At the end of the row of fishermen’s cottages by the harbour’s edge stands an old granite house.
First it belonged to Ned’s parents; then Ned dropped anchor here after a life at sea and called it home. His nephew Hugo moved in too, swapping London for the small Cornish fishing village where he’d spent so many happy holidays.
It’s a refuge – and now other friends and relations are being drawn to the house by the sea.
Among them is Dossie, who’s lonely after her parents died and her son remarried. And cousin Jamie, who’s coming home after more than a year, since his career as an RAF pilot was abruptly cut short. Both have to adjust to a new way of life.
As newcomers arrive and old friends reunite, secrets are uncovered, relationships are forged and tested, and romance is kindled.
For those who come here find that the house by the harbour wall offers a warm welcome, and – despite its situation at the very end of the village – a new beginning …
To Rick
HUGO HOUGHTON COMES hurrying along the precipitous cobbled street that hurtles down to the harbour; his tweed coat flaps around his long legs and he clutches a bag of shopping in his arms as carefully and firmly as if it were a baby. He pauses to look at the few boats that remain of a once prosperous fishing fleet, which now provide day trips out to sea for the tourists, and then turns along beside the harbour wall towards the tall, old slate and granite house at the end of a row of fishermen’s cottages.
Gathering his shopping into one arm, he lets himself in through the massive oak door to a long flagged passage with its series of doorways on either side, which leads through the ground floor into the kitchen at the back of the house. He plunges into the warmth and peace of the big room, dumps his bag on the central table and smiles at the old man – angular, wide shouldered, white haired – who is sitting in a wooden rocking chair by the Aga.
‘All well, Uncle Ned?’ he asks.
Two dogs scramble up from their shared basket, hurrying to meet Hugo, wagging their tails in that welcoming yet hesitant way that the retriever has, longing to show love but anxious lest it should be rejected. Hugo bends to caress them, sympathizing with how they feel: this has been a problem for him for most of his adult life.
‘Good boys,’ he tells them. ‘Good fellows.’
Hugo begins to unpack his shopping, shrugging off his coat, passing Ned the newspaper, telling him about the friends he has seen in the village shop. He pauses to look out into the small paved area where the early May sunshine is slanting in, lighting slate walls, sliding over wooden tubs of tulips and bluebells. This sunny space is sheltered from the north-westerly wind, and today he might be able to persuade Ned outside for his morning coffee. It’s not that his uncle is difficult, rather that he likes to make his presence felt; to show that, despite his vulnerability and physical weaknesses, he is still a force to be reckoned with. After a long and very successful career in the navy – and though he has been retired now for more than twenty years – Ned can still be formidable when he chooses.
To signal his intentions, Hugo opens the door into the little court. At once the dogs make a bid for freedom, jostling to be the first out, and then dashing up the steep flight of stone steps, which leads to the small garden layered into the cliff behind the house. Hugo stands outside for a moment, lifting his face to the warm sunshine, and then goes back inside to find a cloth to wipe the dampness of last night’s rain from the wrought-iron table and chairs.
Ned shakes his newspaper as if it is a call to battle as Hugo comes back inside, pushes the kettle on to the hotplate and smiles at the older man.
‘Coffee outside?’ he suggests tentatively. ‘It’s warm out there.’
Ned frowns, considering, then unexpectedly folds The Times and stands up. Tall and lean, he picks up his stick and makes his way carefully – and very slightly unsteadily – across the flagged floor towards the doorway. Hugo watches, ready to step forward but pretending that he is unconcerned. Ned hates to be fussed over but since his recent hip replacement operation he has been a little less confident and Hugo has a horror that his uncle might fall.
Ned lowers himself on to one of the chairs and Hugo takes a breath of relief and begins to brew the coffee. He’s so happy here, looking after Ned and the various people who come to stay: friends or relations needing a little bit of love and care, of rest and renewal, before returning to the cold world outside these sheltering granite walls. In his mid-fifties, he doesn’t regret taking the early retirement package from his job as a producer at the BBC, or leaving London: the BBC was getting busier, open plan, desks with no names. It was good to retreat from schedules and routines and to come here to the place where he’s spent so many happy holidays. It’s as if he is able to repay some of the kindness his aunt Margaret showed him through his childhood and difficult teenage years. After she died, nearly two years ago, it was clear that Ned wasn’t going to be able to manage alone and Hugo knew how much it would break the old fellow’s heart to leave the home that had been in the Tremayne family for several generations. There was Rose, of course. Rose Pengelly has been their cleaner since she was a girl, and Hugo has a very special place in his heart for her, but it was too much to ask Rose to take on the extra responsibility. And, anyway, how good it is to be needed: to be able to fulfil the nurturing side of his character.
