The Cliff House: A beautiful and addictive story of loss and longing
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It was here that my memories of him were the strongest. Sitting in this spot I could recall him in such Technicolor detail. The patches of sweat which darkened his T-shirt. The individual beads of moisture glistening on his forehead. I could hear his voice telling me to make the most of the sunshine. Warning me the weather wouldn’t last. That storms were coming. As I sat and watched the house I felt him beside me.
Isn’t it beautiful, Tam?
He jumped to his feet and grabbed my hand, pulling me down to the path and the iron railing which encircled the garden. When he reached over to open the latch on the gate I pulled back.
Are we allowed?
Nobody’s home.
Are you sure?
I raised the binoculars to my face and scanned the house and the driveway. There was no movement, no lights or opened windows, no car parked outside. I didn’t rush. I gave myself time to make certain nobody was home. When I was sure, I unhooked the strap from my neck and wrapped it around the binoculars and tucked them back in my bag, then stood and walked down to rejoin the footpath.
The white-painted railings were patched with rust, which bled down the uprights in autumnal orange smears. I walked along the edge of the boundary until I reached the gate, then pushed it open enough for me to squeeze through, but not past the point where the hinges creaked. The lawn was the colour of emeralds, soft and mown into stripes by a gardener who came on a Wednesday afternoon and peed in the bushes unaware I was watching. The grass ran from the gate up to the house and was bordered by lush flowerbeds which held plants of every colour and insects that flitted busily between flower heads. I’d looked some of them up in a book of Dad’s – The Comprehensive Guide to the Flora and Fauna of Cornwall and Devon – and learnt lots of their names by heart. Cordyline, sea pinks, red and lilac poppies, phormium, flowering sea kale, and others I couldn’t remember grew amongst copses of bamboo and blue hydrangea. There were ornamental ferns which should have been in the jungle and agapanthus and towering gunnera with giant leaves straight out of Alice in Wonderland.
When I reached the terrace I stopped and looked up at the house. It wrapped itself around me like a warm blanket. The air crackled with electricity and the cry of curlews rang in my ears as I drank in its salt-stained white and the soft slips of cloud moving like ghosts across ginormous windows. According to Dad it was something called ‘Art Deco’, built between the Wars by the heir to an enormous tobacco fortune as a gift for his American wife who’d taken a shine to Cornwall. It was hard to believe that an actual American once lived in St Just. I imagined her walking across this very same terrace, talking American, dressed in pressed white slacks with a silver cigarette case, the spit of Lauren Bacall.
Most of the terrace was taken up by the glorious swimming pool. Rectangular, with semi-circular steps at one end, it was lined with mosaic tiles as black as coal. I walked to the edge of it and trod on my plimsolls to take them off. I heard my mother’s voice lecturing me.
Don’t break the backs. Undo the laces. No money for more.
The paving stones were warm underfoot. I placed my bag beside my shoes and stared down at the pool. The surface was still. Not even a ripple. It shone like a sheet of black mirror, reflecting the sky like the windows that punctured the house. I bent to put my finger to it and heard the echo of his voice. Saw him smile at me. Saw the glint in his eye. Wavelets spread outwards from my touch and faded to nothing but a shift of light on the disturbed water.
One of her scarves was draped over the sun lounger nearest me. I reached for it. The silk was soft in my fingers. I brought it up to my face and breathed in. It smelt of her perfume, rich and thick, with a hint of coconut suntan oil beneath. I wrapped the scarf around my neck as I’d seen her do a hundred times.
I’d been watching the house on and off since the Davenports bought it two years earlier from an elderly couple who moved to Spain. I don’t know exactly why I first walked up to the point to see the house. Up until that moment I’d avoided it. I’d found the thought of going back to the place too painful. Too much of a reminder of what I’d lost when my father died. But something made me curious. Maybe it was the rumours which had spread through St Just like wildfire. A famous writer. His glamorous wife. Londoners bringing their fancy ways to West Penwith. Or perhaps it was hearing the house in overheard conversations, each mention of it bringing a vibrant memory back to me. But whatever the reason for that first visit, I knew within moments it wouldn’t be the last. As soon as the house loomed into view it was like a spell had been cast. The connection was undeniable. And then, when I began to watch them – Mr and Mrs Davenport – the connection deepened. As I became increasingly sucked into their lives, going to the house became a heady mix of both memory of my father and dreamy escapism.
