The Cornish Affair Read online

  The Cornish Affair

  Laura Lockington

  © Laura Lockington 2013

  Laura Lockington has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  This edition published in 2013 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Extract from Yes Chef No Chef by Susan Willis

  Chapter One

  I think I’d better get the explanation of my name over and done with now. It can lead to false impressions. People do tend to jump to the conclusion that I’m Irish. I freely admit that my name has a Gaelic aroma to it, a whiff of windy beaches and stormy seas, but, it isn’t. I am called Finisterre because I was conceived, very unromantically, in my opinion, whilst my parents were listening to the BBC shipping forecast. I also am very fair skinned, prone to freckles in the summer and have unruly curly hair. Chestnut coloured, not auburn, as I insist on saying.

  It would have been cold comfort to both of them had they known that many years later Finisterre had been summarily dismissed and was re-named FitzRoy. I suppose I should just be thankful that I wasn’t christened Doggerbank or Viking.

  Most people call me Fin.

  When I reached an age to discuss sex with my parents, if indeed any of us actually ever do reach that stage, and ask them how they knew this, it was too late. They both died in a very untimely car crash whilst motoring through a thick fog on the M5.

  It was too bad. I had a trunkful of unanswered questions. Like, how exactly did they know when I was conceived? Was it because they made love so seldom? Or was it such a spectacular climax? My mother had admitted that she felt a ‘ping’ deep inside her, but she was prone to terrible exaggeration and it had crossed her mind that it had in fact been a snapped suspender. Oh, and the big question of course, like, how the hell was I meant to carry on without them?

  I inherited my father’s green eyes, determination, and Penmorah House, perched on the top of a cliff at about the furthest west you can get in England without toppling into the sea. A collection of pre-war silk stockings from my mother who along with an almost theatrical inclination to embroider day to day life had an obsession with vintage underwear. My father’s cellar full of claret (undrinkable) and a simply terrifyingly large debt. Oh, yes, and Nelson, of course.

  Luckily, very luckily I had climbed out of the hell which is financial chaos and was beginning to reap the rewards of some hard work. There were very few things that I was talented with – but the marrying of flavours was one of, well, my only if I’m going to be strictly honest, talents.

  I invent soup. I am England’s leading soupologist.

  What on earth do you mean you’ve never heard of it?

  Do you really think that the carton of Thai spinach and lemongrass soup sitting in your fridge just sort of evolved overnight? No. It didn’t. And, I am happy to tell you, there wasn’t a committee of little men in white coats bubbling things up in test tubes in a factory either.

  Of course I didn’t just do soups. What’s your favourite sarnie from the huge chain of shops that we all are meant to buy our knickers from? Well, that was probably one of mine, too. Sauces, pies, pasta dishes, practically anything that you grab from a chill cabinet in your local supermarket is mine.

  And please, I beg you, don’t get me started on junk food. My job or calling if you like, is only tenable here in England or possibly America by the seeming inability of anyone to throw together a simple meal. That and the death of markets such as every tiny European town could, and thank the Lord, still does have. Most towns in England now don’t even have a fishmonger, let alone a delicatessen. Oh, I know, I know, if you live in the heart of Soho or are lucky enough to personally know a fisherman you might get the goods, but otherwise, at any one time of your life, you’ll be eating one of my concoctions.

  It was all down to me.

  Me and the boys, of course.

  I lifted my head slightly from where I’m sitting and I saw one of them puttering up the lane and into the drive in a disgracefully dilapidated 2CV van, you know, the ones that really do look like a squashed sardine tin on wheels, it has a sticker on the back that proclaimed ‘Windsurfers Do It Standing Up’. This particular boy is Jason Patrick Rasheed Rampersaud, known by all locally as Jace the Onion. He’s passing through the steeply banked, damp, lane that soon will be sprouting purple foxgloves and are studded with wild garlic and vetch. He swung the van round on the gravel to the side of the house, and gave a toot to let me know he’s here.

  I pushed open the kitchen door for him letting in a whoosh of salty air and he swaggered in with a crate of his namesake. He’s a breathtakingly beautiful boy with a skin the colour of a good Colombian roast coffee and a gleaming head of shoulder length blackberry coloured hair. I know it’s blackberry, because he enthusiastically pointed the packet out to me in his shopping basket once when I bumped into him in Boots in Truro. “Because you’re worth it,” I’d said to him.

  Today his hair is tied back with a piece of red nylon that on closer inspection is a coloured pop sock, undoubtedly still warm from one of his many conquests.

  He casually slid the crate of onions onto the table, and leant back, with folded arms.

  “Mornin’ Fin, where’s the little bastard then?”

  I glanced over to Nelson, who is watching morosely from his perch in the corner of the kitchen, his red and green feathers huddled around him like a ruffled fur coat. I’m slightly nervous, because even the name of the dog, can give Nelson the jitters. And no, before you should ask, the dog’s name was in fact Baxter. But Nelson hates him. I thought that it was a fleeting thing, but oh no. I’d had the dog for eighteen months now and they did not get on. It was like trying to live with two rival delinquent football supporters.