Hugo piles the coffee things on to a tray and carries it out to the court. The dogs have returned from their foraging and sit either side of Ned, their muzzles pressed against his knees, as if they understand that their presence brings him comfort. Gently he caresses their smooth heads and Hugo sees that he has closed his eyes against the sunshine and is smiling a little in its warmth. He sets the tray down gently on the table and takes up the coffeepot.
Despite his closed eyelids, Ned perceives Hugo clearly. He pictures the strong, broad-shouldered figure, the untidy mass of dark curly hair, liberally streaked with grey, and Hugo’s violet-blue eyes. He is very like his aunt Margaret. When her younger sister, Hugo’s mother, died of cancer whilst Hugo was still a small child, Margaret took him into her love and care as far as she was able, given that she was a naval wife with a small boy of her own, and Hugo’s father was a barrister living in London.
This house, belonging to Ned’s parents, was a refuge: a place to which they all travelled to spend leaves, school holidays, to lodge between married quarters. It was home. It was here that he and Margaret had come for extended leave after their son was killed in the Falklands War. Jack was twenty-three.
How odd, thinks Ned, his eyes still closed against the sunshine, that the pain should still be so keen after nearly thirty-five years of loss. So must an amputee continue to feel the ache for a lost limb.
Ned opens his eyes and smiles at Hugo, who is hovering near him. Ned knows why Hugo’s relationships with women never survive: he is too kind, too generous, too considerate.
Ned counts himself lucky: his marriage was a good one, he has been loved by several women, his son adored him. And now he has Hugo to support him just when he is beginning to feel vulnerable and lonely. He likes Hugo’s London friends – members of his camera crew, assistant producers, ex-girlfriends – who come to stay for weekends, between jobs or lovers or marriages, and he likes the occasional lodgers who stay whilst they look for long-term accommodation. Everyone gravitates towards Hugo, as towards warmth and succour, and he helps and heals them where he can. It is good to be a part of that and Ned knows how lucky he is. He drinks his hot, strong coffee, unadulterated by sugar or milk.
‘I was thinking that we’d go for a drive,’ Hugo is saying, ‘through the woods and up on to the moor. The wild cherry trees are looking wonderful and the bluebells are beginning to flower.’
‘“And since to look at things in bloom,”’ quotes Ned,
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
Hugo grins at him. ‘Strong,’ he says. ‘Very strong. We’ll have lunch at The Chough and the dogs can have a run on the moor.’
Ned grins back at him – Hugo doesn’t appreciate poetry but is tolerant of Ned’s sudden declamations – dismisses Housman from his mind, and thinks with pleasure of the day ahead. These spring days are a delight to him, filled with promise of the joys to come: of seeing buds opening into a pale tatter of petals; a blackbird sitting on her frail eggs: of the relief to hear the evocative call of the cuckoo and to see the swoop of the first swallow, proving that the Creation is still working.
A bar of music interrupts his reverie and he watches Hugo drag his iPhone from his pocket to read the incoming message.
‘It’s Prune,’ he says. ‘She’s been invited out to supper so she says not to wait for her.’
‘Does she say with whom?’ asks Ned.
He feels in loco parentis where young Prune is concerned, though at twenty-one she is quite old enough to look after herself. Nevertheless, as their lodger she deserves their protection and he’d promised as much to her parents when they came down from Suffolk to see where their daughter was to be living whilst she works as an assistant gardener at the National Trust property on the edge of the village. The Trust has recently opened a small café and Prune has been taken on to train with the team that has the special responsibility of supplying the vegetables to feed visitors. It was the Trust who recommended the house on the quay as a lodging place for Prune.
‘She and the rest of the team are going out with the couple who have been advising on setting up the café,’ Hugo answers. ‘It’s their last evening so they’ve invited them all to a fish-and-chip supper at Padstow.’
‘That sounds like fun,’ observes Ned. ‘In which case we’ll have a good lunch at the pub and then we won’t have to worry too much this evening.’
‘My name’s Prunella,’ she told them when she came to meet them, sitting at the kitchen table, a dog on each side of her. ‘But I’ve always loved gardening since I was small so the nickname was inevitable really.’
She was a slender girl, not very tall, with long, fine, fair hair drawn back from a small, pretty, square face, and Hugo smiled at her.
‘I hope you won’t be daunted by the overwhelming male presence here,’ he said.
She laughed, patting the dogs. ‘I’ve got three older brothers,’ she answered. ‘Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. So have I passed?’
Hugo looked at Ned, his eyebrows raised.
‘With flying colours,’ Ned answered.
And now she has become part of the family and none of them has regretted it. As Hugo and Ned sit at ease together, drinking coffee, discussing plans for the garden, enjoying the sunshine, the dogs lie, noses on paws but eyes and ears alert to any suggestion of a walk. So that when Hugo pushes back his chair, stands up and begins to collect the coffee mugs, they are on their feet at once, hurrying ahead of him into the kitchen, ready for action.
