Nell was thinking of going on a spring cruise to celebrate finishing the monster picture. She had taken so long its owners seemed to have forgotten about it. She missed Elan and knew there was a chance he might not come back, or at least not live there permanently.
She was cleaning his cottage to combat the January blues. She did not want him to come back to the cottage just as he had left it, with all the paraphernalia of a dying man still in the house. It had rained solidly for days and she had watched Gabby itching to get back to London to work. Nell didn’t blame her. She had never grown sanguine about Cornish winters either.
Lucinda seemed to be finding Gabby plenty of work with the gallery and with private collectors. She had stopped taking on local work, apart from small paintings for loyal clients. It was a shame, Nell thought, that Gabby couldn’t strike a balance, somehow. She knew the money Gabby earned in London had been a godsend for both Gabby and Charlie, but she looked thin, tired and permanently preoccupied.
Nell looked down at the pile of things Patrick had needed that must go back to social services. She thought of Gabby’s exhausted outburst before Christmas. It had been startling and disturbing.
Gabby was changing, Nell realized. She was suddenly seeing what Nell had tried to warn her about from the start of her marriage. Charlie’s casual selfishness. It had taken far longer for Gabby to build up a healthy resentment to her marriage than it had taken Nell with Ted.
She threw open the kitchen window, which stuck. She saw the ledge was rotting and took in the air of neglect, the smell of damp that granite cottages so quickly assumed when unlived in.
Come home, Elan, I miss you.
Oh, how she missed his sometimes bitchy humour and the knowledge he was here in his cottage painting, always glad to see her. They went back such a long way and there was a shorthand old friends used which could never be replicated. A moving through life together, watching a familiar face grow older and yet seem exactly the same as ever.
Life moved on. Patrick, the dedicated and tireless GP, was dead. Elan was floating, looking for a place to land, and that might mean anywhere and everywhere. Gabby, the biddable and pliant housewife, had moved on, too; Nell was unsure where she was roosting or how this commuting back and forth was going to work out in the long-term.
She was amazed that Gabby could settle happily in one room in London, especially in spring and summer. Gabby had always come alive when the weather changed. She lived outside, revelled in the sun and colour of the sea, had never ceased to be enchanted.
Nell knew this Lucinda existed because she had spoken to her on the phone. Gabby insisted her room was lovely and the two of them had obviously become friends. It was surprising, for she would not have said Gabby was ambitious, but she obviously was.
The figurehead seemed to have given her confidence and kudos. In all the years she had been on the farm Nell had never known Gabby make a close friend of her own age. Of course, young mothers came in for tea with their children when Josh was small, but Gabby never had a mate, never telephoned or gossiped.
When Nell had pressed the young and self-contained Gabby, she had said, ‘Nell, I have you and Josh, the farm and Charlie. I don’t need anything or anyone else.’
Nell, standing in Elan’s tiny sitting room, realized with horror she was yearning for the days when Gabby needed her; when the work of the farm threw them together, day in and day out.
Dear God, I’m lonely, Nell thought. Which means I haven’t moved on and I damn well should have.
Gabby drove over to St Piran to look at Lady Isabella. Peter had rung and told her that donations to the museum had been surprisingly good. They had started a ‘Friends of St Piran Museum Fund’ and many locals had contributed. It had been a good summer opening. Lady Isabella could draw in the crowds.
Gabby walked over to the vicarage for the key. John was taking an adult confirmation class and mouthed, ‘Come back after you’ve checked Isabella, we’ll open a bottle.’
Gabby grinned at his expression; it was obviously going to be a long afternoon.
Isabella stood in her corner, as majestic and beguiling as ever. She had not deteriorated any further in the even temperature of the museum. Gabby checked her base where the rot had begun to set in and which she had treated. It was stable and had not spread, but would definitely have to be treated again at some point.
Isabella’s right hand possibly once held a flower and both hands must have been beautifully carved.
‘Your arm, I think, is a priority, Isabella, and an insult to your original carver. I will come and fix that soon, I promise.’
She stood looking at the beautiful face in the faded light of the museum. Isabella gazed steadily back. The more Gabby stared at her face, the more warmth and feeling seemed to enter the wood and give Isabella’s face fleeting expression, like the shadows from the branches of a tree playing across a window.
Gabby shivered but could not move away. The wooden eyes were dark, dark brown, and held her, mesmerizing her with their intent. It was as if Isabella was trying to tell Gabby something. The hairs moved on Gabby’s arms. The figurehead seemed suddenly large in this confined space and the winter light was dying. Gabby felt too spooked to move away, then, out of nowhere, she had a clear image of a grave; overgrown, hidden and covered in lichen. Then it was gone and Isabella was just a figurehead once more, standing in a dusty little corner of a museum, quite still and inanimate.
Gabby shivered again and went out of the door, locked it, and then found herself walking not down to the gate but through the narrow paths of the old, overgrown graveyard. The rain had stopped and the earth smelt damp and lifeless, but in spring it was a beautiful place full of colour and life and wildflowers.
She was drawn to a far corner of the graveyard where the headstones were ancient and ornate. Two faced the sea. They were hidden with dead grass and brambles. Gabby bent and pulled at the nearest until she could read the name inscribed on it. The words on the grave were worn and disappearing:
Morley Penro e 1802–1840
A mariner n th arm of t sea he loved.
Bu band of Mo men a Penrose
Fat er of Lisette
Then, added at a later date:
M rwe na Penrose 1810–1866
Beloned Mot er of Lisette
The names meant nothing to Gabrielle. She pulled the dead winter grass from the second grave. The brambles were huge and tore her gloves as she moved them up and behind the grave to read the inscription. She crouched in the wet grass peering down at the grave. She could feel her heart racing with excitement but she did not know why.
Lisette Penrose 1827–1890
Saithful servant and friend
To Thomas from 1867–1890
And to Isabella, his mother, before him
Isabella … his mother! No surname for Thomas or Isabella.
Gabby straightened up. She was trembling with cold and something she was struggling to remember. She felt strange and light-headed.
She made her way slowly to the vicarage. John Bradbury opened the door and exclaimed over her ashen face, wet, muddy jeans and scratched hands. As he took her waterproof jacket, Gabby saw her face in his old spotted mirror in the hall. Her face was wild. For a second she thought she saw a reflection of another dark young woman behind her, then it was gone and she was left staring at herself and at the vicar’s startled expression behind her.
She turned to John Bradbury. ‘I’ve found Isabella’s name on a grave.’