by Hilary Boyd
“How’s Largo? I miss him.”
“He’s good.”
“And the fête? Are things coming along OK?”
“Yeah . . . I didn’t go to the last meeting. Couldn’t face it.”
“You sound a bit low.”
“I’m fine.”
“Any progress on finding something to do?”
“Nope.”
Karen heard the sounds of Sophie moving around, the click of a cupboard opening, water running. She was clearly not focusing on the call.
“Umm . . . listen, Karen, I’ve got to go.”
“Oh. Alright. Well, let’s talk another time, then.”
“Yes. Bye.”
The line went dead. Karen sat, the phone in her hand, thinking. Was there someone else there? Was that what had constrained Sophie? Or maybe the girl had just woken up, even though it was nearly midday. She hadn’t sounded hostile, just very detached. Karen felt something wasn’t right and decided to phone again later in the day.
But in the end she forgot, because William texted her five minutes later and said he would be in her area around five.
Might you be able to meet me, just for a very quick beach walk? X
The tone of his text implied a nervousness about her response. Quite rightly, having acknowledged last time that their situation was hopeless. But she wasn’t able to be angry with him.
*
William did not have his dog collar on. He was wearing pale shorts and a blue T-shirt, sunglasses, trainers. There was no trace of the vicar, he looked like any other man on the beach. And there was something different about him, apart from his clothes—a sort of jauntiness, a devil-may-care aura that she hadn’t seen before.
She grinned as she looked him up and down.
Will laughed. “Too hot for the uniform.”
They set off along the beach. Karen had brought a small cool-bag with a bottle of white wine, two plastic glasses, some olives and crisps.
“I thought we agreed we wouldn’t do this again,” she said as they walked.
“I know . . . I acted on impulse. I was passing—”
“Really?”
“Yes, this time I really was,” he said, earnestly. “I had to pick up a chair Janey bought on eBay from a man who lives up the road from here. But he wasn’t there and wasn’t answering his phone, so I’ll have to go back.”
“Today?”
“I’ll swing past on my way home . . . Janey’s at her parents’ till Thursday.”
Karen absorbed this information, wondering if this were the reason he seemed so carefree.
“I thought you might refuse to see me,” he said.
They sat on the rug again, side by side. The tide was coming in and they moved further up, drinking wine and eating crisps, toes digging in the warm sand, the conversation sparse and general.
“Why do you think it’s sandy here and pebbly there?” Karen asked.
“Umm . . . something to do with the strength of the waves, which is different depending on the geography and the type of stone. There’s flint around here, so maybe it doesn’t break down so easily.” He laughed. “But don’t quote me. I’m horribly ignorant of most things geophysical, but I had to help Rachel with an eco-project about sea defenses for her GCSE.”
“Has she finished school now?” Karen liked Rachel, what she knew of her. She seemed like a quiet, good-natured girl. But as William seldom mentioned his family to Karen—for obvious reasons—she usually respected that.
But now his face broke into a broad smile. “Yes! Wonderful moment when they’re finally free. She turned eighteen last week. She’s off to Seville to work in a hotel for the summer, improve her Spanish. She’s doing modern languages at Edinburgh. Got the required three As—two of them A-star.”
“That’s great.” She could hear the pride in his voice and was ashamed to feel a searing jealousy of his family life, of which she could never be a part. “You’ll miss her.”
“I will . . .” he looked off into the distance, his expression unreadable.
“Swim?” Karen said, partly to change the subject, but also because she was so overheated, so sweaty, that she thought she might die if she didn’t dive into the water that very instant.
And this time Will had brought his trunks.
The sea was warmer than ever—the water coming in across sand baked for hours in the hot July sun—and very still. William was a strong swimmer, his upper torso muscled and sure. They both swam far out, enjoying the bliss of the cool salty waves closing over their heads, bringing instant relief from the heat.
Later, they lolled about on their backs, toes out of the water, arms splayed to the side, eyes skyward.
“I think there’s going to be a storm,” she said, looking over to the west where a dark mass of cloud lay far off on the horizon.
“Air feels heavy enough.”
The waves lapped lazily around them and Karen never wanted this moment to end.
After they’d dried themselves—neither got out of their wet costumes, which would have involved a precarious dance with the towel they were both too shy to perform—they sat back down on the rug, hugging their knees as they finished the bottle of wine and nibbled at the olives. The beach gradually cleared of families keen to get their small children to bed, or to avoid the threatening storm cloud, moving ever closer, the sea a gun-metal gray beneath it. The breeze, now soupy with moisture, blew hundreds of tiny thunder flies across the shore.
“I think we’d better go,” she said.
They began to pack up their stuff. “You could come up to the flat and change there,” she offered. “Have a shower.”
Karen saw him hesitate, then shake his head.
“Thanks, but I’d better not. I should get back,” he said, no weight to his words.
But she, perhaps stoked by the wine, read a wealth of prudish censure into the sentence. For all the world, she thought angrily, as if I were some prostitute luring a poor innocent off the street. “It’s only a shower, for God’s sake. What are you so afraid of?”
William raised his head from his task of pulling on his shoes, her sharpness bringing a startled look to his face.
