This time, we had the van, but even it seemed to approach The Hill with something like reluctance, and I could have sworn I heard the engine wheezing as we climbed.
From either side the trees, still bright with new spring green, closed over us and cast a dancing play of light and shadow on the windscreen, and I caught the swift familiar blur of periwinkle tangled with the darker green of ivy winding up along the verge. And then I looked ahead, expectantly, as I had always done, for my first glimpse of the brick chimneys of Trelowarth House.
The chimneys were the first things to be seen, between the trees and the steep bank of green that ran along the road – a Cornish hedge, they called it, built of stones stacked dry in the old fashion, herringbone, with vines and varied wildflowers binding them together and the trees arched close above. Then came a break in both the trees and hedge, and there, framed as impressively as ever by the view of rising fields and distant forests, was the house.
Trelowarth House had weathered centuries upon this hill, its solid grey stone walls an equal match to any storm the sea might throw at it. For all its size it had been plainly built, a two-storey ‘L’ set with its front squarely facing the line of the cliffs and the sea, while its longer side ran fairly close beside the road. In what might be viewed as a testament to the skills of its original builders, none of its long line of owners appeared to have felt the need to do a major renovation. The chimneys, dutifully repointed, were in the original style, and a few of the casement windows still had the odd pane of Elizabethan glass, through which the people who had lived here then might well have watched the sails of the Armada pass.
The house itself did not encourage such romantic fancies. It looked stern and grey, unyielding, and the only softness to it was the stubborn vine of roses that had wound their way around and over the stone frame of the front door and waited there to bloom as they had done in all the summers of my childhood.
Three-quarters of the way up The Hill, Mark took the sharp left turn into the gravelled drive that angled right again along the fifty feet or so of turf that separated house and road. The garages themselves were in the back, in the old stables at the far edge of the levelled yard, but Mark stopped where we were, beside the house, and parked the van, and in an instant we were overrun by what appeared to be a pack of wild dogs, all leaping up and barking for attention.
‘Down, you beasts,’ Mark told them, getting out and going round to take my suitcase from the back.
I got out carefully myself, not because I was afraid of the dogs, but because I didn’t want to step on them by accident. There were only three of them, as it turned out – a black cocker spaniel, a Labrador, and something that underneath all the dirt looked a bit like a setter – and with the little brown mongrel dog, Samson, who’d jumped out behind me, the pack was quite manageable. Once I’d patted all the heads and rumpled a few ears and scratched a side or two the leaping changed to energetic wagging, with the four dogs weaving round Mark’s legs and mine as we followed the curve of the path round the corner.
At the front of the house a small level lawn had been terraced out of the hillside, with hedges around it to block some part of the wind, and below that the steep green fields tumbled and rolled to the edge of the cliffs.
I was unprepared, as always, for my first view of the sea. From this high up the view was beautiful enough to steal my breath with such a swiftness that my ribcage almost hurt. There were the green hills folding down into their valley, with the darker smudges of the woods marked here and there with paler arcs of blackthorn blossom. There, too, was the harbour of Polgelly with its steeply stacked white houses looking small so far below us, and the headlands curving out to either side, already showing the first spreading cover of sea pink that made a softer contrast to the darkly jagged rock beneath. And past all that, as far as I could see, the endless rolling blue of water stretched away until it met the clouds.
Mark stopped when I stopped, turned to watch my face, and said, ‘Not quite like California, is it?’
‘No.’ This ocean had a very different feel than the Pacific. It seemed somehow more alive. ‘No, this is better.’
I hadn’t heard anyone open the front door behind us, but suddenly someone said ‘Eva!’ and, turning, I saw a young woman in jeans and a red sweater, her dark hair cut even shorter than Mark’s. This had to be Susan, I thought, though I wouldn’t have known her if we’d met away from Trelowarth. She’d only been seven or eight when I’d last been here. Now she was in her late twenties, grown taller and slender, her smile wide and welcoming. ‘I thought I heard the van.’ Her hug was just as warm. ‘Honestly Eva, you look just the same. It’s incredible. Even your hair. I always envied you your hair,’ she told me. ‘Mine would never grow like that.’
I didn’t really think much of my hair, myself. My father had liked my hair long, so I’d left it that way. It was easy enough to take care of, no styling required, and whenever it got in the way I just tied it all back.
‘Short hair suits you though,’ I said to Susan.
‘Yes, well, it’s not by choice.’ She smoothed it with a hand and grinned. ‘I tried to dye it red …’
Mark said, ‘It came out purple.’
‘More maroon, I’d say,’ she set him straight. ‘And when I tried to fix it, it got worse, so I just cut it.’
‘By herself,’ said Mark.
‘Well, naturally.’
‘I could have done as good a job as that,’ he told her drily, ‘with my garden shears.’