by Patrick Gale
They had never knowingly been on holiday with someone Jewish before, anymore than had Charlie’s mother.
‘So let me see if I’ve got it right, Lucas,’ Mrs Somborne-Abbot was saying. ‘No pork ever, no bacon, obviously, or ham. No shellfish. And meals either have to be dairy or meat, not both.’
‘Er, more or less,’ Lucas said. ‘But we’re not kosher at home. Not really. We don’t have two fridges, for instance, to keep the meat and dairy apart. I wasn’t barmitzvahed and Carmel wasn’t batmitzvahed and we only go to synagogue for weddings and funerals.’
‘Ha! Just like us, then, and since my husband died I’ve become an utter pagan. There’s the most brilliant way of slow roasting a pork joint in milk until it forms a delicious crust. I must find it for your mother.’
‘She’d like that,’ Lucas said carefully and Sophie knew that, like her, he was picturing Heidi and the Sturmführerin face to face. He looked paler than anyone else on the beach, an effect heightened by his black hair, black Speedos and thick sunglasses. He said the last were drop-dead fashionable but Sophie thought them a bit Sophia Loren and he had been quite petulant after Emma Somborne-Abbot admired them and said she had a remarkably similar pair at home.
Sophie had brought dark glasses too, cheap tortoiseshell ones, and loved the way they let her stare or even scowl unobserved. They also helped hugely in the struggle to pass among the Vanillas or to tune out Mrs Somborne-Abbot’s more offensive chat.
Their hostess had retained an excellent figure despite her love of rich cooking and was showing it off in a navy blue one-piece that rather worryingly, Sophie thought, had no skirt so that it was like meeting her in her underwear. Sophie found herself staring at the spider veins around her ankles or the crepiness on her thighs, anything that might make her less intimidating. Even more than when she was dressed, the swimming costume made her seem all hands and jabbing, sharpened fingers. Sophie thought of Margaret’s comfortable folds on a daytrip to the Isle of Wight two weeks ago and wondered what she was doing now.
‘Do you want to swim?’ she offered. ‘I don’t mind watching the picnic.’
‘No. You two run along,’ Mrs Somborne-Abbot told them. ‘I’m warming up nicely and swimming would make my hair completely impossible and frizzy for tonight. You run along. But do tell Charlie and those girls to come back here and eat something or this will all go to waste.’
There was to be a birthday party that night at the big house near Rock belonging to the parents of one of the Vanillas. She was a smart, thin girl, called Serafina but content to be known as Saggy and Sophie was dreading it. Unwarned, she had nothing good to wear. Not that she had anything smart to wear at home, beyond the winter skirt Mrs Somborne-Abbot had given her, but the lack of warning was the excuse on which her feeble hopes were pinned and fluttering.
Charlie was especially keen on Saggy, but from the way he went on and on about how big her house was and how fabulous her friends were and how she’d invited him to play croquet with her at the Hurlingham when they got home, one could be forgiven for thinking she frightened him.
The beach faced across the mouth of a broad estuary so, although one could see the Atlantic off to one side and although the water was salty, the waves were what Lucas dismissed as ‘plishy’ rather than thundering and there was always a strong current to right or left, depending on the direction of the tide. Holidaymakers tended to stake out their small territories in the dunes around its fringes and leave the wide, flat expanse of beach for ball games, kite-flying and dogs. Following Lucas across it, Sophie wondered why it felt familiar then realized it filled her with the same fear as crossing a playground, only with adults hurling the balls one was dodging.
Charlie, Emma and the Vanillas had established a rounders match at the beach’s middle so the Vanillas could socialize and play at the same time. They seemed to know everyone and everyone’s dogs. Because the mere proximity of a ball game he might be expected to join made Lucas physically sick, she assumed he would give them all a wide berth and leave her to pass on the message about crab sandwiches. They all waved and cheered and called out to him to join the fun, in the unmistakably mocking way she felt sure would drive him into the sea, so she was amazed when he duly allowed himself to be bossed into a fielding position by Saggy. When he was thumped on the back and called ‘Good Man’ by a hunky blond in rugger shirt and cut-offs, immediately recognizable as Saggy’s brother, she understood. Lucas would put up with any amount of humiliation, she had noticed, if rewarded by a certain kind of male approval.
