Meet Me on the Beach Read online

  Luckily, the prudent Mrs. Rawlings kept the office fridge stocked with her boss’s favorites: sausage rolls, corned beef, Brie, orange juice, beef tomatoes, pickle. And Harry’s desk drawer yielded an almost full bottle of finest malt. As evening set in, the world outside a flawless, silent white, the office became cozy, womb-like, in the single light from the desk lamp. Karen and Harry seemed to adopt a siege mentality as they picnicked on a cleared patch of desk, munching hungrily on the sausage rolls, with the whisky—not something Karen was used to—gradually loosening the boss-PA boundaries.

  “What will we do?” she’d asked him.

  “Do? Nothing we can do.”

  “But supposing it keeps on snowing?”

  Harry had laughed. “Well, then, we’ll be found in twenty years’ time, like Scott of the Antarctic, curled around each other for warmth, clutching our diaries, which’ll contain something brave and heroic they’ll turn into a book . . . which will make millions for our descendants.”

  And while Karen was laughing at the ridiculous scenario, Harry was putting his glass down and coming round the desk and grabbing her out of her chair with such passion she was not given time even to think, let alone protest.

  The night they spent on the office floor, wedged on cushions from the leather sofa and covered with the tartan car rug from Harry’s Jag, was unique. With all the time in the world, no chance of intrusion, they were free of restraint. And Harry was expert, a sensualist, hedonistic by nature and keen to milk every ounce of pleasure from their entwined bodies. Russ’s dogged drive to his own orgasm—usually less than ten minutes, tops—was hardly in the same ballpark.

  “I hope they don’t rescue us too soon,” Karen had whispered into his neck in the small hours of the night. “The food should last us at least another couple of days.”

  And Harry had just chuckled and pulled her closer against his body.

  Even in those days, Harry had been a heavy drinker. But his drinking was part of his zest for life. A zest which seemed to drain clean away as soon as he sold his company—his beloved baby—on the eve of his seventy-second birthday. Such plans they had! Harry, a workaholic, was determined to catch up on all the things he’d missed, such as seats at the Masters golf tournament, taking a yacht round the Med, African game parks, Las Vegas . . . the list was endless. And now they had the money . . .

  But her husband, from day one of retirement, seemed not to want to travel even thirty miles, let alone three thousand. Karen watched in dismay as he fell in on himself, lost all of his joie de vivre. Instead of traveling the world, he played golf and drank, drank and played golf. Then, increasingly, as his right hip became more and more painful with arthritis, he mostly just drank, albeit at the golf club. “We’ll go next year,” was his monotonous response to Karen’s tentative plans.

  She hadn’t given up hope that things would improve, however. Not even now. Her husband might still see the light, get help, stop drinking. Then he’d revert to his old self. And love her again.

  On her way up to bed, after she’d let the dog out and spent a few minutes gazing up at the stars, she made her nightly detour to the den, where Harry had set up his vast flat-screen television, his red leather recliner, his fifties drinks cabinet. He was asleep, of course, the remote clutched in his left hand, a nearly empty glass nestling in his lap as he snored for Britain in front of one of the endless golf replays that blared out into the stuffy, wood-paneled sitting room.

  “Come on, Harry . . . wake up . . . it’s late.” She gently pried the glass from his hand and put it on the side table.

  He harrumphed, half opened his bloodshot eyes without registering her presence, then closed them again.

  “Harry . . . come on, get up. Time for bed.”

  This process could go on for a while. And he was such a heavy man—tall and a dead weight—that Karen’s small frame stood no chance of lifting him unless he helped her.

  Once she’d dragged him upstairs, undressed him, left him flat on his back under the duvet, she went to one of the spare rooms to sleep. She hadn’t felt comfortable doing so when Sophie was there—not wanting to give any ammunition to her stepdaughter that she might use to drive a bigger wedge between Karen and Harry. But now it was a blessed relief to sleep alone between the chilly sheets and not have to endure the stale whisky fumes or listen to the tractor snores all night.

