From a Distance

by Raffaella Barker

Remembering the instructions he had been given, he turned inland. The small market town of Blythe was charming. Lying beneath a great blue sky were higgledy-piggledy houses in flint, or whitewash, the faded blue of painted doors contrasting with soft red brick across which wisteria tumbled. Kit’s heart leapt. A sunny afternoon, people sauntering along the pavement enjoying the spring warmth, a lazy pace and a rhythm that suggested all was well and would continue to be so. He had arrived. What he wanted more than anything at this precise moment was a piece of cake.

  ‘Afternoon, Mr Delaware, glad to meet you.’

  Kit had not thought what the Norfolk solicitor might look like, but if he had, he would have imagined him just as he was. Grave, avuncular, Kit’s age, with a firm handshake and a signet ring on his left hand.

  ‘Yes. Thank you. Indeed,’ Kit heard himself sounding stiff and frosty. He made an effort to unbend. ‘Fantastic day, isn’t it? Have you been following the cricket? Looks like it’ll be a long evening. Hope the weather’s like this at The Oval.’

  Charles Rivett’s smile was brief. ‘Not my bag I’m afraid,’ he said.

  The room was hung with the usual prints and discreet landscapes Kit would have expected in a solicitor’s office, but smelled surprisingly fragrant. Rivett noticed him looking around, almost sniffing the air, and nodded towards a table by the window. A bowl of flowers swanned above a fan of magazines and a large crystal ashtray. ‘My wife brought that lot in. Stuns me that they can give off such a scent.’

  Kit stared at the flowers. ‘Incredible,’ he agreed. ‘Did she grow them?’

  ‘She certainly did.’ Charles Rivett suddenly looked boyishly proud. He spun his pen on his middle finger. ‘She’s always digging something up or planting something else. You know how it is. Tea?’

  Kit wondered how it was that he had so utterly failed to have a wife to bring flowers to the office. ‘No tea, thanks, I’ve been sitting in a cafe since I arrived.’ He smiled wryly, ‘I’m used to Cornish cream tea, but I have to say, Blythe’s coffee cake takes some beating.’

  ‘True,’ Rivett’s smile was perfunctory, there was no escaping the business in hand. Kit’s heart began to thump. It wasn’t a big deal, but suddenly it felt like one.

  ‘Let’s get down to it, Mr Delaware. I have your deeds here, the Kings Sloley Lighthouse is yours now, with vacant possession. Have you seen it yet?’ Rivett pushed the paperwork across the desk.

  Kit was conscious of a great unwillingness in himself to pick it up.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m ambivalent about it, to be perfectly honest. As you know, I’d never heard of it at all before my mother’s death, so it’s all pretty confusing. She never talked about it.’ He pinched the bridge of his nose. Rivett looked at him in silence. ‘What can you tell me?’ His gaze met the lawyer’s straight on.

  Rivett stacked the papers in front of him. ‘Not much,’ he said. ‘There has never been much to do on this one. It was a straightforward trust, set up by your mother for you. I didn’t meet Mrs Delaware, her dealings were with a previous senior partner.’

  Kit stared at the desk between them. ‘Do you know the tenants? Are they – were they – lighthouse officers?’ A prickle of embarrassment smarted in Kit’s chest. ‘I suppose what I mean is, is it still in use?’ He had no clue about how lighthouses worked, and he was at a distinct disadvantage, unsure how much Rivett knew, and painfully aware how few facts he had himself.

  ‘No, it was decommissioned years ago. The tenant, old Jim Fisher, was a bit of a smallholder, he bred rabbits, made hutches and sold them, that sort of thing. He went into a home so his family have been sorting it out.’

  Sunlight shot through the dust motes around Charles Rivett. Kit had a sense of floating above the lawyer’s polished desk, as if he were receding backwards in his life. His mother reading him Peter Pan in his bedroom the summer he was eight and had measles. He had been terrified by the thought that Peter Pan’s shadow was rolled up in a drawer, forgotten. An essential part of him removed. Kit blinked himself back to the present. He couldn’t shake off the notion that he was folded up in a drawer somewhere else.

  Rivett rolled a pen between his fingers. ‘It’s entirely up to you what you do next. You could sell, and no one would ever be any the wiser. I don’t know what you’d get for something like that, but it could be reasonable. You could let the place again, or you could make something of it. You could even turn it into a boutique hotel, if you wanted. It’s quirky and it’s yours to do what you want with.’ The lawyer shrugged, and Kit glimpsed a shadow of a smile. ‘Or you could move in and live there.’

