In a Kingdom by the Sea

by Sara MacDonald

  Both boys somehow ended up studying in Scotland. I’ve never been sure whether this was chance or design. There are only twelve months between them and they are close, often mistaken for twins. Will, who is studying medicine at Edinburgh, says warily, ‘I don’t have any plans, Dad. I’m just concentrating on exams at the moment.’

  ‘But you must have an idea about how you want to specialize,’ Mike says.

  ‘I have to get a medical degree first. Anyway, I might want to be a GP and not specialize in anything. Have you thought of that?’

  ‘Dreary job, totally thankless!’

  Oh, Mike, I think. Why can’t you tell your sons you are proud of them, rather than question their choices?

  Will looks at him. ‘I disagree. There is a national shortage of GPs.’

  Mike shrugs. ‘Well, it’s your life, but I think you’re too bright just to be a GP … You’ve always needed challenges.’

  I watch them both. Will is winding Mike up. He does not want to be a GP. He wants to be an orthopaedic surgeon. How can Mike forget that as a little boy Will was fascinated by the names of bones and how they knitted together?

  Before he is asked, Matteo, who is at the Glasgow School of Art, says, ‘I’m planning on being the next Banksy, Dad.’

  Both boys are laughing at him and Mike makes a face. ‘Okay, I’ll shut up. I was just doing catch up …’

  ‘If you were around longer you wouldn’t need to,’ Will retorts. He yawns and stretches. ‘Matt and I will bore you with our ambitions later, Dad, this boat is too noisy to talk …’

  I watch the water slide past, aware of the fast current and how quickly a day can turn. Perhaps, Mike is conscious of it too, for he says, ‘Okay, let’s make serious plans while we are all together. It’s going to take me all summer to get to grips with this job … but how about we plan for Christmas together? Do you want me to come back home or shall we try for Oman? Revisiting the Barr Al Jissah Resort might be fun. If you aren’t caught up with wild parties and Scottish women, of course …’

  Will and Matteo goggle at him. ‘Are you serious?’ Will asks. ‘Do you really think either of us are going to miss a chance of Christmas in Muscat?’

  ‘Oman! That would be so cool!’ Matteo says, grinning. ‘Any chance of slipping in a girlfriend?’

  Mike laughs. ‘No chance.’

  ‘Only joking. I know that hotel is serious money. Are you sure you don’t want to just take Mum? Will and I are always broke and …’

  Mike throws an arm around me. ‘Well, you can buy your mother and me a drink, can’t you?’

  I watch my sons do a little jig of excitement. I feel like doing one myself. Muscat is paradise. I bend in the cool river breeze and kiss Mike’s cheek.

  ‘Thank you. Christmas in Oman will be wonderful.’

  ‘Make up for leaving you so soon?’

  ‘Not quite.’

  We get off the boat at Greenwich and find a table in a crowded pub garden for lunch. When we have ordered drinks, Will asks, ‘What are you actually going to be doing in Karachi, Dad?’

  ‘I’ll be there to try to save a failing airline and I’m under no illusions that it’s going to be easy …’

  ‘I was reading stuff about Karachi online,’ Matteo says. ‘The Sunnis and Shias are permanently trying to blow each other up. It’s a violent city. Bad stuff happens.’

  ‘Bad stuff happens everywhere, Matt. We’re not immune from bombs and terrorist attacks in London. It doesn’t stop us leading a normal life, does it? When I’m away I worry just as much about your mother in London and both of you in Edinburgh and Glasgow …’

  ‘Ah, sweet of you, Dad,’ Matt says.

  ‘And there was me thinking you forgot all about us …’ Will says.

  ‘London is not in quite the same category as Karachi, Mike.’

  Mike smiles at me. ‘Gabby, I am going to be well looked after. Do you really think the airline would want the embarrassment of having their European director disappear?’

  ‘Any Taliban kidnapping you would let you go pretty quickly after you had grilled them, interminably, on their career path …’ Will announces drily.

  We all laugh. ‘As you are obviously going to earn gross amounts of money, can Will and I order anything off this menu?’ Matteo asks.

