It was March and Gabby had reached her eighth month. She had lived in the empty London house all winter, working consistently, filling the hours. Pain would still catch her unawares under her ribs and she could not remove Mark’s dressing gown from the door.
Nell rang her every week with news of the farm, of Charlie, Elan, Peter; small everyday things, as if to root her somewhere, one foot still on the farm. Gabby had been like a hermit, closed into the house, keeping to a routine as if her life depended on it. She waited for Nell’s phone calls in the same way she waited for the coloured postcards to fall through the letter-box from Germany. One day there would be a letter, Gabby knew this.
John Bradbury rang Gabby and asked if she could go down to look at the figurehead, he had found some flaking on the face. He met Gabby off the train at Truro. The fire in the cottage was alight and Gabby felt a little surge of pleasure to be back.
‘Gabby, it is so good to see you again. I’ve asked Nell and Peter to supper, is that all right?’
‘Of course it is. Nell rings me each week, John, and it will be great to see Peter again. Can I go across and look at Isabella now?’
‘Gabby, will you be all right going over on your own while I organize supper?’
Gabby smiled. ‘I am pregnant, not ill! Of course I will.’
As she stood before the figurehead once more, she felt her stomach lurch with memory of Mark. She peered up at the supposed peeling which was really not too bad and she suspected that Isabella was a combined ploy to draw her back to Cornwall.
Gabby smiled, touched. It was good to be back. Primroses coated the banks in rashes of yellowy-green and she was glad her child would be born in spring. At the farm the fields would lie sloping to the sea, acres of moss green buds ready to open. The pickers would descend as they always did. She turned to look through the arched window. Season follows season in exactly the same way, yet we are always somehow surprised that all goes on so casually without us, no matter what we do or where we are.
Today Gabby could not tell what Lady Isabella was thinking. Her eyes looked down, impregnable, giving nothing away.
‘When I’ve had my baby,’ Gabby told her, ‘I will come and give you your last beauty treatment. I am too awkward at the moment.’
She switched the light off and locked the door again and went out in the late afternoon to look at Lisette’s grave. The old part of the graveyard had been cleared of brambles and generally tidied up.
‘Yes,’ John said when she got back to the vicarage, ‘we have a group of wonderful volunteers from an adult college nearby for pupils with learning difficulties.’
When Gabby heard Nell’s car she went out and they hugged in the little cobbled yard.
‘I’ve brought you bantam eggs and homemade bread, Gabby …’
She stood back and looked at her. ‘You look very beautiful.’
‘Huge, you mean,’ Gabby said, taking Nell into the little cottage.
‘What a very atmospheric room,’ Nell said, a little unsure she liked the stillness of it. ‘I suppose it is because it is the oldest part of the house.’
She pulled a letter from her pocket. ‘Gabby, this came for you.’
Gabby’s heart raced. ‘From Josh?’
‘No,’ Nell said. ‘I’m afraid not, lovie.’
Disappointed, Gabby opened it and sat abruptly on the bed.
‘What is it?’ Nell asked anxiously.
‘It’s from the Salvation Army. They trace people, don’t they? Clara, my mother, has died. Her sister, Aunt Bella, asked them to trace me.’
Nell sat beside Gabby and waited.
Gabby said, after a while, ‘It’s strange, I feel angry, not sad. With Bella mostly because she just walked away and left me to it.’
Nell rubbed Gabby’s back gently. ‘It might be good to know if she had a reason?’
‘Maybe.’ Gabby got up. ‘I hope Clara didn’t have a horrid death, Nell, but it is no good pretending I feel very much.’
Nell thought, as they went out of the little cottage, Gabby may not feel anything immediately but she will feel sadness later for a life lost.
She said abruptly, ‘Will you come over to the farm, Gabby? Charlie was so wistful when he knew I was seeing you. He won’t put you under pressure. I think he just wants to see you. Come to lunch. I’ll ask Elan, too.’
Gabby nodded. ‘Of course I’ll come, Nell.’ She turned away. She could not tell Nell her caution was not because she did not want to visit the farm but because she missed it so much.
