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

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      ‘I’ll be back in a while,’ she said to the cow. ‘I’m just going to check my answer-machine.’

      Taking tea into her workroom she saw there were three messages. Message number one was from Josh, telling her she should get a mobile as he could never get hold of her. He sounded husky and dispirited. They were never off the parade ground. He was worried he would fail his next fitness test. He was finding out about suitable places for Charlie, Nell and Gabby to stay … if he ever passed out. He would ring again on Sunday … He was really looking forward to a weekend home.

      Message number two was from Peter Fletcher.

      ‘Gabrielle. We considered your quote very reasonable indeed, even our mutual councillor friend. An official letter is in the post.

      ‘My other reason for ringing you is Mark Hannah. Before he goes back to London he’s keen to go and see the figureheads at Valhalla on Tresco. Unfortunately, I’m completely tied up with meetings next week. Forgive me if this is an imposition, Gabrielle, but would you be free to fly over on the helicopter with him? We will, of course, pick up the tab. It seems inhospitable to send him on his own when he has done so much for us. I will quite understand if you are too busy. Could you give me a ring on this number …?’

      Gabby shakily put her tea down on her desk. Message number three.

      ‘Hi there, Gabriella. Peter gave me your number, do hope you don’t mind. He couldn’t get an answer so he left a message. Is there any chance of you having the time to accompany me to Tresco to see the figureheads? I would sure love to see them. I’d be grateful if you could let me know as I need to book my train ticket back to London …’

      The sun was setting below the fields. Shadows lengthened across the stubby lawn outside. Bantams pecked the grubs in noisy little groups like fussy old women at a W.I. meeting. Gabby sat very still, pulling a thread from the hem of her tee-shirt. If she did not pick up the phone and dial his number this instant she would not be able to do it. She opened her diary to see which day she would be least missed from the farm, then, feeling sick, she picked up the phone and dialled Mark Hannah’s number.

      As she waited for him to answer, the sun slid away, and despite the flushed sky, dusk descended quickly. Damp rose up from the grass and into the open window. In the kitchen behind her, Nell switched on the six o’clock news and lights sprang up suddenly, away on the far peninsula. A fleeting sadness, an ache, a sensation of being beyond the warmth of lighted windows, of being extrinsic within a house she knew and people she loved, descended on Gabby.

      In the darkening room there was just her, holding a phone which was ringing out into a hotel room where a man lay on a bed with his hands behind his head, watching, as she did, evening come, with a sudden longing for home; for the smell of cooking and laughter and bottles of wine being opened, of small children being bathed. The safe embodiment of a familiar routine.

      He lay still, waiting to see if the phone would ring, and when it did he could not answer it, as if frozen by the knowledge of what answering it might mean. Just as Gabby gave a shaky sigh of relief and made to replace the receiver, Mark Hannah, in one swift movement, turned and grabbed his up from the bedside table, aware as he did so of a premeditated and deliberate crossing from a place of safety, to something quite else.

      In the early hours of the morning Charlie and David, the vet, fought to save number four and her calf. The cow managed after a long, painful labour to give birth to a healthy heifer, but collapsed and haemorrhaged immediately afterwards. Gabby knelt by her head, talking to the old cow and stroking her trembling limbs. Nell brought out more hot water and they put a blanket over her to try to minimize the shock of a difficult birth.

      She managed to turn and nuzzle her calf to her shaky, stick-like feet and then she gave up the fight and with a tired, sad little sound the breath left her body. The calf bellowed and slid down to the floor again, nuzzling her mother for milk. They watched her suckling, then, still leaning against her mother, the calf fell asleep. Charlie rubbed her gently down with straw, admiring her.

      ‘That’s a good calf you’ve got there,’ David said, ‘but I’m sorry we lost the mother. Is there a cow you can try her with, rather than hand-rearing?’

      ‘Yes,’ Charlie said. ‘Just one. She lost a bull calf last week. She’s young and skittish, so I don’t know if she will accept this one, but I’ll certainly try her.’

      They moved out of the barn into the cool dark night.

      ‘Come and have a drink, David,’ Nell said. ‘Gabby, go to bed, you look exhausted.’

      ‘Yes, go on Gab, I won’t be long.’

      ‘Goodnight,’ David smiled at her before the men turned to follow Nell to her cottage.

      Gabby walked across the yard to the house, the image of the dying cow still with her. She knew that it did not matter how long you farmed, you never got used to losing a healthy animal.

      She showered quickly, then climbed into bed and lay on her back trying to relax. She switched her small radio on low and listened to the comfortable ragbag of the World Service and tried to drift off. She wanted to be asleep before Charlie tripped exhausted up the stairs, full of Nell’s whisky.

      Gabby knew the pattern of Charlie’s drinking after a long hard day. If she was still awake she could time Charlie’s clumsy movements in the dark. He would wash his hands but would be too tired to shower. He would fall into the bed beside her with a grunt of relief and either reach out for her or fall asleep in a second on his back and start to snore gently.

      Gabby preferred the latter. The smell of straw and disinfectant would still cling to him, mingling with the not altogether unpleasant sweat of hard labour. With whisky blurring any moral sensibility he would mumble in her ear, push her nightdress up to her waist, part her knees roughly with his, enter her, come immediately, or, worse, complete this isolating little act with difficulty.

      Gabby would lie under him, looking out through the open curtain at the night sky, detaching herself from her inert body being rammed rhythmically under his. As he rolled off her, already asleep, Gabby would feel the bleakness of the spirit confronted by the inevitable fact of its separateness from another human being. She saw in her mind the cockerel pouncing on his bantams or the bull in the field clumsily mounting a heifer.

      If Gabby was aware, in the telling and unforgiving dark, that her passivity in allowing her body to be used was colluding with the act itself, she would have had to face, head on, her own facility for smoothing over all cracks to maintain the polished facade of what she believed a marriage to be.

      It was easier not to confront. Charlie would not have understood the word violation, and it seemed too strong a word for something that lasted minutes and did not hurt the flesh, only left the soul in a cold, dark place. It was simpler to make some areas of her marriage off limits.

      If Gabby had understood that by avoiding communicating to Charlie on any intimate level she denied him the chance of acknowledging any responsibility for the way he sometimes behaved, she would have had to own that she did not have the courage to go there. She was comfortable, on the whole, in the place she occupied, in the marriage she had. Two people who shied carefully away from emotional intimacy. And she was sure Charlie was, too.

      Tonight she slept and was only dimly aware of Charlie falling into bed beside her. He patted her bottom. ‘G’night,’ he mumbled.

      ‘’Night,’ she mumbled back, and, feeling СКАЧАТЬ