  Mike raises his eyebrows. ‘Gross amounts of money you two have no difficulty parting me from …’ He glances at the menu. ‘This is hardly the Ritz. There is nothing here that will break the bank. Go ahead!’

  Matt turns to Will. ‘Oh, to be so old you have forgotten what poor students actually live on …’

  ‘Well, Mum and Dad are baby boomers, they had the luxury of student grants …’

  ‘Bollocks!’ Mike says. ‘You two have the luxury of the bank of Mum and Dad and you’ve never gone hungry in your lives …’

  I smile as I listen to the three of them happily bantering. Familiar old stag, young stag, rubbish. Mike is right; nowhere is absolutely safe and I will not spend the time we have together worrying.

  Mike holds his beer glass up. ‘To us and happy times ahead!’

  We clink our glasses together, aware of the mercurial nature of happiness and family life.

  In the days before he leaves Mike seems uncharacteristically nervous. There are endless delays with his visa and when it finally comes and his flight is booked he asks me to see him off at Heathrow. It is the first time he has ever wanted me to go to the airport with him.

  When we arrive at departures there is a small deputation of courteous but formal PAA staff lined up to meet him. They are deferent and anxious, carefully checking that he has all the correct paperwork for entry into Pakistan.

  It is only then I realize Mike is being treated like a VIP, that this job holds high expectations and huge responsibility. He is already someone important before he has even set foot in Pakistan.

  Before we have time to say goodbye properly, Mike is whisked away and fast-tracked through security and into the business lounge. I stand for a minute in the frenetic hub of the airport, buffeted by people, watching the place where he disappeared.

  When I get home the empty house is very quiet. The washing basket is full of the boys’ dirty clothes. Mike’s loose change lies in the little pottery bowl near the vase of freesias he bought me yesterday. Their scent fills the room.

  I push the French windows open. Traffic growls like the sound of distant bees. The buds on the magnolia tree are unfolding like tissue paper, their scent subtle and musty.

  At the airport, Mike had pulled me to him and whispered, ‘Thank you darling girl, for everything …’

  He sounded so unlike himself, the words strange on his tongue, his voice husky, not quite his own.

  Sun slants across the table in the empty house that four people have filled for days. The air hums like a threnody to the rhythm of the men I love. I don’t know why I feel so sad. I have done this a hundred times.

  I pick up the phone and ring Dominique. It rings and rings in the tiny flat in Paris but no one answers.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Cornwall, 1971

  If I close my eyes you won’t be gone. If I close my eyes I won’t see Maman’s face any more. If I close my eyes I can pretend we are surfing through small fast waves. If I close my eyes we are together at the beach café eating ice cream after school. If I keep my eyes tightly closed you will still be here …

  We are climbing into Papa’s boat and motoring out on the evening tide to fish for mackerel. You and Papa are singing to the fish and embarrassing me.

  I love the silver-purple flash of their skins as we reel them in. You are quick at taking the hook out of their mouths but I can’t do it. I hate seeing Papa bang their heads against the side of the boat.

  ‘Pff!’ you say to me, ‘you like to eat them barbecued with Maman’s frites, though, don’t you? You love her mackerel pâté stuffed in crusty rolls …’

  We moor the boat and walk round from the quay with the fish. Maman is sitting on the
beach in the last of the sun with a picnic. There is lettuce and tomatoes from the allotment, great sticks of French bread, sausages and chicken, pâté and cheese.

  There is always loads of food because Maman knows your friends will wander past hoping she will call out to them to join us. Maman feeds everyone.

  ‘She’s French!’ you say, shrugging. ‘Food is what Maman does.’

  Maman and Papa drink red wine from little kitchen glasses and Papa says, ‘My beautiful girls! Look at my beautiful girls!’

  You are the beautiful one. Maman is pretty, too, but I am not. I stand out because of my hair. It is fair and thick with tight springy curls. I don’t have shiny, blue-black hair like you and Maman.

