Never Too Late (13 page)

“OK,” Chloe agreed. “We’ll do the picnic on Sunday – I love picnics. Make sure you pack all my favourites, Adam. We’ll have to get to your place fairly late, though – we don’t want to run into Mummy and give the game away.”

Adam watched the silvering of her hair in the sunlight as it swung across her slim, lightly tanned arms, wondering how it would feel to slide his fingers through its silkiness, to feel it falling across his chest. He mentally shook himself and picked up his drink.

This Bank Holiday weekend is shaping up rather well!

“Now then children,” he mock admonished them as the food was brought to their table, “sit up and eat your food properly.”

“What about the present?” Chloe asked her brother as they tucked in to their meal.

“What about the past?” he countered.

Chloe stuck her tongue out at him and Adam was mesmerised as the delicate moist pink tip flicked over her bottom lip. She broke off a piece of the wonderfully fragrant, crusty bread and nibbled it, looking up at James expectantly. “Stop trying to avoid the issue. Have you bought something, or got a firm plan, or are you just at the ideas stage?”

“It’s a surprise.” James gave a theatrical slow wink and took another mouthful of cheese, tapping the side of his nose with his other hand.

“I know it’s a surprise for Mummy but we’d like to know now! What is it?”

“Ah, you’ll have to wait and see.”

Adam had watched their playful bickering on many an occasion. “Does the bystander get a clue?”

“Mum will love it.” James grinned. “There – if you know her that’s all the clue you should need.”

Adam and Chloe looked at each other, determined James would not get away with it.

“Something for the house?” Adam wondered.

Chloe wrinkled her nose. “No, not personal enough. One thing I have to admit about my brother is he does choose wonderful presents.” She paused, pursing her lips slightly in deep thought. “It would have to be something for the garden, that’s all she gets excited about these days. But what?”

“Got it!” Adam punched the air, convinced he was right. “You’ve commissioned a garden sculpture from that friend of yours from uni. What was her name?” James looked puzzled. “Oh, come on – the one you were, shall we say, rather friendly with.”

“Oh, Tara,” the penny dropped for James and his grey eyes were dreamy as he remembered for a moment how wonderful that ‘friendly’ period of his life had been, even if rather brief. “That’s a good idea actually – have to speak to her about a Christmas present for Mum.”

Chloe moved her head sideways and stage whispered in Adam’s ear, “I don’t think it’s that then.”

He could smell her perfume, a light floral scent with a hint of musk, as he whispered back, his mouth tantalisingly close to her ear, “Must be a plant then.”

James’ lips twitched and Chloe pounced on him. “It is! But what plant is so expensive and special it warrants coming from both of us?”

“You, dear sister of mine, will have to wait and wonder all through that torture of an afternoon at the salon before you find out.” He turned to Adam. “You, my friend, will find out sooner as I need you as a labourer. Brian has his golf afternoons but not next week. He’s holding the fort while you are taking next Friday afternoon off on gardening leave, as it were. I’ll be out all day getting things organised and started off, but I’ll need a labourer at least half the day.”

“Nice to know I’m good for something, I suppose,” Adam sighed.

“Ground Force has got nothing on what we’re going to achieve,” James declared.

*

Another night going to bed alone.

Hilda finished plaiting her long grey hair and pushed it back over her full length flannelette nightgown. She picked up the black framed photo of her fiancé, Stephen, and kissed it before climbing between the sheets, as she did every night.

Nearly sixty nine years of knowing that he will never return to me.

It was seventy years to the day since she had last gone out in the May Day dawn with her friends to wash her face in the dew to ensure a good complexion.

Young men didn’t want a spotty or freckly maid!

She had known already, though, that she was the most attractive in her circle of friends. She was voted the May Queen and led the procession to the Maypole, followed by all the children with their garlanded hoops and hobby horses.

May Day – the day for love and romance, the ancient Roman festival of Flora, goddess of fruit and flowers. She had made her wish and it had been granted. Her handsome young man had entered her life. As the apples were gathered that year he had gathered her to his heart. Her mother was scandalised when they became engaged after just three months.

