In a Kingdom by the Sea

by Sara MacDonald

  Noor drives me to meet Shahid at the Shalimar Hotel, which is in the middle of Karachi. This is the hotel where we hold a lot of PAA conferences. It is also the hotel that most of the diplomats, journalists and NGOs use for passing through Karachi. It has good service, wonderful food and there is a private swimming pool in a shady garden. The entrance is heavily guarded so it’s considered one of the most safe and secure hotels in Karachi. The manager is a charismatic Malaysian Chinese called Charlie Wang. He has a secret cache of wine in his apartment that he generously likes to share … Hope you are having a great weekend …

  I think of Mike heading off to the lights and smells of an unknown city, the heat fading from the pavements, the smell of enticing food wafting on the night air with all the excitement of exploring somewhere new.

  A breeze moves the leaves of the small red acer on the lawn. They are reflected in the windows of the house, like delicate hands waving. Loneliness swoops like a sudden murmuration of starlings filling the sky.

  Behind me, my house lies empty. How do I cope with just being me all over again when I longed for an us? I had the illusion that this summer would mark a change, that Mike would finally be around, that the four of us would take a holiday together and then Mike and I would move on to a new phase in our lives.

  I shiver in the night air as I face the truth. I am still here in the same place I have always been. Mike has moved on to the next phase of his life. Will and Matteo have their own lives. I am no longer central to their world nor will I ever be again. Mike, after a lifetime of working abroad, still chooses to live and work away from home and away from me.

  In the house the phone rings. It is Kate.

  ‘Hugh says he will take us out to supper if you’re free. We’re both suffering from summer in the city blues. We never see the girls, they are off doing exciting things in the country with friends who have horses and jolly parents who are obviously much more fun than us. We’ve just cracked open a bottle of wine while we contemplate the meaning of life …’

  I laugh. ‘I’m ordering a taxi now.’

  I am glad when September comes and everyone is back from their holidays and the office gets back to normal. Will and Matt head back to Scotland, fit and brown. They have so much luggage I drive them to the station.

  ‘Thanks for the lift, Mum. Don’t be lonely. Not long until Christmas and then you’ll see Dad.’

  ‘You can practise light packing for Oman, Maman. By the time we get home you will have perfected the art …’ Matteo says, patronizingly.

  I raise my eyebrow at his carpet of luggage. ‘I don’t think it’s me who needs to perfect the art of travelling light, Matteo …’

  They hug me and are gone in a blur of rucksacks and loudspeakers, disappearing into the busy crowds, moving swiftly back into their own worlds.

  I head for the office through the choked traffic. It is Emily’s birthday and we are all taking her out for lunch. As I pass the park I see the leaves on the sycamores are beginning to turn. The air is cooler, the shops are filling up with autumn clothes and the sun now sets beyond the garden. Summer is nearly over.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Cornwall, 1966

  From the moment we moved into Loveday’s house Dominique and I forgot Redruth. We slipped off our lives there as easily as discarding a coat we had outgrown. We moved in time for the summer holidays and my parents were so busy working on our new home that we were allowed to run wild.

  Papa brought us small knapsacks. Maman made sandwiches and a drink and off we set each day, mini explorers with a new world to discover.

  Dominique was only ten that first summer but she had inbuilt common sense. She was fiercely protective of me and my parents trusted her. In a few years beauty and hormones would turn her into a bit of a wild child but I remember our first years there as near to idyllic.

  There were strict rules. We had to know the tide times each day. We were never to go into the sea without an adult and there were unnegotiable boundaries beyond which we must not roam.

  The village was full of summer people down in the holiday cottages by the harbour. Within weeks of moving in we were suddenly part of a little gang. There was a doctor’s family with identical twin boys, Benjamin and Tristan. They were Dominique’s age but wild and undisciplined. Their parents seemed to have given up trying to control them, but Dominique, somehow, managed to harness their energy and imagination. If they broke gang rules they were out.

  The twins were in awe of Dominique and the three of them instigated most of our adventures. They made maps of our kingdom from Nearly Cave to Poo Tunnel. From Forbidden Beach out to the rugged cliffs and down to Priest’s Cove where the Pirate Boats came in with plunder.

