The Mermaid Garden Page 2

  Little had changed and much had been enhanced by her descendants, who added to the beauty of the place with their own flair and extravagance until they fell on hard times and were forced to sell in the early 1990s. The Polzanze had been converted into a hotel, which would have broken Alice’s heart had she lived to see it. But her legacy remained, as did much of the original hand-painted wallpaper of birds and butterflies. The cedar tree that sheltered the east side was reputed to be over five hundred years old, and the grounds boasted an ancient walled vegetable garden—built long before the duchess arrived to cultivate rhubarb and raspberries—as well as an ancient gardener who had been there longer than anyone could remember.

  Marina heard a car draw up on the gravel outside and hurried to the first-floor window. She peered through the glass to see a dirty old Morris Minor, stuffed with canvases and paint-stained dust sheets, stall in front of the hotel like an exhausted mule. Her heart accelerated with anticipation and she hastily checked herself in the mirror on the landing. A little over fifty, she was at the height of her beauty, as if time had danced lightly across her face, barely leaving a footprint. Her luscious honey-brown hair tumbled over her shoulders in waves, and her eyes were deep set and engaging, the color of smoky quartz. Petite, with small bones and a narrow waist, she was none the less curvaceous, with wide hips and a generous bosom. She smoothed down her dress and fluffed up her hair, and hoped that she’d make a good impression.

  “Marina darling, it looks like your first potential artist-in-residence has arrived,” exclaimed her husband, Grey Turner, peering through the glass in the hall and chuckling as an elderly man stepped onto the gravel in a long brocaded coat and black breeches, his scuffed shoes decorated with large brass buckles that glinted weakly in the spring sunshine.

  “Good Lord, it’s Captain Hook!” remarked Clementine, Grey’s twenty-three-year-old daughter, who joined him at the window. She screwed up her nose in disdain. “Why Submarine wants to invite a painter to sponge off us every summer is beyond me. It’s very pretentious to have an artist-in-residence.”

  Grey ignored the disrespectful nickname his children had coined for their stepmother. “Marina has a good nose for business,” he said mildly. “Paul Lockwood was a great success last year; our guests loved him. It’s only natural that she should want to repeat it.”

  “She might change her mind when she sees this old sea dog!”

  “Do you think he has a parrot tucked away with all that luggage?” Grey continued, watching the old man walk stiffly round to the boot and pull out a shabby portfolio.

  “I think most certainly, Dad—and a ship moored down at the quay. At least he doesn’t have a hook for a hand.”

  “Marina will think he’s delightful. She loves eccentrics.”

  “Do you think that’s why she married you?”

  Grey straightened up and put his hands in his pockets. He was very tall with curly, graying hair and a long, sensitive face. He looked down at his daughter and shook his head. “Don’t forget you carry my genes, Clemmie. If I’m eccentric, there’s a good chance that you have inherited the same flaw.”

  “I wouldn’t consider it a flaw, Dad. There’s nothing more boring than regular people. Mind you,” she added, as the artist closed the boot, “you can have too much of a good thing.”

  “He’s here! How exciting!” Marina joined her husband and stepdaughter at the window. Clementine watched her joy deflate as she laid eyes on her first candidate, staggering towards the entrance with his artwork tucked under his moth-eaten sleeve, and felt a small swell of pleasure.

  “My God!” Marina exclaimed, throwing up her hands. “What am I going to do?”

  “Too late now, darling. You’d better show him in, or he might draw his sword.” Marina implored her husband with a desperate look, but he shook his head and laughed at her affectionately, digging his hands deeper into the pockets of his corduroy trousers. “This is your project. I know how you hate me to interfere.”

  “Why don’t you interview him with me?” She tried to seduce him with a grin.

  “Oh, no, darling, he’s all yours.”

  “You’re a wicked, wicked man, Grey Turner,” she retorted, but her lips curled at the corners as she took her place in the middle of the hall by the round table and extravagant flower display, while Shane Black, the porter, helped the old man in with his portfolio.

