With a wide grin, he says, “You should know it. The old country, France. Just as you are, no?”
I must be, if I speak French.
Then why are we traveling to Cornwall?
God has generously splashed out his most vibrant oil paints on this edge of the world, this lush green and blue tip of England. I disembark beside AJ at the Newquay station, senses alert for the first tingle of familiarity, but Cornwall itself catches me off guard. Voices are loud and robust, carrying from one openwindow to another. Hills rise and fall like waves, with thatched-roof houses balancing on steep, cobbled streets.
Within minutes of disembarking, I am among crowds of strangers near the wharf. There I lock gazes with a bearded man in a stretched-out sweater who stares at me. Stares as if he knows me. My face floods with warmth even as the sea breeze tickles my skin.
I turn instinctively from that rush, the assault of oncoming memories, but I pivot my mind. Pivot my body. I must embrace this.
The sun is low in the late afternoon sky, casting long shadows over the naval ships huddled at the coastline. I lean into the wind, drinking in a long gulp of salty air, and the formlessknowingthat sweeps over me. Waves slapping the shore and slick fish piled everywhere, the air thick with briny wetness. All I can see are snippets of what was, my story played out in tiny pinpricks, flashes that vanish too quickly for me to truly see them.
The water is wide, I cannot get o'er,
And neither have I wings to fly;
Give me a boat that can carry two,
And both shall row, my love and I.
Ansel vanished immediately to find food, but I was drawn to the water. So I am on my own now, staring back at the man who is still staring at me from beneath a shelter on the pier, and I’m trying to match some feature, some angle of his face with the man in my dream. If he’s aged a bit, grown a beard…
I swallow. I keep my eyes on him as I move toward the shelter, dodging crowds. The small building that frames him says, “Newquay Orchestra,” promising music and delight on a summer evening. He looks down as I near, fiddling with something in his hands.
Whittling. He’s whittling, with slow, careful strokes as a pipe dangles from the corner of his mouth. Up close, he’s considerably older than I thought. Weathered cheeks, stooped back, nose rounded and red from the drink. He seems not to even notice me as I approach, so I crouch a bit—he is slouched in a chair now, his legs angled out in a crooked V—and smile. “Good day.”
He blinks at me, the intruder, but his look is benign. No recognition. “’Lo.” A quick nod, and he returns to whittling.
I open my mouth to say more, but my gaze latches on one of many papers tacked to the side of this brown-shingle shanty behind him. The edges flutter as the wind kicks up, but when the paper blows flat against the wall again, the sight of a woman’s face hits me in the chest with such force I stumble backward.
Dark, silken curls tickling my face. The scent of rosemary and lavender and the feel of satin. My mind backpedals instinctively from the memory, but I dig in. Invite it. A song. Long, low, and lovely, gently probing my conscious mind. I stare at her picture.
Sleep, little child, let your dreams take flight…
A kiss on the forehead, sparkling eyes backing away.
Stay with me, Mummy. Stay here this time.
Yes. Yes! My mother. That label falls over her like a glove.
But she leaves. The ache immediately finds a familiar place between my ribs. I smooth that paper flat against the side of the building, and the sea air becomes the only breath in my lungs because I cannot breathe.
“You’m a powerful sight like her,”the whittler says, not looking up.“Thought you might’ve been.”
“Who is she?”
He’s silent for a long moment, but it isn’t awkward, because I’m staring at the picture of my mother. The real-life form of my dreams.
At last, he says, “Only bit o’ music ever come from here. A woman, sang like a thrush, so they said.”
My gaze flicks to his face screwed up tight. “You were in love with her.”
“Ev’ry man ’round ’ere fancied ’er sommat awful. Right beauty, she were.”
I tug the paper from its pins and hold her close.Isabella de Montfort,the flier says, along with a theater and the date—May the third, 1906. “But this theater’s all the way in London.”
“Aye, that it is, miss. But she’s from these parts, and folks be right proud o’ her.”
