A Bake Off in Cornwall

by Laura Briggs

  "I don't have any," I said.

  "You can't ride your motorbike in that getup," Mum argued. "Kitty, come back here!"

  "I'm riding with a friend," I said. "Tatty-bye."

  At the end of the lane, a decent piece from home, I waited for Nathan to meet me — there was no possibility I would let him collect me from Mum's house. I saw the little car whose lock I picked slowing down as its driver spotted me.

  Nathan emerged from the driver seat when it stopped, and the look on his face made me blush despite my best try. "Hi," he managed, after a moment. "I .. um ... wasn't sure I had the right place ..."

  "Sorry I'm late." I opened the passenger door and climbed inside. "Thanks for the ride."

  "No problem." He'd recovered himself, at any rate. "Is this your house?" he asked, glancing at the nearest cottage — one a bit better off than Mum's, with the garden properly tended in front.

  "No," I said. "Let's go." I motioned for him to go on — there was a distinct chance that Saul might be by at any second and see us. I didn't want questions about who the 'posh boy' was who gave me a lift.

  "Right." He shifted into gear and began driving again. He glanced over at me. "That's ... quite a dress," he said. "It's pretty, I mean. You look nice." The skin of his face had turned a bit pink. I could see it from his profile, even. "Not that you don't usually look nice. This is just different for you."

  "Not exactly my usual style, I know. Try not to laugh, all right?" I said, wryly. "Let's not make a fuss about it." I felt self-conscious as I adjusted the skirt a bit. Sitting down, it was even more snug against my knees.

  "I'll try not to," Nathan said. "Promise." He was still kidding, but in a nice way. Nicer than when we were building the biscuit knights, even. I felt a bit less weird about it when he sneaked glances a couple more times — I didn't think it was because the dress looked a mess, although this made me feel weird in a different way.

  "What play is it?" I asked. "The show we're seeing."

  "The Tempest," he said. "Are you a Shakespeare fan, by chance?"

  "Only seen it once. When I was at school," I said. It had only been a drama club play of sorts, and I hadn't been a student of good standing who was allowed to participate. That wasn't a tale I wanted to share here and now, however.

  It wasn't the most uncomfortable car trip I've ever been part of. It was a bit quiet at the start, but it gradually became less so, when we had both grown tired of silence. It was safe enough to talk about the baking contest, and the summer diary of Cliffs House's events. And it was a stroke of fortune that Nathan had never driven these roads before, and needed my knowledge of the roads from Land's End and Penzance to find his way there.

  Minack Theatre was nothing more than a postcard in the Land's End shop where I worked, a pile of stone above the sea, one that looked a bit like some old Greek ruins. But Julianne would say that everything changes when you see it in person, and it was the same for me when I took the stone steps that wound down to the amphitheatre's seats.

  I'd never had a funny moment where I felt breathless, but I did for just a second, looking at the blue water flecked with white foam, like a big piece of silk rippling over a tabletop the size of the world. There were little strips of green between all the stone levels of the theatre, and sprays of something blooming with little pink flowers cropped up along the path below, leading to the stage and background of false ruins.

  "Are you okay?" said Nathan. He looked a little bit concerned that I was so motionless all of a sudden on the topmost step.

  "Me? I'm fine," I said. I followed him down, where the people he was supposed to meet were waiting in the front row. He started to put his hand on my arm when I caught up with him, but hesitated at the last second. I managed not to break into a little smile, imagining he'd make some remark about my 'bite' being worse than my bark, probably. But the theatre had taken the mood for joking out of Nathan, too, maybe.

  "The theatre of the gods," he said, softly. We were at the bottom now, looking up at the rows of seats carved from stone, which looked fitting enough for Greek gods to occupy.

  "Pick one," said Nathan. "I'm just going to talk to them for a little while about some concert stuff." He motioned towards the two men waiting at the stage's edge. "You can come if you want, or just hang out here."

  "Which seats are we supposed to be in?"

