Page 6 of New Beginnings At Pencarrow Bay

The next morning, Peggy woke with a groggy head.

She hadn’t slept well. Ted had been more his usual self when he’d come back from the walk with the dog, but she hadn’t been able to shake off the sense that something was going on in his life that he wasn’t sharing with her.

So, uncharacteristically, she’d had one too many glasses of wine in an attempt to ignore her instincts.

For a while she sat on the edge of the bed and watched the rhododendron bush to the side of the terrace waving in the sea breeze.

The soft pink blooms of a month ago had shrivelled brown and dropped.

I’ll go for a swim, clear my head , she thought.

She knew herself well, her tendency for over-thinking legendary, according to Annie, whose eyes would sometimes widen in disbelief at the scenarios Peggy cooked up.

Ted’s always telling me that cold water stimulates endorphins , she muttered inwardly, changing the focus of her thoughts with effort.

Some feel-good hormones were exactly what she needed to sweep away the cobwebs.

Swallowing a cup of coffee, eager, suddenly, to get out into the beautiful spring morning, she pulled on her swimming costume under her jeans and sweatshirt and packed a towel in her green-striped elephant-grass basket.

Strolling down the hill on the shore road that ran through the village, she stopped at the donkey field.

Tina and her daughter Mina– who were pretty much alike– were munching happily on the grass, but came over to her when Peggy called.

She’d brought carrots and now she handed them to the animals over the gate, stroking Tina’s soft grey muzzle as she watched their large yellow teeth loudly crunching the vegetables.

Then she continued down the hill, passing Ted’s truck in the castle car park– she waved but he didn’t see her– and on until she reached the beach.

You could swim in Mermaid Cove at the other end of the village, but it was rockier, with less open water.

Today the sea, retreated halfway across the sand, was sparkling with welcome, the square blue pontoon– recently put back in the water after winter– bobbing a comfortable distance from the shore.

She wasn’t a strong swimmer, more of a pootler, but she loved to kick lazily back and forth or lie on her back in the salt water and contemplate the sky.

She would do a circuit of the pontoon today, she decided, pulling off her outer clothes and tying her shoulder-length hair into a ponytail on top of her head.

She had the beach almost to herself, apart from an older man sitting on a rock and gazing out to sea with a beige bucket hat pulled low over his eyes, and two women walking back and forth across the sand, deep in earnest conversation.

She didn’t recognize any of them– although Ted could probably tell me the colour of their grandmother’s eyes , she thought, with a wry smile.

Now she crept gingerly across the band of spiky shells and pebbles to the sand and the water’s edge, hovering ankle deep in the ice cold sea, her toes already numb.

But as she was steeling herself to go further, she heard a sudden loud noise behind her.

It was a cross between a bark and a shout.

Turning, she saw the man from the rock frantically waving his hat and pointing out to sea as he yelled a warning.

Peggy, taken aback, quickly scanned the water where he indicated, but failed to spot anything that might cause such a kerfuffle.

She watched as the man leaped up and began a frantic, lopsided hobble over the sand, seeming much older than his looks suggested.

As he reached her, she held out her hand to steady him.

Now he’d taken his hat off, she recognized him as someone she’d seen around the harbour, usually walking very slowly, supported by a dark-haired younger man.

‘Sorry, didn’t mean to alarm you,’ he said breathlessly, leaning heavily on Peggy’s hand. ‘I’m absolutely sure I saw a dark fin poking out of the water.’

‘A fin ? Like attached to a… shark?’

He nodded gravely. ‘It’s just that Toby, our local fisherman, spotted a shark in the bay yesterday morning when he was doing whatever he does with his crab pots. He posted a video on the village website.’

‘Oh, my God.’ Peggy stared at him, hastily backing out of the sea. ‘A real one? As in, eat you if you get too close?’

The man looked a little embarrassed. ‘Well, no. This was a friendly type, not the munching variety, apparently. Toby claimed it was a basking shark. He described it as “beautiful”. And completely harmless to humans. But I reckoned you might be freaked out if you swam into it– I’m sure you’ve seen the movie. ’

Peggy shuddered. ‘I would literally have died on the spot,’ she said, with feeling.

He looked relieved and gave her a shy grin.

‘Me too. Rory, my husband, says I’m an old hysteric, catastrophizing about everything.

And he’s probably right. But I thought it best to warn you.

’ Letting go of her arm, her new friend shuffled awkwardly to a nearby rock and lowered himself onto it with a grunt and a sigh, shifting about until he found a comfortable perch.

‘Bloody back,’ he muttered. Then his face cleared and he held up his hand to her. ‘Quentin Dorris, by the way.’

She shook it. ‘Peggy Gilbert. Good to meet you.’

‘Likewise.’ He thought for a moment, then went on, ‘You must be the fair Ted’s wife, then. He’s mentioned you. Can’t be that many Peggys around here… good old-fashioned name.’

Surprised, as usual, to be so readily identified by someone she’d never spoken to, Peggy nodded as she corrected him: ‘Partner, not wife.’

Quentin pulled a face. ‘Ooh, can’t be doing with that word “partner”. Not fond of “significant other” either. So coy. Would you consider “consort” perhaps? Or why not just plain “lover”?’

