Our Last Summer

Alexander Bexley-1

Alexander Bexley

The clattering rumble of the bus disturbs Ryan from his book, and he tilts his head out of the window entirely (catching a smooth breeze in the face) to watch it pause at the green in front of the church.

He almost goes back to his book, when the last person drops down from the bus steps and the door clacks shut behind him—or her. And he or she catches Ryan’s eye, mostly because of the age gap.

It’s half past four. There’s the usual gaggle of elderly ladies back from their Thursday pension-shop in Thame or Oxford, but the young one is not someone Ryan knows about. Mostly because Ryan is the village ‘young one’; there’s nobody here even close to his own age.

The village is one of those reserved for retired city workers, most not so old as Nan, but still with adult children elsewhere. The young are irregular—five-year-old grandsons and brand new granddaughters, brought in their prams and bicycles with stabiliser wheels, arriving in the mornings in gleaming four-by-fours and disappearing back to their city-homelands by nightfall.

But a school uniform? A permanent—or at least not completely temporary—presence?

This is new.

The figure is too far off to discern properly—a maroon school uniform hanging off a skinny frame, and a cloud of dark hair that could belong to a boy or a girl. The trousers are ill-fitting, the jumper baggy—and why, why, is the figure even wearing the jumper in this ridiculous heat?

It’s not even easy to tell how old they are, apart from the uniform. It’s one of the secondary comprehensives, but Ryan can’t tell which one, and the lanky height is hard to place. A tall thirteen-year-old and a short eighteen-year-old are indiscernible at this distance, and with only the person’s back on display, Ryan has no further hints to help him.

The person hitches their tattered backpack higher and disappears around the corner of the crumbling church wall, out of sight.

Ryan watches for a little longer, then goes to find Nan.

* * * *

“Your age?” Nan puzzles over it, half-folded towel forgotten in her hands. Ryan’s disturbed her folding laundry, and he thinks she welcomes the interruption. “Oh. I can’t really think of anyone, dear. Was it a boy or a girl?”

“Not sure.” Ryan shrugs. “Too far away.”

“Hmm,” Nan says. “I’m not sure, dear. There’s been a couple of new families moving in, but I haven’t really met them. Milly—you remember Milly, don’t you? Runs the—”

Milly—eighty-something Milly of the stubbornly dyed black hair, and the dumpy stature, and the perpetual cake and coffee, the smell of baking woven into her very being, for as long as Ryan has known her. Milly of the village tearoom, of the village gossip, of knowledge of the place, from her own youth here ‘during the war.’

“The tearoom, yes, Nan.”

“Well, she knows more about what’s going on than me. I think she’s got new neighbours—well, not new, but since last year—but whether or not they have children…” She trails off and shrugs. “The other new people are the young couple who’ve just moved into Rose Cottage, round the other side of the church, but they’re only young themselves. They’ve got a new baby. I can’t imagine they’ve got an older child as well.”

That explains the couple with the pram that Ryan saw the other day, but not the school uniform.

“Well, the local schools get out tomorrow,” Nan says. “Why don’t you just go down to the bus stop to say hello?”

Okay, yeah, Appington might be dull, but it’s not that dull. Ryan rolls his eyes, fobs her off, and makes some vague enquiry as to dinner, and she forgets about it quickly enough.

Ryan doesn’t go—but he does watch the same figure drop down from the bus the next day.