Another Life

by Sara MacDonald

  ‘How can we do it, Dad?’

  ‘She’s going to be hurt, initially, there’s no way round that. I think you’ll have to withdraw slowly. Hopefully, when she sees you’re all still around, that nothing threatens her relationship with all of you …’

  ‘Inez has been trying to get her to think about going back to college, to do a course or something. We found her grades and dissertation in the attic the other day. She was very clever, you know, Dad. We were surprised at some of the papers we found.’

  Mark smiled. ‘Oh, she was exceptionally clever; bright and witty, too. The sort of girl who could have done anything she set her mind on …’ he paused, ‘… but a girl with no ambition.’

  He heard the wistfulness in his voice and was surprised.

  ‘Except to have a family,’ Elle said quietly. Both girls were looking at him as if he had now surprised them.

  ‘Did you mind, Dad?’

  ‘I was surprised,’ he said carefully, ‘because I just assumed with a first-class degree she would want to work, or teach – use her subject, for a few years, anyway. We were very young, as you know. We got married straight after university, and we were absolutely broke …’

  ‘We all thought that you hadn’t wanted Maman to work …’

  ‘Especially when we found all her old university stuff. We assumed that you preferred her at home. You know, because she had been beautiful and clever and men of your generation liked their wives to stay home …’

  Mark laughed again, but it was a hard little laugh, too ironic to be kind. He stared back at his daughters. ‘You thought perhaps I felt threatened by a clever wife? That I encouraged her to stay at home?’

  Oh, how wrong they were! He had married Veronique because he had thought she was as passionate about history as he was. At twenty-three, he had had romantic visions of them nesting in a little flat talking endlessly of their fulfilled days. Eventually, one day, a couple of kids, but basically an academic, a professional life together.

  ‘I had taken it for granted she would want to go on to do a PhD,’ he told them, ‘and to have a working life.’

  ‘So,’ Naimah said slowly, ‘it was Maman who never wanted to work …’

  They were both having trouble absorbing this. Had it been a well-worn mantra started by Veronique, as an excuse to daughters who all worked and had families, because that was the norm now?

  Both his grandchildren had fallen asleep with small flushed faces, leaning against their mothers. Mark said, getting back to the subject, ‘Let’s get Christmas over and I’ll think of the best way of initiating the subject before the New Year.’

  ‘You won’t hurt her, Dad?’

  ‘Of course I won’t. I can prepare the ground, but you must realize it has to come from you lot, not from me. Imagine how your mother would feel if she knew we were talking like this behind her back.’

  ‘Dad, she is young enough to do something, have her own life still, isn’t she?’

  ‘You girls are her life,’ Mark said quietly. ‘You have to remember Maman is still very French in her attitude to family. Remember your French grandmother? She was formidable, pure Mafioso in her attitude to family first.’

  He grinned at their solemn faces. ‘Don’t let’s get this out of proportion. I think the more casually this is handled, the better. Withdraw slowly but firmly. Of course she needs to realize you have your own lives. I’m pretty annoyed with myself for not realizing something I should have seen clearly, then all this agonizing for you could have been avoided.’

  ‘Come on, Dad, you’ve been away a lot and you’ve always been so busy.’

  ‘Someone has to bring in the bacon, we know that.’

  Ah! An ancient, buried resentment surfaced. All those years ago Veronique was determined to have a house and garden for her babies. Not a rented flat. She had worked until they had enough for a deposit and then she had got pregnant without discussing it with him. Mark had had to give up his lowly paid research post. He had been straight into a mortgage and a job to process it.

  He got up. ‘Come on, let’s get these kids home.’

  He did not regret his daughters. He adored every one of them, even if it had been a longer academic climb. He lifted a sleeping child’s dead weight and carried her out to the truck with the Christmas tree neatly attached to the roof. Snow was falling again. Mark buried his nose for a second into the warmth of the child, into that dusky, powdery baby smell.

