The Summer of Secrets (11 page)

‘Are you looking for something?’

‘Bit of paper. Might be in the car.’ He picked up her abandoned tea and drained it. ‘I’ll see you later.’

The house seemed lighter, from the sun, from Mick, the atmosphere bouncing up as if a weight had been lifted. The warm feeling it gave her increased as she walked along to the canal. It was a particular summer feeling, she thought: everything was possible, all things within reach. She stopped for a minute to relish the sense of it, gathering her hair up into a bundle behind her head. That made her think of Seth, his eyes on her as he sketched, and a rush of excitement spread across her chest. The whole world was present inside her, expanding into an infinite space. She wanted to cartwheel, or spin round in circles. If her dad’s boat could make it on to the water, who knew what else could happen? She picked up her pace and ran down the lane.

At the cottage, though, it wasn’t Seth or Victoria that she found. She was hovering by the door, waiting for a response to her call, when a voice answered her from the sitting room.

‘In here.’ It was deep and croaky, as if the owner had only that moment woken up. Helen stepped through slowly, unsure of what she would find. But Piet was sitting on the sofa, a tall china coffee pot on the low table in front of him. He smiled up at Helen.

‘Get yourself a cup and join me for a coffee. None of your instant rubbish.’

She picked up one up from the sideboard and came through, perching on the edge of the armchair. Piet didn’t say anything as he poured for her, stirring in sugar without asking if she wanted it. She took a cautious sip. It was strong and sweet, and Piet hadn’t offered any milk. After pouring some for himself, he had fallen back into the sofa and was drinking with his eyes shut. The silence spread out. Helen could hear the low hum of the fridge and some distant, unidentifiable birdsong. A car came along the road, crested the bridge, died away.

‘So.’ Piet’s voice made her start. ‘What do you think of it?’

Helen had no idea what he was talking about.

‘The coffee?’ He held up his cup.

‘I’ve not had it as strong as this before.’ She took another sip. The taste was better this time. ‘It’s nice.’

Piet’s laugh was rough with smoke.

‘Teach your palate to enjoy good coffee and good whisky, and you won’t go far wrong.’

Helen felt her mouth smile. She liked him, this lean cowboy with the lined face, but he was so different to any other grown-up she knew. She wasn’t sure how to talk to him. He didn’t wait for a response anyway.

‘When I was your age, you couldn’t get coffee worth drinking over here. I’d go to stay with my grandparents, and my grandmother would have me grinding the beans before breakfast.’ He gave a rasping cough. ‘While it was brewing, she’d send me out for the fresh rolls. Man, I’d come back to England and feel like giving up food altogether.’

His expression made her laugh. ‘Where did your grandparents live?’

‘On the outskirts of Amsterdam. But we spent the summer on the Waddenzee. You ever heard of that?’

Helen shook her head.

‘Miles of nothing. The tide goes out and you have the mudflats, and the sea is in channels, you don’t see anything but the mud and the seals. And the birds, all the birds.’ He laughed, shaking his head in wonderment. ‘Me and Jakob—’ he stopped to explain, ‘my brother, you know, Victoria’s dad?’ It was strange, hearing his name said out loud. Other than the odd reference dropped by Victoria, nobody ever mentioned him, and she always had the feeling he was hidden, secret. It was as if Piet was breaking a taboo. She realized he was waiting for her to respond, so she gave a quick nod. ‘We were boys, no bigger than Will, and we’d go off in a canoe, spend all day exploring …’ His voice tailed off, lost in the memory.

Helen studied him, trying not to be obvious in case he wasn’t as abstracted as he seemed. His face had the tanned, leathery look of someone who had spent their life outside in the sun. She wondered how it felt to lose touch with a sibling, tried to imagine what it would be like to grow up with another person always there. Did he know where his brother was? Here was a chance to fill in the gaps left by Victoria’s tidbits of information.

‘I heard that he disappeared. Jakob, I mean.’

Piet shifted slightly, and she felt his gaze rest on her with interest.

‘Victoria been telling you stories, has she?’

‘Well …’ She’d gone too far. ‘A bit. She said about his band.’

‘Ha, Cumulus.’ He shook his head. ‘Good on their day, they were. But it so often wasn’t their day.’

