Excess Baggage

by Judy Astley

  A gust of wind blew one of the louvre slats to the floor. Mark stood up, alarmed. All three children stirred in their sleep but didn’t wake. Theresa looked at the gap in the window and shuddered. ‘Do we put it back? Will they all fall out?’

  ‘The rain’ll pour in if I leave it out.’ Mark pushed the piece of wood back into place, not holding out much hope that it would stay there. It seemed to be bent. The noise outside, he now noticed, was horrendous. Through the gap in the shutter he could just about make out trees wildly waving. ‘Jesus, it’s like something out of a horror movie,’ he said.

  ‘I’m scared.’ Theresa was next to him. He put his arm round her and she didn’t pull away.

  ‘Come on, let’s join the others for a bit,’ she said. ‘But if it gets any worse we’ll come back in here with the kids. If we’re all going to die, we’ll all go together.’

  ‘So I don’t tell them we’re getting divorced?’

  ‘No. Anyway we’re not. I’ve put twenty years into this marriage, I’m not giving up on it now.’ She sounded almost as fierce as before, which confused Mark.

  ‘You make it sound like a life sentence.’ He risked a grin.

  ‘You’ve just defined marriage,’ she said, opening the door.

  ‘We could play a game,’ Plum suggested.

  ‘What about Botticelli?’ Colette suggested.

  ‘Boring. Anyone got any cards? We could play poker, for cash,’ Luke said.

  ‘No cards,’ Shirley decreed. ‘In fact, before we do anything else, this might be a good moment now we’re all together …’

  ‘Yes. We’ve got something to tell you.’ Perry sat on the sofa next to her.

  ‘I knew it.’ Simon got up and started pacing the room. ‘How long have you known?’ he accused Perry.

  ‘A couple of months. We’ve been waiting for the right moment.’

  Simon was biting his knuckles. Lucy looked at her brother and gestured to him to sit down. It must be sad to assume that all unexpected news could only be bad – neither Shirley nor Perry was looking as if it was.

  ‘We’ve decided it’s time to offload some assets,’ Perry began.

  ‘And to make a move. It’ll be our last one,’ Shirley added.

  ‘Last one? So you are ill? You’ve got something serious?’ Simon chipped in.

  Shirley laughed. ‘Well at our age we’ve all got something serious – it’s called old age and it’s terminal. No, Simon, apart from the odd angina twinge, and I’ve got something for that from the doctor, we’re both fine. No, it’s just that we decided recently that it’s time we saw more of our family, while we’re still mobile and most of our brain cells are still functioning.’

  ‘Well you’re certainly seeing them now,’ Plum commented. Simon glared at her.

  ‘So we’ve sold the house in Wilmslow and we’re coming south. To be nearer all of you.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say anything before? Why the big secret?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘Well there was always that risk you’d try to talk us out of it,’ Shirley told her. ‘You’d come up with all the usual: “You don’t want to move far at your time of life”, “What about all your friends”, “The price of property in the south”. We’d thought of all that, we’re not babies.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have said any of that. You’re more than old enough to make your own decisions,’ Lucy said, then added as a reminder, ‘we all are.’

  The sound of the wind filled the silence that followed. The noise was now constant and high-pitched, no longer in gusts, and reminded Lucy of the almost shocking explosiveness of an express train blasting through a quiet country station, only this seemed to be a train with an endless number of carriages.

  ‘Where will you live, exactly?’ Mark’s question hid plenty of others: were his in-laws proposing the conversion of his Surrey double garage into a granny flat? Would they (oh please God) require a paying stake in their grandchildren’s education? Plum wondered (with dread), would they require a slap-up traditional roast every Sunday? And, worst of all, would Simon now run to his mother with every glitch in their family life? Would every teenage fault, that would not escape Shirley’s eagle eye, be down to Bad Mothering?

  ‘I think it’s very brave of you,’ Lucy said at last. ‘Not many people have the guts to uproot themselves from a lifetime in one area and settle somewhere new.’ She thought about Henry telling her ‘So don’t go home’, as if it was that simple. And here were her parents preparing to move on at nearly eighty. It made her, at less than half their age, feel pretty cowardly.

