The Day of the Storm (19 page)

“What will you do then?”

“Nothing. Just know what she looks like.”

I turned from my disappointment and began to walk back to the door where my laden basket waited for me, but Joss was there first, stooping to swing it up and out of my reach.

I said, “I must go back.”

“It's only—” he consulted his watch—“half past eleven. And you've never seen my shop. Come back with me and let me show it off, and I'll make you a cup of coffee and drive you home. You can't possibly walk up the hill with this great weight on your arm.”

“Of course I can.”

“I won't let you.” He opened the door. “Come along.”

*   *   *

I couldn't go without the basket and he obviously wasn't going to give it up, so, resigned and reluctant, I went with him, pushing my hands into my pockets so that he could not take my arm. He seemed in no way put out by my ungraciousness, which in itself was disconcerting, but when we got back to the harbour and were once more in the teeth of the wind, I nearly lost my balance with the unexpectedness of it, and he laughed and pulled my hand out of my pocket, taking it in his own. It was hard not to be disarmed by this protective and forgiving gesture.

As soon as the shop came in view, the tall narrow house shouldering up between the two short fat ones, I saw that indeed changes had taken place. The window frames were now painted, the plate glass had been cleaned, and a sign put up over the door.
JOSS GARDNER
.

“How does that look?” He was full of pride.

“Impressive,” I had to admit.

He took a key out of his pocket and unlocked the door and we went into the shop. Packing cases stood about on the flagged floor, and around the walls, shelving was being erected in varying widths, up to the ceiling. In the centre of the room was another structure, rather like a child's climbing frame, and this had already been set out with modern Danish glass and china, cooking pots in bright colours, and brightly striped Indian rugs. The walls were white, the woodwork had been left in its natural state, and this and the grey floor provided a simple and effective background to the bright wares which he had to sell. At the back of the shop an open staircase rose to the upper floors, and beneath this was another door, ajar, leading down into what appeared to be a dark cellar. “Come upstairs…” He led the way.

I followed him. “What's that door there?”

“That's my workshop. It's in a dreadful mess, I'll show you that another time. Now this—” we emerged on to the first floor, and could scarcely move for baskets and wickerwork—“I haven't exactly got this straight but, as you can see, this is where you buy baskets for logs, clothes pegs, shopping, babies, laundry, anything you care to put in them.”

None of it was very spacious. The narrow house was just a glorified staircase with a landing on each floor.

“Up again. How are your legs? Now we come to the
pièce de résistance,
the owner's palatial living quarters.” I passed a tiny bathroom squeezed into the turn of the stairs. And lagging behind Joss's long legs found myself remembering Andrea's yearning descriptions of his flat, and hoping it would not be the way she had described it to me, but entirely different, so that I would know that her imagination had taken control, and that she had made the whole thing up.

Just like something out of a magazine. With a bed that's a sort of sofa and masses of cushions and things and a log fire.

But it was just the way she had said. As I came up the last stairs, my fleeting hope swiftly died. And there
was
something closed-in and secret about it, with the ceiling sloping down to the floor and a dormer window set into the gable with a seat below it. I saw the little galley, enclosed behind a counter, like a bar, and the old Turkish carpet on the floor, and the divan, red-blanketed, pushed against the wall. As she had said, it was scattered with cushions.

Joss had put down my basket and was already divesting himself of his wet clothes and hanging them on an old-fashioned cane hat-stand.

“Take your things off before you die of cold,” he told me. “I'll light a fire…”

“I can't stay, Joss…”

“No reason not to light the fire. And please, take off that coat.”

I did, unbuttoning it with frozen fingers, pulling off my damp woollen hat and shaking my plait down over my shoulder. While I hung these up beside Joss's things, he was busy at the fireplace, snapping twigs, balling paper, scraping together the ashes from some previous fire, lighting it all with a long taper. When it was crackling he took some pieces of driftwood, tar-soaked, from a basket by the fireplace, and stacked them round the flames. They spat, and spluttered, and swiftly caught. And the room, by firelight, sprang to life. He stood up and turned to face me.

