It is Sister Emily’s first thought on waking: Candlemas! Goody! I wonder what we shall have for lunch! Her Novice Mistress taught her to say the Gloria first thing each morning but Feast Days are special occasions and the words ‘Glory be to the Father…’ are more heartfelt when prayed after the goose, say, at Michaelmas, or a delicious rack of lamb on Easter Sunday. And anyway, these days, the waking thought is more likely to be, Oh dear. Here we go again…
Pulling off her nightgown, running water into her wash basin, she wonders whether Janna is capable of producing a special feast. After all, she hasn’t come here to be a cook. Since Penny has not yet recovered from her bad attack of shingles, poor Janna has been cast unceremoniously into the role and is struggling to cope with the extra work. Well, they are all struggling.
She glances at her little bedside clock. Eighteen minutes past six. At this moment, Ruth – the youngest of them all at a mere sixty-eight – will be washing Nichola and then helping her into the chair, where she spends most of her time, whilst Magda makes tea and coffee and Nichola’s breakfast in the little kitchen at the end of their corridor. These days they all have a hot, comforting drink before Morning Prayer, which has been moved from seven o’clock to half-past to give them all a chance to get ready and finish their early morning tasks. Sister Emily sighs: she could remember the days when she’d risen at dawn for Lauds, and even earlier for the long night vigil of Matins: but now they are too frail to test their small stores of strength.
As sacristan it is her job to set up in the chapel and prepare for the Daily Office, and as she begins to dress she considers the familiar routine of the day ahead: Morning Prayer and then Terce after breakfast at a quarter to nine – and then Father Pascal will arrive to celebrate the Eucharist at midday. Although he is their chaplain, there is a small group of priests who share the rota with him. He’ll stay to lunch today, and so will Clem and Janna. She pauses, sitting on the edge of the bed to put on her shoes, to give thanks for Janna and Clem: how could they manage without them? Chi-Meur has many good friends, as well as alongsiders and oblates, who help in many different ways, but Clem and Janna are part of the bones and blood of the place now. They work and strive alongside the community; and each is on a particular path of discovery.
Pilgrims, she thinks. We are all pilgrims.
She senses Janna’s inward struggle between her need to belong and her fear of commitment; soon, very soon, she might be required to face up to this conflict more directly. Clem’s is a different pilgrimage. Clem responded to a call, to a vocation to serve God as a priest, but has swerved aside from it. He’s questioning that decision now, whilst yet being unable to contain the resentful thought that his bereavement forced it upon him. Meanwhile Chi-Meur embraces them both, and little Jakey, and holds them in safety and in love. But for how much longer? In Chapter, Mother Magda talked about the difficulty in continuing to sustain their life at Chi-Meur: the financial commitments, their vulnerability. She’d been approached, she told them, by someone who was very ready to buy the estate. He’d asked if there were a sister community somewhere that they might join with; he was prepared to be generous.
‘Sell? Sell Chi-Meur? Are we allowed to sell it?’ The Sisters looked at one another anxiously.
‘I think we are allowed to sell. We are all trustees, after all, and are allowed to dispose of its assets. Chi-Meur belongs to the Society of Christ the King, and I imagine the money simply goes into the Society’s bank or towards our support in another House,’ answered Magda.
‘But to leave Chi-Meur.’ Emily was shocked. ‘I have been here for more than sixty years. You, too, Magda.’
‘I know that none of us wants to do this,’ Magda said almost desperately, ‘but things are very hard now. Even with Clem and Janna we are barely managing, and if any of us should become seriously ill…’
None of them looked at Nichola who sat smiling, gazing at nothing. Ruth made sure that she was fresh and clean but it was hard graft keeping an eye on her, and what if one of the others should fail? Fear crept like a chill miasma between them, and she, Emily, had drawn a little closer to the fire.
‘Where might we go?’ she asked bravely.
‘There are the Sisters at Hereford,’ Ruth suggested. ‘They are a small community, but larger than us and with a very good support network.’
‘That’s true,’ agreed Magda, ‘though I know that they have their share of sick and elderly Sisters. They might not feel that they can manage Nichola.’
Ruth instinctively stretched a protective hand to the immobile form beside her; her care for Nichola had brought a special love with it, such as a mother might care for a weak child. Tenderness came late to her, and she remains sharp-tongued and touchy, but Nichola’s helplessness, her gentleness and gratitude, have touched Ruth’s jealous, fearful heart.
‘Shall we pray about it? But please say nothing about it to anyone else.’ Magda closed the meeting and they got up, feeling frightened; Ruth helping Nichola, shuffling slowly with the aid of her stick, and the rest of them going back to their tasks.
Now, Sister Emily stands up and pulls back the curtains: it is still dark outside. The long wing in which the community lives faces south, across the kitchen garden, and she can just glimpse a light in the caravan in the corner of the orchard. Janna is already awake. Perhaps she is planning lunch. Sister Emily arranges her veil, smiling to herself, and goes out into the corridor.
Janna is propped in her bunk, wrapped in a shawl, drinking tea and brooding on the day ahead.
‘We’ll do this together,’ Dossie promised, when Janna admitted her fears. ‘And while we’re at it, we’ll fill the freezer. You need some meals to fall back on if you’re going to have to cope with cooking as well as everything else. You can tell me your budget and we’ll go shopping together. It’s not a problem. I expect they don’t eat much, do they?’
‘Sister Nichola and Sister Emily love their food, though Sister Nichola doesn’t really have a clue what’s she’s eating,’ Janna told her. ‘Mother Magda is diabetic and Sister Ruth is picky because she’s got a bit of a tricky tummy.’
‘So it’s hardly a big lunch, then. Just the four of them.’
‘Father Pascal will stay on after the Eucharist. And they invite me and Clem to share with them on Feast Days in the refectory.’
‘OK. Who does the actual shopping?’
‘Mother Magda used to but she’s been quite happy to let me do it for them lately. I pick up their pensions and prescriptions and stuff like that. She makes a list for me. Of course, Clem grows most of the veggie stuff and we’ve got eggs from the banties.’
