‘I know,’ Mark said. ‘I know it is. But I like the sound of Gabriella, it rolls off my tongue. Gabrielle, Gabriella – the name reminds me of Pre-Raphaelites floating down rivers in gossamer dresses.’
‘Like the Lady of Shallot!’
‘Yep. That’s it!’ They smiled at one another.
‘This is heaven,’ Mark said. ‘Have we time to explore the whole island?’
‘Tresco isn’t very big and we have the rest of the day.’ Gabby was amused.
‘Maybe we could gather a picnic together. Is there a shop?’
‘There’s one shop on the other side of the island. It isn’t exactly a supermarket and there is a pub right next door to it if you felt like a drink or somewhere to have lunch.’
‘I thought it might be fun to walk, if you’re happy to, then we can stop when we feel like it. I’d like to leave time to have a last look at Valhalla before we catch the helicopter back.’
‘We’ll do that, then.’
They circled the walls of the castle and walked along the tree-lined road past fields, birdwatchers’ huts and timeshare cottages to the other end of the island. In the shop they bought filled rolls, crisps, a bottle of wine, chocolate and two apples. Mark stowed them away in his small backpack. They turned and walked along the coastal path for a while and then stopped at a small white sandy beach. Gabby kicked her sandals off; the sand was already warm under her feet, the sea a shade of violet.
Mark Hannah removed his socks and shoes and rolled his trousers up and they walked along the edge of the sea. He asked her about the other islands: St Agnes, St Martin’s, Bryher and St Mary’s. Gabby explained that each island was entirely different and unique in its own way.
‘Each summer all the islands become full to bursting. Accommodation is at a premium, even the campsite on St Agnes gets overbooked. People book a year in advance and then boat-hop between the islands. There are also trips out to visit the seal colonies, the pre-historic sites and to Samson, which is unpopulated now.’
Mark sighed. ‘How I wish I’d booked a week on one of the islands before the hotel in Truro instead of visiting a colleague’s family.’
‘Maybe you’ll have another opportunity?’
‘Not this trip. I have to get back to London to see my publisher, but I’m stopping off in Exeter and hiring a car to do a couple of days’ research and to visit an old aunt. I wouldn’t have minded wasting a week in St Mawes if it had been fun, but the couple I stayed with kept having these God-awful dinner parties and I was trundled out like a decaying trophy.’
Gabby laughed, although she felt sympathetic. ‘It’s because people down here love having anyone of note to show off to their friends. It’s a good thing you weren’t visiting at Christmas, you’d have been swallowed whole.’
They stood for a moment watching the sea. In the distance a small boat packed with holidaymakers chugged its way past to the small jetty behind them. The water at their feet was crystal clear and tiny fish darted between their legs.
‘Whenever I’ve come before it’s been on The Scillonian. It only takes a couple of hours, but it always seems more exciting somehow than the helicopter. You can pretend on a short sea voyage that you are making a journey to a foreign place. You can’t do that in a twenty-minute helicopter ride.’
‘Do you often come over here?’ Mark asked.
‘Not really, considering we’re so near. We used to come every few years when my son was small. Getting in and out of boats and running wild and exploring are a child’s idea of heaven.’
Mark smiled. ‘And a grown man’s.’
They turned and walked inland through the salt marshes. Gabby’s memories were of walking with Josh here while Charlie fished or chatted to the locals. Charlie always met someone he knew, wherever they went. They would talk bulbs and farming, the weather and tourists. Charlie, who grew bored and restless after about two days away from the farm, relaxed here because he knew that in any crisis he could be on the helicopter and home within a few hours. But holidays had often been with Nell as they could never all leave the farm together.
If this was your first trip to the Scilly Islands you would be awed at the vivid colour of the sea and marvel at the row upon row of varying yellow daffodils in spring, sloping downwards from tiny fields rimmed with stone walls. The heat and the silence, even in summer, would press down on you. If you closed your eyes you could almost believe you were on a Greek island.
