Return To Tremarth

CHAPTER I

CHARLOTTE stood listening to the silence in the house, and it was the most impressive silence she had ever heard in her life. If the house had been empty for centuries it could not have been more deathly still and waiting for something to shatter it. If one cocked one’s head one could hear the solemn booming of the waves on the beach at the foot of the cliff on which Tremarth had been built, but this was purely background music… a serious dirge that went on and on and changed its tempo only with the changing of the weather.

Charlotte looked up at the portrait of Great- Aunt Jane above the fireplace in the hall. Great-Aunt Jane must have been painted at the phase of her life when she was abandoning all thoughts of getting married and sampling the wilder delights of living, and the grimness of her shapely lips indicated not so much resignation as a painful acceptance of an Unkind Fate. Undoubtedly Jane Woodford had been designed for matrimony, for she had an excellent skin and slightly sensuous curves, and her beautiful big brown eyes fringed with long and luxuriant eyelashes were the eyes that had been passed on to her great-niece.

Charlotte moved closer and looked up at the portrait intently. She could only very dimly remember Aunt Jane, but the little she did remember made her wish she could remember more. Aunt Jane had smelled of lavender water and had seemed amiable and indulgent enough to a five-year-old, but always unapproachable. She had bestowed sweets and a pat on the head occasionally, but had frowned at a raised voice and the sudden slamming of a door. She lived in a world where the carpets were thick and the long velvet curtains that hung at most of the windows imprisoned a good deal of the sound that went on around her, and fortunately for her there were no such things as motor-car exhausts in her day, or holiday-makers trailing caravans over the cliffs.

She would probably have protested violently at the sight of a party of holiday makers sunbathing at the foot of the cliffs if she had come upon them by accident; but again, fortunately for her, the beach below Tremarth was sacrosanct in her day. The only people who ventured near it were collectors of fossils and those interested in marine life- cultivated dilettante types who went on walking tours, and occasionally stayed at neighbouring houses.

But now Tremarth had been handed down to Jane’s great-niece, Charlotte Woodford… and in addition to the house Charlotte had inherited her jewellery and her trinkets, and indeed everything she died possessed of. The very gold cross she wore in the portrait – a gold cross studded with fine-quality pearls – was held close in Charlotte’s hand as she looked up at her.

Poor Great-Aunt Jane, she thought. For years she had lived in a kind of private nursing- home-cum-guest-house, owing to failing health, and Tremarth had been shut up and had stored away the silence that so impressed the new owner.

She walked swiftly through the house and returned to the great kitchen, where the enormous dresser was stacked with some very handsome china. It was all so vast and in a way pretentious that she wondered what she was going to do with it. There were so many rooms, and they were all filled with extremely valuable furniture, and most of those rooms had wonderful outlooks over the sea. Tremarth would undoubtedly make a wonderful hotel or guesthouse, but she couldn’t see herself running the place as a guesthouse. She had no experience, for one thing, and she had a kind of feeling that Aunt Jane would object very strongly.

She put through a telephone call to her friend Hannah Cootes, in London, and urged her to catch the next train down to Cornwall.

“It’s the sort of house you’ll love,” she told her, “and apart from that I don’t think I could bear to spend a night here alone. Every room is full of the sea, if you know what I mean. The light of the sea is on every ceiling, and the smell of the sea seems to be everywhere. In addition there is a strong odour of potpourri and decaying furniture. I’m very much afraid the woodworm has got at some of it.”

“What a pity… I mean, how wonderful! ” Hannah, at the other end, declared with fervour.

“You mean the woodworm?”

“No, the sea… and the house, of course! I’ve masses of work, but I don’t think I can bear to stay away. What are you proposing to do yourself? I mean, are you going to live there?”

“I’ll try it for a time, once you get here. I’ll spend to-night at the local inn.”

“You tempt me sorely. I can just picture you enjoying a candlelit dinner in some smuggling hostelry -”

“There may still be smugglers on this part of the coast, but I doubt it – And the landlord of the Three Sailors doesn’t look as if he’s the type who goes in for candlelit dinners. He’s probably famous for his lobsters, but I’ll know more about that by this time to-morrow. Do you think you could catch the morning train?”

