Chapter Text
From Paddington Station, it was approximately a two-hour train ride to Cheltenham Spa Station. From there, it was typically a 15-minute taxi ride to travel the four miles across town to reach where Cheltenham meets the edge of the Cotswolds. Just inside the conservation area was an Italianate villa sitting on the highest peak of ten acres of land—Gilliat Park.
A relatively quick trip for a weekend away from the city wasn’t difficult.
Still, Julia Montague never could find the time to return home. By winning her seat in Westminster just days before she turned 24, she became the youngest MP in Parliament and, thus, became Baby of the House. The title brought with it immediate celebrity; celebrity that she reinforced with her remarkable intelligence and her effortlessly commanding presence and composure. She was heralded as a rising star—the future of the Conservatives. However, as impressive of an achievement as it was, being Baby of the House also inherently meant that she had a lot to prove.
Four years on, she was still Baby of the House, and unfortunately, still trying to prove herself. The battle raged on. She would always be up against assumptions and biases, especially those of her older peers. It didn’t really matter that she was primed to successfully defend her seat in the upcoming general election just months away.
The pressure—a lot from outside forces, but much of it also self-imposed—had meant that Julia had little time for much else. Life revolved around duty (if her father’s own example was anything to go by). Therefore, her London really only consisted of Westminster and all that her constituency of Thames West included. There was a stretch of three months when she ventured away from the city every other week or so to spend some time with her (currently off-again) boyfriend at his flat in Surrey. The hold London, and her constituency office, had on her was too strong.
If she could hardly stay put in Surrey with her partner, time away in Cheltenham was implausible.
However, a beloved father who had suffered a heart attack and nasty fall from his horse was cause for reconsideration. As was the beloved father’s request for his dear daughter’s presence at the upcoming Cheltenham Festival.
For his 40 years of service to national security, Dickie Montague had made the recent New Year Honours List and was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George. The announcement in The London Gazette came on his final day as Director of GCHQ. His six-year tenure as the head of the intelligence and security agency saw the turn of the century and the Y2K unease, the September 11 attacks and its ensuing conflicts, a rise in terror inflicted on home soil, as well as the rapid and ever-burgeoning advancements of technology and communications, in addition to the completion of The Doughnut and the agency’s transition into the new HQ. Thus, it was met with genuine surprise that Sir Dickie Montague, who had always been of strong constitution and good health, was felled by a heart attack while out on a pleasant, standard morning ride with his wife. Dickie managed to joke, as he was ushered into the ambulance, that, clearly, he wasn’t suited for retirement.
Despite it being enough to take down all six-foot-three and 14 stone of him, Dickie would recover from the heart attack. Julia didn’t even have the opportunity to say she was leaving for Cheltenham when her mother had rung to give her the news. Dickie was going to be fine. He was stable and conscious thanks to the quick actions of those who had helped them, especially the hiker and the ambulance service that had swiftly reached them.
His shoulder was going to require more attention. The man that had come to his and Frances’s aid had told the emergency medical dispatcher over the phone that it appeared as if Dickie’s arm had “come loose from his body” and was “pinned completely underneath him.” The man then swiftly tended to Frances who, already struck with great distress, became physically ill at the well-intentioned man’s characterization of the situation.
Treating the shoulder meant Dickie first had to be well enough to undergo surgery to repair the damage, of which there had been much of. That had meant weeks of pain and odious discomfort and his arm immobilized in a sling. Then, following surgery, more pain and more odious discomfort and his arm still immobilized in a sling. But Julia saw the blessing in disguise—Dickie’s surgery brought him to and kept him in London for two weeks. Dickie frequented London quite often through the years for work, especially during his time as GCHQ Director. However, his time in the city was often brief, as was Julia’s time in general. A dinner was a special, rare treat. But for those two weeks, she wouldn’t have to make time. What time she did have was her father’s.
After long days of serving her constituency and fulfilling re-election campaign duties, Julia returned to her flat in Kensington to be welcomed by her father’s bright smile and her mother’s immense relief. It was always clear that the delight Dickie showed upon his daughter’s arrival was a break in his newly acquired crotchety demeanor. Julia would provide more respite by relieving the nurse of her duties and assuming her mother’s position as her father’s companion.
