Just For the Summer (10 page)

Eliot felt forlorn, already in need of another drink, and deprived of sympathy. Perhaps it was all her fault, he thought, looking sideways at Liz and her angular, unforgiving body. What he really needed was someone warmer, more compassionate, a mother-figure. Someone like Clare.

Clare at that moment was feeling like Everymother.

Celia was in her kitchen leaning against Clare's Aga and giving last-minute instructions about the care of Andrew in much the same way that people do to a neighbour who is to feed a lonely cat. Clare wondered if she was imagining it, or was Celia really sniffing the air like a labrador, as if to discover whether Clare's bunches of hanging herbs were covering up some sinister aroma of bad housekeeping?

‘I've left plenty of prepared meals in the freezer, he won't run short of shepherd's pie,' Celia said. ‘But I feel he needs to be reminded of the small things, like if you should happen to notice whether his hair looks brushed, perhaps you could have a quiet word?' Celia looked a bit doubtful, as well she might, Clare thought, seeing as Amy and Harriet both had hair tangled like birds' nests by this stage in August.

Clare didn't at all mind taking on the care of Andrew,
but her mind was on things other than his welfare. Miranda seemed to be spending an awful lot of time in the loo, and although Clare made herself carefully alone and available to be confided in, she was now completely certain that Miranda had things going on in her life that she was keeping to herself. All that sex, Clare thought enviously, imagining that when Miranda wandered off alone in the day, saying she was going to sail or swim with Jessica, she was actually going to meet Steve secretly. The problem with the frequent visits to the loo she put. down to cystitis, which Clare had once had during her early days with Jack, when sex had been delightfully, but damagingly frequent and she had had to take her resulting bladder problem to an unsympathetic doctor. Clare wrote ‘potassium citrate' on her shopping list, along with French beans and Coco Pops and planned to announce loudly and cheerily over supper that it was she who had a nasty attack of cystitis and that the bottle in the bathroom cabinet was for her, the children were not to drink it. Miranda could then help herself to a few doses without having to pay-by-confession first.

Archie and Celia were going to ‘do' the gardens on Tresco. Gardening was their great passion. At home in Surrey their herbaceous borders would have rivalled those of Gertrude Jekyll (whose name they always pronounced correctly to rhyme with treacle), and after reading Christopher Lloyd there was an area of
meadow, full of carefully naturalized wild flowers. A visit to Sissinghurst had also resulted in their front garden being given over entirely to white flowers, all neatly bordered with box hedges that had to be trimmed arduously with dressmaking shears. The postman, feeling their garden lacked colour, frequently brought round his left-over home-grown marigold seedlings, which Celia gave to her cleaning lady. In Cornwall each year, she and Archie made visits to gardens at Glen Durgan, Trelissick, Trengwainton and Trebar, all with the same enthusiasm as if it were their first visit. Their shrubs were tagged with permanently legible labels, they knew Latin names. They were life members of the National Trust and bought each other hardback gardening manuals for birthdays.

‘Now you'll be all right won't you Andrew?' Celia fussed. ‘There's plenty of food and Clare will be checking up on you to make sure you're surviving. She says to go round for supper and for anything you might need.'

Celia had doubts about the supper, as she had about Clare's supervision of Andrew's hair brushing. Clare and Jack seemed to barbecue everything, and Celia had a deep distrust of burned food.

‘Don't worry,' Andrew said impatiently, longing for privacy, making plans of his own. ‘I'll be all right, send me a postcard.'

Andrew watched them drive away in the Rover and then wandered round the house looking for something
that he could not normally do. He didn't count his experiment, he just had to do that whether anyone was around or not. In fact it was more exciting with someone on the other side of the bathroom wall. Making love to himself was unsatisfying though, even with the string glove and Andrew was longing for the real thing, for Jessica's warm body, soft and thrilling against his. He had started having to make excuses not to swim in the Lynchs' pool, terrified that his lust for Jessica would show, that his uncontrollable penis would swell to overwhelming size, bursting out and taking over the garden. He imagined them all talking, laughing, then the rising feeling, and all of them gradually stopping to stare, horrified. It would writhe out towards Jessica, a pinky-purple serpent and everyone would see.

