“Everything’s fine,” Natalie insisted, as if Sarah had questioned her ability to cope. “You really don’t have to worry about me, you just concentrate on enjoying yourself.”
“I’m working, mum, not having a holiday,” Sarah protested, trying not to sound defensive. “But thank you so much for holding the fort. It’s great to know you’re there.”
Sarah could see the way her mother would sigh and wave her hand dismissively, enjoying the compliment while shrugging it off.
There was a pause, then a muffled sound of banging and clunking and a child’s voice saying, “Mummy?” Sarah had to think for a moment whether it was Honor or Ruby.
“Mummy, is it far away in Portugal?”
“Not too far, Rubes,” reassured Sarah, not wanting the child to worry.
“Mummy, I’ve got a new song for you.” Ruby seemed anything but worried. “Shall I sing it? It goes like this:
Honor and William in a tree
K-I-S-S-I-N-G
First comes love and then comes marriage
Last comes the baby in the golden carriage. ”
Sarah smiled at the childish innocence of the song. “That’s funny, Ruby, where did you learn…”
Her words were cut short by an enormous howl that had erupted on the other end of the line. Sarah could hear her mother’s voice, getting louder, demanding that Honor stop pulling Ruby’s hair, telling her to behave, and then talking to Sarah again.
“Oh dear, what a noise, but all sorted now. Just a bit of a disagreement about the song. Honor doesn’t seem to like Ruby saying she’s kissing her little friend William.”
I’m not surprised, thought Sarah, recalling William and his seemingly incessantly snotty nose. “Sorry, mum. Thanks for everything you’re doing.”
“If I can’t step in to help my only child… what sort of a mother would I be? When there’s just the two of us – we have to stick together!”
“Absolutely, mum. As I say, I really appreciate it.” Sarah picked up the car keys from the desk and slung her bag over her shoulder. “I better get on. Love to you all, kisses for the girls – and thanks again.”
In the hire car, she turned on the radio and sat half-listening to the rapid Portuguese as she got out the map and traced the way to the processing plant, the next stage of her cork’s journey from harvesting to becoming a stopper. It suddenly seemed a long way to go for a small part of her article. Throughout her tour of the factory, with its vast yard piled with towering stacks of cork bark, enormous vats which simmered and seethed as the cork boiled, and long rows of green-overalled workers, images of Scott constantly invaded her mind. The morning passed in a blur. Her host, Amoral da Silva, was solicitous and helpful to a fault; his corks, spewing forth into giant buckets at a rate of thousands an hour, were perfectly formed. But Sarah’s heart, and her head, were elsewhere.
Driving back, the evening to come looming large and imminent, her mind drifted inexorably to a time she usually tried to forget. To the last time she and Scott had dined together, just the two of them, in Lisbon, at the Cervejaria Trindade. Sarah had studied its antique tiled walls as Scott dangled Vancouver temptingly in front of her.
“Think of all the things we could do there!” he had urged. “All the fun we could have. My family has a log cabin in the mountains – we’ll go horse riding there. And in the winter, we’ll ski and snowboard, ice-skate, if you like.”
“It would be amazing,” she had concurred, even though the truth was that she didn’t know how to do any of those things.
“In spring we’ll make love in the meadow, and in winter we’ll stoke up the fire and keep each other warm whilst the storms rage outside.”
Sarah could smell the woodsmoke and hear the maple branches crackling in the stove, taste the bitter roasted coffee brewing on the hob and hear how silently the powdery snow fell onto the already-white ground outside.
But there was her mother to think about, having chemo for breast cancer and embroiled in a bitter divorce from her dad. The image of Natalie had been impossible to ignore, poised in Sarah’s mind’s eye as if she were listening in on the conversation, willing her not to abandon her as she perceived everyone else had done. That was on top of the call of her degree, the place at university that she had studied so hard to win, that she could not just throw away.
“Let’s not talk about it now,” she had said. “I want to eat and drink and dance.”
And so they had done all three, and then taken a taxi back to the little pink and blue house. He sat on the bed behind her to undress her, enclosing her with his long, muscular legs, deftly removing her bra and running his skilful hands over her body and her breasts.
She had looked down at the floor, at the splintered wooden boards that had seen so many people come and go.
He made love to her until she could hardly remember what day it was, bringing her to orgasm again and again, his tongue precise and dexterous, his lips hungry and firm. She ached to his touch, held him tight, wished him never to stop. It had felt too good to be true.
And in the end, it was.
Preoccupied with thoughts of the past, the journey passed quickly. At the hotel, Sarah showered, changed and put on make-up, but she had hurried so much that it was still a while before she was due to meet Scott. She had time to read some more of the journal, which she felt was slowly revealing its secrets to her as if she were a squirrel gradually uncovering a rich seam of buried acorns, one by one.
The Estoril Coast, 1935
Last night, the last evening of our honeymoon, John suggested that we go out for dinner to a fresh fish restaurant a few miles away, on the Atlantic coast. He was keen for a change from the hotel dining room and I agreed with alacrity for as anyone who knows me is aware, I love adventure.
It was one of those soft spring evenings when one is glad to be alive; I felt reinvigorated after the strange torpor of the last few days. Once we had left the streets and houses behind, the only sounds we could hear were the gentle thunder of the breaking waves and the screeches of the seagulls high above us. Strolling across the beach to the restaurant, my sandals – the new gold ones that John bought me in Lisbon - filled with the soft, shifting sand until I had to stop and take them off and walk the rest of the way in my stockinged feet, wishing I were barefoot and could feel the golden grains between my toes.
‘Restaurant’ was a grand name for the little wooden cabin on stilts that we arrived at. A rickety staircase led up to a wide balcony; inside, the tables were covered with bright cotton cloths and adorned with vases of the yellow sea holly flowers that we had seen growing in great clumps all along the way. There was little wind and the sea seemed calmer than usual. Whilst John studied the short menu chalked onto a blackboard, I stood on the balcony and gazed at the water. I could feel the longing building up inside me, fed by a week of being utterly conventional, the very model of a dignified young wife. I was itching for activity.
I turned to John and told him that I wanted to swim. I have to admit that my voice sounded unexpectedly loud as it echoed around the empty space. He was surprised, to say the least. His expression of alarm made me smile but he wasn’t laughing. I persisted, nevertheless. He has told me often enough how fed up he became at having the daughters of English colleagues paraded in front of him as prospective partners, how they bored him, their conformity and acquiescence all seeming to have come out of the same mould – so let him live by his word! I made the point that we would have all the time in the world for being models of propriety once in Porto, and that once there I would always consider his position at the firm and in society in all my actions. But here we were free so we should enjoy it.
It took quite a bit of cajoling to bring him round to the idea. He remonstrated that I hadn’t brought anything to wear or even a towel to dry myself with,