“I—”
“You’re perfectly happy to lie to Janey, spend hours on the beach with me, swim, drink wine, gaze into my eyes when it suits you. But then your conscience twinges and—oh, heavens—you’d better not go too far and actually do anything, be alone with me. Anything could happen. And then what? Maybe God will strike you dumb.”
His expression hardened. “I told you, this has nothing to do with God.”
“No? Really? I think it has everything to do with him, or at least your slavish devotion to him.” She knew she was going too far, but she no longer cared.
“What we are doing wouldn’t be right even if there were no God,” he said quietly.
“You think I don’t know that? But I wasn’t offering to have sex with you, William, in case you wondered. In fact, I made a decision over the weekend that I wouldn’t . . . couldn’t . . . even see you again.” She stood over him, hands on her hips. “I moved to the seaside to protect you and your family from having to see me all the time . . .” She paused. “And to protect myself, of course, which obviously didn’t work so well.” Her last words were more to herself than him.
He wasn’t looking at her but intently out to sea—maybe expecting the cavalry, in the shape of the on-coming storm, to rescue him.
“You pretend, with these innocent little picnics, that nothing is happening between us. I do the same, it makes me feel better. But it’s a lie and we both know it.”
“What do you want me to say?” William stood up and began dusting the sand off his clothes, his tone softly apologetic.
“Shit or get off the pot, William, to use a seriously unattractive expression.” She snatched up the rug and began shaking it.
Now he faced her. “I should never have come today. I’m sorry, it was so selfish.”
He put his hands o
n her arms, the rug still suspended from her hands.
“No, you shouldn’t. And I shouldn’t have agreed to see you. I’m struggling,” she said, looking him in the eye, her anger now replaced by misery. “Being with you, however much I love it—and I do—makes being apart so hard . . . not knowing when, or if, I’ll see you again.”
“I know. I know exactly how you feel. I feel the same. And I wish things were different, but they’re not.”
“Just accept what is, right?” she said, tears pricking behind her eyes. “But should we do that? Should we just turn our backs on what we have? Can we?”
“Even asking that question seems impossible to me, Karen. Because it means giving everything else up. My family, the Church, my whole life. It’s so huge. I can’t do that.”
Yes, you can, were the words on the tip of her tongue. But instead she said, “No. You can’t. I know you can’t.” She looked away. “Are you in love with Janey?”
William didn’t answer. He pulled her against him and she heard him let out a deep sigh. But although she wanted more than all the riches in the universe to accept his embrace and just feel the pleasure of his warm body against her own, she couldn’t bear to allow another ounce of feeling for this man—who would never be hers—to leak from her heart.
She had to close the box and run.
“Sorry . . .” She pulled away, continued folding the rug, putting it neatly under her arm, emptying the dregs of wine into the sand, gathering up the cool-bag, her shorts and her towel, shaking out her flip-flops. Her movements were methodical, unhurried, perhaps her subconscious hoping, as always, for some last-minute miracle to occur.
William had dropped his hands and was standing there, dumbly.
“You’d better get back to the car before you get soaked,” she added, as the first plump drops of rain ran cool across her face.
“Karen—” he began.
But there was nothing else to say except goodbye.
*
The storm broke barely seconds after Karen reached her building. From her top-floor window she had a spectacular view across the bay as the sky darkened and the heavens opened. She cried along with it, her tears, abundant and unhindered, running down her cheeks just as the rain did on the glass, her sobs drowned out by the thunder and pelting rain. She hated him, she loved him; she despised him, she admired him; she trusted him with her life but she could not trust him with her heart.
She spent the next hour crying on and off, drinking more wine, listening to the saddest country songs she could find on her playlist, but mostly just clicking “repeat” for “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain” over and over again, singing along with Shania when she wasn’t choked with sobs. She was crying with anger at William, then at herself, then for her stupid, empty life.
The storm passed over, leaving just the rain pouring down the balcony windows.
When there was a knock on the door it was quite dark outside, but barely nine o’clock. She thought it must be Mike wanting company for a drink and went to let him in. She could do with some company too, the despair was beginning to frighten her.
William stood there. He was soaking wet and didn’t look apologetic.
“May I come in?” he asked.
She hesitated, then nodded and stood back to let him pass.
He must have seen that she had been crying—her cheeks were surely scarred by runnels of tears—but he didn’t comment. He just took a deep breath and pulled her into his arms. She stared at him in surprise, but he still said nothing. Instead, he pressed his mouth hard to her own.
What followed was nothing that she expected. There was no gentleness on either part—just a fury of desire, which tore at them, sent them wild as they sought to possess each other more absolutely, filling the void that months of unfulfilled desire had wrought. Their bodies seemed to be totally in sync as they fell, wordless, on to the sofa bed, scrambling with clothes, angry and loving and desperate at the same time. His face wet with rain, hers with tears, their mouths, limbs, flesh hot and entangled till both reached their climax and fell back exhausted and in shock.
