Last Guests of the Season

by Sue Gee

  Opposite her, by a casement window overlooking the street, were Dora’s desk and drawing-board. Dora, standing before the board in her sweater and jeans and tortoiseshell glasses – clipping on layout sheets, sketching in headings, illustrations, text, pausing, frowning, stepping back to think – was lit, as was her work, not only by a lamp but also by the light above the rooftops of the buildings opposite. From down in the street came voices and footsteps and irritably braking taxis; up here, huddles of pigeons considered the world from rooftop and window-ledge, and up here, from her desk across the room, Frances considered Dora.

  She was a little taller than Frances, a little older: in her forties, on the brink of change, she looked like someone about to enter the next stage of her life with grace and beauty. Dark hair was cropped very short; she wore, for close work, expensive tortoiseshell glasses, and make-up so rarely that its effect was extraordinary, a lamp illuminating a painting already full of interest. For this subtlety, this understated plainness, served not to diminish but to enhance her. Her skin was clear, her features well set; even so, at first glance, among more immediately striking and colourful women, she might go unnoticed. Dora had thus what Frances had discovered to be the most potent of all attractions: that you look, and do not remark; that you look again and cannot imagine how you missed the first time. Her face was not simply well made, but full of intelligence, lit in repose by an air of calm self-sufficiency and in communication by her smile and by what seemed, at least, to be a complete concentration upon her companion.

  Like Frances, she was reserved, but where Frances was often taut with tension Dora was simply still. She appeared relaxed, contented. She was on the threshold of an age that could precipitate a crisis, but she had no crisis: she had created a home which felt interesting and welcoming; she had a job she found satisfying, children who had not yet done anything terrible and a husband in whom, if they did, she seemed to have confidence would help to see them through.

  In all this, Dora was not unlike Claire, but Frances felt her to be much more than Claire: cleverer, more complex, more complete. Dora, it seemed, wherever she went, was herself. Frances had spent much of her life asking herself who she was.

  On her desk, the manuscripts and proofs awaiting her stood in a row, secured by rubber bands. Those she was working on lay in front of her, in two distinct piles – pages read, pages about to be read – beside a jar of pencils and pens and a lined pad of notes and queries. Publication and production schedules were pinned to the board on the wall beside her; all her reference books were on the shelves. Everything in this corner of the room conveyed order, purpose and accomplishment: authors, coming in for meetings, looked and were reassured, both by the corner and by Frances herself, rising to greet them with a handshake, well dressed, professional. The only jarring note on the well-kept desk was an ashtray: somehow Frances did not look like a smoker, but then she did not smoke much in the office, and never if people objected. And the ashtray was redeemed: by the well-kept plants in the corner, by the framed photographs of her husband and son, and by the sense she gave her authors that theirs was the book she most cared about, that it had her undivided attention.

  Nor did she disappoint them. If anything went wrong – a crisis at the printers in Madrid – or right – the sale of foreign editions at Frankfurt – they were telephoned, calmed or congratulated. On publication day each one received a card and flowers. And if they never, as some authors and editors do, grew close, they respected her, and thanked their lucky stars. And Frances, dealing with them all so well, albeit at a distance, genuinely enjoying her job, sat in her corner when they had left and stacked up the pages of the manuscript they had gone through, line by line, and looked up, and across the room.

  Dora, it is friendship and it is more than friendship …

  As well as the illuminated drawing-board, there stood on Dora’s desk sheets of Letraset, tins of cowgum, fine cartographer’s pens. Pinned up haphazardly on the board beside her were book jackets, postcards, photographs of her teenage children and middle-aged husband, newspaper cuttings and cartoons. In the midst of all this, Dora moved with no less efficiency than Frances, but with more grace. She stood at the drawing-board thinking, tapping a pencil against her teeth; she picked out a colour transparency, put on her glasses and held it up to the window: thoughtful, preoccupied, working things out. She reached to answer the telephone, discussing in the same unhurried tones where her daughter might have left her trainers and what Jocelyn might take to Frankfurt.

