Hogmanay at the inn ended with Beatrice and Ruth talking together right up until the bells rang out and the whole room had hollered a mighty ‘Happy New Year’. Beatrice shared the story of how she’d run away to the inn and fallen for Atholl, and she’d told the tale of her lost baby too. Everything about Ruth’s warm demeanour and openness encouraged her to share and they’d passed a happy evening in the bar.
She’d hugged Ruth goodnight just before Atholl came to find her and swept her up onto the dancefloor where he’d slowly spun her as everyone broke into song about old acquaintances being forgotten and never brought to mind.
Kitty and Gene joined them on the dance floor, while Seth staggered out the door, accompanied by his son, having discovered that the chief perk of being a local celebrity was having many free drinks foisted upon him. He’d been gracious enough to accept every one.
The revellers were so absorbed in their celebrations and their memories of the old year nobody noticed Ruth leaving the bar, her mouth fixed in a thin smile, and not one person spotted Mutt coming back from pacing the sea front with Bear fast asleep inside his black biker jacket. He scanned the room as though looking for someone but not spotting them before passing through the bar, into reception and up the stairs clutching a piece of paper, heading straight for the guest room at the very top of the inn.
Chapter Seventeen
A January Outing to the Coral Beach
Echo and Bear ran ahead, skipping over the ancient white algae beach, not seeming to mind the sharp shards that had made generations of unsuspecting tourists tempted by the glistening white shore instantly regret slipping their shoes off.
Beatrice and Atholl led the inn guests on their New Year’s Day walk, Atholl’s arm around her shoulder and her mittened hand around his waist.
Beatrice was tired this morning but unable to resist the temptation of bringing her guests together and showing them the beach she loved more than any other in the world. This was their chance to blow away the cobwebs from a Hogmanay indoors. If it just so happened that the beach was unusually romantic and windswept today, and the view out over the rippling blue water was captivating enough to get them exclaiming in wonder and chatting to each other, well, that wouldn’t be her fault. And if they broke off into pairs to walk and talk? Well, blame the beach.
There was still the threat of snow in the white sky – all one mass of thick cloud – but there was also the fresh, chilly glare of Januarys in the north of Scotland where, when the winter sun manages to get up over the horizon, it does wonderful things with light and colour and texture, things Beatrice had never seen back home in Warwickshire.
Ruth, Beatrice could see, was already taken by the gorgeous scenery and she had walked all the way across the little half-moon curve of coral with her husband and was sitting on a black rock right on the edge of the cold, clear water, which even in the wintertime still had the look of shallow tropical shores about it.
Beatrice pulled Atholl into the shelter of the low, rocky cliff at the back of the bay where they could spread their waterproof blanket and watch on as the guests mingled and stared at the landscape.
Ruth had very sensibly kept her wellies on and was trying to shove her hair back under the hood of her yellow raincoat to stop it getting messed up with the damp air. She was cheerful, though, as she looked all around at the tall mountains far in the distance, enclosing them in a circle as though at the centre of a snow globe. Hazy, snowy hills, fresh air, watery winter sunshine, and time alone with her husband. This is why she’d come here, and she was determined to be happy.
‘Have you not made any resolutions this year?’ she asked Mark, who was perching, less comfortably than she was, on his own black rock, an arm’s length away.
He looked out across the water, pulling a face that said he hadn’t given the topic any thought.
Ruth gave him time to answer. Something she’d grown used to lately. When he didn’t reply, she’d summoned all the positivity she could from the crisp newness of the January morning and told him she’d made a few of her own and did he want to hear them.
‘Hmm?’ Mark still didn’t look at his wife.
‘I thought we could resolve to go out more, now the boys have left home. See a bit more of each other?’
‘We’re out now, aren’t we?’
‘True. Here we are, together.’ Ruth craned round to let Mark see she was looking straight at him, hoping he’d look up and smile.
He kept his eyes on the horizon. ‘Well then.’
He said this a lot. Well then. Ruth knew it meant, ‘well, there’s an end to it’. She wondered if he’d found it worked well as a conversation stopper some time ago and he’d clung on to it, letting it round off awkward or stilted discussions, deploying it when he needed silence to work or when he didn’t want to hear chatter about the neighbours’ building work or what Ruth’s sister had got up to on holiday with her new boyfriend, and Ruth would let their conversations peter out, not seeming to mind.
It was all too easy to stop talking, back in their home, in their Yorkshire town, where Mark always had calls to make and a laptop screen to monitor, even in the evenings – except when he was asleep in front of the telly by eight – or Ruth might have a hair appointment or yet another supermarket shop to do, or important letters to shuttle to the post office for her husband.
Somehow they were never in the same room at the same time and really getting into a topic, and if they ever did it was about that dodgy guttering in their converted garage bedroom or trying to remember when the car needed its next service or Mark was asking whether Ruth would be a doll and book it in. She thought she might die for the want of a proper talk. She tried to imagine what it might feel like if Mark actually asked her a question, and not about what was for tea or where the remote had got to, either.
She took a deep breath. Ruth wasn’t going to let a ‘well then’ stop her this time. They were on a beautiful beach miles from their life back home. This place couldn’t be more different to their familiar routines and here was her chance to explore ways she might be different from Ruth Firth, wife, carer and mother.
‘I thought I might resolve to try a few more new things,’ she said.
‘Like what?’ Mark said, turning his head to look at her, just for a second.
‘I don’t know, something fun. Something we could both enjoy? The cooking lessons will be fun. Gene’s pub kitchen’s the real deal! I never really got much beyond sausage and mash or trifle with canned fruit and jelly with the kids. Now your wife’s going to be rustling up lobster bisque in a real kitchen! Who knew, eh?’
She smiled, her eyes falling on the side of Mark’s unshaven face. He didn’t bother shaving on days when he wasn’t likely to see clients. Ruth supposed that now went for holidays away with her too.
Mark nodded, eyebrows raised, seeming to say she was right, thatisimpressive.
