Another Life

by Sara MacDonald

  Mr Welland was well pleased, but he was a dour Yorkshireman and not given to excess. ‘Well, Miss, don’t take on. It is my son, Tom, thee has to thank. I carved the piece, but it was Tom who wanted to try the decoration. He said the wood lent itself to shape and there is no doubt he was right.’

  ‘It looks as if he will one day be as good a carpenter as his father,’ Helena said diplomatically.

  ‘Aye, and more so. He grows bored sometimes with the plainness of wood. He sees shapes where others do not. I let him have his way with the drawers on the understanding if thee did not approve or thought it too fancy, he must make more plain ones for thee.’

  Helena smiled. ‘How could we not approve? For a gentleman’s room it might be too ornate, for a young girl it is imaginative and skilfully done. Is this his first work of this kind?’

  ‘Aye, it is, Ma’am.’

  ‘May we thank him?’

  Mr Welland hesitated and Helena, noticing, said, ‘You must be proud of him?’

  Ben Welland looked at her with eyes that were possibly as vivid as Tom’s once, and were now the colour of a faded sky.

  ‘Aye, Ma’am. I am proud, but I hope to keep the lad with me. Keep him here in the yard. But he is restless for more intricate and complicated carving, for which I know he has the skill. Trading ships are being commissioned faster than we can build them and we could not live by furniture alone, fancy or no. Tom has always been skilled with a piece of wood, even as a bairn.’

  Helena smiled again, understanding. ‘But, interesting as boatbuilding is, Tom will need more imaginative work one day and you are afraid of losing him. Our praise of his work might hasten that day.’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am, I believe so. But it is his due and I cannot deny him.’

  He turned and they followed him out into the sunlight again. Ben called out to his son and the boy turned and stood awkwardly in front of them. Helena congratulated him on his work and assured him that he would be rewarded above the original price mentioned. She also told him that when people saw Isabella’s piece he was sure to gain more commissions.

  Isabella, staring from beneath the shadow of her hat, believed Tom Welland to be the most beautiful person she had ever seen. At the mention of her name, Tom’s eyes turned to her, and she said, her face reddening, ‘Thank you … it is lovely.’

  She turned away abruptly and walked to her horse. Tom watched her and when he saw she was going to mount without help he moved forward. He cupped his hands so that she could put her small foot into them and carefully lifted her to the saddle. Ben Welland was busy helping Helena onto her horse.

  Isabella gathered the reins in her small, gloved hands. When she looked down the boy was still watching her, his face grave, but she had a distinct suspicion that he might be amused by her. She said suddenly, ‘Please do not make another chest of drawers the same as mine for anyone else. I wish mine to be the only one or it will be spoilt, the magic will be gone.’

  Her brown eyes met his blue and he held them. The amusement was gone, they held a sudden regard that struck her like lightning. Her bodice felt suddenly too tight, her breasts against the cloth ached. She turned her horse abruptly away before he could answer, brought her whip lightly down on the mare’s flank so that the horse leapt out of the boatyard with Helena behind her.

  Helena had witnessed Isabella’s confusion and she sighed. The boy was uncommonly handsome as, probably, the father had been before him. Helena’s thoughts of the morning returned. She was right, Isabella was no longer a child but a young woman with a passionate body difficult to control.

  How to tell her, Helena wondered, without putting her off marriage forever, that the men women were often attracted to were not the ones, in general, suitable to marry.

  Isabella was now a long way ahead. They had entered the stony cliff path that led down to the cove. Helena did not call out or try to catch up, she wanted to let Isabella compose herself. She would have to talk to her, but not yet, not the second her daughter discovered desire. She must let her have privacy and time to accept her changing body.

  Helena remembered her own first thunderbolt of unfulfilled yearning for a friend of her brothers … Claudio … that was his name.

  Isabella had reached the bottom of the cliff path and turned her horse to wait for Helena to catch up. Helena was not concentrating. She was back in Rome, remembering the beauty of a young body. Why, she had almost forgotten what desire felt like …

  Her mare stumbled on the loose stones and Helena realized she was holding the horse’s head too tight and loosened the reins.

