Summer at 23 the Strand

by Linda Mitchelmore

  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 never 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

  Chapter Two

  MID TO LATE MAY

  Cally

  ‘Do you think, Jack,’ Cally asked her husband, ‘it’s the Serena Ross who’s left this?’

  ‘Who?’

  Jack was busy unpacking their sons’ bags, sliding the T-shirts and shorts, and the pants, socks and jumpers, Cally had laundered ready for their two-week stay by the sea, onto the shelves in the wardrobe of their double room. The boys would have to sleep on the small pull-out sofa in the sitting room. He didn’t look up.

  ‘Serena Ross. She’s an actress. She was all over the papers recently. Pulled out of a film or something. Tom Marchant’s in it. Breaking Ice, the film’s called. He’s still in it but she’s not, so it said in one of the Sunday papers. There seems to have been some sort of affair between them. He’s married.’

  ‘So far so normal for the film wo
rld I’d say. Cynic that I am.’ Jack laughed. ‘Anyway, left what?’

  ‘This necklace.’ Standing in the open doorway of the bedroom, watching Jack, Cally uncurled her fingers to reveal a lozenge-shaped amethyst about three centimetres long and half as wide, on a gold chain so fine Cally thought she might be able to get it through the eye of a needle. Cally didn’t wear jewellery much, except her engagement ring if she and Jack were going out, which wasn’t often these days. Her hands were for ever in water, or cleaning up something after the boys, or gardening, and rings got filthy or slid off and she lost them. And when she was hairdressing she only wore her wedding band because anything with a raised stone might scratch a client. But she liked this necklace. ‘Amethyst. It’s my birthstone. There’s a note to say it’s a gift. I can keep it if I want to and leave a welcome gift for the next occupant, also if I want to. Not obligatory.’

  ‘Just as well,’ Jack said. ‘We can’t run to leaving expensive jewellery for people we don’t know.’

  ‘No, I know we can’t. But we might leave something when the holiday’s over.’

  ‘Over?’ Jack said, looking up sharply at Cally. ‘We’ve only just got here! I’m sorry it’s not the Maldives or somewhere five-star, but I thought, well, you know, a holiday might be just what we need.’

  Cally thought Jack sounded petulant – he certainly looked it, slapping down the boys’ socks and pants on a shelf – as though he was irritated she wasn’t showing enough gratitude for the holiday he’d booked as a surprise. Cally struggled to think of something to say. Why didn’t you at least show me the details of 23 The Strand before booking? was uppermost in her mind, but to say that would put a chill between them, although with the boys around they wouldn’t argue about it. There had been far too much ‘chill’ between them lately. A combination of things – pressure of work for Jack, bouts of flu the boys had been laid really low with, too much time off work at the salon for Cally, which had put her job in jeopardy. And also… no, Cally wasn’t even going to think about that.

  ‘It’s a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be,’ Cally said, trying to diffuse the atmosphere. ‘Thankfully!’ she added, laughing. ‘I mean, when we came along the promenade I thought you’d booked us into one of those beach huts.’

  Near the information office where Cally and Jack had picked up the key, the boys squealing with delight and sliding about on the tiled floor while they waited, impatiently, to be seen, was a double row of beach huts, each no bigger than their garden shed at home, all with brightly coloured doors. One row faced the sea, and the other the green. A few were open with people sitting outside on deckchairs, sipping mugs of tea or reading.

  ‘As if!’ Jack said. ‘Those get taken down in the winter and you’re not allowed to sleep overnight in them. I did check before we came, Cally. Besides, you couldn’t swing the proverbial cat in one of those!’

  ‘Of course you did,’ Cally said, aware she kept saying the wrong thing or, if not the wrong thing, something that irritated Jack, demeaning – in his eyes at least – his kind gesture in booking the holiday. She reached down to ruffle four-year-old Noah’s hair. He was being quiet and pensive for once, as though he was puzzled about where he was, and why.

  ‘Can we have a cat?’ Noah asked. ‘A tiger? Or a lion?’

  Cally laughed. Noah was for ever asking for a pet – a dog, a cat, a hamster, a parrot. So far Cally and Jack had resisted all entreaties, even though it was good for children to learn about love and loss when the pets died. Died? Why were words like that cropping up all the time now? Was it the same as when a friend got a new make of car, and suddenly you started seeing those cars everywhere – same model, same colour?

  ‘Can we?’ Noah persisted. ‘You said swing a cat, Daddy! I can swing a cat.’

