The Bay Tree
The sound of steam hissing from the cappuccino machine roused him; he had been watching the bay tree outside in the courtyard leaning in the wind. A woman dressed in an apron of narrow pink pinstripes held an empty mug uncertainly beneath one of the steaming nozzles and waited. The coffee-maker looked new - as did the uniform which, as yet unscarred by innumerable Sunday afternoon battles to come, hung a little stiffly on its wearer.
The café was obviously doing well: it had begun a rather unpleasant Sunday morning on the cusp of Autumn and still the place was full. Indeed, he had only managed to get a table by waiting on an elderly couple as they rummaged through some coins to check their change before leaving.
Perhaps it was the location that was the attraction; after all, ‘The Bay Tree’ was only yards from the shoreline of a sedate south coast harbour popular in summer with swimmers, sailors and walkers alike. It was possible the café had gained a reputation for something. He had seldom eaten there, but it would not be unreasonable to suggest that they perhaps enjoyed a degree of recognition for the excellence of their Viennese Slice or Black Forest Gateaux.
He checked his watch. It was a little after eleven. If he finished his coffee reasonably quickly he could be halfway home by twelve o’clock providing the traffic was okay.
The far wall of the café was filled with paintings of the bay, yachts, and various views of the sea. There had probably been a similar number when he had last sat in ‘The Bay Tree’, and he wondered whether some of those he could now see might also have survived the last eleven years. There was a small white card alongside each picture, and neatly and uniformly typed was a title, the name of the artist, and a price. He scanned for little red dots stuck to the cards but found none. It was, he had always assumed, the universal symbol that a painting had been sold and its ongoing exhibition was temporary and arranged through the generosity of its new owner.
His view was momentarily blocked by a sea of pink as the waitress, walking past his table, paused before she moved on. Instinctively he looked up to locate what had obstructed her smooth passage and found himself staring at a tall man.
"Excuse me," the newcomer said, smiling, "this appears to be the only vacant seat. Would you mind?"
Chris looked quickly about the room to verify this statement. It appeared to be true.
"Please." He opened his hand towards the chair, offering the place.
"Thank you."
After a moment the waitress appeared again.
"Tea - with lemon, not milk, please."
Chris looked towards the coffee machine and wondered whether the woman would be pleased that this new order would not require her to further her acquaintance with it. As he looked back towards his own drink, the new man caught his eye.
"Unpleasant out, isn’t it?" he offered.
As a matter of policy, Chris’s normal tack at a moments such as this - trapped into conversation with a complete stranger - would be either to make it clear that he was not interested in striking up any kind of rapport (without being rude, of course!), or to keep his reply as brief as possible and make a run for it at the earliest opportunity. For some reason, neither seemed appropriate in this particular instance. He studied the face that awaited his response. The calm smile was understated and relaxed. There was something benign in the man’s eye too which seemed to suggest the absence of any ulterior motive. It was almost as if he were actually interested in the fact that it was blowing a gale outside and that his café companion might feel that way too.
"An hour ago it was much worse. Raining too."
"You haven’t been here an hour, surely!"
The notion of spending an hour drinking coffee in ‘The Bay Tree’ made Chris smile.
"No. Walking, mainly."
"Ah." The arrival of lemon tea broke the response in two. "But I think it should brighten up a little. Perhaps the wind might ease - with the tide, possibly."
It sounded credible enough; Chris hadn’t given it any thought.
"I put it down to Autumn," he suggested, somewhat blandly. "It’s what we should expect, isn’t it?"
A clean hand with well-managed fingernails was offered across the blue and white check of the plastic tablecloth. Chris looked at it, then up to the face of the man to whom it belonged.
"Angel. Matt Angel."
Matt’s features seemed to match the quality and tone of his manicure. His hair, receding slightly, was reasonably long but groomed and neat; the strands of grey that punctuated the dark brown gave the impression that they had always been there, having arrived as a result of knocks, set-backs, and the general accumulation of life. This sense of worldliness - once Chris recognised it - was there in his eyes and smile too. Perhaps Matt had managed to find a balance in his life which allowed him the freedom to actually be interested in the weather.
"Chris."
