The First Time I Saw Your Face

by Hazel Osmond

  ‘So let me get this right. You’ve got the perfect beach, the sea, little houses, a great wreck of a castle.’

  ‘And one of the best pubs you’ll ever go in—’

  ‘I’ve been in a few.’ He wasn’t sure Matt Harper would have said that, he was going to have to be careful. Mind you it wasn’t as big a clanger as the one he’d nearly dropped when she’d told him to close his eyes in the car and he’d almost said, ‘I hope you don’t do the same.’ That would have reminded her nicely of her accident.

  They passed hikers and families, people in wetsuits and he was so intent on the view he didn’t watch the people watching Jennifer.

  ‘So you’ve been coming here since you were a little girl?’

  She was smiling, had taken off her sunglasses. ‘Yes. Dad’s not one for the beach, but Mum is. She grew up in Wallsend by the river – her dad worked in the shipyards – she came here on the odd day trip with her mum. She loves it and so do I.’ There was a shy little glance his way.

  ‘She’s not a farmer’s daughter then?’

  ‘Mum? No. Met Dad when she was a teacher, she’d brought her class on a farm visit. That was when Granddad was still running the farm.’

  The knowledge that Brenda was from what he suspected was a tough background took his mind off the view for a while and they walked on side by side, Jennifer shading her eyes to look out to sea and then towards the beach huts.

  ‘I’ve always wanted one of those,’ she said. ‘I mean, I love the countryside, but imagine waking up to the sound of the sea, the whole day stretching away to the horizon.’

  ‘Couldn’t you save up for one?’

  She bent and picked up a piece of driftwood, unwinding skeins of seaweed from it. ‘It’s not as easy as that. They hardly ever come up for sale. They’re usually passed down and kept in the family.’ She threw the stick into the sea. ‘It’s a nice dream.’

  Another one you’ve shelved and put away.

  ‘How’s the novel going?’ she suddenly asked.

  He thought of it lying unloved on his laptop. ‘Great, wrote another chapter last night.’

  ‘Good. I’m so glad you didn’t give it up. Aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, very. Look, do you fancy a sit-down?’

  They walked up the beach and found a sheltered spot, and the sun sparkling on the sea was so bright that it made his eyes water.

  She was sitting right next to him and when the wind blew her hair it flicked his face. He should move. Put some distance between them. He should work the conversation round to Cressida.

  He watched her watching the sea and felt he didn’t know how to do this any more.

  ‘They get seals coming in here sometimes,’ she said.

  ‘I might meet them later; I’m going to have a paddle.’

  ‘It’ll be freezing.’ She scooped up a handful of sand and looked as if she was feeling the weight of it, her hand bouncing slightly, and he told her about going in the sea with Doug.

  She tipped the sand out. ‘I hope he’s careful in the water. The current there is treacherous.’

  ‘I wonder if the beaches in California are like this?’ He waited a few seconds. ‘How’s your cousin getting on with that lady married to that man Ralph?’

  ‘Rory,’ she said, giving him a playful push. ‘You really don’t take much interest in films, do you?’

  He pushed her back. ‘I remembered it began with an R and that you were going to tell me how she was getting on when we were in the café.’ He grinned and wished he hadn’t because he wondered if she would think he was remembering how he’d put his hand on hers.

  Clearing away some dry sand near where he was sitting to reveal the wetter layer beneath, he began to trace a pattern with his little finger.

  Jennifer wondered what that grin had meant. Was he remembering putting his hand over hers?

  Don’t run ahead. You promised Cress you wouldn’t run away, but don’t run ahead.

  ‘Well Rory is a bit of a naughty boy,’ she said, knowing he wasn’t really interested and was just being polite. ‘I told you his wife is jealous and it’s hardly surprising. He’s pursuing Cress right under her nose. A low spot came the day before yesterday when he turned up in her trailer. It was only the runner knocking on the door that stopped her having to slap him right down. As Cress said, “He was trying to get his hand round my U-bend.” Oh, sorry, that won’t make much sense. Cress and I tend to talk in a kind of code, you see, when there’s anything sensitive being discussed. We call Rory the plumber, hence the joke. But it’s not funny. Hard to say no to someone who’s as big a player as Rory.’

