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Julia Harrison is in her late twenties and something of a bossy-boots. She has a succesful career as a buyer for a West End store, a partner, John, whom she dominates, divorced parents who she is always trying to organise, and a network of friends who she bombards with E-mail and phone calls. Julia is swept along on the tide of her chromium-plated lifestyle and never questions her belief that she lives in the best of all possible worlds.
As a 'modern' phenomena, Julia found the idea of her parents' divorce easy to accept, but there is no room for unpalatable facts in Julia's world and she has glossed over the real effects. Her bossy manner hides a sense of insecurity which has resulted in an obsession with order and stability. Everything must have its place. Her mother is only a short drive away, and she visits her grandmother at least once a week, but problems arise when her father, Gerald Harrison, takes early retirement and relocates to far-off Cornwall.
One of the unpalatable facts Julia has avoided is that the people she calls Mum and Gran are no longer her father's relatives. Gerald finds the situation awkward. His ex-wife has a new partner and Gerald is no longer invited to family get-togethers where his presence might be an embarrassment. There is nothing to keep Gerald in the London area now.
Gerald is the eternal optimist. He may be retired, but he still feels young, and quite uncrtically he accepts the glib axiom of the day. There was a 'third age' where active lives for the over sixties were the norm, and he saw no reason why that shouldn't include him. Full of the joys of a new-found spring, Gerald has decided to buy Carleon House, a derelict old farmhouse on Cornwall's Lizard Peninsula. Why! He'll get that licked into shape in no time!
Julia is desperate to prevent the purchase. She is convinced her father is blind to the fact that the house is an old monster that will eat into his savings and will never repay the repair costs.
However it is not just the house that has attracted Gerald. A trick of the light had produced a momentary impression of a presence at the drawing room window, and then the discovery of the inscription EMILY & HADDY 1815 carved into a joist in the old barn completed the picure. Haddy meant nothing to him, but the name Emily fitted perfectly the image conjured up in his imagination by the trick of the light.
A game gets started. 'Bye, Emily!' he would call out with a wave at the window as he left the house. 'Hi, Emily!' he would call out on his return. It was amusing having an imaginary ghost he could use as a sounding board as he set about restoring the house. 'The green tiles, Emily? Or the blue. So what do you think?'
But as time passed he becomes uncomfortably aware that the figure that he thought he had glimpsed at the drawing room window has acquiring a more and more detailed appearance in his memory. He envisages Emily as a young woman dressed in the style of the early nineteenth century, a romantic figure standing looking out of his drawing room window, her eyes fixed on a distant headland as if waiting for someone to come into view.
Gerald tries to put the image out of his mind, but whenever he approaches the house he cannot stop his eyes flicking towards the window to see if anyone is there. One day, after a shower, he even finds himself scampering across the landing wrapped in a towel in order not to offend Emily's sense of decorum. But then he laughs - of course it's all just in his imagination!
Gerald becomes obsessed with his imaginary Emily. He speculates on the world she would have known in 1815. She might have seen the Northumberland off Falmouth as it transported Napoleon into exile. Perhaps she knew the young lads from nearby Goonhilly who were hung for murder in 1821. Or Maria Branwell from Penzance, the future mother of the Brontë sisters. Lady Caroline Lamb, Byron, Wellington, Lord Falmouth: all figure in Gerald's fanciful reconstructions. But this leads to a new obsession: the restoration of Carleon House as it would have been in Emily's time.
Previously the repairs to Carleon House had taken full advantage of modern technology, and if continued would have produced a perfectly serviceable dwelling, albeit in a stripped-pine blue-china pseudo-cottage style. But now Gerald can see that this was really magazine kitsch. With new determination, he starts a full-blown restoration of Carleon House and immerses himself in period technology - cob walls, lime putty, scantled roofs. He spends hours scouring architectural scrap yards for replacement window frames and door furniture. Everything has to be exactly as it was when the house was built.
Julia, on a visit to Carleon House, is appalled at what he is doing. It is clear to her the house will never be finished. And there are other indications that things will not turn out well. Gerald develops a health problem - 'You are not getting any younger,' his doctor warns.
But Gerald is in the grip of his obsessions. One stormy night reality and fantasy become blurred. He sees a figure on the coastal path, a woman with a hood over her head. She glances towards him for a moment, and then walks quickly away. It had to be a tourist. Surely it couldn't be Emily...
He follows her along the coastal path, then through the village of Cadgwith where the electricity appears to have failed and oil lamps cast a glow through shuttered windows. The village reeks of fish as if the ancient pilchard press was still in use, and he nearly falls on the slippery road above the beach.
But Cadgwith is soon left behind and the figure is hurrying across a rain-swept landscape he barely recognises. It follows ancient tracks across Predanack moors, coming to a halt at the edge of the cliffs overlooking Mounts Bay. The rain is sweeping in from the bay and he can hardly stand against the wind. A great ship looms out of the murk, men up high on the yards desperately adjusting the sails as it tries to go about. A doomed ship, bay locked, starting yet another run across the mouth of the bay into which the gale is driving it, each man praying that this time they will get out into the open sea and escape their fate.
