Sara Craven - High Tide At Midnight

She shook her head slowly, clenching her fingers together in her lap. She must stop thinking along those lines. The fact of the matter was that she was homeless, but that wasn’t the disaster it seemed. Friends were always flouncing away from the shelter of the parental roof after some devastating row or other, and they managed to survive. There were a number of names in her address book which she could call on in an emergency. People were always swopping flats, or marrying and moving out. There would be someone somewhere wanting another girl to make up the numbers. And there were jobs too. Not the sort of creative work she had planned on. For those she would need training—qualifications. But she would find something to do which would pay her share of the rent and food bills, and there were always evening classes she could go to.

She suppressed a grimace. It was a far cry from the spring in the South of France that she had envisaged, but she had only herself to blame. She was capable of far better work than that she had shown Lennox Christie. But she had known the money was there to buy her a place in his class, and she had simply not tried too hard. If she were trying now, it would be very different.

She took the crumpled letter out of her pocket and read it again slowly. While it held out no definite hope, it did offer her a second chance. But she would need to work very hard over the next few months to convince him that she had sincerity and application as well as talent, and wasn’t just another wealthy playgirl looking for an undemanding few months in the sun.

She got up restlessly and walked over to the window, staring out at the prospect of smooth lawns and leafless trees which unfolded itself before her. What she needed was a few months’ grace to do some serious painting, when what confronted her was the urgent necessity for job and flat-hunting. She tried to do some swift mental calculations, but the results were depressing. The pitifully small amount of money she had in her bank account would not be enough to feed and house her while she pursued this tenuous dream. It was time she recognised her hopes of a career even on the fringes of the art world as the fantasy they were, and got down to realities.

She sighed and cast a regretful look back over her shoulder at the group of paintings on the wall. Their appeal had never seemed more potent. If she took any of her mother’s work away with her when she went, it would be those and the self-portrait above the mantelpiece. But if she did take them, heaven only knew what she would do with them. She could not imagine them as a welcome addition to the decor in any of her friends’ flats. She supposed drearily they would have to be stored somewhere until she could find a proper home for them. Whenever that might be.

She was halfway to the door when the thought came to her. She stopped dead in her tracks and swung round again to survey the pictures. She might not be able to claim a temporary home at Trevennon, but surely, for her mother’s sake, they might be willing to store the paintings for her. If she took them down to Trevennon and explained the situation…. As long as she made it clear it was only a temporary measure. They would be far better there than locked away in some warehouse. And it might give the Trevennon family some pleasure too to know that Laura Kerslake had never forgotten….

There was some relief to be gained in knowing she had solved at least one of her problems, minor though it was. It was doubtful whether she would find such ready solutions for those that remained, nevertheless as she went to her room to begin to sort through her clothes and belongings, a tiny ray of hope began to burn deep inside her.

The next few days were not comfortable ones. Morwenna was thankful that she had announced that she was leaving in advance, otherwise she felt the atmosphere in the house would have been well-nigh unendurable. As it was, she could remind herself that the little barbs and snide remarks which came her way were only for a little while longer.

She had been totally ruthless with her packing. Most of her extensive wardrobe was now at the Vicarage awaiting the next jumble sale, and she had retained only the most basic elements. But this did not grieve her as much as parting with the childhood books and possessions that still occupied her bedroom. She had thought sentimentally that one day all these things could be passed on to her own children, but she knew she had to travel lightly, and the cherished articles were disposed of to the charity shop in the nearby town. She had soon reduced her possessions down to the contents of one large suitcase, while her painting gear was consigned to the depths of an old rucksack which she found in one of the attics. The Trevennon pictures and her mother’s self-portrait were carefully taken from their frames under Lady Kerslake’s eagle eye and made into a neat parcel.

Life did not become any easier with the arrival of Guy with his latest girl-friend in tow. She had dark, elaborately frizzed hair and a giggle that made Morwenna want to heave, but judging by Guy’s air of smug satisfaction, he saw nothing amiss.

Morwenna also had to cope with the added humiliation that Guy had obviously told this Georgina all about her, possibly with embellishments, and that Georgina’s reaction to the situation was to treat her with a kind of pitying contempt, mixed with triumph that Morwenna’s loss had been her gain.

Morwenna suffered this in a kind of teeth-grinding impotence, but she knew there would be no point in trying to convince Georgina that her relationship with Guy had been very much in the embryo stage, and that she was not stoically trying to conceal an irrevocably broken heart. It would have given her immense satisfaction to tell Georgina that she was welcome to Guy, and that her only regret was that she had not had the wit to see the truth behind his advances in the first place, but she knew that the other girl would not believe her.

However, it was Vanessa’s attitude that Morwenna found the most surprising. As the time approached for her departure, her cousin became almost cordial, even to the point of insisting on driving her up to London to catch the Penzance train. Morwenna accepted the offer, but she did not deceive herself that it was promoted by any new-found liking for herself. She suspected that Vanessa was taking her to the train merely in order to make sure that she was in fact going to Cornwall, and was seeking her company during her remaining hours at the Priory simply to enable her to avoid Georgina to whom she had taken an instant and embarrassingly open dislike.

Life at the Priory, Morwenna decided on reflection, seemed likely to become hell for man and beast quite shortly, especially if Guy decided to marry Georgina and her father’s money of which she spoke so often and with such candour, and in a way this helped to alleviate the pain of parting from her home. Nevertheless she cried herself to sleep each night, her tears prompted not merely by grief for the losses she had suffered but fear as well. It was all very well to tell herself robustly that no one need starve in these days of the Welfare State, but there was no escaping the fact that she had led a reasonably sheltered existence up to a few short weeks ago, and that what faced her was likely to be both difficult and unpleasant. Nor was it any consolation to remind herself of the thousands of girls of her age who were far worse off than she was herself. She felt totally and bewilderingly alone. From being the pivot on which the family’s love turned, she was now an outcast, and she felt all the acute vulnerability of her position.

But when the day of her departure actually arrived, she was relieved. She said a stilted goodbye to Sir Geoffrey in the study which had once been her father’s and was acutely embarrassed when he handed her with a few mumbled words a slip of paper which turned out to be a sizeable cheque. Blushing furiously, she managed a word of thanks and as soon as she was outside the door, she tore the cheque into tiny fragments and stuffed them into a jardiniere, conveniently situated on its pedestal further along the corridor.