From a Distance (16 page)

‘Tell me about the ice-cream vans.’

‘Oh, it’s a long story,’ her eyes were lowered, she buttoned up her cardigan, shivered. ‘It’s a bit chilly up here,’ she rubbed her arms under the fabric of her cardigan, Kit heard the silky hiss of skin and her skirt as she rubbed one calf against the other.

‘Come on, tell me a little bit. Seeing as we’re here looking over your heritage.’

He liked the way she cocked her head on one side to consider, he liked the warmth in her smile when she agreed.

‘My maternal family ran a fleet of ice-cream vans in Lowestoft, and before that they came from Italy. My father’s father was a prisoner of war in Norfolk. Do you know, they used to sing opera in the camps and they made spaghetti and hung it up to dry on the fences?’ She flicked her hair off her neck and Kit smiled at the unconscious act of preening. ‘I’m Italian with all the clichés,’ she said. ‘My mother’s father set up one of the first ice-cream van fleets in Gorleston. He was an entrepreneur, he saw there were beaches and no cones. Madness. Now they’ve got the coastline sewn up for fifty miles, and all the arcades as well. My brother runs the business since Dad died. It isn’t what it was in its heyday, but people will always want ice cream, won’t they?’

They were reversing their climb now, Kit leading the way down, his hands on the rough walls for balance, feeling the way on either side. ‘Do you like cooking?’

Luisa blew her hair off her face with a sigh. ‘I love it. I’m trying to make a business with ice cream myself, but I never seem to get off the ground.’

‘Do you have a van? I should imagine you’d be like the Pied Piper around here?’

He was teasing, but glancing round for her reaction, Kit saw a flash of eagerness, and in it her vulnerability, before she sighed, ‘I do, but it’s derelict. It’s my dream. I want to do my own. Not part of my family thing. My idea of a good ice cream is full of elderflowers, or wild-dog rose syrup from the hedgerows. It’s a long way from Amorazzi’s Tutti Frutti and 99s.’

They had descended to the hallway, now empty as the sheep had disappeared into the garden.

Kit kept his response light-hearted, he sensed that she felt exposed. ‘You’ll be a wild success,’ he said. ‘You can definitely give your brother a run for his money.’

Luisa flicked back her hair again and put on her sunglasses, shutting him out with one deft movement.

‘Let’s go outside.’ said Kit.

‘What about you?’ Luisa raised the glasses and propped them on her head. ‘You’re the archetype, you know: stranger in town, no family, no ties. What are you going to do with this place? It’s amazing, so much more than I thought it could be.’

A warm glow of pride in his new acquisition welled inside him. Kit felt immense gratitude to his mother for bringing him to this place. He might never know why, but it didn’t really matter. ‘I was left it when my mother died.’ He heard himself adapting the story to protect himself, he wasn’t sure from what. ‘Funnily enough, my mother was dark like you, she was Cornish. Her family were Saltash gypsies and tin miners in the 1800s, and then both her parents were on the fringes of the art movement down in St Ives between the wars.’

Luisa whistled under her breath, fumbling for her keys. ‘Saltash? Sounds more exotic than Gorleston. We all wondered about the owners. Around here it was known it was someone from the West Country, but nobody ever came, and everyone lost interest until Jim’s family moved him out, then we all gossiped like mad. So your mother owned it, but you don’t have connections here otherwise? Does your wife like it?’

They were at the gate. ‘Look, the sheep are already queuing up.’ He leaned to lift the latch for her, and glancing up from the gate their eyes met. ‘I’m not married,’ he said.

‘Do you have children?’ Somehow, the gentle way Luisa asked this meant Kit didn’t find it intrusive. He shook his head. ‘I did get married, briefly, when I was young, but it was a mutual mistake and, sadly, I had no kids then or later.’

‘That is sad.’ Luisa opened her car door and put her bag in.

It was a car, not a truck, Kit noticed. ‘How does this work then?’ he asked, nodding towards the sheep. ‘Do they all sit in a row with safety belts?’

Luisa’s eyes danced, ‘They have to go in the boot. If anyone saw they’d probably report me, but my husband’s trailer had a flat tyre.’

