Another Life

by Sara MacDonald

  ‘Well, if you call Germany abroad, yes. I already told you that.’

  ‘I was not meaning Germany,’ Marika said, watching his face closely.

  Josh thought there was not much he was ever going to be able to conceal from this woman, but he was not about to worry Marika about something that might not happen.

  He smiled and kissed the end of her nose. ‘Stop interrogating me. I will always, always make my way to wherever you are, so please go for the job you really want.’

  He moved her gently out of his way and leapt out of bed. ‘Am I going to get that coffee before next Christmas, Doris, or not?’

  ‘DORIS!’ Marika squeaked. ‘What sort of name is that … Boris? Doris?’

  ‘It is the name for little old ladies who … ow.’ Marika jumped on him and he fell back onto the bed.

  ‘Happy New Year!’ Josh said sleepily later.

  ‘Happy New Year, soldier boy.’

  It was quite some time before either of them surfaced for coffee.

  Before everyone arrived for their New Year’s Eve party, Mark went down to the cellar to check the pressure on the central-heating boiler. Veronique had said the bathroom radiator was not working. He looked at the gauge without interest. It was fine. He supposed the boiler needed a service. He went back upstairs.

  Veronique looked wonderful; luscious in a red dress. Her dark hair had gone almost white in places and it suited her, those wings and streaks of white. She had a new red lipstick, darker than usual, and there was something defiant about her.

  ‘You look lovely,’ Mark said. ‘I like the new dress.’

  Veronique looked up from the table she was finishing laying. ‘Thank you.’ She smiled. ‘Could you get the wine glasses, Mark, the hired ones in the box by the door?’

  Mark began to take them out, held them up to the light in habit to make sure they were all clean and placed them on the table. They were having a buffet supper as there were too many people to sit down at the table. The kitchen seemed empty without the girls. He ironically longed for the noise and the chaos of children underfoot and for the chatter and gossip of his daughters.

  The kitchen was too quiet. He should be filling the silence with his own minutiae, but he had lost the knack somehow; lost the thoughtless art of small talk with his wife. The house seemed huge, their proximity to each other overwhelming. He wondered, suddenly, Did we ever chat inconsequently to one another? There were always babies, I can’t remember a time before we were caught up in feeding bottles, bath time, sterilizing, school runs, homework …

  By the time the last child left home I had left too, although you did not know it.

  ‘All the girls are coming?’ he asked Veronique.

  ‘Of course! They always do,’ Veronique answered, but her voice was tight. Words had been said between Christmas and New Year. Veronique had listened to her daughters in a dignified silence, then made light of it. Shrugged, in her very French way; ‘Pouf! Why did you not say before? That is OK. You tell me when you would like to come for meals. I will wait to know if I am to pick up the children from school. Yes?’

  His daughters, surprised, had rushed in quickly, for in order to work they did need their mother’s help with school pick-ups. Veronique knew this and was making a fair point. His daughters could see that, too.

  ‘Maman,’ Inez had said. ‘You know how grateful we all are. We do need you, you know we do, and we do love coming to have meals. All we are saying is, perhaps not every week or every Sunday. We think it is too much for you, too.’

  Veronique had shrugged again and thrown out her arms; ‘Fine. OK.’

  Then she had gone out of the room leaving her daughters feeling wretched.

  Veronique had announced the following day that this New Year would be different. If her daughters wanted to come to the party, fine, they could come as guests. They must not feel they had to come hours before, to help.

  Mark said now to his wife, ‘Veronique, I think the girls love to be involved in getting ready for the New Year party. They didn’t mean to hurt you, you know. They only meant that on working days they find it difficult to spend so much time here. That’s understandable, isn’t it?’

  Veronique looked up at him. ‘I am not hurt. Of course I understand.’

  She was lying, and Mark, putting the last glass on the table, said, ‘Then why shut them out of coming to help for New Year? It has always been a big family thing we all do together.’

