Chapter 15
Twenty-One Years Ago
It was midway through May; off-season, when Kip’s mother told him to go up to Still Water House and see if he could help there for a few weeks.
That was his mother all over.
Although, as he cycled up the avenue, Kip felt a bit of a fraud.
It wasn’t as if he had any actual qualifications to help, but by the same token, there was no denying the avenue alone could provide a team of men with enough work to keep them going for the summer.
It was badly overgrown, with a thick ridge of grass cutting from the start to end up the centre of it.
Of course, the trouble was, there were no men available on the island at this time of year to take on jobs in a place like this.
Every available man was either running his own farm or out on a trawler from well before dawn with little appetite for much more than a good night’s sleep before the following day began.
So, maybe his mother was right. After all, there wasn’t much more to keep him busy up at their little cottage.
The garden didn’t even pose an afternoon’s worth of exercise for him and over the years, on weekends and holidays, he’d painted and updated the inside of the cottage, exactly to his mother’s specifications.
He doted on his mother even though, still, he had to work hard for so much as a spoonful of praise, but that was just her way. The last thing she wanted was for him to lose the run of himself.
‘I’m here to see your mother,’ he told the younger of the two sisters when she opened the front door.
‘Mum?’ she looked at him blankly.
‘Aye, don’t ask.’ He rolled his eyes and they both laughed. She, Rae, showed him into a grand hall, that smelled slightly musty, and had surely seen better days, but there was no escaping the fact that with a little attention, it could be truly knockout.
‘Hang on,’ Rae said and she poked her head around the door of what he assumed was a sitting room. ‘Mum, there’s someone to see you.’ He heard her whisper, before opening back the door and letting him in.
‘Mrs Scott, I’m…’ He held out his hand to the tiny woman who was lying on an ancient-looking day bed.
He’d hardly have recognised her as the striking woman he remembered from childhood.
Mrs Scott and her family were the big wigs on the island – everyone expected their two daughters to go off and marry lords or princes one day.
Of course, things had changed with the death of their father.
‘Ah, Kip, how lovely.’ Mrs Scott murmured as she tried to raise herself slightly to greet him.
It looked as if every movement caused her some pain and he sat close to her, just opposite, to save her having to move any more on his account.
‘Tell me what you are up to these days? We’re all so proud of you on Pin Hill.
’ She smiled and he could still see traces of the great beauty she had once been.
‘That’s very kind, but…’ He always felt embarrassed when people praised him, it felt undeserved, after all, what did he do apart from kick a ball around a pitch for a few months a year and he got well paid for doing it.
‘It’s off-season now, so, I’m at a loose end and my Mam, she thought you could do with some help around here… ’
‘What kind of help?’ Blythe, the oldest daughter had appeared as if from nowhere and was standing in the doorway at his back.
‘Hey,’ he said turning to look at her. He hadn’t laid eyes on the kid in four years, but now, looking at her, she wasn’t a kid anymore. Somehow, the scrappy girl that she had once been had disappeared and, in her place, a striking young woman had emerged. Kip suddenly found himself lost for words.
‘So, you’re looking for a job?’
‘No, no, not at all,’ he said because he already had a job, just not a day’s work to do for the next two months. He was lucky. He was injury free, many of the other players would spend their down time getting physio or resting up damages from the gruelling season they’d just put in.
‘So, charity?’ Blythe walked over to stand next to where her mother was resting on the sofa.
‘Not at all.’ His voice had risen, but suddenly he wasn’t sure why he’d come. A mixture of deep embarrassment and sudden shyness overtook him in the face of this intense girl. ‘No, that’s not it at all,’ he said then.
‘Oh, Kip, don’t mind Blythe, her bark is worse than her bite.’ Mrs Scott laughed then. ‘Blythe, bring us in a nice pot of coffee and some of that shortbread you made earlier, tell Rae she’s welcome to join us, too.’ She shook her head, her face still lit up with amusement.
‘Sure,’ Blythe said and the way she looked down at her mother almost made Kip’s heart break. Suddenly, he knew, they needed help a lot more than they realised.
