Love Always (10 page)

Chapter Eleven

The sleeper train from Penzance has a special platform to itself, outside the main station. I like that; it accords it a proper position. In summer, it can be a trying experience. It is always crowded, frequently extremely hot (the air conditioning is temperamental), and it gets light so early that, as a child, I would wake at three-thirty and never be able to get back to sleep, lying there on the top bunk under the scratchy blue blankets, tossed about by the motion of the train.

Mum would come down again at the end of the summer to take me back to London, unless Granny was coming up herself, and I always hated it when Mum arrived because I hated leaving Summercove. It was like leaving a fairytale palace behind, a warm, airy, sweet-smelling palace where I was free, where my grandmother was always there so I never got lonely, and where the sun shone and Jay and I were together. Back in London we knew September would be racing to catch us, damp-drenched mornings when the sun rose later and colder, and winter lay just around the corner, putting me and especially my mother into a funk that would last till spring.

On the train back I would always go over the holiday in my head, committing it all to memory. The walk to Logan’s Rock, and the terrifying winds that threaten to blow you off to the treacherous waters beneath. Sitting outside at the Minack Theatre, an amphitheatre carved into the cliffs, screaming with laughter at
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
. Jay and I clambering down through the rocks to the beach below the house; the astonishing green and blue of the water, the ginger beer that was sharp and sweet, at the same time, on your tongue. The warmth, the wet, the wildness, the knowledge that being in Cornwall is like being in a different country, and that every mile you draw away from it is like leaving a part of you behind. Yes, I thought it was like something out of a fairytale.

After we’ve paid Mike and waved him off, Octavia and I stand on the blustery quayside, at the entrance to the station.

‘Do you know what carriage you are?’ I ask, my tone almost formal.

She shakes her head. ‘I have to go and pick my tickets up from the machine.’

‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Right.’

We are silent. I look down at my black boots. I pulled them on this morning, at five-thirty, in the dark. It seems like a lifetime ago.

‘So, I’ve already got my ticket,’ I say, waving the orange card at her. ‘I think I’ll—’

‘Yes, yes,’ she says, a touch too eagerly. ‘Well, it was . . .’ she trails off. ‘Er, good to see you.’

Someone hurries past us, dragging a suitcase on wheels. It crackles loudly over the tarmac. ‘Look, Natasha,’ Octavia says, after another silence. ‘I’m sorry. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said it like that.’ She holds her hands up. Don’t blame me. ‘I just thought you’d have heard. You know, everyone’s always . . .’ She trails off again, and crosses her arms defensively. ‘It’s all water under the bridge, I suppose.’

‘It’s clearly not though, is it?’ I say. ‘It’s anything but that. It explains a lot, anyway.’ I’m trying not to sound angry. ‘Look, your mum’s always had it in for my mum and I’ve never known why, and now I do. That’s why I’m not surprised.’

‘You understand why now.’ Octavia nods, as if to say, Good. She’s finally getting it.

‘No, I don’t believe it, Octavia. What I mean is,’ I say, breathing deeply, ‘I understand why you’ve always been so vile to us now. I mean, did your mother tell you this herself?’

‘Not in so many words,’ Octavia says. ‘You don’t sit down and explain something like that – we just always knew. Dad, too. And Uncle Jeremy. That’s why he never comes back.’ She shrugs.

‘Well, as you like. I don’t believe for a second, a
second
–’ and I raise my voice so I’m speaking as loudly as possible without shouting, and I can hear myself, high above the clinking masts in the harbour, above the train engine – ‘that my mother killed Cecily, or anyone. I don’t know what happened, but I know that much.’ I sling my bag over my shoulder.

‘Hey –’ she begins. ‘That’s just what they say. I’m just saying—’

‘No,’ I interrupt. ‘Let’s not go into it again, OK? I think I’m going to get on, now. See you around then. Thanks for—‘ I don’t know what to thank her for, but since I’ve started I think I’d better finish. ‘Er – thanks for sharing the taxi fare with me.’

Octavia nods back – what else can she do? – and says, ‘No problem.’

I don’t look back at her as I walk towards the train. I pray I don’t bump into her again, but I’m pretty sure she’ll steer clear of me this time. She thinks she’s done me a favour. That’s what upsets me most of all. Pointed out how stupid I’ve been.

