Mousie woke early in her cottage at the end of The Row. The room brimmed with quivering sea-light and she lay quite still, savouring the cosy comfort of warm blankets, watching the milk-blue sky beyond the window. Except on those wild nights, when a north-westerly gale whipped the sea halfway up the cliffs and drove rain against the cold glass panes, she hated to sleep with the curtains closed. She might waken suddenly to the bright, white radiance of a full moon, boxing her bed with square black bars, or she could watch the softly twinkling points of starlight pricking out one by one on a midsummer’s night.
This morning, by hauling herself up and propping a pillow more firmly behind her back, she could see past Com Head to The Mouls, whose rocky bulk seemed to float on the surface of the flat, silvery water. Still half asleep, she let her thoughts drift between the duties and pleasures of the day ahead: Joss would be off to Wadebridge, busy with her patients all day, so straight up to the house after breakfast; seize the opportunity of some time alone with Emma; write and post the birthday card for Tom, Olivia’s eldest; a quick dash into Polzeath for some groceries; remember to book the MOT for her ageing little Fiat; check the donkeys. What a relief that Emma would be able to stay with Honor whilst she caught up with a few tasks. Poor Emma, so worried about her dear old Mutt …
It was odd, thought Mousie as she pulled the bedclothes more closely around her shoulders, that the arrival of the young American had filled her with such a strong sense of apprehension. After all, there was no reason why he shouldn’t pursue his quest as far as he could, and the photograph was certainly an important lead. It was such a shock to see it again, after so many years, and it was obvious that Honor had been affected by it too. Remembering her cry: ‘I can’t see him. It’s all too painful. Too long ago …’ Mousie was pierced by remorse.
Why had she never quite been able to drift into the habit of calling Honor by the foolish little nickname? Though she’d been the first to agree that it was typical of Hubert to invent it, that there was no harm in the children using it, yet there was something that blocked such familiarity between herself and Honor. The shock of the news of Hubert’s death, the sight of the numbed, bewildered little family, had gone a long way in subduing her jealousy of this beautiful, casually elegant woman; nevertheless she could remember how she’d watched Honor with a clear, cool eye – ready to disapprove.
After the long sea passage, Honor seems disorientated: confused by this homecoming to an unknown home, keeping her children close.
It is as if, thinks Mousie, Hubert’s young widow has been silenced by her grief, made dumb by sorrow.
‘She won’t talk to me,’ she says to her mother. ‘Not properly. She’s not interested in anything that happens here and she seems afraid to let the children out of her sight.’
The latter, at least, is true. Not yet two, Emma is too young to be given much freedom but Honor rarely lets Bruno go anywhere without her either: not that he shows much desire, at first, to be adventurous.
‘Think back to how we were when Daddy was killed,’ advises her mother. ‘I know it’s six years ago now but remember how we all clung together? They are suffering from shock and it takes time to recover from these dreadful things. And, after all, Honor is a stranger here. When we came back to St Meriadoc we’d looked upon it as a second home ever since you and Rafe were babies. Honor knows only what Hubert has told her. No wonder she behaves as if she has been hit over the head, poor child.’
And Mousie, ashamed of her jealousy, tries harder: inviting Honor to accompany her on walks, to talk about Hubert, but any encouragement to share the past is met with resistance. Honor, it seems, simply cannot bear to dwell on what she has lost. Yet Mousie notices that she spends long periods talking to Hubert’s frail, elderly father. Occasionally, during that first summer, Mousie comes upon them sitting beneath the lilac trees in the Paradise gardens: Uncle James in his old steamer chair whilst Honor is half turned towards him, her face animated.
‘He specialized in tropical fevers …’ she is saying. ‘He was quite brilliant. Everyone loved him …’
Bruno leans against her knee, his face bright, as if through her words his father lives again, whilst Emma staggers about the sunny lawn, wrenching pink-tipped daisies from the grass, threatening to topple into the waters of the pond where great gold and black fish dart beneath the weed. The old man watches Honor, a smile pulling at his lips. Only his hands, smoothing and rubbing one against the other as if he is continually washing them in invisible water, show his private emotions and, as Mousie watches, she sees Bruno reach out to take hold of his grandfather’s hands so as to still the endless restlessness.
At her approach, the small group seems to solidify into watchfulness. Uncle James peers towards her beneath the sweet-scented flowers and Honor instinctively holds Bruno close against her side. Only Emma is untouched, shouting with pleasure at the freedom of the garden after so many weeks restrained on the steamer, holding out her trove of daisies and blades of emerald grass.
Mousie crouches, taking the ragged bouquet, giving Emma a hug, but her eyes are still on the three under the trees. Honor breaks the spell: sitting back in her wicker chair, crossing her long legs, raising both hands to her hair, which she wears – gypsy-like – beneath a cotton square.
‘Hello, Mousie,’ Honor calls; she uses the nickname with no apparent effort or awkwardness, yet Mousie still feels excluded from intimacy, and the moment never arrives when she is able to return the compliment. For some reason this makes her feel guilty and her only comfort is that, apart from Rafe, who is hardly more than a child himself, none of the rest of the family does either; only Bruno and Emma use the cheerful little name that links the three of them to the past.