For a few minutes all that could be heard in the flat was their labored breathing as they lay pressed naked up against each other on the cushions. William laughed; it was a joyous, exuberant sound. She joined in, her body bruised and alive. But there was no need for words. His arm was around her shoulder, her cheek nestling against his chest, but as they lay there, his hand began to caress her breast, his fingers playful as they toyed with one nipple, then the other. She turned her face up to kiss him, tasted the salt still on his lips, and once more the longing took hold and they began to make love again.
This time it was open-ended, not climax-driven. A slow, exquisite exploration, which drove them deeper and deeper into each other’s soul with every touch of lips, skin, sex. No boundaries, no time, no thought, no need, only a miraculous, enveloping sensuality. The sky was beginning to lighten with the summer dawn by the time they both fell into an exhausted sleep. During the hours of love-making they had sometimes paused, drunk water, talked for a while, then, as if neither could bear to waste a single moment of that night, they had begun to kiss again.
They woke to brilliant sunlight, cramped and stiff, chilly from the inadequate throw they had drawn around them before sleep had intervened. Karen, although reluctant to lose the touch of William’s skin against her own, pulled herself up, shivering. She squinted at the clock. 7:07 A.M., it read. She looked back at Will, whose responding smile was almost drugged. He blinked, running his hand over his hair, pushing the dark strands off his forehead.
She padded across the floor for her dressing gown, then came and sat back down next to Will on the sofa, which was still not pulled out into a bed. Loath to speak and break the spell, she took his hand in hers, holding it gently in her grasp, stroking her thumb across his palm.
“What’s the time?” he asked, and when she told him he merely nodded.
“We could swim,” she said after a while. “It’s a stunning day.”
“It’ll be cold after the storm . . . the water,” he said, pulling a face.
Which prompted her to dig him in the ribs and call him “a wuss.”
And he was right, it was cold. Cold and still choppy, a brisk wind ruffling the surf, the reflection of the morning sun so bright it hurt their eyes. But oh how glorious to feel the water bathe their tired bodies, wash away the stiffness, send blood racing through their veins as they swam the length of the bay and back.
As they walked up the beach wrapped in their towels, Karen saw Mike pulling up the metal shutters on the café. He waved, then saw William, hesitated, turned away. She didn’t care—not about him or anyone else—not this morning.
“So did you pick up the chair?” Karen asked, when they were both seated at the oval table in her flat with coffee, brown toast and marmalade. William looked scrubbed clean, his cheeks glowing, his hair damp and shiny around his face as he hungrily munched through his breakfast.
“Chair?”
“The one Janey bought on eBay? Did you get it last night.”
“No. I didn’t go very far, only to the car. I was thinking.”
“You were outside all that time?”
He nodded sheepishly. “I just couldn’t make myself leave.”
Karen imagined him sitting in the car as the storm beat around him, arguing with himself, knowing by heart the two sides of the dispute and not wanting to think about them right now. She knew he was just about to go and she had to make every second count.
“Thank you for last night,” he said, after a silence. The look he gave her was steady and full of tenderness. “Thank you so much.”
She smiled. “Who’d have thought it?”
“Thought what?”
“That such passion lurked beneath these ordinary exteriors.”
He looked a bit bewildered for a second. “It’s not . . . for me . . .”
“Nor for me either . . . not normal at all.” The fierc
e, primal union with William last night was nothing like the accomplished sexual technique that Harry had offered in the early days—learned and honed over the years with a string of women before Karen. Sex with Harry had been a lot of fun, but sex with William reached to her very soul.
When they embraced and said goodbye, they clung to each other, each knowing that as soon as he was alone and away from her, his conscience would start yelling at him again, telling him that he must behave.
She wanted to say something to override that voice, but nothing in the external world had changed since last night. Except, of course, that now there was the knowledge of an extraordinary bond between them—one that reached way beyond either of their experience.
Chapter Eleven
“The randy vicar, I take it,” Mike said, his face radiating disapproval.
Karen had gone back to bed after Will left, not waking till nearly twelve. Last night seemed unreal without his presence to confirm it. And now, as she sat at one of the café tables, she felt unable to concentrate on anything.
“’Fraid so.”
“Spent the night, did he?”
“He did.”
Mike laughed. “God, what are you like? You’ve sat there for days like you’re listening to me. Only yesterday you’re banging on about flow charts or some such bollocks that’ll get you back on track. Then our friend the polisher pitches up with a cool-bag and it’s all for nowt.” He saw her frown. “I saw you last night on the beach.”
“It was my cool-bag,” she said.
“Oh, well . . . that’s OK, then.”
They both started laughing.
“Good night, was it? Only you look like you’re stoned again. Don’t tell me the reverend trades illegal substances along with all his other vices.”
“Nothing like that. Oh, Mike, what am I going to do?”
“You could stop mooching about and help me with these sandwiches. If you can see straight, that is.”
*
“Sophie, please can you call me. This is the fourth time I’ve tried and I’m getting worried.” Karen put the phone down.
She’d stayed in the café helping Mike out for longer than he needed her, because she felt so restless. She didn’t fancy sitting alone in the flat or doing any of the other things that had kept her so contentedly occupied over the last few weeks. The come-down after last night was hard, especially as she couldn’t call William to run through the experience together, couldn’t plan, couldn’t hope.