He took Matt’s hand. The shake was firm yet unthreatening. Chris noticed that Matt was not wearing a watch and found himself checking his own.
"Going somewhere?" Matt enquired.
"Oh, only home. In a while."
"You don’t look like the sort of man who’s in a particular hurry to go anywhere, to be honest," said Matt. "Almost like you belong here."
Chris laughed at the thought.
"I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be funny."
"No, no; that’s ok. I used to live around here a few years ago, that’s all."
"I see. So you know the area well then?"
"Reasonably. And you?"
"Me? No; I’m just visiting. Today only. I like the sea. Oh, and the church. I want to take a look at the church."
Chris looked out of the far right-hand window. In its top corner, just beyond the swaying trees which bordered the car park, he could make out part of the stone bell tower. It was, he knew, one of the oldest in England.
"But you’ve come back."
"I’m sorry?" Matt’s words pulled Chris back from his study.
"You’ve come back. To ‘The Bay Tree’. Doesn’t that mean that you belong here?"
"I don’t think so."
Matt lifted his tea and took a sip, his pause seemingly designed to give Chris a chance to elaborate. He did not.
"You might think it’s a little naive, or that I’m a trifle, well… But I tend to think that people generally only choose to go to places they really want to go to - and that they do so because they have a specific reason or because they belong there. Take me. Why am I here? Generally because I want to see the church, because I’m interested in…history, shall we say? Let’s be broad! And I’m in ‘The Bay Tree’ because I was thirsty and wanted a drink before I visit the Norman chapel round the corner. Simple, isn’t it? But then that fits my theory. I don’t belong, but I’m here because I have a reason and I choose to be. Does that sound fanciful?"
Chris had finished his coffee while Matt had been talking. There was an eloquence in the way Matt delivered his short monologue that seemed in keeping with the rest of him. Perhaps he was charming. Chris always had difficulty in defining an individual’s characteristics. Often someone would make an observation about a mutual acquaintance which would take him completely by surprise. Although such insights would help him ‘round’ the person in question, they often involved some kind of recalibration too. Matt seemed particularly open, however, and Chris felt vaguely reassured that if he was indeed charming, then at least he had been able to see it for himself.
The pause grew too long. He laughed nervously.
"You want to know why I’m here, is that it?"
"I’m interested. Oh, and please don’t get me wrong; I do generally find people interesting. Think about my theory; please, just for a second! And from my point of view, too. I get a certain sense that you belong here. You say that you do not - perhaps you used to, but not any more. In this case, my theory tells me that you have a reason for being here - and for at least an hour too! The walking, perhaps; but not the best of weather. And you do not live nearby; I suspect that too. So I play this little game with myself; that’s all." For a moment his smile left him and he placed both his hands on the table, leaning forwards slightly as he did so. "I do not wish to make you uncomfortable; and of course you can simply tell me to mind my own business…" And then the smile returned. "But I would appreciate it if you could satisfy the curiosity of an over-inquisitive stranger…"
Chris looked away briefly, taking in again the window, the pictures on the wall, and the small space between the last table and the counter - the space had had become sacred to him.
"Another coffee? Please; on me?"
To Matt’s side, the pink waitress stood notepad in hand, pencil poised. Chris felt momentarily outnumbered and strangely powerless.
"Thanks."
As he watched her walk away, his plans to be home by one o’clock retreated with her. Matt smiled.
"Good."
It was a simple enough word, yet at that precise moment it seemed to Chris as if it were bound up with meaning way beyond his comprehension. The sense of capitulation took him aback; after all, he had simply agreed to take a second cup of coffee with a pleasant and inoffensive stranger. For a moment he considered whether or not he might yet need to hatch an escape plan - a visit to the toilet perhaps, and then slip away through ‘Peter’s Pottery’. But then he would need to take his coat and thus give the game away.
"Where were we?"
As Matt spoke, the coffee and another lemon tea arrived. Matt handed the waitress a twenty-pound note which was sufficient to dismiss her.
"You were asking why I was here."
"Oh yes," Matt’s relaxed smile returned, "and you were trying to decide whether or not to tell me."
Chris nodded, disarmed again by his companion’s direct and perceptive affability.
