‘Not at all. I’ll bring someone I think you’ll enjoy talking to, an archaeologist friend of mine. You have confidence in Gabrielle Ellis to do a good restoration? It must be hard to hand Lady Isabella over.’
‘It is hard, but I’m sure you’re right in wanting Gabrielle to restore her. How much pull does that councillor fellow have?’
Peter laughed. ‘We don’t have to take the help of council funding or the conditions the council might impose for that funding, but, as you know, to gather private donations, even with National Heritage help, is difficult and time-consuming. We do have ways of persuading Councillor Rowe to our way of thinking. He is a very vain little man. Give him the limelight, lots of press coverage, photos … The Heritage people find him as much of a bore as we do.’
‘Good. Does Gabrielle have children? I mean, is she able to work full time on this project?’
Peter glanced at him. ‘She and Charlie have one grown-up son. He didn’t want to go into the farm, which was a blow for Charlie. He went straight to the army from university instead.’
Mark was amazed. ‘A grown-up son? She can only be about thirty, surely?’
‘Somewhere in her thirties, I should think. She came down to Cornwall to pick daffodils one school holiday. She and Charlie fell in love and she never went home. I think she had her son at about seventeen or eighteen.’
‘My God, that’s almost child abduction.’
‘Romantic, isn’t it,’ Peter said dryly, ‘because they are still together and as far as I know, very happy. An improvement on marrying first cousins – that used to happen a lot down here.’
Is he warning me off, in an understated British way? Mark wondered. Then suddenly shocked at himself, thought, He should not have to. If I am a decent human being I close my mind to this woman.
Later, as he was shaving, Mark met his own eyes in the mirror. He thought of home, of early evening, of how the light slanted mellow across the rooftops at the end of a day as he prepared to leave the campus and return to his rambling house that was always bursting with people. He would stand at the door for a second, listening to Veronique calmly reigning supreme in the huge kitchen in the middle of the chaos of his daughters, grandchildren, their schoolfriends, hangers-on, neighbours.
Veronique blissfully, radiantly content. He had always thought of himself as trying to be an honourable man, certainly not one who had habitually been unfaithful to his wife or gone out of his way to commit adultery. Nor one who had ever pursued a happily married woman, or any married woman for that matter.
He continued to stare at himself with a strange falling-away sensation. His own eyes locked with those of his reflection as if he were two separate people, one trying to stare the other into submission. He caught a quick glimpse of the future in the moment when it was still possible to retreat, and also the moment when he knew he was going to ignore that warning voice as piercing as a house alarm, and reach out deliberately for the self-destruct button.
Gabby turned left and instead of driving down the lane to the farm she followed the narrow road that led to the coastal path and the next cove. The sun was hanging spectacularly over the sea and the day was cooling. She turned again and bumped along a track until it ended in a gate. She got out, locked the car, climbed over the gate and walked across the field until she came to a small cottage standing on its own, facing the sea.
The door stood wide open and she called Elan’s name, even though she knew exactly where he would be. She walked on across the field towards the coastal path until she saw his familiar figure sitting on his collapsible stool, painting with his back to her. He had picked a place relatively sheltered, where the cliff path started to descend down to the cove.
Gabby did not disturb him. She sat some way behind him, cross-legged, watching the sun leach and bleed into the sky, spread out like a crimson stain and then dissolve into the sea until it too was molten. She knew as soon as the sun slipped behind the horizon the last heat of the day would disappear as suddenly as the colours melted, and Elan would pack up his paints and turn for home.
She was unsure why she had suddenly felt the need to see him, but turning towards his cottage had been instinctive. He had been Nell’s friend long before Gabby came to Cornwall, and he still was, but she and Elan had the immediate rapport of the outsider and the solitary.
He was Josh’s godfather. His name was Alan Premore, but Josh had always called him Elan and the name had stuck. After his parents and Nell, Elan had been the first name Josh had mastered and Alan had, from that moment, signed his paintings Elan Premore. This was partly because he unashamedly adored Josh, but also because he had begun to exhibit seriously the year Josh was born.
Gabby loved this spare, reclusive man unconditionally, and accepted, without it ever being mentioned, that he loved her in return. He turned now and saw her as the sun set on one more day. As on many other days he had no idea that she had been sitting silently behind him. He smiled and gathered up his paints, folded the small easel.
‘Darling child, how long have you been there?’
‘Not long.’ She got up and he kissed her forehead and they made their way back to his cottage. He never asked Gabby why she came, for that might have indicated she had to have a reason, and being insular himself he understood the need to be near someone who would not question why you were there, just that you were.
As they walked back to the cottage Gabby told him about her day. Her excitement was catching and Elan had rarely seen her so animated. He was interested in the story of the figurehead and its return to St Piran.
‘John Bradbury still vicar?’ he asked.
‘Yes, he’s just the same, so is Peter. So is Councillor Rowe.’
‘Dear heavens, Gabby, hasn’t he been voted out yet?’
‘Nell says every time he’s voted off the council, he somehow gets himself voted on again.’
‘Mainly, I suspect, because no one else wants to be elected. And this Canadian, what was he like?’
‘Oh, fine. He seemed nice. I didn’t really have time to talk to him properly.’
Elan propped his things against the hall table. ‘Let’s have a drink, child, I have a cold, very good bottle of wine all ready in the fridge.’
Gabby laughed. ‘But you didn’t know I was coming.’
‘I always keep a bottle just in case you come. Pour me my tot while I open the bottle.’
Gabby reached up for his heavy tumbler and poured him a hefty whisky with a burst of soda from his archaic silver soda siphon.
‘Can you still get bits for this siphon, Elan?’
‘Just.’ He handed Gabby the glass of wine and they sat at the kitchen table in front of his ancient Rayburn. ‘Now, this Canadian historian fellow sounds interesting. Any good for an isolable painter?’
Gabby laughed. ‘What a lovely word. Afraid not. I think, well, he’s heterosexual, Elan.’
‘What a shame, I do like a transatlantic drawl.’
Elan watched Gabby’s colour change. This was surprising and he teased her gently. ‘What makes you so sure, if you didn’t talk to him properly?’
‘He … well, of course, I cannot be sure of anything, but he seemed heterosexual. Elan, could I ring Nell?’ Gabby asked, changing the subject. ‘She might be wondering where I am.’
‘Of course you can.’
Gabby got up and as she phoned Nell, Elan thought how little she had changed over the years. How young she seemed. Yet, he also