  ‘Poor Cressida.’ His brown eyes looked so regretful that she wanted to put her arm around him.

  ‘Don’t worry. Cress, clever clogs, worked out a little strategy.’ She scooped up some more sand and watched the little rivulets run through her fingers. ‘She waited for the next inevitable incident and had a full-on panic attack. She’s really good at those … got us out of a couple of dreadful parties when we were younger. She’s told him that she does fancy him like mad, but the pressure of the filming and his wife glowering at her is just too much and she’s teetering on the brink of nervous exhaustion.’ She laughed. ‘Said that she’d give him an IOU on the sex thing, for when the film was over, otherwise she just knew she’d have to have a break from filming.’

  ‘That would be bad, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Disastrous. I think Rory could see the dollars actually going down the drain. Since then he’s been treating her like a piece of porcelain, even leaving little presents in her trailer. And she’s had a breakthrough with the wife too; she’s showing Cress how to knit. Does these amazing cobwebby wall hangings, evidently.’

  ‘You have a very clever cousin,’ he said, and she saw him rub out the pattern he had made and begin again. ‘I’m presuming she’ll never honour that IOU?’

  ‘She’ll run as fast as her Manolo Blahniks will let her.’

  ‘Manolo?’

  ‘Shoes, stylish and expensive ones.’ She purposely did not look at his horrible brogues. She looked at him instead, wondering how she could have become so attracted to this slightly naive guy, so different from the ones she’d gravitated towards at uni. In a strange way, she felt protective of him, sitting there looking first puzzled and then with that sweet sadness about him. Was he still thinking about Sonia?

  ‘OK,’ he said, standing up, ‘time for a paddle,’ and he was running down to the sea. She watched him take off his shoes and socks and looked at his bare feet and felt a spasm of lust. How pathetic, she was turned on by his feet. She got up and followed him down to the water’s edge as he rolled up his horrible jeans, and laughed at the faces he was making while he waded in up to his calves.

  ‘Bet you can’t stay in for a minute,’ she called, starting to time him on her watch, and then on the spur of the moment as he was coming out, gasping and teeth chattering, gathered up his shoes and socks and ran away from him.

  She ran on before she was brought to a halt by a sharp tug on her coat and then she felt Matt’s arms come around her and he was trying to get her to drop the shoes. Her heart was pounding more from having him so close than from the exertion and she knew she would look hot and flustered. He was breathing heavily too, fumbling to try to get a grip on one shoe. She let him have it and peeled away from him with the other, running backwards as he came after her. Suddenly anxious about the way he was piling towards her, she threw the shoe she was holding up the beach towards the sand dunes, and balled the socks and threw them too. She thought he would stop and gather everything up, but he didn’t, he kept on running and then suddenly she was upside-down over his shoulder and screeching and he was heading for the sea.

  ‘No, Matt, I’m sorry. Stop!’ she yelled.

  ‘Too late for that,’ he said, and people were looking and smiling and she felt dizzy and exhilarated and faintly afraid.

  ‘In you go,’ he shouted and made a movement to tip her right over his sh
oulder. She screamed really loudly and felt his chest vibrate under her thighs as if he was laughing. When he lowered her back on to the sand they stood face to face and for a wild moment she wondered if he would bend his head and place his lips on hers – there was something in his eyes that told her it was going to happen. Neither of them moved, and then there it was again, that look of regret, sadness.

  It was her cue to step backwards and say something about going to get his stuff for him and for him to cough and say, yes, his feet were getting cold and perhaps it was time for some lunch?

  They walked back to the pub commenting on the light and the flock of wading birds and the number of walkers streaming along the coastal path by the coastguard station, and he joked that he should be doing that and not going to the pub.

  He stopped just before they left the beach, said he wanted to get some shells for his nieces, and she helped him gather them up. She sensed he was as nervous as her about what had just happened.