  *

  The next morning was a perfect winter day, cold, but with a bright-blue, cloudless sky, the sun pouring in the kitchen window. Karen made herself toast and marmalade—her own homemade preserve, which she’d boiled down and potted into twelve sterilized glass jars of assorted sizes only the previous week—and a mug of filter coffee. She ate quickly, impatient to be outside, to escape with the dog on to the Sussex downs behind the house. Because if Harry woke up he’d expect her to stay and make his breakfast, which always involved a tedious round of orange juice, eggs, bacon, tomato, toast, tea and the Telegraph.

  The ground was frosty and crackling under her boots as she strode up the path on to the hill. Largo was delirious, charging over the rough ground, snorting and snuffling and wagging his tail as he stuck his nose down rabbit holes and inhaled all the scents brought out by the sunshine. Karen sucked in the fresh air, light-headed with the sense of release from the confines of the house. She loved being outdoors—even as a child, she was always badgering her mother to let her play out, never happier than when she was allowed to take Johnny, her brother, into the Devon hills with their collie dog and sandwiches in her backpack.

  She saw someone up ahead. The new vicar. He looked lost, just standing on the brow of the hill as if he were trying to get his bearings. She groaned silently. Reverend Haskell had only arrived last November after the parish’s previous incumbent, Bob Parkin, had been finally diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

  Largo, racing up to him, obviously startled the man out of his reverie because he jumped and looked around.

  “Oh . . . Mrs. Stewart,” he said.

  “Reverend,” she replied.

  “Please . . . call me William, everyone else does.”

  “Only if you call me Karen.”

  They both smiled.

  “Deal,” he said.

  There was an awkward silence, made more uncomfortable on Karen’s part because ever since William Haskell’s arrival in the village, she had felt a subtle pressure from him to become part of the congregation. He had asked her three times now—no doubt prompted by her husband—if she would like to meet him to “discuss things over coffee.” But Karen was not a churchgoer, did not believe in God—or at least not the organized-religion version. She had managed to resist all Harry’s blandishments over the years to come to services with him, and she was not about to give in to this new attack on her faithlessness.

  “Isn’t it just the most stunning day?” he said, gazing out over the hills. He was in his mid-fifties, Karen reckoned, maybe a bit younger, slim but with broad shoulders and an upright posture that made him look taller than he was. His coloring reminded her of an Irish boyfriend she had once had with his dark hair—the thickness making the short cut unruly—fair skin and very light-blue Celtic eyes surrounded by dark lashes. She wouldn’t have called him good looking exactly, but his face was strong, lived in, with a deep furrow between his eyebrows as if he were permanently worried. He was certainly a breath of fresh air in the village after decades of Bob’s plodding, unimaginative ministry. Haskell was charismatic, energetic and intent on shaking the parish up, raising money for just causes, involving everyone in “community”—his favorite buzzword.

  “We need it after all that rain,” she said, dying to get on with her walk.

  They both stood, hands in the pockets of their jackets, breath steaming in the cold, looking at the view rather than at each other. Where they were standing gave a toytown impression of the village below, so neat and pretty and tranquil, the square tower of the Norman church majestic in the shaft of sunlight coming over the hill. Her house, th
e Old Rectory—large and elegant, early Victorian brick—sitting contentedly beside the church. The vicar’s, by contrast, a dull, boxy, seventies build further down the lane where he lived with his wife, Janey, and seventeen-year-old daughter, Rachel.

  “Is Harry OK?” William asked. “I didn’t see him in church yesterday.”

  Her husband was a church warden, a pillar of the parish council, frequent benefactor to the church bell-tower fund, and allowed the church fête to be held in their garden every summer. In the past he would rarely miss a service, sometimes going to evensong as well as to matins. But the drinking had made his attendance erratic.

  “He wasn’t feeling well,” she said, entirely truthfully as Harry had barely been able to stand with his crippling hangover on Sunday morning.