‘OK,’ Dossie said again.
Janna watched Dossie, head bent, calculating what menus she might prepare, and she thought how much Dossie was like Clem and Jakey: the silvery-gilt blond hair; the narrow dark blue eyes that sometimes looked brown; smiling eyes but a serious mouth. Mo looked like that too.
‘Why do you have such funny names?’ she asked Dossie. ‘Mo, Pa, Dossie. Even Jakey and Clem use them. Not Mum, or Grandma or Grandpa. I’ve got a friend who always calls his dad by his name because he hated the way his mother used to refer to him as “your father” but they were divorced. Yours are all such funny names.’
‘I was called Theodosia after my granny, who died very young,’ she answered. ‘But I’ve always been Dossie, even at school and college, and then Clem just picked up on it when he was little because it was what the B and B-ers called me. Mo is Mollie and Pa is Patrick. Pa trained at the Camborne School of Mines; he’s a mining engineer. They married very young, when Pa was still at Camborne, and they had a little flat in the town. It was a kind of tease by Pa’s friends, as if he and Mo were more responsible and grown up because they were married. His friends would go round for supper and treat it like home and they just became Pa and Mo. It was just a joke to begin with but it caught on. We rather like it, though some people think it’s a bit odd. Perhaps we’re just natural nickname people.’
Janna finishes her tea and climbs out of her bunk, shivering. It is very cold, the wind in the north-east. Even with her little gas fire full on, the caravan suddenly feels rather flimsy. She dresses quickly: thermal underwear, a long thick cord skirt the colour of crushed raspberries, several jerseys. Dossie has made a delicious concoction with duck breasts and a rich sauce for the Candlemas feast; all quite ready for Janna to pop into the oven. She’ll roast potatoes and parsnips, and Clem has promised broccoli; Pa donated a case of wine at Christmas. Should it be white or red with duck? She’ll have to ask Clem.
Clem has already lit the fire in the library where the Sisters hold their Chapter meetings and have tea in the cold winter afternoons with any visitors who venture out to see them. The big room on the north-west corner of the house takes a long time to warm up and at present, with no guests to consider, Mother Magda refuses to waste the precious central heating oil. She is a worrier; her brow permanently creased, her slight frame tensed against criticism, braced for disaster. Jakey can make her laugh, though, so that the worry lines seem to disappear into a wide delighted smile and her still beautiful dark blue eyes shine with joy.
Clem’s allayed any anxiety about logs. His predecessor left a barn full of them, chopped up and piled there over a period of years, unused because the Sisters consider log fires a luxury. He didn’t ask permission the first time but simply lit it one Friday morning before their Chapter meeting. He saw their instinctive delighted reaction – their looks of pleasure and surprise – though Sister Ruth bridled at his temerity and Mother Magda quickly began to look anxious.
‘Just while the weather is so cold,’ he explained quickly. ‘And the room needs airing, especially with all these books. It would be a pity if they got damp and musty and we’ve got so many logs.’
‘Oh, yes.’ Mother Magda was relieved at this rational explanation. ‘And Sister Nichola might like to sit here for a while after lunch,’ she suggested placatingly to Sister Ruth, sensing her indignation. ‘Just for a change.’
Clem could see that Sister Ruth was torn between wanting to voice her disapproval and acknowledging the pleasure the fire would give. Sister Nichola was already advancing towards it with little murmurs of delight.
‘Just while the weather is so cold,’ Sister Ruth agreed reluctantly.
Now, he builds the fire up and puts the guard in front of it. At the window he pauses. The fields slope steeply to the cliff’s edge and he can see away across the sea to Cataclews Point and Trevose Head. The silvery water, fretted by the sharp north-easterly wind, churns restlessly, chopping and changing – now azure, now grey – beneath the cold clear blue sky and snow-charged clouds. In the clump of ash trees just below the house Clem can see a quarrelsome party of rooks balancing amongst the bone-white branches; their bulky, twiggy nests being bargained over and refurbished. Suddenly one of the rooks takes to the air, swerving and diving, showing off to his mate and rivals alike as he exults in the strengthening breeze. Others follow him, challenging him, their harsh voices tossed and lost in the wind.
Clem likes the rooks: he senses their joy in their connivance with the elements, their bravado, and their instinctive one-upmanship battling with their need for community.
‘Like us, don’t you think?’ Sister Emily is at his shoulder: ‘Argumentative, difficult, but needing one another.’
Clem, who has just been thinking that very thing, bites his lip. ‘I expect,’ he says awkwardly, his eyes still on the rooks, ‘that living in a community probably makes you better people in the end.’
‘But we’re not here to be “better” people. Or even “nice” people. We’re here to try to be God’s people, wouldn’t you say?’ She touches him lightly on the shoulder with the sheaf of papers she is holding and glides quietly away, pausing at the door. ‘How inviting that fire looks. Thank you, Clem.’
He follows her out and goes back to the Lodge to waken Jakey and give him breakfast.
The snow begins to fall later that afternoon. The duck is finished, and the remains of the feast are cleared away. The Sisters are having tea in the library and Jakey has just arrived home on the school bus.
‘Bad weather setting in,’ shouts the driver to Clem. ‘Snow’s forecast. Doubt I shall see you tomorrow.’
He pulls away up the narrow lane and Clem catches Jakey’s hand and hurries him into the Lodge out of the cold wind.
‘Snow!’ Jakey struggles out of his coat; his eyes shine in expectation. ‘We can make a snowman.’
‘If there’s enough of it.’ Clem hangs the coat up on the row of pegs in the hall. ‘We don’t usually get very heavy falls down here in Cornwall so don’t count on it. It’ll probably be gone by morning. So have you had a good day? What did you do?’
‘Nothing.’ Jakey goes into the sitting-room and through to the kitchen.
‘That must have been interesting then,’ Clem says, sighing inwardly, recognizing the mood, knowing he should have been more upbeat about the snow. ‘So you all sat in rows not doing anything all day. I thought it was Show and Tell today. You took your pirate book that Mo and Pa gave you. That must have gone down well.’
