Out of Step Read online

  Out of Step

  Maggie Makepeace

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  ‘I dunno what all the fuss is about,’ a voice protested on Nell’s car radio. ‘I mean, if they’re that bothered about the drought and the reservoirs getting empty and stuff, then why don’t they simply fill them up from the mains?’

  Nell gave a shout of derisive laughter and switched off. She concentrated on taking a difficult bend in the road, and when she was back on the straight again, she thought: Water – that’s definitely a priority. I want to live in a place where I can watch it flowing past my window, preferably in both directions, so it had better be tidal. I want a little clinker-built dinghy, so that I can potter up and down it and explore the creeks. I also want birds, particularly waders, so I’ll need mudflats. I want paintable scenery without crowds. I want privacy and peace. I don’t want too difficult a journey into work every day. And I don’t just want jam on it; I want quince jelly.

  She smiled as she remembered what her mother and father would have chanted, as they used to, to Nell’s childish demands: ‘I want, I want,’ was Fanny’s cry! And then she felt uneasy all over again at wishing to leave their house behind her, and begin again elsewhere. If they were still alive, she thought, I’d have left without a qualm years ago. People of thirty who still live with their parents are definitely sad. But I suppose I’ve stayed on all this time because it’s been my only link with who I am – who I was.

  The road opened out as it reached the ridge of the hill and Nell, looking to her right, saw a large smug Georgian house serene in its own parkland about halfway down the hillside and overlooking the boat-rich estuary of the River Torrent. A sign by the gates read: ‘Thrushton Hall’, and below it a smaller one: ‘Eely Private Moorings’. She wanted to stop for a better view, but even now the narrowness of the road prevented her until after she had passed the Thrushton estate’s Home Farm buildings. Here there was a convenient layby and an uninterrupted view down over the fields, which fell away steeply to the woodland at the bottom by the water’s edge. On the other side of the river the precipitous ground was fit only for trees, mostly oak and ash towards the river mouth (proper trees, as Nell always thought) and then increasingly the more commercial sitka spruce the further west she looked, until, at the head of the estuary where the tiny Eel tributary merged with the Torrent, the folds of the hillside were almost entirely submerged in a uniform dark green. The open grasslands beside and below her were now a miserable yellowish brown after a summer almost devoid of rain; not like the lush South West at all. It was rather – Nell searched for the appropriate word – sinister. Would it ever rain again? She vowed never to complain if it did.

  She got her binoculars out for a better view, and scrutinised the side of the big house and part of its long formal gardens. Mmm, she thought, I could fancy a place like that – maybe a fraction out of my league though? And I’d have to spend far too much time watering the herbaceous borders. And it’s too high above the river. I’d like to be closer. She focused the glasses on the old two-span stone bridge at the upper limit of the estuary, and along the opposite bank to the Eel Creek where there was a spit of land and half a dozen long boats without masts, moored in a line. She followed the flow back downstream, past a small mid-river islet and eastwards, until the woodland on her left entirely hid the Torrent and its exit to the sea from her view.

  She sat on for a while as the September sun warmed the top of her head through the opened car roof, and watched as a couple of tiny bright figures walked the coastal path below her, on the diversion caused by the river mouth which took them inland in a loop. One of these days, she thought, I must do that walk, all of it. And then it came to her: Now Martin’s gone, I can. I can do anything. It was a revolutionary idea.

  A movement on the ground nearby caught her eye. A small brown bird flew away from her with an unexpected flash of white from its tail.

  ‘A wheatear!’ The first of the autumn migrants. She was delighted. It was high time she migrated too. She took herself, started the car again and moved off. Then almost immediately there was an unexpected sideroad leading down towards the estuary. She overshot it, but backed up for a better look. It was only a rough farm track with a grass strip down the centre and it looked unkempt and rutty, but she decided to risk it anyway. She drove down cautiously in first gear. Trees hung overhead, forming a dappled green tunnel, and then quite soon the track widened on a bend and the wood to her left gave way briefly to open fields and an even better view of the river with its wide curve to the south, the dunes at its mouth, and the grey sea beyond it. Now she could see the well-known sailing club on the north bank, with its plastic tenders neatly arranged down the backbone of the marina walkway, and the multicoloured yachts moored out in the broad stretch of water sheltered behind the head, all pointed the same way by the tide.

  She stopped again and scanned the vista with her binoculars. The track ahead of her ran down even more steeply and disappeared amongst trees at its foot, but there surely, just visible through the topmost branches were a pair of chimneys? Yes, and a suggestion of terracotta-coloured roof tiles.

  Now, that, Nell thought, driving on downhill, could be more like it!

  Robert Hayhoe sat in his office in the upstairs room of Bottom Cottage (in which he also slept) and stared out of the east window at the curve of the river and the nearly empty coastal path. The sun glinted invitingly on the water. In his vegetable patch below he could see his courgettes turning into useless marrows almost before his eyes. It was much too good a day to waste indoors, working. There was firewood to chop and stack before the onset of winter. The garden needed weeding. The hedge wanted cutting … He sighed, and addressed himself to his computer, reading the columns of figures on the screen and forcing himself to make sense of them.

