Another Life: Escape to Cornwall with this gripping, emotional, page-turning read
Sara MacDonald
‘A great read, a moving story of family history, love deception, passion and heartbreak’Cornwall TodayTwo women, living more than a hundreds years apart yet against the same wild backdrop of sea and landscape, make a rash bid for freedom to live another life. But for both of them, that choice means a loss which will greatly affect the next generation.…When marine historian Mark Hannah finds a hauntingly beautiful figurehead in Newfoundland, he traces her ship, The Lady Isabella, back to Cornwall. There he meets Gabrielle Ellis, the woman who will restore her to her former glory. Together they begin to piece together the lives of the carver, Tom Welland and the real Lady Isabella.Surrounded by the rugged Cornish landscape, Gabrielle becomes increasingly haunted by Isabella's lost life. As Gabrielle's own life becomes inextricably involved with Mark's, her story runs parallel with the lives of Isabella, her husband Richard and Tom Welland, the carver.
SARA MACDONALD
Another Life
Copyright (#ulink_bcc482e2-2ee8-52ed-9779-3b7e0de463ef)
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2004
Copyright © Sara MacDonald 2004
Sara MacDonald asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9780007175772
Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2013 ISBN: 9780007388028
Version: 2017-03-13
Dedication (#u9a2a1ff5-932c-5060-8446-28c9c0882367)
For Lizzie and John Cynddylan with love.
Contents
Cover (#uebc87917-1c19-582a-b70f-4a9128edd4a1)
Title Page (#u9efd2ede-8e3f-53ae-b86e-382fdb2c9a1e)
Copyright (#ubfe5996d-4305-5577-83a1-a4b207fa2ffa)
Dedication (#ua57c72d2-3e9f-5307-89e0-61f20510bb1b)
Prologue (#ud6dea305-c9d3-52ac-b9fd-2eca2a28bcdd)
Chapter 1 (#u3562ed35-8f7c-56b2-8704-ffc2d3330bf0)
Chapter 2 (#ub7e622ec-9504-532f-a9cd-cda4c3e29068)
Chapter 3 (#ufca01fc7-db4f-5077-99c5-985525a8c564)
Chapter 4 (#u4eeae6e8-aa06-5fce-9b9e-0cbd221e5547)
Chapter 5 (#ubf8c1f4d-2095-5155-88fb-375a6c1f23dd)
Chapter 6 (#ua5ba198f-522a-5ad2-8685-8b2c90f7328f)
Chapter 7 (#ubc45764b-a921-52db-abb3-9300179716b8)
Chapter 8 (#u26cb076c-7d0b-5b7d-80be-ec2b56cc8060)
Chapter 9 (#u62015b79-d377-5b29-9382-85e3b9fec1a6)
Chapter 10 (#uc595c286-db7f-592b-a7c2-bf689428c95f)
Chapter 11 (#ub17ae241-8357-575d-8216-da87d4ef8474)
Chapter 12 (#ufe7d8eaa-e593-5446-96ed-6e57a0a2514e)
Chapter 13 (#u63339433-13c2-54e9-9111-64175477554b)
Chapter 14 (#u5bad2553-c1ac-545b-b392-05f47647e5d6)
Chapter 15 (#u82f2c3fd-f20d-50a1-8f84-395749e42997)
Chapter 16 (#u3b3ff4fc-d859-549d-b227-6d66772e4a18)
Chapter 17 (#u194ca02b-9a61-5370-aeef-a2c18d3da4e7)
Chapter 18 (#u0e0dca70-f91c-5a1f-8544-fc11a1ed8e08)
Chapter 19 (#u87ea6861-5ad2-5b2d-8ad2-3f6b627e1dcb)
Chapter 20 (#u4e518d01-9627-53af-9188-ed448e746220)
Chapter 21 (#u1c3fc9ed-3f1b-5d5f-842e-e3bc597ea913)
Chapter 22 (#uc344f72b-664d-5954-b257-16d418a74ffa)
Chapter 23 (#ubef5b6de-4255-5809-84b6-9c82387c4c83)
Chapter 24 (#u13126e4a-9cec-597a-ba3f-913ec83aed31)
Chapter 25 (#ue742f54b-11ea-512d-8632-72149281034c)
Chapter 26 (#u7d50e8d5-77ce-5656-8794-8e12833e1038)
Chapter 27 (#uf84d5bd1-32a7-5ab9-85a2-f859ddeaea47)
Chapter 28 (#ubfc0ad81-24bb-529f-8ed6-31d0e4884d07)
Chapter 29 (#ucb5a93c4-53a1-5552-8b5a-3f6db15ed20c)
Chapter 30 (#uda5b7604-5223-554b-8dd5-1b01992817e5)
Chapter 31 (#u28bca006-2e4d-5f39-b26e-f7270b9b14e9)
Chapter 32 (#u2066131a-b2ee-5667-9c5a-71b94e1d28b9)
Chapter 33 (#ucace9380-4681-5498-b43f-4501053d3afc)
Chapter 34 (#u654b1a66-8914-5a2c-865f-e9cef81265af)
Chapter 35 (#u6b0ba1cf-4278-5185-a4ee-01bddfe83993)
Chapter 36 (#u56eff2ed-b7ac-51be-9666-3d56aa076ec9)
Chapter 37 (#u424a551f-1bbc-5860-81b0-4765a659b62c)
Chapter 38 (#uc5abe271-488b-579c-967b-d3a49b46409a)
Chapter 39 (#u59b8f5b4-b896-55d9-9d8f-8f6e0b26647c)
Chapter 40 (#ua1222c35-4e11-5097-a66b-0c41e8246fbc)
Chapter 41 (#ucc1751a2-6341-5c5a-bffe-15a21e1cc4b2)
Chapter 42 (#u991815db-a165-56a5-bf61-179bafac0082)
Chapter 43 (#u71c3d112-84c7-500c-83cd-11180ff53e94)
Chapter 44 (#u40bace55-dae3-5957-abf3-51a2a7006e9b)
Chapter 45 (#udf7c77a9-d9ca-5912-902f-be22b7aa0e76)
Chapter 46 (#ua258af28-9d80-583b-a400-52a18757336a)
Chapter 47 (#u8fb284fd-d8c3-500e-8d9d-6913ce8981ec)
Chapter 48 (#ue53d1d7f-91ae-5591-90b6-800b0d47f4c6)
Chapter 49 (#u11bd86a8-8132-5158-8615-57fc5399665d)
Chapter 50 (#ua65f613c-de82-5858-9ec5-321793561d42)
Chapter 51 (#u68f00481-6e3a-5281-9e04-08b211c55c35)
Chapter 52 (#u44811ea8-a35f-5cd7-b2ac-3802d1de5415)
Chapter 53 (#uefa0c32f-8856-528b-aa0b-1da157ce2092)
Chapter 54 (#u1d8ae22a-1422-554e-8a08-688d411c7141)
Chapter 55 (#ud6920144-3f20-57d3-b376-21bcc6dddfda)
Chapter 56 (#uc50dcbaf-0921-5fb9-be6b-789741eb78bb)
Chapter 57 (#u5fc814fe-955a-555c-873a-aceadb238dbe)
Chapter 58 (#u061819b6-1881-5b63-bd01-622bec66f217)
Chapter 59 (#u03c3753f-7857-5cb1-9b08-6cf1dddcc9b3)
Chapter 60 (#u0cb015a1-be95-5ef9-96ff-b299fd2d5bbb)
Chapter 61 (#u95ad641e-9638-5d04-a3f9-4a0bf74f8d6c)
Chapter 62 (#ud1ca11dd-8b71-5891-ac80-426cb31b1bee)
Chapter 63 (#uae885cc4-04ff-50b7-902d-2697f2efa7e1)
Chapter 64 (#uc21a1111-b7e3-5efe-af7c-a2edf8e21dd2)
Chapter 65 (#u1eb91b11-0fa2-5011-b9a7-f281cbbfa832)
Chapter 66 (#ud9f5ad1b-0562-5bc7-84df-d45fbc95e33e)
Chapter 67 (#u206ad915-133d-5463-a22a-ee6e82be5b08)
Chapter 68 (#u49c6345a-66c1-582a-9b63-2ae826802e35)
Chapter 69 (#u3d53235b-1270-5fd6-8e04-4e30b5e5d8a5)
Chapter 70 (#ucd4663b3-9feb-5385-a936-c8776661e776)
Chapter 71 (#u8b5c2bc7-9118-5ca4-a49a-3c3509c84fe7)
Chapter 72 (#u6f8653f7-b380-5897-a335-837a326769f7)
Chapter 73 (#u2c4cd165-9446-5265-b5ac-e01e49d5889d)
Chapter 74 (#ufd1fd542-bfee-5412-a0c5-3a073803997f)
Chapter 75 (#ub5a2fa23-3a05-5317-aa33-6526c1d373b1)
Chapter 76 (#ue0d82cfe-e236-5d31-8f1a-b7885f9a64b1)
Chapter 77 (#u1a820375-802d-59a7-b06e-fa6a664ed0dd)
Chapter 78 (#u490706d9-363f-552c-ad45-f79138605eaa)
Chapter 79 (#ud8a5a015-a0a0-5baf-b27b-4ed00d681c7a)
Chapter 80 (#ua7e83d63-a8f1-591a-b231-3f63e26220c7)
Chapter 81 (#u636cb5d5-2413-538b-ab45-ebf32a1d3b09)
Chapter 82 (#u9389f65b-3460-52e7-bcce-fafc981a0344)
Chapter 83 (#u689cc0ab-29b0-5ff3-80a8-3c3a2fd5c0de)
Chapter 84 (#uf63b4e4d-cafb-5157-9191-35e9cfd48c2c)
Acknowledgments (#u39baff6c-ce08-53e1-aced-00c91c2a3d1d)
Keep Reading (#u93a6dc65-7a90-535a-aa5e-423d2d7c8783)
About the Author (#udb971df2-4a50-54bb-90ad-61acfc8fed77)
Also by the Author (#uc868596f-a746-50b3-97bf-1e6fed11853c)
About the Publisher (#ufd63a3d8-0c25-5f7d-982a-463c5f1434a2)
Prologue (#ulink_7f349dd6-714e-5548-9451-e7816b0484f0)
Montreal, Quebec 1998
Mark went down to the basement to take one last look at Isabella before he wrapped her up in bubble wrap and placed her in the crate. He had become so used to her being down there that it would seem strange not to have her dominating the room. Despite the ravages of her age and the sea, her presence filled the space. Her eyes in the damaged face watched him with a look that was mysterious and resolute, as if she had seen everything and nothing could surprise her any more.
Her expression seemed to change in the varying light. A face that was made up of such a multiplicity of emotions that Mark thought the carver must have known his model well. This was not a face merely glimpsed or remembered. This face he had created was mobile and frighteningly alive. Her carver had seen and captured the essence of the woman, and even now, a decade later, Mark believed he could glimpse an innocent sensuousness. A consciousness of self that was part of being a beautiful woman and seeing herself reflected in a man’s eyes.
The paint had flaked on the left cheek giving her an air of having been abandoned. There was a deep cut in the wood above her right ear, probably made by a propeller. When Mark first saw her in the garden of a house he never meant to revisit, he had been startled, for it seemed to him that he must have been guided there solely in order to rescue her.
Who better than a historian to discover her origins? His exasperated family admitted that no one else would be foolish enough to ship her from Newfoundland to a basement in Montreal in order to find out who she was and where she had come from.
‘You’re so fanciful, Dad. I guess you believe she was waiting for you to come along, huh?’
Of course, he wouldn’t admit to it. Neither could he quite understand how his family were not equally enchanted by her.
