‘No, you’re not throwing me down that,’ she squealed. ‘You’ll ruin my skirt.’
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘it’s your turn.’
‘No, Nick. No.’
She had sounded serious when he had first lifted her but now she began to laugh.
‘Everybody’s had their turn. It’s yours now.’
‘No please, stop,’ said Mum, laughing uncontrollably.
Dad placed her gently in a lying position on the edge of the bank. Mum was laughing too much to resist. Then he pushed her and she tumbled down. He rolled down after her so that he ended up beside her. Through her laughter, she said, ‘My hair. It’s ruined. And look at my blouse.’
‘Never mind your blouse,’ he said, ‘give us a kiss.’
She did.
‘I love you,’ Lewis heard Dad say softly.
He kissed her again and this time, they let it go on. Loudly and theatrically, Lewis said ‘Uhhh!’
7
Lewis had always hated Mondays; hated that doom that descended on him on Sunday night knowing that he was going through the last few hours of the weekend before school on Monday. So today, a Monday when there was no longer any school, when a golden summer beckoned and an empty book waited to have its pages filled up – he had written this in his diary that morning – there was only one thing for it – a day on the beach.
In his room, he put two of the three books he had brought with him into his pack: Greenmantle by John Buchan and The Drama of Three Hundred and Sixty Five Days: Scenes in the Great War by Hall Caine. Mrs Middleton had made him two Cornish pasties – one for lunch and a second one, with apple in it for dessert. With these and a bottle of lemonade, he headed off towards Readymoney.
He had come here yesterday with a strange mixture of anticipation and excitement and wonder. His Mum had been here, as a little girl, with her parents. As he got closer, past the grey stone house with its imposing gateway and then down the gentle hill towards the beach, he thought of her here. He pictured her holding her mum’s hand and chattering excitedly as they got nearer and the smell of the sea got stronger. How carefree she must have been then – and full of life.
Readymoney. Boats pulled up on the beach while a ship rode at anchor just offshore. Masts and sails and the black hulk of the vessel in the starlight. Lanterns swaying in the darkness; dark figures unloading boats; the jingle of gold coins. Readymoney. You could see how suited the place was to such nocturnal undertakings. The cove was shaped like it was embraced between two arms of land. He imagined Mum standing here catching her first glimpse of the beach and the speckled sunlight on the water. How thrilled she must have been. He pictured her wonderment at the sensation of sand under her feet – at first warm, powdery, yielding and then damp and hard-packed. He saw her playing on the sand, paddling in the water, running in and out and squealing because of its coldness.
It was like a circle – Mum had come here, and then there had been Treasure Island and now he was here himself. The circle closed. He felt very close to her. He saw the little girl on the beach, sitting in the sand in her summer clothes with a bucket and spade all those years ago. Readymoney had probably changed very little since she had been here.
It occurred to him that the course her life had taken from that day had probably not been at all what she had intended. Of course, neither would his be now. Was that how life worked? There were things you wanted to do, things you wanted to achieve in your life. No, no – it wasn’t so much achievement. It was about happiness. That was it. You wanted to find happiness. The same happiness that the little girl with her skirts spreading out around her on the sand knew. But how did you do that? And did anyone ever? Maybe the problem was just that you grew up and entered the adult world with all its difficulties and complications and unknowns. Or maybe it was that life just had a way of taking you and tossing you around and doing what it wanted with you.
Still, it had been strange and wonderful to stand here yesterday. A moment of almost mystical significance and closeness to her and communication with her, was what he had written in his diary.
Today was another day of blue sky and Lewis was one of the first to arrive. The tide was out. He chose a spot over on the right, roughly halfway between the back of the beach and the sea. He had put on his swimsuit beneath his clothes so now he was able to take down his trousers, unbutton his shirt and he was ready. He rolled out his towel, lay down and opened John Buchan.
