Beach Hut Surprise: Escape to Little Piddling this summer — six feel-good beach reads to make you smile, or even laugh out loud

by Libertà Books

  I shook my head.

  "Well, when are you free?"

  He was serious! He really was asking me out. It flustered me. I stammered some rubbish about needing to stick to my schedule. Then pushed the book into my shoulder bag and gathered myself to leave.

  Anton stood up. Oh, those British manners again. But then, for a moment, I thought he wasn't going to let me past.

  That annoyed me. I raised an eyebrow.

  He gave a little nod. Then stepped back. "OK. Not tonight. I'll see you around."

  And I was out of the pub and heading for home and my telescope.

  Phew.

  Chapter Twelve

  I had the greatest difficulty in concentrating on the moon and the sea that night. I kept dropping things—the telescope cap, the notebook, my biro countless times. I nearly missed the four o'clock observation altogether and knocked the 'scope out of alignment, rushing to catch up. And all because I couldn't understand Anton.

  What did he want? Was he suspicious of me, for some reason? I didn't see why he should be. I'd seen more of Judith, Chandra and Ben than I had of Anton, and they accepted me totally at face value.

  I discarded the possibility that he might genuinely be attracted to me. Pretty much at once, to be honest. I'd read Rogue Herries, Persuasion and I Capture the Castle by then. So I knew about the conventions of human courtship. Though, based on the same evidence, my own reactions were distinctly suspect.

  Not going to think about that.

  Oddly, that was the first time since I'd arrived on Earth that the Institute communicated clearly. Or maybe I'd been trying too hard up until then. Anyway, it was deeply unrewarding, a bureaucratic classic in fact: Report in Full; we are Reviewing Options.

  Gee, thanks, guys.

  I was too stirred up and, frankly, too pissed off to get to sleep after that. I took my telescope home to Forget-me-not and dumped my stuff. Then I marched along the beach and off into the countryside to walk off my temper.

  It didn't work.

  Fortunately Ben and Chandra were both busy by the time I went for my shower-and-breakfast. I grabbed a bun and their biggest coffee to take home and set about cleaning the place. Ferociously.

  Judith, who often wandered up around lunchtime, was much entertained. "Hormones," she said wisely. "Just don't kill anyone. There are tourists about."

  I knew about hormones. I'd learned the hard way. When I arrived in the wrong place, I was taken in by a friendly bunch of girls, students on a Greek island holiday. So they were the life form I Adapted to. All my research told me that blood meant injury. I knew that. So when I began to bleed, I sought out a medical person.

  "It happens," he said. "You are a woman."

  That worried me. I'd already discovered that women were not respected. "Permanently?" I asked.

  He was taken aback, but then he laughed as if I'd made one of their jokes.

  So I learned about hormones in the field, as it were. Knowing why I was feeling like that didn't make me any more rational, though. I snapped Anton's head off when he turned up that afternoon. He'd even brought me a transistor radio of my own. It was a present.

  I glowered. "Why?"

  He gave me a bland smile and said, "Chandra would like her radio back sometime."

  I couldn't argue with that. I gave him the borrowed radio and more or less drove him out of the beach hut at broom point.

  He went, but he was laughing. I suspected Anton knew about hormones too. It made me want to throw things.

  Anton turned up every day. He brought me books. I told him I would be reading The Lord of the Rings for the foreseeable future. He invited me to an evening of folk song at the Church Hall, a barbecue on the cliffs and another movie. I reminded him that I never went out in the evenings. Never. He came back with the offer of an Easter Sunday picnic at Milly and Bert's.

  "No," I almost shouted.

  "Well, it's not until the end of next week. You've got ten days to change your mind."

  It wasn't just hormones that were driving my exasperation by then.

  What's more, he was on the beach with his binoculars the whole damn time then. I fell over him morning, afternoon and evening. Maybe he was there at night, too, though of course I was busy then, so I didn't catch him.

  On Thursday afternoon, he even walked in on me in floods of tears over The Lord of the Rings.