  Veronique did not answer. In punishing her daughters for wounding her she had only succeeded in punishing herself. It had been a great shock, for her whole life was caught up in theirs and without them she felt panic. This was what the defiant red dress and lipstick was about. See, don’t worry, girls, I am my own person with plenty of friends … plenty to do.

  Mark went round the table and placed his hands on her shoulders, made her look at him. He said gently, ‘Veronique, you are the most wonderful mother. Your children and grandchildren adore you, they always will, but you are also a very clever woman with many talents. Maybe it’s time for you just to think of yourself for once. Not bury yourself in the girls. Think of what you might like to do with your life now they are grown up. The amount of time you expend on your family … why …’ he laughed, shook her a little, trying to get her to smile ‘… you could be running a vast business empire!’

  Veronique did smile, but not before he caught the panic in her eyes at the thought of having to do something else with her life, leave her womb-like home.

  ‘Let’s make this a really happy evening. No atmosphere, no coolness, just the beginning of a new year with family and friends,’ Mark said automatically, and heard his treacherous self saying it.

  Veronique moved away. ‘Yes! We always have a happy New Year party, don’t we? There is the bell, will you get it?’

  She added, suddenly, ‘You need the girls filling the house, too, don’t you, Mark?’

  Something in the way she said it made him turn quickly, but she was taking a dish out of the oven and he could not see her face.

  He threw the front door open and a cold blast of air filled the hall. The couple stamped the snow off their boots. Behind them the branches of the tree in the front yard were bent with great wedges of snow which slid and dropped with a heavy plop. Mark closed the door and greeted the woman in the way he always did; ‘How is the most beautiful doctor’s wife in Quebec, then …?’

  An hour later he sprinted up to his study and grabbed his mobile, checked his watch, and dialled Gabriella’s mobile.

  ‘I’m on the beach,’ she said, ‘watching some beautiful coloured kites sail against a vivid sky …’

  Outside the snow began to fall again and the windowledge, which he had not cleared of earlier snow, built up in little frozen peaks. The noise of laughter and voices floated up the stairs to him. Across the world she stands on a beach against a winter sea. The pain caught him off-guard, contracting his throat, spreading across his chest.

  ‘Happy New Year, Gabriella,’ he said, forcing himself to breathe. ‘I cannot say it on the stroke of the hour.’

  ‘I know. I know. Happy New Year, Mark.’

  ‘Our year, Gabriella, this will be our year.’

  Nell had not stayed up for New Year and Charlie was not yet back from the pub. Gabby went out into the night and looked up at the stars. As the hour struck she lifted her glass of wine to a moon she could not see. Happy New Year for all those I love. Good things for Josh and keep him safe. For Nell and Charlie. For Elan. For Mark and me.

  The house seemed very empty. She made a hot-water bottle and went upstairs to bed. She paused outside Josh’s room, peered inside, smiled and then closed the door. She climbed into a freezing bed and curled into a ball.

  Our year, Gabriella. Our year.

  The house seemed full of ghosts, empty of its heart. People no longer filled its rooms but loitered on the edge like strangers passing on the stairs. The beloved kitchen was the only room still beating with a last little
pulse of its own.

  Gabby listened to the house creaking as if it ached. It needed small footsteps climbing up and down the stairs, clinging to the old heavy banister rail. It needed its windows thrown open to the sun and wind to dispel the smell of damp and dust from the corners. There was a room with a piano that was no longer played. A dining room with heavy furniture, no longer used. Nooks and crannies, stairways, hall, landings and cupboards, cobbled and flagged floors, old faded Persian carpets full of generations of dog hairs. Still the same place, always the same, but changed because they were no longer loved and polished, swept and lived in, and Gabby knew the heart of a house died when it was no longer cared for. It slowly faded like the lives it had lost.

  She sat up to listen to its rhythm, the sound of the creaks as the house cooled down. She could hardly hear them, realized she had grown away from its steady heartbeat. The song she heard now was the flow of a river and distant traffic as it drove over the bridge, the edge-of-a-city sounds, far away from the beat of the sea.

