The Kissing Gate Read online

  Jannie whispered, ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘We’ll go over. See where it happened. Talk to the chairman.’ Gussie breathed in the September air and thought of the dust and now the bodies.

  Ned said, ‘I think I might apply for a sabbatical. Give some time to thinking about it.’

  Gussie nodded doubtfully. ‘I suppose I could make some adjustments in the diary too.’

  Jannie wailed; a thread of sound in the moonlit dark. ‘That leaves me with finishing at college. My God. I lived with them. They came to Exeter often to see me. They’ve gone and you two are planning to go off together …’

  Gussie and Ned circled her with their arms. They closed their eyes and held on tightly. Jannie’s sobs reduced and she whispered, ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No … no …’ Gussie breathed.

  Ned said, ‘We’ve lost our mum and dad. We’re in the same boat, Jan. Never feel alone.’

  They could feel Jannie nodding beneath their heads. She gave a tiny laugh and said in a trembling voice, ‘The same boat. Three of us. Yes.’

  Tentatively, Jannie did what she had so often done in the past. She reached up and took the end of Gussie’s plait in one hand and Ned’s quiff of orange hair in the other and quavered, ‘You both belong to me, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ Gussie and Ned replied in unison.

  Then Gussie said, as Kate would have done, ‘The Beautiful Briscoes!’

  And they walked on.

  Two

  ‘MUMMY, THIS IS my friend. His name is Ned—’

  ‘How many times do I have to tell you not to call me Mummy?’

  ‘Sorry. This is Ned and he’s two years younger than me and I am looking after him while his … mother … is at work.’

  ‘Great. And to whom are you talking at this moment?’

  ‘You. Zannah.’

  ‘At last. Thank you, Gussie. See how it works? You are Gussie Briscoe. I am Zannah Scaife. You are my daughter but you are a person in your own right and I respect that. I do not call you “daughter”.’ A big sigh, then a wonderful smile. ‘How do you do, Ned? I am delighted to meet you. I have come to take Gussie home for an early tea because we have to go to Newlyn this evening to see some paintings.’

  Ned looked at her warily, then held out his hand. ‘Is it an opening? My father is a painter and Mum and me go to openings with him. Sometimes.’

  ‘Does he have a name?’

  ‘Yes. It’s Victor Gould.’

  Zannah was suddenly all attention. ‘Victor Gould? The Gloucestershire artist? My God. Is he here? In St Ives?

  ‘No. He left us here when I was six. I think he lives in America.’

  Zannah lifted one bare foot free of the sand on Porthmeor beach where they were standing in the afternoon sun, and shook it. Her three ankle chains jingled. She did the same with the other foot and the same happened. She always said you couldn’t have too many ankle chains if you had ankles like hers.

  Then she said, ‘D’you want to have tea with us? Mark has made some scones and I’ve got cream.’

  Ned looked longing but shook his head. ‘Better not. I’ll help Jem take the donkeys up to the field. Mum will be home by then.’ He turned, then remembered his manners. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  Zannah and Gussie watched him tramp through the loose sand to where Jem Maddern was leading two donkeys back towards the row of beach huts.

  ‘He looks a nice boy,’ Zannah said.

  ‘He’s very nice.’ Gussie took her hand.

  ‘And what is his mother like?’

  ‘I don’t know. She works, and he helps Jem with the donkeys and Jem asked me to take him off for a bit. He doesn’t smile much and Jem thinks he puts the customers off.’

  ‘Jem would, of course.’

  They both laughed. Gussie swung her mother’s hand as they passed a group who were gathering up picnic things and sounding tired and cross. She loved being seen with Zannah, who was much too beautiful to be anyone’s mother, especially hers.

  ‘Is Daddy home yet?’ she asked.

  Zannah said with laboured patience, ‘Mark. His name is Mark. And no, he is not home yet so we will call into the studio and dig him out.’

  They tramped over the rough neck of the Island and came upon the tangle of sheds and converted garages owned or rented by working artists. The Scaife studio was large and gaunt. Gerald Scaife had specialized in enormous paintings the production of which involved stepladders and long-handled brooms. Zannah had grown up here, physically attached to her father by a long cord, happily dabbling with paints, and later – though not much later – whittling balsa wood with sharp knives. The smell of paint and turpentine was as necessary to her as oxygen. She flung open the door and stood there breathing it in with eyes half closed.

