She drops her head into her heads. ‘I can’t marry you, Thomas. I’m so sorry. I just can’t.’
Chapter 21
Tippy’s Tickle – 14 September 2001
The gate of St Stephen’s Cemetery, once black but now seemingly held together by rust, screeches as Sophie tugs it open. It jerks to a stop, refusing to budge any further.
Handing the patchwork bag she’s filled with drawing materials to Sophie, Ellie squeezes through the opening. Sophie follows, wrenching the protesting gate closed behind her. Tufts of yellowing grass splay against the weather-beaten headstones and crosses on the gentle slope below. Beyond the hill, on its spit of land the other side of the tickle, the aluminium steeple of St Stephen’s Church points its glinting finger up into the blue sky. They stand for a moment on the hill, looking out to the sea below, which shines like new-polished silver in the morning sun, its stillness broken only by the occasional whale spout blasting through the surface and the tickle-ace gulls ducking and diving along the shore.
‘It’s lovely here, Aunt Ellie,’ Sophie says as she snaps several photos.
‘I’ve always thought so. I’ve been coming here for years, since before Thomas died. It was a good place to hide from my mother-in-law, Agnes. She wouldn’t come near the place. Said it was full of fairies who’d reach up from the graves and pull you down to Hell for disturbing the dead.’
Sophie laughs. ‘They don’t sound like any kind of fairies I’ve ever heard of.’
‘Oh, yes. They all believed in fairies back then. Emmett still does. Agnes infected him with that when he was a boy, I’m afraid. They weren’t the nice fairies of England or Walt Disney, like Tinker Bell. These ones played tricks, and led little children into the woods with their fairy music, or hit you with a fairy blast when you were out in the woods or fields on your own.’
‘A fairy blast?’
‘Yes. Agnes swore she’d seen a boy with a fairy blast once. All sorts of nasty stuff came out of the wound – fish bones and sticks and insects.’
Sophie shudders. ‘That’s awful.’
‘I loved those fairies. I always had the cemetery all to myself.’ She points to an old wooden bench peeking out from behind a stunted cedar near the gate. ‘Come on. It’s where I always sit.’
They sit together on the bench and Ellie reaches into the bag, dispensing charcoal pencils, pastels the colours of ice cream and a drawing pad to each of them. ‘Let’s have a go at drawing the church.’
Sophie picks up a charcoal pencil and squints at the gleaming steeple. ‘I don’t know if I can remember how to do this. I only draw construction drawings now.’
‘Just trust your eyes and your hand. Don’t overthink it.’
‘All right. Here goes nothing.’
After a few tentative lines, and the conviction that any latent artistic talent has deserted her, Sophie turns over a fresh page. The sun kisses her face with a soft warmth, and a light breeze dances up the hill from the ocean, rustling the tufts of grass like a mother tousling her child’s hair. Taking a deep breath, she begins to draw, letting the pencil find its way across the rough white paper. She feels her way, increasing the pressure on the pencil for the thick line of the church’s walls, and lifting the pencil to a fine point for the window frames and the door. She shakes out the tension in her hand and leans over the drawing, shading in the shadows with a fine cross-hatching, frowning as she attempts to transfer the white puffs of clouds to the drawing.
As she draws, she finds her mind settling into a calmness she hasn’t felt since she was a teenager drawing their cat, Sopwith Pusskins, a puff of fur curled up in front of the fire, for her final art-class assignment. The memory settles into her mind as she draws the lines of the rocky spit of land where it meets the tickle. It had been a chilly December Sunday afternoon. Her face warm from the gas fire, and the radio was on, probably Sing Something Simple, which her father liked. Rattling sounds from the kitchen – her mother baking something for some Women’s Institute do. It had been … perfect. A moment of truce in her parents’ fractious relationship.
She flips over the page and starts another version of the church. Stronger lines this time as she draws the clapboard building. Softer on the waves slapping up against the rocks, looser on the tufts of long grass sprouting around the old headstones. Changing pressure on the charcoal pencil for the different effects. Remembering something she’d lost, something she hadn’t even realised she’d forgotten: the Sophie she once was, before she’d packed her away like an old coat. The Sophie who loved something.
***
‘What do you think?’ Sophie holds up her drawing to Ellie.
‘That’s lovely, Sophie. You have a wonderful sense of perspective. Why ever did you give up drawing?’
Sophie sighs as she closes the drawing pad, and rests it on her lap. ‘My mother wanted me to focus on a career. I think she resented having to give up her musical career when she married my father. Poor Dad … They used to argue. Or, she would argue, and he would just take it.’ Sophie looks at her aunt. ‘You know she was pregnant when they got married?’
Ellie nods. ‘Yes, I knew. You father wrote to me.’
‘She miscarried and then she was trapped. That’s the word she’d use with my father. Trapped. She wouldn’t divorce, being a Catholic. So, she decided to make Dad her project. Push him up
