Summer of '76 Read Online Free Page B

left now, and a few glasses.’
    Luke shakes his head, breaking his sandwich into two pieces. ‘Man, you’ve gotta get out of there. Hey, maybe we could get a place together? You could come with me to the mainland?’ He prods Martin with his toe. ‘Mart? It would be a laugh! You and me, living together? You could do that photography course you keep going on about.’
    Martin continues chewing until his sandwich is finished, and reaches for another. ‘I couldn’t do that, mate. I haven’t saved enough for the camera yet – and I don’t want one of those cheap ones. It’s got to be a good one if I’m going to do a proper course. Anyway, you’ll be busy getting to know all your new mates at poly.’
    ‘Don’t be an idiot. Once an islander, always an islander. Seriously, you could get a job over there, no problem.’
    Martin turns the sandwich over in his hands. ‘But I’ve got my job with Dad. He’s getting more orders than ever these days, and I know he wants me to carry on the business.’
    ‘But what about what
you
want to do? You always said you wanted to work with animals, like David Attenborough.’
    ‘Or Johnny Morris.’
    ‘Don’t you want to do that any more?’
    Martin doesn’t answer for a moment. ‘Dad says there’s no money in it, and you can’t live on fresh air. He’s just had an order in from this big new gallery in London – forty frames – and they want them done really quick. He couldn’tdo it all with just the one pair of hands. He couldn’t manage without me.’
    ‘But you must have ambitions, Mart. I look at my folks and think, I don’t want to end up like them, stuck in the same old place, doing the same old things. I’d rather top myself.’ He turns his face skyward as a cluster of noisy gulls passes over. ‘I mean, you must have some things you want to achieve before you die?’
    ‘I’d like to go on Concorde,’ Martin replies, after a minute’s thought. ‘Or hang-gliding. Like those fellas we saw over at Compton Down.’
    Luke brushes the crumbs from his lap. ‘Sorry, Mart. It’s just – it won’t be the same when I’m over there.’
    Martin drinks deeply from his water flask, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. ‘That’s OK. You’ll be back some weekends anyway, won’t you? You said it yourself – Brighton’s not that far away.’
    Luke shields his eyes as he looks out over the endless horizon. ‘You’re right,’ he says, watching the sunlight as it ripples and shimmers across the water.
    ‘I know I am,’ says Martin, stretching out his long hairy legs and brushing the crumbs into the grass. ‘You’ll be back. Just like nothing’s ever changed.’

    Later that day, they set up their tent on the south side of the island, at a large cliffside campsite along the Military Road with views across the channel. It’s not overly crowded, but the owner has asked campers to stick to the near end of the site while they’re busy getting the place ready for the tourist season. The whirr of lawnmowers buzzes in the breeze as gardeners clear the overgrown borders, cutting down the meadow grasses at the edges, lopping off the fresh daisy heads before they’ve had a chance to unfurl. Before long, Luke knows, the campsites across the island will fill up with holidaymakers, crowding in from the mainland with their caravans and tents and hordes of noisy children. But for nowit’s relatively peaceful, with just twenty or so pitches taken across the gently sloping hillside.
    Martin and Luke find a spot towards the top of the field where the grass is bathed in sunshine, away from the boisterous young families who congregate closest to the washing-up stations and showers. The sun is bright, but up here the wind whips and howls around the tents and guy ropes, tugging and swirling at Luke’s hair as if it’s caught in a vortex. He swipes his fringe aside, while Martin lunges clumsily, grasping for a corner of the tent which has slipped its peg as they struggle