A Summer to Remember Page 12

  Aaron was just telling her of his bravado when he’d first jumped The Leap himself, for a dare, when she noticed his attention wander and checked behind herself to see what he was looking at.

  ‘Cosy!’ Rory whispered at the same time, which made Harry turn and look too.

  Genevieve had come to sit at another table with a man. He had his back to them but Clancy wouldn’t have been able to see his face anyway – he had Genevieve stuck to it.

  Clancy turned quickly back, glancing at Aaron. ‘Oh.’ She hesitated, trying to read his expression. ‘Is this painful?’ she murmured.

  His eyebrows were up in his hairline but he smiled. ‘Just unexpected.’

  Harry and Rory had wolfed their food already and were studying the throbbing graze on Clancy’s elbow admiringly. ‘Bet that proper burns,’ said Harry. ‘Thanks for brekkie, Aaron.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Rory echoed, then the two jogged off across the headland, apparently ready for the day’s next adventure.

  Aaron shook his head ruefully. ‘Harry’s crazy. Bored to tears, obviously, and ripe for any mischief.’ Then he took Clancy’s arm in his tanned hands, turning it gently to scrutinise the graze. ‘You ought to get the grit washed out of that.’

  Gingerly, she took her arm back. ‘I’ll go home for a shower.’

  Aaron sat back with the big mug of tea that had come with breakfast. ‘I’m going to Keelmarsh House along the coast later this morning. Fancy coming? I’ve got permission to take photos of the knot garden I’ve been creating for my website. You could pose as a visitor to the hall, reading in the arbour or drifting artily along the pathways.’

  ‘That would be fun,’ Clancy said, thinking of a drive along the coast road and the chance to see how the other half lived. ‘At IsVid we were always acting as extras for client videos.’

  Aaron began to rise. ‘The tourism site rang yesterday, all enthusiastic about our rewritten blurb for the cottages. Presumably that’s your doing?’

  Clancy grinned. ‘Evelyn left the sign-in details so I bigged up the cottages for get-away-from-it-all breaks, free from the tyranny of the mobile phone and the internet. People feel too available these days. Colleagues not being able to get them on email, text, WhatsApp or direct messaging could sound like bliss.’

  ‘Very smart,’ Aaron agreed, then went into the B&B to pay for breakfast, calling, ‘Hello!’ to Genevieve and the man she was now holding hands with across the table, while Clancy set off for the Roundhouse, glad for Genevieve if she’d managed to move on.

  After a shower to rinse out her grazes, though they stung like crazy, she’d just enough time to dry her hair and choose a summer dress long enough to cover her grazed knee, a lacy cardigan that would hide her grazed elbow and sandals that didn’t press on her grazed toes. Light make-up, and she was ready when Aaron turned up in his truck.

  His gaze glowed when he looked at her and Clancy was taken by surprise by a little spurt of heat.

  When Aaron saw Clancy in a pale blue denim dress embroidered with poppies and daisies he was glad he’d changed into grey cotton trousers and a white short-sleeved shirt from what he termed ‘the trendy shop’ he frequented in King’s Lynn.

  At the truck, he tried to be smooth, opening the passenger door for her, only for her to burst out laughing when Nelson jumped from the back seat into the front and Aaron had to do some undignified tugging on the big dog’s collar to persuade him back into the rear. Her smile burned itself into the back of Aaron’s eyes when she murmured, ‘Thanks,’ and swung gracefully in.

  Soon they were bowling along the A149 east through Titchwell then Brancaster, chalk or flint cottages edging the road. Clancy didn’t seem to mind Nelson’s hot breath down her neck as they threaded their way between hedgerows and through villages of chalkstone cottages. The road was busy, as befitted a sunny Sunday as tourist season began to build, but Aaron was in no hurry. Clancy’s scent kept washing over him. He loved the way women smelled with their layers of scents, from shower gel to deodorant to moisturiser to make-up, and then possibly perfume on top. Clancy’s fragrance today reminded him of the wild yellow genistra that edged the drive of Keelmarsh House.

  She appeared relaxed, her hands clasped lightly in her lap. ‘I had a visit from your cousin Jordy,’ she said, stretching her bare legs out, the angry red graze on her knee just peeping at him from under the hem.

