Beatrice called him. He ignored her. The boy lunged towards the dog, which pranced further away. They spent several minutes, calling and coaxing, in Beatrice’s case, or sprinting and rugby tackling in the boy’s. The other boys watched, laughing, the large boy, Sturton, taking the chance to sprawl on the sand and mop his flushed face with a handkerchief. ‘Come on, you lummoxes,’ the fair-haired boy shouted to his friends. ‘Give us a hand.’
After several minutes Jinx allowed himself to be caught and the fair-haired boy wiped the ball carefully on his shorts before raising it in triumph.
‘I’m so sorry.’ Beatrice clipped the dog on the lead and said, ‘He’s got awful manners, hasn’t he? I hope he hasn’t spoilt your game.’
The boy gave Beatrice a mock bow. ‘The fault was ours, or more specifically, Sturton’s. He could bat for England, could Sturton, but his sixes would knock out the umpire.’
Beatrice hardly heard the sense of his words, so intent was she on the sound of his voice, and the warmth of his gaze. She imagined he must spend a lot of time on the playing-fields to be so sun-browned, and she marvelled that it made his eyes seem so blue.
He was putting out his hand now. ‘How do you do?’ he said. ‘Ashton. Rafe Ashton.’
Beatrice managed to get out her own name and shook his hand. It was as though a warm current passed between them.
‘See you around, Beatrice Marlow,’ he said. ‘Bye, Jinx-boy.’ And he was striding back to resume his game.
I’m already forgotten, Beatrice assumed, but as she led Jinx past the temptation of the spinning ball and towards the path to the harbour, Rafe gave her a smile that assured her otherwise.
‘Arlene Brooker has her sister’s boy staying,’ Mr Marlow remarked, reaching for the condiments. ‘Rafe Ashton. He’s sixteen – a nice-looking lad. I met him with Larry Sturton’s boy at the Brookers’ today. Turns out Rafe’s at Winchester with James.’ Beatrice’s father didn’t notice his daughter’s interest in this conversation. He began to eat in his usual irritating way, nibbling his food off the fork in fussy, catlike movements.
Delphine spread her napkin on her lap and began to sever fat from her chop. ‘Arlene Brooker has told me about Rafe and his older half-brother. A dreadful business. Her sister’s been widowed twice already and has married for a third time. They were in Paris with her last husband, but this one’s stationed in India, somewhere in the mountains – where would that be?’
‘Kashmir, I reckon,’ her husband said.
‘Yes, Kashmir, that was it. The boys used to stay with their grandfather in the school holidays, but do you remember Arlene telling us that he died at Easter? Gerald, the older boy, he’s at Sandhurst, but Arlene said she could take Rafe. I imagine he’ll be in Cornwall often.’
‘I think I saw him this morning,’ Beatrice plucked up the courage to say. ‘Playing cricket on the beach. And one of the other boys was definitely James Sturton.’
‘It’s a pity they’re all boys,’ said her mother. ‘It would be nice to have more girls for you to play with.’
‘I don’t mind, maman.’ She wasn’t keen on meeting strangers of either gender. But she thought she’d like to see something more of Rafe.
For the next few days she walked on the beach or up to the tennis club or shopped for her mother with a continuous sense of hope that she might see him.
The Brookers’ villa was up on the plateau near the tennis club, and Beatrice would walk past the house trying to appear as though she were not avidly looking for Rafe. One afternoon when she loitered, pretending to find early blackberries in the hedges, she was sure it was his voice she heard in the back garden, laughing and talking, though she could only make out the odd word of whatever adventure he was recounting.
It was three mornings after their first meeting that she saw him on the beach again, this time swimming. A wind had got up, and Rafe and James Sturton were surfing the waves with handheld boards. When he saw her he splashed his way to shore, where he rubbed his back vigorously with a towel as he asked her questions.
‘Do you live in Saint Florian?’
‘Yes.’
‘All the time or just the holidays?’
‘I live here all the time,’ she told him. ‘Do you remember the first house you come to when you walk back that way?’ She pointed to the dunes and he looked and nodded. ‘That’s where I live. It’s called The Rowans.’ She was surprised at how easy she found him to talk to.
‘Do you know the Brookers, my uncle and aunt?’ he asked, pulling the towel around his shoulders.