Читать книгу Garden of Stars: A gripping novel of hope, family and love across the ages - Rose Alexander - Страница 13

3

Lisbon, 1935

It seems incredible, and somehow unreal, to be writing this as a married woman. The wedding was magnificent; everyone had a marvellous time, which is what I most hoped for, and the dancing went on until 2am. My dress, though I feel immodest to say it, was exquisite. Maria was the cutest bridesmaid you could possibly imagine and John the most perfect groom. In his dark suit with its red rose buttonhole he looked more handsome than Clark Gable. He swept me off my feet, literally as well as metaphorically, for this morning, rather than carrying me over the threshold into our new home, he picked me up and carried me out of my parents’ house and placed me in the car like a precious package needing careful delivery.

Although I am so excited to be starting my new life, I could feel tears forming behind my eyes as we pulled away. My family were gathered together and waving us off as if their lives depended on it and I had to turn my face away for a few moments while I composed myself. I didn’t want John to see me crying; he might have thought I don’t want to be his wife, don’t want to move to Porto with him, when I do, I really, really do. It’s just that it’s hard to leave everything you’ve ever known, your beloved mother and father and siblings, the montado itself… I’m sure he would have understood, although I didn’t feel like telling him just then as he is always so self-possessed and faultless, somehow, it sometimes makes me feel very uncouth and dishevelled, in character rather than appearance, if that makes any sense at all.

I had a small, muslin-wrapped parcel on my lap and John asked me what it was. I blushed rather as I explained to him that it was my lucky charm - a piece of cork bark that I wanted to take with me to remind me of the cork forests that have been my life since the day I was born. It is the cork trees’ bark that provides us with our livelihood, and not just us, lots of other families, too. The Alentejo is cork and cork is the Alentejo; it’s always been like that and I suppose it always will be. I wondered whether John would be dismissive of such sentimentality – he is English, after all - but instead he was at his most indulgent, and once we’d rounded the corner and were no longer in sight of the farewell party, he put his hand on my knee and squeezed it. It sent a shiver all through me.

Spring comes early to the Alentejo and as we puttered along the country lanes in the open-topped car, the growing season was in full swing all around us, cartloads of manure wedged between open gateposts in the entrance to every field. The peasant women working on the first plantings had their check skirts tied between their legs to keep them out of the way, and on their heads they wore wide-brimmed felt hats pulled firmly down over black headscarves. I always think that it must be so hot, but I suppose they are used to it for they don’t seem to find it so. The men, sporting sheepskin chaps with the fleece worn to the outside, ploughed neat furrows with their oxen, the overturned earth a rich reddish-brown. Tucked away in tidy rows beneath the hedgerows were their taros, small cork buckets with wooden handles and tight-fitting lids that keep their lunch either hot or cold.

It felt strange to think that I don’t know when I’ll see all these things again. Perhaps that’s why the colours of the wild flowers that adorned the meadows on either side of us seemed brighter than ever before; the scarlet, gold, white and blue of the poppies, moon daisies, field chrysanthemums and wild anchusa blazing in the sunshine. The gum cistus bushes were surrounded by immense clouds of white blossoms, as if a host of butterflies had paused in their flight and become immobilised, intoxicated by the sweetness of the nectar they sought. I felt myself captured in the same way, my life encircled by the man I love like an invisible net that will hold me to him forever.

John clasped my hand and raised it to his lips to kiss it, making me giggle like a schoolgirl. Really, I do have to work on that sophistication I have mentioned before. I urged John to be careful and keep two hands on the wheel; he borrowed the car from a rather wealthy friend of his and although he is as competent at driving as he is at everything else, one does need to pay attention when in charge of a motor vehicle. Apart from anything else, my mother was so nervous about us driving ourselves that I thought she might try to forbid it and it would be too vexing if her fears were to be proved right.

When I waved his hand away, his reply was, “I can’t resist you,” which made me squirm with delicious embarrassment and blush all the more.

After that, my mind kept straying to the night to come when we would consummate our marriage. (I couldn’t possibly have done so in my parents’ house; it just wouldn’t have felt right. John felt the same – he said he wanted to be free of any restraint when he enjoyed me for the first time. Whatever that means!) Anyway, the brush of John’s lips against my skin filled me with a thrill of anticipation which, together with the excitement of bowling along on the open road and the undercurrent of danger thus produced, made me feel quite light-headed and dizzy.