"True."
"And have you? Decided, I mean. Or should I guess? I’m sorry," Matt hurried on to prevent offence, "it’s just that I like playing these little games. I mean no harm I assure you."
"No, of course. That’s ok; really." Chris paused. "It’s no big secret. I mean, there’s nothing I’m ashamed of or trying to conceal. Daft really."
"Your being here?"
"For the first time in eleven years? Yes. And chasing ghosts, too."
Matt rapped the table gently with his fingers, his smile suddenly broadening. There was a lilt of boyish excitement in his voice.
"You see! I knew you’d be interesting. Eleven years, and ghosts too!
The words worked their magic and Chris relaxed instantly.
"Eleven years. I don’t know why I waited so long. I mean, it’s crazy, isn’t it? Almost as if I was scared of the place!" He looked around again. "It’s funny; it’s almost as I remember it - except for the new espresso machine!"
"Progress," Matt suggested.
"I’m not sure the waitress would agree with you." He took a sip of his coffee.
"And your ghosts? Have they moved on - or are they still here too?"
"The ghosts?" Chris smiled at the thought of ‘The Bay Tree’ being possessed by a range of tray-carrying poltergeists. "People have undoubtedly moved on - like me, really - but the ghosts are still here." He looked again at the void by the counter. "Just over there, in fact."
Chris realised, as Matt turned in his chair to follow his gaze, that it was the first time this man had removed his attention from him since his arrival.
"By the display there," Matt suggested, "just behind where the lady in the blue jacket is sitting?"
"Just there."
Matt turned back.
"Was she pretty?"
Chris wanted to be surprised, wanted to be affronted even; he wanted to demand what right the stranger now facing him had to pry into his history, to ask questions, to demand answers. But he couldn’t. The question - speculative though it might have appeared - seemed the most logical thing in the world.
"At least pretty. I had been sitting here, like this. I’d just finished a walk and popped in for a coffee. It was a Sunday, around this time. The kind of regular thing I liked to do when ‘I belonged’!" Both men laughed gently at this. "I don’t know where she came from, but suddenly she was there. She obviously knew the people who ran the café because she was showing off a purple dress she was wearing. I got the impression that she was just trying it on - perhaps she was going to buy it and wanted a second opinion. Her hair. It was just on the blonde side of light brown. Straight, and so long. Almost to her waist. Against the purple of the dress it was marvellous. And when she laughed, her head moved in such a way as to create this kind of fantastic ripple down her back. Took my breath away."
Chris paused and allowed himself to relive that now-ghostly moment. He became conscious of the lull and was immediately embarrassed by it.
"I’m sorry."
"No need. Sounds like the most marvellous moment to have experienced. I could be quite jealous! Did she notice you?"
"Me?"
"In my experience, when someone has such a strong reaction, the other person cannot but sense it and react too."
"Another theory?"
An apologetic nod gave Chris the answer.
"She saw me, yes. That’s all I can say."
"And afterwards?"
"Afterwards?"
"There must have been more. I suspect that one incident - powerful though it was - would not be quite enough to create the kind of ghost that resides in that corner. You spoke to her?"
"Not exactly. I came back to ‘The Bay Tree’ a little more regularly after that, of course."
"Hoping to see her."
"Yes."
"And did you?"
Chris shook his head, the tone of his voice changing slightly.
"No. And it was always profoundly disappointing. I used to arrive with such nervousness, just in case she was here; in case I saw her; in case she spoke to me."
"But you did see her again."
Chris looked at Matt, surprised by the degree of certainty of his assertion.
"I did. In and around town. In places like the supermarket, or in the library. I used to always be on the look-out. I guess I became a little obsessed."
"And she?"
"Sorry; I’m not with you?" Chris picked up his coffee.
"Did she see you? Those times in the supermarket or wherever; when you saw her, did she notice you?"
Chris nodded.
"And there was never contact? Never a word exchanged?"
"Never." Chris’s voice fell. "Almost; but no."
He looked down at the table then felt Matt’s hand on his arm.
