A Rather Remarkable Homecoming (12 page)

“Of course,” I said, pausing at the office anteroom where a plump, pleasant woman took my credit card to charge the tickets. I idly wondered if Trevor had conducted this entire tour for the simple purpose of selling a couple of tickets.

“Thank you so much,” Trevor said as we all shook hands. “And do please call me the minute you return from London. I can’t wait to hear what you learn about our Elizabethan lodger.”

Jeremy didn’t say a word until we were safely in our car in the parking lot and heading for the winding country road that would take us back into town. Then he said in a deadly tone, “Okay, Penny, when I get old and go dotty, I want to be put in the 1960s wing. Have you got that? I want to go where the Beatles are.”

“But that’s not your decade,” I reminded him. “Your misspent youth was in the 1980s, right?”

“Oh, please!” Jeremy exclaimed. “Punk and New Wave are okay when you’re young, but I don’t wish to spend a lifetime there.”

“By the time we’re as old as these folks are,” I said, “we’d be lucky to get into any wing at all.”

Jeremy pondered this, then said quite vehemently, “Well, whatever happens, do
not
stick me in the 1970s. I will
not
spend my last breath hearing Donna Summers. Do you hear me? I HATE disco!”

“Okay, okay!” I cried. “Stop talking about it. I mean, why do you keep telling me to park you in a home in the first place? Don’t I get to stay with you?”

“Right,” Jeremy said, calming down a little. “We’ll go together, listening to
Rubber Soul
.”

“Never mind all that!” I cried. “Are these Legacy Society folks totally crazy or what?”

“The Cornish are known to be an eccentric lot,” Jeremy told me. “But, this is beyond any of my expectations.”

“Well, what do you think? Did Shakespeare hang out in my grandmother’s house?” I asked.

“I think that bloke Trevor is such a compelling storyteller that he’s got everybody out here mesmerized,” Jeremy said frankly. “But all he really has to offer is a scrap of paper and a lot of theories. No hard evidence that I can see. I mean sure, we should go to London and see what his expert has to say. But I have to tell you, I’m not particularly hopeful.”

I sighed gustily. “I know,” I admitted. “I did plenty of research on Shakespeare for that silly vampire film I worked on. And the more you search, the more you find out how little we really know about old Will.
But
,” I said determinedly, “if there’s any chance that Trevor is on the right track, I say we go for it. After all, there
was
an acting troupe in that house, and there
was
a man who signed his name that way, and Shakespeare had to be
somewhere
that year, so why not here?”

“ I don’t know about you,” Jeremy said as we drove back toward town, “but I could go for a nice tall ale, and a plate of fresh-caught Cornish seafood.”

He looked as if he was already picturing the scene, and he held up one hand and mimed grasping a stein of beer.

“Hey,” I said as we entered the hotel parking lot, “plenty of spaces tonight. Isn’t that great?”

“Hmm,” was all Jeremy said as he slid easily into a prime parking spot.

The front porch of the restaurant was empty as we clattered up the wooden steps, and I could sense that things here had changed drastically, even before we tried to push open the locked doors of the restaurant.

“It’s six o’clock. What time do they start serving dinner?” I asked, bewildered.

“They don’t,” Jeremy said, pointing to the white placard that listed the restaurant’s hours. “Not tonight. We’re still in low season, so it’s closed Monday through Thursday,” he announced, “until next week. Then they’re open every night.”

He sighed. “Damn. I had my mouth set for that turbot
à l’anglaise in hollandaise
. This is what comes of counting one’s chickens before they’re hatched,” he concluded philosophically.

“Please don’t mention chickens,” I objected. “What I wouldn’t do for a roasted one! I’d even settle for an egg. I mean, they can’t
not
feed us . . . can they? This restaurant is connected to our hotel. There has to be
some
kind of room service, right?”

Jeremy snorted. “You want that cold plate again?”

I shook my head emphatically. “Well, maybe our hotel can recommend someplace else, so we don’t have to drive around for hours,” I coaxed. “I think I saw a stack of menus on the reception desk. Monday’s always a tough night to eat out, though.”

