Chapter 15 #2
‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have gulped it down, but yes, it’s very good, and…’
‘I know, it’s a scorcher. Why don’t you take a break?
You know, you’re not tied to the job here,’ she said softly, and he watched as she put the pitcher down and sat at the edge of the still water pool.
‘Come on,’ she called back to him tossing off her shoes and submerging her feet and legs into the still water.
It seemed to Kip as if to join her might be to take a slice of heaven.
‘You’re right. It’s too hot to work in this sun.
’ And he dropped to the ledge next to her and pulled off his old work boots and thick socks, plunging his feet into the pool, and it felt divine.
The freshness of it shimmied up his legs, sending pleasant cool shivers along his spine.
He bent forward, submerged his hand and arms up to his elbows.
The relief was like a thousand small arrows of balm flying up through him.
‘So?’ She looked at him now from under her fringe that had bleached blonder in the bright sun.
‘So,’ he said then, and he held her eyes for longer than he’d meant to, but what the hell, he’d never felt like this before.
Blythe, the more time he spent here, he thought was amazing.
She never stopped giving. She looked after her mother, she took care of Rae, she seemed to keep the whole place running and when she wasn’t doing that, she was racing to the hotel and keeping that show on the road as well.
And she was damned sexy. Even sitting here next to her filled him with a yearning to move closer to her.
He wanted to put his arms around her, pull her to him, feel the softness and strength of her body next to his.
Stop it. He had to talk to her, stop thinking like this.
He wanted to tell her she was amazing, but he couldn’t do that, not without sounding a bit weird.
‘Kip.’ She said his name softly. ‘I…’ she turned to look at him and for another long moment, no words passed between them, but maybe something else was said in the silence.
‘I wanted to thank you, you know, for all you’ve done for us.
I mean, it feels wrong, that we haven’t paid you, that you don’t want anything and yet, you’ve done so much. ’
‘I’m happy to do it, Blythe, that’s the truth,’ he said then and he was being honest. ‘I’m not great at sitting home with time on my hands, I needed something to fill my days and honestly…
’ he stopped. ‘You know, I’m not always going to be able to play rugby, someday, I’m going to have to retire and working here, well, it’s given me a sense of what I’d like to do. ’
‘Become a gardener?’
‘Maybe,’ he laughed. But he meant so much more than that.
He’d tackled lots of odd jobs about the place, too.
Every time Mrs Scott invited him to have tea with her, he found some little task to take on in the house as well as outside.
‘And I’ve loved this place, it’s very…’ he looked down at the pool where his feet were dangling next to Blythe’s, ‘special.’
‘I suppose it is.’ She laughed then. ‘When my dad was… well, before the accident, Rae and I used to spend every summer day down here at the pool.’ She laughed then and he felt her gaze across at him, assessing him.
‘Come on.’ She said, pulling off her T-shirt so she was sitting next to him for a second with just her bra and shorts on.
Then, suddenly she was in the pool. Screaming with delight at the cold.
‘What’s stopping you?’ She held up her hand and he grabbed it and then she was pulling him and suddenly, the cold welled up around him and he felt more alive than he’d ever felt in his whole life.
‘It’s amazing.’ He spluttered, ‘this is amazing!’ He shouted above her shrieking for joy. He felt like a boy, filled with that childish happiness that was so fleeting, you hardly recognised it was gone, until one-off moments like this, if you were lucky enough to experience them.
‘Kip,’ she said again and later, he marvelled at how he’d heard her, because it was little more than a whisper, but when he turned, she was right up next to him, her face tilted towards his and he knew, or maybe he didn’t know, but this was right.
He pulled her close, felt the length of her against him.
He kissed her long and slow right there in the centre of the still water pool and far off in the distance, his whole world melted into insignificance at that moment.
For all the glory on the rugby pitch. All the prizes, the travel and even the wins, Kip knew, he’d never felt as content as he did that year in Still Water House.
Quite aside from him and Blythe, he felt as if he belonged there.
It wasn’t just the place either, he was growing fond of Rae and absolutely adored Mrs Scott.
On those afternoons, when she was able, she called for him to come and join her for tea in the afternoon.
