Another Life

by Sara MacDonald

  Richard appeared before her one day.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he announced excitedly, ‘I have a surprise for you. Leave the morning free, my love. We will ride together into Falmouth.’

  ‘Tell me!’ Isabella begged. ‘I cannot wait until tomorrow. Please?’

  ‘Indeed I will not,’ he placed his hand on the back of her neck. He was very pleased with himself, ‘for then it will not be a surprise.’

  Isabella moved slightly away, for his hand was heavy. He squeezed her arm. She could not move away again or she would hurt his feelings. The shadow was back; she did not like his touch and tried hard to hide it, not to shiver. His hands were large and in private, in their bed, she felt as if he was going to swallow her. She closed her eyes, banishing the image of a pig bending to the trough. He was so eager and excited and clumsy and she was repelled.

  Lisette, without a word exchanged between them, had helped Isabella with this difficulty. She left porter by his bedside so that he often fell asleep before he could turn for her. Lisette also explained to Sir Richard that Isabella had always slept badly and must have a room of her own where she could toss and turn without disturbing him.

  Of course this did not stop Richard visiting her, but Lisette, who always seemed to know, would leave her a small glass of milk and brandy. Isabella took it like medicine and it enabled her to float away from her body, to detach herself from what he was doing.

  Afterwards, when Richard slept or had gone back to his own room, Isabella would cry silently for a thing that was taken from her, a thing she could hardly bear to give. Then she would be angry with herself. This was her husband. It was his right.

  That night, during his expected visit, before the promise of tomorrow, Isabella tried hard to hide her revulsion and the act was blessedly quick. As he slept beside her Isabella tried to think of what his secret could be. She was more than a little intrigued.

  Chapter 28

  Gabby watched Mark. He was moving the small desk they had just bought on the Portobello Road, a little to the left, then a fraction back to the right, so that it was exactly in the middle of the small alcove of the sitting room. She smiled at his concentration, his total absorption in the smallness of the task, in the exactness of its position.

  She sat curled up on the sofa with the Sunday papers. It was early evening and the birds were singing their nightly hymns outside. She was soporific from the wine at lunchtime and quietly exultant to be there, to have had one whole weekend with Mark before he flew to Paris to see one of his daughters.

  Through narrowed lids she watched his languid movements. He was wearing a coffee-coloured short-sleeved shirt and his cream linen trousers. He wore clothes as if they were a second skin; effortlessly. His arms, dark against the shirt, were muscular from chopping logs in cold Canadian winters. They gave Gabby a frisson, made her want to leap off the sofa and bite gently into the flesh of his forearm just to hold his skin between her teeth.

  Mark, feeling the intensity of her gaze, turned and met her sleepy half-closed eyes and was stopped by her feline languor. They stared at each other, both in awe of this endless craving they had for one another.

  Then Mark was across the room, bending and pulling Gabby to her feet. He lifted her up the stairs and threw her gently on the bed. Laughing, they pulled at each other’s clothes and threw them over their heads onto the floor.

  It was like having a fever, Gabby thought, as she bent to his mouth; a wonderful, terrible, insatiable, burning fever that consumed and seared the flesh. You. You. Only you.

  They slept lightly as the summer day faded, their bodies curled around each other, perfectly still, as if they had both stopped breathing. They were holding these moments of a stolen life with care as they always did when they were together.

  Behind their eyelids as they lay in the rumpled bed, their other lives played in the background like a slow-moving film. Gabby dreamt of a purple evening sea, engine sounds carrying over the water as the small fishing fleet made for the harbour.

  She could almost smell, in this London house, the cows ambling back down the lane to their field after milking, flicking their tails against the flies. She tried not to think of Nell and Charlie moving about the yard or kitchen, for her heart would jump guiltily with sharp sadness.

  She was cheating. She was no longer the person they thought she was, she had become someone quite else, a woman grown clever at secrecy and evasion. Nothing seemed to touch her when she was with Mark. Guilt came on the train home or when she was alone.