To Julia, Dickie was the epitome of the strong, silent type. A speak-when-spoken-to gentleman, Dickie had always been content to let the women in his life steer the conversation, especially his impressive orator of a daughter. Yet, as Dickie helped his daughter wind down from her hectic workday with games of whist to 12 points, as they had often done for Dickie when Julia was younger, suddenly it was Dickie who was in command of the conversation, willingly and excitedly sharing stories of his past. With his newfound openness likely a result of his recent confrontation with his own mortality, Dickie reminisced about growing up on the seaside of Somerset; regaled Julia with tales from his time in the navy; waxed poetic about his attempts in wooing his boss’s secretary, “the fetching Frances Ashley;” and hypothetically suggested anecdotes of adventures that may or may not have occurred during all his years as a supposed desk agent at GCHQ.
It was a complete revelation for Julia to, as an adult, meet the man who was her father.
Not long after their return to Gilliat, Dickie had expressed to his wife that he wished for Julia to attend the Cheltenham Festival. Naturally, Frances reached out to their daughter, and the idea struck Julia like a bolt. It was the perfect opportunity that she would be willing to leave London for. Several of her most influential constituents attended the races. Therefore, it would be both a personal holiday and work event. Frances had even brilliantly suggested they host a few of said constituents in addition to their annual guests. It would be a welcomed gathering, by Dickie most of all. And even better, after years of discussion, a fourth day had finally been added to the festival.
Julia decided she would spend a whole week home in Cheltenham, and she would do so without worry or dread that she wasn’t doing enough to outpace her Westminster peers.
While Julia had intended to arrive far earlier in the day, it took nearly the entire weekend preparing her staff for her week-long absence from the office. She barely caught the last train out of Paddington.
She stewed in her seat as she stared into the darkness that zoomed past. The point of arriving a couple of days before the festival was to have as much time with her parents before their guests arrived. By the time she arrived at Gilliat, her parents would be asleep and they would have lost a day.
Julia was well aware of the imbalance in her life. She didn’t want to be at the office on a Sunday as the day transformed into night. She certainly didn’t want her staff to be there either. Thankfully, they knew what was at stake: Julia couldn’t simply win and keep her seat—Young Julia Montague had to do it convincingly. Therefore, late hours at the office were required. A week in Cheltenham and four days of appealing to and flattering her Kensington and Chelsea friends and neighbors was required. At least the latter would allow her to indulge herself.
While most of the smattering of fellow late-night travelers hurried toward the taxi rank, Julia took her time. There was no longer any hurry to get home.
“Gilliat Park, please,” she said while she hauled her luggage into one of the black cabs.
She expected to meet the driver’s eyes in the rearview mirror but was met with a face-to-face interaction instead.
“They expecting you this late?” the man asked.
“They were expecting me at noon.”
The driver winced on her behalf and took off from the queue quite speedily.
“No rush,” Julia told him. “Do you mind driving around Imperial Square?”
“Not at all.”
Julia closed her eyes and imagined the drive that was happening around her. She knew the first couple of miles from the station were through a quiet, uninteresting neighborhood. After a few minutes, she opened her eyes to see the last of the suburban houses and the first of grand Regency-style buildings surrounding the gardens of the center of town. The street lamps lit the greens sparingly but Julia filled in what she could barely see with her memories. She smiled to herself thinking about all the times she and her mates skived off from class and tempted their fates by only going so far as the gardens when the school was just the next street over.
Julia retrieved her Blackberry from her purse.
“Gustav and I can’t wait until you’re here,” she typed.
A message from Indira Nair soon appeared on her screen. “Blow him a kiss for me,” it read.
Julia could trust that her oldest friend would respond right away. She looked out the window just as they drove by the statue of Gustav Holst in the square. She fulfilled her friend’s request and laughed to herself, imagining them blowing a kiss to old Gustav every time they walked by, without fail. They would then sit on the grass nearby and ravage through their haul of puddings and sweets.
Thinking of the treats they engorged themselves on twisted Julia’s nearly empty stomach; two packets of crisps on the train ride had been her dinner. The memories of the puddings, especially, became vivid. A slice of banoffee pie, in particular. The cafe was certainly closed, but luckily, the best banoffee pie was actually from a pub across town.