But he couldn’t stop thinking about the little girl on the beach. Was it that she hadn’t known what she wanted, that she didn’t know what would make her happy? Was that the problem – that we tried certain things hoping or expecting that they would make us happy? Sometimes they did but more often they turned out to be not what we wanted after all. And what then? You’d made your bed so lie in it? Or move on and do something different? At least Mum had had choices, he supposed. With this War, he – his generation – were being given none.
He picked up his book again. Best not to think about all this. Anyway, it was only the third of July – lots could happen between now and his birthday on the tenth of November. And lots more before he might actually be trained and shipped to France and in danger. Best just to enjoy the day.
He spent it in and out of the water. He would read for half an hour or so. By then his body was so hot that he would have to run into the water to cool off. Then it was back to the book again. By lunchtime the beach had filled up and he was ravenous.
He was sitting up, eating the first of his pasties, looking at the sun on the water when he saw a figure walk down towards the sea. She wore a floppy straw hat, a flouncy white skirt that came down below her knees and a white blouse. She carried a straw basket with the handles looped over her shoulder. She was barefoot and her shoes were in her hand. There was something about her that looked vaguely familiar but it took him a few moments before he realised that it was the woman from the church. He hadn’t realised how tall she was. She found what she seemed to think was a good spot – it was pretty much in the centre of the beach – took a towel from her bag and rolled it out. She was closer to the sea than Lewis and probably twenty yards away with her back to him. Her hands went to the side of her skirt where she undid something and then she stepped out of it to reveal the trousers of a neck-to-knee swimsuit in a mauve colour. She unbuttoned the blouse and removed it showing the swimsuit’s top with its round neck and sleeves that came down to just above the elbows. Then she took a swimming cap from her bag, and with what seemed like one deft movement, she rolled her blonde hair up into a bun and slipped the cap down over it. She walked across the sand, into the water and, when it was up to her thighs, plunged in. He saw quickly that she was a good swimmer as, after a few casual strokes, she began to swim back and forth parallel to the shore.
Lewis wrapped the partially eaten pasty back up in the brown paper it had come in, put it in his pack and stood up. He hurried into the water.
He wanted to get closer to her, to see her face. He had failed to do it yesterday but by heaven, he was going to do it today. At some stage she would stop swimming and go to get out of the water and then he needed to be close enough to her. But right now she was showing no sign of stopping and continued to plough back and forth. Lewis decided that he would do the same and he would stay closer to the shore than she was, so that he could intercept her, if he had to. As casually as possible and when the water was up to his waist, he slid into its cooling embrace.
He stayed a bit behind her so that she wouldn’t feel that he was following her and pulled through the water. Up ahead he saw her turn. He went on for a few strokes more and then turned himself. He had just taken a stroke or two and she was a good eight or ten yards ahead of him, when she suddenly turned to her right and began to make for the shore. He had to keep going himself. Otherwise it would have been obvious that he was following her. He swam a few more strokes and then stopped and allowed himself to sink and his feet to touch the sand. By this time she was already standing up.
The bits of her arms that showed, were brown from the sun. She waded out of the water and back to where her towel was. Lewis waded out himself. She pulled off her bathing cap and shook out her hair. Then she began to dry herself with the towel. He tried not to look directly at her. He could hardly walk past where she was so he headed to where his things were. When he did look over at her, he saw that she had lain face down on her towel and was basking in the sun.
She didn’t go into the water again after that. At least not that Lewis saw. But at some time during the afternoon, the heat of the day caused him to nod off. His head dropped onto the book and he dozed for what would afterwards turn out to be over an hour. When he woke, she was gone.
8
The church bell tolled six o’ clock.
‘Goodness, is that the time. I must put your father’s dinner on.’
‘Can we read some more?’ asked Lewis.
‘Not today. Tomorrow. Promise.’
Mum went into the kitchen and put on her apron.
‘Want to help me peel some potatoes?’ she asked.
