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

Elan went for days without speaking to a soul. It was how he had chosen and needed to live in order to paint, but Gabby saw now the extent of his longing for the companionship he once had with Patrick.

Mark, too, seemed unable to tear his eyes away.

‘I’m going to have to have those two little paintings, Gabriella.’ He peered at the list of prices. ‘So … I don’t eat for a while. No bad thing.’

‘Elan Premore has a cottage near us. He’s one of our closest friends. He’s a kind and lovely man … I never realized how lonely and isolated he must sometimes feel.’

Lonely seemed too tame a word for the passion glimpsed within the paintings. It was raw and bleak. Like waking in the dark and reaching for a person no longer there.

Mark looked down at her. ‘Is he a recluse?’

‘In a way, I suppose. He lives in a tiny coastguard cottage in the middle of nowhere.’

‘Completely on his own?’

‘At the moment. He had a long-term partner, a doctor. They’d been together for years, then suddenly one morning Patrick left without a word of explanation. He just vanished. Elan was devastated for a while. I thought he’d got over it, he is always so cheerful, so flippant with me …’ She swallowed. ‘Obviously he hasn’t got over it.’

They both turned back to the paintings.

‘I don’t think he ever will.’

‘Yet,’ Mark said, ‘he is able to turn an emptiness that destroys a man into something lasting. A painting as resonant and as instinctive as a piece of music. A thing we ache to own because we understand he is showing us, more succinctly than we could ever articulate ourselves, a universal human condition.’

Gabby was silent. While the paintings were being wrapped, she said, ‘Elan would have enjoyed talking to you.’

‘I’d love to meet him one day,’ Mark said.

‘He’s having another exhibition in London soon. I’ll find out when it is. He would be glad you bought those paintings … you understand them so well.’

‘It’s possible only to capture a glimpse of what your friend was feeling when he painted those landscapes, those two distinct moods. But that glimpse is more than enough to recognize the spirituality within his work. Each person interprets what they see in subjective ways, but we can all intrinsically relate to those pictures to a greater or lesser degree.’

‘Like listening to a piece of classical music we don’t quite understand, and yet it makes us cry.’

‘Yes, Gabriella.’

Mark reached for her hand and brought it to his lips. A tiny gesture, instinctively done, his eyes smiling again as he smoothly banished any introspective shadow that threatened to cast itself over their day.

They walked slowly back the way they had come towards the Abbey Gardens and the long, white, curving stretch of beach to have their picnic. They found a sheltered place backed by rocks and sat on their sweaters and leant against them. Mark opened the wine with a remarkable penknife that seemed to have a blade for every eventuality.

‘Boy Scouts penknife. Obligatory male weapon, never know when it might come in handy.’

Gabby smiled and undid the egg rolls from their clingfilm. She had forgotten how pale and anaemic shop eggs were; they did not look very appetizing. Mark saw her face.

‘Sorry, I’m afraid it was egg or processed cheese. I thought eggs might be fractionally better, forgetting that you probably haven’t tasted shop eggs for years. I suppose yours are the colour of the sun.’

‘Well, yes. Small eggs, though, we keep bantams. These are fine, what does it matter what they taste like …’ She indicated the duck-egg-blue sea, waved her arm skyward at the cloudless sky.

‘Very true,’ Mark said softly.

There was hardly a sound except the lapping of small waves. The sun glinted and danced on the surface of the water making it iridescent. Mark handed Gabby a beaker of wine and held his up to her.

‘To this beautiful day and to the future.’

His eyes rested on her with an expression that made her stomach lurch. They touched plastic glasses and Gabby, feeling the heat spreading over her entire body, made herself busy stowing away little clumps of clingfilm, then she turned and studied the horizon and the small boats still making their way back and forth to the island.

They munched the rolls in silence, washing them down with sharp white wine. Alarmed, Gabby thought, I mustn’t drink too much.

As if reading her thoughts, Mark said, ‘An island must be the best place of all to drink at lunchtime. You can’t drive. There’s no escape, the only thing to do is relax.’

He turned on his back and lay with his head on his sweater, his arms under his head. ‘What made you become a picture restorer, Gabriella?’

Gabby sieved grains of sand as smooth as silk through her fingers. ‘Watching Nell, my mother-in-law. She used to let me help her with small, simple jobs that didn’t need any particular expertise. I began to get so interested that she encouraged me to train properly, get a qualification. But really it was Nell who got me started. I learnt so much from her, she was a wonderful teacher.’

‘So I understand. Peter Fletcher has huge respect for her.’

‘They go back a long way, I think they trained or worked together in London at some time. It’s been much easier for me to work in Cornwall because Nell forged the way. When she started restoring it took her years to build up a business and a reputation. She was helping her husband run the farm, too. I don’t know how she did it.’

Gabby slid onto her back. The wine was beginning to make her sleepy. She closed her eyes. One of the reasons Nell had encouraged her to study properly was to banish her longing for another child. It just never happened. Despite months of tests and medical advice and marking the calendar religiously, she had never conceived again. She had enrolled at Falmouth College of Arts to study Fine Arts with a quaking heart, but had loved every minute.

Through Nell she acquired a talent for something she was good at and loved, but would never have thought of doing. Her touch was light and instinctive and when Nell began to slow down she had taken over some of her work and steadily gained a reputation of her own. By the time Josh left for university she had her own clients and a fledgling business.

‘I owe Nell so much,’ she murmured, her body relaxing into the warm sand.

‘You sound close.’ Mark turned slightly on his side towards her, away from the sun in his eyes.

‘Yes, I guess we are.’

Mark smiled. ‘If you’ve never had to think about it, you are. Does Nell still restore?’

‘She just takes on work she enjoys now, and friends’ paintings. She used to do all the museum work and the heavy and sometimes monotonous cleaning of huge paintings of local dignitaries in council offices …’

‘Like Councillor Rowe!’

Gabby laughed. ‘Exactly like Councillor Rowe! Now I’ve taken over all those and I think she’s finding it fun and a huge relief to pick and choose what she wants to do for the first time in her life.’

‘So she’s a widow?’

‘Oh, she’s been a widow for twenty-odd years …’ Gabby stopped as a sudden thought occurred to her. She could not believe she had never thought of it before.

‘What is it, Gabriella?’ Mark propped his head on his hand and peered at her.

‘I’ve suddenly realized that Nell must have been a widow for almost as long as she was married. It’s such a strange concept … Nell has always seemed embedded in the farm, yet …’ Gabby tried to work it out. ‘She must have been, heavens, around the age I am now when Ted died.’ She stared at Mark, startled.

‘Nell could have left the farm when Ted died. She could have gone back to London and resumed her career. She could have had another life altogether, while she was still young enough.’

Supposing Nell had longed to leave and Charlie and I never thought of asking her what she wanted?

Mark was thinking, How startling this girl’s eyes are. They seem to mirror every emotion, leaving her guileless. At times they appear a deep forget-me-not blue, as now. At other times they seem a hazy grey like seeing the sky or sea through mist. There seem to be brown flecks in them somewhere; perhaps they turn that way when she is angry. Is this sleeping girl ever angry? And why do I think she’s sleeping?