Garden of Stars

by Rose Alexander

  John has suggested that we have a weekend away, that we go to the nearby town of Amarante and relax for a day or so. He is so tired; he’s been working hard and business is getting tougher. There is unease in Europe, with Britain and France rearming hurriedly, and because of his English connections, John is more aware of the tension and possible trouble that lies ahead than most of his Portuguese colleagues. After all, his brother is in the RAF, and the stories he is telling are far from reassuring.

  I am worried too – worried because John is, and also through terror of the unknown, of what might happen if Europe or the world goes to war again. I know that John will not stand by and watch, and however confused my feelings for him as a husband, I love him as a person, and I wish no harm to him, ever. Indeed, I fear for him and all the other men who will inevitably be drawn into any conflict that might arise. I recall watching the bacalhoeiro preparing to depart on the first day of our married life and how sure I was, then, that John would always be safe. I was sure of other things, too.

  Nothing, absolutely nothing at all, seems that certain any more.

  The proposed trip to Amarante is something to look forward to and perhaps exactly what we need. A change is as good as a rest, I said to myself, as John poured forth the proposed arrangements and everything we would do there.

  “I’ll sort out a hotel – I’m sure one of the boys in the office will be able to recommend somewhere – we’ll go the weekend after next,” he said, consulting his pocket diary. “And when we get there – I want to eat good food, drink excellent wine and make love to my beautiful wife. Are you happy with that plan?”

  “Of course.” I smiled brightly, but inside I could feel my attempt at high spirits deserting me. Making love these days is tinged with sadness and desperation in equal measure. Maybe even irritation. And however much John insists that it isn’t important, that he is sure it will happen sooner or later, I know that he is sorely disappointed that I am still not pregnant. And myself? More than disappointed. So much, much more.

  I had little to do over the next few days – until today. I was reading a periodical of John’s that I hadn’t the slightest bit of interest in when the doorbell rang. It was the maid’s afternoon off, so I listlessly got up to answer it. I was hardly paying attention as I swung the door open, assuming it would be a neighbour or perhaps one of those people who are always collecting money for good causes.

  “Hello, Inês.”

  His voice, his fair, freckled face, his shock of red hair, came so much out of the blue that my hand flew up involuntarily to my mouth and a hot flush spread through my veins.

  “Edmund!”

  I noticed that his visage seemed in some inexplicable way both bright with joy and dull with sadness. Whatever – it was so familiar, so much missed, so unforgotten.

  “I’m sorry to call on you unexpectedly; I know you asked me not to contact you again.”

  In my shock and amazement at seeing him, I had forgotten all of this. I attempted to pull myself together, drawing myself up to my – not very commanding – height in an effort to seem in control of the situation, whilst inside my heart was pounding and my stomach turning somersaults.

  I led him into the drawing room and offered him coffee, and then, registering the pallor of his complexion, changed the offer to madeira. He nodded his acceptance, seeming hardly able to speak. I found the bottle, removed the cork and placed it on the silver tray.

  “No two corks are alike,” he announced, picking it up and examining it as I poured the syrupy golden liquid. He spoke as if at a scientific conference where his job was to deliver information to interested strangers. “All are unique.”

  He took the glass I proffered towards him.

  “Like people. Like women.”

  He drank the entire contents of the glass in one gulp. It seemed to give him courage and he looked me in the eye for the first time since he had arrived. “There’s no one in the world like you.”

  I felt completely overwhelmed; I couldn’t think of anything to say. I drank my madeira uncharacteristically quickly, too.

  “I’ve come to say goodbye.”

  So this was the reason for his visit. With shaking hands, I put my glass onto the table.

  “Where are you going?” I asked, working hard to quell the tremor in my voice. My mind flashed ahead to possible destinations. He was returning to England, presumably. Maybe he had a new post in one of the schools he had mentioned to me once or twice during our lessons; was it Winchester he had talked about? Windsor? My memory, usually so sharp, deserted me and my mind was nothing but fuzz.

