In a Kingdom by the Sea

I can still hear the sound of the chickens in the long grass and Maman’s cry when the fox got any of them or she spotted a rat near the feed.

I can see Papa stripped to the waist as he dug out a vegetable patch on a piece of the field next to the house. I can see Maman watching him from under her sunhat and remember the little flush inside me as I sensed, but did not understand, the innuendo of their banter.

My first memory of our house is standing on the balcony with my father gazing downhill across a field of wild flowers to the sea. There was a mist hanging over the water like a magical curtain and the sea was eerily still, like glass.

‘Fairyland!’ I whispered. To a five year old living in a terraced house in Redruth, it was.

‘Can you imagine living in this house?’ Papa asked me, sounding excited.

‘I wouldn’t like to live with Aunt Loveday. She’s old, Papa, and she smells.’

‘That’s not very kind, Gabby,’ my father said. ‘It’s sad. Loveday is too old to live here any more. She can’t cope with all the stairs so she is going to a private nursing home. This house has to be sold to help pay for her care …’

My father sighed as he looked down at the neglected garden.

‘Poor old Loveday. She’s lived here all her life. It is a big thing for her to admit she can’t manage on her own. Now she wants her home to stay in the family.’

‘So, are we going to buy her house?’ I asked my father, following his eyes across the jungle garden.

‘Maybe, if we can afford to. The house has to be valued first. If we moved here you would have to leave your friends and change schools.’

I stared out at the sea, blindingly blue below me. ‘I don’t mind. I’d love to live here. We’d have the beach and a garden to play in but Dominique won’t want to move. She’s got so many friends, she won’t want to leave any of them.’

‘Leaving some of them behind would be no bad thing,’ my father said. ‘She might make more sensible ones and concentrate on her schoolwork …’

Loveday’s house was an old and shabby granite house. Once a farmhouse it lay foursquare and solid, facing the coastline. Loveday, a distant cousin of Papa’s, had slowly sold off most of their land but had protected the house by keeping all the surrounding fields.

Papa pointed to the village sloping off to the right of us. Fishermen’s cottages lay in tiers raised above the water. We could not see the small harbour full of fishing boats from here, or the lifeboat station; they lay out of sight beyond the point, like another little hamlet. On this side of the village there was only the perfect horseshoe cove and the coastal path through fields.

‘With a little imagination, this coastline could attract so many more people …’ my father murmured to himself.

Maman came bustling onto the balcony with Dominique behind her. They were carrying a French loaf, cheese and tomatoes. Maman looked happy. My sister looked bored and sulky.

Maman kissed the top of my head and said to Papa, ‘I rang the education department at County Hall this morning. There are no staff vacancies in the village school at the moment but I would almost certainly be able to teach in Penzance.’

She dropped the bread on the table and turned and looked out at the sea, and the garden below. ‘We would be mad not to try to buy this house, Tom, however hard it will be. I could do supply teaching. There will always be work in the shops and hotels in the summer season. I could probably earn more money having two part-time jobs than I do teaching.’

Dominique rolled her eyes, dismissively. ‘Maman! Are you going to stop teaching in Redruth to be a cleaner like Kirsty’s mum? Just so you can live in this house?’

‘Dominique,’ Maman said. ‘I have loved Loveday’s house from the first moment I saw it. I would do any job that brings in money to live here. I do not want to spend my life in a rented house in Redruth with no garden. This might be the only chance Papa and I have of owning a house …’

‘But this village is miles away from anywhere,’ Dominique wailed. ‘It’s like a dead place. I won’t have any friends. I like Redruth …’

‘In a couple of years you’ll have to change schools anyway,’ Papa said. ‘You’re good at making friends. You’d soon make new friends in the village …’

‘It’s a boring, boring village. It doesn’t even have a proper shop …’ Dominique was in a rare bad mood and spoiling the morning.

‘Loads of tourists will come to the beach every summer,’ I told her.

‘Big deal.’ She flounced off down the steps to the overgrown garden.

Maman said, slightly deflated, ‘It is a bit off the beaten track, Tom. If we did B&B, would anyone come, apart from walkers?’

