Voices in Summer (11 page)

The day had been perfect. Long, hot, sun-soaked. The tide was out, and the beach, viewed from the sea, where Eve, after an energetic swim, drifted blissfully on the rise and fall of gathering waves, revealed itself as a curve of cliff, a sickle of rocks, and then the wide, clean sweep of the sand.

It was, for this particular beach, crowded. Now, at the end of July, the holiday season was at its peak and the scene was littered with bright spots of colour: bathing towels and striped windbreaks; children in scarlet and canary-yellow bathing suits; sun umbrellas and huge, inflatable rubber balls. Overhead, gulls swooped and screamed, perched on the cliff tops, dived to devour the flotsam of a hundred picnics, dropped in the sand. Their screams were matched by human cries, which, across the distance, pierced the air. Boys playing football, mothers shrieking at wayward toddlers, the happy screams of a girl being mobbed by a couple of youths who appeared to be trying to drown her.

The sea at first had seemed icy, but the swim had got her circulation going and now she was aware only of a marvellous, invigorating, salty coolness. She lay on her back and watched the cloudless sky, her mind empty of anything save the physical perfection of now.

I am fifty-eight, she reminded herself, but had long since decided that one of the good things about being fifty-eight was the fact that one took time to appreciate the really marvellous moments that still came one's way. They weren't happiness, exactly. Years ago, happiness had ceased to pounce, unawares, with the reasonless ecstasy of youth. They were something better. Eve had never much liked being pounced on, by happiness or anything else. It had always frightened and disconcerted her to be taken unawares.

Lulled, as though in a cradle, by the movement of the sea, she let herself be gently washed ashore by the incoming tide.

Now, the waves gathered their puny momentum, curved into shallow breakers. Her hands touched sand. Another wave, and she lay, beached, letting the incoming tide flow over her body, and after the depths in which she had been swimming, the water now felt actually warm.

That was it. It was over. There was no time for more. She got to her feet and walked up onto the blistering sand towards the outcrop of rock where she had left her thick white towel robe. She picked up the robe and pulled it on, felt it warm against the cold wetness of her shoulders and arms. She tied the sash, pushed her feet into thong sandals, started the long walk up towards the narrow footpath that led to the clifftop and the car park.

It was nearly six o'clock. The first of the holiday people were starting to pack up, the children, reluctant, protesting, howling with exhaustion and too much sun. Some people were already well tanned, but others, who had perhaps arrived only yesterday or the day before, were boiled pink as lobsters and were in for a couple of days of agony and peeling shoulders before they could safely venture out again. They never learned. It happened every hot summer, and the doctors' surgeries were filled with them, sitting in rows with flaming faces and blistered backs.

The cliff path was steep. At the top, Eve paused for breath, turning back to look at the sea, framed between two bastions of rock. Inshore, over the sand it was green as jade, but farther out lay a ribbon of the most intense indigo blue. The horizon was hazed in lavender, the sky azure.

A young family caught up with her, the father carrying the toddler, the mother dragging the older child by the hand. He was in tears. ‘I don't want to go 'ome termorrer. I want to stay 'ere for another week. I want to stay 'ere forever.'

Eve caught the young mother's eye. She was close to exasperation. Eve could identify with her. She remembered being that age, with Ivan, a stocky little blond boy, clinging to her hand. She could feel his hand, small and dry and rough, in her own. Don't be angry with him, she wanted to say. Don't spoil it. Before you know where you are, he'll be grown up and you'll have lost him forever. Savour every fleeting moment of your child's life, even if he does, from time to time, drive you out of your mind.

'I don't want to go 'ome.' The drone continued. The mother made a resigned face in Eve's direction and Eve smiled back wryly, but her tender heart bled for the lot of them, who tomorrow would have to leave Cornwall and make the long, tedious journey back to London; to crowds, and streets and offices and jobs and buses and the smell of petrol fumes. It seemed grossly unfair that they should have to go and she should stay. She could stay here forever, because this was where she lived.