Her phone rang again. ‘Hi, darling. What? Oh, is he back? Does he want to speak to me? Shall I leave the sheep then? Thank goodness, I was about to put them in the car. He’s landing with a thud, isn’t he?’ She looked at Kit, raised her eyebrows. ‘Okay, yes. I’ll ask. Half an hour? Okay, bye darling.’

Shutting the phone she shoved it into her bag. ‘I must go. That was Luca, my son. I haven’t been much use with the sheep, but luckily their owner’s just got back from his holiday and he’s coming to pick them up. I’m so sorry to leave them, but he’ll put them somewhere safe today. I think I’ve wasted your time, I really apologise.’

Without thinking Kit leaned to kiss her cheek. She smelled of summer grass and orange blossom, his senses whirled as he recognised it and was back in a rush at their brief encounter on the pavement in town. ‘I hope we meet again.’ His voice was husky.

Luisa’s eyes widened. She clasped his wrist and her pulse beat through her fingertips, warm and insistent. ‘A goodbye kiss on a farming mission. That’s a first for me.’ The smile leapt again in her eyes.

Kit laughed, covering his own embarrassment. ‘I’ll have to let the farmer know you have no control over his sheep, they’re a hazard to the lighthouse man’s duties.’

Luisa’s brow contracted in an apologetic frown. ‘We’ve been such an invasion. How can we make it up? Will you come to our house and have supper some time soon?’ She saw hesitation on his face, and flashed a smile. ‘I know you want to refuse, but you can’t – you’ve got no plates or pans to cook for yourself here.’

He laughed. She had a knack for making things easy, he liked her relaxed approach. ‘I’d like to meet your family.’ Once again, Kit heard himself say what he didn’t know he was thinking.

Luisa started her car. ‘You will. And everyone else in the area too. You’re a big fish in this tiny pond of ours, you know. Bye, Kit. Welcome to the Lighthouse.’

He watched her drive around the bend and away, and then he listened. Only when the sound of her car engine was obliterated by distance and the ceaseless whisper of the waves behind the lighthouse did he turn and walk away.

Chapter 7

Since breakfast time, Luisa had been trying to find respite from chores and family demands to scrutinise her text and ponder its significance. Arriving with a quacking sound set for her by Mae, she had almost dropped the phone into the washing up when she saw it was from Kit.

Morning. Can I lure you back to the Lighthouse again? Come for a sunset drink. 6.30. All of you. xK

His phrasing, his sudden arrival into her morning, and his invitation were engrossing. Why didn’t everyone send texts like this? She pinged back her reply within seconds.

Nice lure. YES please!

Over the last couple of days she had exchanged a few texts with him, focusing on practicalities, from where he might buy a kettle to whether anyone except crazed lunatics swam in the sea in Norfolk. This one was longer. Four sentences. Practically a note. The quacking that heralded it exploded into a domestic scene as she prepared breakfast for her beloved family.

‘Bugger,’ she was busy. No time for texts. When she saw who it was from, she was surprised, and the sound she made should have indicated to her beloved family that there was something to interest them in her phone. Not a bit of it. None of the beloveds, from Tom changing batteries in the torch, to Mae, who had, she said, got out of bed by mistake because she’d misread the time on her phone and it was way too early for a Saturday, to Luca, lost in perusal of a football match report from the European cup qualifiers, was even the smallest bit interested in her, her text, or anyone who might have sent it.

The garden offered sanctuary, but not for long. Just as she had settled in the vegetable patch, a tray of broad bean seedlings beside her as her cover, and was examining the message, reading significance into every letter, Luca appeared.

‘Thought I’d give you a hand,’ he said, and proceeded not to, instead stretching himself out on the grass.

‘Is it wet?’ Luisa tucked the phone into her bra, a storage spot she favoured when gardening.

‘Not really,’ Luca propped his feet on an upside-down pot, and flopped his arms out. ‘S’relaxing.’ He smiled, and closed his eyes.

Luisa wanted to prod him into action, but it was pointless, he would help in his own time. His capacity for being comfortable was endless.

