The House on the Cliff, page 5
And then, as she’s about to leave the room, there’s a clatter. Her eyes dart towards the far corner, by the room’s only window. Amanda runs over, determined to catch the boy who has been leading her a merry dance. But it’s not a boy. It’s a black and white cat, the same one she’s seen wandering around the school grounds, and as she watches, it jumps down from an open fan light onto the floor and saunters over to the door that leads into the school building, waiting to be let out.
Relief floods through her. That must be what it was, then, thinks Amanda. A cat. She has been searching the school building in the dead of a night for a needy, very shrill cat. She laughs, and every laugh seems to push her earlier fear further and further away. Shaking her head at her apparent insanity, she turns the light off behind her and walks with purpose back through the school building to their living quarters.
As she enters the code into the keypad and pushes the door to their section of the building open, she hears the wailing begin again. But this time, she decides not to investigate.
‘Bloody cats,’ she whispers to herself. ‘Attention seekers, the lot of them.’
4
THERESA
18 December 1965
It’s the first Saturday after the end of Theresa’s first term at Hallows Abbey and she is feeling demob happy. Her first few months at the school have been exhausting, both mentally and physically. She’s on call twenty-four hours a day and although she’s usually able to sleep undisturbed, she finds her senses are heightened at night and she often finds it difficult to settle. The boys’ health issues are also more difficult to treat than she’d imagined. There have been plenty of grazed knees, of course, but she’s also had to counsel many of them, realising that she might be the only person in the school they feel safe confiding in.
It’s a bright, cold day, the first after what has felt like an interminable stretch of rain, and Theresa is determined to make the most of it. She’s planning to catch a lift with one of the kitchen staff, Anna, who, like her, is staying at school over the Christmas holidays. They’re heading into Porthgerran, the nearest village, just along the coast, for its monthly outdoor market, hoping to pick up a few treats and decorations to make their school lodgings feel a little more festive.
To say Theresa is looking forward to it is an understatement. She hasn’t been out of school since half-term. Whilst in theory she could walk beyond Hallows’ boundary, there’s simply been nowhere to go. She realises this makes her no more free than the boys. In fact, it has meant her life has been as confined in England as it was in Ireland, where the convent school and her home had been her twin prisons. Theresa pulls on her coat, picks up her purse, looks out of her window at the crystal-clear sky, and heads outside to meet her friend.
The drive to Porthgerran is short. This is a relief, as Anna is as large as her Morris Mini is bijou, and the tiny single-track roads to the village are essentially an obstacle course, full of tractors, vans and, in one instance, astonishingly, a goat. Theresa feels like kissing the ground when they pull up safely beside the quay, where fishing boats await their next departure in orderly moorings, their rigging clinking in the gentle breeze.
‘I’ve got to head to the post office before it closes,’ says Anna, pulling on a blue woollen coat with big plastic buttons. Theresa knows her new friend writes to her parents, who live in North Yorkshire, often. ‘And then to Woolworths. Do you want to come with me?’
‘Oh, no. Don’t worry. I’ll just wander around the market.’
‘All right. So shall we meet by the war memorial in an hour, then? You can’t miss it.’
‘Yes, that sounds fine. Let’s do that.’
Theresa is quite relieved when Anna walks away. Not that she dislikes her – in fact, she appreciates the other woman’s brand of honesty and keen sense of humour – it’s just that she wants to experience complete freedom for a little while, going wherever she wants to go, with her own money, not doing anyone else’s bidding.
It’s easy to tell where the market is due to the chorus of shouting salespeople. ‘Fifty flying saucers for a shilling,’ someone yells. ‘Get your fresh turkey here, folks,’ shouts another. Theresa follows these sounds and finds herself in a large village square which is packed with covered stalls selling everything from fresh vegetables to furniture. There’s a brass band, from the Salvation Army, she thinks, judging by the uniforms, playing carols next to a Christmas tree that must be at least ten feet tall. It’s adorned with a string of coloured bulbs, and there’s a golden star at its peak. Aside from the noise, Theresa’s nostrils are assaulted by a vast array of different smells: the salty tang of fresh fish; the rich aroma of freshly fried sausages; the cloying sweetness of fruit being sold off cheap, before it turns.
