Anya bit her tongue. She didn’t want to sound old by saying that they were, to her, still kids. “Are you sailors too?”
“Oh yes. We come from St Mawes, you know, in Cornwall.” Anya gritted her teeth, the assumption that everyone in the world is ignorant, especially if they happen to have grey hair, was a trait she had probably exhibited when she was Lizzy’s age. “We’ve always been around boats.”
“Did Geoffrey tell you his grandfather died in a yachting accident? His father was never allowed on boats after that.” ‘I didn’t know he was interested’ she added silently to herself.
“He said he’d always wanted to sail but couldn’t as he lived miles from the sea but he started learning at University and he picked it all up very quickly. He’s a natural really.”
Anya felt she had failed Geoffrey in some way by not knowing he had wanted to sail and by not knowing more of what had interested him. He had never said a word about sailing at University. Miriam was right. She knew so little about her children.
“So where did you go from Goa?”
“We stayed in Goa longer than we’d planned because of the Twin Towers thing. Everything just stopped for days and Joe had just come in from Bahrain and Qatar and they’re in the Middle East, you know, so the authorities were really suspicious. Especially as the boat he was to take on was registered in Abu Dhabi.”
“Because that’s in the Middle East as well?” Anya couldn’t resist asking, hoping that Lizzy would see that she was teasing.
“Obviously.” Lizzy showed no sign of humour as she continued. “Anyway, Joe eventually got clearance, it took a couple of weeks but we all hung around. I’d arranged to crew for him with whatever jobs he had for a few months and Geoffrey sort of just tagged along. The first job was to help get this fantastic boat down to Darwin, that’s on the north coast of Australia.”
“I know where Darwin is.” Anya had failed to control the edge in her voice but Lizzy showed no sign of hearing it. Anya tried to give Lizzy the benefit of the doubt, surely this affectation of checking geography at every opportunity was because the girl was anxious about something.
“Well then we got up to Saigon.”
Anya couldn’t resist interjecting “Is that the Saigon in Viet Nam?” but Lizzy ignored her.
“That was brilliant. And then to Japan and then Hawaii.”
“Joe really is a man in demand.” Anya made no attempt to hide the sarcasm but Lizzy either didn’t notice or ignored it.
“We hung around Hawaii for a bit as a job fell through then he got this job to take this fantastic gin palace of a boat from Vancouver to Grenada. All the way down the west coast of America, through the Panama Canal.”
‘That’ll be the canal in Panama will it?’ Anya thought but managed not to say.
“Geoffrey seems to have ditched all his plans to join up with you.” Anya knew she was sounding as though she didn’t understand how gap years worked, how people didn’t make plans, how if they made plans they changed them for the smallest of reasons. And it seemed like his relationship with Lizzy wasn’t ‘the smallest of reasons’.
“We did talk about that. He just said he wanted to be with people he liked and he liked us. He said he’d always wanted to sail and he could do that with us so it seemed the right thing to do.”
Anya didn’t want to sound like a mother checking up but she couldn’t help it. She needed to know more about this girl that Geoffrey was entangled with.
“And you. When this year is over, what are your plans?”
“We’ll get back to the UK and then go down to see my parents in St Mawes.”
“In Cornwall.”
“And give them the news.”
Aware that she probably didn’t want to know the answer Anya asked “What news would that be then?”
“Didn’t Geoffrey tell you? We got married in Hawaii.”
Anya stopped playing the place game in her head and had to think before she answered. “You did what?”
“We got married in Hawaii…”
“I thought I’d heard you correctly.”
“I thought Geoffrey must have told you. In the pickup. On the way here. He didn’t?”
“No. He didn’t.”
“Oh shit.”
“Yes young lady ‘oh shit’.”
“I thought you hadn’t said anything because you were so angry.”
“He said nothing.” Anya thought back to the drive back from the city. She hadn’t given him any chance at all to talk about himself. She had only thought of her problems. ‘Oh shit’ she echoed silently to herself. She tried, but failed, to soften her voice. “Now tell me something about yourself. What sort of person are you that gets married without telling anyone?” She had a feeling she was sounding more like Kathleen than at any time in her life.
“Isn’t that what you did? With Geoffrey’s dad? He told me all about you.”
“I doubt it.”
“He told me how you married his dad when you were at uni and then again just before he died. It’s so romantic.”
“Geoffrey has no idea what he is talking about.”
“But you got married without telling anyone. The first time that is.”
“But that was different.”
“How?”
Anya didn’t like being put on the back foot. She should be the one asking the questions. She didn’t like having to justify her actions of years ago to this girl. Her daughter-in-law. The daughter-on-law she had only just met.
“Geoffrey’s father had money. He could support the two of us.” Even to Anya it sounded weak. “And, as he has probably told you, I couldn’t have children so there was no danger of a family coming along.”
“We can both work and there’s such a thing as the pill.” Anya noted that she didn’t mention Geoffrey’s inheritance, perhaps he hadn’t told her.
“But you’re so young! You’ve got your careers to think about, you’ve got nowhere to live. It all seems very airy fairy to me, not well thought out at all.”