‘In the right place, I might be,’ Veronique said. ‘But not in my basement, watching me. Her eyes follow me about. I forget she is in here and at night when I switch the light on she gives me a terrible fright.’
‘This is one of the loveliest figureheads I’ve ever seen. It’s worth preserving,’ Mark said. ‘Pity she belonged to a British schooner, not one of ours … Various bodies in England are funding most of the cost, but it’s the same over there as it is for us here, they have to fight for every penny they get.’
Mark turned and Inez was standing behind him, hip jutted out to support Daisy who was sleepily sucking her thumb. Inez put her on the ground and they carefully started to wrap the figurehead in layers and layers of bubble wrap, until she resembled a mummy and her face and features were distorted by plastic.
Sitting on the floor, Daisy looked up and pointed. ‘Poor lady gone?’
Mark picked the child up. ‘Yes. She is going to fly on an aeroplane over the sea and someone a long way away is going to make her better.’
‘I like lady,’ she said. ‘What name?’
‘Isabella.’ The child’s hair smelt of butter. ‘The lady used to stand on the front of a ship and swim through the waves and look very beautiful. Her name is Isabella, and we have wrapped her up in a thick coat of bubbles so she won’t get hurt on the aeroplane.’
‘Poor lady,’ Daisy said again as they went up the stairs, and Mark wondered how he could appease his wife for flying off with his wooden angel.
He was not ready to give her up yet; and he needed to know who he was going to give her up to.
Chapter 1 (#ulink_44108d3f-4d4f-5b69-b3ee-c88794409976)
Through the trees Gabby could see the yellow arm of the mechanical digger in the top field. It was the end of an era. No more cattle or the sweet grassy smell of them bringing the flies into the garden in summer. No sound of cows’ teeth munching the new green blades in sharp little stretch and pulling sounds. No wheezy human-sounding bovine coughs making them jump in the dark.
Charlie had occasionally ploughed a portion of the top field for cabbages or kale, and when Josh was small he and his friends had wrinkled their noses at the smell of rotting greens. But cabbages had been infinitely better than executive houses.
‘I wouldn’t have sold an acre of land if I’d had a choice,’ Charlie said miserably, watching the digger throwing up dark earth in all directions like an angry elephant. He was secretly appalled by that great arm tearing at his sacred field. Gabby and Nell could see that, despite his effort to appear businesslike, he felt as sick as they did.
‘We’ll get used to it,’ Nell said quickly. ‘We’ll make a wind-break to hide the houses. We can fill the gap with trees.’
‘Of course we’ll get used to it,’ Gabby said, wanting to cry. ‘Charlie, you had to do it, we know that, it’s just …’
‘I know,’ Charlie said abruptly, turning away and striding in his muddy boots across the farmyard. He hoisted himself up into the Land Rover and drove noisily down the lane to look at his pheasant chicks, something he always did when he wanted to be alone.
‘Oh, Nell,’ Gabby said. ‘This is far worse for you; you’ve lived here longer than either of us.’
Nell lifted her shoulders in a pragmatic little shrug.
‘I hate seeing any of the land go, Gabby, but we have to survive and it’s better than losing the farm or having the financial worries Ted and I had. Charlie is more businesslike than his father. That huge field had its limitations; it slopes, it’s exposed to the wind, and it’s stony. At least we keep the south end and the views. Those houses are going to lose the sun early and they won’t have a view. It’s just that we’re all sentimentally attached, it’s such a beautiful field. Does Josh know work has started?’
‘No, not yet, I’ve avoided mentioning it. You know how Josh likes things to stay exactly the same, he and Charlie argued about it last summer. Josh knows Charlie had no choice, but he refused to see why the paddock by the road couldn’t be sold instead. He wouldn’t accept that the paddock wouldn’t bring in enough money. Also, Nell, he feels guilty about minding so much when he’s not prepared to take on the farm himself.’
They walked slowly back towards the house, and as Nell reached her cottage she said, ‘You realize Charlie hasn’t given up on that one? He thinks Josh will come into the business later when he’s a bit older, when he’s tired of doing his own thing.’
Gabby hesitated. She was sure Josh would not change his mind. He had chosen his career and she felt, so strongly that it shocked her, that she did not want him to change it.
‘He might, Nell, but I doubt it. He loves it here, it’s his home, but farming isn’t something to do lightly or for sentimental reasons, is it? It gets harder every year. He would have to go to agricultural college, he’d have to be totally committed, and who knows what farming is going to be like for his generation? I mean, few jobs are for life any more.’
Nell laughed. ‘You sound like a little old general.’
Gabby made a face. ‘Do I? How is that huge picture of yours coming on?’
‘It’s a nightmare! Come and have a look. It feels like the Forth Bridge. All I’ve done so far is run some tests.’
They went into Nell’s chaotic cottage. Her two old cats lay curled together in the lid of a sewing basket in front of the Aga. Nell led the way, treading over old Sunday papers that littered the floor, into her pristine workroom where Mahler was playing quietly. Gabby never ceased to be amazed at how Nell managed to keep this one room like an operating theatre when the rest of the house grew more like an animal refuge every year.
Both women stood staring at the painting of a stout, bosomy lady clad in pearls and evening dress in an attractive oval frame. The painting looked as if it had been housed in a damp attic for many years, and Nell rather wished it had stayed there.
‘It’s a lovely frame,’ Gabby said. ‘The woman is …’
‘… Hideous!’ Nell snorted. ‘The canvas is in a bad way, as you can see, but it is a quality painting, although I’m unsure if it’s as valuable as the Browns believe it to be. I’ve told them to seek expert opinion; I’m out of date with valuations.’
‘I suppose they want you to clean and restore it before they have it valued?’
‘I think they hope to send it to Christies.’
Gabby peered more closely at it. It had craquelure or crocodiling almost everywhere and the paint on the dress was flaking badly. In the hands of someone less expert than Nell the picture could end up more restoration than painting.
‘Nell, I’m not surprised you’re quailing. This is going to take a lot of work. I thought you were going to refuse larger paintings?’
‘I was. They caught me at a weak moment. They’ve dated her around 1892. She’s been restored before, twice they think, possibly in the 1930s. It looks as though it’s been consolidated with wax-resin and just surface cleaned, but I’d have said it had been cleaned at a later date, possibly in the 1950s.’
Gabby and Nell stared down at the painting. The discoloration of both the varnish and overpaints had affected the image, and excessive restoration in the background meant that no detail could be seen and all sense of the painting was impaired. Gabby was interested in the process of the restoration.
‘I could come and help you as soon as I’ve finished cleaning The Cobbler’s Cats.’
‘I thought you had this figurehead restoration in St Piran coming up?’
‘Peter’s asked me to go and look at it but I’m not sure I’ll get the job, Nell. I haven’t got any experience of figureheads. Anyway, I could help you in the evenings.’
‘See what happens before you commit yourself to helping me. When are you going to see it?’
‘It’s arriving in London from Canada and is being driven down to Cornwall next week. Oh, Nell, I’d really love to be given the chance of restoring her.’
‘There’s absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t be offered the job, Gabby. You’ve got a growing reputation and it reflects the work you’re starting to be offered.’
Gabby smiled. ‘I’ve had an excellent teacher.’
Nell patted her arm. ‘Coffee?’
‘I’d better get to work, Nell, half the morning has gone.’ Gabby preferred her coffee without cat hairs in it. ‘Let me help you get this doughty woman out of her frame before I go.’
They eased the painting out of its frame and laid it carefully on Nell’s table, face up and uncovered to avoid any more paint loss. The portrait was large and had obviously been moved frequently as there were lines of stretcher marks where it had been folded, and the craquelure followed the lines of a stretcher and had caused the most damage.
‘I wonder if she was passed from one family member to another in desperation, constantly being removed from her frame, poor old dear,’ Gabby said.
‘Well, someone loved her enough to commission a huge six-foot painting of her. Removing the overpaint is going to take the most time.’ Nell peered at the woman’s bosoms with a magnifying glass. ‘I’ll remove that varnish with isopropanol. Can you see? There’s a thin layer of discoloured natural resin. I’m going to have to remove most of the more recent restorations. I suspect …’ Nell moved over to the foreground of the lady’s sumptuous dress ‘… that each restorer has altered the tone of the previous overpaint, rather than removing it. I’m pretty sure I’ll find layers concealing more damage …’
Gabby smiled as she watched Nell. She was already caught in the excitement of restoring. Her face had come suddenly alive as her eyes darted to and fro, assessing the damage with a keen and professional eye. It was this, Nell’s passionate interest in her work, that had fired Gabby’s imagination and curiosity all those years ago.
Gabby walked across the farmyard back to the house. Despite the distant noise of the digger a feeling of contentment filled her. She had been afraid when Josh left home that the gap he left would yawn before her, yet slowly but steadily the work had come in to distract her. She had now got to the stage of having to refuse commissions. For the first time in her life she was able to make a financial contribution to the farm, and it felt wonderful.
She walked through the kitchen to her workroom, which was the oldest part of the house with a cobbled floor that had once been Charlie’s office. The window looked out on the small, walled garden which dipped downhill to the daffodil fields.
At the start of every daffodil season Gabby would stand transfixed by the green and yellow sloping fields full of emerging buds and the startling vivid blue of the ocean behind them. The scene was reminiscent of the poster of daffodil pickers that had been stuck on the classroom wall at school. It had been that poster that had enticed her to run away and climb on a coach to Cornwall.
She moved away from the window to the small painting propped up on an easel. She wanted to finish it today. It was the last of her backlog as she had decided not to take on any more commissions until she had seen the figurehead next week.
Ever since Peter Fletcher, the curator from the museum in Truro, had rung her she had felt restless with anticipation. She thought about this lost figurehead making its way from Canada on its last voyage home. She tried not to think how disappointed she would be if she was not offered the job of restoring it.
She picked up a swab of cotton wool on a stick from the jam-jar beside her and started to work, concentrating, engrossed, as her fingers moved deftly, defining detail and discovering small hidden surprises out of layers of dirt. She smiled as she discovered under the old cobbler’s hands, not darkness, but a beautiful drawer of nails.
Chapter 2 (#ulink_f41d360a-2133-57eb-b791-40885d751be6)
Gabby set off to see the figurehead at St Piran a week after the digger started to scar the top field. At the top of the hill she got out and climbed onto the gate. She looked down on the farm crouched in the trees, so familiar; and yet, as she gripped the top of the gate all seemed suddenly unfamiliar, as if she was a stranger looking down on a homestead containing the lives of people she knew nothing about.
A small figure came out of the barn and walked across the yard. Charlie? She could not see from here. The odd sensation persisted. The hot, still day pressed down on her, the heat shimmered above the grass and hedgerow. The morning swelled with the sound of bees settling on the honeysuckle in the hedge. Horseflies hovered in petrol-blue clouds over the cowpats in the field beyond the gate.
Still she stood on the gate looking downwards, suspended and held by the day that slowly wound forward to the next minute and the next and the next. In her mind’s eye she saw the hands of a clock crawling round the face in slow motion, so imperceptibly towards something that she was afraid they might stop altogether and she would forever be suspended, held here, above her life, waiting.
The sun bounced and glinted off the sea, dazzling her. Her hands on the gate seemed extraordinarily translucent, her body torpid and yet light as if she might blow away like a leaf, hither and thither across the field having no weight at all. She thought suddenly, I would have no place down there if it wasn’t for Josh. If my child had never existed Nell and Charlie would be a memory only. A memory I reached for in the dark because it reminded me of what I had been running from, that first cold day when I stood here looking down at the pickers bent to the tight green buds of daffodils in a freezing wind.