“And bring my work with me?”

“Of course. You can have a suite of rooms to yourself… absolutely no one to disturb you. So long as you come!”

“I’ll come,” Hannah promised.

“Good.” Charlotte felt relief course through her. “I’ll meet you at Truro station. And now this place is getting a bit eerie, so I’ll make for the Three Sailors. Aunt Jane’s portrait is hanging above the fireplace in the hall, and she looks a bit ghostly in the gloom.”

“I expect the house is haunted,” Hannah said cheerfully at the other end.

“Don’t!” Charlotte exclaimed. Then she decided that if Aunt Jane haunted the place she’d learn to put up with her.

Nevertheless, once the telephone receiver had been returned to its rest and the unbroken silence of the house clamped down again she did feel a decided urge to escape as quickly as possible. The hall, with its mellow panelling and sombre portraits, great stone fireplace and tall windows – one of them inset with what looked like an armorial bearing – was gathering shadows so quickly that she could almost see them crowding in on her, while outside, in the brilliance of the early evening, the emerald lawns sloping down to the sea and the gay flower borders that had been maintained meticulously despite the owner’s absence might have been part of another world.

The sea, with the sparkle of western sun on it, the green-clad cliffs, the overhanging arc of blue sky, the snowy-breasted gulls circling the wide heavens… they were all calling to her, and calling to her insistently, and she gathered up her handbag and gloves and darted out through the gardens to her car, which she had left on the drive in front of the entrance porch. She didn’t even stop to make sure the French window by which she left the house was locked, and as she shot off down the drive she was uneasily aware that she had panicked, for no reason, except that the house was empty, and those shadows had seemed to want to engulf her.

Beside her in the car was Waterloo, her black spaniel, and she told him about the gardens in which he could roam when they moved in the following day, and she also told him that his Aunt Hannah was coming to join them. Waterloo who was a fairly old dog, more interested in humans than gardens, wagged his tail at the mention of Hannah Cootes, who was a prime favourite with him.

The landlord of the Three Sailors had already reserved a room for Charlotte. His wife showed her to it, and a cheerful Cornish waitress attended to Charlotte’s wants in the dining-room. There was no lobster on the menu, but the roast chicken was excellent, and Charlotte thoroughly enjoyed her meal.

Afterwards she carried her coffee into the small and rather stuffy visitors’ lounge, watched television for about twenty minutes, and then decided it was high time she did something about Waterloo’s evening meal. She went into the bar, where the landlord was dispensing liquid refreshment to various locals, and asked him whether he would see to it that the animal was properly fed.

The landlord beamed at her immediately, and assured her that his wife had already attended to Waterloo’s needs. Charlotte noticed a man at the bar, quite unlike the other customers, who were exchanging light badinage in the cheerful atmosphere, and it was while she was attempting to make up her mind about ordering an innocuous drink, in order to prevent the landlord receiving the impression that she considered the company of his locals a little beneath her, that he spoke.

He had a slightly bored expression, and, in fact, a faintly jaded air.

His smile was sardonically twisted, and his cool grey eyes as cold as steel.

“It’s Miss Woodford, isn’t it?” he asked, while he calmly selected another cigarette from his case and lit it.

“Yes,” she answered, her slim eyebrows shooting upwards in surprise. “But how did you know?”

“I study hotel registers.” His lopsided smile was somehow disquieting and definitely tinder- valuing. “It’s a useful habit when you want to find out something.”

“And you wanted to find out something about me?”

“As a matter of fact, I know quite a lot about you already.” He offered her his cigarette-case, but she shook her head.

“I don’t smoke.”

“And you don’t drink? Or very little? The occasional sherry before dinner, and that sort of thing?”

“How – how do you know?” She felt inclined to stammer and for no particular reason she felt annoyed. She was not in the habit of entering into conversation with complete strangers and discussing with them her various addictions, while their eyes flickered over her almost disdainfully and they looked drily amused.

This particular stranger was well-dressed and had the hallmark of being affluent, and she had observed that his cigarette-case was an expensive gold one adorned with a rather flamboyant set of initials. His shirt cuffs were immaculate and his tie seemed vaguely familiar. He was personable in a dark and very slightly forbidding fashion, and must have been somewhere in his early thirties.

