Chapter Seven
From the way that his eyes, heavy with desire, had been fixed to her mouth and, damn, pretty hot, she’d known he wanted to kiss her. His spurt of anger told her just how much.
A kiss would probably have been a bad idea. For all kinds of reasons.
Like Stef. Stef. And . . . Stef.
She could have told him that she and Stef were living separate lives but right now a man in her life, particularly an angry man with barriers against married women, would complicate her already knotty situation. And she knew little about Martyn Mayfair other than that he kept turning up in shining armour to rescue her from dragons — well, sunburn and thunderstorms — and he had a stalker, which was sad and, as she was pretty freaked by the whole Robina thing, an out-of-left-field complication.
There was no reason for her to feel affronted that Martyn had thrust her from him like a dog that had rolled in something stinky.
So she should just stop.
She sighed. Well, stop then, Honor.
But, before he’d turned so harsh and unforgiving, she’d been all set to drown in those dark eyes and let his lips make real the connection they were obviously both feeling. And as for that incredibly English way he said ‘bastard’ — barzstard. Not basstard. Cute . . . She shook herself. Stop! Really, stop. Not going to happen.
A long soak in a hot bath went some way to easing her stiff muscles. Then, after a quick lunch, she fired up her laptop and resolved to work through her inbox to punish herself for wishfully thinking herself kissed by a specimen of almost perfect male physical beauty. First the mail she’d let build up from friends and recently ex-coworkers demanding to be told exactly what the hell she thought she was doing, pinging back the same breezy paragraph to each: Hi! I’m fine, just enjoying a little time out before deciding where I go from here. Be sure to see you sometime.
But the concern from loved ones was harder to deal with. She clicked first on Zach :
Hey Honor, you OK? Dad’s stressing. He rang me, checking whether you were hanging with me down in Texas but I told him no. But if you do want to hang here, I’ll still tell him no, if you want. Zach
PS I keep hearing that everyone back in Hamilton Drives is so amazed. I knew Stef’s stunt would make it hard for you but you kind of took people by surprise by leaving.
She moved on to Jessamine :
Honor, I saw Stef and he’s totally subdued, wishing he was back in the days when his worst crime was blowing up a mailbox. He says to tell you that he loves you and knows he deserves to be punished but he misses you like crazy and wishes you’d go see him. Love you, sis. Jessie xxx
Honor smiled, picturing Jessie, the image of blonde, pretty Karen, throwing her arms around Honor and delivering those kisses, heavy on the lip gloss.
She left the hardest till last. Dad :
Honor, honey, I’m not going to pretend that I’m in favour of you hiding out from your errant husband but I guess that’s a conversation for another day. Until you’ve got this fit out of your system, can we please continue to check in with one another? Regularly? Karen says Hi.
I love you.
She returned, I love you, too. I’m really fine, Dad.
When she’d conquered her inbox, restless emotions and incipient muscle stiffness sent her to put up her hair and slap on her sun block and walk out to explore Eastingdean while the sunshine lasted.
Most commercial activity in Eastingdean was centred on The Butts, a broad road, off Marine Drive, of pubs, fascinating stores and places to linger. Honor suppressed a childish snicker at the idea of a street named The Butts. The British didn’t use the word ‘butt’ in quite the same way as Americans but if she were ever to open a shop here it would have to, just have to , sell panties and boxer shorts. She could call it Cover Your Butts . Or Beautiful Butts. The Butts for butts. The Butts Store .
On the first corner of The Butts was a block of shops called Starboard Walk, studded with enormous pebbles row on row on row. The rest of the stores — no, shops — that lined The Butts were an eclectic mixture of more flint, plain red brick, rendered and painted in white or cream with the occasional pink, or the cross between a house and a zebra that was mock-Tudor.
The butcher’s shop and the one that sold fruit and vegetables were worthy only of a glance and she noted the fish and chip shop for when she hadn’t just eaten. Across the road from the Eastingdean Teapot, the tearoom that Martyn had said belonged to his stalker, she browsed happily around a leafy, peaty garden shop that sold spotted Wellington boots, neat packs of seed, and baskets of hanging plants swinging gently as they waited to be bought.
Her favourite, though, she found at the point where the shops were petering out — Pretty Old. The shop front was stained dark, the bevelled glass windows shone, and the air smelled of dust and beeswax as she stepped inside. From somewhere in the recesses she thought she could hear a radio but, although a tinkling bell announced her as she closed the door, nobody emerged to help her.
It wasn’t exactly an antique store, not like those she’d seen in London’s Chelsea. In Hamilton Drives the sign over the door would have said something about ‘collectibles’.
But, wow. It was crammed with cool stuff.
