Another Life

by Sara MacDonald

  ‘She’s been married to my father for twenty-four years! Why throw that all away … I just can’t get my head round it.’

  ‘In my limited experience it is always one half of a couple that makes a marriage last. Your mother has been an exceptional wife and mother for all those years. She and Nell are the most generous and giving souls I know. Are you going to judge your mother because she happened to fall in love with someone who loved her deeply in return? So deeply, Josh, he was leaving his family …’

  ‘And you applaud that, do you, Elan?’

  ‘I don’t believe I have the right to judge anyone.’

  ‘Are you saying we took Gabby for granted?’

  ‘Yes, I am. She’s always been there for you and for Charlie. She did not start to work or use her own talents properly until you left home. You, Charlie and the farm always came first. Was Gabby expected to go on leading your lives, just being there, forgoing any life she might have of her own until the day she died? I will tell you this, Josh, Charlie certainly wasn’t interested in Gabby’s restoring. As far as he was concerned her life was the farm, full stop.’

  Elan was as surprised at his anger as Josh.

  ‘Whatever you say, I know my parents were happy. They never argued or rowed when I was a child. I had the most wonderful childhood.’

  ‘Yes, you did. You were and always will be loved and cherished by both Charlie and Gabby. But it is our mothers who care mostly for us in our early years. It is from women we receive both our sense of ourselves and unconditional love. Don’t judge, Josh; give Gabby some understanding and love in return for all she has given you.’

  Josh got to his feet. ‘I don’t think I’ll stay after all, if you don’t mind. I’ll join Marika. Thanks for the drink.’

  He made for the door and turned. ‘I’m actually going to save my love and understanding for Charlie, Elan. Goodnight.’

  Elan itched to say, Oh, my dear boy, if you only knew how implacable and self-righteous you sound. But he didn’t, he said instead, ‘Take care, Josh. I’m always here.’

  Josh could not wait to get to Marika. She met him from the train.

  ‘You sounded awful on the phone. We are in luck, both my parents are away. I was going to wash my hair and slut about in terrible pyjamas and you have spoilt it.’

  Josh did not smile and Marika said anxiously, ‘You look shocked. What has happened? I thought you were having supper with your mother and staying with Elan?’

  ‘I need a drink before I even begin to tell you.’

  ‘You smell as if you have already had more than one.’

  ‘Well, I need a few more.’

  ‘It cannot be that bad.’

  ‘Believe me, it is.’

  It felt odd driving into Sandhurst again, Josh thought, so much had happened and the time spent there seemed suddenly innocent and uncomplicated.

  Once in the house Marika poured him a drink and they sat at the huge kitchen table.

  ‘Would you like scrambled egg or something?’

  ‘Maybe later. Marika, my parents have split up. My mother has been having an affair all the time she has been in London.’

  ‘Gabby!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She told you this tonight?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, is she living with him now, at the moment?’

  ‘I guess she must have been, but he was killed three weeks ago in an air crash.’

  Marika clapped her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, how dreadful. Poor Gabby!’

  Josh stared at her. ‘Poor Gabby! What about my poor father?’

  ‘Josh, of course, he will be upset, but Gabby has lost … everything.’

  ‘How come every bloody person is concerned with Gabby and this man and not what she has done to Charlie?’

  ‘Have you spoken to your father?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So how do you know what she has done to him? Suppose he is not heartbroken? Supposing they had grown away from each other? You have been away …’

  This was not the reaction Josh had expected. ‘I thought you, at least, might understand at this precise moment how I am feeling on hearing that my parents, who have never had an argument in their lives, have suddenly and inexplicably split up.’

  Marika came round the table and twined her arms round his neck.

  ‘I am sorry, I did not mean to sound callous. Of course it must be a shock. But you know, it may heal itself. If they had a strong marriage up to now …’

  ‘This man was going to leave his wife and children. Gabby was leaving Charlie and they were planning a life together … I just can’t believe it. She and Nell were like that …’ He snapped his fingers.

  Marika went to the toaster. ‘I am going to make you comfort food; toast and Marmite.’

  Despite himself, Josh smiled. Marika said carefully, ‘Then it was not just an affair, Josh. Gabby must have loved him very deeply to be prepared to leave her life in Cornwall, to risk losing you. I saw how she felt about the place … She seemed so much part of the farm when I was there.’

  ‘So how does that make it better?’

  ‘It doesn’t. It makes it sadder. Gabby has lost someone she loves. Imagine how we would feel if we lost one another.’

  ‘I’m more concerned with how Charlie is feeling. He is the innocent party in all this.’

  It was Marika’s turn to stare. ‘How can you not care that your mother must be going through hell on earth at this moment? She must be lonely and frightened and utterly bereft. I hope you were not beastly to her?’

  Josh’s mouth twitched at Marika’s English. ‘I guess I was beastly, but I thought Elan was pretty beastly to me. I’ve never realized he is much fonder of Gabby and Nell than he is of my father.’

  Marika buttered toast. ‘You need to sleep on this, Josh. In the morning you might regret your first reaction to your mother and then you can ring her, let her know that of course you love her, but need time to … be there for her.’