  It was the last straw. "Are you spying on me?" I yelled, trying to blot my face unobtrusively.

  He didn't even try to ignore my tearful state. "What's wrong, Selsis?" He hovered between the open doors, looking worried and awkward. He even sounded as if he cared.

  I blew my nose hard. "Got to a sad bit." I stood up and closed the book firmly on the hobbit Meriadoc saying goodbye to the dead Theoden. As a father you were to me for a little while. My eyes filled again. "Damn!"

  I went towards Anton, certain that he would give way before me and back out onto the boardwalk. I think I wanted him out of my home, so I could howl in decent privacy. But he didn't move.

  "Hey," he said, really gently. "Don't cry. It's only a book."

  But it was a bit more than that. Meriadoc could have been me, bidding farewell to Peter Abel.

  Anton lifted the book out of my hand and surveyed the cover. "Ah. Tolkien. Damnably good at grief, isn't he? Tolkien and the Dvorak Cello Concerto do it every time."

  I couldn't speak.

  He took my hand. It was a bit tentative. But I could feel the kindness.

  "Come along. We'll walk down the beach and back again. Then you'll feel better. I'll buy you an ice cream, if you like."

  He held onto my hand all the way along the sands to the Pier.

  He bought each of us a big swirl of ice cream with a chocolate flake in it and made me sit on the sea wall to eat it.

  Hoisting himself up beside me, he said, "You didn't tell me you were a giant killer."

  "What?"

  "I met one of your former colleagues at my course on Tuesday. He was telling me how you put the Minister for Education straight."

  Ouch! "Secretary of State," I corrected, wincing.

  "So it was you. I thought it had to be, since you'd mentioned Peter Abel."

  My eyes filled. I stared resolutely at the sea. "I cost him his job."

  "No, you didn't."

  I was horribly tempted to push him off the wall. But at least it stopped the tears.

  "You know nothing about it," I said, with dignity.

  "I know that, whatever the Minister thinks, Peter Abel has taken a sabbatical. He'll be back."

  I slewed round to stare at him. "What do you mean?"

  He shrugged. "The Chairman of Governors is a politician. He says she won't be running Education for long. She's not interested and, anyway, she has her eye on higher things."

  I remembered her dogmatic pronouncements. "She certainly isn't interested," I agreed.

  "There you are, then. She moves up. Peter Abel quietly moves back. Meanwhile he's climbing the Munros. After which he's heading out east."

  In my relief, words spilled out of me. "I thought he'd jumped. He was worried. He probably didn't have the energy—" I stopped dead, remembering too late that Anton was already suspicious of me.

  But he wasn't looking suspicious. He was looking as if he'd found the answer to a puzzle. And deeply compassionate.

  He said slowly, "That was why you were so distressed the first time I saw you, wasn't it? You thought Abel had thrown himself off a mountain."

  "Sort of." I'd actually thought that he'd been ordered back to the Institute. I knew he would either break up in transit or, if he got back, break his heart, knowing he could never return to Earth. "He loved Orwell College. Loves. He loves that school."

  Anton put his arm round me. "Well, you can stop worrying about him now."

  I was saved from having to answer by the imminent collapse of my ice cream. I applied myself to salvage and the emotional moment passed.

  Walking back, Anton said casually, "How d
id you get on with that spy book? Like the characters any better in the end? Or at least forgive them?"

  "Yes and no."

  "Why is that?" He sounded as if it mattered.

  Anyway, I needed to explain to myself as much as to him. "I was educated with facts. I learned to experiment again and again until I knew the where, when, how of things. But nobody ever taught me to ask why?"

  His eyes were very intent. "Not educated in this country, then."

  I wasn't really listening. "The great thing about novels is they make you think what if? What if I could do this? What if I could feel that?"

  "Your parents must have been very fierce."

  Define parents.

  That brought me back to reality with a bump.

  I shut up like a clam. In the end, he gave up and walked back with me to Forget-me-not. I didn't ask him in.

  Before he left, Anton said, "Are you star gazing again tonight?"

  "Yes."

