chapter 11
1809 Words
Titus
After our cream tea, we head out of The Monolith and start walking back through the village. We’ve only gone a hundred yards when Heidi stops and says, “Oh! I completely forgot about that!”
She’s stopped to look at a poster in a shop window. I go back and look at it with her. It’s advertising Shakespeare in the Park. A theater group from Exeter is performingA Midsummer Night’s Dreamin a variety of outdoor locations around Devon. And tonight, the performance just happens to be in Briarton.
“Oh,” Heidi says, turning to me, “I’d so love to see that. Will you come with me?”
“Of course,” I say good-naturedly, even though I’ve never been much of a theatergoer, and I’ve never studied Shakespeare.
“That’s fantastic. We’ll bring some cushions, and I’ll make us a picnic. It’ll be amazing.”
I smile as we continue up the road, pleased to see the sparkle return to her eyes. I was actually quite shocked about what she told me of her relationship with her father. The fact that she cut her hair the day she landed here tells me how deeply her resentment runs. It also emphasizes how awful what’s happened with Jason has been for her. All her life she’s had to put up with men trying to control her. I resolve to make sure that in the short time we’re together, I never put any demands on her in that way.
The play begins at six-thirty, and it’s only two p.m., so Heidi suggests we take a drive across the moors.
“You want to take my car?” I ask.
“If you don’t mind driving.”
“Not at all—at least it’s the same side of the road as in New Zealand.”
“True, I was very relieved about that when I came over.”
We walk up to the car park, and I press the button on my keys to open the car.
Heidi’s eyes almost fall out of her head. “Your hire car is a Range Rover?”
“A Sport Dynamic SE. What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing at all. I keep forgetting you’re a gazillionaire.”
I laugh as we get in and close the doors, and I start the engine. “You’re hardly poor, surely. Your father’s one of the richest guys in Auckland, I would have thought.” Peter Huxley is an investment banker, and he’s made a fortune over the years.
“I don’t want any of his money,” she says, buckling herself in. “He insists on paying an allowance into an account for me, but I don’t touch it.” She looks out of the window. “I know it’s not the same as not having money, because there’s always the reassurance that it’s there if I need it. But I’ve survived on my wages so far.”
I reach out and take her hand in mine and squeeze it. She looks up at me with her big blue eyes, surprised.
“I’m sorry,” I say. Then I release her hand, buckle myself in, and reverse out of the parking space.
She clears her throat and directs me to turn right out of the car park, and I head along the main road toward the western end of the town, and turn onto a B-road. “Tomorrow I’ll take you to some of the other villages on the moors,” she says, “but today we’ll just have a look at the landscape.”
I follow her directions along narrow lanes with high hedgerows, having to reverse twice when I meet a car coming the other way. After about ten minutes, we pass over a cattle grid, and she says, “We’re on the moors now.”
It’s not long before the hedgerows clear, and either side of us the ground opens out to the upland area of Dartmoor National Park.
“This is all granite under peat,” she says, “and sometimes it peeks out from the grassland and forms what we call tors. We’ll go up to Haytor now—it’s the best known one.”
“Does it rain a lot here?”
“God, yes. There are a lot of bogs with cotton-grass and sedges—all that purple and pink, and the sprinkles of white. Fox Tor Mires was the inspiration for Conan Doyle’s Great Grimpen Mire, you know, inThe Hound of the Baskervilles?”
“Oh, really? I love Sherlock Holmes.”
“Me, too! I’ve watched all the Jeremy Brett series as well as the modern ones.”
“Yeah, same, and a lot of the movies, too.”
We continue talking about our favorite portrayals of the fictional detective as I drive along the winding road through the vast, open moorland. At one point, I slow down as we pass a group of small, wild, Dartmoor ponies.
Following Heidi’s instructions, I turn off and slot the car into a space in the Haytor car park, and we get out. I’m sure that usually it’s a wet, rather miserable walk, but today it’shot as, the sun beating down on us, forcing us to don our sunglasses, and to apply the sun lotion that Heidi has brought in her purse onto our arms and faces.
“Don’t forget your neck and ears,” she says. “Bend down.”