  As the summer slipped by, Gabby had got bolder, less hesitant and less guilty about spending time with Mark. She travelled up to London on the early train on Monday, going straight to the National Portrait Gallery or wherever she was working that week.

  Sometimes she could work from home, in the house by the river, and she restored in a corner of what had been the dining room, watching the river outside and listening to music.

  Mark had a desk in the bedroom above which also looked down on the water. On the days when he was writing and not lecturing they worked companionably in the house together, both disciplined but very aware of the other in the silence or with soft music playing.

  They would stop for lunch and walk by the river, hardly daring to breathe or articulate their happiness in case some God was listening. But there were also long days when they left the house early and got back late, battling back tired through the rush of the city. Sometimes they met in a wine bar to wind down, eat supper and make their way home together.

  And although it was all new, this life they shared until Thursday, it sometimes felt to both of them as if they had done it forever.

  On Thursday Gabby caught the train home, used the time to do her paperwork. Back at the farm she had a late lunch with Nell, took a long walk with Shadow to ease her back into the familiar routine. She would tackle the chaos of the house, answer any messages left for her. Ring Mark.

  On Friday and Saturday she delivered or collected paintings, restored in her workroom, washed and ironed Charlie’s clothes and did any jobs he had asked her to do on the farm. On Sunday Nell made her lie in and cooked Sunday lunch and she went to bed early for the train back to London on Monday morning.

  Mark, on his own in London, wrote, went to an exhibition, lunched, had supper with colleagues, missed Gabby.

  The previous Thursday Gabby had felt unwell and had rung Nell to say she thought she was coming down with flu and would stay up in London. She had sounded dreadful and Nell, worried, had said, ‘You’re doing too much. I’m trying to get you help in the house.’

  Gabby had slept for two whole days. By Saturday she had felt wonderful. She and Mark had had a leisurely weekend with time to wander about together slowly with no particular aim. Just having fun. Gabby was reluctant for it ever to end. She had stopped spinning through her two lives and relaxed. Mark always managed to surprise her with plans for their days together, taking her as a tourist around a London he knew better than she.

  They walked hand in hand the wide London parks that separated the city, and breathed in the space and the trees; sat on benches and talked and talked of other cities they might visit together one day. They peered through the railings of private gardens, wandered along wide roads and looked down into expensive basement kitchens where lives so different to Gabby’s were lived.

  Once they had stopped fascinated to watch a little Asian boy on a kitchen stool playing the violin, and the sound of the music issuing from below the pavement in the dusk was somehow surreal.

  They went to the theatre and Mark had introduced Gabby to opera, carefully chosen because she was unsure. She had loved being enveloped for an evening, loved the splendour of it and never got sick of emerging into the West End at night, with all the lights that defied the shadows, the endless excitement and bustle of a city that did not sleep.

  Lucinda and Gabby were often given tickets for exhibitions and spent their lunch hour in the galleries Gabby used to read about in Cornwall with lo
nging. She saved the catalogues to show Nell, feeling constantly tired but vitally alive, loving every moment of this city life.

  Mark’s thoughts also returned home on Sunday evenings. He saw a faded cream clapboard house, its possessions spilling out into the yard full of children’s toys and rugs and old garden chairs. The house would be bursting with friends drinking beer in small groups in the leftover day. His daughters would be traipsing in and out bathing small children, who would reappear in their clean pyjamas smelling of baby powder.

  The smell of cooking would pervade the house as his daughters and Veronique filled the table with too much food. The sacrosanct Sunday meal, all the family together, children scrambling into seats or being placed into baby chairs; the noisy sound of a close-knit family, chatting, laughing, arguing, doing what it did week in and week out with little variation, because they all enjoyed being together and took such pleasure in the sheer weight of their numbers.

  Mark ached for the loss of a need to be there with them, part of it all still. It frightened him, this strange disconnection with his family; flesh of his flesh. They were the wife and children he had worked his butt off for; they were the meaning of his life. Always had been. Five successful, bright daughters; happy, as far as he could tell, with their lives.