  “Jace, please don’t call him that. You know what Nelson’s like,” I said.

  We both glanced over to him, but Nelson shuffled his feet around for a bit and then tucked his head under his wing.

  “Anyway, Nancy’s taken him for a walk.”

  I went over to the crate and poked the onions. They were pearly white, and individually wrapped in straw.

  Jace lolled over to the kettle and switched it on.

  “Thirsty work, humpin’ onions,” he remarked.

  If I knew Jace, that wasn’t the only thing he’d been humping. But I kept the thought to myself. I made some tea and we chatted for a while about the surf at Newquay, the beach picnic that was planned, and all the usual local gossip, including the thrilling topic of the moment which was a lorry which had overturned on a narrow bridge down in Dunmere that was carrying full consignment of men’s shoes. By the time the lorry driver had climbed out of his cab and hiked to a call box and returned, the lorr
y was empty. According to Jace every Tom Dick and Harry was to be seen sporting gleaming new footwear, swearing that they had picked them up for a song at Trego Mills.

  This was definitely a county that still had wreckers in the blood.

  What had puzzled the poor lorry driver was that the stretch of road had been deserted, and he couldn’t figure out where the looters had come from.

  “But then, he was from up country,” Jace said dismissively, with a lazy smile.

  Up country could of course mean anything, but just not Cornish. It could even mean from (Lord preserve us) Devon. I smiled and looked down. Sure enough, a very snazzy pair of what looked like Italian loafers were on his feet.

  “Oh, before I forget, mum said she’s got the curry leaves in, and the kaffir lime leaves. She wants to bring ‘em over herself if that’s alright?” Jace slurped through a mouthful of thick brown PG tips.

  I always wanted to give Jace a delicate china tea, or a scented brew to match his complexion, but he insisted on what he called a ‘proper workman’s brew’. So PG tips it was, served in one of Nancy’s thick lumpy home made efforts. I’d tried, over the years to accidentally smash as many mugs of Nancy’s as I could, but this one proved utterly impervious to knocks and bangs.

  “What are ‘em for, then?” Jace enquired, nodding towards the onions.

  I wasn’t really sure yet. I’d been asked to come up with some roasted, stuffed vegetables for a new ‘home café’ range that a leading supermarket wanted to start. They had employed one of the leading TV chefs of the moment for their TV ad campaign, and to my horror he’d actually had some ideas of his own. I like working on my own, and really didn’t want some London trendy sort poking around with my recipes, or God forbid, coming up with his own ideas. That sort of thing had to be firmly nipped in the bud. I’d encountered it before, but had seen them off – they were all usually much too busy anyway, being interviewed for magazines and turning up on their friends TV chat shows enthusing about a new way to cook polenta with sun dried olives.

  “Me mum does ‘em lovely in the oven, with herbs and stuff, you should ask her,” Jace said, wiping his tea moustache away with the back of his hand.

  “I will, thanks.”

  Jace went over to look out of the window that faced the sea. I could tell that he was trying to gauge the rollers, to see if it was worthwhile taking the afternoon off and rolling on his wet suit. He sucked his teeth, and sighed. I joined him at the window and looked out, the sea was the colour of gooseberries, dappled with sunshine and had quite a few white horses. The waves looked quite high to me, but obviously Jace didn’t think so. With a look of regret he went to sit down at the table, and took out a battered tobacco tin.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll roll it in here, but smoke it outside,” he smiled at me, giving me the ritualistic speech.

  I rolled my eyes at him, and pushed an ashtray towards him to catch the stray bits of tobacco and grass that would fall onto my table.

  I found it best never to talk to Jace, or any of the boys about their dope smoking. Their feeble minded rants about the medicinal and or political properties of ‘the weed’ made me lose the will to live. The only thing that I knew for sure was that it made anyone who smoked it very, very boring. It also, for some strange reason, made them slip into a black worm hole of ancient vocabulary. ‘Man’, ‘Crash’, and ‘Dude’, seemed to go hand in hand with it. Very worrying.

  “Any more news than, Jace?” I asked. I loved the gossip that all the boys bought with them, but Jace usually had a certain pithy style to the telling of it, which always had me weak with laughter.

  He narrowed his eyes in consideration. “Well, you know about Breadpuddin’?” he asked.

  Indeed I did. She was a newcomer to the village. Why she had been nicknamed Breadpudding, I really don’t know, but most people had a nick name here, and the roots to most of them were lost over time. She caused a near riot when she had hired a fork lift to remove an ancient standing stone from her front garden. All the locals were so up in arms about it they had got together a petition, and when that hadn’t worked they had simply used their own farm machinery and plonked it right back where it belonged. Then they had all formed a circle at midnight (just after chucking out time at The Ram) and had circled the stone, chanting ‘A curse on all who touch the stone.’ It had sounded great fun, and apparently a good time was had by all, ending up back at The Ram for an official lock in.

  “What’s she done now?” I asked eagerly.

  “She’s only tried it on with Will, that’s what.” Jace sat back to watch my reaction with a look of smug satisfaction on his face.