  Isabella was having trouble holding her horse. It was plunging and dancing, impatient for a gallop by the sea. Helena called out to her, ‘Let her go, she will unseat you. I will be right behind you.’

  Isabella swung her horse round and started to canter towards the edge of the sea. Helena’s horse whinnied in frustration, wanting to be off the stony path onto the sand. Helena spoke to it soothingly.

  ‘Wait, wait, we are nearly at the bottom … steady now, wait till we are off these stones.’

  At last they reached the bottom of the cliff and the beach lay tantalizingly ahead. Isabella was already melting into the distance. Helena’s horse leapt forward, snorting with excitement. The stones skidded under its feet, and as it lurched Helena was thrown forward and lost her stirrup. She gathered the reins in and tried to hold the horse, but the mare reared up on her hind legs and plunged ahead again. Helena flew over the horse’s head and landed on the sand, but the back of her head connected sharply with the black rocks lying at the foot of the cliff. She died instantly.

  Isabella was still galloping to the far side of the cove. She had regained her composure and felt exhilarated by her ride along the edge of the waves. Laughing, she turned her horse round to watch her mother coming towards her.

  The riderless horse, stirrup flying and thumping into her side, was pounding her way, and Isabella could just make out a small figure lying crumpled and motionless near the black rocks. She gave an anguished cry that was lost in the sound of the surf and the seagulls screaming above her.

  The light was going. The room was suddenly cold. Gabby shivered. She had done enough for one day. She finished filling Isabella’s robe, where the wood had rotted at the back of the figurehead where it would have abutted the ship.

  She tidied her things and prepared her bottles and jars for the morning. Pink clouds had gathered, coloured by the setting sun. The face of Isabella was caught in golden light from the window and in the rays of the dying sun the face looked as smooth and sad as death.

  Chapter 18

  It was not until Gabby was on the train to London that she stopped to think about what she was doing. She had told herself that she could not do any more work on the figurehead until the paint samples she had sent up to London had been analysed. This was not quite true, for there were other things she could be doing, such as grouting out all the dead wood from the base of Isabella while she waited.

  The sun bounced off the sea as she left Penzance. Nell had wanted to drive her to the station but Gabby had persuaded her it was much too early. Guilt and excitement gnawed at her stomach and she felt odd and jittery as if watching herself from a distance.

  It was a long time since she had been on a train on her own. It felt wonderful. No man’s land. She looked out of the window; to her left the Hayle estuary lay full of waders and the sea beyond the sand dunes was rough, rolling in below the cliffs on a high tide.

  As the train rattled inland she thought about a time before the railway was built and how once tin, copper and coal had to be transported by hundreds of mules and horses. There were many depressed little towns left by the mining industry and Cornwall constantly struggled to survive. It was going to take her five hours to reach Paddington, but in Isabella’s day London must have seemed as remote as New Zealand.

  Gabby’s book lay unread on her knee. Whenever her mind came back to the end of her journey her stomach contracted and h
er tongue stuck to the roof of her dry mouth. Nell had booked Gabby into her old-fashioned club which was conveniently near to Paddington.

  She went slowly over her conversation with Mark. She had rung him excitedly when Nell had rushed in to her mid-morning, waving a catalogue.

  ‘Gabby! I knew there was something familiar about the face of your figurehead. Look, I’ve been rummaging through my files and found this. Don’t you think this face is similar? I cleaned and restored her in the sixties while I was at the Portrait Gallery.’

  Gabby looked down at the photograph of a dark young woman in a rich ruby dress, looking pensive. It was quite hard to tell; after all, they only had a wooden face and blind eyes with which to compare her. Gabby went to her drawer and got out the photos she had taken of the figurehead and placed one of Isabella’s face next to the catalogue. Gabby and Nell peered down and both women shivered in excitement. The shape of both faces was the same. So were the placing of eyes and mouth, the expression in them almost identical.

