The Summerhouse by the Sea

by Jenny Oliver

  Then a voice next to her said, ‘Why don’t you just go back up to the café? Rory, mate, there’s a beer waiting for you. Max, I know the guy who runs the watersports if you fancy a go on anything. He’s got a little boy about your age. See over there,’ he pointed in the direction of the pontoon that bobbed in the water at the end of the peninsula. ‘We could go over, say hi?’

  Max jumped up with a definite yes.

  ‘That OK, Rory?’ Tom asked, as Rory heaved himself to standing, brushing the sand from his trousers.

  ‘What? Yes, yes, fine. Fine.’

  Ava looked at Tom as he put his hand on Max’s back and steered him towards the watersports pontoon. She hadn’t expected him to follow them down to the beach. She’d expected him to have watched with vague interest for a minute or two and then go in search of someone in a bikini. He hadn’t looked at her at all, just cut through her waffling with the most simple, obvious plan.

  Maybe he sympathised with Rory? Recognised what he was going through – both the unwanted fame and the pressure of fatherhood? See, this was why she needed a phone. All this minutiae needed to be recounted, analysed and explained.

  Flora was waiting for them at the table with a tray of little beers, along with the all-seeing wrinkled eyes of the breakfast lot, their hands engrossed in their tasks – their knitting, their chess, their newspapers – mouths deathly silent, ears pricked up for the next instalment.

  CHAPTER 12

  In the distance, Rory could just see Max’s head poking out of the top of a lifejacket as he plopped backwards into a giant rubber ring, a shaggy-haired blond kid in the one next to him and a real dude at the helm of the speedboat. At least Max was in paradise.

  Ava wasn’t saying anything, he could feel her watching.

  Flora was sitting at the adjacent table, going through a list of prices, half with them, half not.

  He took a moment just to sit in the dappled shade of the orange trees and drink his beer. Served in a glass smaller than a half-pint with condensation dripping down the side and a frothy white head sliced to the side with a palette knife. He reached forwards to pick it up. Felt the warmth of the foam and the ice cool of the beer on his lips. He shut his eyes, felt the sun flicker yellow on his face through the awning, heard the white noise of cicadas. Felt the familiar patterns of the plastic chair and inhaled the drifting smoke of an old man’s cigar.

  Memories of holidays here: of his mum dressed up to the nines for dinner, mesmerising the collective gaze of Café Estrella; of card games he was itching to win, with Val needing constant reminders of the rules and Ava cheating while his mum languidly turned a blind eye and a cigar of his dad’s burnt to a stump in the ash tray. Moments in the sun where, under Val’s beady-eyed gaze, their mother behaved herself, slipped into her rightful role. Where to Rory’s delight she sat legs outstretched on the beach building sandcastles with them, moving every time the shade obstructed her tan, as Val watched from her deckchair, her newspaper untouched as she maintained order, her skin the colour of treacle, her swimming hat dotted with purple plastic flowers.

  The university summers, just him and Ava. No one talking of anything other than what the first drink was going to be. Thinking he was the bee’s knees. Taking a canoe out on the sea and paddling miles, coming back sweaty and tanned and chatting up the waitresses.

  More than halcyon days. Days when the future was as wide open as a Wild West prairie.

  ‘It’ll blow over, you know,’ Ava said. ‘You just have to make it matter less. In the end, no one cares about these things.’

  ‘She’s right,’ Flora said, without looking up. ‘They have their own dramas to deal with. Except this lot,’ she added with a little smirk, pointing towards the breakfast gang.

  Rory gave a half-hearted laugh. He wanted to say that he couldn’t make it matter less. That, without him having realised, his job had come to define him. That he’d thought he had life buttoned up nice and tight and now it seemed all the toggles were in the wrong holes. But he didn’t say things like that, so he nodded, noncommittal, then opened his mouth to ask Ava what she’d done since she’d been here, but found himself saying instead, ‘I think it’s all over. I think I might be losing my marriage as well.’

  ‘What?’ Ava said, surprised. ‘But you and Claire are . . .’ she seemed lost for the right word, then just said, ‘you and Claire,’ as she might about other guaranteed pairings like Marmite and toast.