  “Brisbane,” he replied, staring first at the floor and then out of the window.

  “Brisbane!” I heard how shrill and sharp my voice sounded. I searched frantically through my mind for any knowledge of this place. Was it in southern England, or the north? And then I realised.

  “Do you mean – Australia? Brisbane in Australia?”

  Edmund circled his hat round and round in his hands, crushing the brim between his elegant fingers. “I do.” All his years in Portugal had caused him to speak English as if it were Portuguese, replying with the verb as we do rather than simply ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

  I turned away. I rested my hands on the table to steady myself, leaving damp fingerprints on the high sheen. What difference did it make where he was going, really?

  “I had to see you one more time before I left.” Edmund sounded much calmer now he had got out the information he had come to convey. Just his hands, still turning and turning the hat, betrayed the emotion that strained in every pore of his being. “I had to say goodbye.”

  I raised my black eyes to his blue ones. I would never see him again, after today, after this quiet afternoon at the beginning of summer. Never.

  I invited him to stay awhile.

  Shutting the door behind him a few hours later, I flattened my palms against the smooth wood and rested my head forwards. A sickness rose inside me and I crumpled to the floor where I lay, too sad for tears, on the cool tiles.

  Australia. So far. So impossibly, unbelievably distant.

  Too far.

  A crumb of raw cork lay on the tiles beside me. It must have fallen when I gave Edmund the piece of bark that had been in the drawer in the table ever since my arrival in Porto, all through our hours of lessons when we had got to know each other so well. I had wanted him to take it. I knew he would understand.

  Lying on the floor I rubbed the cork between my fingers and watched it disintegrate and disperse in tiny pinpricks of dust across the tiles. I was still there when John got home, and only just managed to jump up in time to let him in. Ushering him to his chair, I disappeared into the kitchen to prepare our evening meal, glad of the fact that he never offers to help so solitude, for a few more minutes, was mine.

  20

  London, 2010

  Sarah’s immediate reaction to what she was reading was to swear, forcefully, out loud. The reasons that Inês might have for wanting her to read the journal were getting more complicated the further along she got, not less. All the indications were that Inês had consummated her relationship with Edmund, knowing she was about to lose him to the other side of the world. This knowledge made Sarah reconsider everything, all the comments that Inês had made recently, everything she seemed to have implied or hinted at. Was she trying to tell Sarah that she should not let love desert her as Inês herself had? Australia, in the 1930s, must have been a destination of impossible distance, precluding any possibility of reunion or chance meeting ever again. But was Canada in the 21st century any different? It somehow didn’t feel so. The meaning of it all seemed more elusive than ever.

  Downstairs in the kitchen, Hugo had opened the bottle of vinho verde she’d bought at the Portuguese deli on Kentish Town Road. It was telling, Sarah contemplated as she poured herself a glass, how she was not tempted at all to share Inês’s story with him, but did long for Scott to know, for Scott’s insight and understanding.

&nb
sp; Hugo began rummaging in one of the kitchen cupboards.

  “What are you looking for?” asked Sarah, knowing exactly the answer to her question. Hugo didn’t reply, but began to root around in the bread bin instead.

  “Hugo, there aren’t any snacks. Sorry.”

  “No, there aren’t. I can see that.” He closed the sliding metal lid of the bread bin with a sharp clang. “What’s for dinner? I’m starving.”

  “Well, amazingly, there was nothing in the fridge that was capable of leaping into the oven and cooking itself. So there’s no dinner.” Sarah had her back to him and noisily began to wash up the pots and pans from the children’s tea. “I didn’t manage to get to the shops today,” she added.

  “Well, I could have picked up some stuff, if you’d told me that there wasn’t anything.”

  You could have asked, Sarah wanted to retort. Instead, she said nothing, just continued with her task, placing a saucepan onto the draining board with exaggerated precision, conscious of the way the conversation was spiralling downwards, leading them into a petty quarrel that she didn’t want to have but seemed powerless to prevent.

