Last Guests of the Season

by Sue Gee

  ‘What?’

  He mouthed at her, made gestures. ‘Do you want to dance?’

  She shook her head, about to add, Later, in a little while. Oliver looked at her, his face darkening. ‘Please…’ she said. ‘I was…’ But he had left her, marching across the street, seizing Tom’s hand as he passed, dragging him, astonished and afraid, towards the café. Frances, shaken, felt Dora also – the real Dora, not her likeness, who went on dancing – abandon her and disappear; she was left with Jessica, who looked distressed.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked, struggling to regain a sense of herself as someone capable of looking after a child.

  Jessica shook her head, not meeting her eyes, trying, clearly, to indicate that nothing was the matter at all.

  With a sound like a nail being dragged across glass, the song came to an end; there was a burst of clapping and cheers, and the bandleader stepped forward, taking the microphone, which shrieked.

  ‘Obrigado, obrigado …’ He began to talk rapidly, greeted with laughter and more applause.

  ‘Come on,’ said Frances, taking Jessica in charge. ‘Let me buy you an ice or something.’ They moved through the dancers, and she cast one last look at the woman who was not Dora, seeing, ahead in the queue, Oliver and Tom, next to each other in a silence that she could sense from here was grim; then the music began again, louder than ever.

  ‘Oliver …’ She went up to him, trying to smile, to defuse. ‘You misunderstood –’

  ‘Did I? I don’t think so.’

  ‘But you did. I was thinking about something else, that was all – you didn’t give me a chance –’ She could hear herself trying to absolve her own part, to make light of her abstraction, and he said coldly:

  ‘Please don’t try to tell me what I did or didn’t do,’ and turned away from her.

  Between them, Tom was clutching at himself.

  ‘Do you need a pee?’ she asked him. He shook his head. ‘I think you do.’ She took his hand.

  ‘I want an ice cream.’

  ‘You can have one when we get back. Come on.’ She led him through the crowd, looking bleakly about her. Apart from the single café there seemed nowhere which might house a lavatory, and anyway, who cared? There were gaps between the houses, leading straight to the mountainside on earthen paths bordered by ferns. She ushered Tom through one of these and waited, trying to recover herself, while he peed into the ground; he finished, giving a shiver, and pulled up his shorts again.

  ‘Oliver’s angry,’ he said, as they made their way back.

  ‘Not with you.’ The singer on the stage was wailing; the air throbbed. ‘Did you like the dancing?’ she asked, and Tom nodded, but said no more as he walked beside her. They moved to rejoin the queue, seeing Claire, Jack and Robert, who had reached their goal and were out in the street again with ice creams and cans of beer, wave and beckon to them. Frances waved back in so far as she ever waved – and looked along the line leading into the café for Oliver, who wasn’t there.

  ‘Can you see Oliver anywhere?’ she asked Tom.

  ‘He’s dancing.’

  ‘Dancing?’ she repeated blankly, and then she saw him, with Jessica, on the far side of the bandstand near the beer stall. Jessica had her back to the café queue; she was swaying to the beat, her hair swishing across her shoulders, her hands at her side. Oliver, opposite her, was studiedly looking at the ground, a tall, beautiful man moving little, shifting on his feet.

  In a long ago time when Frances and Oliver had gone dancing – a time which felt so distant it might never have happened – she had found that control and restraint, and the sense of power which lay beneath it, overwhelming, full of excitement, a match for her own reserve, a challenge.

  Now, in what had become a marriage of silence and withdrawal, she saw only repression, withholding, coldness. She wondered that he was dancing at all, and particularly with Jessica, guessing that it was she, a pretty and determined child whom Oliver clearly found a relief from Tom – and probably herself – who had dragged him out there.

  Perhaps forty people were dancing now, and Oliver and Jessica, adult and child, looked not at all out of place: there was an old woman in black with her granddaughter, a mother and baby, laughing, a group of little girls, teenagers returned from the procession, holding hands. And where was Dora? Dora was nowhere to be seen. Searching through the watchers and the dancers for that particular and graceful turn of the head, waiting for the lift of the heart, Frances saw only strangers.