  Gabby looked at the description: Helena Viscaria. Believed to have been painted on her eighteenth birthday by her cousin, Bernardo Venichy, as a wedding present for her husband, Daniel Vyvyan, whom she married in 1844.

  ‘Definitely the same family, don’t you think?’ Nell asked, pleased with herself.

  ‘Yes. Oh yes!’ Gabby turned to Nell. ‘What on earth made you remember restoring this painting? It was so long ago.’

  ‘Quite extraordinary, the subconscious. The face on the figurehead seemed familiar and it niggled at me. Last night I kept dreaming of a red dress, and in the morning the face of the painting was clear in my mind so I went looking for her, not really believing I would find her in my chaos.’

  Gabby laughed. ‘Nell, you pretend to be disorganized, but you aren’t really. If I moaned about you making me keep records before, I never will again!’

  ‘I think the other reason I remembered was because it was such a beautiful painting and was in really bad repair having been stored in a damp loft or cellar. A young member of the family had found it and of course Venichy was having a spectacular revival in the sixties when the painting was brought to the gallery. I’m not sure, but I believe the gallery eventually bought it from the Vyvyan family, or they have it on permanent loan somewhere.’

  ‘I wonder,’ Gabby said, ‘if this is what Mark Hannah was chasing. He said he had a lead about the family in Manchester and was going to try to visit the Portrait Gallery before he went home.’

  ‘Possibly,’ Nell said. ‘It might have been hanging in Manchester at some point. Why don’t you ring him? I’ll make some coffee.’

  So she had, and he too had been excited. ‘Gabriella … your Nell is a wonder. This is such a bonus. I … I know this is a lot to ask, but could you possibly bring that catalogue up to London? It would make my job of finding out about the family much easier. Is that at all possible?’

  Startled, Gabby had mumbled, ‘Um … well … could I ring you back on that one?’

  Nell had come back into the study, and Gabby replaced the receiver with nervous hands. ‘He was chasing that painting and it did hang in Manchester. Nell, he wants me to rush up to London with the catalogue so that he can take it to the Portrait Gallery with him.’

  ‘Today?’ Nell asked, startled.

  ‘Not today, Nell. It’s far too late to catch a train today.’

  ‘What if we photocopied it and put it in the post tonight. He would, with luck, get it in the morning.’

  They looked at each other doubtfully. ‘With luck is the word,’ Gabby said. ‘I told him I’d ring him back. I’ll have to think. It would be much better if you went, actually, Nell. You restored the picture.’

  ‘Gabby, I’m not haring up to London for a day. Chelsea Flower Show is my next trip. My dear girl, if you feel like a gallivant to the National Portrait Gallery with your Canadian, you go. It might be quite good for you. I can ring my club and book you in for the night, and you can catch the train home the following day.’

  Gabby bit her lip, thinking of Charlie. Nell said quietly, ‘Gabby, if you’re worried about the expense or what Charlie will say, don’t. You’re earning your own money. I’ll pay for the night at the club. I’d love to, that’s what it’s for, to be used. If you think it would be fun and you can put up with five hours on a train, go.’

  ‘Nell … thanks.’

  ‘Ring him back. I must get to work. I’ll see you at lunchtime.’

  ‘Gabriella? Thanks for ringing back. I’ve delayed my flight a day and managed to get a meeting with a friend of a colleague at the National Portrait Gallery. If it is the same painting I’ve been trying to trace, it was loaned to the gallery by the Vyvyan family for one of their retrospective exhibitions in 1964.’

  ‘That’s right. Nell restored it in the early sixties. Just before that exhibition.’

  ‘She is a star! This is what I love about tracing history, the leads that suddenly appear when you are least expecting them … Gabriella, have you had time to think? Any possibility you could come up to London and go to the gallery with me? It would be so good to have you with me.’

  Gabby felt almost angry that his voice could wreak such havoc with her stomach, but she said, ‘I’ll come up on the early train. What time is your appointment with the gallery?’

  ‘Two-thirty. Can you make it for then?’

  ‘On the early train I can.’

