by Tobias Roote
Her arms had tightened their grip around my waist, hands pressed against my sides feeling every muscle against her fingers as I flexed to keep the bike balanced. I had forgotten how intimate a pillion passenger could be while trying to hold on in rough conditions. We eventually got to the top and turned into my concreted drive and although it was now smooth, Alice maintained her firm grip on me until we came to a stop.
Mercury immediately jumped from his position on the fuel tank and went haring off to do his usual circuit of the cottage. Alice’s hands slipped almost reluctantly off my waist as she leaned back, they briefly landed on my shoulders as she stood on the pegs before swinging her leg across and placing herself on firm ground. I hoped she didn’t realise how much I had enjoyed that, but a part of me suspected that she did.
Pulling the bike onto its rest, I removed the keys and looked towards the door. Alice was already standing on the deep veranda that ran the length of the cottage; her hand brushing absently over the wood uprights that had over time weathered into a rich dark, smooth colour.
“Did you know I lived in this cottage for a while before I went on my travels?” she said wistfully as her hand trailed along the handrail. She plopped herself down in one of the rattan chairs I had put there to enjoy the afternoon sunshine.
“No, I didn’t, John said it had been used by family members occasionally, but never said who.”
I walked up the steps to the front door and clicked the latch to let Mercury inside so he could get to his water bowl. He shot between my legs making straight for it as I leaned my head back out and asked,
“Cold beer, juice or water?”
“Oh! a beer sounds good to me if its cold.”
I walked over to the fridge pulling out two ice-cold beers. Knocking off the tops on the edge of the counter and grabbing two chunky glasses, I went back out on the veranda and sitting in the opposite chair, pushed a bottle and glass towards Alice.
Leaning forward, Alice wiped the fleck of foam that had materialised on the top of the bottle and ignoring the glass, put it to her lips. She leaned her head back to swig directly from the bottle, her long neck exposed, the muscles moving up and down her throat as she drank.
I poured mine into my glass and by the time I had filled my glass halfway, Alice had plonked her bottle on the glass table keeping her hand on it as if claiming ownership. Half the contents were drained and she laughed as the gas fought its way back out in a loud belch.
Studiously ignoring her, I finished pouring my beer and then when full, bought it up to my lips and sipped delicately, bringing guffaws of laughter from her as I maintained a respectable pose and continued sipping. She continued to laugh and Mercury trotted out to see what all the fuss was about, wound himself around her legs, looking up at her expectantly.
Alice was certainly something else! Her worldly experience gave her the confidence to know when she could get away with anything, and also I suspected she probably didn’t give a damn what anyone thought anyway. My like for her intensified as we sat there chatting about nothing in particular, but just enjoying the relaxed company of friends. We certainly had become that overnight which was not really surprising as we knew a considerable amount about each other from John and Abbey’s desire to include each of us in their communications.
The sun continued to stream onto the veranda and as the talk died a little I went into the kitchen to retrieve two more beers. When I came out Alice had moved from the chair to the recliner, fidgeting while she settled her now completely naked body into a comfortable position in the full sun!
I froze! That, I certainly hadn’t expected! As I stood there halfway out of the kitchen I couldn’t help myself as my eyes swept across her taut well toned body, her all over tan the result of considerable time in the sun. She was beautifully proportioned and remarkably at ease.
As my mind raced over the signals I had been getting from her, I realised that suddenly we had moved into new territory. I quickly scanned my memory to see if I had somehow sent inappropriate messages to this girl who was so much younger than me, realising as I did so, that I was seriously attracted to her. She had not been slow to pick up on that and was now telling me that she was also interested.
The next move was obviously up to me. However, this prompted me to immediately consider the feelings of John and Abbey. So, as I reached her lounger I nudged a small box to act as a drinks table closer, giving myself a few moments to consider my situation.
Alice looked up without moving, squinting with one eye open and reached up for the beer in my hand. I let go as I felt her grip on it take the weight.
“Aah, thanks Dan.”
Remaining silent, I pulled the chair she had been sitting on around to face outwards over the veranda placing myself in a position where I couldn’t see her lying there. I sat and brooded. I had a very good relationship with John and Abbey. I didn’t want to lose them as friends, or have to move. This was going to be awkward. I decided I needed to address it head on.
I turned to confront her to find she was sitting up with her beer in one hand, feet crossed, her knees up with arms resting nonchalantly on them leaving me nowhere else to look. She watched me closely as I struggled to keep my eyes on a level with hers. I felt my face redden, she shrewdly gauged my reaction.
“They won’t mind,” she said.
“Who won’t ?”
“Dad and Abbey. They won’t mind me being here with you like this. They know me very well and accept that I live differently to them.”
She took a swig of her beer and looked out across the garden giving me time to pull my thoughts together.
“Perhaps, but maybe it’s not just about how they feel towards you, but also about how they will feel towards me. They have been very good to me over the last two years and I don't want to abuse a good friendship. That’s just for starters, the next thing is you're half my age, and.... “ I stopped as she laughed.
