Just For the Summer (14 page)

Across the river, on the hillside an elderly man was standing on his lawn, arms folded aggressively, staring across to Archie and Celia's house. He looked, Clare thought, as if he'd been there all night, waiting for someone to emerge so he could get his accusations about sleeplessness and mayhem in before anyone else did. Clare could also see Jeannie down below, crossing the footbridge on her way up to the Lynchs' house. As Clare watched, Jeannie stopped and turned to look at Archie's cottage. I bet she'd love to come and help clean it up, Clare thought, then she could
tell all those in the village who don't already know, just what a disaster area it is. Clare pulled on last night's clothes and went along to Miranda's room to start the inquisition.

‘Did you know he was having a party?' she demanded of Miranda's still sleeping body.

Miranda stirred lazily and made an attempt to open her eyes.

‘Miranda, wake up.' Clare prodded her impatiently. ‘You said he was having a few people in. I thought that meant a dinner party or something.'

‘Oh Mum, it's only people your age who have dinner parties. We go out for pasta or a burger. Except here you have to get someone to drive you a million miles for that.' Miranda stretched languidly and sighed. ‘I didn't know there'd be that many people. I don't think Andrew did either.'

Clare went down to the kitchen and Miranda, wearing one of Jack's old tee-shirts as a nightdress, padded down the stairs after her.

‘Are you going to help clear up?' Miranda asked, watching Clare delving under the sink for a bucket and a pack of J-cloths.

‘Yes, and you can come and help too.'

‘Er sorry, I promised to take her and Jessica into Truro this morning,' Jack said, arriving in the kitchen behind Miranda.

‘And it was you who said you'd look after Andrew …'
Miranda added, ducking round Jack before the packet of J-cloths that Clare threw could hit her.

Clare groaned quietly to herself and went back to searching under the sink. A pair of rubber gloves, she thought, because there might be all sorts of disgusting things to be handled. Used condoms, sick to be mopped up. If she went there expecting the worst, perhaps it wouldn't really be that bad.

Clare put all her cleaning equipment outside the door and then came back in to make some tea. I'll give him an hour or two to make a start on it himself, she thought. It was, after all, more Andrew's fault than hers. Why, she thought, shoving bread into the be-crumbed toaster, should I take this on entirely myself, just because I'm the nearest female of the right sort of age and I happen to be a parent?

That morning Andrew tasted bad, smelt bad and felt dreadful. He lay in bed flinching away from the bright sunlight and thought childishly, it's not my fault. At the same time he knew that this was no compensation, that of course he would get the blame, and that worst of all he would have to do the clearing up. Most of all though he blamed Clare and Liz and Eliot. They were, after all, Parents. And even though they weren't his they should have been around to protect him from this sort of thing. The noise must have been tremendous, way beyond the level at which Archie and Celia would, in Surrey, have
called the police. This was what happened when you got liberal parents in charge: no control, no sense of responsibility. Archie's old school had done a good job on Andrew. Certain moral standards were being maintained by him at any rate, if not in the rest of this slack world. Andrew would never have gone to the home of a total stranger and stubbed out cigarettes on the floor, spilled beer all over the sofa or got into an unfamiliar bed with a girl he'd just met. Well maybe he'd do that, oh God just give him the chance. And who was it, his conscience reminded him, who was sick on the rose bed, and who drank all that Chivas Regal? Andrew wished he had the amnesia of the practised drunk. He wished and wished the whole thing had never happened. He never wanted to see Jessica again. He felt dreadful, still nauseous and his throat was sore too, like when he was about to get the flu. Perhaps he could just stay in his sordid bed for a few days and then his mother would feel sorry for him. But she'd be home in twenty-four hours and he hadn't even inspected the damage in the cold revealing light of day. He bathed and tooth-brushed away the worst of the remaining taste of alcohol and went downstairs carefully, as if afraid he was about to see the remains of a massacre, not just the typical leftovers of a party. One brief glance round told him that there was not the slightest chance that he was going to get away with this. He would have to spend forever clearing up the mess. Thank goodness Celia didn't have a cleaning lady who
would come and report the damage around the village. There were probably things missing and broken, it was hard to tell until some sort of order was restored. Celia knew every tiny ornament in the cottage. Although she seemed a briskly practical woman she was also a great sentimentalist and every item she collected reminded her of some happy time or other. The smell was the worst thing. Almost gagging in the stale fumes, Andrew cleared a way through the discarded cans and glasses to the kitchen. He pulled out a bin liner from under the sink and started randomly collecting cigarette ends, bottles and cans from the table and floor. Must have been the boatyard lot, thought Andrew snobbishly, decent people wouldn't make such a mess. And why was the fridge empty? And the bread bin? Even if he'd felt like breakfast they'd left him nothing to eat. He filled the plastic bag quickly and looked around. He'd made very little impact. Every surface he looked at seemed to have something sticky and spilled. And why was he having to do all this by himself? Couldn't some of the girls come and give him a hand? But given the hypothetical choice between clearing up everything himself and having Jessica turn up to help he decided he'd rather be alone, even if he hoovered way beyond midnight. How could he ever have been so stupid? How could he ever have imagined that she would have so eagerly accepted an invitation to do rude things on his sofa with him? It really was, after all, entirely his own fault.