I knew their routine well. They only ever came on weekends, arriving late afternoon on a Friday and leaving before noon on the Monday. On as many Fridays as I could manage I’d walk to the point and wait, binoculars primed, praying for the roar of the Jaguar as it careened down the lane. They didn’t always appear. There was no way of knowing. Even though Mum went in every week – whether they were coming or not – they never thought to tell her which weekends they’d be there. On the days when they didn’t appear I’d feel so let down it physically hurt, deflated by disappointment. It was following one of these no-shows that I braved creeping into the garden, just like I’d done with my dad all those years before.
Adrenalin coursed through me as I walked across the lawn towards the house. I didn’t make it all the way to the terrace before nerves got the better of me and I turned and hared out of the gate to the safety of the footpath. As I paused to catch my breath, my whole body trembled and a bout of excited laughter rippled through me. The thrill of it became an addiction, and while the other kids at school sniffed glue or drank snakebite and black to get their kicks, I walked up to The Cliff House, either to watch the Davenports or explore, depending on the mood which took me.
I stood in front of the window and cupped my hands around my eyes, peering in to double-check it was empty. The sitting room was as spotless as always, not a magazine or an ornament or a picture frame out of place. I thought of my mother dusting and polishing, arranging everything just so, wanting it to be perfect for when they arrived. I felt for the key with the green tag in my pocket and pushed it into the lock. I held my breath as I turned it. There was a loud click. I opened the door and paused to listen. The only sound was the hum of the enormous fridge in the kitchen so I stepped inside and pulled the door closed behind me.
The inside of the house was what I imagined an art gallery would look like. It was cool and quiet with paintings on white walls, unusual pottery dotted about, and a large hunk of grey stone in one corner which was carved into a vague human form. The paintings were oversized canvases with no frames or glass, splashes of colour daubed over them as if someone had poured the paint from a tin instead of brushing it. All were signed in the corner with the name Etienne scrawled in an extravagant blue flourish. Truth be told, I didn’t think they were that good, but what did I know? There was no way people like the Davenports would put anything on their walls that wasn’t the very best. I preferred the photographs, black-and-white close-ups of body parts made to look like the landscape. A woman’s breast turned into a hill. A tummy button filled with water to resemble a pool in the desert.
My feet made a soft padding sound as I crossed the room. The polished floorboards shone as if coated with syrup. I walked through the door leading into the kitchen where a central worktop held a neat stack of recipe books, the titles of which I now knew by heart – Robert Carrier, Elizabeth David, The F Plan, The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet – and a pepper mill which was at least a foot tall and the same shade of red as my mother’s movie-star lipstick. I struck a pose against the worktop, flicked back my hair, swished my dress.
‘Darling?’ My voice fractured the stillness. ‘Yes, my love? Oh, darling, do bring me a Martini. Stirred, if you will. Of course, my love. I’ll fetch you one now. Shall I put one of those green things in it, too? I know how you love them so.’
I gave a trill, mimicking the laugh I was sure she’d have.
‘Darling, you’re right. I do love them. And, oh, goodness me, isn’t it hot today? Baking hot. Thank goodness we have the swimming pool. What on earth would we do if we didn’t? We’d boil, darling. We’d absolutely boil.’
He smiled.
My stomach tightened as he reached out for my hand, then lifted it to his mouth and pressed his lips against my skin.
I smiled and went to the cupboard for a glass, which I filled from the tap. I turned the tap off and the last drips fell against the stainless steel sink with the beat of a slowing clock. As I drank I held my little finger up in a delicate salute. I also took the tiniest sips because people like the Davenports never gulped their water. After I’d rinsed the glass and dried it on my dress, I returned it to the cupboard before walking back through the sitting room and out onto the terrace, where the heat seemed to have intensified.