Jakey leans against the table, puts his thumb into his mouth and nods slowly; he is finding his first term at school very tiring. He looks exhausted, with dark circles under his eyes, and Clem is filled with the familiar ache of love and compassion for him.
‘What would you like to eat?’ he asks. ‘Just a little something to keep you going until supper time. There’s still some of that Smartie cake. Would you like some milk? Or juice?’
Jakey takes his thumb out. ‘I’d like a cup of tea.’
‘Tea?’ Clem’s mind jumps to and fro. Is it OK to give tea to a four-year-old? What about tannin? And caffeine? He hesitates and Jakey looks mutinously at him.
‘The Sisters give me tea,’ he says. ‘And sometimes coffee, if they’re having it. I like it.’
Clem begins to laugh. ‘The Sisters are naughty,’ he says – and Jakey laughs too, at the idea of the Sisters being naughty.
‘Sister Emily is naughty,’ he says thoughtfully, ‘but Sister Luth isn’t.’
‘OK,’ says Clem. He’ll make it nearly all milk with just a dash of tea: surely it can’t hurt him. ‘Tea it is. Now let’s hear about Show and Tell.’
Jakey scrambles up onto his chair and reaches for Stripey Bunny, eager now to tell. Outside the snow whirls. It flutters past the window and begins to settle on the fields.
‘I’m outa here,’ says Mr Caine, mobile clamped between ear and shoulder as he packs. ‘The weather forecast is snow and more snow. I’m getting back to civilization while I can…No, Tommy, I’m not ratting out. I’m just biding my time. I’ll come back when it’s clear…Phil is holed up in Plymouth, waiting by the phone…No, they haven’t come to a decision. I’ve told you. These old dames don’t work like we do. Their time frame is different. We want everything yesterday and their eyes are fixed on eternity…Yeah, I know it sounds fanciful but I tell you, a few weeks on this godforsaken peninsula, you get fanciful. It’s enough to drive you crazy. A load of Worzel Gummidges drivelling in your ear all day about farming and fishing…Yeah, yeah, I know the stakes are high but Phil’s on the case. If they accept the offer he’ll be right on to it…No, he can’t just frighten them into signing a bit of paper saying the convent’s done for and they’ll accept his offer. He’s got to keep cool. They’re thinking about it…OK, but nobody else is gonna come charging in, are they? Why would they? Nobody’s gonna be thinking about it, are they?…Yeah, I know we don’t want to give them time to start looking at that old covenant saying it’s got to be a convent or else, but we don’t want to make them nervous either. You said not to make them suspicious. I hope that mole solicitor of yours is right about it, that’s all. He’s probably as crooked as you are. Can it be proved, that’s the real question?…OK. OK. I’m off. I’ll speak when I get to Exeter. If I get that far. I’ve told the Worzels I’ll be back in a few days. They’re holding my room. Like they need to! Nobody else is crazy enough to want to be here in bloody February…Yeah. Be in touch.’
He crams the last of his clothes into his bag, glances round. He can hardly wait to be out and driving up the A39 towards civilization. It gives him the creeps, all this emptiness, the steep cliffs, the awful relentless sound of the sea. He’s always hated the sea: feared it, even. It’s so uncontrollable, indifferent, vast. He likes to be in control and here, on this wild north coast, he feels helpless. These poor sods spend their whole lives in one long battle against the elements.
He checks the tiny bathroom, comes out and here’s Mrs Trembath in his room. He swallows down a surge of irritation – everything’s packed, there’s nothing to see – but he allows a suggestion of surprise to creep into his smile.
‘Didn’t hear you knock,’ he says pointedly.
She ignores it. Well, what do you expect from yokel locals? He picks up his bag.
‘I’m off then. See you as soon as this passes.’
‘There was a phone call,’ she says – and he tenses. What phone call? Who’d try to get him here? Tommy and Phil use only mobiles.
‘Who was it?’
She shakes her head. ‘Woudden leave no name. I told ’en you was packing. Said ’e’d try another time.’
He wants to shout at her; give her a good shaking. Why didn’t the silly cow simply come and get him? He hides all these reactions, and smiles.
‘Can’t have been important then.’
She watches him, saying nothing.
‘Well, then.’ His joviality sounds forced. ‘Thanks for holding the room for a few days,’ he gives a little chuckle, ‘though I’m not sure it’s really necessary. Can’t see people beating down the door exactly, can you? Not in this weather.’
She continues to stare at him. ‘We gets all sorts,’ she answers. ‘All weathers.’
His smile fades. ‘Yes, I’m sure you do.’
He can’t wait to be away; it’s really getting to him now. He’s wasting time and it’s still snowing. He edges past her and hurries down the stairs.
‘’Bye, then,’ he shouts. ‘I’ll be in touch. Thanks,’ and he goes out into the whirling snow, slings his bag into the car and then he’s away down the track as fast as he dares.
Janna wakes in the West Room above the porch. The little room, recently painted by Clem, is full of a chill, unearthly light. Janna lies quite still, accustoming herself to strange new sensations: the softness of the bed, the low beams and the silence.
Mother Magda and Clem persuaded her from the small, cosy security of the caravan early in the evening after Clem heard the weather forecast. Like an unwilling animal coerced from its lair, she reluctantly stumbled through the already thick snow, clutching her tote bag full of the things she’d need for this sojourn in the house. Her protests fell on deaf ears. She had no fears of the snow or of being cold, she said, but it was the sight of Mother Magda, frail and anxious at the caravan door, that made her give in. Clem wore his usual, secretly amused, half frowning expression, which always gave the impression that he utterly understood everything but was saying nothing.
Janna slides out of bed, pulls her shawl closer around her and goes to the window. She gives an involuntary gasp of shock. Snow is falling so thickly that she can barely see further than the window. The lawn below the house is indistinguishable from its surrounding wall and the fields beyond. The cliffs and the sea are swallowed by this dazzling, dancing cloud of snow.
Recovered from the shock, her first thought is: Thank goodness Dossie filled the freezer with all that food. Her second thought sends her reaching for the light switch. With relief she sees that the electricity hasn’t been cut off.