“Egdon Heath is still open, right?” Julia asked the driver.
“For another half hour.”
Julia took a moment to carefully weigh her options. Despite being quite close to Gilliat, the pub would actually be out of the way as they would drive past the road to Gilliat to reach Egdon Heath. It was also rather late; surely, they’d have sold out of the pie.
However, it was banoffee pie. The best banoffee pie.
It would absolutely be worth the detour.
“Egdon Heath, please.”
While their drive resumed through more of Cheltenham’s suburbs, Julia couldn’t resist checking her phone. She reluctantly ignored the dozens of unread emails and scrolled through the unread texts instead. Her heart began to race with anticipation as she read over the names of each sender. When she finally came to his name, she dropped back in her seat in relief—Roger’s name wasn’t bold as senders of unread texts were. His last message was a week old. “I am sorry. Can I call you?” it read. Her silence had been her answer.
Noticing that the collection of semi-detached houses was growing scarce, Julia tightened her scarf around her neck as she slid toward the left side of the car. She gazed out the window, studying the suburbs turn into woodland. She peered ahead to find a break in the woods. At the break was a dirt road with a large property gate. The coach lights on the stone pillars were just bright enough to illuminate a crest where the iron gates met in the center and the property name arched above. They drove by too fast for Julia to see it properly, but she could clearly imagine the scripted lettering spelling out “Gilliat Park.”
She followed the break in the woods through the rear windshield until the car slowly turned off the road making it disappear. They pulled into a carpark of a standalone building surrounded by a clearing and stopped.
“I’ll be ten minutes,” Julia said.
The driver nodded and retrieved his unfinished crossword puzzle from the seat beside him while Julia maneuvered around her case and climbed out of the cab. She stood for a moment to absorb the environment. The light, the darkness, the air, the silence—it all felt markedly different from their London counterparts—and their familiarity was instantly comforting.
Julia brought her focus to Egdon Heath and smiled. In contrast to all the elegant and grand Regency architecture that dominated Cheltenham, Egdon Heath was a modest, homey Tudor lodge that appropriately enough was situated in a heath. Julia looked to the road. If she walked to it, she’d be able to see the break in the woods that led to Gilliat a hundred feet away. Gilliat House was 400 yards from there. It was a walk Julia and her father used to take weekly for the banoffee pie. Julia glanced at her watch and hurried for the door just as a couple headed out.
Once inside, she collected her windswept fringe and draped it back across her forehead while she immediately reached for her scarf, loosening it. The fire in the fireplace still burned strong. There weren’t many enjoying the warmth. A regular sat huddled at the bar. A couple of men, obnoxiously and demonstrably, played darts in the far corner. The lone barback disappeared into the back with a fully stuffed rubbish bag. The large landlord sat hunched over the till, his back to the door, unaware of the new customer.
Julia continued to stand just inside the door, studying the pub, mesmerized by how much of it she still remembered. Yet, there was definitely something different. Julia couldn’t place her finger on it. As she finally started to walk further inside, she slowly spun around, trying to decipher what was off. She reached into her coat pocket and retrieved her Regals and her lighter. She plucked a cigarette from the pack and mindlessly fiddled with it while she continued to scrutinize the pub. Unable to satisfy her curiosity, she frowned to herself and blindly turned toward the bar. The barback suddenly appeared before her.
“Fuck!” she breathed aloud with all the air she had gasped.
The man remained where he firmly stood, unaffected by the near collision and the woman’s alarm. He simply dried his hands with a tea towel and allowed Julia to compose herself. As she took deep breaths to calm her heart, she stared at the man, eventually raising an eyebrow, waiting for an apology.
“I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind smoking that outside?” he said instead.
Julia smirked at the Scotsman. She was proud of herself for not immediately scoffing. The authority he tried to exude amused her. Granted, he wore the authority well, but it was moot. Julia knew it to be an act ineffective on her. She could easily go through the barback, knowing full well he didn’t possess ultimate authority. She wouldn’t, though. She wouldn’t dare interrupt Maurice as he counted the till.
And the man in front of her wasn’t someone she couldn’t handle.
