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

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       Chapter 9

      Gabrielle and Mark stood before the figureheads in the peace of an early morning. The helicopter had departed with a roar back to Penzance and the only other people in the Abbey Gardens were the gardeners, unseen and silent. A spade stood upright in the soil, a robin pecked in the new-turned earth. A jacket lay folded on a bench, there was the sound of someone sweeping a path and the smell of damp blooms mixed with spearmint rose from the ground.

      They had permission to go into the gardens before they opened to the little ferryboats full of tourists and gardening clubs. They walked silently, along paths that curled round vast tropical plants and beds of succulents of such colour and variety that occasionally they stopped in their tracks, awed by the sheer scale of the planting.

      ‘Each time I come I think of The Secret Garden,’ Gabby whispered, as if her voice might shatter the illusion of paradise. ‘There’s always a spade or a fork placed just so, yet I’ve never seen anyone working.’

      Mark smiled. ‘Perhaps the gardeners are from some other world. Nothing would surprise me here. What an amazing place! There’s something mystical and timeless about being inside a walled garden.’

      Rounding a corner they came upon a clearing and there before them lay Valhalla Museum, with the array of figureheads, bright against the lush undergrowth, extraordinary in their garish beauty. Mark drew in his breath, and Gabby, turning to look up at him, thought how open and un-English he was; unafraid to show his excitement.

      They both stood silently admiring while the birds swooped and darted fearlessly at their feet, for there was little in these lush gardens to threaten them. They moved closer to examine the carvings. Gabby was especially interested in the faces, because on the St Piran figurehead the face and neck were going to be most difficult to restore.

      ‘Trophies of the sea,’ Mark murmured. ‘Each figurehead an individual offering of respect and affection, regardless of whether they were carved by a naïve seaman or a carver of distinction.’

      Staring into an enigmatic wooden face with eyes that gave nothing away, Gabby thought of the figurehead carvers and of the sailors who had manned the ships and watched as their figureheads rose and plunged out of the waves, carrying them precariously to battle in the duty of a monarch.

      How many lives, from the moment of carving to the moment of her ship sinking and being salvaged, did a carved face touch in so many different ways? Gabby could see in her mind’s eye a Napoleonic battle or a great storm breaking up a galleon. The sails unfurling at speed, masts falling with a great crack, like trees, and the screams of men jumping away from the sinking ship to drown in the angry waters.

      There the ship would lie on the seabed, broken, its hull becoming a sad skeleton over the years as seaweed and barnacles enveloped it. Then, one day, divers would descend; the salvage men, swimming round the wreck in slow-moving sequence with waving arms and excited thumbs-up as they discovered a poignant wooden face, staring blindly upwards, the heart and soul of the dead vessel. They would bring her up from that fathomless dark to see once more the light of day and the lives of men.

      Gabby became conscious of Mark staring at her in the amused way he had.

      ‘Come back,’ he said softly. ‘Where have you been?’

      ‘I was just thinking that each figurehead must have a story, a life of its own, and we’ll never know what it was, we can only imagine it.’

      ‘You would be surprised how much we can learn from a ship, Gabriella. Like compiling a profile we can build a history, based on fact. We might never discover all the names and faces of those who built or sailed in the ships, but with a date and a time we can catch a glimpse, find records, form an idea of the way these mariners lived their lives.

      ‘We don’t have records of the building of the early ships because the shipwrights were often illiterate so no plans were drawn up. However, models were made and some of these survive and are as beautifully detailed as the real ships.’

      They moved around the display of figureheads: a sailor, a king, a damsel, a god.

      ‘Did the figureheads become a way of denoting wealth or origin, or just a way of honouring a monarch or a country?’ Gabby asked. ‘I know the Vikings had them on their ships until the thirteenth century and then they changed the front of their boats for war or something. We had to draw eleventh-century Viking boats from the Bayeux Tapestry endlessly at school and I’m afraid I was bored rigid.’

      Mark laughed. ‘I’m probably boring you now, Gabriella. The figureheads became superfluous when the Vikings developed the forecastle on the front of their boats. But before that happened the Viking longships carried serpents and dragons. There were two in the British Museum, as well as on the Bayeux Tapestry, which you must have seen, depicting William of Normandy’s invasion fleet of 1066, all decorated with lion and dragon figureheads.’

      Gabby said hastily, ‘I’m not in the least bit bored. There is a huge difference between being taught by a bored nun with no interest in the subject herself, and going to the British Museum, which I loved. Or standing here in front of figureheads, some of which have been pulled up somewhere out there on the rocks …’ She gestured towards the sea.

      Mark stood looking down at her. Gabby had never met anyone who looked as if they were always about to laugh, as if life itself was one huge joke. It did not fit in, somehow, with her idea of a historian.

      He turned back to the figureheads, casually placing a hand under her elbow.

      ‘A figurehead could be many things. Originally it was most likely religious. The head of an animal sacrificed to appease a sea god. Then it would have become symbolic and a means of identification. The Egyptian ships had figures of holy birds or eyes painted on the sides of the bows so the ship could see. The Phoenicians used horse heads symbolizing speed, and the Greek rowing galleys favoured bronze animals, usually a boar’s head, their most hunted and frightening animal …’

      Gabby listened to Mark Hannah’s fluid and easy voice. It had a beautiful rhythm and symmetry. His enthusiasm was catching, making it all the more … seductive shot into her mind, and she jumped away from his hand under her elbow as if this thought could transfer itself up her arm into his hand.

      ‘Can you give me five minutes?’ Mark was rummaging in his haversack and brought out a small tape recorder. ‘I just want to make some notes, then we can go look for a coffee?’

      ‘Of course.’

      Gabby wandered away. She could hear voices now, the day was waking up and the gardens would be open soon. Visitors would begin to stream in and the helicopter would return. The ferry would arrive at St Mary’s and the small boats would chug to and fro from the islands, depositing visitors until dusk.

      She sat on the grass cross-legged and closed her eyes and held her face up to the sun. She felt an unaccountable surge of happiness. Scilly always felt like another country. Only a few miles of water separated them from the mainland and yet it always felt abroad.

      Gabby felt that small, familiar tug of longing which surfaced occasionally and which she would quickly squash. A sensation that the world was flowing fluidly on without her. It was not unhappiness, it was not boredom. She could never catch СКАЧАТЬ