She dresses quickly, staring at herself in the small square mirror above the little basin in the corner. Her untameable lion-mane hair clings to the brush and stands out about her small thin face. Someone once told her that her eyes were the colour of clear honey and she peers into them, trying to see herself as others see her, wondering if she is attractive.
Passing out of the room, she pauses in the corridor to listen to the silence. No visitors to fill up the empty bedrooms, nobody hurrying to the bathroom, or down the stairs to breakfast in the guests’ dining-room next to the refectory. Standing outside her bedroom door she is aware of the spaces of the house all about her, used now only by retreatants, and of the nuns tucked away in their private wing. She goes down into the hall and through to the back of the house to the kitchen. How warm it is in this long, low room; how welcoming.
Slipping between the kitchen and the refectory, she makes porridge, and puts bread in the toaster; assembles cereals, butter and marmalade and lays places for the Sisters. There are voices in the back hall and Clem and Jakey come into the kitchen. Jakey’s cheeks are poppy red, his eyes bright. He is trussed up like a parcel in his warm, padded jacket and he wears a woolly knitted hat with earflaps.
‘We shall be able to make a snowman,’ he says to Janna. ‘And the bus won’t get up the hill so I can’t go to school. We’ve come to have bleakfast with you.’
‘That’s great,’ Janna says, and Clem says, ‘Remember that you must talk quietly, Jakey.’
Jakey makes a face; he presses his lips together and puts his hand in front of his mouth. His eyes beam at Janna above his fingers and she grins back at him.
‘I’m going to check the banties,’ Clem says. ‘They’ll have to stay in their house today. I’ll clear a bit of a path and then I’ll light the fire in the library. You stay here, Jakey, and no nonsense. Janna’s got to get everybody’s breakfasts. Make sure you help her.’
Jakey wrestles the small rucksack off his back, opens it up and sits Stripey Bunny on a chair at the table. He hangs the rucksack on the back of the chair and looks round as he struggles out of his coat. He loves the kitchen, with its huge ancient inglenook fireplace, which now houses the big four-oven Aga, and the low-beamed ceiling. Along the deep-set stone windowsills Janna has put pots of hyacinths and cyclamen and there are some special pretty pebbles and stones too, which he and she collect down on the shore. He goes to stand beside her at the Aga as she stirs the porridge.
‘Daddy got his shovel out,’ he says to Janna, ‘and dug a path for us. Can I have sausages?’
‘Not for breakfast.’ She looks down at him, touches his blond hair very lightly. ‘Maybe for lunch. How about porridge? And then toast and honey?’
He considers and then nods: if he’d been at home he might have argued about which cereal he wants but he remembers that he is supposed to be helping Janna. And, anyway, he likes porridge and toast and honey.
‘Get some spoons out of the drawer there,’ she tells him. ‘Three spoons, one each for you, me and Daddy, and put them on the table. Can you do that? Listen. I think the Sisters are coming out from Morning Prayer.’
He puts the spoons on the table just as Mother Magda comes into the kitchen. She raises her eyebrows at him in a kind of smiling surprise and makes him a little ‘Good morning’ bow. He is quite used now to this form of silent greeting and he bows back to her, very seriously, and then picks up Stripey Bunny and makes him bow too with his long floppy ears falling forward. Mother Magda’s smile becomes a wide beam and he laughs with her, sharing the joke.
She and Janna speak softly together and Janna takes the bowls out of the lower oven and begins to fill them with porridge. He watches Janna put four bowls on the tray with a jug of milk and carry them into the refectory; Mother Magda follows her. The toast pops up; four pieces in the long silver toaster and, as he stands beside his chair, the room grows brighter and is suddenly filled with light; long fingers of sunshine reach through the windows and touch the flowers and the pebbles.
Janna comes back. She fills a bowl with porridge for him, mixes it with some cold milk, sprinkles sugar over it and puts it at his place. He scrambles onto his chair, still watching her as she puts the toast into the rack. She is like nobody else he’s ever known, with her wild lion hair and thin brown face and bright strange clothes. Beside the elderly sober-clad nuns she is vivid and exciting. Today she’s wrapped herself in the apron that has words printed on it: ‘SAVE WATER. DRINK WINE.’ She’d read them to him and even then he hadn’t understood, but Sister Emily said, ‘Now I think that is such a good idea.’ And they laughed together, silently, bending close, with Sister Emily’s wrinkled, thin hand on Janna’s warm, strong arm. Sister Ruth came in and paused, looking at them both, her chin high and forbidding, and Janna moved away, still smiling secretly to herself.
Now she turns suddenly, holding the toast rack, and catches his stare.
‘OK, my lover?’ she asks, and there’s a tenderness in her voice and in her look that makes him feel a bit odd: shaky and upset, and wanting to run over to her and bury his face in the warmth of her body and snuff up the scents of her skin. He has a little pain in his chest, as though something is missing, that he’s lost something really important, and he wants to hold on to Janna. He feels as if he might cry and, as if she understands, she puts the toast on the table and comes swiftly round to him. She kneels beside his chair and puts her arms round him, and he buries his face in her warm breast and cries without knowing why, although Daddy has explained that it happens because he lost Mummy just after he was born and it’s all quite natural and nothing to be worried about, and that Daddy feels the same way too, sometimes.
Gently Janna smooths his hair and wipes his cheeks with her fingers. ‘Poor Stripey Bunny needs some porridge,’ she whispers to him. ‘Poor old Stripes. He’s all thin, look.’ And she squeezes his middle so that he flops about and looks funny, and Jakey manages a smile and takes up his spoon. And then Daddy comes in saying how cold it is and they’ll build a snowman after breakfast, and suddenly everything is quite all right again.
Clem eats his porridge gratefully. He knows he’s lucky that the Sisters are prepared to stretch a point with Jakey so that he is allowed into certain parts of the house and the grounds as long as he is quiet and good. It had to be part of the contract and Mother Magda was quick to see that there needed to be a readiness to adapt on both sides. It’s odd, actually, how readily Jakey has accepted convent life. He seems to understand the reverence required and even enjoy it. Of course, he got used to going to church in London but even so it’s a great deal to ask of a small boy. He remembers, when he brought Jakey to be introduced to the Sisters, how Sister Emily shook his hand and then asked to be introduced to Stripey Bunny.