  I get teased about my hair at school but you tell me that it is unique. You say that anyone can have straight dark hair but hardly anyone has curly, fair hair, green eyes and olive skin. You tell me I am cute and clever. You tell me you could never make up stories like me, nor read three books in a week. But I would like to be like you, so beautiful that people turn their heads to take another look as you walk past …

  ‘My beautiful girls. Look at you all sitting on the rug … I must take a photo …’ Papa sighs.

  ‘Too much red wine,’ Maman says, rolling her eyes.

  You can never wait for summer to come. You love it when the campsite opens up on the hill and the beach café stays open until dark. You love it when the tourists start to pour in and the village fills up. You stop pretending to be bored by the grey winter and the empty town. You come alive again like the trees.

  What will I do without you? What will I do? You have millions of friends, but I don’t, and you hardly ever say no if I want to play with you. ‘She’s my sister,’ you say firmly. And that’s that.

  I know all the places you go when you are fed up, when you and Maman argue. You climb down to forbidden Nannaver Beach, tucked under the cliffs, but you make me promise never to go on my own.

  Do you remember that day we made a den up in the fields underneath the hawthorn? A fox or badger had made a hidden path between the thorns. We pinched Papa’s sandwiches and flask and stayed there all day to get out of cleaning our rooms.

  When we got home Maman was cross and said we smelt of fox poo. She didn’t think it was funny. Papa did, and he hosed us down with the freezing water from the garden hose.

  Last May Day, you took me with you over the fields to Marazion Festival.

  You held my hand as we ran. Your hair was flying out behind you in a great snaky wave and getting in my eyes. You were laughing as you pulled me along because we were late and your friends were waiting.

  The Mount was lit up like fairyland. We could hear music coming from the causeway and the sun was falling into the sea.

  There was a German family walking the other way, back to the campsite. They smiled and asked if they could take our photos. I was in jeans but you were in your favourite, faded, once-pink summer dress. The dress everyone smiled at you in; the dress Maman and Papa did not like you to wear. There was trouble later when they picked us up and saw that you were wearing that old dress.

  Once, when we were in Penzance, a woman stopped us in the street. She had been staring at you from the other side of the road. She said she was a talent scout for a model agency. She tried to give Maman her card but Maman said she did not want it, that you were only thirteen years old. The woman looked amazed and said, ‘She is incredibly voluptuous for a thirteen year old.’

  Neither of us knew what voluptuous meant but it made Maman furious and she was very rude to the woman in fast French and we both got the giggles.

  One rainy day you pricked both our thumbs and pressed our blobs of blood together. You wanted us to be real sisters, not half-sisters, but you were always my real sister even before our blood was joined.

  Dom, I don’t know what you did for Maman to send you away, but don’t worry. She will come and get you. She doesn’t mean it. She will want you home soon with Papa and me. There have always been four of us. You, me, Maman and Papa …

  I wake on my own in the London house sobbing in the hours before dawn. The dream is visceral and still powerfully alive. I thought I had dealt with and buried all this long, long ago.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  London, 2009

  It is a strange, uneasy summer in London. The war in Afghanistan dominates the news. The sight of huge RAF planes lumbering into Brize Norton carrying coffins and mutilated soldiers casts a pall everywhere.

  Publishing is in a difficult place at the moment. Commissions are slow and Emily and I feel anxious. Book translations are harder to obtain and I have not been able to place any new foreign authors for months. It has taken me years to build up a good little bilingual team and I do not want to have to let anyone go.

  Then, with serendipitous timing, Isabella Fournier, a bestselling French author I met last year at a Paris book launch, asks if I will take over the translation of her latest book. It is a bit of a coup and it has given us some clout. I relax, feeling sure that the year is going to improve.

  For the first couple of months Mike and I manage to Skype each other regularly. He is living in a hotel near Karachi Airport but quite a distance from the city. Mike would never admit it to me but I think his first few weeks in Pakistan are proving daunting.

  He cannot leave the hotel without security and for some reason it seems to be taking a long time for a driver to be vetted and a car allocated to him.