In the summer the buffet car is always full; people arrive as early as possible to get a seat so they’re not shut into their cabins, which are initially cute but soon become claustrophobic. In winter, the car is nearly empty, and after I have dumped my bag in the single-bed cabin and admired the free set of toiletries, I settle down into one of the single seats by the window, with a table and a lamp, and put my bag in front of me. I look around hastily again, but Octavia hasn’t appeared. The diary pages are still in my pocket. I sit there, and the train pulls slowly away from the station, and I don’t know what to feel.

There’s a
Times
on the opposite seat – the guard obviously missed it – and I pick it up. I order some tea and biscuits, even though I’m not hungry, and I start reading the paper. The news absorbs me. I read about a cabinet plot to oust the Prime Minister, the flooding all over the country, the travails of a minor sportsman and his ‘celebrity’ wife, what’s happening in a reality TV show, which MP has tried to claim an antique rug on expenses. I feel as if I’ve been away for a long time, and I am gathering information to piece myself back together, bit by bit.

I know before I turn the page to the Obituaries section that I will see a photo of my grandmother, scarf in her hair, a broad smile curling over her perfect teeth, brush in hand, a mug of tea and painting paraphernalia – palette, brushes, rags, turps – cluttered around her, in the studio I was standing in over an hour ago. It looks completely different, crammed with canvases, postcards stuck on the walls, pot plants, a gramophone.

Something catches in my throat. She is smiling out at me. It’s like Cecily’s face, shining out of the drawer.

Frances Seymour

Highly acclaimed observer of Cornish landscape who never painted after 1963

Frances Seymour, who has died at the age of eighty-nine, was what one would call a star. Not for her the flamboyance, the tantrums and temperamentality, clichés of the artist: she was universally beloved, charismatic and beautiful, a magnet for men and women alike; her house, the beautiful Summercove near Treen in Cornwall, open to all and a haven for friends and family. She lit up every room she was in and her company was a rare gift.

Because of her charm and force of personality it is easy to forget, therefore, the gap Seymour created when she abandoned painting after the death of her youngest daughter Cecily, in a tragic accident. Frances never forgave herself for her daughter’s death, and some have speculated this was her form of penance, for the events of that summer in 1963. This is not established. What it is important to establish, however, is the role Frances Seymour played before that in sealing the reputation of British painting in the mid-twentieth century.

Frances Seymour was not a Cornish painter, or a female painter. She was simply one of the most talented artists of the last century.

This was my grandmother, I want to shout. I want to wave the paper out of the window, like the Kind Old Gentleman in
The Railway Children
. Look how clever she was, how brilliant!

Tears come to my eyes, and I’m crying, I can’t help it. I don’t understand anything any more. I keep hearing Octavia’s voice, and when I close my eyes I can see her large grey eyes, her pointy noise, looming at me in the dark, as she oh-so-carefully stabs my mother in the back, over and over again. I want to hate her, to laugh at her, but I can’t. I ask myself why I can’t.

Because, despite what I said to her only an hour before, I’m terrified that she’s right.

I look out of the window, as if I expect to see someone’s face there. We have been going fast, through a blur of nondescript-looking villages, but suddenly it is dark, a landscape with no lights at all. I can see my own reflection in the window, nothing more. My neck and the newspaper are both startlingly white against the blackness outside, the blackness of my coat and dress. I stare at myself; I can’t see the tears; I look like a ghost. In the black and white of the light, I look like Cecily.

Carefully, I tear the obituary out of the paper and fold it. The tearing sound is loud, and the couple at the table next to me look up, curiously. I stand up and smile, backing away towards my room and when I get there, I fall onto the familiar old scratchy blue blanket and the smooth white sheets. I take the pages out of my pocket and sit on the lower bunk, holding them in my hand, gazing at them, at the scrawling black handwriting, my finger and thumb poised to turn the first page. I close my eyes.

And now I can see myself, suddenly, back at Summercove. There are voices I recognise, but they’re different somehow, thinner, higher. Bright sunshine is streaming into the living room, the smell of sea and grass and something else, something dangerous, almost tangible, rushing towards me . . . And Cecily’s face, as it was in the oil sketch.
Come with me! Come with me
, she is saying. And I do. I take a deep breath and I follow her, down to the sea.