‘Yes please,’ said Lewis. He pulled one of the kitchen chairs away from the table and half carried, half dragged it across the floor to the sink. Just then, they heard the front door open, some steps in the hallway and then the kitchen door opened.
‘Hello me old mates!’
‘Daddy!’
Lewis rushed into his father’s arms. Dad lifted him up and carried him over to where Mum was bent down, taking a dish from the cupboard. She straightened up, turned slightly towards Dad and proffered her cheek which he kissed.
Mum made dinner consisting of steak and kidney pie, peas from her small vegetable patch and potatoes, yellow with butter. Lewis had a grown up knife and fork and he manipulated them awkwardly.
‘How are things at work?’ asked Mum.
‘I’ve made quota – and it’s only the twentieth.’
‘That’s wonderful. You’ll be able to go a bit easier now.’
‘Oh, you can’t really rest in our business, you know. If you do, someone will get in ahead of you. If you’re not going forwards you’re going backwards – all that sort of thing.’
‘I was down at Turners today. Mr Turner asked if we could clear some of his account.’
‘Tell him that the commission I get this month will more than pay his bill.’ Robert poured himself some more of the bottle of wine he had brought. He offered some to Mum but she declined, covering her still half-full glass with her hand.
‘We said that last month, and even though we paid off some of his bill, we owe him more now than we did then.’
‘I don’t know where all the money goes. I’d have thought I must have one of the best paid jobs of anyone around here.’
‘Perhaps if you could let me have some more for the housekeeping.’
Dad lowered his knife and fork and placed them carefully on either side of his plate.
‘There isn’t any more. I’m working like a dog as it is.’
‘I know you are, dear, but I can show you the bills.’
‘Never mind the bills,’ he said angrily, ‘The bills are your responsibility. I’m bringing in all I can. Maybe you should have married that accountant fellow. Maybe he could have made the pennies go further, though quite frankly, I don’t see how.’
‘Perhaps if you didn’t go to the pub quite so often.’
Lewis glanced at Mum’s face. She seemed to have shrunk.
‘You were in there this evening, for example.’
‘Christ, you’d think I was a bloody alcoholic the way you go on. Yes, I sometimes go to the pub for a drink and yes, I was there this evening. I’ve made quota half way through the month and I was having a small celebration. Do you begrudge me that? Do you?’
Dad seemed to have forgotten his dinner now. The plate looked like a boat, the knife and fork like two oars dangling over the side.
‘Some of the fellows in there never make quota. I do – consistently. Do you think that’s easy? I’d like to see you roll into that bloody office on the first of each month, with an empty order book, and wondering where in God’s name, in the tiny territory I have, I’m going to find enough people to buy bloody bacon slicers. Just how many bacon slicers do you think one shop will buy? And yet I do it – month after month after bloody month.’
Mum spoke very softly.
‘Look, why can’t we talk about this reasonably? I was just saying —’
‘I know what you were just saying. You were just saying that I drink all my salary while you and Lewis here starve. That’s what you were saying. And I won’t have it. What do you think keeps this roof over your head? I work as hard as any man, harder than most; and if what I bring in isn’t enough to keep you in the style to which you’ve become accustomed, then I don’t know what is.’
Dad pushed back his chair. It grated harshly on the black and white linoleum squares of the kitchen floor. He stood up and stormed out of the kitchen. They heard his heavy footsteps on the stairs. Lewis looked at Mum. At first she wouldn’t meet his eyes, and when she did, he thought she just looked sad and broken. A short while later the front door banged. Lewis continued looking at Mum, wanting her to say something. Eventually, she did.
‘It’s all right, my darling. Daddy’s just tired. Finish up your dinner, there’s a good boy.’
Lewis thought Mum looked like she was going to cry. He put his head down and resumed eating.
Mum said, ‘Excuse me a moment, my love – I just need to go to the bathroom.’