I walked like a model on a catwalk, swinging my hips from side to side, one foot in front of the other, chin held high. Then I untied the silk scarf and pulled it away from my neck, enjoying the way it caressed my skin. I laid it over the sun lounger exactly as I had found it, watching for a moment as a slight wind ruffled the material and made it dance. I walked over to the swimming pool steps and looked into the water. The blackness was like a dead television screen and for a moment or two I stared at my reflected face, imagined I was floating beneath the surface looking up at the sky. I reached for the zip on my mother’s dress and undid it and let it fall to the ground, enjoying the breeze on my sweat-dampened skin.
It was then I felt somebody watching me.
I turned quickly but the terrace was empty and the house still.
I waited. Scanned the house. Searched every window. I’d imagined it.
Nobody’s home.
Remembering my father’s words reassured me and I turned my attention back to the pool. I took a step into the water. It was heated but not enough to stop goosebumps leaping up across my skin. I rubbed my arms as I waited for the water to settle and when it did, when the ripples had faded to flatness, I stepped down again. Between each step I allowed the wavering surface to still and savoured the growing feeling of calm that enveloped me.
I pushed off the wall and held my head clear of the water, swimming like she did with her swan’s neck straight and tall. My strokes were long and slow and as I pulled through the water I focused on the way it soothed my skin. I turned when I reached the end then dived beneath the water and closed my eyes as the silence wrapped around me. I held my breath and waited for the familiar burn in my lungs. As always I allowed the indulgent thought of opening my mouth to pass through my mind.
One breath. Swift and silky. And then…
When the raking pain became too much to bear, I pushed off the floor of the pool and propelled myself upwards. My head broke the surface and I drew a breath in, dragging oxygen deep into my body.
When I heard her voice I screamed.
‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’
CHAPTER FOUR
Tamsyn
July 1986
‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’
My stomach turned over.
There was a figure silhouetted against the sun, features obscured in shadow, standing at the edge of the pool.
My heart pounded as I heaved myself through the water towards the steps.
‘I’m… I… Sorry…’ The words wouldn’t form and my voice stumbled as I clambered out of the swimming pool. I tried to hide my underwear with my hands. Why hadn’t I worn a proper swimsuit? Why had I swum in my bra and pants, which were old and baggy and turned see-through with water? ‘I’m… I…’
Panic muddied my thoughts. The voice had been female. Who was she? It was a Thursday. The Davenports never came on a Thursday. Was it her? Mrs Davenport? Blinded by the sun, it was hard to be certain, but surely that was the only person it could be?
‘Answer my question.’
I bent to pick up my dress from the ground and drew it up to my chin to hide my body.
‘I’ll leave,’ I whispered. ‘Sorry. I’m sorry.’
She didn’t speak. A soft, rhythmic tapping echoed across the terrace. I glanced at the house. The back door was ajar, a breeze worrying it gently against the frame. Everything inside me screamed run. I looked down towards the gate and path, my route to freedom.
‘Don’t even think about it.’
As I looked back at her she blurred like an out-of-focus picture. I swallowed. My throat was dry and my palms sweating, my body numbed by guilt and fear. When she stepped towards me, I readied myself for Mrs Davenport to shriek at me, demand an explanation before calling the police and firing my mum.
But she didn’t shriek.
As the figure stepped out of the glare of the sun her face became visible. It wasn’t Mrs Davenport. It was a girl, about my own age, maybe a year or two older. She stared at me with her hands on her hips, head cocked to one side. Her eyes were heavily made up with thick black eyeliner dragged upwards into arrowheads. She wore a black skirt that trailed the floor, a black top with holes worn into the sleeves, and a thin leather chord encircling her neck which threatened to throttle her. Her dyed white-blonde hair was cut into an aggressively short bob, framing her elfin face and razor-sharp cheekbones. She radiated an aristocratic confidence that made my breath catch. My mother would have disagreed. She would have hated her make-up and the fact she was so painfully thin. She’d think she looked like an addict. But this girl’s skin was too perfect – too porcelain – for that. Eyes too clear. I knew which kids from school did drugs. Their acne, gaunt faces, and wide staring eyes gave them away.
This girl was nothing like them.
Her eyes scanned me as if I were something she was thinking of buying. I cringed beneath her scrutiny, painfully aware of how spongy and uncared for my body was. Shame swept over me and I desperately tried to arrange the fabric of the dress so it covered more of me.