  ‘Of course we won’t be descending on you lot for ever. Well, only for a month or two till the flat in Hove is ready. We fancied being by the sea,’ Shirley told them. She didn’t, Mark noticed, specify exactly on whom they would be descending. ‘A month or two’ was a long time when it came to live-in in-laws.

  Perry smiled. ‘Even above the howling wind I can almost hear the sighs of relief.’ There was a lot of bright, denying laughter. ‘And of course the other thing is,’ he went on, ‘with the house sold, we’ll be able to pass on some of the cash. Then if we make it past the next seven years, there’s less death duties to pay. Don’t want the Government taking a chunk of our hard-earned money.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘I’ll tell you how much you get if we make it to the morning. No point getting your hopes up if Shirley and me are going to snuff it in this wind like a pair of burnt-out candles.’

  There was a spooky silence when the wind abruptly ceased. Perry was dismissive, saying, ‘Is that all we get? I’ve been out on worse Sunday afternoons on the Matlock hills.’

  The new stillness was eerily oppressive and Lucy felt as if she could hardly dare breathe, as if the wind had swept all the oxygen away leaving a dangerous vacuum in its place.

  ‘That’s the start of the eye,’ Simon told them, as if they hadn’t all heard the manager’s lecture. ‘This is the dangerous bit. Nobody must go outside; part two could start up any second.’

  It was too late, Luke and Becky had already unbolted the double terrace doors and were breathing in the stifling, immobile air. Lucy went to look too, to see what was different. The sky was clear again, as if nothing had happened, but below on the beach the skeletons of the once-thatched beach umbrellas looked tatty and forlorn. Against the sky she could see the silhouette of a ragged palm tree, its few remaining leaves shredded and broken. She couldn’t see the rest of the hotel grounds without opening the villa’s main door, but that would push Simon’s patience too far.

  ‘Mum, come back in. I’m scared.’ Colette stood in the doorway, shivering, though the night was even warmer than it had been at dusk. Lucy shepherded Becky and Luke back inside, shut the doors again and let Simon do his bit with the locking and the careful readjusting of the louvres.

  ‘Goodness, it must be hot out there. You’ve let all the humid air come in now.’ Shirley was fanning herself with a guidebook. ‘Lucky we’ve got the fan.’

  ‘Lucky the electricity hasn’t given out too,’ Theresa commented. She felt drowsy, which she put down to the wine, and arranged herself under the ceiling fan where it wafted welcome draughts into her hair.

  ‘There’s still the second half of the storm to come,’ Simon warned.

  ‘Oh, the harbinger of doom,’ Theresa mocked. ‘We’re all right so far, it’s not that bad, Simon, give it a rest.’

  ‘Let’s all have a cup of tea,’ Plum suggested brightly. She was feeling claustrophobic and thought that sitting about waiting for disaster was a waste of time and energy. It was well past midnight now. They could all just stop anticipating the worst, surely, and spread themselves out for some sleep. Why on earth didn’t Shirley and Perry just go and get some sleep in the other bedroom? Theresa and Mark could go in with their three and the rest of them could curl up on the sofas and the floor with their blankets. There was no need to sit up like this as if it was a jolly and wonderful party that no-one wanted to leave. She filled the kettle and opened the cupboard to look for tea
bags and cups. Perhaps she could sneak a shot of the minibar gin into each of them, get them thinking about sleep.

  The storm’s return shocked them all. It began with a bizarre, violent hammering at the terrace doors, as if something monstrous was demanding to get in.

  ‘Jesus, it’s like that bit in Jaws when the shark comes back to the boat …’ Lucy said.

  ‘It’s coming from the other direction this time. Hurricanes do that.’ Simon’s voice was now shaky and scared: being well-informed was obviously no longer a comfort. However bad the wind had seemed an hour ago, this was far worse. Lucy thought he sounded as if he wanted, suddenly, to abandon his role as troop leader and crawl under a table. Perhaps they all should. The banging continued, alternatively heaving and crashing at the doors till the wood began to splinter and split.