  Ignoring the amused faces congregated at the window—for by now Jennifer, one of the receptionists, and Heather, a waitress, had found an excuse to come into the hall—Marina smiled at her first candidate warmly, extending her hand. His was rough and calloused, his fingernails ingrained with old paint. He seized hers with a firm grip. His eyes devoured her with the relish of a man who has been at sea for many months, and he seemed lost for words. “It’s so good of you to come, Mr. Bascobalena. Let’s go into my office where we can have some coffee and a little chat. Perhaps you would prefer tea?”

  “Or a barrel of rum,” Clementine hissed to her father.

  Mr. Bascobalena cleared his throat and swallowed. “Black coffee, no sugar—and please call me Balthazar.”

  His deep baritone startled Marina, and she flinched, withdrawing her hand. She could see her stepdaughter sniggering out of the corner of her eye, and she lifted her chin defiantly.

  “Shane, see to it that Heather brings Mr. Bascobalena a pot of black coffee right away and a cappuccino for me.”

  “Will do, Mrs. Turner,” said Shane, suppressing his mirth.

  Picking up the portfolio, Shane followed them across the hall, through the drawing room, where a few clusters of guests sat reading the newspapers, and into the pretty green sitting room beyond which Marina’s office overlooked the Children’s Garden, redundant aqueduct, and the sea. She gestured that he place the portfolio on the coffee table, then watched him leave the room, closing the door behind him.

  Marina invited Balthazar to sit on the sofa and winced as his dirty clothes made contact with the pale green chenille. She sank into the armchair and turned her face to the open window, where the sea breeze carried on its breath the sweet scent of cut grass and ozone. She could hear the distant roar of the ocean and the plaintive cry of gulls wheeling on the wind, and felt her heart ache with yearning to be down on the beach, her feet in the water, her hair tossed about by the breeze. Reluctantly, she wrenched her thoughts back. She already knew that Balthazar Bascobalena would not be spending the summer at the Polzanze, but she had to do him the courtesy of going through the motions.

  “You have a wonderful name—Bascobalena. Sounds Spanish.” She was aware that he was staring at her, his jaw a little slack, as if he had never seen a woman before. In spite of the open window, his unwashed smell was beginning to fill the room. She wished Heather would hurry with the coffees, but guessed Shane was hanging around in the hall discussing their visitor with the rest of her staff. She hoped none of her guests had seen him come in.

  “Perhaps, somewhere in my family history, there’s a Spaniard. But we’re Devon folk through and through, and proud of it.”

  Marina raised her eyebrows doubtfully. He had the dark skin and eyes of a Spaniard. When he bared his teeth, they were brown and rotten like a sailor with scurvy. “And Balthazar. You have the name of a hero in a book.”

  “My mother was fanciful.”

  “Was she an artist, too?”

  “No, but she was a dreamer, God rest her soul.”

  “So, tell me, Balthazar, what do you paint?”

  “Boats,” he replied, leaning forward to open his portfolio.

  “Boats,” Marina repeated, trying to inject some enthusiasm into her voice. “How interesting. But not surprising,” she added humorously.

  Mr. Bascobalena missed her reference to his pirate outfit. “Oh, I’ve been fascinated by boats since I was a nipper.”

  “Raised on the sea?”

  “Oh, yes, as was my father and grandfather before him.” He was distracted by a couple of paintings hanging on the
wall. “Those are good landscapes. Are you a collector, Mrs. Turner?”

  “Sadly not. I don’t paint, either. I just admire people like you who do. So, let’s see some of your work.”

  He pulled out a sketch of a fishing boat in a tempestuous sea. For a moment Marina forgot his smell and his extraordinary clothes and stared incredulously at the picture before her.

  “It’s beautiful,” she gasped, shuffling to the edge of her chair. “You have a gift.”

  “Look at this one, then.” He pulled out another, his enthusiasm rising. Marina was stunned by the wistful charm of his work. He had sketched boats of all kinds: from fleets of Elizabethan ships to modern yachts and barges. Some drawn in calm waters at dawn, others on the high seas by moonlight, all with the same stirring sense of melancholy. “I paint in oils, too, but they’re too big to bring. You can come and see them if you like? I live near Salcombe.”

