Summer at Coastguard Cottages. Jennifer Bohnet
happily as she looked around. This was such a unique place, with the large ‘Captain’s House’ and smaller ‘Bosun’s Locker’ like mismatched bookends, holding up the six cottages in between. Despite the few modern improvements made down the years, principally the creation of the swimming pool and tennis court, the century-old weathered stone building of the complex, sitting on its clifftop overlooking the Channel, gave off a comforting air of permanence and solidarity.
The fact that only two of the eight properties were regularly rented out, and then only to friends and family, not commercially, was one of the main benefits of the old cottages for Karen. Everybody who came for the long summer holiday had some connection to the place, making for a tight-knit community with people knowing each other.
Karen shuddered as the image of the complex of holiday cottages in Cornwall Derek had persuaded her to spend Easter in one year came into her mind. Three hundred chalets accommodating a thousand people at the height of the season. She’d hated the place on sight. Derek had wanted to buy one.
He’d been furious with her when she’d said she didn’t like the place. Couldn’t see why anyone would want to have a holiday there.
‘But look at the amenities. Swimming pool, crazy golf for the kids, restaurant, pub, cinema, sports room. It’s got everything you could want on a holiday.’
‘But I don’t want any of those things – apart from the pool and we’ve got one in Devon.’ She’d shrugged. ‘There’s no character. All the chalets look alike. It’s just too busy for me. Not relaxing at all. Give me The Captain’s House every time.’
Making her way down the short path to the front door, memories of that visit to the detested Cornish complex lingered in Karen’s mind. Why now? Probably because of something Derek had said that afternoon, she decided.
‘You’re obsessed with that damn place,’ he’d muttered when she’d reminded him it was today she was driving down to Devon for the summer. The fact that it also signalled the first day of their trial separation, he seemed to have forgotten.
‘Could buy a decent villa down on the Costa del Sol and have guaranteed sunshine if you’d only sell it. And have money in the bank.’
‘Not going to happen, Derek,’ Karen said. ‘Especially now. Right, I’m off. Let me know if you do decide to come down while Francesca and Wills are around. I haven’t told them about us needing time apart to rethink things.’
An emphatic shake of his head. ‘Not sure there’s any point in even coming down.’
Karen had sighed and left. A few years ago he would have kissed her properly, told her to drive carefully and to ring when she arrived. Those days were in the past, though, and the chances of them returning were slim.
Unlocking the large wooden front door, Karen released a deep breath. She was back in the place she loved most in the world. The place where her problems faded temporarily into the background. Derek and his bullying would never win. No way would she ever sell this house.
Once the shutters on the large bay window of the sitting room were open, she sank down onto the cushioned window seat. Always her favourite place to sit. She loved the way the front lawns dropped away leaving nothing but the sea in full view, giving the sensation of standing on the bridge of a ship. People visiting the house for the first time always pointed that out, which amused her. Did they think she perhaps hadn’t realised? That the past forty-odd summers had been spent here in some sort of daze?
Sitting there looking at the sea, choppy as the evening tide turned, Karen offered up a silent thank you to her parents, who’d had the foresight to buy the house as a holiday home all those years ago – and then to leave it to her, not her brother. He’d been openly relieved to inherit their parents’ detached house close to the university town where he was a lecturer.
Not that he didn’t like The Captain’s House. He and his wife came for a holiday every summer, claiming it set them up for the year. But he didn’t love it with the passion Karen did. She couldn’t imagine a life without it. Maybe Derek was right and she was obsessed. But it was so good to be back here with eight weeks of summer stretching ahead of her.
Eight weeks of days with no real routines, swims in the infinity pool whose water she could see sparkling in the late sun, games of tennis, communal get-togethers and barbecues. The only thing missing would be the continual presence of the children.
Wills would be home sometime this month and Francesca had promised to come for a fortnight in August. The first summer in eighteen years without either of them being around for the whole of it.
Wills had no idea how much she’d missed him the last few months while he travelled on his gap year. The occasional postcard was no compensation. Summer here wouldn’t be complete until he arrived back safely from his travels.
She knew things changed as life progressed, of course she did. Children growing up and gaining their independence was only natural. Francesca, being the eldest, had been the first to take flight four years ago for a career in the arts. At the time Karen had consoled herself with the thought that Wills, at fourteen, would be home for a few more years. She wasn’t ready for the nest to empty completely. Nor was she ready for how fast those four years had flown.
She’d realised recently that certain milestones, while openly acknowledged as being part of the general melee of family life, actually made a deeper impact than at first seemed to be the case, their full extent hidden, iceberg-like, way below the surface.
Francesca and Wills would, of course, always be connected to her because she was their mother, but at eighteen, nearly nineteen, Wills was now busy following Francesca into the wider world. Making his own decisions, choosing the life he wanted. A life she would inevitably be on the outskirts of, as she now was with Francesca, rather than being involved in the day-to-day minutiae.
It had been Wills’ decision to go travelling for six months, to get his own place, to study medicine, rather than the decisions Francesca had made four years ago, that had hurled unwelcome and unforeseen changes and challenges into her life.
If she were honest, though, she’d known for some time that an eruption in her own life was inevitable. The ground beneath her feet had been trembling for a few years now. The big final quake, destroying everything in its path, was getting nearer. Could she honestly say the changes she was facing, had initiated, were unwelcome? No. That was what this trial separation was all about – her trying to gain control of an uncertain future. She just needed to let her natural optimism rise and fight the frightened feelings about what the future might hold.
Watching a small sailing boat beating its way back into harbour, Karen decided she wasn’t going to worry about anything over the summer. She’d follow her own mother’s default philosophy for once: ‘Remember, Karen, life has a habit of sorting things out one way or another if you leave them alone.’
Karen had always secretly thought the philosophy was a bit of a coward’s way out, much like the old cliché ‘least said, soonest mended’, but this summer she intended to test the validity of both. With any luck, by the end of summer, decisions would have made themselves.
*
Bruce Adams, slicing onions and mushrooms for his chicken casserole supper in ‘The Bosun’s Locker’, heard a car arriving and guessed it was Karen. Good. Karen’s arrival signalled that summer proper was about to begin. Although, of course, it would be a new version of summer. His first without Gabby. He muttered to himself as his eyes began to stream. Damn onions.
There had been a lot of firsts in the last six months. Months in which he’d learnt how quickly life could change as well as the true meaning of loneliness. No siblings, either his or Gabby’s, to give support, no cousins to offer a comforting word, no children to share the despair of heartbreaking loss. Just him. Alone.
Of course he had friends who’d offered their sympathy, attended the funeral, and then, muttering ‘Time’s a great healer’, slowly drifted away, back into their own lives where they didn’t have to suffer the embarrassment of not knowing what to say to him.