The Diary of Cecily Kapoor, aged fifteen. July, 1963.

St Katherine’s School for Girls
Denmouth
Devon
England

If lost please return

Saturday, 20th July 1963

Dear Diary,

First day of holidays. That is – count it, my dears, count it –

SEVEN WEEKS of blissful beautiful no school!! !!

My summer project starts NOW.

I am writing this sitting on my bed at Summercove. On the patchwork quilt Mary sewed me when we first moved here and I was scared at night. One of Mummy’s sketches is on the wall, of our little cove down on the beach. There is a cupboard for our clothes built into the wall with sweet little plastic handles dotted with stars. What else? There are two shelves painted white with all my books on them (I share this room with my sister Miranda. But she only reads Honey magazine). I have everything from My Friend Flicka to Pride & Prejudice & they are all mine.

Today is the first proper day of the holidays. I got home yesterday. I love the luxury of the beginning of the hols, where time seems to stretch out before you, for ages & ages. We go back 8th Sept. It seems a lifetime away.

I have never kept a diary before. Two days ago, the last day of classes, Miss Powell gave everyone in our class ten pages of paper, tied together with string and our names on, and told us to keep a record of our summer holidays: she said to write down what we did, who we saw, and what happens. Everyone groaned when Miss Powell said it, but I was glad. I want to be a writer when I grow up & this is good practice.

No one else was that excited about it, only me really. Annabel Taylor, who can barely write in joined-up writing, looked completely appalled. I have laid a wager with myself. It is that she will write 2 pages over the summer, and those will be about the boys she knows.

(that is not very nice of me).

Miss Powell says she will not look at our diaries herself, but she wants us to read some sections out to the rest of the class when we come back in the autumn. She says, in years to come, we will find them and read them and remember the summer of 1963. She says it is a year we will want to remember. I thought she meant because of Mr Profumo and the scandal. We’re absolutely not allowed to talk about it at school. Still, I hoped she might mention it. She just said something instead about the wind of change blowing. I like Miss Powell. She is younger than most of the teachers, and she has fantastic cropped hair, and she likes Bonjour Tristesse. Rita dies for Miss Powell, she cries about her at night. Anyone’s better than Miss Gilchrist, say I. Awful woman with meaty hands, I’m sure she used to be in prison. Miss Powell isn’t like that.

Anyway, enough of silly school. It’s hard sometimes, to get back into the swing of life here after being away at St Kat’s for months on end. One’s head is full of drear things like plimsolls and kit bags and hymnals. I’m back now. It’s over! (for a while).

So what shall I tell you, diary? I shall start by describing where I am and what’s happening.

It is after tea & the house is quiet, but there are sounds, all dear & familiar to me after months at school. Mary is in the kitchen, cooking supper; I can hear her feet on the floor & the pans clattering.

Dad is humming in his study. It sounds like wasps, buzzing. Dad is a famous sort of writer. He wrote a book people always want to talk about, called The Modern Fortress. I haven’t read it. But lots of people have. It is an IMPORTANT BOOK. Miss Green, our headmistress, said that to me last year. ‘IMPORTANT BOOK CECILY.’ That means she hasn’t read it, I absolutely bet.

(must be kind & what if they do read it even though they said they wouldn’t?)

My cousins Louisa & Jeremy arrived today. They are playing with Claude, our dog, on the lawn. Louisa is wearing a beautiful striped bathing costume, I covet it. She has a new lipstick and she is terribly pleased with herself, for she has been offered a scholarship to Girton, and she is dreadfully ambitious and clever. Jeremy is at medical school in London. Jeremy is my favourite cousin, there are only two of them that I know, I don’t know my cousins in Lahore, in Pakistan, but perhaps I would like them more than Jeremy. I doubt it. He’s awfully nice.

Jeremy has been for a swim & carried the table outside for supper after the rain. That’s enough about them for the moment.