  ‘What about my ice cream?’ Tom was asking. ‘What about my ice cream?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, distantly, filled with disappointment – for if there were not to be Dora, Dora’s likeness had helped – and she turned back to the queue and stood, waiting, as Tom went to join the Murrays and a bar football table rattled and banged beside her to whoops of excitement from the boys pressed all around it. The queue moved slowly, the air filled with the smell of sweat, bacon, spiced sausage, coffee and beer; the few spindly tables in the hot little room were packed solid with noisy families. Frances stood watching a girl in apron and ponytail scooping out ice cream from a box, pressed on all sides by people coming out, people pouring in to replace them. And here, as she neared the top of the queue at last, was Dora, leaving with her bearded companion, coming towards her. She drew closer, holding herself in a little, keeping herself apart from the throng as both Frances and the real Dora would choose to do, and as she drew near, Frances, who rarely initiated any social encounter, looked her full in the face, and smiled at her. The woman looked back, puzzled by a stranger’s friendliness; she did not smile, and Frances said unsteadily, ‘I’m sorry – I thought you were someone else.’

  The woman turned to her companion. ‘Was sagt mir diese Frau?’

  Smiling smoothly – blandly, thought Frances, finding him of no interest – the man said to her in halting English, ‘Can we help you?’

  ‘No,’ she said shortly. ‘I made a mistake.’ She had reached the counter. She opened her purse, indicating strawberry-flavour cornets to the girl with the ponytail, knowing she had been rude and intrusive to a couple who would probably speculate before they forgot about her, and she felt, as she counted out worn escudos notes, a complete exhaustion with herself. Outside again, carrying her ices, she saw the German couple walking away from the dancers, leaving, going back through the village.

  Enough, she said. Enough, enough.

  Tom was standing with Claire, Jack on her other side; they were watching the dancing and, in particular, not Oliver and Jessica, but Robert and Guida, who were much enjoying themselves, arms linked, turning each other about.

  Frances, glad of the distraction, gave Tom his ice and then Jack, who looked at it longingly, her own.

  ‘And how did this come to be?’ she asked Claire, who was observing the scene with amusement. There was a break in the song; Robert and Guida drew apart, laughing.

  ‘I hadn’t realised Guida was here,’ she added more quietly.

  ‘Nor we,’ said Claire. ‘I think she came up after the procession, with her friends. Anyway, she’s managed to lure Robert out there, which is more than I could do.’ Another song began, and she covered her ears. ‘I’m not sure I can take too much more of this,’ and she waved an elaborate goodbye to Robert, who was dancing again.

  ‘Shall we go?’ Frances mouthed at her, and Claire nodded.

  They began to move through the bystanders and the stalls of pottery and leather bags, the boys following, dripping melted ice cream. They passed the bandstand, deafened, and came up behind Jessica and Oliver, who were no longer dancing but queueing at the beer stall. Claire tapped Jess on the shoulder.

  ‘We’re off,’ she said.

  Jessica looked at her, all smiles. ‘Bye.’ She saw Jack’s ice cream and moved towards him. ‘Let’s have a lick.’

  Oliver looked at Frances. ‘Will you dance with me now?’ he asked her, and it was clear that he was angry still, his invitation made in that tone
impossible to accept.

  Frances hesitated. ‘I –’ she began, and then she realised, and sensed that Claire was realising it also, that Oliver, who rarely drank more than a couple of glasses of wine with a meal, had been drinking now for some time.

  ‘No,’ he said, beads of sweat all along his forehead beneath the line of thick hair. ‘Of course you won’t. Why should you dance with me?’

  Beside Frances, Tom was looking at the ground; licking Jack’s ice cream, a few feet away, Jessica heard none of this exchange.

  ‘Jessica,’ said Claire, going over to her, ‘I think you’d better come with us now.’

  ‘What?’ She looked at her mother and her face fell. ‘I don’t want to,’ she said. ‘It’s lovely here.’

  ‘I know, but –’ Claire floundered. It wasn’t getting late, it wasn’t getting cold, there was no obvious and familiar reason she could give a twelve-year-old for leaving. ‘It’s nearly suppertime,’ she said weakly.

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Jess … I’m sorry, I don’t want to have an argument, I just want you to come.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I say so,’ said Claire, clutching at parental authority.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Oliver’s drunk,’ she said at last, exasperated.