Walking towards her car, she prayed for the heat wave to continue. Alec and Laura were arriving this evening in time for dinner, which was the reason Eve could not linger on the beach. They were driving down from London, and tomorrow morning, at some ungodly hour, Alec was leaving again, to make the unimaginably long drive to Scotland and his salmon fishing. Laura would stay at Tremenheere for the next ten days or so, and then Alec would return to take her back to London.

Alec, Eve knew. Pale and stony-faced, still pole-axed by his newly broken marriage, he had come to their wedding, and she had always loved him for this. Since then, slightly less shattered, he had come, once or twice, to stay with Gerald and Eve. But Laura was a stranger. Laura had been ill, in hospital. Laura was coming to Tremenheere to recover.

Which made it even more necessary for the weather to go on being conveniently perfect. Laura would have breakfast in bed and lie, peacefully, in the garden with no person to bother her. She would rest and recover. When she was stronger, perhaps, she, Eve, would bring her here, and they would bask on the beach and swim together.

It made everything so much easier if the weather was good. Living here, in the farthest corner of Cornwall, Eve and Gerald were inundated each summer with visitors: relations, friends from London, young families unable to afford the hideous cost of hotels. They always had a good time because Eve made sure that they did, but sometimes even she became disheartened by constant rain and unseasonable winds, and although she knew perfectly well that it wasn't, she could never quite get rid of the idea that it was all her fault.

These reflections got her into her car, which was boiling hot, despite the fact that she had parked it in the meagre shade of a hawthorn bush. Still bundled in her towel robe, and with the air from the open window cold on her damp hair, she started for home. Up the hill from the cove and onto the main road. Through a village and along by the edge of the sea. The road crossed the railway by means of a bridge and then ran, parallel to the railway lines, towards the town.

In the old days, Gerald had once told her, before the war, here had been only agricultural land, small farms and hidden villages with tiny square-towered churches. The churches still stood, but the fields where the broccoli and the early potatoes had grown were now lost to development and progress. Holiday homes and blocks of flats, petrol stations and supermarkets, lined the road.

There was the heliport that served the Scilly Islands and then the big gates of a mansion house that was now a hotel. Once there had been trees beyond the gates, but these had been cut down and space made for a glittering blue swimming pool.

Between this hotel and the start of the town, a road turned up to the right, signposted to Penvarloe. Into this road Eve turned, away from the stream of traffic. The road narrowed to a lane, high hedged, winding up onto the hill. At once she was back in rural, unspoiled countryside. Small fields, stone-walled, where herds of Guernseys grazed. Deep valleys, dark with thickets of wood. After a mile or so, the road curved steeply and the village of Penvarloe lay ahead, low cottages clinging to the edge of the street. She passed the pub – where tables stood out on the cobbled forecourt – and the tenth-century church, embedded, like some prehistoric rock, surrounded by yews and ancient, leaning gravestones.

The village post office was also the general store and sold vegetables, fizzy drinks, and deep-frozen goodies for the holiday trade. Its open door (for it did not close until seven o'clock in the evening) was flanked with crates of fruit, and as Eve approached, a slender woman, with a mop of curling grey hair, emerged through this door. She wore sunglasses and a pale blue, sleeveless dress and carried a wicker basket of shopping. Eve tooted her horn, and the woman saw her and waved, and Eve slowed the car and drew up at the side of the road.

'Silvia.'

Silvia Marten crossed the pavement and came over to talk, stooping, supported by a hand on the roof of the car. From a distance, despite the grey hair, her appearance was incredibly youthful, so that close up, the lined weather-beaten skin, the sharp angle of her jawbone, the sagging flesh beneath her chin, were somehow shocking. She set down her basket and pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head, and Eve stared up into those amazing eyes, neither yellow no green, very wide, very open, and fringed with thickly mascaraed lashes. Her eye shadow was a pale translucent green and her eyebrows immaculately shaped and plucked.

'Hello, Eve.' Her voice was deep and husky. 'Have you been swimming?'

'Yes, I went to Gwenvoe. I've been busy all day and I simply had to have a cool-off.'

'How energetic you are. Didn't Gerald want to come with you?'

'He's been cutting the grass, I think.'

'Are you going to be in this evening? I've got some chrysanthemum cuttings I promised him, and I've run out of space in my greenhouse. Thought I might bring them up, take a drink off you.'

