Page 20 of New Beginnings At Pencarrow Bay
‘Look, as I said before, Lindy seems one hundred per cent on the ball to me. I just think this is really odd, that’s all.’ Peggy was surprised to feel a sudden tension in the room.
‘It’s really not helpful you implying she’s losing it,’ Ted snapped. ‘You’re behaving like Felix.’
‘I didn’t say that,’ she said emphatically. ‘I’m only trying to find a sensible explanation, Ted.’
‘Hmm,’ Ted said, his tone cool as he reached overto pick up her empty mug and take it, with his own, to the sink.
Peggy was baffled by the defensive position he was taking. ‘You’re making me feel bad,’ she said. ‘Let’s not argue. We’re on the same side here.’
Ted came over to sit beside her. He sighed, squeezed her hand. ‘Sorry.’
Neither spoke.
Then Peggy asked, ‘Are you going to tell Lindy I know?’
Ted gave a small shrug. ‘I don’t want to lie to her. But what she told me was in confidence, Peggy. I don’t know how she’s going to feel if she knows I shared it. That’s her worst fear realized.’
Peggy bit her lip.Even with me?It made her feel a little hurt that Lindy was so desperate for her not to know, while Ted did.
After a minute he went on, ‘Look, I’m not enjoying the situation, listening to her problems, seeing her unhappiness. But I am going to be there for her, Pegs. I’m worried about her. Now you know the situation, you don’t object, do you?’
‘Of course I don’t. I want to help her as much as you do,’ Peggy insisted. ‘You know I like Lindy. She’s been so kind to me.’ She pulled a wry face. ‘But there’s no need to sneak around. If you’re meeting her, just say.’
Ted gave her a relieved smile. ‘Thanks, sweetheart. God, I’m so glad I’ve told you. It’s been eating me up, keeping Lindy’s secret and knowing you suspected something.’ He dropped a kiss on Peggy’s cheek and rubbed his hands together. ‘So, what’s for supper, then?’
She told him, and rose to begin the process.
As she pulled the cling-film off the dish of Vietnamese beef salad– from Nigel Slater’s brilliant cookbook Christine and the team had given her as a retirement present– she pondered on what Ted had told her. He was right: Lindy was potentially vulnerable. It was fine having family living with her– as long as those family members had her best interests at heart. But if they didn’t… Her heart went out to her new friend and she felt mean for being funny about the dry robe and the drink. Lindy was obviously just thanking Ted for his support with a lovely birthday present. She poured the spicy dressing of lime, fish sauce and sweet chilli over the cooled beef– tender, Cornish-reared and grass-fed local meat, a million miles away from your average supermarket version– tomatoes from Jake’s greenhouse, thin sticks of cucumber and some of the watercress that grew in abundance in the stream that ran down from the hills and ended in the field next to the castle. She was thoroughly ashamed of herself for doubting Ted– and worried about what might be happening to Lindy. It was hard to know how to help.
11
A couple of days later, Peggy took Quentin up on his suggestion to do a round of the village loop on his buggy. She looked forward to seeing him, but she also had an ulterior motive.
‘We can drop in on the farm shop,’ Quentin declared, as they began their journey round the village from the centre, where they’d had a guilty coffee– immediately declared not as good as Ted’s– at Clove Hitch, the café on the harbour. It was Quentin’s suggestion, but Peggy was in total agreement. They wanted to have time to themselves, the coffee van always in danger of turning into a social event.
The café had seen better days, the navy-blue sign above the door– displaying a knotted rope– peeling and weathered from the constant blast of salty wind and spray. Rumour had it– as Quentin explained to Peggy– that it was about to be sold and turned into a buzzing cocktail bar for the summer’s tourist youth. Which seemed unlikely in a village like Pencarrow, where cosy pubs had always been the order of the day for all ages.
‘I hope they don’t,’ Quentin whispered, eyeing Terry, the man behind the counter. ‘He’ll definitely be out of a job, poor chap. He’s not exactly got the trendy mixologist vibe the new owners will be looking for.’
Peggy couldn’t help but feel sad for Terry. Out of a job at his age– she knew how that felt.Does he have plans?shewondered, constantly intrigued, these days, by how people viewed retirement. Did he long to stop working in a way she never had? For his sake she hoped so. The man was lugubrious, overweight and sweaty, probably in his sixties, but brusque to the point of rudeness with the customers, as if they were a cross he had to bear. And tourists could probably be supremely irritating.Maybe he longs for the axe to fall, she thought, as she sipped her coffee,so he can take up birdwatching or bowls.She wondered what hobby she could find that would fill a part, at least, of her days. But none sprang to mind. Only the faces of her sick children. One in particular, Scout, a charming girl of thirteen, who had a rare congenital heart condition that constantly sent her back into Great Ormond Street. She looked so frail, with a permanent blue tinge to her skin, but she was incredibly clever and very rewarding to teach, so full of life and choosing to ignore her disability.
‘So,’ Quentin began, when they were on their way up the hill, ‘I vote we make our way to the farm shop and see what Paul is up to. We might even be lucky. This could be the day Mother Messinger graces us with some of her heavenly lamb patties– them what take the skin off your throat.’ He chuckled. ‘And if not, there’s usually someone interesting to gawp at.’
The farm shop was owned by the son of the famous samosa-maker and his ex-model wife, Sienna. He was the lead singer of a successful millennium band– Lantimos Virgins– now defunct, which had enjoyed a couple of break-out hits at the time. Sexy and handsome, he had a voice to charm the birds from the trees. Of Jamaican heritage, although brought up since babyhood in England,Paul was the sort of man who filled the room with his personality, his laughter.
Sienna was a slim blonde, tall and huge-eyed, a beauty. But she was also generally acknowledged to be rude and rather grumpy. Nobody in the village could understand why, given her lifestyle and her gorgeous husband. The locals, particularly the women, wanted better for Paul.
His shop was a sort of passion. But the passion didn’t extend to the boring nitty-gritty of food safety or hygiene. Much of the stock had dodgy sell-by dates, but there might be– randomly and you had to be quick– his mother’s eccentric Cornish version of Caribbean treats for sale: sticky ginger and apple sponge, the apple substituted for pineapple; her spicy version of a Cornish pasty with minced lamb and butternut squash that Quentin loved; sweet chilli and potato puffs, instead of Jamaican plantain. And, equally randomly, some hung-over singer or rumpled model, general celebrity fare, might wander down from Paul and Sienna’s sprawling house behind the shop for the locals, as Quentin so aptly put it, to ‘gawp at’.
Peggy waited till they were past Ted’s van and on the top road before she broached the question that had been burning on her tongue since the uneasy conversation about Lindy the other night. She found it easier to ask Quentin when they were side by side and she didn’t have to meet his eye, because she didn’t intend to be completely honest. It was a breezy day, patchy sunlight, but warm enough as he accelerated up the hill, his buggy-driving skills vastly improved since that first day at the beach. ‘Umm, can I ask you something professional, Quentin?’
He turned a curious face to her, but she kept her eyes to the front. ‘Go ahead.’
‘If you think someone is being sort of coerced– not sure how to describe it but I suppose they call it being “gaslighted”, these days– what should you do about it? Who should you turn to for help?’
He looked thoughtful. ‘Is it “gaslighted” or “gaslit”? I wonder… I suppose gaslit is the actual flame thing.’ Then he pulled himself together. ‘Sorry, yes. A tricky one.’ He drove on a few yards. ‘I suppose you’re not going to tell me who this is?’
‘Can’t.’