  This air of serenity was part of what had drawn Frances to her. Part, but not all: after years of thinking of her, she still did not feel she knew the whole, and no longer tried to. For what seemed at times infinitely complex felt essentially, as always in love, perfectly simple: she wanted to be with her, that was all.

  Dora, she wrote now, hearing, far above her, an aeroplane climb the hot white sky, I wish you were with me, you would so like it here …

  Her feet crunched on twigs in the carpet of needles; she could smell resin from the eucalyptus trees, as well as pine. She walked on, heading downwards, towards the river. Last night I sat out on the terrace, after everyone else had gone to bed, looking at the stars above the mountains. I wanted to hear a footstep, to turn to see you coming gravely out through the tall white doors to sit beside me. I miss you. I miss you …

  So many unwritten words, so many unspoken declarations.

  She had come to the end of the level ground; beneath her she could see the river, lit by the slowly sinking sun. The air was no longer baking, as it had been when she left Oliver and Jessica down by the pool, but balmy, warm, the light as clear as honey, slanting through the trees. She sat down, suddenly overcome with exhaustion, and the pain of absence; she leaned against the peeling trunk of a eucalyptus, beneath motionless blue-grey leaves, and wrapped her arms around her in a trance of longing.

  Tom woke first, and lay for a while without moving, looking up at the ceiling, where a brown patch of damp made two islands and a giraffe. Well, a sort of giraffe. Only three legs. A lot of spots, though. He went on gazing at it, wondering how long it would take a three-legged giraffe to swim between the two islands, and how it had come to lose the leg in the first place. Engrossed, he forgot where he was, in the same way he forgot when Oliver read the Just So Stories to him: he did that, sometimes, when he came back from work. The giraffe was a kind of Just So animal – perhaps Oliver would like to come and look at it later. Or perhaps he would be too busy. He gave an enormous yawn, coming to, and rolled over, towards Jack’s bed.

  Jack lay sleeping peacefully, head on one side, arms flung out on the pillow. Tom pushed back the blue and white bedcover and slid on to the floor; he crossed the room and stood looking down at him, shifting from one foot to the other, clearing his throat. Jack’s eyelids fluttered, but he did not wake. He had fantastic eyelashes, furry as caterpillars – well, perhaps more silky than furry. With one large finger Tom reached down to touch them, just to see what they felt like: Jack stirred, and the finger slipped, poking into the corner.

  ‘Oi!’

  ‘Sorry.’ Tom backed away.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Jack, flushed, furious, rubbed at his eye. ‘Ow.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Tom again, and reached for the door handle. He’d better get out of here, before there was really a fuss. The door swung towards him and he went out quickly, but the catch caught his side, as the one on the bathroom door had done the other day, scraping all along his waist at the gap between shrunken T-shirt and outgrown shorts. He fought back tears, clutching his side, and went along the landing to his parents’room. Outside the door, he knocked; no one answered. He turned the handle and pushed.

  The room was empty. The shutters were closed, the bed made, clothes folded in piles on the chest of drawers, waiting to be put away. He flung himself down on the bed, and wrapped his arms round a pillow, pressing hard. He wasn’t here. Not in Portugal, not anywhere. He wasn’t, any more, he simply wasn’t: it
was like being dead.

  After a while he lifted his head, listening. Jack wouldn’t dare come in here, but he might be waiting. He wiped his face on the pillow and crept to the door, opening it just a little crack, just to see. And the corridor stretching ahead was empty and sunny and quiet. It looked lovely, as if everything was quite all right, with people doing things downstairs, like sewing or something.

  Jack must have gone in to his parents: where were Frances and Oliver?

  Tom crept out of the room, softly closing the door. He went along the loose rag runner in the corridor very carefully, and over the brilliant patches of light on the landing carpet, down into the large and airy sitting-room. This was empty, too, and so was Jessica’s room, the door wide open, a muddle of clothes on an unmade bed.

