So much had gone unspoken. Especially unsaid were Ben’s fears. Yet how could those fears be brought into the open, when everything that related to them was swept under the carpet?
Not today, though. Today the present moment demanded an acknowledgement of the past that had brought him here. Thus, when Ben climbed into his car and began the drive out of Truro, meaning to head north, in the direction of Casvelyn, he braked at the signpost indicating the route to St. Ives and while he waited for the shimmering in his vision to clear, he made his decision, and he turned for the west.
Ultimately, he coursed south on the A30, the north coast’s main artery. He had no clear intention in his mind, but as the signposts grew more and more familiar to him, he made the proper turns by rote, working his way over to the sea through an uneven landscape made externally inhospitable by granite intrusions but internally rich with mineral ore. In this part of the countryside, ruined engine houses stood in mute testimony to generations of Cornishmen working beneath the ground, digging tin and copper till the lodes gave out and the mines were abandoned to weather and time.
These mines had long been served by remote stone villages, which were forced to redefine themselves or die altogether when mining failed. The land was bad for farming, too stony and barren and so constantly windswept that only thickets of gorse and the hardiest, low-growing weeds and wildflowers managed to gain a foothold. So people turned to cattle and sheep if they could afford a herd, and they turned to smuggling when times were tough.
Cornwall’s myriad coves were the provenance of smuggling. Those who were successful in this line of work were those who knew the ways of the sea and the tide. But over time this, too, gave way to other means of support. Transportation to the southwest improved, and transportation brought tourists. Among them were summer people who sunned themselves on the beaches and crisscrossed the countryside on walking paths. Among them, ultimately, came the surfers.
In Pengelly Cove, Ben saw them from above, where the main part of the village stood, unpainted granite that was roofed in slate, looking bleak and deserted in the wet spring weather. Three streets only defined the place: two that were lined with shops, houses, two pubs, and an inn called the Curlew and a third marking a steep and twisting route down to a small car park, a lifeboat station, the cove, and the sea.
Out among the waves, lifelong surfers braved the weather. For the swells were from the northwest, coming in even sets, and the grey faces of the waves were building to the barrels for which Pengelly Cove was known. Into these, the surfers dropped, carving across the face of a wave, rising to its shoulder, fading over the top to paddle out to the swell line and wait for another. No one wasted the energy riding a wave to shore, not in this weather and not with the waves breaking in mirror images of one another, over the reefs some one hundred yards out. The shore break was for rank beginners, a low wall of white water that gave the neophyte a semblance of success but no respectability.
Ben descended to the cove. He did so on foot rather than by car, leaving his vehicle in front of the Curlew Inn and walking back along the street to the junction. He wasn’t bothered by the weather. He was dressed for it, and he wanted to experience the cove as he’d experienced it in his youth: hiking down what had been only a path then, with no car park below and nothing else save the water, the sand, and the deep sea caves to greet him when he reached the bottom, his surfboard tucked under his arm.