‘How do you do, Mr Stripey Bunny,’ she said gravely, shaking his paw, and Jakey gazed at her for a moment in surprise, and then they chuckled together, sharing the joke. Mother Magda laughed too, and took Stripey Bunny’s paw but Sister Ruth watched with her hands hidden in her sleeves, not reacting when Jakey looked hopefully towards her, inviting her to share in the game. Clem could tell by her expression and body language that here was a woman who feared any kind of loss of control; who instinctively disliked any relaxation of the rules. He stiffened a little, anxious for Jakey lest he was hurt by the rebuff, but Jakey was already turning back happily to Sister Emily and Mother Magda – his new friends.
Clem finishes his porridge and puts his bowl aside, still brooding on the oddness of bringing up a child in such a place as Chi-Meur. The point is that they are all bringing Jakey up: Janna, the Sisters, Father Pascal, Dossie, Mo and Pa. Clem watches Janna cutting soldiers of toast and spreading honey on them. She puts them on to Jakey’s plate and he eats them, relishing them and offering bites to Stripey Bunny at intervals.
It is as if we are a family, Clem thinks. And I’m sure Jakey is happy here.
Janna smiles at him and pushes some toast towards him and he thinks: If only I could fall in love with her, how simple life would be.
The snow falls, freezes, and falls again: in Cornwall the schools are closed and roads are blocked with drifting snow.
‘Unheard of down here,’ Pa says crossly, staring disconsolately from the bedroom window. ‘Climate change. We can look forward to this kind of thing now: floods, snow, heat waves. All this energy in the atmosphere; that’s what’s causing it. Tsunamis, volcanoes erupting. How am I supposed to get the dogs out in this?’
Straight-backed, one hand clenched in a fist behind his back, he raises his coffee mug and drinks. Mo watches him from the bed. His intensity, his high-octane energy, has always been slightly exhausting, even when they were both young; now it is poured out in tirades against the government, roaring at the television, raging at newspaper articles. She is terrified that these storms will cause another stroke. Their GP has been understanding about her anxiety but realistic about Pa’s character.
‘We know him,’ he says, resigned. ‘And it’s no good trying to change him at this late date. He’ll probably crash down with another stroke, just like he did before, and it might be worse next time, but can you honestly imagine him sitting quietly on the sofa with a tea cosy on his head? Might as well let him get on with it, Mo. I know it’s hard for you…’
And it is hard. At first she watched anxiously as he bellowed down the telephone at an unknown voice trying to sell him double glazing – ‘Can’t you understand what I’m saying? This is a grade-one-listed property. We can’t put in double glazing. Why don’t you check your facts before you waste people’s time?’ – or she’d keep an eye on the clock whilst he spent an hour digging a trench for the runner beans, popping down the garden at intervals to make sure that he hadn’t collapsed again. Gradually she built up a defence against the fear, knowing that her anxiety added to his awareness of his vulnerability and weakness, and by degrees they’d fallen back into their old cheerful ways.
‘If you could get the ride-on mower out of the barn somehow,’ she says now, ‘you could fix something on the back and make a path through the snow to the lane. They’ll have the tractors out soon, so as to get to the stock. The dogs will enjoy it. Wolfie can ride on the mower with you.’
She can see by the alert tilt to his head that he is thinking about it. She stretches her hand to Wolfie, curled on the quilt by her knees and, at the bottom of the bed, John the Baptist beats his tail on the rug. He’s always been sensitive to Pa’s occasional outbursts – ears flattened, an eye rolled backwards to glance at his master whilst he laid a conciliatory head on Pa’s knee – and even in his most fiery moments Pa’s hand is tender on the black head, gently pulling an ear, smoothing the soft coat. John the Baptist understands all about barks being worse than their bites and he adores Pa.
Mo finishes her tea. She watches Pa’s shoulders shrugging inside his disgraceful old dressing gown, his fingers clenching and unclenching, as he plots and plans and works things out.
‘If I can get it out,’ he says, with a kind of gloomy relish, ‘I suppose it might work. The snow’s drifted across the barn doors again. It’ll be hell’s own delight shifting it.’ But when he turns to look at her, his face is bright with intent; concentrated with purpose. ‘All right, Mo?’ he asks – and she smiles as she nods her ‘yes’ to the old familiar question. He’s asked it all their lives together: speeding along in his Austin Healey Sprite; racing before the wind in sailing boats; walking on the cliffs; lying on beaches in the sun. At all the crucial moments, birth and death and celebration, there has been the look and the question: ‘All right, Mo?’ like an arm around the shoulder, an embrace.
John the Baptist gets up and goes to him, tail wagging, and she looks at them both with love and sudden gut-wrenching panic: how would she possibly manage without them? She pushes the quilt aside and swings her legs rather painfully over the side of the bed.
‘Well, dress up warmly,’ she says. ‘Is Dossie up yet?’
He shakes his head. ‘Lucky we’ve got plenty of supplies in. Good old Dossie. She’d have made a first-rate purser. She can sleep in and I’ll cook the breakfast.’
But Dossie is not asleep. For once the snow has not had its usual effect upon her. She is neither delighted by its magical transforming qualities nor excited in a childish way by the white stuff. She is quite simply irritated by it: she will not now be able to keep her lunch date. She’s exchanged several emails with the amusing Rupert French, whose holiday properties are mainly to the south of Truro, and it seems a natural progression to meet him for lunch.
‘I buy a run-down old cottage or a barn with planning permission,’ he told her, ‘and live in it or in a caravan while I do it up. Then I move on to the next one. My wife and I used to do it together but now…well, now I’m working on my own.’
His voice changed when he said that. He sounded rather bleak and she didn’t like to ask him whether his wife had died or whether they were divorced.
