by Judy Astley
Jack was feeling rather cramped and foolish lurking behind his tree, but waited till the preoccupied Eliot had gone past. He’d thought of Eliot as the type to be working all night, an inspired alcoholic, typing and smoking into the early hours, with piles of disorganized papers and a rusting Anglepoise lamp. He didn’t draw too well that morning, the lumbering muttering man, brain quite obviously in overdrive, had alarmed him. When we live down here, he thought, we’ll get a large dog.
Clare hated making plans about food for the afternoon when she hadn’t even had breakfast. It was Jeannie’s day for washing floors and Clare would have to make cakes round her. Once last year she had suggested that Jeannie leave it for another time, but Jeannie had looked so astonished and said ‘but it’s my day for it’, that Clare had felt she had insulted her and kept apologetically out of the way. In a village this size you had to behave impeccably towards the cleaning lady, she was God. If you didn’t treat her as such you’d never get another. Word would get round. As Clare drank her early coffee on the terrace, she wandered round deadheading the pinks, clearing up dead fish and peanut shells. The problem with using the terrace as an outdoor room was that there was outdoor housework too. It would help if they’d all treat it with the respect a room would get, and not throw crisp packets and bread crusts all over the place. What she really needed, when it came down to it, was litter bins, but then it would look like a pub garden. She was angry too, with the children for leaving collections of little fish and molluscs to die in the sun, gasping to death in the hot plastic buckets. The children were all for save the whale and conservation, but only in the abstract, not when it came to the little creatures they fished out of the creek.
Clare swilled down the terrace with greasy washing-up water, wishing she could still use the hose pipe. For a few brief moments before the sun dried them again, she could savour the fresh dampness of her flowers. She wished she could hose down the house, too, just swoosh away all the summer dust and grime with an illegal jet from the hose. England, she thought, just isn’t equipped for the heat. There isn’t the cool marble and stone of the Mediterranean, the carpets seem to sweat in the clogging heat.
Clare had invited Archie and Celia to tea. They had been arriving at the sailing club for lunch the day before just as Clare was leaving. Still feeling twinges of guilt about Andrew and wondering whether they were justified, she made her invitation. Celia had accepted with grace like royalty, and although she was not the sort of person who would ever have the bad manners to say so, Clare was somehow left with the impression that she was considered almost as naughty a child as Andrew. Jack said it was entirely Celia’s fault, she shouldn’t have relied so heavily on the theory of grown-up conspiracy, and remembered that she was almost a generation away from Clare, let alone Andrew.
Liz and Eliot were coming too for which Clare felt duly grateful, on the rather dubious premise that if Celia thought Clare wasn’t up to standard as an adult, she should really take a closer look at Eliot.
While the scones were defrosting and the cakes were in the oven, Jeannie told Clare she was going upstairs to give Miranda’s room a good going-over. Why couldn’t she have done that while I was busy cooking round her in the kitchen Clare thought. Clare found it very embarrassing that Jeannie was cleaning her house while her son was possibly doing goodness knows what with Miranda. She was uncomfortably conscious that if Jeannie was a friend and not an employee they could have had a bit of a giggle about it. As it was, if Jeannie knew anything was going on she was keeping it to herself. Clare had too much middle-class angst about employing people to be any good at it. She pretended to herself that she had a thing about exploitation, but in truth she was just not used to it. Jeannie much preferred working for Liz, who had clearly been brought up with servants and didn’t dither about what to call her, or what she could ask her to do. She didn’t keep apologizing about the state of the sitting room. You knew where you were with people like that. Mrs Lynch wouldn’t waste valuable blockbuster reading time trailing around after a cleaning lady plumping up cushions on the sofa. Jeannie knew Clare had wanted her out of the kitchen, but she wasn’t going to let her off that easily. There was peace and quiet in Miranda’s room, and not that much cleaning to be done either, she was quite a neat girl really. Steve could have done a lot worse if things had worked out. There were no dirty tissues under the bed, no make-up smeared on the dressing table and she did at least seem to have aimed her laundry at the basket, nothing worse than other people’s grubby knickers left lying around. Miranda and Steve should by now have been at the holding-hands-in-the-village stage, he should be teaching her to play euchre in the pub so she’d have something to do in winter. It was a pity that Miranda had after all run true to type and abandoned Steve as soon as her own sort arrived.
