Another Life: Escape to Cornwall with this gripping, emotional, page-turning read

Who would have thought Josh would become a soldier, not a farmer? Who could have guessed he could permanently leave the farm he loved, the friends he had grown up with? She slipped the postcard into her pocket. She loved Josh with a fierce love and pride and was suddenly shocked at her own duplicity.

She understood exactly why Josh had turned his back on the farm. How could she, of all people, not feel honest and grateful that he had needed more than a lifetime embedded in the harsh Cornish landscape? That he had chosen not to be smothered by the seasons, the weather, disease, and animal husbandry.

She would have been bitterly disappointed if he had grown up incurious about anything outside the parochial world in which he had spent his childhood. There would be no more grandchildren, she had had only one chance to instil in him a need for something outside the farm and county, a craving to learn; for him to soak up like a sponge all that a country childhood had made him, by distance, ignorant of.

She had taught him about paintings, about art, about conserving the past, the environment; all that she herself felt passionate about. Gabby had given him a ferocious love of books and Charlie an abiding pride in the land they owned. This was why Charlie had difficulty in understanding how Josh could turn his back on the physical thrill of working land that had belonged to four generations of his family.

Yet, Josh, the scholarship boy, had come away from university with a first and gone straight to Sandhurst. Nell found it mystifying. It was also humbling. What right had she to try to mould Josh, from a baby, to compromise? Here she was, believing she had widened his horizons when he would have certainly done so without her help. Josh had always seemed to know what he wanted from life. Possibly, it was away from the two women who loved him, in a way, Nell had begun to realize since he had left, that might well have been suffocating.

She and Gabby had each other, their restoration work, and Charlie. Josh must forge his own life. Nell smiled. The lorries had gone, the cows were coming up the lane for milking. Soon Gabby would be home to tell of her day.

She took Josh’s postcard out of her pocket and placed it in the centre of the mantelpiece. Thank God for Gabby.

Chapter 5

Extraordinary. Mark did not know who he was expecting. A middle-aged spinster? An earnest academic? A hugger of trees in ethnic sweater and bright sandals? Whoever it was, it certainly was not this small, dark girl hovering on the other side of the museum gate.

She stood peering at them in an enormous pair of sunglasses that hid most of her face. With her hand on the gate she seemed poised for flight and ready to bolt. The kindly priest next to him turned and saw her, called out her name, and it was only then that she lifted the latch and walked towards them.

The little pompous guy was telling Peter that he considered Gabrielle Ellis to be too inexperienced. He was cut off by the priest who moved away to greet the girl. Introductions were made and Mark saw, closer, that Gabrielle Ellis was not a girl, but a small, very pretty woman.

They had unpacked the figurehead on the ground floor in a corner near the window at the back of the museum where there was the most light for Gabrielle to look at her. He watched Gabrielle’s face as she caught sight of the Lady Isabella. A little involuntary sigh escaped her. She moved forward to peer at the wooden face he had grown to love, tentatively, as if the impassive face of Lady Isabella was alive and carried secrets from the ocean she would love to know.

Gabrielle Ellis had dark hair to her shoulders and she tended to flip it forward to hide her face. As she listened to everyone her face was concentrated and rapt. She kept glancing back at the figurehead, bending to look at her face and neck, her fingers hovering and framing Isabella’s face as if she longed to touch or was offering comfort to a patient.

As she leant forward to examine the many small craquelures and fissures, her hair fell forward to reveal, against her suntanned shoulders, a tiny triangle of startling white neck, as soft and tender as a baby’s. Mark had this sudden overpowering urge to place his lips upon that tiny place of whiteness.

He brought himself back abruptly to the conversation. The councillor seemed determined that Gabrielle Ellis was not going to get the job of restoring the figurehead. This project, he thought, has been my overriding passion for too long. If a local restorer can do the job, I’m damned if I’m going to let this sententious little man, with some agenda, ship her back to London.

Mark said his piece and a sticky silence followed. He wondered if Gabrielle was feeling undermined by the attitude of the councillor, but he watched her face and it did not appear so. John Bradbury was beginning to get mad, though, he could see a small tic starting up in his cheek, and Mark grinned to himself.

