The Wind Off the Sea Read online

  Once the blue bag had been allowed to do its magic, Max’s yelling ceased and was replaced by a look of such tragedy that as he held the application to his arm John found it hard not to smile. In order to divert the little boy’s attention from both his pain and his loss of dignity he at once began to examine the deflated beach ball for a puncture, a hole that he soon found by way of submerging the ball bit by bit in sea water collected in a bucket. Ten minutes later the puncture was repaired thanks to a large sticking plaster from John’s emergency kit.

  ‘Do you always travel to the beach this well equipped?’ Mattie smiled, knocking the big coloured bouncing ball back to Max.

  ‘Afraid so. Blue bags for stings, and sticking plasters for the repair of ailing beach balls. I’m a bit of an old woman like that. Actually, I only carry blue bags because if I get stung I swell up rather like your beach ball over there – and I happened to have a box of plasters on me because I cut my foot yesterday, and I thought I might need a fresh one. And I don’t know why I’m telling you this really, because it really is really rather boring.’

  There was a short silence.

  ‘I don’t know whether you remember me,’ Mattie finally said, to break the ensuing silence. ‘I’m – I’m Mattie Eastcott.’

  ‘Of course I remember you. Actually I was wondering if you remembered me. Last time I saw you – good Lord – last time I saw you properly, that is, it must have been before the war, I imagine. Some party or other, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I think it was Caroline Nesbitt’s dance. You and your brother were there, you and Walter, and I danced with you both.’

  ‘Yes, you did. But I seem to remember that you danced with Walter more.’

  Mattie found herself just about to say, as a tease, well who wouldn’t? but she stopped herself in time, before – as her mother was so fond of saying – the devil got her tongue. Instead she fell silent and just smiled, at which John smiled back and looked shyly away at little Max.

  ‘Max is my son,’ Mattie said at once, determined for some reason that this was something John should know as soon as possible. ‘I had a baby during the war. But if you’re a Bexhamite, you probably know that already.’

  ‘As a matter of fact I didn’t,’ John replied, trying to keep the disappointment out of his voice. ‘I didn’t know you were married.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  John looked back at her sharply. ‘I see. What – killed in the war was he? Your husband?’

  ‘No. I’m not married now – and I wasn’t married then, when I had Max. I’ve never been married.’

  ‘I see. That’s war for you, isn’t it? Really? Good-looking little fellow, isn’t he?’

  John ruffled Max’s hair.

  ‘His father was very handsome,’ Mattie replied, feeling her cheeks colouring. ‘His name’s Max – Max’s that is. Not his father.’

  ‘I like the name Max. It has a kind of heroic twang to it. Like an air ace – or a dashing sportsman. Max Eastcott scores a hundred at Lords. Max Eastcott wins Wimbledon. Max Eastcott wins the Open. I can just see it, can’t you? The child is bound for the Hall of Fame, no doubt of it.’

  Mattie smiled, throwing the ball back to Max who caught it and put it down, now more interested in the sandcastle he was busy building.

  ‘Down for your summer holiday? You don’t live in Bexham any more, do you, John?’

  ‘No – not full time. I still come home for weekends. Sometimes.’

  ‘Home, to Mum’s cooking.’

  ‘That’s right. I’m down here on holiday now. Couldn’t get out of London fast enough. Hot enough to fry eggs on the pavement, as the saying goes.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ Mattie replied. ‘I couldn’t stand this sort of heat in a city.’

  ‘It’s utterly appalling. It’s suffocating. In fact it’s so hot they’re growing coconuts in Hyde Park.’

  Mattie just stared back at him, refusing to laugh. John widened his own eyes at her in return, wondering why he found her so easy to tease. Then he remembered, because he remembered her. Those times in Bexham before the war felt so far off nowadays, halcyon days, full of laughter and eternal sunshine, days so distant that it now seemed to John that they might well have been from another century. Yet as he looked at Mathilda Eastcott standing before him it was as if the last time he had seen her had been only the day before, so fresh had her memory become. Today she was a picture with her brown hair cut fashionably short, her tanned body clothed in a bright blue all in one bathing suit over which she had thrown a pale yellow cotton shirt for protection and also perhaps, a little modesty; a vision from yesterday that had become a picture for today.

