Tonight she slept and was only dimly aware of Charlie falling into bed beside her. He patted her bottom. ‘G’night,’ he mumbled.
‘’Night,’ she mumbled back, and, feeling sudden affection, ‘Sorry about number four, Charlie.’
But Charlie was already asleep. In three hours he would have to get up for milking.
Chapter 9
Gabrielle and Mark stood before the figureheads in the peace of an early morning. The helicopter had departed with a roar back to Penzance and the only other people in the Abbey Gardens were the gardeners, unseen and silent. A spade stood upright in the soil, a robin pecked in the new-turned earth. A jacket lay folded on a bench, there was the sound of someone sweeping a path and the smell of damp blooms mixed with spearmint rose from the ground.
They had permission to go into the gardens before they opened to the little ferryboats full of tourists and gardening clubs. They walked silently, along paths that curled round vast tropical plants and beds of succulents of such colour and variety that occasionally they stopped in their tracks, awed by the sheer scale of the planting.
‘Each time I come I think of The Secret Garden,’ Gabby whispered, as if her voice might shatter the illusion of paradise. ‘There’s always a spade or a fork placed just so, yet I’ve never seen anyone working.’
Mark smiled. ‘Perhaps the gardeners are from some other world. Nothing would surprise me here. What an amazing place! There’s something mystical and timeless about being inside a walled garden.’
Rounding a corner they came upon a clearing and there before them lay Valhalla Museum, with the array of figureheads, bright against the lush undergrowth, extraordinary in their garish beauty. Mark drew in his breath, and Gabby, turning to look up at him, thought how open and un-English he was; unafraid to show his excitement.
They both stood silently admiring while the birds swooped and darted fearlessly at their feet, for there was little in these lush gardens to threaten them. They moved closer to examine the carvings. Gabby was especially interested in the faces, because on the St Piran figurehead the face and neck were going to be most difficult to restore.
‘Trophies of the sea,’ Mark murmured. ‘Each figurehead an individual offering of respect and affection, regardless of whether they were carved by a naïve seaman or a carver of distinction.’
Staring into an enigmatic wooden face with eyes that gave nothing away, Gabby thought of the figurehead carvers and of the sailors who had manned the ships and watched as their figureheads rose and plunged out of the waves, carrying them precariously to battle in the duty of a monarch.
How many lives, from the moment of carving to the moment of her ship sinking and being salvaged, did a carved face touch in so many different ways? Gabby could see in her mind’s eye a Napoleonic battle or a great storm breaking up a galleon. The sails unfurling at speed, masts falling with a great crack, like trees, and the screams of men jumping away from the sinking ship to drown in the angry waters.
There the ship would lie on the seabed, broken, its hull becoming a sad skeleton over the years as seaweed and barnacles enveloped it. Then, one day, divers would descend; the salvage men, swimming round the wreck in slow-moving sequence with waving arms and excited thumbs-up as they discovered a poignant wooden face, staring blindly upwards, the heart and soul of the dead vessel. They would bring her up from that fathomless dark to see once more the light of day and the lives of men.
Gabby became conscious of Mark staring at her in the amused way he had.
‘Come back,’ he said softly. ‘Where have you been?’
‘I was just thinking that each figurehead must have a story, a life of its own, and we’ll never know what it was, we can only imagine it.’
‘You would be surprised how much we can learn from a ship, Gabriella. Like compiling a profile we can build a history, based on fact. We might never discover all the names and faces of those who built or sailed in the ships, but with a date and a time we can catch a glimpse, find records, form an idea of the way these mariners lived their lives.
‘We don’t have records of the building of the early ships because the shipwrights were often illiterate so no plans were drawn up. However, models were made and some of these survive and are as beautifully detailed as the real ships.’
They moved around the display of figureheads: a sailor, a king, a damsel, a god.