  He heard a car outside just as he had got his brain back on track again, and frowned. It wouldn’t be his milk or the post because both were left in a wooden box in the hedge, up by the top road. It was probably more bloody grockles assuming his lane was a public right of way, and parking in his turning circle whilst they walked down to the sea. He’d always meant to put up a sign, ‘Private Road’, but hadn’t got round to it. He didn’t want to call the world’s attention to the cottage. He valued its solitude. Anyway, it was now the end of the summer season and he had the whole of the winter ahead of him to have the place to himself. He wasn’t going to fuss about it. He didn’t have time to spare, anyway. His clients were pressing him to get their accounts sorted out. This one had to be finished today.

  His eye was caught nevertheless, a few minutes later, by the sight of a woman standing just beyond his fence, framed by the runner beans on one side and the eight-foot sunflowers he’d grown for Josh and Rosie on the other. She had a pair of binoculars round her neck and she was looking straight at him.

  She went on staring so unselfconsciously that he realised she cou
ldn’t see him. The sun must be reflecting off the window glass making it one-way only. He indulged himself for a few moments by looking back at her, picking up his own binoculars from the windowsill and examining her face in the same analytical way that he watched the birds on the estuary. She had thick brown hair cut short, broad cheekbones, a wide upturned mouth and a spattering of freckles. An intelligent, sensual sort of face, he decided; rather appealing.

  Then she frowned, and turned abruptly away. Had his glasses glinted at her, giving him away? He put them down in some confusion, feeling foolish. Spying on women wasn’t something he ever did. What was he thinking of? He made himself concentrate on the job in hand, and was only dimly aware of a car starting up as she drove away.

  The following Monday she turned up again. He was sure it must be her, even though she had her back to him. This time she was sitting on a camp stool on the bend of the river, and apparently painting the view. She was further away this time, so Rob felt able to look at her again through binoculars. He could even see some of her picture. It looked pretty good. He hoped she wasn’t going to make a habit of driving down his lane. If she did it again, he would have to discourage her. She could always get to the coast path further along by the sailing club like everybody else. But she was probably only a late holidaymaker, so he most likely wouldn’t have to bother. Some people have all the luck, he thought. It’s going to be years before I’ll get the chance again to have a peaceful uninterrupted break where I can please myself. Then he caught himself up. How can I say that, living here!

  The next Monday she didn’t appear, and Rob (having in an idle moment labelled her Miss Dowsabell) was fleetingly disappointed, and then forgot all about her. So when he saw her again, four weeks later, he was unprepared for feeling pleased.

  She was drawing this time, and it seemed that his cottage was her subject. The morning light streamed over her shoulders and gleamed in the spikes of her fringe, which were being blown up above her face by the breeze. He couldn’t see her expression as it was in shadow, and he didn’t like to use his glasses because she was directly facing him. Anyway, he hadn’t time for all this. He must get on. He worked for a while feeling irritated with himself and then, abruptly, he got to his feet and went downstairs. The back door was the nearest, but he deliberately went through his kitchen and out at the front, so he could see where she had parked her car.

  It was a blue Citroën 2CV and it wasn’t actually on his turnaround at all, but at the junction of his lane with the coastal path (where it altered course to go behind his garden) tucked carefully out of the way under the trees. She was still trespassing though. He followed the path round to the riverbank, and along it until he reached her. He’d meant to say something pleasant and meaningless, and then lead up to his main purpose gradually, but somehow it all went wrong.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, glancing up as he approached. ‘I was beginning to wonder whether you had legs.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Well, I only ever see your top half through the window.’

  Embarrassment flooded through him. She must have seen him staring at her like a bloody voyeur! He quite forgot, in his haste to retreat, what he’d planned to say. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘er, sorry, but my lane isn’t actually a right of way…’

  She looked him straight in the eye – she had very fine green ones – and seemed a lot less flustered than he was.

  ‘Oh … I do beg your pardon. So, how am I supposed to get here, then? This is the public path, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes it is. You have to go down the road to the sailing club. It’s only about…’

  ‘A mile that way?’ She gestured with a pencil.

  ‘Yes. Sorry … I…’

  ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Now I know, I won’t intrude upon your patch again.’ She looked put out.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Rob said. ‘Don’t worry about it.’ He felt firmly in the wrong, but unable to rectify the situation. ‘Um … bye, then.’

  It was only when he had got back to the steadiness of his empty cottage that he thought, Damn! And I never even looked at her drawing. What a total prat.

  Nell usually chose to draw and paint out of doors on Mondays for two reasons: first, she had half of that day in lieu every time she had to work on Saturday mornings, and secondly there were generally fewer people out and about on Mondays, so she suffered less ill-considered appreciation from each passing art critic.

