Holiday Fling

by Christina Jones

  ‘And wasps,’ Aunt adds dryly. ‘You young people never think of that. Where you have sweet sticky things you’ll find wasps too.’ I swing impatiently to the left and head up a hill. ‘Not so fast, Jessica, you’ve only just got your test. Your mother won’t lend you the car again if you hit a cow.’

  ‘Mother’s dead.’ I have to roar the words as a tractor pulling a cartload of hay goes by.

  Aunt stops looking at the dashboard and looks towards me instead. Then she starts to hum, that eerie dislocated melody I’ve heard before. It sounds like a mixture of every song she’s ever heard. I can’t stand it.

  ‘I’m sorry, Aunt,’ I say. ‘I shouldn’t have shouted. There was no call to shout like that.’ Aunt Hilda hesitates, then she reaches into her bag and pulls out her powder compact. She’s patting powder on her face now. She can’t see her face in the small mirror though she’s peering purposefully at it.

  ‘I Want You’ by The Beatles comes on. I sigh deeply and turn down the volume. I say, ‘I’m not sure I like driving any more,’ but Aunt doesn’t answer. She’s sleepy. At least I hope that’s what she is as her head suddenly lolls alarmingly to one side, mouth open, false teeth slipping. Oh no – not here. Not now. I pat her hand firmly. ‘Aunt? Aunt?’ She doesn’t move. I slow down and holler, ‘Aunt Hilda, are you all right?’

  She blinks up at me, startled. ‘What is it?’

  I’m stumped for an answer. I can’t very well say ‘I thought you might be dead’ now, can I? ‘I hope you’re warm enough,’ I say, flustered. She doesn’t reply.

  We drift past hills, golden gorse, cottages, and blackberries. We drift past a house selling free-range eggs and organic manure. I see a woman hanging washing on a line and a young girl crying as a dog eats her fallen ice cream. Images are flying past me like collages – bits and pieces of life that hold no clues.

  ‘I have no idea where I am.’ I have to share this thought with someone, even though I know it will probably be contradicted. ‘I have never seen that mountain before in my life. Have you seen that mountain before, Aunt?’

  I regret the words as soon as I say them but Aunt immediately answers. ‘It’s the Sugarloaf.’ She says it without even peering semi-sightlessly out the window. And I don’t snap ‘No it isn’t’ because suddenly I know – I know I’ve seen that mountain before. And I know where I’ve been heading for, forgetting that I knew the way.

  The mountain sits there, fat and magnificent and secretive, almost purple with the past. And I know that if I turn this corner I will see the house, just off the road with a wall not quite high enough to hide it. I will see the river where we swam and the lawn where we danced naked that early summer morning twenty years ago.

  ‘Stuff them,’ he’d said. ‘Who cares if someone sees us?’ And if I wait and watch I may see him too.

  The violence of this realisation makes me stop the car. ‘More cows?’ asks Aunt. ‘These country roads can get so crowded.’ I stare at the mountain again. I want to turn and leave but I’ve remembered the way home. It’s straight ahead, not back. ‘Next it will be cyclists,’ Aunt chatters. ‘Great big bunches of them with their bottoms in the air.’ I start up the engine. Suddenly I fear that he may sense me here, startled with longing, drawn back. I fear he may run out and invite us in for scones and tea. I almost hope it too, which is why I must drive on.

  I try not to look at his house as I pass. But of course I do. I only see shirts and skirts on the washing line. I don’t see him. I don’t see Aaron. My heart is so heavy I fear I may drive into a ditch. There’s another song about love on the radio. I switch over to tennis and speed towards the dual carriageway.

  How was I to know what I needed back then, I think. How was I to know one day I’d need a man who could dance naked on a lawn?

  ‘I’m a bit peckish,’ Aunt Hilda H says it firmly, taking a stand. ‘Let’s stop at the first tea place we see.’ We do. A teenage girl with a nose ring helps me to heave Aunt Hilda out of the car. It’s one of those plastic, dimly lit pubs where shirt-sleeved men on bar stools blink wonderingly as you enter and then forget about you entirely. But Aunt Hilda will not be forgotten. ‘I want a toasted ham and tomato sandwich,’ she announces fiercely to the first figure who passes our drab but cushioned corner. ‘My niece will have one too – and two teas please.’