  “OK, I get the picture.” Hugo retrieved the stash of take away menus tucked behind the toaster and started flicking through them. “Shall I order a curry, then?”

  Sarah concentrated on keeping her voice light and even. “It’s a bit late for curry, I think. Too heavy. I’ll find something to cook. Omelette or something.” She opened the fridge. “If we’ve got any eggs,” she continued, doubtfully.

  “That sounds exciting.” The sarcasm in Hugo’s voice was unnecessary, in Sarah’s opinion. She was aware of her cheeks reddening in anger. Rather than mollifying the situation, suggesting she’d scratch a meal together seemed only to have made matters worse.

  “Hugo, you could have thought about dinner,” she snapped back, unable to stop herself. “You could have offered to cook. You could have picked something up on the way back from the office without me having to ask you to. You could have done all of those things tonight, or any other night of our life together, but you never do and you never have.” Sarah tore off her rubber washing-up gloves and slapped them emphatically down onto the edge of the sink. “Now there’s nothing to eat and you’re cross with me.”

  “I’m not cross with you about the dinner. I’m cross with you about…about…well,” Hugo shoved the menus back behind the toaster, struggling to find the words he was looking for. “You never used to complain about doing the cooking,” he concluded, weakly.

  “Well I am now.”

  Sarah turned away to pick up a pile of dirty tea towels from the worktop and shove them into the washing machine. She emptied the dryer and headed to the stairs, arms full of clothes. In her bedroom, she sat down on the bed, her head in her hands. She could feel herself losing her grip, letting go of the precarious hold she had on keeping everything together, pretending that everything was all right. Her predictable, comprehensible life seemed to be slipping through her fingers like fast-flowing water. And the feeling was terrifying.

  Half an hour later, she went downstairs and cooked some pasta. She put the bowls down on the table, together with the jar of pesto. They ate in silence. Sarah gazed intently at her glass of vinho verde, observing how the tiny bubbles attached to the sides of the glass before detaching and fizzing upwards.

  We don’t seem to have anything in common any more, to be able to agree on anything. We’ve nothing to say to each other. When did that happen? How?

  When they had finished, as she began to clear away, Hugo put his arms around her. “Come on, let’s go upstairs. We can deal with all that tomorrow.”

  Sarah released herself from his embrace, shoved a stray plate into the dishwasher and turned to look at her husband.

  “It’s been a long day and I’m tired,” she sighed. “I’m sorry, I just want to go to bed and sleep.” The dishwasher’s familiar rumble started up as she pressed the button. She pushed the cork firmly into the wine bottle, knowing that by morning its delicious effervescence would have gone.

  “Night, night.”

  Scott suggested they videocall and, using the journal and Inês’s assertion that ‘we all only have the one life’ as permission, Sarah agreed. She had decided not to read any more of it for a while, unconsciously knowing, but not admitting to herself, that she didn’t want to come across anything that took that permission away. Inês had gone for a fortnight’s stay in the Peak District with John’s brother and his wife, Sarah’s grandfather and grandmother, as she did every summer. It was strange for Sarah, the only time in the whole year that she was not responsible for taking care of Inês. Her absence gave Sarah more time, time that she could make available for Scott.

  The first videocall, each sitting in their offices so many miles apart, enabled a connection that faceless communication could not match. Sarah’s heart leapt to see Scott’s unhurried smile, directed at her alone, to watch as he locked his long fingers together, put them behind his head and leant back in his chair. She was almost with him, living and breathing him as she so wished to do.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  Sarah looked down and fiddled with her headphones lead. “I miss you.”

  There was a slight delay on the line and then his reply came through. “Me too, you.”

  Sarah could see the Vancouver cityscape through the picture windows behind him; soaring skyscrapers, the distant mountains beyond. He asked about her writing; she about his work. The chat was relaxed and casual on the surface, but underneath tensions, desires and emotions seethed and bubbled. And then Scott’s phone was ringing, loud and insistent, and he had to go, the red type that said he was offline popping up on the screen. It was all over so quickly and left Sarah longing for more.

