Another Life

by Sara MacDonald

  Josh laughed. ‘I know!’

  How sweet that she would think anyone in Sandhurst might not know who she was. Waiters moved about with trays of canapés and people drifted and moved, broke up and re-formed, leaving Josh and Marika together.

  ‘Would you have even come to talk to me if I had not made signs across the room?’ Marika asked him accusingly.

  ‘It would never have occurred to me that you might need rescuing.’

  ‘I see. So you would not have come to speak with me? You would have ignored me all evening, despite the fact I have passed you every day running? How very rude.’

  Josh burst out laughing at her injured tone. ‘Marika …’ How lovely the name sounded, saying it for the first time. ‘You are always surrounded by the entire military establishment. I was not going to jostle and hassle for your attention.’

  ‘But do you not realize how frightening this is, to be surrounded?’

  Josh looked at her closely and saw that she meant it.

  ‘I hadn’t, no.’

  Close up, she was amazing. Peachy skin and strange, unfathomable eyes, a sort of greeny-blue. They regarded him steadily and something fleeting passed through Josh, a déjà vu, gone before he could catch it.

  ‘Are you busy when this finishes or could you have supper with me?’ Josh asked quickly.

  Marika’s face lit up. ‘I thought you would never ask me. Come, talk to my parents. They are, of course, having a dinner party for the instructors, but I don’t think they will mind if I abscond.’

  She guided him firmly towards the Commandant and Josh’s heart sank. She introduced him to her mother. ‘Uli, this is Josh …’

  ‘… Josh Ellis.’ Josh shook her hand. Same eyes. Similar smile.

  ‘Hello, Josh,’ she said, her voice very English.

  ‘Sir,’ Josh said nervously to the Commandant.

  ‘Would it be all right to go and have supper with Josh? I know you were expecting me home …’

  Her mother laughed. ‘Why, Marika, are you trying to get out of our little dinner party?’ She turned to her husband. ‘Darling, would you mind? It is her last night?’

  The Commandant smiled. ‘Of course I don’t mind.’ He shot a glance at Josh. ‘Bring her back at a decent time. You are on church parade tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Josh guided her out of the room quickly before his friends caught up with him. They ran down the steps clutching hands while Josh pulled his mobile out of his pocket to ring for a taxi. They walked under the trees and along the wide road towards the gate in silence. Happiness soared in Josh. Ever since he had caught a glimpse of Marika at the guard house returning from Cornwall, he had, in a way, been certain this would happen.

  Marika turned to him under the shadows of the chestnut trees.

  ‘I have a confession to make.’

  ‘Oh yes? You are married with twins?’

  She smiled. ‘Don’t be silly. I changed my running time to the afternoon in the hope that you would speak to me.’

  He pulled her closer. ‘Did you now?’

  ‘But you never stopped.’

  ‘Ah, but I take my training very seriously! And I couldn’t bear to seem too keen, or to get the brush-off.’

  ‘Would you have ever spoken to me if I had not smiled at you tonight?’

  ‘Oh yes. I saw you at the guardhouse once, but you didn’t see me. The cheeky bugger on duty said you were out of my league, but …’

  Marika kissed his mouth and retreated quickly. ‘Every day I see you running. I watch you in church and in the mess and once in town, but you never come over to me. Everybody but you …’

  Josh wound his arms round her and she leant against him, closed her eyes.

  It seems to have taken so long to be here, in this place.

  Josh. She had practised his name silently on her tongue. He was dark, enigmatic. A clever face that gave little away … a fantastic body … So many good-looking officers buzzing round her like bees, except him. And now, this.

  She sighed, and they continued to the gate where their taxi waited. Inside it Josh picked up her hand.

  ‘I guess,’ he said carefully, ‘I was afraid of making a move. Also, truthfully, I am preoccupied with passing out, Marika. A lot rides on it. Acceptance in the regiment of your choice … and it’s bloody physically demanding …’

  ‘Oh, I understand. I am in the middle of my finals,’ Marika interrupted. ‘It is not the right time to get involved, I know this. But I also know that I must have you … to …’

  She searched for words. ‘For the future … so we don’t miss each other. Do you understand?’