They drive up out of the village, skirting high granite walls, and into the woodland at the moor’s edge. Ash, hawthorn, alder are beginning to leaf and, beneath their tender buds, the bluebells’ haze reflects the cloudless sky.
Ned lowers his window and Hugo slows the car so that they are able to breathe in the fragrance. Amongst mossy boulders, tightly curled fists of bracken push through to stand like question marks above the rocks. Hugo can hear the cuckoo’s two notes – C and A flat – and he smiles at Ned in a shared delight.
They pass small fields, hedged about with yellow-flowering gorse, where cows take their ease in companionable groups; tails twitching, chewing things over. The car bumps across the cattle grid and then they are up on the open moor and the dogs begin to jostle and barge each other with excitement. He pulls on to the dry, close-cropped grass, gets out and opens the tailgate so that the dogs are able to leap down and go dashing away, scattering a group of skewbald ponies. The wind is cold. He leans in to reach for his coat, knowing that Ned will stay where he is in the warm shelter of the car, shrugs himself into his windproof jacket and hurries away after the dogs.
Ned watches them go: Brioc ahead as usual, Mortimer following more slowly, showing his age. How many times he and Margaret walked the dogs here; how much she loved this part of the moor: that gleam of a white church tower set all about with rhododendrons down in the valley and, seawards, a rim of gold at the edge of the world. Instinctively Ned folds his arms across himself as if he is holding himself in – or pretending that he is hugging Margaret, being hugged in return. He isn’t sure which it is but after a moment he sighs at his foolishness and settles himself more comfortably to wait for Hugo’s return.
The small bar of The Chough is busy but the table in the corner by the inglenook fireplace is empty, and the landlord, knowing the treachery of these early May days, has kept the log fire burning. Behind the bar, Ben, a tall, good-looking boy barely out of his teens, sways quietly to the background music: Gregory Porter singing ‘Hey Laura’. His lips soundlessly frame the words and his eyes are full of dreams. A flurry of newcomers jolt him out of his reverie and, as he hurries to serve them, Ned watches him sympathetically, trying to remember what it was like to be that age: untried, hopeful. Not for Ben, yet, the more and more frequent reminders of the past; the mental thumbing of anecdotes as if they are a greasy old pack of cards.
‘Which is worse?’ Hugo once asked him. ‘Sins of omission or commission?’
‘Omission,’ Ned answered at once, instinctively.
Hugo frowned, thinking about it. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ he said at last, ‘but there are an awful lot of things I regret doing. Rushing in where angels fear to tread. Making a fool of myself.’
‘If those are the worst sins you’ve committed, be grateful,’ Ned answered, thinking guiltily of one of his own particular sins of commission with a rather beautiful woman during a short posting to Norfolk, Virginia, when he was helping to run a NATO exercise from the COMSUBLANT bunker.
He glances around the bar. A man has just come in and is being welcomed by another who is standing ordering a drink. They hug each other. Ned is slowly getting used to the sight of men hugging. Everyone hugs these days: rugby players, tennis players, TV presenters. His glance slides past them and he glimpses a young woman at the furthest table, which is littered with coffee cups and plastic mugs. Ned feels a tiny jolt of recognition though he cannot place her. She is talking eagerly to her two companions, also young women, whilst several small children beside them are busy with colouring books. He frowns, trying to place the vivacious face but the memory eludes him.
Hugo is back, carrying two pints of ale, and the two men at the bar are now blocking Ned’s view otherwise he might ask Hugo if he recognizes her. Meanwhile, Ben is here with the menus and he is drawing their attention to the specials board.
‘Though I expect,’ he says, smiling at Ned, ‘that you’ll be having your usual?’
Ned smiles back at him, touched by the fact that Ben remembers. How poignant is the genuine kindness of the young as opposed to their thoughtless pity, which is one of the trials of old age. He agrees that he will have the seafood platter, simply because it pleases Ben, who beams at him and then looks at Hugo, who is studying the menu. He orders venison sausages and sits down beside Ned.
‘I’ve been meaning to text Dossie,’ he says. ‘We’re running low on emergency supplies.’
Ned takes a pull at his pint. He approves of Dossie Pardoe, a woman much the same age as Hugo, widowed young, who runs a small business called Fill the Freezer from her home in St Endellion. She supplies home-cooked food to holiday cottages all over the peninsula, as well as catering for dinner parties, children’s parties and small special events. They are both very fond of Dossie and are helping her to cope with the recent deaths of her parents. Her widowed son, Clem, has just married again, which is another adjustment, though Ned knows that Dossie is delighted for her son and her grandson, Jakey.
‘She’s really missing Clem and young Jakey much more than she lets on,’ Hugo is saying. ‘I know that she adores Tilly, but it can’t be easy to step back after ten years of being there for them and suddenly be a mother-in-law again. They were all such a close unit.’
