Garden of Stars

by Rose Alexander

  Sarah absorbed this information for a moment. She recalled once more the letter that Carrie had sent. Of how that letter, telling of pregnancy and marriage, had crushed all hope, decimated all her dreams.

  In all this time, it had never occurred to her that the pregnancy had been an accident.

  Sarah looked down at the backs of her hands, the veins standing out prominently in the heat, and found that they were tightly furled, her nails digging into her palms and her wedding ring pressing painfully against the adjacent fingers.

  Don’t lose it with him now.

  “Should have been more careful, then, shouldn’t you?” She hated the sound of her own voice, hard and cold.

  Don’t spoil everything.

  The silence, heavy like the gathering clouds, seemed impenetrable.

  “It’s not always that simple, is it?” His voice, when he spoke, was soft, almost as if he were talking to himself.

  “Isn’t it?” She tried to moderate hers, too, to keep out the shocking envy that engulfed her.

  “She told me years later that she’d wanted it to happen; she desperately wanted to be a mother, always had. She wasn’t – well, let’s just say she wasn’t entirely honest about what was going on. It somehow slipped her mind to tell me that she’d stopped taking the pill.”

  Scott ran his finger along the serrated edge of the low wall that separated the terrace from the flowerbeds. “And once the twins were conceived, her religion, her beliefs, would never have allowed her to terminate the pregnancy.” He shrugged his shoulders, resignedly. “We didn’t know it was twins until much later, of course.”

  “Of course.” Sarah wasn’t sure if she had managed to veil the sarcasm in her voice, but if Scott noticed, he ignored it. So she trapped you, essentially, is what she wanted to say but managed to refrain.

  “She wanted to go back to Canada to have them. She went ahead and I followed. I didn’t see what other option I had.”

  Scott swallowed as if there was something huge in his throat. “We got married and then they were born, so perfect, a boy and a girl. They were my kids. I loved them.”

  Sarah raised her head, timing the flight of one of the tiny birds from the spiky shrub where the flock was resting to the pool. One, two, three, four, five, six…six seconds to make it there, have a drink, and go back again.

  She saw you coming, she wanted to say. She recognised all that’s good in you – your loyalty and honour, your sense of responsibility, your kindness. All the things I loved in you, too, before a wrong decision of mine ripped it all apart.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Scott. Noticed how his face seemed somehow crumpled, his eyes tired. He was fashioning and refashioning a towel into a pillow, folding it first lengthways and then widthways as if sure that, like a Rubik’s cube, there was a perfect way to do it if he could only work out the secret.

  You know that he loves you. So ask him.

  “Were you in love with her? Celina. Were you, are you, in love with her?”

  The pause that followed felt as long as eternity.

  “No.” He spoke slowly, in a voice that was full of pain and regret. “I’ve never been in love with her, no.”

  Sarah remembered the exact words of Carrie’s letter.

  I go away up the Amazon and look what happens! You disappear back to Blighty and Scott gets old cod-face Celina up the duff and decides to get hitched.

  She remembered the searing hatred that had run through her, for the woman who had so seamlessly and shamelessly taken her place. She recalled also the desolation that instantly followed, the crushing feeling of a heavy weight falling on her from a great height, pulverising the hope she still had of a future with Scott, forcing her to see that it was over. Really over now. There was simply no place for her any more. The agony she had felt then returned to her now, making her chest feel heavy and tight, compounded all these years later by Scott’s words: I’ve never been in love with her, no.

  “I was pregnant too, you know.” She said it casually, letting a handful of gravel drizzle through her fingers and onto the slabs.

  Scott raised his face to hers, in slow motion. “Well obviously I didn’t know, no.”

  “It’s OK. I only found out I was when I wasn’t, if you know what I mean.” Why was she speaking like this? With some kind of affected insouciance that robbed Scott of the right to any feelings about it all? “It was for the best – how could I have coped with a baby when I was a student?”

  Scott’s hands turned upwards as if to echo, ‘How?’