“Now, what do you want? Coffee? Tea? Chocolate? Brandy and soda?”

“Coffee?”

“Two coffees coming up.” He retired behind his counter, filled a kettle and lit the gas. As he collected a tray and cups, I went over to the window, knelt on the seat and looked down through the fury of the storm to the street below, washed by spray as the waves broke over the sea wall. The boats in the harbour bobbed about like demented corks, and huge herring gulls floated over their swinging mastheads, screaming at the wind. Absorbed in the task of making our coffee, Joss moved with economy from one side of the galley to the other, neat-fingered and self-sufficient as a single-minded yachtsman. So occupied, he appeared harmless enough, but the disconcerting point about Andrea's revelations was that they all seemed to contain an element of truth.

I had known Joss for only a few days, but already I had seen him in every sort of mood. I knew he could be charming, stubborn, angry, and downright rude. It was not difficult to imagine him as a ruthless and passionate lover, but it was distasteful to imagine him with Andrea.

He looked up suddenly and caught my eye. I was embarrassed, caught with my thoughts. I said, quickly, to divert us both, “In good weather you must have a lovely view.”

“Clear out to the lighthouse.”

“In the summer it must be like being abroad.”

“In the summer it's like Piccadilly Underground at rush hour. But that only lasts for two months.” He came out from behind his counter, carrying a tray with the steaming cups, the sugar bowl and the milk jug. The coffee smelt delicious. He pulled forward a long stool with his foot, set the tray at one end of it and himself at the other. Thus, we faced each other.

“I want to hear more about yesterday,” said Joss. “Where did you go besides Falmouth?”

I told him about St Endon and the little pub by the water's edge.

“Yes, I've heard about it, but I've never been there. Did you get a good lunch?”

“Yes. And it was so warm that we sat out in the sunshine.”

“That's the south coast for you. And what happened then?”

“Nothing happened then. We came home.”

He handed me my cup and saucer. “Did Eliot take you to High Cross?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see the garage?”

“Yes. And Mollie's house.”

“What did you think of all those elegant, sexy cars?”

“I thought just that. That they were elegant and sexy.”

“Did you meet any of the guys who work for him?”

His voice was so casual that I became wary.

“Who, for instance?”

“Morris Tatcombe?”

“Joss, you didn't ask me here for coffee at all, did you? You're pumping me.”

“I'm not. I promise I'm not. It's just that I wondered if Morris was working for Eliot.”

“What do you know about Morris?”

“Just that he's rotten.”

“He's a good mechanic.”

“Yes, he is. Everybody knows that, and it's the only good thing about him. But he's also totally dishonest and vicious to boot.”

“If he's totally dishonest, why isn't he in jail?”

“He's already been. He's just come out.”

This took the wind out of my sails, but I soldiered bravely on, sounding more sure of myself than I felt.

“And how do you know he's vicious…?”

“Because he picked a quarrel with me one night in a pub. We went outside and I punched him in the nose, and it was lucky for me I hit him first, because he was carrying a knife.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you asked. If you don't want to be told things, you shouldn't ask questions.”

“And what am I meant to do about it?”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I'm sorry I brought it up. It was just that I'd heard Eliot had given him a job and I hoped it wasn't true.”

“You don't like Eliot, do you?”

“I don't like him, I don't dislike him. He's nothing to do with me. But I'll tell you something. He picks bad friends.”

“You mean Ernest Padlow?”

Joss sent me a glance that was full of reluctant admiration.

“You don't waste much time, I'll say that for you. You seem to know it all.”

“I know about Ernest Padlow because I saw him with Eliot that first night when you gave me dinner at The Anchor.”