  After a while Maman and Papa let us roam a little further, as long as Dominique and the older children were with us. Papa would drop us off in his truck at Priest’s Cove to play soldiers and pirates on Smuggler’s Bridge. Later, Maman would walk along the coastal path to meet us with Mr Rowe’s old collie, Mabel.

  None of us ever fell off the edge of a cliff or drowned. Nothing dire happened apart from us occasionally getting tired and quarrelsome. I was the youngest and wilted first at the miles the older children covered. Often Maman made me go home with her and I was secretly grateful. I am sure keeping up helped with my running when I was older. I learned stamina. I learned that if you whined or dragged your feet you got left behind.

  Of course, it wasn’t a Mary Poppins life. Papa liked the pub a bit too much. Maman was possessive and jealous of other women. They had spectacular rows. Sometimes, Dominique and I would cover our ears and run out into the wild garden.

  I would get upset but Dominique just laughed and shrugged.

  ‘Pff! It’s only Papa flirting or Maman thinking he is. They will make up.’ And they always did. We would return home to find Maman flushed and happy in a mysteriously embarrassing way. Papa would wink at us as he self-consciously helped Maman prepare our tea.

  ‘Guilty!’ Dominique would whisper.

  ‘Of what?’ I would whisper back.

  Dominique would lean behind her hand. ‘Flirting with Miss Hicks. He’s mending her roof. Maman accused him of fancying her.’

  ‘Is fancying the same as flirting?’

  Dominique considered. ‘I think it is one step worse. It’s okay though, it’s what grown-ups do. They get married, then they like other people and have rows.’

  ‘But … Papa still loves Maman?’

  ‘Of course he does, Rabbit. Look at them, all lovey-dovey …’

  Dominique would roll her eyes and put a finger down her throat and pretend to be sick.

  My sister was the font of all knowledge and my lodestar. When she went to secondary school I would wait for her at the bus stop every afternoon.

  One day, she did not get off the school bus as usual. A girl in Dominique’s class told me that my sister had got off a stop early so she could walk home with her friends.

  I was stricken by the sudden realization that Dominique was too kind to tell me that she wanted to spend more time with her friends, less with me.

  I took off for the beach, mortified, and sat for the rest of the afternoon finding flat pebbles to skim, determined not to cry. Papa spotted me driving home in his truck. He came and sat beside me as I skimmed the stones into the waves. I did not say anything but somehow Papa knew.

  ‘Dominique needs a bit of space sometimes, sweetheart …’

  From then on Papa tried to come home early on the days Maman was giving French lessons or privately tutoring. He took me body-boarding. He bought a double canoe and we towed it off to the estuary. I would do my homework or read a book while he fished.

  Dominique had discovered the Jubilee Pool in Penzance. Everyone went there in the summer. Papa would drop me off after school to join her and her friends. That was where I met Morwenna, my first best friend.

  She lived in a cottage the other side of the point by the harbour. Her father was a fisherman and her house always
smelt of fish. Like Maman, her mother was always working too. In the Co-op, in the chippie and she cleaned holiday cottages.

  Morwenna also had an elder sister, called Ada. Ada was not kind or pretty like Dominique. She had the disturbing, hard little face of an adult. A girl who grimly believed she had been cheated of something everyone else had. She had cause, I think, because her tired mother expected a lot of her.

  Ada loathed Dominique with a passion that was unnerving. She had a vicious tongue and she lied about people. She liked to make trouble for Dominique both with Maman and at school. I always believed that Ada had something to do with Maman sending Dominique away, but I could never prove it.

  The winters of my childhood could seem endless. There were days and days of damp sea mist that descended like a dark cloak to the very doors and windows. It made the trees into eerie, shapeless monsters. It suffocated sound, gave us headaches and made us irritable. Then there were the biting easterly winds that hit the house head on with a vicious intensity that made the windows and doors rattle.