  For the first time she realized the enormity of what Charlie had lost. No Josh and his wife filling this house with their children. Josh was the only chance he had had of the next generation living in his family home. No hide and seek and children’s bikes littering the yard. No retirement to a little warm cottage like Nell.

  Gabby rocked with the sudden clarity of both their lives in the soft darkness of a house she had loved and cared for so long. You have a choice. You could make a decision, now, before you see him again. You could do the right thing. You could be content again. It would not be that hard. Charlie and Nell do not deserve this. They gave you a whole life, a refuge, a place … You’ve fought to have the perfect family, why do this to Josh now … why blow a whole good life away?

  Gabby was part of the dark. An owl hooted somewhere and a dog barked in the distance. She thought of that house by the railway line and the room she had spent so, so many hours in. She remembered the feeling of never feeling safe. Of having to watch out for herself from the moment she could reason. Of knowing where dangers lay and that the most danger lay in the fact she was a little girl, cute and dark and pretty. They came, her mother’s boyfriends, and rattled the locked door. But of course there were other places to catch you, you could not stay in your room forever. But she was clever, she bit and scratched and clawed and yelled. Not all had evil intent, but how was she to know in the pawing and lifting and touching what might have been kindness and what intent. Her biggest dangers came when she was wearing school uniform.

  Clara, the drinker, chose her friends in the club from the bottom of a gin glass. She was a sought-after croupier, it was her one talent, and she was in her element working at night. She had all day to sleep off excess. The drinker became the heavy drinker, then the alcoholic. The more her looks faded, the more she loathed her blossoming daughter … but to hate me that much, to not want to believe or protect me …

  Gabby leapt out of bed and went to the window, shivering with cold. I am not going to remember. I am not. Olive had said, ‘I wonder why she did not give you up for adoption or place you in care? She must have wanted you, Gabby. Perhaps she just lost her way, grew evil through drink.’

  Perhaps. And the irony was, Gabby ran. She ran all the way to this house and Nell and overdosed on her kindness. Mistook lust for affection. Mistook respectability for safety because Charlie was Nell’s son. Blurred by the wine Charlie had bought her, startled by his sudden lunge, she did not scratch and claw, she just gave up. She had fought for so long and run so far, and for a second, like a child, she thought she might seem ungrateful for all the attention Charlie and Nell had given her. She was too weary and disillusioned to run any longer. She just gave up.

  It had taken about four minutes. Four minutes that dictated her future; and Charlie’s. The reason she was here now. The reason Josh was. The reason she was a picture restorer; the reason she had met Mark. The reason she was here now, remembering. All this in four minutes. Terrifying in its simplicity. One small, unthinking moment in time changes the map of our lives forever; dictates the future.

  I gave up, gave in, and lived a contented, sleep-walking, safe, safe life.

  Was it living, this life without passion or growth or danger? Or was it living a whole life lost in other people? A life you thought you wanted.

  Our year, Gabriella. Our year.

  Chapter 44

  Tom put his tools down and looked down at his afternoon’s work. The head, apart from details of the face and the front piece, was almost finished. He stared at the alignment of the arms from the shoulder, looked down at his sketches then across to where Isabella was standing. He went to her and rearranged her right hand. She needed to hold a flower of some kind in her hand.

  He peered at the front of the figurehead. He was happy with the folds of the dress and the skirt to ground level, but he was going to have to be careful when he bolted the back section to the front. The bolts must lie just behind the sash, which would be painted gold, and the hand holding the flower would be in front of the sash, which meant the angle of that right hand … he pencilled a line down the figurehead.

  Isabella watched him, marvelling at his concentration. She had stood for a long time and was tired but she would not say anything, for she could see he was exhausted and after all he was working, she had only to stand.

  Tom walked towards her. ‘Are you tired? I can do no more today. I will make a mistake if I go on.’ He smiled. ‘You can sit down now.’

  Isabella sat and bent to the basket Lisette had brought and handed him an orange. He took it with a smile.

  ‘I will walk you home,’ Tom said.

  ‘Really, there is no need, Tom. I can walk up the hill on my own.’