In cabinets crouched old telephones, from froggy-looking examples in two shades of green to brittle black, dials yellowed with age and a funny cord that looked as if it had been covered in cotton.
Then came the photographs. Faded photographs in tones of grey or shades of sepia; weddings and christenings, parades, family groups and solemn babies in long gowns, all framed in tarnished silver or wood smoothed by age. Even better was an album of postcards that were embroidered in faded silks and sometimes edged with lace.
She picked it up and breathed in the smell of old.
Old paper, old ink, old lives. It was exactly the kind of history she loved best: the kind you could touch, just on the edges of living memory. Inside the album’s back cover was written in a childish cursive script: Mary Brownlee, The Rise, Eastingdean, East Sussex. Was Mary Brownlee still around? Probably not, she realised, sadly, if her precious collection had ended up in this hushed, musty shop.
Each postcard had its own embroidered message: Happy Christmas . Happy Birthday. To My Darling Wife. To My Little Girl. Don’t Forget Me. Honor turned each thick page gently, reverently, Souvenir de France , Right is Might , until she reached the final one, RFA 1917, my heart it wings to thee. The colours were muted by the years but every stitch was beautiful and precise, just as it had been set almost a century before.
‘Lovely, aren’t they?’
The quiet voice came from right beside her and Honor jumped so hard she almost dropped the precious album. A woman in her sixties twinkled at her, eyes almost disappearing in her smile, cheeks as round as red apples. If her ears had been pointed, Honor would have suspected her of being a hobbit. ‘Sorry, did I startle you? You’re looking at First World War silks. They were embroidered for the servicemen. What you’re holding is a collection of cards a staff sergeant in the Royal Field Artillery sent home to his wife and daughter.’
‘They’re gorgeous.’ Honor stroked a page. ‘How much would you charge for the book?’
Hobbit woman crinkled up her face again. ‘I’m afraid it’s expensive. The collection will soon be a hundred years old, which is rather a magic figure, in antiques. And all together like that in the album, they sort of tell a story, don’t they?’
Honor waited.
The screwed-up face screwed up even more. ‘I couldn’t take less than two hundred pounds.’
‘Wow. I’d have to think about that.’ Regretfully, Honor closed the album and slid it back on to the shelf by a framed photo of girls in drum majorette uniforms, hems well below their knees.
The lady nodded, sadly. ‘I know. Expensive.’ Then her face scrunched up again with a pained smile, as if she were gently disappointed in Honor but was too gracious to make it plain. ‘Do enjoy browsing.’
Honor did. By the time she finally tore herself away from the shelves of beads, bobbins, boxes and brassware, she felt dazed. Holding bits of history in her hands had made her covet so many that, like a child confused by the largesse of a toyshop, she hadn’t bought a thing, just allowed herself a last loving flick through the postcards in their creased old hide binding. Maybe, just maybe, if she could get herself a job, she could justify buying that fabulous collection.
Outside, the sunlight made her blink as she crossed the street to return down the other side. In a recess almost opposite Pretty Old stood a wooden community hall. She was fascinated to learn from the glassed-in notice board that the hall was home to a whole bunch of groups and events: a visit to Rottingdean’s windmill — she’d seen it, big and black on a ridge above Rottingdean village, but hadn’t figured out how to get to it. A talk by a local author. Tai Chi for the over fifties. How to make dough animals for the under tens. And Zumba! The Zumba classes back in Hamilton had taken place in an air-conditioned dance studio with a polished floor and a wall of mirrors, rather than in something that looked like a large shed, but she couldn’t see how it could be too different. She’d loved the combination of aerobics and Latin music and, forgetting that her muscles were already stiffening from her run, she shifted her weight right as she went up on the ball of her left foot. Yeahhh . . . Zumbahhh! Ow . . . butt cheeks!
Maybe Zumba would have to wait.
She turned towards the Eastingdean Teapot. OK, it was giving in to curiosity but, after hearing Martyn’s stories about Robina, she just had to walk through the troughs of many-coloured petunias and the green chairs and tables. Menus were sandwiched in sturdy acrylic holders and parasols flapped their white fringes in the breeze like big crazy spiders.
The tearoom, set behind the teagarden, was like a parlour, furnished with mismatched wooden furniture and smelling as sweet as fruitcake. On the walls hung cookie tin lids and pretty plates. Pickles and conserves in hexagonal jars with lace caps waited for buyers on a counter that divided the tearoom from the kitchen and behind it a teenaged boy washed glasses and a blonde woman in a hairnet rushed around.