  Josh grinned. ‘I think so. You mean it’s not the time to get involved at the moment, but we can sort of make a claim, a declaration of intent, for later?’

  Marika laughed. ‘Yes, yes. Something like that.’

  ‘So what are we doing tonight? Having supper, forming an understanding … then saying goodbye?’

  ‘No. Tonight, I hope, we are sleeping together because we must.’

  Startled, Josh laughed nervously. ‘My God, Marika, you don’t beat about the bush, do you?’

  ‘That is what my stepfather says to my mother. But, you see, we have lived with war and so we must not lose a moment in English reserve. We say what we mean.’

  As they paid the taxi, Josh thought of the complications of sleeping with the Commandant’s stepdaughter, while knowing it was exactly what he wanted and was going to do. They booked a room in the best hotel and ordered room service as both of them were starving. They pooled their limited resources, giggling. One night here was practically one week’s wages. But, as they said later, it was worth every penny to circumnavigate weeks of socially circling each other. It also felt right. No awkwardness, just an immediate feeling of belonging. They lay and talked in the dark impersonal room, and Josh felt happier and more relaxed than he had for months.

  ‘You do not talk to your friends about this, I hope?’ Marika said sleepily.

  ‘You are joking?’

  ‘How lovely if we could stay here all night together.’

  ‘We’ve got a whole lifetime.’

  ‘Yes. How is it we already know each other?’

  ‘Haven’t a clue. You’re a witch.’

  ‘A white one.’

  ‘Of course.’ Josh sat up and looked down at her and felt suddenly overwhelmed. ‘You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, Marika. How am I going to bear it, knowing that every other male will be lusting after you?’

  ‘First, I am not the most beautiful woman, there are squillions, and secondly, it is the same for me.’

  She sat up and held his face. ‘It is the same for me. I think you are the sexiest and most lovely man I have ever seen. I’ve noticed the way girls look at you, and you have that air of not being interested which makes you irritatingly irresistible.’

  ‘Do you think it possible we could be biased?’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Well, I’m certainly not.’

  ‘What if we had been terrible in bed together? You know, one of those fumbling farces?’

  Josh did know, only too well. He laughed and got out of bed. ‘It wasn’t going to happen. It is something you instinctively know. It’s chemical.’

  ‘Like an experiment?’ Marika sat up and jiggled the bed up and down happily.

  ‘Marika, get dressed! We must watch the time. I don’t want to do extra orderly officer, even for you.’

  Marika made for the shower. ‘Do we just brazenly walk out of this hotel together? How do we leave with dignity?’

  ‘I’ll order a taxi while you shower. Then we walk down to reception with utter aplomb and say that we have just had an urgent phone call and must leave immediately, and I’ll pay the bill while you go outside for the taxi. Of course, they know perfectly well, we have no luggage, but we leave insouciantly with panache.’

  Marika nodded gravely. ‘We leave with insouciant panache. Got it.’
>
  Josh threw her dress at her. ‘GO! Shower quickly!’

  In the taxi, Marika suddenly looked vulnerable. ‘I leave at midday tomorrow, back to Durham. I won’t see you at church tomorrow, Josh. Uli’s driving me to London because the Sunday trains are crap from here.’

  ‘I’ve got your mobile,’ Josh said. ‘I’ll ring you while you’re on the train. I’ll try and ring you every day, even if it is a quick one. OK?’

  ‘Don’t lose my number. We can text, too, and I could leave messages, couldn’t I?’

  ‘Of course you can. After my passing out and your finals, we’ll take off. Goa, perhaps – somewhere right away, just the two of us.’

  ‘Don’t forget me, Josh.’

  ‘No chance of that. I’ve been head-over-heels in love with you for weeks. Love at first sight.’

  ‘Well, I loved you before I even spoke to you.’

  ‘Clever girl!’

  They hugged each other until the taxi turned into the married quarters. Marika slipped out and ran to the front door, turned and blew a kiss and was gone.