In truth Andrew had few illusions that Jessica would be overcome with passion for him, and the offending item had yet to be measured at larger than five inches, but it rose with shameful ease, encouraged by Andrew's habit of idly fingering it from inside the pocket of his shorts. Milo never gave any indication that he had the same problem, in fact Milo never seemed to be interested in anybody in that way, just water skiing and wind surfing. A wetsuit, Andrew thought, now surely that would keep the beast in place.

Andrew wandered aimlessly round his parents' bedroom, picking things up, putting them down.
He looked through the pile of books beside the bed, nothing rude enough for him among the collection of detective stories and classic novels. He opened and closed drawers at random, not prying, but looking for clues to his parents. The contents of the drawers were ordinary clean sensible clothes, with which to deal with the weather, with walking, sailing and the sun. His parents had no secrets. Did they still do it? Andrew wondered. He thought probably not, not at their age.

As Celia and Archie drove towards Penzance, changes were taking place in the village. It was Friday, which the residents liked for this was changeover day. By 6.30 a.m. sleepy children were being fastened into backs of cars, dogs were being walked to their last tree this side of the Tamar. Overflowing rubbish sacks were already splitting open next to overloaded dustbins. The children of the second-homers had done their goodbye crying the night before, bereft of their new friends, sure they would never, at least till the next afternoon when the new lot came, meet anyone like Alex or Emily ever again.

Clare tended her garden, watching the renters struggle to be out of the cottages and flats by 10 a.m. Some were gone much earlier – there was the Tamar bridge to be queued for, or roadworks at Okehampton and a lot of motorway to be covered before the midday heat set in. Or there was simply the urge to get home in time to
watch
Neighbours
or catch the supermarket before it shut. New clients weren't allowed in till after 3 p.m. and those who arrived too early hung around the village trying to get a restorative drink at the Mariners, or shopping for toilet rolls (there were never any in the cottages, Jeannie and her friends had any spares stuffed into their shopping trolleys). Cars were still full of luggage and babies, bikes and surfboards on the roofracks.

But between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. the residents mostly had the place to themselves. This was the tranquillity for which they had bought their cottages. There was a suburban Sunday atmosphere as they strolled smugly round the village, congratulating each other on how quiet it was, doing things to their boats. Some even washed their cars, mowed the lawns. Their children ran round the village collecting up abandoned buckets and spades and fishing nets. Later they hung round throwing stones into the creek, slyly appraising the children of the new arrivals, who stared back at them, pale and shy. By 4 p.m. the shop would be full of customers, for the brigade of cleaning ladies would have done their fruitful tour of larder and kitchen cupboard, to make up for having their busiest day of the week while everyone else seemed to be resting. Jeannie would have cleaned out at least three of the properties, somehow finding time in each to have a quiet smoke, (someone always left a cigarette or two in packets under the beds), while watching a bit of daytime TV.

That evening Clare and Jack did their duty by having Andrew round to supper.

‘You'll stay in for it, won't you Miranda?' Clare had hardly dared ask, ‘And if there's anyone else you want to invite …' she had then ventured.

‘Milo and Jess?' Miranda had answered promptly.

‘Sure, and I'll ask the Lynch twins as well for Amy and Harriet,' Clare had said, planning an al fresco supper, a noisy, relaxed barbecue for all the children.

‘Can't we have some more adults too?' Jack had asked nervously, fearing an evening of over-excited children all too close to the creek at high tide, and with no alternative fathers to help take charge.

‘Don't be silly. What can go wrong?' Clare said. ‘And if you want someone to talk to, you can talk to me can't you?' she added sweetly, kissing him fondly on the cheek as she walked past on her way to the kitchen.

‘If you'd only keep still long enough, I would …' Jack called after her, but his words faded at the doorway and Clare did not turn back.