  “Thank you. I’m sure they’re as lovely as your sketches.” She looked at him with sincerity. “You have an extraordinary talent.”

  “If I could paint people, I’d paint you.” Marina ignored the lecherous look in his eyes.

  “You don’t paint people?” She feigned disappointment.

  “Not a chance.” He ran a hand through thinning gray hair that reached the gilded epaulettes on his shoulders. “Never have done. Can’t get them right. Whatever I do they always look like monkeys.”

  “What a shame. You see, Balthazar, I need my artist-in-residence to teach my guests how to paint everything. Not just boats and monkeys. I’m sorry.”

  As Balthazar’s shoulders hunched in defeat, Heather appeared with the tray carrying a silver coffeepot and a cappuccino. Marina shot her a furious look for having taken so long, and Heather flushed a little as she placed it on the desk. Marina hoped he’d leave right away, but his greedy eyes settled on the gingernut biscuits and his spirits lifted. Reluctantly, she poured him a cup of coffee, handed him the biscuits, and watched him sink back into her sofa.

  * * *

  Clementine climbed into her red Mini Cooper and drove down the winding narrow lanes towards the town of Dawcomb-Devlish. Woolly fields undulated in a patchwork of assorted greens beneath a clear cerulean sky. Swallows dived and seagulls wheeled, and every now and then she glimpsed the sparkling blue ocean gently rippling into the hazy mists on the horizon. And yet, in spite of the beauty, Clementine’s heart was a nugget of resentment.

  She stared miserably at the gray tarmac and considered her lot. She wished she was traveling around India again, enjoying the freedom that three years and a respectable degree at university merited, instead of schlepping into Dawcomb-Devlish every morning to slog away as secretary to the desperately bland Mr. Atwood and his sleepy estate agency on the high street.

  It had come as something of a shock when her father had declared that he no longer had the money to fund her self-indulgence. She had hoped to defer work for another year at least. He had offered her a job at the hotel, like Jake, who had worked his way up to manager, but she’d rather die than call her stepmother boss. So he had found her a position for six months while Mr. Atwood’s secretary, Polly, was on maternity leave. If she lasted six weeks it would be a miracle—not only was she barely able to type, but she was very disorganized, relying on Sylvia, Mr. Atwood’s partner’s secretary, to do most of the work for her. She was aware that Mr. Atwood’s patience was being sorely tested, but as he was indebted to her father for sending him clients there was little he could do.

  It was a bore to be in Devon at all. If her mother hadn’t had to sell her house in London and move up to Scotland, she’d have found a far more glamorous job in Chelsea and would be spending every night with her friends in Boujis. As it was, she found herself in Devon, which she loathed on account of the many summer holidays she had spent being dragged onto cold beaches and shivering on rocks while her brother and father went crabbing. Marina used to make lavish picnics and would take her up and down the beach looking for shells, but Clementine always refused to take her hand. It was a small act of defiance. But she had always felt inadequate beside this beautiful creature who had stolen her father’s heart. She was well aware of the light in his eyes when he looked at her, as if he were gazing on an angel, and the way the light dimmed when he looked at her, as if she were an interruption. She didn’t doubt his love; he just loved Marina more.

  Approaching the town, Clementine noticed a black object lying in the middle of the road. At first she thought it was an old boot, and slowed down. But on closer inspection she saw that it was a hedgehog, crawling leisurely across the tarmac. She glanced in her rearview mirror to see a couple of cars behind her and knew that if she didn’t stop, the hedgehog would surely be crushed. The animal’s plight drew her out of herself, and she braked suddenly, threw open the door, and hurried to his aid. The man in the car behind tooted angrily. Clementine ignored him and bent down to move the hedgehog along. The trouble was, he was very prickly and riddled with flees. She thought quickly, noticing a couple of cars coming towards her, and took off her shoes. Carefully, she scooped the hedgehog off the ground in one and put him down on the grassy verge. It gave her pleasure to watch him shuffle into the bush and disappear. By the time she climbed back into her car there was a small queue behind and in front. She waved her thanks as she passed, beaming a smile at the drivers who scowled back at her.