  They are the meaning of my life. Not any more. The sentence formed itself, chilling him with its certainty. Was he other than himself, then? Was this a passing fantasy, this life he might have led with this woman in this London house? If he had been younger, single and available?

  Was he subconsciously angry with his family for existing, for being in the way of …? He smiled cynically at himself and opened his eyes. Don’t go there. Don’t start all that crap.

  On the wall opposite he had placed Elan’s two paintings. They were the first thing he saw in the morning and last thing at night. Apt. Before and after.

  His eyes wandered round the bedroom. He had found the small nursing chair in a junk shop and had had it re-covered in yellow brocade. There was a small built-in wardrobe and a neat chest of drawers with brass handles he had bid for in a sale. On it Gabby had placed a vase of sweet peas which he could smell in little waves from the bed.

  The floor was polished and had two cream rugs either side of the bed. No clutter, minimal furniture. The house could breathe and so could he.

  He turned over carefully so that he did not wake Gabby and propped up on one elbow to watch her sleep. He could never get used to the smallness of her: her dimpled hands, like a child’s; the slimness of her wrists which he could encircle twice with his fingers; her newly cut hair, a shiny dark bob that framed but did not hide her face, heightened her cheekbones. He felt choked with love. If only it was just sex. But it was not. It was not.

  Gabby’s shoulder was cold and he pulled the covers up over her. He got out of bed and padded to the bathroom for his robe and went downstairs. He went to the fridge, pulled out a bottle of wine and opened it, held the glasses up to the dusky light from the window to make sure they were clean. Polished them quickly with a cloth, watching himself performing these pedantic little domestic tasks with surprise.

  Why? To preserve an illusion of perfection that did not exist? He did not know why he was suddenly giving weight to unimportant things, behaving in this slow and precise way; as if each simple task he undertook was somehow giving validity to normal everyday life here, making it real and tangible and true.

  See, here are my hands doing the things people do every day, all the time, making a careful symmetry, finding a certain place in the house I share with Gabriella, for these are the small objects that unite us.

  In the tiny garden a tortoiseshell cat sat watching him hold a perfectly clean glass up to the dying light. He filled the glasses and went back up the stairs. Gabby was awake and lying on her back in the almost dark. Mark placed a wine glass on her bedside table and she sat up, reached out to him, and placed her mouth into the palm of his hand. His long fingers almost covered her face.

  He felt her tears and did not move, closed his own eyes against the ending of this. When she let his hand go he moved away, lit one small bedroom lamp and got back into the bed beside her. Gabby smiled and lifted her glass to him, wanting to banish the Sunday-evening blues, where church bells rang and children telephoned their parents. Where families gathered for scrambled eggs and bad television. Where people were where they belonged.

  ‘Skol!’ she said, wrinkling her nose at Mark.

  ‘Bottoms up, old fruit!’ he replied, and their eyes met in an understanding. They snuggled down together in the bed.

  ‘Tell me the story of how you came to live in Cornwall,’ Mark said.

  ‘It’s a boring story, honestly.’

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that, madam.’

  Gabby giggled. ‘Went for a holiday, never really left. That’s it.’

  Mark peered down at her. ‘Well, if you are going to be obtuse, tell me about your childhood.’

  ‘Nothing to tell. Nothing.’ Her voice had changed. She moved abruptly and picked up her wine. The room was suddenly silent, full of distance.

  ‘I’m sorry, Gabby …’

  ‘It’s OK. I never talk about my childhood, Mark. Never.’

  The face she turned to him was devoid of expression. It was not a face he had seen before.

  He touched her cheek. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again.

  Gabby did not answer. She moved closer to him, tight into him as if she wanted him to absorb her. Mark stroked her hair rhythmically and she ran her fingers down his body suddenly, surprising him; bent down to him, making him groan.

  ‘Fuck me,’ she whispered. ‘Now.’