‘Did the figureheads become a way of denoting wealth or origin, or just a way of honouring a monarch or a country?’ Gabby asked. ‘I know the Vikings had them on their ships until the thirteenth century and then they changed the front of their boats for war or something. We had to draw eleventh-century Viking boats from the Bayeux Tapestry endlessly at school and I’m afraid I was bored rigid.’
Mark laughed. ‘I’m probably boring you now, Gabriella. The figureheads became superfluous when the Vikings developed the forecastle on the front of their boats. But before that happened the Viking longships carried serpents and dragons. There were two in the British Museum, as well as on the Bayeux Tapestry, which you must have seen, depicting William of Normandy’s invasion fleet of 1066, all decorated with lion and dragon figureheads.’
Gabby said hastily, ‘I’m not in the least bit bored. There is a huge difference between being taught by a bored nun with no interest in the subject herself, and going to the British Museum, which I loved. Or standing here in front of figureheads, some of which have been pulled up somewhere out there on the rocks …’ She gestured towards the sea.
Mark stood looking down at her. Gabby had never met anyone who looked as if they were always about to laugh, as if life itself was one huge joke. It did not fit in, somehow, with her idea of a historian.
He turned back to the figureheads, casually placing a hand under her elbow.
‘A figurehead could be many things. Originally it was most likely religious. The head of an animal sacrificed to appease a sea god. Then it would have become symbolic and a means of identification. The Egyptian ships had figures of holy birds or eyes painted on the sides of the bows so the ship could see. The Phoenicians used horse heads symbolizing speed, and the Greek rowing galleys favoured bronze animals, usually a boar’s head, their most hunted and frightening animal …’
Gabby listened to Mark Hannah’s fluid and easy voice. It had a beautiful rhythm and symmetry. His enthusiasm was catching, making it all the more … seductive shot into her mind, and she jumped away from his hand under her elbow as if this thought could transfer itself up her arm into his hand.
‘Can you give me five minutes?’ Mark was rummaging in his haversack and brought out a small tape recorder. ‘I just want to make some notes, then we can go look for a coffee?’
‘Of course.’
Gabby wandered away. She could hear voices now, the day was waking up and the gardens would be open soon. Visitors would begin to stream in and the helicopter would return. The ferry would arrive at St Mary’s and the small boats would chug to and fro from the islands, depositing visitors until dusk.
She sat on the grass cross-legged and closed her eyes and held her face up to the sun. She felt an unaccountable surge of happiness. Scilly always felt like another country. Only a few miles of water separated them from the mainland and yet it always felt abroad.
Gabby felt that small, familiar tug of longing which surfaced occasionally and which she would quickly squash. A sensation that the world was flowing fluidly on without her. It was not unhappiness, it was not boredom. She could never catch and hold on to the feeling. It slid slyly away from her, as if momentarily her soul had migrated to a dry desert, a landscape without feature or water, or enough life to sustain her.
Like running through sand, she knew that beyond the horizon there was an oasis, a lighted city twinkling and pulsing with life, but somehow her feet could never retain the momentum to reach that place of light and laughter. The days of her life slid by in an effortless rhythm, each day dissolving into the next with little change or interruption, each day f
orming a pattern, a whole, indivisible except for the tiniest domestic detail.
Since Josh left home she had started to get up early with Charlie in order to get through her work. Each morning she took Shadow for a walk across the top field and down the coastal path to the small cove. She would watch the sea mist lift to reveal another day, then she would return to the house to cook Charlie’s breakfast, already thinking about the painting waiting in her workroom.
After hours working, stiff, she would get up from her chair and stretch, lean out of the window perfectly content, and a sudden yearning for something indefinable would swoop, a burning ache, deep in her bones, for something to break the continuity of the measureless days.
Behind her the faint sound of the soft Canadian drawl had stopped. Her back prickled, the heat of her body felt strange to her. She kept her eyes closed, focusing on the sun blobs behind her eyelids, merging into the soft noises around her and the heady, dizzy smell of flowers.
