‘Right.’ I feel a little flutter at the idea that he was nervous too, and I don’t tell him that I’ve been ready for ages and I sat in the hotel room watching the clock until I could justify leaving without being ridiculously early.
He shifts from one foot to the other again, and I get the feeling he’s trying to work out how we should greet each other, which is exactly what I’m doing too. A handshake is too formal, a hug is not formal enough, and would a kiss on the cheek be too weird even if I wasn’t so short that I doubt I could reach his cheek without a struggle anyway?
We both decide on something at the exact same moment, except he goes for a cheek kiss and I go for a hug and I end up headbutting him in the chest.
He steps back with a nervous chuckle. ‘Sorry, I’m too tall for my own good.’
I smile up at him for trying to take the blame, even though it was my fault for being so nervous of making a wrong move.
‘Well, there are sparrows taller than me.’ I nod to one of the little brown birds chirruping from the hedgerow.
‘Aw, you’re the perfect height.’
‘Yeah, for a footstool.’
He laughs and then looks guilty. ‘I feel like I should apologise for laughing at that but I don’t know how to without digging myself in deeper. I’m laughing because you’re funny, not because it’s true, and now I’m laughing even more because of how awkward I’ve made this situation, and I think this whole conversation would’ve gone a lot better if I’d just kept my mouth shut.’
I giggle again because he’s so adorably awkward and tongue-tied, and it makes me feel better that he might be even half as nervous as I am.
‘Oh, and look.’ He holds his hands out to me, turning them over and back, showing them off like someone doing an advert for hand cream.
I slip my fingers around his and hold one of his hands up to the light, pretending to examine it. What I’m really concentrating on is how warm his rough skin is, how long his slim fingers are, and how right it feels when they curl around mine and my thumb rubs against his so softly.
I have to swallow a couple of times to get my words out. ‘Impressive hand-washing skills.’
He lets out another laugh. ‘You’d think that most men want to be told that they look good, or they smell nice, or they’re good in bed, but what every guy really wants a woman to notice about him is that he’s good at washing his hands.’
It makes me laugh too and I force myself to let go of his perfectly clean hand, which admittedly is the subject of seriously impressive hand-washing skills. After this afternoon, I doubted his hands would ever look clean again.
Inside, we find a perfect little country pub, with mahogany tables and chairs, old red-brick walls, and stained-glass lampshades hanging from exposed beams in the ceiling.
‘What can I get you?’ Nathan asks as we walk up to the bar.
‘Just a beer, please.’
‘Same.’ He nods, and while he stands there reading the food menu above the bar, I’m standing a little bit behind him and I can’t resist a quick perv. His jeans fit like a glove, framing a perfectly pert bum; the shirt makes his waist look slim and his shoulders broad; and his hair is different to how it was on the beach earlier. This afternoon, it was windblown and unstyled, but tonight, it’s softly spiked at the front and he’s used some kind of texturising, touchable wax, which is having absolutely the desired effect.
‘Have you eaten?’ He turns around and catches me mid-stare. ‘Do you want something? I keep hearing about the fish and chips here …’
‘Well, I’m a vegetarian so I don’t eat fish …’
‘Oh my God, me too!’ He looks at me in surprise.
‘I did not know that, what completely brand-new information,’ I say a bit too squeakily, one step away from a complete Friends re-enactment of Phoebe and Joey when Ross tells them about Rachel’s pregnancy. I can’t tell him that Daphne and I have already discovered that from his phone.
‘Aw, that’s amazing. Most people in my life just think I’m being a fussy weirdo when I say that.’ He edges nearer to me until my shoulder touches his arm. ‘Do you want to share some chips or something? I was too nervous … er, busy … to eat, so I’m famished.’
‘I’d love to,’ I say, because I haven’t had anything since the ice cream earlier. No way could I fit anything in my stomach with all the butterflies fluttering around in there.
His smile doesn’t seem like it could get any wider but he somehow manages it, and seeing those dimples so close makes my knees feel weak. ‘Do you want to grab a table while I order?’