  She had to be resolute as well, John realised, strong-minded and determined enough to bring up her illegitimate child in the small, inquisitive society that was Bexham. No helpless woman then, but a character strong enough to withstand the barbs and arrows that would inevitably be aimed her way.

  ‘Mattie—’ he began, suddenly nervous after a short silence. ‘Mattie, I was wondering if—’

  ‘Whom are you talking to out there?’ a voice suddenly boomed from the darkness of the beach hut as Lionel Eastcott awoke from his post-prandial snooze. ‘Mattie? Who the devil you talking to out there, eh?’

  Lionel appeared at the entrance to his beach hut, shading his eyes against the sun as he tried to make out the identity of the tall figure standing talking to his daughter.

  ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ John called back. ‘John Tate. How are you?’

  Lionel frowned as his brain clicked into operation trying to remember which exactly of the three Tate sons he actually was. Then, as he shook the hand being offered him, he remembered John was the eldest of them.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Home for a holiday I imagine. Certainly got the weather.’

  They exchanged pleasantries about the heat wave and the general situation while all the time Lionel watched John watching Mattie, and wondered uneasily at this sudden meeting outside the beach hut. Finally, John made to take his leave, only for Mattie to prevent him by suggesting that it might be a better idea for him to stay and have some tea with them. Lionel, inwardly reluctant, nevertheless agreed politely and disappeared back into the hut to light the Primus and prepare for the daily beach hut tea ceremony, while John stood outside the hut talking to Mattie and throwing a beach ball at Max.

  ‘Odd how cooling tea is in hot weather,’ John remarked as they sat in the shade of the hut finally drinking Lionel’s precious brew, which had seemed to take hours to prepare.

  ‘Law of opposites, I suppose,’ Lionel announced, staring ahead of him as if talking to himself rather than John. ‘To cool down drink hot tea; the law of opposites,’ he repeated.

  ‘Rather like the proper state of affairs between a man and a woman,’ John heard himself saying, but he looked at Mr Eastcott, despite his not looking at him. ‘My father’s a great believer in the union of opposites – and at certain times it has seemed to me that there’s none so opposite as my mother and father.’

  ‘By opposite do you mean mettlesome, I wonder?’ Lionel asked, slowly stirring his tea.

  ‘Not at all, sir, far from it. It’s just that women’s characters are so completely different. What’s more they really seem to enjoy begging to differ, which makes for what we all call a happy marriage, I suppose. Besides, women must have a greater say in things, don’t you think, sir? It’s only fair.’

  Lionel paused for careful thought, wondering whether this was what had been amiss at times in his own marriage to Maude. As a general rule she had always held distinctly different points of view from his yet he himself hadn’t enjoyed the experience at all. On the contrary, he hated being bested by a woman, particularly his wife. In return Maude had resorted to sighing deeply, clicking her tongue loudly and staring at him with narrowed eyes. All in all they had certainly not enjoyed begging to differ, and reflecting on this now Lionel realised, for perhaps the thousandth time, how wrong he’d been. Undoubtedly they would have
enjoyed their life together a great deal more had he taken more time to listen to what his wife had to say. Not that it had all been dreary, far from it. Their times on the beach with Mattie had always been fun, which was probably why he still liked to keep the beach hut on, the memories keeping him more than warm, keeping him kicking on, still wanting to be up and about in the morning. That and little Max, the light of his life, the next generation coming leaping along with all the same uncertainties, all the same weaknesses, all the same joys to come.

  ‘No doubt you’re right,’ he said, returning from his reverie. ‘And if the suffragettes have their way, we’ll see women doing everything men do. Probably even have a woman Prime Minister one day – though God forbid such a thing ever happens in my lifetime.’

  ‘The union of opposites isn’t a particularly contemporary idea, sir,’ John offered, after a small pause. ‘The Greeks were great believers in that sort of thing.’