  Out of the blue, like the piercing point of a knife under his ribs, I want Gabriella to have my child.

  Chapter 37

  Within a few days Isabella had grown to love the smell of wood, the sharp gluey smell as the chips fell to the ground around Tom Welland’s feet as he chiselled into the solid piece of wood that would one day be her face.

  Isabella had not expected to feel so excited to be back in St Piran, but she was. She was touched at how the villagers remembered her and Mama and she was relieved to find it was the happy memories she associated with the place she grew up, not that tragic last memory.

  Richard’s family had had a summer home there for decades. Rumour had it that it had been his grandfather’s love nest. Neglected for years, Richard had now had the house renovated and Isabella called it the Summer House. She and Lisette were installed there until Tom Welland had completed the figurehead.

  Lady Isabella was being fitted out down on the wooden quay. Sheltered harbours were few on the north coast and the smaller ships, if blown by a vicious onshore wind, could beach themselves up on the cove if they needed shelter.

  Richard, despite a childhood in Devon, wanted the local people to have pride in Lady Isabella. St Piran was his wife’s birthplace, and if trade went well the community would also prosper in her success.

  He had less altruistic reasons, too. He must maximize the success of the trade routes he had established over the years. He must constantly evolve his business interests, note where the new trade lay, and take risks.

  Trade was good, but he and others like him, small local shipping dynasties, knew they had maybe ten years more and then steam and iron vessels would overtake the wooden schooners and brigs. They would be overwhelmed by progress.

  His beautiful wooden ships would be in decline, but, God willing, by then he would have a son, and he would have to move with the times as his family had always done. But for the present he was the happiest and most fulfilled he had ever been. He knew where every one of his ships registered around Cornwall and Devon lay, and the reputation of every master. After a season or so, when tonnage was good, Richard would sell on one or two of his boats, for the right price.

  While Isabella was taken up with sitting for the figurehead, Richard decided to travel to Devon and then on to London. It was a good time to do business without feeling he was neglecting Isabella.

  In case she should be lonely or bored he arranged for Sophie, her cousin, to stay for a few days.

  ‘Will you visit your father and his wife, Isabella?’ Richard asked her before he left. ‘Do you not think it is time to make your peace? It is somewhat awkward when your father and I do business together for you are very distant with him. Could you try to like his wife a little, for my sake?’

  Isabella looked at him with an expression he was coming to know well.

  ‘Richard, I am perfectly cordial to my father. I have no opinion of his wife whatsoever. I neither like nor dislike her. My father knows I am here with Lisette. It is my father and his wife’s place to invite me, for I am the visitor here.’

  Richard sighed. Isabella could be childishly wilful. It really was not that poor woman’s fault that she had taken Helena’s place. Charlotte seemed constantly to be in Helena’s shadow, no one seemed able to even remember her name.

  ‘I will be gone for three weeks, Isabella, for I must go on to London from Exeter.’

  Isabella smiled. ‘Richard, I believe it is all just an excuse for you to travel on the railroad, which I know you love!’

  But she was
overjoyed to have the time on her own.

  ‘It is a new and revolutionary invention that excites me, I admit, every time I travel. The time it saves to reach London has transformed our lives down here. By the time our children are born the railroad will have reached Truro. There will hardly be any part of the world that does not have a railway, you wait and see.’

  Sophie had arrived in St Piran with her drawing book, happy to escape her French tutor and her mother who was determinedly grooming her for her season in London. While Isabella sat for Tom, Sophie sat upon the cliffs and sketched.

  Isabella had been sitting for a long time. Her feet had gone to sleep. Tom stood up and stretched, looked at Isabella.

  ‘What do you think about while I carve?’ he asked. ‘Your face changes in small ways all the time. It is like the shadow of rippling leaves across your face.’

  Isabella stood up too. She turned away for a moment to hide the colour which had suddenly come to her face. She had been watching his hands as they chiselled and his concentration on the block of wood. She had been watching his hair as it fell across his face, lines of fairness that the sun had bleached. His bent back was powerful, the muscles under his shirt moved tightly.

