lain dormant for decades. In their thick Cornish accents this couple merely confirmed with a vengeance that he was back in his ancestral lands. It had all happened too quickly, with not enough space between the jerky train and the thick fog of his depression and the driving up to the chapel on the blustery headland and being pitchforked back into the bluff and energetic Methodism that had pursued him in his childhood.
He sought now as alternative to play little games with the Verrans—wild fancies that would curb his sudden animosity and hopefully distance himself from the pair. “Aunt Hannah was so modest,” he began. “She never wanted to talk about all that coal-mine money Uncle Petherick left her after he immigrated to Pittsburgh. And I guess she told you more, as her best friends, than she ever told me about the Texas property of old Petherick’s daughter, Loveday, and the oil well she inherited from her second husband?”
Stroking a beardless chin, Davey looked out of the tall doors at the leaden sea. “Funny,” he mused, “I guess most of the fortune she was left came from the United States rather than Canada where all she got was the Alberta ranch. I don’t expect she left too much over here, did she? Then the house was never exclusively hers, of course. When her dear sister-in-law died, Cousin Alyson and I divvied up the proceeds of Lanoe House with her and let her stay there rent-free while she lived. Not that she needed anything like that with all the American loot. Then who am I telling? You got all the information when the will was read, of course.”
Hilda Verran could contain herself no longer. She let out a hiss of air surprisingly loud for one of her stature. What will? We b’aint heard of no will! There bin no will read, has there, Len? Jest a penny or two lying about the house, and bits o’ furniture that was hardly more’n matchsticks. Curtains was in rags from the first day Oi see’d ’em!”
Her husband glanced up at Davey’s face and probably saw the smirk lurking there. He grabbed at her sleeve. “There were a derelict old Austin out back. No more’n a pile of junk that was! Least it help pay getting her into the Breakers. Otherwise she’d have been on the parish.”
Davey thought the man was expecting his sympathy, when he felt much closer to erupting in laughter. Fortunately for the Verrans that was the moment the organist and preacher elected to depart. There was a smile for Davey from the uncertain musician, who then accorded the preacher a grudging nod as the tall figure, now wrapped in a bright yellow oilskin, bolted the doors of the chapel behind all five of them. He gave his erstwhile congregation a deep-throated adieu before stepping toward his muddy vehicle and, Davey hazarded, another funeral on his scattered circuit of rural Primitive Wesleyan chapels along the North Cornwall coast. The lady left on a bicycle.
The three remaining regarded one another. In accordance with his earlier resolution Davey smiled at them both as two upturned faces, their expressions flitting from anxiety through skepticism to outright hostility with the regularity of traffic lights.
Their disconcerted looks were matched with an excited, high-pitched babble. Mr. Verran was the loudest, his spouse the more voluble, but it still remained a hysterical chorus from the little couple. “Will? Oh, no, sir! No bloody will!”
“Her never, ever mentioned that money, did her, Len? Money in America? Money in H’Alberta? Never! Never! Be sure on that, maister. Her allus claimed to be as a church mouse. What a hussy! And her hiding a bloody fortune?”
That was the first expletive Davey had heard fall from the lady’s lips.
“Her left nothing in Lanoe that a Gypo would drop by for!” Len chimed in. “Oi can tell on ’ee that! Cryin’ poor mouth, with all that tucked away over there! Regular miser, then, was our Hannah Bryant! Devious biddy!”
“Miser and hypocrite! A lettin’ of us slave over her all them years! And to think her could’ve had a regular bunch of servants awaitin’ on her every wish and whim!” Hilda paused for a breath.
Davey shifted his weight onto the other leg. Their frantic litany was beginning to bore him. It was then he came to a decision that was to have far-reaching implications, far more than he could have ever anticipated. Besides, his adopted playfulness was shot with cunning. He suddenly saw a way of temporarily ridding himself of these tiresome two who claimed to be cousins and at the same time extending their punishment for their greedy insinuation into old Hannah’s life.
“Maybe she did make a will,” he began, “and then hid it somewhere in the house. Auntie was so suspicious about a lot of things.” A fresh inspiration sustained his invention. “Of course, it would be made out to you people. There was really no one else, you see. She told Cousin Alyson and me that the proceeds from the house would be all we’d ever get. She might have mentioned the North Cornwall Hunt or some dogs’ home in Newquay as beneficiaries, but that would have been before you guys moved in. I mean, before she had your help and loving care.”
They exchanged quick glances. Davey felt he could feel them secretly slobber over the references to both fox hunt and dogs’ home. He felt sure they would be aware of the two incidents in his aunt’s life of which she moaned endlessly. One involved the littering of her land by defecating foxhounds, the other her spirited defence of her treacherous dog who apparently had turned on her, disfiguring her face and nearly biting her to death.
The Verrans couldn’t contain themselves. “Oh, her would’ve had no truck with the loikes of they!” Hilda shouted.
“Sued the master of hounds over the North Cornwall and the shit its dogs dropped all over her lawn!” her husband exclaimed. And, as further elaboration: “And Oi reckon she were moinded to have all bloody dogs outlawed after she were savaged by her own. No, my handsome, there’d be no money going to them outfits. Not bloody likely!”
“More than that Oi reckon we got no more to say.” Whether Hilda was merely upset by her husband’s language or whether she was fearful of one of them saying too much—now that the prospects of personal enrichment had become so much closer—Davey was unsure, but he opted for the latter. Articulation was always risky where he and they came from: he recalled afresh how deep went Cornish superstition.
“I have an idea,” he volunteered. “Why don’t we all slip over to Lanoe and see what we can find?” Then, lest they were reluctant to accompany him, he added, “There’s a problem of time, you see. I mean, if in Canada and the U.S. they don’t hear of a will, they might simply regard her as intestate and hand over all her assets to the state.”
Even as he said it, Davey thought his spur-of-the-moment argument crass, but he realized at that juncture he was relying not so much on his powers of persuasion as on the blindness of the greedy. He blew the gods a kiss as the Verrans scrambled over each other verbally to shout their instant agreement with his cockeyed proposal.
In a matter of minutes both their ancient Morris Mini van and his rented Rover were revving loudly against the cry of the wind. As the two vehicles headed south on reaching the coastal highway, the dwarfs quickly passed him and he lost sight of them. That didn’t faze him, though. He was looking forward to driving at a leisurely pace through the network of narrow, leafy lanes on leaving the main road and heading for Pentudy with its fondly remembered Celtic cross dominating the village green. It was at least twenty years since he’d seen the village where “Lanoe” was his family’s “dower house” and where each Bryant generation had gone in succession from the neighbouring parish where the eldest sons had always farmed so that the two village churches shared in the family christenings, marriages, and occasional burials over at least three centuries.
But during that return to the past Davey was to learn that the “new Cornwall” he was about to experience, albeit briefly, was savagely different from the one he’d left behind. Of course, he was about to change his mind concerning a whole lot of things,