As they walked over to the pub he made Gabrielle laugh, but she seemed shy and talked little over lunch. She scribbled a quick estimate on a pad and it was obvious that both John and Peter Fletcher wanted to give her the job. Cock Robin disappeared in high dudgeon and he wondered who had the deciding vote; the council, the Heritage people or the museum.

He studied Gabrielle while he ate his sandwich. Without the sunglasses, and out of the dim church, her face was small and elfinlike. She had extraordinary blue eyes with flecks of grey and brown in them. Her hands were small, like a child’s, with dimples in the wrists. Dear little hands.

It was her stillness that struck him most. Her movements were slow and tranquil, but somehow detached, as if a piece of her was somewhere else. He knew he was making her self-conscious by looking at her for too long, too intensely, but he found it almost impossible to turn his gaze anywhere else. As soon as he tried to concentrate on the Tristan guy, who was earnestly trying to elicit information for his local rag, his eyes would return to her face as if pulled by a magnet.

They all walked back to the car park to go their separate ways. Peter was driving him back to his Truro hotel. The afternoon was still hot but the colours were changing as the sun got lower in the sky. The sea beyond the languid fields was aquamarine. Loneliness seized him; he did not want to return to his impersonal hotel room, he wanted to watch the sunset on a cliff top with this woman.

He took her hand, held on to it, said goodbye, smiled down at her with the pure exultation of a discovery. She asked, rather severely, for her hand back, got into her quaint little English car, still hidden by those ridiculous sunglasses, and sped off.

He felt, as he held that small hand, such a surge of desire that her hand in his had trembled. He knew, as he felt the heat emanating from her small body and down into her hand like a tangible thing, that she was as acutely aware of him as he was of her.

He turned and walked away to Peter’s car. The curator was watching him with an expression Mark found impossible to read, and he thought suddenly, I am a married man, at least twenty years older than Gabrielle Ellis. I have a wife I love and five grown-up daughters.

The car turned out into the road and they both reached out to pull the visors against the sun moving down the sky in front of them. They had to stop while a herd of cows idled along the road in front of them, flicking their tails. Huge great beasts with sweet, grass-smelling breath, shoving against each other and mooing noisily as they turned into a muddy farmyard to be milked.

‘I’d like to take you out to supper,’ Peter said.

‘That would be great.’

‘Can I pick you up about eight?’

‘Sure, I’ll be ready. I’m not taking up too much of your time?’

‘Not at all. I’ll bring someone I think you’ll enjoy talking to, an archaeologist friend of mine. You have confidence in Gabrielle Ellis to do a good restoration? It must be hard to hand Lady Isabella over.’

‘It is hard, but I’m sure you’re right in wanting Gabrielle to restore her. How much pull does that councillor fellow have?’

Peter laughed. ‘We don’t have to take the help of council funding or the conditions the council might impose for that funding, but, as you know, to gather private donations, even with National Heritage help, is difficult and time-consuming. We do have ways of persuading Councillor Rowe to our way of thinking. He is a very vain little man. Give him the limelight, lots of press coverage, photos … The Heritage people find him as much of a bore as we do.’

‘Good. Does Gabrielle have children? I mean, is she able to work full time on this project?’

Peter glanced at him. ‘She and Charlie have one grown-up son. He didn’t want to go into the farm, which was a blow for Charlie. He went straight to the army from university instead.’

Mark was amazed. ‘A grown-up son? She can only be about thirty, surely?’

‘Somewhere in her thirties, I should think. She came down to Cornwall to pick daffodils one school holiday. She and Charlie fell in love and she never went home. I think she had her son at about seventeen or eighteen.’

‘My God, that’s almost child abduction.’

‘Romantic, isn’t it,’ Peter said dryly, ‘because they are still together and as far as I know, very happy. An improvement on marrying first cousins – that used to happen a lot down here.’

Is he warning me off, in an understated British way? Mark wondered. Then suddenly shocked at himself, thought, He should not have to. If I am a decent human being I close my mind to this woman.