She laughed. Quentin had a very engaging smile, his weather-beaten face craggy and lived-in, surrounded by a shock of untidy greying hair to his light-blue shirt collar, his previously anxious brown eyes now alive with amusement.

‘Best coffee for miles around, Ted’s, it has to be said,’ he added, when she didn’t answer.

‘He’ll be very happy to hear that.’

Into the silence, Quentin asked, ‘So, are you going to swim? Or have I put you off for good?’

She wanted to say she was gung-ho, quite unconcerned by the prospect of rubbing her bare legs up against the smooth grey body of a huge shark, basking or otherwise. But she wasn’t going to lie. ‘Might give it a miss today,’ she said, pulling a face.

Quentin looked stricken. ‘That’s terrible.

I’ve gone and ruined your morning dip– probably for nothing.

I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have worried you, but I panicked.

’ He shrugged. ‘Toby says there are lots of sharks around the Cornish coast– there was another spotted in St Ives recently. We have dolphins and seals and all sorts, of course, but I doubt the sharks come this far into the harbour,’ he added, not sounding sufficiently doubting to Peggy’s nervous ear.

‘I’m glad you warned me. Anyway, you’d have looked pretty silly if you’d sat there and watched me screaming my head off because you didn’t want to make a fuss.’

He laughed as he began to struggle upright from the rock.

‘Well, I must say it’s nice to have my anxiety validated for once– even if I was mistaken.

’ Steadying himself, he added, ‘I’d buy you one of Ted’s excellent coffees and a bun as compensation for messing up your day, but I imagine you get them for free, so my company would be your only gain– if it is, indeed, a gain.

’ He hesitated, then went on, ‘Even if you’ve had enough of my company, my shiny new cripple’s chariot is up the top and I’d be so grateful if you could help me to it.

I didn’t bring my stick, stupidly, and Rory insists I shouldn’t go down on the beach alone. ’

‘I’d love a coffee,’ Peggy assured Quentin, as she concentrated on steadying him on the wet sand.

They began to make their way slowly across the beach and up the slope, stopping every few minutes so Quentin could rest on one of the benches lining the steep tarmacked path.

His red mobility scooter sat glinting in the sunshine beside the sea wall, tucked into the hedge on the shore road.

Peggy wondered what was wrong with Quentin’s back, and how long he’d been so physically compromised, but she didn’t feel she knew him well enough to ask.

‘I’ll just go and get my things,’ she said, as he sank gratefully into the black seat of the buggy.

As she hurried back to the rock where she’d left her clothes and began to dress, she felt rather excited to have made this charming new acquaintance.

Sliding into her canvas shoes, she found herself looking forward to telling Ted the shark story.

He’ll laugh at me , she thought, with a smile.

When she got back to Quentin, he was texting laboriously. Looking up, he said, ‘Just telling Rory what I’m up to. He worries.’

‘So you’re not the only one,’ she joked.

He smiled. ‘Ah, but Rory only worries about me. I worry about everything else .’

They made slow progress up to the castle, pulling in to let the cars pass. It wasn’t as busy as it would be later in the summer, but Peggy had noticed a sharp increase in traffic since Easter. They chatted easily, Quentin filling her in about the houses and inhabitants they passed.

‘That one used to be owned by a super-rich crook, think his name was Philip something, who ran off with his company’s pension fund.

A lovely couple, can’t remember their names, bought it for a song, and actually live in it full time.

The small one on the corner with the lattice windows is Teresa’s.

She used to be our brilliant sub-postmistress, but was implicated in that Horizon horror show– cleared, obviously, but it ruined her mental health.

And her life. Even now she’s been vindicated, we hardly see her out any more.

That sweet little place behind the hedge with the French shutters and green front door?

’ He pointed up one of the narrow lanes.

‘That’s the prettiest house on the planet inside.

I long for it. It belongs to Florence Bywater, the writer.

We’re friends. But she’s in her nineties, and seldom visits now. ’

Peggy was really enjoying herself. Quentin was amusing and very informative.

He hadn’t quite got the hang of the controls on his buggy, so he would suddenly lurch forward then come to an abrupt halt, which was concerning with cars coming through.

But they got to the crest of the hill without incident, where they bumped into a tall, barefoot man with a voluminous purple cloak edged in gold brocade, blond locks flowing dramatically down his back, striding at some speed and purpose towards the village.

‘Hi, Ken,’ Quentin called. The man came to an abrupt halt.

‘Quentin, how are you? I hope you’re coming to my reading?’

‘Uh, sorry, not this time,’ Quentin replied, with a kind smile.

Ken raised an imperious eyebrow, waved goodbye and set off again.

‘Silly old bore,’ Quentin said fondly, when Ken was out of earshot. ‘He thinks he’s the reincarnation of Morton Nance, who was the Grand Bard of Cornwall in the thirties. That’s why he gave me such a dirty look when I called him Ken. We’re told we have to address him as Morton now. Ridiculous.’

Peggy laughed. ‘He’s doing a reading?’

‘Oh, yes. He camps out at Morvoren’s feet– tail, I suppose I should say– and drones on about the imminent resurgence of Cornish culture. The tourists love him: bit of eccentricity, local colour. I’m all for Cornish culture resurging– although I suspect Ken and his nonsense do it no favours.’

‘Maybe the shark’ll get him,’ Peggy joked, and they began to giggle.