Jeannie picked up the silky soft clothes from the bed and hung them in the wardrobe, dusted the chest of drawers and tipped the dying posy of roses into the bin. A scarf in the bottom of the bin had to be rescued, Miranda couldn’t be intending to throw that out, it was silk, by the feel of it, and too pretty. Underneath the scarf was a small cardboard box and it didn’t seem prying to read what it was, you don’t put really private things into a waste paper basket, surely, Jeannie reasoned.
Jeannie read the box and had to sit on the bed. If she’s got Steve into trouble, the little tart … she thought angrily. She put the box on top of the rubbish and carried it down to the dustbin outside the house, where she left. it exposed at the top of the bin so Jack or Clare could get the same heart-spearing shock that she had just had.
If Miranda had so thoughtlessly left the pregnancy test kit box lying around her bedroom, Jeannie thought furiously, why couldn’t she also have had the decency to leave the result?
TWELVE
WELL HE DIDN’T have to go with them, but he knew what they’d say if he didn’t: ‘Oh Andrew they’ll think it’s so odd’ or worse, ‘Aren’t you well?’ His mother would put an enquiring hand to his forehead, checking for fever. He didn’t want to be touched, not by her, not by anyone now. They’d want a good reason for his absence, and Celia could smell out an untruth like a labrador after a dead pheasant. He was pretty sure that the photos were of Jessica, even though he couldn’t see her face behind the scarf. She must have known he’d know too, he didn’t actually know that many girls after all, and certainly not with tits like that. And that scarf looked like the kind of silky paisley type of thing that Miranda sometimes wore, which made it worse, they were in it together, mocking him. He could imagine them by the photo booth, giggling, saying ‘He’s going to love this!’, and Jessica posing quickly, half-naked, while the lights flashed, then struggling back into her tee shirt while Miranda kept terrified look-out the other side of the curtain. It had to be them, the envelope had a Truro postmark. It certainly wasn’t Beryl from the pub. She had much bigger, darker nipples, he’d seen them outlined against her thin blouse as she reached up to change the gin bottle on the row of optics. He’d thought the nipples rather frightening, but fascinating. She’d seen him looking and winked, shamelessly. It had been yet another of those times when he’d wished he didn’t blush.
He would have to go to Clare’s, and he’d have to act as if nothing had happened. Then with any luck they’d think the dreadful package had got lost in the post, or been re-routed to Surrey along with the telephone bill and the council tax stuff. Andrew felt he had quite enough to cope with already, what with Celia’s tight-lipped hurt silences, and Archie’s bluff commiseration, ‘Bad luck getting caught old boy!’ as if by having the party Andrew had turned into a man at last and now they could be chums. It even seemed he didn’t mind about the Chivas Regal. Chip off the old block, that kind of thing. This was not what Andrew wanted at all. All he had wanted was to get his leg over, as the rugby players at school put it. Funny thing to say, he thought, surely they don’t just mean one leg?
Andrew also thought that he and Milo had cleared up rather well, but every time Celia moved furniture
she managed to find just one more cigarette end. There had been a used and dusty condom under her bed, and the dustmen had refused to take all the sacks of empty bottles and cans at one go, so the garbage sat there outside the cottage reproaching Andrew for his misdemeanours for a whole extra week. The wages of sin had been a good telling-off and a hangover. Andrew therefore resolved to forget about sex and concentrate on his sailing, perhaps getting seriously fit, with a physique worth showing off. Then next time it would be Jessica damn well propositioning him. In the meantime Andrew couldn’t quite bring himself to tear up the little strip of photographs and hide them at the bottom of the rubbish bin, as he had with the Marks and Spencer knickers. He thought he should really, but destroying them would have felt like mutilating Jessica herself, and she looked so vulnerable, so ‘offered’. So he took them upstairs and opened the shameful box of-secrets in his wardrobe, intending to incarcerate them for ever beneath the collection of erotica. All this lot too, he thought, was part of the sin for which he was being punished, and he decided he’d have no more of it. But just unlocking the box, just handling the photos of Jessica, was having the usual effect. No-one was home. Andrew rifled through the box and its rather obscene contents. He giggled quietly at his own small joke, the idea of handling himself with kid gloves, a pair of which he had bought from a junk shop near the school. They were so thin and delicate and did not detract from the sensation like heavier ones did. They felt like skin, someone else’s, not his own sweaty impatient hand. Well maybe just this once, he thought, after all Jessica had sent him a gift.
