Thirteen Days By Sunset Beach (16 page)

"I've no idea how valuable they may be to the girl, but I'm sure she has a long time yet to photograph her grandmother. Now for the last time—"

"You mustn't say that, Julian," Sandra said.

"I'm sure we've no reason to suppose you won't be with us for a good while yet, Sandra. Now will you please ask your husband—"

"I'm asking you not to say that."

"Why not?" The prohibition appeared to infuriate Julian as much as Ray's grip on his wrist. "Is it another of these wretched superstitions we seem to be surrounded by?"

"No." Ray thought Sandra might manage to leave it at that, since the solitary word felt like a burden that was constricting his heart, until she said "It's the truth."

"What is? All I said—"

"For God's sake, Julian." Natalie snatched the phone out of his hand and gave it back to Jonquil. "Promise you won't do anything else wrong," she said and without giving Jonquil time to speak "You two take William to play and don't go out of the accommodation. I'll come and find you when we're ready."

Ray saw that not only the teenagers understood how grave the situation might be. "We can go on the swings if you like," William said.

Nobody spoke until he'd led Tim and Jonquil out of sight, and then nobody appeared to want to be the first to speak. Ray had begun to hope the silence might quieten everybody's speculations when Doug said "You shouldn't think the worst either, mum."

"I can't say I wasn't."

"Then you're as bad as you were telling Jules he was. I don't mean bad," Doug said as Julian remained sullen. "You both know what I mean."

"And now you can stop thinking it, mum," Natalie said, "since you can't know."

Sandra took a breath as loud as words. Ray thought she was using it to keep some of those unspoken, but she said "Natalie, it's the truth."

Ray saw Julian make the effort to join in, and wished he'd found a different occasion. "What is, Sandra?"

Perhaps it was his tone—the way a patient adult might have spoken to an unreasonable youngster—that made Sandra press her lips together, only to say "I'm not expected to see Christmas."

Somebody gasped, but Ray didn't think it was him, although one of his feelings was a species of relief—a release from the dogged performance he had been maintaining for so long that it hardly felt like a choice, from having to keep so much not just unsaid but unsuspected. Everyone had frozen into a silent tableau with Sandra as its focus, where she seemed determined to fend off any sense that she was vulnerable or inviting sympathy—if anything, she looked angry with herself for having been provoked to speak. He didn't know how long the silence paralysed them all before Natalie demanded "Who says you aren't?" fiercely enough for a confrontation with the perpetrator.

"The hospital." Sandra sounded close to apologetic. "The specialists," 
she said.

Doug made to speak and had to clear his throat. "What kind?"

"The favourite," Sandra said with a wry smile too brief to convey much. "When my grandmother had it I used to call it canker. That's what I thought it was called, because my parents always spelled it out if I could hear. It can still do for a name."

"What treatment are you having, Sandra?" Pris seemed to find it hard to ask.

"I'm not." To a chorus of murmurs Sandra said "I saw what it does to people who are as far gone as I am. It may give them a few extra months, it might even add on a year, but I don't think the way they are is living. I'd rather not spend whatever time I have left in that state."

"But—" Ray thought Natalie hadn't set out to say "But how do you feel?"

"Since we've come here, better than I have for quite a long time, so thank you all for making it that way."

"We're glad if you're happy," Doug said, "but I think Nat was asking—"

"Not just happy. More like revived." Sandra pondered and said "As if I've had some kind of transfusion. I actually feel younger than I did."

"I expect that's the suit," Pris said.

Ray saw she was trying to share Sandra's optimism, but the bid seemed to fall short of its goal. With a frown at the clouds Sandra said "Maybe it's the air."

"So long as whatever it is does you good," Natalie said not quite steadily, and gazed out to sea.

"You all are, and I don't want any of you feeling too sad for me." When this brought about another silence Sandra said "Including like that. Let's carry on with what we've planned, and don't go thinking you need to make any allowances. Just let's make sure the young ones don't find out about me. The last thing I want to do is spoil this holiday for them."

