Coming Home (57 page)

Anyway, it meant that Loveday and I were able to come here under our own steam, instead of having to be chauffeured in the Nancherrow shooting-brake. I can't tell you what fun it was, driving ourselves, and we made the journey very slowly,
savouring
it. It was the loveliest day, all the hedges smothered in foxgloves, and we took the road over the moor, and in the distance the sea was the deepest blue. We sang quite a lot.

Just before we left, Diana Carey-Lewis went off to London for a bit. Colonel Carey-Lewis looked a bit down in the mouth when she told him she was going away, but he's fairly depressed about everything himself, and never stops reading newspapers and listening to the wireless, and I think the poor man just got on her nerves. In the end, however, he made the best of it, and saw her off in her car and told her to have a good time. He really has to be the dearest and most unselfish of husbands, and who can blame him for being concerned about the way things are going? It must be agonising for a man who fought in the trenches all through the last war. I am glad that you are all in Singapore and away from it all. At least there, you will be safe from whatever happens in Europe.

I must go. Loveday and Heather want to go to the beach, and Mrs Warren has packed us a picnic. I can smell hot pasties. Can you think of anything better than eating hot pasties after a swim? I can't.

My love to you all as always. I'll try to write again soon.

Judith

Unlike Nancherrow, mealtimes at the Warrens' house were, by necessity, informal affairs. With two men at work, starting at different hours, breakfast was very much a movable feast, and Mr Warren was in his shop, and Joe away to the beach, long before any of the girls were even out of bed. At midday, Mrs Warren fed her husband whenever there came a lull in business and he was able to escape from his sides of bacon, his packets of tea, and pounds of butter. Having been on his feet since early morning, he needed to sit down for a spell, to cast his eye over the local paper, to enjoy a bowl of soup, a slice of bread and cheese and a cup of tea. Mrs Warren did not sit down. While her husband ate, she ironed, or made a cake, or washed the kitchen floor, or stood at the sink and peeled pounds of potatoes, listening companionably while he read out snippets of news, like cricket scores, or how much the Women's Institute of St Enedoc had made with the Bring & Buy Sale. When he had finished his tea, rolled and smoked a wrinkled cigarette, he returned to work, and then it was Ellie's turn for refreshment. Ellie did not fancy soup. She made herself meat-paste sandwiches, and crunched away on chocolate biscuits, all the while telling Mrs Warren what Russell Oates had said to her while they were queuing for the cinema, and did Mrs Warren think she should have a permanent wave? She was a flighty girl, and mad on boys, but Mrs Warren had known her since she was just a little thing at the Porthkerris school, and enjoyed Ellie's company. She liked her because she had a bit of go in her, and was a real worker, bright as a new penny and always friendly with customers.

‘Jeanette MacDonald's on this week,’ Ellie would tell her. ‘With Nelson Eddy. I always think they're a bit soppy, but the music's nice. Saw James Cagney last week, it was some frightening, gangsters and that in Chicago.’

‘How you can watch all that shooting and killing, Ellie, is beyond me.’

‘It's exciting. And if it gets too bloody, I just go down under the seat.’

Loveday stayed her week, and it was a constant source of wonder to Judith the way she fitted in and adapted to life in the crowded house over the grocer's shop, so diametrically different in every way from the establishment in which she had been brought up. The Carey-Lewises were ‘gentry’…there was no getting away from that uncomfortable-sounding word. And Loveday had been raised accordingly, spoilt and indulged, surrounded by devoted nannies and butlers, and worshipped by besotted parents. But ever since her first visit to Porthkerris, when they had both still been at school, Loveday was entranced by the Warrens and everything about them. Loving the novelty of living bang in the middle of a busy little town, of stepping out of the door straight into the narrow cobbled street that led down to the harbour. When Mr Warren or Joe started in on their teasing, she gave as good as she got, and for Mrs Warren, she learned to make her own bed, help with the dishes, and peg laundry out in the yard at the back of the wash-house. The grocery shop, always milling with customers, was a constant diversion, and the freedom that the Warren offspring took for granted, Loveday found precious. ‘I'm going now’ was all you had to shout up the stairs, and nobody asked where you were going, or when you would be home again.

But most of all she enjoyed the fun of the crowded beach where she, with Judith and Heather, spent much of their time. The weather never stopped being perfect, with a cool breeze, and days of cloudless skies, and the sands bright with striped tents and sun-umbrellas, and noisy with cheerful parties of holiday-makers. Diana had bought Loveday a new bathing-suit, a two-piece, to which Loveday added a pair of dark glasses, so that she could blatantly stare at people without being observed. As well, Judith suspected, Loveday hoped they made her look like a film star. So slender and tanned and dazzlingly pretty, she inevitably drew admiring glances, and it was never long before some young man bounced a beach ball their way, and so a new acquaintance would be struck up. Scarcely a day passed but the three girls were invited to join in a game of rounders or volleyball or to swim out to the raft and sunbathe on the soggy coconut matting.