‘Hiya!’ Charlie ran up to her. He was tanned and it suited him, even though his nose and ear-tops were peeling. He claimed he always burned before he went brown. ‘You got away.’ Did he regret kissing her now?
‘Yes. But your mum’s worried about all the food. She said to tell you all to go back and eat something.’
Emma had overheard them. ‘Oh she doesn’t want us interrupting her,’ she said. ‘Not now.’
Sophie glanced back and saw that Mrs Somborne-Abbot had no sooner been left alone than she had three older men standing around her eating the picnic and chatting. As Sophie watched, Mrs Somborne Abbot waved girlishly and tucked her legs under her like a woman on an old-fashioned holiday poster. One of the men hunkered down beside her and the other two followed suit.
Sophie excused herself from playing. ‘I can’t catch,’ she told them. ‘And I need to cool off.’
‘Sophie’s a demon swimmer,’ Charlie said by way of excusing and explaining her.
The beach shelved swiftly into the deep channel formed by the estuary so, once she had waded out through the ranks of barking dogs and splashing children, the sounds of the beach were muffled by the inhuman sea sounds, gulls, boat engines, the sorrowful dinging of a buoy placed to warn of a sandbar. The sea was far colder than Lucas’s pool but not unbearable, especially once she remembered Margaret’s trick of plunging in for a few minutes, coming ashore just long enough for the breeze to raise goose bumps then plunging back in. The second time the sea felt warmer than the breezy air above it.
She stayed in, undisturbed for nearly an hour, now swimming vigorously, parallel to the shore, now content to drift on her back, enjoying the warmth of sun through shallow water. One advantage of having no breakers was that swimming required less of an effort. She might have been in an extra-buoyant pool.
The more she thought about it, the stranger it was that she and Lucas had been invited to visit. When Charlie wrote from there during the Easter holidays the Vanillas were clearly getting on his nerves. When Lucas told her the Sturmführerin had rung Heidi to ask them both down, they assumed it was because Charlie needed reinforcements. The novelty of working as a waitress in the gloomily subterranean Ratty’s Tunnel was wearing off and it was dawning on her that, if she kept it up, she would miss the summer entirely. Courage bolstered by the prospect of having Lucas for company on the long train ride, she swallowed her misgivings and said yes. She told a white lie to Kieran and Margaret and said she was going to Cornwall for a few days with the Behrmans. They had yet to forgive Mrs Somborne-Abbot for casting her adrift in London with no cash.
Charlie was pleased enough to see them – although he didn’t come to Bodmin to meet their train but sent Emma on her own – but they had not seen him alone in two days. Either he or his mother intended this as some kind of demonstration, Sophie decided.
‘I’m normal. I’m popular. These are my Right People. I’ve made friends with the sort of girls a man ends up marrying and we’re happy precisely because we’re not bothered about being clever.’
Both Charlie and his mother had mentioned the party that evening but nobody had specifically said Lucas and Sophie were invited. Sophie’s spirits lifted at the idea that they were not. They’d be quite happy to stay behind in the holiday house. They could lounge in its sparsely furnished, sun-baked sitting room, watching the sunset. They could cross the beach to Polteath for fish and chips. They were nearly fifth-formers now. They no long
er needed child-minding.
But if Lucas was content to play rounders, and his shell-shocked intellectual routine was all a pose, he’d be sure to want to go. She could picture him overcoming his initial shyness with a glass or three of scrumpy then charming Saggy’s brother – who was probably a bad dancer so would have gravitated to the kitchen too. He’d express a flattering interest in going out on the family’s little crabber, then let slip how well he’d known Jonty Mortimer, who was at Durham with Master Saggy, and generally play on his nostalgia for boarding school. Then he’d catch his eye in a certain way as all the Young People set out for the inevitable midnight dip.
She spied on the rounders game from the water in time to see Lucas racing for the home mound, which meant he had actually hit a ball, which meant he was fitting in.
