Christmas at Strand House

by Linda Mitchelmore

  ‘Ah, so you’ve noticed I don’t emerge for my run until after coffee time?’

  ‘I have. Would eight o’clock at the harbour be too early? The carrot here is that there’ll more than likely be dolphins off Berry Head.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘The boat leaving at eight bit, or the dolphins bit?’

  ‘I can do early if I’m going to see dolphins.’

  ‘You’re on,’ Hugh said. ‘My treat.’

  Martha was up at six o’clock the next morning. Hugh had said it might be an idea to wear a jacket with a hood if she had one with her, and a scarf, because it was still only May and, while the forecast was good, it could be a lot colder on the water than it was sitting on the decks of their chalets in the shelter of the cliff behind them.

  He’d said it in a very non-bossy way as though he really was concerned she might get chilled.

  Hugh had said he’d call for her at seven and they could walk over to the harbour. But when she looked out to see if he was on his way she saw he was on the beach, his phone/camera to his eye, back to the sea, photographing the chalets on The Strand.

  Why was he doing that? Was he waiting for her to open the door so he could get a shot of her coming out? Was she being paranoid? Whichever, a ripple of unease snaked its way up her spine and out over her shoulders, and she shivered.

  But just as Hugh had faced his demons by going into The Shoreline on his own without his brother, so she would have to face the fact that not every lens aimed her way was going to be for evil ends.

  Martha reached for her coat, scarf and shoulder bag and went out. Hugh slid his phone back into his pocket and walked to greet her.

  ‘Gorgeous morning for it, Martha,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you’ll regret this.’

  ‘I hope not,’ Martha said. ‘I’ve usually got pretty good sea legs.’ And then she decided to let Hugh know she’d seen him photographing her chalet. ‘What were you taking photographs of just now?’

  ‘The chalets. And yours in particular.’

  ‘Why?’ Martha said. She didn’t know whether she wanted to go and see dolphins any more.

  ‘Because there was a peregrine falcon hovering above it. I think it must have seen a piece of cockle or something a seagull had dropped. I’ll show you if you like.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘We’ll need to get going if we’re going to catch that boat, though.’ Hugh placed an arm under Martha’s elbow and steered her round in the direction of the harbour. ‘I’ll find the best shots and show you as we go along.’

  And he did, but still Martha was uneasy.

  ‘Have you ever seen the film Roman Holiday?’ Martha asked.

  ‘Yep. Dozens of times. It’s my mother’s favourite. After Harris died she curled up on the couch watching it on a loop for months. I watched with her more times than I can count. So, I think, reading between the lines here, that you’re saying I’m not the Gregory Peck character who gets to kiss the iconic Audrey Hepburn character, but that I’m… the photographer?’

  ‘But you haven’t taken any photos of me that you’re going to present to me, as happened in the film, when my fortnight of escapism here is over?’

  ‘Nope. But then, photographers don’t, for the most part, have to sit in a darkroom developing stuff these days. There are no negatives to blackmail people with. Anything unwanted is deleted with a swipe of a finger. ‘But back to Roman Holiday… Audrey Hepburn’s character, Princess Ann, and the journalist, Joe Bradley, as played by Gregory Peck, were never going to get together, were they? Even though they did share just the one kiss,’ Hugh went on. ‘See how well I know this film!’

  ‘And the Princess Ann character was never going to get it together with the photographer?’ Martha smiled.

  ‘Irving Radovich, as played by Eddie Albert. Who never got to kiss Audrey Hepburn, although, as I said, Gregory Peck did. And what a kiss! What fantastic on-screen chemistry those two had, eh? And off-screen for all we know.’

  They’d reached the end of the beach now, and would have to get back on to the promenade to make their way to the harbour. Hugh, with his long legs, stepped on to the prom and held a hand out to help Martha up.

  Hugh was looking at Martha, a gentle smile playing about his lips. He ran his tongue around them as though they had suddenly gone dry with nerves. She had the feeling he would very much like to kiss her. And much to her surprise, Martha found she wanted very much to kiss him too. In all her twenty-seven years she’d never kissed anyone who hadn’t been involved in the world of acting. But would that be wise? Could their worlds knit together happily? Would they?

  ‘Well,’ Hugh said, breaking the spell that seemed to have been cast over them both. ‘The boat and the dolphins wait for no man. Come on.’

  ‘You weren’t joking when you said it was a small boat.’ Martha laughed. ‘I’ve been in bigger baths in the States!’