‘Invite her to supper this evening,’ Ned suggests impulsively. He sympathizes with Dossie as she navigates her way through this tough patch and he admires her courage and gallantry. ‘Then we can talk about topping up supplies.’
Hugo raises his eyebrows. ‘I thought the reason we were having lunch here is because we weren’t going to bother about supper?’
‘Oh, just do it,’ says the older man impatiently. ‘Send her a text.’
Hugo shrugs cheerfully, pulls out his phone and Ned sits back in his chair. The group of mothers and children is leaving. They mill about, parents calling instructions, and one small boy shoulders forward ahead of the rest, impatient to be outside. Ned looks at the small determined face, the black hair and dark brown eyes, and is once again pierced by the feeling of recognition. He looks again for the woman he noticed earlier, who is hurrying to catch up with the little boy, calling after him to wait for her.
Ned leans forward to draw Hugo’s attention to her but before he can speak the whole party has swept out of The Chough and he’s too late.
DOSSIE CLOSES THE door behind her and stands listening to the sound of silence. No Pa shouting from his den to ask how the day went; no Mo in the kitchen pushing the kettle on to the Aga ready for a welcoming cup of tea or coffee; no Wolfie skittering out into the hall barking a welcome; no Jonno struggling up from his basket, tail wagging. This coming in to the overwhelming sense of absence is the hardest thing: nobody now with whom to share her day, her small successes or frustrations. After Pa’s death from his second stroke, and then during the last year of Mo’s illness, the bed-and-breakfast business that they’d continued to run so gallantly gradually diminished and, though Dossie’s own business continues to flourish, there is a pointlessness to life with which she must wrestle on a daily basis.
It was to Mo and Pa that Dossie returned when her husband, Mike, was killed in a motor-racing accident, leaving her with their small son, Clem. They had looked after him whilst she organized lunches, dinners, cooked special-occasion feasts in other people’s kitchens and finally managed to get her business up and running. Mo and Pa had contacts and friends right across the peninsula who were very ready to help the young widowed daughter of their two old friends. And in return, years later, she was able to help them to keep their rather eccentric bed-and-breakfast business running as they grew older and less able. She misses those visitors who, over the years, became friends, bringing their dogs and occasionally, as the years passed, grandchildren. And, on top of all this, Dossie misses the familiar daily contact with Clem and her grandson, Jakey.
She crosses the hall, goes into the kitchen, instinctively glancing away from the dogs’ empty baskets. It was almost as if a malign history were repeating itself when Clem’s young wife died having their baby. When Jakey was four, Clem decided to return to Cornwall from London and, once again, the family rallied round to support them whilst Clem pursued his vocation, his theological training, and was ordained. Now, six years on, he is chaplain to the Anglican community in the beautiful old retreat house of Chi-Meur, twenty miles away on the coast.
During that time Dossie had grown used to being on call to babysit, to provide food in an emergency, and simply to spend precious time with her son and grandson. She was so happy when Tilly came into their lives: pretty, funny, clever Tilly, who looks after all the IT at Chi-Meur and who has brought a whole new dimension to Clem’s life; and to Jakey’s, too. They live in the cottage at the end of Chi-Meur’s drive and the three of them, plus a retriever called Bells, are a happy little unit. Though they stay closely in touch with her, Dossie knows she must now step back. She must be tactful and give them space.
It’s odd, this sense of desolation each time she returns home. The huge effort required to prepare some food and sit eating it solemnly, all alone. Food is the source of life; it should be shared, be a celebration. Mo and Pa had been the most splendid of hosts, giving to their guests not only good food but an atmosphere of warmth and fun in which to enjoy it whilst making them feel special. After years of travelling the world with Pa’s job at Rio Tinto Zinc as a mining engineer, they found it impossible simply to retire to a quiet life and their B and B-ers gave them a purpose. This pretty, gracious Georgian house, with its elegant sash windows and perfect proportions, was an ideal setting for the venture and Dossie can’t imagine living anywhere else.
As she opens the fridge and stares disconsolately at its contents, a text message pings in and she shuts the door and takes her phone from her bag. She sees that the text is from Hugo and immediately she is washed through with a sense of warmth, of relief, and even gratitude. She has grown so fond of Hugo and Ned in their big old house down at the harbour’s edge in the small fishing village near Polzeath. They have welcomed her into their world, which is almost as eccentric as the world she shared with Mo and Pa. She reads the text and foolishly wants to weep.
Come to supper. We both need you. xx
But she doesn’t weep. Instead she laughs and taps out a reply.
You mean that your freezer is empty. I can take a hint. xx
She agrees a time with Hugo and goes back to the fridge. Oddly, this small connection has lifted her spirits and given her the courage to go on again.
‘You need another dog,’ Hugo told her, after Wolfie died. ‘I know it was difficult when Mo was ill and you were trying to do everything, but it’s different now.’
