‘Mum! I’m at a cafe in Hyderabad. I’ve been in the countryside for so long, I can’t get my head round the city, it’s insane. Last week I was in an Ashram, and I’ve still got the meditations ringing through my ears. This city is crazy, it’s so busy. The view on the screen shifted suddenly, as she lifted her laptop to show Luisa. Grayson started barking and she could hear a car arriving.
‘Damn,’ said Luisa, ‘they’re all coming back.’ The new pool of pancake batter was smoking in the pan, she had flour on her hands and she didn’t want to wreck the computer.
‘Darling, I really want to catch up properly, but there are so many people about to arrive and I’ve burned the pancakes and—’
Luisa was spared the need to cut her daughter off as the screen froze then blacked out. She’d try later.
‘Oh! How did you know to come?’ Kit walked into the kitchen, startling Luisa. ‘I was going to invite you, but I didn’t,’ she said baldly.
‘Thought I’d bring you these back,’ he said pointing to the basket full of roasting tins and plates he was carrying. He leaned to kiss her cheek. ‘You were phenomenal. It was sensational, I don’t know how you do it, and I’m about to write you a large cheque in thanks.’
‘Oh. Yes. Good. I don’t know where everyone is but they’re on their way. Coffee?’ Luisa couldn’t meet his eye. Too embarrassing. It was as though they had slept together. She sneaked a look at him, but he was also determinedly looking elsewhere. Was he embarrassed as well? Did that make it better? Or worse?
‘Where’s everyone?’ Kit opened the door and peered into the garden.
‘Well they’re not out there,’ Luisa snapped.
His eyebrows flew together. ‘Okay,’ he said mildly, and moved the pile of bowls he’d brought off the table, making room for himself to perch there. He rubbed his forehead. Luisa noticed he had circles under his eyes. He was probably hungover. She opened the window. The kitchen had closed in, clogged with steam. There was too much going on, the recklessness she had embraced the night before now felt dangerous. She pressed a glass against her face and took a deep breath. Now was the moment.
‘Kit, I—’
‘Hey there, something smells good.’ Luisa spun around as Tom walked into the room. People flooded in behind him. Luca, Dora and Maddie stepped in from the garden, repeatedly banging the door against the wall until the glass juddered. Luisa wondered if research had found that noise actually was louder when made by teenagers. Mae emerged like a dormouse from the hall and snatched the laptop.
‘Mae. Don’t start on anything,’ pleaded Luisa. ‘The pancakes are ready. It’s time to sit down.’ She flipped the final golden disc and slid it onto the stack in the oven. Everyone was at the table, and the party post-mortem was interspersed with requests for butter, milk, sugar and lemon.
Dora poured a glass of water, and drank it in huge gulps. ‘Sorry, I didn’t think I drank much last night, but I feel like I’m on another planet today.’
Maddie waved her fork, festooning liquid chocolate over the table and her sleeve. ‘Watch out for my laptop,’ shrieked Luisa.
Kit stood up suddenly, cleared his throat and fumbled at the side of his chair.
Amazing, thought Luisa, he’s going to give another speech. Must have got a taste for it last night. She bit her lip, then thought better of her intention to eat nothing, and tucked into a twist of bacon and a mouthful of Luca’s pancake.
‘Mum,’ he muttered. Kit was clearing a space on the over-cluttered table. He placed a cushion on the cleared table in front of him.
‘I need to talk to you all . . . I am . . . Oh, God. Let’s just say I didn’t see what has now become very clear.’ His smile was apologetic. ‘Anyway, I’m going to seize the moment. In the midst of the family.’ He looked vulnerable, young.
Luisa suddenly wondered how old he was. Funny, she’d never thought about it before. He was looking at Tom. Tom stood up, ran a hand through his hair and said something to Kit, their heads close. Luisa didn’t hear his words. She didn’t hear anything except blood thumping in her head. In that moment, time shifted its pace, and her world became no bigger than the distance between Tom and Kit as they stood side by side. The sounds in the room, the movements of cups, food, hands and cutlery, the vapour trail from the kettle, the rhythm of voices stopped. Ceased. Vanished. The plumes of steam that had curled up to the ceiling to hang in festoons evaporated, and within Luisa’s body and mind, the charge of energy and excitement, the exhaustion and the laughter and the fun, all became still. In the midst of this stillness, her gaze met Kit’s. An ache of silence passed between them, subtle and vital as a heartbeat. Tears sprang in Luisa’s eyes, and she dropped her fork on the floor. She bent to retrieve it, a coward’s impulse pulling her down to hide under the table. She straightened herself again. There was no need. Who was she hiding from? What was she hiding? There was nothing. There never had been, there never would be. In the room, movement had begun again.