Chris at Penharrow is pretty certain that she died. ‘I heard some rumour that she was very ill and that she went upcountry for treatment. Bristol, I think it was. It was a while ago now. I really don’t know him all that well, only through the trade. He’s based more on the south coast. But he sounded quite cheerful when he phoned to ask about your new scheme.’
Huddled in her duvet, Dossie wonders why she feels so disappointed that they won’t be able to meet up as they’ve planned. After all, a phone call and a few emails are nothing to go by, though she knows that he’s rather dishy. There is a photograph of him on his website with some of his clients outside one of his cottages and she’s studied it closely. He is laughing into the camera and he looks quite tough and rather fun. In one of the emails he wrote:
I’m not that far away from you at the moment, working on a little cottage up near the edge of the moor. The first one I’ve bought outside my usual area and it’s still in a bit of a state. A cross between a builders’ merchant’s and a squat! I haven’t had the telephone connected yet and I have to go up to the village hall to send emails. We must meet up some time and talk all this through. I’ve got a lot of clients I know will be really keen to try it out. How about a pub lunch?
And so it was arranged and they exchanged the numbers of their mobiles in case of some emergency, though he warned her that the signal was very patchy. Dossie wonders how he is faring, up on Bodmin Moor, and reaches for her mobile phone on the bedside table: no message. She’ll get up and check her emails. Sitting up, pulling the duvet higher, she texts quickly to Clem: Snowed in. Hope u r ok? xx
Clem and Jakey will be quite safe at Chi-Meur: they are so self-sufficient and she knows that the freezer is well stocked up. Pulling on her dressing gown, she slips next door into her study and switches on her laptop: no emails. She glances at her watch: barely eight o’clock. It is much too early; he’ll hardly manage to get up to the village hall before breakfast. Meanwhile, she can smell bacon frying. Mo puts her head in at the door.
‘So you are up. Pa thought you were still asleep. He’s got a little plan to dig us out but he might need some help.’
‘I know what that means.’ Dossie comes out of the study and closes the door behind her. ‘It means lots of hard labour on my part and a great deal of shouting on his.’
Mo chuckles. ‘It’s my fault, darling, I’m afraid. I suggested it. He gets so fretful if he can’t be doing. You know what he’s like.’
‘Don’t I, though.’ Dossie looks resigned. ‘OK. I’ll get dressed but tell him to save me some bacon.’
Back in her room she checks her mobile again. There was a message from Rupert: Cant get car out. Gutted. How about u?
She texts back: Same here – and then hesitates. Is he asking if she is gutted or merely snowed in? She doesn’t want to sound too keen but she feels pleased that he is gutted. However, she wipes her message and starts again. No luck today. B in touch, and leaves it at that. But his message has cheered her. She feels excited, on the brink of something, and is almost glad that the meeting is postponed so that the expectation can continue to grow for a little while longer. He is disappointed: gutted. She hugs the sense of excitement to her and looks out upon the pastoral scene with equanimity now.
Perhaps he’ll send another text; perhaps she’ll email him later on, just something casual. Dossie begins to dress, humming beneath her breath.
‘What are you doing?’
Rupert slides the mobile into a small compartment in his briefcase and zips it shut.
‘Just checking messages,’ he calls. ‘This snow is going to be causing lots of problems. I shan’t be able to get out this morning. And you won’t be able to get home.’
She comes carefully down the steep narrow staircase wrapped in a thick long dressing gown, huddling the collar up around her neck. Her morning face is slightly shiny and pallid, her brow creased into an expression of faint dissatisfaction: Kitty has never been a morning person.
‘Lucky I kept the wood-burner going overnight,’ he says. ‘I should go into the sitting-room if I were you. It’s cosy in there. I’ll bring some coffee in.’
She gives a little unsmiling nod and he goes back into the kitchen, slightly irritated that she’s taken it into her head to pay this flying visit, but far too experienced to show it. The important thing is to keep the mood light. Kitty has a sixth sense where other women are concerned and there must be no hint of his lunch date with Dossie. Yet he can’t quite keep himself from smiling as he finds the percolator and makes coffee: Dossie sounds rather fun and he is looking forward to meeting her. But not today.
Kitty turns her head as he carries in the coffee. ‘I still think it’s crazy that you bought this place,’ she says. ‘Honestly, it’s miles off the beaten track.’
He passes her the mug of strong, black coffee. ‘You know why I bought it,’ he answers, perching on the chair opposite. ‘I bought it because the owner was in trouble and needed to offload it quickly. I got it very cheap and I should be able to turn it round and sell it on and make a nice little profit.’
‘In this market?’
‘OK,’ he says easily, smiling at her, ‘then I’ll rent it out until the market improves.’
She sits back in the corner of the shabby armchair, drawing her long legs up beneath her, folding her thin elegant hands around the mug. He sees that she is pulling herself together, shaking off the grumpy early morning mood that reflects the uncomfortable night on the second-hand bed. He wonders why she’s made the sudden dash down to see him and hopes it isn’t going to become a habit. After all, he gets up to Bristol twice a week. The truth is that he’s begun to enjoy his semi-bachelor existence, though he won’t let her guess this.
She makes a little face at him. ‘It’s just so silly to be so far apart. After all, we don’t need to be, do we? There’s plenty of room at the flat and Mummy would love to have you there.’
She’s wheedling now, regretting her grumpiness. He watches her, still smiling, thinking, as he always does, how ridiculous it sounds to hear a grown woman calling her mother ‘Mummy’. One day soon Mummy will leave her darling daughter a beautiful ground-floor flat in Sneyd Park in Bristol, some very valuable ‘pieces’ and a comfortable bank balance. Not that it matters: he has plenty of money of his own, though most of it is tied up in property. Still, it’s a comforting prospect. One can always do with extra security. The cottage has been a bit of a bolt hole from the restrictions of the flat: a good excuse to get away from the invalid atmosphere.
‘It’s serving a turn,’ he shrugs. ‘You don’t really want me in the flat in Bristol all the time while you’re looking after your mother and it’s keeping me busy.’
She glances around the small room, at the temporary shabby furniture, and he almost laughs aloud at her expression of distaste.
