Something strikes me then: it’s funny, but they look totally unconnected. There’s no likeness between them all, no sense that we are one big family gathered together for a funeral. My friend Cathy and her mother and sister are like peas in a pod. Whereas Mum, Jeremy, Louisa, the Bowler Hat – they might have just met, you’d never know they spent every summer down here, four and five weeks together at a time. I’ve seen photos – not many, I suppose because of Cecily they don’t keep many here at Summercove. But Mum has a couple in her room at the flat, her and Archie, posing on the terrace, Archie like a young film star, raising his eyebrows, my mother Miranda pouting beautifully, Louisa and Jeremy smiling, their arms crossed. And there’s one of Archie and the Bowler Hat, and Guy, gurning down on the beach. I suppose that was the summer the Bowler Hat and Guy came here for the first time. In Granny’s room, she had a picture of Louisa and Mum, demure in halter-neck swimming costumes, lying on the lawn together when they were about twelve or so.
You’d never know it to look at them together now. They seem like strangers to each other.
Arvind clears his throat and the spell, whatever it was, is broken. The sun has gone in and it is very cold. I sway on my feet, a combination of grief, hunger, fatigue. Suddenly, an arm is wrapped round my shoulders, and Jay whispers in my ear, ‘Come on, let’s go back to the house. You need a drink.’
We walk in tiny steps towards the car, behind other mourners who are chatting and gossiping as they stand around waiting for us to drive off. Our progress is slow. Oli likes to collect sayings, things that you say and then realise afterwards are a cliché. Is it just me, or are policemen getting younger and younger? is one of his favourites – I said that to him without thinking last year. Now I want to say, We are moving at a funereal pace. I look at Jay, but I know he won’t get it.
‘Everyone,’ Louisa is saying loudly, her voice floating across the ranks of mourners in the watery sunshine, ‘Frances’s family would like to invite you all back to Summercove for some refreshments. Please, do follow us. Thank you.’
With her pink and white complexion, her halo of greying-blonde hair and striped padded jerkin over sensible country-woman’s attire, she looks like an organised angel. One of the admin assistants helping St Peter at the Pearly Gates. People nod respectfully – you always do what Louisa says. They smile at her. My mother walks on ahead, and I notice the glances she gets in contrast. The curious stares, the sighs. Louisa follows Miranda, her beautiful, wicked cousin, and we make our way to the cars. We are going to Summercove.
Chapter Five
Without the setting, Summercove would still be a beautiful house. With it, it’s – well, it’s jaw-dropping. To me, at least. Maybe it’s not to everyone’s taste. I don’t care. To me, it’s the place I’d rather be, more than anywhere else. Always.
Off a small lane, covered in foliage in summer so green and dense it’s almost dark, you turn down a driveway and suddenly the house is there, at the edge of a lawn that slopes gently towards the cliffs. There is a proper garden at the back, manicured grass, rows of lavender, rose bushes climbing up the side of the house, a table and chairs for tea or for lounging in. There are even palm trees – they grow everywhere in Cornwall. But at the front of the house is a terrace with simple stone steps leading to the lawn. At the other end is a beautiful tiny gazebo, like a glass carousel, where you can sit and look out to sea. Next to the house by the lane is a gate, which opens onto a tiny path with high hedgerows that in summer are smothered in orange kaffir lilies, ivy, brambles, full of noisily chirping crickets. The path gives way to grassy moors and stony rocks, from where the rest of the coast suddenly opens up in front of you, the foaming cerulean sea, the blue, blue sky, the wild flowers dotted all around, and if you’re lucky and it’s a clear day, you can see across to the Minack Theatre one way, and almost to the Lizard the other. You have to be careful as you clamber down, holding on to a rope chain, as the path has been cut through the rocks and is frequently slimy and damp. You must move slowly, surely, taking care not to slip. You climb down, down, down, and you’re on the beach, where the sand is custard yellow and there are flat black rocks to lie on. And there’s no one else around. Just us, our own private beach, leading down from the house.
Summercove was built in the 1920s, for a millionaire’s son who wanted to be an artist (along with roughly twenty per cent of the people who come to Cornwall). It wouldn’t look out of place in Miami – a low square art deco house with round edges, studded with big rectangular suntrap windows and gracefully settled in the incline of the land before it dramatically drops away to the cliffs. The sitting room has French doors which lead out onto the terrace, the bedrooms upstairs have wide window seats.
It is not a mansion, but it is big, and airy, and light, and always warm, built in concrete and brick to withstand the rough sea winds. My room, which I shared with Octavia for the week or so that our holidays coincided but usually was lucky enough to have to myself for most of the summer, was small and would have been pokey had it not looked out to sea. It was my mother’s room when she was younger. The curtains were 1950s, Heal’s, pale grey, tiny patterns dotted over in blue, green, yellow, red. The furniture is darling, two small beds with dark wooden frames pale pink silk goose eiderdowns, a bookcase also in dark wood stuffed with my mother’s books from when she was little: My Friend Flicka, Swallows and Amazons, the Narnia books, Jane Austen, and – my favourite of all – a tiny low armchair on brass wheels, covered with a sturdy navy hessian studded with pink polka dots. It is worn in parts but still intact, and I used to sit either there or in the window seat for hours.
I was a dreamy, withdrawn child, extremely awkward, a sad contrast to my glamorous, confident mother. I don’t have time for people who claim special privileges because they suffer from crippling shyness. We all do, I believe, we just learn to carry it off in different ways. My mother is, I think, also shy and awkward, but she gets past it by assuming a persona, that of the mercurial beauty. But I remember in particular that when I was twelve or so, and life seemed overwhelming – at my new scary secondary school, with my mother, with my growing awareness of my place in the world – my room at Summercove was an absolute refuge to me.
The Hammersmith flat was boiling in summer, freezing in winter, with paper-thin walls that meant everyone knew your business. Here, by the sea, I was private. Even for the brief time that Octavia and I were both there together, she’d spend most days outside, down on the beach and in the garden. Whereas I could sit in my room and sketch for a whole afternoon, or stare out at the horizon, or write terrible poems about how no one understood me, all the while flicking my hair from one side to the other, eyes filling with tears and sighing about the awfulness of my life. I was probably ghastly, I’m afraid to say.
Poor Octavia. I’m so sure I’m right and she’s the ghastly one, it has never really occurred to me that it’s most likely the other way round. I don’t remember her ever having a tantrum or gazing moodily out of the window for hours on end.
Now, in late February, the branches are almost bare and so the lane leading to the house is lighter, though the road is muddy and full of mulch. The huge wheels of the car crunch as we turn into the drive and I crane my neck to catch a first glimpse of the house once more. A curving, white shape slips into view before us, and I see the green of the field and the blue of the sea beyond. I steel myself for what’s coming.
‘So, Natasha, what time is your train tonight?’ Archie says loudly. He turns off the engine. ‘Have you heard this?’ he says, looking at my mother.
Oh, God.
‘Tonight?’ my mother squeaks, climbing out of the car, one long leg at a time. She peers into the back where we are sitting with Arvind. ‘You’re not going back tonight.’
‘I am, I’m afraid,’ I say, sounding ridiculously formal.