  "Any of them," he said. "Pick one of the good ones, if you want — the ones carved for the gods and not the back benches. Just save one for me." He crossed to the stage, where the two men waiting were now shaking hands with him.

  So I picked a place in the second row, and sat watching the sky change to a pinkish shade as the day drew to a close. Some tourists were taking photos of the sea and the stage until it was almost time for the play to begin, when the big lights came on to illuminate the stage as the sun disappeared.

  The show was a local theatre company onstage — there wasn't much in the way of props or backdrops, but that was the point of playing the Minack, where the sea and the stone ruins like an old Mediterranean fortress were the real backdrop. At nighttime, the sea was a velvety darkness that washed against the far shore, where a little white light burned across the way.

  "I hope you understand Shakespeare better than I do, because I'm totally lost," Nathan whispered to me. Even the cooler temperatures of Cornwall versus the hot summers across the Pond didn't stop him from taking off his suit coat and tucking it over the seat. He didn't move his arm afterwards; I felt it brush against my shoulder as he leaned in to whisper, "Who is the guy on the left supposed to be?"

  "Sshh," I said. "You're ruining my concentration." I leaned forward, pretending to be totally engrossed in the play. Not that it wasn't a good local performance — but it was mostly because I didn't want to get quite so close all of a sudden. But he didn't move his arm from the niche between our seats, except to stretch it out along the top. I tried not to roll my eyes as I settled back in my place.

  "You're stealing part of my seat," I whispered. "The back bit's mine, too."

  "This? This is the neutral zone," he said. "It's outside the seat's technical boundaries." A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth, briefly. "Besides, I'm getting cramped sitting the other way. And aren't you too busy watching the play to notice?"

  "Touché," I muttered.

  When we rose at the end for the standing ovation, he tucked his suit coat around my shoulders; I felt its silk lining sliding around me before I was aware what he was doing.

  "It's a little cool," he said, speaking louder since the audience was cheering.

  "Thanks," I said. It was a little too warm for it, really, but I felt suddenly that I didn't want to be rude to him.

  He wasn't in a hurry to go after the cast's bows were finished — besides, we were trapped in place until the rest of the audience had filed up the stone steps to the carvings and natural boulders looking down at us from on high. Nathan sat down on the back of the first row's seat, using its 'neutral zone' as a resting spot as we gazed at the now-empty stage and let time pass.

  "Won't they kick us out?" I asked. I had seated myself next to him, since we seemed to be waiting for something. "Your friends with the theatre, whoever they are."

  "No. They said I could stay as long as I wanted," said Nathan. "So long as we can find our way out of here in the dark." As he spoke, the stage lights disappeared. There was just moonlight, but it was bright enough since the rain clouds weren't hiding it. It made the sea look different, and the chairs of stone and the leaves and flowers in the garden beds above. Like a great big spotlight that made everything seem bright, but not cold.

  "So," he said. "Did you like it? This place. Tonight."

  "Of course I did," I scoffed. "It was different for me. Sort of like...something magic." Rubbishy words, really. My cheeks turned pink, and I was glad he couldn't see them. "At least a bit like it."

  "They said it was beautiful here," he said, resting his hands on either side of the seat's flat back as he
gazed at the carved cliff around us. "You know how it is, though. Just words until they become reality."

  "Whose words are those? Your mates in Truro?" I asked, teasing him. "Ceffylgwyn's posh set that absconded from the village?"

  A sound between a grunt and a groan came from Nathan's throat. "What's with you and them?" he asked. "Would you just tell me what you have against them? Or what they have against you?"

  "They didn't tell you to stay away from me, then," I said, airily. "Guess you need better mates."

  "Why would they tell me that?" He looked me firmly in the eye at this point. "Come on, Kitty. Tell me the truth."

  I let his coat slip from my shoulders, to the back of the seat beside mine. "I was a bit wild in my past," I said. "You must've heard the stories." I didn't stay locked with his gaze for this remark.