“All the things we have to do we can do just as easily together as apart.”
“But why get married? Why not just live together?” Anya knew she was beginning to sound desperate.
“Why did you marry Geoffrey’s father? You were younger than he is now.”
“That was different.” Anya repeated unconvincingly.
“How?”
Anya knew it was an argument she could never win. Lizzy was right. They had done nothing she hadn’t herself done.
She looked straight at Lizzy and shook her head in defeat. “Times were different then, no doubt you and I were in very different situations but we won’t argue about it. Tell me about you. I want you to tell me, then I’ll ask Geoffrey. Then I’ll know whether to believe this is a mistake or not.”
Lizzy told Anya of a privileged life, a happy family, a father and mother who had never been married to anyone else but each other; a stable background of boarding school, which Lizzy and Lissa had loved, long holidays spent mucking about in boats, travelling with their parents to compete all over Europe.
“But how would you describe yourself. What are you like?” Anya pressed Lizzy.
“I’m bright, clever, quick to learn, interested in everything and I love your son.”
“That’s what I wanted to hear.”
“But loving him isn’t enough. I like him, I find him interesting, intriguing, mysterious. Sometimes, when he turns in on himself and shuts everyone out, I want to comfort him, tell him everything will be alright. He hates to be in the wrong, hates, absolutely hates, being criticised even when it’s completely justified, because he will already have criticised himself and he is his own worst critic. But when push comes to shove he’s fiercely loyal and his own man.”
Anya was impressed by Lizzy’s reading of the man it was obvious they both loved.
“I don’t think I could have put it better myself.” She wasn’t going to argue, or resist. Geoffrey and Lizzy had made their
decision and she would have to live with it, make the best of it. Perhaps, even, grow to like the idea. She stood up, leant down to Lizzy and kissed her cheek. “You can switch fingers now.” She would do everything with a good grace.
Lizzy carefully removed a ring from the fourth finger of her right hand and placed it on the fourth finger of her left.
Geoffrey drove in a few minutes later and Lizzy waved her left hand at him.
“So you know?” He asked Anya carefully.
“I do.”
“And?”
“Well I can’t say much can I? As Lizzy has very cleverly reminded me, your Dad and I did much the same thing, though I would have hoped you may have learned from our experience.”
“People never learn from other people’s experience. You’ve always said that. And this is definitely ‘experience’ not ‘mistake’.”
“No. I’m the one still making mistakes, still not knowing where I’m going. You two seem set to face anything life throws at you together. And that’s good. A trouble shared…”
“… is a trouble halved. My mother always says that too.” Lizzy smiled. “We’ll be OK Anya. Honestly.”
“I really think you might.”
It was agreed that Lizzy and Geoffrey would spend a week on the island before flying back to England though Anya saw little of them as Geoffrey showed his wife the island he knew so well. ‘Well, it is their honeymoon’ she told herself.
“It needs a lot of work.” Geoffrey said on their last evening as they watched the sea as the sun went down behind them.
“There comes a point when shabby chic becomes just plain shabby.” Lizzy pointed out, to Anya’s mind rather unnecessarily.
“I don’t think we ever aimed for shabby chic.” Anya bit back.
Geoffrey knew he was in a difficult position, sandwiched between two strong women but he rather liked the way Lizzy was making Anya respond.
“I didn’t mean that. What I meant was…”
“I think you did. Shabby Chic may be the fashion in St Mawes, Cornwall but it most certainly is not in the Caribbean.”
“Please Anya. I really didn’t mean to insult the place, or you, I wouldn’t. I love it here. I really do.”
Anya got such a filthy look from Geoffrey she decided she had probably gone too far. “It is beautiful isn’t it? I fell in love with the place the first time I saw it. Have I ever told you, Geoffrey, how I came to buy Fishermen Rock in the first place?”
She had, on just about every visit they had made to the island, but he decided this was the olive branch and he must accept it.
“Of course you have Anya, but tell Lizzy. It’s such a great story.”
“I’d love to hear it.” Lizzy took her cue from her husband and peace was restored as Anya recounted the events of that January day in 1994.
“I think I would have fallen in love with it too.” Lizzy said as Anya came to the end of the story and was rewarded by a beaming smile from her mother-in-law.
“I’m sorry you two. Have I really been a bitch?”
“Yes.” Geoffrey replied without qualification.
“It’s just that I know I’m going to have to sell up and I really don’t want to. It needs serious investment and I have nothing to invest.”
As Lizzy put together a meal of cold meats and salad in the kitchen Geoffrey opened another bottle of wine and filled the three glasses. “While Lizzy’s not here tell me how bad everything really is.”
“Apart from this dilapidated liability of a hotel and the house back in England I have enough to live on for a couple more months and then nothing. No income, no pension, just those two properties.”
“Well the house must be worth a million or so? You could sell that.” Geoffrey suggested sensibly.
“But I can’t. Don’t you remember the terms of your father’s will? I have to keep the house until you three are 21 and James isn’t 21 for another year. And in any case now isn’t a very good time to be selling anything, the property market isn’t exactly flourishing after what Lizzy rather brushed off as ‘the twin towers thing’. Nothing is selling in the UK or here.”
