Garden of Stars (4 page)

She gulped a mouthful of wine and dished out the reinvigorated casserole. “I'm sure mum will come and help with the kids,” she added, scrutinising Hugo's expression for clues as to his likely reaction.

“Oh,” was his only response. He seemed stunned, lost for words. His tired eyes struggled to change focus from his phone to her. “Have you already agreed to it? Then we'll manage. Somehow.”

His expression conveyed an inner disbelief that this would be possible. He rubbed his hands across his thick eyebrows, causing the hairs to stand awry. He was only forty-two, a couple of years older than Sarah, but his reddish-brown curls, once so thick and wiry with an exuberant bounciness that had entranced and delighted her when they first met, were thinning. Not only was his glorious trampoline hair now more like a flattish mat, but also the creases under his eyes had deepened to match the furrows etched into his brow. These things could not have happened overnight, but Sarah realised with a jolt of shock that it was the first time she had noticed them.

“More or less.” She passed a plate to Hugo and then considered her own, half-heartedly forking up a small mouthful. “I'd really like to do it,” she added.

“It's a done deal, then, isn't it? Nothing further to discuss.” Hugo looked back at his phone and began jabbing at the keypad at top speed.

“Fantastic,” Sarah replied, relieved that he hadn't put up more of a fuss about the difficulty of juggling the business and childcare, but also angered by the fact that this was the sum total of his interest in her work. And in her. Neither worthy of his full attention even for only a few minutes. She breathed in deeply and willed for Ines's spirit.

“Hugo, could you put that thing down while we're talking?” He hadn't asked for any details about the article, let alone congratulated her on being offered it. “Don't you want to know anything else about what I'll be writing about, where I'll be going?”

“Sorry. I just had to reply to that one urgently.” Hugo pushed the phone a few inches away from him on the table, but didn't take his eyes off it.

“Was it really something that couldn't have waited for five minutes?”

“I'm keeping a lot of balls in the air at the moment with the new clients we're taking on. I don't think you realise the pressure I'm under. It's not all about you, you know.” He smiled lopsidedly, as if aware of the need to soften the tone of his words.

Sarah, unable to see the joke, traced her finger slowly and deliberately around the rim of her wine glass. I think the problem is that it's so rarely about me, were the words that swirled around inside her
head, but that she didn't say. And Hugo wouldn't have been listening anyway; the mobile had begun to dance around on the table with a dull, thudding sound and he immediately picked it up and walked over to the back door to get a better signal.

A flash of razor-sharp fury ran through Sarah like a flame along a fuse. She should have challenged him about the way he took her for granted. She had a sudden urge, barely suppressed, to seize his phone and throw it into the dirty dishwater in the sink.

Then, as she sat listening to the dripping tap that had needed mending for ages, and the distant rumble of Hugo talking to whoever it was about whatever it was that was so important, her anger slowly dissipated. If she acted like a doormat, it was hardly surprising if she got treated like one.

She cleared away the dishes and then went into the sitting room to do a bit of half-hearted tidying up. Ruby's collection of Russian dolls was spread out across the rug, serried ranks of mothers, children, babies, conscientiously arranged in size order. Sarah stacked them up, infant inside child inside teenager inside parent inside babushka. Lining them up on the shelf beneath the television, she contemplated how they regarded her with their sightless eyes. She pushed her finger against the end one, just hard enough to cause it to topple and fall, and watched as it knocked over the next one, and the next.

Hugo came in. “What on earth are you doing?”

Sarah shrugged. “I've got no idea.” She looked down at her watch. “It's time I got to bed, anyway.”

“Oh.”

Hugo stepped over a couple of cushions that lay discarded on the floor and a heap of Lego spewing from an overturned box and negotiated his way to the sofa where he sank down, clutching the TV remote.

“Night, then.” He turned the TV on and began flicking through the channels.

“Night.”

