The Holiday Home

11


Connie wondered if she could find the entrance to the cave in the wooded valley after all these years. She’d asked Greg to join her on her walk, but he was busy with emails. Though she made a show of disappointment, secretly she’d been relieved to take the walk on her own. She desperately needed to get out of the house and think about her unsettling row with Pru the other night. The appearance of Merlin had had a very strange effect on them both. She was shaken by how much emotion the memories of that summer had stirred up.

Her sandals allowed the long grasses to tickle her instep as she pushed her way along the overgrown path. She saw the remembered stile ahead of her and, after climbing it, turned right to follow the rushing stream leading through the valley and on to the sea. The first time she’d come here was with Merlin and Pru. The three of them had played Pooh sticks and Merlin had given them their first experience of smoking a joint. It had been a warm afternoon with the drone of flies in the air.

‘Either of you girls know what a fuggee hole is?’ asked Merlin, his blissed-out eyes turning Connie to jelly.

Pru giggled, ‘I wouldn’t like to say.’

Merlin grinned his suntanned grin and clamped the joint between his crooked teeth. ‘Shame on you, Pru Carew. Dirty mind!’

He took her hand and pulled her up the sloping side of the valley.

Connie watched the giggling couple for a moment then hurried to catch them up, not wanting to be left behind. The climb got steeper until they reached a small plateau. Merlin was now leading the way and the girls were scrambling after him. Giggling and stoned.

After about fifty metres, Merlin stopped and bent down on his haunches, pulling aside some tall ferns.

‘’Ere it is.’

The girls crouched next to him and saw an opening in the side of the valley. Carved out of the rock, it was just big enough to take a barrel of brandy or a small crouched person.

Merlin flicked his lighter and, using it as a torch, disappeared into the hillside.

The girls looked at each other nervously.

‘Come on, girls. The lights are on,’ he called.

Pru went first, letting out a gasp as she entered the carved cavern, lit now by six flickering church candles.

‘Oh my God!’ she called to her sister. ‘Connie, you must see this.’

‘What is this place?’ breathed Connie in wonder as she stood in the tall space.

Merlin shrugged. ‘No one knows for sure, but there are several of them in these parts. Prehistoric, I think. The smugglers used them to hide their stash.’

At the back of the dry cave there lay a pile of blankets and an old-fashioned feather quilt. Merlin shook them out and spread them on the floor.

‘Come and lie down next to me,’ he told them. As they did so, he began to sing the Beatles’ ‘Come Together’. His voice ricocheted richly from the walls.

Connie put her arm across his muscly chest and met Pru’s doing the same thing from the other side. Merlin finished the song and put each of his arms under their heads.

‘Oh, my lovely girls. Summer doesn’t get much better than this!’

*

Connie was starting to sweat a bit as she climbed the steep slope and found the plateau. Her heart beat with a sense of stepping back in time. It didn’t take her long to find the entrance, hidden now by a thicket of ferns and gorse. The plants scraped her legs and stung her feet, but she kept going until the small hole was revealed.

As she ducked her head inside, Connie cursed herself for not bringing a torch. Then she remembered that the three of them had scratched their initials just inside the entrance. She closed her eyes tightly and counted to sixty, hoping that this would trick her eyes into seeing in the dark better. When she opened them, her sight slowly adjusted. Turning her head to the right she saw the letters CC, PC and MP.