Part 2 (1/2)

There's the whole world for them to play in. The fields and the cliffs and the sea.

But looking after them . . . the was.h.i.+ng and the ironing, and the cooking. And there's no refrigerator, and how would I heat the water?

I thought that all that mattered was getting the children to yourself away from London.

They're better in London, with Nanny, than living in a house like this.

That wasn't what you thought yesterday.

I can't bring them here. I wouldn't know where to begin. Not on my own like that.

Then what are you going to do?

I don't know. Talk to Alice, perhaps I should have talked to her before now. She hasn't children of her own, but she'll understand. Maybe she'll know about some other little house. She'll understand. She'll help. She has to help.

So much, said her own cool and scathing voice, for all those strong resolutions.

Angrily, Virginia stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette, ground it under her heel and got up and went downstairs and took out the keys and locked the door behind her. She went back up the path to the gate, stepped through and shut it. The house watched her the small bedroom windows like derisive eyes. She tore herself from their gaze and got back into the safety of her car. It was a quarter past twelve. She needed cigarettes and she was not expected back at Wheal House for lunch, so, when she had turned the car, and was driving back up on to the main road again, she took not the road to Porthkerris, but the other way, and she drove the short mile to Lanyon village, up the narrow main street, and finally came to a halt in the cobbled square that was flanked on one side by the porch of the square-towered church and on the other by a small whitewashed pub called The Mermaid's Arms.

Because of the fine weather, there were tables and chairs set up outside the pub, along with brightly coloured sun-umbrellas and tubs of orange nasturtiums. A man and a woman in holiday clothes sat and drank their beer, their little boy played with a puppy. As Virginia approached, they looked up to smile good morning, and she smiled back and went past them in through the door, instinctively ducking her head beneath the blackened lintel.

Inside it was dark-panelled, low-ceilinged, dimly illuminated by tiny windows veiled in lace curtains; there was a pleasant smell, cool and musty. A few figures, scarcely visible in the gloom, sat along the wall, or around small wobbly tables, and behind the bar, framed by rows of hanging beer-mugs, the barman, in s.h.i.+rtsleeves and a checkered pullover, was polis.h.i.+ng gla.s.ses with a dishcloth.

”... I don't know ow it is, William,” he was saying to a customer who sat at the other end of the bar, perched disconsolately on a tall stool, with a long cigarette ash and hall a pint of bitter, ”... but you put the litter bins up and n.o.body puts nothing into them ...”

”Ur ...” said William, nodding in sad agreement and sprinkling cigarette ash into the beer.

”Stuff blows all over the road, and the County Council don't even come and empty them. Ugly old things they are, too, we'd be better without them. Managed all right without them before, we did . . .” He finished polis.h.i.+ng the gla.s.s, set it down with a thump and turned to attend to Virginia.

”Yes, madam?”

He was very Cornish, in voice, in looks, in colouring. A red and wind-burned face, blue eyes, black hair.

Virginia asked for cigarettes.

”Only got packets of twenty. That all right?” He turned to take them from the shelf and slit the wrapper with a practised thumbnail. ”Lovely day, isn't it? On holiday, are you?”

”Yes.” It was years since she had been into a pub. In Scotland women were never taken into pubs. She had forgotten the atmosphere, the snug companions.h.i.+p. She said, ”Do you have any c.o.ke?”

He looked surprised. ”Yes, I've got c.o.ke. Keep it for the children. Want some, do you?”

”Please.”

He reached for a bottle, opened it neatly, poured it into a gla.s.s and pushed it across the counter towards her.

”I was just saying to William, here, that road to Porthkerris is a disgrace . . Virginia pulled up a stool and settled down to listen. ”. . . All that rubbish lying around. Visitors don't seem to know what to do with their litter. You'd think coming to a lovely part like this they'd have the sense they was born with and take all them old bits of paper home with them, in the car, not leave them lying around on the roadside. They talk about conservation and ecology, but, my G.o.d . . .”

He was off on what was obviously his favourite hobby-horse, judging by the well-timed grunts of a.s.sent that came from all corners of the room. Virginia lit a cigarette. Outside, in the sunny square, a car drew up, the engine stopped, a door slammed. She heard a man's voice say good morning, and then footsteps came through the doorway and into the bar behind her.

”... I wrote to the MP about it, said who was going to get the place cleaned up, he said it was the responsibility of the County Council, but I said ...” Over Virginia's head he caught sight of the new customer. ” 'Allo, there! You're a stranger.”

”Still at the litter bins, Joe?”

”You know me, boy, worry a subject to death, like a terrier killing a rat. What 11 you have?”

”A pint of bitter.”

Joe turned to draw the beer, and the newcomer moved in to stand between Virginia and lugubrious William, and she had recognized his voice at once, as soon as he spoke, just as she had known his footfall, stepping in over the flagged threshold of The Mermaid's Arms.

She took a mouthful of c.o.ke, laid down the gla.s.s. All at once her cigarette tasted bitter; she stubbed it out and turned her head to look at him, and she saw the blue s.h.i.+rt, with the sleeves rolled back from his brown forearms, and the eyes very blue and the short, rough, brown hair cut like a pelt, close to the shape of his head. And because there was nothing else to be done she said, ”Hallo, Eustace.”

Startled, his head swung round and his expression was that of a man who had suddenly been hit in the stomach, bemused and incapable. She said, quickly, ”It really is me,” and his smile came, incredulous, rueful, as though he knew he had been made to look a fool.

”Virginia.”

She said again, stupidly, ”Hallo.”

”What in the name of heaven are you doing here?”

She was aware that every ear in the place was waiting for her to reply. She made it very light and casual. ”Buying cigarettes. Having a drink.”

”I didn't mean that. I mean in Cornwall. Here, in Lanyon.”

”I'm on holiday. Staying with the Lingards in Porthkerris.”

”How long have you been here?”

”About a week ...”

”And what are you doing out here?”

But before she had time to tell him, the barman had pushed Eustace's tankard of beer across the counter, and Eustace was diverted by trying to find the right money in his trouser pocket.

”Old friends, are you?” asked Joe, looking at Virginia with new interest, and she said, ”Yes, I suppose you could say that.”

”I haven't seen her for ten years,” Eustace told him, pus.h.i.+ng the coins across the counter. He looked at Virginia's gla.s.s. ”What are you drinking?”

”c.o.ke.”

”Bring it outside, we may as well sit in the sun.”

She followed him, aware of the unblinking stares which followed them; the insatiable curiosity. Outside in the suns.h.i.+ne he put their gla.s.ses down on to a wooden table and they settled, side by side on a bench, with the sun on their heads and their backs against the whitewashed wall of the pub.

”You don't mind being brought out here, do you? Otherwise we couldn't say a word without it being received and transmitted all over the county within half an hour.”

”I'd rather be outside.”