Another Life

by Sara MacDonald

  Every evening she wrote letters to Tom in her old journal. She knew one day in spring the packet boat would bring news from him and she could send this record of her days in return.

  Richard came infrequently and only for form’s sake, for people would find it strange if he never visited his wife. He combined it with business in St Piran. They were polite and distant with one another. The anger seemed to have gone from him, leaving a space that was neither cold nor warm but contained nothing.

  She had stolen his cheerful, innocent bluffness and there was nothing to replace it. The pain and regret she felt was real. She had to live with the knowledge that she had destroyed the happiness of another human being for the sake of her own.

  He had told his friends and family that Isabella was having a difficult time and had been consigned to bed rest. Of course there was gossip. Why would Isabella leave the comforts of her home in Mylor and the softer south coast of Falmouth for St Piran? The word, Lisette told her, was that Richard was humouring her because her spirits were low and she wanted to be near her father.

  How odd that it turned out to be true.

  Her little household consisted of Lisette, a cook and two maids and a gardener who came three times a week. This is what Isabella could afford and each week she and Lisette checked the books to ensure they lived within their means.

  This new way of living gave Isabella much satisfaction and helped her to make decisions. Although she was poor by her father’s and Richard’s standards, she did not feel poor. Lisette told her that by the standards of the village she was very well-to-do.

  At first the people of St Piran were wary of her and the trouble she might bring with her. Lisette explained that you could never stop rumours in a village. What the gentry did not know, servants always would.

  The villagers who had waved at Isabella all summer often now turned so that they need not pass her. These were Isabella’s lowest moments on her arrival at the Summer House. Lisette said she must be patient and that when they saw that her father visited her they would stop being anxious about what Richard might do. Tom seemed so far away from her some days, that despite her dear Lisette Isabella felt a loneliness that was overpowering.

  One evening Cook sent Lisette to tell her that Ben Welland was at the kitchen door. Isabella’s heart leapt thinking that it might be a word from Tom. But Ben Welland had come to ask her help. His daughter Ada’s baby was very sick and he wondered if she had her mother’s gift with the herbs. He remembered that Helena used lavender and herbs to make compresses; he had once seen a child’s fever banished this way.

  ‘Have you sent for the doctor?’ Isabella asked as they hurried down the hill.

  Ben did not answer and Isabella realized all of a sudden that they could not afford one.

  As soon as she bent over the baby and heard her cough she knew the poor child had the croup. Instantly, she knew what to do, for she had seen and heard this cough many times on her rounds with Helena.

  She turned to Ada. ‘Put kettles on the stove, I need a good head of steam.’

  Ben turned immediately and went downstairs. Isabella went to the window in the airless room.

  ‘This window must be opened, Ada, during the day, both top and bottom casement, so fresh air can circulate into the room.’

  ‘No,’ Ada cried. ‘It is too cold, my baby will die.’

  Lisette picked up the baby who was fighting for breath and said sharply, ‘Ada, do as Lady Isabella tells you. There is no air in this room. Your child cannot breathe. How many of you sleep in here?’

  Ada said, ‘My husband, the two lads, the baby and me.’

  Isabella looked at the walls. They were not running with water, but crystal beads stood out, a sure sign of damp. Five people in one tiny, fetid room.

  ‘Who owns this cottage?’ she asked.

  Ada’s husband looked at his feet.

  ‘My father?’

  ‘Yes, M’lady.’

  ‘And when was Mr Rowe, his agent, last round?’

  Again they did not answer.

  They took the baby down into the kitchen and had her cot brought downstairs. Lisette laid her across her knee near the steam and Isabella applied compresses to the tiny forehead and bathed her thin limbs with lavender water. Then they sat, listening to the terrible croaking sounds that racked her small body until slowly they became easier as the steam worked on her lungs. Finally the rasping noise grew fainter and then ceased altogether as the baby slept.

