The Holiday Home (14 page)

It was Merlin.

11

C
onnie wondered if she could find the entrance to the cave in the wooded valley after all these years. She’d asked Greg to join her on her walk, but he was busy with emails. Though she made a show of disappointment, secretly she’d been relieved to take the walk on her own. She desperately needed to get out of the house and think about her unsettling row with Pru the other night. The appearance of Merlin had had a very strange effect on them both. She was shaken by how much emotion the memories of that summer had stirred up.

Her sandals allowed the long grasses to tickle her instep as she pushed her way along the overgrown path. She saw the remembered stile ahead of her and, after climbing it, turned right to follow the rushing stream leading through the valley and on to the sea. The first time she’d come here was with Merlin and Pru. The three of them had played Pooh sticks and Merlin had given them their first experience of smoking a joint. It had been a warm afternoon with the drone of flies in the air.

‘Either of you girls know what a fuggee hole is?’ asked Merlin, his blissed-out eyes turning Connie to jelly.

Pru giggled, ‘I wouldn’t like to say.’

Merlin grinned his suntanned grin and clamped the joint between his crooked teeth. ‘Shame on you, Pru Carew. Dirty mind!’

He took her hand and pulled her up the sloping side of the valley.

Connie watched the giggling couple for a moment then hurried to catch them up, not wanting to be left behind. The climb got steeper until they reached a small plateau. Merlin was now leading the way and the girls were scrambling after him. Giggling and stoned.

After about fifty metres, Merlin stopped and bent down on his haunches, pulling aside some tall ferns.

‘’Ere it is.’

The girls crouched next to him and saw an opening in the side of the valley. Carved out of the rock, it was just big enough to take a barrel of brandy or a small crouched person.

Merlin flicked his lighter and, using it as a torch, disappeared into the hillside.

The girls looked at each other nervously.

‘Come on, girls. The lights are on,’ he called.

Pru went first, letting out a gasp as she entered the carved cavern, lit now by six flickering church candles.

‘Oh my God!’ she called to her sister. ‘Connie, you must see this.’

‘What is this place?’ breathed Connie in wonder as she stood in the tall space.

Merlin shrugged. ‘No one knows for sure, but there are several of them in these parts. Prehistoric, I think. The smugglers used them to hide their stash.’

At the back of the dry cave there lay a pile of blankets and an old-fashioned feather quilt. Merlin shook them out and spread them on the floor.

‘Come and lie down next to me,’ he told them. As they did so, he began to sing the Beatles’ ‘Come Together’. His voice ricocheted richly from the walls.

Connie put her arm across his muscly chest and met Pru’s doing the same thing from the other side. Merlin finished the song and put each of his arms under their heads.

‘Oh, my lovely girls. Summer doesn’t get much better than this!’

*

Connie was starting to sweat a bit as she climbed the steep slope and found the plateau. Her heart beat with a sense of stepping back in time. It didn’t take her long to find the entrance, hidden now by a thicket of ferns and gorse. The plants scraped her legs and stung her feet, but she kept going until the small hole was revealed.

As she ducked her head inside, Connie cursed herself for not bringing a torch. Then she remembered that the three of them had scratched their initials just inside the entrance. She closed her eyes tightly and counted to sixty, hoping that this would trick her eyes into seeing in the dark better. When she opened them, her sight slowly adjusted. Turning her head to the right she saw the letters
CC
,
PC
and
MP
.

12

A
s soon as he saw Pru in the water, Merlin stopped paddling and put his head to one side, staring at her from under his still-golden eyelashes. He dropped his gaze to her bare shoulders and then down to the water, where he could clearly see she wasn’t wearing any clothes. He lifted the boat’s paddle out of the water and balanced it across the front of the canoe.

‘So. My little Pru has returned.’

‘I think it’s you who have returned.’

He laughed. ‘True, that. I haven’t been to Figgoty’s since you left me.’

Pru snorted in derision. ‘Stop sounding like a schoolboy and leave me alone. I need to get out and get dressed.’

‘Nothing I haven’t seen before, eh, Pru?’

She was shivering in the water now. ‘Bugger off, Merlin.’ She started to swim back to the beach.

He leaned on the paddle and looked thoughtfully up at the sky.

‘You’re not holding a grudge are you, Pru?’

Angrily she stopped swimming and turned to him. ‘Hold a grudge? Whatever for? You are a footnote to my youth, someone Connie and I laugh about.’

