Another Life: Escape to Cornwall with this gripping, emotional, page-turning read. Sara MacDonald
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Название: Another Life: Escape to Cornwall with this gripping, emotional, page-turning read
Автор: Sara MacDonald
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Историческая литература
isbn: 9780007388028
isbn:
She stared beyond the gate, away to the horizon, across Charlie and Nell’s five hundred acres below her, then she turned abruptly and got back into the car.
As she drove away from the sea she began to think about the figurehead. Peter Fletcher had told her, briefly, that it had come from a trade schooner called the Lady Isabella, which had set sail from St Piran and foundered in Canadian waters in 1867 with all hands on board.
The figurehead must have been salvaged years ago, but had only recently been discovered by a Canadian historian who had taken the time and trouble to trace a figurehead, from a foreign vessel, all the way back to the small Cornish port from where it had started its journey.
Gabby had been to the library and got out everything on marine figureheads she could find. Nell had given her a list of maritime museums and suggested she go over and visit Valhalla on Tresco to view the collection of figureheads more closely. She had also dug out old restoration books from her lecturing days which she thought Gabby might find useful.
Gabby pored over the photographs, fascinated by the wealth and beauty of the ships and figureheads inside the books she had borrowed. She had surprised herself with her sudden overriding conviction that this figurehead was a commission she must have. It was the first time she had been approached for the sort of work Nell herself had never undertaken and it astonished her that her opinion was being sought; that she had credibility on the basis of her own work, not Nell’s reputation.
Nell was sure that one of the reasons Gabby had been approached was her skill with intricate church panels. Gabby was more patient than Nell had been in her younger days. On wood it was necessary to peel away centuries of wax, stain and varnish, to reveal, after a tiring and lengthy process, if you were lucky, a hidden painting. The moment of discovery, the moment a fleck of colour appeared under your fingers like magic, was incomparable. Gabby never tired of the excitement and anticipation of a discovery. Nell preferred the satisfaction of simply transforming what she was working on to the comparative rarity of finding a concealed painting that had not been ruined.
As Gabby entered the village a small wind gusted from the sea, rocking her car. It carried with it a sudden presentiment that was disturbing. She felt a sharp stab of anxiety that made her breathless. She parked her car near the small museum and walked towards the group of people waiting for her in the porch.
For a moment Gabby hesitated with her hand on the latch of the old Methodist chapel that was now a museum. The group of men waiting for her were in shadow, she could not see their faces.
There was a second when she could have turned and run back to the car, driven away fast, back to the farmhouse lying squat and secure amid small trees all bent one way by the winds like figures frozen in a Russian landscape.
She could have run and never known the possibilities the future could hold. But someone called out and the moment slid away into impossibility. She opened the gate and passed through it, towards the men who stood in shadow and the sound of her name being called.
It took Gabby a moment to adjust to the darkness of the museum as the vicar of St Piran, John Bradbury, guided her through the door. Her heart sank as she spotted Councillor Rowe. He and Nell had been at war for years and she firmly maintained he was a closet misogynist. He was already puffing himself up like a bantam as she approached.
John Bradbury, with his back to the councillor, gave Gabby a wink of encouragement.
‘Gabrielle, come and meet everybody. You know Peter Fletcher from Truro Museum. Tristan Brown is from the Western Morning News. Councillor Rowe, I think you’ve met before. And this is Professor Mark Hannah, from Montreal. Mark has been entirely responsible for the safe return of our beautiful figurehead to St Piran. Mark, this is Gabrielle Ellis, our local restorer.’
Gabrielle looked up into the amused eyes of the Canadian. He held out his hand.
‘Great to meet you, Gabriella.’ His hand was warm, the fingers long and thin, his grip firm. Suddenly self-conscious, Gabby looked away, smiled at Peter Fletcher, and then they all turned and walked towards a corner of the museum where the figurehead lay on her back on a worktable, swathes of bubble wrap still around and underneath her like an eiderdown.
Gabby stared down at the wooden figure, held her breath. Lady Isabella was so much more beautiful than she had imagined. She moved closer and looked at the high cheekbones, the sightless eyes, the scarred face and neck. The wood was dry with small cracks, the paint flaked, remnants of colour caught in the corner of her eyes like tears.
The face was extraordinary, so meticulously carved that it seemed to have an expression of combined sensuality and haunting sadness. This face, Gabby thought, had been carved with a doomed or careless passion.
The Canadian, watching her, said softly, ‘Meet Lady Isabella.’
Gabrielle was unable to keep the thrill out of her voice; ‘She is exquisite.’
Mark Hannah laughed. ‘She is, isn’t she.’
‘Where on earth did you find her?’ Gabby asked.
‘Pure chance. I was in Newfoundland giving a series of lectures at the Marine Institute of Memorial University. I had a couple of days there and I decided to go walking. I suddenly spotted her in a garden in Bonavista Bay, among the usual flotsam brought up from the sea. She was wedged between two trees.
‘I knocked on the door and the man who lived there told me she had been given to him as part of a debt owed by his brother-in-law who had once lived in Malpeque Bay, Prince Edward Island. He thought she had been exhibited at some time, maybe at the Green Park Shipbuilding Museum on the west side of Malpeque Bay. I could see a crude attempt to restore her had been made but she was beginning to deteriorate and I asked if he would be willing to sell her to me.’
The boy from the Western Morning News was scribbling fast into his notebook.
‘After a lot of haggling I bought her for the sum of the whole debt owed to him. I told myself I wanted her because I thought she would make an excellent research project for some of my students, but it was love at first sight. I had to have her.’
Gabby, watching him, thought, He must have told this story many times and yet the excitement of the discovery is still with him.
‘I wonder how long she was exposed to the elements,’ she said, looking at the wood-rot and damage at her base.
‘The man told me he had kept her in his old boat shed and had only put her in his garden when he needed his shed.’
Peter Fletcher touched Gabby’s arm. ‘Thanks to Mark’s detective work I was able to trace the original plans for the schooner Lady Isabella. They were in the marine archives in Devon. She was a two-masted ship, commissioned by a wealthy master mariner, an ex-naval gentleman called Sir Richard Magor whose family were big in shipbuilding here in Cornwall and Devon, as well as Prince Edward Island.’
Gabby felt a surge of excitement. ‘Do you have the name of the man who carved the figurehead?’
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