The Fire Child. S. K. Tremayne
hours to drive and hike the wild Penwith landscape. I love photographing the silent mine stacks, the salt-bitten fishing villages and the dark and plunging coves where, on all but the calmest days, the waves throw themselves psychotically at the cliffs. Though my favourite place so far is Zawn Hanna, the cove at the end of our own valley. Morvellan Mine stands above it, but I ignore its black shapes and instead gaze out at the sea.
When occasional summer rain has sent me indoors I’ve tried completing my mental map of Carnhallow. I’ve finally counted the seventy-eight bedrooms and it turns out that there are, in fact, eighteen, depending on how you categorize the tiny, sad, echoing box rooms on the top floor, which were probably servants’ quarters, though they have an odd echo of the monastic cells which must once, I presume, have stood on this ground, in this lush little valley.
Some days, standing alone in the dust of this top floor, when the sea-wind is combing through the rowans, it feels like I can hear the words of those monks, caught on the breeze: Ave Maria, gratia plena: Dominus tecum …
At other times I linger in the Drawing Room, my favourite part of Carnhallow, along with the kitchen and the gardens. I’ve checked out most of the books, from Nina’s volumes on antique silverware and Meissen porcelain to David’s many monographs on mainly modern artists: Klee, Bacon, Jackson Pollock. David has a particular liking for abstract expressionists.
Last weekend I saw him sit and stare at the solid black and red blobs of a Mark Rothko painting for an hour, then he closed the book, looked at me, and said, ‘We’re all astronauts, really, aren’t we; interstellar astronauts, travelling so far into the blackness we can never return.’ Then he got up and offered me Plymouth gin in a Georgian tumbler.
But my biggest personal discovery has not been porcelain or paintings but a small dog-eared volume of photographs, hidden between two big fat books on Van Dyck and Michelangelo. When I first opened this battered little booklet it revealed startling monochrome images of historic Kerthen mines and the miners within them.
The photos must, I reckon, be nineteenth century. I look at them almost every day. What amazes me about them is that the miners worked practically without light: all they had was the faint flicker of the tiny candles stuck in their felt hats. Which means that the moment the camera’s magnesium flash exploded was the only time in their lives when the miners properly saw where they worked, where they had spent every waking hour, digging and hewing and drilling. One precious fraction of brightness. Then back to lifelong darkness.
The thought of those miners, who once toiled their lives away in the rocks right underneath me, stirs me into action. Get to work, Rachel Daly.
The drawing is folded and set on the tray, which is warm from the sun. I carry the tray with the lemon-scented glasses into the coolness of the house, the airiness of the kitchen. Then I open my app. There are only two significant places left to explore: I’ve left them to last because they are the ones that give me the most concern. They are the worst of Carnhallow’s challenges.
The first is the basement and the cellars.
David showed me this bewildering labyrinth the day we arrived, and I have not revisited. Because the basement is a depressing place: a network of dismal corridors, grimed with dust, where rusted bells dangle below coiled springs, never to be heard again.
There are many stairs down to the basement. I take the first set, outside the kitchen. Flicking on unreliable lights at the top of the steps, I pick my way down the creaking wooden stairs, and look around.
Ancient signs hang from peeling doors: Brushing Room, Butler’s Pantry, Footman’s Room, receding into shadows and grey. At the end of the dingy corridor ahead of me I can make out the tall, arched stone threshold of the wine cellar. David and Cassie visit the cellars a lot: it is the one part of Carnhallow’s vast basement that gets used. Apparently there are lancet windows in the cellar, blinded and bricked, showing the monastic origin of Carnhallow, one thousand years ago. One day I will sit myself down in that cellar and blow dust off old French labels, teach myself about wine the way I am slowly teaching myself about everything else, but today I need to get an overall grasp.
Turning down an opposite corridor I find more signs: Bake House, Cleaning Room, Dairy. The piles of debris littering and sometimes obstructing the corridors are stupefying. An antique sewing machine. Half of a vintage motorcycle, taken to pieces then left here. Broken clay pipes from maybe two hundred years before. A mouldy Victorian wardrobe. Some kind of light fitting, made possibly from swan feathers. An enormous wheel from a horse-carriage. It is like the Kerthens, as they slowly died out, or dispersed, or decayed, couldn’t bear to part with anything, as it painfully symbolized their decline. So it all got hidden away down here. Entombed.
Phone in hand, I pause. The air is motionless and cold. Two huge antique fridges lurk, for no obvious reason, in a corner. I have a sudden image of being imprisoned within one of them. Hammering on the door, trapped in its reeking smallness, stuck down a basement corridor that no one will ever use. Dying over days in a cuboid coffin.
A shudder runs through me. Moving on, turning left, I find an even older doorway. The stonework of the doorjamb looks medieval, and the painted wooden sign hanging from a nail says STILL.
Still?
Still what? Still here? Be still? Please be still? The sign agitates.
STILL.
Repressing my anxieties, I push the door. The hinges are stiff with rust: I have to lay my shoulder on the door and shunt hard, and at last the door springs open, with a bang. Like I have broken something. I sense the house glaring at me with disapproval.
It is very dark in this room. There is no apparent switch and the only light comes from the corridor behind me. My eyes slowly adjust to the gloom. In the middle of this small room is a battered wooden table. It could be hundreds of years old, or it could have just had a hard time. Various bottles, greyed with dust, sit on shelves. Some have tiny labels on them, hung on exquisite metal chains, like little necklaces for tiny slave girls. Going close I see the handwritten names, scratchily penned – quilled – with ancient ink.
Feverfew. Wormwood. Comfrey. Mullein.
Still.
STILL.
I think I understand it now, maybe. This is a place for distilling. Making herbal remedies, tinctures. A still room.
Turning to go, I see something totally unexpected. Three or four large cardboard boxes in the corner of the room, partly concealed by a case of ancient glassware. The boxes have the name Nina vigorously scrawled on them.
So this is her stuff? The dead woman, the dead mother, the dead wife. Clothes, or books, maybe. Not ready to be thrown out.
Now I feel really improper, like a trespasser. I’ve done nothing wrong, I am the new wife, a keeper of Carnhallow, and David wants me to explore so that I can restore this maze of dust: but the act of almost-breaking-in to this room, and happening upon these sad boxes, makes me blush.
Trying not to run, I retrace my steps, and I climb the stairs with a definite sense of relief. Taking deep breaths. Then a glance at my watch reminds me. I have to collect Jamie, soon, which means I have enough time for my final task.
There is one more interior space I want to see: the entirely untouched West Wing. And at its heart, the Old Hall. David has told me it is impressive.
But I’ve not once set foot inside this space yet. Only seen the gaunt exterior. Taking the corridor beyond the grand stairs, I cross from east to west, and from now to then.
This must be it. A large but unpainted and very heavy wooden door. The handle is a twisted, cast-iron ring. It takes an effort to turn, but then the door swings smoothly open. I step, for the first time, into the Old Hall.
The tall arched windows are Gothic, and leaded. Obviously from the monastery. The vaulted stone chamber is cold; it is also totally uncarpeted and unfurnished. David says that centuries ago they used to pay the miners in this hall. I can see them now. The humble men, stoically queuing, summoned by their surnames. The mine captains looking on with crossed and burly arms.