Summer Seduction. Daphne Clair

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      ‘Is that all?’ Rose Summerfield laughed. ‘Well, at least you won’t be on your own there any more. Maybe we should come over this weekend and vet him.’

      ‘No!’ Blythe said instantly. ‘He’s very…private.’

      ‘A recluse? How old?’

      ‘Mm, maybe mid-thirties. He looks…’

      ‘What?’

      Blythe struggled to explain. ‘He isn’t happy. And I don’t think he eats properly.’

      ‘Men don’t when they’re on their own,’ her mother said sweepingly. ‘Do you want to feed him up?’

      ‘He wouldn’t thank me for it.’ He had barely managed to say thank you for the biscuits. Maybe biscuits were another thing he didn’t care for.

      ‘He is all right, I suppose?’ Rose worried.

      ‘I don’t think he’s an axe murderer, Mum.’

      ‘Well, maybe we’ll come over anyway,’ Rose decided. ‘Just to let him know you’re not alone in the world.’

      ‘I’d love to see you, but really there’s no need—’

      ‘Sunday,’ Rose said firmly. ‘We’ll bring lunch.’

      

      Early next morning Blythe caught a glimpse of her new neighbour loping at a steady pace past the cottage. He wore lightweight track pants and a navy T-shirt with running shoes, and looked like a serious jogger.

      In the afternoon she went down to the beach to scavenge for pieces of driftwood and beach grasses.

      Only four kilometres along the shoreline from Tahawai, although more than ten via the winding, unsealed and boneshaking road, was the popular holiday settlement, Apiata Beach. At low tide it was possible to walk—and clamber—from one to the other, but few people braved the several rock outcrops and stony little bays between the resort and Tahawai, even in the height of summer.

      At this time of year, with winter barely giving way to a cool spring, Blythe rarely saw anyone but the occasional lone fisherman or family party of locals on the beach. Sometimes surfers turned up to try the waves, but most of them preferred Apiata.

      Jas Tratherne was wearing white sneakers or maybe his running shoes—not boots anyway, she noted—and he didn’t have a dog at his heels. But he strode along the sand with a look of preoccupation, his head bent and one hand swinging a crooked driftwood stick, the other tucked into the pocket of a light parka.

      He was walking near the water’s edge, skirting the white-flecked waves thumping onto the sand in a flurry of foam. As Blythe descended the sandy slope he looked up.

      Blythe raised a hand in a half-hearted wave.

      He returned the gesture, then resumed his walk.

      Okay, she thought. He didn’t want company and that was fine. She headed off in the other direction.

      That night music drifted in through her barely open bedroom window with the night breeze. As she hovered on the edge of sleep the poignant notes entered into her dreams, and the next morning she had the feeling that the music had gone on for a long time. Hours.

      When she drove past the house to the store at Apiata, the detached wooden garage was open, what looked like a station wagon parked inside.

      On her return she parked the van in her garage next to the tunnel house and took her paper, mail and milk up the steps and inside.

      Sitting with a sandwich and coffee at the long table under the corner windows, she opened the newspaper. It wasn’t warm enough today to use the lounger on the high, enclosed deck outside.

      After two cups of coffee she folded the paper and fetched her kete. She had woven the traditional-style Maori carrier bag herself. Mrs Delaney, matriarch of the large, boisterous family who had grown up in the house now occupied by the solitary and anti-social Jas Tratherne, had taught Blythe along with her own daughters the ancient art of flax-weaving.

      She pulled on a hooded red sweatshirt as she left the porch, awkwardly transferring the plaited handles of the kete from one hand to the other and starting down the steps before she had fully donned the sweatshirt.

      When she looked up she saw Jas Tratherne approaching, his hair stirred by the wind. He wore lightcoloured cotton trousers, sneakers and the nylon parka.

      Fixing a smile on her face, Blythe paused as she reached the foot of the steps. ‘Hi.’

      He didn’t smile, but nodded. ‘Good afternoon—’ and with a glance at the kete ‘—Red Riding Hood.’

      ‘Hardly.’ She parted the handles. ‘No goodies, see?’ She saw he’d shaved today, and the planes of his face were more sharply defined, adding to the impression that he’d recently lost weight.

      He seemed to be debating whether to continue the conversation. After a moment he said, ‘So why are you carrying an empty basket?’

      ‘I’m gathering stuff from the beach.’

      ‘Stuff?’

      As they were obviously headed in the same direction they really had no choice but to walk together. ‘Leaves, stalks, seedheads, driftwood—’

      ‘Shells?’

      ‘Mm, maybe. It’s not a great beach for shells. The surf’s too rough, and most of them get pounded to bits. Sometimes I pick up a nice piece of beach glass or some interesting stones.’

      They walked on a few steps before he asked, ‘So what are you going to do with all this stuff?’

      She suspected he wasn’t really interested but that he felt obliged to be polite. ‘I make notions.’

      ‘Notions?’

      ‘Arrangements of driftwood or flotsam and my own dried flowers. For some of them I weave flax containers or wall hangers.’

      ‘I’d have thought it would be too sandy here for flower-growing.’

      ‘The gully’s sheltered from the sea wind, and the soil on the bottom is quite peaty. And,’ she added, ‘there’s plenty of seaweed for mulch and fertiliser. The right flowers do very well.’

      ‘Like…?’

      ‘Strawflowers, statice, lavender—I use some and the rest go directly to florists.’

      They went up the little rise between the hills, and the breeze blew strands of hair across Blythe’s eyes.

      ‘You’re running a business—on your own?’

      ‘Yes.’ Half closing her eyes against the wind, she shook back her hair. ‘It’s all mine.’

      ‘Yours?’

      ‘Why not?’

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