The Kissing Gate Read online

  About the Book

  Gussie, Ned and Jannie are not quite siblings, but they share a fiercely close and affectionate family bond. In their bohemian Cornish home, with a famous and distinguished artist as their father figure, they glory in their unusual upbringing and their unconventional, loving family life ...

  Until one day a terrible tragedy destroys the foundations of that family, and they have to learn to cope on their own.

  Moving from Cornwall to New York and back again to the West Country, Susan Sallis’s warm and powerful novel shows us love and sorrow, and family life in all its guises.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Susan Sallis

  Copyright

  For my family and friends with love

  One

  GUSSIE WAS RECLINING, enjoyably self-conscious, on the sofa, the end dropped down to accommodate her long legs. Book, notepaper, envelopes and two pens, in case one wouldn’t work, were on the stool within reach if she felt like making an effort. She closed her eyes; she had after all managed to get up and shower, which was enough for now.

  Gussie had had one of her summer colds and had burned, then shivered, through the previous day, then sweated it out profusely during the night. Now she felt weak but whole again. She had wanted the house to herself; to make tea the way she liked it, cut thin bread and butter and savour each bite. It was a precious time, this coming to life again.

  Ned, of course, had not wanted to leave her; Jannie had said nothing, which meant she was desperate to go. Laura Ashley in Truro was having its end-of-summer sale and the dress in the window might still be there. Besides which, and somehow far more selfishly, she occasionally caught Gussie’s summer colds and bore them less stoically than her older sister. Ten years older: it was quite a lot of time in which she might become more like her talented sister and less like her – very ordinary – mother. So she bit her lip and said nothing, and Gussie’s sheer common sense naturally won the day with Ned.

  So Gussie put her head back on the sofa cushions and smiled and thought of the two of them, probably at this minute walking from Truro railway station down the long hill into the town. They would both be doing giant strides, just as she had taught them when Jannie at last learned to walk. It was Ned who had always made the difficult return trip interesting, organizing the three of them into a train. ‘Coupled up now?’ he would yell, and Jannie would forget about wanting to be picked up and grab on to Gussie, and they would all make chugging noises and arrive laughing at the booking office.

  Yes, Truro railway station had featured often in their shared lives: a grand start to a theatre trip or a shopping spree, but a muscle-shattering haul back up.

  Gussie’s smile deepened, and she closed her eyes and thought how marvellous it was to be part of such a mixed family: Ned, tall and still gangly, with red hair, snub nose and pale, almost colourless eyes – presumably like his father; Jannie like Ned’s mother, small, blonde, somehow Nordic. And herself … who did she take after, with her father’s dark hair in its single plait and his dark eyes but not his strangely inward look? Was it her mother, the wild Zannah Scaife? Or was it her grandmother, conventional but also loving and kind?

  It was so simple really. Mark Briscoe, the painter-in-a-wheelchair, divorced with a nine-year-old daughter, had married Kate Gould, also divorced and with a seven-year-old son. And then they had had a baby of their own.

  Gussie smiled again. She had realized for years now that Kate had made the family into a strong unit. She was a proper home-maker, so happy and content with her life and her children. ‘The Beautiful Briscoes’, she called them.

  Gussie’s smile widened. In spite of all these wonderful thoughts, how lovely it was to have time without her stepbrother and half-sister. A few hours to come back to life. Just to lie here; not to read or write postcards or plan her next project. Just to be.

  Idly she began to work out how long they would be … an hour to get there, if the connection at St Erth was on time; an hour’s intensive shopping; an unhealthy fast-food lunch, perhaps by the river, and then – the door crashed open, slammed shut, a scurry in the passage, the living-room door flung wide, and there they were!

  They all spoke at once.

  Gussie said, ‘What’s happened? Why are you back?’