  I’m past caring, but somehow the message is relayed to the bar. The television gleams fluorescently in the corner but the sound is just a hum. ‘Sorry Aunt,’ I say. ‘We never did find the Peacehaven Hotel, or even the garden with the scones and the honey.’

  ‘And wasps,’ she volleys, sharp as a button.

  I sit so still that when the tea arrives Aunt Hilda attempts to pour it and spills some on to the table and her skirt. I have to get up and get a cloth. I have to brush past at least four beer bellies at the bar. They do not move away. They look like they like having their bellies brushed. This does not console me. Aunt wants a sherry after her tea. We have one. It’s getting late. Edmund will be wondering. Let him. At last we leave. A man with ‘Surfers Against Sewerage’ on his T-shirt helps me get Aunt Hilda back into the car. It’s still bright out but the light is gentler now – forgiving.

  The journey back is quick and efficient. I wish it could go on a while. I hate driving up to the nursing home. I hate that Aunt Hilda needs to be there. I hate that the young nurses who heave her from the car – I allow them to, they know how to protect their backs – don’t know the way she once strode over the Wicklow hills with her Labrador and her dreams and the way her husband’s eyes lit up with love that night of the big dance. I hate that they don’t know the thin hair that lies across her face was once a mass of golden curls and how she sang ‘Moonlight Becomes You’ holding a floor mop wig and burst into giggles.

  I so hate that they do not know the heart of her – though they take her pulse several times a time.

  I hate it but I help her into her room – which is not her room, not really. It’s too clean and too right. It doesn’t have love in it – only kindness.

  She’s sleepy now. I wait as they put her to bed, leaving the room on a pretend errand as they change her incontinence pad. ‘She’s ready,’ a nurse calls at last, already moving to another room. There’s a smell of talc and urine. Her clothes are heaped on the leather chair. Her handbag is stuffed back into a cupboard.

  And as I watch her lying there I think, she’s almost at the end of her journey – and what a strange journey it is. I wonder what will become of her – of all of us – Aunt, me, Aaron, Edmund, out there in the big unknown.

  ‘I love you, Great-aunt Hilda,’ I say, bending over and kissing her.

  ‘And I love you too, Jessica.’ Her hand with its thin, dark-veined skin reaches for mine. She looks up at me like a baby. ‘Say hello to Aaron for me.’

  ‘You mean Edmund.’

  ‘Of course, yes, Edmund.’ She sighs and smiles and curls up under her flower duvet.

  Stealing out of the room, I look back at her, freezing the moment. But of course it isn’t frozen. Time moves on, but maybe chronology itself is a mystery. Love glimpsed unknowingly twenty years before can rise up defiantly on a Sunday drive and shake you to your core.

  And a ninety-year-old woman waiting for God knows what while staring into nothing can be young again any time she chooses.

  Winter Break

  Jane Wenham-Jones

  It didn’t help that it was pouring with rain and the central heating had packed up again. I arrived at work cold, wet, still reverberating from my tepid shower and heated exchange with my teenage daughter whose idea of the end of the world is not being able to wash her hair for the sixth time in a week.

  Terry and Shaun had very sensibly shot off to office and school at double speed while Zoë and I were still screaming at each other. This left me to phone the plumber. His mobile was switched off.

  So I was not at my most receptive to the sight of Janice draped over the photocopier, dreamy expression on her face, holiday brochu
re in one of her perfectly manicured hands. ‘Lanzarote,’ she breathed, shoving a glossy page featuring a huge white villa and deep blue swimming pool beneath my reddened nose. ‘It’s almost eighty degrees there right now.’

  ‘Lovely,’ I said, shaking the drips from my sodden coat. ‘Has anyone sorted the post yet?’

  ‘Alan’s got us a last-minute booking,’ Janice went on, ignoring me. ‘Look – our own terrace and pool. He says it will be a sort of second honeymoon.’

  ‘Perhaps you need some sunshine,’ she added helpfully as I tried to warm my hands on someone else’s coffee mug. ‘You might have that Seasonal Affective thing. That’s why you’re so miserable.’