What she felt in every nerve of her body and what she determinedly allowed herself to think were horribly diverse. It made her want to run away down the narrow paths dripping with flowers like bright jewels. It felt too bright, too nightmarishly large and foreign and unknown. An unmapped landscape, the geography a language she had never learnt and felt stunned to recognize.
She opened her eyes when Mark blocked out the sun. He was standing in front of her, not smiling, his expression unreadable as he gazed down upon her. She looked up into his eyes and they were both still, staring at one another. She glimpsed a sudden hesitancy, a fleeting loneliness or vulnerability.
The strength of emotion that flooded Gabby must have shown in her eyes for Mark smiled suddenly and put out his hand to pull her up from the grass, and somehow, on the narrow paths, where it was necessary to walk close, he forgot to let go of it until they reached the café.
Chapter 10
Charlie crossed the yard to the old hay barn where Alan, his farm manager, worked. Once the land had been sold and Gabby started to bring money into the farm he had decided to hire a farm manager to free him from paperwork.
Up until a few years ago Nell had helped with the accounts, but she had made it plain to Charlie that it was about time he got someone else, and that does not mean Gabby, she had said firmly. Charlie did not blame Nell, it took hours of her time and there was always a last-minute panic. All the same, with Josh gone Gabby had more time on her hands, and if Nell had managed to restore as well as balance the books, he could not see why it would be such a big deal for Gabby to take over Nell’s work.
However, he had begun to rely on Gabby’s small financial input, which made a difference, so he grudgingly hired Alan. It had been an excellent move. Alan had managed to slice a sizable chunk from their feed bills and he was way ahead of Charlie and Nell when it came to what they could and could not put against tax. Charlie had to admit the man earnt every penny he paid him. Alan came from a farming family himself and he had plenty of sound ideas on farm management. Today, however, his face was serious.
‘Look at this, Charlie.’ He picked a bulb from a bag on his desk and held it in the palm of one hand. He gently scratched the surface with a fingernail and the bulb crumbled.
‘Shit.’ Charlie picked the bulb up and peered at it. ‘Eel worm. Which field?’
‘The two-acre field at Mendely.’
‘We stored the bulbs from that field on their own, didn’t we?’
‘Yes, b––’
‘Thank God for that.’
‘Charlie … listen! We stored the bulbs from that field on their own, but, if you remember, the red barn had a hole in the roof, so while it was being fixed we also put the bulbs from the small home field in there.’
‘Oh, shit!’ Charlie said again angrily. ‘We’ve lost two bloody fields, then, and that barn will be useless until we’ve disinfected it.’
‘It could have been worse, Charlie.’ Alan pointed outside his office where layers of bulbs filled the barn. ‘Matt and I have checked the bulbs in the other barns and as far as we can see everything is fine. If we had to get eel worm, much better it was one of the smaller fields away from the farm.’
‘We’ll have to buy in, then, as soon as possible,’ Charlie said. ‘Have you got time to go through the catalogues for main breeders this afternoon?’
‘Yes. About three o’clock, before milking? I’ve got the meal rep coming at two-thirty.’
Charlie turned for the door. ‘Let’s make it three-thirty. It will give me and Matt time to plough up the field at Mendely. See you then. I’ve got my mobile if anything else crops up.’
Charlie came out of the barn in a bad temper and collared Nell who was feeding the bantams.
‘Have you seen Matt, Nell?’
‘He’s taken the repaired tractor to the far field, he asked me to tell you.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, why couldn’t he just wait until he’d seen me this morning?’
‘Charlie, he didn’t know where you were. What’s put you in a foul mood all of a sudden?’
‘Eel worm. All the bulbs from Mendely are contaminated, plus we stored the bulbs from the small home field with them, so two whole fields will have to be chucked.’
Nell sighed. ‘That is bad luck. Did you get that hole mended in the red barn?’
‘No!’ Charlie snapped. ‘I haven’t quite got round to that. I can’t be bloody everywhere. Look, Nell, can you get Gabby to go and find Matt and tell him to leave what he’s doing and meet me at Mendely. I want him to plough up the field so I can spray it immediately. Even if he’s got his mobile phone he won’t hear it.’
