Homecomings Read online

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  At the end of the row of fishermen’s cottages by the harbour’s edge stands an old granite house.

  First it belonged to Ned’s parents; then Ned dropped anchor here after a life at sea and called it home. His nephew Hugo moved in too, swapping London for the small Cornish fishing village where he’d spent so many happy holidays.

  It’s a refuge – and now other friends and relations are being drawn to the house by the sea.

  Among them is Dossie, who’s lonely after her parents died and her son remarried. And cousin Jamie, who’s coming home after more than a year, since his career as an RAF pilot was abruptly cut short. Both have to adjust to a new way of life.

  As newcomers arrive and old friends reunite, secrets are uncovered, relationships are forged and tested, and romance is kindled.

  For those who come here find that the house by the harbour wall offers a warm welcome, and – despite its situation at the very end of the village – a new beginning …

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Part Two

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Part Three

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Part Four

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  About the Author

  Also by Marcia Willett

  Copyright

  HOMECOMINGS

  MARCIA WILLETT

  To Rick

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  HUGO HOUGHTON COMES hurrying along the precipitous cobbled street that hurtles down to the harbour; his tweed coat flaps around his long legs and he clutches a bag of shopping in his arms as carefully and firmly as if it were a baby. He pauses to look at the few boats that remain of a once prosperous fishing fleet, which now provide day trips out to sea for the tourists, and then turns along beside the harbour wall towards the tall, old slate and granite house at the end of a row of fishermen’s cottages.

  Gathering his shopping into one arm, he lets himself in through the massive oak door to a long flagged passage with its series of doorways on either side, which leads through the ground floor into the kitchen at the back of the house. He plunges into the warmth and peace of the big room, dumps his bag on the central table and smiles at the old man – angular, wide shouldered, white haired – who is sitting in a wooden rocking chair by the Aga.

  ‘All well, Uncle Ned?’ he asks.

  Two dogs scramble up from their shared basket, hurrying to meet Hugo, wagging their tails in that welcoming yet hesitant way that the retriever has, longing to show love but anxious lest it should be rejected. Hugo bends to caress them, sympathizing with how they feel: this has been a problem for him for most of his adult life.

  ‘Good boys,’ he tells them. ‘Good fellows.’

  Hugo begins to unpack his shopping, shrugging off his coat, passing Ned the newspaper, telling him about the friends he has seen in the village shop. He pauses to look out into the small paved area where the early May sunshine is slanting in, lighting slate walls, sliding over wooden tubs of tulips and bluebells. This sunny space is sheltered from the north-westerly wind, and today he might be able to persuade Ned outside for his morning coffee. It’s not that his uncle is difficult, rather that he likes to make his presence felt; to show that, despite his vulnerability and physical weaknesses, he is still a force to be reckoned with. After a long and very successful career in the navy – and though he has been retired now for more than twenty years – Ned can still be formidable when he chooses.

  To signal his intentions, Hugo opens the door into the little court. At once the dogs make a bid for freedom, jostling to be the first out, and then dashing up the steep flight of stone steps, which leads to the small garden layered into the cliff behind the house. Hugo stands outside for a moment, lifting his face to the warm sunshine, and then goes back inside to find a cloth to wipe the dampness of last night’s rain from the wrought-iron table and chairs.

  Ned shakes his newspaper as if it is a call to battle as Hugo comes back inside, pushes the kettle on to the hotplate and smiles at the older man.

  ‘Coffee outside?’ he suggests tentatively. ‘It’s warm out there.’

  Ned frowns, considering, then unexpectedly folds The Times and stands up. Tall and lean, he picks up his stick and makes his way carefully – and very slightly unsteadily – across the flagged floor towards the doorway. Hugo watches, ready to step forward but pretending that he is unconcerned. Ned hates to be fussed over but since his recent hip replacement operation he has been a little less confident and Hugo has a horror that his uncle might fall.

  Ned lowers himself on to one of the chairs and Hugo takes a breath of relief and begins to brew the coffee. He’s so happy here, looking after Ned and the various people who come to stay: friends or relations needing a little bit of love and care, of rest and renewal, before returning to the cold world outside these sheltering granite walls. In his mid-fifties, he doesn’t regret taking the early retirement package from his job as a producer at the BBC, or leaving London: the BBC was getting busier, open plan, desks with no names. It was good to retreat from schedules and routines and to come here to the place where he’s spent so many happy holidays. It’s as if he is able to repay some of the kindness his aunt Margaret showed him through his childhood and difficult teenage years. After she died, nearly two years ago, it was clear that Ned wasn’t going to be able to manage alone and Hugo knew how much it would break the old fellow’s heart to leave the home that had been in the Tremayne family for several generations. There was Rose, of course. Rose Pengelly has been their cleaner since she was a girl, and Hugo has a very special place in his heart for her, but it was too much to ask Rose to take on the extra responsibility. And, anyway, how good it is to be needed: to be able to fulfil the nurturing side of his character.