“Okay, ‘Old Man’, I understand!” She slipped off the recliner and popped her shorts back on. Her T Shirt followed and in seconds she was kneeling down in front of me. As I started to lean back from the closeness of her she grabbed my head and pulled me towards her. The kiss when it came was exquisite, her lips soft, her mouth parted just enough for her tongue to flick out. As I began to respond she pulled away.
“Not now, ‘Old Man’,” she laughed and before I knew what was happening, she was off the veranda and heading towards the main house. I could still taste her lips on mine. What on earth had just happened?
I went to turn into the cottage when I heard a noise and looked to the edge of the wall where the drive came down from the chicken shed. It wasn’t in view or directly on the way to the house so anyone there would have had to detour to get to that corner.
“You handled that rather well ‘Old Man’!” John said as he walked around the corner smiling, but his eyes showed the concern for me and perhaps for her too. I couldn’t tell.
I sighed, “How long were you there, John?” I looked at him holding a brace of skinned rabbits still dripping blood from their skinning; I had a passing thought at that moment that I was really glad he didn’t carry a shotgun.
“Oh, about long enough to know that I was right about you Dan,” he nodded approvingly. “The trouble with that one is, she has always known her own mind. When she decides she wants something, anything, then there is no stopping her. Her Mother was much the same!” He sighed in a sad way and leaned against the corner of the veranda.
Dammit, he actually looked sorry for me. I almost believed the worst.
“The trouble is Dan, if she has you in her sights, then you are not going to get off that easy. The only thing I can say is, that one day she will meet a man who will make her happy and content and I don’t care who that man is, if she settles down and turns from girl to woman so she can avoid the pitfalls her mother fell into, I will be eternally grateful.”
He turned to go, I said “John, I promise...,” but didn’t get a chance to fin
ish.
He turned back sharply, “Dan, don’t promise what you can’t deliver. Abbey and I will not lose sleep over anything that goes on so long as she doesn’t get hurt. At the end of the day she is my youngest, but she lives her life as she sees fit and we have never been able to change her.” He smiled kindly as he walked off following Alice to the house.
“Oh, I almost forgot the reason I called by - BBQ at 6pm Dan, be there. Okay?” he called out over his shoulder as he walked away, rather ponderously I thought, up the lane. He didn’t wait, or expect an answer as he left me contemplating what had just happened and how I felt about being given permission to be chased by the twenty five year old daughter of a good friend.
John was a lot older than me and I was well past her age group. Definitely the strangest day I had experienced for a very long time.
I went in to change for my patrol around the holding, the blood and guts from the rabbits would have stirred up some work for Mercury and I needed time to think.
CHAPTER 4
The BBQ on John’s terrace overlooked the valley. You could see for miles at this time of year, before the dust and pollen took hold. The setting sun still giving me a clear view to the distant hills as I approached the house.
“Hi Dan”
Abbey saw me coming down the path and walked out to meet me. That’s different, I thought. She took my arm and walked with me. I was just about to ask what was so special that I got an escort when she turned looking up at me as she spoke, patting my arm in that way that some people do thinking it pacifies a nervous suitor.
“Alice isn’t down yet,” she smiled at me as if I was being taken to one side for a parental chat prior to taking their daughter on a first date. I felt odd, as if I was being prepped for something. I decided to chill and let Abbey lead, she obviously had intentions to discuss something. My gut feeling continued to nag at me. I remembered Spiros’ revelations that they had both been travelling recently and briefly wondered, looking at her as we walked, whether I really knew these two people after all.
She took me through to the garden that adjoined the terrace. It was her favourite retreat and was often the coolest place to be at the peak of summer. John broke his back for two years to make sure her flowers and grass made it through the hot summers.
I thought I knew what was coming as John and Abbey held no secrets from each other. What was Abbey going to tell me about Alice? That I couldn’t fight it, but to keep my mitts off her anyway, or no more roast dinners.
“Dan, you are a dear friend. You have become very much part of our family these last two years,” Abbey began and I got to thinking, this is worse than I thought.
“We think you should know that in the event anything happened to us here, that you have been left the Cottage and most of the land, so it goes without saying that we hold you in very high esteem.”
I went to interrupt but she held her hand up to stall me.
“John hasn’t told you this before because there was never a need to. We didn’t want you to feel trapped or beholden in any way because that would break John’s heart if he thought you felt at all like that.”
I stopped walking forcing Abbey to wait for me and giving me time to catch on to the conversation. We had arrived at the little patio in her favourite corner.
We sat overlooking the lawn and the terrace above and back to the house. The smoke from the BBQ was building up to something spectacular. John loved using charcoal, but never really quite got the hang of it. As a result it was often either too hot, or burnt cooling ash before cooking commenced.
I tried to take the initiative to forestall what seemed to be Abbey and John’s last will and testament. With my gut telling me that there was something seriously wrong, I knew I was just making a last ditch attempt at denial before accepting the changes culminating from their recent actions. I felt my retirement begin to slip away.
