I’d expected to find it closed, since Wednesdays were Felicity’s days off and she was still up helping Susan at the greenhouse, but an ‘Open’ sign was hanging in the front door like an invitation, so I ventured in.
The shop had a lovely, eclectic appeal, like its owner. There were notecards in delicate pen and ink, scenes of the harbour, and wind chimes of spun glass that caught the sun, sparkling. A rainbow of silk scarves and bright Celtic jewellery in silver and gold fought for space with a jumbled display of framed paintings, a few of which were Claire’s – I knew the strong sweep of her brushstrokes and the boldness of her palette and the way she brought her scenes alive with light.
Felicity’s sculptures were here as well, castings in bronze that showed all of the skill of the butterfly sundial, and more. My favourites were the little piskies, fairy folk of Cornwall – different versions of the same small figure, looking as though somebody had caught them in the middle of a dance.
Behind me, near the till, I heard a stool scrape and the sound of footsteps crossing the shop floor, and then a young man’s voice, friendly, spoke up at my side. ‘Can I help you?’
I glanced round with a shake of my head. ‘I’m just looking.’
‘See anything you like?’ The lazy smile let me know the double meaning was intentional. He would have been about my age, nice-looking, with golden-blond hair and blue eyes that seemed oddly familiar.
I looked at him more closely and his smile grew more reproachful as he said, ‘You don’t remember me.’
I wasn’t certain. ‘Oliver?’
Surely it couldn’t be Oliver, son of the woman who’d looked after Susan and Mark when their mother had died. Having come with his mother each day to Trelowarth he’d known both the house and the grounds just as well as the rest of us did. Even after Claire had married Uncle George his mother had come up to help from time to time, and when we children came down to Polgelly we had often played with Oliver.
He folded his arms on his chest, looking pleased. ‘You remembered.’
‘Yes, well, you don’t forget boys who throw rocks at you.’
‘Once,’ he said. ‘I threw a pebble at you once, and anyway as I recall you picked it up and chucked it back. And you had better aim.’
I had. I’d hit him on the forehead. Knocked him over. ‘You grew up.’
‘And you.’ He smiled again. ‘Mark didn’t say that you were coming for a visit. Are you here for long?’
‘I might be,’ I said. ‘So you work with Felicity, then?’
He corrected me. ‘Only on Wednesdays. I’m closed myself, Wednesdays.’ In answer to my questioning look, he said, ‘I have my own Smugglers’ Museum.’
‘Oh? Whereabouts?’
‘Down by the harbour, between the pub and the tea room.’ Oliver grinned. ‘I weighed twelve stone when I started up the museum. I won’t tell you what I weigh now.’
He looked fit as an athlete, to me. With his head tipped to one side, he asked, ‘Do you smell chocolate?’
‘It’s my fudge.’ I took the bag out of my pocket to show him. ‘It’s energy,’ I told him. ‘For The Hill.’
‘Let’s have a piece then.’
I offered the bag and he reached in and helped himself.
‘What’s your excuse?’ I asked. ‘You live down here.’
‘True.’ The charm was deliberate. ‘But I have a feeling I’m going to be climbing The Hill fairly often myself, in the very near future.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
I cheated, in the end. I didn’t climb back to Trelowarth by the road, but went around the harbour’s edge and up the coast path, up the gentler slope that rose by stages to the level of the clifftop, keeping to the bottom of the fields below Trelowarth as it wound its way towards the Wild Wood.
At the side of the path, clumps of dark spiky gorse were in bloom with their deep-yellow flowers, the foxgloves were rampant, and thick drifts of sea pink spilt over the edge of the cliffs. I could hear the full roar of the sea here, the swirl of the spray crashing hard on the rocks far below where I walked, and the sullen retreat of the waves.
Most tourists avoided this stretch of the coast path. Only seasoned ramblers came this way, or people who wanted to visit the Beacon. Or those, like myself, who preferred the wilder, untouched ways, and didn’t mind walking too close to the edge.
Even so, when the path reached a place where it rounded a cleft in the cliffside a little too closely, a quick downward glance at the white water boiling below on the rocks made me feel slightly dizzy. And when, as I straightened, the wind rose with a sudden force that rocked me on my feet, I turned my back to it and left the path for safety’s sake, cutting up on a diagonal through the fields below the house.
I huddled in my jacket, head tucked down, and climbed determinedly. I’d nearly reached the house when it occurred to me that something wasn’t right.
I should have reached the lawn by now. The level hedged lawn at the front of the house where we’d always played badminton. But I hadn’t. I lifted my head to see how much further I had yet to go. And then I stopped dead in my tracks.
The lawn was gone.
And where it should have been, not fifteen feet from me, a man was standing with his back towards me, unaware. He seemed to be watching the road.
He wore a sleeveless coat of some rough brown material that flared below his waist, and the sleeves of the white shirt he wore underneath it were rolled to his elbows in working-man style. On his legs he wore tight-fitting brown trousers tucked into boots, also brown, that came up to his knees. And his hair – that was brown as well, worn long enough to be combed back and tied at his collar, the way I’d seen sailors wear their hair in period films.