  The studio was empty of life.

  Gussie, anticipating trouble, said quickly, ‘Listen, Zannah. If Mark is ill, I’ll stay behind and look after him.’

  ‘He had no intention of coming with me. I wanted us to go as a family. No one believes I am old enough to have had a child, and here you are, almost nine years old, and every time something special happens you have to stay and look after him because he’s too damned embarrassed to show himself!’

  ‘Mummy, you know it’s not like that! He can’t help getting tired—’

  ‘I’ll wager a fiver that he’s swimming!’ She stabbed a furious finger at what looked like a pile of stair rods in the corner. ‘Look, there are his bloody legs! Someone called – one of the other painters, no doubt – and he’s gone in his chair!’ She threw back her head. ‘Someone is coming from the Whitehorn Gallery tonight – to see the show, of course, but to suss out the talent generally. And we make such a good group! Oh God, we’re never going to make it if Mark won’t show himself! The painter is as important as his bloody work. Gerald taught me that and I’ve tried to pass it on to Mark.’ She lowered her head and unclenched her fists. ‘And please don’t call me Mummy – it sounds ghastly!’

  ‘OK. But really and truly, it doesn’t matter about Daddy – Mark – and me. It’s you people notice. And you could show some of your things, you know you could. Your carvings are just great. And your pots.’

  ‘Darling girl. You wouldn’t understand. I could sell my stuff like hot cakes. And where d’you think that would leave our dearest Mark?’ She looked down at Gussie’s face, so like her father’s. ‘No. You’re too young. Let me just tell you, briefly. If you’re beautiful and have got a personality, it doesn’t matter that you’re no genius. If your sister dropped you off a railway bridge when you were a baby and left you without any legs, then you do have to be a genius.’ She stared into the peculiar tea-brown eyes of her daughter and saw bewilderment. ‘Don’t worry about it, Gus. Daddy is happy being Daddy; he doesn’t particularly care about being Mark.’

  They closed the big doors carefully because some of Gerald Scaife’s work was still stored there and was what Zannah called their insurance policies. Then they climbed the steps to Wheal Dream and walked along the wharf to Mount Zion. There was no sign of Mark but two of the towels were missing from the clothesline in the yard, and the wheelchair, neatly folded inside the door, was gone.

  Zannah went into a real rage. Gussie hated it when words flew like bullets at him even when he wasn’t there. ‘Selfish swine’ and ‘bloody hopeless’ made her cringe, and she was glad that Mrs Cledra heard them and came round to say that Mark had only gone for a swim off the old pier and would be back in five minutes. Just time to get his tea on the table. She looked significantly at the mess that had to be cleared away first and Zannah made a sound like a spitting cat.

  Gussie began stacking newspapers, emptying ashtrays and putting her mother’s makeup into its little bag. Zannah watched her silently and then said, as she so often did lately, ‘I can’t take much more, Gus. I mean it this time. You could look after things here for a bit, couldn’t you?’

  ‘Course I could.’ Gussie shook a cloth over the table. She put a cruet into the ex
act centre of the cloth. ‘Shall I make boiled eggs and put out the heavy cake?’

  ‘Oh, darling, you understand me so well. That would be great.’

  She ran upstairs and came down minutes later with her old hippie bag on her shoulder. She grabbed her makeup case and stuffed it on top of a lacy nightdress. ‘I love you. And I love Mark. But sometimes it’s a question of personal survival.’

  Gussie said, ‘OK. And I do understand about calling you Zannah, ’cos I don’t like it when you call me Gus instead of Gussie.’

  ‘I’ll never do it again, honey.’ Zannah embraced her in a suffocating hug. She was laughing with tears streaming down her face. ‘But do call Mark, Daddy. He would prefer it. And try to get him to do some sculpting. His hands are so sensitive. He should be a sculptor.’

  ‘OK,’ Gussie said again.