Gabby thought suddenly of home. The milking would have finished; Nell would be feeding the bantams. Charlie would be doing his rounds, checking up on everyone. And here she was, someone else, island-walking on a clear, cloudless blue day with a man she did not know.
Moorhens shot out of the undergrowth and a heron stood on one foot perfectly still. Mark and Gabby walked on in companionable silence.
Mark was considering how his life had changed since he found Lady Isabella. What began as an interest became a quest. Obsession, Veronique had said. While he was away, the house would become even more packed with his daughters and their families. Veronique would be standing at the stove cooking dinner. Or, he was a bit hazy about the time difference, she would be sitting at the large Shaker table chatting to one of the girls, keeping half an eye on any grandchildren playing at her feet. She would be utterly content to be surrounded by chaos, for that chaos was her family and her whole life.
Mark could no longer remember when they had last had an evening meal alone together. He could no longer remember what his wife looked like when he first met her at university, but he never forgot how clever she had been and how shockingly eager, almost thankful she had seemed, to submerge that marvellous intellect into babies and domesticity.
Would anyone, passing them on the path as he walked with this small dark woman who was not much older than his eldest daughter, think he was her father? It was the last thing he felt. Away from his family, that ballooned alarmingly each year as if it was a contest, how different, how … free he felt. As if he was another man altogether.
They walked until they reached the small harbour, with fishing boats pulled up onto the foreshore. There was a gallery, the pub, and beyond, tucked away in the trees, lay the island hotel.
Mark went off to explore Cromwell’s castellated fortresses rising from the water while Gabby sat on the wall, lifting her face to the sun and listening to children playing around the boats. Sound and smell; sun-coloured floaters on her closed lids rose and fell soporifically. The heat warmed her already-brown legs and arms. All life faded to this small second on the wall.
She slowly opened her eyes and got up and walked into the gallery. Most of the artists were local. Gabby was immediately drawn to two of Elan’s paintings, a watercolour and a gouache, neither of which she had seen before. She was standing studying them when Mark joined her.
They both stood looking at the two small paintings for a long time. Elan could capture a mood so exactly that it made your skin prickle. The sheer power and range of his emotions transformed his work. The moral sensibility behind a deft and seemingly simple scene was as real and true as the fierce weather or the muted colours of the start of another day.
Sunrise over Cove, a watercolour, had a haunting quality. Cottage before a Storm was full of a strange and intense yearning. Both paintings seemed to capture the artist’s longing for another human being to share in the sparse and beautiful landscape he painted.
Gabby felt overwhelmed. She had never suspected the extent of Elan’s loneliness. No conversation with him could have revealed so much. It was a shock to learn all over again how little it was possible to know those you love.
Elan went for days without speaking to a soul. It was how he had chosen and needed to live in order to paint, but Gabby saw now the extent of his longing for the companionship he once had with Patrick.
Mark, too, seemed unable to tear his eyes away.
‘I’m going to have to have those two little paintings, Gabriella.’ He peered at the list of prices. ‘So … I don’t e
at for a while. No bad thing.’
‘Elan Premore has a cottage near us. He’s one of our closest friends. He’s a kind and lovely man … I never realized how lonely and isolated he must sometimes feel.’
Lonely seemed too tame a word for the passion glimpsed within the paintings. It was raw and bleak. Like waking in the dark and reaching for a person no longer there.
Mark looked down at her. ‘Is he a recluse?’
‘In a way, I suppose. He lives in a tiny coastguard cottage in the middle of nowhere.’
‘Completely on his own?’
‘At the moment. He had a long-term partner, a doctor. They’d been together for years, then suddenly one morning Patrick left without a word of explanation. He just vanished. Elan was devastated for a while. I thought he’d got over it, he is always so cheerful, so flippant with me …’ She swallowed. ‘Obviously he hasn’t got over it.’
They both turned back to the paintings.
‘I don’t think he ever will.’
