Later on that morning, Elinor stood on the slate steps outside Trenouth for a moment, before bending down and tying the shoelaces on her trainers a little bit tighter. She knew she was procrastinating, as she always did before a jog. Even though she’d become a lot fitter recently, she still found it a challenge to motivate herself to go out running.
She’d resolved this dilemma by sticking an unattractive photo of herself in a swimsuit on her bedroom mirror. Looking at it usually did the job.
On her first run along the coast, she’d only managed ten minutes before she was wheezing like an asthmatic. Ignoring the concerned looks of other walkers on the clifftop, she’d carried on running, determined to break the barriers her lungs and heart were putting up. She was sure at some point her protesting heart was going to give up on her, but fortunately it didn’t.
It wasn’t many days before she was finding, to her surprise, she’d reached a level of endurance she didn’t know she was capable of.
After the horrible start to the morning when they’d been witness to a lifeless body being uplifted from their cove, both Leo and Elinor had gulped down a hearty amount of food for breakfast. They’d savoured each mouthful, each silently recognising that their deceased neighbour would no longer have the pleasure of doing so.
But once she’d eaten the enormous cooked breakfast and drunk several glasses of water, she could feel the edible fuel lodged in her stomach and knew she had to run some of it off.
Besides, a heavy lump of sadness had also settled at the pit of her stomach and she wanted to shake it off. There was going to be no better cure for her acute emotional pain than pushing her body to the limit. The physical exhaustion of her run would ease the mental tiredness she always felt when she was in low spirits.
She briskly zipped up her velour running top and set off. Once over their wall, she raced ahead down along the cliff path to Treyarnon Bay. As she jogged along the edges of the bay, she noticed some surfers were out in the ocean.
Ignoring them she ran on, following the path along to Constantine Bay. She made her way to the edges of Trevose Golf Course, trying to keep an eye out for the ancient Constantine chapel and well.
Soon, she could see from a distance the pyramid shape of the well’s roof.
In amongst the carefully groomed grass there was a modern stone structure with a slate roof – all its sides open to the elements – and inside were the old remains of the well. Elinor ran up to it and rested beside it for a moment to get her breath back.
She looked down at the clear water.
Of course, people had superstitiously thrown in numerous coins of various denominations, as people have done with wells or fountains for centuries. Some of the coins had landed around the edges of the well and Elinor wondered if the greenkeepers ever profited from this unexpected largesse. She doubted this ancient well would reach the profitability of Rome’s Trevi Fountain, where supposedly up to 3,000 euros were thrown in every single day.
Close by were the remains of the old chapel, buried underneath heavy gorse bushes. A couple of greenkeepers were busily employed cutting down the undergrowth from around the chapel’s archway.
Elinor politely said hello to them and then turned to head back towards the coastal path.
She didn’t like loitering for too long on the golf course because it was busy and popular. Sometimes the golfers tended to get annoyed when she jogged across the fairway, and she’d hear them yelling at her from afar. But living down here in Cornwall she was fast developing a thick skin, and would just give them a rude gesture before carrying on. She was sure one day some pompous twat was going to corner her with a golf club official, but so far she’d escaped any reprimand.
She ran along the coastal path that skirted the edges of Booby’s Bay, the beach nearest to Trevose Head, feeling the soft grass cushioning her heavy tread.
From a distance, Trevose Head looked like a slumbering green lizard, with its head sticking out and dipped into the ocean’s water. Its physical presence was strangely docile and benign, even though it charismatically dominated the horizon.
Trevose Head was the focal point for any clifftop within a five-mile radius and the protruding land mass drew your eye, like a coquetting young lady craving attention. You could clearly see Trevose Head even when you looked out from Leo’s house.
It was only on foggy days that Trevose Head disappeared from sight. When the land mass was shrouded sadly in thick mist, the mournful tones of a foghorn would echo across the water as a warning.
Elinor was sure she’d be fit enough to run to the tip of Trevose Head one day, but that wasn’t her goal for today. Looking at her watch she saw she’d already been running for forty minutes, which was her target time. Once she reached the end of Booby’s Bay she turned and resolutely headed back to Constantine Bay.
When she reached the edges of Constantine Bay she ran to the top of a sand dune and then let gravity pull her down the steep slope, her legs giving way to the slipping sand. As she stumbled downwards she felt the sand pouring into the cracks in her shoes and socks.
Unexpectedly, her ankle twisted in the loose sand and with a shriek she found herself falling and rolling down the precipitous, and unstable, mound.
She landed shortly afterwards on a soft patch of sand at the bottom and lay there, gasping and laughing dementedly at herself, as she turned her face upwards to the sky. It was strangely comfortable lying on a bed of sand and after her vigorous run she felt no inclination to get up again.