  Had she been thinking? No, she had not. Sleepy with having to stay so still, she had just let the sensation of Tom waver over her in the warm afternoon. Absorbing him into her in the flickering of light and shadow across her face.

  Isabella walked over to look at her likeness emerging from the smooth, honeyed wood. The huge block of wood was held by a chain at an angle. It was strange, a little eerie. Her face was half-formed, a metamorphosis, the wood inanimate without life. A frozen half-face. Isabella shivered. It was like someone had died while giving her birth and here she was unformed and lifeless, caught in unbeing for eternity; a grotesque half-life.

  Tom said quickly, ‘If I were a painter you would not be allowed to look before I finished you. The wood looks strange now, but I have to break when my fingers ache, for the face must be right, it leads all the rest of the carving.’

  He smiled down at her. ‘I start by carving the shape of the head and face and then I go on to the body and return to capture the detail of the face later.’

  Isabella turned away. ‘Lisette brought me orange juice. Would you like some?’

  ‘If you have some to spare. What about your cousin?’

  ‘Lisette has gone with Sophie to the cliff path above the cove. Sophie wants to paint the sea and Lisette is afraid she will fall over the edge of the cliff and insisted on going too. We are all very much afraid of Sophie’s mama.’

  She handed Tom a glass of orange and they smiled. They stood together looking across the cove, squinting against the sun bouncing off the sea. They could not see her, but Lady Isabella was laid upon wooden staging on the quay while her carpenters, Tom’s father among them, climbed aboard her like ants, working hard to finish for her maiden voyage fully fitted.

  From where they stood the sounds of hammering and voices and the occasional swearing carried up the cliff in disembodied echoes. Tom flexed his fingers and turned away from the sea.

  ‘So, you have not told me what you think about as you sit so patiently, Lady Isabella?’

  Isabella’s smile was enigmatic. She could say it was lovely to have her bed to herself, or how free she felt in the boatyard with Tom, away from Richard, away from Lisette. She could say that she understood now the ache of belonging, that a sense of the place you were born always remained.

  For so many years she had put her childhood and her mama out of her mind. And suddenly, as Tom carved her likeness, the happy memories were creeping back. She could see Helena laughing again, not dead.

  She said to Tom, ‘I think of many things. Sometimes I visit the rooms of my father’s house once more and try to remember how each room was furnished, but only my mama’s room remains truly clear to me.’

  ‘You miss your home?’

  ‘No, not the house itself, it was too big. Papa used to say he could spend three weeks just trying to find Mama. I loved my own room and Lisette’s little room off the nursery. I loved Mama’s drawing room, it was full of lovely Italian furniture and glass. I liked the room off the kitchen where Lisette and the maids used to sew. It always smelt of newly baked bread. What I miss most are the gardens where I used to play – they were beautiful. I loved the lake and the stables …’

  Tom, watching her, laughed softly.

  ‘Why do you laugh? You asked me a question and when I answer, you laugh at me.’ Isabella was mortified.

  Tom hastily became serious. ‘I am sorry, Miss … Lady Isabella. It is just the way you reel off the rooms of your house, the ones you can remember! It is difficult to even imagine so much space. Many cottages only have two rooms for a whole family. I was not laughing at you. It is the … difference that struck me, for where you might have envied more simplicity, my parents with three sons and a daughter would have envied you your excess of rooms.’

  Isabella was embarrassed. ‘I am sorry …’

  ‘There is nothing for you to be sorry for, my Lady. My father, my two brothers and I are all in work, and we were able to buy old Mrs Trevean’s place two years back. I believe my mother to be the happiest woman alive.’

  ‘You mean the little thatched cottage? The last cottage after the chapel near the coastal path that leads into the village?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Lisette used to walk me past there, her mother was friendly with Mrs Trevean. She had a goat in her front garden who ate her roses, did she not?’

