Tom put his tools down and looked down at his afternoon’s work. The head, apart from details of the face and the front piece, was almost finished. He stared at the alignment of the arms from the shoulder, looked down at his sketches then across to where Isabella was standing. He went to her and rearranged her right hand. She needed to hold a flower of some kind in her hand.
He peered at the front of the figurehead. He was happy with the folds of the dress and the skirt to ground level, but he was going to have to be careful when he bolted the back section to the front. The bolts must lie just behind the sash, which would be painted gold, and the hand holding the flower would be in front of the sash, which meant the angle of that right hand … he pencilled a line down the figurehead.
Isabella watched him, marvelling at his concentration. She had stood for a long time and was tired but she would not say anything, for she could see he was exhausted and after all he was working, she had only to stand.
Tom walked towards her. ‘Are you tired? I can do no more today. I will make a mistake if I go on.’ He smiled. ‘You can sit down now.’
Isabella sat and bent to the basket Lisette had brought and handed him an orange. He took it with a smile.
‘I will walk you home,’ Tom said.
‘Really, there is no need, Tom. I can walk up the hill on my own.’
Lisette’s mother was ill and she had asked Tom to see Isabella safe to the house so that she could stay on with her mother in her cottage.
‘I had thought of walking you home by the cliff path, then across the fields so that we can catch the breeze above the headland, if you are not too tired?’
Isabella’s spirit soared. She had no wish to go back to the house.
‘I am not tired,’ she said, ‘and it is a much nicer walk than along the road.’
Tom covered the figurehead and shut the gates of the boatyard. They walked up the road and then turned off for the coastal path. He took the basket for the climb uphill. At the top of the cliff the next cove glittered below them. The sea was enticing, a deep navy. They walked on the soft dry grass, full of clover and little yellow and blue cliff flowers, for half a mile or so and then started to descend to the next cove. The fields above the cove led back to the Summer House.
Tom took Isabella’s arm down the path full of loose stones, but even so she kept losing her footing. She tried to keep the image out of her head, she even hummed a little out-of-breath tune to deflect herself, but as she neared the bottom of the path and the loose stones rolled and bounced to the dry white sand the image flashed again, as clear as in her dreams. The reality she never actually saw: Mama flying over her horse’s neck and her head connecting with the jagged rock lying … there … there, in that same place.
Isabella could remember turning at the sea’s edge and seeing the crumpled figure lying motionless like a broken doll. She could remember the terrifying gallop back across the sand towards that still figure as she hung on to the reins and saddle, screaming, ‘Mama, Mama, Mama. No! No! No!’
They had reached the bottom of the track and were onto the sand, and Isabella was shaking. Tom, startled, looked down at her ashen face.
‘What is it, Isabella?’
She pointed to the dark slash of rock. ‘Mama … died there.’
‘Oh!’ How could he have forgotten that was the place?
‘Of course … Isabella … I’m sorry. Come …’
He took her hand and made her run towards the sea away from the rock and the image of Helena’s blood soaking into the sand. They reached the sea out of breath.
‘I am sorry,’ Tom said. ‘I did not think, Isabella … I had forgotten it was here.’
‘It is all right. I am all right now, Tom. It is just I never came back here … It is the first time …’
Her hand in his was burning.
Tom touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers.
‘You are so hot! Isabella, do not get heatstroke or I will be blamed for keeping you in the sun too long. I am not conscious of time when I am carving. You must call out when you are tired …’
‘I am fine, Tom. It is just uncommonly warm for June and we have had no wind for days.’
Tom looked down at her. ‘Go into the sea. Take off your shoes and go in. The water is cold and will cool you.’
Isabella blushed painfully. ‘I cannot. No, I cannot.’
Tom realized suddenly that she would have to take off her stockings. He sat in the sand and took his boots off, rolled his trousers up to the knee.
‘I am going to walk into the sea. Take your stockings off, I will not see. Then come into the water.’
Without waiting for an answer he moved away, walked into the small waves leaving Isabella standing awkwardly not knowing what to do. She longed to take her thick stockings off, release her feet from the prim lace-up ankle boots, to feel the sand between her toes again as she had as a child.