On her wrists she wore a collection of silver bangles like Madonna and when she crossed her arms they jangled tunefully.
‘Who said you could swim here?’
My mouth opened and closed as I grappled to find a reason – any reason – to justify me being there. I thought of my dad. Tried to imagine what flawless excuse he’d have given for our trespassing. Somewhere above me I could have sworn I heard a raven cry and a shiver wriggled through me.
‘For God’s sake,’ she said, tapping her toe against the paving impatiently. ‘Put the dress back on if you’re that cold.’
I didn’t move for a moment or two, but then turned my back and shook out the dress, biting back tears of humiliation as I felt her eyes on my body as I bent to step into it. The fabric clung to my damp skin so I had to tug hard at it, risking tearing the delicate material. I pulled the zip up and faced her. My wet hair dripped down my back as I bit my lower lip to stop myself crying.
The girl raised a single dark and perfectly plucked eyebrow. ‘If you don’t say something soon, I’m going to call the police and have you locked up.’ Her voice oozed with money. ‘Who are you and what are you doing here?’
Mum was going to lose her job. I felt sick as I pictured her sitting at the kitchen table, a ragged piece of toilet roll clutched in her fist, red-topped bills surrounding her.
‘I’m… I...’ My voice stuttered and waned.
The girl looked irritated. ‘Well?’
Something caught my eye. Eleanor Davenport’s silk scarf fluttering in a gust of wind, half-lifting off the sun lounger as if, like me, it was desperate to escape. I glanced at the girl. Her eyes narrowed. Her patience was visibly running out.
‘My… mother…’
‘What? Speak up, for God’s sake.’
‘My mother,’ I said more loudly. ‘She… She cleans here. She’s the cleaner. I think… I mean, she said… She left her scarf here. She gave me the key.’ I pulled the key with the green tag out of my slightly soggy pocket and held it aloft as if this small piece of metal was my passport to being here. ‘I looked for it. The scarf. But couldn’t see it. I was leaving. And, well, I was hot…’ My voice wilted as the little bravery I’d mustered evaporated. ‘And the pool… I thought nobody… I’m… I’m sorry.’
For what felt like a century the girl with peroxide hair didn’t speak. I shifted on my feet, willing her to send me away with nothing more than a sharp warning never to show my face there again.
‘Who were you speaking to?’
‘What?’ My throat was dry and tight and trapped my voice so it came out in a rasp.
‘When you broke in to look for this scarf. I heard you having a conversation. Is there someone else here?’ Her eyes flicked from me to the house and back again.
My cheeks burst into flame. ‘No… I… I was… Talking to myself.’
‘How strange.’
She turned and walked back towards the door. Was this my signal to go? Was I free? I hesitated, about to turn away, but she glanced back with narrowed eyes. ‘Don’t even think about leaving. If you move an inch, you’ll be sorry.’
My stomach hardened to a tight ball. Who was she? Why was she here? As I did what I was told and stood stock still, water collecting at my feet, I was hit with the sudden idea that perhaps she might also be trespassing and that in a remarkable twist of fate we’d both arrived at the house, uninvited, at the same time. Perhaps I wasn’t the only girl who watched this place from an out-of-sight vantage point and snuck in when nobody was home.
This thought bought a little clarity with it. My mind seemed to de-mist. Whoever she was, whatever reason she had to be here, the most important thing was to convince her not to tell the Davenports. If Mum lost her job she’d have to do more hours at the bloody chip shop or, worse still, sign on, something I knew full well she’d rather die than do.
The girl walked back out of the door. She held two bottles in her hand and an opener in the other.
‘I like your dress,’ she said as she neared me.
I wasn’t sure if I’d heard her correctly so didn’t say anything in return.
‘Where did you get it?’
‘My dress?’
She made a face like I was stupid. ‘Er, yeah, your dress.’
‘It’s my mum’s. From the Sixties. She wore it to a Rolling Stones concert.’
‘Retro?’ Her eyes blinked slowly. ‘Très fashionable.’
I let my breath go with a nervous laugh. I was struck again by how pretty she was. Not pretty like Alice Daley or Imogen Norris – who were universally acknowledged to be the prettiest girls in school, all pushed-up boobs and bum-skimming skirts. No, this girl was graceful and poised and pretty like Princess Di, if Princess Di wore black make-up, a hundred bangles and had a silver stud in her nose.