She wanders slowly from one stall to the next, buying a bag of boiled sweets from one, and some silver tinsel from another, which she plans to hang over her bedhead. Then she spots a stall selling mince pies, and her mouth waters, memories of her grandmother’s baking flooding back. She’d been quite young when Grandma Edie had died but she still remembers the warmth of her home and her hugs, in stark contrast to the house she’d shared with her parents, which had been consistently cold, both in temperature and emotion.
She approaches the stall and pays for a pie, which is presented to her in a striped paper bag, and walks over to the railings that divide the marketplace from the harbour. She pulls the pie out of the bag and inhales it, the familiar combination of spices instantly transporting her into the festive season.
Then everything happens very quickly.
Something large swoops down, so fast that initially she’s not even sure what it is. It snatches the mince pie from her hand.
‘What the? Oh my…’ she says, yelling in frustration at the sky.
Then someone laughs.
‘Got you, didn’t he?’
Theresa turns to see a man standing at the railing, laughing. He’s in his thirties, she thinks, tall with broad shoulders. He has a handsome, chiselled face, dark hair with a slight wave in it, and a closely clipped beard. He’s wearing well-worn jeans and a thick woollen jumper which is grey, with flecks of blue in it.
‘Yes,’ she says, miserably. She’s hungry.
‘That was our Harry.’
‘Harry? A seagull called Harry?’
‘Yes. Why not? I’ve got names for all of ’em.’
Theresa wonders whether he’s having her on.
‘You spend a lot of time here, then?’ she asks.
He shrugs and turns so he’s leaning on the railings, facing her. ‘You could say that.’
‘Do you work at the market?’
‘Oh, no. Although they’re selling some of my catch today.’
‘You’re a fisherman?’
‘Yes. We’d called it a pyscador, though. In Cornish.’
Theresa notices the way his trousers cling to his thighs. It’s not something she usually notices.
‘Oh. I see.’
‘You’re not from around here.’
His Adam’s apple moves as he speaks. His voice is deep, gravelly, and there’s an inflection of humour in every word. She feels something stir inside her.
‘Yes. I suppose that’s fairly obvious, given my accent.’
‘Yeah, and the fact you held your mince pie out for the birds.’
Theresa laughs in embarrassment.
‘Guilty as charged.’
‘I shouldn’t worry about it,’ he says, walking over to her bench. ‘I’ve just bought one myself. Fancy sharing?’
‘Oh,’ replies Theresa, flustered both by this offer and by her proximity to this rather attractive man. ‘Really?’
‘Really,’ he says, and his dark eyes sparkle. ‘I’m Trystan, by the way.’
‘I’m much obliged, Trystan. I’m Theresa,’ she says. He holds her gaze for just a little too long. She blushes and looks away.
‘Theresa,’ he says, sitting down next to her. ‘That’s such a pretty name.’
5
AMANDA
Late September 2024
Amanda pauses in front of the mirror she’s hung in the hallway to check she looks vaguely presentable. She knows she’s only going as far as the nurse’s room, but she’s always taken pride in her appearance, and today feels like the sort of new start that deserves an effort.
She’s chosen a pair of black trousers (crucially, for her unpredictable, bloated tummy – with stretch) and a loose red shirt, and she’s wearing flat black patent pumps on her feet. Yes, her clothing looks professional, she thinks. Her face, however… When, she wonders, did her eyelids begin to droop? And surely those crow’s feet at the corner have grown at least a centimetre overnight? She’s applied her make-up as best she knows how, but you’d never even know she was wearing eyeshadow at the moment, and her foundation is making the skin around her eyes resemble crazy paving. This is not the reflection she saw in her twenties, or even, frankly, in her thirties, even when she was knackered from bringing up two kids. No, she knows this is undeniably the reflection of a middle-aged woman. Amanda runs her hands through her hair, which has at least an inch of regrowth at the roots. She spent more than half an hour taming it with straightening irons this morning, and it already looks frizzy. She lets out an involuntary sigh, grabs her keys and phone and shuts their front door.
It takes her about ten minutes to locate the room, which is on the ground floor of the main building, next to the library. She knocks and waits.