For the few months of the year that Miranda spent living in the cottage she tried hard to make her surroundings compatible with her current choice of personality. Miranda believed that you were what you read. Depending on her mood she spent a lot of her Cornwall time drifting about in a fantasy. She was Claudine, Juliet, Tess. Inside her head was a nonsensical porridge of daydreams, dramas in which she played the
starring role. It was easier, more private living in her head like this and it was the only way in which to co-exist with Clare who tried too hard to get close. Clare's insistence that Miranda was so special for Clare had always made it difficult for Miranda to think of Jack as a father. The moment had long passed when she could have pointed this out, now it would be too hurtful. Miranda and Clare were no longer a lonely and crusading unit battling through Clare's degree, sleeping in the same narrow bed, sharing tins of beans. When Clare still told people about how Miranda used to play with Lego during lectures, or talked about hitching to rock festivals, Miranda felt embarrassed, and alienated from Jack, who Clare at that time had not yet met. Miranda had been Clare's biggest drama in life, and it was now too far in the past.

Miranda escaped into the contradictions of her bedroom which was full of what she thought of as false starts. There was all the stuff from her riding phase, not that long ago, when she had galloped a local fat pony along the beach, pretending to be Rebecca. She piled up the old Ruby Ferguson books with the too-small riding boots ready to pass on to Harriet. There was a pile of opera CDs from her infatuation with Puccini. The CDs were hardly played, arriving on a birthday too near the end of the phase as she turned from Mimi to Madonna, filling the house with loud tarty music and wearing loud tarty clothes. Right now, prowling round the unusually tidy room she found it impossible to escape being
simply Miranda. Hardy's heroines had never had to deal with the instructions on how to use a pregnancy test kit. Miranda wandered back to the bathroom and sat on the edge of the bath, watching the solution of urine and chemicals. She wrapped her jumble sale robe round her thin self and stared at the tiny test tube. If she kept watching it perhaps it wouldn't change colour, she wouldn't be pregnant. She ran water into the bath, watching it creep up over the stains on the old enamel, which got worse every year.

She pulled back the curtain, the fabric so old it was almost fashionable again, and looked out through the honeysuckle to the river. Steve would be out there putting petrol into the hire boats, bringing them to the pontoon now that the tide was high, ready for the day's customers. Already the holiday-makers were out, swarming round the village, diligently entertaining their children, taking them fishing.

Miranda looked back at the test-tube. The girl in the magazine advert for the kit had been photographed sitting on the edge of her bath, in a warm-looking room lush with thick carpet and cosmetics, ornaments, plants, pretty things. She looked like the career type, young, married, plenty of money. She was only an adman's fantasy. Miranda was the real customer. A girl with bitten nails, unable to wait the extra days for hospital bureaucracy, the family doctor with his kind but disappointed concern, or worst of all her mother knowing
before she did. This was a sordid way to find out if you were growing a human. Collecting early morning pee and shaving your legs in the bath, perfecting the skin care while you kept watch on a phial of liquid, daring it to change colour. But when Miranda got out of the bath, the liquid was pink. It must run in the family, Miranda thought, so this must have been how Clare felt when she realized I was on the way.

Clare was in the kitchen, envying Jack. He'd taken on the cooking of the barbecue that evening and therefore had earned himself an afternoon off in which to gather his strength. Clare, therefore was left with whatever domestic duties had to be done that day, and resented it.

‘I'm supposed to be having a holiday,' she fumed to the washing machine. Other people on holiday get room service: I AM room service.

At home in Barnes at least she could fling the laundry in and out of its gadgets as and when she thought of it. Here, in time-bomb mood, she had to stand over an ancient twin-tub washing machine that must have been the last word of luxury in its day. Now it seemed to plead to go away and be left to retire in the recycling plant. Water slopped on to the kitchen floor, all over Clare's espadrilles, the soles of which were soaking up the dampness like blotting paper. The machine could do nothing without intervention. It was helpless and
unwilling, slow and stubborn. Like an old lady crossing a busy road, it could not be rushed but had to be encouraged gently along in case of disaster. Clare cursed and pushed her collapsing hair out of her face as she dragged hot and heavy sheets from one half of the machine to the other. The spinner made the whole thing dance madly across the floor, skittering sideways trying to pull the hoses from the taps at the same time. Clare kicked it back towards the sink. She might as well, she thought, take the sheets down to the creek, bash them with stones and gossip with the villagers. But the real villagers all had state-of-the-art automatics. One day, she thought, one day I'll persuade Jack to sell this bloody inefficient house and we'll take real holidays like everyone else, in real family hotels where real chambermaids take away the used bedlinen and I never have to see it again.