Something Nice

("The very clever text and unraveling story based on the famous 'Lewis Chessmen' kept me gripped and unable to put this book down."

This was a review of my children's book, 'The Chess Piece Magician'. It was something I missed and have only just had it pointed out to me on a site called Armadillo. A sound endorsement, I think. Below, another something from PB.)

PAMELA RUNS THE LENGTH OF THE BEACH

He doesn’t know her name is Pamela or that she is an artist with a studio converted out of the roof space of her cottage. She does not sell pictures through Mhairi’s Port Brokeferry Giftshop or show her work in the town. Instead she sends her work down south to a gallery there that handles all her paintings. She is a big name in some art circles, but Guthrie doesn’t know that. All he knows is that three times a week, most weeks, she can be seen out running the length of the beach in Port Brokeferry, a bottle of water in one hand and a voice recording machine in the other. She stops at the turn, speaks into her machine and drinks from her bottle. Then she removes her t-shirt and runs back the way she had come in a vest.

Guthrie isn’t the only one who notices her. Some of the men think she might be a model. She has long blond hair and is tall and thin. Like she takes care of what she eats. She dresses in expensive clothes and keeps herself to herself.

She drives a small yellow van with rust on the back door. She uses it to transport her works to the station for sending away. Not the car of a girl who might be a model, but then they say that is just the kind of quirk a model would have. Then they add that if she isn’t a model, she should be. There’s no disagreement there.

She also does most of her shopping outside of Port Brokeferry and so has little reason to talk to anyone in the town. Blair knows her name and what she does, but he tells no one what he knows.

She has taken the cottage just outside Port Brokeferry on a three year lease. The cottage is called Jess’ Ship. There’s a chair inside made out of driftwood and held together with old rope. Pamela likes to sit in that chair, drinking iced lemon tea and looking out at the sea and the gulls hanging in the sky. She reads a lot and books arrive regularly through the post. She plays music very loud, rock music with thumping drums and screaming guitars. Blair has to knock several times to be heard. She always apologises for the noise. ‘It’s to quieten the voices in my head,’ she tells him.

Some weeks she is nowhere to be seen. She lets Blair know that she will be gone so that he does not make the trip out to her cottage with any mail. It is an extra fifteen minutes on his round when he has mail to deliver at Jess’ Ship. Then, on the precise day she has said to Blair, she is back again and running the beach and taking off her t-shirt at the turn and Guthrie watching her. And others in the town noticing what she does.

She brings small presents back with her, for Blair. Small things to thank him for bringing her mail. She takes the time to talk to him some days, at the door. She asks him about the history of the village and why the cottage is called Jess’ Ship and she wants to know what music he likes and what books. Then she gives him a pot of french confiture, or chocolates from Belgium, or a ring of Italian sausage. And sometimes she passes her books on to him. He doesn’t like to tell her that they are not his sort of books. Instead he tries reading some of them so that he can talk to her about them.