Unforgettable (Gloria Cook) - By Gloria Cook Page 0,26
the mutt was territorial and the old van was its sentry box, Finn strode the last few feet cautiously, but it was a friendly little creature and while creating a high-pitched din it jumped out of the cab and came tearing energetically towards Finn and then rolled over on its back to display submission.
Finn hunkered down to it and tickled its wiry tummy, wary of fleas, worried about carrying any back to Eloise. ‘Daft little thing, aren’t you?’
A woman appeared in the doorway at the side of the house. She had a lot of backside and frontage, all jouncing about under a full well-worn paisley apron, a waist-length cardigan apparently made from unpicked former knits, a dress that appeared to have once been curtain material, no stockings and dusty, clumpy shoes. Mrs R’s declaration that the Vercoe women were adept seamstresses had not provided this woman with any fashion sense. She wore thick-rimmed glasses and had masses of dark-honey hair. She was hefting a washing basket – flasket, she would call it – containing a mountain of wet laundry.
‘Morning to ’ee, my bird,’ she grinned, and the pleasantry caused her to lose her frumpy image. Finn was drawn to her motherly persona and wished his own mother were more like this woman. ‘I wondered what started the dog off. Quiet girl, quiet, Tufty!’ Obediently, Tufty trotted off back to her scrapyard kennel. ‘That’s better. We can hear ourselves think now. Something I can do for ’ee, my handsome?’
‘I’m here to see Mr Vercoe,’ Finn said politely.
‘Aw, he’s somewhere about here. Be in for his crib in a minute. Go on inside and wait for him, while I hang this lot out. Can’t keep to one washday with my brood. My eldest daughter Jenna’s in the kitchen. Go in and talk to her, through this door. Don’t be shy, we’re a friendly lot here.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Vercoe,’ Finn replied, smiling for he was sure he was going to feel at home here. Miss Verity had talked about her happy reunion with the Vercoes, calling them the salt of the earth, and adding it was a pity the earth wasn’t filled with people just like them.
While Jean Vercoe went round the back of the house, Finn sauntered over the high threshold straight into the large kitchen, one of the house’s extensions. His lingering smile drained away. From bending over a treadle sewing machine beside one of the wide windows a girl of about fifteen years looked up at him. He was met with the beady stare of Jenna Vercoe, a girl he realized he’d come across before on the high street of Wadebridge, a girl and her friends that he and his schoolmates had openly jeered at for coming from an inferior background. ‘Not even good enough to be oiks!’ Finn had smirked, entering the verbal abuse. His behaviour had been cruel and immature and now it made him cringe.
‘Oh . . .’ Finn could have faced her better if she hurled scathing remarks at him about his enormous comedown, but Jenna Vercoe merely gazed at him as if he was something no one desired to find on the bottom of their shoe. ‘Um, your mother told me to come straight in and . . . and wait for your father. I’ve come to see him,’ Finn ended lamely.
Jenna took her time repositioning a loose cover of thick beige material under the machine needle. Crammed on the floor about her feet were baskets of cloth oddments. A box of rag dolls was waiting to be dressed and receive their facial features. Without looking at him again, but giving an uninterested shrug, she said in her soft Cornish accent, something Finn had ridiculed her for, ‘Sit and wait then.’
Aggression he could cope with but he hated being made to feel a fool. A worm of uncertainty dragged down uncomfortably in his stomach and he went to up her. ‘I, um, owe you an apology for the time we met before.’
She flew to her feet, startling Finn. ‘I don’t want your apology. It would mean nothing to either of us.’
Finn’s brows shot up to his scalp. It was like being challenged by a wild cat, a wild cat with blazing dark eyes, yet he noticed she had a pretty nose and delicate ears. He was further forward with girls than most of his peers. He had looked them over with a male’s appreciative eyes from the age of twelve, and at his sixteenth birthday