“It isn’t against the law.”
“Yet,” the man swiftly replied with an arrogant tilt of his head.
This time, Julia couldn’t stop the scoff. “And what do you know about that?”
The man sneered as he lowered his head. Julia was sure she had seen the start of an eyeroll before he hid his face completely. He scratched behind his ear and then combed his hand forward over his sloppy, overgrown Caesar cut. Julia glared at him, noticing his pretension remained. She rolled her eyes, making sure he saw, and then looked around the, essentially, empty pub.
“There’s no one here.”
“I’m here,” the man quickly, but coolly, said.
Julia sighed as she flicked her finger and sent the cigarette back into the pack. The man didn’t move until the pack was returned to her pocket. Satisfied, he tossed the tea towel over his shoulder and headed for the bar.
“You’re welcome,” she said after him.
She watched and waited for him to acknowledge her. He did not. Julia pursed her lips and reluctantly followed his trail, desperately wishing she could take a deep drag from a smoke right about now. She dropped herself onto a stool at the empty end of the bar and smiled at the familiar barfly down from her. Old Mr. Clements waved—but more like swatted, as was his custom with everyone—and he emptied what remained of his glass and returned his attention to the football highlights on the television. Between them, the barback pulled a pint and replaced Clements’s empty glass with it.
“Last one for the night, Ray,” he said.
The old man agreed by offering his hand and the two of them shook on it.
Julia’s eyes widened and then narrowed. She had come into Egdon Heath at least once a week from the ages of six to 18 and she had only ever known Clements as Clements, or Clem, if he happened to smile at all that day. Yet, the barback not only knew his first name, but used it without consequence. Though her eyes were still slits of disbelief, the intrigue of the young man began to lift the corner of Julia’s mouth. Her face quickly changed upon glancing at the games’ nook. Her face dropped and her brow furrowed deeper after noticing that the two men playing darts had paused their match to study the stranger in the room. Julia quickly looked away from their leering and decided she had no other option than to finally bother Maurice.
“Pie, please,” she simply said.
Maurice lifted his head and froze. Perplexed, the barback stopped cleaning the beer taps and looked back and forth between the landlord and stranger, intrigued by the imminent exchange. Maurice slowly turned around. He glared at Julia with a hiked up brow. After a moment, he lumbered to the bar, planted his massive hands on it, and leaned toward her.
“With extra bits of Flake?” he grumbled.
“Please?” Julia smiled.
Maurice tried to fight his own smile. He succumbed and allowed his face to light up. “You’re far too late,” he said regrettably.
“Are you sure?”
He engaged in another staredown, more light-hearted this time, due in large part to his inability to extinguish his smile. He conceded the moment Julia playfully fluttered her eyes.
“David, go—Have you met David?”
The barback’s face contorted with confusion and then quiet panic as Maurice’s ham-sized hands came down on his shoulders. Maurice gruffly tugged at David, placing him in front of Julia.
“This is David,” he said. “David, this is—”
“We’ve met,” Julia insisted. Though she smiled at him, she also narrowed her eyes.
Maurice wasn’t sure what the short history of theirs was, but it amused him already. He threw some weight into a few pats directed at the younger man’s arm. “David, go see if there’s any banoffee pie in the back that we can serve.”
“There isn’t.”
“Check, please,” Maurice kindly requested.
David sighed as he darted across his boss to shove the last cap in his hand onto the last beer faucet. “I can assure you: there is no banoffee pie back there,” he said, disappearing through the swinging door.
“He’s fun,” Julia said.
“Good lad had a long day.”
“He and I both.” She propped her arms on the bar and dropped her chin into her hands.
“Dickie said you were supposed to be here around noon.”
She nodded into her palms, squishing her cheeks and exaggerating her pout. She sighed heavily but smiled on further inspection of Maurice’s gentle face. He was a youthful 60, but that had been the case for as long as Julia knew him, and even though he leaned on the bar, Julia still looked up at him. Maurice was probably the only man she knew to be taller than her father and who still felt as giant to her as Dickie did.
“How are you?” she asked with great earnesty.
“Good, but apparently, today aside, not as good as you, Mighty Montague.”
Julia physically recoiled at the moniker the rags had bestowed upon her and slid her hands forward to cover her face.