  ‘Shit, it’s giving way! So much for your system, Simon.’ Mark hurled himself at the double doors to try to force them back into place but the thick dense wood was already buckling outwards under the wind’s power. The noise was dreadful now: a constant long low whooing sound exactly like the moment before a speeding underground train emerges from the tunnel at a station. Except this noise was relentless, terrifying. Becky and Colette had their hands clasped over their ears. Marisa was whimpering softly, crouched behind the sofa again with the blanket over her head.

  ‘We’ll have to leave it!’ Simon said. ‘We’ll just have to let it go.’

  ‘But we’ll be sucked out over the wall and into the sea!’

  Lucy felt a dragging pain of terror. She could hear, somewhere among the howls and roars of the wind, water lashing against the outside walls. It could be the rain, she prayed for it to be the rain, but it wasn’t constant, it was intermittent like huge handfuls of sharp pebbles being hurled at windows. It probably was pebbles, which meant it had to be sea spray, lashing over the wall. She looked at the villa’s main door. From there to the main part of the hotel was a run of at least two hundred perilous yards. Stuff would be flying about everywhere and wind this powerful was far too strong to fight. Already she could hear crashes and thumpings from close by outside, presumably roof-tiles were hurtling about like frisbees. What was it Henry had said? ‘Don’t go out: more people are killed by flying debris and coconuts …’ She sent up a quick prayer for his and Oliver’s safety, just as rain started to pour in through the roof.

  ‘Turn the fan off! The water’s coming down the wire!’ Plum shrieked, pointing upwards. Simon raced to the light switches and tried a few at random.

  ‘Simon, don’t …!’ It was too late. As his hand flicked at the correct switch he was flung backwards by a bolt of electricity.

  ‘Aaagh!’ he yelled, clutching his hand.

  ‘That was a daft thing to do,’ Perry pronounced. ‘You should have used a bit of wood.’

  ‘I know that now.’ Simon sat on the soaking sofa clutching his hand and breathing heavily.

  ‘You OK, Simon?’ Lucy sat next to him and handed him a glass of water.

  ‘Yeah. Stupid thing to do, Dad’s right.’ He looked gloomy. Lucy guessed he felt mildly mortified.

  ‘Let’s get out of this room, it’s all soggy now anyway,’ she suggested. ‘We’ll hole up in the bedrooms till this passes.’

  ‘All together, though.’ Shirley looked nervous. ‘I don’t want us splitting up. We’ll go in with the little ones.’

  Lucy collected up all the blankets then went into the second bathroom and brought out the pile of thick snowy towels to take with them. The buckled door was just about holding but water was trickling in through the roof. She was thankful she was wearing thick-soled trainers (the gold lady’s query about what to wear hadn’t been entirely fatuous), for the centre of the sitting-room floor was now inch-deep in water and the electricity was still functioning, which was convenient though potentially lethal.

  The wind was blasting through the villa but inside the bedroom Mark forced the door shut and he and Simon sat on the floor, leaning against it. The windows in here were smaller and less vulnerable but it was still like trying to keep demons out – they tugged and rattled at the shutters and forced fierce whistling draughts through every hairline gap. This room, though, with a flat concrete roof and no tiles to lose, was at least dry.

  ‘Well it won’t get any worse,’ Luke announced from the bathroom doorway. Behind him, having claimed for herself the large shower area, Becky had curled up under a couple of towels, trying to sleep.

  ‘Won’t it?’ Plum asked. ‘It feels like it’s going to be like this for ever.’

  ‘No, course not.’ Luke was scornful. ‘See, if the middle of it’s the worst bit, like close to the hole where the eye of the storm was, well now we’ve had nearly an hour of that, well, it’s got to be moving on towards an outside edge. Like the doughnut. Get it? So it’ll get better, in the end.’

  ‘Makes sense.’ Shirley could only just make herself heard above wind which didn’t seem to be letting up all that much. ‘So, Luke,’ she congratulated him, ‘you really do manage the occasional bit of thinking beneath that dreadful floppy hair! I’d assumed that there was no room for anything inside your head but bits of tunes from that Walkman-thing you keep clamped to your ears.’

  ‘He does OK at school, we’ve told you that.’ Plum defended her son.

  ‘Oh I know, but seeing him a bit more often, seeing all of you, we’ll be able to see for ourselves, won’t we?’ Shirley beamed at her.