Nancherrow Cove had never been so diverting.

But the time flew by, and almost before they realised, it was Loveday's last day. The evening meal at the Warrens was the one time when the whole family, and anyone else who happened to be about and in need of sustenance, forgathered around the long, scrubbed table in Mrs Warren's kitchen, to talk, laugh, argue, tease, and generally catch up on the day's affairs. There was never any question of changing, or dressing up. A cursory hand-wash was all that was expected, and everybody sat down in the clothes they had worn all day, the men in open-necked shirts and Mrs Warren still wearing her pinafore.

The meal was served at half past six, and though never less than a feast, was traditionally referred to as ‘tea’. A leg of lamb would be served, or a capon, or grilled fish, accompanied by mashed and roasted potatoes, three dishes of vegetables, sauces and pickles, jugs of dark, rich gravy. For ‘afters’ there were jellies and custards, dishes of cream, and then a homemade cake, or biscuits and cheese, all washed down with large cups of strong tea.

This evening it was just family. The Warren parents, Joe, and the three girls, bare-armed and cool in the sleeveless cotton dresses they had pulled on over their bathing-suits after a day on the beach.

‘We're going to miss you,’ Mr Warren told Loveday. ‘Won't be the same without you around the place, driving us all mad.’

‘Do you really have to go?’ Mrs Warren asked, sounding a bit sad.

‘Yes, I've got to go. I promised Fleet I'd be back, and we've lots of work to do together. I just hope Walter's been riding her, otherwise she'll be frisky and nappy as anything.’

‘Well, you've certainly had the sunshine.’ Mr Warren grinned. ‘What's your mum going to say when you go home, black as a little Indian?’

‘She's in London, so she won't be there. But if she was there, she'd be jealous. She's always trying to get brown. Sometimes she sunbathes with no clothes on.’

Joe raised his eyebrows. ‘Tell her to come to our beach then. We could do with a side-show or two.’

‘Oh, you stupid thing. She doesn't do it on crowded beaches. Just privately, sometimes, in the garden or on the rocks.’

‘Can't be so private if you know she does it. Go peeping, do you?’

Loveday threw a bit of bread at him, and Mrs Warren heaved herself to her feet and went to put the kettle on.

She left the next morning, fetched by Palmer in the Nancherrow shooting-brake. Not the most suitable of vehicles for the steep hills, narrow streets, and tight corners of Porthkerris, and by the time he turned up, Palmer was in something of a fluster, because he had totally lost his bearings in the unfamiliar warren of cobbled lanes, and made it to the door of Warren's Grocery more by luck than good management.

However, he was there. Loveday's suitcases were humped downstairs and out through the shop, and everybody emerged onto the pavement to see her off, with lots of kisses and hugs and promises that, before long, she would come again.

‘When will you be back?’ she asked Judith, hanging out of the open window of the brake.

‘Probably Sunday morning. I'll ring you up and let you know. Send my love to everybody.’

‘I will…’ Shuddering, the shooting-brake started up and moved, with monstrous dignity, away. ‘Goodbye! Goodbye!’

They all stood waving, but only for a moment, because almost immediately the huge vehicle turned the sharp corner by the Market Place and was gone.

At first it felt a bit strange without Loveday. Like all the Carey-Lewis family, she had that gift of adding a certain unexpected glamour to almost any gathering. But it was nice too, to have just Heather for company, and to be able to talk about the old days and old friends, without feeling that they were leaving Loveday out of the conversation, or having to explain painfully to her who so-and-so was, or when such-and-such had happened.

They sat at the kitchen table and drank tea and discussed how they would spend the day, and decided against going to Porthkerris beach, because, although Loveday had wished to do nothing else, being without her seemed a good opportunity to travel a little farther afield.

‘After all, I've got the car. Let's drive somewhere really inaccessible.’ They were still trying to make up their minds where to go when Mrs Warren joined them, treading up the stairs for a breather from the shop, and she made the decision for them.

‘Why don't you go off to Treen? Won't take long in the car, and the cliffs'll be some lovely on a day like this, and probably not a soul there. Mind, it's a real scramble to get down to the sands, but you've got all day, haven't you?’

And so they went to Treen, by way of the Land's End Road, Pendeen, and St Just. Bowling along, Judith was reminded of Phyllis.

‘I must come and see her one day. She lives somewhere near here, but I don't know quite where. I'll have to write her a letter, because she most certainly isn't on the telephone.’

‘You can do that this week. And we can go to Penmarron too, if you want.’