“Guess I’m constantly finding ways to disappoint you,” David said.
Julia slapped her palms onto the bar to find that he had returned. Empty-handed.
“Sorry,” he said. He sounded genuine.
Julia dropped her head, facedown, onto the bar and groaned.
“Sorry, dear,” Maurice said. He patted her shoulder and returned to the till. “Can David do anything else for you?”
She watched David grab his coat and messenger bag off the wall. “No, I’ll be fine. I knew the pie was a longshot,” she sighed.
She buried her tired face in her hands once again and vigorously rubbed. She pressed her fingers into her eyes until she saw stars. When she opened them, the stars lingered longer than usual, likely because of her overall fatigue. She didn’t see David approaching her until he stood across the bar from her. He carefully retrieved a square Styrofoam container from his bag and placed it in front of her along with a fork.
“It’s been sitting in my bag for the past half hour,” he said. “I doubt it’s in one piece.”
Julia looked at him with suspicion as she cautiously lifted the top of the box, even leaning away as she did. But leaning back also allowed her a sneak peek before the container was properly opened. She could see the familiar toffee filling smeared against the walls of the box and a cloud of whipped cream speckled with crushed Flake bars. The lid popped open on its own when Julia let go of it to snatch the container closer to her and grab the fork. It took a bit of work in what was really a pie crime scene to scoop up a satisfactory bite, but she managed quite swiftly and quickly shoved the forkful into her mouth. She threw her head back for the duration of her moan. She was unbothered by David’s wide-eyed stare when she returned to the pie.
She raised an eyebrow at him and took another bite. “You lied.”
“No, I said there was no pie ‘back there,’” he told her through a smile, gesturing toward the kitchen with a tilt of his head. The smile became a smug smirk as he shrugged and headed off to the toilet.
Julia focused on her pie. Seeing that she had already devoured two-thirds of it without even realizing it, she began to consume smaller bites to truly savor the treat. She carefully shaved off a sliver and held it in her mouth until it dissolved. Her eyes rolled to the back of her head. She collected another respectable bite but was displeased with its imbalance of proportions. She gathered a little more of the biscuit crust. Too much. There was a superfluous amount of whipped cream that remained in the container, so Julia added more of it to the fork. She examined the bite, studying it from all angles. Unfortunately, the last look was ruined as Julia caught sight of one of the leering punters who had given up playing darts and was far more interested in her instead. She turned away too late. He took their eye contact as an invitation and started toward her.
In her periphery, Julia anxiously watched the man continue his approach even as David returned behind the bar, and even though he stood right in front of her, David didn’t notice her discomfort. He was too focused on the garnish caddy and his effort to compose a pitiful fruit salad with olives in a plastic cup.
The man was nearing. He’d already walked past Clem and was now four stools away. Then three. Two…
Julia reached across the bar, grabbing the collars of David’s polo shirt and coat. She pulled him toward her as she shoved the fork with the perfect bite of banoffee pie on it into his mouth. Fortuitously, his jaw had dropped the moment she clutched his shirt. She let go to slap her hand over her own mouth.
“I am so sorry,” she laughed into her palm. “I don’t know why I chose to do that.”
David took a moment to swallow as much of the soft filling and cream as he could without the shards of crust or Flake bar going down as well. He was somewhat successful. “Why did you have to choose to do anything?!” he mumbled.
His eyes were still so wide with shock and confusion that Julia nearly laughed again at the absurdity of the exchange, but the clarity of his blue eyes captivated her. She settled herself and descended back down onto the stool.
“I’m so sorry,” she said again. “He...” She directed David’s attention to the punter who had since turned around and was returning to his friend. “I just didn’t want to deal with him, so I thought he wouldn’t bother me if I was engaged with you.” She took a deep breath and exhaled through her mouth before returning to her pie. “Thank you,” she said, unable to meet his eyes.
“I really wish I had given you a spoon.”
Her eyes shot up to David. He rolled his tongue around in his mouth, tasting and feeling for damage. She grew worried when he began focusing on his front teeth.
“Did I hurt you?”
He looked at her blankly until her inquiry registered with him. “Oh, I’m fine,” he grinned. “Just had something stuck to my teeth I think.”