  Rory took another sip of his beer, unable to quite believe that he’d said what he’d said out loud. But he had to tell someone. Since iPhonegate, since Claire had looked at him like she might actually walk away, it was like a large balloon had been sitting, expanding, in his chest. He wondered whether, if he looked down, he might see that he’d risen from his chair as it floated away.

  He realised fleetingly that this must be why people ask if you ‘need to talk’. He imagined his father rolling his eyes. Then wondered how many balloons were weighing him down.

  He glanced at Ava. ‘You know that time I came out here to film Flora and Ricardo? That’s probably the last time in my life that I felt like I was me. Like I had time.’ He looked around him.

  ‘But you were twenty, Rory,’ Ava said. ‘Everyone feels like that at twenty.’

  Dots of light coming through the ripped awning were dancing on Ava’s face. She looked like she had that same holiday. Carefree. Ava always looked carefree.

  ‘It’s not being twenty. It’s just not being relied on. It’s having no responsibility. No pressure. Look at this lot . . .’ He pointed to the chess players. ‘They have all the time in the world.’

  ‘That’s dangerous talk, young man,’ the raisin-tanned woman said, lowering her newspaper, the pug asleep in her lap getting a shock. ‘Just think what your grandmother would have to say about that. Why do you think we’ve got all the time? We’ve got all the time because we’re running out of time. Never wish your life away. Never.’

  ‘Listen to Gabriela.’ The man in the pale blue suit with the moustache agreed. ‘You don’t want to be old, trust me,’ he said, none of them with even a hint of remorse at their blatant eavesdropping.

  Rory ran his hands over his face. ‘I’m just so tired.’

  Ava was staring at him. He could tell she didn’t know what to say. She had the same stricken look on her face as when their dad had told them that their mum wasn’t coming home. He’d told them in the morning and then taken them shopping for a treat in an attempt to counteract the news. Rory had bought a pair of red and black Nike Air Max trainers that he’d been begging for for months. He distinctly remembered the joy of the orange box and the smell of the new leather and feeling a bit guilty that he’d got them, because he’d known their mum wasn’t coming back to live with them for a while and part of him knew it would make life much less stressful. Ava hadn’t been quite the same. Unable to find anything she wanted to buy, she’d had a massive meltdown in House of Fraser, and they’d all had to go and have a cup of tea and a cake in the depressing café that smelt of jacket potatoes and vegetable soup. In the end their dad had folded up five ten-pound notes and told her that she should buy what she wanted when she saw it.

  It occurred to Rory now that he had no idea what she’d bought. He just remembered her having to always sleep with the light on and spending hours begging their dad to call New York, almost without fail to be told that their mother had just gone out.

  It wasn’t lost on Rory that the age he’d been when he’d got those trainers was only a few years older than Max was now. Yet he didn’t feel man enough to manage the response if he and Claire split. To say with the same absolute certainty as his father that life would move forwards and they would all be just fine.

  ‘You’ve got to go back,’ said Ava, wide-eyed and panicky. ‘You’ve got to go home and talk to Claire. You have to. You can’t stay here. You need to sort it out.’

  Rory felt suddenly like he could push back his chair, start walking and never stop.

 
; The decision to keep his bum on his seat was made for him by Flora. Big, buxom, blowsy Flora, who had captured a nation with her warm, no-fuss cookery and a pair of breasts the subject of 165 complaints to the BBC when she’d appeared in a very low-cut velvet top on a Christmas special. Flora may have been a good twenty years older than him, but Rory had spent a lot of time behind his camera while filming his documentary about her and Ricardo, staring at that satin-clad figure.

  Today, however, like Rory, Flora looked a little more world-weary, but when she smiled at him she was still a confusing cross between what he’d wished his mum had been like and a hormone-spinning boyhood crush. ‘You can’t go back. Not while you feel like this,’ she said, peering at him over the top of her pearlised pink reading glasses.

  ‘Oh I really think he should,’ said Ava.

  Flora shook her head. ‘No. You have to let it settle. Everything is out of place. You have to let it settle before you make any decisions. Like the sea here after a big storm. Just take some time, sit on a sun lounger, do some fishing.’