"I’m really sorry. That must have been so hard for you; wanting and wishing, feeling that if you’d just managed to break the ice, if fate had given you a chance…" Chris looked at him. Matt’s hand remained on his arm. "After all this time. Perhaps I can understand why it has taken you so long to come back - but I’m afraid I don’t possess a theory which helps people handle ‘what might have been’…"
Chris lifted his mug and downed the remaining coffee in a single gulp. He smiled as he replaced it on the table.
"And I was kind of hoping you might have had one of your theories to help me out!"
"Do you need one?!" Matt removed his hand from Chris’s arm and allowed his voice to mirror the more upbeat note Chris was trying to sound. "After all, you’ve come back here and faced your ghost. You’ve moved on. Eleven years is a long time too. Perhaps you should distil the best things and keep hold of those."
"Another theory?"
"Not yet - but it does show promise, don’t you think?"
They both laughed.
From beyond the counter, the coffee machine growled and spluttered at another cup. Outside it appeared as if the sun was beginning to win the battle against the clouds, defiantly bathing the courtyard in sunshine. Chris checked his watch then felt the back of the chair for his coat.
"Planning to get away?" Matt asked.
"I ought to, really."
"How about one more favour?"
"Another favour?" Chris feigned a puzzled look. "I wasn’t aware that I’d actually done you any favours. Probably the other way around."
"I just wondered if - as someone who ‘belongs’ here - you wouldn’t mind showing me round the old church."
"And then I’ll be free to go?" Chris quizzed playfully.
"And then you’ll be free," Matt echoed.
They rose together and pulled on their coats. Chris looked towards the counter and the waitress who appeared to be watching them closely. He realised that he had not yet paid for his first two coffees and began to dig in his pocket for some money.
"Don’t worry about that," Matt said, his hand on Chris’s arm again, "I’ve taken care of it." And then, with a slight wave, he gestured towards the waitress who smiled and waved back.
"I don’t know about me, but it seems as if you’re the one who belongs here!" Chris said, as he followed Matt towards the exit.
"I have found," Matt said, pausing to let Chris catch up with him, "that how people treat you and their attitude towards you is dependant on how you treat them. So I try and be pleasant, and I try to be generous."
"Your money! You gave the waitress twenty pounds and took no change. That must have been far too much."
Matt smiled.
"Perhaps; who is to say?"
Outside the weather had indeed moderated. There was late-summery blueness about a sky now punctuated by white clouds. Away on the horizon, the remnants of the dark grey mass that had borne the day’s earlier unpleasantness had almost retreated out of sight.
They turned to the left and walked beyond the cottage-like shop fronts to the small road boasting both cul-de-sac and car park signs. A portion of the church came into view behind a low stone wall and its accompanying trees and hedges.
"If we cross here, there’s a small path - just over there."
Matt followed Chris’s instruction and traversed the road, reaching the path first. Without speaking, he turned down the path to a gate at the far end which opened into the church grounds proper.
It was a small, squat building with a low tower adorned with a predominantly wooden conical structure at its top. A few people milled in small groups around the church, reading the parish notices or examining the names and dates on the few tombstones that seemed haphazardly scattered in the far corner of the plot.
"Isn’t that marvellous!" Matt said, enthusiastically. "I have read about this church, of course. There’s a similar one a little further along the coast, not far from Hastings - but it’s not a patch on this one."
"I’ve always found it peaceful," Chris offered defensively, immediately feeling that he was going to be out of his depth when it came to factual matters. He followed Matt to the entrance where they stopped.
"See here?" With his index finger, Matt drew a line on the wall where there seemed a change in the way the building had been constructed. "This bit - here, on the outside - is more recent. They must have added it a century or so after the original church was built. It’s still very early of course, but not as early."
He moved toward the archway over the main door then stopped again.
"And this."
Matt pointed to a rough cross which had been gouged out of the stone portal. He traced his finger across it slowly, almost reverentially.
"Do you know what this is?"
"Apart from a cross?"
"The Knights of the Crusade, when they returned home to England, would find the nearest church to their point of landing and, with their battle-scarred swords, carve crosses into the stone. It was a ritual; their way of giving thanks to being home and saved." He ran his finger over the cross again. "Imagine that, Chris. Think how long this has been here and who must have carved it; what they must have seen and been through. Their relief and gratitude."