  ‘I should have known you would like beaches,’ she said, trying to get back that sense of ease between them. ‘After you wrote about all those ones in Dorset. What’s the nearest one to where you live now?’

  ‘To Bath?’ he said, putting the shells in his pocket. ‘Not sure if it’s Clevedon or Weston-super-Mare.’

  ‘Bath?’

  ‘What?’

  She bent down and retrieved a shell he had let slip from his hand.

  ‘You said Bath.’

  ‘Did I?’ She heard him laugh as she straightened back up. ‘Must be all this water making me think of baths. Meant Bristol. What an idiot.’

  Sitting side by side in the pub at a bleached-pine table, he had beer and she had tonic water and they ate their crab sandwiches and agreed there was nothing like fresh crab to give you a taste of the sea. She didn’t feel as disappointed as she thought she might about him not having kissed her; she wasn’t sure she was ready for that yet. And he obviously wasn’t either. She was just happy that for a split second it looked as though he had wanted to kiss her. Actually wanted to.

  She knew, as always, that people were looking at her, one woman was really staring and she stared back and raised an eyebrow as if to say, ‘What? It’s scarred skin, not an extra head.’ Today it didn’t feel bitter; luxuriating in the heat coming off the man sitting by her side, everything seemed sweet.

  CHAPTER 25

  Mack sat in the chair in the cottage, the one in the front room where he did all his thinking and which he’d come to think of as the ‘torture chair’, and took off his brogues and socks. Upending the shoes, one after the other, he tipped sand on the carpet.

  Of all the stupid things to do, he had done it. He should have been staying behind that line he’d drawn in the sand, not cavorting about on it. Not getting his Baths mixed up with his Bristols.

  It was the exhilaration of getting that little nugget about Rory and Cressida that had made him lose the plot. It might not seem much at the minute, but a wooing superstar plus expensive presents might add up to something other than the ending Jennifer envisaged. Cressida had a habit of choosing good-looking men or powerful ones and Rory was both. Add in Rory’s willingness to wait for her and it was a heady aphrodisiac. Would it matter that he sounded like a right knob-head?

  He rubbed the sand into the carpet with one of his feet, watching it settle among the other stains and dirt and remembered what Jennifer had felt like when he’d lifted her up. There was nothing on her, but what there was had felt extremely …

  He struggled up from the chair and went into the kitchen to get a drink of water.

  At least the journey back from the beach had been uneventful, both of them making an effort to hide behind small talk. When he hadn’t been talking, he had looked out at the fields, imagining them come spring and early summer, yellow with rape or white-gold with barley and wheat.

  White-gold like Jennifer’s hair.

  Standing at the sink with the cup to his lips, his mind travelled from her hair to her willowy body and soon he was remembering the way the dress she’d had on at yesterday’s rehearsals had gently skimmed over her breasts, her belly, her hips.

  Get a grip, man.

  The doorbell rang and he jarred the cup against his teeth. He hoped whoever it was would go away. When the bell rang again, he opened the door slowly to see Sonia. She handed him his glasses and leaned against the door frame to show herself to best advantage. ‘You left them on the counter. Again.’ There was a little flicker of mischief in her eyes. ‘And what’s this I’ve heard about you turning Lisa down?’

  ‘Um … well, I wouldn’t say … um … you know … I’ve never been one to, well, hop from one romance to the next.’

  ‘Really? I have. Though I suppose as you’ve been having him in for little chats,’ she jerked her head towards Mr Armstrong’s door, ‘you’ll know all about that, eh?’

  He just wanted to get in the house and close his eyes for a while and think about what had happened on the beach. He couldn’t be bothered with all that ‘Gosh, no’ rubbish; was suddenly sick of being a nervy dork.

  ‘Mr Armstrong thinks you bought your husband off the Internet,’ he said, brutally.