“What about all your other places?” Geoff had known she had run a property business and had had a number of houses she rented out but he had never known the details.
“They’ve gone, one by one, I’m afraid.” Anya felt he deserved a totally honest answer to his unspoken question. “All of your father’s money went to you children in trust. The income came to me for your expenses but it was never going to cover everything. It was so important you had everything you needed to hold your heads up with everyone at school and university. When your Dad died interest rates were a lot higher than they are now, stock market returns have dropped through the floor what with dot com booms and busts and then 9/11. His calculations were made at a very different time. For a while we’ve been existing on money from here.” She looked around her at the shambles that had been her high-earning hotel. “I had no idea I was taking too much money out of this place. Miriam never told me.”
Not for the first time Geoffrey was thankful for how much this woman, who looked so much older than he had remembered her, had done for him and Jim and Rose. His capital had been protected, his bank balance was so obscenely healthy that he had been able to take time out to travel the world. He hadn’t worried about getting a job after his degree, as so many of his friends had. He had never had to think about money. It had always been his assumption that, as a family, they were rich, not just comfortably well off, but rich.
“We’ll sort something out.” He said, trying to comfort but unsure how.
“No need, the decision has made itself. The Fishermen Rock has to be sold even if I have to give it away for just enough to keep me until Jim’s 21st. I’ve been a fool to think for one moment I could get it back to what it should be. I’ll go back to England and hang on somehow until next year when I’ll sell the house. Then I’ll be comfortable. It’s only a year or so.”
Lizzy appeared balancing the three plates of food, to hear Anya talk of her decision.
“You can’t sell this place!” Anya was surprised at the anguish in Lizzy’s voice.
“Of course I don’t want to sell but there really is no alternative.”
“We’ll take it over.” Anya looked at Lizzy with amazement, then at Geoffrey to see if he had any idea what his wife was talking about.
“We’ve been talking about spending time here, working on the hotel, perhaps even sorting out something to do with sailing.”
“We really think that it’d be fun making a go of it.”
Their enthusiasm amazed Anya, she looked from one to the other as they explained their plans.
“It would be different, not the chic place it used to be…”
“More of a place for sailing.”
“There’s an awful lot on the other side of the island but not over here on the Atlantic coast.”
Anya had to interject. “For very good reason, look at the wind, and the currents. No one in their right mind would rather sail here than on the benign Caribbean side.”
“Exactly. We wouldn’t go for the novice, only the extreme sailor, the one with experience who wants a real challenge. We could put money into the hotel. Help you run it. Work as a team.”
Anya could not let them do it. “It’s out of the question. It’s too soon to tie yourselves down. And where would you be if the venture failed and you lost all your money? I won’t have it.”
Geoffrey had listened to Lizzy’s ideas the night before and had been caught up in her enthusiasm. It would have been nice, he had agreed, to live in the sun but, although he would never admit it to his wife, he was relieved at Anya’s veto.
“I won’t get the best price but Fishermen Rock has to go.”
She raised her glass, as if to toast the old place and drank the wine down in one. Geoffrey and Lizzy were leaving the next day. She would give herself one week to sort it all out before following them back to England.
>
She didn’t drive straight back to the hotel after dropping them off at the airport, instead she drove through the city and up the west coast. She knew this would be the last chance she would have to see the island she could never get to know well enough. At the North Cape she sat for a long time watching the Atlantic rollers crashing into and over the sheer cliffs. She headed back down the east coast remembering the evening when she had first driven along those roads. She passed the Abbey and wondered why she had never followed up on the friendship of that Mr Cave. There were so many things she hadn’t done, so many people she hadn’t spent time with, when she had been content to sit in the sun and be served rum punch. ‘What a waste.’ She said to herself over and over as she neared home.
She was surprised to see a car in the car park as she drove down the steep approach.
“Good evening Anya.”
“Good evening Vincent, and Kenneth.” “Come on round and I’ll get you a drink. We can talk better sitting down.”
As she prepared a jug of iced punch Anya wondered why they had come over uninvited when she had heard nothing from them since that evening over two weeks before.
“Can we come straight to the point?” Anya was surprised that it was Kenneth who spoke.
“Of course.”
“My father has been worried about you.” Kenneth spoke as if Vincent weren’t sitting next to him. “We know the island as well as any and certainly…”
Vincent interrupted his son. “You have had visitors.” His voice was brusque.
“Certainly it hasn’t been a secret.”
“Your son?”
“Yes, my elder son and his wife.”
“You have three children, two sons and a daughter. We have seen them.” He did not speak kindly.
Anya looked at her uncle-half-brother and saw the anger that should have been turned against their mutual father turned on her.
He could not know that she could not have children.
She bought time by talking brightly and confidently, lying by omission.
“You have just missed Geoffrey. He and his wife have been staying with me for a few days. They’ve just gone back to the UK this afternoon. Then there’s Rose who’s 21 and James who’s just 20, they’re both at university.”
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