  Jannie said, ‘We actually got there! We got off the train, and the down train was waiting on the other side and we ran over the bridge and just made it—’

  Ned spoke and moved at the same time. ‘You haven’t got the telly on – we thought you’d have – dammit, it’s not even plugged in.’ He reached down, scrabbling for the plug and its socket.

  Jannie said, ‘I bet it’s not true! They were talking about it on the train, that’s all, and Ned overreacted as usual!’

  ‘What? What’s happened, for goodness’ sake? You both look so wild!’

  Ned panted, ‘New York. A plane has crashed into the Twin Towers. It’s bound to be on the telly.’

  Gussie swung her legs to the floor and knocked over the stool. Envelopes scattered. She ignored them and said, ‘What? Don’t be ridiculous. It couldn’t happen—’ But she stopped speaking because both Jannie and Ned were talking all at once. She looked from one to the other; the babble began to make sense. She focused on Ned, who had at last got the plug into its socket and was fiddling with the remote. She said, ‘Darling. Ned. Don’t look like that. It won’t affect Mum and Dad. The meeting wasn’t arranged until …’ Her voice died as the picture materialized on the screen. It was obviously a disaster movie beloved of daytime television programmers. A skyscraper toppling … toppling … ‘Try the other side.’

  He punched buttons. It was the same movie.

  He said slowly, ‘This is it. This is happening. Now.’

  They watched, aghast, incredulous. At some point Jannie began to cry and Gussie held her as she had held the five-year-old after her first day at school. ‘Darling, it will be all right. They won’t be there.’

  But they could be there. Even when Gussie went into the kitchen and made coffee and cut cheese sandwiches for lunch, they knew. Because if they weren’t there they would be telephoning to reassure ‘the kids’. And the phone did not ring.

  The awful thing was, ‘the kids’ could not ring through to New York. The huge impersonal hotel on the margins of the East and West Sides where the Briscoes stayed on their annual visits was pretty hopeless at taking messages anyway, but all lines to America were jammed. The three continued to watch the television avidly, unsparingly, praying for some kind of personal message to come through: ‘Mark and Kate Briscoe reported slightly injured …’ ‘An English couple wishing to get a message to their family back home …’ It was a lifeline between Cornwall and New York. Or maybe not a lifeline at all.

  It was mid-afternoon when Ned said slowly, ‘I think we have to phone one of these emergency numbers they’re giving out.’

 
Gussie flashed him a look. ‘We don’t even know they’re there, Ned! If Dad was having a bad day, Mummy will make him stay in bed … It’s the bloody hotel we want. We’ve just got to be patient and keep trying.’

  Ned cleared his throat. ‘Trouble is, Sis, we don’t need to know, do we? That couple we saw. Jumping out. Holding hands.’

  ‘Shut up!’ Jannie screamed. ‘Don’t say it!’

  Ned held Gussie’s gaze. ‘The bloke. Didn’t you notice?’

  She forced herself to breathe normally. ‘It was too far off, Ned. You couldn’t possibly see.’

  Jannie screamed again, something incomprehensible, then flung herself on to Gussie and grabbed her shoulders, pushing them as if she was trying to hold them together. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut; Gussie could see the muscles in the upturned face contracting fiercely. When Jannie spoke it did not sound like her. There was no more panic or protest; she grated each word harshly.

  ‘I saw it, Gus. You’ve always said what amazing vision I’ve got. And I saw it. The man had no legs.’

  Gussie could almost hear her father’s dear, familiar voice saying to his wife, ‘I’m not facing my Maker with these bloody things, Kate!’ and would even … perhaps … laugh as he unstrapped his tin legs and let them fall.

  As if in confirmation, the telephone rang at last.

  Gussie and Ned had so often joked – actually joked – about being ‘half orphans’, though in fact neither of them was. Gussie’s mother, the famous Zannah Scaife, lived in France in a house called Glorious Isolation, not far from Nice. Ned’s father, Victor Gould, had left Ned and his mother having a ‘nice little holiday’ in St Ives and gone to live in California with another war painter. He could have returned at any time, yet when Kate Gould accepted Mark Briscoe’s proposal of marriage and had gone to a solicitor about a divorce, he made no objection. He had become an American citizen by then, which made the whole thing very easy indeed.