  He shifted his gaze from her legs to the road. ‘What did he want?’ Jordy was a bit of a lad. His relationship with his wife was up and down and if he was about to start playing the field Aaron wasn’t keen on the idea of Clancy being in the field Jordy played in.

  ‘About Harry.’ She went on to outline Jordy’s concerns for Harry’s future.

  Aaron was pleasantly surprised. ‘I thought he might have seen a YouTube video of Harry and Rory “surfing” in the back of a moving truck. Not my truck!’ he added hastily. ‘I hope Jordy isn’t trying to browbeat Harry. Harry, for all his clowning around, hasn’t found a way to stand up to his dad yet. Anabelle finds it hard too.’

  ‘Jordy is a bit … assertive,’ Clancy owned.

  At Burnham Norton, Aaron slowed to turn left onto a back road that became ever narrower, the hedges wilder, then he turned left and halted in front a set of black electronic gates. He punched in the entry number and when the gates had shuddered aside he drove on up the drive of Keelmarsh House, wild white roses punctuating the yellow genistra on either side between great rocks of red chalkstone.

  Clancy clasped her hands. ‘Wow. This is like a grotto. I’m expecting to see elves.’

  He laughed, keeping the truck to twenty miles per hour as the notice by the gate requested. ‘Keep your eyes peeled but all I’ve seen here are deer. One of the builders working here says there are boar in the woods.’

  She gave a tiny shudder. ‘They can stay there.’

  It took several minutes to traverse the green mile of drive. The knot garden being not far from the front of the hall, Aaron drove right up to the house, where the drive became a perfect gravel circle.

  They got out of the truck with Nelson on the lead, poop bags in the attached pouch because canine calling cards on the lawns would not go down well with the permanent garden staff. However, apart from cocking his leg up the truck wheel as soon as he jumped out, Nelson behaved impeccably, trotting majestically at Aaron’s side with his ears up and his gaze roving the landscape as if he’d heard the talk of deer and boar and fancied a snack.

  Clancy gazed at the imposing brown stone house, drinking in the castle-like crenellations and the green Virginia creeper making its way around the massive bay windows.

  ‘It’s built of carrstone,’ Aaron told her, following her example and gazing up. ‘Our local building materials are carrstone, white and red chalk and a bit of flint. I’d suggest the owners took the creeper down if they asked me, because it can damage the masonry. But they haven’t asked me.’

  ‘Tell me the owners are successful actors or musicians who come here to create their masterpieces!’ She backed up a few steps, craning to take in the turret with gothic arched windows that looked to have come straight out of a fairy tale.

  He grinned. ‘Sorry to disappoint. He had an advertising agency in London and she was a merchant banker when you could make real dosh at it. I think they’ve gone off for the summer exhausted from keeping track of all their bank accounts.’

  He swung his camera over one shoulder and led her back down the drive. ‘A lot of the knot garden’s young because it’s not easy to move mature box hedging about, so it’ll look quite different in ten years,’ he explained. ‘For now I’ve made use of lavender for edging with young box behind, ready to take over, and there are a lot of aromatic plants like marjoram and thyme. The miniature roses are quite mature, so they’re already making a good impression visually.’

  When they reached the knot garden, Clancy halted to admire it. The paved path formed a square with a circle laid within it. At the centre stood an obelisk. Above borders of lav
ender, butterflies flitted and bees buzzed, Nelson snapping at any that hovered too close. ‘It’s gorgeous,’ she said. ‘Is this what you’ve been doing for the last couple of weeks?’

  ‘Re-doing really,’ he admitted. ‘The pathways were already here but I relayed the flags on fresh sand, adding shale in various places. The four yew pillars at the corners were OK to reshape. Just about everything else had to be done from scratch.’

  He left Clancy to walk the circular path and branch off to approach the tall stone shape in the centre, tall, four-sided and pointy, while he took out his camera, one of those that looked professional but was actually point-and-shoot. ‘Oh,’ she breathed. ‘It’s a monument to the family members and household staff who died in the two World Wars.’