She imagined that he was on the edge of saying, ‘You don’t even have to worry about Clem and Jakey now, either,’ but restrained himself. Or maybe she was just feeling oversensitive. It is hard no longer to be the one Jakey and Clem turn to if there is a problem or something to celebrate.
‘Get over it,’ she mutters, taking the makings of a sandwich from the fridge. ‘Get a life. Get a dog.’
Meanwhile she’ll think of some special pudding that she can take to contribute to the supper: she has something to look forward to and the bad moment is past.
Later, as she drives between St Endellion and Polzeath, Dossie thinks about having another dog; of trying to manage a puppy or whether it should be a rescue dog. Either would almost certainly bring problems, yet it would be so good to have a companion again. As she turns westward towards Polzeath, however, a different problem presses in: whether or not she should sell the house. It’s not easy when Adam telephones and asks if she’s considering putting The Court on the market yet. Her brother, Adam, works for a big London estate agency that specializes in selling country properties.
‘Now is the perfect time of year to sell,’ he said during the last conversation. ‘It’s too big for you on your own, Doss. It’ll cost a bomb to keep it up and running.’
Since Mo died, Dossie has worked hard to rebuild her relationship with her brother.
‘So you scooped the pool, Doss,’ he said to her bleakly after their father’s funeral. ‘Pa warned me just before he died that he was leaving The Court to you because of all that you’d done for them, but I didn’t quite believe he would actually do it. Not that you don’t deserve it.’
She didn’t tell Adam that she’d pleaded with Pa to change his will but their father remained adamant.
‘We’ve helped Adam from time to time,’ Pa said. ‘It’s not our fault his marriage fell apart and he lost half of everything. You made it possible for Mo and me to stay in our home, Dossie, when we were old, to run our business and to surround ourselves with our friends. We couldn’t have done it without you and we had so much fun. This has been your home for most of your life apart from when you were with Mike. Don’t forget that.’
Once Pa died, Adam changed. Slowly he grew less defensive, easier to be with, as if some challenge, some expectation, had been removed; as if he no longer had anything to prove. Later again, during his visits while Mo was ill, there was a kind of reconciliation, an acceptance at last on each side. Dossie can imagine how hard a blow it was to Adam to be disinherited but she is beginning to hope that she might be able to heal that resentment. She knows, though, that he’s right about selling The Court. But how could she bear it and where would she go?
As she drives, surrounded by the cool, blue, infinite sky-spaces that indicate proximity to the sea, she is prey to a sense of panic. She is reminded of the loneliness of those years after Mike was killed. How he’d loved speed! Motorbikes, Formula One, speedboats. He took so many risks that it was hardly surprising that his life ended so tragically. But even back then, desolate though she was, she had small Clem. He was her reason to carry on, to survive, to continue to create a home and a life – and this became a pattern. Until now.
She drives down into the village, past the harbour, and parks her little Golf on the hard area beside Ned’s Volvo. As she climbs out her spirits are beginning to rise. Quite apart from the fact that Hugo and Ned have become such good chums, her own sense of pride won’t allow her to whinge and whine and pull sad faces in front of them. She opens the hatchback, reaches in for the basket containing the pudding, and takes a deep breath. The massive front door is unlocked as usual and she shouts as she comes into the long hallway. There is a responding shout and the sound of barking, and she smiles with amusement, happiness, and a tinge of sadness at the old familiar response to a homecoming.
‘BREAD-AND-BUTTER PUDDING,’ SAYS Hugo appreciatively. ‘You know all our weaknesses, Dossie.’
Dossie raises her eyebrows. ‘I seriously doubt that.’ She rolls her eyes and winks at Hugo. ‘I bet Ned has all sorts of secrets he’s not letting on about.’
Ned can’t help but smile. He loves the way that Dossie slightly flirts with him and teases him. It makes him feel young again, viable, alive. And he does indeed have secrets that he has no intention of revealing – and the guilt that goes with them.
‘And what about me?’ demands Hugo, spooning the pudding on to plates. ‘What about my secrets?’
‘I think,’ says Dossie, finding forks and spoons and then sitting down again at the table, ‘that your secret is that you’re a frustrated concert pianist.’
Ned watches Hugo’s face with interest as a variety of expressions flit across it: surprise, a little frown, a downward turn of the lips in a tiny facial shrug.
‘You might be right,’ he concedes. ‘What makes you say so?’
Dossie looks at him thoughtfully. ‘I think it’s the way your face changes when you prepare to play. You become detached. It’s as if you are about to enter into another world, which you actually prefer to this one.’
Ned is slightly taken aback by Dossie’s perspicacity. There was a time when he hoped that Hugo would make his playing his career when he was in his last years at school. It was sad that Hugo’s father had never recognized his son’s talent or taken it seriously. If his mother had still been alive it might have been different.