She stepped over him and started a new row for her seedlings. ‘Anyway,’ she said breathlessly, digging flints chunks out of the soil before pouring a trickle of water into the holes, ‘a funny thing’s happened. I didn’t get round to telling Dad I’d met the new man the other day, and now he’s asked us to go for a drink at the Lighthouse tonight, and I still haven’t told him.’

‘What’s the big deal? Dad won’t care.’

She hadn’t expected Luca to answer, it was more of a thinking aloud exercise. She placed a couple of small plants tenderly in the holes. ‘I don’t know. Maybe it isn’t.’

Her phone vibrated under her shirt. It was another message from Kit.

Help me . . . do I need a giant plastic swing seat from garage? Credit card poised. K

Luisa blushed, glanced at Luca. His eyes were still shut. She texted back, her fingers moving rapidly,

Is it for the sheep?

She shoved the phone away again, biting her spreading smile, pushing back the rush of exuberance she felt. It was such fun, and she felt like a teenager. She poked Luca gently with her trowel. ‘Wake up, Lux, pass those runner beans, could you? Are these rows straight, d’you think?’

Luca brushed her hand away. ‘In a minute, Mum.’

She didn’t know she was on tenterhooks for a reply until she jumped as the phone buzzed again.

Do sheep swing? What’re you up to?

Amazing that just a few words on a phone could have her dancing about in the vegetable garden. This was fun.

Planting beans then making gazpacho. You?

Luisa began to hum, jumpy with anticipation. She was a little defiant. No one noticed what she did, and they weren’t interested anyway. Luca and Mae were always hammering away at their phones, absorbed in whatever appeared on the screens, now she was like them. She was in the dance.

Back came the reply, Luisa jumped up and stepped away from Luca to read it.

Manning the Lighthouse and wondering how you make gazpacho.

Luca, stood up, yawning. He stretched and shrugged, gazing blankly at Luisa’s plants. ‘They’re not straight, Mum,’ he said eventually. He picked up the hoe. ‘Shall I do it?’ he suggested.

‘Please.’ She squinted through a dazzle of sunlight. The familiar tawny flecks in his eyes swam, he whistled and raised the hoe, balancing it.

‘Look, Mum, look!’ Up it went, high and straight, and Luca placed the handle carefully on his upturned forehead, bent himself to assure a balance and then stood, arms wide, head back and the hoe balanced straight up on his head.

‘Wait, I’ll take a picture, I can’t believe you can still do that.
Stay
!’

Too fast for her to capture it, Luca lost the balance. Luisa clapped, laughing. ‘Brilliant, you have such a good life skill there.’

He bowed with a flourish. ‘I can juggle too, d’you remember, Mum?’

Luisa thought back to the summer when he was twelve, the circus school and his stubborn refusal to give up on acts more suited to an older person. Tireless hours waiting because to rush him out and away home would have caused bitter disappointment, and anyway, it had been time that she loved giving him. She remembered sitting on a wooden box in the shadows at the back as Luca walked all the way across the sawdust ring on his hands, legs hanging above him, tummy exposed, a pale slice in the spotlights. His whoop of excitement that he had done it was so darling, his confidence boosted so he walked taller already when he waved at her and moved with his group of fellow students to a different challenge.

‘Yes, I remember. You’ve got rubber in your veins instead of blood, that’s what the guy said.’

‘Wonder if I still have,’ Luca suddenly threw himself into a backwards flip, then a cartwheel. He was like a puppy, flailing across the grass, veering beyond control and back. Breathlessly he came to a halt and bounded back to Luisa.

‘I’m out of practice. Mum, I need you to make me practise.’

She laughed. ‘Come and bounce these plants into the ground. I need help getting them straight.’

She began digging a new row of holes. Luca beside her, delicately placing plants. Luisa noticed that she made about ten times as many movements as he did. As he gently untangled roots and rested little bean plants in their holes, she shook hers, sloshed water over them and patted earth around them before moving on. She was too impulsive. Hers looked shell-shocked. Perhaps she had been too hasty with the texts. Kit hadn’t replied to her last one. Or was it her turn? She didn’t dare check, Luca was too close.