  Kit was surprised to find himself saying, ‘Yes, I think I’m going to do that. At least for a short while.’

  Charles Rivett led the way out into the hall. The cool air quenched Kit’s impetuous mood, and the scent of beeswax lingered on the staircase, reminding him of home.

  The lawyer searched in the cupboard briefly, then shrugged. ‘Now, I thought we had the keys, but there was some mess up with the cleaning team at the Lighthouse, so if you’d like to drop by in the morning, Marion, on reception, will give you them.’

  Still adjusting to his own statement, Kit answered, ‘Don’t worry, tomorrow’s fine. I could do with an early night before I tackle the unknown.’

  They were by the door now. The street was still dotted with shoppers, though Kit thought it must be after five. As if in response to his thought, Charles Rivett looked at his watch. ‘It will be done by now, but I know the Fishers had to get some sort of specialist team in to sort the electrics. Decent of them, they had a hell of a time getting stuff out, so I think you may find a bit of furniture comes with the property.’

  Kit’s head swam. He had a strong desire to locate the Lighthouse and then drive as fast as he could in the opposite direction. ‘You know my business is called Lighthouse Fabric, don’t you? My mother named it.’

  ‘I did notice that, I must say. What d’you make of it?’

  Kit shrugged, ‘Nothing. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll get to grips with it after I’ve been there.’

  The lawyer nodded. ‘Hmm. I’d like to take you there myself, but unfortunately I have a meeting in the morning. D’you know the way to Kings Sloley? If you time your visit right, you’ll get a decent pint in the pub and not a bad lunch. I won’t give you directions to the Lighthouse. I’ll just say it’s striped. Red and white.’ He smiled and was gone.

  Chapter 4

  Luisa was in a rush. She’d left Mae in charge of Maddie, and the mother hen instinct was telling her she needed to get back to the pair of them. She had two vital errands: a recipe to give to the chef at Melodies, the restaurant down the road, and posting a parcel to Ellie. Luisa, queuing in the post office with the package for her daughter, found herself standing in a furtive manner. She didn’t really want to be seen. Honestly, she felt as if she was sending drugs. Why should she feel like a criminal for sending her own daughter a small token? What was wrong with giving her a very useful, possibly lifesaving wristband from a very practical, sensible Natural Travel Guide website? Yes, it had been quite expensive, but that was because it actually stopped you being attractive to mosquitoes by releasing B vitamins in through your pulse points. Defiant and braced for disapproval, Luisa looked at the wall. If she wanted to save Ellie from malaria, why shouldn’t she? And if she was sending a parcel anyway, she might as well put in some sun lotion and the pretty shawl she found in the market, perfect for Ellie to wrap round her shoulders if the sun got too fierce. She hadn’t said she was going to the post office, just vaguely mentioned an errand. Mae didn’t need to know she was sending things to Ellie, she would only roll her eyes.

  ‘You’ve got to let her get on with being away without you,’ Mae had commanded, thwarting Luisa’s supposedly casual attempts to Skype Ellie last night. ‘You know where she is, you know she’s having a good time. Leave her alone, Mum.’

  ‘Can I help you?’ The post office man coughed at her.

  ‘Yes.’ Luisa tilted he
r chin.

  ‘Well?’ he enquired.

  She looked round. No one she knew was in the post office, no one would know. ‘To send this to India. As fast as possible.’ She pushed the package through the window, triumphant. She had managed to administer a small dose of mothering to her eldest child, harming no one and indulging her own desire. Once she had paid for the parcel she rushed out.

  Hurrying towards the cafe, Luisa deliberately avoided the looming figure of Cathy Bryer, mother of the Baked Alaska client, beckoning from across the street. There wasn’t time to stop, she had to hand in her recipe to the chef at Melodies, and she had hoped to have time to talk to him about violet ice cream, and the blackcurrant leaf sorbet. The antique flavours were shaping up well, they could become a speciality. She dived across the road in the wake of a big car moving like a blue whale down the High Street, and was thus able to avoid Cathy altogether. It was best not to be caught by her, she had left three messages over the last twenty-four hours asking for Luisa’s recipe for gazpacho. There wasn’t time today, and anyway, she didn’t want to hand out her recipes. Just because she was making a pudding for her didn’t entitle Cathy Bryer to her whole recipe collection. People must come to her to make food. Or they could go to Melodies, or the cafe where she had ice creams. This was how the professionals worked, and she was a professional, born and bred.