  Contact with Scott became Sarah’s lifeline; the only thing that gave meaning to each passing day. But with the pleasure came the pain, of hearing about his weekends with his family, of imagining him sleeping, eating, living, without her. And sometimes she felt scared, about how easy it was to live two lives, be two people, and not know any more who was the one she wanted to be, or ought to be. Articles accumulated on her desk, waiting for completion, but seeming inconsequential and insignificant.

  The weather was still wonderful, the summer a hot one. Outside Sarah’s window, the people walking along the pavement were dressed for the heat; women in maxi dresses with thin spaghetti straps, men in sleeveless T-shirts and many-pocketed shorts. The children had broken up and were at the local summer holiday club, loving their days spent in sandpits and paddling pools and the adventure playground.

  Sarah took to roaming the Heath and Parliament Hill, going over and over everything in her head and getting nowhere. One day she stopped to gaze up at the blue expanse of sky above the green of trees and grass, and to wonder if the answer lay up there, somewhere, if only she could find it.

  Walking unseeingly along the path she had to veer abruptly to the side as a small boy came racing up the hill, galloping as if on horseback and firing a stick-gun. Sarah watched as he ran and shouted, his flashing trainers sending out bullets of light. Perhaps Hugo and Scott should fight a duel, she thought, with a grim snort of silent disdain, prove who wanted her and deserved her the most. Pistols at dawn! She laughed out loud, a laugh that turned to bitter tears at the farcical absurdity of it all.

  Her secret seemed to hang more heavily upon her every day, to be harder to keep and to manage. Even though she had revealed a part of the story to Inês, she could not tell her everything. She couldn’t tell any of her local friends, such as Lorna, either – it was too close to home, too likely that someone would let the cat out of the bag. She phoned Carrie.

  “Can you get out for a couple of hours?”

  “Who’s asking?”

  “Me. Sarah. Your old and very dear friend.”

  They met at Bar Italia in Frith Street. The pavements were crowded with chairs and tables and thronged with people, teenage tourists in skimpy clothing explo
ring Soho getting in the way of office workers searching for a lunchtime sandwich.

  “I need to talk to someone,” Sarah blurted out, as soon as the waitress had brought their coffees. “I’ve known you for so long, and you’re the only one who might understand. I didn’t lie to you about what happened with Scott that weekend in Portugal – I didn’t sleep with him, I swear. But – I did spend the weekend with him, he came with me to Porto, we – we kissed.”

  Carrie was silent, considering Sarah’s words. She took a measured sip from her bowl-sized cup. “I see.”

  Sarah remembered how Carrie always used to deal with other people’s problems in the Lisbon days – impatiently, uncompromisingly – and realised that she must be desperate to have chosen her to confide in. There just didn’t seem to be anyone else.

  “And?” continued Carrie, her voice a mixture of curiosity and disapproval.

  “It was so amazing. It was like we last saw each other two weeks ago, not twenty years. It was as if the other half of me just walked into the room. I feel that he can see into my soul. I know that sounds sentimental and melodramatic, but that’s how it was. It felt so comfortable, so right,” Sarah had been enthusiastic, the words pouring out. Now her voice tailed off. “But there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  Carrie forehead furrowed in bewilderment. “What do you mean, nothing you can do? About what?”

  “Exactly that. There’s nothing we can do about any of it.” Sarah’s throat was tight, her voice wavering now.

  “Gosh, Sarah, you’re throwing an awful lot of stuff at me in a very short space of time. Brain cells are in short supply right now. Ouch!” Carrie’s frown deepened and she rubbed her belly. “Sorry, kicking.”

  “Poor you. Ruby did it all the time, it was awful.” Sarah was glad of the diversion, but Carrie was not deflected for long.

  “So where has this come from?” she demanded, once her baby was still again. “Is it just seeing him in Portugal? I thought he was long forgotten, you’ve never mentioned him once in all these years, I had no idea…”