  “What?” I screeched, obligingly.

  “Yep, proper scared, he was. Came out of her front door lookin’ like a dog’s dinner, all done up in some see through night dress or somethin’ and asked if he would help move her bed. Fair jumped on him. He said he wouldn’t mind that so much, but he’d only gone there to see if he could flog ‘er some dodgy duck eggs!”

  I snorted with laughter. The image was irresistible. Will was a strapping boy, but very shy. He got tongue tied in the presence of any female, God knows what he’d been like in the face of naked lust on Breadpudding. Who, I must tell you, resembled the original hennaed lady, with a simply enormous shelf like bust. Her poor little husband quivered behind her, looking very like one of those husbands depicted on seaside postcards, a tiny pale excuse for a man, permanently living in dread of her awful temper.

  “I do hope Will didn’t oblige,” I said, spluttering with giggles.

  “Nah… although he did wonder, ‘cos of the eggs, see.” Jace said confidentially.

  “Yes, I see.” I said, straightening my face.

  It was easy to forget just how poor some of us are here. Cornwall is deceptive. Everyone associates it with clotted cream, childhood holidays spent on glorious sandy beaches, gingham curtains blowing in the breeze and well kept fishing ports, servicing the wealthy tourists. But it’s really not like that. It’s the poorest county in England. Nearly everyone has two, or even three jobs to try and keep the wolf from the door. The tin mines are gone, and tourism has stayed. Sort of.

  “So, has Will recovered from his shock?” I said.

  “I reckons so. He’m beat me at arrows last night,” Jace said with a grin.

  Jace wandered out the back door to sit on the steps and lit up. A breeze wafted through the kitchen, making Nelson look up suspiciously. He glared at me, and shuffled around a bit.

  It did seem very unfair, I was the only person I knew who had two bad tempered pets. Nelson had been in this house since I was a baby, and had very over developed ideas of who was actually in charge. He was a lovely looking bird, and would occasionally, when the wind was blowing from the west, deign to perch on my shoulder and gently nuzzle my ear. He was, if I am truthful, just as likely to take a nip at you. He also spoke, usually at really inopportune moments. He had repeated (ad nauseam) at my parents funeral wake, “bugger off you lot” in his loud screechy voice, which reduced Nancy and me to tears of mingled grief and laughter, but I don’t think the multitude of grieving aunts and cousins, not to mention the vicar, was impressed.

  Baxter, on the other hand, whom I’d had great hopes for, were slowly being eroded. He was a westie, given to me by Nancy for a birthday present. A lovable bundle of white fur with two boot button eyes. He too, was distinctly gruff in his manner. A bit like a very old man in a gentleman’s club in St James’s, who discovers that some young cad is sitting in his seat. Oh well, perhaps now summer was nearly here they’d both mellow out a bit. Oh God, I was sounding like the boys, ‘mellow out’? I went to shut the kitchen door. Perhaps the fumes of Jace’s joint were slowly but surely addling my brain.

  From the side window I saw Baxter pulling Nancy along on his lead. Nancy had gathered a bunch of flowers, and was clasping them to her chest with one hand, whilst allowing the dog to drag her up the hill. Her silver hair had completely come undone in the wind, and was blowing
wildly around her face, and her long silk scarf was in danger of throttling her. In fact, she looked pretty much like everybody’s idea of an aging bohemian: amber necklaces, home spun skirt, flapping sandals and all. That’s where the surprise came, I think. She looked like an old hippie but spoke like the leader of the sensible tribe from planet kindness.

  She was my mother’s older sister, and had somehow never left Penmorah after my parents funeral fifteen years ago, for which I was profoundly thankful.

  Nelson shuffled on his perch, and then gave a screech. I knew what that meant, and sure enough, two seconds later, the phone rang. I never knew if the parrot had supernatural abilities, or maybe his hearing was so acute he could pick up on noises inaudible to us mere humans. Whatever it was, it was disconcerting.

  “Hello, Fin, darling. What’s the weather like in glorious Cornwall?”

  It was the angel of darkness, otherwise known as my manager, sparring partner, guru, and general all round bossy boots, Harry.

  The only reason he wanted know what the weather was like so that he could taunt me with the game. The game involved him trying to catch me out. I had to give the correct lunch time soup to fit the general weather and circumstances of our day. You know, if it was a perfect autumn day where the crisp golden leaves were drifting round the foot of the beech trees, willing you to be five years old again and roll around in them, and there was just a hint of chill in the deep blue sky, well, that was easy. It had to be wild mushroom, didn’t it?

  “Hmm, let me think.” I looked out of the window again, noting the scudding clouds and the pale blue sky. “Oh, OK, got it. It’s watercress soup, with a hefty dollop of cream swirled round in the middle, alright?”

  “Hmm, well, not a lot of thought went into that one did it? Anyway, I’ll let it go, just because I’m that sort of magnanimous person –“

  I snorted derisively.

  “I’ll have you know, I could have chosen the soup that Napoleon, when he was pining away on Elba craved, which was his childhood chestnut and goats milk concoction.” I said tartly.