In the middle of the kitchen stood the woman from the park, Robina, in jeans and a richly embroidered green velvet top, a black apron slung around her hips, recognisable from the bubble of black curls held back from her face by a black bandana. She didn’t look much of a stalker, icing chocolate flowers on to greaseproof paper.
Honor watched, fascinated by the fluid swoop-twist movements that created the petals and the dab that joined them in the middle. After a few clusters of swoop-twist petals, Robina glanced up. ‘Would you like to sit down? We’ll take your order at the table.’ She smiled and Honor thought she had never seen such huge brown eyes, nor amazingly bee-stung lips.
After everything she’d been told she’d half-expected horns and cloven hooves, so it took her a moment to respond to being not only in conversation with Robina but it being quite normal and friendly. ‘Sure. Thanks.’ She settled on a wheel-back chair with a rose pink cushion at the last free table, glancing around at a lone man taking up the whole of a table meant for four by spreading out his broadsheet newspaper; two young mums talking earnestly as they shovelled food into their toddlers; and three tables seemingly populated by one party, judging by the way that they talked across the divides as they ate.
The teenager emerged from the kitchen with a pad and pen. ‘’Lo. What can I getcha?’ He had the same big brown eyes as Robina, but his hair was flat and sandy and he didn’t have her lips. Honor found herself being glad — lips like that were for girls.
She glanced at the menu. ‘A pot of hot tea, please, and maybe some cake or pie.’
He indicated a table beside the wall, tiered with cakes under clear plastic covers. ‘We got carrot cake, lemon drizzle, pineapple upside down, date and walnut, and chocolate cupcakes, apple pie and cherry with almond tart. You can have cream, custard or ice-cream.’
‘They all look delicious.’
‘Yeah.’ He wiggled his pen, glancing sympathetically at a toddler who was crying at being trapped in his highchair.
‘Are all these cakes made right here?’
‘Yeah.’ He nodded vaguely at the kitchen. ‘Or there’s desserts on the menu. No more cream teas, the last of the scones have just gone.’ He wiggled his pen again.
‘I’ll have cherry and almond pie, with cream.’
‘OK.’ He scribbled, then disappeared back through the flap in the counter into the steam of the kitchen, sliding his feet along the floor as if too weary to pick them up.
Honor waited, gazing around at the lace at the window and the stack of white crockery on the counter, the survivors of many sets, judging by the mix. Robina was still intent on her task, giant icing bag twisted in her hands. The woman in the hairnet kept up a steady stream of conversation and sometimes Robina answered. The lone man folded up his newspaper and left his empty cup but no tip. Three middle-aged women took the table.
Then the door shot open. ‘Rufus! I’ve got fifteen minutes, be a love and get me a big fat mug of black coffee and one of your mother’s enormously risen scones, quick as you can, good boy.’ Clarissa. Martyn’s sister-mother. Well, now. Wasn’t that interesting?
A smile touched Rufus’s face like a watery sun as he selected an enormous mug and carried it to the coffee machine. ‘Too late for scones. Got cupcakes, lemon drizzle—’
‘Damnation. Is one of those cupcakes chocolate? I need something to sweeten me up before I teach tap to unwilling little girls and boys in Hove.’ She glanced around the tables.
Honor lifted her hand. ‘Hi, Clarissa.’
Clarissa waved back. ‘Oh, Honor. Sunburn better? May I join you?’ She hooked her bag over the back of the other chair and nearly snatched the coffee and cupcake from Rufus’s tray.
‘Much.’ Honor smiled at Rufus as he put down in front of her a white china teapot, matching cup and saucer, a tiny milk jug and some sachets of sugar. ‘Thanks.’
‘Everything OK at the bungalow? I can send Martyn round if you need help with anything.’ Clarissa blew over the surface of her coffee. Her hair curled beside her cheekbones and although she set about her cupcake with deadly efficiency, she didn’t look as if she carried a spare pound. If she’d given birth to Martyn at sixteen she must be in her late forties but her skin was smooth. Maybe it was because she didn’t smile enough to get wrinkles.
Honor poured her tea. ‘Everything’s great. I love the view over the ocean.’
‘You wanting the place for four months was a bonus because it cuts down on tons of paperwork and stuff. Have no idea what I’ll do if I can’t let it in winter. Panic.’ She fired out her sentences between bites.
Honor picked up the fork that came with her cherry and almond tart. When she took her first mouthful of pastry, the cherry leaking bloodily through the cream, she couldn’t suppress an, ‘ Mmm . . .’
‘Good?’ Clarissa nodded. ‘She’s a genius with pastry, Robina.’ She indicated her cupcake. ‘And cake. Robina’s the one with the dark curls.’
In the interests of local community harmony, Honor elected not to ask Clarissa if she knew about Robina’s passion for Martyn. ‘She’s Rufus’s mom?’
