I followed her inside. Gloria sat by the front gate. Vauxhall watched her from the doorstep, then lay down and went to sleep.
I put my shopping on the kitchen table, sat down and waited for her to join me with the teapot. It was a comfortable scene. Mrs Bell took her apron off before sitting down. She didn’t have pierced ears or a television but her skin was very pale, and her hair was dark. She had the look of a gypsy fortune-teller who gave up telling fortunes years ago, innocent eyes broken at the corners. She wore a little rouge on her face and her wedding ring on her right hand. ‘So…’ she said to me, and I knew what she meant.
‘Elizabeth Green’s at my house,’ I said.
‘At your house?’ Mrs Bell knows what it’s like at Port Juliet. ‘She stayed the night?’
‘Yes.’
‘My God,’ she said. ‘In your house?’
‘Yes.’
‘But it’s…’
‘I know,’ I said.
‘Is she okay?’ She lowered her eyes and coughed. ‘What I mean to say is…’
‘I know what you mean,’ I said, and I smiled. ‘She’ll survive. I’m here to fetch the taxi for her.’
‘Oh,’ said Mrs Bell, and she poured the tea and told me all she knew.
Elizabeth Green was in England for the European premiere of her new film, Raintown. That had been last week, and now she had taken a few days off before flying back home to America.
She had appeared in Zennack two days ago. She’d taken a cab from Penzance. She booked into Mrs Bell’s and did nothing but complain. First the bed was too small, then it was too high, and then the room was too noisy. When she said the bathroom was dirty Mrs Bell was indignant, told her that none of her previous guests had complained and went to make herself a cup of tea. ‘I’ve never been so insulted,’ said Mrs Bell.
‘Her mother was born in Port Juliet.’
‘That seems unlikely.’ I don’t think Mrs Bell had spent her whole life in Cornwall.
‘I think it’s true.’
She huffed, and poured herself another cup. ‘You could eat off my taps,’ she said.
‘Of course you could,’ I said, and I told her about the state of my house, and how ashamed I’d felt.
‘Have you seen any of her films?’
‘I don’t think I missed one. Whenever I was in port I went to the cinema.’
‘I haven’t been for ages.’
‘There’s a cinema in Truro,’ I said. ‘We could go one day.’
She touched her hair and looked at her cup of tea. ‘Could we?’
‘Of course.’
‘I’m not sure,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t think it would be a very good idea.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because…’ she started, and then she coughed noisily and said, ‘And the phone never stopped. In the end I had to take it off the hook.’
‘When?’
‘When that woman was here. I don’t know. Someone from London, and then there was an American. I overheard her talking; I think she was expecting Port Juliet to be more than what it is, but I wasn’t going to set her right. I thought, serves you right, treating me like this.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘And she turned her nose up at my breakfasts. That was the last straw.’
‘She’s got very little consideration.’
‘You can say that again,’ said Mrs Bell, and she stood up, tapped the table-top with the tips of her fingers and went to rinse her cup.