“So you did. That's another rotten egg. If Ernest had his way the whole of Porthkerris would be bulldozed into car parks. There wouldn't be a house left standing. And we would all have to go up the hill and live in his fancy little semis which in ten years' time will be leaking, leaning, cracking up and generally bagging at the knees.”

I did not reply to this outburst. I drank my coffee and thought how pleasant it would be to have a conversation without being instantly drawn into longstanding vendettas which had nothing to do with me. I was tired of listening to everybody I wanted to like running down the reputations of everybody else.

I finished my coffee, set down the cup and said, “I must get back.”

Joss, with an obvious effort, apologized. “I'm sorry.”

“Why?”

“For losing my temper.”

“Eliot's my cousin, Joss.”

“I know.” He looked down, turning his cup in his hands. “But, without meaning to, I've become involved with Boscarva, too.”

“Just don't take your prejudices out on me.”

His eyes met mine. “I wasn't angry with you.”

“I know.” I stood up. “I must go,” I said again.

“I'll drive you back.”

“You don't have to…” But he paid no attention to my protest, just took my coat from its hook and helped me on with it. I pulled the wet woollen hat over my ears and picked up the heavy basket.

The telephone rang.

Joss, in his oilskin, went to answer it, and I started downstairs. I heard him call, just before he took the receiver off the hook, “Rebecca, wait for me. I won't be a moment…” and then, into the telephone, “Yes? Yes, Joss Gardner here…”

I went down to the ground floor and the shop. It was still raining. Upstairs I could hear Joss deep in conversation.

Bored with waiting for him, perhaps a little curious, I pushed open the door of the workshop, turned on the light, and went down four stone steps. There was the usual confusion, benches, woodshavings, scraps, tools, vises; over all hung the smell of glue, of new wood, of polish. There was also a clutter of old furniture, so dusty and ramshackle it was impossible to tell whether it was of any value or not. A chest of drawers missing all its handles, a bedside cupboard without a leg.

And then, at the very back of the room, in the shadows, I saw them. A davenport desk, in apparently perfect repair, and alongside it a chair in the Chinese Chippendale style, with a tapestry seat, embroidered in flowers.

I felt sick, as though I had been kicked in the stomach. I turned and went up the steps, turning off the light and closing the door, going through the shop and out into the bitter windblast of that wicked February day.

My workshop's in a dreadful mess, I'll show you that another time.

I walked and then found that I was running up towards the church, into a warren of little lanes where he would never find me. I was running, always uphill, encumbered by the shopping basket, heavy as lead, and my heart pounded in my chest and there was the taste of blood in my mouth.

Eliot had been right. It was too easy for Joss and he had simply taken his chance. It was my desk; it was my desk that he had taken, but he had taken it from Grenville's house, flinging the old man's trust and kindness back in his face.

I could imagine killing Joss, and it was easy. I told myself that I could never speak to him, could never bear to be near him again. I had never been so angry in my life. With him; but worse with myself, for having been taken in by his empty charm, for having been proved so totally wrong. I had never been so angry.

I stumbled on up the hill.

But if I was so angry, then why was I crying?

10

It was a long and exhausting climb back to Boscarva, and I have never found it possible to sustain extreme emotion for more than ten minutes. Gradually, fighting my way up the hill against the weather, I calmed down, wiped my tears away with my gloved hand, pulled myself together. In an apparently intolerable situation, there is nearly always something one can do, and long before I reached Boscarva I had decided what it was. I would go back to London.

I left the shopping basket on the kitchen table and went upstairs to my room, took off all my drenched clothes, changed my shoes, washed my hands, carefully re-plaited my hair; thus calmed I went in search of Grenville and found him in his study, sitting by the fire and reading the morning paper.

He lowered this and looked over the top of it as I came in.

“Rebecca.”

“Hallo. How are you this wild morning?” I sounded determinedly cheerful, like a maddening nurse.

“Full of aches and pains. The wind's a killer even if you never go out in it. Where've you been?”