‘Dad, did you really not know?’ Mae was asking, ‘I mean we did the Second World War in history. How come you didn’t tell us what happened to our grandfather at the end?’
Tom shrugged. ‘You know, it did come up, Mae. Your grandmother, whom you won’t remember really, used to say that my father,’ he paused, looked across at Kit, and their eyes met, ‘our father, lost a whole swathe of time. He came back from the war a couple of years after VE Day, and I don’t know where he’d been. No one did. My mother always said she wouldn’t ask him, she said if he wanted to tell us, he would. So we never asked.’
He dropped a hand on Kit’s shoulder.
Dora, chin propped on her hands, elbows on the table, stared at Kit. ‘We never asked,’ she repeated slowly, ‘but I think Bella knew something.’ She turned to her brother, ‘D’you think Mum knew, Tom?’
Tom sighed, ‘Hard to say. Perhaps she guessed and didn’t want to rock the boat.’
‘Some things are better left unsaid,’ Dora hugged Maddie at her side.
‘A brother from another mother,’ said Luca, his smile spreading as he dragged himself up from his seat and moved between Kit and his father. ‘Uncle Kit. The man from UNCLE. It’s a film, isn’t it?’
‘It was TV first, but it’s a film now. This is the man from Cornwall,’ said Tom.
‘The man with the Lighthouse.’ Luca shook his head.
‘How long have you known this?’ Luisa heard her question hit the room like a felled tree. Or so she thought. No one heard her. She cleared her throat and asked again, ‘Did you know when you came to Norfolk?’
Kit didn’t meet her gaze. He shoved one hand in his pocket, and looked across the table and out of the window to the lawn where Grayson was lying flat on his side, his tail occasionally swatting an invisible fly.
‘I’ve only just realised,’ he said after an endless pause. ‘It was the cushion. When Dora said it had belonged to her father, everything fell together in an instant.’
All eyes flew to the embroidered cushion on the table. ‘It didn’t make any sense to me that my mother had this lighthouse, but when I saw this, it did.’ He ran his fingers over the bright stitches. He shrugged and looked at Dora again.
‘And then there was the painting. You saw it, Dora, you even said it was like one your father did. I brought it with me from Cornwall, like a talisman, I suppose. It was in Mum’s house, and I never really looked at it, but the initials are MM. Michael Marker.’
‘It fits,’ said Dora, tipping back on her chair. ‘It makes sense.’
‘She loved him,’ Luisa found tears rushing, and hid them in her cup of coffee.
Kit nodded, ‘Yes, I think she did. I suppose she didn’t tell me because it wasn’t her story. It was his. Norfolk, the Lighthouse, and in the end, all of you, belonged to him.’
Dora leaned over the cushion with Maddie. ‘Weren’t there any letters?’
‘Ask Bella,’ said Tom. ‘I’ve never seen a thing, but we can have a dig around.’
‘I haven’t s
een anything in my mother’s papers,’ Kit said, ‘but maybe we’ll discover something now that we know what to look for.’
‘Do we?’ Tom opened the back door.
Luisa sat among the breakfast chaos and picked up a strawberry. Its taste pinged her back to the morning, the post-party happiness. Kit was following Tom outside, tapping something into his phone. She shivered, goosebumps along her arms, as all the things she hadn’t done with Kit picked themselves up and stole quietly away, shadows insubstantial as wisps of steam, and vanished into the air.
‘Right,’ she said briskly, ‘basil ice cream it is. Maddie, do you want to help me pick some basil? We’re going to make green ice cream.’ She stood and held a hand out to her niece. ‘I made a mint version the other day,’ she explained, to the top of Maddie’s head, ‘and it gave me the idea. Herb ice cream sounds medieval. It might be medicinal, even.’