“The way you hesitated just now, when trying to make up your mind about ordering a drink. You don’t frequent bars, but you’re sensitive about injuring other people’s feelings. The landlord is eager to be of service to you, and you think that’s very nice.”

“Well?”

She stared at him, her slim figure very erect; her shapely head with its cap of gleaming cop- per-beach hair aflame in the light that streamed down on it from an old-fashioned hanging lantern.

“But I don’t think he’s being unnaturally attentive when you’re Miss Charlotte Woodford of Tremarth, and you’re extremely attractive… if you don’t mind my saying so! ”

The landlord was preoccupied with one of his customers, but Charlotte glanced at him and bit her lip.

“I’d like some more coffee, landlord, if you don’t mind bringing it over to this table in the comer,” she requested in a singularly clear voice.

“Of course, miss… Certainly, miss!”

There was no doubt about it, she was a popular customer.

The dark man in the impeccable grey tailoring followed her over to her table in the comer.

“I wonder if you’ll permit me to introduce myself?” he asked, as if he had every intention in any case of doing so.

Her white eyelids fluttered, and her dark eyelashes lifted above her big brown eyes.

“Must you?” she asked in her turn.

She saw a flash of even white teeth as he smiled.

“It isn’t really necessary, because you do already know me. But it’s a very long time ago since we met – when you were only five. I used to give you rides round the orchard at Tremarth on my shoulders… remember?”

She gasped as she stared up at him. From the moment that her eyes alighted on him perched on a high stool at the bar strange things had been happening to her. She felt as if her memory was being tugged at. Few people can remember clearly the faces they encountered when they were five years old, but this one must have created for itself a niche somewhere in the deep recesses of her unplumbed retentive consciousness. She would have been exaggerating outrageously if she said that she recognised him. But memory was already beginning to stir a little, like a sleeper awaking from a prolonged state of trance, and she knew why those sardonically marked black eyebrows, and those disturbing grey eyes, had puzzled her. They had intrigued her against her will. And now she knew the reason why.

“But it can’t possibly be true,” she protested, still staring up at him. “You were so many years older – ”

“I was fifteen,” he told her, “and you, as I have just reminded you, were five.”

“You were away at school. But you came to Tremarth to stay with your uncle.”

“And you were staying with your Great-Aunt Jane.”

“My aunt didn’t like you. She discouraged your visits.”

“Because her house had once belonged to my family, and she disliked to think of herself as a usurper. That was precisely what she was, however. And she was not even a Cornish-woman!”

“You’re Richard Tremarth!”

“I am.” And he bowed slightly and mockingly from the waist. “One of your earliest admirers! Have I your permission to sit down and talk to you?”

Charlotte could think of no reason why she should be discourteous enough to refuse him this permission. True, the memories – such very, very faint and faded memories – he aroused had a kind of backwash of unpleasantness. She had disliked being carried on his shoulders round the orchard at Tremarth, and the childish perspicacity that had enabled her to sense that her Great-Aunt Jane was almost hostile towards him had no doubt shaped her own attitude of badly veiled dislike and mistrust. He was the local doctor’s nephew, and he visited Cornwall two or three times a year. His people were rich – his parents, that is – but it appeared that they were always abroad. Young Richard didn’t seem to mind in the slightest. In fact, to Charlotte he was a slightly unnatural boy already approaching manhood, who cared for very little except sailing and Tremarth.

She recollected now that he had seemed passionately devoted to Tremarth. He had taken photographs of it with his expensive German camera and carried them back to school with him in one of his opulent pigskin suitcases, and he had spent hours on the terrace trying to paint the south wall that overlooked the sea. But he was no artist, and his efforts had made her laugh – a little cruelly, as she realised now. She had had beech-brown curls and elfin dark eyes, and although she had had a wholesome fear of her impressive elderly aunt she had had no fear at all of the doctor’s dark, intense nephew. Quite the contrary, in fact. She had provoked him with the shamelessness of a far older specimen of her sex, and although she accepted sweets from him, and allowed him to take her out in his boat, she never thanked him for these favours.

