It was incredible to me that someone could make such a momentous decision with such apparent ease. Hugh and Iris hadn’t even discussed it. Where were the planning, the spreadsheets, the agonising discussions, the headaches?
‘I guess I’m staying until Friday, then.’
Pip smiled, a blush creeping up his face. ‘I guess so.’
Aside from a few more snipes from Aster, it was a perfect afternoon.
I played cricket for the first time, discovering that I could hit a ball a decent distance, but was a hopeless bowler. I built a sand church with Beanie and a couple of Hugh’s nieces, and we conducted weddings with a shell for the bride and a dead crab for her groom, until his legs fell off. I sat and watched boats sailing past, enjoying the kiss of sunshine on my bare skin, and listened to the blend of excited chatter and more serious conversations.
I talked to Pip. And when I wasn’t talking to him, I automatically tuned in to where he was, what he was doing, including joining in Celine’s volleyball game, and investigating rockpools with Jack.
I also couldn’t help continuously searching out Gabe. The man who would have been my stepfather, if things had turned out differently. The only man my mother ever loved – or even liked. Despite Pip having told me that Richard was the older brother, as the one who ran the farm, Gabe was clearly patriarch of the Hawkins family, and he carried the honour with easy grace and calm composure. I surreptitiously watched him chatting to every single person on the beach, dividing up the teams for games, ensuring the children were being safe in the water, checking Aster had a comfy seat and enough to drink.
‘Pip said that you do this most Sundays,’ I said to Lily, who spent most of the afternoon snoozing, in between rescuing Mister Whiskers from repeated escape attempts.
‘When the weather’s good enough. If it’s wet, we don’t bother, and if it’s cold, we only last a couple of hours.’
‘I thought farmers were supposed to work all the time.’
‘They’ve worked all week. And this morning. An afternoon off is hardly an indulgence.’
‘Yes. I just… this isreallyoff.’
‘What do you mean?’ She sat up and twisted around on her deckchair to look at me properly.
‘I spend my afternoons off cleaning or catching up on jobs.’
Lily screwed up her nose. ‘Then how is that off?’
I thought about that for a minute. ‘I don’t know.’
‘When do you catch up on doing nothing?’
‘Today?’
‘Are all mainlanders like that?’
I considered what Mum would have said about the kind of mainlanders who sat about at weekends, doing what she called ‘nothing’ and I was starting to realise other people called ‘resting’, ‘recuperating’ or ‘enjoying themselves’.
Her answer to this question would have been,All decent, hardworking, responsible ones are.
For the first time, I was seriously questioning whether she was right.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘I was going to say. No wonder you’re all stressed out and anxious over there, if you don’t know how to take time off.’
‘Now it looks as though I’ll be spending my time off baking pasties,’ I said, smiling, because honestly I had got so much from these past few days, I was happy to give something back. Busy and frantic was my comfort zone, after all.
‘Baking pasties, and hopefully helping me sort some decorations? I know Iris is all for keeping it casual, but it’s not every day my baby sister gets married and moves to the other side of the island. I want to make up for letting her down with the catering.’
‘Whatever you need, I’d love to help.’
As the afternoon mellowed towards evening, a small bonfire was lit and Rosemary handed out hot dogs to anyone who could squeeze one in. The children, now huddled in sandy towels with damp hair plastered on rosy cheeks, roasted marshmallows as Richard led the adults in a round of haunting sea shanties, depicting wild tales of smugglers, shipwrecks and women driven half mad with grief, waiting for their lost sailors to come home.
Eventually, as the warmth of the day began to dissipate, the family started to disperse. When Richard readied the boat just before nine o’clock, there was a small queue of people opting to avoid the climb back up the cliff, so Pip offered to walk instead.
‘Are you heading up now?’ Rosemary asked as she shook the sand off a blanket. ‘Your father needs you in the chicken shed tomorrow while he shows Hugh that sick calf.’