‘I’m sorry Mrs Scott if I’ve overstepped the mark, it’s just I’ve driven my mother round the twist doing jobs she doesn’t need to have done and she thought, with the size of this place, I could at least help keep the grass down or make myself useful in some way about the place for the few weeks I’m home. ’
‘Don’t be sorry, I’d be glad to have you.
As you can see, the grounds are about to overtake the house if we don’t do something about them, but there’s literally no one available.
Every man on the island is up to ninety with the good weather – I can’t blame them, they have families to feed and by comparison, what’s this place other than a folly to times past.’
‘It’s a beautiful place,’ Kip said and he realised he’d lowered his voice, but the fact was, from the moment he walked onto the avenue he had the strangest feeling as if he was exactly where he was meant to be today.
‘I’m no expert gardener, but I can keep the grass down for the summer and maybe clear up that driveway for you. ’
‘That’s so kind of you. I’ll pay you, of course.’
‘I didn’t come for the money,’ he said, but then he felt, rather than saw, Blythe behind him and he realised that it might soften her towards him in some small way if she didn’t feel as if he saw their family as some sort of crazy reverse charity case.
‘I’m happy to work for my dinner, does that sound fair? ’
‘Breakfast, dinner and tea, if you’d like them,’ Rae said then as she dropped into one of the fat chesterfield chairs next to the huge empty fire grate.
‘We can help you, you know, between our other chores,’ Blythe said then, leaving a tray filled with three large mugs, a delicate cup, cafetiere and enough shortbread biscuits to feed a large family.
‘You have enough to be getting on with,’ her mother said and she smiled with such pride at Blythe. ‘Honestly, I don’t know how you already fit so much into the days.’ She shook her head then.
‘I can definitely help,’ Rae said, picking up a piece of shortbread and leaving the coffee pouring to her sister.
‘I mean, I’d like to, you know, maybe take on one area outside,’ She said then and Kip thought, yes, he’d enjoy working alongside Rae.
There was an endearing innocence to her and a twinkle in her eye that spoke to him of a sense of fun that would shorten any job.
*
The next few weeks raced by. Soon, he settled into a routine of sorts.
A run along the beach first thing in the morning and then a quick shower before heading up to Still Water House on his bicycle.
Mostly, he was tinkering about in one of the many sheds and outhouses by the time Rae – or sometimes Blythe – would find him and insist on feeding him something to start the day.
The days themselves were long but satisfying.
There was something about the peace of the place, getting to grips with the overgrown garden and grounds when the weather was fine.When the rain poured down for three days on end in the middle of July, he organised one of the sheds so it was easy to put his hand on any tool he needed in a matter of moments.
Most days Rae helped for an hour or two.
She was good company, a little lost perhaps in her own way, flailing beneath the death of her father, the weakened state of her mother and trying to find purchase for her own identity in the shadow of her older, much more accomplished, confident and, in Kip’s opinion, more striking sister.
Whoa. When Kip realised that he did indeed feel that Blythe was the more beautiful of the sisters it pulled him up short.
Falling for one of the Hope Square sisters was not on his game plan this year.
Even less so, because she was younger than him, impossibly strong-minded and more disconcertingly, she didn’t even seem to register his existence.
Well, not beyond being perfectly polite and gracious because he was doing such trojan work around the house.
It was her ambivalence to him that drove his desire on even more, probably.
He’d become used to women and girls fawning over him, not that he’d taken advantage of it.
There was too much to unpack about his own parents and how things had ended up there for Kip not to realise that he had to tread softly and very carefully when it came to falling in love.
‘Hey.’ Blythe almost made him jump when she came up behind him silently one afternoon in the garden.
It was midway through August, and it felt as if they’d hardly gotten to know each other, despite the fact that she seemed to dominate his thoughts more and more with every passing day.
‘Thought you might like to try some homemade lemonade.’ She handed him an ice-cold glass, a pitcher in her other hand.
It was one of those intensely hot days, when even the shade was too warm to sit in.
He drank the glass down in about three gulps.
‘So, it’s good, yeah?’ Blythe laughed then and he thought, she doesn’t laugh half often enough.
Right there, he decided that there was nothing he wanted more if he was to ever settle down with anyone, than to make them laugh like Blythe Scott did just now.