To be honest, I’m quite happy just standing here with his arm touching mine, but I spot an empty table tucked into a corner and I get the feeling it’s exactly the one he’d go for, slightly away from the other tables and with just enough space for the two of us. I nudge my bare arm against his forearm, feeling the rough smattering of fine dark hair against my skin, and point to where I’m going, before I leave him standing at the bar and make a beeline for it, surprised when people sitting at other tables smile and say hello as I pass them. In what kind of non-London world do you greet other diners in pubs?
I slide onto the red cushion covering the wooden bench that curves around the corner table and look around. I want to look at Nathan again but he keeps looking over at me with a smile and being caught ogling his bum once is enough for one evening.
There are wooden anchors and fishing nets displayed across the wall, framed photos of unknown fishermen holding large fish aloft, and shelves displaying giant seashells – the kind that you’d need both hands to hold, and I wonder if they were found on Pearlholme beach and what kind of gigantic mutant mollusks live here if that’s the case. Is the carousel being installed for human or crustacean use?
Despite being determined not to look at Nathan, I can’t take my eyes off him as he gets two bottles of beer from the bar and makes his way across the pub, only taking his eyes off mine to greet people who say hello to him as he passes.
‘People are so friendly here.’ He slides onto the bench on the opposite side of the table and hands me one of the beer bottles. ‘Chips will be over when they’re done. Cheers.’ He taps the neck of his bottle against mine.
‘When was the last time you walked into a pub and people greeted you?’ I ask to get my mind off the way his smile makes every inch of his face brighten.
‘I wouldn’t know, I don’t go out much.’ His eyes flick to mine. ‘And there I go making myself sound all lively and exciting again. I mean that I go out every night raving and getting completely rat-arsed, obviously.’
I grin because he seems exciting to me exactly as he is. ‘So rat-arsed that you don’t even remember doing it?’
‘Exactly.’ He laughs and when his eyes meet mine this time, they’re twinkling in the warm light of the pub. I’ve never thought that brown eyes could be twinkly before – when you think of twinkly eyes you generally think of blue ones – but his seem to reflect the lights around us and the smile on his face. ‘I think I’m showing my age by talking about raves anyway. Do they still exist anymore?’
‘I wouldn’t know, I don’t go out much either. Only when my best friend stops accepting my excuses and drags me from the flat by my ear, but she’s been pregnant for the past few months so I’ve been enjoying the reprieve.’
‘What a pair we make.’ He looks over his shoulder at the pub behind him. ‘We fit right in here. You know how they usually ID you in pubs to make sure you’re over eighteen?’
I nod and he leans forward and whispers. ‘Do you think in this one they get ID’d to make sure they’re over seventy?’
I let out a laugh so loud that several of the aforementioned pensioners turn to look at us.
‘Careful, we’re yobs disturbing the peace. I keep expecting a policeman to appear behind us and say they don’t want our sort of “yoof” around here.’
‘It’s your fault for making me laugh,’ I say, eternally grateful that I hadn’t just had a sip o
f beer because it would’ve ended up all over the table.
‘All right, Nath? How’s the carousel coming along?’ one of the elderly men at a nearby table calls over to him.
‘It’s great, thanks, Frank. How’s that bunion doing today?’
This time I do choke on a sip of beer because I’m trying so hard to contain another laugh. I’m pretty sure the first rule of The Sun & Sand would be not to laugh at the mention of ailments.
‘It’s marvellous. My daughter ordered a fancy foam plaster online for me and that’s helped. What an attentive young man you are,’ Frank says, before turning to me and raising his glass. ‘You’ve got a good one there, lass.’
I fear that trying to reply may result in a burst of laughter that I’ll never recover from, so I just smile and nod along.
Nathan waves to a couple of other people sat at tables around the room before turning back to me.
‘Well, if talking about bunions across the pub doesn’t endear you to the locals then nothing will.’