Up the, hill at the Lynch household, Liz was cowering in the kitchen from the sounds of Eliot swearing at his word processor. She didn't see why Eliot should bother to work at all. He certainly didn't need to, especially not to the point of getting up before daylight and crashing round the bedroom looking for something to wear. If he retired, she thought, they could stop going to Cornwall summer after summer, because there would be no need for Eliot to take a rural break from all those so-called research trips he was always taking to exotic places during the rest of the year. Exotic places could then be for holidays. When Eliot got to Cornwall, all he did was go sailing, or get in the way, or get drunk, or complain that he couldn't work, they all made too much noise.

Over breakfast, Liz took out her frustrated rage on Jessica and Milo:

‘I hope you're going round to help Andrew clear up after his party,' she said to the two of them. ‘You must have been having a good time, you could be heard all over the village and probably right across the Lizard. It was just like being back in London.' Liz wanted to go to a party too, she wanted to dress up in a sleek little Dolce y Gabbana number without fear of it being attacked by river mud or beach sand.

‘Wasn't bad, actually,' said Jessica, buttering toast.

She smiled at Milo. ‘I don't think Andrew had such a good time though.'

‘You could say he wasn't too well when we left,' Milo explained to Liz, ‘I don't think he's used to our kind of parties.'

‘Do you think Celia and Archie knew?' Liz asked.

‘Hardly. Even Andrew seemed a little unprepared to say the least. You could say he got a bit tired and emotional.'

They're talking to me, Liz thought, like a friend, a family member, not a wicked stepmother.

‘Anyone nice there?' she asked Jessica, risking rebuff.

‘Very nice,' Jessica grinned. ‘Called Paul, he's working at the boatyard for the summer and he's doing Peace Studies at Bradford.'

‘I don't think Andrew liked that either,' Milo said, teasing her. ‘He was moping around all night after you Jess.'

‘You can't be serious, that was just the baby-bird look men get when they're drunk. Not that he's yet what I'd call a man. God, I like him but he's a bit of a double-bagger. And he's too young. Milo, you've put me off my breakfast.' But she was laughing too.

‘What on earth is a “double-bagger”?' Liz asked.

Jessica grinned at her. ‘It's when you have to put a paper bag over your own head in case the one over his head breaks while you're, you know, doing it.'

They were all still laughing when Eliot came in, wanting breakfast. They were having fun and he wasn't. His mood deepened.

‘So you are coming with me to clear up his house?' Milo said to Jessica.

‘Not a chance,' she said, sliding out of the kitchen door, ‘I'm off to Truro with Miranda and I'll have to go now or they'll have left without me. See you later, and Milo, please send Andrew my regards, but not, I'm afraid, my love.'

The weather was cloudy, threatening much-needed rain. A good day for a hangover, Milo thought, thinking not of himself but of Andrew as he sauntered down the lane carrying a roll of extra-large dustbin liners and a powerful vacuum cleaner.

‘Well it could be a lot worse,' he said cheerfully to Andrew as he strolled into the cottage and surveyed the damage. Worse? thought Andrew. What kind of social life did they have back in Hampstead?