  She did not even wave goodbye to her mother. When her father came bowling along the wharf in his wheelchair, tin legs in their holder at the back, hair still dripping on to his shirt collar, he was not surprised to find they were having tea without Zannah.

  ‘Don’t say anything, sweetie, but I hoped she might go on without me. Those openings make my back ache.’ He took the top off his egg with one strike of his knife, then did the same for hers. She told him about Ned and he told her that he had carved a dozen ‘Joanies’ that day for the new shop in Fore Street. Joanies were the traditional Cornish doll, scorned by modern children but still beloved of tourists. Mark allowed himself to carve them occasionally, especially when the bills came in.

  ‘Funny, Zannah was saying you should be a sculptor.’

  He roared with laughter. ‘I don’t think she would consider a Joanie to be sculpture, sweetie, do you? But she will be pleased I’ve earned some money! And making Joanies is carrying on a tradition rather than pandering to the tourists!’

  Zannah didn’t come home that night. The next time they saw her was in Plymouth at the office of their solicitor. She went to live in France in the Lower Corniche a few miles inland from Nice. She had her father’s money and she left his studio for Mark, on condition ‘you get away from the little stuff and do something big’. He made no promises. By that time he had started on a work that would eventually become the symbolic High Hope outside St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. And it was Kate who assisted him, encouraged him, made him believe in himself.

  ‘I won’t be coming back, Mark. Not keen on seeing you with someone else. But you will always be welcome at Glorious Isolation.’

  ‘I feel as you do, Zannah,’ Mark said steadily. She nodded.

  ‘Gussie, you’ll visit, won’t you?’

  Gussie nodded. But it was difficult. Baby January arrived and was instantly adored by both the other children. Then there was Cirencester Agricultural College and a dissertation titled Planting with Nature, and a follow-up book called Putting Back What You Take Out, which proved unexpectedly popular.

  She had seen her mother three times in twenty years. Each time there were different men in attendance. Zannah seemed younger and happier but she made very little work in those years. Instead she planted vines. And then some more. When Gussie was commissioned to work on the new project in one of the gentle inlets of the peninsula, Zannah sent instructions on how to start a vineyard on the south-facing banks of the creek. She wrote, ‘This is something I can give you, sweetie, nothing to do with the Briscoes … The land is in our blood.’

  Gussie knew somewhere deep inside herself that her mother was right, but she fought the connection. After all, she had chosen to study at Cirencester long before Zannah planted those first vines. However, she followed the instructions that arrived so regularly and the grapes from the Cornish Creek vineyards became not only well known for their wine but were a joy to behold. From the north-facing side of the creek the opposite bank appeared to be clothed in velvet, which subtly changed colour through the seasons.

  An article about Gussie’s work appeared in the English Garden. A small photograph stared out from the page; she really did look like her father, that wide open face, dark hair and eyes, snub nose and determined chin. She still wore her hair in a single plait down her back and had coiled it into a fat bun on her neck that day. Ned had stared at it, surprised. ‘My God. I didn’t realize you were … well … actually, beautiful!’

  She had been embarrassed and told him to shut up. But like a fool she had sent a cutting of the article to her mother and Zannah had been similarly struck by the photograph.

  ‘Come over for the summer, darling,’ she wrote. ‘I can do things for you. And you need me. You are so vulnerable. Obviously that Kate woman is not helping one bit. We can go down to Monte Carlo – I know the right people – good connections for you and great fun. OK, I can hear you reminding me of the fun we had with the boat. Not that kind of fun, darling. But just as interesting and even more exciting.’

  She had never gone. She had met Andrew Bellamy by then, a corporate lawyer and a businessman. He had started Albion UK back in the eighties; Gussie Briscoe became his protégée.

  Three

  THE FIRST FAREWELL was on the Thursday two days after the Twin Towers fell. It took place in the chapel dedicated to St Nicholas, built on the top of the headland. The headland was called the Island, and could well have been one once, but was now joined to the mainland by a narrow strip of land on which huddled most of the old fishing cottages.

  The tiny chapel could hold twelve people and that Thursday morning there were fifteen and a dog. The dog lay outside the open door where below, the milky blue sea turned lazily on to the small beach. The congregation stood shoulder against shoulder inside the cell-like granite building with its bench altar and clay chalice.