  "Oh. Those. You mean about you stealing the motorbike," he said. "And spray-painting the primary's walls —"

  "That wasn't me," I said, quickly. "Some of the lot I followed about, maybe, but I didn't do those things." I might've stated this with a little more force than necessary, but I was still prickly after all these years whenever my name was connected to village vandalism. Gossip had grouped me in with the louts who had been cruel and destructive just for boredom's sake, which was the worst part of it all.

  "I never said you did." Nathan leaned back a little. "I'm not an idiot. I don't believe everything I'm told. Well, the motorbike I believed," he clarified. "Especially after you picked my car lock with all the prowess of Catwoman."

  "I'm not proud of it, you know," I answered. "A skill like that."

  "Like heck you're not."

  I bit my lip to stop the sudden twitch of a smile from becoming real. He was partly right. It was a mixed bag, showing off with something I wished I hadn't learned, with the 'showing off' being the part I liked about it sometimes, wrong as it was.

  "So why did you leave the village?" said Nathan. "You think most people run away because they're looking for something bigger, or more exciting. Did you decide excitement wasn't all it was cracked up to be?"

  "You've obviously never seen Land's End, or that wouldn't be the thought popping into your head," I said. "That's where I ran off to." I paused, feeling a bit of the sea breeze ruffle my dress scarf and my hair— I could feel the pins holding my style in place were starting to slip. "I guess I wanted to get away after my gran passed. She was the only part of my life back then that held me there."

  "What was she like?" he asked.

  "Gran was fantastic," I said. "She made flowers look like works of art, like something out of a painting, whenever she put them together. She could bake the best oggies of anyone, even Charlotte Jones — and she made stories out of patchwork." Bits of those quilts in my room made me think of her whenever I laid aside my things at the end of the day. Maybe that's why I was still living there.

  "But you came back," said Nathan.

  I snorted. "To look after Mum," I said. "But she didn't need me around to fuss at her until she crept off the sofa now and then, or so she said." I studied my fingers with their nails clipped short, as if it was interesting I'd left them unpainted. "She still thinks of me as trouble waiting to happen. And maybe she's right. I picked your lock the other night without a second's thought, didn't I?"

  "Maybe she would see it as a good sign," said Nathan. "You're using your powers for good now, and not evil." That made me laugh — me with powers, and not two pins that had once let me crack into any room in the primary school after hours.

  Nathan's gaze moved to the water again. "You know, leaving home wasn't easy for me," he said. "I came here in the first place because I thought this was a career opportunity I couldn't pass up, not if I wanted something bigger in the future. But now ..." he hesitated, "...now I'm not sure what I wanted, really. Bigger's not always better. When I quit the tour, I guess I was just trying to find myself outside of ladders and goals."

  "You sort of live for your job," I said. "Least that's what everyone says about you."

  "Yeah. That's the problem for me." He drew a deep breath. "Maybe I should be a more enthusiastic theatregoer," he said, after a minute or two. "Shakespeare's not exactly my thing, really. But I guess it's yours," he added, looking at me. "Julianne said you liked the theatre. You know, plays, musicals."

  "When?" I challenged. "Not when we were in her office, and you offered me the ticket."

  Now his face was shaded a little darker in the moonlight. "It was just a random remark," he said, his voice going a bit awkward all of a sudden.

  "Yeah. Must've been," I said.

  "Anyway, since you liked theatre, I thought you'd like this."

  "If people didn't know better, they would say this was a date," I said. "You and me on the town for a night — me in a posh frock like this one."

  "They would, wouldn't they?" said Nathan. "I mean, it looks exactly like it. Even the two of us just sitting here, talking."

  "Especially that part," I said. "Everyone knows we can't talk to each other." We both laughed. Nathan's grew quiet first.

  He cleared his throat. "You know, there's a chance I was working up my courage to ask you somewhere," he said. "And maybe this event sort of presented itself as an opportunity."

  "To ask me out."

  "Your words, not mine," he said.

  "So you were asking me out tonight," I clarified. "That's what this was all about."

  "Like I said, Shakespeare's not my thing," he answered. I imagined that his face was probably redder than ever, but he was still looking me in the eye. "So, I confess. I asked you out tonight on a kind of pseudo date."