  “I’m sorry, Sarah, I had no idea. Looks like I don’t have a very good track record in this area. I don’t think anyone’s got pregnant because of me since then, though.”

  Sarah slumped forward onto the lounger.

  “That was a joke. Probably mistimed. Sorry.”

  She sat up and reached out a hand towards him. “Don’t worry. It was just one of those things. Nothing to be done about it now. I didn’t tell you so how could you have known or done anything?”

  “I guess so.”

  Neither said anything for a while.

  “I would have liked to have your baby, though,” Sarah said, breaking the silence. She got up from the lounger and strolled to the side of the pool, nonchalantly, as if it had just occurred to her that she fancied a swim. Dragonflies flitted across the surface, noiseless and fleet, their iridescence heightened by the bright sun above and deep blue below. She jumped and the cool shroud of water closed above her head and enveloped her, the ripples mingling with her tears and washing them away.

  Later, after dinner, he took her hands.

  “So where do we go from here?” His eyes were soft, his honey-brown hair even more ruffled than usual from his hand raking through it. His hazelnut skin was darker now, after the days spent outdoors.

  Sarah studied her fingernails intently. My nail varnish is chipping, she registered to herself. Inside her, a pain stabbed at her thoughts, mocking her, tormenting her.

  “I guess we go home, don’t we?”

  “Oh.” Scott seemed nonplussed, confused.

  Sarah contemplated her nails intently, scratching a flaking bit of varnish off her thumbnail. “What can we do? My girls are waiting for me and I have to go to them.”

  Desperate desire for him threatened to overwhelm her, made her sound dismissive when in reality she was about to crumble.

  “I understand that, Sarah. And I respect it.”

  “I know you do.”

  What do I want you to say? That everything will be OK, that you’ll come for me, whisk me away, that we’ll make a new life together? That the pain and hurt I cause to others can somehow be healed, that the past can be wiped away and the future can be ours to hold…? Maybe, right now, I just need to hear those lies.

  “I suppose I just can’t see a way forward.” Sarah focused on the row of short, stubby candles on the coffee table. “Can you?”

  Scott stared at the candles, too, and poked at the side of one of them, making the wax pour out, flowing in an angry red river onto the chrome stand. He took the cork from their now empty bottle of wine and held it into the flame. It blackened and smoked, but did not catch fire. Just as João explained to me in the montado, thought Sarah. Cork doesn’t burn. Examining Scott in his absorption with the smouldering stopper, Sarah saw something in his expression that was so unexpected she almost didn’t recognise it. Vulnerability.

  “No. At this precise moment, I can’t,” he replied, eventually. “But if we want it enough, we can find a way. If we both want it enough…” His gaze was fixed on her. And then a dollop of wax fell onto his fingers and he dropped the cork and snatched his hand away, shaking it to rid himself of the searing pain.

  They went to bed and had sex, uncoordinated and fervid, that Sarah felt satisfied neither of them. Sarah had no idea how he could, but Scott fell asleep, stretched out on his stomach, head turned towards her, one hand holding hers and the other curled up, fingers around the thumb, like
a child. She lay and looked at her lover, taking in every part of him, wondering how it was possible to adore so profoundly such simple things as the deep hollow between his neck and collarbone, the curve of his eyebrows, the strength in his hands. In the bed they shared, she rewrote her past and her future.

  She thought of the myriad of cultures and languages that made up his history; and how she would have loved that to be her children’s inheritance. He would have taught them to speak French so beautifully, the way he did, and shown them the special places where his native ancestors had lived before the Europeans arrived.

  She wondered how she would have taken to life in Canada, in Vancouver, on the edge of the world’s largest ocean, at the foot of his beloved North Shore Mountains. She knew, with absolute certainty, that wherever they lived she would have been glad to share life’s ups and downs with him, to have been the one he turned to when he needed love and support, to have grown up with him.

  She imagined what it would have been like to get married to him. What kind of wedding would they have had? Where? She wondered what their children would have looked like, how it would have felt to gaze at her newborn baby with Scott by her side, to see his joy, his pride. How she had longed for that, once.

