Chapter 2

Movement in the van woke me. Dora, in thermal pyjamas, was carrying a bowl of cereal to the table, which she must have replaced after getting out of bed and rolling up the sleeping bag.

“Morning,” I croaked.

“Morning,” she replied, glancing up at me as I peered down from my eyrie.

“Coffee.” I muttered, barely comprehensibly.

She obviously worked out the communication, though. “I didn’t want to boil the kettle and wake you. And I don’t know how you like your coffee. Not to mention, I don’t know how to work the various devices I can see.”

In my t-shirt and shorts, barefoot, I climbed down and picked up my jeans.

“I could have gone through your pockets,” she informed me, neutrally.

“You could,” I agreed. “But you didn’t.” I didn’t tell her that I’d removed several critical items from my wallet and stowed them, with my mobile phone, under my pillow. She could have got a few pounds and some loyalty cards, but not much else. Still barefoot, I padded over to the ‘kitchen’. “Do you drink coffee?”

“Yes, I do. I drank coffee yesterday, if you remember.”

“Of course. Sorry. I’m still half asleep.”

“From what I’ve seen, I don’t take coffee as seriously as you. I’d normally dump a teaspoonful of instant in a mug and pour on boiling water. I’m pretty sure that won’t work for you.”

“No, it won’t. For one thing there’s no instant in the place. Normally I’d just make one mug with a filter, or a cafetière. But this machine is actually simple.” I spooned coffee into the filter and poured a couple of mugs into the heater. “It just needs a clean filter paper each time and ground coffee to match how much water you put in. It only makes four cups, which is really two mugs.” I switched on, and took out a bowl for some muesli. The coffee maker burbled to itself gently. “I thought I’d take a ride round to the other side of the lake this morning. See if I can spot an osprey.”

“Ride?”

“Motorbike on the back of the van.”

Silence for a while, broken by the slight sounds of cereal being eaten. I finished my muesli and got up to get coffee. “Coffee?” I asked.

“Yes, please. Milk. No sugar.” She watched as I poured two mugs, one not quite full to which I added milk and placed in front of her. “I’ve never been on a motorbike.”

“Up to you. You can stay here if you’d rather...”

She stared at me, wide-eyed. “You’d let me stay here on my own? You trust me?”

“Can I not?”

“Well, yes, but...”

“Dora, I think you’re sensible enough to see you have too much to lose. Right now, you’ve got a place to live, food and a comfortable, warm bed – it is comfortable, I hope? I haven’t actually tried it!”

“Comfortable enough. You’re right. But a motorbike? Isn’t it dangerous?”

“No more dangerous than living ‘by the kindness of strangers,’” I pointed out, “and the level of danger rather depends upon the rider. I am a careful rider and Oscar is not a powerful machine.”

“Oscar?” She giggled, a delightful sound. “You named your motorbike Oscar?”

“Yes. I did, in fact, name my bike Oscar. Look. It’s up to you. You can stay here, or you can give riding pillion a try. If you don’t like it, I’ll bring you back here. I’ll just point out that Oscar is my only means of getting around other than Shank’s pony. I’m not going to disconnect all the services to use the van until I’m ready to move on.”

Motorbikes are quite heavy. Oscar, for a five hundred, is fairly light, but that’s only relative. The rack he travels on is wound down by a crank and she watched curiously as I uncovered him, unlocked the mechanism and wound the handle. It took a few minutes to unstrap him from the rack and move him away from the van.

“Oh!” She exclaimed as I wheeled him past and she saw the number-plate. “That’s why Oscar.”

“Indeed. But I think it suits him. You’ll see.” I tidied up the straps, but left the rack resting on the ground before straddling Oscar and prodding at the kick-start lever. It took a couple of tries, but he coughed into life. Dora clambered – rather tentatively – on behind me, and I rode through the park to the exit gate. The junction with the road was quite well designed and I could see there was little traffic, so barely slowed as I turned on to the road. Of course, that meant Oscar ‘fell’ sideways before I accelerated away and Dora squeezed my chest while trying to stay upright. I could understand that. She didn’t yell, though, and settled down once we were travelling in a straight line.

Oscar is an old-fashioned, single-cylinder, five hundred cc. machine. Admittedly, the design has been updated to conform to modern safety and emissions standards, but the basic design dates from a time when eighty miles an hour was a respectable top speed, and rarely used. I got up to fifty and top gear, occasionally dropping a gear or two to negotiate tight bends. I could tell Dora had relaxed because she snuggled in close and followed me as we tilted round the bends instead of her initial, panicked response.

We passed the official RSPB Osprey viewing point in Dodds Wood shortly after leaving the campsite. It would probably – almost certainly – be a better place to see the birds, but I wanted a ride, and we could always call in later

Nowadays, the A66 bypasses Keswick, which is, in my opinion, a Good Thing. Not that I dislike the town. Merely that negotiating town traffic when one doesn’t have to is not fun. We made good progress until I saw the sign for the lake view-point and pulled in to park.

