Sara Craven - High Tide At Midnight

Lady Kerslake returned to her former saccharine amiability, giving the impression that it was only Morwenna’s own intractability that was taking her away from the Priory. Morwenna, putting her own cheek dutifully against the scented one turned to her, wondered with a wry twist of her lips what Cousin Patricia’s reaction would be if she suddenly took her at her word and announced that she was going to stay.

Vanessa was waiting in the hall tapping her foot impatiently. She made no attempt to help Morwenna with her case or rucksack but walked briskly ahead of her to the car and sat revving the engine while her cousin stowed her luggage in the boot. Morwenna climbed into the passenger seat and looked steadily ahead of her. There was no point in looking back. The Priory was closed to her now and lingering backward glances as the car started down the drive would only distress her.

Vanessa gave her a sideways glance as they waited to emerge from the drive on to the road.

‘You’re a cool customer, I must say, Wenna,’ she remarked. ‘One moment you’re drooping about the place like Patience on a monument or something, and the next you’re off—and to Cornwall of all places! You must be completely mad. I mean, it may be all very well in the summer, except for the crowds, of course. But in winter time—my God!’

She paused but Morwenna made no response, so she continued, ‘I thought Guy might have made the effort to come down and say goodbye—especially under the circumstances.’ She waited again, but there was still no reply, and her voice was slightly pettish as she went on, ‘I suppose he thought if he made a fuss it might upset the frightful Georgina.’

Morwenna said calmly, ‘There was absolutely no reason for him to make any kind of fuss.’

‘Oh, come off it, Wenna.’ Vanessa put her foot on the accelerator and overtook a van on a slight bend to the alarm and indignation of its driver. ‘You know quite well that you and Guy had a thing going. It can’t be pleasant for you to see him with someone else. I don’t blame you at all for going off to lick your wounds somewhere—I think I’d do the same in your position. But if it’s any consolation to you, Mother was furious over Georgina. It’s been almost amusing watching her try to be civil to her. I think in some ways she would have preferred it if Guy had insisted on sticking to you.’

‘Thank you,’ Morwenna said drily.

Vanessa hunched a shoulder. ‘Oh, you know what I mean. After all, you were pretty involved with him. He’s lucky to have got away as lightly as he has.’

‘Without having to make an honest woman of me, do you mean?’ Morwenna was controlling her temper with some difficulty. ‘Is that what you all think?’

Vanessa shot her an uneasy glance. ‘Well—not precisely. But Guy is sleeping with Georgina—and being utterly blatant about it, so….’

‘So naturally you all assumed that I’d fallen into bed with him with equal ease.’ Morwenna forced a smile. ‘I can’t pretend I’m flattered, or does Guy usually restrict his attentions to pushovers?’

‘Well, let’s say he doesn’t usually waste a great deal of his time on frightened virgins,’ Vanessa returned derisively.

Morwenna caught her bottom lip savagely in her teeth. ‘I see.’ She was silent for a moment. It was difficult to know which was worse—the assumption that she had been Guy’s pliant mistress or the alternative inference that she had not been sufficiently attractive to him for him to have attempted seduction. She would have preferred not to be ranged in either category.

She managed a light laugh. ‘Actually our relationship was based more on mutual convenience than anything else,’ she said, digging her hands into the pockets of her sheepskin coat to conceal the fact that they were trembling. ‘We—we both needed someone to be seen around with. And I don’t blame Guy at all for confining himself to ladies with money. Now that our positions are reversed, I’m doing more or less the same thing.’

‘You are?’ Vanessa gave her a slightly flabbergasted look. ‘I don’t follow you.’

Morwenna allowed her smile to widen. ‘Well, I’m not going down to Cornwall for my health’s sake, let’s say.’

‘No?’ Vanessa was openly intrigued. ‘Is there a man?’

Morwenna achieved a giggle quite as smug as anything Georgina had produced.

‘Of course there’s a man,’ she said without a tremor, crossing her fingers superstitiously in the shelter of her pockets. ‘I’d hardly be travelling to the back of beyond at this time of year otherwise.’

‘Well!’ Vanessa’s tone was frankly congratulatory. ‘I always knew you couldn’t possibly be as innocent as you looked. Have you known him long?’

Morwenna shrugged. ‘Long enough,’ she said airily. Since I was a small child, she thought hysterically, in dreams and stories, and please don’t let her ask me how old he is or any other details. I don’t care if she does think me a gold-digger or worse. Anything’s better than being regarded as a charity case. And I’ll never see any of them again, so they can think what they like.

Vanessa was speaking again. ‘And do your plans include marriage, or is that an indelicate question?’

‘Oh, that would depend on a lot of things,’ Morwenna said hastily. ‘I—I prefer to cross that bridge when I come to it.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘And if I can persuade him to provide the money to send me to painting school next year, I may never have to cross it at all.’

‘I see,’ Vanessa said blankly. ‘Well, all I can say is that I wish you luck.’

‘Thank you,’ Morwenna laughed. ‘But I don’t think I shall need it.’ Her tone implied a total confidence in her own power of attraction, and for a moment she despised herself for playing Vanessa’s game, but what did it matter after all? They were never likely to meet again. Once she was out of the way, Morwenna guessed that her cousins would breathe a sigh of relief and put her out of their minds. In a way she could see their point of view. While she had remained at the Priory, they could never feel their inheritance was truly theirs. She was a wholly unwelcome reminder of the old days, and relations between the two families had never been on the most intimate terms.

But it was chilling to have to recognise that she was now alone in the world with her own way to make. There had been times, not long ago either, when she had inwardly rebelled against the loving shelter of the Priory, when she had been sorely tempted to thrust away her father’s and Martin’s concern for her and take off on her own like so many of her contemporaries. In some ways now, she wished she had yielded to the impulse. At least now she would not feel so bereft.

Later, as she stowed her solitary suitcase and her haversack, with the bulky parcel of canvases attached, on the luggage rack and felt the train jerk under her feet as it set off on the long run to the West, a tight knot of tension settled in the pit of her stomach. She watched the platforms and sidings slip past with increasing despondency. In spite of her brave words to Vanessa, each one of which she now bitterly regretted, she knew she might well be embarking on a wild goose chase.

She swallowed past a lump in her throat. The request that the Trevennons should store her mother’s pictures until she was able to come for them had seemed quite a reasonable one when she had first formulated it. Yet what right had she, a stranger among strangers, to ask any favours at all? Wouldn’t she have done better to have stayed in London and hardened herself to sell the pictures? That would have been the sensible thing to have done instead of tearing off on this quixotic journey to a corner of England she only knew from bedtime stories and a few romantic images on canvas.