  ‘I don’t like fishing,’ said Rory. The idea of doing nothing was abhorrent to him. He never did nothing. If he lay in bed for too long in the morning he got restless legs. He needed to be doing something.

  Flora laughed. ‘Have another beer.’

  ‘If you insist!’ Tom appeared from between the orange trees, grinning. He took a seat in the sun and, pointing back towards the pontoon said, ‘Rory, your son is a speed demon.’

  ‘He is?’ This was news to Rory.

  Tom nodded. ‘He wants to go for a spin along the coast in the speedboat with Alessandro and his kid, Emilio. That OK with you?’

  ‘No, he should probably come back,’ Rory said, turning round in his chair to see Max waving at him, hair wet, massive smile on his face.

  ‘Nah mate, he’s fine, he’s enjoying himself,’ said Tom. ‘Relax.’

  Rory stiffened in his chair. He was a terrible relaxer, especially when told to. But as he looked at his grinning son, he realised that he spent an awful lot of time at home trying to get Max to do something – to eat, get dressed, get off the damn computer – and here he was desperate to get out into the wide blue yonder. Why did Rory think he should come back anyway? Because he didn’t want him to be a nuisance? Because it was nearly lunchtime and Max should have something to eat? Because . . . He didn’t know. It was all in chaos, what difference did it make what time they ate? Rory wished he could be ten years old and in a speedboat. He did a thumbs up towards the pontoon and Max whooped.

  ‘You alright?’ Tom asked, legs outstretched in front of him.

  Rory was immediately envious of Tom’s casual ease with life – his unironed shirt and unkempt, undefinable facial hair that was too short for a beard and too long for stubble. His ability to seemingly kick back and do nothing.

  Rory nodded. ‘Yes. Thank you. Apologies for earlier on the beach.’

  ‘Fine with me,’ Tom said. ‘I know what it’s like to have the papers twist your words,’ he added, before his attention was diverted to the tray of little beers Flora put down on the table.

  Rory wanted to disappear. To fast-forward life till it was back to normal. He missed his phone. Not for Twitter but for everything it held. All the articles, all the nuggets of information. Its ability to transport him somewhere, anywhere, for however long he wanted. If he had his phone now he could take himself away.

  Ava seemed to be the one trying to keep it all normal. ‘Shall we have some lunch?’ she said, grabbing the waiter’s attention as he passed and asking, ‘Can I order some tapas?’

  He shrugged and flipped his pad to a new page.

  ‘The chickpeas and chorizo . . .’ she started.

  ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘We don’t have that.’

  Flora shifted uncomfortably in her seat, feigning deep interest in the accounts she was working on.

  ‘OK, the calamari?’ said Ava.

  ‘No.’

  Ava frowned. ‘What do you have?’

  He thought for a moment. ‘Tortilla.’

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Tortilla and olives.’

  ‘No. No olives.’

  ‘How can you not have olives?’ she said, pointing to the hillside dotted with olive trees.

  The waiter chuckled to himself. ‘Si, we have olives,’ he said, walking off, sniggering at his little joke.

  Across the path the early lunch crowd were all starting to drift from the beach and into Nino’s, a queue already forming.

  At Estrella the tables were still cluttered with finished coffee cups, wasps buzzing around empty breakfast plates.

  On the table in front of Rory was a pile of croissant crumbs. He pushed one of them with his finger, a triangle shape, and sat it on a square. It made a house. Then he pulled the others into a line to make a road and then a tree. By the time he’d finished the second beer there was an aeroplane in the sky and he’d poured a line of sugar out from his leftover sachet to make the clouds and rays of sun while the others chatted in the background.

  His glass empty, he looked up to see if anyone was having another to find them all watching him.

  ‘That’s quite a scene you’ve made there,’ said Tom, looking impressed at the crumb and sugar picture.

  ‘I, erm . . .’ Rory frowned. ‘I’m not terribly good at doing nothing,’ he said.

  ‘I think you’re going to have to, Rory. You need time to think,’ said Ava.

  ‘Give the guy a break,’ Tom laughed. ‘He’s hardly going to sit at a table and think about his life all day. Doing nothing is a pretty daunting thing.’

  ‘You seem very good at it,’ Ava said, brows raised as she looked at him.

  Tom laughed. ‘I own a bloody vineyard.’