Later, as he was shaving, Mark met his own eyes in the mirror. He thought of home, of early evening, of how the light slanted mellow across the rooftops at the end of a day as he prepared to leave the campus and return to his rambling house that was always bursting with people. He would stand at the door for a second, listening to Veronique calmly reigning supreme in the huge kitchen in the middle of the chaos of his daughters, grandchildren, their schoolfriends, hangers-on, neighbours.

Veronique blissfully, radiantly content. He had always thought of himself as trying to be an honourable man, certainly not one who had habitually been unfaithful to his wife or gone out of his way to commit adultery. Nor one who had ever pursued a happily married woman, or any married woman for that matter.

He continued to stare at himself with a strange falling-away sensation. His own eyes locked with those of his reflection as if he were two separate people, one trying to stare the other into submission. He caught a quick glimpse of the future in the moment when it was still possible to retreat, and also the moment when he knew he was going to ignore that warning voice as piercing as a house alarm, and reach out deliberately for the self-destruct button.

Chapter 6

Gabby turned left and instead of driving down the lane to the farm she followed the narrow road that led to the coastal path and the next cove. The sun was hanging spectacularly over the sea and the day was cooling. She turned again and bumped along a track until it ended in a gate. She got out, locked the car, climbed over the gate and walked across the field until she came to a small cottage standing on its own, facing the sea.

The door stood wide open and she called Elan’s name, even though she knew exactly where he would be. She walked on across the field towards the coastal path until she saw his familiar figure sitting on his collapsible stool, painting with his back to her. He had picked a place relatively sheltered, where the cliff path started to descend down to the cove.

Gabby did not disturb him. She sat some way behind him, cross-legged, watching the sun leach and bleed into the sky, spread out like a crimson stain and then dissolve into the sea until it too was molten. She knew as soon as the sun slipped behind the horizon the last heat of the day would disappear as suddenly as the colours melted, and Elan would pack up his paints and turn for home.

She was unsure why she had suddenly felt the need to see him, but turning towards his cottage had been instinctive. He had been Nell’s friend long before Gabby came to Cornwall, and he still was, but she and Elan had the immediate rapport of the outsider and the solitary.

He was Josh’s godfather. His name was Alan Premore, but Josh had always called him Elan and the name had stuck. After his parents and Nell, Elan had been the first name Josh had mastered and Alan had, from that moment, signed his paintings Elan Premore. This was partly because he unashamedly adored Josh, but also because he had begun to exhibit seriously the year Josh was born.

Gabby loved this spare, reclusive man unconditionally, and accepted, without it ever being mentioned, that he loved her in return. He turned now and saw her as the sun set on one more day. As on many other days he had no idea that she had been sitting silently behind him. He smiled and gathered up his paints, folded the small easel.

‘Darling child, how long have you been there?’

‘Not long.’ She got up and he kissed her forehead and they made their way back to his cottage. He never asked Gabby why she came, for that might have indicated she had to have a reason, and being insular himself he understood the need to be near someone who would not question why you were there, just that you were.

As they walked back to the cottage Gabby told him about her day. Her excitement was catching and Elan had rarely seen her so animated. He was interested in the story of the figurehead and its return to St Piran.

‘John Bradbury still vicar?’ he asked.

‘Yes, he’s just the same, so is Peter. So is Councillor Rowe.’

‘Dear heavens, Gabby, hasn’t he been voted out yet?’

‘Nell says every time he’s voted off the council, he somehow gets himself voted on again.’

‘Mainly, I suspect, because no one else wants to be elected. And this Canadian, what was he like?’

‘Oh, fine. He seemed nice. I didn’t really have time to talk to him properly.’

Elan propped his things against the hall table. ‘Let’s have a drink, child, I have a cold, very good bottle of wine all ready in the fridge.’

Gabby laughed. ‘But you didn’t know I was coming.’

‘I always keep a bottle just in case you come. Pour me my tot while I open the bottle.’

Gabby reached up for his heavy tumbler and poured him a hefty whisky with a burst of soda from his archaic silver soda siphon.

‘Can you still get bits for this siphon, Elan?’

‘Just.’ He handed Gabby the glass of wine and they sat at the kitchen table in front of his ancient Rayburn. ‘Now, this Canadian historian fellow sounds interesting. Any good for an isolable painter?’