Clare was in the kitchen. She hated icing cakes and did not need Miranda hanging around and picking at the sandwiches.
‘Leave them alone Miranda, they’re for later.’
‘Sorry. Who’s coming?’
‘Just the usual, Eliot and Liz, Celia and Archie, and all the kids probably, unless you’re all off to the beach?’
‘No, well I’ll be here anyway.’
Miranda was slouching against the doorway, looking bored and moody. She was kicking rhythmically at the chipped skirting board, driving Clare mad. ‘Miranda if you can’t be useful, please go away.’
‘Sorry,’ said Miranda, not moving. Clare bustled across to the oven and got out the scones. Please, she thought, don’t let this be the moment that she wants to talk, I’m too busy.
‘Do you want anyone else to come too?’ Clare asked, aware that her subtlety was rather heavy-handed. (As, she thought, were also her scones.) She rinsed the icing funnel under the tap so she wouldn’t have to be looking at Miranda. No wonder Roman Catholics like those confession boxes, she thought, so much easier not to see each other.
‘No. Why should I?’ Miranda said, and then flounced out of the kitchen. Clare wasn’t sure whether to be annoyed with herself for alienating Miranda yet again by her clumsiness or be glad to have her out of the way. Like Scarlett O’Hara she decided to think about it tomorrow. She still had to butter the scones.
‘We should take flowers,’ Jessica had said to Milo. They were collecting ox-eye daisies from the hedgerow along the lane, dawdling on their way to Clare’s.
‘I’m so proud of you,’ Milo said, ‘I honestly never thought you’d do it.’
‘I had to, after you’d dared me,’ Jessica said. ‘The worst bit was hanging around outside the booth waiting for the photos to come out of the little slot. There was a man there who’d gone in just after us and he was watching for his own pictures to come out. In the end Miranda got so frantic to distract him that she started asking him all sorts of stupid questions about his horrid little dog. He had one of those tiny beige terriers with a hair-ribbon, the sort people carry. Miranda had to keep stroking it and saying isn’t it sweet, and asking what it liked to eat and such.’
‘I’d love to have seen Andrew’s face when he opened the envelope,’ Milo said. ‘I hope Celia and Archie weren’t around.’
‘Suppose they open his mail?’ said Jessica, suddenly horrified.
‘Surely not, and anyway they wouldn’t know it was you.’
‘Neither will Andrew, I hope. I do feel extremely stupid. Can’t we go home?’
‘No of course not, you’ll have to face him sometime. If he does think it’s you, we’ll know by the bulge growing in his trousers.’ Milo and Jessica started giggling.
‘I won’t be able to look,’ Jessica said, ‘Too dreadful to think of. Let’s go home.’ She set off, back up the lane, flowers trailing.
‘Not, a chance,’ Milo said, catching her and hauling her back again. ’I’ll look after you, and anyway let’s just be nice to him, the poor sod.’
So they arrived at Clare’s, arm in arm, carrying huge bunches of daisies, smiling radiantly at the group assembled on the lawn. How lovely they look, everyone thought, what a picture of filial affection.