‘Ah, he was nosing round the carousel yesterday. Started telling me about his latest doctor’s visit. I thought they put up that security fence to keep me and my carousel bits in, but I’m starting to wonder if it was actually to keep chatty pensioners out.’
‘You must be doing something right if they’re shortening your name already.’
‘I think they’ve mistaken me for one of their own,’ he whispers. ‘Either that or Frank has pimped me out as a cure for insomnia.’
He’s cheery on the surface, but it feels like there’s something much deeper behind his diffident sense of humour.
‘Nice to see our two tourists found each other.’ The woman who gave me directions to The Shell Hotel earlier comes over and plonks a massive bowl of steaming hot chips on the table between us.
‘I’m sure we’re not your only two tourists.’ Nathan looks up and gives her a dashing smile that makes me glad I’m sitting down even though it wasn’t directed at me.
‘Of course not, the cottage lets are full and there’s a few people at the hotel – you two just seemed like you should find each other.’
How could she possibly know that? I only said a couple of sentences to her and none of them involved him or the carousel.
‘Did you find your way to the hotel all right?’ she asks me.
‘Yes, thanks.’ Surely she would’ve noticed me walking in circles around the village if I hadn’t?
‘And I’m pleased to see you found your way out of it too,’ she says. ‘Rumour has it that some people haven’t been so lucky.’
Nathan snorts and I look at her in horror. ‘Seriously?’
She keeps a straight face for a disconcerting amount of time before she lets out a peal of laughter. ‘I’m pulling your leg, of course. But that S isn’t wonky for no reason …’
‘The Hell Hotel?’ Nathan says.
‘That’s what we call it round here.’ She pats the table and goes to walk away. ‘Enjoy your chips. Don’t forget, they’re much better than the ones you’ll get on the promenade!’
‘We’re going to have to test that theory.’ Nathan turns back to me when she leaves, and I nod probably a bit too enthusiastically at the idea that he means we’ll have to test it together.
‘Is the hotel as bad as everyone says?’ He takes a chip and nudges the bowl nearer to me.
I shrug. ‘I only checked in this afternoon, I haven’t spent enough time there to judge it. But it’s a bit … dark and overgrown, and the inside looks like it could do with a good clean and a few lightbulbs changing, and the room is tiny and the bathroom’s down the hall and had someone else’s pubic hair in the shower tray.’
‘Oh no!’ Nathan looks like it’s his turn to stifle a giggle. ‘I don’t mean to laugh, but …’
‘If you can’t laugh about someone else’s pubic hair, what can you laugh about?’ I say, laughing as he lets out a guffaw. Somehow, laughing about it with him makes it all worthwhile. Even the pubic hair.
‘In all fairness, the guy on reception looked about a hundred. I doubt he could make it up the stairs to the bathroom, let alone clean it.’
‘Come up to the cottage anytime. Seriously. I’ve never described a building as cute before, but the cottage embodies cuteness, and the bathroom’s spotless. You’re welcome anytime you want.’
‘Thank you.’ I take a chip and shove it in my mouth to avoid having to come up with an excuse, no matter how much I want to jump at the chance. Of course, the chip is approximately the temperature of lava, and I then have to style it out and breezily answer him with a burning mouthful of boiling potato. ‘To be honest, it could be a cow shed and it would still be better than my flat in London.’
‘It does look like it might’ve actually once been a cow shed.’
‘I’ll let you know if I hear mooing in the night. I didn’t fancy exploring much but it did look like there were a few corners that hadn’t been disturbed this side of the Seventies. There could still be cows roaming around in there.’ I think about it for a moment. ‘Although, in all fairness, if the cows are still in there, it does smell like they probably died in the Eighties at the latest.’
‘Maybe they’ve been dead since the Eighties and they’re still roaming around in there.’ His whole face lights up. ‘Zombie cows!’
I start laughing again because he seems like the only person in the world who could make zombie cows seem like a completely normal topic of conversation and something to get excited about. Daphne would kill me if she could overhear this.