  So neither Ned nor Gussie was short of parents, but liked to dramatize the situation occasionally, backed up by Kate, who often went out on to the veranda at suppertime and yelled down the harbour beach, ‘Sustenance for all orphans of the storm!’ None of the neighbours even raised an eyebrow because the Briscoes were artists and artists were like that.

  Once, when Jannie was seven and Ned a precocious fifteen-year-old, he made a ponderous attempt to make matters clearer. Seated at the table after the usual summons he said, ‘Absolutely the opposite, Mother dear. Gussie and I have a plethora of parents!’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Jannie asked with infant bewilderment.

  ‘Work it out, Titch. I have two dads and one mum. Gussie has two mums and one dad.’

  Naturally Jannie had wept and Gussie had comforted. ‘You did things properly, Jannie darling. One mum and one dad.’

  But that wasn’t what worried Jannie at all. ‘Don’t like my bruvver calling me Titch!’ she had wailed.

  Gussie comforted her, and Kate paused with knife poised above the cheese flan, which Dad always called a quiche lorraine, and said thoughtfully, ‘Actually, you two are quite lucky. Having a spare parent is a kind of insurance policy. It means you won’t lose any of us!’ She grinned. ‘You poor things. Always someone to look after!’

  Ned, still showing off, said, ‘There’s always euthanasia, of course.’

  Gussie was genuinely shocked. ‘That’s not funny, Ned!’

  ‘Not meant to be!’ he came back defiantly.

  And then Mark had appeared, stumping along the passage, leaning his shoulder on the doorframe as he twisted himself round, the house fitting his body like a glove. Kate eyed him quickly, then began cutting the quiche. He was grinning from ear to ear. She spoke without anxiety.

  ‘Busy day?’

  ‘Yes. But – oh, my dears – it’s happening! Inside the womb of that lump of marble, there’s a madonna! She’s curved with the shape of the lump. She’s protecting a child. It’s amazing.’

  ‘Sounds like those Russian dolls, one inside the other again and again.’ Gussie smiled congratulations at her father.

  Kate said, ‘Sit down, take the weight off those legs. This might be the right time to bring in some assistants. Who was that student you used last year?’

  Still grinning enormously, Mark lowered himself gingerly between Ned and Jannie. ‘I know, I know … not just yet, though. Might unstrap the legs and work from a stool.’

  That meant he couldn’t bear to hand over any of the arduous chipping away of the marble. Kate made a face.

  He said quickly, ‘A bit longer, Katie love. Let me be there for the moment of birth.’ He grinned down into his younger daughter’s face. ‘Like I was with Jannie.’

  Kate made another face, this time of astonishment. ‘I think I might have been around at that particular moment!’ she protested, and he laughed and said, ‘You were God’s marble, my darling. The beginning of all things!’

  Gussie and Ned rolled their eyes at each other and then laughed, trying to pretend they weren’t embarrassed.

  Jannie looked at each of them in turn and then said, ‘What’s a woom?’

  And Ned, quick as a flash, had said, ‘It’s what we’re sitting in right now, Titch!’

  Jannie had turned pink with indignation and shouted, ‘That’s a room, you bloody idiot! And don’t call me Titch!’

  Kate exploded a protest and glared at Ned and – of course – Jannie cried and Gussie cuddled her.

  People started to call later that evening. They were proud of the fact that Mark Briscoe had lived among them, learning to walk on tin legs so that he could manage the many steps of Downalong. They hadn’t been so pleased when he married Zannah Scaife, a wild child, daughter of a wild man, and when the babe had come along six months later – in August – they had shaken their heads and wondered what sort of child she would be, named for her birth month, with a shock of black hair and a yell that cut through the peace of the row of terraced cottages like a knife.