‘Not much worse,' he said to Milo. ‘The parents are home tomorrow and I'm in for a lot of trouble.'

Milo suspected that Archie would be more angry about Trust being Abused than about any amount of breakage and felt it would not pay to continue the conversation on this subject.

‘It won't take long,' he said encouragingly, ‘This thing will sweep up anything.'

Andrew was bound to be feeling morose, Milo thought, his head must hurt like hell. He looked droopy, wilting like Archie's poor roses.

‘Why don't we just do the worst of it for now and then
have some coffee? You should have some aspirins too.'

‘Is Jessica coming too?' Andrew found the courage to ask.

‘Er no,' Milo turned away to hide a smile. He couldn't help thinking of the term ‘double-bagger'. He fiddled with the plug of the cleaner. ‘She had to go to Truro with Miranda, long-standing arrangement or something.'

Well this is funny, two men cleaning a house, Andrew thought. He wasn't used to this kind of arrangement in Surrey. There were always the women. When Celia and Archie had a party (‘people in for drinks') their Mrs Fletcher came in to do the handing round of sherry, and plates of canapes and she wore a neat frock and sparkly earrings for the occasion. In the morning she'd be back again in her familiar apron to do the cleaning up. Not that it was ever on this scale, just a little accidental ash, and the odd ring left by a careless glass, someone forgetting to use one of the little mats. Celia wouldn't call them coasters.

‘Oh look,' Milo said, looking through the kitchen door as Clare walked up the path, ‘the cavalry's arrived.'

‘'Bout time,' Andrew muttered, holding his head.

Clare, clanking her bucket of cleaning stuff, stopped dead in the doorway.

‘What a dreadful smell!' she said, wrinkling her nose. ‘The entire village must have come in here and smoked a pack of Silk Cut each! We'll have to take the curtains down and hang them outside on the washing line. And
hope it doesn't rain. Fresh air will blow away the smell.'

Clare glared at Andrew who didn't appear to be able to move. He looked terrible, pasty and baggy-eyed. His shoulders drooped and his hair looked matted. Clare squashed a surge of sympathy and handed him a packet of Flash and the bucket.

‘Go on,' she said, ‘you can make a start upstairs on the bathroom. I don't have to go up and look, I can imagine what it's like.' Andrew slouched out of the room and trailed dejectedly up the stairs.

‘I'll get the curtains down shall I?' Milo said softly. ‘Don't be too hard on him,' he said, pushing his floppy blond hair out of his eyes and smiling at her. ‘It wasn't entirely his fault. In fact it was probably entirely mine.' Milo told her the truth with disarming honesty. His lazy blue eyes looked deep into Clare's and she could see more than a trace of Eliot's wicked Irish charm. If I were twenty years younger, she caught herself thinking.

Soon, every curtain and rug in the house was hanging from the washing line and from branches of the cherry tree, like prayer mats for all the village to gaze at and comment on. Clare, scrubbing the kitchen and polishing tables, was past caring what anyone, except Celia and Archie, thought. Milo wielded his vacuum cleaner, with casual power, whistling cheerfully as he played with its various attachments, seeming to find a scientific satisfaction in discovering the right tool for getting cigarette ends out from down the sides of the sofa.

Clare scrubbed, polished, wiped and scoured. Andrew, even paler after cleaning the bathroom, trailed round the house and garden filling bin liners with empties and wishing they wouldn't clang so loudly. In case of stains, Andrew didn't dare look at Clare as together they stripped the beds and shoved sheets into plastic bags.

Clare, feeling that she'd done more than her best, took the sheets with her and drove off to Helston to the launderette. I'm in for a tedious evening of ironing, she thought, but at least it would give her chance, at last, to think over what she and Jack would do with the rest of their lives.

Milo, feeling sorry for Andrew's hangover, volunteered to make the coffee while Andrew hosed down the garden. He'd hoped it would rain in the night, good and heavy rain to eradicate any sign of where he'd disgraced himself in the rosebed. It hadn't and Andrew avoided getting too near the area by hosing with his fingers over the end of the pipe to increase the pressure and drive away the disgusting evidence over the end of the lawn into the creek.