High Tide At Midnight. Sara Craven

She stared across the room at the painting of the lonely house on the bleak headland and her stomach contracted nervously. She thought wildly, ‘Oh, God, what have I done?’

      She had always tended to be impulsive. It was a family trait, but it had never carried her to these lengths before. It had been impulsiveness that had led her to apply to the painting school. Many of the friends she had been at school with were rather desultorily pursuing careers as personal assistants or secretaries, but they seemed to be little more than glorified dogsbodies as far as Morwenna could see. Or they were helping to run boutiques, or serving in West End department stores. Somehow she had wanted more than that. And it hadn’t particularly pleased her when people said tolerantly, ‘Oh—Morwenna? Well, she’ll get married, of course,’ their eyes lingering appreciatively over her slender figure with the gently rounded hips and small, firm breasts.

      She tried to control her whirling thoughts. After all, she wasn’t committed to going to Cornwall. Trevennon had been a let-out—the inspiration of the moment—something to save her face with Cousin Patricia. She didn’t have to actually do anything about it. Anyway, a wave of colour flooded her face, she couldn’t just wish herself on a group of strangers, in spite of her brave words to Lady Kerslake. She had no means of knowing whether the Dominic of whom her mother had spoken with such affection was still alive. He would be in his sixties at the very least, and the years that Laura Kerslake had spent at Trevennon would only be a distant memory.

      She had sometimes wondered why her mother had not maintained contact with Trevennon over the years, but at the time it had never occurred to her to ask. She had been too young to consider the complexities of the situation, she thought, and after her mother’s death, too much probing into the past had never seemed quite appropriate. Besides, she had always had the feeling that her father had not shared her mother’s nostalgia for Cornwall. Nothing had ever been said, but the impression had been a strong one. Perhaps it had been nothing more than ordinary, and only too human jealousy of a time when she had lived and been happy without him, Morwenna thought wryly. Sir Robert’s love for his wife had been all-encompassing. But somehow she had felt the past was an area where she should not trespass with her questions, and now they could never be answered—unless of course she went to Trevennon herself.

      She shook her head slowly, clenching her fingers together in her lap. She must stop thinking along those lines. The fact of the matter was that she was homeless, but that wasn’t the disaster it seemed. Friends were always flouncing away from the shelter of the parental roof after some devastating row or other, and they managed to survive. There were a number of names in her address book which she could call on in an emergency. People were always swopping flats, or marrying and moving out. There would be someone somewhere wanting another girl to make up the numbers. And there were jobs too. Not the sort of creative work she had planned on. For those she would need training—qualifications. But she would find something to do which would pay her share of the rent and food bills, and there were always evening classes she could go to.

      She suppressed a grimace. It was a far cry from the spring in the South of France that she had envisaged, but she had only herself to blame. She was capable of far better work than that she had shown Lennox Christie. But she had known the money was there to buy her a place in his class, and she had simply not tried too hard. If she were trying now, it would be very different.

      She took the crumpled letter out of her pocket and read it again slowly. While it held out no definite hope, it did offer her a second chance. But she would need to work very hard over the next few months to convince him that she had sincerity and application as well as talent, and wasn’t just another wealthy playgirl looking for an undemanding few months in the sun.

      She got up restlessly and walked over to the window, staring out at the prospect of smooth lawns and leafless trees which unfolded itself before her. What she needed was a few months’ grace to do some serious painting, when what confronted her was the urgent necessity for job and flat-hunting. She tried to do some swift mental calculations, but the results were depressing. The pitifully small amount of money she had in her bank account would not be enough to feed and house her while she pursued this tenuous dream. It was time she recognised her hopes of a career even on the fringes of the art world as the fantasy they were, and got down to realities.

      She sighed and cast a regretful look back over her shoulder at the group of paintings on the wall. Their appeal had never seemed more potent. If she took any of her mother’s work away with her when she went, it would be those and the self-portrait above the mantelpiece. But if she did take them, heaven only knew what she would do with them. She could not imagine them as a welcome addition to the decor in any of her friends’ flats. She supposed drearily they would have to be stored somewhere until she could find a proper home for them. Whenever that might be.

      She was halfway to the door when the thought came to her. She stopped dead in her tracks and swung round again to survey the pictures. She might not be able to claim a temporary home at Trevennon, but surely, for her mother’s sake, they might be willing to store the paintings for her. If she took them down to Trevennon and explained the situation…. As long as she made it clear it was only a temporary measure. They would be far better there than locked away in some warehouse. And it might give the Trevennon family some pleasure too to know that Laura Kerslake had never forgotten….

      There was some relief to be gained in knowing she had solved at least one of her problems, minor though it was. It was doubtful whether she would find such ready solutions for those that remained, nevertheless as she went to her room to begin to sort through her clothes and belongings, a tiny ray of hope began to burn deep inside her.

      The next few days were not comfortable ones. Morwenna was thankful that she had announced that she was leaving in advance, otherwise she felt the atmosphere in the house would have been well-nigh unendurable. As it was, she could remind herself that the little barbs and snide remarks which came her way were only for a little while longer.

      She had been totally ruthless with her packing. Most of her extensive wardrobe was now at the Vicarage awaiting the next jumble sale, and she had retained only the most basic elements. But this did not grieve her as much as parting with the childhood books and possessions that still occupied her bedroom. She had thought sentimentally that one day all these things could be passed on to her own children, but she knew she had to travel lightly, and the cherished articles were disposed of to the charity shop in the nearby town. She had soon reduced her possessions down to the contents of one large suitcase, while her painting gear was consigned to the depths of an old rucksack which she found in one of the attics. The Trevennon pictures and her mother’s self-portrait were carefully taken from their frames under Lady Kerslake’s eagle eye and made into a neat parcel.

      Life did not become any easier with the arrival of Guy with his latest girl-friend in tow. She had dark, elaborately frizzed hair and a giggle that made Morwenna want to heave, but judging by Guy’s air of smug satisfaction, he saw nothing amiss.

      Morwenna also had to cope with the added humiliation that Guy had obviously told this Georgina all about her, possibly with embellishments, and that Georgina’s reaction to the situation was to treat her with a kind of pitying contempt, mixed with triumph that Morwenna’s loss had been her gain.

      Morwenna suffered this in a kind of teeth-grinding impotence, but she knew there would be no point in trying to convince Georgina that her relationship with Guy had been very much in the embryo stage, and that she was not stoically trying to conceal an irrevocably broken heart. It would have given her immense satisfaction to tell Georgina that she was welcome to Guy, and that her only regret was that she had not had the wit to see the truth behind his advances in the first place, but she knew that the other girl would not believe her.

      However, it was Vanessa’s attitude that Morwenna found the most surprising. As the time approached for her departure, her cousin became almost cordial, even to the point of insisting on driving her up to London to catch the Penzance train. Morwenna accepted the offer, but she did not deceive herself that it was promoted by any new-found liking for herself. She suspected that Vanessa was taking her to the train merely in order to make sure that she was in fact going to Cornwall, and was seeking her company during her remaining hours at the Priory simply to enable her to avoid Georgina