  They laid her in her cot, as near to the constant steam of the kettle as possible. Ada’s pinched, tired face relaxed into something near a smile.

  ‘Keep her warm and down here with the steam tonight,’ Isabella told her. ‘Then in the morning your baby should see the doctor.’

  They left the house and Ben walked up the hill with them. Lisette said, ‘They will not get the doctor, will they, Ben?’

  Ben shook his head. ‘Mines are closing. They have no money for the doctor, but I will see what I can do.’

  ‘Mr Welland,’ Isabella said carefully, for she knew he was proud. ‘Will you go for the doctor in the morning and ask for the bill to be sent to the Summer House. Please do this. I am not a doctor and the baby needs medicine.’

  Ben Welland turned to look at her and then said slowly, ‘Aye. I thank thee, M’lady. I would not accept for mysen but I will for the child.’

  ‘Good.’ Isabella smiled. ‘Goodnight, Mr Welland.’

  ‘Goodnight, Miss Isabella. God go with thee.’ His faded blue eyes met hers. ‘Thou art so like thy mother.’ And he was gone back down the hill.

  The village began to come to her when they were sick or needed help. Sometimes Isabella could help them and sometimes she could do nothing but soothe them with her herbs.

  Her father had been mortified about the state of his cottages. He rode down to see Ada’s house and arranged for the work to be done himself.

  People no longer avoided Isabella and she felt warmer for their smiles and their greetings. She was now in her eighth month and Lisette would no longer allow her to walk into the village or let people come to the door. Isabella grew weary quickly and rested each afternoon in her room. Lisette would sit by the fire with her and sew, and Isabella would sleep a little for the movement of her child kept her awake at night.

  When she was by herself, watching the firelight play across the walls, in the melancholy time when it was neither afternoon nor quite evening, she would sob with this loneliness and fear that she might always be alone. She felt she had lost her husband, who had once loved her, and she had lost Tom whom she loved beyond everything.

  She would look around the room to where her carved chest of drawers stood in an archway that had once been a door. The light played over the small animals Tom had carved and she took comfort from seeing it there, knowing Tom’s fingers carved every piece.

  Resting on the chest was a small mirror with drawers and the sketch Tom had made of Isabella for the figure head. Above, on the wall, hung her favourite painting of Helena in a red dress. Her father had brought it over one day and she knew how precious it was to him. She had wrapped her arms around him for a moment in gratitude and he bent quickly and kissed the top of her head.

  ‘You grow so like her, daughter. So very like her.’

  One day Ben Welland knocked on the outside door of the courtyard. Isabella struggled to get out of her chair and Lisette said sharply, ‘Miss Isabella, stay exactly where you are.’

  Ben came in carrying a wooden crib and placed it before her. It was made of light wood and was on rockers. The edging all round was carved with small acorns and the wood was so polished she could almost see her face in it. Inside there were layers of tiny crocheted covers in white, and a tiny lace pillow.

  Isabella stared at it, reached out to touch it. She could not speak. The tears rolled down her cheeks and she could not even thank him.

  He stood awkwardly and said, smiling, ‘My carving is not up to my son’s, M’lady. The crib and th
e covers are from the village, from us all, to thank thee.’

  Isabella found her voice. ‘Thank you, Mr Welland, it is beautiful. I love it. Thank you so very much … it is very kind of you. I am so touched.’

  She turned to Lisette, for she wanted to talk to Mr Welland alone.

  ‘Lisette, would you ask Cook to make tea for Mr Welland?’

  Lisette went reluctantly, and before Isabella could speak Ben Welland went to the crib and from under the covers took out three letters and handed them to Isabella. She clapped her hands to her mouth in surprise. She had waited so long she felt almost faint.

  ‘The packet boat is in from Southampton. Tom’s brother brought them to me. He disembarked at Falmouth last night and came over this morning.’

  Isabella clutched the letters to her, longing to be alone to read them.

  ‘Did you have word too? Is Tom well, Ben?’