  ‘I haven’t, and I’m not,’ I said through gritted teeth, as Janice wandered off to find someone sweeter-tempered than me to share her good news with. I picked up the telephone to work through the various numbers on the plumber’s card. ‘Fresh fish, local wine …’ Janice’s voice carried clearly across the room as I scowled at the receiver and muttered crossly. ‘Oh great! Now the other line’s engaged!’

  We heard nothing but Janice’s holiday all day. Volcanic rocks, sun-soaked beaches, stunning scenery, and forgotten coves – we got the lot. At five o’clock while I piled up the folders on my desk and went to see if my coat had ever dried, she was still wafting about talking about sea, sand, and local delicacies. ‘And look,’ I heard her saying to Carol as I left, ‘they call this bit the valley of a thousand palms …’

  Outside it was still drizzling. As I splashed through the puddles to the bus stop I thought longingly of warm sunshine and light evenings and cocktails by a sparkling pool. We hadn’t had any sort of holiday at all for over three years – not with Terry being made redundant and two teenagers to clothe. Janice was always off somewhere, I thought sourly as I walked up the dark street to our cold house. While we never even seemed to have a night out.

  Inside Zoë was shivering. ‘Can’t we light a fire or something?’ she asked plaintively.

  ‘We’d better wait till Dad gets home’, I said, looking doubtfully at the chimney place which had housed nothing more than a dusty basket of dried flowers for the last ten years. ‘It probably needs sweeping and we haven’t got anything to burn in it anyway.’

  ‘Oh, great!’ said my daughter, flouncing upstairs.

  ‘Put some more clothes on, then!’ I bellowed after her crossly. ‘What do you think people did a hundred years ago?’

  I sound like my mother, I thought dismally, turning up the collar of my coat as I went to put the kettle on.

  My mood was not improved when I eventually got through to the plumber’s answerphone to be informed he was on holiday for a fortnight.

  ‘I suppose he’s gone to Lanzarote as well!’ I said grumpily to Terry that night above the sound of Zoë slamming doors. ‘Or Tenerife, or Barbados. Or anywhere not dark and freezing cold at half-past four!’

  Terry put his arm round me. ‘Perhaps we could manage a week somewhere,’ he said. I looked at him in surprise. Terry had a new job now but we were still feeling the effects of living on one income for so long.

  ‘Can we afford it?’ I asked, although I could feel the excitement mounting in me already.

  Terry nodded. ‘Why don’t you pop into the travel agents in your lunch hour tomorrow?’

  ‘Really?’ I said eagerly. ‘Honestly?’

  But Terry was picking up the phone book and thinking of other things. ‘Now let’s see if we can find another plumber … or at least a chimney sweep …’

  We watched TV wearing three jumpers each and went to bed early.

  ‘I’m still freezing,’ complained Zoë, when I went in to say goodnight.

  ‘Put another pair of socks on – there’s a plumber coming round in the morning!’ I said cheerily. ‘Soon be warm again.’

  ‘I’m going to stay at Lucy’s tomorrow,’ she answered grumpily.

  I wanted to tell her we’d done all the calculations and could just about afford a last-minute cheap week in the sun but I thought I’d leave it as a surprise for when it was all booked. ‘Love you both!’ I called gaily as I crossed the landing to Shaun’s room. Zoë, clearly remembering the harridan her mother had been only hours ago, poked her head out of the door and looked at me curiously.

  Even another heat-less morning with no hot water couldn’t dampen my spirits. I beamed at Janice as I got back from lunch the following day, my arms full of brochures. ‘I expect you’ll want to get off early tonight won’t you?’ I asked kindly. ‘Make a start on the packing for Monday.’

  Hope I can get the time off so easily, I thought as I settled at my desk with my sandwich and a hundred glossy pages of paradise, consulting the list of late bargains the travel agent had given me, hugging myself at the vision of me too, soon to be lying out on one of the sun-loungers in the picture, sporting my new orange bikini bought in July and only worn once, with Terry rubbing a little oil in my back, handing me my long, cold drink …

  Then the phone rang. Terry’s voice was flat, and my heart sank.

  ‘We’re going to have to have a new boiler.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘He’s getting us one for Monday.’

  ‘Right.’

  We were both silent. I didn’t need to ask. We both knew a new boiler could cost thousands.