He turned and smiled, then taking Chris by the arm, led him out into the open air again.
"Didn’t you want to go inside?" Chris asked, a little surprised at their about-turn.
Matt stopped and smiled.
"A notion - but couldn’t we say that this is your return from your own crusade?’
"I’m not with you."
"Confronting your ghosts. Slaying the past. You’ve been away for years - probably longer than most of the Crusade Knights! - and now you’re back, safe and sound."
"Where I belong?" Chris laughed gently, amused by his new friend’s flight of fancy. "Is this another theory?"
"No, not a theory."
Suddenly the smile went from Matt’s face and Chris had the sense that something as yet unseen had captured his attention, as if his concentration had been stolen by an incident elsewhere. Chris, unable to fathom the source of this diversion, glanced around but could see nothing out of the ordinary. When he turned back to his companion, the benign smile had returned.
"What did you say her name was?"
"Who?"
"Your ghost. Her name?"
"I never found out her name."
At that moment, a voice, clear and purposeful.
"Matthew?"
It was a questioning voice, and it was female.
In the split second before he moved, Chris caught something in Matt’s smile that he had not seen before. It was a smile full of theory and proofs, of knowledge and wisdom, and somehow of certainty.
Taking a step back, Matt half turned, revealing as he did so, a woman now walking towards them. She took two further paces, then stopped.
"Katherine!" Matt said, greeting her, "I’d like you to meet Chris."
That recognition was instant and mutual was evidenced by a certain blush that rose in both their cheeks. Her hair was shorter than it had been, but the years had been kind; her face displayed tell-tale traces of having lived and grown older, but there could be no doubt. As Chris faced his ghost - in the flesh this time and not ten feet distant - he faltered. After all this time, and after all those days of longing and years of regret…
"Perhaps," said Matt, "now I’ll go and take a proper look at the church."
They watched him walk away. Chris wanted to call him back, to demand an explanation - any kind of explanation - but found he could not. He turned back to Katherine who was staring hard at him.
"Is Matthew a friend of yours?" she asked.
"Matt? No. I’ve only just met him. Just now, in fact." Chris paused. "But you know him?"
Katherine turned momentarily to check Matt’s progress.
"Not really."
There was an awkward silence. Chris struggled to know what he should do. He was certain that Matt would - as he seemed to know everything - and Chris found he wanted to be told; he needed guidance. The very thing he had spent countless moments wishing for and dreaming of had now happened - but it had happened eleven years after it should have and in doing so found him with a different life.
He perhaps struggled with this for a split second before Katherine moved towards him, her hand extended.
"Hello, Chris," she said. It seemed a new beginning.
He took her hand - perhaps for a moment too long, he could not be sure - then allowed it to fall.
"You’ve cut your hair."
As soon as he said it, he knew it had been a ridiculous statement to make; but under the pressure of needing to move on, to move forward and somehow progress, it was all he could think of. And he wasn’t even certain where he wanted to move on to, or where his notion of progress should have been taking him. It was as if his life had come to a complete halt and he desperately needed something to re-start it. In this context, ‘you’ve cut your hair’ (as he instantly replayed it) seemed pathetic.
But she laughed - and Chris realised with a shiver an echo of that very first laugh.
"Once or twice!" Katherine confirmed, smiling.
"The first time I saw you it was almost to your waist."
"In ‘The Bay Tree’."
"In ‘The Bay Tree’, yes."
There was a slight pause.
"I was much younger then," she said, "I don’t think I really thought about it. Girls don’t at that age."
Chris looked at the woman before him and wondered about her use of ‘girl’. How much history did she have?
"Would you perhaps like a coffee?" he suggested.
"In ‘The Bay Tree’ - for old times’ sake?"
She appeared relaxed at their sudden encounter - an image he was absolutely certain he did not convey himself.
