by Liz Fenwick
‘It’s lovely.’
‘Yes, it is.’ He paused. ‘It’s been bothering me.’ He walked to the window facing the river and looked out. ‘It has been knocking away at the back of my mind, saying this style is familiar but . . .’ He turned around and looked at Jaunty, waiting.
‘Yes, I see what you mean.’ She got up and placed the painting on the bed and left the studio.
Nine
Jaunty sat at her desk. The afternoon was grey with no breaks in the clouds. The river reflected the flatness. She had passed Gabe on her way out to the studio. She looked as if she was about to speak but had said nothing in the end. Life was passing her by before it had even begun. Jaunty had had life but then retreated into survival mode. But had she had any choice? No. Today it would be different, but back then there were very few choices available to her.
It was chaos in St Nazaire. Panic ruled and it became clear that Jean wouldn’t get on the boat. Things were dire. The Nazis were bombing and we were, well and truly, in the terrifying midst of war. I looked at the fear in Jean’s eyes. She would never survive in France and I knew what I had to do. We were similar enough in appearance that the photograph in my passport could be her. Once the boarding began I thrust my ticket and my papers into her hands and grabbed hers.
When she began to protest, I put my finger over her mouth. I told her what she already knew. I had a chance of survival here in France and she didn’t. I told her I would find a way back to England. She was to let my father know I was alive and that I would do my best to get home. Her eyes widened and before she could do or say anything else I fled into the crowd and began to make a plan. I knew staying in a large port was not going to be safe.
Jaunty took a breath. Her chest was tight. She could smell the harbour, the scent of seaweed and rotting fish. She sat back and shook her head. She should remember the smell of burning, but no, it was fish she could smell. How Jean had hated fish and Jaunty had sent Jean to her death in the sea. She closed her eyes. What else could she have done? Jean, even if she’d survived the attack on the Lancastria, just before 4 o’clock that afternoon, couldn’t swim. Jaunty had prayed for a long time that Jean had been killed instantly and hadn’t drowned.
Jaunty did not want to think of drowning. She must continue writing.
I was alone with someone else’s passport in an occupied country. I had some money and a bit of jewellery along with a set of watercolours. Not exactly the best tools for survival. However, I knew I needed to become someone else and not someone English. Part of it wouldn’t be difficult. I was fluent in French and I knew Paris like the back of my hand.
There is much I could say, but I find I’m reluctant to dwell on some parts of the past. But you, Gabriella, need to know at least the minimum to understand how I came to be the woman you know as your grandmother. One night in a café, I met a Frenchman who was willing to help me and had the connections needed. I am not proud of what I did in return – just thinking about it makes me feel ill. However, after handing over my body, most of my jewellery and the watercolours, I had French papers. As quickly as I could, I left the port and headed to the coast of Brittany where I felt I had the best chance of getting back to England.
Eventually I found work and accommodation in a village on the coast. It was simple to be an art student from Paris because that is what I had been, although that part of my life suddenly felt very far away. Before those dreadful days I had never realised what a sheltered and protected life I had lived. Although life in Paris was wild and I had thought I was the most sophisticated woman, a few weeks travelling alone through occupied France changed any view I had of myself. I was simply a naïve young woman of nineteen who longed to be safe with my mother in New York or even dodging bombs with my father in London. Anything would have been preferable to being someone else in an occupied country with no idea of who to contact or how to leave France. A month before I would have laughed at myself. Then, I foolishly thought I had all the connections in the world and they would save me.
I kept to myself and no one questioned me. I got a job working in a bar and rented a box room from a fisherman’s widow. It was the closest thing I could do to become invisible – hiding in plain sight. At night I would lie awake and pray for my parents, for Alex and for Jean. My parents would be grieving for me, believing their daughter had been lost with the other 4,000 souls on the Lancastria and I had no way to contact them. Each day I would visit the church and pray. The young curate would try and engage me in conversation but I always managed to slip away. I worked on the basis that the fewer people I allowed near me the safer I was, although the whole time I listened to every conversation, including that of the Nazis, when they arrived in the town. The more information I had, the safer I felt.
