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Ben glanced from the books in his hand to the empty shelves.
‘Books could become her…delight. Her special bond with you.’ He couldn’t resist it. ‘Other than watching training for the Legion DVDs together, that is.’
Ben put his hand over Aleksey’s heart. It was almost thoughtless, casual as if just putting it to his chest, but there his heart was and so that’s where Ben’s hand landed. ‘My mother used to read to me. All the time. Before she… I put everything of hers away and took another path. Thank you.’
If Aleksey had foreseen how his gift would be received, he might have thought of something else to give Ben. He got no further interaction from his other half for the rest of the afternoon. Ben, crossed-legged and flanked on each side by a dog, began on his pilot book.
Aleksey after sighing for a while, smoking, checking out what the spider (now called Eric) was doing, he announced he was going to look for the generator.
Ben nodded.
The dogs ignored him too.
Attention. He rather missed it.
* * *
Sitting in the pavilion, leaning on the sill using his new telescope through one of the open shutters, Aleksey quickly realised he couldn’t see a generator anywhere so decided to look for something more interesting. Sharks? He had a remarkably clear view now of the water. There were diving birds which moved too fast for him to follow. There was an RNLI lifeboat, which might have been out of St Mary’s, chugging along heading west, crewed by men in bright orange life vests. When he lowered the instrument, he could barely see the boat at all.
He thought about Ben’s comment about incursions, which he was fairly sure Ben had only been joking about, but how did you stop people landing on your island? Once or twice they had unexpected visitors in their valley on Dartmoor. They had no fences, no barriers at all expect the old dry stone wall, and such formations were all over the National Park, built by French prisoners from the Napoleonic wars, and so did not necessarily look like private property markers to anyone. It had always seemed to him quite a nice way to end up if you’d been caught by the enemy: building walls on Dartmoor. Better than what would have awaited him in Afghanistan, that was for sure.
It was possible, he supposed, to put barbed wire on top of these more attractive obstructions, and then warning signs withno trespassing,but he’d gone another way. The grounds were now patrolled by Squeezy’s, or he supposed DS Mailer’s, efficient team. Hannibal, Psycho and Riff Raff, were, despite their names, surprisingly courteous with the occasional elderly walker who was discovered admiring the rhododendrons and asking for directions to Widdecombe.
But here?
Aleksey pictured naval mines bobbing around his coastline, a trap for the unwary, and lifted Ben’s superb gift once more to scope this thought out. He caught a flash of white in the distance and moved the instrument more slowly to find it once more. A large motorised yacht. He smirked, picturing some of the fellow Russians he’d spotted in Tre Huw, wondering where this one was headed to find another sanctuary. It was a beautiful boat if you liked that sort of display of gaudy wealth. It even had a little helicopter at the stern. He could picture Phillipa’s thoughts on it:ghastly foreign peasants with their new money.
He got more comfortable and steadied the scope, scanning the decks, checking out the sleek lines. He wondered idly how much such a beautiful object of desire would cost. It was one disadvantage, and yet in a way also a remarkable advantage of the island that it had no internet. The immediate temptation to Google yachts did not have to be resisted. It was liberating in a way.Appaloosa. He’d found the designation on the stern. He laughed aloud, picturing those beautiful horses tossing their manes, prancing, racing, and thought this an apt name.
He’d name his yacht after a horse too.
He laid the telescope carefully down on a shelf and began to inspect the temporary repair Squeezy and Ben had done with the tarps. They needed nailing down properly. If he could tear Ben away from his books.
Change.
Ben feared it so much.
But Ben Rider-Mikkelsen was inside on a lovely day, and he was sitting down…reading.
Next, Aleksey reckoned, he might explain to Ben what irony was.
* * *
‘Hey! Give it back.’
Aleksey held the book out of reach. ‘I’m bored. Amuse me.’
Ben held out his hand. ‘Stop using my lines.’
‘I’m starving…?’
Ben grinned. ‘Yeah, okay. It’s brilliant, by the way. The story.’ He was heading towards the kitchen, so Aleksey followed and levered himself up to perch on an old counter top to watch the food preparations.
As the fridge wasn’t working yet, they’d just left all the food on the wooden table in the middle of the room. Ben had found a large tin bath and had laboriously pumped it full of ice-cold water, presumably from the underground aquifer. He’d heaved this onto the floor, and their milk was weighed down beneath the surface, keeping at least somewhat fresh. As Ben held things up for him to select from—cheese, deli meats, quiche, pasties and other such things he’d found in the little St Mary’s shop, he asked with a small lip quirk, ‘Have you been playing with your telescope?’
Aleksey snagged Ben’s sleeve as he came over to rinse his hands. ‘Yes, and I want to play with yours now.’
Ben slid his wet hands around Aleksey’s neck and they kissed leisurely.