‘Yet,’ Mark said, ‘he is able to turn an emptiness that destroys a man into something lasting. A painting as resonant and as instinctive as a piece of music. A thing we ache to own because we understand he is showing us, more succinctly than we could ever articulate ourselves, a universal human condition.’
Gabby was silent. While the paintings were being wrapped, she said, ‘Elan would have enjoyed talking to you.’
‘I’d love to meet him one day,’ Mark said.
‘He’s having another exhibition in London soon. I’ll find out when it is. He would be glad you bought those paintings … you understand them so well.’
‘It’s possible only to capture a glimpse of what your friend was feeling when he painted those landscapes, those two distinct moods. But that glimpse is more than enough to recognize the spirituality within his work. Each person interprets what they see in subjective ways, but we can all intrinsically relate to those pictures to a greater or lesser degree.’
‘Like listening to a piece of classical music we don’t quite understand, and yet it makes us cry.’
‘Yes, Gabriella.’
Mark reached for her hand and brought it to his lips. A tiny gesture, instinctively done, his eyes smiling again as he smoothly banished any introspective shadow that threatened to cast itself over their day.
They walked slowly back the way they had come towards the Abbey Gardens and the long, white, curving stretch of beach to have their picnic. They found a sheltered place backed by rocks and sat on their sweaters and leant against them. Mark opened the wine with a remarkable penknife that seemed to have a blade for every eventuality.
‘Boy Scouts penknife. Obligatory male weapon, never know when it might come in handy.’
Gabby smiled and undid the egg rolls from their clingfilm. She had forgotten how pale and anaemic shop eggs were; they did not look very appetizing. Mark saw her face.
‘Sorry, I’m afraid it was egg or processed cheese. I thought eggs might be fractionally better, forgetting that you probably haven’t tasted shop eggs for years. I suppose yours are the colour of the sun.’
‘Well, yes. Small eggs, though, we keep bantams. These are fine, what does it matter what they taste like …’ She indicated the duck-egg-blue sea, waved her arm skyward at the cloudless sky.
‘Very true,’ Mark said softly.
There was hardly a sound except the lapping of small waves. The sun glinted and danced on the surface of the water making it iridescent. Mark handed Gabby a beaker of wine and held his up to her.
‘To this beautiful day and to the future.’
His eyes rested on her with an expression that made her stomach lurch. They touched plastic glasses and Gabby, feeling the heat spreading over her entire body, made herself busy stowing away little clumps of clingfilm, then she turned and studied the horizon and the small boats still making their way back and forth to the island.
They munched the rolls in silence, washing them down with sharp white wine. Alarmed, Gabby thought, I mustn’t drink too much.
As if reading her thoughts, Mark said, ‘An island must be the best place of all to drink at lunchtime. You can’t drive. There’s no escape, the only thing to do is relax.’
He turned on his back and lay with his head on his sweater, his arms under his head. ‘What made you become a picture restorer, Gabriella?’
Gabby sieved grains of sand as smooth as silk through her fingers. ‘Watching Nell, my mother-in-law. She used to let me help her with small, simple jobs that didn’t need any particular expertise. I began to get so interested that she encouraged me to train properly, get a qualification. But really it was Nell who got me started. I learnt so much from her, she was a wonderful teacher.’
‘So I understand. Peter Fletcher has huge respect for her.’
‘They go back a long way, I think they trained or worked together in London at some time. It’s been much easier for me to work in Cornwall because Nell forged the way. When she started restoring it took her years to build up a business and a reputation. She was helping her husband run the farm, too. I don’t know how she did it.’
Gabby slid onto her back. The wine was beginning to make her sleepy. She closed her eyes. One of the reasons Nell had encouraged her to study properly was to banish her longing for another child. It just never happened. Despite months of tests and medical advice and marking the calendar religiously, she had never conceived again. She had enrolled at Falmouth College of Arts to study Fine Arts with a quaking heart, but had loved every minute.
