She looked up, her eyes widening in shock and alarm as they encountered the tall, muscular frame of the man standing looking down at her. He must have been swimming in the river, she realised, because droplets of water were running down over his chest still, darkening the springy mat of hair that grew there. He was wearing jeans that were old and very faded, but his feet were bare. His arms and torso as well as his face were burned dark by constant exposure to the sun. Tiny lines radiated outwards from the corners of his dark blue eyes. His hair clung sleekly to his scalp and it was very dark.
Gemma moistened her lips nervously, suddenly feeling extremely alarmed.
‘It’s all right, I’m not going to hurt you.’
His voice rumbled from the depth of his chest, but it was gentle and reassuring, tinged with an accent she recognised as Irish.
The moment she heard it Gemma felt herself relax. She knew instinctively and beyond any shadow of a doubt that he wasn’t lying to her, and that he meant her no harm.
He looked down at the book she was reading and smiled at her. ‘Lawrence, eh? Now there’s a fine writer. Not as robust as some maybe, but a fine writer nonetheless.’
‘Do you … do you like reading, then?’
There had been an odd pause then while he looked at her for a moment, and then he had said quietly, ‘I like it fine when I have the time.’
And that was how it had all begun.
IN retrospect, that afternoon seemed to have a fey, almost magical, quality to it.
Gemma remembered that she had offered to share her sandwiches with him and that he had equally gravely accepted.
She had learned that he was working with a gang of labourers on the new motorway that was being built several miles away. He liked the countryside, he had told her, and he preferred to be alone on his time off. His family had come originally from Ireland, but he had been orphaned as a child and brought up in a home. His whole face had hardened when he told her that, and he had added that he didn’t intent to stay a labourer all his life. He had seemed so much older and more mature than she was herself that she had been half shocked to learn that he was only twenty years old.
He questioned her about herself, and she had told him openly and gravely about her background and her family.
In turn he had told her about his plans to educate himself, to start his own business. Labouring paid well, he had told her, but there was no future in it. It was a young man’s work, and it was gruellingly hard. He had told her that he had had to leave school at sixteen and about the night-school courses he was taking, now finished for the summer.
‘It’s to be hoped I don’t forget everything I’ve learned before they start up again in the autumn.’
‘I could help you remember.’
The diffident words were out before she could silence them, and she had tensed stiffly, waiting for him to laugh at her, or maybe even be angry. She had forgotten for a moment that men didn’t like girls who were too clever and her eyes blurred with adolescent tears while her olive skin flamed a miserable scarlet in her embarrassment and shame.
When he had said softly, ‘Maybe you could at that … and perhaps teach me a lot of the things I ought to know as well,’ she had looked at him nervously, not sure whether he was being serious or making fun of her.
‘I aim to make a success of my life,’ he had told her fiercely, ‘and if I’m to be that, I’ll need to know things you can’t learn from a book.’
‘You mean things like using the right knife and fork?’ Gemma had asked him intuitively.
‘Yes, but not just that. You say your father’s a master builder. There are things I need to know, books I need to read, if I’m ever going to be anything more than a labourer, and the building industry is the only one I know. The problem with this sort of life is that I never stay in one place long enough to do more than one full term at night school. If I had the right books, if I knew the right way to go about it, there’s a lot that I could teach myself.’
Gemma had understood what he was trying to say and it would be easy enough for her to help him. Her father’s study was full of just the sort of books he needed. David was to take her father’s place in the company eventually, and every holiday her father drew up a syllabus of things he had to study.
Right from the start it was almost as though she had already known Luke all her life. She could talk to him about things she had never been able to discuss with anyone else, and within a week it seemed to Gemma that they had known one another all their lives.
It wasn’t difficult for her to supply him with the books he needed, nor was it hard for her to slip away from the house most evenings to meet him. Even the weather was in their favour, remaining fine and warm so that they could meet in the clearing by the river.
She knew now that Luke lived in a caravan close by the motorway development and that he shared his accommodation with four other men. He liked to come to the river to swim because he claimed it was the only way he could feel really clean. The caravan boasted only one shower, which wasn’t enough to wash away the ingrained dust and dirt of the backbreaking work of road building.
Of course she never mentioned him at home. She knew how deeply her parents would disapprove of their association. She wasn’t even allowed to mingle with the village children, and Luke, with his Irish background, his accent and his lack of education could never be anyone her parents would approve of her knowing. Anyway, she preferred to keep their friendship a secret. It made it seem more special, more hers and hers alone, and she liked that. She felt comfortable with Luke, and she liked the glow of pleasure it gave her when she was able to give him some nugget of information he hadn’t known. She had ‘borrowed’ an old picnic basket from the pantry, and with it she taught Luke the correct placings of knives, forks and spoons.
Together they explored the mystery of Hardy and the pain of Lawrence, and together they laughed at Luke’s mimicking of her accent and hers of his.
Because of him Gemma felt more at home with herself than at any other time in her life. Her legs and arms were now tanned a soft gold and when she was with Luke she forgot how tall and gangly she was. Luke didn’t mind that she wasn’t blonde and pretty. Sexual awareness as yet had no part in her life. She knew all about it, of course, but physical desire and all its mysteries were something she had yet to experience.
All that changed the day David came home and brought a friend with him. Tom Hardman was the most beautiful-looking human being Gemma had ever seen. He was the same age as David, just seventeen, but he was taller than her brother and broader, his skin sheened golden by their Welsh holiday, his hair thick and brightly fair, his eyes as blue as the August skies.
Gemma fell head over heels in love with him the moment she set eyes on him.
She didn’t tell Luke about him. Not at first; the strange tummy-twisting sensation she had experienced the moment she set eyes on Tom was something still too private and wonderful to talk about to anyone, even Luke. She had barely been able to eat her supper last night, or her breakfast this morning. David had had his birthday while he was away, and as a present he