  ‘Is he?’ asked Jack, fascinated. ‘He doesn’t look drunk.’

  ‘Oh, God.’ Claire turned, seeing Oliver at the top of the beer queue now, buying cans. She beckoned to Frances. ‘Will you keep an eye on these two for me?’ she asked as Frances came up with Tom, dragging his feet, making noises. ‘I just want to have a word with Robert.’ And she pushed through the crowd, waving and calling, finding Robert and Guida still, as she thought crossly, jigging about.

  Robert looked at her enquiringly.

  ‘I thought you’d gone,’ he shouted.

  Claire cupped her hands to her mouth.

  ‘We had. I need you.’

  Robert sighed. He made ruefully apologetic gestures to Guida, who smiled and nodded and returned to her companions, a group of teenagers whom Claire recognised from their own village.

  ‘What’s up?’ he asked, when she had gone, and Claire explained, leading him back to where Frances and the three children stood in an awkwardly disconsolate group, the boys scuffing at the ground, Jessica chewing at a nail, something she hadn’t done for years. Claire looked around.

  ‘Where’s Oliver?’

  ‘He’s gone.’ Frances was white-faced. ‘He’s stormed off.’

  ‘Oh. Oh, dear. Well …’ Claire’s voice died away.

  ‘Right,’ said Robert, marshalling them all. ‘Let’s go home and have something to eat.’ He took Jack and Tom by the hand, one on either side of him, swinging their arms to the music as they walked away. ‘Had a good time? Jolly little do?’

  ‘Idiot,’ said Jessica, under her breath.

  Robert stopped swinging, and looked at her. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Her hair fell over her face; she buried her hands in her pockets.

  ‘I hope it was nothing,’ said Robert, in a tone none of them was used to hearing. ‘Because I’ve had just about enough of your rudeness to me on this holiday. Got it?’

  Jessica didn’t answer. She stood waiting for him and the boys to move on, and as Claire, approaching with Frances, put out a hand towards her, she pushed it away.

  ‘What is it?’ Claire asked. ‘Come on, Jess, please don’t be like this …’

  ‘Stop it,’ said Jessica. ‘Stop it!’

  Claire shook her head, and gave up. They had come to the end of the line of cars leading out from the village; ahead, a few people were walking down towards their own village, on a road littered with pieces of toilet paper fallen from the trees; drink cans and paper bags lay beneath the blackberry brambles. Robert and the boys stopped to pick a few of the berries and Claire, searching for neutrality, a way to make things better, said to Frances:

  ‘We could come up here tomorrow, perhaps, with a bowl …’

  Frances didn’t answer, looking straight ahead. They walked on down the road, rope-soled summer shoes quiet on the tarmac, the light and the music beginning to fade. Behind them, Jessica followed, slowly, wanting nothing to do with any of them, looking around at every footstep on the road behind for Oliver, who had left without even saying goodbye.

  The children, after a game of Scrabble, had been put to bed; Frances, too, had gone up early, pale, with a headache, leaving Robert and Claire out on the terrace with the last of the jug of red wine. Every now and then the air was pierced by a speeding motor bike, and the road past the house lit by a wildly swaying headlamp; then it was quiet again, except for the halfhearted fizz of the fuse-box from inside the house, and the crickets from down in the darkened garden. They sat, Claire on the swing-seat and Robert leaning back in his chair, watching the moths bump against the outside lamp above the double doors.

  ‘Where do you think he’s got to?’ asked Claire.

  ‘No idea,’ said Robert. ‘Do stop worrying.’

  ‘I can’t help it.’ The candle in its saucer was burning low; she leaned forward and fiddled with a matchstick, poking it into the wax. ‘Aren’t you worried?’

  ‘I think he’s all right,’ said Robert, reaching for the jug. ‘As much as he’s ever all right. He and Frances, perhaps I should say. It’s quite clear they’re not.’ He refilled their glasses. ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Breaking confidences?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Robert shook his head. ‘Which leaves me to speculate,’ he said, and slowly turned his glass in his hands. ‘What am I going to do?’ he said, after a while. ‘What am I going to do about Jess?’