Gabby laughed. ‘What a lovely word. Afraid not. I think, well, he’s heterosexual, Elan.’

‘What a shame, I do like a transatlantic drawl.’

Elan watched Gabby’s colour change. This was surprising and he teased her gently. ‘What makes you so sure, if you didn’t talk to him properly?’

‘He … well, of course, I cannot be sure of anything, but he seemed heterosexual. Elan, could I ring Nell?’ Gabby asked, changing the subject. ‘She might be wondering where I am.’

‘Of course you can.’

Gabby got up and as she phoned Nell, Elan thought how little she had changed over the years. How young she seemed. Yet, he also sensed a buried agitation or tension in her. For the first time he glimpsed what Nell had hinted of; something crouched and waiting in Gabby. Her stillness could be unnerving, but tonight there was an intangible change in her. Her movements seemed quicker and more nervous. Perhaps it was merely the excitement of seeing the figurehead, but Elan thought not. He knew from experience he would have to wait to find out. Gabby was like a bird; startle her and she would be off, a dot on the horizon. She could perversely, casually drop small bombshells, and Elan had learnt that his reaction had to appear insouciant in order to share her rare intimacies.

Watching her chatting on the phone to Nell, he thought back to the first glimpse she had obliquely given him of her past.

‘Come on, child,’ he once urged. ‘Have another glass. I don’t drink wine and it will be wasted.’

‘No, Elan, no more. I’m hopeless, I can’t drink more than one glass, truly. You know that.’

‘But you and Shadow are walking, you haven’t got to drive. Come on, Gabby, it’s such a good wine.’

Gabby had placed her hand over her glass firmly and looking down at the table she’d said, quietly, ‘Please, Elan, don’t press me. I only ever have one glass, not because it will affect me, but because I am afraid it won’t. It is in my genes – I have to watch it.’

She had sat opposite him, avoiding his eyes. He was ashamed of his crassness in not just accepting her refusal. He had gone round the table and kissed the top of her head. With his hands on her shoulders he had apologized, promised he would never browbeat her again.

She had stood up, smiling. ‘I’ve got to go. I’m collecting Josh from Cubs.’

At the door Elan had said gently, ‘Gabby, I don’t believe for a moment you are genetically predisposed to alcohol abuse. It would certainly have manifested itself before now, so banish that thought from your head.’

‘OK.’

She was gone, over the fields at a trot away from him. He knew she would immediately regret having given him even the briefest glimpse of her past. He resolved never to be tempted to repeat to Nell anything Gabby said to him. She needed to trust him absolutely. It was not that Gabby was not close to Nell, it was that she was too close. He knew Gabby’s childhood was a taboo subject, an uncharted and forbidden landscape.

As Gabby replaced the phone now he pushed the cork back into the bottle of wine for her to take home. He watched her walk, a small, neat enigma, across his field. He stood in the open doorway and lifted his whisky glass to the navy blue sea.

‘God bless Gabby and keep her from ever having her heart broken – especially by a sodding Canadian.’

Chapter 7

After supper, when they had cleared away the supper things and Charlie had left for the pub quiz-night, Gabby got out the folder Peter had given her containing the Canadian restorer’s report on the figurehead of Isabella, and laid out all the photographs and the better quality JPEG images of areas of damage.

She had been inspected by a Valerie Mischell, of Collections and Conservation, Museum and Heritage Services, Culture Division, City of Toronto, at the home of Mark Hannah, ‘… who discovered the figurehead and generously provided much of the following information which forms part of his research into marine shipping and wrecks of the 19th century.’

Gabby scanned the first page of the report; it would be interesting to know more about Mark Hannah and his work.

‘The purpose of the inspection is to provide information for the Victoria & Albert Museum in London … describing any obvious work that might be necessary in the opinion of the person carrying out the inspection …’

‘These are very good photographs of her,’ Nell said, coming and peering down at the array of images. ‘What an interesting face.’

They both studied the photographs. Isabella lay with a gold headpiece around her hair. Her right hand held a lily, and Nell stared down at the flowing lines of her robe and at her hands. The right hand was beautifully carved, fingers splayed, with a thin gold band on her little finger.