We hurried over to our hotel. The lobby was empty and there was no one standing at the front desk. But the door to the little office behind it was open, and as we drew nearer I could hear a rustling noise that clearly indicated someone was definitely back there, ignoring us, even when Jeremy said, “Harumph!” a couple of times.

“Yoo-hoo!” I called out finally.

There was a creak of a chair, and a thin old man, with only a few strands of grey-white hair over his otherwise bald pate, peered out at us. He had wire spectacles perched on the end of his long, skinny nose, and there was a napkin tucked under his chin, which he now reluctantly removed before emerging.

“Where can we find a good dinner tonight?” Jeremy said bluntly, for he sensed that subtle good manners would be wasted on this fellow, who behaved more like the kind of night watchman that takes such a job because he prefers not to have to talk to people.

Without answering, the man reached into a drawer and pulled out a stack of well-worn menus from local restaurants. The old fellow flapped them on the counter, then turned as if to shuffle back to his little mouse-hole.

But Jeremy, refusing to glance at what he knew he’d find on all those menus, said authoritatively, “Which one is open tonight?”

The old man paused, and gave us a slight smirk of amusement. “There’s nuffin’ open tonight round here,” he said definitively. “ ’Twere all the same, these fancy restaurants. They run on the exact same hours, like a herd of sheep.”

“This guy’s great for hotel P.R.,” I muttered to Jeremy.

“We could send you up a cold supper,” the man said without enthusiasm.

“No thanks,” Jeremy said shortly. He was ready to walk out, but I nudged him.

“We should let the hotel know we want to stay on longer,” I murmured, for we had agreed that we were going to need a base out here, even if we went back and forth to London.

“Do you handle reservations for the hotel?” Jeremy asked the man doubtfully. Without a word, he shuffled into his office.

“Back to his pickle-and-cheese sandwich,” Jeremy muttered.

But a short moment later, a middle-aged woman emerged. With a determinedly bright expression, I told her we’d like to keep our room for awhile longer. And although I didn’t exactly expect her to leap with joy at the prospect of having us around for an extended stay, I surely wasn’t prepared for the definitive way she shook her head, as if dealing with two foolish children.

“Not possible, dearie,” she said. “The ’igh season begins next week. We’re booked solid till October.”

There was a stunned silence. Jeremy’s expression remained deliberately unflappable because, being English, he resolutely refuses to ever let anyone see him looking crestfallen.

I just thought that she was simply trying to drive a hard bargain to ratchet up the room rate.

“Are you completely sure about that?” I asked. “You haven’t even looked in your reservation book,” I added pointedly.

“Don’t have to, darling,” she replied, but, as if to prove something to us, she opened it, and flipped page after page, shaking her head, as if somehow we could read upside-down and this therefore made her case beyond a shadow of a doubt.

“Who else around here can you recommend?” I asked, feeling cranky now. “Hotels, or cottages—?”

But this only produced a short, incredulous laugh from her.

“Sweetie, every decent little shack in Cornwall and Devon goes rented by March!” she declared. “So-o-sorry,” she sang out, attempting to sound a little regretful. “I’ll ask around tomorrow morning, and if I hear of anything I’ll definitely let you know.”

Which meant, of course, that tomorrow we were out on our ear.

“Let’s go,” Jeremy said abruptly, steering me back outside. The street was quite dark without the bustle of the weekend crowd’s automobiles.

“We could drive to Padstow,” Jeremy said dubiously as we stood at the curb. As he spoke, the first fat drops of rain plopped on the pavement beside us.

“Swell. We’ll probably skid off the roads to our deaths whilst trying to score a meal,” I said.

“Want to just go to bed?” Jeremy said stoically.

But I am part French, and no matter what the circumstances I simply cannot treat eating as if it’s merely a pastime, like playing bridge.

“Can’t do it, sonny,” I replied. “Surely we can scare up some take-out joint, or a food mart?”

“This isn’t London, darling,” Jeremy said. “Out here we must hunt and gather for our meals, just like the Celts.”

Just then a bright red pick-up truck came roaring up, and ground to a sudden stop right in front of us. The driver peered out. Recognizing us, he inched forward, and rolled down the window.