  ‘Pretty sobering,’ he agreed, trying a few shots of bees on lavender and close-ups of the shale and gravel, their colours brought out by the sun. He was pleased with the purplish slate shale beside the flowering lavender and tiny muted green leaves of thyme. Clancy was still reading the words inscribed on the obelisk, her head tilted. Her hair was glossy and bright in the sunshine, the blue of her dress contrasting beautifully with the yellow-green yews. Nelson stood beside her, gently waving his tail if she glanced at him. Aaron fired off about five frames, glad that Nelson had his good side to the camera. He didn’t think anyone would be particularly sold on the sight of his permanently closed socket.

  He began working through the shots he wanted, asking Clancy to stroll along paths, looking like a heroine on a book jacket walking towards her future, or watch butterflies pensively in the sun. Nelson settled down to sunbathe. Aaron produced a book from the truck and asked her to settle in the shade of the arbour at the very back of the knot garden and pretend to read. He’d borrowed it from his mother’s store of notebooks, chosen for the highly stylised illustration of flowers on the cover – all from non-existent species, in his opinion.

  Clancy could have been born to the task of ornamenting garden shots, propping a hand beneath her chin thoughtfully or hooking a foot behind the opposite ankle and looking studious. He took about ten times the shots he needed just because he was enjoying looking at her through the lens. ‘I think I’ve got enough,’ he said eventually, feeling regretful.

  She closed the notebook with a snap. ‘You haven’t taken any video.’

  He shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know what to do with it.’

  ‘But video content’s such a powerful tool,’ she said, looking shocked. ‘Let me show you.’ Taking out her phone, she directed him to walk away from her, looking down and right towards the lavender and a circular bed of clipped dark red hebe. Nelson obligingly jumped up at Aaron’s approach and loped to meet him, hurdling the corner of the border like a deer.

  Clancy tapped at her phone, beaming. ‘What a fab spontaneous clip this will make. I’ve got iMovie so I can do some editing, just to show you.’ She dropped back onto the bench in the shady arbour and worked over the screen for a couple of minutes.

  Then she handed the phone to him. ‘Look. A few seconds of moody video is great for websites or blogs. Do you have a YouTube channel? You can host it on there.’

  Smiling at her enthusiasm, Aaron took the phone, warm from the sunshine and her hands, and she tucked her hair behind her ears to watch him press the triangular ‘play’ symbol. What he saw was himself in soft-focus, walking down the path, the sunshine slanting from behind the hall, easing into slow motion just as Nelson flew into shot like a professional photo bomber, gazing up with doggy adoration when Aaron stooped to scratch him behind the ears. ‘That is amazing!’ he said, glancing at her with respect.

  ‘May I see your camera?’ After investigating its functions, she got him to put the sprinklers on and took slow-mo of sunshine through the spray, explaining what she was doing so he could try it himself.

  ‘Fantastic,’ he said, when he’d viewed the end result.

  ‘I wasn’t one of the creatives at IsVid but we all had to know the basics,’ she answered eagerly. The smile faded. Then it reappeared with an almost visible effort and she went on to suggest they end with a couple of fanciful shots, like with her sitting on the top of one of the stone columns of the arbour.

  He took the photos from below, she tucking her dress artfully around her injured knee.

  ‘It must be time for lunch,’ he said finally, reaching up to help her down from her perch. Realising his intention too late, she half-fell, and he moved swiftly to catch her.

  She landed so that they were toe-to-toe, his hands just above her hips.

  For several moments the world went blank, as if an electric charge had shot up his arms and stopped his brain. Clancy gazed up at him, the sunlight highlighting each individual shade of gold and green in her irises.

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ he heard himself say.

  She laughed, but breathlessly.

  Slowly, so she had time to turn away if she wanted, he dipped his head and brushed his lips to hers, leaning in as he came back for another taste, letting his hands move around her until they came together on her back. Her lips parted slightly under his and he let the kiss deepen, feeling as if she were questing, trying it out, deciding. Then he brought the kiss to a close before she could and smiled tentatively.

  Her answering smile was equally unsure … like: ‘OK, so that came out of nowhere.’

  But she didn’t complain and so he kissed her again, once, twice, softly. Then Nelson rushed up, nails clicking on the shale, and reared up on his hind legs as if to join in the fun. The waft of dog-breath definitely brought proceedings to a halt. Aaron grumbled, ‘How to destroy a moment, Nelson. Get down!’ and Clancy giggled.

