Just For the Summer

by Judy Astley

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ Archie said, smiling.

  ‘I’d be absolutely bloody amazed,’ Eliot said, opening another bottle.

  The popping of the cork made tourists on the opposite bank of the creek look across to the garden. How decadent we must look, Jack thought.

  It was turning into yet another long boozy afternoon. The humidity, and the slowly looming clouds made everyone languid and rather tetchy. Clare noticed that even the older children were being unusually quiet. She could just make out Milo and Andrew talking about cricket, in that test-match commentator drone that men have when they talk about the game. No-one looked very relaxed, just exhausted, perhaps it was the effort of not mentioning Andrew’s party, presumably another unmentionable. Amy and Harriet were not, for once, squabbling, but waiting with unnatural grace for their turn on the swing. Miranda was pushing one of the Lynch twins, while Jessica sat alone on the grass making daisy chains. A few villagers could be seen gardening on the hillside. The locals knew better than to go out for walks in such solid heat. No-one was mowing, the grass was no longer growing enough to need it, so the village was silent in the sunshine.

  Clare was getting pleasantly drunk and soon she decided would be in no state to care about anything, not about Miranda’s moodiness, or Jack’s lack of a job, or the appalling feeling she was getting that she was at a cocktail party in Wimbledon when here she was supposed to be getting back to nature, away from it all. That was the minus side to drinking champagne in the afternoon. It made you not care about the important things, and then it made you depressed and weepy later about the things that didn’t matter at all.

  Deep grey storm clouds were starting to gather over the hills and the light had that intensity that made the greens of the fields and trees so much more vivid, sharp-edged and brilliant against the sky. Across the creek in another cottage garden a tired man was slowly clearing weeds from his terrace, shoving them firmly into a black plastic sack.

  From the idleness of their deckchairs, Clare and the others watched him.

  ‘He’s wasting his time. The bin men won’t take any of that,’ Jack said.

  ‘Perhaps he’s going to take it all to his compost heap,’ Celia said.

  ‘Don’t know why he bothers anyway, I’m sure he’s only renting the place.’ Clare added, ‘At least I haven’t seen him around before this week.’

  As they watched, the man picked up the full bag and strolled down to the creek.

  ‘Jeez, he’s not-going to put it in the river is he?’

  ‘Well wouldn’t you?’ said Clare. She put a few weeds in almost every day. Added up over a week they’d probably come to almost a bagful. ‘I do sometimes,’ she confessed. ‘Not many of course,’ she added cravenly.

  ‘Yes but you live here,’ Celia said.

  ‘Does that matter?’ Jack asked. ‘It’s the same foliage whether we’re here or elsewhere.’

  ‘We pay our council tax,’ Archie said.

  Jack got up and started clearing plates. The argument was ridiculous, they all sounded like smug children. The heat was getting to them. He went into the kitchen. The whole afternoon was ridiculous. Tea, Eliot’s case of champagne, sticky cakes, all unnecessary, just so Clare could soothe her conscience over an issue no-one was ever going to mention, ever again. Wouldn’t it have been simpler to say to Celia: ‘Sorry your house got messed up but that’s what happens when you leave kids of that age on their own.’ So they’d all had to play tea-parties while he could have been painting.

  By the time Jack came back from the house the others were watching Eliot confront the poor gardening man across the creek. All the kids were lined up by the wall gleefully encouraging Eliot while Clare, Celia and Archie were still trying to pretend nothing was happening. Liz had her eyes shut, looking as if it was only what was to be expected.

  As Jack approached he could hear what Eliot was shouting: ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing, putting all that garbage into the pissing creek. Don’t you realize all that shit floats round blocking up the channel, getting round propellors?’

  ‘It’s biodegradable,’ shouted the gardener smugly.

  ‘Don’t care if it’s best bullshit,’ Eliot roared, playing now to a larger audience, a party of hikers gathering on the bridge halfway across the creek, reluctant to cross over and look as if they were taking sides. They were joined by a couple of families returning from the beach.

  ‘You fat-arsed evil little bugger!’ Eliot was yelling, waving his arms.

  ‘Oh God,’ groaned Liz, ‘This really is the end.’