  Mae and Maddie had chosen a table on the pavement. Luisa threaded her way towards them, surprised that such a throng of people could be squeezed between the brick walls and the tarmac of the road. Fifteen or so metal tables, painted fondant colours, blue, yellow, lavender and pink, all busy. Tea was good business. She had begun experimenting with her own Lapsang-Souchong-flavoured ice cream, keen to have something in reserve, should she ever manage to start an enterprise like this herself. A couple leaned together, spooning sorbet out of a tall glass. That was what ice cream could do! It could make magic, create a frisson, act as a conduit for love, lust even. It wasn’t just cones and 99s to bribe children into silence, it was sexy, grown up, erotic. Luisa flourished her phone and took a picture of the tables around her. She would ask Dora for her thoughts on ice cream’s eroticism. This cafe had a reputation for cream teas, but today there was hardly a scone in sight. Even Maddie, usually a pushover for a cup cake, had chosen a colourful ice-cream sundae. Luisa slid onto the bench next to her and kissed her head.

  ‘Hello, Miss Chief,’ she said.

  Maddie’s answering smile was missing a tooth. ‘You’ve had the tooth fairy!’ Luisa exclaimed, but Maddie shook her head.

  ‘No. It came out today. I’ve got it in a apple.’

  ‘An apple,’ corrected Mae gently, and leaned forward to show her mother. ‘Look, Mum. Maddie kept it in the apple she was eating when it came out, don’t you think that’s clever?’

  Luisa scrutinised the half-eaten apple, its bitten flesh tinged brown, a small, bloody tooth lying in a dented pit near the stalk.

  ‘Brilliant,’ she said, beaming.

  ‘I thought of it myself,’ said Maddie with pride, ‘so I don’t lose it.’

  Luisa loved the familiarity of almost daily life with Dora and Maddie. The visits and sleepovers, the ebb and flow of close family life, was natural to her. Ellie was away, and less than three children in the house meant it felt under-inhabited. Maddie was a last tie to a kitchen full of young children. Maddie’s ice cream was almost finished. ‘Look, Auntie Lou, I saved the sprinkles on my spoon to show you. They’re yellow,’ she said, bouncing on her chair with delight.

  Luisa caught the spoon and looked. ‘Good idea,’ she commented, ‘I did one with saffron and honeycomb once—’

  Mae laughed. ‘Mum, stop it. You can’t stare at stuff like that, it’s embarrassing. You would never let us—’

  Luisa dropped the spoon, rubbing a fleck of gloop from her dress. ‘Sorry, sorry, I just want to have a look at the recipe.’ She reached past her daughter for the menu card, ‘I was thinking a bit of white chocolate mousse would fold into that—’

  Mae nudged her. ‘Mum,’ she hissed, ‘shhh! The waitress is coming. It’s like espionage. We’re doing the Cold War in History. If this was East Berlin, you could get into lots of trouble for spying, you know, locked up.’

  ‘That’s slightly over the top, darling but—’

  ‘What can I get you?’

  A quick skim of the menu had shown nothing that demanded urgent consumption. ‘A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips’, Luisa could hear Dora’s mantra. She would have ignored it, for research purposes obviously, but she had already eaten a lot of Baked Alaska.

  She ordered a pot of tea then called the waitress back. ‘Actually, make that a pot for two,’ she said, waving across the cafe as Dora arrived.

  ‘Hi everyone, sorry I’m late, I’ve been. I’ve been . . .’ Dora shouted, then recollected herself as she caught sight of her daughter. ‘I’ve been . . . I’ve been here and there and everywhere this afternoon!’

  She flumped down onto a chair with a sigh. ‘What a treat to sit in the sun,’ she said, casting her eyes around the tables.

  ‘So?’ Luisa raised an eyebrow in Dora’s direction. She was basking in the success of her mission to the post office and this unexpectedly pleasant afternoon in the cafe with the children chatting, Mae not sulking and life being sweet. Sunlight seeped in and out of Dora. Copper hair, freckles and the fine hairs on her her arms were all golden. She was voluptuous, creamy, sensuous. Even if she hadn’t been having sex with whom-ever-he-was from where-ever-it-was, she looked as though she had. The man who had been licking sorbet off his spoon with his girlfriend had turned round to look a her. A car tooted, a cat call swooped from the wound-down window as it zoomed by. A shadow crossed the sun and Luisa shivered. Sometimes, without it ever being acknowledged, even by herself, she had the sense that she had passed to the other side, the frumpy, invisible side of life.

