Page 9 of Second Act
He turned the TV on for a few minutes before he went to sleep,and there was nothing interesting on. It was late, even if early for him on LA time, but it had been a long flight, and he turned off the TV and the lights and drifted off to sleep in his cozy new hideaway. He was going to discover the beach and the town in the morning.
—
When Andy woke up, he had slept for eight hours. It was a beautiful spring day outside. He put on jeans and a black sweater and boots and went downstairs to the kitchen to make breakfast. He was starving, and was startled to see a serious-looking, austere woman standing in the kitchen in an apron. She had gray hair and didn’t smile when she saw him.
“Good morning, sir,” she said formally. “I’m Mrs. MacInnes, the housekeeper. May I make you breakfast?”
“Thank you very much,” Andy said with a warm smile.
“Would you like tea, sir, or coffee?”
“Coffee would be great, black, no sugar.” There was a fancy coffeemaker that looked as though it could make espresso and cappuccino too, but he preferred black coffee in the morning.
“Did you sleep well?” she asked, as she made toast for him, and fried eggs after he asked for them.
“Like a baby. It’s an incredibly comfortable house. I’m surprised it hasn’t sold for three years. It has every high-tech feature. The owners must have spent a fortune on it.”
“They did,” she confirmed, with a disapproving look.
“Is the bank asking too much for it?”
“No.” She hesitated and then added, “The house has a reputation that doesn’t appeal to some people. And it’s too fancy for peoplearound here. They want simple beach cottages, not a house like this.” He was curious about her comment that the house had a reputation. He wondered if the owners were drug dealers. They certainly had had money at their disposal, for a while anyway. He couldn’t conceive of the house as a brothel. It was much too elegantly done. It looked like a very stylish house in London or LA. “It’s going to be auctioned off in six months, if it doesn’t sell before then,” she informed him. “It’ll probably go for next to nothing. Are you interested in buying it?” she asked, curious about him too. She knew he was from LA, but nothing more than that. He looked like a decent sort to her. She wondered if he was married, but he had come alone. Maybe he was getting divorced.
“I don’t think so,” Andy said about buying the house. “I have a house in LA.”
“Are you in the movie business, sir?” she asked, as she poured him another cup of coffee. The eggs had been delicious. He hesitated before he answered. He wasn’t in any business right now. He hadn’t figured out yet how he was going to answer that question in future, to people who didn’t know the story. It was a relief to be in a place where they didn’t.
“I was” seemed the simplest answer, and she nodded. She wasn’t sour, but she was serious, as though she hadn’t had an easy life. And with that, a young woman with blond hair in pigtails hurried into the kitchen and gave a start when she saw Andy. She blushed bright red.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were here. I thought you were still sleeping.”
“This is Brigid,” Mrs. MacInnes introduced her.
“Hello,” Andy said with a smile, and the girl smiled back.
“I’ll go up to do your room now,” she said, and left as quickly as she’d arrived.
“Did you work for the previous owners?” Andy asked Mrs. MacInnes, and she nodded.
“I did.” She offered no further information, and seemed closed tight, like an oyster.
“What happened?”
She took a long time to answer the question. “They were a family. They’re not anymore.”
“Divorce?” She nodded and took his dishes to the sink to rinse them, turned her back and turned on the water. It was obvious she didn’t wish to say more, out of loyalty, or British restraint. Whatever the reason, she made it clear that she had nothing more to say about them, and he went back to wondering if they were high-end drug dealers of some kind. There was a story there, he could tell, but she wasn’t going to share it.
After breakfast, he asked Mrs. MacInnes the way to the beach, and which way the village was, and she told him. There was a path at the end of the garden which eventually led to the beach. And the village was just a few miles down the road. He asked if she had the car keys, and she took them out of a drawer.
“Bertie, the groundskeeper, started them both yesterday, and put petrol in them. No one’s driven them in three years, but he drives them occasionally to keep them going.” Andy took the keys to the Land Rover and put the ones to the station wagon back in the drawer.
He went out to look for the garage. It was behind the house. Bothcars were clean and seemed in good order. He decided to visit the village first and have a look around. He had to remind himself to drive on the other side of the road from what he was used to. It was a three-mile drive to the village and he was there in minutes. It was a quaint, funny old town with a high street of a few shops, a bookstore, two banks, a post office, two pubs that weren’t open so early, and an antique shop. He walked past them and peered into them. He liked the old-fashioned look of the town. There were people buying groceries at the grocery stores and going into the post office. There was a year-round population, and a summer community. He was neither, or both, a visiting observer, and he liked what he saw. He thought he might try eating at the pubs, since he didn’t like cooking for himself.
He wandered around town for half an hour and drove back to the house. And then he went back out on foot and looked for the beach. The path was discreetly hidden by hedges and bushes, but he found it according to Mrs. MacInnes’s instructions, and it was beautiful and rugged. There were low cliffs further down the beach and jagged rocks bordering a long beach of coarse sand and small weathered pebbles. It didn’t look like the sandy California beaches he was used to, but it was nice to walk along and see the channel, which led to the ocean. There was a breeze and short whitecaps, some sailboats farther out moving at a good speed, and fishing boats in the distance. He walked until he came to the small port. There was a dock, and some sailboats covered and tied up, and the berth where the fishing boats came in at night. It all had a rugged feeling to it. He sat down on the beach for a while, enjoying the scene and feeling his soul come to life again. It felt good just being here andsmelling the ocean and salt air. There were two children playing on the little pebbles with their mother. They were collecting rocks and putting them in a bucket. He smiled watching them. There was something healthy and peaceful about the place. He’d been lucky, blind luck. Frances had picked a good place, with a supremely comfortable house. He could see himself there for several months easily and maybe even into the summer.
He sat on the beach for a while and then he walked back in the direction he had come from, and halfway back he saw a woman with her long dark hair flying in the breeze. She had her head down and was walking toward him. She seemed small and very slight, and at first he wasn’t sure if she was a young girl or a woman, but she had the determined walk of an adult. She stopped several times and looked out to sea as he approached, until finally he was only a few feet away from her as she turned and looked straight at him. He could see tears glistening on her face in the sunlight. She didn’t try to hide them, and she looked right through him. She looked ravaged and he almost wanted to go to her and ask her if she was all right, but it seemed like it would have been an intrusion. She walked past him then. She looked young, with her long hair flying around her, and what had struck him was that she looked heartbroken. The vision of her troubled him all the way back to the house, and he wondered if he should have said something to her after all, but the moment had passed and she’d walked on. She’d been wearing a blue denim skirt and a purple sweater. She looked like a local.
Andy went to his study when he got back, and answered a slew of emails from his lawyer, his accounting firm, and his investment advisor. The business of life and responsibility went on with or withouta job. There were invitations that should be answered, all to be declined, and pages his attorney needed him to sign for the severance package. He realized he would have to print them, sign them, and scan and email them back. He missed Frances more than ever and wondered how he was going to manage with no office help at all for the next six months, if he stayed that long. Even if he didn’t, he was going to be working as his own assistant, and the idea didn’t appeal to him much. He went to talk to Mrs. MacInnes, but she had left for the day by then, and when he called the local bank that managed the house, they were closed. He decided to call them in the morning. Maybe they could suggest someone to help him for a few hours a day with office work. Some local girl who didn’t need a full-time job.