  What the hell demons am I slaying? Mark wondered.

  They slept, woke, got up to eat, went back to bed with their books. Josh rang Gabby on her mobile. She got out of bed and walked onto the landing, and stood in the dark talking to him. Officially she was staying with Lucinda.

  Gabby shivered with guilt as Josh relayed his week … Sunday evening, cleaning kit time … passing out was getting near … the sergeant-major was an absolute bastard. He was marching in his sleep and dreaming he mucked up at Chaos Corner …

  ‘What’s Chaos Corner?’

  ‘It’s a corner of the parade ground notoriously difficult to manoeuvre. It’s where we all have to turn, but it’s so tight everyone usually ends up colliding with the guys in front.’

  ‘Well, if everyone always mucks up, it’s nothing to have nightmares about. You’ll all go down like little spillikins!’

  Josh laughed. ‘Gee, Gabby, I feel a whole lot better now.’

  ‘How is your love life? Will we meet her?’

  ‘Hope so, but she’s in Durham and it’s exam time, so my love life consists of e-mails and texting. I can’t wait to take off on holiday …’

  When he rang off Gabby ran a bath and she and Mark both got into it, giggling and squirming and threatening to flood the bathroom. Then they returned to bed.

  ‘I don’t think I have ever spent so much time in bed.’ Mark was laughing, relieved Gabby was happy again.

  ‘Bed is an island. Some days I think about going back to bed all day. Bliss! Utter bliss!’ Gabby wriggled down under the covers, picked up her book, but did not read.

  ‘Your favourite place?’ Mark asked lightly, bending and kissing her nose.

  ‘I spent ninety per cent of my childhood in bed,’ Gabby said suddenly, with a small shrug. ‘I used to lock myself in my bedroom so my bed became home.’

  ‘A safe haven?’ Mark asked gently.

  ‘A safe haven, until I got to Cornwall. Josh was the reason I never left.’

  Slowly, hesitantly at first, Gabby started to talk to Mark of her long-buried childhood with Clara. Not everything, never everything, but it was a beginning.

  Chapter 29

  It was the spring of her A-level year when Gabrielle decided she would go daffodil picking. She knew nothing about it, but one of the supply teachers had come from the Scilly
Isles and had put up a wonderful poster in the art room. Green fields full of yellow daffodils with a backdrop of aquamarine sea. It looked idyllic. Gabby imagined herself in skimpy shorts and tee-shirts getting a tan against that exotic horizon. Bending and picking vivid yellow flowers in tiny green fields with groups of cheerful pickers.

  She had one overriding need – escape – and she had planned it for weeks. She was on study leave so she was able to catch a coach to Cornwall before the school officially broke up for Easter. The daffodil season was short and she wanted to earn as much money as she could.

  In the dark she had unlocked her bedroom door, stepped over the various sleeping bodies, left a note for her comatose mother and crept out for the early coach to Penzance.

  She never reached the Scilly Isles. By the time she reached Penzance the weather was appalling, the ferry had been cancelled and she could not afford the crossing anyway. She had seen from the coach various large signs on the roadside saying, ‘Daffodil Pickers Wanted’.

  With desperate courage, pretending she was much older, she booked herself into one of the numerous bed and breakfast places in Penzance, and the next day, after asking her landlady the way, she took a bus to the farm. The farmer refused to take her on. He wanted experienced pickers who worked quickly and he could tell at a glance she was a city girl.

  That night, huddled in her room surreptitiously eating fish and chips, Gabby saw in the local paper that held her chips that other farms were advertising. Her landlady told her there was a shortage of pickers due to the government clamping down on immigrant labour. There were swooping inspections now for foreign workers without papers.

  The next morning Gabby hitched a lift to the farm. She had looked at a map in Smith’s and decided to go as far off the beaten track as she could. It was a bleak, dismal morning and the wind bit into her face, stinging and vicious, making her gasp. The sun had not shone once since her arrival and the entire world seemed to be encased in cold grey cloud.