I dip my head, and she tips a little of the lotion onto her fingers and smears it across the back of my neck. I lift my gaze to hers as she rubs it in. “You’re taking a surprisingly long time to do that.”
“Gotta be thorough,” she replies, giving me an impish smile.
When she’s done, we continue walking up the path to the rocks. It only takes us five minutes, and then we’re at the top of the hill, looking out across the amazing patchwork of colors forming the moors. Turning south, I can even see the sea. It’s a fantastic view.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” she says.
I look at her profile, the breeze making her blonde hair dance around her face. Her cheeks are pink from the sun. She’s still wearing her sleeveless yellow top and shorts and no jacket, and she shivers a little as the wind whips across the rocks.
“Stunning,” I say, only half referring to the tor.
She doesn’t notice. “There are several prehistoric settlements up here,” she says.
“Really? I would’ve thought it would be far too cold.”
“It was warmer back then, and the moorland was covered with trees. Neolithic farmers cleared some of the forests and established the first fields. And of course there are lots of individual standing stones, stone circles, and stone rows.”
I look at the ancient landscape, awed to think a man could have stood here, on this spot, five or six thousand years ago. The New Zealand landscape can be breathtaking, but we don’t have anything like this.
“I can see you’re a teacher,” I say as we begin to walk back down the path. “You make it sound so interesting. It makes me want to study archaeology.”
“You should! There are loads of deserted medieval villages here, too. You should see some of the aerial photographs, they’re fascinating.”
I love her enthusiasm and her obviously vast knowledge. She looks so young, but her expertise reminds me that she’s twenty-five.
Despite the sun, she shivers again, and I say, “Are you cold?”
“A bit. It’s so breezy. I should have brought a jacket.”
“Come here.” I put an arm around her and rub her arm. I know I shouldn’t, but I want to touch her. I can’t help it. She fascinates me.
If she’d stiffened or pulled away, I’d have apologized and dropped my arm, but she doesn’t; she nestles against me and slides an arm around my waist, and so we walk back to the car like that, borrowing from each other’s body warmth. It’s with some reluctance that I move away from her in the car park, and I’m sure I see the same unwillingness in her to separate.We get in the car, and I head back toward Briarton. “We can have a couple of hours’ rest before we go out this evening,” she says.
“Yeah. I might have a snooze,” I tell her. “I’ve never slept in the afternoon before, but I’m feeling tired.”
“It’s your age,” she says.
I chuckle. “Thank you. I’m only twenty-nine.”
“When’s your birthday?”
“October the twenty-fifth.”
“Oh, a Scorpio!”
“You’re into astrology?”
She grins. “Only for fun.”
“So what are Scorpios like?”
“Bold, creative, determined, and loyal. Mysterious and mystical. Passionate and sexy.”
“You’re making it up.”
“No I’m not! You read any online description. They’re the sexiest sign.”
“Well that’s nice to know.”
“They’re also supposed to be quite jealous, but you don’t seem like the jealous type.”
“I think you should trust your partner, and I don’t believe in demanding to know where they are every hour of the day or who they’re with. That’s not to say I wouldn’t get irritated if some guy tried to chat up my girlfriend. I’m only human. That’s why I can see the advantages of being married.”
“You don’t see it as a ball and chain?”
“Not at all. It’s a warning to other men. Keep away, she’s my girl.” I glance across at her. She meets my eyes for a moment, then looks away, out of the window.
“What about you, when’s your birthday?” I ask, changing the subject.
“July the twentieth.”
“Oh, I just missed it. So what star sign does that make you?”
“Cancer. We’re sensitive and compassionate, and very domestic—we like cooking and baking, and art projects around the home. We have deep feelings, and we wear our hearts on our sleeves.”
“I’ve never believed in astrology, but that does seem to describe you.”
“You do seem like a Scorpio, too. You’re very mysterious.”
I laugh. “No I’m not. I’m an open book.”
“You are. Some men are all sport and s*x, but I think you have layers.”
“I really don’t.”
“You only think about sport and s*x?”
“Sport, food, technology, and s*x. That’s about it.”
She giggles, and I grin.
- Writer