  Hugo piles the coffee things on to a tray and carries it out to the court. The dogs have returned from their foraging and sit either side of Ned, their muzzles pressed against his knees, as if they understand that their presence brings him comfort. Gently he caresses their smooth heads and Hugo sees that he has closed his eyes against the sunshine and is smiling a little in its warmth. He sets the tray down gently on the table and takes up the coffeepot.

  Despite his closed eyelids, Ned perceives Hugo clearly. He pictures the strong, broad-shouldered figure, the untidy mass of dark curly hair, liberally streaked with grey, and Hugo’s violet-blue eyes. He is very like his aunt Margaret. When her younger sister, Hugo’s mother, died of cancer whilst Hugo was still a small child, Margaret took him into her love and care as far as she was able, given that she was a naval wife with a small boy of her own, and Hugo’s father was a barrister living in London.

  This house, belonging to Ned’s parents, was a refuge: a place to which they all travelled to spend leaves, school holida
ys, to lodge between married quarters. It was home. It was here that he and Margaret had come for extended leave after their son was killed in the Falklands War. Jack was twenty-three.

  How odd, thinks Ned, his eyes still closed against the sunshine, that the pain should still be so keen after nearly thirty-five years of loss. So must an amputee continue to feel the ache for a lost limb.

  Ned opens his eyes and smiles at Hugo, who is hovering near him. Ned knows why Hugo’s relationships with women never survive: he is too kind, too generous, too considerate.

  Ned counts himself lucky: his marriage was a good one, he has been loved by several women, his son adored him. And now he has Hugo to support him just when he is beginning to feel vulnerable and lonely. He likes Hugo’s London friends – members of his camera crew, assistant producers, ex-girlfriends – who come to stay for weekends, between jobs or lovers or marriages, and he likes the occasional lodgers who stay whilst they look for long-term accommodation. Everyone gravitates towards Hugo, as towards warmth and succour, and he helps and heals them where he can. It is good to be a part of that and Ned knows how lucky he is. He drinks his hot, strong coffee, unadulterated by sugar or milk.

  ‘I was thinking that we’d go for a drive,’ Hugo is saying, ‘through the woods and up on to the moor. The wild cherry trees are looking wonderful and the bluebells are beginning to flower.’

  ‘“And since to look at things in bloom,”’ quotes Ned,

  Fifty springs are little room,

  About the woodlands I will go

  To see the cherry hung with snow.

  Hugo grins at him. ‘Strong,’ he says. ‘Very strong. We’ll have lunch at The Chough and the dogs can have a run on the moor.’

  Ned grins back at him – Hugo doesn’t appreciate poetry but is tolerant of Ned’s sudden declamations – dismisses Housman from his mind, and thinks with pleasure of the day ahead. These spring days are a delight to him, filled with promise of the joys to come: of seeing buds opening into a pale tatter of petals; a blackbird sitting on her frail eggs: of the relief to hear the evocative call of the cuckoo and to see the swoop of the first swallow, proving that the Creation is still working.

  A bar of music interrupts his reverie and he watches Hugo drag his iPhone from his pocket to read the incoming message.

  ‘It’s Prune,’ he says. ‘She’s been invited out to supper so she says not to wait for her.’

  ‘Does she say with whom?’ asks Ned.

  He feels in loco parentis where young Prune is concerned, though at twenty-one she is quite old enough to look after herself. Nevertheless, as their lodger she deserves their protection and he’d promised as much to her parents when they came down from Suffolk to see where their daughter was to be living whilst she works as an assistant gardener at the National Trust property on the edge of the village. The Trust has recently opened a small café and Prune has been taken on to train with the team that has the special responsibility of supplying the vegetables to feed visitors. It was the Trust who recommended the house on the quay as a lodging place for Prune.

  ‘She and the rest of the team are going out with the couple who have been advising on setting up the café,’ Hugo answers. ‘It’s their last evening so they’ve invited them all to a fish-and-chip supper at Padstow.’

  ‘That sounds like fun,’ observes Ned. ‘In which case we’ll have a good lunch at the pub and then we won’t have to worry too much this evening.’

  ‘My name’s Prunella,’ she told them when she came to meet them, sitting at the kitchen table, a dog on each side of her. ‘But I’ve always loved gardening since I was small so the nickname was inevitable really.’

  She was a slender girl, not very tall, with long, fine, fair hair drawn back from a small, pretty, square face, and Hugo smiled at her.

  ‘I hope you won’t be daunted by the overwhelming male presence here,’ he said.

  She laughed, patting the dogs. ‘I’ve got three older brothers,’ she answered. ‘Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. So have I passed?’

  Hugo looked at Ned, his eyebrows raised.

  ‘With flying colours,’ Ned answered.

  And now she has become part of the family and none of them has regretted it. As Hugo and Ned sit at ease together, drinking coffee, discussing plans for the garden, enjoying the sunshine, the dogs lie, noses on paws but eyes and ears alert to any suggestion of a walk. So that when Hugo pushes back his chair, stands up and begins to collect the coffee mugs, they are on their feet at once, hurrying ahead of him into the kitchen, ready for action.