  "Would you like company?" It sounded as if he expected a negative but was driven to ask anyway.

  I shook my head, keeping my distance, expecting him to leave.

  But he didn't. "Selsis—"

  "Yes?"

  "I want to tell you something… Ought to…"

  I blanked him. It was nothing to do with mind-communication. It was pure Staff Room.

  "Oh, the hell with it," said Anton and stalked off back to college.

  Well, that's what I assumed.

  I should have known better. Look where my assumptions about the minister had got me.

  Coming back from my night watch in the cold dawn, I heard steps behind me. I was too tired to run and, anyway, I should be able to broadcast a strong enough suggestion to deflect most would-be muggers and snoopers. So I sighed and turned to face my pursuer.

  It was Anton.

  He looked tired, too. I wondered how long he'd been following me.

  He said, "I'm really sorry, Selsis."

  A rather pretty pink blush was starting to infuse the sky behind him. I stared at it, trying to work out what to do, what to say.

  In the end all I could think of was, "What are you talking about?"

  "I've watched you all night. Yes, you look at the sky. Yes, you make notes. And then you scan the sea."

  He stared at me as if I ought to be falling back in guilty surprise. I felt blank.

  "So?"

  "What are you looking for? A Russian sub?"

  Was I hallucinating? Had I somehow fallen asleep and this was a rapid eye movement delusion?

  "I know where you come from, you see. You're an enemy alien."

  Alien! He knew. I went cold. And I was falling, falling, falling…

  "And… That thing I was going to tell you? I'm a spy, too."

  It was like a blow. My recoil was instant. I couldn't think.

  After a moment, Anton said heavily, "The Prague Spring. I was born a Czech. In 1968 I was at Manchester University, post-doctoral studies in hardware address translation. If you went abroad to study, you reported to the Ministry. Even under Dubček. Until the Russians got rid of him."

  In the grey dawn light, he looked haggard. Grieving. He half-turned away from me, looking at the brightening sky.

  "The night after tanks rolled into Prague, I went to a concert. London. The Soviet State Symphony Orchestra." He nearly spat it out. "I wanted to kill them all. A Russian cellist was playing."

  "Oh." Suddenly I understood. "The Dvorak Cello Concerto."

  He swallowed. "He cried. Rostropovich. He played it through to the end. And he cried. Afterwards, I— Well, that was my walk into the sea moment."

  He turned back to me, remote, courteous. It was like a skull smiling. I shivered. The wind was very cold.

  "They gave me political asylum. I changed my name," he said lightly, quite as if it didn't matter. "These days I'm attached to British counter-intelligence."

  He looked at me steadily, waiting.

  When I didn't—couldn't—say anything, he squared his shoulders. "So I'm afraid I'm going to have to turn you in."

  Chapter Thirteen

  Of course, I didn't understand. Story of my life on Earth. Blasted words.

  "Turn me into what?" It wasn't the most important thing, but it sounded worrying.

  Anton gave a bark of laughter, more angry than amused. But he translated in a level voice. "Report your activities to my superiors. Take you in for questioning."

  Even I could understand that.

  "Oh."

  I took a couple of steps back from him and nearly lost my footing on the rough path. I still had that sensation of falling, tumbling in free fall through the thinnest of air. I couldn't breathe.

  In Star Trek, this would be where the Institute locked onto me and beamed me out of there. And I suddenly realised: I really don't want that.

  Huh?

  Anton had grabbed me when I stumbled. Now I looked at him properly, I could see that he was as shocked as I was. Yes, he was angry. But not, I thought, at me.

  And that was when, rather late, my brain kicked in. I dissected what he'd said. It didn't make sense.

  "You're going to report me as an enemy alien?"

  He flinched. "Yes."

  "But I'm not. I mean, I'm no enemy. I'll put my hands up to being an alien. But I'm here to help. Not to spy or do anything hostile."

  Behind him the sun was rising in a surge of gold and cherry-blossom pink. It turned his hair to that fabulous Renaissance auburn again. Suddenly the core of my body blazed into life. It was rather alarming, but it sharpened my wits. Not before time.

