Read Online The Visitor by Katherine Stansfield - Free Book Online Page A

usually did, not waiting for a response. ‘You sit there. I’ve got to put these out though why anybody would want to eat them is beyond me. Then we’ll have a chat.’
    Pearl looked at the tins. Pilchards. The beautiful silver fish squashed into a tiny little box and sealed up. And they’d come from so far away. Africa, it said on the label. The palace was empty. There were no walls of fish. Her mother was dead. And yet the past seemed so real when she remembered, when she let herself remember.
    It was cool in the shop and quite pleasant to sit behind the counter and watch the people in the street as they made their way down to the beach. As a little girl she had wanted to work in Pendeen’s, to arrange all the hooks and corks, to feel the softness of the cloth piled in bolts to the ceiling. Eileen’s shop sold games for the beach and things to put in a picnic hamper. Her grandson pushed an ice cream cart along the seafront in the afternoons. The shop was busy today and several customers interrupted Eileen putting out the tins. A woman came in asking for a guidebook and she and Eileen disappeared to the back of the shop.
    Near the door there was a rack of picture postcards. Some were views of Morlanow from the cliff path near the new house and there was a lovely one of the Tregurtha Hotel. Pearl couldn’t see any postcards of the fishing boats and certainly none of the palace which was a very ordinary building to look at from the outside – inside was a different world: women, silver, and salt.
    A brightly coloured postcard caught her eye. It was printed by the railway company. She recognised the brown and cream. Pearl got up to look at it. ‘Morlanow’ was written in big, curling letters across the top and underneath, in smaller writing, was ‘timeless Cornwall’. The main space of the picture was taken up with a map of the county, with Morlanow and Pentreath marked very clearly, so that their names seemed to fill all the land, and, now that she looked properly, there weren’t any more names marked on. The rest of Cornwall was empty. But there were other things on the map. King Arthur was at the top, near the border, clutching a sword and looking stern, and in the sea just off Morlanow there was a mermaid. She had long blonde hair and a silly little smile, perching on a rock and admiring herself in a mirror. A grizzled-looking fisherman beamed at Pearl from one corner of the postcard, his bearded face fat and red. By his side was a full bussa jar of pilchards.
    â€˜You can have that one if you like,’ Eileen said, coming up behind her.
    Pearl shook her head. ‘No, thanks.’ She moved closer to the doorway and looked out onto the street, her face quickly hot in the sun. She closed her eyes to let that blinding white light come again. She would give in. ‘Do you miss the old days, Eileen?’ she said.
    â€˜What do you mean?’
    Pearl heard the rustling of Eileen’s skirt and the tins clinking together, but she didn’t open her eyes. ‘The fishing,’ Pearl said. ‘When the pilchards came.’
    â€˜That was before my time.’
    â€˜Was it? It doesn’t seem that long ago.’
    A hand on her arm, the smell of dust and newness that fought through the shop. ‘Come and sit down,’ Eileen said, brusque as ever. ‘I’ve made us some lunch.’
    They sat behind the counter and shared some smoked fish and bread. Pearl tried to seem keen but she wasn’t hungry. In the street the holiday visitors continued to stream past.
    â€˜By the time I got here there weren’t any pilchards,’ Eileen said. ‘They’d gone.’
    â€˜You’ve not eaten a fresh one then?’
    Eileen shook her head, her mouth full. She swallowed and then said, ‘This is good though, this mackerel. And I like the ling your George catches.’
    â€˜It’s not the same. The taste of them, they were so