  Tom laughed. ‘She did. When I was little I got chased by that goat, I was mighty scared of it. Now, will you sit for me a little longer?’

  Isabella sat.

  Tom said, ‘I need you to be very still for one more hour while I finish the shape of your face. After that it will be much easier and we can talk if you feel like it.’

  He went to Isabella and lifted her chin gently with his finger, then measured with his finger and thumb the width of her head. His hands were surprisingly square and small and strong. More than half an hour passed and he was bent to his wood in total concentration, glancing up every now and then. Little beads of sweat formed on his forehead and top lip. His tongue was caught between his teeth.

  In the long afternoon as Tom carved her features from wood, Isabella was finally able to lay Helena to rest, to remember small precious moments and to banish that last image of her mother for another, far truer memory.

  Her mother had once given an impromptu concert when her piano had still been in the downstairs drawing room. The French windows had been thrown open to a hot summer day such as this one. Their house guests had sat enraptured, inside the room and outside on the terrace, listening to Helena play for more than an hour, play as if she could not bear to stop.

  When she did, a mistle thrush in a tree went on singing like an encore as the sun sank beneath the sea. There had been an awed, breathless silence as still as the dying day. Helena’s audience were reluctant to let the evening slip from them by moving or clapping. Isabella, sitting on the steps, had been so proud. She had felt like the thrush puffing up his chest for the glory of being alive.

  Isabella looked on the face before her. Tom Welland looked exhausted, as if all his energy was spent. His eyes were a faded yet startling blue, exactly like a rash of forget-me-nots against a green lawn.

  ‘Extraordinary,’ she murmured.

  Tom smiled, removed his hand, focusing once more on the flesh and blood Isabella.

  ‘What?’

  Isabella blushed. ‘Oh … your eyes. Exactly like forget-me-nots. Sophie will be interested,’ she added hastily.

  ‘Why will Miss Tredinnick be interested?’ Tom did not move away. Dared not laugh at her again.

  ‘Because she paints,’ Isabella said inconsequently.

  ‘Ah,’ Tom said. ‘I do not know the colour of your cousin’s eyes but yours are like tiger’s eyes, the stone as well as the beast. They are not Eng
lish eyes. They make you … different, Lady Isabella.’

  He blinked as a bead of sweat fell in his eye. Isabella took out her handkerchief and pressed it above his eye, then the other. Dabbed his forehead gently, soaking up the moisture on his face. When she reached his mouth her hand trembled as she pressed the flimsy cloth to the beads of moisture on his top lip.

  Tom did not move. When she met his eyes he held them. Then, gently, he took the handkerchief from her.

  ‘Thank you. I am very hot. I will ask my mother to wash this for you.’

  His voice sounded a little strange. ‘Come, I will walk you home or I will have Lisette to deal with.’

  He walked away to his wood and covered it, tied the cover over her likeness with rope although it was under cover of a rough roof. Isabella thought, How could I have touched him like that? What will he think of me?’

  She walked over to him, her eyes on the ground.

  ‘I do not want you to look at the figurehead again until I am quite finished.’

  Isabella looked up. He had her handkerchief to his mouth and was breathing deeply.

  ‘Lavender?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice caught in her throat at the way he was looking at her.

  He put the handkerchief in his pocket and they walked together out of the empty boatyard. As they walked up the hill, Tom said, ‘Would the day after tomorrow be all right for you? I have to help my father all tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes. In the afternoon?’

  ‘Yes. Would you like to leave it until later when it is cooler?’

  Isabella smiled. ‘You are the one who must choose the time, for I am not the one who grows hot with working. I just sit.’

  ‘But,’ Tom said softly, ‘I cannot create your likeness without you.’

  They saw Lisette coming down the road towards them. When she reached them she said immediately, ‘You have been out in the sun far too long, Miss Isabella …’

  ‘I have been in the shade, Lisette. It is Tom who has been in the sun.’