The Wheeling Dipping Seagull, Brian Doswell [learn to read books TXT] 📗

sandals to match. Ready.

Aunt Jen always said a girl should arrive at least ten minutes late. If he’s still waiting it’s because he wants to. If he’s gone it saves you all the bother of deciding what to do about him later.

It’s only 7:45 - plenty of time.


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Even with all of the windows open, it’s still warm in the car. I can feel my shirt sticking to the leather seat; so much for crisply ironed shirts on an evening like this. I can’t stop thinking about the events of the last two days. It was so kind of her to go out of her way to return my towel. All that business with her bikini was a bit embarrassing, but she didn’t seem to mind. And lunch. I can’t remember when I had lunch with such a fine pair of . . . .distractions.

Immediately I regret the thought. I have been out socially, in company, loads of times since my wife died, but this will be the first time with someone special. I’m not sure what it is about Sylvie but from the first sight of her hair, her manner, her style, I knew she would be special.

The dashboard clock ticks past the half hour. I did not expect her to be here on the dot. My wife was never ready on time, even when she started the day before. The car park is still fairly empty, except for a small gathering of seagulls pecking at crumbs blown in on the breeze. I’m becoming a bit of an expert on seagulls. Most of them seem to be like the cat that curiosity killed. They have to check everything that might be vaguely edible, especially the stubbed ends of filter tipped cigarettes. It amuses me how they pick things up and then toss their heads to throw it away when they could just leave things where they are. I look for my seagull with the eyebrow but the flock are too far away. I look down at the dashboard again barely a minute has passed. I look up and there is a seagull standing on the bonnet of the car. Its head is cocked to the right and a piercing black jewel of an eye glowers at me from beneath a single streaky black eyebrow.


ooooo

I ease my little green Clio out into the traffic and head for the beach car park. It’s going to be a warm evening, I can tell because I’m feeling sticky already. Did I remember a splash of deodorant? Did I do my underarms? Too late now, I’m really out of practice at this sort of thing. I’ve had the Clio for years. I flirted with the idea of trading it in for a new one with the help of Aunt Jen’s legacy but, when it came to the day, I couldn’t bear to part with her.

The entrance to the car park is off a small roundabout. There’s a barrier which pops up when you get close enough but you need to know where it is because the council gardeners have planted bushes all round it and it’s easy to hit the kerb stones, especially if you’re late and going a bit too quickly, which I’m certainly not.

I’ve been caught before so I was being extra careful when a large white bird launched itself out of the bushes and screeched like a banshee as it crossed in front of my windscreen. I swear I barely touched the kerb but the car lurched as I instinctively ducked, inside the car, to avoid the bird. It was there and gone in an instant. The barrier swung upwards and I drove over to where David was parked.


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My pulse raced when I saw the Clio come round the bushes by the entrance. So what if it was almost eight o’clock, she had come. “How like a woman driver to cut diagonally across the empty lanes of parking spaces towards me.” I could forgive her anything but I couldn’t help noticing how the whole car leaned to the left.

“Sylvie,” I spoke her name for the first time, “Do you know that you have a flat tyre?”

We stood together, side by side, looking at the wheel, as if our combined gaze would, by some magic, repair the problem and re-inflate the tyre.

“You must have a spare in the boot.” I looked again at the age of the car and decided the question was not as daft as it sounded. If there was a spare tyre, it was probably as flat as this one.

“Of course. I think so.” Sylvie moved to the back of the car and opened the boot.

Wheel changing is a strictly male pursuit and my Sir Galahad act was a welcome chance to return the lost towel favour. The spare wheel and a full set of tools sat in the specially designed space under the carpet. It seemed so easy, change the wheel now before the sun goes down, and all will be well when we get back to the car park later on.

I spun the first three wheel nuts off with the simple elegance of a race-car pit crew. The fourth was a little more reluctant. The fifth one would not budge. I even tried jumping on the wrench but the stupid thing resisted every effort.