“Hey,” Colin shouted in greeting. “What are you doing standing out in the rain?”

“Looking for dinner,” I said. “Nothing’s open.”

Colin said dryly, “The gas station in Rock sells caviar and champagne. That goes over well with the second-homers.”

The image of tinned caviar standing on a shelf next to cans of motor oil nearly turned my stomach, and my face must have reflected this, because Colin laughed and said, “Care for a pint? The only place open tonight is the old pub, but it’s not easy to find in the dark. Follow me,” he called, then went roaring off.

“Great. We can surely get something to eat there,” Jeremy said excitedly.

“Lord, don’t lose him!” I cried. We hurried into the car, and Jeremy tore off after him.

Colin led us down one dark street after another, swinging around the turns and hills at breakneck speed. We drove past the railroad tracks, and then careened up another very steep hill where some dark warehouses dwarfed a few remaining old nineteenth-century brick buildings. It looked as if this street had once been a residential part of town, and I imagined that many other such brick houses had been torn down and replaced by these grim-looking warehouses in the twentieth century. But from the sight of things, most of these warehouses were now empty, too.

“So, all the hotels and restaurants like Toby Taylor’s poshnosh—they only cater to the wealthy weekenders,” I said aloud. “What happens when the locals want to eat during the week in the off-season? The only place they can go is here, in this old part of town that’s been half abandoned.”

“This is what Harriet’s been trying to tell us,” Jeremy said. “And even in the high season, most of these local kids never even get to see the beach, let alone eat out. They work long hours for low wages in the back of hot, sticky restaurants and hotel kitchens—and they still can’t pay their rent.”

I looked up in surprise, for it was unusual for Jeremy to display personal feeling about such a subject. He caught my glance and explained, “I had friends from out here who played in my band but they weren’t as fortunate as me. They were smart enough to qualify for good schools, yet couldn’t afford it, so they never saw the inside of a university.”

Colin slowed down in front of one of the brick buildings—the only one that had any lights on. He rolled down his window again. “Go on inside, and tell Joe at the bar that you’re with me and you’ll be wanting a table,” he instructed. “I have to go through the back door to haul in my stuff.”

“What stuff?” I muttered to Jeremy as Colin drove away.

“I think tonight it’s best to ask as few questions as possible,” Jeremy advised, parking the car under a street lamp in front of the pub. “We will be lucky if this car is still here when we come out.”

“Colin wouldn’t tell us to park here if it wasn’t safe,” I said optimistically.

“Let’s hope so,” Jeremy said. “Meanwhile, I suggest we go inside and case the place out.”

Although
Ye Olde Towne Pub
was on street level, the interior felt as if we’d entered a basement or rathskeller. A very long bar was flanked by high stools, all of which were occupied by big, beefy men who had bushy beards, or long wild hair, or arms covered in tattoos . . . and some of them had all three of these features.

On each side of the bar were many big, antique dartboards at which several clusters of men were hurling darts. Each time a dart landed, a derisive or appreciative roar came up from some of the audience at the bar.

The entire floor was covered with sawdust. Across the room, opposite the bar, was a huge working fireplace with carved wooden gargoyles on either side. I thought I spotted a brick oven as part of this fireplace.

The center of the room was tightly crowded with tables, most of which were already occupied by groups of men, or groups of women, but hardly any couples. The diners were of all ages, from teenagers to old grizzled folk, with practically everybody wearing jeans and sneakers and other casual attire.

A surprising number of waiters were working tonight, each wearing butcher’s aprons over their jeans and T-shirts, all very busy hustling about, balancing big trays of beer glasses, which, when necessary, they hoisted over their heads to better navigate the crowded room. There was a jukebox going with rock-and-roll blaring out, and this caused the diners to raise their chatter to a level that was very nearly deafening, which perhaps explained why there weren’t many signs of couples looking for quiet conversation on a date night.

At the farthest wall of the bar was a very dark cavernous area, where a number of scraggly-haired young men seemed to be moving furniture in the shadows, probably making room to set up more tables there for more diners, I thought.