  ‘I’ll meet you at Paddington. Let me know the time. Then I’ll take you out to lunch, before we go …’

  Gabby wobbled down the speeding train to get a coffee. It was following the sea wall at Teignmouth. In rough weather the waves came up over the sea wall, a great grey tower looming over the trains in a terrifying way before the line was closed.

  She could see her reflection in the window and closed her eyes against herself. She could not relax, she felt poised, on the brink of something. She kept visualizing herself getting off the train, walking along the platform to the barrier, looking round for him … then, what? Smiling and waving? Shaking hands? Being businesslike?

  How had they parted? What exactly had he said? Gabby tried to remember. People often said things they did not mean. Sometimes they pretended they had not said the things they did not mean.

  The countryside raced past and still she could not concentrate on her book. The train followed a canal; rows and rows of bright barges were lined along the banks, bicycles and flowers and pushchairs up on their roofs. A family of ducks were settled on the riverbank, the gander’s bright green feathers glinted in the sun.

  She felt rather as she had when she had smoked a joint with Josh, to see what it was like. Everything stood out, bright and separate. Stark and noticeable. Beautiful and highlighted, as if she was marking her trail to a foreign land and must take note in case she could not find her way back. Her limbs felt stiff with anticipation. She made herself breathe deeply, tried to think of nothing outside her direct vision.

  Her mind moved to Isabella. What had excited Mark so much about the figurehead that he felt the need to accompany her thousands of miles?

  In her imagination Gabby suddenly saw his wrist. The way the long dark fingers lay curled around the smooth face of a female figurehead on Tresco. The way the hairs on his wrist curled into his shirt cuff. She shivered as she remembered how badly she had wanted to touch that place between cuff and wrist, lay a finger there to feel the heat and pulse of him. The heat and pulse of him.

  The train swayed and groaned as it gathered speed and she closed her eyes, half-asleep, voices rising and coming to her in small waves.

  When they reached Reading, Gabby went to the loo and brushed her hair, put on her pale lipstick which never stayed on. Sprayed herself with something expensive Nell had given her for Christmas. She looked at herself critically. Her dark skin was tanned and devoid of make-up, which, except for lipstick, she never wore. Her eyes, framed by naturally dark lashes, seemed too intense, too blue and nervous. Like a horse about to bolt.

&
nbsp; For heaven’s sake. You are just taking him a catalogue. You will have a pleasant lunch, an interesting afternoon, and then … She reached up for her overnight bag and pulled it to her. Then maybe an early drink or supper and he will put you in a taxi for Nell’s club, and you will have enjoyed the day with him and be glad you came.

  She got out of her seat as the train slid into Paddington, letting the people in a hurry go in front of her. Then she walked slowly down the platform towards the barrier, holding her ticket. She saw him first because he was tall. He had on cream linen trousers and a crumpled jacket and still looked casually elegant. His eyes were scanning the people pouring towards him, rather anxiously.

  Gabby stopped dead in her tracks and watched him. A powerful feeling of familiarity swept through her, so strong and strange was the sensation that she had done all this before. Slowly she moved on towards him and when he caught sight of her his face lit up. Once on the other side of the barrier he hugged her hard.

  ‘It is so, so good to see you. I guess I couldn’t really believe you would come.’

  Gabby laughed. ‘I said I would.’

  ‘Sure you did. But things can go wrong. Something might have prevented you.’

  ‘Well, nothing did,’ she said softly.

  ‘Nothing did,’ he repeated, taking her hand and bringing it to his lips. He hooked her holdall over his shoulder.

  ‘We’ll take a taxi. I found somewhere to eat near the gallery so we don’t have a panic about getting there.’

  It was an Italian restaurant and looked expensive. Gabby was glad she had worn a newish pair of white trousers and a navy denim jacket that Josh loved her in.

  Mark openly stared at her. ‘You look wonderful, Gabriella. Just give me a moment, then I will stop gazing at you and order wine.’

  A waiter brought them huge menus and Mark ordered two glasses of white wine, remembering this is what she drank.