  She placed the toast in front of him. Afterwards she was to think of the fleeting random choice of a sentence she had formed in a certain way and of Josh’s reply which might have been different, but was not.

  ‘No way am I ringing her! At this moment I don’t love her and I see no reason why I should be there for her, Marika. She has ruined my leave, spoilt everything good in my life, and I can’t forgive her.’

  Marika was suddenly very still.

  ‘Ruined your leave?’ Her voice was very quiet. ‘Ah, I see, this is about you and your feelings. I had not realized.’

  ‘Am I not supposed to have any?’

  ‘Sure you are. But you seem to have no compassion or understanding or insight or sadness for your mother’s situation. I am sorry, but I cannot get my head round that, Josh. I cannot bear my mother to be unhappy. To lose someone you love is the worst thing in the world. You are her son and you are judging her while knowing nothing.’

  ‘You sound like Elan.’

  ‘Good. You make me afraid, Josh.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because that cold hardness and lack of compassion is what my mother and I fled from. You have had a wonderfully privileged life and I think you are spoilt. I think you have always had everything your way, everybody has gone out of their way to make life happy for you. And when they stop, maybe because they want a little happiness too, you kick and scream because you cannot bear it. You are not thinking of Charlie or Gabby, only of what is spoilt for you …’

  ‘Have you finished?’

  ‘Yes. Where are you going?’

  ‘To find a hotel.’

  ‘It is too late. I will make you up a bed in one of the spare rooms. You have had too much to drink to go anywhere and you are not thinking straight. I will show you upstairs.’

  ‘I am actually as sober as a fucking judge. Just mystified as to why everyone around me thinks I ought to congratulate my mother for breaking up her marriage to my father.’

  ‘No one is saying that.
It would just be nice if you thought about what your mother must be going through for one second. Considered someone else’s feelings above your own. Felt something for anyone other than yourself. Loved, with all the meaning of that word, Josh.’

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘As long as I abide by your set of values, presumably? As long as I never fall from grace? Here is your room.’

  ‘Marika, I need to sleep in the same bed as you tonight. Don’t punish me for a fucking awful day.’

  Marika relented. ‘OK. In there. I am going back downstairs to finish the toast.’

  Later, when they were both side by side, not touching in the dark, Josh said, ‘I’ve made you sad.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why do you feel so strongly about my mother?’

  Silence, then Marika sat up. ‘Because of Uli. My father was shot in front of her, Josh. She was made to watch. She was not allowed to go to him as he died. My elder sister was raped. She committed suicide on the day my step father was bringing us to England. We do not know what happened to my brother. Life is so fragile, Josh. It can be taken in a moment. You know this. The thought of you making a person you love unhappy for even a second … this breaks my heart.’

  Josh reached for her, horrified. ‘I didn’t know … You never told me … Come here … Oh, Marika, I’m so sorry … I wish you’d told me, before …’

  ‘I told you now for a reason, Josh.’

  ‘I realize that and I do understand why, Marika. In comparison my little drama is as nothing.’

  ‘Then you will ring Gabby tomorrow?’

  Josh swallowed. ‘I can’t, Marika, I’m sorry. I can’t be a hypocrite.’

  ‘What if Gabby died suddenly while you were mad at her? How could you bear it?’

  ‘It’s not going to happen, Marika. Everything for you is coloured by your past, it has to be. If I’ve overreacted, so have you. Let’s go to sleep.’

  Marika’s voice was small with disbelief. ‘I tell you something that hurts me to speak of and it has made no difference to you at all. If you cannot find it in your heart to forgive Gabby, I do not want you, Josh, for you are someone else, someone I don’t know or understand.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. We’re both tired. Let’s just go to sleep.’

  And he did, almost straight away, and Marika lay beside him weeping soundlessly for the happy, witty and carefree man she had fallen in love with when all was going smoothly and his stride into the future with her had seemed graceful and effortless.

  It was not enough.

  They had had their first row and their last. Marika lay in the dark and worried about Gabby, alone somewhere in London in an empty house, with no comfort but Josh’s cruel words echoing in the dark. She brought up her knees in a familiar anguish. If she knew where Gabby lived she would get a taxi, go there herself, so Gabby would know she was not alone. Sometimes it is the people you never think of who are thinking of you in the dark.

  In the morning she would walk away.

  Chapter 77

  Isabella had not seen Richard since the day of Mrs Tredinnick’s visit, but she had had a letter from his solicitor containing the deeds of the Summer House. It seemed Richard wanted no payment for the house and Isabella was puzzled. Perhaps he considered she owed him nothing, since her father had given him a considerable sum of Helena’s money on her marriage. But why had he so suddenly and completely appeared to relinquish any rights to her and the child? It was not in character and she asked Lisette what she thought.

  Lisette, too, felt uneasy. ‘The only reason I can think of, Miss Isabella, is that Sir Richard hopes to turn you by kindness.’

  Ownership of the Summer House made all the difference to Isabella. She no longer doubted that Tom would come or send word to her, and she now had peace and a place of her own in which to wait.

  She began to wake early in the mornings. She threw the windows open and stretched in sunlight like a cat that scented the coming of spring. She felt almost herself once more, as if she had slept too long or had had some fever but was now recovered.