  She let out a great whoop of laughter. ‘Daft bugger. I met him on an Internet dating site. Suppose he told you too that Gregor only married me for a British passport? That it’s bad enough, the eastern Europeans coming over here for our jobs, let alone our women?’ She crossed her arms, looked suddenly aggressive. ‘Well, let’s put the record straight. Gregor is half British anyway; his mum’s from Didcot, though he’s lived in the Czech Republic since he was about five. He’s a scientist, works for the Forestry Commission up at Kielder Forest. Very brainy. Likes older women, that’s why he was on that site. It’s not a crime. He’s twenty-seven and I’m forty-two and if he doesn’t care about the age gap, then neither do I. Dad’s slowly coming round to me having a toy-boy husband, as he calls it, but I’m careful I don’t rub his nose in it. So, if old Armstrong’s said I’ve been fornicating on the chest freezer, he’s lying.’ She screwed up her eyes. ‘What else? Oh yes, Gregor’s my third husband. First one dropped dead in his twenties, six months we’d been married; second one left me for a woman up in Edinburgh. Oh and in between, I’ve slept with quite a few men, and yes, it’s probably me that’s done the leading on.’ She uncrossed her arms. ‘There, straight from the horse’s mouth.’

  This time Mack did say, ‘Gosh.’

  ‘Gosh indeed,’ she mimicked and then her expression became knowing. ‘And don’t think you’re fooling me with that butter-wouldn’t-melt act. You’re sniffing around … got your eye on someone. You’re all of a jitter and strung out like a young fox on a scent.’

  After she’d gone, he felt shaken and wondered how many editions of O’Dowd’s paper he could fill with her life history alone. The woman was a walking soap opera and far too nosy for her own good.

  Mr Armstrong’s door opened and he poked his head out.

  ‘Told you, didn’t I?’ he said, ‘Whore of Babylon.’

  Mack went back inside and sat in the torture chair again, the feel of the sand in the carpet taking him back to the beach and listening to that soft laugh and looking into those blue eyes and trying not to feel like the lowest form of human life.

  ‘Say that again slowly, Jen.’

  Jennifer shut the kitchen door and stood looking at the table, her mind still thinking about hanging upside down over Matt’s shoulder.

  ‘I had the best time, Cress, and … at one point, I thought he was going to kiss me.’

  ‘Not that bit, Jen, although that’s lovely. Say that other thing again. The thing you said as soon as I answered the phone. It’s wonderful to hear it.’

  ‘OK,’ she said, with a laugh she didn’t know was coming. ‘Hope, Cress. I have hope.’

  CHAPTER 26

  The trip to the beach had jumbled Mack’s brain and now he felt that the two men he was trying to be were at war with each other. Mack Stone; Matt Harper
– one was calculating, watching and listening; the other seemed to be living in the moment and doing things he hadn’t told him to do. He found himself putting on his walking boots one morning and enjoying, actually enjoying, the thought of getting up on to the moors. He sat down in a chair and took his boots off again pretty sharpish, but then he just spent the whole day hanging around the cottage. When the sun came out, he sat on the front doorstep and got a wave from a woman and child who lived in the cottage next to Mr Armstrong’s. Sonia had introduced them to him in the shop. He went inside to fetch a book, came back out and sat reading it. Just after lunch he saw Sonia and Gregor snogging beside Gregor’s car. When they came up for air, they waved at him too.

  In the evening a car drew up just as he was setting out to walk to rehearsal. It was Lisa offering him a lift. He got into the car warily. They’d fallen into a joky but strained friendship following the ‘kebab incident’, but he worried that this lift might be the start of a new campaign to ‘bag him’. When she handed him some brochures about personal finances and, on the journey to the hall, asked him various questions about his savings and current account and his pension arrangements, he realised she was after his business, not his body. He hoped he would be able to remember all the made-up answers to her questions. ‘Just let me know if there’s anything I can do to help,’ she said as she parked the car. ‘I do Gerry’s and Pamela’s accounts for them. I’m good, Matt, could save you a few pounds.’ She gave him a big wink at that, but it had ‘friend’ stamped on it, not ‘hottie’.