As Ray realised that he would have to keep the pretence up after all, Julian said "May we ask when you both knew about the situation?"

"After Doug booked us all in here," Ray said. "We thought of letting everyone know at the time, but I hope you understand why we didn't."

"Was it also after I arranged everyone's insurance?"

"I'm afraid it wasn't," Sandra said. "We couldn't very well let you know and expect you to keep it from everyone else."

"It needed to be taken into account, all the same."

"It'll only affect my insurance, won't it?"

"Not with the family package I bought, no."

"Then I'm sorry, everyone. I ought to have asked how it worked."

She looked sadder than she had over letting her secret be known. "There's no reason to suppose we'll need to claim, is there?" Ray said despite feeling that the discussion had turned insultingly banal. "We'll make sure there's no need."

"You look as if you think there might be," Sandra told Julian.

"Whatever I was thinking can't be allowed to matter now."

"It was why you wanted us all here, wasn't it? We haven't finished talking about that. Were you going to suggest we should go home?"

"Some of us won't be," Doug said at once.

"I'm simply concerned for others," Julian said. "In particular William and now you, Sandra."

"This disease you think is around here, you mean."

"You mightn't dismiss it if you'd seen the effects, Sandra."

"I saw as well," Ray reminded him.

"Then surely you don't want to contradict me."

"I went a lot closer than you did, but I don't seem to be infected, do I? And I don't believe we've seen anyone else in anything approaching that state."

"Perhaps we don't know what to look for. Or perhaps other victims are being hidden away. I've told you the people round here are hiding the truth."

"Can you blame them? We found one body and you're talking about an epidemic. If you were them, wouldn't you do everything you could to avoid that kind of panic? It could ruin their livelihood if people like us stayed away."

"I'd be sad if you took William home," Sandra said, "but I'd understand."

"I'll be staying with my mother," Natalie told Julian.

"That's two of us," said Doug.

"Count me in as well," Pris said.

"I gather I'm voted down."

"Jules, it's not a vote. You do what you feel you have to, because we are."

"Julian?" before he could reply Sandra said "Will you be satisfied if we all watch out for any signs? Of this disease you think is about, I mean? And we'll all take special care of William."

"That's very thoughtful of you in the circumstances." Just the same, Julian made his pause count before he said "I'll trust you all to do as she suggests."

Sandra reached to squeeze his arm, a gesture that appeared to startle him. As he withdrew to a distance he seemed to find safer Natalie hugged her mother, and then Doug and Pris did. Sandra patted their hands as she said "Do you know what I'd like to do now?"

"Whatever you like," Doug said somewhat indistinctly.

"Go for a ride on the road train with William and everyone," Sandra said, and Ray welcomed the proposal with all the enthusiasm he could find in him. He would have felt more eager if he hadn't had to start pretending once again that all was well. He could only hope that the four who shared the secret now would give as convincing a performance.

"I'm sorry we had to send you three away like that. It was just your granny being silly, William. I won't do it again."

"How were you being silly, gran?"

"It was like your daddy said, just a superstition. We can't make things happen by thinking them. Not things we don't want to happen or things we want either."

They had all been on the road train when Sandra told him so, on their stately way through a village in the hills. Ray had felt as though by proposing the ride on the train, which resembled an escapee from a fairground, she'd been trying to recapture childhood by sharing William's—trying to consolidate the youthfulness she claimed to have found on the island. "We can't make things happen by thinking them..." Ray hadn't dared to yield to his emotions while she was speaking to William, but now he did as he lay beside her in the dark.

It felt like dissolving into grief. He was quivering so much with silent sobs that he had to ease his arm away from her waist for fear of waking her. For an immeasurable time he couldn't think for weeping, as if the flood had purified him of thoughts. It wasn't just that her words to William had overwhelmed him; letting the family into the truth had broken down the dam of his emotions, though it had still needed to hold until he was alone or at least unobserved. He had to quell his shaking, because he was afraid of transmitting it to the bed. When he managed to relax his body it renewed the storm of tears, until his pillow grew so sodden that he thought he felt it squelch beneath his cheek.