Her imagination was running away with her, fed by the glimpse of Mrs Somborne-Abbot being chatted up by three men simultaneously. It was making a kind of Satanic orgy from a gathering that would probably be no more intimidating than a pineapple-cheese hedgehog.
Restraining herself, Sophie swam back into the shallows and waded out. A big, wet Labrador took a keen interest in her and followed her closely, trying to ram its nose between her legs. Big dogs scared her. Most dogs did. She was unused to them. She tried shooing it away but it only licked her, so she swore at it, which made it bark at her. She knew running was probably the worst thing to do but she ran anyway and the beast pursued her, getting in a few, humiliating nose-shoves before she reached the others.
She was rescued at once by Saggy’s brother, who knew the dog, of course, and spoke fluent canine so was able to round on it furiously and send it away.
‘My God, you’ve been in for hours,’ Saggy said. ‘You’re amazing! Don’t you feel the cold at all? There’s nothing to you. Not like some of the whales around here, like my mum.’
‘Actually I am quite cold,’ Sophie said, newly aware of her damp costume and lack of a towel. Her teeth began to chatter.
‘Charlie!’ Saggy commanded. ‘Get the poor girl a towel and a jersey, for Pete’s sake.’ Charlie ran off obediently. ‘Now we’ve got to head back and start getting the place ready,’ she continued. ‘You can come, can’t you? You and Jeremy?’
‘Lucas. Yes. We’d love to.’
Damn! She had missed the perfect chance to say well no, nothing to wear but shorts and anyway I’ve got double pneumonia.
‘Great. Super. Bye all.’ Saggy turned away, shouting, ‘Tisha, I’ll drive over to pick up the wine if you can clear the downstairs out a bit.’ And marshalling Vanillas and brother, she strode away towards the car park.
‘You can tell her father’s a General,’ Charlie said, draping a towel around her shoulders.
‘Yeah,’ Sophie said. ‘She’s amazing.’ But Saggy didn’t strike her as amazing at all, simply brimming with upper-class aplomb and even bossier than Charlie’s sisters. She recalled, with an inner chill to match her outer one, that she would come up against a lot more Saggies now she was entering the upper school. Mercifully few of them entered on the classics ladder. Lucas was taking French, English and history of art so would acquire an abundance of new girlfriends.
Spirits were high in the car as Mrs Somborne-Abbot drove them back to Polteath. This was partly because it was a squash and Sophie and Lucas had to travel in the boot, which seemed to remind everyone but Sophie of childhood and other happy holidays. Mrs Somborne-Abbot was especially happy, high on sunshine and harmless flirtation and the anticipation of more. Sunshine suited the Somborne-Abbots.
‘Saggy’s got a brilliant dress for tonight,’ Emma said. ‘Fiorucci. She showed me yesterday.’
‘Oh good,’ Sophie said feebly.
‘Now you’re not to worry about dressing up, Sophia,’ Mrs Somborne-Abbot called from the front.
‘Yeah,’ Charlie agreed. ‘It’s not like London. It’s actually a bit infra-dig to get all done up.’
‘Everyone’s on holiday. No one expects anyone to have their best clothes,’ his mother echoed, waving merry, sharp fingers at a woman with two barking dogs who just stared back from the sandy verge.
Perhaps she was right for when they reached the house Charlie and Lucas simply showered off the sand in the ‘boys’ bathroom’ downstairs and were soon out on the patch of sun-scorched grass under Sophie’s window playing a game of Swingball wearing jeans and T-shirts as they might have on any evening. The women, however, were clearly making more painstaking preparations. The upstairs was busy with baths and pattering feet and bossy arguments over who could wear what.
When Lucas eventually burst in on Sophie, flushed from their game, to see what she was up to, he found her huddled on the bed, turning in on herself in dread.
‘Are you sick, Phi?’ he asked.
‘Just a bit chilled,’ she said. ‘There’s been rather a rush for the bath.’
‘They’ve probably had all the hot water. Our shower’s electric. Wash downstairs.’
‘I’ve got nothing to wear,’ she said.
‘That doesn’t matter.’
‘It’s different for boys. I really don’t want to go, Lou.’
‘No one can make you. Stay here. Say you’re sick.’