  ‘I’ll have to take your word for that!’ Hugh grinned.

  They were sitting in the stern, just seven other passengers seated onboard. And two crew. Tea and coffee available on request was written on a scrap of paper pinned to the cockpit and Martha wondered where it could possibly be made in such a small space – and how, given the boat rocked as the captain spun it round to point out to sea. But then the sea seemed to flatten out as though it had been ironed and they were sailing over a sheet of satin.

  ‘Cormorants,’ Hugh said. ‘Fairy Cove.’

  Just yards out of the harbour and Martha had seen her first cormorant up close, standing on a rock a few yards from the shoreline of a fairy-sized cove. How large they seemed so close up, how glossy and rather elegant-looking with their small heads and slender bodies.

  ‘And the gulls are just waking up in their cliff roosting places,’ Hugh said, pointing up at the red sandstone cliff. ‘And terns.’

  ‘It’s a bit of a day of firsts for me already,’ Martha said. ‘I mean, do we ever really look at cormorants and seagulls and terns in the normal course of events?’ She never had – they were just there, seagulls being a nuisance much of the time, but from the boat they looked as though they’d just come through a washing machine on a white wash, they were so bright in the early-morning light.

  ‘Well, I do,’ Hugh laughed. ‘They can be my bread and butter, seagulls. Thank God for photo memory cards these days because I can take literally thousands of images and then discard what I don’t want. Forgive me if I ignore you for a moment, but there’s loads I want to take pictures of.’

  ‘Snap away,’ Martha told him.

  The captain was giving a running commentary about the area and the wildlife and Martha was happy to let his words wash over her as her eyes drank in the view. Hugh kept standing up to take pictures, then sitting down again, touching her on the arm now and then, gently but briefly, to ask if she was okay, and was she warm enough.

  And then, there they were. As the boat rounded Berry Head, there were the dolphins. The captain shut down the throttle so that there was only the shush of the sea and the rumble of the motor as they all stood, as though choreographed, watching the dolphins jump and dive. No one spoke. A woman on the port side put her hands to her mouth and her eyes went wide with wonder as though she couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing. Martha tried to count them… seven, eight, nine… but couldn’t be sure she wasn’t counting the same ones twice. As the boat rocked gently on the current, and everyone seemed to instantly find their sea legs, the dolphins came nearer. Martha had the urge to reach out and touch one, they were so close.

  Martha lost track of time. She’d heard how seeing dolphins could be an almost religious experience and now she knew it to be true. Never would she have thought she could see them here, off the Devon coast, and in May, and in the company of a man she’d only just met. They were so free, so joyous, the way they leapt and then disappeared beneath the water again only to surface a few yards further away to make the same manoeuvre all over again. And it was then that Martha knew she had ne
ver had that freedom. Her life in acting had been scripted by her mother for the most part. Yes, she’d had a gift for acting – and dancing and singing – but had she only been living the life her mother had wanted for herself? She had spent two-thirds of her life living in what she now realised was a rather cloistered world.

  Although it had been Martha who had run out on her acting life, it had taken meeting Hugh to show her the beauty in the real world.

  ‘Thank you for bringing me, Hugh,’ she said, sitting back down, quite giddy with emotion now.

  ‘It’s been my pleasure.’

  The dolphins were moving further away now. Still rising from the water but not as high as they had been.

  ‘I’ll hold this experience to me for ever, I think,’ Martha said.

  ‘Me too. And we could,’ Hugh said, ‘make a few more before your fortnight’s up. If that’s okay with you, Miss Martha Langford.’

  There it was again – Hugh’s use of her real name, not her stage name. He liked her because of who she was, not what she was.

  ‘We could,’ Martha said. ‘And I think we should.’

  So they did. They still ran each day, but separately, because Martha was never going to be able to keep up, running on sand, with Hugh. But they always met for coffee, at one of the many cafés along the seafront, or back at Martha’s chalet, taking their drinks down onto the beach to drink if the tide was out, burying their bare feet in the sand, and letting the sand trickle through their fingers as they talked and shared aspects of their past lives. In the evenings they wandered up into the town to find a restaurant or pub for supper. They even had a hilarious hour in the Penny Arcade playing the gaming machines – winning sometimes, losing sometimes. A bit like life, Martha thought, although she thought she might be on a winning streak now she’d met Hugh.

  Hugh had taken Martha’s arm in a gallant way and linked it through his to cross roads, but they didn’t hold hands. Or kiss.