  Maman was always cold. Papa was constantly fixing windows and plugging gaps under doors. Winters meant being claustrophobically closed in together. If the weather stopped Papa working outside he would get frustrated and march about the house at weekends snapping at everyone.

  Maman would happily bake if she was kept inside, but Papa would pace up and down driving her mad. Dominique, bored, would thump up and down the stairs unable to keep still. I could curl up and read but Dominique never could.

  Maman and I would wait for the explosion as Papa and Dominique got on each other’s nerves. Papa would tell Dominique to do something constructive like tidy her room or get on with some homework. Dominique would snap straight back with a rude, ‘Why don’t you do something constructive like helping Maman with the housework for a change …?’

  Woomph! Like lighting touchpaper, Maman, Papa and Dominique would all jump up and down shouting and waving their arms. I would pick up my book and fly to my room for peace.

  Then, slowly, spring would start to emerge. Translucent leaves on the trees would begin to unfurl. The daffodil fields in the valleys would turn from tight green buds to a blaze of yellow. The hedgerows came alive with hundreds of wild flowers.

  I would look out of my window and see Maman feeding the chickens in the orchard. I would see Papa and Dominique bent together painting the bottom of his upturned boat. Behind them lay a sea, no longer rough and sullen, but turning from winter navy to a translucent greeny-blue.

  Those days seem halcyon now. I was too young to know how transient happiness is. I knew nothing of fear or jealousy or the reach of the past. I could never have dreamt that the four of us – Maman, Papa, Dominique and me – could ever be ripped apart.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  London, November 2009

  Emily comes up the stairs to my office with a coffee and some contracts to sign. She has been restless and preoccupied lately and I suspect that someone has approached her with a job offer. She’s my right hand and I don’t want to lose her.

  I take my coffee and wait until she is sitting down. ‘Rumour has it that someone is trying to entice you away from us, Em. You would let me know if you are thinking of leaving us?’

  ‘Honestly!’ Emily says quickly, looking embarrassed. ‘Of course I’d tell you, Gabby. Adrian Lang put out feelers, that’s all. They are looking for someone to head their foreign rights department …’

  ‘He’s a good agent. You’d be your own boss. It must be tempting.’

  ‘Well, it is.’ She grins at me. ‘But you must know they can’t match my current salary. I know they approached you last year …’

  ‘They did and I refused but I’m a lot older than you, I don’t want to amalgamate agencies or do two jobs. I’m not surprised that Adrian’s approached you. You have wonderful organizational skills, Emily, as well as being an extremely competent translator. I’m aware that you could do my job more efficiently without me than I could do it without you …’

  I smile. ‘It would be natural if you felt fidgety, but I’m afraid I’m not ready to retire for a while, so I would quite understand if you wanted to take off to be your own boss …’

  I’ve been lucky to have Emily for so long and it wouldn’t be fair to hold her back. She looks at me earnestly.

  ‘Gabby, of course I was flattered to be approached but if I was seriously considering Adrian’s offer I would have come and told you. It was just nice to leave it on the table and pretend to myself I was thinking about it …’

  She shuffles the papers she is holding into a neat pile. ‘I don’t want to leave. Why would I? We have a perfect working relationship. You give me a free rein and you’re a good friend. I couldn’t replace that. Yes, I might be efficient at organizing things and running an office, but you’re the one who can instantly spot talent amid the dross. You’re the one who can translate an author into another language yet instinctively keep their true voice. It’s a hell of a skill. That’s why you’re so respected and why I’m still learning from you all the time …’ Emily grins. ‘So, I’ll sit it out and wait until you are too doddery to do the job, then I’ll jump you …’

  ‘Thank you, Emily.’ I laugh, touched. ‘Come on, I’ll sign these contracts, then I’ll take you out to lunch to celebrate you not leaving.’

  ‘Done!’ she says.

  Christmas is looming and the boys are home. We are all excited and rush about getting small presents we can carry to Oman. I have supper with Kate and Hugh before I leave.

  Hugh pecks my cheek. ‘Gosh, you look glowing and happy.’

  Kate peers at me. ‘You do. It’s good to see. I thought you were a little down the last time I saw you.’

