Mark and Gabby were sitting in a restaurant by the river which was gilded in spring sunshine. Ducks flippantly turned tail and swans floated elegantly past in the quick current, like dignified judges. On the other side of the river under the trees a man and a child threw bread into the silvery water for them.
‘I’ve just had a letter from John Bradbury. He’s met an old lady in a nursing home who remembers the last family of Vyvyans living in the village when she was a child. He says she is a fount of knowledge about her childhood in St Piran, but keeps wandering on to other subjects just as it all gets interesting!’
Mark laughed. ‘I’ve been there. It takes endless patience, oceans of tea, and then just as you’re leaving the dear old thing will drop into the conversation the one thing you’ve been angling for all the time. We ought to have a national grid to tap into the memory and recollections of the old sitting out their lives. Whole pieces of history and perspective lost because none of us have time to listen … Oh, Gabriella, I’m on my soapbox again. Has that nice priest recovered yet from the sight of you at Christmas with your hair on end, burbling about graves?’
Gabby laughed. ‘I think so. Apparently I kept saying Isabella had led me there and he kept saying I was overtired and I must remember that the museum had been a church, and churches can be atmospheric in the dark and lead people to think they have had supernatural experiences.’
‘You would have thought a man of the cloth would be the first person to acknowledge the supernatural!’
‘In the morning I wasn’t so sure I hadn’t dreamt or imagined the whole weird experience. I’m glad John drove me over to the house that had once been Perannose Manor. It is now a huge Christian conference centre. I wanted to look at the inscriptions above the Vyvyan crypt.
‘There she was: Helena, née Viscaria, Beloved wife of Daniel and mother to Isabella. Then Daniel Vyvyan at a much later date and then his second wife, Charlotte. It suddenly all seemed so real to me. Isabella must only have been a child when Helena died. I felt, looking at that huge family crypt and finding those graves in the Methodist graveyard, that Isabella meant me to make a connection … I know that sounds … strange.’
Mark leant towards her. ‘No, not strange at all to me.’
Gabby sipped her ice-cold wine. ‘It would be wonderful to find Isabella’s grave and know when and how old she was when she died.’
‘I’m rather jealous that I don’t have the time to go on digging around myself. I couldn’t justify any more time, even as a research project. University budgets don’t extend to international flights to the UK for students! But you know it’s great that the village is getting involved. You’d be amazed what people come up with. My best researchers back home are retired. They have the time and the patience to look and listen.’
‘I know the museum is repaying you for the cost of transporting Isabella from Montreal, but it must have cost you a bomb to get her from Newfoundland. And you made a gift of her to Cornwall. You are amazingly generous, Mark Hannah, and I love you for it, but you are no businessman.’
Mark smiled. ‘So my wife tells me.’
He poured Gabby more wine and picked up her hand.
‘We may both be barking, Gabriella, but I believe you were meant to find those graves in the same way that I discovered the figurehead. I had no intention of going to Bonavista Bay the day I found her. In fact, the trip to Newfoundland and the Memorial University weren’t even strictly necessary, more a sudden odd need to visit my birthplace …’
He stopped for a minute, looked away and twiddled his wine glass.
‘As you get older the past seems suddenly more relevant. Perhaps that’s the reason I’ve always loved history; there is so much to learn that connects in surprising ways. Research often throws up such unexpected and exciting things that link human beings through the ages.
‘The garden where I first saw the figurehead belonged to the house I’d once lived in as a child. I stood at the gate and I couldn’t take my eyes off her … I don’t know whether something about her reminded me of my mother, for I have no conscious memory of her or the house. I only knew I had to own that powerful wooden face.’
Gabby shivered. ‘Did you think that you were there to take her home, to her birthplace?’
‘No. Not at that moment. I just simply had to have her.’ Mark grinned. ‘It was not a practical decision if you live in a suburban house with a large family and an already crowded yard … I guess what spooked me most was why I had been drawn so powerfully back after so many years to the house where I was born. Perhaps a sudden subconscious need to check my origins or to see if there really had been a house where I began my life. If I had been a week earlier I wouldn’t have even known the figurehead existed because she had been kept in a shed, so the motivation that drew me there seemed of great importance …’
He closed Gabby’s fingers round his own. ‘And, in the light of meeting you, my darling, it makes me tempted to believe nothing is really chance …’
Gabby said slowly, turning his hand in hers, ‘You brought Isabella thousands of miles back home, and even if the real Isabella has no grave in St Piran, the figurehead marks her birthplace.’