The sensation brought him back to himself—to the knowledge that his grief changed nothing. It was just a rehearsal for worse, and he was dismayed by how much it felt like wishing for the end. He could almost hear his own pathetic voice practising the words that he would have to say to everyone—worst of all, to William. His body dragged him back from indulging in the future; his head pounded in the rhythm of his violent heartbeat, his eyes stung like wounds, his nose was clogged with catarrh. He was clumsily solid again, not lifted up by grief at all, and how much worse did he imagine Sandra felt when she pushed away a practically untouched meal or squeezed her eyes tight shut and dug her fingernails into the arms of her chair?

At least he hadn't seen her do any of those things since they'd come to Vasilema. He crept to the bathroom to blow his nose as surreptitiously as he could, and had an unexpected impulse to switch on a light, even though that might waken Sandra. There was nothing he needed to see in the room; the whisper of movement he'd seemed to hear as he left the bed had most likely been a wave on the beach, unless Sandra had stirred without waking. She was quiet now, and once he'd reassured himself that she was breathing he kept his arm around her while he tried to join her in sleep.

He thought he'd failed until a knock at the door roused him. As he floundered out of bed he heard another muted knock. He had a confused sense of obeying the tradition that prohibited answering first time. He fumbled the door open just enough to peer around it and saw the sun between Doug and Julian. "No panic, dad," Doug said. "There's been a change of plan."

Ray kept his voice low to indicate they should as well. "What's changed?"

"We've decided against bicycles," Julian said with a frown instead of a murmur. "We're hiring transport for the day."

Ray heard Sandra struggling awake to call "Don't change it on my behalf."

"We were thinking of William," Julian said. "His mother and I don't think he can be expected to travel like that as far as some of us are proposing."

"It's gone down well with the teens," Doug said. "It's the popular vote."

"We're going to pick up the vehicles now. If you two can be ready when we come back, that would be ideal."

"Well, that's us organised," Sandra said once Ray had shut the door, and then she grew serious. "I shouldn't have let it out, Ray."

He couldn't have said why her words seemed ominous. "What?"

"What else is there? The truth. I shouldn't have let Julian provoke me."

"I think it's right for Doug and Natalie to know."

She seemed unsure whether to believe this, and Ray was less than certain that he did. "I didn't just tell them," she said.

"Then they've got support if they need it, haven't they?" When he saw this fall short of reassuring her Ray said in some desperation. "I hope I don't sound selfish, but I'm glad I'm not alone with it any more."

"I didn't realise you felt that way. How couldn't I have? I shouldn't be concerned just with myself."

Ray sat by her on the bed as she took hold of his pillow to prop behind her shoulders against the wall. "What's happened to this?" she protested. "It's damp."

"Just your disgusting husband. Sweat if it isn't drool."

"You'll never disgust me." She rested a hand on the pillow and gazed at him. "Oh, Ray," she said. "I can see from your eyes what it was."

"Never mind me, except how in Christ's name could I think I wasn't selfish? It's you that mustn't be alone with it, and you mustn't feel you are."

Sandra found his hands with hers and leaned against him. "I don't like to think you will be," she said. "Alone."

"I'll have the children, won't I? And nobody know what happens after. Maybe it won't keep us apart very long."

Might this sound as if he was proposing to follow her by doing away with himself? He was only trying to conjure up their notion of an afterlife. It was less a belief than a hope too vague to bear examination, but it seemed to revive Sandra. "Nothing must," she declared forcefully enough to be addressing someone else besides him.

She clung to him until he felt she was trying to keep hold of the moment for ever, and then she let go of his hands. "We'd better get moving before we're told off," she said.

By the time he finished in the bathroom she'd made coffee and set out breakfast on the balcony. He'd drunk half his mugful and was counting empty loungers beneath the cloudy sky at Sunset Beach—even at that distance he thought most of them were unoccupied—when Sandra emerged. "Do I look all right?" she said. "I don't think I can tell."