Nell sighed and scattered corn in an arc. ‘Gabby isn’t here, she left shortly after you this morning. You can’t have forgotten, surely? She’s gone to Scilly to look at figureheads. I’m sorry, Charlie, but I can’t go either. I’ve got a client collecting a picture in ten minutes.’
‘Fine, fine. I’ll go myself. Obviously I’m a one-man band around here. Why Gabby has to go swanning off on a weekday is beyond me.’
‘Charlie,’ Nell said quietly, ‘come on, eel worm is serious, but you’ve caught it early. If it was one of the large fields it would have been far worse. It’s happened before and it will happen again. We’ve been farming long enough for you to know disease is an occupational hazard, with bulbs or livestock.’
She smiled at him. ‘Don’t do a Ted on me. You know how it used to drive you mad.’
Reluctantly, Charlie grinned back at her.
‘Come on, I’ll make you a coffee before you go out.’
Charlie followed her into the farmhouse, sobered by the thought of turning into his father. Ted, at the slightest setback, would lugubriously pronounce instant bankruptcy. Indeed, he constantly predicted doom lay in wait for all farmers, but it crouched in particular waiting for him.
‘Do I really sound like Dad?’ he asked Nell, leaning against the Aga and pulling a hand through his hair irritably.
‘Sometimes you do.’ Nell took the heavy kettle off the Aga and poured water into two mugs. ‘Your language is worse, you get angry rather than depressed, and your bad temper blows over more quickly than your father’s black moods.’
Charlie took his mug of coffee from her and asked suddenly, surprising himself as well as Nell, ‘Were you happy with Dad, Nell?’
Startled, for this was so unlike Charlie, Nell was momentarily lost for the right words. Eventually she said slowly, ‘I don’t think I had the time to even think about it. We had a busy life together and I believe I was perfectly content. We both loved the farm and had the same goals …’
Nell added, because she knew it was what Charlie wanted to hear, ‘Your father and I understood each other very well. We had a whole life together.’
Charlie grinned and drained his mug. ‘Good. I’m off. I won’t be back for lunch, I’ll grab a pasty as I go through the village. See you later. When is Gabby back?’
‘Not till this evening.’
‘Why does she need a
ll day to look at figureheads?’
‘Peter Fletcher couldn’t go, and he asked Gabby if she wouldn’t mind going with Mark Hannah, the Canadian, to see the figureheads and to show him around Tresco. It would be a waste of money to just go out there and come back on the next helicopter, don’t you think? She did tell you, Charlie, you don’t listen.’
‘Probably not,’ he said proudly and went out of the door.
Nell, irritated, thought, he sounds just like his father sometimes, too. It was a glorious morning and she hoped Gabby was enjoying every minute of a day’s escape.
It was odd. Gabby was such a small, unobtrusive person. Often they would not see each other all day, yet when she was away from the farm Nell felt the lack of her presence in her small workroom, missed glimpses of her flitting around the farm, somehow always registered the weight of her absence.
She thought about her duplicity in answering Charlie’s question. Of course she had had time to think about her happiness with Ted. Too much time. Working with your hands freed your mind to fly to places better not visited, but that did not mean she had wasted her life in wanting to change what she could not. The one thing she did envy about Ted back then, and Charlie now, was their ability to accept as truth anything she said with quiet conviction. It was something she had perfected over the years, for in the moment of saying it she too believed the power of her own unambiguity.
She picked up a bowl and went back outside to check the chicken houses and surrounding area for eggs. She found six perfect speckled-brown eggs in the long grass by the hedge. Looking up at the cloudless sky, listening to the roar of the sea in the distance, Nell smiled, thinking again of the small simple pleasures that sustain, that never change and count as happiness.
Chapter 11
‘Actually, it’s Gabrielle, not Gabriella,’ Gabby said, as they sat outside on a wooden bench drinking coffee and eating biscuits.
Another Life Page 6