  Cally wagged a finger playfully at Jack and shook her head. The trouble was, Noah was all ears. She’d have to be careful what she said in front of him from now on. They both would, once she found the courage to tell Jack about the lump. She so didn’t want it to be real, the tiny, granite-chipping lump she’d found in her left breast, just below the nipple. She so didn’t want the information she’d seen on the internet when she’d Googled lumps/breasts to be one hundred per cent correct. There had to be a margin for hope. She hoped telling him here would be easier. She’d been on the verge of telling him at home but the moment was snatched from her. The boys had been in bed fast asleep, and Jack had done the supper dishes while Cally had a shower and changed into her night things. Then Jack had come in with a mug of cocoa for her and that was when Noah had woken up screaming. They’d both rushed upstairs. That he’d woken with a nightmare had been Cally’s first thought, but when they got there they could see he was running a temperature. He didn’t go limp in Jack’s arms when he picked him up, but remained rigid, holding his hands to his head. And then he’d been monumentally sick. Cally had checked for a rash but in the low light of the bedroom she couldn’t be sure if it was a rash she was seeing or the pressure of the fabric of Noah’s pyjamas on his skin. So she’d called her mother on her mobile to come and sit with Riley, while Jack used the landline to ring for an ambulance. In the early hours of the morning, with Noah’s temperature back down and in his own bed again, Cally realised that, for the time she’d been dealing with what could have been a serious emergency, she’d completely forgotten about her own health worries. And now, she wanted to deal with it in her own time, in her own way. It was her lump after all.

  ‘Please, Daddy?’ Noah persisted, dragging Cally’s mind back to the present. ‘You said. I’ll help look after it.’

  Cally thought, after the rush to hospital, that she would willingly give him anything he asked for. Jack too. But that was a subject Cally and Jack didn’t agree on one hundred per cent; that a pet would be good for the boys. Cally thought it was a natural way to teach them responsibility, and gentleness, instead of the rough and tumble that was their normal life, but Jack didn’t agree. He saw pets as tying, and she had to agree that a pet would have given them an extra problem to deal with before they could come away to the seaside.

  ‘And me!’ Three-year-old Riley always wanted whatever it was his older brother had. Once, he’d had a meltdown because Noah needed medicine for a stomach upset while Riley had nothing wrong with him. It had taken ages to quieten him down.

  ‘No. Sorry,’ Jack said. ‘Not a cat. I’m allergic to them, I’m afraid.’

  Desperate not to risk a meltdown from Riley over having a pet cat – or not in this case – Cally came up with an idea.

  ‘Shall we go down to the beach? Now? We can come back and make toast in the chalet afterwards.’

  ‘Yes!’ the boys said in unison.

  ‘We’ll go along to the little tea station and buy buckets and spades. And maybe some flags for the tops of sandcastles if they have them…’

  Cally’s voice trailed away. She remembered, as a child, that when her Aunt Frances took her on holiday with her cousins, they always bought a new bucket and spade each season and had sandcastle-building competitions, and always there would be flags on the top as well as shells and bird feathers. If worst came to worst with the lump Cally had found, she’d be making memories for her boys on this holiday, wouldn’t she? Once they started school proper she wouldn’t be able to take them out of school for holidays. A lump caught in her throat at the thought she might die before they even started school proper at five years old.

  ‘You okay?’ Jack asked. He put an arm around her shoulder but didn’t pull her close as he usually did. Cally felt herself still under his touch and hated herself for it. But how could she tell Jack about the lump she’d found? Now? Right at this minute? She couldn’t. She’d just promised the boys a trip to the beach, hadn’t she?

  To make amends for the chill she knew she was conveying to Jack, she reached up and touched his hand.

  ‘I’m fine. Why?’

  ‘Well, I’ve noticed you’ve begun to say something and then you stop. You did it more
than a few times at home for a few weeks before we came away. I was going to ask you about it, but then Noah gave us that little panic.’

  ‘He did, didn’t he? All well again now.’

  And I want to be able to say those words about myself soon – all well again. In the middle of the night when Cally woke, her mind racing with thoughts for the future, for all their futures, those were the words she wanted to believe most. Wee-small-hours thinking was so bad for the soul, she knew that, but she couldn’t stop herself.

  ‘But are you?’ Jack asked. ‘Well, I mean.’

  He drew Cally to him then and she so wanted to say that no, she wasn’t well, she’d found a lump and she was too, too scared of what it might mean; she might have cancer, she might have to go through horrid treatments, and she might still die at the end of it. But there were two little boys waiting for her to fulfil a promise she’d just made.

  ‘I’ve said. I’m fine, Jack.’ She couldn’t bring herself to say ‘Honest’.

  ‘I hope so,’ Jack said. ‘We’ll talk about it later, eh? Only I’m worried. It’s like you forget what it is you’re going to say sometimes.’

  ‘Do I? I…’

  ‘There you go,’ Jack said. ‘You’re doing it again.’

  ‘Just tired,’ Cally said. ‘It’s been manic at the salon. So many went sick with that norovirus. We were lucky to miss it. I did double shifts, remember?’

  Cally loved her work as a hairdresser. She loved cutting best of all. ‘Anyone can gild a lily,’ was what Hannah, her tutor, had told her, ‘but a lily is beautiful without the gilding. You have to have a solid foundation to work on and a good cut is paramount.’ So many clients asked for her now that she rarely did colours or perms these days.