  Josh could not sleep. He could still smell and feel her in the dark. Would he be able to focus tomorrow? Thank God it was Sunday. Only church parade and curry lunch in the mess. Then a long ride … He thought of home. Charlie, Gabby, Nell. They seemed so far away, like a different life.

  As he began to fall asleep, he saw clearly, in one of those moments when it is difficult to know whether it is fantasy or truth, a glimpse of his own future. He saw himself in an unknown landscape. There was a woman beside him who had a small child by the hand. Her stomach was swollen and distended with another. The dream was erotic and visceral; that woman, those babies, his. The dream or fantasy felt so real and sensual that Josh was desperate to hold on to it in the dark, but it slid away into oblivion leaving a strange hollow place where it had been.

  Chapter 22

  Mark stopped for a moment before he opened his front door. His plane had been delayed and he had rung Veronique to tell her he would make his own way home. Usually one of his daughters came to the airport to meet him, as Veronique did not like driving at night. As he sat in the taxi he marvelled at the way in which a journey home could seem like a small act of loneliness.

  This feeling was immediately enhanced as he put the key into the lock and pushed open the front door. The noise of conversation, of voices raised in rowdy debate, hit him. A wall of sound, not deafening but eager and involved.

  He leant against the inside of the door, outside the pool of light, looking down the hall into a kitchen full of daughters, sons-in-law and children. A small girl sat at the large table among the remnants of a meal, drawing; a bunch of imported pink roses dropped petals on the tablecloth.

  The conversation was political, good-natured and heated. It did not pause or slow, indeed no one had yet noticed him standing in the dark hall watching them. It occurred to Mark that he might be a ghost returning to see how life went on without him, and the answer was that it went on very well.

  The feeling of dislocation he had had in the taxi returned, as if he had opened a stranger’s front door and found himself in the wrong house and the wrong life. He felt a dramatic urge to turn and wrench the door open again and run out into the velvety night.

  The small girl at the table, Mercy, her tongue wedged on her top lip in concentration, raised her head at that moment from her drawing and saw him. She beamed and jumped off her chair, crying, ‘Grampie! Grampie!’

  She ran down the dark hall and Mark caught her, whirled her up in his arms.

  ‘Hi there, tadpole!’

  His youngest daughter, Nereh, peered round the kitchen door.

  ‘Dad! You’re back.’

  Mark moved into the room and Veronique came across the kitchen to kiss him. She smelt of garlic and herbs and her lips tasted of red wine. He turned to three of his daughters, five of his grandchildren, two of his sons-in-law. Everyone talked at once.

  ‘Chéri! We waited for you. Only the children have eaten.’

  ‘What was the flight like?’

  ‘Did you deliver your figurehead?’

  ‘Have you been to the back of beyond?’

  ‘How was London?’

  ‘Grampie, Grampie … look, look, I’ve lost a tooth.’

  ‘Well, I’ve lost two teeth …’

  ‘Grampie, look, I’ve drawn a sailing boat with a head in front, eyes, everything …’

  Helena, Nereh, Inez, Elle. Jean-Pierre and Mike. Mercy, Naimah, Daisy, Violette, and the baby, Flynn, Nereh’s youngest. Tiny Flynn, who would be ruined in this household of women, eventually perpetuating in all his female grandchildren the historic and unfair role of the longed for male child.

  Mark was drowning in a sea of voices, suffocating under happy faces and the sheer volume of noise. He took the wine Inez handed him over the children’s heads. He felt deathly tired.

  ‘Have I time to shower?’ He smiled, ruffling heads, cheerful; jolly, even.

  ‘Go!’ Veronique called, smiling affectionately, turning from the stove to him.

  But she does not see me. When did Veronique last really look at me or try to read what is in my face? Mark willed her to meet his eyes, register his tiredness, but she was already bent to the girls, to her grandchildren.

  ‘Vite! Vite! Clear the table. Elle, fetch a new cloth. Inez; mats, candles. Jean-Pierre, will you see to the wine?’

  Nereh, the baby crooked in her arms, saw her father was white with tiredness. She moved to the door. ‘Dad, shall I run you a bath?’