My sister & brother (Archie & Miranda other way round) are gossiping in their secret annoying way, about who knows what as they walk round the edge of the lawn together, like Jane Austen heroines taking a turn about the garden. They are twins, 2 yrs older than me. They have just finished at school. Though Archie is staying on an extra term, to do the exam for Oxford and Cambridge, though he says he won’t go. Miranda is not doing that exam. She is not doing anything.

They are strange, the twins. I am not sure if My hand hurts already. But I must go on!

Finally Mummy. Mummy is painting. She is in her studio, down at the end of the corridor. She is a famous painter. ‘Famous painter’ – I am not sure if that is a good thing or not, but it is how she is always referred to by people. The Picture Post did a spread on us a couple of years ago. ‘Famous Painter at Home with her Family’. As if her fame is as important as her painting. I wonder if it annoys her. Mummy has an exhibition this autumn & she is making me sit for a portrait. I don’t like sitting for her except we talk, which I like. I sat for her this morning. The exhibition is soon & she is painting furiously, she is behind. She is short with Dad, but he doesn’t notice. She smokes & looks out of the window a lot, & I hear her pacing up & down in the studio when I’m in my room. She’s doing it now.

Anyway, I will write more about them all I am sure. We are to be joined in a few days by Frank and Guy Leighton, Frank is a schoolfriend of Jeremy’s & he is Louisa’s boyfriend. Guy is his brother. Mummy loves having people down. I do too, it’s more fun when there are more around.

There are so many things I want to read & see & do, so many thoughts I keep having. I want to write it all down, to experience things I haven’t (please excuse me Diary, I will try & write as much as possible). I want to Broaden my Mind, & summer holidays are the time to do something about this, & I undertake it in earnest. I shall read the papers & comment on them so this diary is also a well-informed record of the times.

For example, I was interested to see that the memorial service of the Rev Cuthbert Creighton took place yesterday near Worcester, & that Miss BP Hards (that is a funny name) has got engaged. Also that the Duke of Edinburgh will be attending a lunch of the Heating & Ventilation Engineers next Tuesday at Grosvenor House in London.

The bell for dinner has not gone yet. So here is some more information, this time about me.

Name: Cecily Ann Kapoor
Age: 15 (16 in November)

School: St Katherine’s School for Girls

Favourite Subjects: English! Drama, Art, History, Latin.

Best Friends: Margaret, Jennifer, Rita. (NB. I should like Linda Langley to also be my friend but she is not, as she is the year above.)

Favourite Teacher: Miss Powell

Favourite Book: Bonjour Tristesse, Francoise Sagan

Favourite Poem: The Prisoner, by Emily Brontë

Favourite actress: Kay Kendall RIP. Jean Seberg in Bonjour Tristesse the film, I want my hair cut short like her, so chic & gamine but Mummy says NO.

Favourite actor: Stewart Granger in Moonfleet, SWOON! Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird DOUBLE SWOON, also Dirk Bogarde & Rock Hudson.

Favourite film: It used to be Moonfleet but it’s a bit babyish for me now. Bonjour Tristesse, I LOVE that film, & the book, it is all so chic glamorous. And To Kill a Mockingbird, which is a marvellous & extremely wonderful evocation of the Deep South & its problems.

Favourite song: NOT The Beatles, everyone likes them & it’s so dull! Miranda & Louisa practically weep every time they come on the radio. They play Please Please Me every day on the gramophone. They only like them because they are boys & from Liverpool ie dangerous, according to my Aunt Pamela, Louisa’s mother, but she thinks the bin man on her road is a dangerous communist because she once saw him reading the Tribune. Miranda & Louisa are silly when it comes to B.O.Y.S. anyway. I don’t like boys (apart from Gregory Peck & Stewart Granger & they are men). I am concentrating on becoming an interesting & accomplished person because one day I want to be a writer & writers don’t become writers by sitting around listening to Please pleasezzzzzzzz me. Or Frank Ifield. Can you believe it, Louisa actually has an album by Frank Ifield. zzzzzzzzzz again.

Anyway my favourite song & album is Juliette Greco. I also like the Four Seasons, & the Beach Boys. She is French, they are American, & I like that, it is something different. Not boring old England, all the time. Sometimes you would think it was the only country in the world.