Sarah left the room and went upstairs, remembering to take the journal with her. She had taken herself aback, she acknowledged to herself as she undressed, by sticking her neck out and committing to the trip. She knew, had known for a long time, that she needed to make some changes to her life. Going back to Portugal, where so much that was life-changing had happened in the past, would be the start.

Getting into bed, she turned on the light and began to read.

3

Lisbon, 1935

It seems incredible, and somehow unreal, to be writing this as a married woman. The wedding was magnificent; everyone had a marvellous time, which is what I most hoped for, and the dancing went on until 2am. My dress, though I feel immodest to say it, was exquisite. Maria was the cutest bridesmaid you could possibly imagine and John the most perfect groom. In his dark suit with its red rose buttonhole he looked more handsome than Clark Gable. He swept me off my feet, literally as well as metaphorically, for this morning, rather than carrying me over the threshold into our new home, he picked me up and carried me out of my parents' house and placed me in the car like a precious package needing careful delivery.

Although I am so excited to be starting my new life, I could feel tears forming behind my eyes as we pulled away. My family were gathered together and waving us off as if their lives depended on it and I had to turn my face away for a few moments while I composed myself. I didn't want John to see me crying; he might have thought I don't want to be his wife, don't want to move to Porto with him, when I do, I really, really do. It's just that it's hard to leave everything you've ever known, your beloved mother and father and siblings, the
montado
itself… I'm sure he would have understood, although I didn't feel like telling him just then as he is always so self-possessed and
faultless
, somehow, it sometimes makes me feel very uncouth and
dishevelled
, in character rather than appearance, if that makes any sense at all.

I had a small, muslin-wrapped parcel on my lap and John asked me what it was. I blushed rather as I explained to him that it was my lucky charm - a piece of cork bark that I wanted to take with me to remind me of the cork forests that have been my life since the day I was born. It is the cork trees' bark that provides us with our livelihood, and not just us, lots of other families, too. The Alentejo is cork and cork is the Alentejo; it's always been like that and I suppose it always will be. I wondered whether John would be dismissive of such sentimentality – he is English, after all - but instead he was at his most indulgent, and once we'd rounded the
corner and were no longer in sight of the farewell party, he put his hand on my knee and squeezed it. It sent a shiver all through me.

Spring comes early to my Alentejo and as we puttered along the country lanes in the open-topped car, the growing season was in full swing all around us, cartloads of manure wedged between open gateposts in the entrance to every field. The peasant women working on the first plantings had their check skirts tied between their legs to keep them out of the way, and on their heads they wore wide-brimmed felt hats pulled firmly down over black headscarves. I always think that it must be so hot, but I suppose they are used to it for they don't seem to find it so. The men, sporting sheepskin chaps with the fleece worn to the outside, ploughed neat furrows with their oxen, the overturned earth a rich reddish-brown. Tucked away in tidy rows beneath the hedgerows were their
taros
, small cork buckets with wooden handles and tight-fitting lids that keep their lunch either hot or cold.

It felt strange to think that I don't know when I'll see all these things again. Perhaps that's why the colours of the wild flowers that adorned the meadows on either side of us seemed brighter than ever before; the scarlet, gold, white and blue of the poppies, moon daisies, field chrysanthemums and wild anchusa blazing in the sunshine. The gum cistus bushes were surrounded by immense clouds of white blossoms, as if a host of butterflies had paused in their flight and become immobilised, intoxicated by the sweetness of the nectar they sought. I felt myself captured in the same way, my life encircled by the man I love like an invisible net that will hold me to him forever.

John clasped my hand and raised it to his lips to kiss it, making me giggle like a schoolgirl. Really, I do have to work on that sophistication I have mentioned before. I urged John to be careful and keep two hands on the wheel; he borrowed the car from a rather wealthy friend of his and although he is as competent at driving as he is at everything else, one does need to pay attention when in charge of a motor vehicle. Apart from anything else, my mother was so nervous about us driving ourselves that I thought she might try to forbid it and it would be too vexing if her fears were to be proved right.

When I waved his hand away, his reply was, “I can't resist you,” which made me squirm with delicious embarrassment and blush all the more.