Archie and Celia arrived rather late, as if they were regally aware that the tea-party was in their honour. Even in the heat, Celia had a cardigan draped round her shoulders, which she pulled protectively a little tighter as she caught sight of Eliot, grinning at her across a champagne bottle. He noticed the reflex gesture of defence, which set up thoughts of a challenge idly flicking across his mind. Nice legs on Celia, he thought, but hips a bit spiky, could do damage. Only Liz, idly picking buttercups from the dry grass, knew that this was the second bottle he was pouring, the other one had mostly gone into himself and the empty bottle was in her kitchen bin. She’d abandoned the idea of collecting bottles for the bottle bank in Helston, so as to protect Milo and Jessica from the appalling truth about how much their father was capable of drinking. The family could, she thought, probably qualify for the installation of a council bottle bank of their own, right outside the back door.
Clare had noticed Celia’s expression of disapproval at Eliot and immediately took her off to admire the penstemons, asking her advice about blackfly on the nasturtiums. Jack overheard her and wondered if she had remembered to hide the can of (ozone and bee friendly) pesticide in the shed. Clare knew perfectly well what to do about bugs in the garden. Obviously, he realized, they were to spend the afternoon talking about anything but the awfulness of teenagers and their destructive social lives.
Archie, benign and cheerful, said that he was not averse to champagne at any time of the day and settled comfortably into a deckchair next to Liz, at the same time sneaking an admiring glance at her tanned legs as he sat down.
Liz noticed and hoped Eliot had too, it was time he realized, she thought, that other people found her extremely attractive. Wouldn’t do him any harm. She hitched her silk skirt up a little higher and recrossed her legs to make a more flattering arrangement and then offered her best smile to Archie.
‘So how was your trip to Tresco? I love travelling by helicopter, don’t you?’
‘Well actually we didn’t, we went by boat. We’re not very adventurous I’m afraid,’ Archie said.
So he won’t be flashing anything more than a smile at you my dear Liz, Eliot thought, watching.
‘The gardens were wonderful,’ Celia said, coming to sit next to Archie and overcoming her reluctance to drink Eliot’s champagne. ‘And in spite of the water shortage too, I don’t know how they manage to keep the plants so well.’
‘I hope this drought doesn’t go on much longer,’ Clare said. ‘I remember a couple of years ago, syphoning the bath water out of the window, and feeling guilty because I knew we shouldn’t really even be having baths.’
‘I couldn’t exist without a bath,’ Liz said languorously, ‘That would be just too uncivilized.’ She couldn’t believe anyone would go to all that trouble with bits of piping for a few plants. One could always buy new ones the following spring.
Jack, smiling to himself at the thought of Liz in a flowered bath cap and nothing else said ‘Showers use a lot less water, you know, far more ecologically sound.’
‘You’re teasing me,’ Liz giggled. ‘Showers are too much like after games at school. There’s always bits of you that don’t g
et wet enough and warm enough and it’s so unrelaxing.’
‘Yes that’s true,’ Celia said. ‘A shower doesn’t do a lot for the old bones after gardening.’
‘But I don’t have old bones,’ Liz pointed out, rather cattily.
Clare started handing round scones rather frantically.
‘Does anyone remember that thing about putting a brick in the loo cistern so it flushed less water?’
‘It usually meant that it didn’t quite flush enough,’ Archie recalled. ‘Then you had to flush twice. Pointless I thought at the time, defeats the object.’
Jack said, ‘I remember a man, after it rained for three months that autumn, writing to The Times and asking if he was allowed to take his brick out now.’
Clare thought the conversation was getting a bit lavatorial for a Sunday tea-time. She had a look towards the smaller children playing by the swing. They’d go into hysterical giggles if they heard the grown-ups talking like that, they were at that stage.
‘When we had baths at school,’ Celia was saying, ‘we had to wear these cotton smocks so we wouldn’t be able to see our bodies and be corrupted. Nuns, you see. So much was unmentionable then.’ She looked rather wistful.
‘Different things are unmentionable now, even if we can talk about our bodies,’ Eliot said. ‘Americans, they’re always asking how much you earn, soon as you meet them. We British wouldn’t even tell our best friends.’
‘Like asking how you vote,’ Archie said. ‘It’s very bad form.’
‘You can always lie,’ Eliot said. ‘But no-one would even have to speculate how you vote, Archie. It would be beyond the imagination to take you for other than a true blue Tory.’