On occasion during our engagement, I have worried about whether it’s possible to get it wrong. Making love, that is. I don’t really know what to do and that makes me anxious, but then I think that everyone else who’s married must do it and they must work it out so surely I will be able to. Better to be optimistic, I say, and assume the best rather than fear the worst. That’s how I try to be with other difficulties I face and so why not with this? And I mustn’t forget that it will be John who leads the way and he does everything with such verve and self-assurance that I’m sure that making love will be no different.

Finally, after rather a long drive, we arrived in Lisbon. John negotiated the bends of the old town’s narrow streets masterfully – those that are accessible by car at all, that is. We went to a favourite restaurant of his and ate bacalhau – dried salt cod - with braised fried onions, buttered rice and a mild mustard sauce. John didn’t have dessert but I had pudim, crème caramel. I always choose it because it reminds me of being a little girl; it was the treat I invariably selected when we went out for lunch on Sundays. I love the way the quivering golden mound splits apart and slides onto the plate when you cut into it, oozing delicious, golden, buttery sauce. Today, I ate it rather too greedily as if I could physically consume the familiarity and comfort it represents. When everything is so new, it’s nice to have something you know well to fall back on.

After lunch, John took me to the Chiado. It is the most exclusive shopping street in Lisbon – and the steepest. I was quite out of breath by the time we reached a shop door surrounded by blue, white and orange tiles. John told me that I was to choose some new shoes. Well, what he actually said was, “You won’t need those old clodhoppers you wear on the farm any more.” Really! But when I looked down at the toes of my brown, practical shoes where the Alentejan dust still lay in a thin film, I saw his point. The bell chimed as we entered and the shop assistant appeared from some inner room. She was immaculate and when I caught sight of myself in the mirror, all windblown hair, wine-reddened cheeks and out of town clothes, I felt rather queasy and regretted eating the pudim.

But then I became distracted by the problem of having to choose when there was so much choice. The shelves in the shop stretched from floor to ceiling and were filled with box after box. I couldn’t think where to begin. So I went over to the window to examine the display and as soon as I saw them, I knew. I picked out a pair of shoes from the careful arrangement that lay behind the glass and showed them to John.

Gold, high-heeled evening sandals, shiny and bejewelled, completely and utterly different from any shoe I’ve ever owned before and surely a shoe that no country bumpkin would ever wear.

“No more clodhoppers for me,” I said to John as I tried them on. And he laughed and bought them for me, despite the price tag, plus another pair of reddish-brown court shoes for everyday. He didn’t so much as flinch as he wrote the cheque and we walked back to the car through streets bedecked with washing hanging out to dry like prosaic bunting, John carrying the box stiffly in front of him as if it were a regal offering.

We set off for Estoril, and as we progressed along the coast road, a vast number of masts came into view, and then the boats that they belonged to, three and four-masted schooners moving gently side to side with the swell of the ocean. John stopped the car and we got out to take a look. Approaching them, we saw that the boats were full of activity; men loading crates of food and sack after sack of salt, their voices snatched by the same wind that would soon be taking them to their destination. For we had happened upon the bacalhoeiro, the fishing fleet about to set off to the cod banks of Newfoundland and Greenland, from where it would return in many months’ time with its cargo of bacalhau, our national dish.

John explained that the little boats piled on the deck of each ship are called dories. These are winched over the side with one or two men aboard who spend all day, up to twelve hours, fishing by hand with a line. Some days they might catch a glimpse of an ocean liner crossing from America to Europe or back again – but most of the time there won’t be another sign of human life anywhere on the planet.

It made me shudder to think of it, just you and your little boat in the middle of all that water. Imagine it - the grey-black sea, the choppy waves, the fishermen in their woollen jumpers and hats, their hands sore and calloused from the sharp fishing lines, and the big, ugly cod flailing and twitching in the bottom of the boats as they die. And then add to that the knowledge that every year, there’ll be those who go out and never come back.

I studied John as we stood on the quayside, and thought of all the newly married brides who each and every springtime say goodbye to their husbands and are left to wait at home for long months, hoping and praying that they might see them again. The wind was forcing back John’s hair, revealing his neat ears and strong forehead. In profile, he looks so solid and determined. I love him so much and I’m so glad that he does not have to go away, that his life will never hold the dangers that the fishermen of the bacalhoeiro face.

London, 2010

As the innocence and charm of Inês’s words reeled her further and further in, Sarah found herself increasingly entranced, but also discomfited. It was a while before she recognised the negative feelings niggling at the back of her mind and even longer until she forced herself to put a name to them, ashamed as she was to find herself harbouring jealousy. How lucky for Inês to have been so young and so in love, a lifetime with the man of her dreams to look forward to. What she herself had longed for at the same age, had held in her hands but lost. She could deny to herself no longer that the real motivation for returning to Portugal was not just about a good job, a reassertion of her independence or to kick back against Hugo’s neglect.

