Summer at 23 the Strand

by Linda Mitchelmore

  ‘Nothing for a bit. I’ll probably have to get Job Seeker’s Allowance or whatever it’s called now. But I’m too raw to put myself out there. Not everyone’s like you. The second I have to say why I left my last job I’ll be judged.’

  ‘Don’t tell them then,’ Danny said. He drank his coffee almost in one go. ‘And don’t even think about looking until your two weeks here are up. Just enjoy. Let the sun warm you, and those lovely people in The Port Light feed you cake and coffee. And now I have to go.’

  ‘Oh,’ Caroline said. ‘Back to Bath?’

  ‘Nope. The Redcliffe Hotel. You can see it from here. Like I said, I had a few days’ holiday owed me.’

  ‘How many days?’ Caroline asked. ‘God, but scratch that – I’m sounding needy. It’s just that it’s been lovely spending the day with you, possibly because you wanted to spend it with me, and…’

  ‘Don’t think too much,’ Danny said. ‘Just be. But think on this – how does breakfast at the Redcliffe grab you? Eight-thirty?’ He looked at Caroline, tilting his head to one side.

  Caroline hadn’t eaten breakfast for years and she had a feeling Danny had guessed that.

  ‘It grabs me around the wrist and drags me there,’ Caroline laughed.

  ‘In that case, I’ll say goodnight.’ Danny stood up and leaned over to kiss Caroline on the top of her head before running down the steps and back to his hotel.

  Caroline stood up, leaned over the rail of her deck and watched him go until he was just a speck as the sun dropped in the sky and her eyes couldn’t focus at that distance any more.

  And then Caroline went inside. Two whole days without alcohol.

  ‘Eggs Benedict,’ Danny said, reading from the breakfast menu. ‘My mother was wizard at these. I always have them in hotels to remember her by. Know them?’

  Caroline knew what eggs Benedict were and roughly how many calories were in them – a whole day’s worth of calories for someone like her who got all their calories from a bottle.

  ‘Of course I know them,’ Caroline said. ‘If that’s what you’re having I’ll join you. And toast to follow. With honey.’

  ‘Ah. Honey. Three sorts here apparently – clover, acacia and local.’

  ‘Let’s go for local,’ Caroline said.

  Danny ordered from the waitress who had suddenly appeared at their table.

  ‘Four rounds of wholemeal toast?’ Caroline queried as the waitress walked away.

  ‘Yep. You’ll need sustenance for today’s walk.’

  ‘I will?’

  ‘Three options. The whole seven miles from here to over there,’ Danny said, pointing out across the terrace and across the bay. ‘Or we can go as far as Sugarloaf and walk back. Grand name that, Sugarloaf. I have no idea what it is or what it means but it’ll be fun to find out. The third option is on to Elberry Cove, cut up through the bungalows at the back of the beach and get the bus back. Whichever option, it’s about the same distance. You’ll need stout shoes.’

  ‘You’ve thought all this out, haven’t you?’ Caroline said.

  ‘I have. Courtesy of the internet and Google Maps. The shop in the foyer sells rather snazzy walking trainers. And socks.’

  ‘And how did you guess I owned neither of those things?’

  ‘Hunch,’ Danny said. ‘My dad never did either.’

  So, they were back to that, despite the friendly banter. Caroline ate slowly through her breakfast, allowed Danny to buy her trainers and socks from the shop in the foyer, and then they went for their walk.

  When they got back to Hollacombe in the early evening they shared a portion of fish and chips sitting on the sea wall, throwing the scraps to the gulls that always congregated whenever there was food about. And then they went their separate ways.

  Three whole days without alcohol.

  Caroline had invited Danny to eat breakfast at 23 The Strand the next day. She got up early and went into town for fresh croissants, blackcurrant and apricot jams, and fresh strawberries.

  Danny arrived on time. He waved a brochure at her.

  ‘How are you on art?’ he asked. ‘Only there’s an exhibition by a local sculptor in a deconsecrated church about a mile away. And paintings by “other artists” it says here. I’ve bought a map. Easy to find.’

  ‘Art has never figured hugely in my life,’ Caroline said. ‘But then neither has not drinking wine for three days – at least not for a very long time.’

