Another Life

by Sara MacDonald

  The train hooted in the dark, reminding her of her room as a child and the loneliness of an often empty house at night. She would lie in that bed by the window thinking of all the people in the lighted trains out there, while the house creaked and moved alarmingly without a grown-up to hear or guard her.

  Now, here she was on a night train, while other people in their houses listened sleepily to the speeding of her train through the velvety night, and she still felt alone. She formed Mark’s name on her lips and thought of the house by the river, her safe house, as the train sped through the darkness taking her home.

  Chapter 32

  The timber is beautiful. I have taken great pains to ensure its quality, for it must withstand exposure and the battering of the sea. The wood is oak and perfect for my purpose, being free of knots for a good two feet. I lay the wood out and arrange the planks carefully so that the end grain will not be in a critical carving place such as the face, neck and hands. The grain of the wood should also run in the same direction for carving her drapery. Her costume must flow as if it is one with the water.

  I tried my brothers’ patience sorely. I had the wood yard in turmoil as I searched for the perfect timber that I had seen on board. I knew exactly what I wanted and I searched until I found it.

  I had the oak cut into six-foot lengths. The plank sizes vary and the thickness in them differs, so I will have to plane the surfaces. I will have to bolt the wood together from many pieces for the body of the figurehead, for it will have to weather all manner of extremes as well as salt water.

  I am glad to be back in England, yet it is strange, for all seems to be exactly as I left it. The St Piran boatyard thrives, thanks to my father. He now has many men in the yard, as well as my two brothers. Although he seems always short of skilled carpenters, for they are much in demand at this time and many skilled workers have emigrated to seek a better life in the colonies.

  It occurs to me for the first time that my father’s ambition might well have been stunted by my mother’s need to remain in one place. I watch my father’s face sometimes when I am talking of my travels and I believe I see wistfulness there, for what might have been.

  I owe my father a great deal. He let me watch him carve as a small boy and allowed me to experiment as an apprentice. I long for him to be his own man as I intend to be, for he sees none of the profit of the shipyard, only takes a wage.

  When I was offered the chance of working in the boatyard in Prince Edward Island, and then taking passage to sail the schooners home to England to be fitted, my father did not hesitate or ask to keep me. He advised me to take the opportunity to better myself.

  I started my new life by carving and embellishing the prows of small schooners, and when this proved successful I tried my hand at a small figurehead for a Cornish brigantine which then sailed home to Falmouth.

  Sir Richard Magor saw this figurehead in Flushing and sent word, via his brother in Prince Edward Island, that he would like me to return home to carve a figurehead for one of his own schooners. The offer was such that I could not refuse and I felt the need to see my family after nearly a three-year absence.

  This is my most important commission to date. Sir Richard is an influential man who owns many small trading ships. He is also a naval man, knowledgeable about ships and the sea.

  My father tells me that Sir Richard is seeking to build bigger boats with detachable bunks in order to take emigrants. He plans to replace the bunks with timber and sundry goods for import on the return journey to England. His schooners, brigs and barques will sail home via Mediterranean ports where he can unload and take on foreign cargo. He is undoubtedly a shrewd businessman.

  I could be afraid that I might fail to do justice to Lady Isabella, fail to capture the likeness of her, but I am not. I fear only the excitement in beginning such a project may affect my hands at first. However, such is the quality of the wood, such is the beauty of the face I am to carve from it, that I am anxious to begin.

  Once I start carving I will be lost to all but the work of my hands holding my tools, and to that face. A face that is haunting and sad at the same time. A face impossible to forget, for the eyes pierce my heart with the memory of a child collecting her birthday present, sitting proud on the back of a small grey mare.

  The years between that day and this have taken the laughter from Isabella’s face and masked her eyes, and yet, as I looked into her face once more, I saw that the spark still lay somewhere, hidden, but not dead.

  It was a shock to see the child of my memory a married woman, for she is a girl still. She cannot be more than eighteen and looks that age despite her smart clothes. From awkwardness she has grown into a beauty, yet she seems somehow subdued.