  They drive up out of the village, skirting high granite walls, and into the woodland at the moor’s edge. Ash, hawthorn, alder are beginning to leaf and, beneath their tender buds, the bluebells’ haze reflects the cloudless sky.

  Ned lowers his window and Hugo slows the car so that they are able to breathe in the fragrance. Amongst mossy boulders, tightly curled fists of bracken push through to stand like question marks above the rocks. Hugo can hear the cuckoo’s two notes – C and A flat – and he smiles at Ned in a shared delight.

  They pass small fields, hedged about with yellow-flowering gorse, where cows take their ease in companionable groups; tails twitching, chewing things over. The car bumps across the cattle grid and then they are up on the open moor and the dogs begin to jostle and barge each other with excitement. He pulls on to the dry, close-cropped grass, gets out and opens the tailgate so that the dogs are able to leap down and go dashing away, scattering a group of skewbald ponies. The wind is cold. He leans in to reach for his coat, knowing that Ned will stay where he is in the warm shelter of the car, shrugs himself into his windproof jacket and hurries away after the dogs.

  Ned watches them go: Brioc ahead as usual, Mortimer following more slowly, showing his age. How many times he and Margaret walked the dogs here; how much she loved this part of the moor: that gleam of a white church tower set all about with rhododendrons down in the valley and, seawards, a rim of gold at the edge of the world. Instinctively Ned folds his arms across himself as if he is holding himself in – or pretending that he is hugging Margaret, being hugged in return. He isn’t sure which it is but after a moment he sighs at his foolishness and settles himself more comfortably to wait for Hugo’s return.

  The small bar of The Chough is busy but the table in the corner by the inglenook fireplace is empty, and the landlord, knowing the treachery of these early May days, has kept the log fire burning. Behind the bar, Ben, a tall, good-looking boy barely out of his teens, sways quietly to the background music: Gregory Porter singing ‘Hey Laura’. His lips soundlessly frame the words and his eyes are full of dreams. A flurry of newcomers jolt him out of his reverie and, as he hurries to serve them, Ned watches him sympathetically, trying to remember what it was like to be that age: untried, hopeful. Not for Ben, yet, the more and more frequent reminders of the past; the mental thumbing of anecdotes as if they are a greasy old pack of cards.

  ‘Which is worse?’ Hugo once asked him. ‘Sins of omission or commission?’

  ‘Omission,’ Ned answered at once, instinctively.

  Hugo frowned, thinking about it. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ he said at last, ‘but there are an awful lot of things I regret doing. Rushing in where angels fear to tread. Making a fool of myself.’

  ‘If those are the worst sins you’ve committed, be grateful,’ Ned answered, thinking guiltily of one of his own particular sins of commission with a rather beautiful woman during a short posting to Norfolk, Virginia, when he was helping to run a NATO exercise from the COMSUBLANT bunker.

  He glances around the bar. A man has just come in and is being welcomed by another who is standing ordering a drink. They hug each other. Ned is slowly getting used to the sight of men hugging. Everyone hugs these days: rugby players, tennis players, TV presenters. His glance slides past them and he glimpses a young woman at the furthest table, which is littered with coffee cups and plastic mugs. Ned feels a tiny jolt of recognition though he cannot pl
ace her. She is talking eagerly to her two companions, also young women, whilst several small children beside them are busy with colouring books. He frowns, trying to place the vivacious face but the memory eludes him.

  Hugo is back, carrying two pints of ale, and the two men at the bar are now blocking Ned’s view otherwise he might ask Hugo if he recognizes her. Meanwhile, Ben is here with the menus and he is drawing their attention to the specials board.

  ‘Though I expect,’ he says, smiling at Ned, ‘that you’ll be having your usual?’

  Ned smiles back at him, touched by the fact that Ben remembers. How poignant is the genuine kindness of the young as opposed to their thoughtless pity, which is one of the trials of old age. He agrees that he will have the seafood platter, simply because it pleases Ben, who beams at him and then looks at Hugo, who is studying the menu. He orders venison sausages and sits down beside Ned.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to text Dossie,’ he says. ‘We’re running low on emergency supplies.’

  Ned takes a pull at his pint. He approves of Dossie Pardoe, a woman much the same age as Hugo, widowed young, who runs a small business called Fill the Freezer from her home in St Endellion. She supplies home-cooked food to holiday cottages all over the peninsula, as well as catering for dinner parties, children’s parties and small special events. They are both very fond of Dossie and are helping her to cope with the recent deaths of her parents. Her widowed son, Clem, has just married again, which is another adjustment, though Ned knows that Dossie is delighted for her son and her grandson, Jakey.

  ‘She’s really missing Clem and young Jakey much more than she lets on,’ Hugo is saying. ‘I know that she adores Tilly, but it can’t be easy to step back after ten years of being there for them and suddenly be a mother-in-law again. They were all such a close unit.’

  ‘Invite her to supper this evening,’ Ned suggests impulsively. He sympathizes with Dossie as she navigates her way through this tough patch and he admires her courage and gallantry. ‘Then we can talk about topping up supplies.’