Other interesting things about me: My father is from what is now Pakistan. My skin is darker than the other girls at school & so I don’t need to lie in the sun to tan, which is good. Some of the girls like Annabel Taylor make me feel awful about it & say nasty things, I wish they wouldn’t, I am as English as them. Mrs Charles, the Deputy Head, called me a clumsy little wog when she was cross after I dropped all the blackboard dusters & made chalk cloud fly in her face & make her cough. I asked Archie what it meant & he was very cross with me.

Dear diary, (the truth is I really don’t like writing about this) but they are worse to Miranda, her skin is darker than mine. I feel sorry for her but I don’t tell her, she gets cross. We are the only girls like it in our school. Dad came with Mum to drop us off last year & I don’t know why he did, he barely knows we exist. I shouldn’t say this diary but I was embarrassed of him. He is small & quite eccentric & doesn’t make sense when he talks, because he talks in riddles. Even though he is a famous writer, the girls at school don’t know that, or at least they don’t care. I wish they did, but they don’t.

Thank god for Mummy. She looks like a film star, always has done. She is very beautiful, I’m sure Miranda & I are a sad disappointment to all who gaze upon our visages. Mummy has ‘it’ – I don’t know what ‘it’ is, but she can put on her overalls or an old shirt & look stunning. I just look like a boy.

No dinner bell yet, what’s going on? I’m ravenous.

Sometimes I wonder about where Dad came from, too, I imagine palaces made of gold & the burning heat & markets with silk & exotic foods, like in The Horse & His Boy by C.S. Lewis. Dad says it is a bit like that but not really. He is from Lahore. It is a fortress town, Akbar lived there, he was one of the greatest Indian rulers, we did him in school & I could say that was where Dad came from. It was in the Punjab, now it is in Pakistan. It is because India is not ours any more. I love the idea of it, the Mughal emperors & the forts & bazaars. I want to go to India. I will one day, when I am grown up & a famous writer. I shall have a scarf from Liberty, & smoke those Russian cigarettes, and do my hair like Juliette Greco –

We have been called for supper, I must go. I have been writing for well over an hour, it is nearly seven & my left hand hurts, a LOT.

I will add my exercises after I have done them tonight.

Bust exercises: 30
Nose squashing exercises: 5 mins

Love always, Cecily

Sunday, 21st July, 1963

Dear Diary,

After yesterday’s writing marathon my hand STILL hurts so I will be brief. I feel we have made a good start. It is lovely being home but it is funny how the things you forgot about that are always there start to come back after a few days. It is even funnier, reading them as you write them down. Perhaps I shouldn’t, but if I didn’t record what happens and what I think about my family I wouldn’t be being truthful, would I.

I was out all day at the beach & then went for a long walk with Jeremy to Logan’s Rock. Very tired now. We talked about his walking holiday in Switzerland, it sounds most interesting. I tried to sound like an interesting person back, but I have never really been anywhere and done anything, and it’s hard. I expect Jeremy is all the time with wonderful interesting girls up in London. I rather hate to think about it.

Had another sitting with Mummy this morning. We are in her studio, I never go in there so it’s interesting only from that point of view. It’s very white & quiet & she wasn’t like my mother when we were in there.

I can’t explain it. She is much more . . . definite. Tells me how to sit & what to do. Doesn’t care I’m her daughter. She asks questions to be polite, like Sandra, the hairdresser we go to in Penzance. It is uncomfortable after a while, staying still like that. I like it because I get to wear the ring I love so much round a chain on my neck. It is Mum’s ring, she let me take it to school last year and look after it. She says I can have it one day, if I’m good.

The only thing I should record is that Mummy kept asking about Miranda. If there was anything I thought we could do about her that we weren’t doing, as she has left school & has nothing in sight. I don’t know what to say as it’s been decided that Miranda is a ‘problem’. By Mummy. (I don’t think Dad has noticed any of us is actually back from school, let alone that M has actually finished school & needs something to do). They think she ought to know what she’s doing, but to be fair to Miranda they’ve never asked her before, I don’t know why they’re worried about it now. I said they should make her join the French Foreign Legion. Mummy didn’t laugh.

She plays jazz up there, Chet Baker & John Coltrane & she smokes while she paints, which is strange because she doesn’t anywhere else. And she is different. I can’t explain it.