She had told him on one occasion that she hated him. And now that she recalled it, she was not entirely surprised. He had been so extraordinarily possessive about Tremarth, saying that her aunt had no right to live in it. and one day he would buy it back. He would force her to part with it because it was the cradle of the Tremarth family, and he was more proud of being a Tremarth than he was of being English. She simply hadn’t understood why he had seemed to despise the English. He had insisted that he was Cornish.

And one day he intended to settle down in Cornwall. It was his background… his heritage.

“Well, well,” she exclaimed, as she watched him take a seat at her table and study her over the top of it. “Life is strange, isn’t it? I never expected a bit of my past to creep up on me when I returned to Cornwall.”

Richard, who was six feet two in his socks and as lean and lithe as a greyhound, smiled.

“I’m flattered to be described as a bit of your past.”

“You know what I mean_” She felt annoyed again.

“I’d honestly forgotten you. But then that isn’t really surprising, is it? I was only a baby. And to me you were neither fish nor flesh, if you follow my meaning. You were not another child I could play with, and you were not really a man. You were something in between, and you puzzled me.”

“If you’d had brothers and sisters I would not have puzzled you at all.” “No; but I hadn’t any brothers or sisters. I was – and still am – an only child.”

“I was an only child, too,” he told her. She studied him with rather more interest. He was astonishingly good-looking, really, in a dark and saturnine way. His eyes were quite extraordinary, and they fascinated her. She wanted to look away, but his eyes would not allow this, and they stared at one another, the colour stealing slowly into her deliciously creamy cheeks as she recognised that his whole expression was mocking her. She knew enough about men to realise that he found her attractive, but the curve of his mouth was hard and cynical. He had a square jaw that jutted ominously, and she wondered what it would be like to thwart him.

And then she found herself blushing furiously because it was such an extraordinary thing to think only a few minutes after making the discovery that she had known him in the past.

If he noticed the blush, his expression did not alter. He merely began to press her for information.

“So you haven’t been back to Cornwall for some time?”

“Not since I was five.” A dimple played for a moment at one comer of her mouth, and then vanished. “My great-aunt’s health deteriorated soon after that, and I never saw her again. She left Tremarth to my father, but he also is dead.”

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

Charlotte found it necessary to lower her eyelashes. She shrugged.

“Like your father he travelled abroad a good deal,” she told him, “and in fact he died abroad. He was an archaeologist.”

“And your mother?”

“I’m sorry to say that they parted. But she’s dead, too, now.”

She thought that his expression grew slightly sombre, and his grey eyes harder between the short thick fringes of his very black eyelashes.

“So we’re both orphans,” he remarked. “But I’ve been an orphan for many years – and I’m used to it.”

“Your uncle?” she enquired politely. “I remember he was Aunt Jane’s doctor.”

“Dead, too, but one of my pleasant memories. I was fond of him.”

“I’m sorry,” she murmured automatically.

The landlord had brought a tray of coffee to their table, and had thoughtfully added another cup, but Richard Tremarth refused to be tempted when Charlotte poised the coffee-pot near the rim of his cup.

“Thank you,” he said absent-mindedly, “but I loathe coffee.”

He was frowning as he lighted yet another cigarette.

“You smoke too much,” she remarked, without passing to reflect that it was no concern of hers.

Tremarth shrugged.

“We all have one particular vice, and mine is not smoking.” She watched as the smoke crept upwards in a column and surrounded his sleek dark head. “I heard that Miss Woodford had died, and I came down here to take a nostalgic look at the house. You may remember that I once expressed the determination to possess it myself one of these days.”

“Yes,” she replied, “I do remember that.” “We all have dreams, but some of them are not very practical. However – ” He glanced at her swiftly and then away. “Any objection to my having a look over the house since you’re here, and I’m here, too?”

“None whatsoever,” she assured him.

“I take it you’re not planning to live there yourself?”

“I really don’t know…She sounded surprised. “It’s too soon to make up my mind. To be honest, I’m not yet accustomed to the idea that I own the house.”

“And the contents?” He shot the question at her. “Your aunt left you everything, of course?” “Everything except an income to maintain the place. She died very badly off, I’m afraid.” She was amazed by the appearance of relief in his face.