She stared beyond the gate, away to the horizon, across Charlie and Nell’s five hundred acres below her, then she turned abruptly and got back into the car.
As she drove away from the sea she began to think about the figurehead. Peter Fletcher had told her, briefly, that it had come from a trade schooner called the Lady Isabella, which had set sail from St Piran and foundered in Canadian waters in 1867 with all hands on board.
The figurehead must have been salvaged years ago, but had only recently been discovered by a Canadian historian who had taken the time and trouble to trace a figurehead, from a foreign vessel, all the way back to the small Cornish port from where it had started its journey.
Gabby had been to the library and got out everything on marine figureheads she could find. Nell had given her a list of maritime museums and suggested she go over and visit Valhalla on Tresco to view the collection of figureheads more closely. She had also dug out old restoration books from her lecturing days which she thought Gabby might find useful.
Gabby pored over the photographs, fascinated by the wealth and beauty of the ships and figureheads inside the books she had borrowed. She had surprised herself with her sudden overriding conviction that this figurehead was a commission she must have. It was the first time she had been approached for the sort of work Nell herself had never undertaken and it astonished her that her opinion was being sought; that she had credibility on the basis of her own work, not Nell’s reputation.
Nell was sure that one of the reasons Gabby had been approached was her skill with intricate church panels. Gabby was more patient than Nell had been in her younger days. On wood it was necessary to peel away centuries of wax, stain and varnish, to reveal, after a tiring and lengthy process, if you were lucky, a hidden painting. The moment of discovery, the moment a fleck of colour appeared under your fingers like magic, was incomparable. Gabby never tired of the excitement and anticipation of a discovery. Nell preferred the satisfaction of simply transforming what she was working on to the comparative rarity of finding a concealed painting that had not been ruined.
As Gabby entered the village a small wind gusted from the sea, rocking her car. It carried with it a sudden presentiment that was disturbing. She felt a sharp stab of anxiety that made her breathless. She parked her car near the small museum and walked towards the group of people waiting for her in the porch.
For a moment Gabby hesitated with her hand on the latch of the old Methodist chapel that was now a museum. The group of men waiting for her were in shadow, she could not see their faces.
There was a second when she could have turned and run back to the car, driven away fast, back to the farmhouse lying squat and secure amid small trees all bent one way by the winds like figures frozen in a Russian landscape.
She could have run and never known the possibilities the future could hold. But someone called out and the moment slid away into impossibility. She opened the gate and passed through it, towards the men who stood in shadow and the sound of her name being called.
Chapter 3 (#ulink_c76333e9-1618-5155-9a4b-5493aab69e1c)
It took Gabby a moment to adjust to the darkness of the museum as the vicar of St Piran, John Bradbury, guided her through the door. Her heart sank as she spotted Councillor Rowe. He and Nell had been at war for years and she firmly maintained he was a closet misogynist. He was already puffing himself up like a bantam as she approached.
John Bradbury, with his back to the councillor, gave Gabby a wink of encouragement.
‘Gabrielle, come and meet everybody. You know Peter Fletcher from Truro Museum. Tristan Brown is from the Western Morning News. Councillor Rowe, I think you’ve met before. And this is Professor Mark Hannah, from Montreal. Mark has been entirely responsible for the safe return of our beautiful figurehead to St Piran. Mark, this is Gabrielle Ellis, our local restorer.’
Gabrielle looked up into the amused eyes of the Canadian. He held out his hand.
‘Great to meet you, Gabriella.’ His hand was warm, the fingers long and thin, his grip firm. Suddenly self-conscious, Gabby looked away, smiled at Peter Fletcher, and then they all turned and walked towards a corner of the museum where the figurehead lay on her back on a worktable, swathes of bubble wrap still around and underneath her like an eiderdown.
Gabby stared down at the wooden figure, held her breath. Lady Isabella was so much more beautiful than she had imagined. She moved closer and looked at the high cheekbones, the sightless eyes, the scarred face and neck. The wood was dry with small cracks, the paint flaked, remnants of colour caught in the corner of her eyes like tears.
The face was extraordinary, so meticulously carved that it seemed to have an expression of combined sensuality and haunting sadness. This face, Gabby thought, had been carved with a doomed or careless passion.
The Canadian, watching her, said softly, ‘Meet Lady Isabella.’
Gabrielle was unable to keep the thrill out of her voice; ‘She is exquisite.’
Mark Hannah laughed. ‘She is, isn’t she.’
‘Where on earth did you find her?’ Gabby asked.
‘Pure chance. I was in Newfoundland giving a series of lectures at the Marine Institute of Memorial University. I had a couple of days there and I decided to go walking. I suddenly spotted her in a garden in Bonavista Bay, among the usual flotsam brought up from the sea. She was wedged between two trees.
‘I knocked on the door and the man who lived there told me she had been given to him as part of a debt owed by his brother-in-law who had once lived in Malpeque Bay, Prince Edward Island. He thought she had been exhibited at some time, maybe at the Green Park Shipbuilding Museum on the west side of Malpeque Bay. I could see a crude attempt to restore her had been made but she was beginning to deteriorate and I asked if he would be willing to sell her to me.’
The boy from the Western Morning News was scribbling fast into his notebook.
‘After a lot of haggling I bought her for the sum of the whole debt owed to him. I told myself I wanted her because I thought she would make an excellent research project for some of my students, but it was love at first sight. I had to have her.’
Gabby, watching him, thought, He must have told this story many times and yet the excitement of the discovery is still with him.
‘I wonder how long she was exposed to the elements,’ she said, looking at the wood-rot and damage at her base.
‘The man told me he had kept her in his old boat shed and had only put her in his garden when he needed his shed.’
Peter Fletcher touched Gabby’s arm. ‘Thanks to Mark’s detective work I was able to trace the original plans for the schooner Lady Isabella. They were in the marine archives in Devon. She was a two-masted ship, commissioned by a wealthy master mariner, an ex-naval gentleman called Sir Richard Magor whose family were big in shipbuilding here in Cornwall and Devon, as well as Prince Edward Island.’
Gabby felt a surge of excitement. ‘Do you have the name of the man who carved the figurehead?’
Peter grinned at her. ‘Oh yes. His name was Tom Welland. He was quite a famous woodcarver in his day. His figures were unmistakable.’
Gabby turned back to the figurehead. She longed to touch that frail face, but knew she must not. The Canadian came to stand beside her.
‘Tom Welland went in for detail. Not all figurehead carvers did, many were quite primitive. He became well-known, not just in England but on the continent as well as Canada and America. He was an artist and was able to pick and choose his commissions. He appears to have travelled widely when he was young, probably as crew on the trading vessels, because traces of his work can still be found in Mediterranean ports. Then he just seems to have stopped carving. No one knows what happened to him. John tells me his family lived and worked around St Piran all their lives.’
‘They did indeed,’ John Bradbury said. ‘Most of them are buried here, but not Tom.’
‘It’s wonderful to have a date. It means we know exactly when she was carved and what materials they would have used,’ Gabby said.
‘But how did you connect her to Cornwall?’ Tristan from the Western Morning News asked Mark Hannah.
The Canadian smiled at the boy. ‘I knew she must be European, possibly British from a trade schooner. The nearest we have to your schooners or barques are Boston trawlers, and the figureheads differ. I went to the public archives. Prince Edward Island was once a British colony and there had been a thriving shipbuilding business between the island and the West Country in the nineteenth century.
‘I couldn’t find any sign of a trading ship called Lady Isabella registered as being built on the island, but records get destroyed or go missing and when I turned to the register of wrecks it jumped out at me. A schooner, the Lady Isabella, lost in a storm in 1867 off Bonavista Bay. Instinct told me this was her. There was no mention of the schooner carrying a figurehead, so I asked an English colleague to check for me in the Lloyds List, London, and there she was, listed and described with figurehead alongside the date of her sinking.’
Peter Fletcher took up the story again. ‘Thanks to Mark’s detective work we looked at the most probable Cornish owners and builders of that period. I went to the Public Record Office to look down the Lloyds Register. Trading vessels had to be registered to get an insurance certificate.
‘I found that a schooner called Lady Isabella, built in Prince Edward Island in 1863 had been granted an A1 certificate of seaworthiness by Lloyds London in 1864. Then I went to the Guildhall Library, where Mark’s colleague had already looked, to double-check the Lloyds List. This also stated that Lady Isabella was wrecked off Newfoundland with all hands in 1867. By that time she was owned by a Daniel Vyvyan, but it was common for ships to be sold on when tonnage was profitable.’
‘So,’ Gabby asked, ‘was this Isabella, Sir Richard Magor’s wife?’
John Bradbury said, ‘We don’t know, bit of a mystery there. Peter and I have been going through the old parish records. The Magors were not from the parish of St Piran, they were an old Falmouth seafaring family and many of them were master mariners. Sir Richard lived in Botallick House, now owned by the National Trust in the parish of Mylor. In the Mylor parish register there is no record of him marrying in the 1860s. None at all.’
‘What about this Daniel Vyvyan guy, who owned her when she sank?’ Tristan asked.
‘The Vyvyan family have lived in St Piran for generations. They owned the mausoleum-like house you see on your right as you come into St Piran. It was Perannose Manor and is now a Christian conference centre. Daniel had two wives, a Helena Vyvyan, née Viscaria, and a Charlotte, née Flemming; both are buried with Vyvyan in the family crypt.’
‘What about daughters?’ Gabby asked.
‘Ah, I was coming to that. Helena and Daniel had a daughter Isabella in 1846 …’
‘What?’ Everybody looked at John Bradbury.
He laughed. ‘I have more! I was talking to a long-retired vicar of Mylor, a bit of an amateur historian and sleuth. He maintains there was an Isabella who was the first wife of Sir Richard Magor. No one knows what happened to her, she is not buried in Mylor or here in St Piran. Legend has it that a page in the parish records registering a marriage in 1864, containing that of Magor and Isabella Vyvyan was torn out, destroyed shortly after that marriage …’
‘Maybe that’s why Richard Magor sold the ship to Isabella’s father, if she had fallen out of favour,’ Gabby said.
‘Quite possibly,’ Peter said. ‘And of course our research is ongoing. What we do know is that in the years the Lady Isabella was built, St Piran had a thriving boat-building business employing many men in the area.’
‘This is all very interesting indeed,’ Councillor Rowe said, ‘but the business of the morning is who is going to restore the figurehead now she is here. The rest we can look forward to hearing later.’
They all stared at him. How on earth could he not be interested in a piece of history that he was hoping to raise money for, Gabby wondered.
‘Quite right!’ Mark Hannah looked as if he was having trouble not laughing. ‘The business of the day.’
They turned back to the figurehead. Mark Hannah said to Gabby, ‘One of the reasons Tom Welland became so well-known and sought after was that sailors believed his carvings were blessed because his faces always looked so alive.’
‘It’s true,’ Gabby said. ‘Her face is disturbingly alive. It’s the eyes, I think.’
‘Mark has offered to go on researching the history of the Lady Isabella for us in London, when he has time between his lecturing engagements and writing his book, and we’re very grateful. Of course, we will go on delving this end too, and hopefully we will discover more about the schooner. We do have a great deal to thank you for, Mark,’ Peter said.
‘Indeed we do,’ John Bradbury agreed, looking pointedly at Councillor Rowe.
Councillor Rowe cleared his throat. ‘London is where I think this valuable piece of local history should be restored. We need a London expert. It is only right and proper that we have the best we can afford.’
Gabrielle knew she was being rebuffed and the councillor wanted to ease her out, but she was not going to give him the satisfaction of seeing that she suddenly felt unsure of her credibility; for it was true, she had never restored a figurehead. She felt the Canadian’s eyes on her, but when she looked up she knew instantly he was rooting for her.