The next thing Gerald is aware of is being helped to his feet by the police. An air-sea rescue is in progress, a searchlight from a helicopter sweeping the sea where a yacht is in trouble. In the light of morning, all can be explained: the cold and the wet had made him feverish. But Gerald is not convinced.
Gerald's obsession becomes even more intense. He discovers that the second name carved on the joist in the barn, Haddy, was once a diminutive of Adam. Could Haddy have been the man Emily was waiting for as she gazed out from the drawing room window? To Gerald the name Haddy carries the resonance of the local beer hall. He cannot help feeling a surge of jealousy. Someone like Haddy is not nearly good enough for his Emily!
He decides the only one way forward is to search out the facts about the real Emily whose name was recorded in the inscription. An old tithe map at the County Records Office provides her surname, but he is unprepared for the tragedy further research uncovers. He had imagined Emily in 1815 as having her life before her, but in fact that was the year when Emily died, and she was only nineteen.
Gerald can hardly believe it. So how did she die? Illness? An accident? Once again the line between reality and fantasy becomes confused in Gerald's mind. On his regular walk along the coastal path he sees two figures approaching. Tourists, of course. But the man is swaggering along in front just like Gerald imagined Haddy would have done. A woman is following, remonstrating with the man, the hood of her anorak - or was it a cloak? - falling down to reveal long black hair.
What Gerald then witnesses - or thinks he witnesses - turns everything on its head. Emily was nothing like his conception. Emily was no meek and mild Jane Austin-style heroine, waiting pale and patient at the window for her beloved to return. Emily was a country girl and she could give as good as she got.
It was obvious what was happening on the path. Haddy had been trying to dump her and Emily wasn't going to let him get away with that. And when Haddy laughed in her face Emily hadn't contented herself with mere verbal abuse.
Emily's blows were violent and took Haddy by surprise. For a moment he was out of balance, teetering on the edge, and Gerald was sure he saw Emily's hand reach out and give Haddy a push. Then Haddy was slipping, falling away, grabbing at anything to save himself, and his hand found Emily. Gerald watched thunderstruck as the pair of them went over the edge, but when he rushed up and peered down at the rocks below there was nothing there.
When Julia and John next visit Gerald, winter has arrived and Gerald's life is bleak. His fantasy world has collapsed. He could see now that Emily had only been a subconscious representation of the sort of daughter he had never had, the sort of daughter one could put on a pedestal. Mild, gentle, and always ready to help their Dad. But daughters were never like that.
Gerald was left with the consequences of his folly. Circumstances had forced him to revert to an 1815 life style with a vengeance. The house repairs were at a standstill and the only usable WC was in an outhouse - little different from an 1815 privy at the bottom of the garden. He also had money worries, his car was giving problems, and his health had worsened. Although he put a brave face on it in front of Julia, he fervently wished that he had never set eyes on Carleon House.
Julia is also putting a brave face on things. Her perpetual need to dominate has produced cracks in her relationship with John. Quarrels are frequent, with John accusing Julia of driving her father away with her domineering attitude, just as John knows Julia is driving him away.
Gerald makes light of his problems while Julia and John are visiting, but worse is to come after they have left. Out for a walk one foggy evening, Gerald misses his way and stumbles over the edge of the cliffs. He comes to a halt clutching on to a slab of rock poised above the sea. Now Gerald can no longer avoid the fact of his own mortality. There is no 'third age'. Years always tell. He is too old. He will never get back up the cliff. Soon his fingers will weaken and he will fall. Why not give up gracefully? Let go, and slip away into the void...
But Gerald somehow finds the strength to claw his way back to safety. He slumps down on the path, a tired old man, blood from his torn hands trickling into the mud. But then he becomes aware that he is not alone. A hand is reaching out and he can see sympathetic eyes.
We next meet Gerald in the spring. He has come to terms with his age and is quite content pottering in his garden. In the evening he reads nineteenth-century novels he obtains from the mobile public library. Usually he reads them aloud to Emily. She has evolved, become substantial, part of Gerald's life - people look hastily away when Gerald walks by talking to his Emily.
We last see Gerald through Julia's eyes. She and John still have their problems, but she also has learned to let go. You can't hang on to the past. One day you have to start making your way through life, and accept that its not always going to be plain sailing.
As they drive up, Julia and John see Gerald leaving the house. He has become quite absent minded and has obviously forgotten they were coming.
He is reminiscent of a former age with his somewhat shabby but genteel mode of dress. He is very erect in his posture but with the careful movements of one who suffers from the occasional twinge of winter rheumatism. His arm is crooked at an angle across his chest, and his head is inclined politely, as if he is in intimate conversation with an unseen companion on his arm. With grave courtesy he is helping his companion across the wooden bridge that leads to the coastal path, and then they are fading from sight amongst the mists rolling in from the sea.
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