  When she burst into the office, mumbling apologies, it was well past ten. Sylvia Helvin, a feisty redhead divorcée with big breasts barely restrained by her tight green V-neck sweater and silk scarf, placed her hand over the telephone receiver and grinned broadly. “Don’t panic, lovely, they’re both out at a meeting this morning. We have the office to ourselves. Be a darling and get me a latte.” She lifted her scarlet talons and laughed throatily into the telephone. “Now, Freddie, you’re a naughty, naughty boy. You better behave or I’ll have to smack you again.” Clementine wandered off to the Black Bean Coffee Shop. When she returned, Sylvia was still talking, the receiver clamped between her chin and shoulder, busy filing her nails. Clementine plonked the coffee carton in front of her and threw her bag onto the floor. “Bad morning?” Sylvia asked, hanging up.

  “Submarine is interviewing artists.”

  “Ah, the artist-in-residence. Very posh.”

  “But that’s just it. It’s not posh at all. It’s pretentious.”

  “Does it matter, if he’s handsome?”

  “Handsome? Some chance. You should have seen the pirate that rocked up at dawn. Old, smelly, and clearly mad. All that was missing was his ship.”

  Sylvia sipped her latte cautiously so as not to ruin her lipstick. “You know, she’s either brave or foolish inviting a total stranger into her home.”

  “It’s not a home, it’s a hotel. Anyway, that’s the business for you—total strangers traipsing in and out all day, every day. Ghastly!”

  “No, I mean with the robberies. They’ve started calling him Baffles, the gentleman thief. He targets hotels like your father’s, as well as big houses. Haven’t you read the paper this morning?”

  “I don’t read the Dawcomb-Devlish Gazette.”

  “You’re missing out. It’s a veritable mine of local information. It’s all getting rather bizarre. He descended on a big house just outside Thurlestone, crept in while they were all asleep, and left with loads of cash and a serious work of art. The weird thing is he seemed to know where everything was, as if he’d been there and checked it out first.”

  “How do they know he’s a he?”

  Sylvia shrugged. “Well, he signs his name Raffles, after the fictional character, and he was a man. That’s why they’ve nicknamed him Baffles.” She laughed through her nose. “Typical journalists, they’re loving it! Get this, though: he didn’t leave a single clue except for a little note saying ‘thank you’ in neat and tidy writing.”

  “You’re joking!”

  “Would I make light of such a serious matter?” She sucked in her cheeks. “I tease you not, C
lemmie dear. The robber has good manners. To think, only a week ago he targeted the Palace Hotel in Thurlestone. Hope he doesn’t come down here.”

  Clementine laughed and flopped into her chair. “Well, I don’t really care if he targets the Polzanze and steals all Submarine’s precious paintings. He’d be doing me a favor if he managed to carry her off with his loot.”

  “I think you’re being unfair. I like her. She’s glamorous.”

  “Cheap glamour.”

  “Don’t be such a snob.”

  “I’m not a snob. I don’t care where people come from if they’re nice.”

  “She’s a local girl, like me.”

  “Not that you’d know. She tries so hard to sound posh, there’s barely any trace of her original country accent.” Clementine chuckled. “The trouble is she’s ended up with a very strange accent that’s neither one thing nor the other—at times she even sounds foreign!”

  “You’re very hard on her, Clemmie. So, she has the odd character flaw. You should be more forgiving.”

  “She’s pretentious. I don’t like people who pretend to be what they’re not. She should stop trying to sound grand.”

  Sylvia rounded on her crossly. “You say you’re not a snob, Clementine, but you’re sounding just like one. What’s your posh education done for you? Given you a plum to carry in your mouth and a sense of superiority. You’re working in the same office as me, earning a lot less. Your father would have done better to have saved his pennies.”

  “I didn’t mean to offend you, Sylvia. She’s my stepmother. I don’t think she’s good for my father, that’s all. He could have done better for himself. You know he was a highly successful barrister in London. What on earth inspired him to come down here and run a hotel?”

  “His wife.”

  “My point exactly. He’d be a judge by now if he’d hung in there.”