In the bar, I would chat with the soldiers grudgingly – or so I made it appear. It was a fine balance. I was fluent in German but told no one, knowing that that way the soldiers would talk freely in front of me and I would hear things. Slowly it dawned on me that some of the information I was overhearing could be useful to the allies.
By that time I’d been working in the bar about a year and knew all the locals. It was the hub of the village and I guessed that a shopkeeper, Richard Mauvieux, was the man I should contact for the resistance. The whispers I’d heard proved to be correct. He was the local leader and I began to feed information through him.
A stiff breeze howled through the pines as Gabe walked to the studio. The door was halfway open and, stopping just outside, she peered in and saw Fin flipping through the canvases stacked against the wall. She froze. What on earth was he doing? He had no right. She marched in.
He looked up and smiled. ‘Jaunty is an outstanding artist.’
Gabe took a step back. ‘Yes. Yes, she is.’ Of course, she thought, what human wouldn’t be curious about the paintings of a famous artist if they were sleeping among them? Why must she always think the worst of people?
He glanced at the music in her hand. ‘You’d like to use the piano?’
‘Yes, please.’ Gabe hovered near the doorway.
‘No problem. I’ll get out of your way.’ He picked up a file and his phone and Gabe backed out of the studio to let him pass, but his arm still managed to touch hers. She held her breath until the feeling aroused had passed. She closed the door firmly behind her and sat at the piano. She played scales, checking to make sure the tuner had done his job and that her hand was up to something more rigorous. She then launched into a Scriabin Etude.
When she was finished she dropped her head on the piano and let her mind go blank. She wasn’t sure how long she had been sitting there when she heard a tapping on the door.
‘Come in.’ She sat up.
The door opened and Gabe prepared to face Fin. But it was Max Opie.
‘Hi.’
She blinked.
‘I asked about you in the shop,’ he said, stepping tentatively through the doorway.
‘Ah.’
He cast a glance around the room and stopped at the view. ‘You’re no amateur.’
Gabe shrugged. She was in no-man’s-land. ‘Not a professional either, really.’
‘Interesting.’ He turned to her.
‘Not interesting at all.’ Gabe stood up and turned over the score that she had intended to work on once she had warmed up. He had been staring at it.
‘If you say so, but no amateur plays Scriabin like that.’ He smiled.
‘I am only a professional musician in that I compose music for ads.’
He leaned against the piano. ‘It pays the rent?’
‘Well, yes.’ Gabe pushed the stool under the piano. ‘How can I help?’
‘I need a soprano.’ He smiled and hooked his thumbs into the pockets on his waistcoat.
Gabe shook her head. ‘Well, you’ve come to the wrong place.’
He stood straight and pushed his satchel
behind his back. ‘I haven’t.’
‘Look, I’m not some lost Cinderella looking for her place in a choir.’ She walked to the window and watched the cormorant dive into the fast-flowing surface.
‘I googled you.’
Gabe’s eyes opened wide. ‘Surely you are not that short of sopranos in Cornwall.’
‘No, there are many wonderful voices, and up-and-coming ones like Hannah. But I am composing an opera and I need a fully fledged professional soprano so that I can listen to it being performed the way it should be.’
Gabe looked at her fingers. To sing, to sing something new . . . Her hands began to shake. She looked up. The river’s surface was disturbed and the swell still lingered from the storm. The tide was on its way out and the east wind was blowing in the opposite direction. She felt like the water, being pulled and pushed into two different directions. To sing again, joy.
He joined her at the window. ‘You wouldn’t be singing in front of anyone but me.’
His hand touched her arm. She recoiled. No.
‘Sorry,’ he said. He took a few steps back.