Julia demonstrably relaxed in relief. “I thought I’d stabbed you.”
“Aye, that is a reasonable concern when you force a fork into someone’s mouth.”
“Again, so sorry,” Julia said, but with a smile. She found the incident amusing all over again. “You did get some pie out of it, though.”
“Aye,” he nodded. “I did.”
The smile on Julia’s face subtly widened. His brogue charmed her. The “ayes” charmed her. As well as the eyes. There was actually quite a bit about David that Julia found intriguing. Yet, there existed a barrier between them that she placed the moment she nearly crashed into him. He couldn’t be more than 25 Julia guessed. The clothes he wore, while fine—basic, at best—simply hung and draped his lean frame; the fit of them hardly a consideration to him. His mousy brown hair had a careless moppiness to it that reminded her of nearly every boy she went to uni with. His face was absent of baby fat but still had a softness to it. At the same time, the slimness of his face leaned toward awkward, unfitting of the structure of it. And the clarity and brightness Julia saw in his eyes, Julia realized was quite simply youth. She could see wisps of life experience in them, but they were certainly still full of innocence and naivety.
David was young. Not yet 25. Maybe nearer to 20.
Julia studied him in his coat, his messenger bag slung around him. “I’m keeping you.”
David glanced in the direction of the games’ nook and peeked at what remained of the banoffee pie. “Think I’ll hang around,” he said. He scrunched his face as he explained, “In case Maurice needs anything else.”
“Of course,” Julia said, playing along, mimicking the face scrunch.
Her smile eventually softened to a rest, but her appreciation of his presence caused it to linger. She forced herself to return her attention to the pie but repeatedly fought the urge to look back up at him. David chuckled and went back to topping off his fruit cup with olives. He felt her watchful eye and looked up to confirm. He held his index finger in front of his smile and silently shushed as he tilted his head toward Maurice back over his shoulder. He popped an olive into his mouth and went about putting the garnish container away in the cooler, tidying up other things along the way. Julia watched with peculiar interest. She found that he moved with a thoughtful consideration, even the tiniest movements of his actions done with intention and care. A few coins slipped from Maurice’s grasp and dropped to the floor. David hurried over without hesitation and rushed to collect them before Maurice could inconveniently crouch down on his famously bad knees. Julia didn’t know what possessed her to watch him do typically unremarkable things, let alone scrutinize and interpret them on a micro-level. But she did, and she took note of his particular mature mindfulness, adding it to the growing list of things about David that intrigued her. She took a brief inventory of the list and nervously swallowed.
“I have a Roger,” she blurted out when he returned in front of her.
“I’m...sorry?” His tone somehow simultaneously expressed a misunderstanding and sympathy.
“I have a boyfriend and he’s called Roger.”
“Oh,” David laughed. “Ok.”
“I just... I don’t want to lead you on.”
David tilted his head back, finally comprehending the plot. He calmly bobbed his head, a soft, resigned smile on his face. “That’s ok,” he shrugged. “I know exactly how this ends.”
Julia felt the dense wrinkles form on her forehead as she attempted to decipher his meaning. He appeared resigned, but said it brightly enough. He wasn’t cocky, but there was a hint of arrogance. It felt glib but not smarmy. It might have been a statement of respectful acceptance. Or an absolute throwaway of a line. So innocuous of a statement, yet it perplexed Julia to the point of annoyance. A cigarette would soothe her.
“You really won’t let me smoke in here?”
He nodded with a disapproving look.
“What do you know about a smoking ban anyway? You seem to think one is imminent.”
“Isn’t it? The writing’s on the wall. Businesses have been instituting their own bans since last year. Whole cities are coming around and are doing the same. There is a lot of support for a smoking ban in the great majority of workplaces and enclosed public places.”
His phrasing made Julia’s eyes light up with amused surprise. It was extremely similar to the language she’d seen in studies and briefings that have come across her desk. Maybe even verbatim of one.
“How do you know all that?”
David shrugged. “I follow the news.”
“That’s quite niche news to retain.”
Despite a smoking ban being an active issue in the Palace of Westminster and briefly appearing on the news occasionally, it wasn’t yet causing waves. Certainly not enough for a young Scotsman to be as confident about the issue as David was.