“Then you can’t even contemplate living there yourself?”

“I’ve told you I’ve no idea what I’m going to do with it-”

“But a young woman of your age! Alone – in a house like that!” Relief gave place to an alert hardness that widened her eyes and aroused in her the beginnings of real resentment. “I mean, you’re not even married. Or are you?” Suspicion edged his voice and narrowed his eyes while, to her astonishment, his fist on the table clenched itself until the knuckles showed up white and gleaming in the rays that were streaming from the ship’s lantern overhead. “You’re not just calling yourself Miss Woodford and living apart from a husband, or anything of that sort?”

“Well, really! ” she gasped.

“Are you?” he persisted, his mouth like a steel trap.

“Certainly not!” She couldn’t remember feeling so indignant for a long time. “For one thing I don’t believe in married couples living apart, and for another I’m not even – engaged!”

“Good!” He relaxed so completely that she could almost have deceived herself that she had imagined that alteration in his expression. She saw his even, well-cared-for white teeth again as he smiled across the table at her, and between his thick eyelashes his grey eyes actually softened. “Then there’s no one to tell you what you must or must not do? You are your own mistress?”

“I hope so.”

“And you probably have a job of some sort?” “I run a typewriting bureau with a friend. She’s carrying on without me at the moment.” He looked as satisfied as if she had supplied him with a very useful piece of information.

He rose from the table unexpectedly.

“You must forgive me if I say good-night to you now,” he said. “Whenever I pay a short visit to Cornwall I like to make the most of it. The tide’s out and the moon will be up in another ten minutes or so” – he consulted his watch – “and I want to take a walk. Discovering the old familiar places is one of my favourite occupations when I’m down here at Tremarth.”

She looked up at him in some surprise. Even by the light of a Cornish moon, discovering old familiar places might be a trifle difficult at that late hour of the day.

“Good hunting,” she replied carelessly, as she poured herself another cup of coffee and realised even as she did so that it would probably keep her awake when she took herself upstairs to her room. “I hope you’ve got cat’s eyes. Or perhaps you normally take your exercise when other people are thinking of going to bed?”

He looked down at her unsmilingly.

“If you’re visiting the house to-morrow, may I go with you? I don’t want to be a nuisance, but I would like to look over it again.”

“Of course,” she answered immediately. “As a matter of fact, I’m leaving here to-morrow morning after breakfast, and shall be staying at Tremarth after that. At any rate, for a while -”

He looked down at her intently.

“Thank you,” he said, “I have my own car. I’ll simply follow you up to the house as soon as I see you leave.”

She was about to call after him that she was sorry she couldn’t offer him lunch because there were no stores, as yet, at Tremarth, but he swept out of the bar with a few quick strides, and she was left with the impression of someone who was a complete and – she suspected – rather ruthless stranger, and a memory that didn’t actually link up with that stranger.

The Richard Tremarth she had known when she was a child had found her a nuisance, but had gone out of his way to please her. This man was not as pliable and she could not imagine him going out of his way to please anyone. He was very much a self-contained unit who conveyed to her the strong impression that he was not visiting that part of the world because of nostalgia, but because he had some sort of an axe to grind.

She said good-night to the landlord and made her way up to her room in the quaint centuries-old inn. Her bed was turned down, and the room itself looked very inviting, but after switching on the light for a moment she switched it off again and went across to the window. Below it lay the cobbled village street, a small opening opposite at the end of which she could see the sea.

Richard Tremarth had been quite right about the moment when the moon would rise, for it was already lifting itself above the rooftops and shedding a light across the placidly heaving sea. From where she stood at her window she could see a semi-circle of glistening white beach, and some dark cliffs looming above it. She could also see a tall figure striding out across the sand, making for the line of cliffs and looking very purposeful, and not in the least as if his sole purpose was to enjoy himself.

A faint frown drew her slim eyebrows together. Since they were such old friends, why hadn’t he asked her to accompany him? After all, as he had reminded her, he had once given her piggy-back rides round the orchard at Tremarth.

Try as she would, she couldn’t imagine him giving her anything but a few formal minutes of his time after this lapse of so many years.