He said in his soft drawl, turning to Rowe, ‘I’ve heard excellent accounts and seen for myself some of Gabrielle’s work. Peter took me to the church of Saint Hilary to see the panels and the two painted wood sculptures Gabriella restored. I also drove to Lanreath to see the painted medieval oak rood-screens she worked on. I can see no good reason for this figurehead being lugged to London if it can be restored professionally here. What do you think, Peter?’
‘I have no doubt whatsoever that Gabrielle is more than qualified to do the job. I’ve worked closely with her before and I’m sure she will do it justice. She’s been working with Nell Appleby, who is one of the best fine art conservators in the county.’
He turned to the councillor. ‘I’m sure you must remember the two major sculptures that Nell and Gabrielle restored about two years ago, Rowe? The seventeenth-century Spanish gilded wood carving of Saint Joseph; and the one of Saint Ann, probably fourteenth-century? It was Gabrielle who found the fragments of original paint.’
Gabby turned away from the men to the wistful wooden face, to the shaved and battered bodice, to the carved fingers with the arms held down close to her body so she could fly through the water.
‘I know you will need to do a proper inspection, Gabrielle, but is it possible to give us a quick assessment?’ she heard Peter ask behind her.
Gabby got out her magnifying glasses and knelt beside the figurehead, bending close, careful not to touch any of the painted sections. She talked the group of men through the various methods she would use, the tests she would carry out before she started. As she talked and examined the face, the cheekbones looked suddenly warm and smooth, and as Gabby’s fingers hovered over her face a strange feeling of familiarity flooded through her as if she was bending to the face of someone she knew well. She wished Nell had come, the detail was breathtaking.
‘The work in this …’ Gabby marvelled as she examined an eyelid, the relaxed and languid lips, ‘… is such a labour of love. She must have seemed so alive and vivid in her once blue dress with the water rushing past her.’
The Canadian’s expression was intent, as if he needed to gauge Gabby’s feelings and the care she would take with his beloved figurehead.
Peter Fletcher smiled. ‘It is the most wonderful find. Gabrielle, would you be willing to take her on?’
Gabby looked up, was about to answer, Yes, oh yes, when Rowe said, ‘However proficient Mrs Ellis is, a figurehead is quite a different matter to a sculpture or painting. This has been immersed in salt water for many years and has been half-ruined with modern paints. I believe we decided to discuss the restoration carefully before we offered it to anyone …’
‘That is exactly what we are doing, discussing it,’ the vicar said crossly, cutting him off. ‘That is why we have two experts in front of us who know what they are talking about …’
‘There is a question of cost,’ Rowe said, interrupting in his turn.
Gabby looked at the vicar. ‘I can’t estimate the time it will take off the top of my head. But of course I would come and do a proper detailed inspection before I sent you a quote.’
Peter was also getting annoyed with Rowe. ‘I can tell you now, the cost of the figurehead being restored and insured outside the county is going to be far more than any quote from Gabrielle. You are quite wrong; it is not a different skill. A figurehead is like a panel and Gabrielle is expert at wood treatments and polychrome. Which in lay terms, Rowe, are painted surfaces. She also has knowledge of pigments from medieval to contemporary paints. We have an expert on site, so I am unsure what your reservations are.’
Gabby felt like whispering, I’ll do it for nothing, just let me have the chance, but she knew it wasn’t professional and Nell and Charlie would explode.
Rowe opened his mouth to argue and the Canadian said evenly, ‘I suggest that having got the figurehead safely home to Cornwall, not without some difficulty, it would be foolish to move her again. She is damaged and had I thought she would not be restored locally, I would have left her in London.’
There was an uncomfortable silence. Rowe was an unpopular councillor but he was good at obtaining money from various sources. The Canadian winked at Gabrielle then watched the councillor with veiled amusement.
‘I think,’ the vicar said, ‘we should all repair to the pub and discuss this over lunch.’
‘Good idea,’ Peter Fletcher said.
‘Indeed,’ Rowe said. ‘I can then go on to talk to the Heritage people. Well, Mrs Ellis, thank you for coming, we will inform you of our decision.’
‘I meant,’ the vicar said coldly, ‘for Gabrielle to accompany us and be part of the discussion.’
Peter took Gabrielle’s arm as they walked out of the church. He was a polite bachelor and he deplored Rowe’s crassness. ‘Let’s go and see if we can find a table.’
Gabrielle smiled at him. ‘Peter, really, it’s fine. I should be getting back anyway.’
They all emerged into the harsh sunlight. Gabby put on her sunglasses with relief.
Peter said, ‘I think it’s important that you stay, Gabby. We are keen that you do this restoration, that’s why we rang you, and I’d like to talk this through with you.’
‘I agree,’ the Canadian said, falling into step the other side of her. ‘It would be good to talk with you, if you have the time. That figurehead has been my baby for quite a while.’
‘Settled,’ the vicar said. ‘Come on, Gabrielle, off we go.’
Peter moved away to talk to him and Gabby was left with the Canadian. She felt suddenly, infuriatingly tongue-tied. From the moment she entered the church she had been aware of his eyes constantly on her face.
He was a tall and lean man, and in the sunlight she saw he was older than she had first thought. His eyes crinkled with amusement as he bent to her.
‘Now what the hell could you have possibly done to upset that asshole?’
Startled, Gabby snorted with laughter. ‘Not me! Nell, my mother-in-law. She upset his brother, an untrained restorer, who ruined a valuable painting belonging to an old friend of hers and then charged her the earth. Nell wrote an article in the local paper. She didn’t name him but everyone knew exactly who she was talking about. It was the end of his career. Councillor Rowe has never forgiven her.’
They sat inside in the cool and Rowe pointedly ordered himself a pasty and orange juice and left. As the door closed behind him everyone relaxed. The young reporter started to quiz Mark on the details of shipping the Lady Isabella back to England while John Bradbury ordered sandwiches.
‘How’s Nell?’ Peter asked Gabby. ‘Still working, I hope.’
‘Oh yes. Nell will never really give up. She’s working on a huge painting at the moment.’
‘I met a guy in London who knew your mother-in-law,’ Mark said suddenly. ‘She’s still very highly thought of. I understand she worked for the National Portrait Gallery and then gave it all up to become a farmer’s wife.’
‘I don’t think she’s ever really stopped restoring. She just took on work locally instead of from London, when Charlie was old enough to help around the farm.’
‘Your husband?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you Cornish?’
‘No. Charlie is.’
Now, why did she not want to talk about Charlie, as if it might make her less interesting to the Canadian?
‘They have the most beautiful farm,’ Peter said, ‘miles from anywhere and hell to find.’
The Canadian – Mark, for heaven’s sake, he has a name – was still firmly concentrating on her rather than the reporter. Gabby, who hated the focus of attention being on her, turned the conversation back to the figurehead to the relief of the earnest young man.
Back in the church car park they said their goodbyes. The two men thanked her for coming. The young reporter got on his motorbike and roared off. John Bradbury walked home to his vicarage. Peter sent his love to Nell and went to unlock his car and open all the windows.
The Canadian took Gabby’s hand and looked down on her in the amused way he had, as if laughter was never far away. She wondered if he found them all very quaint and British and tried to draw her hand away, feeling suddenly cross with him for staring, for making her tongue-tied, when she would think later of all the questions she wanted to ask him. He hung on to her hand, still smiling down at her.
‘Please could I have my hand back?’ she asked.
‘Of course you can,’ he said. ‘I’m only borrowing it – for now. It’s a very nice hand indeed.’
He let it go. ‘It’s been great meeting you, Gabriella. I’m so happy Lady Isabella is going to be in your hands. She will be, you know.’
‘I would really love to restore her,’ Gabby said, hot all over. ‘Goodbye.’
She climbed into her car and banged the door shut, deeply grateful to her sunglasses that she hoped were hiding her face.
‘Goodbye, Gabriella, take care,’ Mark said through the window and turned and walked back to Peter, who waved at her as she drove quickly past, eager to get round the corner and back onto the road home.
The sun was beginning to fade and the shadows over the fields lengthen. Cows were making their way down a field to be milked. She wondered how long Charlie could keep his herd and how diminished the farm would be without the sight of them in the yard every morning and evening. Wistfulness for everything to stay exactly as it was overtook her so suddenly that tears sprang to her eyes. She made the little car go faster, as if the farm might have disappeared altogether in the time it took her to drive home.
Chapter 4 (#ulink_494c4749-04a7-539c-8ae0-97a84c4541c2)
Nell watched as the girl and the small boy crossed the edge of the daffodil field down towards the coastal path. The morning was still, the wind from the south-west soft and teasing. The sky and sea merged in the distance, blue on blue.
The day was held, breathless and hovering, like the kestrel poised, wings fluttering, over the hedge of the field where the girl walked.
It was one of those days that was too still, the lack of wind unnerving, making the morning seem as if it had drawn in on itself, gathering and collecting in a silence that should be listened to.
Nell stood, shading her eyes, holding the bowl full of corn, staring out towards the small figure of the girl in the distance. There was no hint of cloud, just the endless shimmering ocean meeting the lush green of the fields dotted with buds of emerging daffodils.
She could hear the tractor now, moving along the farm track. As it came into sight above the hedge the girl stopped and lifted the child, and he called out, waved vigorously with his small, fat hands. The driver stopped and jumped out and walked to the field gate that lay between them. The child let go of his mother and ran along the stony edge of yellow daffodils so fast he fell, and the man leapt over the gate and scooped him up, threw him up over his head. Nell could hear the child’s laughter blowing over to her like dandelion fluff on the fragile stillness of the day.
Maybe it was going to work, Nell thought, against all the odds. Watching from a distance they looked like a little textbook family; content, happy in their skins. Charlie had a son. He had never doubted for a moment that his firstborn would be a son. That had made everything easier.
The man ruffled the girl’s dark hair lightly and they stood talking for a moment before he lifted the child up onto his shoulders, walked away and climbed over the gate and placed the child in front of him on the tractor. The engine started up again and they continued down the lane, towards where Nell stood in the yard holding the bowl of corn for the hens, watching.
Silently the kestrel dived, steep and sharp. Nell could hear the sudden squeal of the baby rabbit as it was caught and pulled out of the hedge. The girl turned, startled, and clapped her hand over her mouth in horror.
‘No. No. No,’ Nell heard faintly on the wind. Then the girl made little runs up and down, crying and shouting in impotent anger at the kestrel, which lifted its prey swiftly upwards over the hedge and away in low flight.
The girl was left small and alone in the vast rolling greenness of the field. Some nebulous, disturbing feeling caught at Nell as the girl, shading her eyes, watched the kestrel until it was a pinprick in the sky.
Nell had rarely seen any show of emotion in this girl. Placid, cheerful, so careful to fit into country life, to be accommodating, to be loved. Nell realized in that brief moment that her daughter-in-law had been smothering any spontaneous expression of anger, joy or misery. She suddenly perceived Gabby as a sleepwalker in her own life. It was safer to sleep sometimes than to question how or why we came to be in a particular place at a particular time with a particular person. Nell knew this protective passivity only too well.
She turned away from the figure making its way back towards her, a small, clear silhouette against the horizon of sea and sky. She clucked at the hens and scattered the corn in a wide arc as she identified this intangible feeling of unrest. What happened when Gabrielle woke up? No one could sleep for an entire lifetime.
Nell turned Josh’s postcard over and looked at the soldier on horseback. How quickly the years had slid away. Hard to think of that little curly-haired boy in uniform. Hard to watch the green field he loved so much with its annual rash of mushrooms, disappearing into piles of earth, forming trenches for foundations that would house another generation on land she knew like the back of her hand.