“And I read a lot,” he proclaimed.
“About public health?”
“Sure.”
“What, like Public Health white papers?” Julia joked.
With a straight face, David gave a single nod. “Yes.”
“You’re reading Public Health policy?”
David nodded again.
“Articles of foundational legislation? On Public Health?”
“Why is that so hard to believe?”
“You’re…” Julia lingered but ultimately shook her head. She simply restarted her approach, especially when she remembered something she noticed earlier. “You smoke!”
David’s entire face frowned; his brows, his eyes, his lips. “No, I don’t.”
“You do. You have a pack in your front pocket.”
“Looking at my ‘front pocket,’ are we?” he said with a grin.
Julia gave him a stern look and David sighed. He reached down into the front pocket of his ill-fitting, loose jeans, pulling out what Julia had assumed was a pack of cigarettes.
“Playing cards?”
Julia surrendered, calming down and relaxing back on her stool. She lowered her red face and looked back down at the remains of her banoffee pie. A lot of the filling had ended up on the walls of the Styrofoam. She tediously began scraping together a decent collection of it.
“Would you like to play?”
Though unsure if her embarrassment had disappeared from her cheeks, Julia looked up.
“Do you know how to play whist?”
Once again, Julia’s eyes subtly lit up with surprise. He took the look as her answer and started dealing out a hand of 13 cards to both of them. Julia picked each one up as they were dealt and began organizing them in ascending order, grouping them by their suits.
“Now, I’ve only just learned to play a few weeks ago,” David said. “Old man I’m staying with—Well, I’m staying on his property—”
Julia’s eyebrow rose. “Discern the difference.”
“Erm, well, I’ve been living in a camper van for the past nine or ten months now. Been traveling all over,” he modestly, almost shyly and nervously, revealed, “but almost six weeks ago now, I was hiking Cotswold Way and I’d come across a couple out on a horse ride, only the man’s had a heart attack and fallen from his horse, his wife’s in bits by his side—”
Julia slowly lowered her hand. The frenzy that began to stir inside her made her eyes water. Holding his own hand close to his chest, David was oblivious of the stunning revelation striking Julia.
“Poor man was in bad shape,” he went on. “Conscious but bad shape. His arm was out of its socket. Come loose from his body. Pinned completely underneath him.”
Julia placed her cards down on the bar and brought her fingers to her lips.
David finally looked up and was immediately upset to have affected Julia. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I know I have to be more sensitive about that kind of stuff. I’m sorry.” He disappointedly shook his head at himself.
“What happened?”
But Julia knew. Frances had recounted much of the incident to her. Not only had the serendipitous hiker come to Dickie and Frances’s aid, he had rendered it. The man produced aspirin from his pack and administered it to Dickie after first crushing it. He then made the call to 999. Frances embarrassedly admitted that she fell ill and needed attention. The man provided her with water and delicately encouraged her to compose herself. He needed her help, he’d told her—she would have to ride to the trail to meet the ambulance service and lead them back. David’s control of the situation had saved Dickie’s life, and Frances’s.
Julia’s as well.
“I called 999,” David simply shrugged. “Paramedics came. Took him to hospital.” He lifted his hand back up toward him and resumed shifting his own cards around. “I wanted to make sure he was ok, so I kind of hovered around the hospital. His missus kindly kept me in the loop. He was going to be fine.”
Caring very little about the game, Julia played her first card and immediately returned her focus to David, waiting for him to continue on with the story. He glanced over his hand at the card on the bar and furrowed his brow as he studied his cards. After a moment, he threw a card down, winning the trick as well as the face-up community card—the 10 of hearts—for his hand. Julia drew the face-down card underneath it and shoved it into her hand without looking at it.
“Anyway,” David sighed, “they invited me to dinner at theirs as a thank you. I pulled up in my camper and they insisted I stay for a while. ‘To sleep in a proper bed and have a proper shower,’ they said.” David smiled as he thought about their kindness and then chuckled. “They haven’t allowed me to leave. I guess they like my company? But I like them as well. Nice people. So, win-win, I suppose.”
“And now you live in your van on their property?”