‘Before we go into the house … Have you heard from Josh, Nell? How is he? Is he enjoying Germany?’
‘He’s enjoying his job. I am not sure he has enjoyed Dortmund particularly, except that it is a good base for his seemingly constant holidays that the army allows. He always asks after you. He still sends postcards?’
Gabby smiled. ‘Yes. It’s wonderful to have them, but you can’t get much news on a postcard.’
It was so long since Gabby had socialized with anyone at all that she suddenly felt dread. John said gently, seeing her face go pale at the sight of the dining-room table laid, ‘Dear Gabby. It is only that my kitchen is always such a pigsty that I have laid the table in here. You leave us whenever you feel like it.’
Peter had brought some clippings. ‘Gabby, I meant to post these on to you, very dilatory of me. Our young reporter found this. Do you remember? He came to cover the figurehead when it first arrived.’
He handed Gabby an old Cornishman newspaper dated 1865. A small paragraph covered the launch of the Lady Isabella in St Piran.
Despite the inclement weather the schooner Lady Isabella was launched with much solemnity from St Piran’s quay. The village band played and food and drink were available free of charge, in celebration of the event. However, thunder and lightning and a heavy squall forced band and villagers alike to scatter for shelter from the elements. Mr Trevannow the undertaker was heard to comment this bode ill luck for the small schooner to which Ben Welland the shipwright retorted, ‘Aye, I am sure that is what thou would like, for much of thy business depends on the elements.’ This to much laughter from the villagers …
Gabby smiled at the quaintness of the report. ‘But Mr Trevannow the undertaker was right, wasn’t he, Peter?’
‘I’m afraid he was. Here is the second thing of interest, Gabby. When Mark looked down the Lloyds List of wrecks he found the Lady Isabella there, date and position registered, but there were no Wellands, Magors or Vyvyans on the passenger list. However, one of Mark’s young researchers completing his dissertation contacted me. He had travelled back in Mark’s footsteps to Newfoundland and had found the graves of the passengers retrieved from the sea at the time of the wreck.
‘They had been found by local Inuit. The bodies were a Captain Abrahams, the skipper, one old man, and a young woman and young man, both of the approximate ages of Isabella and Tom, who were bound together. They were thought to be a Mr and Mrs Foye who were on the list of passengers. These two names were also on the Lloyds List. I checked.’
Gabby stared at him, took an excited breath. ‘Peter, could it be Tom and Isabella?’
‘I think so. If they were travelling under a pseudonym they were escaping from something.’
‘Without their baby.’
‘Without their baby.’
‘How sad,’ Nell said.
‘There is one thing more,’ Peter said, excitedly.
Gabby, Nell and John stared at him, waiting.
‘Please,’ John said, ‘put us out of our misery.’
‘In 1888 a Thomas Richard Welland sailed out to Newfoundland and brought the bodies of Mr and Mrs Foye home to Cornwall.’
Gabby shivered suddenly. ‘Here?’ she whispered. ‘To St Piran?’
‘That is the mystery. It seems not. Where are the graves of Isabella and Tom? Not in St Piran, it seems.’
Charlie was thinner, Gabby saw and he looked a little older because of it. They were awkward with each other, her size didn’t help, and Charlie’s eyes seemed to be drawn again and again to her stomach.
Elan and the wine at lunch made it easier. Whenever he had been in London they had spent time together.
‘I’m trying to inveigle Nell up to my next exhibition, darling. She’s got a bad dose of Cornwallitis.’
Nell laughed. ‘Well I just might get myself on a train, Elan, especially as you keep threatening us with retiring.’
‘It will never happen, Nell. Elan couldn’t stop painting even if he wanted to.’
‘Don’t you be so sure. I am growing old and may retire to a warmer climate.’
After lunch Charlie took Gabby round the farm and showed her the changes in the last few months, and they talked about Josh. ‘I’ve even started to write letters,’ he said.
‘It’s the busy time coming up,’ Gabby said. ‘How are you doing for pickers?’