  The woman I gazed at from the end of the quay was indeed a beauty, but she no longer had that sense of joy, of living in a world where everything is before her. She has lost it, that restless excitement I glimpsed in her as a child. I wonder if it had started to fade even before that tragic day ended.

  Chapter 33

  Mark had complicated-looking maps, notebooks and ancient sailing manuals all over the floor. Gabby stood in the doorway watching him. He had his half-moon glasses on which amused her, and he was concentrating so hard he had not heard her come in.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Gabby asked, kneeling beside him.

  ‘One second, sweetheart …’ He reached out to touch her without taking his eyes off some equation he was making in a notebook. Then he threw his pencil down.

  ‘Navigational skills are definitely not my strong point.’

  Delighted to see her he took her face in his hands and gently kissed her mouth, his eyes laughing behind his professor-like glasses as he examined her features. This was what Gabby loved most about him, his even temper, his capacity for happiness. She stared back, her heart contracting with love.

  Mark removed his hands from her face. ‘Dear little face. If I look at it any longer I shall get sidetracked. I’m trying to work out the timings of the old trade routes before the railways connected the West Country with the rest of England. This is for my lecture at Greenwich for combined London schools next week. I was trying to calculate how long a so-called commuter route to Newfoundland and back would take …

  ‘See, here on this map … this is where the packet ships carrying the mail used to sail. So did the small trading ships of the nineteenth century, with variations, of course, as they discovered new ports of call, new places for trade …’

  Gabby smiled. Mark was off. She knew he would be brilliant with schoolchildren; his enthusiasm could enchant a slug.

  ‘You see, I’ve been wondering about the Lady Isabella. We know she sailed the long trade routes but she was a smallish schooner, which is interesting. I would have thought she would have been better suited for trade around Britain, France, Spain, all round the Med. So I think she must have been built for speed. She was really quite sophisticated for that time if you study the plans.

  ‘I’ve been doing a bit of sleuthing. This Sir Richard Magor owned quite a few vessels. In those days owners formed a sort of syndicate, the profits and costs would be shared by many investors. This guy was forward-looking and later he co-owned quite large vessels for the long hauls which would have been far more cost effective in terms of carrying imports and exports.’

  Mark turned to Gabby. ‘Although I couldn’t find evidence of the Lady Isabella being built in Prince Edward Island, I’m pretty sure she was. They built fast, light little schooners, and despite the shipwright’s plans for her construction found in the archives in Devon, I don’t think she was built in St Piran.’

  ‘Peter sounded so sure. Why would she have been registered at St Piran if she had been built elsewhere? And why would the plans for the Lady Isabella have been found in Devon? I think the museum would far rather believe she was built in St Piran.’

  ‘What I believe might have happened is that she was basically built in Prince Edward Island, sailed home and was refitted in St Pi
ran. This was not uncommon for those who had business interests out there.’

  Mark got up off the floor. ‘Let’s have a drink. I need one.’ He grinned at her. ‘One always imagines on a sabbatical that there will be plenty of time to pursue various little anomalies. I daren’t start researching any more on the Lady Isabella until I’ve finished my book. I’ve had my publisher on the phone and I bullshitted. I’m nowhere near completing.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘Oh dear indeed!’ Mark opened the fridge and took out a bottle. ‘I keep getting sidelined. One little bit of research leads to another and another and I get sidetracked.’

  ‘Apparently, the figurehead is drawing in visitors to the museum; it’s their best year yet. John says Lady Isabella stands in her corner looking down and enchanting everyone. It would be great to have funds to do the second phase one day, Mark.’

  ‘When I last spoke to Peter, he was delighted with all you’d done. He said you’d worked wonders with her face.’ Mark said wistfully.

  Gabby smiled. ‘I guess it must be frustrating not to be able to pursue a project you started. I know the museum want to bring a booklet out detailing the Lady Isabella’s history eventually, but John told me they were well aware researching is very time-consuming. And just think, when you’ve finished your book and stopped giving lectures to every deserving case who asks you, you’ll have all the time in the world to pursue your little peccadilloes.’