The shrill, insistent bell of her alarm clock shocked Mousie fully awake and drove her from her warm nest, shivering into the bathroom. Her cottage was small and neat: no knocking through of rooms or building of extensions; just the right amount of space for someone who was positively Franciscan in her minimalist needs. It was because of this trait that Hubert had nicknamed her when she was a child: her liking for small nooks and odd corners, combined with her horror of excess – large portions of food, too many belongings – had inspired him. His son, taking up the tradition years later, referred to her little cottage as ‘The Wainscot’.
Mousie grinned as she pulled on warm trousers and a thick jersey. Bruno was so like Hubert and she loved him very dearly: but then Bruno was so easy to love. Mousie sighed, regretting the readiness to criticize that had so defined her early relationship with Honor. Had she been too ready to judge her? Had she withheld love?
It is in judging others that we betray them most.
The words remained with her as she finished dressing and, still trying to remember where she’d read them, she went down to breakfast.
Next door, Rafe and Pamela clattered about, each interrupting the other as they discussed the exciting prospect of the arrival of their son, George.
‘Just for one night.’ Rafe picked up the postcard, received yesterday, and read the words out loud again. ‘“A quick dash to see you all. Penny and Tasha won’t be with me.” Let’s hope he has a good run down.’ He cracked eggs into a white china bowl. ‘It’s odd that he’s coming on his own.’
‘It’s a bit of an upheaval just for one night,’ Pamela rationalized her disappointment, excusing Penny, ‘when you’ve got a tiny baby to organize. Perhaps Penny thinks it would be nice for us to have him to ourselves.’
She took the card into her own hands, running her fingers over the shiny surface, imagining the photograph of Dartmoor ponies on Yennadon Down, which Rafe had described to her. Penny often sent embossed cards so that Pamela was able to feel the shape of the scene: a flower or a little house. This was simply a picture postcard. She put it aside and began to make coffee, measuring and spooning from jars on which Rafe had stuck Braille labels so that she could ‘read’ with her fingers, wishing that she was able to see the faces of her grandchildren. Mousie and Rafe did their best to describe them for her: Mousie was very good at it, painting in the tiny details of each child, remarking on the likeness to a parent or some other relative, until Pamela not only vividly recalled her own children at various stages of their development but was able to form an idea of the faces of the new members of her growing family.
‘Olivia looks just like you did at her age,’ she’d say, ‘and little Tom is going to be just like his father. He’s got those brown eyes set wide apart just like Adrian’s. Now Joe reminds me very much of my own father, though you never knew him, of course, rather than Rafe. And George … well, George is exactly like his father, just as we always knew he would be.’
Pamela smiled to herself, admitting privately to herself that George had always been very special to her and Mousie, and suddenly had an idea.
‘See if you can catch Joss before she goes off to Wadebridge,’ she said suddenly to Rafe, switching on the percolator. ‘Perhaps she could come in for some supper. I can smell burning. Is the toast stuck again?’
Rafe dealt briskly with the toaster, shared the scrambled eggs between two plates and carried them to the table, ducking automatically as he passed beneath the heavy beams. The two middle cottages of The Row had been converted into one larger dwelling and, when his mother, Julia, died, Rafe had moved back into it with his young wife and their baby girl. His view was that the quiet beauty of St Meriadoc more than made up for a higher salary and career opportunities up-country. Pamela, already pregnant with Joe, gazed at the cottage, the shining sea, the tumbling cliffs, and agreed with heart-felt gratitude.
‘It’s good of Mutt to let us have it so cheaply,’ she’d said. ‘The rent is terribly low. She could earn much more money letting it to holidaymakers. Or I suppose she could sell it?’
He’d shaken his head. ‘Probably not. I don’t know how Uncle James left the estate but I imagine it would have passed from Hubert into some kind of trust for Bruno and Emma. We don’t come from that side of the family. Uncle James’s wife was my mother’s sister and they took us in during the war when Father died. Well, you know the story.’
‘It’s so beautiful here,’ she’d said. ‘I’ve loved being in Exeter – and I know you’ll find sixth-form colleges a bit different from university lecturing – but, oh, Rafe, this magic valley is such a place to bring up children.’
‘Mutt calls it “the golden cup”,’ he’d told her, ‘from a poem about a lark. You just wait until you hear the larks up by the Saint’s Well.’
Watching her now, as she reached for the toast, her fingers testing the side of one of the small pots of conserve for the raised shape of the orange – marmalade, today, rather than strawberry jam – he felt such love for her. He did everything possible to enable her, suppressing the early instinctive reaction to protect, quickly seeing how much could be done to give back some of the freedom this swift descent into blindness had snatched from her. They’d stride arm-in-arm together over the windy hills, plunging down into the sheltered lanes, pausing so that she could identify the birds – ‘I can hear a robin … and there’s a buzzard somewhere. Wait! There’s something else. A yellowhammer?’ – whilst he held his breath, willing her to succeed. He’d put a creamy crown of honeysuckle into her hand and watch her frown of concentration smooth into delighted recognition as she held it against her face, breathing its heavy evocative scent, reliving long-ago sunny afternoon walks; the children racing ahead whilst they’d stroll more slowly, revelling in the wild hedgerows streaked with the bright, paint-colours of late spring: bluebells, campion, buttercup, rioting together beneath a blush of May blossom.
The light on the percolator glowed red and he stood up to pour the coffee.
‘Odd, though,’ her voice from behind him echoed his own secret thought, ‘that George sent a card. I wonder why he didn’t ring us?’