  "Why?" I asked.

  "Maybe because I find you sort of ... fascinating."

  "Me? Fascinating?" I echoed, raising one eyebrow.

  "Don't make me say it again," he answered. His face must be blushing harder by the minute. "It's not exactly the right word, but you know what I mean. I think about you — I mean, I can't stop thinking about you on some level." He sounded helpless. "There's something about you that defies explanation for me. In a good way, not a bad one," he added, quickly.

  It suddenly seemed really funny when he said it aloud. As if I hadn't been truly aware of it the whole evening, which was the reason I was wearing this dress that my Mum found so mortifying. I was laughing at him because it was the only thing that would keep me from melting into a puddle of messy confusion over the revelation that someone was actually thinking about me on a semi-constant basis.

  "What?" he said, as if he knew what I was thinking about somehow.

  "I'm just thinking — you, me. Out on a proper date," I said. "Everybody knows what you think about me. And me with a posh bloke — the kind of toff whose opinion of me I didn't need you to confirm."

  "It's not that funny to me," he said, in a sort of amused-but-perplexed voice. "I don't see anything weird about the idea, really."

  "I think the rest of your mates would have some serious questions about that," I said. He took my smile for mockery — which was what I wanted him to take it for, as if I couldn't stop teasing him.

  "Will you stop using them as an excuse to keep me away?" said Nathan. "What do you think of me? Seriously, not as some British cliché of a white collar businessman, or whatever. Give me a straight answer, Kitty."

  Quite serious, that voice, even with his smile. All the humor was disappearing from his face, but it wasn't angry or disappointed, the look confronting me. Maybe his earnestness was getting to me, because I felt the color rush to my cheeks again.

  I was wishing things were different right now. That somewhere inside, I didn't still feel like I didn't belong in this posh frock, in this moonlit place, and especially not with him. I wished I didn't find myself liking him so much. Because this moment wanted to be the beginning of something as amazing as this place had felt tonight, and that didn't seem possible.

  "What do you want me to say?" I was still being coy, but I didn't feel like it. I didn't know what I was feeling anymore.r />
  Nathan leaned towards me. I felt his lips against mine, kissing me; I kissed him back. It was a little one at first, but growing more serious by the second. From pleasant to good, then like waves of hot sparks that make you feel quick and breathless.

  At first, I didn't want it to stop, then I knew it had to. It had to stop before it was too late to turn back from something that just couldn't be true.

  I put my hand on his chest and gave him a gentle push to end it, drawing away from him. "It's late," I said. "They don't want us hanging about here forever." I slid down from the back of the seat and away from Nathan, because I needed distance — a good bit of it to clear my head, which felt hot and muddled, not that I could tell him so.

  "What's the matter?" said Nathan, who hopped up from his seat now. "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing," I lied. "I just have to go, that's all."

  His face fell slightly. "Fine," he said, after a moment. "We'll go home." He slipped on his coat again.

  "You needn't drive me," I said. "I'm staying with a mate here. I forgot to tell you before that I'm popping around to their place for tonight. We're meeting up with friends later ... doing some stuff."

  "Okay. I'll give you a ride to their place," he said.

  "I can walk." I was going up the stairs with these words. "Thanks, anyway." I wasn't riding the miles back to Ceffylgwyn by his side, in darkness and silence after what just happened. Things had all shifted with that kiss. It was us both being crazy in the moonlight, giving in to some silly impulse.

  "Kitty, what's the rush?" he said. He sounded exasperated. "At least let me drive you there."

  "I'm good. I can take care of myself," I answered.

  "Is this because I kissed you?" he said. "Was it that bad?"

  "G'night," I said. "I'll see you around." I made it to the top of Minack's stone steps before Nathan even set foot on the first one.

  It was a lie. I didn't have a mate in Porthcurno, and my only one left in Land's End didn't answer her mobile when I rang it. Obviously, I couldn't call Mum and explain that I had stranded myself here. So I rang Saul instead.