  ‘It doesn’t say it’s a “private view” exhibition – when wine and nibbles are usually provided to get punters to part with their cash – so I doubt alcohol will be involved. It’s easier when there’s no temptation. Interested?’

  ‘I could be,’ Caroline said. She still didn’t quite understand what Danny’s agenda was with all this or if he had an ulterior motive. ‘More coffee? Before we go.’

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ Danny said. ‘If you’ll forgive the rather inappropriate pun.’

  ‘All forgiven,’ Caroline laughed.

  Laughed?

  The walk to the exhibition involved a trek up over the hills behind the seafront, via a short pathway through a narrow strip of woodland. As they came out of the wood into a field the wind suddenly got up and blew Caroline’s hair across her face.

  With a bag containing her purse, sunglasses, tissues and umbrella in one hand, and a fern she’d picked to swat away the gnats that seemed to be everywhere in the other, Caroline struggled to remove it.

  Danny stepped forward, turned and faced her. He lifted her hair very gently off her face and tucked it behind one ear.

  ‘Never let it be said I do not rescue damsels in distress.’

  ‘I’m hardly a damsel,’ Caroline laughed. ‘But thank you all the same.’ When Danny didn’t step away to walk beside her again, Caroline said, ‘What?’

  ‘What what?’ Danny said.

  ‘You’re looking at me a bit funny,’ Caroline said.

  ‘Funny ha ha or funny peculiar?’

  ‘Uncomfortable,’ Caroline said. She didn’t feel threatened by Danny but there was something.

  ‘Well, that would be because I’m wondering if you’d like to come to the cinema with me tonight, and don’t know how to ask.’

  ‘You just have!’

  ‘No ulterior motive in case that’s what you might be thinking. No holding hands in the back row or anything.’

  ‘It’s a long time since I’ve been to the cinema – holding someone’s hand or not.’

  ‘Yeah. And I think it’s the saddest thing, going to the cinema on your own when everyone else is in couples or groups. So I don’t. So shall we? Go together? Tonight?’

  ‘I’ll give it some thought. But I’m just wondering if you know my doctor, Dr Shaw? She suggested I fill my life with different things to take me away from the bottle – a walk, a gallery, the cinema. Gardening.’

  ‘Nope. I’ve met plenty of doctors in my time, both for myself and on behalf of my father, but I’ve never met a Dr Shaw.’

  ‘I just thought I’d ask,’ Caroline said, sad for Danny that his father, and what he’d been, and how it had affected him, was still at the forefront of his mind really, despite his cheeky banter and his sometimes irreverent way of saying things.

  ‘That’s okay. But I can’t help with the gardening, I’m afraid. I haven’t got a garden, not even an indoor plant in a pot. Just for the record I’d say Dr Shaw’s advice must be standard for doctors to dish out to their alcoholic patients. A doctor I consulted about Dad said much the same.’

  They couldn’t get away from this shared experience of bad experiences with alcohol could they?

  ‘Possibly,’ Caroline said. ‘But before we go to the cinema – if I do decide to go that is – there are things I need to tell you. After we’ve been to the exhibition.’

  Caroline loved everything about the exhibition – the life-sized bronze figures, the miniature abstract ones. They were all out of her price range but it was wonderful to be among such creativity. The p
aintings, too, were wonderful, if pricey. But the ceramics were less so and Caroline treated herself to a small, blood-red bowl incised with dragonflies on the inside. It would be a memory of her day – a good memory, something she could remember that didn’t have the blur of alcohol fuzzing the edges. But now they were outside again, Caroline felt impelled to tell Danny what she’d said she would.

  ‘I’ve had inappropriate sex more times than I probably remember because of alcohol. Sometimes it was because I badly needed another drink and didn’t have the money for it, and sometimes it was because I was just so damned lonely and needed to feel another person close to me.’

  Caroline, arms folded, leaned on the fence outside the exhibition looking down over the hill and out to sea. Danny was standing beside her, so close she could feel his body rising and falling as he breathed.

  ‘We all do things we’re ashamed of. For the record I’ve not treated the women in my life well.’

  Caroline shrank into herself.

  ‘You don’t hit women?’ she said, not believing for a second that Danny did, but she had to ask.