  From the day that she discovered the secret cottage, she was loath to go anywhere else. It seemed to her to be the most perfect place imaginable, and there were enough subjects, both landscape and still life, to keep her going for years. The two-storey house itself was very simple: a door in the middle with a window on either side downstairs, three windows upstairs, and a chimney at each end. The roof was clay-tiled, and the walls had not been whitewashed for so long that they’d had plenty of time to accumulate botanical hangers-on: several large patches of a dark fungus and a general wash of green algae. The paint was peeling on the window-frames, and there was a scuff mark on the front door where someone was clearly in the habit of kicking it.

  But for all its lack of sophistication it didn’t look unloved, and people clearly lived in it. There was a dusty Land Rover parked outside, and a small child’s tricycle and yellow lorry in the centre of the open turning space. On the left of the cottage a vegetable garden flourished; organic, judging by the weeds, the pile of old lorry tyres and the overflowing compost heaps. There were half a dozen huge sunflowers, three of which had faces carved on to their central discs – two eyes and a smiley mouth each – probably done with a spoon! Nell was entranced. Then out of the corner of her eye she caught a movement from an upstairs window and felt as though she’d been caught prying. She turned abruptly and left.

  A week later she decided to go back again, taking her painting gear. As she walked past the cottage, she glanced up at the bedroom window and saw a man sitting there, presumably working since he was staring fixedly at something in front of him. She noticed that he looked youngish and had dark curly hair – a Heathcliff type, she thought, but he’s probably only five foot nothing when he stands up. Men are usually disappointing.

  She went past swiftly so as not to give the appearance of snooping, but she had time to see that the back of the cottage was very close to the water with only a strip of grass and a metre-high stone wall to defend it against flooding. There was a small wooden jetty too, but it looked unused and derelict. It was high tide but today the river was not full. Presumably in the winter it could be a torrent, as its name suggested. She wondered if Heathcliff lived there all the year round. From a buddleia bush a robin sang its intermittent autumn song, dropping the clear notes into the still air. She could hear the distant bumping and crashing of a flail mower as a farmer cut his hedges, but here all was calm. Nell wondered where the children were.

  She walked further along the river path leaving the cottage behind her, and kept going past the detour behind the sailing club until she could see the whole of the river mouth. Then she sat herself down on her camp stool and prepared to compose her view of it. On its left were the dunes, piled up by the westerly winds in ridges, ever advancing inland. On its right were grassy slopes, broken at their foot by modest cliffs, on the eminence of which rose the forty-foot tower of the Thrushton folly, greyly self-important and as out of place as a speaker at a Trappist picnic.

  Dragonflies hawked overhead as she worked. Puffy white clouds condensed high above and cobbled themselves together into a mackerel sky. Rain in twelve hours, Nell thought. At last. She stayed for as long as the light would allow, and by the time it had changed too drastically, she was confident that she’d got enough on canvas to be able to finish it at home.

  The painting eventually turned out well, and she was encouraged to want to do more, but it was a whole month before she managed another Monday by the estuary. Sibyl had been feeling guilty about all the summer Saturdays Nell had volunteered to work, and was insisting that as the pr
oprietor of ARTFULL, she herself must man the little shop in Boxcombe for the foreseeable future in order to give Nell ‘proper’ weekends in which to ‘take up any good offers that are going’. Sibyl had never liked Martin, but had tactfully kept silent until after he had moved out of Nell’s house and taken himself off. Dear Sibyl, Nell thought affectionately. Dear Elly’s Ma, what would I do without you?

  So it was early October before Nell returned to the cottage, determined this time to do a drawing of the house itself. She hadn’t long been there, and was getting on famously with the light behind her illuminating the scene quite perfectly. The wind tousled her hair as she worked and she was glad of her warm sweater, but glad too to be distanced from the unnatural heat and humidity of the preceding summer, which had rendered her exhausted and apathetic. This was the best of English weather, cool but bright – and one of those days when everything went right.

  She looked up with narrowed eyes to take a line on the gable end of the cottage, and there he was – Heathcliff himself – walking down the path towards her. Even at this distance, she was sure it was him because this man was wearing a red sweatshirt of the same colour as the one she’d seen him in as she’d passed under his window earlier. It was obvious too that he was considerably more than five feet tall. He’d better be nice, she thought, shading a dark area confidently with a soft pencil, because if he isn’t, he’s got absolutely no business to be living in my ideal home …

  Chapter Two

  Now it’s mid-October, Nell thought on Saturday morning, I can sit and draw outside at weekends without being pestered by trippers, so I’ll go today. But I’ll have to carry all my stuff in a rucksack or something, because it’s going to be a long walk – nasty possessive selfish man!

  Looking at the Landranger map that morning, she had decided not to drive as far as the road to the sailing club, but instead to try the track going down by Thrushton Hall leading to Eely private moorings. She expected to find a locked gate barring her way but the one at the bottom was open – maybe because it was out of season – and she was able to drive right down to the river and park there unchallenged. The gardens of the big house, she could now see, ended in a substantial riverside quay but it was empty of boats. In the opposite direction the Torrent was now narrow enough to be crossed by an old bridge in two high stone spans.