He smiled, showing his attractively wonky teeth. ‘If I thought that was true, you’d be breaking my heart.’ He picked up his paddle and put it in the water. ‘You and I are unfinished business. Catch you later.’

She watched as he disappeared around the next headland and then she swam back to shore and into her warm, dry clothes.

The climb from the beach and up the cliffs was hard. Her legs were shaky and her fingers felt weak as she fumbled for handholds in the slate. Seeing Merlin had upset some delicate balance within her. She grasped a good wedge of rock, but as she hauled her weight on to it, it came away in her hand and she slid a little, grazing her shins. Her breath was uneven and painful in her throat. She felt something rising within her – something buried but not dead.

‘Come on, Prudence. It was all a long time ago. Don’t let that idiot under your skin.’

After a while she scrambled from her hands and knees to a bent walk and then, finally, she was standing upright on the grass-tufted path of the clifftop. Pru rubbed her eyes with her T-shirt and looked down to the beach. She saw her own footprints in the bare sand, but of Merlin there was no sight.

There was a weather-beaten bench ahead of her, facing the ocean, and she gratefully walked towards it and sat. She put the palms of her hands over her blue eyes and instantly saw an image of Merlin making love to her for the first time in the little cave up in the valley. The fuggee hole. She remembered the excitement of having given Connie the slip. She remembered how he’d held her hand and guided her through the gap in the earth bank and into the warm pitch-blackness. She could hear the rasp of his lighter and see the candle stubs sitting in solid pools of wax on the floor. She’d watched as he bent and lit their wicks. Now, she could see the tall graceful arch of the rock; white and smooth. It wasn’t dank and slimy like the cave under Atlantic House. Merlin had moved to the back of the cave and collected the bundle of blankets and the faded paisley eiderdown quilt. He’d laid them on the floor, the same as he had that day when Connie had been with them.

‘Do you want to lie down?’

She kicked off her plimsolls and sat on the makeshift bed.

‘I’ve never seen a girl like you before.’ He was kneeling in front of her. Slowly he slid his arms round her waist, all the while gently kissing her neck and shoulders.

‘Is that nice?’ he breathed.

‘Mm,’ she said, her eyes wide open.

She had been kissed by boys before, but had never understood what all the fuss was about. Now, with the warmth of his arms around her and his soft lips on her face, she felt different.

He sat back a moment to look at her. Satisfied that she appeared not to mind, he moved in to kiss her mouth. Unsure how to respond, Pru had parted her lips a little and allowed his tongue inside her mouth. She didn’t know what to do with her hands, so she let them hang loosely by her side. He pulled away and looked at her.

‘Not shy, are you?’ he asked.

‘No.’

He’d taken her hands and placed them on the belt of his jeans. ‘Undo me,’ he whispered.

She squeezed the palms of her hands tighter over her eyes, remembering the way he’d made love to her and how she had felt. Special. Adult. Wanted. Until …

‘Merlin!’ the sound of that name broke through her reverie. Rubbing her eyes roughly, she uncovered them and sat blinking in the daylight.

A little round dog followed by a little round man barrelled towards her.

‘Here, Merlin!’ the man called in a Midlands accent. ‘Quiet, you’ve disturbed this lady. Mind if I share the seat with you?’ He sat down before she could answer. ‘Beautiful up here, isn’t it? I’m going to be scattered up here when I die.’

Without saying a word, Pru stood up and walked away as fast as she could. Behind her, she heard the man say, ‘Well. Some people, eh, Merlin?’ Her walk turned into a trot which turned into a run. She had to get back to the real world. To Francis and security.

*

‘Mum … Muuuuum?’ Abigail was shouting from upstairs.

Connie, who had only just sat down after clearing up the supper things, was in the drawing room with Greg. Her mind had drifted back to the initials carved in the rock wall. She took a deep breath and blew it loudly through her lips. ‘What?’ she yelled.

‘There’s no hot water. And I’ve got shampoo in my hair.’

‘Well, use the cold tap.’

‘It’s cold.’

‘Exactly.’

A short silence ensued. Connie picked up her glass of wine and waited.

‘Daaaad?’

Connie looked over at Greg, who was trying to watch the news.

‘Whaat?’ he bellowed.

‘There’s no hot water and …’

‘… You’ve got shampoo in your hair?’ he chorused with her.