  “Nothing serious, I hope?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Give him my best, will you?” The reverend seemed to stir himself. “Right, better get on. So many things to do . . .” He paused, taking a long, slow breath. “This is such a lovely part of the world. What luck to be able to work here.”

  Karen nodded, but although his words were delivered with his usual enthusiasm, they fell strangely flat in the still morning air, as if he were trying to convince himself that he was happy to be there by virtue of saying so.

  “Is it time for that coffee yet?” was his parting shot as he waved, grinned and strode off toward the village.

  Is he not quite as happy as he seems? she wondered, as she walked on up the path. She’d detected a pensive, almost disconsolate look in his light eyes, quite out of sync with his determinedly cheery vicar persona. Still, it can’t be that easy being a religious man in today’s secular world.

  *

  “Where have you been?”

  The kitchen was dim with smoke and rank with the smell of burning fat. On the stove was a frying pan containing a scorched rasher of bacon, now cold and congealed. The table was a litter of crumbs and burned toast, the lid off the marmalade, a greasy knife resting on the open butter packet, the filter machine still on despite the glass carafe being empty, adding the aroma of singed coffee to the mix. Harry was sitting with the newspaper spread out in front of him, his reading glasses balanced on the end of his nose, his color high, a light sheen of sweat on his forehead.

  “A walk, it’s such a beautiful day,” she replied. “I met the vicar on the hill.”

  Her husband gave a low growl. “Preposterous man. All that hail-fellow-well-met rubbish. He’s a Happy Clappy, no question. Mark my words, he’ll have us singing ‘Kumbaya’ next. Bob may have been dotty, but at least he knew tradition when he saw it.”

  This seemed a bit unfair to Karen, but she knew better than to challenge her husband over religion.

  “How are you feeling? You look a bit rough.” She rinsed out the coffee jug and filled the filter paper with fresh grounds.

  Harry turned back to his paper. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you look ill, Harry. You’re bright red in the face and sweating.”

  “I just drank four cups of coffee and ate a massive fry-up, that’s why I’m sweating.” He shot her a warning look, obviously hoping to silence her on the subject of his hangover.

  “The vicar wondered why you weren’t at church yesterday. I said you were ill.”

  “It’s none of his bloody business. He should spend more time preaching and less time poking his nose into my affairs. He was banging on about ‘syncretism’ last week. What the hell’s that supposed to mean? The man’s an idiot.”

  Karen had no idea what it meant. She did know, however, that Harry’s absence from church had nothing whatever to do with Reverend Haskell’s preaching, but she was not going to have that argument right now. “He seems like a good man, though, don’t you think? He’s already started a lunch club for the old people, Sheila said. At least he’s enthusiastic.”

  Harry gave her a pitying look. “Ha! ‘Enthusiastic.’ Just what we need in a man of the cloth. Although I’m not sure what qualifies you to judge, seeing as you never set foot in church.”

  “He’s not in church all the time, Harry. I’ve met him out and about, I hear people talk, I’m perfectly entitled to say whether he seems like a good person or not.”

  “I’d rather assumed it was part of a vicar’s job description to be good,” Harry retorted. “Or have I missed something?”

  She didn’t respond to his sarcasm, just began to clear away the mess in silence.

  Chapter Two

  Later that afternoon Karen phoned her brother, Johnny. He was the only person she felt she could confide in on the subject of her marriage. She couldn’t talk to her friends in the village because the community was so tight-knit, so gossipy, that everyone knew everyone else’s business almost before they knew it themselves. And worse, few had seen the rough side of Harry Stewart. He was always so charming, so polite, so outwardly concerned with his neighbors and the wider community. And in the past he had truly meant it. No one would believe her if she told them what he was really like now.

  “Yeah, not so good,” Karen responded to her brother’s question.

  “Still boozing?”

  “Ooh, yes.” She told him about the vicious slap.

  “What? Christ!” Johnny exploded. “Honestly, you can’t go on like this, Karen. You’ve got to get out of there.”

  “I don’t think he meant it . . . well, he meant it at the time, but you could see he was shocked at himself.”