  He went out on to the terrace: no one was there. From a long way down in the village he could hear a saw, rather a nice sound, but he couldn’t hear voices, or anyone doing anything. The swing-seat was still: the cushions looked smooth and cool, and he thought he might like to he in it, while he had the chance. It was a bit like Goldilocks, trying things out: he moved towards the seat and lay down, pushing himself back and forth with his hand against the table, hearing the creak, and then the church clock, striking two.

  His hand slid down inside his shorts. He wasn’t supposed to do this, Oliver and Frances were always frowning about it, but he hadn’t done it for a long time, in fact he’d forgotten all about it since they came on holiday. Anyway, it was nice; anyway, they weren’t here. The swing-seat moved gently to and fro; leafy shadows from the lemon trees played on the canopy; he closed his eyes and his fingers rubbed slowly up and down. It felt lovely; you could forget about everything, doing this.

  From the bottom of the steps leading down to the garden came the gentle murmur of the hens, the scratch of their feet on dry grass, dry earth. They were free here, not like the poor gasping ones in the market this morning, who were going to die. He rubbed harder, trying to get rid of the sight of their open beaks and the doom in their eyes: it had all gone away with the sick pill and the sleep, he didn’t want to have to think about them now, he was feeling comforted, and nothing mattered any more; not being sick, not the hens, not people getting angry. He’d never get angry again, either: everything was going to be all right.

  From far above him, a voice. ‘Hey, look at Tom! He’s playing with himself!’ Jack, in joyful mockery, was looking down from the balcony.

  Tom whipped out his hand and went scarlet. ‘I wasn’t.’

  ‘Yes you were, I saw you.’

  The canopy … The gap. Jack could see through the end, through the treacherous gap. Tom swung his legs round, and sat up; he put his hands on either side of him.

  ‘Okay, Jack, that’s enough.’

  From beside Jack came Robert’s voice, steady and kind. He was leaning on the parapet, calling down. ‘All right, Tom? Had a good rest?’

  He felt himself go redder still, mumbling a reply. And then footsteps came up from the garden, and Oliver appeared, followed by Jessica.

  ‘Hello, Tom. What’ve you been up to?’

  ‘He’s been playing with himself.’ Jack’s clear voice came floating down through the warm still air.

  ‘Jack …’ said Robert, but it was too late. Jessica burst into giggles, and Oliver, who he thought was going to get angry, seemed to think it was funny too, and then they were all laughing, as if they couldn’t help it, as if he was on television or something. He sprang up, and tears of rage and humiliation spurted from him as he made for the other flight of steps.

  ‘Tom …’ Oliver was reaching out for him, trying to take his arm: he snatched it away and began to run, stumbling across the orange tiles of the terrace, down the stone steps and round through the scrubby garden, up the next steps to the water tank. The water running into the tank sounded wonderful: he wanted to plunge into it, or race along the path into the pool, but he could hear Oliver calling him: ‘Tom, Tom!’ and he ran up to the iron gate, panting, yanking at it, bursting out on to the road.

  ‘Tom!’

  He stood undecided, breathing hard: should he go down, to the village? No, more people would see him – anyway, he’d be going past the garden again. He’d go up, away from everyone, away from them all. He swung round and went pounding up, panting even harder, terribly hot, the road beneath him swimming through the hateful blur of tears. How could he have done that, how could he? All out of doors, where anyone could see him, he must have been mad.

  Someone was coming down the road towards him: he looked up, heaving. And there was Frances! He flung himself upon her.

  ‘Oh, Tom,’ she said wearily, holding his hot, sweating body away from her. ‘Now what’s the matter?’