‘Anyway,’ Dossie is saying, ‘payment for the pudding is that you play for us after supper. And don’t ask me what. You know how ignorant I am and you only do it to show me up.’
Hugo is laughing now. ‘OK. But you’re going to have to start taking it on board and learn. I might play you some Debussy.’
‘Awesome,’ says Dossie, who sometimes talks like her grandson, Jakey. ‘Shall I like it?’
‘It’ll be joyous,’ Hugo says solemnly. ‘Simply joyous.’
Ned watches them, amused, as they burst out laughing. They like to do this: to quote lines from TV shows or films that they both seem to know.
How wonderful, he thinks, if they were to fall in love.
They make such an attractive pair: Hugo with his dark curly hair, so kind and warm-hearted, and Dossie, so ashy-fair, so funny, and vital. They are both generous, life enhancing, nurturers.
But this was always my problem, thinks Ned wryly. I was always much too ready to fall in love. Too romantic. Too susceptible. How terrible it is to be so old on the outside and still so young on the inside. He thinks of John Donne’s poem:
I am two fools, I know,
For loving, and for saying so …
But he knows that Hugo is not that kind of fool and Ned senses that although Hugo might be very attracted to Dossie, they are already moving beyond that fragile, magical moment of falling in love. Their friendship is easy, uncomplicated, and Ned is so grateful to be a part of it that he is happy simply to enjoy his pudding and look forward to hearing Hugo play.
Hugo spoons up some cream and mentally reviews what he might play to Dossie. He’s rather enjoying his role as entertainer, of musician, though he suspects that she is not quite as ignorant as she claims.
‘So what do you like?’ he asked her on a previous occasion. ‘What music do you listen to when you’re driving? Or do you listen to the radio?’
She shook her head. ‘No, I like to listen to music. At the moment I’m really into Jamie Cullum, Nina Simone … You know?’ She smiles at him. ‘All that jazz?’
He shakes his head, pretending disapproval. ‘My cousin Jamie loves that stuff,’ he told her.
Now, as he finishes the pudding and pushes his plate aside, Hugo remembers that he’d also been rather grateful that Jamie wasn’t around to play for Dossie. Jazz piano is Jamie’s speciality. It’s the story of his life: his cousin was always ahead; a year older, taller, more glamorous. He was head chorister, when they were both in the choir at Wells Cathedral School, and Jamie was always the one who got the girl when they were teenagers and, as if that weren’t enough, he became an RAF pilot. They tease each other, mock each other, exasperate each other, yet between them is an unbreakable bond of love and trust forged long ago as small boys at boarding school.
Hugo frowns. He can still remember the loneliness and the fear of those first awful weeks at school; his mother only recently dead, his barrister father busy and detached. It was Jamie who rescued him; his big, clever, popular cousin who protected him, drew him onwards, encouraged his passion for music. Very few people understood the hard work, the professionalism, the dedication and comradeship required to be a chorister.
Hugo dismisses his memories and reaches for the pad of paper that lives on the kitchen table.
‘So,’ he says, ‘what wonderful food shall we ask Dossie for this time?’
Ned makes suggestions and watches Dossie, who is stroking Brioc. The dog leans his head against her knees and she bends over him, smoothing his coat and murmuring words of love. Ned can see her longing, her loneliness, and he wishes he could help her. It is clear from the way she makes such a fuss of Mort and Brioc how much she misses having a dog of her own.
‘Perhaps,’ he suggests, ‘you should take Brioc home with you. On loan, as it were.’
She raises her head to smile at him, though it is not one of her usual smiles, and she makes a little face of longing.
‘A kind of rent-a-dog, d’you mean? What a fantastic idea. Only he’d miss you all too much. And you’d miss him.’
‘We’d have Mort,’ says Ned. ‘Wouldn’t we, Mort?’
Mort, stretched out under the table, beats his tail upon the floor.
‘Just don’t tempt me,’ warns Dossie, ‘or I might take you up on it.’
‘He’d probably enjoy a break,’ says Hugo, still compiling his list. ‘Travelling all over the county. Meeting lots of lovely people. Eating wonderful food. Being top dog with Dossie. What’s not to like?’
‘Sounds like you might enjoy it yourself,’ suggests Ned slyly, and they all burst out laughing. ‘Well, if you won’t take me up on that, Dossie, I shall have to start a new campaign. A “Find a Dog for Dossie” campaign.’
‘Don’t think I haven’t thought about it,’ says Dossie. ‘It’s just not that easy. I’m not sure I could cope with a puppy, and rescue dogs often bring all kinds of problems. And that’s apart from the fact of growing to love it and going through all the agonies of losing it again.’
Ned can hear the emotion in her voice and Hugo glances up sympathetically. Dossie’s head is bent over Brioc’s and the two men exchange glances.
‘It’s time for your recital,’ Ned says lightly. ‘Finished the shopping list for Dossie?’