‘I can’t.’
‘It’s just a party.’
Could she tell him? ‘Lou, I’ve … I’ve never been to a party before.’
There. She’d said it now.
‘But you must have!’
‘Well I haven’t. And I hate these people. I don’t want the first one I go to to be –’
She was cut off by Charlie’s mother coming in. She had on a flowery skirt the colour of Granny Smiths and a crisp cream blouse that brought out her tan. ‘Come on, Sophia,’ she said briskly. ‘We’ll be late.’
‘She’s got nothing to wear,’ Lucas said.
‘But that doesn’t matter. We told you.’
‘No,’ Sophie added. ‘Really nothing. No dresses.’
Mrs Somborne-Abbot glanced from one to the other, sniffing conspiracy. ‘But that’s easily fixed. Let’s see what Emma’s got. She’s not so much bigger than you.’
She brought in three equally unSophie dresses on padded hangers. They were puffy, Laura Ashley things that would spend all evening sliding off her sloping shoulders and bagging out around her waist and bottom if she dared do anything but stand still in a corner. One glance at a label told her Emma was at least three sizes bigger than her.
‘Out you go, Lucas. Respect a young lady’s privacy.’ Mrs Somborne-Abbot was relentless. ‘This one, I think. The turquoise will do things with your eyes. Emma always looked lovely in it. Come on. Skin a rabbit and we’ll see how it looks.’ She was speaking as though Sophie were a child, not a teenager, but perhaps Sophie deserved it for acting like one. She slid to the edge of the bed and pulled off her borrowed baggy jersey she had tugged on for warmth and reassurance. Her bra was her second-best and none too clean but she couldn’t change it with Christine Somborne-Abbot and her spiky hands looming over her.
‘Actually I really don’t feel very well,’ she said.
‘Are you sick? The crab was fine, I thought.’
‘No, I … I just think I must have spent too long in the sea. I think I may have caught a chill. Sorry.’
Sophie had never been quite sure what symptoms catching a chill involved beyond getting too cold but the words worked like a charm. The impending dress was lowered. She could see Mrs Somborne-Abbot making rapid calculations. There were fresh men waiting for her, Vanillas for her only satisfactory son to dance with. The door opened and Emma came in.
‘Any luck?’ she began, then saw there had been no progress and sensed an atmosphere. ‘Oh,’ she said.
‘Honestly,’ Sophie pleaded. ‘I’ll be fine here. I will. I’ll just get into bed and go to sleep.’
‘But someone should stay with you.’
If she hadn’t been so miserable, Sophie would have been amused at how nakedly the older woman’s selfishness was showing. Someone
should stay behind and she really didn’t see why it should have to be her.
‘I’ll stay,’ Emma offered. ‘They’re all a bit young for me anyway.’
‘You can’t,’ her mother reminded her. ‘What about Olly?’
‘No one stay,’ Sophie said. ‘I’ll be fine. I’m sixteen,’ she lied. ‘I won’t burn the place down. Promise.’ She gave them her best, sunny orphan smile.
‘We’re going to be late,’ Charlie shouted from downstairs.
‘Coming!’ his mother shouted back crossly. ‘Honestly! Well … If you’re quite sure, Sophia …’
‘Certain. Have a great evening both of you. Sorry to be a killjoy.’
The door was closed on her. The rejected dresses were left draped on the bedstead as a reproach. As their voices receded along the landing, Sophie heard a brisk flare-up of indignation in Mrs Somborne-Abbot’s explanations but she didn’t care. She had been reprieved and nothing else mattered. She heard the front door banging to, footsteps on the gravel path, the clicking of the gate catch and the impatient departure of the little car.
She remembered childhood mornings when a half-fabricated fever had been enough to persuade Margaret to keep her back from St Bonnie’s for the day, and the delicious sensation of lying on in bed on a weekday hearing the house grow quieter and quieter about her.
She pulled the jersey back on and tugged the bedding about her. She had been quite chilled. Perhaps she would sleep for a little then slip downstairs after a safe interval to visit the kitchen. Eating up some leftover crab sandwiches would risk her less disapproval than raiding the fridge for anything new.