The sight of Tom moving about in the shallow water was more than she could bear. Quickly she lifted her skirts and rolled her stockings down, pulled her boots off and placed each stocking carefully into a boot. Then, released, she ran into the sea, holding her skirts free of the small, slapping, cooling waves.
Tom turned to see Isabella’s laughing face. Her hair was coming loose and she was so extraordinarily beautiful he forgot to breathe.
‘Oh,’ she cried. ‘This is good! I have not been in the water for so long …’ She stopped as she saw his face. Tom stood there staring at her, transfixed. For the first time in her life, Isabella felt the exhilarating power of her own beauty. It was exciting and blindingly powerful. She lifted her skirts a little higher and turned from him and began to run through the shallows, splashing and laughing, not caring if the salt ruined her dress, not caring how wet she became, only wanting to hang on to this feeling of freedom.
The cold sea against her ankles was intoxicating and she ran and ran, wishing for the first time she was just a girl from the village who could do this every day if she felt like it. She skirted out of the sea but kept running on the wet sand along the edge of the waves.
Tom had come out of the water and picked up the basket and their shoes, and was walking in the shallows towards her. Isabella could see when she turned that he was laughing at her. She waited for him to catch up and they stood smiling at each other, then he said in that particular voice that made her stomach turn over, for it seemed to be saying something quite different, ‘I must get you home, Lady Isabella.’
‘Indeed?’
‘Indeed, indeed!’
Isabella giggled. They moved onto the dry sand and Tom handed her the basket with her shoes and stockings. He took his shirt off and bent to dry her feet. He carefully brushed away the wet, clinging grains of sand from her toes, and when he had dried both feet as well as he could, he placed them on his rough blue shirt and stared at them a moment. He could still see the faint marks of her ankle boots on her skin.
He touches me. He touches my feet. His fingers brush the glistening, scratching grains of sand. Those fingers which carve my likeness now touch my skin.
Tom got up abruptly and walked towards the far rocks where he turned his back to put his own boots on. Isabella stood on his shirt and quickly pulled her stockings back on, then sat on the sand to do up her boots.
When she was done she lifted Tom’s shirt and shook it free of sand, but there on the front was the clear imprint of her feet. She lifted the shirt to her face and breathed it in, breathed in the smell of Tom.
Tom turned and saw Isabella’s face bent into his shirt. Desire shot through him like buckshot. He turned quickly away to the sea before she looked up. The water was bright with sparks, the sun was sinking lower at the end of the day, and Tom fought with himself, confronted the enormity of his feelings. No fantasy, this, no flight of his imagination. This thing between them was a factor he could no longer control.
Isabella reached him and held out his shirt.
‘Thank you,’ she said to his brown naked back.
Tom turned to take the shirt. Isabella stared at the fair hairs running over his chest. Everything about this man was beautiful. before she could stop herself she had reached out and touched the warmth of his skin, startling herself as much as him. They stared at one another, fascinated and afraid. Tom battled with himself, breathing hard. Isabella was willing him; touch me, touch me. Oh God, touch me.
Tom broke eye contact, quickly took his shirt and pulled it over his head, bent to take the basket, and they walked in complete silence across the sand and up the path to regain the fields. Tom helped her over the stiles without meeting her eyes. He could find no words to say that would sound right, although he rehearsed them in his head. He felt her embarrassment and wanted to break the silence, but he could not trust himself to say what he should.
They came out on the road, just below the small house.
‘Will Lisette be home?’ he asked finally before he left her at the gate.
‘I do not think so.’ Isabella took the basket. ‘Thank you for walking me home. I hope that you will not have missed your meal.’
‘Will I see you tomorrow? It will not be long now before I finish. I will try not to keep you too long.’
Isabella nodded. ‘I will be there if you need me. Goodnight, Tom.’
Her voice was small and tight and miserable. She looked as wretched as he felt.
‘Goodnight, Isabella,’ he said.
Isabella looked at him then, caught something in his voice, then she turned and went inside the house and shut the door.
That night I toss and turn. Sleep evades me. I am angry with myself. I burn and the bedcover suffocates me. I kick it off. Isabella’s face keeps passing before my eyes. She had gazed at me like a small flower opening. She reached out and touched me and I turned away. I wounded her for I did not have the wit to play light of it, to pass it off as play, to talk of other things, to distract her as I should have done.