As he followed her back along the path towards the road, he tried to make sense of where he was and what he was doing. He tried to break the situation down into neat little blocks of fact: he was walking towards a café to have a drink with a woman he had just met; a woman he had - in some oblique sense - ‘known’ for at least eleven years; a woman who (once upon a time) had filled his dreams and occupied his waking moments. There had been days, he was sure, when simply to have known her name would have been satisfying enough; but now there she was, just ahead of him. He could have reached out and placed his hand on her arm, or rested it against her back. He could have taken her marvellous hair - now a few inches below shoulder length but still wonderfully straight - and run his fingers through it.
He stopped. Katherine took two additional paces then stopped too.
"Is there something wrong?" she asked, turning to face him. They had reached the gate and her left hand now rested on it.
"Wrong?" He tried to smile. "No, there’s nothing wrong. It’s just…" It was impossible to elaborate.
She coloured slightly.
"Coffee; white without sugar. And possibly a warm scone?" It was his order from the time he had first set eyes on her. She tilted her head slightly to acknowledge how he must have been feeling. "I know."
The café was less than half full when they arrived, the distance between the gate and ‘The Bay Tree’ having been occupied by weather trivia.
"Shall we sit here?" Chris suggested the table he had recently vacated, but Katherine headed for the one nearest the counter.
"I used to know the people who ran ‘The Bay Tree’," she said as she slipped off her coat and sat down. "I was at college with Sam, their daughter. We used to sit here sometimes in the evening just after the café closed, drinking hot chocolate and talking."
"That would have been a while ago," Chris suggested, trying to gain some temporal bearing.
"Yes. Sam lives in Cleveland, in the States; she moved away - oh, let me see - at least nine years ago it must be now."
"And you?"
"Me?"
The waitress arrived as Katherine spoke.
"Hello again," she said cheerfully, looking at Chris, "you must really like it in here!"
Katherine smiled.
"We’re old hands," she said, offering a meaningless - and simultaneously meaningful - banality. "Two coffees, milk no sugar; one scone - warm; and an almond slice, if you have any left, please."
"I think we do." The waitress scribbled on her pad then walked the short distance across Chris’s sacred ground to the counter.
"You were saying?" he prompted.
"Yes?"
"That Sam went away. And I asked about you. Did you move away?"
"Not really. I spent a few years in Portsmouth; and then some time in Winchester, Petersfield - places like that. I never went far. My parents still live in Chichester."
Her words reached him laden with uncommunicated history. The supermarket, the library, all those shared places; Chris sensed that they might have been relevant for her too.
"But you did, didn’t you? Move away I mean. One minute I noticed you about the place, the next…" She tried to lighten the observation and make it seem less than it was. "Where did you go?"
"Birmingham first. I got a job working for Rover."
"Making cars?!" She feigned shock.
"Not really. ‘Administration’ is probably a safer description. After that I move to Manchester."
"Why Manchester?"
"I met someone. It was where they lived."
The clattering of mugs, plates and cutlery interrupted him. He was glad. Something inside him wanted to erase the last eleven years as if they had never happened; he wanted to close that book and throw it away - into the nearby sea would do! - and then reopen the volume that, all those years ago, he had never even had the courage to pull off the shelf.
"Are you still there - in Manchester?"
There were questions that he wanted to ask too, but which politeness, decorum, or a misplaced sense of reserve simply prevented him from uttering. Something in her manner - perhaps the way she now played with her spoon, or the way she was resting her hand on the table - suggested to him that Katherine was facing the same struggle. Or was he just fantasising again?
"No. We separated a couple of years ago." he paused; she chose not to fill the gap. "I mainly work in London now, but I live in Horsham. Well, between Horsham and Crawley."
"Under the aeroplanes?"
He smiled.
"Of course!"
She cut her almond slice into four pieces then picked up the first of these and bit it in two.
"Good?" He asked.
"Mmm." She replied, as she finished that morsel. "But then they always were."
"I’ve never been to Portsmouth." It was the only gambit he could think of to try and begin to fill in Katherine’s history. After all, he knew nothing about her: the three places she had lived, and the name of an old college friend was very little to go on.
"It’s ok, I guess. I grew to dislike it after a while. Especially the summers and the tourists. And the places the tourists weren’t you didn’t want to be! We moved back to the country when Peter became ill. The city wasn’t very good for him as it turned out. So we tried smaller towns. We had to be relatively close to hospitals, you see. I liked Winchester at first too; but then I realised it suffered from the same problems as Portsmouth. Have you been there?"