I love the lakes. The view-point, set on a promontory low on the west side of Bassenthwaite Lake, is well placed in the stunning scenery, but when Dora dismounted and stepped round next to me her expression – at least as far as I was concerned – eclipsed it.

I lifted my helmet off as she fiddled with the fastening on hers. She stepped close. “I can’t undo it.”

“Come here, then, and hold my helmet.” Standing next to me as I straddled Oscar, my nose was about level with her sterno-clavicular dip, the little hollow at the base of her throat. She took my helmet and I reached to the chin-strap of hers; not far – I suppose my nose was within a foot of her. My knuckle brushed the smooth skin of her neck and she inhaled sharply. The strap loosened easily, and I lifted the helmet off.

She was smiling. I took that to mean she didn’t mind riding pillion.

“That was fun! I totally see why you like it.” Her words reinforced my conclusion.

There’s nothing really special about the viewing point – just a more or less level triangle of uncultivated ground protruding into the lake. Having locked my helmet into the top-box, carrying hers which was lighter and less bulky, we ambled across to the lake. Where there’s water there’s usually water fowl. Ducks, almost always Mallard. Coot. Cormorant. Gulls.

The first thing I saw was the brown, crested head of a female merganser, with a retinue of chicks. Mergansers are not ducks, though they look like it. I pointed them out to Dora, and offered her my compact binoculars.

While she was peering through them, I saw the shape I was hoping for, and touched her shoulder.

“What is it?”

I pointed. The bird was some distance away, and if I hadn’t known what to look for I wouldn’t have noticed it. “Osprey,” I said, “Fish eagle. It’s hunting. I don’t know how they do it, but it’ll somehow spot a fish near the surface, stoop and grab it, lift it out of the water. Then it’ll shift it around so it’s pointing fore and aft. Fantastic!”

She looked at me with a puzzled expression, but turned back and found the bird with the binoculars. It was too much to hope for that it’d move towards us, but that’s what it did. Sure enough, it was less than a quarter mile away when it plummeted down; amidst spray, and lifted away from the water, a struggling, substantial fish in its talons. We watched – Dora through the binoculars, I had to make do with my mod one eyeballs – as it reconfigured the fish for minimum air resistance, and headed for its nest; perhaps that should be eyrie, I wasn’t sure.

Dora lowered the binoculars. “Wow! That was really something! Do you know all about birds?”

I laughed. “Hardly! I like to watch them, but I don’t go out of my way. I just happen to know about these. They’re why I chose to stop here, rather than further south or on the coast.”

“So, what is your thing, Steve? You like birds, motorcycles and classical music. You work with ... computers, you said?” I nodded yes. “So ... what is your thing? What floats your boat?”

“I’m a polymath, Dora. Not really – the word implies I’m actually competent in many subjects – but I just enjoy a lot of different things. I know a little about a lot.”

“There’s a saying...” she paused, watching my face. “An expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing at all.”

I had to laugh. I’ve quoted that saying myself a few times.

She looked around, handing me the binoculars, and took a deep breath. “This is really something,” she murmured, then, louder, looking at me, “I’ve lived in cities all my life, even...” she broke off. She must have interpreted the look on my face, because she went on, “I don’t want to bore you with my life right now. You know the most important thing, I suppose.”

I shook my head. “No, to both ideas. I doubt if your life-story is boring, and I doubt what I know about you is the most important thing to know. But when you’re ready, feel free to talk.” I paused. “For now, I’m glad you’re enjoying the day. We ought to think about something to eat. We could go into Keswick...”

“Could we ride round the lake? Make sarnies back at ... at home?”

Home? My van?

I dare say you’re wondering what’s wrong with me. Some might understand reluctance to have sex with a young woman who admitted to a history of prostitution, but in all honesty that was only a part. I suppose some might wonder about said young woman seeking to live in a motorhome with a man she’d only met that morning. Well, I wondered that, too. But I wasn’t complaining. She was easy on the eye, if not centrefold gorgeous.

No. Somewhere deep inside I understood that there was more to her than met the eye.

We walked slowly back to Oscar, and I helped her to fasten her own helmet before donning my own. Now I take my riding and driving seriously, which means concentrating on what’s going on, but on that occasion I cruised along, often at thirty or less, as long as I wasn’t obstructing anyone else. The road runs alongside the lake on the west side and I was able to spare a little attention for the scenery. As we approached the camp site, it wasn’t quite midday, so I kept going the short distance to the parking for the Osprey observation points. I parked there and we walked up to the lower view point to speak to the volunteers there, then took the short but stiff climb to the upper view point. There, we waited our turn for the use of a spotting scope, focussed on the Osprey nest. We were in time to see one of the parents arriving back there to feed the hatchlings.

Dora watched intently, through one of the spotting scopes the volunteers had set up for visitors, until she almost tore herself away to give someone else a chance.