Max wasn’t the man who had raped her. He looked like a little boy, so eager. She took a deep breath. ‘Can you leave the work with me and let me think about it?’
He smiled. ‘Of course.’ He picked a pencil off a shelf and scratched down his number on the score. ‘Give me a call in a few days.’ He began walking out but then stopped and turned. ‘What an amazing studio. I’ve always loved your grandmother’s work.’
‘Thank you.’ She watched him leave and when he was out of sight she picked up the piece. Her fingers ran over the notes on the first page. She could hear it in her head. Before long she was humming and then singing. The piece could have been written for her. She sat at the piano and played the score.
Random notes reached Jaunty, then drifted away on the breeze. She squeezed the pen between her fingers and watched the blood drain away. She must hold on to her thoughts. Clarity. Just tell the facts. But Jaunty wasn’t sure what was fact and what was fiction. Things were slipping from her even now.
I had begun to pass information on to the resistance. It had taken a year but they had begun to trust me. I didn’t socialise at all and made sure that no one had any reason to pay attention to me. As much as possible I was simply the woman who worked at the bar. For another year this is how I survived. Then, having provided good information, I became more a part of the team and eventually I was asked to meet Alain, the area coordinator. Everyone always spoke of him in hushed tones.
Gabriella, I thought he would dismiss me. But my small role had become so important to me. It made me feel less awful about Jean and about the pain I knew my parents must be experiencing.
The room is filled with cigarette smoke. I breathe deeply and rub my hands on my skirt. I long for one as I practise what I will say to Alain. I look up when I hear a knock and my breath catches. I am paralysed. Alex stands at the door. Blood drains from his face.
He doesn’t move but continues to stare. Our eyes lock. I will myself to move but nothing happens. He closes the door. I find my feet and I am in his arms. I taste him. I feel him. I am against the wall and he is in me. I am complete.
Thank God no one was with us to witness my reunion with Alex. I was alive. He was alive, and for the moment that was all that mattered. After that meeting, my role increased. I would like to say it did because I was good, but truly it was so that Alex and I had reasons to be together and those infrequent reunions kept me sane. It became harder to pretend to myself and to others that I didn’t have joy when I was so full of love. But it was vital for me to remain invisible, boring, the sort of woman no one takes any notice of.
In a world that was so wrong he was my joy, my passion. When I wasn’t with him I trained myself not to think about him. It was so important. No one knew that we knew each other outside of France and we never spoke in English and we never spoke of home. All that longing went into our lovemaking.
Forgive me, Gabriella, I have wandered off again. I do want you to know that I did do something useful during the war because I fear that you will look on my life and see only its lies. At least then it was more than the lies, or maybe it was then that the lies mattered the most.
Jaunty lifted her pen when she heard a car on the track, but it didn’t turn down the drive. Gabriella. Jaunty understood loneliness because it was all she had felt after the war and soon became all she craved. By the end of the war she had loved too much.
Love, promises, desire . . . gone . . .
Jaunty looked up when she heard Fin tap on her door. She put the book aside and called to him to come in.
He stood by the window looking out at the water. He turned to her. ‘Those pre-war paintings aren’t yours, are they?’
Jaunty placed her fingers together. She could lie but she had done that enough. She stood. ‘No.’
A slow smile spread across Fin’s face. Jaunty knew that she had solved his puzzle. But now that he had an answer what would he do with it? There was a knock at the door.
‘I’ll get it.’ Fin disappeared.
Jaunty walked through to the sitting room, considering what should happen next. Above all Gabriella must not be hurt. Jaunty looked at her paintings on the sitting-room wall. The deception had been obvious for years for anyone who really wanted to see it. Jaunty felt a twinge, reached for the door handle, and fell to the ground.