‘Come in,’ says Rosie from behind the door. Amanda enters. ‘Oh, don’t you look lovely.’
‘Oh. Thanks.’ Amanda beams. Not only is this sort of compliment rare as hen’s teeth at the moment, but Rosie is the nicest person she’s met at Hallows Abbey and she feels genuinely pleased to be back in her presence.
Rosie checks her watch. ‘Also, you’re early. Excellent.’
‘Well, I didn’t have to come very far.’
Amanda looks around. The nurse’s room is actually two rooms, connected with a door, which is currently open. She can see that there’s a single bed in the other room, currently unoccupied. Rosie is sitting at a desk, on top of which there’s a computer, a phone and a large notebook. On the table behind her there are various tools of her trade. Amanda recognises a blood pressure monitor and an otoscope for examining ear canals. On the wall is a large, locked cabinet, which she assumes is where the medicines are stocked. In the corner to Amanda’s right is a sink. At the end of the room is a large sash window, through which she can see one of the boarding houses, Wenceslas, on the other side of the road.
‘Absolutely. Well, welcome to my humble abode. Not that I actually live here, of course, but it feels like it sometimes. Now, let’s start with a cup of tea, shall we, before the first boy arrives to keep us busy? Someone always creeps along to see me after registration, keen to avoid double maths. Take a seat, and I’ll put the kettle on.’
Amanda sits down in the chair that’s presumably reserved for visiting students, beside the desk, while Rosie walks over to a table beside the sink. She fills a kettle and turns it on.
‘So, who do they go to when you’re not on duty?’ she asks.
‘Oh, they’re the responsibility of their house’s matron out of hours, unless they’re really poorly, in which case they call a doctor. It used to be that the school had a nurse on call almost all of the time. They had to live here, on site. Thankfully they changed that more than two decades ago.’
‘Yes. Living here is quite…’ Amanda realises she is about to be too honest. She doesn’t want word getting around that she’s been Bede moaning about the accommodation they’ve been given.
‘It’s OK, I know,’ says Rosie. ‘I know a few of the women employed as matrons here. It’s odd, I think, living where you work, or in your case, where your husband works. And this place is… how do I put this? Stuck out on its own peninsula, miles from the nearest town… It’s its own little world, isn’t it? It’s definitely not the real world, at any rate. It can feel quite discombobulating, I reckon.’ The kettle boils, and Rosie puts tea bags in two mugs and fills them with hot water.
Amanda thinks about the unease she’s been feeling ever since she arrived. Is it simply because Hallows Abbey is so isolated and such an odd institution, she wonders. Is that it?
‘How long have you worked here?’
‘Oh, about a decade now,’ says Rosie. ‘Milk?’ Amanda nods. ‘Yeah, so I used to be a practice nurse at a GP surgery in Redruth, but I fancied a change before retirement. It’s a slower pace here. Mostly it’s just patching up sports injuries and working out when they need to see a doctor for antibiotics. But there do seem to be more and more mental health problems now, though. More than ever before.’
‘Homesickness?’ Amanda thinks about the pale, sad faces she’s seen on the younger boys in the past couple of weeks, since the term began. She doesn’t want to even think about how it would have felt to have sent their children away from home at thirteen. ‘Oh yes, that.’ Rosie places a steaming mug of tea down next to Amanda, and sits in front of the desk, swivelling to face her new colleague. ‘But so much else besides. I wonder, you know, if it started with Covid, when they were isolated from each other and from society for so long. There’s so much anxiety about. Self-harm. Depression. Not just low mood for a bit, but persistent low mood. The kind that the doctor needs to see them about. The school does have a counsellor for the boys, but he’s getting so booked up now, they are having to wait weeks to see him sometimes.’
‘Goodness. I didn’t realise it was this bad.’
‘Oh, I’m putting you off working here now, aren’t I? Don’t listen to me. I’m just moaning. The boys are lovely, and most of the time we have a laugh together. I’m just… upset for them, really. It’s quite unnatural, isn’t it, to spend so much time away from their families. And although there are some female teachers and a lot of the non-teaching staff are female, there’s such a strange imbalance here. I don’t think it’s just that though, or even just this school or single-sex boarding schools, to be fair. Other school nurses I know say the same thing. This generation sometimes seems so damaged. But why, that’s the thing? What’s happening to them to make them feel this way? I wish I knew.’