‘I have to be so careful, there are checks for illegal immigrants all the time and they have got clever at false papers.’
‘The fields look beautiful,’ Gabby said. ‘The weather’s just right at the moment.’
‘Yes. We start to pick tomorrow. I’ve got a new lad ready for when Matt retires. He’s just finished college, he looks promising. Are you OK to walk along the path for a bit?’
Gabby smiled. ‘Of course, but I won’t make it down to the cove.’
Charlie said after a while, ‘How have you been?’
Gabby did not answer immediately. She knew if she said, ‘lonely’, Charlie would say, ‘come home’, and it wasn’t fair for she didn’t know her own feelings.
‘I’ve worked pretty much to stop myself thinking,’ she said eventually.
‘How long are you staying at John Bradbury’s?’
‘A week or so. I’m not sure.’
They turned back to the house. ‘I know you may not want to stay at the house, but Nell would love to have you in her cottage, Gabby. She misses you. Could you spend a few days with her?’
Gabby looked at him. ‘Of course I could.’ She smiled. ‘I’m not going anywhere. It’s just … I don’t want to hold your life up, Charlie. I want you to be getting on with it, moving on if you need to.’
‘You’re not holding me up.’
Elan was coming out of Nell’s cottage. Gabby waved. ‘I’d better go, Charlie. Elan is giving me a lift back to John’s and I feel guilty, he likes to nap in the afternoons.’
‘Stay on. Spend the afternoon with Nell. I’ll take you back after milking.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. Go and tell him.’
Gabby fell asleep by the fire and then Nell cooked scrambled eggs and they sat with Charlie and watched a film, and somehow it was all, for a while, just as it used to be. Then Charlie drove her home. You don’t realize how lonely you are until you are with people again, Gabby thought.
Isabella could hardly remember what the sight of land felt like. It seemed to her as if the ship had been ploughing bravely through huge seas for half her lifetime. But for Tom, she would have been very afraid, but he assured her the Lady Isabella had been built to withstand waves as large as the ones which broke over her.
Isabella had tried not to grieve so openly when Tom was with her, for she could see it broke his heart. He felt he had not protected her or their child and Isabella knew there was nothing either of them could have done. She should have understood more clearly the nature of her husband.
They had no doubt Thomas would be loved and given all material things, but he would not have a mother … and there Isabella had to stop dwelling on it for she wept and became ill. She was glad of one thing. She had told Lisette where she had hidden her diary, her grass wedding ring and a letter to her son. She trusted her and knew that when Thomas was grown, if for any reason they did not return, Lisette would tell him the truth of his parents and of his birth.
Meanwhile they clung together, and looked to the future they must make for themselves and for happier times when they would both be reunited with their son. They talked long into the night in their small cabin of their many plans, and Tom described the wonderful places they might one day visit. He had a notion to visit Italy again in order to examine at leisure their statues. He believed Florence to be the most beautiful city in the world.
Now Isabella had recovered from the birth of their son they could lie with each other again, but it was not the same as before for the act now had a sweet and poignant sadness, a knowledge that the world could be cruel and happiness snatched in a second, and they could never forget this or be as they were.
As they drew near New England Isabella overheard Captain Abrahams tell Tom that bad weather was ahead and it would be a rough night and best all passengers kept to their cabins until it had blown itself out.
Tom went round the cabin stowing everything that might fall or harm them away. In the night Isabella heard him leave the cabin and go out for a minute. He was soon back and held her tight and she heard the wild hammering of his heart and then she slept again.
She was awakened and hurled out of the bunk onto the floor. Tom reached for her and held her tight and they stayed on the floor. The noise was fearsome, everything was crashing around them. There was frantic shouting and then the shouts were drowned in the roar of wind and sea. They were tossed around the cabin and the small ship listed on one side, then the other.
Isabella began to pray, ‘Hail Mary, Mother of grace, the Lord is with thee … Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the …’ when there was a terrible tearing and a crash and splintering, then quiet.
‘What is it, Tom?’ she whispered, terrified.
‘One of the masts is split.’