  She recalled the exact words he had spoken, when he was asking her to go to Vancouver with him, in the final days of that summer that had seemed to be endless.

  “Think of all the things we could do there! All the fun we could have. I’ll take you to the log cabin in the mountains – we’ll go horse riding there. And in the winter, we’ll ski and snowboard, ice-skate, if you like.”

  “It will be amazing,” she had replied, even though she didn’t know how to do any of those things.

  What is it about, this affair? Some desperate attempt to turn back the clock, to live my life again, to pretend it never went wrong? To find absolution, closure, to erase all the moments that have intervened?

  Then Hugo appeared before her, his familiar face and reddish -brown curly hair that had been impossible to tame when she had first met him, but was now thinning and subdued with age, his greeny-blue eyes and pale eyelashes. The love for him was different, but had it always been less? In recent years it seemed to have absented itself, without permission asked or granted, somehow and somewhere, dissolving away like an aspirin in a glass, leaving only a cloudy residue of resentment, unhappiness and resignation.

  But surely there had been love, once, during all the years they had built a life together, bought their house, had their family, forged careers and businesses, developed friendships and habits, shared jokes and experiences?

  She knew that there had been.

  And then the vision changed again and it was a frosty morning at the cabin in the mountains, Scott’s motorbike outside with the engine running, Scott majestic in his leathers, telling her to jump on behind, and the two of them riding along roads where the snow lay piled high on either side. The vision did not tell her where they were headed, she just knew that they would arrive at their destination as the sun was setting in the west, and that once they were there, they would know that it was the right place.

  In the hotel bed, under the crisp white sheets, in the real world, the world of now and not of dreams, her hand was still tightly clasped in Scott’s and she looked down at it in the darkness of the night. Gently, she withdrew from his grasp, turned on her side and curled up into a ball. She buried her face in the pillow so her weeping would not wake him.

  In the morning, they made love until Sarah felt her head spin, all traces of the clumsy experience of the night before erased.

  Outside, standing by the car which was no longer shiny and pristine but covered in a greyish brown film of dust, Sarah felt as if the world was tumbling away in front of her. She held onto the roof, the soft layer of grime irritating her fingertips.

  “I don’t think I can do it.” She was surprised at the sound of her own voice, how shaky it was, how thin compared to the hot, thick air around them.

  Scott looked up from examining the contents of his pocket. “It’s OK, I’ll drive.”

  “No,” said Sarah. “No, I didn’t mean that.” She felt as if she was gasping for air, as if a vice was pressing on her lungs as she spoke. “I don’t think I can do it. Go back home and pretend that everything’s OK. That none of this has happened. Walk in the door and carry on as before. I can’t do it. I can’t bear it.”

  Scott ran his hand through his hair, the familiar gesture. He took her face in his hands, the hands that Sarah loved so much, and kissed her. “I need you to stay strong. We both need to stay strong.”

  She found herself flinging her arms around him, clinging to him, desperately, despairingly. He held her for long moments, while the world around them was still and silent, waiting. Eventually, he pulled away. Kissed the top of her head, and bent to open the car door for her.

  “But what are we going to do, Scott?” Her words erupted like bullets from a gun, frenzied, scattering everywhere.

  Scott turned the car key round and round in his hand. “I don’t know. Don’t you think that if I did, I’d tell you?” His own stress was making him snappy, impatient.

  Sarah climbed into the car, reaching her hand up to the amber pendant around her neck as she did so, gripping its cool, smooth firmness so hard she could almost imagine it breaking in two.

  The drive to Lisbon passed quickly. They hadn’t been able to book Sarah a room at the Palace where they had met; it was full. A small box in the city centre had been all they could find, but Sarah didn’t care – it was a more central location for the search. Scott suggested that they get a bite to eat before heading for the English cemetery, but Sarah refused. The sense of urgency that was twisting in her gut could not be denied any longer.

