In her glazed eyes, there is a flicker of surprise. She forces herself to sit up straight, so she is no longer slumped over the bar.
“Rum and Coke,” she says, her swagger returning, and she turns away from me, tapping her fingers on the bar.
As I am ordering the drinks, she pretends to be doing something on her phone. I can see her screen, and she is just randomly flicking between applications and messages.
“It’s Rob, by the way,” I say.
“Charlie,” she says. “But everyone calls me Charls.”
“You’re local?” I ask.
“Camborne, born and bred,” she says, swiveling her body to face me. “But I’m staying up here now.” Her eyes are like lizard tongues, darting toward me when she thinks I’m not looking.
“You’ve probably never heard of Camborne, have you?”
“Mining, right?”
“Yeah. Not anymore, though. My dad worked at South Crofty, till it were closed,” she says and I notice how Cornish she sounds. The fading inflection, the soft rolled r’s.
“And you?”
“London.”
“London. Very nice.”
“Do you know London?”
“Been there once or twice,” she says, looking away again to the other end of the bar, taking a deep drag of her cigarette.
She is younger than I thought, midtwenties, with red-brown hair and soft, childish features. There is something vaguely unhinged about her, something I can’t place, that goes beyond the drink, beyond the smudges around her eyes. She seems out of place in The Smugglers, as if she has ducked out of a wedding party and ended up here.
“Down here on your holidays then?”
“Something like that.”
“So you like Tintagel then?” she asks.
“I only arrived today. I’ll go to the castle tomorrow. I’m staying in the hotel next door.”
“First time here then?”
“Yes.”
It is a lie, but I cannot tell her about the time we were here before. The three of us, the end of a wet British summer, wrapped up against the wind, raincoats over shorts. I remember how Jack charged around on the grass next to the parking lot and how fearful Anna was—“hold hands, Jack, hold hands”—in case he got too close to the edge. I remember how we walked up the steep, winding path and came to the top of the cliff, and then, out of nowhere, there was a break in the weather, an almost biblical respite, as the rain stopped, the clouds parted and a rainbow appeared.
“Rainbow, rainbow,” Jack shouted, hopping from foot to foot, the leaves dancing around him like fire sprites. Then, it was as if something touched him, or someone whispered in his ear, and he stood still, looking up through the column of light that pierced the clouds, as the rainbow faded into the blue sky.
“You okay?”
“What? Yes, fine,” I say, taking a sip of my pint.
“You were miles away.”
“Oh, sorry.”
She doesn’t say anything and drinks half of her rum and Coke and shakes the ice around in the glass.
“It’s all right, Tintagel,” she says to nobody in particular. “I work in the village, at one of the gift shops. My friend works here.” She points at the barmaid, the one with the kind face.
“It’s a nice pub.”
“It’s okay,” she says. “Better on the weekend, and there’s karaoke on Tuesdays.”
“Do you sing?”
She snorts a little. “Only once, never again.”
“Shame, I’d like to see that,” I say smiling, holding her gaze.
She laughs and smiles back, then coyly looks away.
“Same again?” I ask. “I’m having another.”
“Not having something from that then?” She reaches over and pats my jacket pocket, feeling for my hip flask.
I am annoyed that she has seen me and just as I’m thinking what to say, she gently touches my arm.
“You’re not exactly subtle about it, mate.” She looks at her watch and then realizes she is not wearing one, so instead checks the time on her phone.
“Go on then. Last one,” she says, chuckling to herself, struggling to get off her stool in her tight skirt. I watch her walk to the bathroom—a journey she chastely announces—and I can see the outline of her underwear beneath her skirt, the imprint of the bar stool on her thighs.
She smells of perfume when she comes back, and she has fixed her makeup and tied back her hair. We order some shots, and we are talking and drinking and swigging together from my hip flask, and then she is showing me videos of dogs on YouTube, because her family breeds Rhodesian Ridgebacks, and then clips of people fighting, people getting knocked out on the street on CCTV, because one of her mates from Camborne was a kickboxer but he was in prison now, assault.
Then I look up and it is all a blur, a skipping CD, the lights are on, and I can hear the harsh whine of a vacuum cleaner. I wonder if I have fallen asleep, passed out, but Charlie is still there next to me and I see we are now drinking vodka and Red Bull. I look at her and she smiles with wet, drunken eyes and she starts laughing again, pointing to her friend, the barmaid, who is scowling and pushing the vacuum cleaner around the carpet.
And then we leave, via a brief little farce where she said she thought she should go home, and then we are walking arm in arm along the deserted High Street, giggling and shushing and falling up the stairs to the little flat she has above the gift shop where she works. When we get to the top of the stairs, she looks at me, her mouth shaped like a heart and I feel a rush of boozy lust, so I pull her close to me and we start kissing, my hand reaching under her skirt.
* * *
After we finish, we lie on her small single mattress on the floor, without making eye contact, our heads buried into each other’s necks. When we have held each other for what seems like an acceptable amount of time, I walk along the hall looking for the bathroom. I fumble for a light switch, but it