Hugo nods. ‘All done. Come on, then. I shall play Mozart’s D minor Fantasia and if you clap loudly enough you’ll be allowed to have coffee afterwards.’
As Dossie follows them upstairs to the drawing-room, where the baby grand piano is, she sends up a tiny prayer of thanksgiving for the friendship of these two men. Their affection and kindness, the laughter and sharing, is like a shield and a buckler against her loneliness and sense of loss. She still has good friends, Janna and the Sisters at the Retreat House; she has Clem and Tilly and Jakey, but these two men are very special to her. They have come new to her at a very particular time in her life and she knows that she is just as important to them as they are to her.
The room, which is the whole width of the house, faces west with a view beyond the harbour and seaward to The Mouls. As the sun tips down towards the horizon it is as if the sea catches its light, bursts into flame, and blazes with fire. Dossie stands at the window, arms folded across her breast, watching the sunset as Ned settles into an armchair and Hugo adjusts his position on the piano stool until he is comfortable. As he begins the long slow arpeggios that set the sombre tone of the opening, Dossie is overcome by a stillness of spirit. She doesn’t know the piece he is playing, though she recognizes the mournful little tune that follows the introduction, yet the mercurial shifts of mood in the music mirror her own state of mind. Since Mo and Pa died, and Clem married Tilly, she seems to spend her whole time on an emotional roller coaster: tears, joy, grief, laughter, all follow in quick succession. When Hugo launches into the merry little passage at the end, the combined delight of the music and the sunset takes her breath away.
She turns as Hugo plays the last chords with a theatrical flourish, and she and Ned give him enthusiastic applause. He grins at her but remains seated. For a moment he hesitates, eyes turned downward, then lifts his hands to the keys again. He begins to play a slow and steady introduction that leads into a tune so exquisite that to Dossie it is as if a fist squeezes her heart and she can barely breathe. The music is so beautiful it is unbearable. As she watches him she sees the expression she spoke of earlier: of intense concentration, of complete immersion in the music and another world. He repeats the tune with his left hand whilst his right hand creates a shimmering accompaniment. His broad hands move confidently over the keys, his eyes are closed, and there is something so particularly impressive about him, so sexy, that, just for this moment, she thinks that she could almost fall in love with this other, detached, assured Hugo. She turns back to the window, disturbed by her feelings. And now the music changes. The composer is saying something that cannot be defined in words. The tune returns, embellished, intense, reinforced, reaches a climax and then subsides to a sad, resigned little statement that is repeated twice before Hugo brings the piece to a close with a last bright high chord and lifts his fingers from the piano.
There is a silence.
‘Was that the “Widmung”?’ Ned asks at last. He clears his throat to hide the emotion in his voice. ‘I didn’t know you could play the Liszt arrangement. I’m impressed.’
Hugo is murmuring deprecatingly that it isn’t really up to standard, that he wouldn’t want to attempt it in public, and Dossie continues to stare out of the window, trying to control her emotions, her confusion, and to prevent herself from bursting into tears.
Suddenly the front door slams, a voice calls, the dogs bark, and Hugo gets up from the piano. The tension begins to dissolve and at last Dossie turns to look at him.
‘That was … awesome.’
She knows that Hugo is not deceived by this deliberately foolish word, that he sees how much she is moved, and he nods, slightly embarrassed but pleased. Ned looks at her anxiously, aware of her mood. She smiles back at him, nods as if to say: ‘It’s OK. I’m all right,’ and he gives a little nod in return.
‘Let’s have that coffee,’ he says. ‘Prune’s home.’
PRUNE KNEELS DOWN to embrace Brioc’s welcoming and enthusiastic licks whilst Mort butts her with his head and whines joyfully.
‘A good day in the greenhouse?’ enquires Hugo. ‘A nice supper in Padstow?’ and Prune beams at him.
She feels happy, wanting to laugh and sing: life is good. How much of this is due to Ben turning up unexpectedly at the gardens this afternoon after his lunchtime shift at The Chough, of his coming to find her in the greenhouses and inviting her to a gig at the weekend at a pub in Wadebridge, she doesn’t want to analyse too clearly. She really likes him – his readiness to laugh and joke, his directness and quick responsiveness – but she doesn’t want to look overkeen: she’s known him for only a few weeks and she’s made that mistake before.
‘We saved some bread-and-butter pudding for you,’ says Dossie, following Hugo into the kitchen with Ned behind her. ‘But you probably won’t want any if you’ve been pigging out on fish and chips.’
Prune gives her a hug. She has become so fond of Dossie, who seems a part of the set-up here and who has a kind of agelessness about her that makes her feel like a mate. Prune feels really lucky to have got the job with the National Trust, after her two-year course at Bicton College, and to be part of the little team involved in growing the food that will be used in the café. They are all young, excited and enthusiastic about it. But then it’s good, too, to come back here and chill with Hugo and Ned – and Dossie when she’s around.