'Oh, how sweet of you. Of course.' Then she hesitated. 'The only thing is, Alec and Laura are arriving sometime. . . .'

'Alec? Alec Haverstock . . .?' she smiled suddenly, and her smile was disarming as a small boy's grin, transforming her expression, dissolving the tautness of her features. 'Is he coming to stay?'

'Not to stay. Just for a night. Laura's staying on for a bit, though. She's been in hospital; come for a rest cure. Of course' – she slapped the flat of her hand against the driving wheel – ‘I always forget you've known Alec for so long.'

'We used to play on the beach centuries ago. Well . . . I . . . won't come this evening. Another time.

'No.' Eve could not bear to disappoint Silvia, to imagine her returning to her empty house, to spend the rest of this lovely day on her own. 'Come. Come anyway. Gerald would love to see you. If I ask him he'll make us some Pimms.'

'Well, if you're
sure.'

Eve nodded.

'Heaven, then; love to come.' She picked up her basket again. 'I'll just take this home and collect the cuttings. Be about half an hour.'

They parted, Silvia walking up the street in the direction of her little house, Eve to pass her and drive on, through the length of the village and a hundred yards or so beyond the last cottage. Now, she was running alongside the garden of Tremenheere. There was a stone wall, and thick clumps of rhododendrons beyond. The gates stood open, and the drive curved around a stand of azaleas and stopped in a sweep of gravel below the front door. This was framed in honeysuckle, and as Eve got out of the car, she could smell its heavy fragrance, drowsy and sweet in the warmth of the breezeless evening.

She went, not indoors, but in search of Gerald, through the escallonia archway that led into the garden. She saw the sweep of the lawn, newly cut, neatly striped in two shades of green. She saw her husband on the flagged terrace, supine in a long chair, with his old sailing hat on his head, a gin and tonic conveniently to hand, and the
Times
on his lap.

The sight of him was, as always, eminently satisfying. One of the best things about Gerald was that he never pottered. Some husbands Eve knew pottered the day away, always apparently on the go, but never actually achieving anything. Gerald was always either intensely busy or intensely idle. He had spent the day cutting the grass; now he was going to be lazy for an hour or two.

Her white coat caught his eye. He looked up and saw her, laid down the newspaper, took off his spectacles.

'Hello, my darling.' She reached his side, put her hands on the arms of his chair, leaned down to kiss him. 'Did you have a lovely swim?'

'Quite delicious.'

'Sit down and tell me about it.'

‘I can't. I've got to go and pick raspberries.'

'Stay for a second.'

She sat at his feet, cross-legged. Scented thyme grew between the cracks in the flagstones, and she pulled up a tiny sprig and crushed it between her fingers, releasing the herby, aromatic smell.

She said, 'I've just seen Silvia. She's coming round for a drink. She's got some chrysanthemum cuttings for you. I said you'd maybe make us some Pimms.'

'Can't she come another evening? Alec and Laura will probably arrive while she's here.'

‘I think she'd like to see Alec. They said they wouldn't be here until dinnertime. Perhaps –' She had been going to suggest that they should invite Silvia to stay on for dinner, but Gerald interrupted her.

'You're not to ask her to stay for dinner.'

'Why not?'

'Because Laura won't feel like meeting new people, not just yet. Not after two days in hospital and a long drive on a hot day.'

'But it's so embarrassing when people come for a drink and then one has to bundle them off home because it's time to start eating the soup. It seems so inhospitable.'

'You wouldn't know how to be inhospitable. And with a bit of luck, Silvia will have gone before they arrive.'

'You're heartless, Gerald. Silvia's lonely. She's all alone. After all, it's not very long since Tom died.'

'He's been dead for a year.' Gerald never minced words nor talked in platitudes. 'And I'm not heartless. I'm very fond of Silvia and I find her extremely decorative and amusing. But we all have our own lives to live. And I won't have you exhausting yourself, looking after all your lame ducks at the same time. They must wait in a tidy queue and take their turn. And this evening it's Laura's turn.'

'Gerald, I do hope she's nice.'

'I'm sure she's charming.'

'How can you be so sure? You couldn't stand Erica. You said that she drove a wedge between Alec and his family.'