  On Martha’s last night, sitting on the deck of 23 The Strand, Hugh uncorked a bottle of champagne he said he’d had cooling in his fridge, along with a plate of deli nibbles Martha had a feeling he’d bought for just such an occasion.

  ‘Glasses out,’ Hugh said, indicating the frothing champagne and the need to get it into glasses before it frothed all over the deck.

  ‘Yes, sir!’ Martha laughed, holding out the champagne glasses towards him.

  When they were filled to the brim, she handed one to Hugh.

  ‘A toast,’ he said. ‘To you. For helping me with my grief over Harris. So, to you.’

  Martha gulped back tears, then took a sip of champagne.

  ‘And to you,’ she said, clinking glasses. ‘And to legs and hearts that will mend, given time.’

  ‘That too,’ Hugh said, tapping Martha’s glass again.

  ‘What will you do now?’

  ‘Photography, of course. I’ve a fancy for photographing the oceans of the world, running on the world’s beaches. I’ve got an idea for a TV series running around in my head – 90 Mile Beach, Bondi Beach. Woolacombe in North Devon, even. It doesn’t have to be a big beach or a famous one. The concept is I’d run with a well-known personality and we’d look at the geography and wildlife around us, and put the world to rights as we ran. What do you think?’

  I think it’s a rotten idea. I want you to stay in my life, not go running off with some random person you might fall in love with on a tropical beach. Was he telling her this was the end of their friendship? Or was he putting the ball in her court, giving her an ‘out’ if she wanted it?

  ‘Sounds good,’ Martha said.

  ‘Once more with feeling,’ Hugh laughed.

  ‘Sounds really, really good.’

  ‘That’s better. A seven out of ten that time. And you?’ Hugh asked.

  ‘I’ve not made any firm plans yet. I quite fancy stage work again. It’s all too easy to iron out mistakes while filming for TV or the cinema. The money would be less but I’ve got enough to live on for a while. Then again, there’s an idea buzzing about in my head like a mosquito that I could train to teach drama. Not at a stage school but in an ordinary comprehensive perhaps.’

  ‘Go for it,’ Hugh said. ‘You’ve got a beautiful speaking voice. Well, a beautiful everything actually.’

  ‘That’s a lovely thing to hear,’ Martha said. ‘And?’

  ‘And what?’ Hugh swirled the stem of his glass in his fingers. He looked down at the table, up at the sky, out to sea. His eyes settled on Martha for a second and she saw his Adam’s apple going up and down.

  He was struggling for the right thing to say, wasn’t he?

  ‘To our respective futures?’ Hugh said eventually.

  ‘I think we both know that isn’t what I meant. And I do believe, Hugh, you’re blushing.’

  Martha prised Hugh’s glass gently from him and placed it on the tiny table between them.

  ‘I was taught in drama school that, in the right situation, more emotion, more feeling, more truth can be conveyed by what people don’t say than by what they do. Action – and conversely inaction – really can speak louder than words sometimes.’ Then she cupped Hugh’s face in her hands and kissed him. Just a gentle kiss but she let it linger.

  ‘Wow! Is that how they teach you to kiss in stage school?’

  ‘Nope. That one came from the heart.’

  And then Hugh kissed her back.

  It was that old cliché of fireworks and music playing for Martha.

  ‘And so did that. But back to our futures… I like live theatre,’ Hugh said. ‘Can I come and watch?’

  ‘Of course. And I’ve decided a bit of running on the world’s beaches is something I’d quite like too.’

  ‘So, we’ve rewritten the end of Roman Holiday.’ Hugh kissed her again.

  ‘Get a room already!’ someone shouted from the prom.

  ‘Your cabin or mine?’ Martha asked as Hugh released her from the kiss.

  Martha wrapped the amethyst necklace Tom Marchant had given her in tissue paper and slid it into an envelope. She had no need of it any more but it might be just the thing someone else might love and cherish. On the outside of the envelope she wrote her message:

  Dear next occupant,

  I’ve had the most interesting and wonderful fortnight at 23 The Strand. Life-changing even. I hope you have a wonderful time too. I leave you this gift, which I hope you’ll enjoy wearing or will give to someone you think would like it. It might be fun if you could leave some little thing as a welcome gift for the next occupant but that’s by no means obligatory.

  Best wishes

  Martha

  P.S. Formerly known as Serena Ross

  The next book from Linda Mitchelmore, The Little B & B at Cove End, is coming in summer 2019!

  If you enjoyed Christmas at Strand House, then why not try another delightfully uplifting festive romance from HQ Digital?

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