Robina, overhearing, looked up with a beaming smile. ‘Yes, he’s my little Ru — Sophie, can you put the icing in the fridge, please? — and he helps us out here when he’s not at school.’
Honor glanced at her watch. ‘Isn’t it school time, now?’
Robina put down the icing bag and picked up a whisk and a bowl to cradle in her arm. ‘Only sports day, so I kept him home. We’re a person short because Kirsty, who usually works here, is in hospital with one of those strange viruses. She’s really ill, poor Kirst. So Rufus is more use here than running round a track. Aren’t you, little Ru?’
Rufus shrugged, face impassive as he accepted money from the mums and toddlers as they left.
Honor suspected Rufus would have enjoyed sports day, given the opportunity.
‘So.’ Clarissa wiped the last of the cupcake from her fingers with a jolly yellow napkin and sank back into her chair with her coffee. ‘How are you liking England?’
‘I love it.’ Honor smiled, even though Clarissa didn’t. ‘I’m going to make myself a real pig over English history, that’s for sure. I’ve been browsing the Pretty Old store, up the street, lusting after an album of postcards sent home by an artillery staff sergeant in World War I. But I have to resist spending that much money until I get a job. The cards are called silks and they were embroidered by Frenchwomen for the servicemen—’
‘How much did she try and skin you for?’
Honor halted. ‘Excuse me?’
Clarissa fished around in her bag for money. ‘Peggy, at Pretty Old. What did she want to charge you for the album?’
‘Two hundred pounds.’
Clarissa jumped up, dropping money for the cupcake and coffee on the table. ‘Got to run. See you.’
‘OK—’ Honor was left talking to empty air as Clarissa let the door bang behind her. She shrugged and turned back to her pie.
Behind the counter, Rufus washed up as the woman who Robina had addressed as Sophie called, ‘Remember to rinse everything under the hot, Ru,’ which, as Honor could see, he was doing already. Rufus said nothing but pulled a gargoyle face at Sophie’s back, making Honor choke.
He met her gaze with one eye through a gap in his hair and a corner of his mouth quirked up before he turned back to his steaming sink.
Honor was getting ready to pay her bill when Clarissa burst back in. ‘Fifty quid?’
Honor jumped. ‘What?’
‘Peggy said she’s sorry, she thought you were American. You can have the album for fifty quid.’
Honor felt her hackles rise. ‘I am American.’
‘But now you’re living here you don’t count as one so she won’t rip you off. Call back into the shop if you want it.’ And she was gone. Through an uneven square window Honor watched her run across the teagarden and down the road — did everyone run, in the Mayfair family? — in wonder that Clarissa would scrounge the time, when she was so obviously busy, to get her tenant a good price on an old album. Evidently, there was kindness in her.
Leaving the Eastingdean Teapot, Honor strode back up The Butts to Pretty Old and pinged through the door. ‘Hello, dear,’ cooed Peggy, from behind the counter, quite unabashed. ‘Sorry about earlier. I thought you were American.’
Smiling sweetly, Honor said, ‘I am. And I can only pay twenty.’
‘You poor thing.’ Peggy’s smile was just as sweet. ‘Because I can only sell for fifty.’
‘OK. I’ll surf around eBay.’ Honor pivoted on her heel.
‘Forty-five, then. Just to make up for me thinking you were a tourist. Clarissa says your mum is English.’
Honor regarded Peggy, still beaming, perched behind a glassed-in counter full of medals and coins. ‘Yes, that’s right. I’m living in Eastingdean for four months. I might become a regular customer. Thirty-five.’
Peggy began to slide the album into a crinkled supermarket carrier bag. ‘Call it forty, then. I don’t want to get on the wrong side of the Mayfairs.’
Honor propped her hip against the counter, deliberately not taking the proffered bag. ‘Are they scary? I’ve met three Mayfairs and they’ve all been good to me. Thirty-five.’
Peggy’s creases multiplied in exasperation. ‘Thirty-five, then, just this once.’ Taking Honor’s notes, she slid them into the cash register. ‘It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the Mayfairs — it’s just that they’re involved in everything in Eastingdean. Zo? is the doctor, Nicola is the midwife, Beverley is a legal secretary. We all have to hope that they know how to keep their mouths shut.’
Accepting the bag, Honor raised her eyebrows. ‘I guess they must understand that. The Mayfairs will have as much to hide as the next person.’
Peggy cackled, her eyes disappearing completely. ‘One of the Mayfairs doesn’t hide very much.’ And she laughed until her cheeks shook.
Honor stared. Sometimes, British humour completely baffled her.