Page 24 of Summer at the Cornish Garden Café

‘I was just making sure I remembered the details of the legend,’ he said, shaking himself inwardly. ‘So… Many years ago, there was a handsome young fisherman named Branok. He loved to fish and had done so since he was a small child, accompanying his father and grandfather out on their small boat in all weathers. Branok was strong and fit, a true Cornishman. Heloved fishing but he also loved a beautiful young woman named Demelza.

Demelza was the daughter of the village wise woman. She was able to heal people with herbs and she helped her mother in her role as village midwife. They were respected and loved by the villagers and often called upon for help with ailments.

Branok and Demelza had pledged their love and sworn they’d be together as soon as she turned eighteen. Her mother had forbidden her to marry too young, not wanting her to follow the same fate as her older sister who had married at sixteen and died in childbirth.

But one day, Branok set out in the boat alone. His grandfather had taken ill and his father had stayed home to care for him. Branok insisted on going because they needed to eat and to provide for the some of the elderly villagers they supported. He set off, but a terrible storm blew up and it lashed his boat around on the sea. Demelza went to the cliffs, where the development is now, and watched as his boat was tossed around like a child’s toy. The rain hammered down, the waves crashed against the shore and the cliffs, and lightning pierced the sky. As Branok’s boat was torn in half, Demelza’s screams were swallowed by the thunder that cracked the dark sky.’

He paused and focused on Lena’s face and saw that she was worrying her bottom lip, her hands clasped together as if in prayer.

‘It’s so sad,’ she said.

‘Legends often are.’ He smiled. ‘Do you want me to stop?’

‘No, I have to know what happened next.’

‘Branok was swallowed by the sea along with his boat. It was the death he’d have wanted as a fisherman, but he was very young and had so much ahead of him. But it wasn’t meant to be. However, Demelza wouldn’t accept that he was gone. She spent days and weeks searching the beaches for him, watching from the cliffs and calling his name. She wouldn’t eat or sleep and she became ill as her heart broke. No one could help her, not her mother or any of the villagers, because the man she had loved and seen her future with was no longer around.

Finally, one evening she was on the cliffs, and she looked down and saw a familiar figure on the beach. She rushed down to the sand, desperate to embrace her lover once more. When she reached the beach, she paused, because she could see that Branok was no longer whole. He was a spirit, his body limned by the moonlight, there and yet not there.

As she approached him, she heard his voice on the whisper of the waves that caressed the shore. He said, “Demelza, I will always be with you. But you must live and treat the villagers with your medicine and your skills and learn to love again. This was my fate and so it must be, but yours is to care for the people of Porthpenny and to grow old and wise. I love you and one day, when the time is right, I will return to claim you.”’

‘Oh my god!’ Lena’s eyes glistened and a tear escaped then ran down her cheek. Without thinking, Thomas wiped it gently away with his thumb.

‘It’s so sad. What happened to Demelza?’

‘She never fell in love again, but she cared for the villagers, and she grew old and wise. Then one night, when she was in her eightieth year, she heard Branok calling to her again. She left her cottage under the glow of a full moon and went down to thebeach where he was waiting for her. Taking his hand, she walked into the waves with him and was never seen again.’

Now Lena’s tears flowed down her cheeks so Thomas wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She trembled as she cried and he held her tighter, wanting to take away her sadness. ‘It’s such a… a s-sad story.’

Thomas nodded. ‘There’s hope in the story though because they were reunited. Their love wasn’t destroyed by time or separation. It was the kind of love that endures. And they say… they say that under the glow of each full moon, if you listen carefully enough, you will hear Branok calling to Demelza and her answering. If you’re really lucky, you might see them walking along the beach together before they disappear into the waves.’

Lena pulled a tissue from her pocket and wiped her eyes then she looked up at him. ‘Sorry.’

‘Why are you sorry?’

‘For crying at a story.’

‘Don’t ever be sorry for crying. The story makes me think again about fate. Perhaps we should take from it that each one of us has a fate already mapped out, regardless of what we do, but we can still fall in love and that love can last more than a lifetime.’

‘Are you a romantic then, Thomas?’ She peered at him from under her damp lashes where tiny teardrops sat like diamonds.

He gave an embarrassed shrug at the direct question. ‘I don’t know. I think I used to be before… before this.’ He tapped his leg, rubbed at his cheek. ‘But I hate what happened to me. Fate or not. I mean, if that was my fate then what next? What am I meant to do now?’ And just like that, he felt himself sliding downthe helter-skelter of trauma and grief. It was exhausting how the cycle continued, even when he thought he was possibly moving on.

Lena gently touched his cheek and then she moved closer to him and pressed a gentle kiss to his scar. He gasped in surprise and tensed; certain she’d be horrified by being so close to it. So close to him. But when he met her eyes, there was no horror or revulsion there at all. Her pupils dilated and he saw something he hadn’t seen in years in their grey depths.Desire.But how could she possibly desire him when he looked the way he did?

‘You are finding your way, Thomas,’ she said. ‘One hour, one day, one week at a time. Whether you know it or not, you are healing inside and out.’

‘Do you really think so?’ he asked, emotion welling in his throat and making it ache.

‘I know so.’ She held his gaze, her beautiful eyes almost silver now as the sky turned lavender and the stars emerged.

Over on the village square, music started up and Lena smiled. ‘Is that Cornish folk music?’

‘It is indeed.’

‘Can we go and listen?’ she asked.

‘Of course.’ He stood and held out his hand and she took it. They put their rubbish into the recycling bins and made their way over to the square. Arm in arm, they stood watching the band and tapping their feet as the light seeped from the sky. All round the village, solar lights twinkled, and above them a full moon glowed bright in the sky.

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