At Fowey, we had turned on to the Saint’s Way, which went up to Padstow, a cross-country route of thirty miles or so. ‘The route of the Bronze Age traders and missionaries from Wales and Ireland.’
We looked at the churches with their grey headstones, the epitaphs to drownings, plagues and early death, and I thought, We should not be deceived: the Celt still rules here and this is a country of fire and passion.
At Port Isaac, the route took us north and the terrain became more demanding. Every so often, Hal called a halt to rub my back where the straps bit into it, but we made good progress. At last, we rounded the corner and stopped.
The sea roared below us, and seagulls coasted on thermals. Before us rose monumental black cliffs and, high up on them, the remnants of salt-lashed walls. These were the ruins of Tintagel.
I slipped off my rucksack and sank down. The turf was hard and springy, my lips and skin were salty and I was tired. Hal hunkered down beside me. ‘This is the first of many journeys, I hope.’
‘So do I,’ I said.
Hal folded his arms around his bent knees and talked about climbing mountains, traversing deserts and finding the valley where hard apricots were harvested and soaked in spring water.
The sea ran up the beach, indifferent and careless. Suddenly I was cold. I thought of Ianthe’s scones on a blue and white plate and of a fire burning in a grate and how far they would be from the valley where the hard apricots grew
Later, huddled behind a rock on the beach, we ate our sandwiches and told stories about the castle.
Treading carefully over the slate and past the rock pools, the pregnant Queen Ygrayne would have wrapped her fur-lined cloak around her swollen body and entered Tintagel, the door clanging shut behind her. As she went upstairs and prepared to give birth to a son called Arthur, she would have given thanks for refuge from the violence that had killed her husband.
And here too, at another time, high up where the seagulls flew past the arched windows, King Mark installed his wife, Iseult, of the hand’s-span waist, to reign over the cliff and the sea. Here, too, a young knight halted to pay homage to the king. His name was Tristan.
‘These are not happy stories,’ I pointed out to Hal. ‘A mother left alone. A husband abandoned. Lovers who die.’
Hal’s arms tightened around me. Through his jacket, I could hear his heart beating.
Chapter Thirteen
When I was pregnant with Sam, I swallowed iron pills, poured milk down my throat and avoided wine, coffee and curry. I slept in the afternoons, visited the dentist for regular check-ups and every week I consulted the manual as to what had happened to the bundle of cells, then the miniature footballer, that I carried. I told it that I was doing my very best to give it a sporting chance, that, however tedious, I realized my relinquishing of favourite foods and other little adaptations of behaviour were vital to its future. And how time spun itself out. How each week dragged its feet into the next.
Time dragged now. March limped away. April and May were slow, oh, so slow. June came, and my hard gestation of grief showed no sign of ending.
The oldest memories are so much sharper and clearer than the near past and, thinking over this hypothesis, I could see that this was – partly – what Nathan had battled against when meeting Minty had forced him to take stock. He chose to believe that those sharp old memories meant more than the blurred, tumbled, frantic moments of our family life. He feared that my sweet, vivid awakening into sexual passion and love with Hal had greater staying power than my years with him.
Robert Dodd, the solicitor, and I stitched up the final strands of my severance package and I signed a document agreeing that I would not take up a similar job within six months. The trade-off was a reasonable, but not generous, sum of money.
‘Must be nice to have six months.’ Robert allowed himself to show a glimmer of frank envy.
‘I might be back,’ I told him, ‘for the divorce. But I hope not. I hope Nathan and I can work through this.’
He smiled with professional detachment that suggested experience had taught him otherwise then showed me out.
Sam made a point of coming up at weekends, and for the May bank holiday he brought Alice with him. I slapped on lashings of red lipstick, too much, and made them a supper of chicken breasts seethed with garlic and fennel, and pushed a piece around my own plate.
Apart from pointing out that I should try to eat more and drink less, Sam was quiet, but Alice made up for it. Smart as paint in a grey suit and gold jewellery, she questioned me closely as to what had happened at work. ‘I hope you made them squeal,’ she said at last, fiddling with her bracelet. She had painted her nails with a shiny, clear gloss, which made her hands look efficient. Then she asked which I minded more: losing my job, or my salary, and it struck me that, on this subject, Alice was vulnerable. It was also a good question. ‘It must be difficult,’ she said, ‘not to have a financial base. If you have no money you have no power, and it is others who drive the negotiations.’
‘Experience counts for something,’ I pointed out.
She smiled disbelievingly. ‘Not enough.’ I liked Alice better for her honesty, but she was straying close to the bone. I tried to change the subject and asked her if she had seen Spielberg’s latest film.
‘Alice couldn’t possibly spare the time.’ When he wished, Sam had his own brand of irony. ‘Her power base demands all her attention.’
Displaying her efficient nails, Alice raised her wineglass to her lips. ‘Jealous, Sam?’
Yet when we said goodbye Alice surprised me by giving me a kiss: brief and businesslike, but a kiss all the same. ‘I shall think of you, Rose,’ she said. ‘I really will. I’m sorry about… Nathan.’ She meant it, and I found myself kissing her back.
Unlike Alice, I had plenty of spare time at my disposal and, a past-master at tweaking my conscience, Mr Sears made use of it.
Apart from taking him Sunday lunch, my charity consisted of tossing coins into hats held out in the streets and responding irritably to telephone requests for donations, but the image of Mr Sears sitting each day in his fuggy, dingy room was not easily dismissed. Cross and snippy as he could be, his right to more pricked away at me like a thorn. In the end, I told him I was taking him out. ‘Don’t mind if I do,’ he said, which, considering he had not left the house for three years, was pretty cool. Somehow, I bullied the reluctant social services into providing a wheelchair and a carer for a few extra hours. ‘Call this a bus?’ he said, when the single-decker drew up. She and I manhandled him on to the number eighty-eight, where he was completely happy. The three of us did a double run, which took most of the day, and he sat by the window, treating us to a running commentary on a cityscape in which familiar landmarks, mostly pubs, had been transmogrified into bars and grills. ‘What’s wrong with a pub? If you wanted a cup of coffee you nipped up to the Kardomah.’
It was not beyond the bounds of possibility that Mr Sears concluded, given the treacherous pace of change, he was better off in his room.
The second that finals were over, Poppy materialized at Lakey Street and unloaded her possessions all over the house. In a lightning procedure, she repacked her suitcase, kissed me goodbye and demanded money for a taxi to the airport. ‘I forbid you to worry,’ she said. ‘Worrying is for wimps.’
That weekend I bought a copy of the papers and the Digest. Until then, I had not touched it, but I wanted to see the worst for myself. I carried it into the park and walked up and down, gathering sufficient resolve.
Whatever else she might be, Minty was professional. The pages were different but fine: more celebrities, more photographs, and more books covering a younger age group. Yet I had not been entirely obliterated, for Minty had built on what had been there, but my ideas no longer held the centre stage. It was a kind of compromise, a nod to the relationship we had once shared.
Astonishingly, as I read on, I felt not jealousy but a growing detachment from that which had previously absorbed me. A small Martian in a shiny helmet and knee-pads streaked along the path, followed by a puffing adult. I followed their progress, feeling that on this subject I could breathe more easily, and I seemed to have been granted a respite from professional rivalry. It was not that I did not care, but I did not care so