‘There are plenty of walkers but the village does need a café, a decent pub and nice places to stay to draw more people here. Look, down there to the beach, Marianne … See those little huts by the lifebuoy? The council are thinking of doing those huts up and renting them out. Wouldn’t one of them be the perfect place for a little café? As you say, there’s nowhere to get anything to eat or drink at the moment.’

Papa laughed at Maman’s face. She was staring out visualizing the café up and running.

‘I reckon this little village is going to change dramatically in the next few years. More and more tourists are coming further west. St Ives is getting crowded and too expensive, but up-country people still want to buy second homes, which means plenty of work for a builder like me …’

My father was waving his hands about and striding up and down as if we already lived here.

‘The village would be ruined,’ Maman said, ‘if it was built up and overpriced like St Ives. I love all the fields covered in gorse. Who wants to live near empty houses all winter?’

‘No one can sell agricultural land. No one can change the coastline or coastal footpaths. People will always come to walk and how many walkers pass a café if it’s there? I’m not talking about building new houses but renovating old cottages when they are sold off. I’ve heard that the council plan to open craft shops in the old cowsheds in the square as a showcase for local artists, potters and silversmiths and the like. This is the right time for us to buy, my bird. If we don’t take this chance, we’ll regret it for the rest of our lives …’

My parents went inside arm in arm to make lunch. I stayed outside on the balcony staring out at the sea. The mist was blowing away and little fishing boats were heading out of the harbour, the thud of their engines echoing over the still air.

A tractor was ploughing up on the hill with a great carpet of seagulls circling behind it. The church bell chimed. I heard Maman laugh inside the house and the deep boom of Papa’s voice. I caught the flash of Dominique’s dress in the orchard. She had climbed into one of the old apple trees and her singing floated out over the garden. I waved and she waved back. I could see she was smiling. I could see she was changing her mind and tasting freedom.

This was my first memory of the village. A sensation we all had of coming home; an instant connectedness to Loveday’s house that was powerful. The old lady’s life here was ending, but ours was about to begin.

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_fe48f3e8-2d04-51fc-8f1a-22c052a383f6)

London, 2009

A few days after our party, Mike flew off to Karachi for his interview with Pakistani Atlantic Airlines. When the phone rang I already knew what he would say. He had been offered the job and accepted on the spot.

Aware of my silence he said, ‘Gabby, I’m going to have to wait for my visa application to be processed. Even fast-tracked, it will take at least ten days, so we will have time together before I go …’

I take time off work and Will and Matteo head down from Edinburgh and Glasgow to spend a long weekend with Mike before he leaves.

‘FFS, Dad, we’re fighting the Taliban, it’s not exactly the perfect time to head for Pakistan, is it?’

‘You’ll get kidnapped … like that journalist, what’s his name … Pearl Someone …’

‘Daniel. Daniel Pearl, he got …’

‘Shut up, both of you, you’ll worry your mother. Of course I won’t get kidnapped. I’m not a journalist after a story. There are other Europeans working in Pakistan, you know. Oil companies, commercial firms, NGOs. Everyone working out there is given security.’

The parks are stunning, full of trees with translucent green leaves and picnickers enjoying a hot June. Mike loves to roam London when he is home, so we criss-cross the city like tourists, drink coffee by the Serpentine, dip in and out of galleries, go to the theatre. In the evenings we take turns choosing where to eat and sip cold white wine and beer on shady terraces.

I cannot remember the last time we all spent time together in London. I let my happiness settle inside me like a precious thing, hardly daring to own it, in case some mean god snatches it away.

One afternoon Will and Matteo persuade us to take a riverboat down to Greenwich like we used to when they were small. As we chug downriver Mike cross-questions his sons on their career plans.

Both boys somehow ended up studying in Scotland. I’ve never been sure whether this was chance or design. There are only twelve months between them and they are close, often mistaken for twins. Will, who is studying medicine at Edinburgh, says warily, ‘I don’t have any plans, Dad. I’m just concentrating on exams at the moment.’

‘But you must have an idea about how you want to specialize,’ Mike says.