  ‘You don’t say?’ Lionel stared at him briefly before continuing. ‘But then the Greeks were very peculiar people, young man, with some very peculiar ideas. Little wonder their civilisation tumbled – little wonder at all. They’ve always appealed to me as being nothing but a crowd of pansies.’

  ‘I’d rather them than the Romans. I think Churchill might too – seeing how much the Greeks preferred jaw-jaw to war-war.’

  ‘Nothing comes of trying to talk to people who want to make war. Best get in there early, and get it over with. That’s why we’re in the mess we’re in now, because we failed to grasp the nettle ten years ago. In hesitation and rhetoric lies only the threat of defeat, with the threat of defeat finally we have recourse to war, and if you leave it too late you’re ill prepared – and what was the result in this case? Much greater losses than we’d have sustained if we’d been ready and willing earlier. Your Greeks would have been no match for the Hun, while your Romans would have been. They’d have been in there first. Beauty is all very well but it’s a luxury. What matters is a country being in a state of readiness.’

  ‘Perhaps. But then again with the benefit of their great wisdom perhaps the Greeks might have foreseen a situation such as we faced long before it became dangerous and lanced the boil early. They had a pretty fine set of soldiers, too, you know. They weren’t all pansies.’

  Lionel frowned at John over his teacup and sniffed, making a sound more eloquent than words, a sound that said I don’t know what to say to that, a tactic Mattie suddenly remembered that he had often employed against her poor mother. In return John just smiled. Realising that Mattie had been left out of the conversation for some time, he turned to her, intending to include her.

  ‘Good cuppa, at just the right moment.’ Lionel started to collect up his precious picnic things. ‘Well, it’s been very nice seeing you, young man. Perhaps we’ll see you down here on the beach some other day.’

  ‘Every chance of that, sir,’ John replied happily. ‘Seeing I have the beach hut next door but one.’

  Lionel smiled weakly as he realised that if the hot spell continued as indefinitely as was forecast, then there was indeed every chance of seeing John Tate on the beach not on another day but on many days to come.

  ‘Jolly good.’

  Lionel clipped his picnic case tightly shut, picked up his panama and prepared to leave.

  ‘Time to go home, Mattie. Collect up Max’s things, if you would.’

  ‘Why don’t you go on ahead, Daddy? There’s a wind getting up and it’s a bit cooler now the tide’s coming in. Max and I will come back later.’

  Max piped up. ‘Can we go shrimping, Mummy?’

  ‘Why not. Good idea – we’ll go to your favourite pool.’

  ‘You know I don’t like you two playing on the rocks when the tide’s coming in,’ Lionel grumbled. ‘There have been far too many accidents.’

  ‘I’ll help keep a good eye on him, sir, if that’s all right?’

  Lionel saw the question was directed less at him than at Mattie. Sticking his empty pipe upside down in his mouth and giving a grunt of farewell, Lionel departed, reminding Mattie not only to lock up the beach hut, something she’d never yet forgotten to do, but also to be home in good time since he was playing bridge at Mrs Morrison’s that evening.

  Left alone, Mattie, John and Max fished happily for shrimps for the next hour, until finally the incoming tide defeated them and they retired back to the safety of the beach hut.

  ‘Mind if I have a quick dip? Before I see you both home?’ John enquired. ‘I haven’t really had my swim, and I’m a bit broiled.’

  ‘I should think you are. In fact you’ve caught the sun terribly on your shoulders. After you’ve swum I’ll rub some cream on – a girl in the village brought lots back from France. Well, smuggled it back actually.’

  ‘That’s terribly kind of you. Thanks.’

  ‘Come on, Max – one last splash to cool off.’

  While Mattie and Max splashed about in the breaking waves, John swam out to sea, so far that when Mattie looked for him of a sudden she found she couldn’t see him. Filled with fear she shielded her eyes against the still brilliant sunshine that was dancing off the water. It was then that she saw him, probably two hundred yards out from the shore, treading water and waving at her. Now he was waving both hands at her, then all of a sudden he disappeared under the water. Mattie put both hands to her mouth and was about to look round for an able-bodied man whom she could call on for help when she saw John reappear, swimming strongly through the sparkling seas. On his way back to the shore he kept disappearing and reappearing in the sea like a seal or a dolphin, vanishing on one side of a wave only to surface on the other. Finally he rolled on his back and lazily backstroked his way in, riding the crest of the incoming waves, until he flopped down on the sand at Mattie’s feet.

