‘Did you really almost fall down these steps?’
‘Only because an unmannerly man jostled me. Have no concern on my account.’
She watched their car drive off and then went into the hotel.
Gamaliel, carrying Bluebell’s belongings in the wake of her and her brother, said: ‘Old ladies are very kind people. Do you think this one is as kind as my grandmother?’
‘Your great grandmother, Gamaliel.’
‘That makes her sound older than she is.’
‘She was married at eighteen.’
‘How long will she live?’
‘
‘Yes, a silly question.’ He hitched up Bluebell’s easel and folding stool and followed the other two in silence up the village street.
When he had dumped his burdens in the hall and gone off to have a last swim before supper, Bluebell said: ‘That was a strange question.’
‘What was?’
‘How long will she live?’
‘Well, you gave the only possible answer.’
‘Yes, I suppose so. He does not know yet that our grandmother has asked for him and that mother has capitulated and is to stay on at Headlands and that only Fiona is to come here.’
‘I wish she were
‘Well, she could hardly go and stay at Campions. That would be too embarrassing for Diana, as she made clear.’
‘Yes, of course. I wish grandmother had not asked for Gamaliel. I shall miss him terribly.’
‘Perhaps he will elect not to go. He is of an age to make up his own mind, as we’ve agreed.’
‘He might have expectations if he does as she wishes. I would not attempt to stand in his way.’
‘Neither would Parsifal and I, but the decision must be made by him and by him alone. It is not as though he were our own child. If he were, I might think differently.’
‘I believe I love him better than if he were your own, but, so far as you are concerned, what is the difference?’
‘Not in the degree of my love. But if Gamaliel were my own child I think I would be selfish enough to keep him here, whatever advantages grandmother was able to give him. As it is, for his own sake, I must let him go if he decides that way. It is so petty to be poor! If we weren’t, I’d see grandmother at the devil before I’d let him go!’
‘Did the old lady he rescued show any interest in the picture you were painting?’
‘I don’t think she so much as glanced at it, although she had passed from the dining-room to the annexe while I was there and, later on, passed me again to visit Trev in his office, and returned to the annexe once more.’
‘I noticed, when she came to the bar counter when I was there, what very fine rings she was wearing. Trev told me she had booked in at the hotel for a month and that will cost her a pretty penny at today’s prices. He tells me that she runs a luxurious car and has her own chauffeur.’
‘Then I hope that I can interest her in a picture. I wonder whether she would like to have her portrait painted?’
The object of these remarks had gone to her room to get ready for dinner. The room, booked for her by her secretary, Laura Gavin, overlooked the cove and from the window she had a view of rocks and headland and the lower end of the Seawards slipway from the garden down to the strip of beach from which Gamaliel and Garnet swam and Parsifal and Bluebell occasionally splashed about in the shallows when the weather was warm.
Nearer to hand, although she could not see them, the young students who were spending part of the long vacation acting as supernumeraries to the hotel staff, were shouting and laughing in the fishermen’s tiny bay before they dried and dressed in their own little annexe in the car park before resuming their uniforms and preparing to wait at the dinner tables.
Dame Beatrice took her time and went down to dinner at eight.
Trev came up to the table. ‘Everything to your satisfaction, I hope, Dame Beatrice? Would you care for anything to drink?’
Dame Beatrice inspected the wine list and selected her half-bottle. ‘Who is that very charming young negro who went off with a man and the woman who was painting an adequate but uninspired view of the cove? He told me his name was Gamaliel, but that he prefers to be known as Ubi,’ she said.
‘Oh, he is an adopted boy. They live in that house just below the Methodist chapel which perhaps you can see from your bedroom window. The artist is the woman who adopted him.’
He went off to fetch the wine she had ordered and Dame Beatrice, with no premonition of what was to come, settled to her meal and enjoyed it. After dinner she took coffee and brandy in the dark little snuggery which was called the lounge, then went through the bar on to its narrow balcony for a last look at the sea before she retired to bed or, rather, to read in bed until she felt sleepy enough to put out the light.
In the morning she was awakened by the screaming of impatient gulls waiting for the fishermen to come in. It was barely six o’clock, but by seven she was out of the house and exploring a rough path which led from the hotel car park along the cliff. Houses clung to the hillside, with other houses, separated from them by the steep, winding hill which led out of the village towards Tregony and St Austell, rising above them, so that from where she was