  They moved out of the kitchen and Nereh shut the noise firmly in. They stood in the dark hall.

  ‘You’re knackered, Dad, you just want to go to bed, don’t you?’

  Mark leant towards her and placed his index finger into the baby’s tiny hand. For a moment, in the light of a passing car, Nereh saw a profound and sudden sadness in her father’s face, then he turned for the stairs.

  ‘I think a shower will jolt me awake. I might fall asleep in a bath, but thank you, honey. Put the hall light on, you might trip with the baby.’

  ‘Dad?’ Nereh called after him. ‘I’ll make sure we all leave straight after supper. I did suggest to Maman it would be better to leave a family meal until the weekend, but … you know Maman.’

  Mark stopped at the top of the stairs. ‘I do.’

  He smiled down at the daughter most like him, at her sweet, open face, dark eyes and tight curls that made her look touchingly young. She grinned back, and then disappeared into the lighted kitchen.

  What is the matter with me? Mark wondered under the shower. Middle-aged angst? These are my children. This is my family.

  Dressed once more in clean shirt and linen trousers, he felt more human, less humourless. He took his mobile phone out of his briefcase and switched it on. It bleeped. A small envelope appeared: HOPE YOU HAD SAFE JOURNEY HOME, it said. Mark smiled and gently deleted the message.

  In bed, later that night, his hand lightly over Veronique’s hip, he thought, I am jetlagged, that is all. All will be well in the morning.

  He woke early. Sunshine was slanted in little leaf patterns across the beige carpet. Veronique was still asleep. He slid out of bed and went downstairs in bare feet. He pushed his feet into somebody’s moccasins, plugged coffee in among the chaos of the kitchen, opened the screen and outer door and padded out into the yard.

  This was the garden he and Veronique had planned together and had filled with plants and tubs and trees over the years. Balls and toys lay on the lawn, wet from the dew. He saw a small rose was trampled and carefully pulled away the broken branch.

  Out under the trees the grass was cold and wet around his ankles. A dove called somewhere. A summer sound. A sound of childhood. Long days running wild, when everything lay ahead, stretching out to a future both terrifying and exciting.

  Everywhere he turned in this garden there was evidence of his children’s children. Swings, play-pit, seesaw. Grass scuffed and trampled by small feet, netbal
l nets.

  He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to visualize an immaculate English lawn, a wooden bench, table and garden chairs. Flowerbeds full of subtle and delicious colours. No sound except the birds singing as he worked in his own peaceful, silent garden, empty of children and the trappings of childhood. Sometimes, just sometimes, empty of his children and his children’s children.

  Mark tried thinking of a time when there was only Veronique in this house. Only he and Veronique eating a meal, having a conversation; and he could not remember that far back.

  He thought of a three-storey house by a river, the noise of traffic a gentle growl. A house devoid of possessions. Empty rooms with sunlight sliding across the polished floor from long windows. He imagined the pieces he would buy to furnish the rooms of that house, that was waiting for him to the sound of water.

  No small footsteps dotting and carrying up the stairs. No toys and piercing cries. No chatter. Peace. Just him in another life.

  Chapter 23

  Isabella stared at herself in the mirror. The dress she wore was beautiful. Sewn into the bodice and gown were hundreds of small pearls. It fitted perfectly to her small waist. Against the darkness of her skin, which her aunt had always disliked, Isabella knew it looked well. She was like a portrait of a grown-up woman she did not recognize.

  She stared into her own eyes as if they belonged to another. During the last few weeks she had lost weight, and her eyes seemed too big for her face and had shadows beneath them.

  Isabella thought of Helena, of how she should be beside her this day. But she would not be here in this room if her mama were alive. She would not be in this house. She would be in her own house about to marry a man she loved. She closed her eyes quickly against her reflection. This was no time to remember Mama.

  She moved to the window and looked out across the garden to the bay. The sea was like glass, too little wind for the white and tan sails of the small boats idling there. She looked across to the far side of Helford Passage. Verdant green fields and woods rose up from the water. She remembered the day she had arrived here, and that, despite her sadness, she had seen how beautiful it was.