Through Nell she acquired a talent for something she was good at and loved, but would never have thought of doing. Her touch was light and instinctive and when Nell began to slow down she had taken over some of her work and steadily gained a reputation of her own. By the time Josh left for university she had her own clients and a fledgling business.
‘I owe Nell so much,’ she murmured, her body relaxing into the warm sand.
‘You sound close.’ Mark turned slightly on his side towards her, away from the sun in his eyes.
‘Yes, I guess we are.’
Mark smiled. ‘If you’ve never had to think about it, you are. Does Nell still restore?’
‘She just takes on work she enjoys now, and friends’ paintings. She used to do all the museum work and the heavy and sometimes monotonous cleaning of huge paintings of local dignitaries in council offices …’
‘Like Councillor Rowe!’
Gabby laughed. ‘Exactly like Councillor Rowe! Now I’ve taken over all those and I think she’s finding it fun and a huge relief to pick and choose what she wants to do for the first time in her life.’
‘So she’s a widow?’
‘Oh, she’s been a widow for twenty-odd years …’ Gabby stopped as a sudden thought occurred to her. She could not believe she had never thought of it before.
‘What is it, Gabriella?’ Mark propped his head on his hand and peered at her.
‘I’ve suddenly realized that Nell must have been a widow for almost as long as she was married. It’s such a strange concept … Nell has always seemed embedded in the farm, yet …’ Gabby tried to work it out. ‘She must have been, heavens, around the age I am now when Ted died.’ She stared at Mark, startled.
‘Nell could have left the farm when Ted died. She could have gone back to London and resumed her career. She could have had another life altogether, while she was still young enough.’
Supposing Nell had longed to leave and Charlie and I never thought of asking her what she wanted?
Mark was thinking, How startling this girl’s eyes are. They seem to mirror every emotion, leaving her guileless. At times they appear a deep forget-me-not blue, as now. At other times they seem a hazy grey like seeing the sky or sea through mist. There seem to be brown flecks in them somewhere; perhaps they turn that way when she is angry. Is this sleeping girl ever angry? And why do I think she’s sleeping?
Had he spoken aloud? He was unsure.
‘I guess,’ he sa
id, ‘it’s not really as simple as that. Can you really go back? The life you had once as a child or a student is long gone. You exchanged it, moved on to the life you have now. Whether your adult life is happy or not it takes courage to return to your roots or a memory of happiness. Most people, perhaps wisely, don’t risk it. A place and the people you left behind don’t stay frozen in time, waiting for your return. Everything changes, moves on. It can’t be recaptured. Isn’t returning a way of saying that the whole life you have lived since has not been worth the leaving?’
‘Or the living?’
‘Or the living.’
He watched her eyes, fixed on his, cloud, change colour alarmingly quickly. For a second he was afraid of what he glimpsed, so stark it looked. He reached out his hand to touch hers and her fingers felt cold. He closed his hand firmly round hers.
‘Banish it. Don’t let a ghost walk over your grave.’
She smiled and lay back on the sand, closing her eyes, letting his fingers hold on to hers. They both drifted sleepily without talking any more.
A place and the people you left behind don’t stay frozen in time, waiting for your return …
No. But in your mind they do. In your mind they stay exactly as you left them.
That is why you must take such care with the life you have. It must never be taken for granted. It seemed to Gabby, sometimes, that people did not understand the importance of this. People had rows, screamed at each other, spoilt their lives in cruelty and quick tongues, in passion and in hate. It wasn’t worth it. It really wasn’t.
She thought of Josh. Josh leaving the life he shared with her for another wider world. She was glad of it, it was how things should be, and yet they would never be so close again. He would grow away from her, the process had already begun. As his world enlarged she would grow smaller. He would bring girls back and the things they had laughed at and done together he would now share with someone else.
And yet … she too had moved on to another place; she was not in the same place that he had left her. In those first days of his leaving she had flown to his empty room just to breathe in the smell of him. The pain that cut deep into her ribs, making her breathless with loss, eased, as she too slipped into a separate life without him.
Another Life Page 7