‘Très… cool,’ she said.
I managed to nod.
‘You’re very lucky to have a cool mother. Mine,’ she said deliberately, ‘is very, very, uncool.’
I thought of the photograph of my parents, the one that had his writing on the back:
Angie and Me. Odeon Theatre, Guildford, March 1965.
In the picture my mum wore the rainbow dress. She was seventeen, not long engaged, delirious with love. Her hair was held back by a thick red scarf, feline eyes outlined with liner, her lips and skin pale as was the fashion. My dad wore a white shirt and a thin black tie. His hair was slicked back and he held a cigarette loosely in his fingers. I closed my eyes for a second, caught a flash of him singing me to sleep, smelt the cigarettes stuck to his skin.
‘Would you like a drink?’ She gestured to the bottles in her hand. Coca-Cola – the real thing, in curvaceous glass bottles like the ones I’d seen shiny, happy Americans with white-toothed smiles selling on the television.
‘Who are you?’
She gave no indication of having heard me. Maybe I’d spoken too quietly. She walked over to the table and put the bottles down, then using the opener she flicked the caps off each in turn, the cola fizzing loudly as she threw them onto the table. One bounced across the iron fretwork and fell with a tinny clink against the paving stones.
‘I think I should go.’
‘If you leave, I’ll tell my mother you broke into our house and I found you rifling through her jewellery box.’
Horror mushroomed inside me so violently I thought I might be sick.
‘Your mother?’ I didn’t understand. They didn’t have a daughter. Mum had never mentioned one. There was nothing in the house that indicated they had children − no photos, no clothes, no posters in any bedrooms. Was she lying?
‘Yes. My mother. More’s the pity.’ She sat on one of the chairs and lifted her bare feet onto the table and crossed them at the ankle. I’d never seen toenails painted purple before and never heard of people wearing rings on their toes, but she wore three and her nails were the colour of autumn plums.
‘Are they here?’ My voice quivered. Why had I been so careless? How stupid could I be?
‘My mother’s shopping while my father gets something fixed on the Jag. A tyre or, God, I don’t know, something dull. My mother will already be in a filthy mood because she won’t have found anything worth buying and will be moaning about Cornwall being stuck in the Dark Ages and wondering why anybody ever leaves Chelsea.’
‘My mum can’t lose her job,’ I whispered.
She stared at me for a moment or two, her expression flat, but then her body seemed to soften.
‘Relax.’ Her voice had lost its sharpness. ‘You don’t need to worry. I’m not going to tell them. I don’t give a shit about you swimming in the pool. I mean, why wouldn’t you? It’s hot as hell today.’
I could have cried with relief.
‘Go on. Stay for a bit. I’m literally dying of boredom. You can leave before they get back.’ She pushed one of the bottles towards me. ‘Have a Coke.’
‘I’ve never had a real Coke, only the one they do at Wimpy.’ And even then I’d only tried it once, though I didn’t tell her that.
She furrowed her brow and a bemused smile flashed across her face as she reached for the bottle nearest her and tipped it up to her lips. I inhaled sharply, shocked by how much she resembled Mrs Davenport in that split second. As I stared at her I noticed other similarities between her and her parents. Her face was the same shape as his. The sweeping curve of her neck was identical to hers. How stupid not to see these things immediately. Stupid not to have guessed who she was. Their daughter. Her house. A surge of irrational jealousy shuddered through me like an electric charge.
The girl looked up at me whilst shielding her eyes from the sun. ‘For God’s sake sit down.’ She kicked the empty chair and it scraped against the paving.
The movement jolted me into action and I walked towards her. I hesitated as I reached the table, wondering if it might be a trap and when I sat down she’d laugh and say, ‘Ha! Idiot! As if someone like you could actually sit with someone like me?’
But she didn’t. She smiled.
From nowhere a waft of her perfume swept over me. I had a vivid recollection of Truro. The shopping centre. My mother rummaging through the bottles and sprays in The Body Shop. Taking lids off. Pumping scent onto her wrists. Then mine. Ignoring the hard stares of the lady behind the counter.