  “We need to go straight there – or rather, I do. If she isn’t…if we don’t find her, I’ll have to go to the Lisbon record office and I’ve only got Monday – my flight home is first thing Tuesday.”

  “Sure,” Scott answered, and led the way out of the hotel. In the square, the gathered trams resembled a swarm of yellow beetles. Scott gestured towards the one they needed and they jumped aboard.

  Jardim da Estrela, read the destination on the front.

  29

  After about fifteen minutes of violent swaying up and down some of Lisbon’s many hills, the tram pulled up alongside a small park, inside which Sarah could see the colourful umbrellas and awnings of a Sunday market, and crowds of people milling around. A street sign said Largo da Estrela; the end of the line.

  Scott led her past the entrance to the park and across the busy road that surrounded it. A high wall faced them, in the middle of which a pair of large wooden gates stood open.

  The sign by the gates read:

  Cemitério dos Ingleses

  English cemetery

  Please ring the bell loudly for entry.

  But there was no need to ring the bell; it was Sunday and from far inside the open gates came the faint sound of organ music. A church steeple rose above the trees, its cross silhouetted against the blue sky. Once inside, Sarah halted, not quite sure what to do next, wondering which way to go, overwhelmed by finally being here. She sensed a bustling, hurrying figure behind them and turned round. It was the vicar, black robes swishing as he walked, bespectacled face welcoming her with a wide smile.

  “Come in, do come in. You are most welcome. Henry Fielding’s grave is that way.” He pointed to the left, to a weed strewn gravel path and a collection of skew-whiff headstones in various stages of dilapidation.

  “I – we’re – not really looking for Fielding.” Sarah answered. “I wondered – I mean, I know it’s a long shot – but are there any babies buried here? From ages ago, not recent burials.”

  The vicar was taken aback, his countenance dimmed momentarily. “We do have some infant graves,” he replied. “But I’m afraid I don’t know all the departed who are laid to rest here.”

  Sarah smiled. His turn of phrase was almost
comical, and he seemed to be an appealing mixture of jolly and batty. “Please don’t worry. I’ll have a look round myself, if that’s all right.”

  “Of course, you are more than welcome. Help yourself! But I’m late – the service is due to start in a few minutes. Do come and join us, if you’d like!”

  Thankfully, he didn’t wait to hear Sarah’s answer, and scurried off, reminding her of the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland.

  She and Scott began to make their way methodically through the graveyard. Thick undergrowth of wild nettles and brambles lay beneath overgrown cypress trees that loomed overhead, obscuring the daylight. The graves mostly dated back to the nineteenth century, the headstones engraved with sentimental epitaphs and carvings of ivy and arum lilies. Some were white with lichen that smudged the text and Sarah struggled to decipher their inscriptions. She realised what a mammoth task it was, to try to find Isabel in this half-wilderness.

  The sun rose higher and higher as they worked. Sarah wished she had thought to bring water. Both she and Scott were silent, intent on the task, leaving no headstone overlooked. On a bank by the side of the church, a riot of orange nasturtiums tumbled down to the slanting stones beneath. Near to the huge wooden door was a red bench, its seat sloping and its paint wearing away, chipped and flaking. Sarah sat down, and gestured for Scott to join her. They rested for a few minutes before Sarah hurriedly jumped up again.

  “I don’t know how long the service will go on for,” she explained. “I don’t want to be here when the door opens and the congregation comes out.”

  “Assuming there’s anyone in there,” replied Scott.

  And it was true, as they hadn’t seen anyone arrive after the vicar.

  They continued along the gravel path, stones and brittle brown leaves crunching underfoot. A ramshackle dog rose of the purest pink had run riot in one corner, and next to it, in complete contrast, the neat, tight buds of an elegant tea rose resembled a newborn baby’s fist waiting to unfurl. Sarah found the graves of several children, but not Isabel. One little boy had died after just five minutes of life. ‘Thy will be done’ was the only memorial. And little Emilia, who had lived for less than a year, and whose parents would mourn her for eternity.