Kip knew she always tried to make it for the hottest part of the day, in the hope that it was some little break for him out of the sun.
Some days Blythe would have baked, other days, it was shop-bought biscuits on a tray set out by Rae served up in the grand, faded drawing room.
Even on the warmest days, Mrs Scott was settled under a heavy woollen rug from the mills over in Ballycove.
She was frail and he hated to admit it, but he thought she was growing weaker each time he saw her, but even so, her spirit was like a flame.
When she smiled, it felt as if the whole room brightened up, she had the most amazing eyes, you knew, when you spoke, she was really listening to you.
It was on one of those afternoons that she asked him to open a card she’d received in the post and read it to her. Kip had self-consciously stumbled across the letters. Mrs Scott smiled indulgently.
‘You should have said,’ she murmured when he’d finished.
And he looked at her, that familiar emotion of shame and inadequacy roiling up in him.
‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of, it’s dyslexia, as common as the hydrangeas in the garden, I’d say,’ she said then.
‘I read about it, in The Times a few months ago. Some study, carried out by one of the top universities, do you know what it said?’
‘That people who can’t read feel as thick as two short planks?’ He was aiming for humour; it had long become his only weapon of deflection.
‘No, you must never say that. They said that in research, they’d found that people with dyslexia who spent their whole lives compensating, tended to be much brighter in other ways.’ She smiled then, held his eye until it felt uncomfortable for him. ‘I’m paraphrasing, but you understand, Kip?’
‘Aye, Mrs Macken was always saying the same thing to me in school.’
‘Constance is such a gift to this island, isn’t she?’
‘She’s lovely, everyone’s favourite teacher.’
‘Anyway, Constance is right, especially when it comes to you. Do you know how many intellectual derelicts there are in this world? People who can read and write and yet, can’t support themselves, can’t make their own beds in the morning or stick by a wife for longer than it takes to break her heart? ’
‘I know that well enough.’
‘Hmm. Well, you’re not like that, Kip. I’ve watched you out there, in the garden, here in the house, you’re a very clever man, I don’t believe there’s a single thing you couldn’t do if you set your mind to it.
’ She said this with such conviction, that Kip felt a knot of unexpected emotion rise up in him.
‘You are a very special person, Mrs Scott. I’ve never met anyone like you, it’s been an honour not just to spend time here, but to get to know you all.’
‘It’s a joy for us. I’d like to think that when I’m…’ She smiled sadly now, ‘well, when I’m gone, you’d still be here.’
‘Oh, don’t be talking like that.’
‘Listen to me,’ she said, her expression suddenly serious.
‘I have two daughters, and I worry about them both. But I look at you and Blythe together and…’ She stopped, because so far as Kip knew, Blythe had never told anyone about that kiss in the pond or the fact that when they were alone, sometimes they held hands and once, she’d thrown her arms about him and clung to him so hard, it felt as if she needed him more than the air itself. ‘You’re right together.’
‘Ah, Mrs Scott.’ He wasn’t sure now if she was just ribbing him.
‘I know, I know, I shouldn’t be saying these things, but there might not be the chance again.
You’ll go back to that other world. It could be a year before you’re properly back here on Pin Hill again and by then…
’ She looked out the window. ‘Well, I don’t think I’ll be here to admire the garden and the fine work you’ve done next summer. ’
‘Don’t say that,’ he said hoarsely, but maybe he knew it was true as well as she did.
‘Well, just remember what I said, Blythe is the most caring daughter a mother could ask for, but these days, she doesn’t let too many people in – I think it might be her father’s death.
’ She shook her head sadly. ‘She’s cut herself off, as if she’s afraid that people will set out to hurt her.
But she’s pure gold underneath. True, she can be a stubborn piece of work sometimes, she knows her own mind so well, there’s no talking sense into her, but if you love her, all I’m asking is that you persevere, she will make you very happy one day.
’ She stopped, there were footsteps in the hall and then as the door opened, she whispered, ‘promise me.’
‘I promise.’ The words slipped out, by accident or in surprise, but once he’d said them, he knew, a promise is a promise and this one he fully intended to keep.