Gabe sang the scales quietly, building until her voice began to work properly. The score was brilliant and her heart begged her to sing it. The libretto was based on the story of the Lovers of Porthgwarra. She remembered reading the tale years ago in an old book of Jaunty’s, Popular Romances of the West of England by Robert Hunt. Max had captured the lovers’ anguish at being forced to separate and the parents’ anger and prejudice beautifully. On the keys her fingers flowed through the opening bars, then she sang.
She lost herself in the music. She was Nancy, the maid of Porthgwarra and her lover, William, was across the sea. They had promised each other to remain true, that they would be together in three years, no matter what. Gabe forgot her location, the time – everything was gone and she sat on the rocks above the sea while the incoming tide swirled around her, taking her life but bringing William to her. The slow sound of a steady clapping broke into her trance. Spinning towards the sound, Gabe found Fin and Max standing by the door.
‘Sorry to interrupt but the doctor is with your grandmother.’
Words of anger that were about to spill from her mouth died and she ran, pushing past both men. How long had she been singing? She had no idea. It had absorbed her totally.
Reaching Jaunty’s bedroom she found the doctor speaking with her grandmother.
‘Ah, there you are, Gabriella.’ Dr Winslade looked up from where he was sitting on the side of the bed. ‘Your grandmother has had a minor heart attack.’
Gabe stopped moving.
‘Don’t worry. It’s happened before and she refuses to have any treatment for it. She and I have had this battle many times and I will give you your chance to argue with her – but in truth there is little that we can do now other than to make sure she takes her medication and doesn’t over-exert herself.’ He stood and picked up Jaunty’s hand.
‘Listen to Gabriella even if you won’t listen to me.’
Gabe looked at her grandmother. The bed seemed to have absorbed Jaunty into it. She could barely be seen under the eiderdown and Gabe knew that whether she wanted it or not, Jaunty was slipping away from her. ‘Thank you, Dr Winslade.’
He nodded and left them. Gabe sat on the edge of the bed.
‘Don’t Jaunty me,’ her grandmother said.
‘I didn’t say a word,’ Gabe said gently, pushing a strand of hair off Jaunty’s cheek.
‘You were about to.’ Jaunty smiled tiredly. ‘But I am old, Gabriella. Let me go . . .
’
Gabe swallowed but didn’t answer. She turned away and saw Fin in the doorway. He must have called the doctor. She had been lost in the world of the music and her grandmother could have died. From now on she must stick with the music she got paid to create, not waste time and energy on stuff that didn’t belong in her life any more.
‘You look tired.’ Gabe placed a glass of water on the bedside table.
‘I am.’ Jaunty’s voice was a whisper.
‘Get some rest.’
Jaunty closed her eyes and Gabe prayed it wasn’t for the last time. She stood, looking about the room, and her glance was drawn outside to the trees, which seemed to hold the room in their embrace. Tonight the wind rushed from the north, roaring through the pine needles and rattling the windows. She could feel the draught. She pulled the curtains closed and walked into the sitting room. Fin and Max were sitting on the sofa with the teapot in front of them, looking well acquainted.
‘Thought you might need tea.’ Fin picked up the pot and poured.
Gabe took a step back, offended. This was her home, not his. But then immediately she knew she was being ridiculous. It was tea and he was right: she needed a cup. ‘Thanks.’ She sat opposite them. ‘Thank you for acting so quickly, Fin. I should have been here.’
‘You can’t be here all the time and, besides, I was.’ He handed her a mug.
Gabe bit her lip. This was true. Maybe she did need help, but it didn’t have to be him. She turned to Max. ‘And you?’
‘I was walking down the path when I heard Fin swear.’
‘Ah.’ She sipped the tea. ‘Thank you for your help.’
‘No problem. Happy to.’ He nodded. ‘You totally got the music.’
Gabe closed her eyes. She had forgotten that. They had heard her. They had stood and listened while Jaunty was with the doctor. Her muscles tensed and her toes curled. ‘Yes, well, it’s a beautiful piece but I don’t think I can help you.’