Who would have thought Josh would become a soldier, not a farmer? Who could have guessed he could permanently leave the farm he loved, the friends he had grown up with? She slipped the postcard into her pocket. She loved Josh with a fierce love and pride and was suddenly shocked at her own duplicity.
She understood exactly why Josh had turned his back on the farm. How could she, of all people, not feel honest and grateful that he had needed more than a lifetime embedded in the harsh Cornish landscape? That he had chosen not to be smothered by the seasons, the weather, disease, and animal husbandry.
She would have been bitterly disappointed if he had grown up incurious about anything outside the parochial world in which he had spent his childhood. There would be no more grandchildren, she had had only one chance to instil in him a need for something outside the farm and county, a craving to learn; for him to soak up like a sponge all that a country childhood had made him, by distance, ignorant of.
She had taught him about paintings, about art, about conserving the past, the environment; all that she herself felt passionate about. Gabby had given him a ferocious love of books and Charlie an abiding pride in the land they owned. This was why Charlie had difficulty in understanding how Josh could turn his back on the physical thrill of working land that had belonged to four generations of his family.
Yet, Josh, the scholarship boy, had come away from university with a first and gone straight to Sandhurst. Nell found it mystifying. It was also humbling. What right had she to try to mould Josh, from a baby, to compromise? Here she was, believing she had widened his horizons when he would have certainly done so without her help. Josh had always seemed to know what he wanted from life. Possibly, it was away from the two women who loved him, in a way, Nell had begun to realize since he had left, that might well have been suffocating.
She and Gabby had each other, their restoration work, and Charlie. Josh must forge his own life. Nell smiled. The lorries had gone, the cows were coming up the lane for milking. Soon Gabby would be home to tell of her day.
She took Josh’s postcard out of her pocket and placed it in the centre of the mantelpiece. Thank God for Gabby.
Chapter 5 (#ulink_13ac3b0d-3289-5e13-bb5b-0866e3d881e2)
Extraordinary. Mark did not know who he was expecting. A middle-aged spinster? An earnest academic? A hugger of trees in ethnic sweater and bright sandals? Whoever it was, it certainly was not this small, dark girl hovering on the other side of the museum gate.
She stood peering at them in an enormous pair of sunglasses that hid most of her face. With her hand on the gate she seemed poised for flight and ready to bolt. The kindly priest next to him turned and saw her, called out her name, and it was only then that she lifted the latch and walked towards them.
The little pompous guy was telling Peter that he considered Gabrielle Ellis to be too inexperienced. He was cut off by the priest who moved away to greet the girl. Introductions were made and Mark saw, closer, that Gabrielle Ellis was not a girl, but a small, very pretty woman.
They had unpacked the figurehead on the ground floor in a corner near the window at the back of the museum where there was the most light for Gabrielle to look at her. He watched Gabrielle’s face as she caught sight of the Lady Isabella. A little involuntary sigh escaped her. She moved forward to peer at the wooden face he had grown to love, tentatively, as if the impassive face of Lady Isabella was alive and carried secrets from the ocean she would love to know.
Gabrielle Ellis had dark hair to her shoulders and she tended to flip it forward to hide her face. As she listened to everyone her face was concentrated and rapt. She kept glancing back at the figurehead, bending to look at her face and neck, her fingers hovering and framing Isabella’s face as if she longed to touch or was offering comfort to a patient.
As she leant forward to examine the many small craquelures and fissures, her hair fell forward to reveal, against her suntanned shoulders, a tiny triangle of startling white neck, as soft and tender as a baby’s. Mark had this sudden overpowering urge to place his lips upon that tiny place of whiteness.
He brought himself back abruptly to the conversation. The councillor seemed determined that Gabrielle Ellis was not going to get the job of restoring the figurehead. This project, he thought, has been my overriding passion for too long. If a local restorer can do the job, I’m damned if I’m going to let this sententious little man, with some agenda, ship her back to London.
Mark said his piece and a sticky silence followed. He wondered if Gabrielle was feeling undermined by the attitude of the councillor, but he watched her face and it did not appear so. John Bradbury was beginning to get mad, though, he could see a small tic starting up in his cheek, and Mark grinned to himself.
As they walked over to the pub he made Gabrielle laugh, but she seemed shy and talked little over lunch. She scribbled a quick estimate on a pad and it was obvious that both John and Peter Fletcher wanted to give her the job. Cock Robin disappeared in high dudgeon and he wondered who had the deciding vote; the council, the Heritage people or the museum.
He studied Gabrielle while he ate his sandwich. Without the sunglasses, and out of the dim church, her face was small and elfinlike. She had extraordinary blue eyes with flecks of grey and brown in them. Her hands were small, like a child’s, with dimples in the wrists. Dear little hands.
It was her stillness that struck him most. Her movements were slow and tranquil, but somehow detached, as if a piece of her was somewhere else. He knew he was making her self-conscious by looking at her for too long, too intensely, but he found it almost impossible to turn his gaze anywhere else. As soon as he tried to concentrate on the Tristan guy, who was earnestly trying to elicit information for his local rag, his eyes would return to her face as if pulled by a magnet.
They all walked back to the car park to go their separate ways. Peter was driving him back to his Truro hotel. The afternoon was still hot but the colours were changing as the sun got lower in the sky. The sea beyond the languid fields was aquamarine. Loneliness seized him; he did not want to return to his impersonal hotel room, he wanted to watch the sunset on a cliff top with this woman.
He took her hand, held on to it, said goodbye, smiled down at her with the pure exultation of a discovery. She asked, rather severely, for her hand back, got into her quaint little English car, still hidden by those ridiculous sunglasses, and sped off.
He felt, as he held that small hand, such a surge of desire that her hand in his had trembled. He knew, as he felt the heat emanating from her small body and down into her hand like a tangible thing, that she was as acutely aware of him as he was of her.
He turned and walked away to Peter’s car. The curator was watching him with an expression Mark found impossible to read, and he thought suddenly, I am a married man, at least twenty years older than Gabrielle Ellis. I have a wife I love and five grown-up daughters.
The car turned out into the road and they both reached out to pull the visors against the sun moving down the sky in front of them. They had to stop while a herd of cows idled along the road in front of them, flicking their tails. Huge great beasts with sweet, grass-smelling breath, shoving against each other and mooing noisily as they turned into a muddy farmyard to be milked.
‘I’d like to take you out to supper,’ Peter said.
‘That would be great.’
‘Can I pick you up about eight?’
‘Sure, I’ll be ready. I’m not taking up too much of your time?’
‘Not at all. I’ll bring someone I think you’ll enjoy talking to, an archaeologist friend of mine. You have confidence in Gabrielle Ellis to do a good restoration? It must be hard to hand Lady Isabella over.’
‘It is hard, but I’m sure you’re right in wanting Gabrielle to restore her. How much pull does that councillor fellow have?’
Peter laughed. ‘We don’t have to take the help of council funding or the conditions the council might impose for that funding, but, as you know, to gather private donations, even with National Heritage help, is difficult and time-consuming. We do have ways of persuading Councillor Rowe to our way of thinking. He is a very vain little man. Give him the limelight, lots of press coverage, photos … The Heritage people find him as much of a bore as we do.’
‘Good. Does Gabrielle have children? I mean, is she able to work full time on this project?’
Peter glanced at him. ‘She and Charlie have one grown-up son. He didn’t want to go into the farm, which was a blow for Charlie. He went straight to the army from university instead.’
Mark was amazed. ‘A grown-up son? She can only be about thirty, surely?’
‘Somewhere in her thirties, I should think. She came down to Cornwall to pick daffodils one school holiday. She and Charlie fell in love and she never went home. I think she had her son at about seventeen or eighteen.’
‘My God, that’s almost child abduction.’
‘Romantic, isn’t it,’ Peter said dryly, ‘because they are still together and as far as I know, very happy. An improvement on marrying first cousins – that used to happen a lot down here.’
Is he warning me off, in an understated British way? Mark wondered. Then suddenly shocked at himself, thought, Heshould not have to. If I am a decent human being I close my mind to this woman.
Later, as he was shaving, Mark met his own eyes in the mirror. He thought of home, of early evening, of how the light slanted mellow across the rooftops at the end of a day as he prepared to leave the campus and return to his rambling house that was always bursting with people. He would stand at the door for a second, listening to Veronique calmly reigning supreme in the huge kitchen in the middle of the chaos of his daughters, grandchildren, their schoolfriends, hangers-on, neighbours.
Veronique blissfully, radiantly content. He had always thought of himself as trying to be an honourable man, certainly not one who had habitually been unfaithful to his wife or gone out of his way to commit adultery. Nor one who had ever pursued a happily married woman, or any married woman for that matter.
He continued to stare at himself with a strange falling-away sensation. His own eyes locked with those of his reflection as if he were two separate people, one trying to stare the other into submission. He caught a quick glimpse of the future in the moment when it was still possible to retreat, and also the moment when he knew he was going to ignore that warning voice as piercing as a house alarm, and reach out deliberately for the self-destruct button.
Chapter 6 (#ulink_85c47205-792a-5ec6-84e2-af9015e95480)
Gabby turned left and instead of driving down the lane to the farm she followed the narrow road that led to the coastal path and the next cove. The sun was hanging spectacularly over the sea and the day was cooling. She turned again and bumped along a track until it ended in a gate. She got out, locked the car, climbed over the gate and walked across the field until she came to a small cottage standing on its own, facing the sea.
The door stood wide open and she called Elan’s name, even though she knew exactly where he would be. She walked on across the field towards the coastal path until she saw his familiar figure sitting on his collapsible stool, painting with his back to her. He had picked a place relatively sheltered, where the cliff path started to descend down to the cove.
Gabby did not disturb him. She sat some way behind him, cross-legged, watching the sun leach and bleed into the sky, spread out like a crimson stain and then dissolve into the sea until it too was molten. She knew as soon as the sun slipped behind the horizon the last heat of the day would disappear as suddenly as the colours melted, and Elan would pack up his paints and turn for home.
She was unsure why she had suddenly felt the need to see him, but turning towards his cottage had been instinctive. He had been Nell’s friend long before Gabby came to Cornwall, and he still was, but she and Elan had the immediate rapport of the outsider and the solitary.
He was Josh’s godfather. His name was Alan Premore, but Josh had always called him Elan and the name had stuck. After his parents and Nell, Elan had been the first name Josh had mastered and Alan had, from that moment, signed his paintings Elan Premore. This was partly because he unashamedly adored Josh, but also because he had begun to exhibit seriously the year Josh was born.
Gabby loved this spare, reclusive man unconditionally, and accepted, without it ever being mentioned, that he loved her in return. He turned now and saw her as the sun set on one more day. As on many other days he had no idea that she had been sitting silently behind him. He smiled and gathered up his paints, folded the small easel.
‘Darling child, how long have you been there?’
‘Not long.’ She got up and he kissed her forehead and they made their way back to his cottage. He never asked Gabby why she came, for that might have indicated she had to have a reason, and being insular himself he understood the need to be near someone who would not question why you were there, just that you were.
As they walked back to the cottage Gabby told him about her day. Her excitement was catching and Elan had rarely seen her so animated. He was interested in the story of the figurehead and its return to St Piran.
‘John Bradbury still vicar?’ he asked.
‘Yes, he’s just the same, so is Peter. So is Councillor Rowe.’
‘Dear heavens, Gabby, hasn’t he been voted out yet?’
‘Nell says every time he’s voted off the council, he somehow gets himself voted on again.’
‘Mainly, I suspect, because no one else wants to be elected. And this Canadian, what was he like?’
‘Oh, fine. He seemed nice. I didn’t really have time to talk to him properly.’