It was about Scott.

Her first boyfriend, love of her life, the man who she could hardly bear the thought of seeing again, but equally could not get out of her mind or from under her skin. He had populated her dreams for two decades and around his memory she had spun an elaborate web of fantasies of what might have been, what could and should have been – if only. With him, she had always convinced herself, her life would have been so very different. So much better? Sometimes, and more and more frequently these days, it was compellingly beguiling to believe so. Now, having spent so many years trying, and failing, to forget about him, the moment of reckoning had arrived. Should she contact him? How could she? How could she not?

The network of friends and acquaintances from the year she had spent in Portugal had fragmented and dispersed over the two decades since. She was in regular touch only with Carrie, her vivacious, irrepressible, confrontational crony, with whom she had shared many adventures and experiences. Carrie and Scott had continued to correspond for a while and so Sarah knew that, after a few years back home in his native Canada, he had returned to live in Portugal, and that in all likelihood he was still there, working for the same Canadian/Portuguese shipping company. A similar career to Inês’s John, another thing that, at the time, Sarah had felt tied her even more tightly to her beloved great-aunt, her country and her heritage.

She would find his email, she told herself – so easy to do, these days, with the internet; she knew his firm’s name. She could send him a message, friendly but casual, announcing her impending presence in Lisbon and enquiring as to whether he would like to meet. She should do this to put to rest twenty years of regret, to close a door that had been left wide open.

Her stomach churned and flipped at the thought.

She found his company’s website in just a few seconds online. Closed it again, without clicking on the ‘our staff’ tab, or the ‘contact us’ button, though they boldly advertised themselves on the home page, inviting her. She reasoned with herself that she didn’t know if she was going to have time to fit in anything else but work, wouldn’t know her schedule for a few days yet, not until she’d firmed everything up and gone through all her checklists. There was no point contacting him and then having to cancel; that would be embarrassing, and simply a waste of time. And conversely, the later she got in touch, the more likely that he wouldn’t be able to make it, wouldn’t be in town or available, and then the whole thing would just go away and she’d know that it wasn’t because she had lacked the balls to do it, but just due to a simple matter of logistics, of busy lives and prior engagements. And anyway, how to explain a pre-planned meeting to Hugo? He might easily misinterpret such an action, and even if he didn’t, wouldn’t it be tantamount to throwing in his face the fact that their marriage was worn and crumbling, otiose? And would not that, in turn, draw to both of their attentions that they had let it get this way and that neither seemed able to diagnose the sickness nor prescribe the cure? Fiddling with the mouse at the same time as staring into space, a hot rush of shame engulfed Sarah. No matter what the hardship, she must stay true. If there were to be a meeting, it would be a chance one, organised whilst there, suitably impromptu.

Satisfied with this non-decision for the moment, Sarah concentrated on making preparations amidst dealing with all the mundanity of everyday life. The short amount of time leading to her departure date flew by in a whirl of planning and grocery shopping, chores and organisation, precluding too much introspection.

On her last day, she and Inês walked to the top of Kite Hill as they had so many times over the years. A stiff breeze blew down from the north, and Sarah felt its force as she helped Inês onto the bench and sat down beside her. Before them lay a sweeping view of London, the landmarks familiar from a lifetime of visits: St Paul’s and Battersea Power Station, the BT Tower and Canary Wharf. Over the years, new icons had been added to the old – the Millennium Dome, the London Eye, the Gherkin. The kite-fliers, always present at the weekends, were absent today, but instead, far away in the distance, Sarah could make out the hunched shapes of rooks pecking at the grass. They resembled black paper bags scattered at random, sullying the pristine green.

“You seem somewhat strained,” said Inês once they were settled, her frail voice battling the wind.

Sarah shifted uncomfortably. She could hide her feelings from most people; from Hugo, her mother, her friends. But not Inês.

“Just tired with getting everything sorted, making sure all the pieces of the jigsaw are in place.” She shrugged and hoped her excuse was enough. She had never talked about Scott because it had always been too raw, too agonising. The past few days had shown her that it still was.

“Will you see any of your old companions in Lisbon?” asked Inês, as if she had read Sarah’s mind.

“Oh no,” replied Sarah, hastily. “I mean, I shouldn’t think so. I’ve lost touch with everyone but Carrie and she lives here.” She shrugged and pulled her hands further inside her coat sleeves.