  “And that makes it OK? Listen to yourself! A slap this week, a beating the next, killing you the week after. Are you genuinely just going to sit there and wait for that?”

  Karen laughed. “Don’t be so melodramatic, J. You spend too much time with downtrodden women. Harry’s not going to kill me. I wish I hadn’t told you now. Part of me’d love to leave, you know I would, but he’s sick. And old. It’s the drink talking. He never used to be like this. We had fun.”

  “He always treats you like a ‘little woman.’ I hate that.”

  “I know, but that’s my fault as much as his for allowing it.”

  “Whatever. But honestly, you can’t just ignore the signs. You hear about it every day, women dying from domestic abuse.”

  “It’s really not that bad,” she said firmly, wanting to stop her brother winding her up, sensationalizing what had just been a one-off, however horrible at the time. “And anyway, I don’t know where to go, what to do. I hardly have any money of my own. And there’s the dog. I can’t leave Largo.” She felt so helpless and pathetic but she didn’t want to cry again, she’d done that so often while on the phone to Johnny this last year. And he was three thousand miles away in Toronto, how could he help?

  There was a long silence. Her brother clearly didn’t know what she should do either.

  “You must have enough money to leave and rent somewhere for a while. Maybe if you make a stand it’ll shock Harry so much he’ll shape up, stop drinking.”

  “Maybe.” She’d thought of that too.

  “Could you at least look into it? Promise me? I’m worried about you, have been for months. Even if he doesn’t attack you again, you sound so utterly miserable. It’s not worth it, Karen.”

  “I know . . .”

  “Get out while you’re still young enough to make a life. If you sit there another ten years you’ll be past it.”

  “Great, just what I need to hear.”

  “Well, it’s true. You’re fifty-seven. Think about it.”

  Johnny, three years younger than Karen, had always behaved like the elder sibling. Bossy and practical, a solicitor, husband, father of three and passionate campaigner for human rights, he wasted no time on self-doubt. Karen knew that her own inaction must be a constant source of frustration to him.

  “Harry’s drinking is his responsibility, not yours. You know quite well he could do something about it if he chose.” His tone had softened.

  “Could he? It wouldn’t be that easy.”

&nbs
p; “You’re too bloody sympathetic. And I know why. But Harry isn’t Mum, Karen. Of course he could stop. She did. And no, it can’t have been easy but she still went ahead and did it.”

  “Spurred on by acute pancreatitis and the doctors telling her she would die if she didn’t.”

  “True, but that doesn’t always act as an incentive. Look at George Best.”

  Their mother, Gloria, had not been a nasty drunk like Harry, more of a helpless, hopeless drinker. She’d got through the day, walked them home from school, cooked them all supper, functioned on the surface pretty well in the early days—perhaps on autopilot much of the time. But they heard the arguments with their father at night and, as Karen and Johnny got older, she let things slide more and more. It got to the stage where both children dreaded coming home to the stale, airless house and Gloria slumped in the armchair in her housecoat, slurring her words and waving her cigarette over the bulging ashtray, pink lipstick smudged, a glass of cheap sherry on the table beside her. Neither of them ever dared bring friends home.

  “Don’t know how Dad stood it so long,” she heard herself say, realizing the irony of her words.

  “He probably thought he couldn’t leave us with Mum in that state. He was OK, Dad, he did his best.”

  “Yeah . . . have you heard from Joan recently?”

  Joan was the girl in the tea shop their father ran off with as soon as Gloria was sober. Apparently he’d dropped in there most days on the way home from his job at Exeter town planning office—delaying his return to his wife, no doubt. He admitted later that it was a long-standing affair, but neither of them chose to blame him.

  “Christmas card, that’s all. I should ring, but the time difference makes it tricky . . . at least, that’s my excuse. Anyway, I’d better go, sis, I’m at the beginning of my day here. Please tell me you’ll do something this time, not just wait around till he comes at you with a kitchen knife.”

  Karen couldn’t help smiling at this. “No worries there. Harry doesn’t have the first idea where the knives are kept!”