Cornwall

Cornwall holds two different possibilities for Edwina: a place bound to the early life of her family, and a coastal future she may choose for herself. In old age she imagines leaving London for Cornwall, while a remembered Easter at Sennen Cove returns her to the time when Ollie Treadaway and their twins were young. The place links family memory to the prospect of a life no longer organized around the house she is preparing to leave.

A remembered family setting

At Sennen Cove, Edwina recalls an Easter too cold for swimming. She and Ollie Treadaway dangled the babies’ toes in the water; Charlie Treadaway screamed until his face turned cherry-red. The family picnicked with friends from art school on a red tartan rug, eating fruit cake and cheese-and-pickle sandwiches. Rowena Treadaway and Charlie Treadaway, still toddlers, were a novelty among their parents’ friends: chubby-fisted, quick to laugh or cry, and clumsy in terry-towelling nappies and rubber pants. Charlie even tried to eat the sand.

That bright coastal recollection is set against a later, darker memory. Edwina remembers that she had once imagined she might become pregnant again, but never anticipated lying in a bath with her head underwater, ignoring her children’s screams and considering whether cutting her wrists would kill her. The contrast makes the family’s time at Sennen Cove more than a picturesque holiday memory: it belongs to an earlier life whose apparent happiness would not prevent later despair.

Cornwall as a possible future

In later life, Edwina considers that she may have fifteen years left and need not remain in London. She believes she can afford to choose where to live and describes herself as mentally sound and financially independent. Cornwall becomes a concrete alternative rather than a passing daydream: she pictures herself living above St Ives in a wooden house with a veranda.

Her imagined days there are specific and self-directed. She would drink coffee outside in the cold and wine in the sun, cook sardines on a portable barbecue, and paint again. The painting she anticipates is of the sea, worked in oils through blues ranging from cobalt to Prussian. This vision gives relocation a creative dimension: Cornwall represents not only escape from her present house but the possibility of recovering an activity and a life chosen on her own terms.

Memory, work, and departure

The coastal future takes shape while Edwina is sorting through the accumulated contents of her home and considering what to tell Alicia, her old friend and housekeeper. The household history attached to her memories is not solely a story of family intimacy. Alicia had come to Edwina’s house every day while the twins were young, first caring for them and later continuing with ironing and cleaning. In later years she also did much of the cooking and laundry, though Dickie preferred his work shirts to be professionally laundered.

The recollections also expose the unequal terms within which this domestic closeness existed. Edwina remembers her mother’s racist description of Alicia and recalls Dickie using a racial slur when speaking of her. Edwina challenged him, while recognizing that his schooling at Wyebourne College had helped shape a narrow view in which Black people appeared to him and Lucas chiefly as pupils of exotic royal descent or as cleaning staff. These memories complicate any simple picture of the home as a place of affection and care: its daily life depended on Alicia’s labor, even as the family’s language and assumptions could diminish her.

An unfinished departure

As Edwina imagines leaving, the house itself becomes a threshold between what can be carried and what may remain behind. She wonders whether the bad times will stay there when she closes its door for the last time, or cling to her like pollen and ash. Cornwall therefore remains a contemplated destination, not a confirmed move in the available account. Its significance lies in the choice it makes imaginable: after years shaped by family loss, domestic obligations, and painful memories, Edwina can picture a home organized around her own independence and the work of painting.