  Lisette’s mother was ill and she had asked Tom to see Isabella safe to the house so that she could stay on with her mother in her cottage.

  ‘I had thought of walking you home by the cliff path, then across the fields so that we can catch the breeze above the headland, if you are not too tired?’

  Isabella’s spirit soared. She had no wish to go back to the house.

  ‘I am not tired,’ she said, ‘and it is a much nicer walk than along the road.’

  Tom covered the figurehead and shut the gates of the boatyard. They walked up the road and then turned off for the coastal path. He took the basket for the climb uphill. At the top of the cliff the next cove glittered below them. The sea was enticing, a deep navy. They walked on the soft dry grass, full of clover and little yellow and blue cliff flowers, for half a mile or so and then started to descend to the next cove. The fields above the cove led back to the Summer House.

  Tom took Isabella’s arm down the path full of loose stones, but even so she kept losing her footing. She tried to keep the image out of her head, she even hummed a little out-of-breath tune to deflect herself, but as she neared the bottom of the path and the loose stones rolled and bounced to the dry white sand the image flashed again, as clear as in her dreams. The reality she never actually saw: Mama flying over her horse’s neck and her head connecting with the jagged rock lying … there … there, in that same place.

  Isabella could remember turning at the sea’s edge and seeing the crumpled figure lying motionless like a broken doll. She could remember the terrifying gallop back across the sand towards that still figure as she hung on to the reins and saddle, screaming, ‘Mama, Mama, Mama. No! No! No!’

  They had reached the bottom of the track and were onto the sand, and Isabella was shaking. Tom, startled, looked down at her ashen face.

  ‘What is it, Isabella?’

  She pointed to the dark slash of rock. ‘Mama … died there.’

  ‘Oh!’ How could he have forgotten that was the place?

  ‘Of course … Isabella … I’m sorry. Come …’

  He took her hand and made her run towards the sea away from the rock and the image of Helena’s blood soaking into the sand. They reached the sea out of breath.

  ‘I am sorry,�
�� Tom said. ‘I did not think, Isabella … I had forgotten it was here.’

  ‘It is all right. I am all right now, Tom. It is just I never came back here … It is the first time …’

  Her hand in his was burning.

  Tom touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers.

  ‘You are so hot! Isabella, do not get heatstroke or I will be blamed for keeping you in the sun too long. I am not conscious of time when I am carving. You must call out when you are tired …’

  ‘I am fine, Tom. It is just uncommonly warm for June and we have had no wind for days.’

  Tom looked down at her. ‘Go into the sea. Take off your shoes and go in. The water is cold and will cool you.’

  Isabella blushed painfully. ‘I cannot. No, I cannot.’

  Tom realized suddenly that she would have to take off her stockings. He sat in the sand and took his boots off, rolled his trousers up to the knee.

  ‘I am going to walk into the sea. Take your stockings off, I will not see. Then come into the water.’

  Without waiting for an answer he moved away, walked into the small waves leaving Isabella standing awkwardly not knowing what to do. She longed to take her thick stockings off, release her feet from the prim lace-up ankle boots, to feel the sand between her toes again as she had as a child.

  The sight of Tom moving about in the shallow water was more than she could bear. Quickly she lifted her skirts and rolled her stockings down, pulled her boots off and placed each stocking carefully into a boot. Then, released, she ran into the sea, holding her skirts free of the small, slapping, cooling waves.

  Tom turned to see Isabella’s laughing face. Her hair was coming loose and she was so extraordinarily beautiful he forgot to breathe.

  ‘Oh,’ she cried. ‘This is good! I have not been in the water for so long …’ She stopped as she saw his face. Tom stood there staring at her, transfixed. For the first time in her life, Isabella felt the exhilarating power of her own beauty. It was exciting and blindingly powerful. She lifted her skirts a little higher and turned from him and began to run through the shallows, splashing and laughing, not caring if the salt ruined her dress, not caring how wet she became, only wanting to hang on to this feeling of freedom.