  It was the time of the spring tides and the sea retreated towards the horizon leaving acres of pale sand. When it returned, sliding slyly back in a floodtide the colour of aquamarine, it formed a waveless lake as still as the one in her father’s garden.

  The villagers left small baskets of presents in celebration of Thomas’s birth. Isabella felt suddenly weightless, for she had discovered that the fear of something was far more deadly than facing it.

  Thomas already had a downy growth of blond hair as soft as feathers. With his striking dark tiger eyes he was beginning to grow beautiful. He had in a short time made slaves of Isabella, Lisette and Anna, who could not bear to hear him cry for more than a second and competed to rush to his crib at the slightest pretence.

  Isabella did not want to miss a moment of him. She carried him round the garden, pointing out the emerging bulbs, shading his eyes from the sun and describing the vivid colours of the dying day to him. She rocked him in Lisette’s old rocker chair and they sleepily listened to the birds. She and Lisette bathed him by the fire, watching his tiny legs kick like a little frog in the water.

  In the afternoons she rested and Lisette took Thomas down to Anna until Ben finished work. Ben pretended gruff indifference to the child he called, ‘A little Pasha, that’s what thou art, with thy strange dark eyes that seem to know a thing or two.’

  Daniel Vyvyan arrived with Charlotte one morning and surprised Isabella in the garden as she rocked Thomas to sleep. Since the child Daniel had been a regular visitor to the Summer House. He, too, was enamoured of his grandchild. Isabella could not help wondering if her child had been a girl whether she would have commanded the same attention. Daniel had always longed for a boy.

  Each time Daniel caught sight of Isabella he was struck to the heart; how as the years passed she grew more and more like Helena.

  While he could not approve of her conduct, he ached for her vulnerability. She had put herself outside her own society now, but could not quite enter the carver’s. Over the last months he had seen something obsessive in Richard which was not healthy. It lacked dignity and had definitely affected his business judgements, for which Richard used to be renowned. Suddenly handing over the deeds of the Summer House, making it a gift, was not in character with the man of the last few months.

  Daniel had heard a rumour and it had upset him greatly.

  That day as he looked down upon the child something shifted within him, an instinctive protective emotion for his own blood. When the child opened his eyes and appeared to gaze at Daniel, he was swept by love and regret. If only he had cared more for his daughter instead of abandoning her to an older man so that she was Richard’s responsibility, not his own … What had he been thinking of? Why, she still looked almost a child … He had stolen her childhood. How could he ever undo this damage?

  He took his leave of Isabella and his grandson, reflecting sadly on the fact that his grandson carried the shipwright’s name, not his. He said to Charlotte as they took the coastal path home, ‘I would take back the years if I could, Charlotte.’

  ‘You cannot take them back, my dear, but you can protect Isabella and her small son’s future, can you not?’

  Daniel took her arm, thought about this. ‘I can,’ he said, brightening. ‘Indeed I can …’

  He looked down upon his wife. ‘Charlotte, I know I have not been an easy man to live with … I resolve to be a better and a kinder man.’

  Charlotte smiled. ‘All this … reflection, my dear, comes from looking down on small Thomas?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ He smiled back. ‘Or perhaps I grow an old and sentimental man.’

  He stopped walking. ‘Am I wrong, Charlotte, to no longer wish to condemn my daughter for wronging a decent man? For no longer caring much that she has caused rumour and gossip and will bring up a boy who will not be quite a gentleman?’

  ‘I believe these things are secondary to your anxiety fo
r your daughter’s future?’

  ‘Well said, my dear, it is exactly that. I want to believe Richard is behaving well in this gift of the house but, Charlotte, something is wrong. He is too much the gentleman of late. We speak only of business, but he is much preoccupied … It may be that my anxiety is misplaced and he hopes by leaving Isabella alone she will return … but …’

  ‘You wish her to return to Botallick House, to her husband?’

  ‘If you had asked me that a short time ago, I would have said, of course. But I have never seen my daughter so content or at peace.’

  Charlotte smiled and said softly, ‘And you, my dear Daniel, have the disconcerting ability to shock and surprise. From a lifetime of rectitude and propriety, you have managed today to see only what makes your daughter happy; to suspend judgement and convention, and that is a considerable feat and I believe Helena would applaud you for it.’

  ‘I have had help,’ Daniel said, equally softly, ‘from a very patient and loving wife.’

  ‘You know it is freedom as well as her son that gives Isabella her peace?’

  ‘I do,’ Daniel said and thought: a freedom I denied her by bundling her off to my cold and socially obsessed sister, instead of letting her stay in her own home with Helena’s things around her. Then with my hastily engineered marriage to Magor, attractive only to Isabella because she could leave her aunt’s restrictive and shallow household. A man only three years my junior, who put her on a pedestal and worshipped her unhealthily to the amusement of his peers.

  Charlotte was right, he could not undo those years, but he could make sure his daughter and grandson had a future in this changing world.

  There was one thing he was sure of. If Tom Welland was anything like his father he would be one of life’s gentlemen. A man with a steady and a loyal heart.

  Chapter 78