  ‘Tom is well. He asks about thee. He worries about thee and thy condition.’

  ‘Can I give you letters for Tom, Mr Welland? Will they go back on the packet?’

  ‘I will give them to my younger son, Jacob, Miss Isabella. He is going back to join Tom in Prince Edward Island. Have you letters ready?’

  ‘Yes.’ Isabella struggled up and went to the top drawer of her chest. She took out all her letters, dated and in envelopes. She sat to finish the last one with a flourish, to tell Tom of his father’s kindness with the crib and that she held his letters to her heart to read when she was alone. She placed them in a bag with Tom’s name on and gave them to Ben.

  ‘God willing they reach Tom,’ she whispered, and Ben repeated, ‘God willing, Miss Isabella.’

  Isabella looked again at the crib. ‘Mr Welland, it is easy to see that Tom learn this craft from you. You build ships because that is your training. I have no doubt in a different life you too would have carved the most beautiful figure heads.’

  Ben Welland’s face crinkled and he gave a wheeze which Isabella believed to be a laugh. He bent suddenly and pointed with his finger at the carving at the foot of the crib. Isabella looked down and for a moment she could not see what he was pointing out. Then she made out, between two little acorns, the letters I and T.

  Isabella and Tom.

  Ben looked her straight in the eye. ‘Look on’t when thou art sad, lass.’

  And he was gone, leaving her in the firelight with Tom’s letters.

  Chapter 72

  When Gabby got to John’s little cottage flat she found he had laid a fire for her and put all the basics in the fridge and cupboards, placed flowers on the table with a note propped up against them:

  ‘My Dear Gabby, Welcome! I am so sorry I have to be out tonight, I would have loved to have given you supper. God bless and sleep well.’

  Gabby was touched and moved around unpacking and placing the few things she had brought with her around the room. It was easier putting distance between her and the farm. She lit the fire, switched the lamps on, drew the curtains against the nights which were drawing in, filled the space, poured wine, and tried not to think. All these things Mark and I did when we got home, that precious little wind-down at the end of a long London day.

  Shadow padded about, unable to sit still, and Gabby wondered if she had been away too often and too long and Shadow needed to be at the farm with Nell.

  She sat by the fire and pulled out one of the three files John had left on the table. She started with the documents, which were sparse, from 1868 onwards, but John was right; at some point they had been muddled and randomly filed. Gabby laid them all on the floor so she could make some order and started to make little piles relating to the varying dates of the documents.

  John had established that Isabella had left Summer House to her son Thomas. It seemed when Thomas had changed his name suddenly to Welland in 1884 the solicitors had continued to call him Magor, with Welland in brackets, presumably for legal reasons.

  Summer House had stayed in the Magor family until after the Second World War, but Gabby was unsure who Thomas’s grandchildren, his direct descendants, were in the numerous names that cropped up. A huge extended Cornish family, cousins perhaps, who used the house as a holiday home?

  None of the family seemed to have lived in it permanently and it had been rented out to various tenants since 1914. There were letters from these tenants complaining of the repair of the house and replies from the solicitor or agent filed with them.

  What was apparent was that many of the male Magors seemed to have emigrated or gone to work in Prince Edward Island long after it ceased to be a British colony. Presumably they still had business interests there for many stayed and became Canadian citizens, as the letters showed, but they had kept Summer House in the family.

  Gabby tidied the papers away and went to the next file. There seemed nothing of interest, sheaves of plans for various improvements to the house. Letters from the War Office to the Church Commission … Then, suddenly, there was a deed of will. Gabby’s heart gave a jerk. Richard Magor had left Isabella’s son, Thomas Magor (Welland), Botallick House, Mylor, in the parish of Falmouth, with the proviso that his second wife Sophie Magor live in it for her lifetime. There were no children of this marriage it seemed.

  Presumably after Richard’s death this second wife Sophie remarried and moved to London, for there was a document relating to the change of her name, objects she was taking with her to London, and a draft signed by her relinquishing all claims to live in Botallick House.