So romantic - a Christmas Day proposal, a diamond ring for his Christmas gift to me. We knew our love is eternal, for all I was so young. Surely the waiting will not be too much longer before I can rejoin him?

*

There was awful congestion on the main Dorking road but as Chloe and Adam drove up the Zig-Zag they entered a different world entirely.

They passed a big group of bikers in Box Hill’s bottom car park, all seeming to have a great time together judging by the laughter. Chloe craned round to check out their gleaming machines as long as she could.

“There must be tens of thousands of pounds’ worth of bike there,” she commented in some awe.

“That gear they’re wearing isn’t cheap either,” Adam agreed. “You can pay a thou just for a bespoke leather suit, and several hundreds for a good helmet.”

She looked across at him. “Have you ever wanted a bike then?” she asked him. “You seem to be pretty clued up on it.”

He nodded. “Yeah, I had a bike when I was in uni. Don’t you remember?”

“I’d love to have a go on a bike. The danger! The freedom! The speed! The wind on your face and streaming through your hair!”

“Not if you don’t want to get stopped for breaking the law,” Adam laughed. “For one thing, the same speed limits apply, and for another your hair will be inside one of those legally required and very necessary helmets.”

Chloe pouted. “Don’t pretend to be such a kill joy. Go on, admit it, I know you didn’t always stick rigidly to the law.”

“OK,” he admitted, “I may once or twice have strayed over the 70 limit…”

“Just once or twice? Ha! And the rest!”

“But I never went without a skid lid, not after I’d seen one of my friends have his face wiped off the tarmac when he hit a pothole and was thrown down the road.”

With that sobering thought they continued up the hill to the top car park. It was difficult finding a parking space but true to form most people were still milling about or spreading their picnics within a hundred yards of where they’d stopped. Chloe and Adam decided to take their basket and rug further up the hill, having no wish to find their day spoiled by the noise of so many others. They slowly meandered across springy verdant turf, glowing with new growth, among beech and yew, oaks, ash and wild cherry. They paused repeatedly to take in the magnificent views, deeply blue-tinged in the distance, and to admire the drifts of bluebells, violets and primroses.

“What a strange name, when you think about it,” Chloe mused. “Box Hill. Do you think it was named for a buried treasure chest or something?”

“No, box as in box trees.”

“So which are the box trees?” Chloe wanted to know. “Surely if it’s called Box Hill after them there must actually be lots of box trees?”

Adam chucked her under the chin. “You are such an ignoramus in so many areas! Too much time spent looking at clothes and cosmetics, not enough time looking at the world around you.”

“Then tell me, Mr Clever Clogs Know-It-All,” she challenged him, “where are they?”

“Just be grateful there aren’t as many here as there once were – they stink like cat’s piss. Don’t get me wrong, though,” Adam continued as they walked on, “it was a very valuable wood a few centuries ago. You know that beading on your mother’s dining table?” Chloe nodded. “That’s box wood. Lots of best quality furniture had box wood inlays, and it was fine grained enough to be used for carving things like chessmen, and in industry for things like shuttles and rulers. Time and fashions move on, though, cheaper foreign imports started in the eighteenth century, and so now, though there’s still some box grown here, there’s nowhere near the same amount as days gone by.”

He spread their rug in the shade, under a beech tree with a fine view towards the Mole valley.

As he unpacked the basket he slapped her hand more than once as Chloe tried to take tasty bits and pieces before he was ready. “Let me finish, woman! There’s plenty to eat and plenty of time to eat it in.” He finished laying out their feast, complete with china, glasses and serviettes. “There we are – now you can eat.”

“Yummee!” Chloe helped herself to a heaped plateful of thick Wiltshire ham, roast chicken, tiny spiced sausages, radicchio leaves, water cress, cherry tomatoes, extra mature cheddar and crusty bread.

Adam drew the cork of the white wine he’d kept chilled in its own cool bag. “You’re easy to please with food, anyway, nice and simple provided the quality is excellent.” He showed the label for her approval and poured into the glass she held out – then took it and started to drink.

“Hey! Tha’s mine!” She sprayed crumbs over him and he made a big deal of brushing them off his shirt.