‘Elinor, are you OK?’
Elinor brushed the hair off her face and looked up into the concerned face bent over her. Two dark brown eyes, creased at the corners, stared down at her, surrounded by a freckled pink-tinged face, a flat nose and a broad mouth. It was Tony Reece.
‘Yes, I’m fine. Why?’ she asked perplexed.
Tony grinned.
‘First I hear a shriek, and then the next minute I see this figure tumbling down the sandy slope. Then once you landed, you didn’t move, so I assumed you must be injured.’
Elinor sat up, conscious of all the sand that must be stuck to her hair and to the parts of her body that were soaked in sweat.
‘So you decided to come to the rescue. That’s sweet of you.’
‘Not quite. I was just checking you were still alive, really.’
‘Why can’t you just accept you were coming to my rescue?’ asked Elinor, unreasonably irate.
Tony looked embarrassed.
‘Sorry. If that’s what you want to see it as, then OK. Sure. Do you want some help to get yourself up?’ he asked, stretching down a hand.
Elinor grabbed it and pulled herself up.
‘Well, I wasn’t planning on falling down the dune. But it was kind of fun,’ she said, dusting herself down.
Tony looked up at the sand dune.
‘Yeah, I used to like rolling down it too when I was young boy.’
‘Come on then, Tony. Why don’t you do it now? Life’s short. You shouldn’t resist the impulse to have fun...’
Tony smiled with real merriment. It seemed to take a supreme amount of effort to get a smile out of him, Elinor thought, but when it came it was well worth the labour.
‘It’s OK. I’ll pass, thanks,’ Tony said. ‘I get my thrills from the surf now. I was going to say to you, I think you’re doing fantastically well at the surf school. I’m glad you didn’t give up.’
Elinor felt pleased he’d noticed her improvement. She was now managing the smaller waves relatively easily. For the last couple of weeks, though, they’d only exchanged brief greetings as they’d passed each other in the water.
‘I could hardly have done worse than that first day. Anything’s bound to be an improvement on that.’
Tony looked at her jogging outfit, as though suddenly noticing it for the first time. Elinor suddenly felt self-conscious, aware of her skin-tight jogging bottoms, her waist bulging over the top, and her hefty sports bra. Annoyingly, she could feel herself blushing.
‘Is this part of a new fitness regime, then?’ asked Tony. ‘With rolling down the dune as part of the circuit?’
‘You know what they say, “a healthy body means a healthy mind”,’ she said, airily quoting the old cliché.
Tony nodded.
‘You’re absolutely right. Well done you,’ he said, serious again.
Elinor felt a mild irritation at his prudish tone and started to wonder if he ever felt the inclination to crack a joke. After a dismal start to the day she felt in need of some levity. She preferred it when he smiled, but she wasn’t about to go and roll down the dune again.
She shivered as a cold breeze started gusting, pulling yet more strands of hair out of her long ponytail.
‘OK, then. I’m going to head back and get changed. I’m due at Barbara’s this afternoon.’
‘Barbara’s?’
‘Barbara Bligh. I’ve just started working on a painting at her studio.’
Enlightened, Tony looked pleasantly surprised. More than that, he looked pleased for some unexplained reason. Elinor couldn’t understand why, but refrained from questioning him about it.
She zipped up her top and looked around for the start of the path leading to Treyarnon Bay.
‘Hold on a minute, Elinor. As you’re a newcomer around here, I wondered if you’d fancy joining us for a drink at The Farmer’s Arms on Friday night?’
Elinor pondered this. Having declined so often Leo’s invitations to The Farmer’s Arms, she felt it would be a little churlish to then turn up at Tony’s behest. But then again, she didn’t have many acquaintances in Cornwall and she did miss having people to socialise with.
‘Who’s “us”?’ she asked curiously.
‘Mostly the surfer crowd. It’s never too late a night as most of us like to catch the waves early in the morning, before heading off to do other things at the weekend. Like surf school.’
‘What time do you all meet?’
‘Most of us are there by half past eight.’
‘Thanks for the invitation, Tony. I’ll think about it... I might see you there. My uncle tends to go on a Friday night, too, so I could always accompany him. Anyway, I’m really going to have to go. I’ve totally cooled down now and I’m keeping you from your surfing, too.’
Tony clearly agreed, so they walked companionably along the beach together until Elinor saw Tony’s surfboard tossed down on the sand a short distance away. After a quick farewell, Tony then began to jog towards the sea and Elinor started the long walk home in eager anticipation of a hot shower and a cup of coffee.