When Wolds Collide, Chapter One

Perhaps this was the essence of a childhood summer, thought Joe, not that it felt as long ago as that since he was last here.

Beneath a white sky which all but touched the land, acres of oil-seed rolled brilliant yellow through realms of swamping heat. Slowly the seaside coach rumbled, sometimes dipping that the gaudy yield towered above the passengers’ heads, and sometimes topping a crest whence buttercup hue became a pastoral patchwork undulating to the boundaries of the mist. Joe had forgotten the stillness of such days, here in the hilly country which lay between Boston’s flat fen and the coast. Not that there’d be any glimpsing the distant sea today, even from the highest rises, when it was as overcast as this.

Everywhere was the oil-seed’s sweet waxy aroma. It wasn’t unpleasant by any means, but that was no bad thing, because out here mid-season there was no getting away from it.

Joe knew Mini-Flash Robin beside him was breathing deeply.

As our hero predicted, they didn’t see the sea until the coach pulled up and it was directly before them. The last vacant double-seat had been towards the front, which meant he and Robin were among the first off. Together they waited on slightly sandy pavement as crowds spilled from the narrow door, and overhead the colourless sky pressed relentlessly down.

Mini-Flash Juniper, tall and fair, at last skipped the bus steps on light booted toes. She was one of those girls who seemed to breeze through hot days as if they didn’t touch her. Robin watched wide-mouthed and flushed as she completed her dainty descent and landed, beige skirts belling in the motionless air.

“Not far now,” Juniper announced. “Just a walk up the seashore. I know there’s an old pier we need to pass underneath, then keep on going a little longer.”

So saying she struck off, slipping out of her knee-length boots while she walked. These she left lying on the ground behind her. Then, as Joe stared and Robin somewhat more so, Mini-Flash Juniper skimmed her tunic over her head and shook the garment free from her shiny straight tresses. She was wearing a tiny T-shirt underneath, and in nothing more than this and her knickers did Juniper commence the journey.

Robin stumbled, still-shod, kicking up beach behind him as he struggled to catch up with the pale strolling figure.

“Hi!” he panted aloud, flapping a sealed and stamped envelope.

Mini-Flash Juniper turned thoughtfully, stopped, and allowed Robin to complete his bumbling advance. When she saw the letter she suddenly smiled, and began to blush.

“Would have had a job delivering this!” he beamed back, breathless.

“Where’s Joe?” asked Juniper, glancing around.

“Gone for a walk I think,” replied Robin happily. “Just handed it to me and said it wouldn’t take three of us.”

He didn’t add that Joe just now was officially the best friend he’d ever had.

“Would have been funny if I’d arrived at Mini-Flash Pseudangelos’s house without it,” said Juniper, and Robin all but drowned in the bliss of her cheesy grin.

They set off again. “So is it a nice house?” asked Mini-Flash Robin.

“I’ve never actually been,” Juniper confessed. Absent-mindedly she slid a hand to the back of her underwear and left it there. Robin took care not to trip over his own feet.

“For all you know then, she might live at an arcade!” he blurted with a laugh.

“Hope not,” was Juniper’s prim reply. “Those love-tester machines say inappropriate things about me every time I put my hand in one.”

Robin hastened to assure her he was only joking.

“Bet you’re good at shooting hoops though,” he went on. “You’d totes win if we had a two-player go!”

There was the pier, its corroded ironwork black against the mist, its sad truncated span ending pitifully short of the surf. Still, it was shadowy beneath on such a heavy day. Boy and girl gaped up at the black boardwalk and even formidable Juniper looked awed, though Robin guessed her barefoot skimpiness may have had something to do with that. Then their eyes found each other and both were suddenly shy, as if struck all at once by the potential for intimacy such secluded surroundings afforded.

They wandered out again into comparative light. Robin hadn’t noticed whether anyone had been on the beach the near side of the pier, but what lay ahead was well and truly deserted.

“That oil-seed was a nice smell,” said Juniper with a sigh. “I’d like a little bit of it to keep in my panties.”

Robin just about managed to express his support for this notion.

The truth was, he’d never so much as dreamed talking about nothing could bring such joy. Every second of pink cheeks and marble thighs was rapture.

“You could likely get strawberries in a seaside town like this,” Juniper went on, looking like one herself.

“They’d totes be good ones,” Robin agreed.

“We could get some thick cream,” Mini-Flash Juniper said to him meaningfully.

By now both her palms were resting behind her. Robin knew he mustn’t lose himself. Not when they had a possibly important letter to hand-deliver.

“How’s the sketching coming along?” he therefore asked her, bracingly, but so she might know he apprehended the significance of all that had gone before and was sweeping up the basketball machines and oil-seed sprig and strawberries within one short interrogative.

Juniper’s T-shirt heaved. She was far fuller about the hips than the torso, but even still, such an exhalation made Robin fidget.

“He’s a real to me as you are,” she insisted. “I can’t help it that he’s got wings.”

Robin hadn’t wanted it to come out sounding like he thought she was silly. He was scarcely in a position to claim he didn’t have hormones of his own, especially right now. True, chap couldn’t quite make out Juniper’s devotion to somebody who didn't exist, but weren’t people always telling you this was a funny time of anyone’s life? Robin suspected they might be onto something at that. It was the funniest time he could remember ever having lived through.

“Oh,” exclaimed Mini-Flash Juniper, “that must be it!”

Ahead rose a concrete seawall, and beyond that a chainlink fence, in which a gate stood open beside an empty checkpoint booth. Afterwards the land seemed to drop down in a ramp, so that from where Robin and Juniper were it was impossible to determine what sort of place Mini-Flash Pseudangelos now called home.

Carefully Robin slipped the letter down his tunic and tucked it into the waistband of his pants for safekeeping. Then he and Juniper, sharing a smile, made their way over to the entrance.

END OF CHAPTER ONE