  There were no documents to say who Thomas married, for all the documents in the files related directly or indirectly, through the solicitors, to matters to do with the Summer House and various other properties.

  Gabby was turning the dry, faded pages of title deeds, plans for additions to the house, maps and surveys relating to old mine workings, when she came across further deeds of the Summer House. Thomas Magor (Welland) left the Summer House jointly to a David Thomas Welland and a Charles Richard Magor (Welland). His two sons? They both owned the house jointly in 1902. So Isabella’s son died young, at about … thirty-five?

  Gabby kept turning the documents. In 1903, Charles Magor, one of the sons, paid a considerable sum to his brother David and took over Botallick House. David became the sole owner of Summer House. There was still no mention of Thomas’s wife, their mother, and Gabby wondered if she might have died young too.

  In 1939, Summer House had been requisitioned due to its proximity to the harbour and its long view over the bay and beyond. After the Second World War it stood empty and then was sold off to the Church and renamed The Vicarage. Summer House no longer existed.

  Just as Gabby was putting the file away a flimsy piece of paper fell out and Gabby saw part of a letter clipped to a deed.

  … grateful if you could ascertain his whereabouts for us. My husband is now unwell, so if you could kindly forward this letter to him in the hope it will reach him when he returns from sea. The last we heard he was with a whaling ship in Newfoundland, but it is possible he has moved on. There is some urgency in this due to my husband’s age and infirmity. As you know there has been a rift for some years between Sir Richard and his son which has upset my husband greatly, and he wishes to heal this rift between them before he dies.

  I have heard rumour that Thomas changed his name by deed poll from Magor to Welland. I pray that this is not true, Mr Bray, for it will injure Sir Richard grievously …

  That was all. Clipped to it was a terse note in another hand. ‘Return to British solicitors Bray and Houseman. Magor’s whereabouts unknown.’ And then, ‘(Keep with deeds of Summer House.)’

  Mark was right. Research was sifting and sifting, slowly and painstakingly, for long and boring hours sometimes, because it was so easy to miss something. Presumably, Sir Richard Magor and his adopted son were reunited, for Richard left him Botallick House. Odd, very odd, too, that Richard allowed Isabella’s son to be called Thomas. And had one of Richard Magor’s grandchildren taken back the name Magor in order to inherit Bota
llick House?

  What on earth had happened to Isabella? If she had died in childbirth there would be a grave here in St Piran or Mylor, or in a Catholic churchyard in Penzance or Truro, and all those places had been checked.

  Gabby and Mark had discussed Isabella and Tom’s possible fate regularly. Mark was sure Isabella disappeared abroad with Tom. Gabby believed no woman would abandon her child to a man she was leaving. It was just not possible.

  Both Peter and John Bradbury thought it unlikely that Isabella would have had the courage to flout the strict conventions of the time and leave with a man not of her own class. But in naval circles, Mark told her, wives of sailors in the nineteenth century often had children obviously not sired by their husbands, who were away for months and years at a time. These children were often taken on by their husbands for form’s sake. Maybe Sir Richard was keeping to some naval tradition.

  Gabby put another log on the fire. She wished Mark were there, he had been so expert at correlating evidence, seeing what was meaningful and speculating on possible outcomes. He had always thought he had plenty of time to come back to Lady Isabella when he had finished his book.

  She got up, stretched, and opened the door to let Shadow out before she went to bed. The night was clear, the sky cloudless and filled with stars, and she stood in the damp air listening to the sea in the distance. When she first came to Cornwall she would stand in the dark, awed by the silence, the vastness of the landscape and the rhythm of moon and tide. The faint roar of the ocean filled the space she stood in. She had felt immediately part of it all, in her element, as if she was standing on the edge of the world, insignificant and yet making this sudden and astounding connection deep into the earth. To the young Gabby the mystery of being alive and alone in the universe was exciting and overwhelming.