  Gabby placed two wine glasses in front of him and he kissed her nose.

  ‘I don’t feel it’s solely my project, Gabriella. That’s the wonderful thing about a find like Isabella, the whole community gets involved. Both Peter and John have got retired volunteers who have the time and patience to painstakingly sift through records. Little clues will turn up all the time.’

  ‘I was thinking, Mark, apart from the fact that the figurehead was named Lady Isabella, and so she was most likely married to Sir Richard Magor, mustn’t there be parish records or a population census which could prove Isabella was in a certain place at a certain date, and so must have been his wife?’

  ‘Oh, definitely. Yes, there will be. I’ve two young researchers from Exeter University who are going through parish records for me in Bideford and Appledore, where there were two big and vibrant boatyards at that time. They might have gone to live in Devon for all we know. This Sir Richard rather interests me.’

  He poured out the wine and lifted the bottle. ‘This should be rather good, try it.’

  Gabby laughed. ‘Honestly, I wouldn’t know, Mark. I hardly drank before I met you. All the wine you buy tastes great to me.’

  ‘Gee,’ Mark said. ‘I’ve driven you to drink, Gabriella.’

  ‘What I want to know is,’ Gabby said, ignoring him, ‘is this lecture of yours going to include the Lady Isabella, then?’

  ‘Sort of. I guess I’d like the life of mariners on the high seas to come alive for the kids, not just turn into a boring old history lesson by a dull old prof. I thought I would use a ship like the Lady Isabella so the kids could relate to the real-life example of one ship and her crew. I’d give the crew names and take them through one voyage to, say … Newfoundland, to illustrate the hardships and the deprivation as well as the adventure of such long voyages. A few gory details of how apprentices, young boys of fourteen and sometimes younger, were bullied and horribly mistreated. Bring in pirates on the high seas, terrifying waves as high as mountains, a few wreckers, and the startling discovery of new lands …

  ‘Not only have I got to keep their interest in a relatively short burst, I want them to enjoy and understand how rich history is and how much the minutiae of their lives inform us of how people lived then …’

  Mark paused, out of breath, and grinned at Gabby. ‘I’m not used to this younger age group. What do you think, Gabriella?’

  ‘Mark, you’ll captivate them. You couldn’t be boring if you tried. You never talk down, that’s the great thing about you. You always assume everyone knows as much as you do, and it brings us all up to your level. Honestly, it sounds wonderful. I know Josh loved anything like that. Oh, by the way, Lucinda asked me if there was any chance of her sitting in on the lecture. Something to do with an exhibition of warships they are putting on next summer. She knows you are lecturing to children and on a later period, but thinks it would be helpful. But, actually, I think she fancies you,’ Gabby said suddenly.

  Mark laughed. ‘Come here, you.’ He enfolded her, still laughing.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘You. You make me so happy.’

  ‘Do I?’ Gabby peered up at him.

  ‘You do. Especially when you’re jealous and I’m an aged historian.’

  ‘Of course I’m jealous! I’ve seen the way women look at you. I don’t like it at all,’ Gabby said seriously.

  Mark was trying to stop laughing.

  Gabby stared at him. ‘You are always so content with life, Mark. It makes me feel … peaceful. Even when you are serious I know it’s not for long.’

  Mark poured more wine. ‘I have much to be content about, Gabriella. I am doing work I love. I have you. You remind me how to be young. We have this house we share. We have love. What more could I possibly want?’

  He raised his glass to her. Gabby thought, We have love. But not forever and ever. We haven’t got this forever and ever.

  As if he could read her face, Mark said gently, ‘Sometimes we can spoil the moment by wanting more. This is our moment, my beloved Gabriella, and we mustn’t waste a second in looking forward or back. Just live it.’

  ‘Yes,’ Gabby said, ‘I know. It’s a gift, this living the moment. How did you learn it so well?’

