Sure enough—she flinched pre-emptively—here it came, the rousing call to battle.
‘Everybody stay together while we find a taxi.’ A gallant at-tempt by their leader to radiate calm in the face of oncoming trial. He felt about on the baggage rack for his hat.
‘Cuthbert,’ Mother worried, ‘take my hand.’
‘I don’t want to—’
‘Everybody responsible for your own piece of luggage,’ Father continued, his voice rising in a rare swell of feeling. ‘Hold tight to your sticks and rackets. And avoid getting caught behind passengers with limps or canes. We mustn’t allow ourselves to be slowed.’
A well-dressed man who’d been sharing their carriage glanced askance at her father and Dolly wondered—not for the first time—if it was possible to disappear simply by wishing it badly enough.
The Smitham family had a habit, refined and cemented over years of identical seaside holidays, of heading down to the Front straight after breakfast. Father had long ago ruled out hiring a bathing hut, declaring them unnecessary luxuries that encouraged show-offs, and early arrival was thus essential if they expected to secure a decent space before the crowds arrived. On this particular morning, Mrs Jennings had kept them in the Bellevue dining room a little later than usual, over-brewing the tea and then fussing dreadfully with the replacement pot. Father became increasingly twitchy—his white canvas shoes were calling to him, despite the sticking plasters he’d been forced to adhere to his heels after the previous day’s exertions—but interrupting their host was unthinkable, and Arthur Smitham did not do unthinkable things. In the end it was Cuthbert who saved them all. He glanced at the ship’s clock above the framed picture of the pier, swallowed a whole poached egg, and exclaimed, ‘Golly! It’s already gone half nine!’
Not even Mrs Jennings could argue with that, backing to-wards the kitchen doors, and wishing them all a lovely morning. ‘And what a day you’ve got for it, what a perfect day!’
The day was rather perfect. It was one of those heavenly summer days when the sky is clear and the breeze is light and warm, and you just know there’s something exciting waiting round the corner. A charabanc was arriving as they reached the promenade and Mr Smitham hurried his family along, anxious to beat the hordes. With the proprietorial air of those who’d booked their fortnight in February and paid in full by March, Mr and Mrs Smitham took a dim view of day-trippers. They were impostors and imposers, decamping on their beach, crowding their pier, and making them queue for their ice-creams.
Dorothy lingered a few steps behind as the rest of her family, marshalled by their fearless leader, sallied round the bandstand to cut off the invaders at the pass. They took the stairs with the majesty of victors and staked a spot right by the stone wall. Father set down the picnic basket and tucked his thumbs into the waistband of his trousers, gazing left and right before declaring the position, ‘Just right.’ He added, with a smile of self-satisfaction, ‘And not one hundred steps from our front door. Not even a hundred steps.’
‘We could wave hello to Mrs Jennings from here,’ said Mother, always glad of the chance to please her husband.
Dorothy managed a faint, wincing smile of encouragement, and then turned her attention to straightening the edges of her towel. Of course, they couldn’t actually see Bellevue from where they were sitting. Contrary to the boarding house’s name (imparted with uncharacteristic hope by the dour Mr Jennings who’d once spent a ‘fair’ month in Paris), the building itself stood in the middle of Little Collins Street, which ran dog-legged off the promenade. The ‘vue’, therefore, wasn’t particularly ‘belle’—drab slices of the town centre from rooms at the front, the drainpipes of a twin house from those at the rear—but neither was the building French, so to quibble, it seemed to Dorothy, was rather pointless. Instead she rubbed Pond’s cold cream into her sunburned shoulders and hid behind her magazine, sneaking glances over its pages at the richer, prettier better people, lounging and laughing on the balconies of the bathing huts.
There was one girl in particular. She had blonde hair, sun-kissed skin and cutie-pie dimples when she laughed, which was often. Dolly couldn’t stop watching her. The way she moved like a cat on that balcony, warm and assured, reaching to stroke the arm of first this friend, and then that one; the tilt of her chin, the bitten-lip smile reserved for the best-looking fellow; the light drift