The Choice by Valerie Mendes

Author:Valerie Mendes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Book Guild
Published: 2017-04-25T04:00:00+00:00

A Taste of Freedom

St Ives, Cornwall, 1936

When Eleanor draws back her curtains at The Porthminster Hotel the next morning, she feels as if she’s woken to a different world. A perfect sunrise lights a cloudless sky, shining an orange ribbon across a calm and dazzling sea. Gulls preen and strut on her balcony. A ship crawls slowly across the horizon’s delicately pencilled line.

Longing to walk on the beach, she is in St Ives by half-past eight, before many of the shops have opened. She walks all morning, taking the narrow path down to the stretch of Porthminster Beach, its mustard-yellow sand firm and damp beneath her boots. She explores the harbour and its cluster of small shops.

She watches the sturdy fishermen calling to one another, laughing, hauling their heavy nets. Their horse waits patiently, its legs deep in water, its cart filling with the morning’s catch. An artist wearing a paint-stained smock and straw boater sits with his easel by the harbour wall, absorbed in his work. Eleanor wonders whether her father ever worked by this waterside.

She buys coffee from a stall, relishing its scent, warming her hands on the steaming cup. People nod and smile at her as they pass, but nobody speaks to her. They give her space, respecting her solitude.

She walks to the end of the harbour, round its corner to the intimate semicircle of Porthgwidden Beach, with its smooth pebbles: granite-grey, pink, cream. Then she’s at the top of The Island where she can see for miles, hear the ocean roar, taste the salt spray. Down again, and she’s on the long strip of Porthmeor Beach, noticing how each of St Ives’ beaches has its own different character.

By one o’clock Eleanor’s ravenous. She returns to the café she’d found yesterday, choosing a leek-and-bacon pie, tea and a thick slice of Cornish fruit loaf.

And then it’s time to return to The Hideaway – and to make up her mind.

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