Sara MacDonald - Sea Music

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2003

Copyright © Sara MacDonald 2003

Lines taken from Old Man, Tears and Sowing from Collected Poems , copyright © Edward Thomas, reproduced by kind permission of Everyman’s Library

Sara MacDonald asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library

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HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780007150731

Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2013 ISBN: 9780007396740

Version: 2017-05-02

For Milly Who says, the past is gone. The present is what matters, and the future.

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Keep Reading

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

It is not cold here in this land of blue sea, but shafts of ice reach out to pierce my skin with memory of coldness. Sometimes I dream of snow and the muffled silence it brings. I dream of snow with the sun glistening on its smooth surface, catching tiny particles of blue ice, incandescent and blinding.

I wake in the dark in a strange place of fierce storms and I remember what horror can lie beneath the silent beauty of snow.

I listen to Fred breathing beside me, his body warm. He is far away in sleep and the faces swoop down at me in the dark, their voices hover in the air, like distant whispers I cannot capture.

I get out of bed, go downstairs and wander about the little cottage, afraid that this life is only a dream and I am about to wake. I sit in the corner chair by the window and wait for the sun to rise out of the black water.

I will hear Fred wake, I will hear the bed creak, then his bare footsteps coming down the stairs. He will come to where I sit and he will reach out gently to stop me rocking. He will fold me in his arms, then he will pick me up as if I weigh nothing, throwing his hair out of his eyes, as he carries me back up the stairs to bed.

He will hold me tight to him and I will breathe him into me. This is my life. I have this life now, here with him. I can feel him smiling into my hair as he tells me about the plans for our new house across the garden.

How can this beautiful man love me? But he does. He does.

I will not always be this in-between person who walks on the sand dunes above the glittering sea, watching my dark shadow move ahead of me as we walk together, the girl I was, the woman I am now.

The house is almost finished. We live here in the cottage all the time now. No more long journeys at weekends. The house is wonderful. Light is everywhere; it fills every corner, it slides across the floor and colours the rooms in buttery sun. Great windows open up and let the untamed garden into the house.

I am so happy I tremble. I kiss Fred’s hands because I cannot speak. I run through the empty rooms laughing and Fred leans in the doorway, his long legs crossed, pushing tobacco into his pipe, watching me with those dark eyes that hold love and amusement.

I make myself walk into the village. I am afraid at first. People stare because I am foreign. Sometimes, in the shop, they stop talking. When I am nervous I forget my English. Then, slowly, people begin to talk to me and I learn their names.

The farm workers in the fields behind the house bring me vegetables and creamy milk from the farm. Fred laughs at me – he says I flirt atrociously – but it is not, as he teases me, because I am floosy, it is only because I am so thin.

The builders’ rubble has been taken away. At last we move in. I can plan the garden. It is going to be perfect. One day Fred comes home with a little mixed dog and we call him Puck. I love him. When we walk on the beach, people come up to me and they ask, ‘How is Puck? How are you?’

Summer is here, the fierce winds are warmer, but I am ill and cannot bear to go out. Fred is pale with worry. Suddenly the doctor tells me I am having a baby. I cannot believe this, I have to keep saying it over and over. After all we have been told, Fred and I are having a baby.

Fred says I must not hope too much, it is early days, I must be careful. But I know. I know this child will be born.

When Fred goes back to London to work for his finals and he cannot see to worry, I dance round the garden and sing because of the happiness of this incredible miracle.

Christmas comes and then the New Year. I lie in my bed, or in a chair that Fred places by the window in the sun. I am careful, waiting. Waiting for spring and my baby.

Our child, a boy, arrives safely on 18 March 1951. He weighs 6lbs 2oz. We call him Barnaby, after one of Fred’s favourite uncles. Barnaby. Such an English name.

Small shoots spring from my feet and take hold in this light, sandy soil and root me here in this extraordinary foreign place filled with blue sea and sky. The past is gone. Marta is gone. My future is here. Is now. I am Martha Tremain, the doctor’s wife. This is who I am.

Lucy finds Abi dead under the cherry tree. The little cat has crawled away to her favourite place and still feels warm to Lucy’s fingers. She knows it is stupid to feel so upset about an old tabby cat, especially when people are being killed all over the Balkans, but this one small cat has been with her most of her childhood.