‘Eugh. I don’t want medicine ice cream,’ Maddie swung ahead across the lawn, then broke into a run towards the greenhouse. Luisa followed, soothed by the tranquil air. She wasn’t sure what basil’s healing properties were supposed to be, but if she made an infusion with the leaves, the delicacy of the colour, the taste that would be so subtle it would be as much a scent as a flavour. Could be amazing.
Tom was standing in the vegetable garden, alone, hands in his pockets, looking up at a crack in the wall. He patted Maddie’s head absently. She ducked and opened the greenhouse door. ‘I’m looking for a butterfly,’ she called.
‘This needs mending,’ Tom said, his eyes fixed on the wall.
‘Are you okay?’ Luisa’s eyes were on his face, it was inscrutable.
He sighed, but didn’t speak. She tried again. ‘I wasn’t expecting that, were you?’
Tom snorted a laugh. ‘Not really. Nothing’s exactly dull when Kit’s around, is it?’ He raised the lid of the water butt by the greenhouse door and peered in, poking with a stick at the flat green surface. The film broke and ripples spread in gentle circles. Tom pulled the stick out and threw it far across the garden. ‘You know, Tod, I never really thought about my parents having any emotional life. I can’t imagine what my father must have gone through. I was never close to him.’ He bent to lift a broken pane of glass from the path.
Luisa nodded. ‘Or what it was like for your mother. Or Kit’s mother,’ she said.
Tom’s expression was uncertain. He looked young. Much younger than Kit. She suddenly wanted to protect him, to protect all of them.
‘True,’ agreed, Tom. ‘I’m not sure what I make of it. Having a brother I mean. Mae just told me she thinks we should christen Kit,’ he laughed, ‘so the kids have obviously got no problem with the whole thing.’
Luisa pulled a knee-high dandelion with gossamer threads at knee height from the path. ‘That’s not a bad idea. We could do it when Ellie gets back. What would Kit wear, I wonder?’
Tom grinned. ‘Some fabric made by his company? ‘Maybe a robe covered in windmills—’
Luisa touched his shoulder. ‘No, it’s got to be lighthouses!’
Tom’s hand on her back spread warmth, he kissed her and wandered off towards his car.
Maddie emerged from the door to the greenhouse with a jam jar. She slid it under the lid of the water butt to fill it. ‘I’m taking some water to the hens. They like it in their dust bath.’
‘Okay darling.’ Luisa entered the greenhouse, and inhaled deeply. Earthiness hung around the ripening tomatoes, so intense it was almost physical. The aroma mingled with the pungent scent of basil rolling together like some exotic oil poured into warm bathwater. Luisa, picking basil stems, was immersed. She held her bunched basil close to her face and closed her eyes, shutting out everything except the sensuality of a Mediterranean afternoon. A lazy day water ice, basil, tomato and a hint of strawberry. Sultry, sun-kissed summer.
Everyone always said the summers in the war had been incredible. Luisa thought about her own family. Her Italian father, toiling in a stony field in Norfolk, far away from home, from any pungent basil crop or ripe crop of tomatoes. Making spaghetti when he was worn out from a day of hard labour, his need for home tastes and sounds so vital. He sang Puccini, La Bohème was his favourite, she remembered from her own childhood. She wondered what he yearned most for while he was a prisoner of war. It can’t have been home as an actual place, because he stayed on. A toss up then, between love and Italian food, and he had found both with her grandmother. She would make this basil ice cream in his honour. Maybe it would become her signature flavour. She wondered if she would have thought of it under different circumstances, or if she would have missed it. Impossible to know. She placed the basil in a flat wooden box and crouched to select a bunch of tomatoes.
Chapter 11
The months before the baby came were happy. Michael found his day-to-day life in Cornwall had purpose and happiness he had not thought possible. As the country began the slow process of putting itself back together, rebuilding and coming to terms with some of what had happened, the local landscape changed. As the outsider, Michael was well placed to observe these changes. They reflected shifts of perspective and new thinking he experienced within himself, as well as heralding a renewal that gleamed through the tattered veil of rationing and endurance that continued into the 1950s. Britain had undergone seismic change. Across the distance of time, life before the war was unreachable, unimaginable, and impossible to recreate. No one even tried. Years had been spent yearning for this time after the war, and now it was here, it was all the country could do to keep moving forward. Rebuilding was slow, painstaking and beset by lack of money and lack of manpower.