‘Come on, love,’ he says. ‘I warned you what it was like here. Anyway, you know perfectly well how uncomfortable renovating a house can be in the early stages. We’ve done it often enough.’
‘It’s different now,’ she argues. ‘I’ve got used to the comfort of the flat.’
He shrugs, bored with this increasingly familiar argument which leads nowhere. He might point out that if she were with him they would have made the cottage much more comfortable but some instinct tells him to stay cool; not to press her. Her determination to visit despite his attempts to discourage it has surprised him – and slightly unnerved him.
‘I have to finish the cottage,’ he points out reasonably. ‘It’s my job. It’s what I do.’
She sits with her head bent, watching the flames through the glass door of the stove.
‘Well, you don’t have to do it for much longer,’ she says. ‘It’s time we relaxed a bit and enjoyed ourselves.’
He feels a thrill of fear at the prospect of being joined at the hip to Kitty in the Bristol flat with her elderly mother, who suffers from aortic stenosis, and no work to which he can escape, no excuses of meetings. He’s done very well since he came out of the army and started his restoration company. It owns a great deal of property, including five cottages down on the Roseland Peninsula. Her father respected him, no doubt about that, though he was always slightly cautious about his, Rupert’s, background: good schools, good regiment, yes, but there was something indefinable that unnerved that unimaginative old stalwart of Bristol’s merchant aristocracy. He’d been wary of this ex-army officer’s approaches to his little princess: he’d glimpsed that odd, passionate, creative streak that made Rupert a perfectionist in his work and meant that a beautifully finished product was much more important than simple profit.
Rupert grins to himself, remembering the predictable old fellow who was so anxious for his precious daughter’s financial wellbeing. His wife – whose life was full of good works, charity lunches and photographs in Country Life – was an easier prospect. Flustered and flattered by compliments, charmed into approval of this young man’s absolute need to create something beautiful, she’d added her persuasions to Kitty’s passionate appeals and they’d carried the day.
‘What are you grinning at?’
He laughs aloud. ‘I was just thinking about your dear old dad. He didn’t get it, did he? My theory that each old house has a soul that has to be consulted before you can start work on it? It made him nervous. He never really reckoned me, did he?’
‘Of course he did,’ she says quickly. ‘Don’t be silly.’ But she smiles too, remembering those earlier days and the excitement of slowly drawing out the character of each cottage, and he sees the pretty, sexy Kitty with whom he’d fallen in love back then. With her short bed-rumpled hair and the glow of the firelight on her pale skin she suddenly looks younger, more vulnerable, and he is pricked by affection and desire.
He stands up, still laughing. ‘We’d better get some clothes on…’ He hesitates, eyebrow quirked. ‘Unless you have any better ideas?’
She hesitates but glances at the window. ‘I thought you said the farmer might come down to see how you’re coping.’
He shrugs. An untimely visit from the farmer wouldn’t faze him but Kitty is already clasping her dressing gown around her and standing up.
‘I think we ought to get dressed,’ she says firmly. ‘Thank God you’ve got the shower working. I’ll go first.’
‘OK,’ he says lightly, and follows her up the stairs.
The narrow alleyways are full of streaming golden sunlight. It gleams on old wet cobbles, slants across slate-hung walls, slides into a secret corner where a tub of pansies shelters beside a cottage door. Janna passes like a shadow down the steep hill; beneath a tiny, pointed slate roof with a crooked chimney; past uneven whitewashed granite walls; below the slits of windows peering slyly down. Far beyond the uneven, lichen-painted roof-scapes, seen in glimpses between angles of jutting walls, the sea rocks placidly, its back turned to the land as if sleeping between the rise and fall of tides.
Janna slips into a passage that leads uphill again towards gorse-covered cliffs and the small Norman church perched halfway up on a grassy plateau. Father Pascal’s cottage is the last in a row of tinners’ cottages, next to the churchyard wall, and kept by the Church as a ‘house for duty’. He moved into it from his parish rectory near Padstow when he retired, and he takes services in the little church next door – which is now served by a team ministry – and anywhere else where he might be needed.
From his upstairs study window, Father Pascal watches Janna appear from between two cottages and begin to climb the stony lane. He likes it here in Peneglos amongst the odd mix of villagers: locals, who try to wrest a living from the hostile countryside or the sea; incomers, who come looking for a quieter, more peaceful existence, and the second-homers, who appear and disappear like small bands of swallows, following the sun. He walks between them all, maintaining a delicate balance, smoothing ruffled feelings, softening antagonisms, diluting prejudices. He loves them, and despairs of them, and supports them. A Breton by birth, with an English mother, he feels at home on this rocky, turbulent coast where every other village honours a saint: a misty land, where the borders between myth and legend and reality are not distinct.
When his father, fighting with the French Resistance, was killed at the end of the war, he and his mother returned to England to live with her family between Penzance and Zennor and, ever since, he’s had a deep passion for his mother’s birthplace. Named for the great French mathematician and moralist, he was quite at home amongst the children of fishermen and miners, who called him ‘Frenchy’ but accepted him as one of their own. His black eyes, and blacker hair, were not remarkable amongst these Celtic people who lived for centuries at the mercy of Spanish invaders, smugglers and seafarers.
Now, he sets aside the homily he’s been preparing and descends the narrow, steep staircase. He opens the door into his little parlour and hastens to put another log into the small wood-burning stove. The cottage has no heating, apart from this stove and the old Cornish range in the living-room-kitchen across the passage, but he is content. Between them they warm the two rooms above – his study and his bedroom – though the bathroom built over the scullery extension at the back of the house is generally freezing.
Here, close to the sea, the snow has disappeared, though there are still problems upcountry. The gullys and alleyways have been awash with snow-melt, the rivers flooding on their descent from the high moors to the sea, but now the paths are clear at last and he smiles with pleasure at Janna, as though he has been separated from his friends at the convent for many months instead of little more than a week.