  But Gussie had grown into such a conventional child. ‘Takes after her grandmother,’ people said. Which had been useful when Zannah had left St Ives and gone to live in France because she needed ‘space’. Gussie had been eight years old and, with the help of ancient Mrs Beck, had kept house perfectly well, exactly as her grandmother would have done. Until her father had remarried.

  Gussie had thought the rows might have started again. Rows about money, mostly because – according to Zannah – they had been living on the Scaife legacy and Mark refused to pander to the tourist trade and paint pretty pictures, or make replica Cornish Crosses.

  There were, however, no rows. Life suddenly seemed in tune with the tides and the boats bobbing below them in the harbour. They no longer had a diet of fish and potatoes alone. Fish was for Fridays and came in wonderful sauces with creamed potatoes fashioned into fancy shapes. There was always a roast on Sundays, and in between there were salads and cheese flans and boiled gammon. When Kate had a few days in bed producing Jannie like a conjuror, Ned did the cooking for one day and fashioned the mashed potatoes into a cot; Gussie managed the second day with a pasty the size of a dustbin lid, which lasted two more days; then Kate took over again and – as she had said – handed Jannie over to Gussie.

  Life was so easy, none of them could quite believe in it. The new school in Truro came up to expectations for Gussie, but to come home was even better. Ned adored his new sister and his old one, as he hastened to say to Gussie. He got a place at Penzance Grammar School when the time came, played with Jannie and went out in the boats with Old Beck. He made two attempts to make contact with his father, but there was never any response and eventually, after inviting him to his graduation, he gave up.

  Gussie saw her mother three times but never enjoyed her visits. Zannah had made unpredictability a way of life, and Gussie was always frightened she might turn up and wreck what they had got. She adored her father and after a very short time she loved Kate deeply. She had made a token attempt to dislike her by saying, ‘What
can I call you? You’re not my mother, so it can’t be Mummy.’

  Kate had frowned, thinking about it, and Gussie had chipped in quickly before she could say something nice, ‘What about Kath?’

  The frown deepened. ‘I don’t really mind. It’s just that the way you say it makes it sound like phlegm.’ She opened her eyes wide. ‘Oh, gosh, did you mean it to sound like that?’

  Gussie found she could not hurt this woman with such a huge stomach, who made lovely food and was always smiling.

  ‘Of course not! I didn’t think … and I don’t want to call you Kate either, because Zannah always wanted to be called Zannah.’ She bit her lip, realizing for the first time that she had rarely called her mother anything but Zannah. She stumbled on helplessly. ‘Ned calls you Mum. Sometimes Ma. Can I call you that too? It seems a cheek, so if you don’t like it …’

  ‘I love it. Honestly, Gussie. I just love it. And are you all right with Gussie?’

  ‘Yes.’ Gussie responded vigorously to the smile. ‘I like Gussie. But not Gus because it sounds like a man. And not August because that sounds solemn.’

  ‘Gussie it shall be then.’ Kate hesitated and then said, ‘And … Mum. OK?’

  ‘Yes. Because Ned always says Dad. And it’s nice.’ Gussie primmed her ten-year-old lips. ‘And it’s proper too.’

  It might have been that day or the next when Daddy got the commission from the States to make a stainless-steel icon for St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. And now, in 2001, he worked regularly for a trust called The Spirit of America. He was famous. They became … perhaps not rich, but well off. With his hands he earned enough money to look after his family. In his wheelchair and on his tin legs he got around St Ives, boarded planes and went to America, swam in the sea as he always had done. And he was happy.

  But now he was also dead. And so was his dear friend and wife. And that meant that after all the joking and laughing about it, Ned and Gussie really were half orphans. And Jannie was totally orphaned.

  They walked along the tide-line that night. There was a big moon showing behind Westcott Pier.