‘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 and hold on to the feeling. It slid slyly away from her, as if momentarily her soul had migrated to a dry desert, a landscape without feature or water, or enough life to sustain her.
Like running through sand, she knew that beyond the horizon there was an oasis, a lighted city twinkling and pulsing with life, but somehow her feet could never retain the momentum to reach that place of light and laughter. The days of her life slid by in an effortless rhythm, each day dissolving into the next with little change or interruption, each day forming a pattern, a whole, indivisible except for the tiniest domestic detail.
Since Josh left home she had started to get up early with Charlie in order to get through her work. Each morning she took Shadow for a walk across the top field and down the coastal path to the small cove. She would watch the sea mist lift to reveal another day, then she would return to the house to cook Charlie’s breakfast, already thinking about the painting waiting in her workroom.
After hours working, stiff, she would get up from her chair and stretch, lean out of the window perfectly content, and a sudden yearning for something indefinable would swoop, a burning ache, deep in her bones, for something to break the continuity of the measureless days.
Behind her the faint sound of the soft Canadian drawl had stopped. Her back prickled, the heat of her body felt strange to her. She kept her eyes closed, focusing on the sun blobs behind her eyelids, merging into the soft noises around her and the heady, dizzy smell of flowers.
What she felt in every nerve of her body and what she determinedly allowed herself to think were horribly diverse. It made her want to run away down the narrow paths dripping with flowers like bright jewels. It felt too bright, too nightmarishly large and foreign and unknown. An unmapped landscape, the geography a language she had never learnt and felt stunned to recognize.
She opened her eyes when Mark blocked out the sun. He was standing in front of her, not smiling, his expression unreadable as he gazed down upon her. She looked up into his eyes and they were both still, staring at one another. She glimpsed a sudden hesitancy, a fleeting loneliness or vulnerability.
The strength of emotion that flooded Gabby must have shown in her eyes for Mark smiled suddenly and put out his hand to pull her up from the grass, and somehow, on the narrow paths, where it was necessary to walk close, he forgot to let go of it until they reached the café.