I have a few tools in the boot of my car and a can of oil. A splash of two of oil should loosen the nut and – job done.

Sylvie watched as I laboured. An uneasy silence settled over us as her car resisted my struggles. I could sense her guilty feeling and laughed about the whole thing.

“There’s always one that sticks.” It was intended to be a light-hearted, reassuring aside, but as I turned my head to smile at her, my hand slipped off the wrench and hit the concrete, leaving a fair chunk of skin on the ground. It hurt like hell, but I smiled like a true Sir Galahad should. It was the streak of blood that I wiped across the front of my shirt that really annoyed me. Moreover, I brushed my hair out of my eyes when I stood up and managed to implant a streak of war paint across my forehead.

Sylvie groped inside her car for a box of tissues and started tearing them off by the handful. I wrapped a pile around the grazed knuckle and continued the forced smile. She spat on one folded tissue and wiped my brow. It was a delightfully intimate moment, the pain went away immediately.

Oddly enough the force of the action had been enough to move the wrench and the last nut began to loosen. Changing the wheel was now a simple matter. The élan of pit crew returned and, in a few minutes, the Clio was back on four wheels. I carefully packed the tool-kit away in the boot and wiped the blood and oil off my hands with another wedge of fragrant tissues.

“David, I’m so sorry to have caused all this trouble. Thank you so much for helping me.” She took my injured hand in hers and the softness of her touch felt like magic. I could have stayed there, holding her hand, for hours. Our eyes met, locked across the blood stained tissue while she reached out and slammed the boot lid closed.


ooooo


I felt so foolish. I must have hit the kerb harder than I thought. If only that seagull had not frightened me, I’m sure I would have been OK.

David is such a sweetie. Lots of men I know would have made some rude comment about ‘women drivers’. He just rolled up his sleeves and got on with it. I could see he was struggling with the wheel nuts but there was no way I could help him. Men can be a bit tricky when they are being macho and I did not really know him well enough to interfere. He was grunting a lot and I wanted to say something encouraging but when I leaned forward his hand slipped off the tool thing and whacked onto the floor. If it had been me I’m sure I would have said something a bit rude but David just smiled as the blood poured from his grazed knuckle.

Suddenly I was on my home ground, Florence Nightingale, fully equipped with a box of tissues and a heart full of tender loving care. I think that he took more notice of the tissues than the TLC.

Somehow he managed to smear blood and oil across his forehead. I pulled out another tissue and wet it with my tongue before wiping the stain off his face. His eyes softened and I felt a real maternal urge well up inside. I half hoped he would cry so I could cuddle him and kiss it all better.

Macho man won out. David finished changing the wheel accompanied by lots of sage advice about where to get the tyre repaired and the wisdom of doing it as soon as the garages opened in the morning, as if I didn’t realise the importance of having a spare tyre. When my Clio was back on her little feet, David packed the bits back into the boot making sure that every piece went back into its proper little hole. I suppose all boys like the game of fitting the blocks into the spaces. I think now that I might have still felt a bit guilty but when he finished, I slammed the boot closed without looking.

That might have gone unnoticed but I managed to catch the hem of my dress in the damn thing and when I turned around the tearing sound rent the air as loud and unmistakable as could be. The side seam of the skirt simply unravelled from the hem to the waist.

I tried to clutch the material together but somehow that never works the way you think it will. Every handful caught on one side, merely pulled away from the other. Honestly it was never my intention for David to enjoy the sight of my best Victoria’s Secret panties, especially in daylight and in the car park. I could not begin to think what might be going through his mind. We had hardly met each other and there was almost nothing left of me that he had not seen.


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The ripping noise was like gunfire. I turned back towards her, to see Sylvie frantically pulling at her dress that had stuck in the closed boot lid. Her face was the colour of beetroot but her legs were beautiful. We needed to find the car key to unlock the boot and free the trapped cloth. Sylvie wanted to look for the key but of course she could not move very far without tearing more of the material. She must have had the key to open the boot to find the spare wheel. It had to be somewhere nearby. The more