Summer at 23 the Strand: A gorgeously feel-good holiday read!. Linda Mitchelmore
elegant-looking with their small heads and slender bodies.
‘And the gulls are just waking up in their cliff roosting places,’ Hugh said, pointing up at the red sandstone cliff. ‘And terns.’
‘It’s a bit of a day of firsts for me already,’ Martha said. ‘I mean, do we ever really look at cormorants and seagulls and terns in the normal course of events?’ She never had – they were just there, seagulls being a nuisance much of the time, but from the boat they looked as though they’d just come through a washing machine on a white wash, they were so bright in the early-morning light.
‘Well, I do,’ Hugh laughed. ‘They can be my bread and butter, seagulls. Thank God for photo memory cards these days because I can take literally thousands of images and then discard what I don’t want. Forgive me if I ignore you for a moment, but there’s loads I want to take pictures of.’
‘Snap away,’ Martha told him.
The captain was giving a running commentary about the area and the wildlife and Martha was happy to let his words wash over her as her eyes drank in the view. Hugh kept standing up to take pictures, then sitting down again, touching her on the arm now and then, gently but briefly, to ask if she was okay, and was she warm enough.
And then, there they were. As the boat rounded Berry Head, there were the dolphins. The captain shut down the throttle so that there was only the shush of the sea and the rumble of the motor as they all stood, as though choreographed, watching the dolphins jump and dive. No one spoke. A woman on the port side put her hands to her mouth and her eyes went wide with wonder as though she couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing. Martha tried to count them… seven, eight, nine… but couldn’t be sure she wasn’t counting the same ones twice. As the boat rocked gently on the current, and everyone seemed to instantly find their sea legs, the dolphins came nearer. Martha had the urge to reach out and touch one, they were so close.
Martha lost track of time. She’d heard how seeing dolphins could be an almost religious experience and now she knew it to be true. Never would she have thought she could see them here, off the Devon coast, and in May, and in the company of a man she’d only just met. They were so free, so joyous, the way they leapt and then disappeared beneath the water again only to surface a few yards further away to make the same manoeuvre all over again. And it was then that Martha knew she had never had that freedom. Her life in acting had been scripted by her mother for the most part. Yes, she’d had a gift for acting – and dancing and singing – but had she only been living the life her mother had wanted for herself? She had spent two-thirds of her life living in what she now realised was a rather cloistered world.
Although it had been Martha who had run out on her acting life, it had taken meeting Hugh to show her the beauty in the real world.
‘Thank you for bringing me, Hugh,’ she said, sitting back down, quite giddy with emotion now.
‘It’s been my pleasure.’
The dolphins were moving further away now. Still rising from the water but not as high as they had been.
‘I’ll hold this experience to me for ever, I think,’ Martha said.
‘Me too. And we could,’ Hugh said, ‘make a few more before your fortnight’s up. If that’s okay with you, Miss Martha Langford.’
There it was again – Hugh’s use of her real name, not her stage name. He liked her because of who she was, not what she was.
‘We could,’ Martha said. ‘And I think we should.’
So they did. They still ran each day, but separately, because Martha was never going to be able to keep up, running on sand, with Hugh. But they always met for coffee, at one of the many cafés along the seafront, or back at Martha’s chalet, taking their drinks down onto the beach to drink if the tide was out, burying their bare feet in the sand, and letting the sand trickle through their fingers as they talked and shared aspects of their past lives. In the evenings they wandered up into the town to find a restaurant or pub for supper. They even had a hilarious hour in the Penny Arcade playing the gaming machines – winning sometimes, losing sometimes. A bit like life, Martha thought, although she thought she might be on a winning streak now she’d met Hugh.
Hugh had taken Martha’s arm in a gallant way and linked it through his to cross roads, but they didn’t hold hands. Or kiss.
On Martha’s last night, sitting on the deck of 23 The Strand, Hugh uncorked a bottle of champagne he said he’d had cooling in his fridge, along with a plate of deli nibbles Martha had a feeling he’d bought for just such an occasion.
‘Glasses out,’ Hugh said, indicating the frothing champagne and the need to get it into glasses before it frothed all over the deck.
‘Yes, sir!’ Martha laughed, holding out the champagne glasses towards him.
When they were filled to the brim, she handed one to Hugh.
‘A toast,’ he said. ‘To you. For helping me with my grief over Harris. So, to you.’
Martha gulped back tears, then took a sip of champagne.
‘And to you,’ she said, clinking glasses. ‘And to legs and hearts that will mend, given time.’
‘That too,’ Hugh said, tapping Martha’s glass again.
‘What will you do now?’
‘Photography, of course. I’ve a fancy for photographing the oceans of the world, running on the world’s beaches. I’ve got an idea for a TV series running around in my head – 90 Mile Beach, Bondi Beach. Woolacombe in North Devon, even. It doesn’t have to be a big beach or a famous one. The concept is I’d run with a well-known personality and we’d look at the geography and wildlife around us, and put the world to rights as we ran. What do you think?’
I think it’s a rotten idea. I want you to stay in my life, not go running off with some random person you might fall in love with on a tropical beach. Was he telling her this was the end of their friendship? Or was he putting the ball in her court, giving her an ‘out’ if she wanted it?
‘Sounds good,’ Martha said.
‘Once more with feeling,’ Hugh laughed.
‘Sounds really, really good.’
‘That’s better. A seven out of ten that time. And you?’ Hugh asked.
‘I’ve not made any firm plans yet. I quite fancy stage work again. It’s all too easy to iron out mistakes while filming for TV or the cinema. The money would be less but I’ve got enough to live on for a while. Then again, there’s an idea buzzing about in my head like a mosquito that I could train to teach drama. Not at a stage school but in an ordinary comprehensive perhaps.’
‘Go for it,’ Hugh said. ‘You’ve got a beautiful speaking voice. Well, a beautiful everything actually.’
‘That’s a lovely thing to hear,’ Martha said. ‘And?’
‘And what?’ Hugh swirled the stem of his glass in his fingers. He looked down at the table, up at the sky, out to sea. His eyes settled on Martha for a second and she saw his Adam’s apple going up and down.
He was struggling for the right thing to say, wasn’t he?
‘To our respective futures?’ Hugh said eventually.
‘I think we both know that isn’t what I meant. And I do believe, Hugh, you’re blushing.’
Martha prised Hugh’s glass gently from him and placed it on the tiny table between them.
‘I was taught in drama school that, in the right situation, more emotion, more feeling, more truth can be conveyed by what people don’t say than by what they do. Action – and conversely inaction – really can speak louder than words sometimes.’ Then she cupped Hugh’s face in her hands and kissed him. Just a gentle kiss but she let it linger.
‘Wow!