“Abbey, I don’t know what you are saying all this for, I have never felt the need to own anything and I am not even sure I would want to stay here if you were both gone. Are you telling me something is happening that might change things?”
Abbey sighed, I could see tears forming. I thought this was going to be about Alice, but now I could feel that there was something more going on. I could see John by the BBQ was pretending to damp down the fire, but from his stance and the position of his head I knew he was looking directly at us. He was tense too. What the fuck was going on?
In the momentary silence I toyed briefly with telling her that I already knew about their recent travels and relating Spiros’concerns, but Abbey resumed the conversation.
“John wants to talk to you later, but I wanted to chat to you first. I have to tell you that both John and I have to leave very soon, and Dan...” she put her hand on my arm again, “for the time being, so do you. You need to disappear and we need you to take Alice. You will be at risk if you remain here.”
“Me? Take Alice? Are you completely bonkers, Abbey?”
Abbey smiled, “Yes, John told me what happened, you were a good friend there Dan. Alice is very wilful, but an absolutely beautiful person inside. We love her dearly and unfortunately cannot refuse her anything. I know what it must have taken for you to back her down and she will fight the harder for it, so be warned. BUT, yes, she needs someone like you and will need your strength.”
I looked off past the garden and terrace while I mused over what she had just said, as much as not said. Some aspect of this was throwing me . There was obviously something going on related to their pasts that had caused the frenetic activity over recent weeks. Danger wasn’t a problem for me, and perhaps not even for John, but Alice? Well, she seemed pretty capable to me. What kind of trouble was coming that would put her in danger, I wondered.
“So, you both have to go away, and John is going to fill me in with the details later, meanwhile you want me to put Alice out of harms way while whatever it is blows over. Is that about it?” I asked gently, making sure I was getting the details right.
“Yes! And Dan, it’s going to be dangerous, but we know you can take care of yourself. We both know precisely what you did to stop the attacks on our animals and ensure our safety. We never said anything, but it did get back to us. When John found out about it he had you checked out with some of his old pals from his previous life back in Whitehall, they couldn’t find out very much, except that you have some important friends in high places. We found out enough to know that you can handle yourself.”
Abbey looked at me as if expecting me to expand on her knowledge, but I knew better. People don’t really want to know about the seamier side of ‘M’ Service, the Dirty Brigade, the WetShop. The side that definitely wasn’t James Bond, Martinis and fast cars.
I looked at her for a few long seconds and finally nodded, and then across at John. He nodded, even from this distance. I wondered if he could lip read. It would have been in his training in his previous life. He had been a Spymaster during the cold war and had played a big part in bringing it to an end. Much of the peace we enjoyed today was through him and others like him putting their lives on the line every day far from home without a friend nearby.
“How long do we have before I have to do this?” I asked, not liking the idea of uprooting my life and getting back into a world I had thought I had left far behind.
“A week I think, maybe more, it might well be less. If we can we will get more notice of anything, but beyond that it won’t be safe to stay here,” Abbey said authoritatively and it was then I suddenly realised what it was that had been nagging at me. Abbey was talking as though she herself was part of this and not just John. Somehow, I had failed to take account of this lovely woman who loved to cook and feed John and me.
My face must have shown something of my inner turmoil because she took my hand in an attempt to reassure me. “John and I were trained to cope with these situations. We will be fine, just take care of yourself and Alice.”
It wasn’t exactly my concern, but her answer
told me what I had just surmised, that she as well as John had been in the espionage game. I had no doubt she was right, they would quickly blend into the background and disappear. Strange, I thought, that in my background checks Abbey's name didn’t come up. As an agent she would have been tagged with John and I would have known about it. I made a note to check it out at the first opportunity.
Abbey stood up and said cheerfully, “We have BBQ’d rabbit for dinner, Alice’s favourite. Lets go and enjoy it and rescue some of the cheer of summer while we still can.”
With that she pulled me up in an iron grip. Dragging my arm into hers she forced me up the path with exaggerated jolliness just as Alice came around the corner from the kitchen. Alice promptly launched herself at John, giving him a big hug as she realised rabbit was on the menu.
As Abbey dragged me inexorably towards my future charge, I reflected briefly on my situation and found that despite my feelings of foreboding for everyone I cared about, that a small positive charge was building in me as if something dormant was waking after sleeping for too long. It was helped along with Abbey's next comment.
She turned to me and whispered. “If you need answers they are under our bed, Alice’s key and her birthday will tell you all you need to know.” With that we were back out of the garden and John and Alice immediately took us both in hand and the past ten minutes were quickly forgotten as we drank red wine and ate our fill of nearly four kilos of tender rabbit. Alice regaled us with tales from her travels and when I sank comfortably into the rocking chair I did so at the behest of Alice who had positioned us perfectly to ensure we landed close together.
John and Abbey looked on amused at my discomfort, but did nothing to rescue me from my fate, instead they gave each other a hug and took their favourite love seat to quietly watch the sun setting across the valley. Peace was our short term companion this evening and we took advantage of it while we could.