“Now, now,” he reprimanded, “no talking with your mouth full.” But he gave in and filled a glass for her too.

They ate in silence for a while, listening to the breeze soughing gently in the branches, the birds singing and, very distantly, the sounds of children playing.

“It’s a great life if you don’t weaken,” Chloe sighed, wiping the last of a nectarine from her mouth with the back of her hand.

Adam tutted and fished a tub of wipes from the basket. “You’re worse than a child at times,” he scolded her and wiped the juice off properly. “How can you eat so daintily in a restaurant and be such a heathen outdoors?”

“I’m just an enigma.”

For a moment out of time they didn’t move, their eyes locked.

Chloe was the first to recover. “I’m glad you didn’t spit on a handkerchief for that,” she tried to joke. She lay back on the rug, affecting nonchalance. “OK, tell me about this bike you had in uni,” she ordered.

“Which one?” he countered, resting back on one elbow so that he could look down at her.

The light was behind him so Chloe couldn’t see his expression clearly. “How many did you have?”

“Just one at a time but only the first one is worth talking about.”

“So tell.”

“She was a BSA ZB34, brought in as a derelict from the States, who I called Barclays.”

“Barclays? Why on earth did you call a bike that?”

“I had to borrow some money to buy her – you know Mum and Dad insisted we kids had to learn to stand on our own two feet? They were there for emergencies and basic living expenses only, everything else we had to earn and pay for ourselves. Well, I borrowed the money from Barclays bank so in a way, technically, they owned her.”

Chloe snorted. “They didn’t know you very well if they didn’t realise you were up to mischief. What bank manager in his right mind would lend money for a broken down bike? What line did you string them?”

Adam tried to look hurt and failed. “Me? Mischief? I was truthful – I told them it was to buy a bike for transport while I was in uni.” He caught her raised eyebrow. “OK, they may have thought it was a fully functional mountain bike or something but their assumptions were their own business.”

He tickled the end of her nose with a long blade of grass. “Anyway,” he continued, “I traced her history while I was getting her back in working order. I found out, much later, she was one of a batch of fifty that had been made in 1953 exclusively for racing in the US – manufactured, shipped straight out from Liverpool to California (nice and warm and dry out there so no problems with rust), and somehow she ended up on a mixed shipment that came back here. She still had all her pink slips, badges, all the parts that were still on her were original. She did look a sorry sight though, poor girl. The paintwork definitely wasn’t original, what was left of it. I knew she was a game bird and worth working on though when, with just a squirt of petrol, me hanging on the throttle cable and the guy who had shipped her in trying to get the manual advance and retard right, he managed to get her to fire on the second kick. It was rough, but it was the proper Brit bike doomph, doomph, doomph… That baby deserved all the time I could give her between lectures. She was also cheaper than taking girls out and she never talked back. Bit me a few times though!” He rubbed a knuckle that still had a scar and a story of its own to tell.

Chloe was fascinated by the story despite herself and sat up, hugging her knees. Adam appreciated the elegant slim lines of her legs, clad in cream pedal pushers, and he wanted to hold the delicate ankles above her espadrilles. The closest he dared was to lay straight the fragile ankle chain she wore.

“Didn’t you find it difficult finding parts to replace the missing bits as it was so old?” she queried.

“She, not it,” Adam corrected her. “No, as I quickly found out it was no problem at all. There’s a tremendous network of people in Britain who will do anything to help get these old bikes up and running again. For instance, I phoned a place in Birmingham for new rings and they arrived before I’d even got the cheque in the post. Another place in Leeds did the chromes for the jam pot suspension and when they arrived they were the wrong ones so I phoned them up and he says oh, you must have such and such a model, not such and such, but don’t worry, he’d sort it. He phoned back half an hour later and tells me he hasn’t got them but his mate over in Wolverhampton has so this other guy has sent out the other style, could I send the wrong ones back not to Leeds but to the guy in Wolverhampton as a straight swap. You can buy brand new parts, too, still manufactured in Bournemouth to the original patents – I got a new exhaust that way. The original manual I printed off the net…”