The First Time I Saw Your Face (27 page)

‘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 shoulder. 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’.

Everyone seemed to love Matt Harper. And Matt Harper had a worrying tendency to love everyone back.

At rehearsal he had wrapped his arms around Doug and given him a spontaneous hug when Finlay had congratulated them on how well their scenes had gone. In fact, he found himself smiling like an idiot as the rehearsal had progressed and the cast had worked through the last act. There were still fluffs and pauses, but for the first time there was continuity; more cues picked up, pace injected; some real character development. Ten days before they were due on stage and they were starting to pull this play together.

As the days passed, he became more and more aware that he was a person pretending to be another person
pretending to be an Elizabethan young man. He feared he was going to unravel.

He was in danger of unravelling with Jennifer as well, he knew that. Watching her sitting with the prompt book he couldn’t keep his mind from the beach and the way her body had felt against his. He sensed she was thinking of it too. There was none of the chin-down avoidance of the early days, but a certain sweet shyness, as though she did not trust herself not to nick his socks and shoes again.

He told himself he could handle it and he did. They bumped along, going for coffee, sitting by each other in the pub. He even accepted the odd lift home, and she had fed him little snippets of news from America: Rory was still wooing; Cress prevaricating and knitting.

At the rehearsal exactly one week before the first performance, things got more disorientating. Finlay was taking him and Jocelyn through their scenes again and Mack could only sympathise with Finlay’s worried look. They made for a chilling couple: Mack found it impossible to hide his animosity and Jocelyn had obviously tuned in to his true feelings. In retaliation she had begun calling him ‘Brogue Male’ (which he found funny), or ‘Mr Jumble-Sale-Wurzle Head’ (which he didn’t). She also liked to point out loudly that there was only one letter dividing wankers from walkers. Matt Harper smiled placidly.

When they had played their scenes together before, Mack had got into the habit of thinking about Lisa to get some warmth going. This time when he went to conjure her up, remembering her on her knees in front of him in that
alleyway, he felt a sharp stab of panic: the head he was now looking down on was blonde.

He needed Cressida to do something soon – fall for Rory, have wild sex with the director, run off with one of the lighting crew, anything, but make it soon.

He tried to put Mack Stone firmly back in control, and when Doug knocked on his door that Saturday and asked if he’d help get the set ready, his mind told him not to get involved; his body shrugged on his fleece and went and sat in Doug’s car. He determined that he would only stay a couple of hours but, seduced by the sense of community and warmth in the hall, he was there until the end of the day, putting up flats and steadying the long ladders while members of the backstage crew hung lights.

When Jennifer appeared he tried to be hearty and dorky and not notice what she was wearing and how she moved and that soft laugh of hers. The strain gave him a thumping headache.

Next day he lay low in Newcastle, only speaking to O’Dowd, who, when Mack gave him the latest updates, told him he’d soon be out of there. He said it was just a matter of time before Cress gave in to Rory and then all Hell was going to break loose. Married man, American icon – Mack could almost hear O’Dowd salivating into the phone.

When Mack arrived for rehearsal on the Monday he told himself he didn’t care whether the set was half finished and looked like a dog’s breakfast. He didn’t care about these people, or the play. Except when his eyes saw the set, finished and a credible approximation of an Italian
palace courtyard, complete with two box hedges in long stone pots, a genuine ‘Wow’ escaped from his lips.

‘It is pretty good,’ Gerry said, screwing up his eyes. ‘Not as good as for the Scottish play, mind you. We had a thrust stage for that and a smoke machine.’

‘Doesn’t matter what it looks like,’ Doug said morosely, ‘everything will go tits up when we get on it.’

Four hours later Mack understood what Doug had meant and suddenly he was caring about the play and the people again. They were all in it together, and ‘it’ was a shambles.