Rosie picks up her tea and blows on it, her eyes unfocused.
‘My husband thinks it’s social media. The stuff they see on their phones.’ Amanda picks up her own mug and takes a sip. ‘He’s been reading up on this theory about, what is it…’ She’s momentarily forgotten the word. This happens a lot these days. ‘Yes, rewilding, that’s it. A theory about letting kids reconnect with the outdoors, with nature. Getting them away from their phones and doing things with their hands that doesn’t involve scrolling. He’s just starting a club for boys who are interested in getting outside more, actually.’ This rewilding idea has been an obsession of Mike’s for some time, and this new club is the only way he feels able to introduce the idea to the school. Both Father Paul and Brother Bede have steadfastly ignored his suggestions of introducing it more widely, to Mike’s intense frustration.
‘Is he? Well, he may have a point. That may be part of it. I’ve definitely had boys in here saying they’ve hurt themselves doing crazy weightlifting stuff in the school gym, trying to emulate some of the beefcakes they see on those video apps. And others who say what they’ve seen has given them nightmares.’
‘Like what?’
‘Oh, violence, generally. Some of it is incredibly graphic, and there’s just no warning. It just pops up there on their feeds. But once they’ve seen it, they can’t unsee it. Some of them come in to me actually crying. Sometimes quite big boys, you know, sixth formers. Just crying.’
There’s a pause.
‘I heard someone crying the other night, you know.’
‘Did you? In the school? One of the boys?’
‘Yes. Or at least, I thought it was. It was quite loud. Late. After midnight. I could hear it from our flat. I was a bit worried, to be honest.’
‘I can imagine. But how on earth could you hear someone crying from there? The boarding houses, even Amadeus, in the main building, are quite separate. Had someone slipped out?’
‘Yes, I thought so. But when I searched around looking for them, I couldn’t find them. Not a soul.’
‘You couldn’t find them?’ Rosie’s eyes widen.
‘No. It gave me a fright, to be honest. I thought I’d been hearing things. Until I went into one of the toilets, you know, one of those at the end of a teaching corridor.’ Rosie is listening, mouth wide, as if spellbound. ‘I didn’t know if I should go in there, you know… it being for the boys. But it was so late, I figured it was fine. No one should have been in there. So I pushed the door open.’
‘And was there? Anyone in there, I mean?’
‘Yes.’
Rosie looks like she might have stopped breathing.
‘It was… a cat.’
The older woman bursts out laughing. ‘You had me there, Mandy, you naughty woman.’
‘What did you think I was going to say?’
‘Oh, you know—’ They are interrupted by a knock at the door. ‘Ah, here we go. First customer.’
Rosie gets up and answers the door. A few muffled words are exchanged and a boy enters, a young teenager. The skin around his eyes is puffy.
‘Come in, then. This is Mrs Chapman, Hector. She’s just joined the medical room team.’
‘Hello, ma’am,’ says the boy, sticking to the naming convention she knows Father Paul has introduced at Hallows Abbey. Sir for male teachers and other staff, and ma’am for females.
‘Nice to meet you, Hector,’ says Amanda, standing up so he can sit down.
‘There’s a chair next door you can bring in, Mrs Chapman,’ says Rosie. ‘You can observe this morning and I’ll teach you various bits and bobs as we go along.’
And so begins Amanda’s first morning of paid work at Hallows Abbey. It passes quickly, far more quickly than in her previous admin job, during which she had at times felt like a child waiting for Christmas as the clock had moved achingly slowly towards 5 p.m. Here, there is a steady flow of boys to see. So many at times, in fact, that she has to put a chair outside the consulting room so they can wait to be seen. Their needs vary, from headaches to stomach upsets to twisted ankles and accidental cuts during design and technology classes. Rosie shows her how to clean up minor wounds and apply dressings, and how to set the other room up for boys who need to have a lie-down, usually while they wait for the matron from their boarding house to come and collect them. It’s involving work, making use of Amanda’s mothering skills as much as any medical ones, and she’s surprised to find she really enjoys it.
