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

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СКАЧАТЬ turned and walked inland through the salt marshes. Gabby’s memories were of walking with Josh here while Charlie fished or chatted to the locals. Charlie always met someone he knew, wherever they went. They would talk bulbs and farming, the weather and tourists. Charlie, who grew bored and restless after about two days away from the farm, relaxed here because he knew that in any crisis he could be on the helicopter and home within a few hours. But holidays had often been with Nell as they could never all leave the farm together.

      If this was your first trip to the Scilly Islands you would be awed at the vivid colour of the sea and marvel at the row upon row of varying yellow daffodils in spring, sloping downwards from tiny fields rimmed with stone walls. The heat and the silence, even in summer, would press down on you. If you closed your eyes you could almost believe you were on a Greek island.

      Gabby thought suddenly of home. The milking would have finished; Nell would be feeding the bantams. Charlie would be doing his rounds, checking up on everyone. And here she was, someone else, island-walking on a clear, cloudless blue day with a man she did not know.

      Moorhens shot out of the undergrowth and a heron stood on one foot perfectly still. Mark and Gabby walked on in companionable silence.

      Mark was considering how his life had changed since he found Lady Isabella. What began as an interest became a quest. Obsession, Veronique had said. While he was away, the house would become even more packed with his daughters and their families. Veronique would be standing at the stove cooking dinner. Or, he was a bit hazy about the time difference, she would be sitting at the large Shaker table chatting to one of the girls, keeping half an eye on any grandchildren playing at her feet. She would be utterly content to be surrounded by chaos, for that chaos was her family and her whole life.

      Mark could no longer remember when they had last had an evening meal alone together. He could no longer remember what his wife looked like when he first met her at university, but he never forgot how clever she had been and how shockingly eager, almost thankful she had seemed, to submerge that marvellous intellect into babies and domesticity.

      Would anyone, passing them on the path as he walked with this small dark woman who was not much older than his eldest daughter, think he was her father? It was the last thing he felt. Away from his family, that ballooned alarmingly each year as if it was a contest, how different, how … free he felt. As if he was another man altogether.

      They walked until they reached the small harbour, with fishing boats pulled up onto the foreshore. There was a gallery, the pub, and beyond, tucked away in the trees, lay the island hotel.

      Mark went off to explore Cromwell’s castellated fortresses rising from the water while Gabby sat on the wall, lifting her face to the sun and listening to children playing around the boats. Sound and smell; sun-coloured floaters on her closed lids rose and fell soporifically. The heat warmed her already-brown legs and arms. All life faded to this small second on the wall.

      She slowly opened her eyes and got up and walked into the gallery. Most of the artists were local. Gabby was immediately drawn to two of Elan’s paintings, a watercolour and a gouache, neither of which she had seen before. She was standing studying them when Mark joined her.

      They both stood looking at the two small paintings for a long time. Elan could capture a mood so exactly that it made your skin prickle. The sheer power and range of his emotions transformed his work. The moral sensibility behind a deft and seemingly simple scene was as real and true as the fierce weather or the muted colours of the start of another day.

      Sunrise over Cove, a watercolour, had a haunting quality. Cottage before a Storm was full of a strange and intense yearning. Both paintings seemed to capture the artist’s longing for another human being to share in the sparse and beautiful landscape he painted.

      Gabby felt overwhelmed. She had never suspected the extent of Elan’s loneliness. No conversation with him could have revealed so much. It was a shock to learn all over again how little it was possible to know those you love.

      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 СКАЧАТЬ