"Winchester? Yes - but only as a tourist, I’m afraid!"
It was a joke and she laughed.
"See what I mean!"
"So you’re in Petersfield now?"
"No. Actually I’m just in the process of moving back here. I’m staying with my parents while I look for somewhere of my own - now that Peter’s confined to the hospice."
"I’m sorry."
"About Peter?"
Chris nodded.
"He’s been very ill for a long time. Actually, I think he’ll be glad when it’s all over."
She paused. Chris wanted to sympathise, to ask about Peter, whether or not anything could be done for him. Yet he also wanted to know other things, things he could not possibly ask. At that precise moment, as she raised the mug of coffee to her lips, he noticed her wedding ring for the first time.
"I guess that’s why I came here today," she continued, oblivious to his sudden discovery, "to remind myself of the place; to see if it is somewhere I could come back to; somewhere I belong."
Her last words shook him.
"Matt!" The name slipped involuntarily and a little too loudly from him. On an adjacent table, a conversation paused. Katherine put her free hand to her lips.
"Whoops!" she said, with a smile.
"What’s funny?" Chris asked, a little confused by her apparent lack of concern. "We abandoned him in the churchyard. He could be looking for us?"
"I don’t think so."
"Are you sure?"
"Of course. He’ll just go home. And anyway, no-one is supposed to care about Estate Agents, are they?"
"About who?"
"Estate Agents. Matthew." She paused, expecting to see some kind of acknowledgement from Chris. "I’d come out here with him to see a couple of houses. He said he needed to go and make a quick phone call to check something about our first viewing. Asked me to wait by the church for him. He was gone ages! I nearly went home myself."
"He was in here - talking to me. He didn’t say anything about being an Estate Agent. Said he’d come here to see the church. We talked about…"
The smile left Katherine’s face.
"About what?"
"The past. He seemed interested. Genuine. Helpful."
Chris could tell that Katherine was replaying her own encounter with Matt; deciphering their conversations, his manner, his uniqueness.
"Not like an Estate Agent at all?" she suggested, her voice indicating that somewhere either a fog was clearing or a mist was descending.
"Absolutely not."
For the next couple of minutes they sat making small talk, finishing their pastries and coffee. Chris looked around the café again, trying to fit this latest encounter into the tapestry of his other ‘Bay Tree’ experiences. It was a small but seemingly intricately woven pattern.
"Do you?" They were walking towards the car park and Katherine’s car. She had apologised but said she needed to make her afternoon visit to Peter in his Brighton home. Chris suddenly wanted to drag her back to their unfinished conversation, feeling a need to complete their encounter properly - and a need to understand what it really meant.
"Do I what?"
"Belong here?"
She looked around in a broad sweep, absorbing the scene as she did so.
"Possibly more here than anywhere else." Her tone lightened. "And you? Or is your heart in Birmingham or London or some other great metropolis?"
Chris smiled.
"Certainly not in any metropolis! And here? Matt seemed to think so - he had a theory about these things."
They had reached her car. She pulled the keys from her bag and allowed her fingers to play with them.
"I must go. Sorry." She paused. "Do you have a card or something? Most professional people seem to these days."
He laughed.
"I do - but I tend not to carry them around to hand out on Sundays!"
"It would be good to meet again," she suggested, a little hesitantly.
"For old times’ sake?"
"Something like that."
"Perhaps soon - if you can find space in your schedule when you’re not being stood up by somewhat dubious Estate Agents!"
"I think I can manage that," she smiled, then leant forward and brushed her cheek against his. "Eleven o’clock, on a Sunday?"
Chris nodded.
"Shall we make it next week? I don’t think I have the stamina to wait another eleven years!"
She reddened slightly as she laughed, then opened her car door and got in. As Chris walked towards his own car he heard her engine start and then the tyres on the loose gravel. He stopped and waved, then she was gone.
By the distant church - under one of the trees near the path - he thought he caught a glimpse of a tall, elegant man looking his way. But it was probably a mirage of sorts - no doubt Matt would have a theory about that sort of thing too.