“What about your special friend?” Inês continued, unperturbed by Sarah’s taciturnity. “Your boyfriend – Scott was his name, I seem to remember.”

Sarah watched as a chocolate brown Labrador raced towards one of the rooks in a vain attempt to catch it. The bird waited until the last moment to soar into the air and mock the dog from above.

“Scott, yes. Scott Calvin. Clever of you to remember.”

Just the simple act of saying his name sent shockwaves running through her. It was a name that evoked a lost existence, the utterance of which tore down the walls and barriers she had so carefully built and rebuilt, time and time again. It was a name that told of heat-soaked days on deserted beaches and tumultuous nights in the liquorice allsort pink-and-blue house in Alcantâra where she had lived all those years ago. Of sunlight that danced on cobbles and bleached the washing on the lines. Of the scent of sun-warmed skin and sweat and sex. Of the shallow dip between his neck and collarbone which, seen by the light of a full moon, made her heart overflow with an adoration that temporarily stilled her breathing.

It struck her how few times, in all the years, she had ever said his name aloud. There had been no reason to.

“You really loved him, didn’t you?” The question, uttered so gently, was like a thunder bolt.

Sarah felt the breeze snatch at her breath as she looked away and saw him before her; his crinkly-kind eyes, suggestive smile and messy, honey-brown hair. His skin, warm and brown, the colour of a smooth hazelnut shell. His warmth and strength, that encompassed her so entirely.

“Yes.”

It was impossible to answer with anything but the truth.

“So what went wrong, my dear? You never told me.” Inês’s question hung suspended in the air between them like the rook that still circled above.

“I guess I wasn’t ready to talk about it, then.”

“Are you now?”

Sarah lifted her blue-grey eyes to Inês and attempted a carefree laugh. “Now! Now there’s nothing to talk about.”

Another silence, filled only by the wind. Inês had been a surrogate mother to Sarah all the years that her mother Natalie had worked so hard building up her business. Inês had always been there for her, tending for her, caring for her, picking her up when she fell, physically and metaphorically. They had always shared everything. Except this.

Inês’s lips trembled slightly, and she struggled to steady them before responding. “Is it really that simple?”

She held Sarah’s gaze as she spoke. Her black eyes, though age-paled and watery, were still piercing. “In my experience, that’s rarely the case.”

No. No, it’s not that bloody simple.

Sarah looked down at the bench and dug off a piece of flaking varnish with her fingernail. For a fleeting second she felt as if she were drowning, had to gulp for the air that the vicious gusts of wind seemed determined to deny her.

“Simple or not, it’s the way things worked out.”

It was a long time before either spoke again. Sarah found her thoughts drifting from her own dilemma, to which she had not yet worked out the solution, and towards the journal and to Inês’s youth. John, who she had loved so much, had joined up when war was declared and Inês hadn’t seen him for years.

“Did you miss him when he went away?” she asked, as the thought occurred to her.

Inês’s eyes were focused on the faraway dome of St Paul’s.

“It was too far to go to him,” she replied, her voice strangely devoid of emotion. She seemed to understand what Sarah meant despite the lack of explanation. “Travel was difficult, then.”

“Of course, during the war, I suppose it must have been,” Sarah concurred. “And anyway, he was fighting, wasn’t he?”

The rooks in the belt of trees further down the hill began to caw cacophonously.

“Fighting?” questioned Inês, suddenly seeming confused, even alarmed. “No, no, there was a gun but it was an accident…” She tailed off, gazing into space.

Sarah frowned. John had definitely been a soldier, in a senior rank; Inês had his medals to prove it.

“The Second World War, John went back to England, didn’t he?” she elucidated, trying to quell the panic in her voice. Inês seemed to have aged so quickly lately; was this misunderstanding an indication that she was losing her marbles as well?

Realisation dawned on Inês’s face as she turned slowly to Sarah.

“Oh, John. Yes, of course, John.” She sounded relieved, as Sarah felt. Just a momentary memory lapse, after all. “You’re right, I had to stay put until it was all over. I missed him, but he survived. So many didn’t.”

There was a bluntness to her statement that Sarah put down to an unwillingness, common in that generation, to indulge personal memories of sadness when so many had sacrificed everything. The wind gathered strength and Inês shivered violently. Studying her closely, Sarah realised with a lurch of her heart how tiny, frail and very, very old she looked, all bundled up in her coat with strands of her hair, once ebony, now pure white, poking out from underneath her red beret.

“We need to get home. Come on, take my arm.”

Sarah escorted Inês back down the crumbling path, trying not to notice how painfully she walked.