in your string vest of a car…’
She looked down at the ring. Two diamonds flanking a very reasonably sized ruby. Harold hadn’t actually said that it wouldn’t collect dust but he’d implied it because he was an Expert. A Time and Motion Expert, and this, too, Nell found moving. He would make things work for her. She would catch buses, water her house plants correctly from
underneath
, stop singeing her eyebrows on the geyser…
‘Half past,’ called Larissa from the kitchen, and Nell shot into violent action. Her hair, that was the most important thing. Today it
had
to stay tidy. After all, it was a sort of lab she worked in, it was science… She brushed it out: green-gold, plumb-straight; hair she washed as often and as carelessly as her face, and began to fasten it on to her head. A rubber band, two clips, a pin…
And now, suddenly, as happened every morning, she was frantically late.
‘Oh God, let me catch my bus,’ she prayed, and threw the
Tibetan Book of the Dead
and the indigestion tablets into a straw basket, and swallowing a mouthful of
brioche
ran out into the street.
At once, she was blinded by summer. The tarmac shimmered, the pavement bit her feet; the street cat lay like a spent Ingres courtesan across the steps.
Nell shut her eyes, pierced by a desperate longing for her childhood summers. For the smell of decaying weed along the tide line (which, whatever people said, really
was
ozone). For the voluptuousness of sand between her toes; for rose-coloured cowries mysteriously special in a handful of common shells. For a man she could see coming out of the water (but this was hardly childhood?) shaking back his hair and laughing as he uncoiled the strands of seaweed round his feet. A man she hoped so much was Harold. Only, would Harold have
allowed
the seaweed to tangle round his feet? Wouldn’t he, being an Expert, have seen and avoided it?
‘Oh no, my
bus
,’ yelled Nell, and, too late, began to run, clutching her diamond ring with her free thumb and feeling already the first dreaded slither of what would soon be the waterfall of her descending hair…
On the other side of London, hemmed in between fifteen volumes of a decomposing German dictionary and something called
Wissenschaftliche Padagogie
, sat Toby Sandford, bent over his dissertation on Animal Symbolism in Sanskrit Literature and trying to extract from his pocket, in total silence, a vinegar-flavoured potato crisp.
The college library was all-enveloping, silent, fusty, with marble busts of surprisingly unclad scholars placed at intervals between the tomes, but Toby wasn’t fooled. This was one of those rare days when all the rules were broken and the whole country ran riot with summer.
He extracted a crisp, closed his eyes and gave himself over to an emotion for which he was really rather young: intense and violent nostalgia. He saw the sea as it had been on the limitless, empty beaches of his native Northumberland, not blue but a cool and pearly grey; saw the entrancing pink legs of oyster catchers glint in the sun, saw a girl (but this was moving out of childhood) come out of the water, letting a skein of seaweed trail in her hand. Now she was bending down, biting with delicate pleasure the bladders of wrack between her teeth. Girls always bit into seaweed…
Or did they? He played the last reel through again in his mind, hoping against hope that the girl was Margaret, with whom he had what was generally termed a relationship. But would Margaret have
bitten
into a piece of seaweed? Wouldn’t she even there, coming out of the sea in the swimsuit whose straps would not have worked loose, been carrying her dissecting scissors, her scalpel?
‘Overwork,’ said Toby to himself. He’d been determined to finish the thesis for his doctorate before he went away, and usually an English summer was easy enough to ignore. But today…
Suddenly he closed his book, bundled up his papers. He’d take a day off, take Margaret out. To
She looked down at the ring. Two diamonds flanking a very reasonably sized ruby. Harold hadn’t actually said that it wouldn’t collect dust but he’d implied it because he was an Expert. A Time and Motion Expert, and this, too, Nell found moving. He would make things work for her. She would catch buses, water her house plants correctly from
underneath
, stop singeing her eyebrows on the geyser…
‘Half past,’ called Larissa from the kitchen, and Nell shot into violent action. Her hair, that was the most important thing. Today it
had
to stay tidy. After all, it was a sort of lab she worked in, it was science… She brushed it out: green-gold, plumb-straight; hair she washed as often and as carelessly as her face, and began to fasten it on to her head. A rubber band, two clips, a pin…
And now, suddenly, as happened every morning, she was frantically late.
‘Oh God, let me catch my bus,’ she prayed, and threw the
Tibetan Book of the Dead
and the indigestion tablets into a straw basket, and swallowing a mouthful of
brioche
ran out into the street.
At once, she was blinded by summer. The tarmac shimmered, the pavement bit her feet; the street cat lay like a spent Ingres courtesan across the steps.
Nell shut her eyes, pierced by a desperate longing for her childhood summers. For the smell of decaying weed along the tide line (which, whatever people said, really
was
ozone). For the voluptuousness of sand between her toes; for rose-coloured cowries mysteriously special in a handful of common shells. For a man she could see coming out of the water (but this was hardly childhood?) shaking back his hair and laughing as he uncoiled the strands of seaweed round his feet. A man she hoped so much was Harold. Only, would Harold have
allowed
the seaweed to tangle round his feet? Wouldn’t he, being an Expert, have seen and avoided it?
‘Oh no, my
bus
,’ yelled Nell, and, too late, began to run, clutching her diamond ring with her free thumb and feeling already the first dreaded slither of what would soon be the waterfall of her descending hair…
On the other side of London, hemmed in between fifteen volumes of a decomposing German dictionary and something called
Wissenschaftliche Padagogie
, sat Toby Sandford, bent over his dissertation on Animal Symbolism in Sanskrit Literature and trying to extract from his pocket, in total silence, a vinegar-flavoured potato crisp.
The college library was all-enveloping, silent, fusty, with marble busts of surprisingly unclad scholars placed at intervals between the tomes, but Toby wasn’t fooled. This was one of those rare days when all the rules were broken and the whole country ran riot with summer.
He extracted a crisp, closed his eyes and gave himself over to an emotion for which he was really rather young: intense and violent nostalgia. He saw the sea as it had been on the limitless, empty beaches of his native Northumberland, not blue but a cool and pearly grey; saw the entrancing pink legs of oyster catchers glint in the sun, saw a girl (but this was moving out of childhood) come out of the water, letting a skein of seaweed trail in her hand. Now she was bending down, biting with delicate pleasure the bladders of wrack between her teeth. Girls always bit into seaweed…
Or did they? He played the last reel through again in his mind, hoping against hope that the girl was Margaret, with whom he had what was generally termed a relationship. But would Margaret have
bitten
into a piece of seaweed? Wouldn’t she even there, coming out of the sea in the swimsuit whose straps would not have worked loose, been carrying her dissecting scissors, her scalpel?
‘Overwork,’ said Toby to himself. He’d been determined to finish the thesis for his doctorate before he went away, and usually an English summer was easy enough to ignore. But today…
Suddenly he closed his book, bundled up his papers. He’d take a day off, take Margaret out. To
Similar Books