Elan propped his things against the hall table. ‘Let’s have a drink, child, I have a cold, very good bottle of wine all ready in the fridge.’
Gabby laughed. ‘But you didn’t know I was coming.’
‘I always keep a bottle just in case you come. Pour me my tot while I open the bottle.’
Gabby reached up for his heavy tumbler and poured him a hefty whisky with a burst of soda from his archaic silver soda siphon.
‘Can you still get bits for this siphon, Elan?’
‘Just.’ He handed Gabby the glass of wine and they sat at the kitchen table in front of his ancient Rayburn. ‘Now, this Canadian historian fellow sounds interesting. Any good for an isolable painter?’
Gabby laughed. ‘What a lovely word. Afraid not. I think, well, he’s heterosexual, Elan.’
‘What a shame, I do like a transatlantic drawl.’
Elan watched Gabby’s colour change. This was surprising and he teased her gently. ‘What makes you so sure, if you didn’t talk to him properly?’
‘He … well, of course, I cannot be sure of anything, but he seemed heterosexual. Elan, could I ring Nell?’ Gabby asked, changing the subject. ‘She might be wondering where I am.’
‘Of course you can.’
Gabby got up and as she phoned Nell, Elan thought how little she had changed over the years. How young she seemed. Yet, he also sensed a buried agitation or tension in her. For the first time he glimpsed what Nell had hinted of; something crouched and waiting in Gabby. Her stillness could be unnerving, but tonight there was an intangible change in her. Her movements seemed quicker and more nervous. Perhaps it was merely the excitement of seeing the figurehead, but Elan thought not. He knew from experience he would have to wait to find out. Gabby was like a bird; startle her and she would be off, a dot on the horizon. She could perversely, casually drop small bombshells, and Elan had learnt that his reaction had to appear insouciant in order to share her rare intimacies.
Watching her chatting on the phone to Nell, he thought back to the first glimpse she had obliquely given him of her past.
‘Come on, child,’ he once urged. ‘Have another glass. I don’t drink wine and it will be wasted.’
‘No, Elan, no more. I’m hopeless, I can’t drink more than one glass, truly. You know that.’
‘But you and Shadow are walking, you haven’t got to drive. Come on, Gabby, it’s such a good wine.’
Gabby had placed her hand over her glass firmly and looking down at the table she’d said, quietly, ‘Please, Elan, don’t press me. I only ever have one glass, not because it will affect me, but because I am afraid it won’t. It is in my genes – I have to watch it.’
She had sat opposite him, avoiding his eyes. He was ashamed of his crassness in not just accepting her refusal. He had gone round the table and kissed the top of her head. With his hands on her shoulders he had apologized, promised he would never browbeat her again.
She had stood up, smiling. ‘I’ve got to go. I’m collecting Josh from Cubs.’
At the door Elan had said gently, ‘Gabby, I don’t believe for a moment you are genetically predisposed to alcohol abuse. It would certainly have manifested itself before now, so banish that thought from your head.’
‘OK.’
She was gone, over the fields at a trot away from him. He knew she would immediately regret having given him even the briefest glimpse of her past. He resolved never to be tempted to repeat to Nell anything Gabby said to him. She needed to trust him absolutely. It was not that Gabby was not close to Nell, it was that she was too close. He knew Gabby’s childhood was a taboo subject, an uncharted and forbidden landscape.
As Gabby replaced the phone now he pushed the cork back into the bottle of wine for her to take home. He watched her walk, a small, neat enigma, across his field. He stood in the open doorway and lifted his whisky glass to the navy blue sea.
‘God bless Gabby and keep her from ever having her heart broken – especially by a sodding Canadian.’
Chapter 7 (#ulink_36a6897f-1203-5d82-b83a-5ca676de72f6)
After supper, when they had cleared away the supper things and Charlie had left for the pub quiz-night, Gabby got out the folder Peter had given her containing the Canadian restorer’s report on the figurehead of Isabella, and laid out all the photographs and the better quality JPEG images of areas of damage.
She had been inspected by a Valerie Mischell, of Collections and Conservation, Museum and Heritage Services, Culture Division, City of Toronto, at the home of Mark Hannah, ‘… who discovered the figurehead and generously provided much of the following information which forms part of his research into marine shipping and wrecks of the 19th century.’
Gabby scanned the first page of the report; it would be interesting to know more about Mark Hannah and his work.
‘The purpose of the inspection is to provide information for the Victoria & Albert Museum in London … describing any obvious work that might be necessary in the opinion of the person carrying out the inspection …’
‘These are very good photographs of her,’ Nell said, coming and peering down at the array of images. ‘What an interesting face.’
They both studied the photographs. Isabella lay with a gold headpiece around her hair. Her right hand held a lily, and Nell stared down at the flowing lines of her robe and at her hands. The right hand was beautifully carved, fingers splayed, with a thin gold band on her little finger.
‘Mark said she had been cut away from the bow timbers, Nell. She is flatter in the back, and can you see, here … her left hand is damaged and has been remodelled.’
‘You’re lucky to have such a detailed report, Gabby, from someone of obvious experience. It will be of enormous help to you.’
‘If I’m given the job, Nell.’
‘The figurehead has been painted several times. Many elements have been painted with gold-coloured oil paint. Evidence of an older cream-coloured paint layer under the white coating …’ Gabby read from the report.
She picked up another photograph. ‘Detail of crack along neck. Head secure but some paint loss reveals a thin layer of plaster underneath the paint …’
‘Look at the detail of the right ear as it disappears into her hair,’ Nell said, entranced.
‘Oh, Nell, you really need to see the figurehead itself to appreciate the detail. Look at the robe, the wrist, the curve of her arm at the elbow as it disappears into her robe … This would be such a wonderful project to work on.’
Nell smiled. Gabby’s enthusiasm was infectious and Nell felt a whiff of envy at Gabby’s chance of working with something so beautiful.
‘The neck and upper body seem the most damaged.’
‘That left hand … it’s a terrible reproduction, totally out of proportion.’
‘Mm, I can see that. What else does she say?’
‘Image 01–0193 … Traces of blue-green paint in upper rear right gap.’ Gabby jumped on the last sentence and photograph. ‘Great! Nell, she found some original paint!’
‘Don’t get your hopes up, Gabby, until you’ve done a detailed inspection of your own.’
‘You are going to come and see her, aren’t you?’
‘I’d certainly like to see her before you start. You just can’t wait to get your teeth into this, can you?’
‘I haven’t got the job yet, Nell!’
‘I know Peter, Gabby. He wouldn’t let you take this report away unless he wanted you to restore it.’
The phone went and Nell got up. ‘It’s probably Elan.’
He and Nell phoned each other most nights. But it was not Elan, it was Peter.
‘Were your ears burning?’ Nell asked.
‘Why? Should they have been?’
‘Gabby and I were just looking through the report that Mark Hannah brought with him.’
‘Good, I can catch Gabby in work mode. How are you, Nell? I hear you’ve been landed with the Browns’ enormous picture.’
Nell had a clear picture of his wolfish, cerebral face crinkling with amusement. ‘Glad you find it funny, Peter. I trust you had nothing to do with them coming to me with it?’
‘I merely advised them that if anyone could do anything with it, you could.’
‘Thank you very much! Well, I hope when I am a bent old crone still working on that masterpiece you will have the grace to feel guilty. I will hand you over to Gabby.’
‘You will never be an old crone, Nell. We must have lunch soon?’
‘Look forward to it,’ Nell said, handing the phone to Gabby. How ridiculous that a certain tone of voice, like a code or secret signal, could still contract her stomach with memory of love.
‘Hello Peter,’ Gabby said, breathless.
‘Gabby, I’ve come up with an idea that might satisfy all the various bodies responsible for the funding for the museum. I’ve spoken to John and he thinks it is possibly the answer, if you are agreeable.’
‘Right,’ Gabby said nervously, wondering what was coming.
‘As we explained, funding is always a problem, and unfortunately we have to depend on councillors like Rowe, who are good at drumming-up money for Cornish artefacts.
‘We want to get the figurehead into a condition where we can exhibit her in the museum by the end of June, before the influx of visitors. We wondered if you would be willing to work on her in two stages. Initially, make sure she is sound and make all the immediate repairs that are needed to safeguard the whole, plus the superficial ones that affect her appearance.
‘When you are happy that she is in a condition to be exhibited in June, having made whatever tests and analysis you consider necessary for further more detailed work later on, would it be possible for you to go on to other work and return to the figurehead at a later date, possibly when the museum is closed at the end of the season? Does this sound feasible to you?’
‘Of course, Peter. John says that the museum is kept at a regular temperature so we don’t have to worry about humidity. That would be fine. I would like to see her again, properly, out of her wrappings and in position. This inspection report is very helpful. I’ll make my own inspection and give you a quote for all the initial work I consider vital before she can be exhibited. After I’ve been working on her for a while, I’ll then submit a more detailed quote for the next stage of her restoration. Would that be OK?’
‘Perfect. Thank you for being so accommodating. By then we will hopefully have more funding and voluntary contributions coming in from interested parties. I can now appease Rowe, Penwith Council, the Heritage people, and the Cornish Historical Society. Bless you!’
Gabby laughed. ‘Does that mean …?’
‘Of course it does, Gabrielle! John and I have always been convinced you are the best person for the job. We just have to tweak terms and make it official. You’ll get a letter in a few days.’
‘I’m really looking forward to restoring her, Peter, it’s very exciting.’
‘It is, isn’t it? We are all hoping Mark Hannah comes up with more history for us. Goodnight, Gabrielle, and thanks again.’
‘YES!’ Gabby said, replacing the phone and punching the air.
‘I told you you had nothing to worry about,’ Nell said, laughing. ‘I’m off to bed.’ She nodded at the report. ‘I should remove those papers and photographs from the table. Charlie will come home and drip egg sandwich all over them.’
‘Oh, God! That wouldn’t look very professional.’
She walked to the back door with Nell. ‘Look, a new moon.’
They both looked up. It was a clear, cold night and the stars stood out like a child’s drawing on black paper.
‘Do you remember Josh and his telescope?’ Nell asked. ‘I wonder what happened to it. It was one of Elan’s extravagant presents, wasn’t it?’
Gabby felt a sudden wrench for that time again, for the simple, innocent pleasures of Josh’s childhood. ‘Josh used to get crazes on things, do you remember? Absolute passions. Then he would go on to the next thing.’
‘Don’t remind me. Do you remember the fish?’
‘Which all died, because he never took any notice of the man in the aquarium and mixed and matched them because he liked their colour or shape. Months of his pocket money eating each other up before he learnt a hard biology lesson.’
‘The fishy mess in the sink when he cleaned them out.’
‘Always at Sunday lunchtime!’
‘And the stick insects he begged for and then could not bear to touch.’
‘And the rabbits.’
‘Then the guinea pigs.’
‘He stuck to his bantams, he loved those. And the calves.’
‘And Hal. That gelding was the love of his life. I still stop in the village and he whinnies and canters over.’
‘I know. He’s a lovely character.’
‘I wonder how he’s doing. Josh, I mean. I think he’s finding Sandhurst harder, physically, than he expected.’
‘People are always saying that it’s because the young are not as fit as the last generation, but Josh has always been sporty and fit.’
Nell snorted. ‘How many late-rising youths know their way around an assault course? Or readily accept being bellowed at? Or want to trot round Dartmoor in a blizzard with a great pack on their backs? Total masochism if you ask me. Absolutely bonkers.’
Gabby began to laugh. Josh and Nell argued about the army every time he came home, but she knew perfectly well, as Josh did, he could do no wrong in Nell’s eyes.