The pounding started again and in the chaos of the cabin they were twisted nearly upside down. When the ship righted itself Tom staggered up and pulled the lifejackets towards him. He helped her into one and put his own on.
She stared at him. ‘Tom?’
‘Isabella, I do not think even the Lady Isabella can withstand the force of this storm, but we are not far off land. The small lifeboats will be launched and you must get into one when the order is given …’
‘I will not go anywhere without you, Tom.’
Isabella could hear the crew calling and the cabin door was pushed open. Tom pulled her after him and she held on so tight her frozen fingers burnt. The passengers came out of their cabins and staggered forward, all clinging to each other.
The sight that greeted them made some of the women cry out in panic. The Lady Isabella was breaking up. Pieces of her floated on the huge waves breaking over her. Men were trying to launch small boats and they watched in horror as two were washed away into the sea like matchsticks.
Tom turned to Isabella and she cried, ‘Bind me to you, Tom. I want to die joined to you as we were in life. Bind me to you.’
Tom did so quickly. ‘Isabella, I love you more than life itself.’
‘And I you, Tom. I would rather have loved you for a short while than never to have known you at all.’
They looked upon one another and thought how glad they were that their child was not here now. It was true that God did work in mysterious ways. Thomas would have a life. Their lives would go on in him.
Together they saw the wave that would swallow them. They braced themselves, held tight to one another in desperate courage; experienced a moment of terror as the wave towered over them and swept them from the ship, and all was darkness, like a light going out.
Gabby woke screaming, clamped a hand over her mouth. Terrified she switched the lamp on by her bed. It was two o’clock in the morning. Her heart was racing. She sat up trying to calm herself. She was drowning. How Freudian, she thought, and got heavily out of bed.
She made tea and thought about the wisdom of staying with Nell, going back to the farm, and yet she was reluctant to return to London.
She could not sleep again and lay listening to the radio until the birds started singing, then she pulled a jacket over her nightdress and went out to watch the sunrise. She walked carefully on the cobbles, in case she disturbed John, and round into the garden. She sat shivering slightly on an old wooden bench watching the sun come up over the trees. There were shadows across the lawn and she thought she could hear a baby cry but when she listened there was nothing.
She moved down the garden to the trees, for behind them the sun would rise up above the sea. She walked through the little gate at the bottom and onto the disputed land. It was the most glorious golden sunrise and Gabby shivered for the wonder of it in a garden alone. She placed her hands over her stomach and thought of Mark. How close he seemed.
She went back inside and brought her toast back out. A little gaggle of cheerful volunteers had arrived and were strimming the overgrown land beyond the garden. John came out with his coffee.
‘Sorry, Gabby, did they wake you?’
Gabby smiled. ‘I’ve been up for hours. I watched the sun rise.’
‘Good heavens … It is a glorious morning, though.’
There was a cry from the field and all strimming stopped.
‘Oh, Lord,’ John said, ‘I hope no one has cut their toes off. I’d better go and look.’
He disappeared behind the shrubs and Gabby lifted her face to the early sun.
‘Gabby! Come and look! Just come and look at this!’ John called, excitement making his voice quiver.
Gabby got up and moved as quickly as she could over the grass. John was poking about, clearing something with the help of some of the boys.
‘Gabby, look, look what this youngster found.’
Gabby bent awkwardly down. She saw an edge of granite and then under the pulled-back grass, so thick it was like a carpet, she saw two small gravestones.
She knelt next to John who was still pulling the vegetation away and felt herself start to shake with excitement. Two small graves, side by side.
Tom Welland
Died at Sea
NFL 1867
Home to Rest
1889
Isabella Vyvyan
Died At Sea
NFL 1867
Buried here
Summer House
1889
John beamed at her. ‘Who is to say this is not consecrated ground now?’
Gabby grinned back and got to her feet, dizzy with excitement, and stepped back onto a fallen branch grown slippery with lichen. She lost her balance, put out her hand to save herself, but landed heavily. John was beside her in a second.
‘Gabby! Oh, my dear! Are you all right?’