  "Look," I said. "Let's go back to Forget-me-not. We can heat some water on the burner and have coffee and talk about this."

  He only agreed to come because he was so miserable. I knew that. But it was a start.

  Sitting opposite him at the small table, I set out the full course of my career on Earth. Starting with arriving in the wrong place, because I thought I was aiming for somewhere called the Bibby Sea.

  "What?"

  I looked eloquently at his transistor radio.

  Anton choked on his coffee. "You mean the BBC?" And he hooted when I recounted my exchange with the Greek island doctor. "And on top of all that, you patronised Margaret Thatcher!" And he was off again.

  I could have smacked him. "I didn't patronise anyone. I told you. I'm here to help."

  Anton sobered. I could see it was an effort.

  "OK. You're very convincing so far. What was the game plan, then?"

  "Earth, this world, is spending more and more of its resources on stuff that will destroy the planet. Weapons of mass destruction. Machinery that will bring about climate change. You can still change that. But it's getting a bit late. Basically, the Institute sent me here to encourage new young inventors."

  Anton leaned back in his chair, eyes alert. "And why does your Institute care whether this planet blows itself up?"

  "I don't think it does. They worry about repercussions. Especially intergalactic refugees. Beings with nothing to lose can be dangerous."

  He stared at me for a long moment, not blinking. Then, finally, he nodded. "Makes sense." He thought about it. "Why you?"

  "I'm a good researcher. Decent track record in teaching. And I've always been interested in Earth. Though I didn't know as much about it as I thought I did," I admitted ruefully.

  His eyes lit with that lovely laughter. "So you said." But then he looked thoughtful.

  "How are you going to do it?"

  Are, I noticed. Not were. For some reason, my heart lifted another notch.

  "Communication technology."

  "Telephones?" Anton was frankly disbelieving.

  "Telephones are in the mix, eventually. At the moment all the focus on Earth is on computer development. Particularly packet switching."

  He jolted upright as if I'd zapped him with an electric current. "Explain!"

  I remembered that he taught computer science. He would probably get it. "Four years ago—29th Oc
tober 1969, to be precise—two computers in California talked to each other. That could be the start of worldwide person-to-person communications. Or it could get lost in the US Department of Defense."

  "Who told you that?"

  "One of our researchers picked it up by chance in routine monitoring." No need to say it was me.

  Anton wasn't deceived. "I thought you said you weren't a spy." He wasn't amused any more.

  "I'm not. I only picked it up because, well—" I was faintly ashamed of this "—it made me laugh."

  "What?"

  "Well, everyone involved was so high tech. And the message was straight out of the seventeenth century." The King James Bible to be precise.

  He stared at me, narrow-eyed.

  "Lo," I said. "It's Tudorspeak, like 'behold'. Which is more or less what it means. It made me laugh and it gave me hope, at the same time. Like when the dove came back to Noah, after the flood. 'And, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf.' As if chance had taken a hand and everything was going to turn out all right after all."

  Anton said nothing.

  "Of course, it was a mistake. The message was supposed to be LOGIN. Only it crashed after two letters." I laughed. I couldn't help it. I always did. "But that just made it better, somehow."

  One look at his face made me realise I'd blown it. That incorrigible frivolity the bloody Minister had complained about. I wiped the smile off my face but it was probably too late. I waited nervously.

  And the most terrible wailing started.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Anton jumped to his feet. And staggered. "Damn. Got to go."

  "Why? What's happening?"

  For some reason—maybe it was his talk of Russian submarines—my first thought was invasion!

  "Lifeboat launch. They'll be calling me at home. If I don't get there fast, they'll think I'm not available. Gotta run."

  He was already out of the door before I'd stood up.

  When I went outside, he was powering down the beach towards the pier. I followed, almost as fast. My brain ran an earworm at the same time: too tired is dangerous, too tired is dangerous. Not me, I realised. Anton.

  Judith was already at the pier and other people were coming along all the time.

  "Anton?" she said, as soon as she saw me.