‘The real one is haunting us, too, Gabriella. I believe the answer lies with her carver, Tom Welland. You only have to look at Isabella’s face to know how the carver felt about her. It’s all there, the sensuous abandon and intimacy. It is unlikely there could have been a happy ending.’
The river outside was rising and a waiter came to take their order. For a moment a small shadow obliterated the weak heat of the spring sunshine. Mark and Gabby stared at each other. The joy of being back together made them both reluctant to break the spell and talk about practical things. For the moment it was possible to have each other and it was easier not to face the future. Soon, very soon, they would have to address it, but it was only when they were apart it became unbearable. Now, together again, the weeks slipped by and it seemed possible to put off hurting other people for a little longer.
Gabby said now, ‘Mark, when I’ve finished this picture at the Tate, I’ll have to go home. Charlie is driving Nell mad with eclipse fever. She says the whole of Cornwall is going potty with avarice and Charlie is the leading contender.’
Mark smiled. ‘I like the sound of your Nell. If you believe the papers the whole world is headed west!’
‘I doubt it, if people are going to have to pay a thousand pounds for a few days in a cottage!’
Mark whistled through his teeth. ‘Ouch! Smugglers and wreckers, ever?
‘Do you realize, Gabriella Ellis, we have known each other for more than a year?’
Gabby sighed. ‘I can hardly remember a time before you, Mark Hannah!’
Mark slid a small, beautifully wrapped box across the table.
‘What is this?’ Gabby turned it in her hands.
‘I waited until I saw something I thought you would like.’
Gabby unwrapped the box and took out a thin silver chain with a tiny pearl encased in a silver acorn. Mark watched her face. She held it up and the silvery sunshine caught it. She swallowed; met his eyes. She had never owned anything so beautiful.
‘I love it. I simply love it, Mark …’
She leant forward and took his face in her hands, and kissed him lingeringly on the mouth. She did not care who was watching.
‘Thank you so much, it is utterly beautiful.’
Other people sitting out by the river gave a little cheer and started clapping.
When they were home Mark fastened it for her as they stood in front of the mirror in the hall. Between her white shirt and dark skin it lay like a perfect little tear.
Gabby watched Mark sleep. He could relax like a cat, fall instantly asleep, and breathe so shallowly he seemed not to breathe at all. His limbs seemed, to her biased eyes, languid and infinitely desirable, even in sleep.
His long legs protruded out of the bottom of the duvet or lay curled against hers. She loved those moments of waking and watching him, unaware, sleeping. Tenderness and wonder that it was possible to enjoy and love a human being in the way she loved Mark amazed her.
He was such a beautiful man, must always have been so. Did his wife still see him this way? Would it ever be possible for Mark to seem ordinary and everyday to Veronique? Could she still see him with those first eyes now, many years and many children later?
Gabby leant forward and placed her lips against Mark’s arm. His mind and body excited her, and how lucky was that.
Mark stirred at the feel of her mouth on his skin, and without seeming to wake turned to scoop her to him and they lay length by length, bodies touching as the flicker that was always there slowly ignited and tenderly they explored one another all over again.
Gabby could not have imagined there were so many ways of loving; she had only ever known the fumble and the mostly silent act in the dark. Nothing had prepared her for the sheer power of passion or the sweet melancholy of intimacy which could make you feel so alone when separated from the one you loved.
Gabby also found it frightening growing so close to someone, for other things began to loosen and unravel like a grubby bandage she had worn too long. Lying close, limbs wrapped round limbs, she had suddenly found herself forming words and sentences she had never wished to disclose, and it was only her terror of bringing ghosts into their lives that stopped her. That, and a feeling that if she once started the thunderous Niagara of emotion that surrounded her childhood with Clara, she might never be able to stop.
Mark sensed her need, but knew he must wait. He hoped as the months and years went by Gabriella would, in fits and starts, open up to him.
For Gabby the healing had already begun, diminishing the power of memory. The pinching of budding breasts, the laughter at the hands reaching up under her little pleated uniform skirt, fingers ready to grab before she understood what it was they wanted to take.
Desire, the love of a man’s body, the excitement and tenderness it produced in her, was a revelation to Gabby. She could never have believed that sex and love could come together in one mind-blowing fundamental act and this simple wonderful fact made her understand how badly she had been affected. How perverse her view of sex and love.
Love was not passive and should not be confused with contentment. Never getting angry, avoiding all confrontation. Willing yourself happy, never ever daring to think you were not, would not do.
Gabby knew the time was coming when she would have to let go of her ghosts. She was too happy for them to intrude now and she and Mark had the rest of their lives to talk, she was surer of that than anything.