  All the children were shrieking with laughter, the little ones delighting in the fact that Eliot was too big to have a mummy to tell him off but knowing quite well that that was what he needed.

  Clare started to giggle quietly, turning away to hide from the children. Archie poured another drink and appeared to be enjoying himself hugely, as did even Celia, Jack noted, so much for being a goody-goody.

  ‘You’re disgusting, you’re a disgrace to the planet. You people come here renting our property and think you can do any damn fucking thing you like …’ Eliot was ranting.

  The man stared back, amazed. ‘It’s my cottage. I bought it last week,’ he said. So these were the neighbours, Jack could almost hear him thinking.

  ‘Doesn’t make any difference. You’re still a podgy ignorant bastard cretin. And you ought to know better,’ Eliot slurred. Then he picked up the nearest empty champagne bottle and hurled it across the creek. It fell far short of its target and floated down towards the pub.

  ‘This is appalling,’ Celia murmured to Jack. ‘Now that we know he’s a neighbour, how will we ever live it down?’

  ‘Didn’t you think it mattered then, if he was just a renter?’ Jack asked her, gathering up empty glasses.

  ‘Oh well I suppose so,’ she said unconvincingly, ‘but we don’t have to live with them.’

  ‘And you can all fuck off too, it isn’t a circus.’ Eliot gestured rudely to the group on the bridge. Some of them gestured back, laughing, but most of them turned away, embarrassed and continued their walk.

  ‘If this was Barnes, the police would be here by now,’ Miranda said to Andrew.

  ‘That’s just it,’ Milo said. ‘As we’re all on holiday Eliot thinks it doesn’t count. He thinks he can do what he likes. And of course he can, you see.’

  ‘Well it certainly brought everyone together,’ Clare was saying later as they washed up in the kitchen. ‘At least Celia and I are friends again. It only takes someone else to behave badly and they’ve all got something else to talk about.’

  ‘That’s a terrible way of looking at it,’ Miranda said. ‘What about that poor man? It was quite funny at the time, but really Eliot humiliated him. I think it’s awful.’

  ‘No-one would have cared if he’d been a renter,’ Jack said. ‘And if he’d been a real local you’d all have asked him how his garden was doing and said the weeds were good for encouraging fish. Double standards. Worse, triple standards.’

  He was a summer visitor like themselves, that man, Jack thought. He’d have to be socialized with. He would, on the other hand, once he’d become part of the tea and drinks and barbecue circuit in the village, be able to dine out on Eliot’s appalling behaviour for weeks to come, Eliot being famous and having been on Wogan. There wasn’t that much that was available to form topics of imaginative conversation in the summer, so perhaps they should all be grateful.

  It was a quiet evening up at the Lynchs’ house. Eliot took Liz straight to bed, leaving Jessica to take care of the twins. Liz was feeling quite excited, Eliot had been so wonderfully dreadful, just as he had been when she had first met him, hitting a journalist who was trying to conduct an interview. She’d thought him powerful and wild, a primitive man who could say and do exactly as he wanted, whereas she had been brought up to do almost exactly the opposite. She only hoped, that evening, that his sexual stamina would survive all the champagne.

  The storm sta
rted round about ten. The evening light had turned a murky yellowy-grey, the trees silhouetted and blowing black and stark against the billowing sky. The rain and the lightning began together and Jessica, terrified, crept out of bed, along to Milo’s room.

  ‘It isn’t just the thunder,’ she said, climbing into bed with him, ‘I’ve got a secret and I want you to have it too. It’s too big for me.’

  Milo put his arm round her, the only girl he could tolerate the idea of being in bed with.

  ‘It’s Miranda,’ Jessica said. ‘She’s told me she’s pregnant. And she doesn’t seem to be doing anything about it.’

  Oh these women and their unpredictable bodies, Milo thought.

  ‘Well we can’t do anything,’ he said. ‘Can’t you persuade her to tell Clare? Perhaps she could have an abortion.’

  ‘She doesn’t believe in it.’

  ‘She’ll feel differently when she gets back home, things aren’t the same down here, it’s all happy-ever-after time in the summer isn’t it? Why don’t you just snuggle down and go to sleep?’