After that, my mind kept straying to the night to come when we would consummate our marriage. (I couldn't possibly have done so in my parents' house; it just wouldn't have felt right. John felt the same – he said he wanted to be free of any restraint when he enjoyed me for the first time. Whatever that means!) Anyway, the brush of John's lips against my skin filled me with a thrill of anticipation which, together with the excitement of bowling along on the open road and the undercurrent of danger thus produced, made me feel quite light-headed and dizzy.

On occasion during our engagement, I have worried about whether it's possible to get it wrong. Making love, that is. I don't really know what to do and that makes me anxious, but then I think that everyone else who's married must do it and they must work it out so surely I will be able to. Better to be optimistic, I say, and assume the best rather than fear the worst. That's how I try to be with other difficulties I face and so why not with this? And I mustn't forget that it will be John who leads the way and he does everything with such verve and self-assurance that I'm sure that making love will be no different.

Finally, after rather a long drive, we arrived in Lisbon. John negotiated the bends of the old town's narrow streets masterfully – those that are accessible by car at all, that is. We went to a favourite restaurant of his and ate
bacalhau
– dried salt cod - with braised fried onions, buttered rice and a mild mustard sauce. John didn't have dessert but I had
pudim
, crème caramel. I always choose it because it reminds me of being a little girl; it was the treat I invariably selected when we went out for lunch on Sundays. I love the way the quivering golden mound splits apart and slides onto the plate when you cut into it, oozing delicious, golden, buttery sauce. Today, I ate it rather too greedily as if I could physically consume the familiarity and comfort it represents. When everything is so new, it's nice to have something you know well to fall back on.

After lunch, John took me to the Chiado. It is the most exclusive shopping street in Lisbon – and the steepest. I was quite out of breath by the time we reached a shop door surrounded by blue, white and orange tiles. John told me that I was to choose some new shoes. Well, what he actually said was, “You won't need those old clodhoppers you wear on the farm any more.” Really! But when I looked down at the toes of my brown, practical shoes where the Alentejan dust still lay in a thin film, I saw his point. The bell chimed as we entered and the shop assistant appeared from some inner room. She was immaculate and when I caught sight
of myself in the mirror, all windblown hair, wine-reddened cheeks and out of town clothes, I felt rather queasy and regretted eating the pudim.

But then I became distracted by the problem of having to choose when there was so much choice. The shelves in the shop stretched from floor to ceiling and were filled with box after box. I couldn't think where to begin. So I went over to the window to examine the display and as soon as I saw them, I knew. I picked out a pair of shoes from the careful arrangement that lay behind the glass and showed them to John.

Gold, high-heeled evening sandals, shiny and bejewelled, completely and utterly different from any shoe I've ever owned before and surely a shoe that no country bumpkin would ever wear.

“No more clodhoppers for me,” I said to John as I tried them on. And he laughed and bought them for me, despite the price tag, plus another pair of reddish-brown court shoes for everyday. He didn't so much as flinch as he wrote the cheque and we walked back to the car through streets bedecked with washing hanging out to dry like prosaic bunting, John carrying the box stiffly in front of him as if it were a regal offering.

We set off for Estoril, and as we progressed along the coast road, a vast number of masts came into view, and then the boats that they belonged to, three and four-masted schooners moving gently side to side with the swell of the ocean. John stopped the car and we got out to take a look. Approaching them, we saw that the boats were full of activity; men loading crates of food and sack after sack of salt, their voices snatched by the same wind that would soon be taking them to their destination. For we had happened upon the
bacalhoeiro
, the fishing fleet about to set off to the cod banks of Newfoundland and Greenland, from where it would return in many months' time with its cargo of
bacalhau
, our national dish.

On the deck of each ship were piled little boats called dories. These are winched over the side with one or two men aboard who spend all day, up to twelve hours, fishing by hand with a line. Some days they might catch a glimpse of an ocean liner crossing from America to Europe or back again – but most of the time there won't be another sign of human life anywhere on the planet.