  ‘A lot has happened in the last two weeks …’ I grin at them both. ‘After Christmas in Oman with the boys Mike wants me to fly back to Karachi with him for New Year.’

  They both look appalled. ‘Is it safe?’ Hugh asks.

  ‘It is deemed safe unless there is trouble or the situation deteriorates. I have been officially sanctioned by the airline.’

  ‘It’s a bit sudden, isn’t it? You didn’t mention anything at Laura’s launch,’ Kate says, handing me a glass of wine.

  ‘I didn’t know then. Mike made friends with the Malaysian manager of the Shalimar Hotel in Karachi. Charlie had an old apartment waiting for a refurbish and he offered it to Mike for a reasonable rent. Mike jumped at it. He moved in straight away. He’d been living out near the airport so he’s thrilled to be in Karachi and he wants me to see where he’s living.’

  ‘Are Will and Matt going with you?’

  ‘No, they don’t have visas. Mike applied for mine when he took the job. It’s not possible to roam freely around Karachi sightseeing and more dangerous if you are young and male. Anyway, it’s only a flying visit and after a week with us the boys will be raring to get back to London for New Year with their friends.’

  ‘How exciting,’ Hugh says. ‘Oman and Karachi. Some people have all the luck …’

  ‘Wow, what an exotic Christmas and New Year you’re going to have, Gabby,’ Kate says.

  I laugh. ‘Mike gleefully announced that the British Deputy High Commission has already earmarked him as a dinner guest. You know what Mike is like.’

  ‘We do.’ Hugh grins.

  We go and sit at the large scrubbed table where I have had so many suppers.

  ‘Don’t you ever feel jealous of Mike’s glamorous lifestyle?’ Kate asks suddenly. ‘He’s always living another entirely separate life.’

  ‘Of course I do,’ I say, with a little intake of breath. Kate rarely makes unhelpful comments like this, but we’ve all had quite a lot of wine. ‘But, I’m used to it now. I don’t know anything else. And,’ I add, because Kate and Hugh are watching me across the supper table and I know what they are thinking, ‘after a lifetime of working away, Mike always comes home to me and the boys.’

  Kate and Hugh lift their glasses to me and make a Christmas toast bu
t I see Kate place her left hand flat on the reclaimed kitchen table as if she is touching wood.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Oman, Christmas 2009

  Stark brown mountains rise up out of a choppy indigo sea. Sunlight falls on rocks making golden veins among the shadows of crevices. Fishing dhows scud across the water. I watch Will and Matteo floating in the aquamarine infinity pool that slides swimmers effortlessly towards the glistening horizon. There is sensory pleasure everywhere. Small tables lit by flickering candles among palm trees. Sunloungers placed on a crystal beach of tiny shells. Our adjoining rooms have small balconies that open out onto the Gulf of Oman and the turquoise Arabian Sea.

  On Christmas morning the boys appear in silly hats and wake us. They have filled tiny stockings for us and they sit on the end of our bed watching as we open them. Mike laughs but I can see he is touched by their small student gifts.

  We sit in a huge bed facing our lanky sons with their crossed hairy legs and dishevelled hair and Mike says, throwing his arm round me, ‘My God, where did the time go? How did my sons get so enormous? I still see them in those tiny white dressing gowns I bought in Dubai …’

  ‘I still have those little dressing gowns,’ I say.

  This might be the last time the four of us spend Christmas together, without girlfriends, without Will and Matteo itching to be skiing with friends or elsewhere.

  In the evening, after we have eaten under the stars, Will and Matteo head off to find other young people at an organized beach party. Mike cautions them about keeping away from anyone doing drugs and stresses the strict penalties in Oman for breaking the law.

  Will says, ‘Dad, we’ve been in and out of Muslim countries all our lives … we’re not going to be that stupid.’ And they disappear towards a crowd of noisy young people congregating on the beach.

  Mike and I sit watching the decorated camels with elaborate headdresses sitting crouched by the candlelit night stalls. Veiled and silent Saudi women watch their husbands smoking hubble-bubble pipes. I wonder how these women keep their boredom in check. The camels have more fun.