She disappeared and Lewis sat at the table by himself. He remembered that bit in Treasure Island where Jim’s father used to ask the captain for money and then wring his hands when he was refused. It was like that now, except that Mum was the one who was being rebuffed.
9
Lewis returned to Readymoney the next day in the hope that she might be there. But for that day and for several days after there was no sign of her. He knew it was a silly obsession. The woman was a stranger; she was old enough to be his mother, he suspected. But he just wanted to see her face. After that he would be satisfied and would let it go. Anyway, it had become a ‘mission’ – at least that’s the way he had been thinking about it. He couldn’t fail on his first mission as a soldier. It would set a bad precedent, be a bad omen for the future.
After three days in a row at Readymoney, he thought that maybe she was frequenting one of the other beaches. Maybe she had only been trying out Readymoney and maybe the swimming or something there wasn’t to her liking. So the next day he tried Pridmouth and Polruan the day after that, but there was no sign of her. Eventually, towards the end of the week, he was getting fed up of the whole silly business.
It was Monday, a week since he had first seen her. He had gone for a long walk, returning along the coast. It was just before five as he was passing Readymoney. The day was hot, he was sweaty and the chance of a cooling swim before dinner was too good to pass up. He had packed his swimsuit and a towel, just in case, so he went down to the beach. Because it was getting close to teatime, it wasn’t as crowded as it had been the previous times he had been here. There were people leaving, carrying their things and heading homewards.
And there she was – sitting on her towel, in the mauve bathing suit, blonde hair loose, looking out to sea. Lewis went down the beach and positioned himself about twenty yards away on her right and slightly behind her. He tried to give the impression that he had just chosen the spot at random. He made a skirt with the towel and changed into his swimsuit. If she was aware of what he was doing she gave no sign as she continued to gaze out at the sun-drenched water.
Lewis ran past her into the sea and dived in. He hoped she was watching him. He swam a few strokes with his face down in the water, revelling in the coolness. But when he stood up, he saw to his dismay that she had already packed up her things and was walking up the beach. He hurried out of the water. By the time he reached his towel she had bent down and was putting on her shoes. As he lifted
up the towel and shook off the sand, she straightened up. The she turned to the right towards Fowey and was gone.
The next day he came in the morning and she arrived about mid-day. He knew now that he wasn’t going to let today go until he had seen her face. She went into the water several times, as did he. Sometimes he went in when she did. But when this happened he was sure to stay ten or fifteen yards away from her. Sometimes he went in first, as though doing so would entice her in. Finally, as it was getting close to tea time and he knew she would be disappearing soon, he decided on a bolder course of action. She was sitting on her towel on the sand and he was in the water. He had gone in one last time in the hope that she would follow him in but it hadn’t worked. Now, daringly, he came out of the water and walked towards where she sat reading. He saw his shadow on the sand. As he did so and as he got closer she looked up.
He saw fine skin, pale lips, the blonde hair, the eyes shadowed beneath the straw hat. She was sitting with her left knee flat on the sand, her right knee raised and her elbow resting on it. She held the book in her lap with her left hand. He wondered what she was reading.
And then she smiled. Smiled at him. Her face which had merely seemed pretty, was suddenly the face of an angel. He knew that she must be kind and generous, warm and loving. Whoever she lived with – husband or children or both – were blessed. Here was a beautiful presence in their lives. But did he also see a hint of sadness there – loneliness, perhaps or vulnerability?
He hadn’t been expecting this and was too surprised to smile back. By the time it had registered with him that he should, he had walked past her. He looked back and saw her head bow as she returned to her book. He had let her down. She had shown friendliness towards him and he hadn’t returned it. What a fool. Dad would probably have walked back at this point. He would have apologised, said that his mind was elsewhere. They would have begun to talk. In no time at all, Dad would have been sitting on the sand beside her or asking her to come for a drink, more likely.
Starlight (The Four Lights Quartet Book 1) Page 5