Gabby lay for a moment in the wet grass, her hands on her stomach, frightened for her baby, then slowly she sat up and John and the volunteer leader helped her to her feet.
‘Oh, Gabby, Gabby, I shouldn’t have called you like that …’
‘John, rubbish! You didn’t put the log there!’ She smiled at his worried face. ‘John, I’m fine. I’ll go and lie down for a bit.’
‘Now, you are sure? Should I call a doctor?’
‘No, John. I’m quite sure. Go and finish your breakfast.’
‘I’ll check on you in an hour. Buzz if you need me.’
Gabby lay carefully on the bed and breathed slowly.
Mark. We found her, your Isabella. We found her, and you were part of her story, and of mine, too.
After a few minutes, Gabby felt suddenly compelled to go over to the museum. She stood in front of Isabella. The newly risen sun flowed in through the windows at an angle and cast a shaft of light across Isabella’s face.
‘Thank you, Isabella,’ Gabby whispered, ‘for showing us the end of your story.’
She stood for a long time looking up at her face and suddenly out of nowhere came the picture of a tall dark man standing in front of a garden containing washed-up treasures and debris from the sea. What had drawn Mark subconsciously to visit the house of his childhood, a place he could hardly remember? What shadows and echoes had drawn him back there?
Isabella looked steadily down, giving nothing away. Yet her expression seemed to change with the light, seemed suddenly at peace.
Gabby looked down at her right arm, so badly copied it did not meet the lily.
I will come and fix that, Isabella, I will make you perfect.
The air moved suddenly; changed. The arc of sun slid lower across Isabella’s face and away. Her face was in shadow again and Gabby knew at once that Isabella did not want to become perfect again. She needed to stay as she was, flawed and imperfect.
Gabby went closer and smiled. Isabella had the face of an angel, but she had been a woman with all the vanity and selfishness and needs of a human being.
Her work here was finished and Gabby reached up to touch the face one last time. As she did so a sharp pain started up in her back, making her gasp.
Nell sat on the edge of the hospital bed. ‘Honestly, Gab, what were you doing trotting about in your nightdress, uncovering buried graves, in the half-light?’
‘I’m fine, Nell. They are only keeping me in as a precaution, but I did give poor John a fright.’
‘Well, there is no way I am letting you out of my sight when they let you out. You are coming to me until the baby is born. You are too precious, Gabby.’
‘Nell, I won’t put up a fight, thank you. But, I don’t want to hurt Charlie. It is not that it would be difficult to come back to the farm, it is just I don’t know that I would be doing it for the right reasons. I’m scared that I would be returning to Charlie just to feel safe and because you are there. Do you see?’
‘Yes, I do. Leave it for now. Just let things unfold or resolve in their own way. Concentrate on that baby of yours. I’ll come back later. I’ll go and get your room ready, air your bed.’
‘Nell, don’t come back, it’s too far. I’ll ring you tonight. I’ll be out by tomorrow.’ But she wasn’t.
It was a long and painful birth. Josh had been so easy, but then she had been so much younger then …
Gabby was so, so, tired.
‘Come on, dearie, you are nearly there …’
And then it was over. There was silence for a second, then the baby gave a croaky little cry. Gabby relaxed, closed her eyes.
‘What is it?’ she whispered.
‘A little girl. A beautiful little girl.’
‘Is she all right?’ Gabby asked, hearing a little flurry of activity in the corner and lowered voices.
There was silence, the atmosphere in the room changed.
‘What’s happening?’ she called out, turning to look. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Your baby is fine, Gabrielle. Absolutely fine. We’ll need to pop her into an incubator for a few hours, because she’s premature, but nothing to worry about …’
The nurse was swaddling her and then brought her to Gabby, smiling, but watching Gabby’s face. ‘Here she is, isn’t she a little beauty?’
Gabby looked down. Her daughter was tiny with tufts of dark hair. She understood the sudden silence in the room for the baby had skin the colour of dark coffee. Gabby unfolded the minute fingers like spider crabs and was suffused with love and a sense of wonder. This is the missing part of Mark. The piece he was looking for. The part I hold.