  ‘God no. Never that. I saw my dad use my mother as a punch-bag too many times. I saw what it did to her as she stayed to keep a roof over our heads – her, my brother and me. And I was on the receiving end of his fists more times than I want to remember as I tried to protect my mother.’

  Caroline turned to look at Danny but he was staring into the distance, hands in the pockets of his shorts.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘About what you’ve been through.’

  She waited for Danny to tell her how it was that he’d not treated women well.

  He shrugged.

  ‘All in the past but up front.’ He took a hand from his pocket and smacked his forehead. ‘Right there in the forefront of everything. It’s meant I haven’t been able to commit. I’ve been in love a couple of times. In love enough to marry a couple of times. One of them in particular I loved like it was a disease. I should have married her but I got out. I didn’t mean to break her heart but my own heart was still breaking. I was afraid I’d turn into a drunk like my dad and I didn’t want to be open to the danger of hurting her like my mother had been hurt. I was faithful to all my girlfriends until I moved on.’

  ‘Are you still moving?’ Caroline said.

  Another shrug from Danny.

  ‘I’m making a pig’s ear of this but I think I’ve been trying to make amends for how my dad was, how I’ve been, how things were for my mum.’

  ‘By trying to help me?’

  ‘Only you can help you,’ Danny said. ‘But if something I’ve said, or might say, sends you down that path, then… well, my dad’s death and what I went through won’t have been entirely in vain.’

  Danny put his hand back in his pocket, and continued staring into the distance. A shadow went over them as a buzzard swooped low overhead and Caroline and Danny looked up at the same moment before looking down again.

  ‘I don’t deserve help,’ Caroline said. ‘Everything that’s happened to me has been self-inflicted. Stuff happened to you, not of your making. I lost it when Evan had an affair but I know now I pushed him to it. He got fed up making love to a woman who had alcohol seeping from every pore and who often fell asleep in the middle of it. Or passed out.’

  ‘I don’t know about you,’ Danny said, ‘But I think we’ve both got to forgive ourselves. Then perhaps others can forgive us.’

  Caroline felt herself welling up. She’d thought she was dead to any sort of emotion but it seemed she wasn’t. She made a strangled sort of snorting noise as she tried to sniff back tears.

  ‘You’re very wise for one so young,’ Caroline said.

  ‘I’m thirty-four, but look older.’

  ‘I’m just older,’ Caroline said, and her tears halted as she laughed. ‘I’m fifty-two.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘I think we should scratch the cinema. I noticed the fair was setting up on the green this morning. It’ll be noisy and busy and heaving with people. I think we should go.’

  Caroline was fast forwarding in her mind and the cinema would open up all sorts of feelings inside her: they would probably hold hands, go for something to eat afterwards when Caroline would do her level best to avoid alcohol, and then perhaps they’d saunter back along on the beach. And then it would be comfort sex for both of them at 23 The Strand or Danny’s hotel. Sober sex, and Caroline could use some of that, but she wouldn’t use Danny.

  ‘You’re on,’ Danny said.

  ‘And that girlfriend you should have married? Is she married?’

  ‘Divorced.’

  ‘So, she’s still there somewhere on the periphery of your life?’

  ‘Yep. Good old Facebook. It’s not that I’ve stalked her, but I couldn’t stop myself checking now and then that she was okay. At first she was and it felt like something was squeezing my heart tight to know someone was making her feel so good when it should have been me. And then that all went pear-shaped for her. Same old story – he fell for someone younger and bailed out.’

  ‘Do you know where she is? Other than on Facebook, I mean?’

  ‘Not her actual address, no. But it wouldn’t be too hard to find.’

  ‘Then find her. I’d bet my life on it that you won’t turn into your dad.’

  ‘I will. Find her I mean, not turn into my dad.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘And I’d bet my life on it that you’ll sort your alcohol problem.’

  ‘I’m going to give it my very best. But first, the fair.’

  ‘First one to scream on the big dipper buys the chips,’ Danny said.