As usual, she has an offering for him: a small posy of snowdrops and jonquils. He takes them with delight as she slips past him into the warmth of the parlour. He shares with her a deep joy in the wild things the countryside shelters and they spend happy moments together checking a rare flower or some small bird against one of his many reference books. He takes the posy into the kitchen, finds the little vase he uses for such a tiny bunch and brings it back to the parlour.
Janna is standing before the fire, looking round her. For once the narrow shoulders are relaxed, her face peaceful. She’s told him many things in this room: about Nat, her very dear friend, who is gay and who has now found a partner so that she is a little less able to be so completely at home in his cottage as she was once. She misses Nat and the special friendship they had, though she still stays in touch and visits him and his partner. She’s explained about her upbringing as a traveller; how her father abandoned her mother before she, Janna, was born, and how her mother became addicted to alcohol and drugs. He knows all about the years of being fostered and how she ran away over and over again to try to find her mother, and how her family are so scattered now that since her mother’s death she’s been quite alone. It was then that Janna started travelling again and came by strange ways to Chi-Meur. And now she is happier than she’s ever been before.
It was he who suggested that her father might be Cornish, that she belonged here just as he did, and that it explained her love for the place and this odd feeling that she’d come home. She shook her head uncertainly. Her mother was from around Plymouth way, or so she’d been told, but it might be possible…
Perhaps, he said on another occasion, perhaps her father hadn’t known her mother was pregnant; that he might not have gone if he’d realized. Or perhaps he’d panicked at the prospect of such responsibility. After all, they’d both been so very young and he’d probably been a wild, free spirit looking for adventure abroad and he’d had a terror of commitment. This struck a chord with Janna, just as he knew it would, and removed a little of the pain. She began to imagine her father rather differently from the heartless philanderer that had always been her concept of him, and was allowing a small area of doubt to creep around and soften that idea of him. But it would be a long and painful process.
As Father Pascal places the flowers on the small bureau he makes a little prayer for wisdom, for guidance, and turns to smile at her and gestures to one of the wooden-framed armchairs.
Janna sits down quickly, still clutching her long woollen coat around her. She loves this room: the bookcase reaching from ceiling to floor filled with the warm, glowing bindings of the books; the paintings and drawings that are fixed to every spare inch of the cream-washed walls. Everywhere she looks is colour and warmth: gold-leaf on soft brown leather, and the crimsons, greens and blues in the bookcase, where the books turn their colourful backs on the room; delicate watercolours and charcoal sketches and bold splashes of thick oil paint. Yet there is peace too.
She looks at Father Pascal with a kind of relief: his presence here all among his paintings and books is necessary to her. There is security here, but the sense of security comes from the man himself; from something he carries within himself. As usual he is all in black: a black roll-neck jersey and old jeans, and thick woollen socks on his feet. He looks like an artist or a jazz musician, yet there is this natural air of authority and of confidence.
‘I’ve moved back into the caravan this morning,’ she tells him triumphantly. ‘I slept in the house when the snow came because Mother Magda was worried about me being outside but we’ve got guests arriving later on today so I’ve gone outside again.’
She smiles a little, remembering how she panicked at the thought of being all amongst the guests, bumping into them on the landing or queuing for the bathroom. She would have felt out of place. Much better to be back in her van, hidden in the trees in the orchard, slipping quietly to and fro. So as soon as she wakened she packed up her things into her tote bag, stripped the bed, took the sheets and towels down to the utility room and put them in the washing machine. Then she let herself out into the cold, bright morning. There was still snow lying under the trees in the orchard, and the van felt chill, so she lit her small gas fire and left it to warm up a bit whilst she went to prepare breakfast. She felt an odd sense of freedom, of lightness, and it was because of that she’d picked the snowdrops and the early jonquils and decided to run down to the village to see Father Pascal as soon as breakfast was cleared away.
‘How will you manage without Penny?’ he is asking. ‘She’s still very poorly.’
‘’Tis difficult,’ Janna admitted. ‘Mother Magda has had to ask guests to bring their own sheets and towels in future. She hates it, of course, but we simply couldn’t cope otherwise. There’s just too much to do. ’Tis a big house, isn’t it? It felt quite creepy at night being there all on my own with the Sisters shut away in their bit. Luckily there’re only two people coming today so that shouldn’t be too hard. Dossie’s been great, though. She’s made up all sorts of meals that I can just get out of the freezer. But I don’t know how we’d do it with a lot of guests all at once.’
‘No,’ he agrees thoughtfully. ‘So many people have come to depend on Chi-Meur and the Sisters have so little strength now. We must pray that some solution soon presents itself.’
He looks rather sad and she feels the stirrings of anxiety. Old fears touch her heart and she frowns at him anxiously.
‘But what could happen?’ she asks. ‘What sort of solution?’
He shakes his head as if to dismiss his thoughts and her fears. ‘Can I make you coffee?’ he asks. ‘Or tea?’
‘No, I must get back.’ She rises to her feet in one quick graceful movement. ‘I only dashed down because I could.’ She laughs. ‘I’ve felt a prisoner up there with all that snow.’
He laughs too. ‘A prisoner?’ he teases her. ‘At Chi-Meur? But I know what you mean. We hate to have restrictions placed upon us, don’t we? Physical or emotional. Blaise Pascal wrote: “All the misfortunes of men derive from one single thing, which is their inability to be at ease in a room.”’
She stares at him. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It means that we might be more content if we were to seek interior freedom rather than physical escape. We can reach into ourselves and find our own freedom without having to rely on other people or external stimulation. That is true freedom.’ He stands up too. ‘Thank you for my flowers. I shall see you on Sunday unless the Sisters need me before that. I know Father John is looking after them this week.’
Janna hurries away, thinking about what he’s said; confused. Is it wrong, then, to want to run out into the wind and the sunlight and to gulp down great salty breaths of sea-laden air? Or is he hinting at her need to escape responsibility, to panic each time she attains the security she craves because it brings with it the chains of loving and caring and obligations? Perhaps this is how her father felt. Oddly, this thought makes her feel strangely happy, almost hopeful. She no longer feels that she should despise him.
Janna toils back up the hill to Chi-Meur, her heart light and full of love.