‘Still better than London?’
I take another chip and blow on it this time. ‘I’ve only been here a few hours and I can already tell that Pearlholme has a way of making everything seem better.’
‘Even their chips,’ he says, holding one up. ‘It makes me realise how much I hate London. Some people can live there and thrive, but I am not one of them. I would be so happy to live somewhere like this.’
‘Couldn’t you? You move around for jobs anyway.’
‘The workshop’s in London. I travel to jobs quite often, but so much of our work comes through there first. I often assess things from there before I go to them; all of our tools are there, spare parts, lists of suppliers, colleagues to consult for their expertise. It’s a good thing not to be too far away from that base.’
‘Your job is so interesting. Carousels are such an ingrained part of our history but I’ve never met anyone who restores them before. How did you get into that in the first place?’
‘I ran away to join the circus.’
I snort a laugh but he doesn’t. ‘Oh wow, you’re serious?’ He nods and I continue. ‘Sorry, I thought that was just a saying, like an old wives’ tale or something. I didn’t realise people actually do that.’
‘When your family’s like mine, the circus is tame in comparison.’ He shakes himself. ‘Yeah, when I was seventeen, the circus was in town over the summer and I hid out there all the time. I got to know the owner, he let me hang out behind the scenes and I made friends with the crew, and at the end of the season when they were packing up to leave, I asked what I’d have to do to join them, and I think they took pity on me and let me go with them. A winter season in Skegness, just what every young lad dreams about.’ He gives me a smile that doesn’t look like he finds anything amusing.
It makes me wonder one thing: what was he running away from?
‘I was supposed to be working on an act, but I was crap at everything. I’m not a performer and I’d just go to bits whenever I had to do something in front of people. I thought I might be onto something with the aerial hoop …’
I instantly picture the ‘Rewrite the Stars’ scene from The Greatest Showman and how impressed I am must show on my face because he lifts a hand to stop me. ‘Not based on talent, solely from a humour perspective. Let me put it this way – at seventeen, I was even more gangly than I am now. I’m not a massive fan of heights so my face was always pale with fear, and I wore a lot of black. I basi
cally looked like Jack Skellington humping an embroidery hoop.’
I close my eyes, trying not to dissolve into giggles at the mental image.
‘I realised I was rubbish at every act I tried, but I didn’t want to leave so I had to make myself useful in any way I could, from making tea to selling popcorn and manning the ticket booth, and one thing I found out I could do was fix things. There was always something or other breaking, and I ended up going to have a look whenever something broke down, from broken rides to holes in the tents to backed-up candyfloss machines. It became an unofficial apprenticeship. I didn’t have any qualifications so a proper electrician would have to follow me around and certify everything, and the circus owner eventually got in touch with a friend in London and he offered me a proper apprenticeship at his workshop, and that was eighteen years ago and he’s still my boss today.’
‘Have you been doing carousels all that time?’
‘No, I had an accident five years ago and couldn’t do my normal work. Carousels became my speciality then.’
‘What happened?’ I ask, feeling irrationally worried at the thought of him being hurt.
‘I fell off a Ferris wheel and wrecked my shoulder. Here, feel.’ He takes my hand and pulls it across the table, pulling the collar of his shirt away from his neck as his fingers take mine under the shirt and press them against the skin of his collarbone. ‘Feel that dent in the bone?’
I nod, my fingertips rubbing the warm skin of his shoulder, feeling a big indentation under my touch.
‘One of the many places I chipped the bone. Snapped my shoulder joint clean in half, shattered everything else surrounding it. Totally my own fault for ignoring safety regulations. We’re not supposed to repair things like that without full scaffolding, and the scaffolding guy hadn’t turned up for the third day in a row, and my colleague had called in sick, and I couldn’t do anything else without the top part being fixed, and I thought I could just put up a ladder and do it myself, and … well, I couldn’t.’
The Little Vintage Carousel by the Sea Page 9