In Cornwall, Michael and Arthur worked together, using driftwood, and ingenuity to resurrect studios and potteries for the expanding colony of artists who turned up in ones and twos from all over the country. In London and other cities, the constant difficulty of living in bombed streets with the haunting reminders of derelict houses, shops and businesses crumpled into rubble, made it difficult to move on from the war. Painters, writers, artists found the fractured urban environments impossible to work in. The reputation of St Ives, through artists like Naum Gabo, Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson was growing fast. Everyone came. Michael was under no illusions that his part was significant. He was probably more vital to William Coyne, digging over and planting up the flower terraces, but he liked the physical act of making things, building spaces, and he was becoming good at it. So he was quick to accept whatever carpentry and building work came his way, without ever missing his days with William. To be busy and to be useful was his daily aim. Beyond that there was nothing.
An old mill on the hill above Newlyn, derelict since before the war, was stripped out by a group of potters, enamellers and printmakers. Michael and Arthur worked through long winter evenings, partitioning the spaces and making rough doors for each new studio. They planned to finish the work on the shortest day of the year.
Michael walked there through the darkness before dawn, and saw the sun rise in streaks of red and orange, on fire in the windowpanes of houses and shops, shining a path through the sea, and he felt this rich, deep glow might have come from within him. He had a role, he was providing. Felicity needed him, he had friends and work. Soon there would be a baby who would need him too. He liked the routine that his life had taken on.
That morning, as he did every day, he had got up in the dark. He went down to the kitchen to make tea, and the early morning kitchen was like a womb, warmed by the embers still flickering in the stove. The chimney rushing and whispering with the odd gust of wind, the tiled floor was warm underfoot like the earth would be in summer. The sputter of the tap as he filled the kettle, the whine of it on the stove, like a distant engine notching up the gears as the water heated within, even the luxurious sound of Rations purring on the cushion on the chair in the window, were familiar to him now, the fabric of his daily life. He made the tea, tucking the pot under the crocheted tea cosy Verity had made for them. He added mugs, a small jug of milk
and a teaspoon to the tray and took it up the narrow staircase to Felicity. With the daily repetition of these simple rituals, Michael’s memories and his conscience were ebbing, drawing the vestiges of his old life away, sucking them out of him, out of the house, and away into the depths of the sea to sink and lie dormant for evermore. Michael was planting himself, putting down roots, and the tendrils of love and intimacy clung to the slate and the stony soil of this peninsula.
The bedroom was silent, a sliver of dawn between the curtains bright in the darkness. Michael threw twigs on to the embers from the night before, and the fire crackled, throwing a gleam across the hearth.
Felicity sat up, and smiled sleepily. ‘Hey, soldier, have I missed anything?’
‘Not much, it’s wild and windy, you should go back to sleep for a bit longer.’
‘I will if you will,’ she teased.
Michael sat on the bed, handed her a cup. ‘I would if I could.’
Felicity sipped the tea. ‘I’ve only got a bit of time this morning. I want to finish the peacock print today.’
She smoothed the quilt. Michael caught her hand. He loved the way her fingers were always dyed with at least two of the colours she was working with. Purple had faded beneath deep emerald, and tiny splashes of both freckled her wrist.
‘Honey, if I get back into bed with you, there’ll be no time for peacocks,’ he drawled, faking an American accent. Of course he wanted to climb back under the covers with her, to be with her, to hold her. Felicity was everything to him, she had made his life different, better than it could ever have otherwise been. Sometimes he succumbed, dived back beneath the heavy blankets and pulled her on top of him, seizing precious moments of skin touching skin, touching the warm curve of her belly growing with their child, their eyes meeting in the silence of the early morning, enthralled by every movement and every moment of stillness between them. Today, though, he resisted. He dragged on his clothes, tucking layers of vest and shirt into the brown tweed trousers he held up with a pair of red braces. Even his cap was on before he let himself reach for her again. Clad in the armour of the day he wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her neck. She smelled of wintersweet and something musky, the essence of passion, he thought. Her heartbeat was a magnet, she brought him a sense of peace he’d thought he’d never know again. There were times, such as last night when they had made love and Felicity was curled against him so her breathing felt like his own, that Michael fell asleep wondering what on earth would have happened to him if he hadn’t met her.
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