  ‘Nothing. It’ll pass.’

  ‘That’s what I keep telling myself.’ The glass in his hands went round and round. ‘Were you like this with your father?’

  She tried to remember. ‘I don’t think so. Perhaps, a bit. What about Penny? What was she like?’

  Robert thought of his sister, so different from him, liable to fly off the handle, frustrated by her children, desperate to get back to work. ‘Mmm,’ he said slowly. ‘Perhaps that’s where it comes from. Oh, well.’ He drank, finishing the glass. ‘Shall we go in?’

  ‘How can we?’ Another motor bike raced past, and she covered her mouth at an inward vision of horror: Oliver weaving drunkenly down the road, unseen in a thin and wavering headlight, hearing a screech of brakes too late, too late …

  ‘Stop it,’ said Robert, watching her. ‘He’s okay. Hey – what was that?’

  Above them the outside lamp was flickering, and the line of the street lights coming up from the village flickered too. Then, beyond them, the lights of the whole village went dim: street lamps, televisions, neon strips in kitchens and low-watt bulbs in upstairs bedrooms. They flickered, faded again, and then came on and stayed on, as though nothing had happened.

  ‘Well, well, I wonder what all that was about.’ Robert got to his feet. ‘I’d better have a look at the fuse-box, I suppose.’ They could hear it fizzing softly still.

  ‘You can look at it,’ said Claire, ‘but there’s not a damn thing you can do with it, is there?’

  ‘We seem to be powerless all round,’ he said, going inside.

  Claire went on sitting there, rocking the seat to and fro, her feet on the ground, vaguely comforted by the rhythm, still straining her ears for Oliver’s footsteps approaching the house from the road above, for the creak of the gate by the water tank. But there were no footsteps, there was no creak, and in a few moments Robert returned, standing in the open doorway.

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It’s just buzzing away, I don’t think it’s anything to worry about. Come on, let’s go to bed.’

  She sighed, and got up. ‘What shall we do about the door? Just leave the key as usual?’

  ‘Yes, what else?’ And Robert went inside again, leaving her to blow out the stump
of candle.

  In the sitting-room she took the key from her purse and went out to put it under the stone at the top of the steps; then she closed the double doors and went to check on Jessica, who had, as usual, fallen asleep with the light on. Claire stood looking down at her, trying to see, in sleep, her daughter’s steps towards adolescence and independence fall away, leaving a child again. She tried, but it was difficult. Bending to kiss her, switching out the light, Claire felt a mixture of sadness and apprehension that went deep, and she went slowly out of the room and along the panelled corridor to the bathroom with her heart full, forgetting, for a while, all about Oliver, wandering in a drunken fury out on the mountainside.

  They fell asleep soon after eleven, and were woken at who knew what hour, hearing from somewhere a violent banging on a door, and shouts.

  ‘Christ.’ Robert, who had been dreaming deeply, sat up in bed. He put out a hand for the light on the table, fumbling for the switch. Nothing happened. He tried again. ‘Bugger.’

  ‘What is it?’ Claire sat up beside him. ‘My God, is that Oliver?’

  ‘Must be. Hang on, the bulb’s gone.’

  From downstairs the banging grew louder; they heard a door on the corridor opening. Robert got out of bed.

  ‘It’s so dark,’ said Claire.

  ‘Of course it’s dark, it’s the middle of the night …’ He was stumbling across the room, stepping over dropped clothes and jumbled-up sandals, still half asleep. He felt for the switch by the door and flicked it on. Nothing happened. Again. Nothing.

  ‘Power cut,’ said Claire shakily. ‘No torch. Oh, God …’ She pushed back the duvet and then pulled it up again as the pounding from downstairs grew fiercer. And then came Jessica’s voice: ‘Mummy! Mummy!’ She sprang out of bed.

  ‘Okay, okay, keep calm.’ Robert, opening the door on to the passage, waited for her to get to him; they reached for each other’s hands, moving out into the darkness of the corridor.

  ‘Claire?’ Frances, invisible, was standing in her own open doorway, sounding horribly calm.

  ‘Yes,’ said Claire, then jumped as Jessica’s voice came again. ‘Quick!’ she said to Robert. ‘Quick!’