Isabella is without guile. Her feelings play across her face openly. She is like a child who has been too long restricted by adults who would like to keep her safe in the nursery, and I feel a sudden, unjustified anger towards Sir Richard.
I see her face pressed into the blue of my shirt. Her hair is dark against it. I see her small childlike hands and those narrow, confined little feet trapped in boots …
I throw the cover off, leap out of bed and climb down the ladder and out into the still night. Not a breath, only the infinite distant roar of the ocean. I begin to walk and find myself climbing the hill towards the house where Isabella will be lying asleep.
I know Lisette will not be there tonight, my mother told me Morwenna Penrose is dying. Isabella is in the care of the cook and one housemaid.
The house is in darkness and I have no idea why I have come or what I will do. Neither do I know which room Isabella sleeps in. Isabella has told me she can hear and see the sea from her window. So she must sleep at the front of the house. I stand looking up at the windows. The middle window must be a landing so it must be one of the rooms to the right or left of the front door.
The left room has light cotton curtains and I decide this must be where Isabella sleeps, and I stand in the dark looking upwards.
Isabella could not sleep. How could she, a married woman, have touched him, again?
I did not mean to, she kept whispering over and over, it just happened. I reached out like a sleepwalker and now I have to endure the torment of having embarrassed Tom and myself. Oh, if only I could have the afternoon back and begin again …
Isabella threw herself on her back in agony as she remembered. She had thought … What had she thought? That he … She thought back to how he had looked at her in the water … It was unmistakable, that look.
Admiring you does not mean he will … will … What had she wanted him to do? She closed her eyes … She did not know. She was not thinking, just feeling …
She thumped the pillow. She would never sleep now, and she would look pale and drawn tomorrow and would wake ugly and he would not be able to carve her likeness … She jumped out of bed and walked round the little room. Thank God Lisette was not there … How selfish I am, I have not thought about poor Lisette and her mother once.
Isabella went to the window. There was a half-moon and clouds were racing past it. Then, under the tree by the gate, she made out a figure. She drew back a little, her heart thumping, gazing downwards, and the figure moved forward towards the window and stood on the lawn looking up. It was Tom Welland.
Startled, she opened her window and whispered down,
‘What are you doing here? Is it Lisette? Is she all right?’
Tom shook his head. ‘She is still with Morwenna. I have something I must say to you, Isabella. Will you come down for a moment?’
Isabella stood gazing down at him, then shut the window and pulled a wrap round her and tiptoed down the stairs. At the bottom she put on a pair of slippers and opened the front door, undid the bolt slowly, holding her breath. Then she turned the heavy key and she was standing outside, facing Tom.
He smiled. She was all in white like a snowflake.
‘What is it?’ she whispered, avoiding his eyes.
‘Isabella … this afternoon … I am sorry … Please look at me.’
Isabella reluctantly met his eyes.
‘Isabella,’ he whispered. ‘You did not mistake my feelings. They have been there ever since I met you again.’
They stood in the dark, facing each other in silence, and the night rustled around them moving inexorably towards daylight. Then they both moved together and Tom was pulling her to him, bending his mouth to hers, holding her face to his, kissing her again and again, and Isabella leant against him feeling his body move against hers; young, firm, exciting and unknown.
Then he drew back, pressed her head into his shoulder for a moment.
‘Isabella,’ he whispered. ‘Go and sleep now. I will see you tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow.’
She was gone through the door. He heard the bolt and the key. Isabella raced upstairs to the window and he held a hand up to her and melted into darkness.
The sea sounded louder in the dark, but Isabella could hear her heart thumping in the silent room. After a while the birds started, slowly at first, then the whole world was full of the sound. Something stirred in Isabella. She felt the sudden smallness of herself in the world. It was a chilling, isolating sensation and, shivering, she moved down under the bedcovers.
She could not know that she and Tom had taken a step that was irrevocable. That one day she would pay a terrible price. She could not know of the hurt she would cause, or the lives she and Tom would damage, but she had a second’s fleeting intimation in the dawn of a new day.