  Dora twirled Maddie’s bunches and kissed her daughter. ‘Hello, Miss Chief, how was your day? Your hair looks great like that, Mads. Did Miss Kemp do it for PE? Did you and Mae get the torch batteries?’

  Maddie wriggled out of the embrace and stretched out her hand with the apple on it as if she was feeding a pony. ‘Look, Mumma, my tooth!’

  Dora gazed at the apple approvingly. ‘Very inventive,’ she said.

  ‘Torch batteries? I knew there was something. Sorry, Dora.’ Mae stood, and Dora rose next to her to let Maddie out of her seat. When did she get so tall? She’d shot up past Dora by an inch now. Luisa hadn’t noticed it before. Maybe it had just happened, a sudden burst like a spring flower and there she was, no longer a child.

  ‘We forgot. We went to buy sweets instead.’ Mae held out a hand to Maddie and she smiled at her little cousin. ‘Come on, Mads, we’ll go and get a treat for Grayson from the pet shop too, he’s been herding sheep all day, hasn’t he?’

  Luisa and Dora sat among the teacups. Luisa poured. ‘When’s Benji collecting her? Is Maddie excited about going camping?’

  ‘Tomorrow for two nights, she’s so excited. Benji’s really got it right at last. We’ve been packing for weeks,’ said Dora.

  Luisa laughed, ‘She’s only seven, it’s so little to be off for two nights.’

  Dora shook her head. ‘Oh no. It’s fine, and Benji needs to do this sort of thing with her, otherwise he’ll miss out completely. You’re just such an Italian, Mumma Lou, you’d have them all at home all their lives if you had your way. Sometimes I really need a night off, you know. How else can I ever meet anyone?’

  ‘Dora! What about today?’ Luisa nudged her. ‘Come on, let’s hear it. Was he nice? At all sexy? You have to tell me, it’s all about vicarious experience for me.’

  Dora made a face, twisting a curl into her hair. ‘Frankly, you’re not missing much. He was a disaster. I knew it the second I saw him standing by his car.’

  ‘How?’

  Dora pulled out a cigarette.

  ‘Here, have a light.’ An arm had shot past Luisa and
a man, walking past with his dog, was holding a flame steady for Dora. Dora swooped over the flame, shimmering, almost luminous. It would be worth smoking again to have that effect on people.

  Dora fanned the smoke away from Luisa. ‘It didn’t help that he was cross. And late. He was furious. Said his journey was hell. You know, a real moaner. He stopped and had an argument at a farm, he said. Such awful manners, I said. Anyway, that wouldn’t have mattered except he was a giant.’

  ‘A giant?’

  Dora nodded, scooping up a drip of Maddie’s ice cream. ‘Mmm, that’s so good. I almost prefer it liquid. You know, not cold. Yes, huge! From Giant Land. Not a normal tall person.’

  Luisa was laughing. ‘How tall is a giant?’

  Dora waved her hands to encompass the sky. ‘Nine feet tall – well near enough – and he tucked his shirt into his trousers under his armpits.’

  ‘That’s quite weird, I agree, it’s funny with first impressions, I—’

  ‘First impressions?’ Dora was indignant. ‘It was more than an impression. He was definitely huge and definitely in a towering rage. He got even crosser when I said I had to pick up Maddie at three o’clock. He drove off! Left me at the table and went back to Newcastle in a huff. Can you imagine?’ She puffed a smoke ring and sat back.

  Luisa suddenly felt very old. A stressful date with an extra-tall stranger was so much less interesting than a recipe for white chocolate mousse ice cream, or an evening with Maddie coming to sleep over.

  Dora squinted at her. ‘Mae’s looking cute,’ she said. ‘Wonder if she’s got a boyfriend yet?’

  ‘She’s only fifteen,’ Luisa protested. ‘She’s too young.’

  Dora snorted. ‘God Lou, you’re prehistoric, can’t you remember being that age? She’s a hot bed of hormones, she needs to fall in love, she must be in love. I was in love with about five people at once when I was fifteen, and the interest coming back my way was precisely zero, except for some pervert who followed me to the hairdresser’s once and accosted me on the doorstep of Hair to Impress in King’s Lynn and said he’d been watching me.’