He was motionless now, his eyes distant, focused on something out of sight. The silence seemed to stretch out for ever. Helen found herself holding her breath, hoping none of the others would turn up. There were so many secrets hidden amongst the Dover tales. What had made Alice who she was? Would Jakob come back? She’d forgotten how old Victoria had said she was when he disappeared. Six, she thought. And in the summer. So Jakob had been gone for ten years. She heard Pippa’s voice, saying she and Will had been born in the spring. So they’d be ten on their next birthday. They would never have seen their father. But weren’t twins usually born early? She seemed to remember something like that coming up in biology. Surreptitiously, she began to calculate on her fingers. Depending on when you said spring began, and if they had been early, she couldn’t see how Jakob could have been there for, well … She felt herself blush. That definitely wasn’t a question for Piet. But she tucked it away to think about later.

Piet suddenly leaned forward and slapped his hands on his knees.

‘As you’re here, you can give me a hand.’ He stood up. ‘Have you finished your coffee?’

Helen tipped back the last mouthful, caught out by the sludgy thickness of the sugar.

‘Yes.’

‘Come on, then.’ He smiled.

He led the way out to the back garden, and through the gap in the fence to where he parked his van in the field. He searched in his pockets for keys, and swung open the back doors. Inside was a large, flat package, wrapped in sacking. It took up the whole length of the van, and had been padded with blankets and secured in place with a crisscross of rope. Helen could see bubble wrap underneath.

‘Here we go.’ Piet flicked off the rope and took the near edge of the sacking in both hands. ‘It’s a painting, right? I’m going to slide this out, and you’re going to hold it while I go to the other end.’ He smiled at her. ‘It’s not heavy, but it’s a bit awkward. OK?’

Helen nodded.

Once it was out, they held it upright between them and Piet led the way back to the cottage and into the living room, walking backwards on sure feet.

He pointed to the wall behind the sofa. ‘It’s going up there.’

The front of the painting faced away from her as she stood holding it upright. Piet stripped off the protective coverings and then, following his directions, she helped him to lift it. Her face was too close to the canvas for her to make sense of any shape within the colours.

‘There.’ Piet stepped back. ‘Do you like it?’

It was an oil painting, a nude stretched out across a bed. Alice, thought Helen; a young and joyous Alice lying on her back with one leg bent up, her arms spread out wide as she laughed at the painter. It was beautiful. And then, immediately, she thought of sitting here with Alice in the room. How would it feel, knowing that everyone could see you like that? It was strange enough to be looking at it with Piet, almost as if her own clothes were gone. She could feel herself lying there, with the painter’s eyes gazing at her skin, at her … She closed her eyes, blood thumping in her ears, horrified at herself. Piet seemed to be very close. She took a tiny step away, uncomfortable.

He was talking again, though.

‘It was one of the first ones I did. Sold every single one from the first exhibition.’

‘I didn’t know that.’ She took a deep breath. This was normal to him. She needed to stop being such a prude. What would it be like to have a painting of her mother on the smooth beige wall of their living room at home? The thought made her want to laugh.

‘She’s very beautiful.’

Piet sat on the armchair, studying the painting as he reached for his tin of tobacco. ‘Isn’t she?’ He licked the edge of his cigarette paper and smoothed it down with one thumb. ‘Chuck the lighter across.’

She picked it up from the arm of the sofa, unnerved by the slight thrill it gave her to be touching something personal to him. Their fingers brushed as he took it, and she backed hurriedly on to the sofa. His voice came almost as a surprise, and she realized she was staring at his hands. The one holding the cigarette was gesturing towards the wall, and she turned to look up.

‘I did that straight out of art college, spent a month with no sleep I was painting so much.’ He shook his head, as if feeling again the effects of so many sleepless nights. ‘I found her on the doorstep of a nightclub with nowhere to go, so I took her back to my rooms. I was young, I was painting like this.’ He waved the cigarette up towards the painting. ‘Life was good.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Life was good.’ There was a long pause. ‘And then Jake rolled up and turned her head.’ He took another draw on the cigarette.

There didn’t seem to be anything to say, although the pause in the conversation suggested it was her turn. The thought of Piet and Alice as a couple had never crossed her mind, and she was grappling with it when Piet spoke again.

‘So, what about your dad’s boat?’

‘It’s been there a long time.’ The transition to something she could make sense about came as a relief. ‘It would mean a lot to my dad to finish it.’

Piet nodded.

