‘But?’
‘But I reckoned without Henry’s scarring,’ she whispered. ‘Those kids…They arrived about fifteen minutes after we did. They were dreadful-weren’t they, Henry?’
‘What happened?’
Jenny shook her head, but Henry, surprisingly, took over. ‘We had a ball,’ he said. ‘Mummy threw it to me and I missed it, and it rolled along the beach and ended up near one of the men’s beer cans. When I went to get it he said I was deformed. He said, “Get lost, you ugly, deformed little s…”’
Henry’s words were spoken almost exactly as he’d heard them. Guy heard the vindictiveness in the child’s bleak recital, and he flinched. He tried to find his voice but it wasn’t there. There weren’t words.
He wanted to-
‘Don’t,’ Jenny whispered, and he knew she was reading the primitive desire that was starting to build-to launch himself back down the beach and punch Jake and his mates until they bled.
It would achieve…nothing. And the police were there. They’d be taken care of.
‘Why do you think they said that?’ he said at last. He didn’t recognise his voice. He didn’t recognise his feelings. Dumb fury and more…
‘I don’t know,’ Henry whispered.
‘I don’t know, either.’ He was fighting desperately for the right words here. For any words at all. ‘It surely isn’t because you’re deformed, Henry. You’re wearing an elastic bandage and you have a couple of manly scars. That doesn’t make you deformed.’
‘The boy kicked me.’
‘He was probably jealous,’ Guy said, swallowing his anger with a huge effort.
He set Jenny’s picnic basket on the ground and hauled it open, inspecting its contents with a critical eye. It gave him something to do. Independent or not, afraid of relationships or not, he wanted to hug them and hold them close, but he knew they’d accept no such gesture. And such a gesture wouldn’t help. Nor would violence. He had to come up with something better.
‘I thought so,’ he said, feeling his way. ‘There’s pink lemonade in here. And great food. They only had beer. Jealousy makes people say funny things. Do you think that’s it?’
‘I don’t know,’ Henry said, staring down at the pink lemonade. ‘That’s silly.’
‘Not as silly as calling you names.’ Guy took a deep breath and turned his back to them both. ‘When people have been angry about things they’ve called me names, too. A lady burst into tears at a swimming pool once. She called me a poor thing. She was stupid. I’m not a poor thing at all. Take a look at this.’
He tugged his shirt over his head, baring his back. They’d be seeing the myriad of scars running down the left side of his body. He heard Jenny’s intake of breath and he winced. The last thing he wanted was sympathy, but this was the only thing he could think of to do.
His scars were a bleak reminder of the night Christa had been killed. She’d been speeding in her father’s Maserati and she had been furious. ‘Why can’t you be a lawyer?’ she’d screamed. ‘I refuse to be married to some dope who organises tinpot weddings and doesn’t have any money to even pay for a decent car. You drive a van with a wedding logo on it. I’ll be damned if I’m ever seen in it.’
She’d slammed her foot on the accelerator, making the point that the van he drove could never be as fast as this. Guy could still see the truck in front of them, the driver’s face frozen in horror as their car slid on black ice, over to the wrong side of the road, straight into him. They’d hit almost broadside, killing Christa instantly and throwing shards of splintering metal into his side.
He’d learned not to hate his scars, but until now he’d never been grateful.
‘Would you call me deformed?’ he asked Henry, his tone carefully neutral.
‘You’ve been cut,’ Henry whispered.
‘And you’ve been burned. Most people start out as babies with no marks on them, but as interesting things happen they get marked. We all get marked from life. Somewhere I read that the native people in Australia deliberately make scars on their chests to show they’re grown up. I think the more marks you have on you, the more interesting you become.’ He smiled at the little boy, searching for a response. ‘So you and me, Henry…we’re really interesting. And drunk people, stupid people, get jealous. Or sad that they’re not mature. Those guys on the beach were stupid kids who’d drunk too much. They’ll be sick soon, and they’ll go to sleep and wake up with a headache, and then they’ll know they’ve been dumb and they’ve been wrong. But meanwhile we should enjoy our day.’
Enough. He’d made his point. Now he needed to lighten up. ‘Hey, there’s more here than pink lemonade,’ he said, turning back to the basket. ‘Do you have enough picnic for me, too?’
‘Yes,’ said Henry.
Jenny was doing a lot of silent blinking.
He glanced back to the beach, where a couple of the youths had been caught before they’d disappeared round the headland. He could see glimpses of them though the trees-police and kids. The kids were gesticulating wildly after their mates.
They needed to leave here, he thought. He didn’t want any more invective as the police brought the kids up to the cars. ‘Are there any more beaches around here, Jenny?’ he asked.
‘There’s another cove about a mile south,’ she managed, in a voice that was none too steady. ‘But…we haven’t got a car.’
‘So it’s the Ferrari,’ Guy said, and grinned. ‘Three people and a picnic basket in a Ferrari? We need to squash. And we need to leave now, before we have police watching. I think what I intend to do might be just a little illegal. But desperate times call for desperate measures.’
‘Everyone in your car?’ Henry said, brightening immediately. ‘Now?’
‘Absolutely now,’ Guy said, with a lot more certainty than he was feeling. ‘Let’s go.’
So independent, aloof Guy Carver had a family picnic. Jenny couldn’t believe it. She’d seen this man in celebrity magazines. She’d never dreamed he could be…human.
But human he was. From squashing them all into his Ferrari, from helping her to put on suncream, from making sand bombs…
He was more than human. She thought of the gift he’d given Henry by showing him his scarred back and the tears kept welling. Such a gift was beyond value. Henry had been given back his pride.
But she couldn’t say anything. Guy was acting as if the whole ugly incident hadn’t happened, and so must she.
They ate lunch, and Henry chattered about anything and everything, a contented six-year-old having a blissful day out with a man who drove a Ferrari and had life scars. What a hero. She watched as Guy spoke to him man to man, and her son’s dreadful day disappeared to nothing and hero-worship took its place.
She didn’t blame Henry. She was getting pretty close to hero-worship herself.
Guy lent her his cellphone. She contacted Jack to tell him Guy would be bringing them home, so not to worry about collecting them. Then they spent a couple of hours in the shallows, teaching Henry to float. The little boy hadn’t spent much time in the water since his accident and he was nervous. Up until now Jenny hadn’t persuaded him to put his face under water, but he’d do anything Guy asked. By mid-afternoon he was floating, kicking his scarred little legs, taking a brief gasp of air and floating again.
‘I’m swimming,’ he gasped, exultant, lit with happiness, and Jenny had to do a whole heap of blinking all over again.
Finally he was exhausted. Guy carried him up the beach and towelled him dry while Jenny packed the picnic gear. They loaded everything once more into the Ferrari, and Guy drove home with Henry’s legs on his knee, picnic gear covering Jenny and a liberal supply of sand coating everything.
‘Every Ferrari should look like this,’ Jenny said, squashed and happy. ‘It’s perfect.’