David laughed again. “Sounds bizarre, I know, but I felt like I was overstaying, especially when they had to go to London for Dickie’s—That’s the old man’s name. Dickie Montague,” he said, looking at her and smiling. “He had to get surgery for his shoulder. But they wanted me to stay and help look after the place while they were away. So I stayed, but in my camper, and that’s where I’ve been.” He tossed down another card, winning yet another trick and the final face-up card; maybe 10 in all. “You’re not very good at this.”
“So I’ve led you to believe,” Julia smirked. The smile didn’t go away for as long as she looked at him. She shook herself back to reality and the game at hand. “Erm, so, I suppose you were saying the old man—Dickie—taught you how to play whist?”
The reminder of the catalyst of the story struck David his eyebrows jumped. “Right! Yes. My record against him is horrible. Been trying to play as much as I can. Nice to play with a partner that isn’t Clem—I think he cheats.”
“Oh, he definitely does.”
They looked down the bar and studied the harmless old man. Clem glared their way and both of them quickly diverted their stares, spitting laughter into their hands. David took a deep, composing breath, sighing with great content, before he played the first card of the next stage of the game. He playfully aimed a hard stare at Julia, putting on the pressure. Unaffected, she played a card that beat his and won the first trick for her collection. Then another three in a row.
David gulped. “I’m beginning to think I’m not very good at this.” He tossed down a card that couldn’t beat Julia’s and sighed as she seized them. “So, are you here for the Cheltenham Festival?”
She nodded and hummed through a frown as she lost a trick and then had to concede the next. Both now focused intently on their match, they traded off winning the next four tricks and ended up all square at six apiece ahead of their last cards. Winner of the final trick took the whole game.
David held onto the solid jack of clubs for last. He confidently placed it down and then physically braced himself, gripping onto the edge of the bar as he leaned on it. Julia purposefully extended his agonizing wait, simply staring at him over her hand with narrowed eyes and a tilted brow. He held onto her gaze until she firmly placed her card over his.
David shoved himself away from the bar, bellowing a hearty laugh. “Unbelievable!”
Julia trumped him with a meager two of hearts. She’d won the final trick, bringing her tally to seven, thus beating his six.
David stepped back up to the bar and collected all the cards. “One more,” he said.
“Deal.”
Maurice hovered over David, dropping a heavy hand on his shoulder once again. “You both had long days,” he said. “Go home.” He plucked a pilfered cherry from David’s fruit cup and winked down at him.
David slowly arranged and aligned the cards into a neat deck while Julia returned to the remnants of her banoffee pie, scrapping the container clean. Satisfied with her effort, she closed the lid and placed the fork on top. David cleared it from the bar while Julia tucked the deck back into its case. She meticulously tucked the lid closed and tossed the pack at David. Both of them turned to the corner of the pub, alerted to the conflict Maurice engaged in, witnessing him rip the darts from the drunken men’s hands.
“Mind walking me out?” Julia asked.
David nodded and jogged out from behind the bar. He hurried to position himself on the far side of her, putting himself between her and the games’ nook even though Maurice physically sat the two wankers down, holding them off until David and Julia safely left. He would probably keep them for a little while, until a cab he would call came to haul them away.
Just outside the door, Julia stopped to bundle herself tighter as she looked up at the cloudy sky. Maybe it was the cold air that reinvigorated her, but she was quite sure it was something else. David carefully secured the door behind them and walked straight to a mountain bike locked to the fence that enclosed the beer garden. He freed it of his chains and walked it to Julia’s side.
“I’m just over there,” he said, pointing in the direction of the break in the woods. “At Gilliat Park.”
“Really? I’m just over the hill on Gilliat,” Julia coyly smiled, possibly leading him to believe she was staying at the bed and breakfast not too far from Gilliat House on the next plot over.
David brilliantly controlled his surprise; his face only modestly lit up. “I could walk you, if you’d like.”
Julia simply pointed at the taxi sitting in the carpark and David grew crestfallen. She left him standing on the pavement like a despondent puppy and headed toward the hackney. She helped herself to the door but only stepped halfway inside and spoke to the driver. Though he started up the car, Julia backed out onto the asphalt and shut the door. He pulled away as Julia turned around to David.
“Let’s go.”