  ‘That was great.’

  ‘Not for us it wasn’t.’ Mattie retorted as she towelled off Max’s little feet. ‘I cannot imagine why you thought that might be funny. Swimming out to sea as far as that, and without saying a word.’

  ‘Bit difficult when you’re a couple of hundred yards from the shore.’

  ‘You could have said you were going to swim out for miles, couldn’t you? You could have said don’t worry, I’m a strong swimmer and I’m going to swim quite a long way out. That’s all.’

  ‘Yes. Yes of course.’ John got to his feet, doing his best to keep a straight face. ‘It was very thoughtless. Please forgive me.’

  Mattie glanced at him, more to see if he was being serious than anything, and when she saw how very serious his face was she gave him a small smile of pardon.

  ‘You’re forgiven. You’re obviously a very strong swimmer.’

  ‘Father insisted we all learned from the age of dot. Living by the sea, and all that. Spending as much time on and in the water as we all did as kids. My brothers and I were known as the Shelborne seals.’

  ‘Next time you feel like swimming to France, just let me know first.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Now let’s get on home, shall we? Before you do something else to worry the life out of me.’

  ‘Whatever you say, Miss Eastcott.’ John gave a naval salute, in reply to which Mattie gave a reluctant smile.

  If he had been by himself, he would have probably skipped home, probably even done a cartwheel, so ecstatic did he suddenly feel that Mattie had actually worried when he had swum so far out to sea. As it was he walked home slowly behind her and Max, carrying everything that he could, and thinking that if he had known what a wonder-filled day it was going to turn out to be he would have got up a whole lot earlier.

  John and Mattie’s meeting on the beach had a bad effect on Lionel. As he dressed preparatory to going to have dinner and play bridge at Gloria Bishop’s house, he had plenty of time to reflect on a subject he had kept confined to the back of his mind, namely the possibility that one day his daughter would once again fall in love.

  Next time round the new man in Mattie’s life might well do the so
-called decent thing and marry her, with the result that it would be Lionel who would be the abandoned one, abandoned not to live alone, but to live with just Ellen for company, and the thought of spending the rest of his life left to Ellen’s tender mercies sent a very real shiver down his spine. Ellen was tolerable as long as she was a background figure, and the very presence of Mattie in his household ensured she remained so, since Mattie was extremely good at what she liked to call managing Ellen. Ellen needed managing, too, since she seemed to find it all but impossible to say anything kind or charming about anything or anyone as well as being excessively pessimistic. With Mattie around to keep her under control, Ellen’s idiosyncrasies were almost tolerable, and as a result Lionel was able to live in comparative peace. Now, with John Tate hovering on the horizon, Lionel had to face the idea that with Mattie married, gone would be his best line of defence against the extremes of Ellen. The idea of having to tackle Ellen every morning was more than he could take. Such a prospect was truly daunting to an ageing widower.

  Lionel suddenly groaned out loud, more at the thought of what the future could hold for him than over the fact that he had made a mess of his bow tie. As he began the meticulous process of retying it, he stopped and took a good look at himself in the mirror, an activity he had once enjoyed but now dreaded as he saw the obvious manifestations of his increasing age. Yes, he thought after a good moment of introspection, I am still a reasonably good-looking man. I haven’t run to fat, I still have most of my hair, and I haven’t entirely lost my looks – but. He took another look, lifting his chin to try to hide not only the beginning of double chins but also the dreaded turkey neck, as well as to alleviate the now quite pronounced jowls that were developing at the bottom of cheeks that had always been slightly pendulous. But who is there whose fancy I might take? Gloria is obviously not interested in me, more’s the pity because nowadays we might well have suited each other – but she is so taken with this American she’s got staying that she doesn’t spare me a second glance unless I make a wrong cue bid at the bridge table. Besides her, I cannot think of a single soul here in Bexham or its environs who might have even the slightest interest in me.