‘It was really good,’ she says. ‘There was live music and the band was amazing. I am full up but I don’t want anyone pinching my bit of bread-and-butter pudding. I’ll save it for tomorrow.’
‘Take note,’ Dossie says warningly to Ned and Hugo.
‘We wouldn’t mess with Prune,’ says Hugo at once. ‘She wields a mean pair of secateurs!’
Prune makes a face at him, and she wonders – just very quickly – how it might be to bring Ben here and to introduce him to this odd group of people and whether he’d be intimidated by them, although she doesn’t really imagine that Ben is easily intimidated.
‘Isn’t it a bit like living with your father and your grandfather?’ he asked when she described the set-up to him.
She thought about it for a moment then shook her head.
‘No, it isn’t, actually. They’re sort of not like that. Hugo worked as a producer of documentaries at the BBC and he’s seriously cool. And Ned’s got a really sharp sense of humour. They’re just … well, people. You know? In the end age doesn’t seem to come into it much.’
Ben nodded. ‘Sounds fun,’ he said.
Even so, Prune can’t quite see herself bringing him here, not just yet. She needs to know him better; to feel more confident with him.
Hugo is making coffee but he knows she won’t drink any this late in the day. He grins at her.
‘Nice brew of dock leaves?’ he asks. ‘Nettles? Root of dandelion?’
It’s rather like having her older brothers around, teasing her, and she swings a punch at him.
‘At least I shall have a good night’s sleep,’ she retorts as she takes down her box of herbal teas from the cupboard. ‘What with all this late-night coffee and booze, it’s like living with students again.’
‘Now there’s a compliment,’ comments Ned.
They all settle round the kitchen table and Prune feels Brioc collapse comfortably against her feet. She smiles, sighs with pleasure, and allows herself to feel happy and on the edge of falling in love. Hugo’s phone pings and he takes it out of his pocket.
‘Jamie,’ he says, ‘asking if he can come and stay. Hoping to get down quite soon.’
‘Of course he can come and stay,’ says Ned impatiently. ‘He knows he’s always welcome here. This is his home. How is he?’
Prune watches the two men as Hugo taps out a reply. She hasn’t yet met Jamie, though Hugo has talked about him: how they were at school and uni together, how Jamie married soon after he arrived at RAF Lyneham, after he’d got his Wings, but that the marriage broke up a few years later. It’s clear from the way Hugo talks that Jamie is a bit of a hero to him, which she thinks is rather sweet. She’s looking forward to meeting him and seeing how he and Hugo act together. She can imagine that, despite the fact that Hugo and Jamie are in their fifties, it’ll be rather the way her brothers behave: joshing, insulting each other, sharing the in-jokes and phrases that go way back to childhood.
‘Not great,’ Hugo is saying, answering Ned’s question. ‘No change, apparently.’
‘Isn’t he well?’ Dossie asks, concerned.
Prune knows that Dossie hasn’t met Jamie either but that she understands that he is important to Hugo and Ned. Hugo hesitates, as if he is deciding how much or little he should say.
‘He’s had these vertigo attacks,’ he says at last. ‘It started with a cold, then terrible dizziness. Actually falling over. Said he thought he was having a stroke. He had three in that first week. He was grounded, of course. Pilots are susceptible to colds, inner-ear infections, but nobody can pin this thing down. He hasn’t flown for more than a year.’
‘How terrible,’ says Dossie, shocked. ‘Quite awful for him.’
‘It’s utterly bloody,’ says Ned, quite violently. ‘One minute you’re a pilot. Next minute you’ve made your last flight without even knowing it. Utterly bloody.’
He shakes his head almost as if he were in pain, as if he can’t believe the cruelties of life and, watching him, Prune remembers that Jamie is Ned’s late brother’s son and that Ned’s own son was killed on RFA Sir Galahad in the Falklands War. Jamie must be very special to him. Her eyes meet Dossie’s, and they exchange a glance that shares the concern they feel, and the helplessness. Neither of them knows what to say.
‘Anyway,’ says Hugo, trying for a more upbeat note, ‘he’s coming down to see us before too long. So that’s all good.’
‘In which case,’ says Dossie, quickly picking up on the positive tone in Hugo’s voice, ‘I’d better get the freezer filled. Give me that list, Hugo, and I’ll see what I can do. Does Jamie have any favourite puddings?’
‘Sticky toffee,’ Ned answers at once, and Prune is oddly touched that Ned should remember such a thing.
She sips her peppermint tea whilst Dossie peers over Hugo’s shoulder, studying the list. Ned suggests additions, and Hugo writes them down. Prune’s attention drifts: she wonders what she might wear to go to the pub with Ben. Imperceptibly her spirits rise.
HUGO GOES OUT