‘Mark said she had been cut away from the bow timbers, Nell. She is flatter in the back, and can you see, here … her left hand is damaged and has been remodelled.’

‘You’re lucky to have such a detailed report, Gabby, from someone of obvious experience. It will be of enormous help to you.’

‘If I’m given the job, Nell.’

‘The figurehead has been painted several times. Many elements have been painted with gold-coloured oil paint. Evidence of an older cream-coloured paint layer under the white coating …’ Gabby read from the report.

She picked up another photograph. ‘Detail of crack along neck. Head secure but some paint loss reveals a thin layer of plaster underneath the paint …’

‘Look at the detail of the right ear as it disappears into her hair,’ Nell said, entranced.

‘Oh, Nell, you really need to see the figurehead itself to appreciate the detail. Look at the robe, the wrist, the curve of her arm at the elbow as it disappears into her robe … This would be such a wonderful project to work on.’

Nell smiled. Gabby’s enthusiasm was infectious and Nell felt a whiff of envy at Gabby’s chance of working with something so beautiful.

‘The neck and upper body seem the most damaged.’

‘That left hand … it’s a terrible reproduction, totally out of proportion.’

‘Mm, I can see that. What else does she say?’

‘Image 01–0193 … Traces of blue-green paint in upper rear right gap.’ Gabby jumped on the last sentence and photograph. ‘Great! Nell, she found some original paint!’

‘Don’t get your hopes up, Gabby, until you’ve done a detailed inspection of your own.’

‘You are going to come and see her, aren’t you?’

‘I’d certainly like to see her before you start. You just can’t wait to get your teeth into this, can you?’

‘I haven’t got the job yet, Nell!’

‘I know Peter, Gabby. He wouldn’t let you take this report away unless he wanted you to restore it.’

The phone went and Nell got up. ‘It’s probably Elan.’

He and Nell phoned each other most nights. But it was not Elan, it was Peter.

‘Were your ears burning?’ Nell asked.

‘Why? Should they have been?’

‘Gabby and I were just looking through the report that Mark Hannah brought with him.’

‘Good, I can catch Gabby in work mode. How are you, Nell? I hear you’ve been landed with the Browns’ enormous picture.’

Nell had a clear picture of his wolfish, cerebral face crinkling with amusement. ‘Glad you find it funny, Peter. I trust you had nothing to do with them coming to me with it?’

‘I merely advised them that if anyone could do anything with it, you could.’

‘Thank you very much! Well, I hope when I am a bent old crone still working on that masterpiece you will have the grace to feel guilty. I will hand you over to Gabby.’

‘You will never be an old crone, Nell. We must have lunch soon?’

‘Look forward to it,’ Nell said, handing the phone to Gabby. How ridiculous that a certain tone of voice, like a code or secret signal, could still contract her stomach with memory of love.

‘Hello Peter,’ Gabby said, breathless.

‘Gabby, I’ve come up with an idea that might satisfy all the various bodies responsible for the funding for the museum. I’ve spoken to John and he thinks it is possibly the answer, if you are agreeable.’

‘Right,’ Gabby said nervously, wondering what was coming.

‘As we explained, funding is always a problem, and unfortunately we have to depend on councillors like Rowe, who are good at drumming-up money for Cornish artefacts.

‘We want to get the figurehead into a condition where we can exhibit her in the museum by the end of June, before the influx of visitors. We wondered if you would be willing to work on her in two stages. Initially, make sure she is sound and make all the immediate repairs that are needed to safeguard the whole, plus the superficial ones that affect her appearance.

‘When you are happy that she is in a condition to be exhibited in June, having made whatever tests and analysis you consider necessary for further more detailed work later on, would it be possible for you to go on to other work and return to the figurehead at a later date, possibly when the museum is closed at the end of the season? Does this sound feasible to you?’

‘Of course, Peter. John says that the museum is kept at a regular temperature so we don’t have to worry about humidity. That would be fine. I would like to see her again, properly, out of her wrappings and in position. This inspection report is very helpful. I’ll make my own inspection and give you a quote for all the initial work I consider vital before she can be exhibited. After I’ve been working on her for a while, I’ll then submit a more detailed quote for the next stage of her restoration. Would that be OK?’