  Night, the house in darkness. The shutters, opened in the late afternoon and evening, were closed again now, against air which began, as the sun sank behind the mountains, to grow chilly, and then, as the evening wore on, to grow cold. Jessica, the last of the children to come in from the terrace after supper, complained it was still too early; nonetheless she seemed glad to be in bed, suddenly tired, asking for another blanket. Claire found one in the cupboard, and tucked her in. ‘You really have caught the sun today.’ She kissed her, and Jessica turned away, yawning.

  Now, the whole house was asleep: Jessica, in her room by herself downstairs, her door open on to the sitting-room, where the moon shone through the pane of clear glass above the terrace doors; everyone else upstairs, soundless. The church clock struck three, but it could have been two o’clock, or four; after a while, a door on the corridor opened, quietly, and was closed again. Slow footsteps moved along the rag runner, hands felt along walls.

  Tom, deeply asleep, was making for the stairs.

  He came down them carefully, holding the banister, stopping at the turn; his lips moved and his eyelids flickered; he came on down, moving steadily, carefully, reaching the bottom, feeling for a step that wasn’t there, standing very still, waiting. Then he moved again, along the wooden passage into the sitting-room, feeling the panelling, stopping when it stopped, feeling the air. He turned, and made for the doors to the terrace, across the moonlit expanse of floorboards, with nothing to stop him, everything airy and open and free.

  But Jessica, dreaming uneasily, turned over and cried out something, and he came to a halt, and waited. Silence.

  He moved on, reaching out again. His hands met something enormous and hairy, which rocked: his eyes flew open. The room was bright with the moon, but the figure towering above him was huge and dark, headless, with a hat. It swayed towards him, and he pushed at it, shouting. It fell with a dreadful crash, like thunder; somebody screamed. He felt hot pee pour everywhere.

  Lights on, doors opening, Jessica’s scream. A horrible fizzing sound, which grew louder. Bare feet raced down the stairs, voices were calling.

  Someone was holding him close.

  Chapter Five

  Jessica, shivering and tearful, was taken upstairs and tucked into her parents’bed: Robert, turning off lights to quieten the fuse-box, dispensing brandy to shaken grown-ups, said he would sleep down in her room. Jack, undisturbed by any of the uproar, slept on, breathing steadily, as Frances, by the light from the landing, helped Tom in to clean dry pyjamas.

  ‘There,’ she said, buttoning him up, guiding him towards his bed, smoothing the pillows. ‘In you get.’

  He was ashen, clammy, his hair sticking up in thick dark tufts. He clambered heavily on to the mattress and sank down.

  ‘Stay with me.’ His eyes were blank.

  ‘Of course I’ll stay.’ She sat on the edge of the bed, holding his hand.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked her. ‘What did I do?’

  ‘You –’ she hesitated. Were you supposed to tell children they walked in their sleep? She knew you were never supposed to wake them: they never had woken him. Tonight – what should she say?

  ‘You went downstairs to the loo,’ she said slowly. ‘You must have been half asleep and gone t
he wrong way, I suppose. So you banged into – that thing.’ Well – it might have been the truth. ‘Poor Tom. Never mind, it’s all right now.’

  ‘Mmm.’ His breathing slowed. She realised suddenly, as he began to relax, that she had been dreaming of Dora when the crash came from downstairs, but that since then had not thought of her once. Let it go, then, she said to herself, summoning sense and reason, and an ordered future swam up before her, in which Dora had disappeared and Frances and Oliver were reunited, their child between them. Let it go, let it go.

  Tom yawned, falling asleep with his hand in hers. Frances knew that Dora, who loved her children dearly, and was always talking about them, would have been the first to fly downstairs at the sound of that terrible crash and the scream; that it would have been she, no one else, not a woman he barely knew, who would have cradled her son in her arms, rocking, reassuring, holding him. Dora, she wrote, looking into the darkness, loving her more than ever with this vision, I was dreaming of you tonight when Tom went sleepwalking … What was the dream? She closed her eyes, feeling sleep heavy upon her, trying to recapture it. Let me sink into sleep again, let me find you …

  The floorboards on the landing creaked.