‘Goodnight, lovie,’ Nell said, making off across the yard, watching her step in the dark.
‘’Night, Nell.’
Gabby whistled for Shadow who had scooted off into the dark. She looked up at the stars once more before shutting the door. On her way upstairs she paused and pushed Josh’s bedroom door open. Funny how a room always retained the faint smell of a person. Odd how strong a sense smell was, taking you faster than thought to a place or a person you loved.
Chapter 8 (#ulink_7b06d240-2264-5dcb-af31-50bbb47e5056)
The noise from the top field was horrendous. They were tipping concrete into the foundations. Nell, who could not bear the thought of this noise continuing for months, phoned the local nursery and ordered twenty trees. If they could plant saplings as soon as possible at least they could screen the building site and maybe it would dull the sound of machinery.
She was planting succulents in the small, walled garden she and Gabby had resurrected from a decade of neglect. They had banned all livestock; no geese, hens or dogs were allowed inside their hallowed plot.
There had been no time to garden when Ted was alive, and Nell thought, not for the first time, how released she felt. Free to be herself, to express herself in ways she had never dreamt of doing when she and Ted were running the farm on a strict budget, when they had had to labour, metaphorically, side by side.
Some mornings, when Nell woke, she also felt guilty about not missing her husband more. She would stretch luxuriously across the whole double bed and lie contemplating her day, waiting for the sun to rise beyond the top field and to creep up the covers towards her face. She felt warm and spoilt and relaxed as she heard the back door of the farmhouse bang, heard Charlie whistling for Shadow and Outside Dog. Then silence would descend and she would lie waiting for the sound of Matt, the herdsman, bringing the cows down the lane and into the yard below.
The smell of them would rise up to her window, the milking machine would start up, a dog over the fields would bark in the first light. All so familiar that any small disturbance in the pattern of a morning would make Nell rise up on her elbow, ears strained for the cause of the minute change in routine. Through it all, like hugging a secret she never got tired of, the knowledge that she did not have to get up and go out into that cold darkness ever again.
She missed the farmhouse not one jot. Most of the contents had belonged to Ted’s parents; heavy Victorian furniture to fill the large rooms. When Charlie married Gabby, Nell thought with glee of her escape to the cottage. She had gone out and bought small, light, inexpensive furniture for the tiny rooms and had taken from the farmhouse only the small pieces she was fond of.
Charlie, who missed her in the house with him and had seen no reason for her to move out, had, in a rare and overt show of affection, had the cottage centrally heated for her. This, for Nell, was like being given an invaluable, never to be taken for granted, Christmas and birthday present rolled into one. She could sit restoring for many more hours and it seemed to her that she was warm for the first time in her life.
She stopped planting for a moment and looked over the grass at Gabby, who was lying on her stomach reading a huge library book on marine architecture, seemingly absorbed despite the thunderous noise of the lorries now depositing granite blocks in piles onto the once lush green field.
Sitting back on her heels Nell realized her thoughts had subconsciously formed a circular route back to Gabby. In her life with Ted there had been little female companionship, scarce time for close friendships. Gabby had not been a substitute for the daughter Nell had never had; she and Gabby did not have the intimate and critical relationship mothers and daughters often have. They had a deep, inviolable friendship and an unspoken admiration for each other which had started in that freezing cold spring when they first met.
Nell had watched, protectively, a girl who refused to be beaten by the elements or by the endless taunts of seasoned pickers. Gabby had been humbled by the sheer volume of farm work Nell had been expected to get through each and every day, as well as her restoring, all to keep the farm solvent.
They had rescued each other. Nell had plucked Gabby from the fields to help her in the barn. Help in the barn had freed Nell to restore and to talk to someone. In the days before Charlie qualified and came back to the farm, Nell could go for months without having a proper conversation with anyone.
Ted had been a man of few words. Or, Nell thought now, so long after his death, maybe he only got out of the way of using words to me. Whatever, this second part of my life is mine, and I would not change a thing.
Gabby suddenly sat up and pulled small earphones out of her ears. ‘I’m sure the earth is shuddering, Nell. I can feel it over the music. This is worse than it’s ever been. It’s unbearable.’
Charlie appeared suddenly, shutting Shadow firmly on the other side of the gate. He looked hot and fed-up.
‘I’ve been up to the site and complained about the noise. We were given a strict understanding that they would build one house at a time to limit the disturbance. I’ve got two cows calving and number four is so distressed I’ve had to bring her in and put her in the barn. I’ve had two complaints, one from the primary school and one from Tom Eddy. He says two of his sheep have aborted.’
Nell and Gabby stared at him. ‘This is serious, Charlie,’ Nell said. ‘What did the site manager say? We can’t afford to fall out with our neighbours.’
‘He assured me they’ve almost finished unloading the granite for the day and he’s sorry about the noise, but he’s only doing what he’s been instructed to do.’
‘Stuart something of Roseworthy Developments gave us a hotline number in case of any complaints.’ Gabby got to her feet. ‘Shall I get it?’
‘It’s OK, I’ve got the number in the office. I’ve told Alan to ring, he’s got more patience than I have. I’ll end up yelling down the phone. In the end, all they’ll say is that they’ve got to build the houses as fast as possible.’
‘I don’t suppose they want to alienate people either, if they can help it,’ Nell said, conscious that Charlie had chosen to sell the land cheaper and take a percentage of the profit of each house built. And each house built was way out of most local pockets.
‘What I came to ask,’ Charlie said, changing the subject, ‘is can you keep an eye on number four. She’s fine at the moment, but she could start to calve any time and I have to drive Darren to the industrial estate to pick up the tractor.’
‘Do you want a cup of tea before you go?’ Gabby asked, getting up. ‘I was just going to make one.’
‘No, I’d better get off … hey, the noise has stopped, perhaps they’ve packed it in for the day.’
‘Oh,’ Nell said. ‘Isn’t silence wonderful?’
‘Gab,’ Charlie said as she came out of the gate. ‘Don’t wait until I get back to call David out, will you? If she starts calving, she’ll need help. Her calf is going to be breech.’
Gabby linked arms with him and walked him to his car. ‘Trust me. I should know what to do by now.’
Charlie grinned. ‘I know. I’m just fond of that cow. This will be her last calf and she’s done us proud.’ He opened the car door. ‘See you at supper. I’ve got my mobile if you need me.’
‘Goodbye, hard farmer man.’
‘You can mock,’ Charlie retorted. ‘Who still cries when the fox gets one of their bantams?’
Gabby watched him hurtle down the lane. The building site was deserted, all was quiet again. She stared across the field to the sea, trying to visualize the houses. Horrible, like being invaded. Nothing would ever be quite the same again. The magic and tranquil stillness of the field was gone forever.
Nell, behind her, said, ‘I’ve ordered trees. Probably more than we need, but I think it’s important we don’t have to look at the wretched houses springing up, even if we can hear them. I’ll make a cup of tea. You check that cow of Charlie’s, Gab.’
Gabby made her way to the barn. Number four was breathing hard and she was restless, but there was no sign of her being in labour yet. Gabby scratched the cow’s head; this cow had been hand-reared and related to humans on a bovine level.
Charlie had never let Josh name the livestock. ‘They are not pets, son. Animals get sick and die. Don’t name them, don’t personalize them, because eventually they will end up on your plate.’
So Josh did not name the orphan calves, he curled up in the straw feeding them by bottle, secretly calling them by numbers. Gabby and Nell would have to proclaim loudly to each other when cooking their own stock, ‘Number six got a good price at market, Charlie says. Tom Eddy is going to breed from her.’
Josh, ears pricked, would regard the meat on his plate with suspicion.
‘Who is this?’
‘Josh!’ Charlie would say crossly. ‘I’ve told you not to name the calves. Giving them a number is exactly the same as naming them. Eat. It is probably not our meat anyway.’
‘But,’ Josh would retort indignantly, ‘if you feed them you’ve got to call them something, you can’t call them nothing …’
‘Call them cow. Eat.’
‘Mum and Nell give the bantams names.’
‘Yes, and you know what a fuss they both make when one goes missing or the fox gets into the pen. Bad enough to lose livestock without giving them damn silly names to make it worse … Women rushing around the yard squeaking … “Oh! Oh! Virginia Woolf has fallen off her perch … Dear, dear … Freda is headless … Fie, fie, Elton John has been in a fight and lost his pretty little tail feathers … ”’ Charlie had bounded around the kitchen throwing Nell’s apron over his head, giving little girly skips and talking in a falsetto.
Josh, by now hysterical with laughter, would decide he must be a man like his father and they would all sit down and happily devour number six. To be a vegetarian on a farm would have been like being evangelical in a strict Roman Catholic household.
‘I’ll be back in a while,’ she said to the cow. ‘I’m just going to check my answer-machine.’
Taking tea into her workroom she saw there were three messages. Message number one was from Josh, telling her she should get a mobile as he could never get hold of her. He sounded husky and dispirited. They were never off the parade ground. He was worried he would fail his next fitness test. He was finding out about suitable places for Charlie, Nell and Gabby to stay … if he ever passed out. He would ring again on Sunday … He was really looking forward to a weekend home.
Message number two was from Peter Fletcher.
‘Gabrielle. We considered your quote very reasonable indeed, even our mutual councillor friend. An official letter is in the post.
‘My other reason for ringing you is Mark Hannah. Before he goes back to London he’s keen to go and see the figureheads at Valhalla on Tresco. Unfortunately, I’m completely tied up with meetings next week. Forgive me if this is an imposition, Gabrielle, but would you be free to fly over on the helicopter with him? We will, of course, pick up the tab. It seems inhospitable to send him on his own when he has done so much for us. I will quite understand if you are too busy. Could you give me a ring on this number …?’
Gabby shakily put her tea down on her desk. Message number three.
‘Hi there, Gabriella. Peter gave me your number, do hope you don’t mind. He couldn’t get an answer so he left a message. Is there any chance of you having the time to accompany me to Tresco to see the figureheads? I would sure love to see them. I’d be grateful if you could let me know as I need to book my train ticket back to London …’
The sun was setting below the fields. Shadows lengthened across the stubby lawn outside. Bantams pecked the grubs in noisy little groups like fussy old women at a W.I. meeting. Gabby sat very still, pulling a thread from the hem of her tee-shirt. If she did not pick up the phone and dial his number this instant she would not be able to do it. She opened her diary to see which day she would be least missed from the farm, then, feeling sick, she picked up the phone and dialled Mark Hannah’s number.
As she waited for him to answer, the sun slid away, and despite the flushed sky, dusk descended quickly. Damp rose up from the grass and into the open window. In the kitchen behind her, Nell switched on the six o’clock news and lights sprang up suddenly, away on the far peninsula. A fleeting sadness, an ache, a sensation of being beyond the warmth of lighted windows, of being extrinsic within a house she knew and people she loved, descended on Gabby.
In the darkening room there was just her, holding a phone which was ringing out into a hotel room where a man lay on a bed with his hands behind his head, watching, as she did, evening come, with a sudden longing for home; for the smell of cooking and laughter and bottles of wine being opened, of small children being bathed. The safe embodiment of a familiar routine.
He lay still, waiting to see if the phone would ring, and when it did he could not answer it, as if frozen by the knowledge of what answering it might mean. Just as Gabby gave a shaky sigh of relief and made to replace the receiver, Mark Hannah, in one swift movement, turned and grabbed his up from the bedside table, aware as he did so of a premeditated and deliberate crossing from a place of safety, to something quite else.
In the early hours of the morning Charlie and David, the vet, fought to save number four and her calf. The cow managed after a long, painful labour to give birth to a healthy heifer, but collapsed and haemorrhaged immediately afterwards. Gabby knelt by her head, talking to the old cow and stroking her trembling limbs. Nell brought out more hot water and they put a blanket over her to try to minimize the shock of a difficult birth.