  ‘I wish I’d brought a picnic now.’ He turned towards where the truck waited, handily close to a fountain Nelson could drink from. ‘Near the woods is a wildlife meadow. It’s full of wildflowers.’ Although, when he thought of it, also full of bees and wasps. Probably deer droppings too. ‘Is there anywhere in particular you’d like to eat?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know the area. Good seaside fish and chips would be lovely.’

  He laughed. ‘OK, let’s go to the pub in Thornham, where Nelson’s welcome. We can walk on the marshes after.’ He was happy to extend their time together.

  Once again they drove along the A149, past the cottages, churches and garden centres, tourists enjoying the early summer sun at the outdoor cafés.

  Over lunch, he told her about his childhood, days out in Wells-next-the-Sea and crabbing on the quayside. ‘I don’t know what the attraction was,’ he added. ‘We always put the crabs back in the sea before we went home.’

  Clancy cut into her crispy fish batter with the side of her fork. Her nails were painted with tiny silver flecks that glinted as she moved. ‘We rarely got to the British seaside. It was more scuba diving in Belize or white-water rafting on African rivers. I took a few trips to Brighton or Hastings when I stopped travelling and came to the UK to go to uni so I’ve ticked the really big boxes like eating seaside rock.’

  ‘Whelks, winkles, jellied eels?’ he suggested.

  She wrinkled her nose. She’d put on sunglasses and he caught his own reflection whenever she turned to look his way. ‘I’ve eaten alligator in New Orleans. Are they anything like that?’

  ‘I haven’t eaten alligator so I don’t know.’ He looked around at the other wooden tables filled with tourists, chatting and smiling. He loved Norfolk. He knew its beaches and cliffs, salt marshes and largely flat landscape. ‘I suppose I seem a real stay-at-home to you, born and brought up in the village I still live in. Working in a thirty-mile radius.’

  She gazed at him. ‘There’s nothing wrong with that. I’ve lived in some wonderful places but also some pretty manky ones. I’ve had more inoculations than I can count. I changed school ten times and never kept friends until I came to the UK to live. I finally made what I thought were lasting friends but now they aren’t really available to me,’ she added. Then stopped.

  He gave her hand a comfor
ting squeeze.

  She smiled and said, ‘This is lovely,’ indicating her golden fish and crispy chips.

  Later, they walked down the road, past the church, and he showed her the way onto the salt marshes where a sign told them they were on the Norfolk Coast Path. She gazed at the enormous blue sky laced with strings of white cloud and the grasses taller than herself that waved and wove in the breeze. He pointed out phragmites, sea asters and golden samphire, though the samphire hadn’t flowered yet. ‘It’s all glorious,’ she breathed.

  ‘I’ll show you the harbour.’ He’d taken her hand again as they strolled, Nelson trotting ahead along the track. It felt comfortable and right.

  ‘There’s a harbour?’ She stopped to gaze at the miles of vegetation all around, the stunted shrubs and occasional dead tree that stood like planted driftwood.

  ‘Not a big harbour,’ he admitted. It actually consisted of one old building and a lot of landing stages with a picturesque wreck on one bank. The tide was out and the sea creek was mainly mud, sandpipers wading between the boats that lay on their sides.

  He’d rarely seen her so relaxed. When she’d arrived in Nelson’s Bar she’d been taut and unhappy, her eyes wary and letting him know how it felt to have nowhere else to go. Now she beamed and chattered as she explored the inlets and it gave him huge pleasure to be there with her.

  She hadn’t mentioned their kisses in the knot garden, though she’d been thoughtful on the drive between Keelmarsh and Thornham. He’d thought she was processing her feelings and hoped she’d conclude that they were both putting the past behind them and were free to enjoy each other’s kisses. Maybe more.

  Disturbing his thoughts, her phone beeped.

  Her eyebrows popped up as she fished in her little bag, the phone beeping a second time. ‘There’s a signal here in the middle of the marsh?’

  ‘Apparently.’ Aaron watched her pause when she looked at the text bubble on her lock-screen. She tapped. Stared, her smile fading. He almost felt the tension shoot into her shoulders and back as, slowly, she put the phone away again.