  She walked towards him, leant against him, wrapped her arms tight around his waist. ‘Teach me,’ she whispered. ‘Teach me the art of it so that nothing can get through the cracks.’

  Mark held her and was silent. Then he said, ‘I cannot teach it. It has somehow to be learnt. I cannot always do it myself. It is like happiness, never a permanent state, not for anyone. If I lose it, which I do, I go back to my beginnings. I look at what I had and who I was a long time ago.’

  Gabby leant back to see his face. He tucked her hair behind her ears, distractedly, and then he said, with difficulty, ‘I was born and lived in Bonavista Bay, Newfoundland, until I was four, with a mother I hardly remember. Apparently we lived in abject poverty. I never knew who my father was. My mother died suddenly and I was about to be shipped off to a children’s home when two anthropologists arrived in Newfoundland for fieldwork. They adopted me. The chance of that happening to a “Newfie”, a derogatory term used by Canadians, was zero.

  ‘From that day onwards it was up. Perhaps that’s why I always feel I was born the day they found me. I was adored. I was educated. I had the most wonderful parents it was possible for a child to have …’

  He smiled wryly. ‘The Newfie in me, however, is always there, hoping to trip the happy me with memories of those first years I don’t want to remember, for reasons I can’t recall. Those are the nasty little fissures ready to trip you into their cracks if you let them. That’s when you have to conjure joy from a tiny thing, remind yourself of how far you’ve come, how very lucky you are.’

  Gabby moved away, disturbed, trying to assimilate his words with the so different childhood she had imagined for him.

  ‘That’s why you understand me.’ Gabby saw it suddenly. ‘I don’t know who my father was either. I don’t think I’ll ever do it, Mark, this accepting, this not looking back or never looking too far forward.’

  ‘Gabby, you will. I am much older than you. It has taken me a lifetime to get to this point. If I hadn’t met you I might never have realized I had reached a point of acceptance long ago.’

  ‘A facility for happiness?’

  Mark smiled. ‘If you like. Which might mean many things. Accepting that you might never know who you are or where you came from. Approving of the person you’ve become or maybe having the courage
to change, to be true to yourself for the first time.’

  They stared at each other. Reading her eyes, Mark said softly, ‘Don’t ask which is true of me, my darling, for I cannot give you a simple answer, or one I know to be entirely truthful. I have that yet to discover. I only know that each moment with you is more happiness than I deserve and I won’t test the Gods for more …’

  He kissed her nose; grinned. ‘Have we done philosophizing? Shall we head out for a meal?’

  Gabby smiled. ‘I love you, Mark Hannah.’

  ‘Thank God for that, Missy Ellis.’

  As they walked in the dusk down the river path on a summer evening, fingers lightly touching, Gabby thought, How can I not look forward? How could I go back to a time without this man when I am so changed by this love every single day?

  When I think of a life without him a great chasm opens up before me in a terrifying way. I could never leap it. I would just fall into darkness.

  The emptiness of a life without Mark rendered in Gabby such a sense of panic that her heart raced and her mouth went dry. She would shake her head violently and whisper in the dark somewhere, no, no, no, like a mantra. God, she prayed, I’ll settle for less, for little, just let me have him somewhere in my life. Just somewhere.

  This was new to her, this all-encompassing love which filtered into every aspect of her life. Underneath her fingers, his. Long, slender, pianist’s hands. Here, on the river path, their bodies moved together, as close as it was possible to walk. The river was silver and racing. Soon, as the sun got lower, it would turn a cloudy pink.

  Men and women walked hand in hand; talking, laughing. Two little boys in peaked caps – twins, perhaps – ran past carrying sticks, chasing each other. Here they were, like anyone else, one more couple wandering towards the pub or a restaurant where they could sit and look out over the river on an evening in the middle of summer.

  Mark hooked his fingers round hers for a better grip and started to hum. Gabby smiled, shook her head as if to free herself from thoughts which would affect the moment she had now. What was it Marika had said? Cherish the moment, for time would snatch it away if you let it. Gabby was not going to let that happen. She had this moment on a river path with the man she loved.