Sue Moorcroft - A Summer to Remember

Oh dear, the positivity hadn’t lasted long. ‘Er, well, I’m looking forward to exploring the village soon. For one reason or another I’ve been stuck in the Roundhouse pretty much since I got here. Evelyn left maps she gave the guests—’

‘Maps?’ Ernie bellowed a laugh, his eyebrows beetling incredulously. ‘If you need a map to find your way round Nelson’s Bar you must be brainless.’

Aaron cleared his throat and, finding the elderly man’s bluntness uncomfortable judging by his pained expression, managed to keep him talking about Roundhouse Row until they’d finished their coffee and could leave.

‘Sorry about Ernie,’ Aaron apologised as soon as they were out of earshot in the lane. ‘He just turns his thoughts to words, no matter how inappropriate or blunt.’

Clancy shrugged. ‘I’m sure we’ll get used to each other.’ Then, as Aaron took out the keys to his truck, she recalled something that had bothered her last night. ‘By the way, I’m sorry if I somehow said the wrong thing to you and Genevieve yesterday. The atmosphere got a bit …’ She let the sentence tail away rather than say ‘weird’.

He scuffed a booted toe in the dust of the lane. ‘It was kind of you to share your knowledge. Gen’s been knocked off balance by what’s happening to her home.’

When he said no more, Clancy ventured, ‘She seems nice.’

‘She is,’ he acknowledged, but he sounded rueful. His brown eyes looked very dark in the sunshine; almost black.

Clancy backed away a step. ‘OK. Good. Well, thanks for clueing me in about my new job.’

He took a couple of steps in the other direction, towards his truck. ‘If you have any questions, just call me on my landline or mobile – I can normally get a signal if I’m out of the village. Or you can leave a message.’

‘Sure.’ With a final smile goodbye, Clancy slipped indoors through the porch, wondering whether she was just being ultra-sensitive … or whether she’d read something in Aaron’s awkward manner that did not bode well for Genevieve.

Despite Ernie’s guffaws, Clancy did pick up a map of Nelson’s Bar out of the folder Evelyn had left. She would have liked Evelyn, she was sure, judging by the neat way she’d left everything.

The hand-drawn map showed that most of the village nestled between Long Lane and Marshview Road, curling together as they neared the tip of the headland and met Droody Road running through the middle. The shape they made looked a little like a heart with an arrow through it, she thought fancifully. Where the three roads met a building was marked ‘The Duke of Bronte B&B’ after which Evelyn had written, ‘(The Duke of Bronte being Lord Nelson’s secondary title)’. Side roads such as Frenchmen’s Way, Trader’s Place and The Green led off the main thoroughfares, and the hill leading to the village was prosaically named Long Climb.

As she’d already walked up Long Lane as far as Aaron’s place, Clancy decided to begin with Marshview Road, as it would lead her towards what was marked on the map as Zig-zag Path leading to Zig-zag Beach, which she remembered as the short stretch of sand where Alice had once taken her.

She stepped outside, the map tucked in her pocket. Once she’d left the shelter of the lane the wind pounced on her, whipping her hair about and making her zip up her fleece. Many of the cottages, sunbathing behind hedges as she passed along Marshview Road, were built of the red and white chalk she was fast getting used to. Between them she was able to catch glimpses of the sea, blue and enticing, each wave sporting a jaunty white frill.

After a few minutes, she reached a small but well-worn footpath to the right, between a hedge and a fence, with a sign saying To Zig-zag Path . Following it, Clancy soon arrived on the scrubby, undulating grassland of the clifftop. The footpath became a vague line where the soil showed through the grass, leading to where a white handrail was poised at the cliff edge and gulls wheeled and called mournfully above.

Exhilarated, hair thrashing more wildly than ever, Clancy strode to the handrail that marked the beginning of Zig-zag Path, pausing to drink in the full glory of the view. Sea, sea, sea, right to the curved horizon. Catching the sun’s rays and tossing them into a million dancing lights, the waves ran constantly, restlessly inshore. To catch sight of the swaying reed beds and winding creeks of the salt marsh between Nelson’s Bar and Brancaster she had to swivel to her right and look almost behind her. The Nelson’s Bar headland seemed to have erupted through the gentle, flat scenery all around it, right out into the sea.

At Clancy’s feet the handrail zigged and zagged steeply down, out of sight after the first few sharp bends. She gave in to its lure, her feet slapping the ground as she followed it down, the sea closer with every step, the hiss and crash of the waves louder.

At last she reached Zig-zag Beach, a triangle of pale sand gritty with countless broken seashells. For several minutes she watched as the waves chased each other up the beach almost to the high tide mark of tossed seaweed, then fell back with a disappointed tshhhhhh into the giant blue and white canvas of the sea. The gulls called to her like lost souls, riding the wind on their perfect wings, then they moved off as if realising she had no food to share.

It didn’t take her long to explore the beach, turning pungent heaps of kelp with her toe, shells crunching beneath the soles of her trainers, but as she breathed in the briny air she was filled with a oneness with the place, almost a feeling of belonging. Or just longing?

Finally, she began back up the path.

She’d toiled to the halfway point, the muscles of her calves pulling, when she was surprised by sounds from behind her and two panting teenaged lads in dripping board shorts jogged up to overtake her.

‘Hello. ’Scuse,’ said the lead boy, sprinkling chilly seawater as he passed. His dark curls were a bit like Aaron’s. The second boy’s hair was slicked back against his head. He grinned, and puffed past her too.

‘Hello,’ she said to their departing backs. Where the hell had they appeared from? Intrigued, she followed as their bare feet picked a way through grit and stones until, at the top of the path, they swung right. Clancy was just able to keep them in sight as they ran a hundred yards to where there was a dip in the clifftop, pausing to confer as they backed away from the edge.

Then, with Tarzan yells, they sprinted right off the top of the cliff, arms windmilling for balance as they plummeted from view.

Shocked into action, Clancy broke into a run, hardly feeling her feet touch ground until she reached the spot where the boys had vanished. Cautiously, she peered over the cliff edge, almost dizzy with relief – or at the way the sea swirled below – to see two heads bobbing in the waves.

‘Are you OK?’ she yelled, only half-believing anyone could jump that far and not be crippled by the force of hitting the water. Faces turned up towards her and an arm waved. Reassured that they’d survived their mad leap, she waved back as they turned to swim through the frothing sea and out of sight around a fold in the cliff.