  Danny stayed in the area two more days. Two more days when Caroline didn’t touch a drop of alcohol despite testing herself to the limit, sitting beside Danny, who was nursing a pint of local ale while she sipped on tonic water with ice and lemon. Caroline and Danny spent the days walking and talking and eating fish and chips – ‘Is it worth eating anything other than fish and chips when you’re at the seaside?’ Danny said every time – out of the paper packaging sitting on the sea wall, their legs dangling over the side as the tide came in. Caroline felt years of anguish and self-hate slipping from her as her shoulders dropped. Danny put out some feelers, and through the friend of a friend of a friend got hold of Debbie’s mobile number and rang her. She was wary but agreed to meet.

  ‘Be happy,’ Caroline said when Danny came to say goodbye.

  ‘You too. And thanks.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Listening. I took a risk barging in on your holiday but I had a hunch you needed someone to talk to. I never really had that person but you’ve filled a gap. I’ve never said as much about how it was for me until these past few days with you.’

  ‘Meant to be,’ Caroline said. She felt sad now because she didn’t think she and Danny would stay in one another’s lives for ever and she knew she was going to miss him.

  ‘And one last tip,’ Danny said. ‘Drink gallons of water to replace the fluid you usually get from wine or whatever. It’ll help disperse the toxins as well. It helps with the withdrawal, so a doctor told me once when I was trying to help Dad.’

  ‘I’ll remember that.’

  ‘Good. Over to you now.’

  Danny cupped Caroline’s face in his hands and kissed her lightly on the lips. A chaste kiss; the sort of kiss a child might give a mother, or a mother a child. A kiss Caroline knew didn’t taste of alcohol. She had a long way to go but she’d made a start. And so had Danny.

  One whole week without alcohol.

  And one whole week here still without Danny to guide and support her. Could she do it?

  On her last evening, Caroline succumbed – as she’d guessed she would – to the lure of her old demon… one glass of chilled Pinot Grigio, sitting outside on the terrace of The Boathouse. She couldn’t finish it.

  When she got back to 23 The Strand she checked her mobil
e. A voicemail.

  Hi, Mum. Let me know when you’re sorted. I’m getting married in December. To Sophie. Yeah, we’re back together again. It’d be great if you were able to be there. Luke. Mwah, mwah.

  Caroline listened to the words, Luke’s voice, over and over, barely able to breathe. And that kissy sound – mwah, mwah. She felt hot and cold and excited and scared. Luke was holding out an olive branch and she was going to take it.

  Dear next occupant,

  My name’s Caroline and I’m an alcoholic. There, I’ve said it. Sorry to dump this stuff on you but I had to say it to someone. We’ll never meet, you and I, whoever you are. 23 The Strand has given me the space to try and turn my life around. I’ve made a start. Just two glasses of wine in two weeks – one small one when I arrived and then another I couldn’t finish at the end of my stay, I’m thrilled to be able to say, instead of my usual two bottles a night. So… this rather fine bottle of Rioja was left for me (along with a note welcoming me here and saying it’s something of a tradition to leave a welcome gift for the next occupant, although not obligatory) and it’s been the devil’s own job to resist opening it. But resist I did. I hope you’ll be able to enjoy it and, perhaps, wish me well in my efforts. Happy holidays. Cheers (toasted in water this end!).

  Caroline

  Chapter Nine

  EARLY SEPTEMBER

  Ed & Margy

  ‘Well, that’s a funny thing to find!’ Margy shouted through to Ed who was busy hanging up their clothes in the wardrobe of 23 The Strand. There was hardly enough space for all the clothes she’d brought with her, never mind Ed’s. Not that he’d grumble about that, because Ed didn’t ‘sweat the small stuff’ as he put it now he’d learned that phrase, and would probably live out of his suitcase for the fortnight.

  ‘Eh?’ Ed shouted back

  ‘A… note… from… an… alcoholic!’ Margy enunciated clearly and slowly. ‘Poor woman.’

  ‘Eh?’ Ed shouted back again.

  ‘I’ll tell you in a minute,’ Margy said, almost in a whisper this time. Ed hated it when she said that. She’d forgotten in the excitement of being here, and why, that Ed didn’t hear quite as well these days as he once had. She supposed that when a body was seventy years old – as Ed’s would be very soon – there were things that might drop off a bit. ‘Although not that,’ she said out loud with a giggle. Would Ed be up for that during their stay? Hmm, maybe… or then again, maybe not. But it didn’t matter. They’d had plenty of that in their time, her and Ed.