‘It’s a nice hull. We’ll see what we can do.’ He sat up, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. ‘It can’t be easy for you, your mum leaving. Means a lot to your dad, having you there with him.’

Helen felt her eyes sting, and she stared down at the floor, wondering if Mick had said something, or if Piet was just being nice. Light from the window pooled by her foot, the circling motes lifting up, weightless, from the frayed carpet.

‘So, where are we? August, hey? What are you and Victoria planning for the rest of the summer?’

The whirl of conversation had shifted again, this time on to firmer ground. Even so, she fumbled for something to say.

‘Hanging out, mostly. There’s not much to do. We’ve got a pile of books to read through.’ Said out loud, it sounded a bit pathetic, but Piet seemed interested, as if this was a valid summer activity. ‘I had to give up on
Ulysses
, but I’ve finished
War and Peace
.’

He laughed.

‘Going for the heavy reads, are you? Well, it’s one way.
Ulysses
will last you the rest of your life.’ He ground the end of his cigarette into the ashtray. ‘What did you make of the Tolstoy?’

‘It was OK.’ Her rush through the final pages felt as if it had happened a long time ago. ‘I mean, it was hard to begin with, but once I got sucked in it didn’t take as long as I thought it would.’ She stopped, experiencing again the thrill she’d felt as Anatole held Natasha’s arm, the prickling tears as Prince Andrei died. Piet was watching her, waiting for her to carry on, as if what she was saying was actually interesting. She tried to work out what she wanted to get across. ‘I liked the changes, you know, how it was all so much fun at the beginning, and then everyone was dying, and Moscow burns and they all have to run away.’ She could see Piet nodding his head. ‘The end was a bit of a let-down, though. How he paired them up and they all got boring.’ She broke off again, wondering if she could explain what she meant. ‘Don’t you hate it when the heroine ends up with the dull guy because the one she really loves is dead?’

An odd expression flickered across Piet’s face, gone almost before she had a chance to register it. He let out his rasping laugh.

‘That’s romance for you. There’d be no story if they hooked up at the start. What else have you got on the list?’

Her mind went blank. She couldn’t remember any of the other names. She tried to visualize them, piled up by her bed.

‘Oh,
Animal Farm
… And
Lolita
. And there was one by somebody called Faulkner, but the library didn’t have it.’ She ground to a halt. ‘We’re doing other things as well as reading.’ She cast about for examples. ‘Like cutting our hair short.’

Piet got up, leaning backwards with his hands in the small of his back before stooping to pick up his tobacco tin and lighter.

‘Victoria, perhaps. She’s got a bit of the gamine about her.’ He straightened up and, as he walked past, he picked up a strand of her hair on one finger, grazing her cheek as he did. It was the lightest touch but she felt it all the way up her spine. ‘I’d keep yours long. Beautiful colours in there.’

She found herself waiting for more, but he ruffled the top of her head, and carried on towards the doorway, pausing on the threshold. ‘Go for longer. Lady Godiva, Rapunzel.’ He stood in contemplation as if she were a painting. Again, she had the sensation of nakedness. She didn’t realise she was holding her breath until after he’d gone.

She stayed where she was, feeling the pressure of his hand on her head. Alice in the picture, Lady Godiva. From a great distance, she heard a car pulling up. Vaguely she was aware of an engine idling, followed by a clamour of noise building up around the side of the house and the car pulling away again. Will fell through the door with Pippa at his heels.

‘Helen, Helen, guess what we got?’ Pippa pulled at her hand. ‘Guess, guess!’

Will was doing a mad dance, waving oars over his head. Victoria backed around the corner, dragging an unwieldy shape behind her.

‘Will, come and give me a hand, why don’t you?’ She pushed her hair away from her forehead and caught sight of Helen. ‘Oh good, you’re here. Grab that handle.’

Helen took a step towards her before stopping as another figure came around the corner. It was Alice, who also paused, as if she was aware of the picture she made and was consciously posing for everyone to enjoy it. It was like the cover of a magazine, the shaded laurels and the grey tones of the pathway the perfect background for her pale skin and the wave of her blonde hair. She was wearing a sundress, white with black polka dots, the skirt nipped at the waist and widening to an extravagance of folds. Helen had the strangest feeling that she was play-acting, but there was no humour on her face. Then she lifted a hand to take off her sunglasses, and waved them vaguely towards the bundle in front of Victoria.