‘Yes. Help.’

He flicked the TV off and stood up, quietly swearing.

Connie heard him go upstairs, followed by Abi’s protestations that he couldn’t come in the bathroom because ‘I haven’t any clothes on.’

‘I’ve seen you without clothes on since you were born. Now open this door.’

After another five minutes or so Greg came downstairs and into the drawing room.

‘There’s no hot water,’ he announced.

Pru and Francis stuck their heads round the door. ‘There doesn’t seem to be any hot water, Connie.’

Connie looked at them as if they were all mad. ‘Really? You don’t say? What do you expect me to do about it?’

‘Oh, don’t get all huffy. We’re only saying,’ said Pru.

‘And I’m only saying why are you all asking me? I don’t know what to do.’

The four of them stood, pathetically, trying to come up with a solution.

‘We’ll have to talk to Dad in the morning. He’ll know a plumber. In fact, Mum and Dad need to do a bit of maintenance on the old place.’

‘That’s true.’ Pru looked at Francis. ‘The tap in our en-suite basin is still dripping.’

The following morning, a delegation of Connie and Pru knocked on the door of The Bungalow.

Dorothy opened it in her dressing gown.

‘It’s terribly early. What do you want?’

Connie poked Pru in the back, which Pru took as a signal, correctly, for her to open the conversation.

‘It’s almost ten. Can we come in?’

‘Oh yes.’ Dorothy opened the door wider. ‘I hope you don’t want breakfast.’

‘We’ve had breakfast. We just want to have a chat with you and Daddy.’

‘Oh God. Sounds ominous.
Henry!
’ she called. ‘The children want to speak to you.’

A muffled, ‘One moment,’ came from his bedroom. They heard movement, then he opened his door and walked out to greet them, tying the belt of his silk dressing gown.

‘Good morning, all. To what do we owe this pleasure? Come into the lounge and sit down. Dorothy?’

‘Yes.’

‘Put some coffee on, would you?’

Dorothy went to the kitchen, grumbling.

Henry sat in his armchair and smoothed his hair with his hands.

‘What’s the matter?’

Connie turned to Pru, who started: ‘Daddy, when did you last have the boiler checked? It’s broken down and there are several taps dripping.’

‘Only to be expected in an old house,’ he replied, smiling.

‘Yes.’ Pru had hit her stride. ‘But it’s nigh on twenty-five years since you and Mummy renovated the old place. Don’t you think it’s about time it had a bit of an overhaul? Maybe some decorating too – it’s looking rather dated.’

Dorothy arrived with coffee and mugs on a tray, which she banged down on the table. ‘Dated? It’s perfect.’

‘Of course, of course,’ soothed Connie. ‘But a lick of paint would brighten it up.’

‘Who for?’ said Henry. ‘The only people who come to the house are you lot. Are you saying we’re not up to your standards?’

Connie blushed. ‘No, Daddy. It’s wonderful and we love coming down. Really, it’s only the hot water that needs looking at.’

Henry sat back in his chair. ‘So get it looked at.’

*

As the girls left The Bungalow, the light drizzle developed into a cloudburst. They ran across the squelching grass and through the French windows of Atlantic House’s kitchen.

Greg and Francis were reading their respective papers.

‘Careful,’ said Greg crossly as Connie shook her dripping cardigan. ‘You’ll get my paper soggy.’

‘Never mind that,’ said Pru, handing her wet sweatshirt to Francis, who carefully draped it on the Aga. ‘You two need to find a plumber. Daddy’s quite happy for us to get the plumbing system overhauled.’

‘Who’s paying?’ asked Greg suspiciously.

‘Well he hasn’t said as much but Daddy, of course! We’re just supervising,’ said Pru, sitting down. ‘Right, Connie. You and I shall spend the day in Truro looking at paint. Maybe some new cushions.’

‘We could do with new loo brushes,’ Francis chipped in.

‘Good idea.’ Pru smiled. ‘Connie, make a list.’

*

Truro was wet and grey. Holidaymakers shuffled about staring into shop windows before sitting in overcrowded cafés with their anoraks gently steaming.

The sisters found a parking spot in Lemon Street and made a dash for Marks and Spencer. They enjoyed their browse round the store and then went on to a very smart interior design shop where they chose several cushions and collected some paint and wallpaper samples. Then they drifted through a couple of boutiques, each buying small holiday essentials that neither husband need know about.