  ‘They were in such a hurry to get me out here, so you’d think they could sort out security before I arrived …’ he tells me irritably. ‘Everyone in the office is bending over backwards to make sure I have everything I need, but at the end of the day they all head home to the city and I am stuck out by the airport in this bloody awful airline hotel full of passing and inebriated cabin crew …’

  The hotel is not bloody awful. Mike showed me round it on his iPad, but he obviously feels trapped and bored.

  ‘Surely there must be secure hotels in the city?’

  ‘Of course there are. They are just being overcautious with me. I’m the only European employee out here at the moment and it would be embarrassing for them if anything happened to me …’

  Mike does not mention meeting up in Dubai as we planned, but by the middle of July he sounds more cheerful.

  ‘I’ve just been assigned a personal manager. His name’s Shahid Ali and he’s a really nice guy with a great sense of humour. He’s enlightening me on the cultural pitfalls of office politics. What’s more, he’s determined to find me a safe hotel in Karachi. Much more of this hotel room and I will be climbing the curtains …’

  ‘That’s great, Mike.’

  ‘The timing’s perfect. I’m experiencing my first taste of antipathy to a gora, a foreigner, running the Karachi office. There was bound to be some resentment and veiled hostility in certain quarters, so it’s good to have someone I can trust at my side …’

  ‘Are you worried about the hostility?’

  ‘No, I expected it. I just have to keep my wits about me. Sometimes, it’s all smoke and mirrors. I suspect that I’m only being shown what people want me to see. Pakistan is a very secretive society, so Shahid is an absolute godsend.’

  ‘I thought you said you weren’t going to be the only European out there?’

  ‘I was told there was going to be a Canadian director based in Karachi with me. But he’s actually a Pakistani Canadian called Adeeb Syad and he’s a bit of a mystery. He’s hardly ever seen in the Karachi office. People joke that he’s secretly retired without telling anyone. Shahid’s convinced he has been bought off for turning a blind eye somewhere along the line, taking back-handers for keeping out of the way …’

  ‘That sounds serious. Can you prove it?’

  ‘Not yet, but I gather he got Shahid transferred to Lahore when he got a bit too close for comfort. Shahid feels as strongly as I do about corruption. There are so many little scams that have been going on for years. People with authority have been
steadily bleeding the airline and I’m not going to tolerate it. I’ve made that clear. No one in the office has any illusions about my intentions. I will stamp it out …’

  ‘Oh dear, Mike, you’re going to make enemies.’

  ‘It goes with the job, I’m afraid. That’s why I’m paid well and that’s why it’s good to have someone I can trust working with me. It’s going to make a big difference …’

  I can hear Mike’s relief.

  ‘Any regrets? Wish you had taken an easier job?’

  ‘No. You know me, Gabby, I thrive on a challenge …’

  As the summer slides by I idly Google flights to Dubai and run them past Mike, but he cannot commit to any dates so nothing is fixed. Will and Matteo are home for the summer and I work on Isabella Fournier’s book from home so that I can see something of them. They drift in and out of the house then disappear. Will goes off sailing in Scotland. Matt takes off on a cheap package holiday with friends to Spain.

  London is humid and claustrophobic. Battling to work through thousands of tourists is no fun. I begin to run out of energy covering for editors off on summer holidays with their families.

  I yearn for Cornwall and the beach. I dream of plunging into sharp, foamy surf; of being battered and reinvigorated by waves. I long for a cool wind straight from the sea to sting me alive.

  I want to stand by the back door of our house and look up at the night sky clear of pollution and watch a scatter of stars fall. I want to get on the train to Penzance and have Maman and Papa waiting there at the end of the line. As time passes I miss them more and more. Sometimes, I cannot believe they are both gone.

  I ring Dominique to ask if she feels like a long weekend in Cornwall. She says she is much too busy with the London wedding dress to take time off. She sounds tired and unaccustomedly distant.

  Mike emails to tell me that at last he has been given a car and a Pashtun driver called Noor. I print out the email and read it on the little bench in my sunny garden.

  It’s fantastic to be independent at last! Life’s a whole different ball game!