  ‘I think it is stopping, a bit.’ Colette was listening hard, as if when her concentration wandered the wind would get in and snatch them all out and into the sea.

  There were gaps now between the wind’s rampaging attacks and these seemed to be gradually losing their power. Becky, too uncomfortable to sleep, had now sat up and leaned against the shower screen picking at her mosquito bites.

  ‘Does that mean we’re not going to die tonight?’ she asked.

  ‘I think you’re safe enough,’ Perry told her. ‘Though it’s still a good while till morning.’

  ‘Time to talk about what happens when we get home then,’ Theresa suggested. ‘Who do you and Mum plan to stay with till your flat’s ready? Me or Simon?’

  ‘Well, as it’s for a while, if you don’t mind, we thought both in turn. A few weeks with you first, maybe, and then off to Simon’s.’

  Plum seethed quietly. So it was a foregone thing, was it? And who would do the extra cooking and the general looking-after? Simon would plead pressure of work, which, of course, in his parents’ generation’s view was such an acceptable man’s excuse. She too had a job, one she should be at home doing right this minute rather than sitting feeling sweaty on a hard floor waiting for the weather either to let her out or kill her. Simon would say she was ungrateful. After all, they’d paid for this holiday. But just a word or two, a bit of being consulted, that’s all it would have taken. Who needed all this silly secrecy?

  ‘What about Lucy? Doesn’t she get a visit too?’ Theresa smiled sweetly at her sister.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Tess,’ Shirley scolded. ‘Where would Lucy put us? She doesn’t have room in that little flat. Though with a bit more money she’ll be able to do something about that. It’s high time she was properly sorted. You could smarten yourself up a bit Lucy, with the extra cash, get a proper car instead of that old van.’

  Lucy smiled and closed her eyes; the thought of being ‘sorted’ was a depressing prospect. ‘It would only get messed up with paint,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, well, in time … Anyway Theresa, are you trying to pass us on down the line?’

  ‘Oh I’ll be happy to have you, don’t get me wrong, it’ll be lovely. I just thought Lucy wouldn’t want to miss out.’

  ‘Well I won’t, will I? They can come for supper or lunch or whatever any time.’

  ‘If you’re there.’ Theresa’s voice was heavy with concealed meaning.

  ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

  ‘Well you’ve got your new boyfriend here, haven’t you? Aren’t you tempted
to shack up here in paradise with him?’

  Lucy looked hard at her. ‘Yes I am, actually, Tess, how clever of you to guess.’ It hadn’t seriously crossed her mind. How childish they could all still become when pushed.

  ‘Now, Theresa, you made her say that. Stop getting at her.’ Shirley tried some gentle refereeing. ‘And Lucy, don’t rise to it. You know you’ll be on that plane.’

  ‘Oh it’s OK, I know Lucy.’ Theresa’s face was contorted with spite. ‘They’re always Mr Right for a fortnight or so. I’m surprised she hasn’t got at least twenty children.’

  ‘Now Tess …’ Perry started.

  ‘Theresa, why are you being so nasty to me? I can’t believe this, you sound as if you almost envy me!’

  Theresa glared. ‘Oh well, you’ve got all the choices, haven’t you? You’ve always had it easy, having Colette just when you felt like it, and then not having more because you didn’t. All that casual fertility was wasted on you. I should have had it. You don’t know how hard it was for me, all those years of not being able to have them. And …’ Theresa was getting seriously steamed up now, ‘and you could never do anything wrong. Always Daddy’s little favourite. He’s always worrying about whether you’ve got enough money, he’s even paying your kid’s school fees.’

  ‘That’s all I do pay. She won’t take any more,’ Perry interrupted.

  ‘Oh God, Tess, have you really grudged me having Colette all these years? She’s about the only thing I have got. I know it was hard for you but you’ve got your children now. And that whopping great house. And Mark.’

  ‘Oh well, Mark …’

  ‘You’re being horrible. And Henry’s really nice,’ Colette told Theresa.

  ‘He is, dear,’ Shirley agreed. ‘But he’s only a holiday romance.’

  ‘Actually he’s not even that.’ No-one took any notice of Lucy.

  Shirley went on, ‘Holiday romances are nice to have, but Henry’s from a different culture. They don’t mix.’