  Before the liturgy began, the priest pronounced the special prayers for those who had died in the terrorist attack in New York City. Gussie bowed her head, holding Ned’s hand on one side and Jannie’s the other.

  ‘In the midst of life we are in death …’ She swivelled her eyes in their sockets and looked at the dog. He was a mixture of collie and Labrador, a retired sheep dog belonging to Thaddeus Stevens, who was a retired shepherd. Thaddeus pulled himself up from his walking stick and touched the dog with the ferrule, very gently. The dog turned his head and looked up, and Gussie witnessed a moment of complete understanding between man and animal. It gave her a jolt. The dog knew. He came every Thursday, whichever denomination took the service; she had seen him often. She had not seen this moment of intimacy before.

  ‘We have lost two of our fellows in this terrible disaster … people we see every day in the town …’ Gussie felt Jannie’s hand tremble within hers. She squeezed it tightly. On her other side Ned squeezed her hand and she wondered whether she had been trembling too.

  ‘… a welcome for them that is beyond our comprehension. The gates of glory will open wide and the trumpets will sound …’ Ned cleared his throat; the sound covered Jannie’s first sob and Gussie released her hand and wrapped it around the slim young shoulders. Not twenty-one years old until next January, and both parents dead. Gussie held her close and felt the tears trickle down her own neck. She had accepted Kate as a mother such a long time ago she could barely remember Zannah. Had her father really loved Kate Gould as he had loved Zannah Scaife, the wild child of St Ives? Or had he felt bound to marry her when she became pregnant? Gussie thought how little it mattered; all she knew for sure was that they had been happily comfortable, all of them, together. They had been a proper family.

  ‘We extend our heartfelt sympathy to their children, who are with us today.’ For a terrible moment Gussie thought the priest was about to mention Zannah Scaife and Victor Gould – ‘divorced and almost forgotten’, as Ned had once said – but he finished there and went to the ragged niche chiselled from the granite.

  The congregation watched as he blessed the sacraments. A murmur went through the tiny church: ‘Blessed be God for ever.’ The priest presented the clay platter with its small pile of wafers to the woman on his right and she took i
t, lifted a wafer between long, purple fingernails and passed it on. Gussie straightened ready to take her turn and saw that Ned was looking at his watch. Was he anxious to get back home to the constant callers? The neighbours came with pasties and heavy cake – ‘useful for visitors from away’ – and the artists’ fraternity were only too glad to eat them as they told the children what a wonderful sculptor Mark had been and, more than that, what a wonderful human being. Ably supported by Kate, of course. As if Kate were a sort of superior female servant.

  The platter arrived and departed. Thaddeus appeared to savour his wafer with epicurean panache before selecting another one and dropping it on the floor for the dog. The priest took the platter back hurriedly, and though his expression did not change Gussie could tell he did not approve of the dog sharing the body of Christ. She caught Ned’s eye but he hadn’t noticed.

  The chalice began the rounds. Jannie’s tears had already dried in the September sun and her face had the blank dried-out look of someone barely awake and completely unaware of what was happening. She took the chalice automatically and put it to her lips. She never drank the wine. ‘It looks like blood,’ she had said as a newly confirmed fifteen-year-old. Kate had tried to explain. Mark had enlarged by using his sculptures: ‘They’re not real, honeybun – you know that. They are symbols of something else.’ But Jannie had stuck to her guns. ‘I know all that – I’m not as dumb a blonde as I look, thank you very much – I just cannot drink what it symbolizes and that is flipping well that!’

  ‘Well, yes. I suppose it flipping well is!’ Mark had said.

  Now, as Jannie passed the symbolic wine to Thaddeus, Gussie noticed a tiny fleck of clay on her upper lip. The chalice had obviously not been flipping well properly fired. She almost grinned, then stopped, holding her breath as Thaddeus swigged vigorously and looked down at his dog. The priest reached out and grabbed the chalice and took it to the altar to finish off the dregs. The service resumed.

  Afterwards, they were like the Royal Family, standing by Father Martin in the sunshine, shaking hands and thanking people for their ‘thoughts and prayers’.