  ‘Well shouldn’t you be there, tending your grapes?’ Ava asked, a little confused.

  Tom shook his head. ‘This is not my favourite stage.’

  Ava made a face. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘We’re in the ripening phase,’ he said. Ava still looked clueless. ‘It’s too stressful. Too much is in the hands of the weather. I’m more about the harvesting. The doing.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Rory. ‘I need to do.’ He sat up, brushing his crumb scene on to the floor much to everyone’s horror. ‘I need to be doing. I can’t sit here just getting drunk. I need a project. When’s picking time?’ he asked Tom.

  Tom shook his head. ‘Not for a month or so, I’m afraid.’

  The waiter brought over a plate of tortilla cut into diamonds and a little bowl of purple black olives.

  They all peered at the slightly dry-looking omelette, the lines of the plastic packet still in grooves on the surface.

  Rory remembered the fluffy white tortilla that Flora used to bring out straight from the pan, served in great wedges with garlic mayonnaise. He remembered being little and their gran making it. Sitting in the Ealing dining room on a Sunday afternoon, competing with Ava to see if they could fit a whole wedge in their mouths in one go, unable to speak and hardly able to chew. Their grandmother sighing that they were disgusting, while eating hers in two swift bites. Their mother lounging back, bored, the ice in a bright-red Campari chinking as she sipped.

  ‘Gracias,’ Ava said to the waiter, but he was gone, off to smoke a cigarette and check his phone.

  They all stared at the unappetising little plates. No one wanting to try anything. Rory watched Flora wipe a bead of sweat from her forehead.

  He looked around the ailing Café Estrella, with its peeling paint, broken awning and straggly orange trees, the old men on plastic chairs playing chess, the tables of dirty plates and the waiter on the phone by his scooter, and then compared it with the view of Nino’s, with its black leather chairs, white walls, queue of customers. There was just enough sadness in seeing the café’s fall from glory to make him forget his own misery for a minute.

  ‘Maybe you should make another film,’ said Ava into the silence. ‘A follow-up on Flora.’

  Rory immedi
ately shook his head. Like a reflex reaction to any suggestion of Ava’s. ‘I don’t have a camera,’ he said, squashing down a small bubble of interest at the idea as he remembered the time he’d spent in the kitchen filming that first documentary, what he’d learnt watching Ricardo: the heat, the passion, the sweat and the adrenaline of success.

  ‘I’ve got a camera,’ said Tom. ‘Go for it.’

  ‘You do?’ said Rory.

  ‘Go on,’ said Ava. ‘You should do it. Definitely.’

  He could see her working it out in her head, the whole thing already done and dusted as a fix-all solution.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s a good idea, Flora?’ Ava carried on, nudging Flora on the arm.

  ‘Well . . .’ Flora seemed both pleased for the distraction from the limp-looking food but also slightly worried at the idea of another film. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t been on camera for ages. I’ll look so fat.’

  Ava rolled her eyes. ‘You won’t look fat, you’ll look amazing.’

  ‘It won’t be a very happy story though, will it?’ said Flora, adding with a mock-documentary voice, ‘The couple have now split up, and as you can see Flora is failing miserably on her own, stuck with mounting debts and no customers under the age of seventy.’ But the way she was running her hand through her hair and giving it a little flounce, the deprecating laugh she added at the end, it was clear to everyone she would adore being back in front of the lens.

  ‘Well maybe this is the chance to make it something else?’ said Ava, refusing to let it go. ‘Maybe this will give you your confidence back?’

  ‘Is she always this idealistic?’ Flora said to Rory, leaning back, a little bamboozled.

  Rory nodded.

  Ava looked chastened. Like she did when she was a kid.

  Rory felt bad. He realised part of the reason he was fighting the whole film idea was simple sibling rivalry. The desire for Ava not to be victorious. Not to be right. He wondered how often he’d made similarly based decisions. How often he’d wanted to keep her down. He had done so much to keep her happy when they were younger – soothe her as a baby while his mum walked to the end of the garden to escape the cries, make her laugh when they were left in the house on their own, let her sleep on his floor on folded up blankets when she had nightmares – it just seemed inconceivable that this needy little kid could possibly know better than him now.