She managed to turn and nuzzle her calf to her shaky, stick-like feet and then she gave up the fight and with a tired, sad little sound the breath left her body. The calf bellowed and slid down to the floor again, nuzzling her mother for milk. They watched her suckling, then, still leaning against her mother, the calf fell asleep. Charlie rubbed her gently down with straw, admiring her.
‘That’s a good calf you’ve got there,’ David said, ‘but I’m sorry we lost the mother. Is there a cow you can try her with, rather than hand-rearing?’
‘Yes,’ Charlie said. ‘Just one. She lost a bull calf last week. She’s young and skittish, so I don’t know if she will accept this one, but I’ll certainly try her.’
They moved out of the barn into the cool dark night.
‘Come and have a drink, David,’ Nell said. ‘Gabby, go to bed, you look exhausted.’
‘Yes, go on Gab, I won’t be long.’
‘Goodnight,’ David smiled at her before the men turned to follow Nell to her cottage.
Gabby walked across the yard to the house, the image of the dying cow still with her. She knew that it did not matter how long you farmed, you never got used to losing a healthy animal.
She showered quickly, then climbed into bed and lay on her back trying to relax. She switched her small radio on low and listened to the comfortable ragbag of the World Service and tried to drift off. She wanted to be asleep before Charlie tripped exhausted up the stairs, full of Nell’s whisky.
Gabby knew the pattern of Charlie’s drinking after a long hard day. If she was still awake she could time Charlie’s clumsy movements in the dark. He would wash his hands but would be too tired to shower. He would fall into the bed beside her with a grunt of relief and either reach out for her or fall asleep in a second on his back and start to snore gently.
Gabby preferred the latter. The smell of straw and disinfectant would still cling to him, mingling with the not altogether unpleasant sweat of hard labour. With whisky blurring any moral sensibility he would mumble in her ear, push her nightdress up to her waist, part her knees roughly with his, enter her, come immediately, or, worse, complete this isolating little act with difficulty.
Gabby would lie under him, looking out through the open curtain at the night sky, detaching herself from her inert body being rammed rhythmically under his. As he rolled off her, already asleep, Gabby would feel the bleakness of the spirit confronted by the inevitable fact of its separateness from another human being. She saw in her mind the cockerel pouncing on his bantams or the bull in the field clumsily mounting a heifer.
If Gabby was aware, in the telling and unforgiving dark, that her passivity in allowing her body to be used was colluding with the act itself, she would have had to face, head on, her own facility for smoothing over all cracks to maintain the polished facade of what she believed a marriage to be.
It was easier not to confront. Charlie would not have understood the word violation, and it seemed too strong a word for something that lasted minutes and did not hurt the flesh, only left the soul in a cold, dark place. It was simpler to make some areas of her marriage off limits.
If Gabby had understood that by avoiding communicating to Charlie on any intimate level she denied him the chance of acknowledging any responsibility for the way he sometimes behaved, she would have had to own that she did not have the courage to go there. She was comfortable, on the whole, in the place she occupied, in the marriage she had. Two people who shied carefully away from emotional intimacy. And she was sure Charlie was, too.
Tonight she slept and was only dimly aware of Charlie falling into bed beside her. He patted her bottom. ‘G’night,’ he mumbled.
‘’Night,’ she mumbled back, and, feeling sudden affection, ‘Sorry about number four, Charlie.’
But Charlie was already asleep. In three hours he would have to get up for milking.
Chapter 9 (#ulink_dcbe1f92-106b-5ea5-8e4d-56b1b96797b5)
Gabrielle and Mark stood before the figureheads in the peace of an early morning. The helicopter had departed with a roar back to Penzance and the only other people in the Abbey Gardens were the gardeners, unseen and silent. A spade stood upright in the soil, a robin pecked in the new-turned earth. A jacket lay folded on a bench, there was the sound of someone sweeping a path and the smell of damp blooms mixed with spearmint rose from the ground.
They had permission to go into the gardens before they opened to the little ferryboats full of tourists and gardening clubs. They walked silently, along paths that curled round vast tropical plants and beds of succulents of such colour and variety that occasionally they stopped in their tracks, awed by the sheer scale of the planting.
‘Each time I come I think of The Secret Garden,’ Gabby whispered, as if her voice might shatter the illusion of paradise. ‘There’s always a spade or a fork placed just so, yet I’ve never seen anyone working.’
Mark smiled. ‘Perhaps the gardeners are from some other world. Nothing would surprise me here. What an amazing place! There’s something mystical and timeless about being inside a walled garden.’
Rounding a corner they came upon a clearing and there before them lay Valhalla Museum, with the array of figureheads, bright against the lush undergrowth, extraordinary in their garish beauty. Mark drew in his breath, and Gabby, turning to look up at him, thought how open and un-English he was; unafraid to show his excitement.
They both stood silently admiring while the birds swooped and darted fearlessly at their feet, for there was little in these lush gardens to threaten them. They moved closer to examine the carvings. Gabby was especially interested in the faces, because on the St Piran figurehead the face and neck were going to be most difficult to restore.
‘Trophies of the sea,’ Mark murmured. ‘Each figurehead an individual offering of respect and affection, regardless of whether they were carved by a naïve seaman or a carver of distinction.’
Staring into an enigmatic wooden face with eyes that gave nothing away, Gabby thought of the figurehead carvers and of the sailors who had manned the ships and watched as their figureheads rose and plunged out of the waves, carrying them precariously to battle in the duty of a monarch.
How many lives, from the moment of carving to the moment of her ship sinking and being salvaged, did a carved face touch in so many different ways? Gabby could see in her mind’s eye a Napoleonic battle or a great storm breaking up a galleon. The sails unfurling at speed, masts falling with a great crack, like trees, and the screams of men jumping away from the sinking ship to drown in the angry waters.
There the ship would lie on the seabed, broken, its hull becoming a sad skeleton over the years as seaweed and barnacles enveloped it. Then, one day, divers would descend; the salvage men, swimming round the wreck in slow-moving sequence with waving arms and excited thumbs-up as they discovered a poignant wooden face, staring blindly upwards, the heart and soul of the dead vessel. They would bring her up from that fathomless dark to see once more the light of day and the lives of men.
Gabby became conscious of Mark staring at her in the amused way he had.
‘Come back,’ he said softly. ‘Where have you been?’
‘I was just thinking that each figurehead must have a story, a life of its own, and we’ll never know what it was, we can only imagine it.’
‘You would be surprised how much we can learn from a ship, Gabriella. Like compiling a profile we can build a history, based on fact. We might never discover all the names and faces of those who built or sailed in the ships, but with a date and a time we can catch a glimpse, find records, form an idea of the way these mariners lived their lives.
‘We don’t have records of the building of the early ships because the shipwrights were often illiterate so no plans were drawn up. However, models were made and some of these survive and are as beautifully detailed as the real ships.’
They moved around the display of figureheads: a sailor, a king, a damsel, a god.
‘Did the figureheads become a way of denoting wealth or origin, or just a way of honouring a monarch or a country?’ Gabby asked. ‘I know the Vikings had them on their ships until the thirteenth century and then they changed the front of their boats for war or something. We had to draw eleventh-century Viking boats from the Bayeux Tapestry endlessly at school and I’m afraid I was bored rigid.’
Mark laughed. ‘I’m probably boring you now, Gabriella. The figureheads became superfluous when the Vikings developed the forecastle on the front of their boats. But before that happened the Viking longships carried serpents and dragons. There were two in the British Museum, as well as on the Bayeux Tapestry, which you must have seen, depicting William of Normandy’s invasion fleet of 1066, all decorated with lion and dragon figureheads.’
Gabby said hastily, ‘I’m not in the least bit bored. There is a huge difference between being taught by a bored nun with no interest in the subject herself, and going to the British Museum, which I loved. Or standing here in front of figureheads, some of which have been pulled up somewhere out there on the rocks …’ She gestured towards the sea.
Mark stood looking down at her. Gabby had never met anyone who looked as if they were always about to laugh, as if life itself was one huge joke. It did not fit in, somehow, with her idea of a historian.
He turned back to the figureheads, casually placing a hand under her elbow.
‘A figurehead could be many things. Originally it was most likely religious. The head of an animal sacrificed to appease a sea god. Then it would have become symbolic and a means of identification. The Egyptian ships had figures of holy birds or eyes painted on the sides of the bows so the ship could see. The Phoenicians used horse heads symbolizing speed, and the Greek rowing galleys favoured bronze animals, usually a boar’s head, their most hunted and frightening animal …’
Gabby listened to Mark Hannah’s fluid and easy voice. It had a beautiful rhythm and symmetry. His enthusiasm was catching, making it all the more … seductive shot into her mind, and she jumped away from his hand under her elbow as if this thought could transfer itself up her arm into his hand.
‘Can you give me five minutes?’ Mark was rummaging in his haversack and brought out a small tape recorder. ‘I just want to make some notes, then we can go look for a coffee?’
‘Of course.’
Gabby wandered away. She could hear voices now, the day was waking up and the gardens would be open soon. Visitors would begin to stream in and the helicopter would return. The ferry would arrive at St Mary’s and the small boats would chug to and fro from the islands, depositing visitors until dusk.
She sat on the grass cross-legged and closed her eyes and held her face up to the sun. She felt an unaccountable surge of happiness. Scilly always felt like another country. Only a few miles of water separated them from the mainland and yet it always felt abroad.
Gabby felt that small, familiar tug of longing which surfaced occasionally and which she would quickly squash. A sensation that the world was flowing fluidly on without her. It was not unhappiness, it was not boredom. She could never catch and hold on to the feeling. It slid slyly away from her, as if momentarily her soul had migrated to a dry desert, a landscape without feature or water, or enough life to sustain her.
Like running through sand, she knew that beyond the horizon there was an oasis, a lighted city twinkling and pulsing with life, but somehow her feet could never retain the momentum to reach that place of light and laughter. The days of her life slid by in an effortless rhythm, each day dissolving into the next with little change or interruption, each day forming a pattern, a whole, indivisible except for the tiniest domestic detail.
Since Josh left home she had started to get up early with Charlie in order to get through her work. Each morning she took Shadow for a walk across the top field and down the coastal path to the small cove. She would watch the sea mist lift to reveal another day, then she would return to the house to cook Charlie’s breakfast, already thinking about the painting waiting in her workroom.
After hours working, stiff, she would get up from her chair and stretch, lean out of the window perfectly content, and a sudden yearning for something indefinable would swoop, a burning ache, deep in her bones, for something to break the continuity of the measureless days.
Behind her the faint sound of the soft Canadian drawl had stopped. Her back prickled, the heat of her body felt strange to her. She kept her eyes closed, focusing on the sun blobs behind her eyelids, merging into the soft noises around her and the heady, dizzy smell of flowers.
What she felt in every nerve of her body and what she determinedly allowed herself to think were horribly diverse. It made her want to run away down the narrow paths dripping with flowers like bright jewels. It felt too bright, too nightmarishly large and foreign and unknown. An unmapped landscape, the geography a language she had never learnt and felt stunned to recognize.
She opened her eyes when Mark blocked out the sun. He was standing in front of her, not smiling, his expression unreadable as he gazed down upon her. She looked up into his eyes and they were both still, staring at one another. She glimpsed a sudden hesitancy, a fleeting loneliness or vulnerability.
The strength of emotion that flooded Gabby must have shown in her eyes for Mark smiled suddenly and put out his hand to pull her up from the grass, and somehow, on the narrow paths, where it was necessary to walk close, he forgot to let go of it until they reached the café.
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