  ‘I’m sorry, love,’ Terry sounded tired. ‘I’d take you away if I could.’

  ‘I know,’ I said glumly. ‘It doesn’t matter. Heating’s more important than holidays.’ But I knew I didn’t sound very convinced.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Terry again.

  ‘Oh well,’ I sighed. ‘You’d better get back to work then. I’ll see you later. I knew I sounded hard done-by but I didn’t seem able to do anything about it.

  I put the phone down and stared out of the window at the cold, grey sky, swallowing hard. It was ridiculous to feel so deeply disappointed. But I’d been so carried away by the idea of a winter break. A week of relaxing in the sunshine, talking to Zoë and Shaun, spending some proper time with Terry. Sometimes our lives seemed one long round of work, sleep, shopping, nagging the kids to get on with their homework …

  ‘I’ll send you all a postcard!’

  Suddenly it was four o’clock and everyone had gathered to wish Janice well.

  I tried to smile as I waved her off, tried hard not to feel envious as she gathered together the sun block and new sunglasses she’d picked up at lunchtime.

  ‘Have a lovely time!’ I called as she ran smiling for the lift, hoping my face did not betray how much I was wishing and wishing it could be me.

  It was dark and raining again as I put my own coat on. While I waited for Carol to finish putting her stuff away, I glanced at the brochure still lying on the corner of Janice’s deserted desk.

  ‘All right for some, eh?’ I said, trying to sound cheery.

  Carol stopped and shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t want her life,’ she said. ‘Second honeymoon? Last-ditch attempt to save their marriage more like.’

  ‘Really?’ I stared at her shocked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she nodded, ‘that’s Alan’s answer to everything – a week away or an expensive dinner out – he thinks then she’ll forgive him for seeing whichever girl it is this time. I’d rather have some trust and loyalty myself.’

  ‘Yes, so would I,’ I said slowly, hearing Terry’s apologetic voice on the phone. ‘Poor Janice,’ I added, thinking of Terry’s comforting arm around me.

  As Carol and I walked down the stairs together, I thought again about what she’d told me and felt ashamed of feeling envious of Janice and even worse about getting my priorities all wrong.

  ‘Have a good weekend,’ said Carol, smiling.

  ‘I will!’

  I’ll make sure we all do, I told myself as I said goodnight and walked away down the dark road, feeling worse and worse. How selfish I’d been on the phone earlier, letting my disappointment show so clearly. Terry had worked all the hours going when he’d got the new job, often co
ming home exhausted just so he could get our finances straight. It wasn’t his fault the boiler had packed up. None of it was his fault. I stopped at the little supermarket by the bus stop and bought a bottle of wine. I’d go home and cook everyone something really nice and tell him how it honestly didn’t matter a jot, because it didn’t. ‘We can go on holiday another year!’ I would say. ‘Who cares when we’ve got each other?’

  But the house was silent when I got in. A note on the kitchen table informed me that Zoë had indeed gone to stay the night with Lucy. Shaun and Terry were nowhere to be seen. Probably gone off somewhere together to avoid seeing my miserable face, I imagined guiltily. I took my coat off and put the bottle of wine in the fridge.

  Time to go and get a few jumpers on again, I thought as I wandered back up the chilly hall and turned the handle on the living room door.

  I stepped back in surprise. The heat hit me like the warm whoosh from an opened oven door. I blinked at the sight of yellow-orange flames leaping up out of the grate and licking up the chimney, the huge basket of logs standing next to the hearth. Every lamp was lit and the room looked as warm and welcoming as yesterday it had seemed drab and cold. But what was inside made my jaw drop open.

  All the furniture had been pushed back and on either side of the fire was a brightly striped deckchair. Along the carpet was spread an enormous beach towel. On the coffee table were two glasses filled with some exotic looking fruity drink with a bright paper umbrella sticking jauntily out of each, and a platter of delicious looking, nibble-sized pieces of food. Prawns, olives, little squares of cheese, wonderful crusty bread …

  ‘Terry!’ I called at the same moment as I felt his arms come round me from behind.

  ‘Kids are both out,’ he murmured into my shoulder. ‘Thought we’d have a bit of a holiday.’