  Jessica put her thumb in her mouth and Milo stroked her naked back, thinking vaguely of Oliver, until they both slept, curled together like kittens. In the morning Liz, cheered by a night of passion, came to wake Milo and wondered if this little scene was something sent by the gods to replace all the worrying she did about Eliot.

  THIRTEEN

  PEOPLE SAID THE next day that the weather had broken, as if, in England a spell of sunshine was a fragile, delicate thing. Rain poured persistently all over the village, drenching the lines of swimsuits and the cushions of the sunloungers that people had been overconfident enough to leave out at night. The post office sold out of plastic macs. They were bought with great reluctance, the purchasers feeling disgruntled that they had so foolishly taken a chance on British weather and not brought anything suitable with them, just in case. Eliot was quite happy in his study, aware that there weren’t people out there having a better time than he was, and determinedly hurtling through his four thousand word quota so that he could go out to play later. He could see from his window the dreary plastic shapes of the people wandering in the rain, wondering what they should be doing with themselves, and he thought there was no sight more drab than a floral Laura Ashley sundress vanquished by a shapeless plastic mac. He remembered his first wife, once, caught in a rainstorm in a thin flowered frock and espadrilles with soles like blotting paper. She had looked like a kitten someone had tried to drown.

  The residents had their own uniform for the wet weather and could be seen taking soggy walks through the woods in camouflage Barbours and obligatory green wellies. Some wore old skiing anoraks or their oilskins, either way items too bulky for the average two-weeker to have room for in the car. Some, such as Celia and Archie, continued to go out sailing as usual, blinking the rain from their eyelashes and relishing the solitude. Up at the bungalows as the walkers strode past, the retired couples could be seen cosily reading their Telegraphs by the light from their picture windows, glancing appreciatively at the rain falling softly on their gardens and saving them a job. In the post office, among the mac-buyers and the postcard-browsers, Harriet, Amy and an assortment of small untidy children were gathered around the souvenir and gift section.

  ‘And I’d like a cat made of shells, and one of those lavender bags, and a box of those little mats, and some flowery cards and sweets …’

  Amy was putting in her order for birthday presents. With no choice of shops, Amy took her party guests solemnly to the post office and instructed them what to bring her. It was a practical if shameless way to go about having a birthday list, but if they wanted a free tea, Harriet had told them all, they’d have to bring the right stuff. They didn’t have to do the buying then, just the choosing. Amy and Harriet would go away with the list, and allocate exactly who was to bring what later. They were very organized children.

  Miranda wished she hadn’t told Jessica. While no-one had known it had been conveniently unreal. Even the word ‘pregnant’ didn’t convey any meaning to her, but when Miranda looked into her mirror and said to herself ‘I’m going to have a baby,’ she could make herself scared. The more people who knew about it, the longer she left it, the nearer would be the time when she would have to do something about it. Even if it had been a romance, she couldn’t imagine staying on in the village, an old-fashioned shotgun wedding and living in Jeannie’s cottage with Steve. Yuck. She longed to be back home again, for things that were normal, even for school, the security of the daily bus journey, homework, babysitting. She stayed in out of the rain, glad of the excuse, and lay on her bed reading Jilly Cooper. Real-life sex now rather revolted her. All those hormones that had told her it was the right time the right place, were now keeping her celibate, too late. She felt sick, not sexy. She no longer wanted to spend any time outside communing with nature, even the fruit on the trees, the flowers fattening their seed pods reminded her of fertility. She now preferred to stay close to home, playing Trivial Pursuit with the family, doing jigsaws with Amy, holding the ends of skipping ropes for Harriet. She’d tried being a grown-up, gone through the glass and wanted to come back again. She couldn’t tell Clare, all that compassion and understanding that she knew Clare had been storing up for just this moment. And what would she advise her to do? Have an abortion? Clare herself could have got rid of the inconvenient Miranda, but had chosen not to. Would she expect Miranda to do the same?

  Clare knew it wasn’t a good day to be going into Truro. Everyone rushed to the nearest town when the rain came, trying to minimize the depressing effect of all that damp and dripping. No-one could go to the beach, walking the cliff path was likely to be too muddy for the average holidaymaker in sandals, so Penzance and Falmouth would be full of families drifting from shop to shop with children pleading for money for slot machines and amusement arcades … Bemused fathers would be trailing their wives round cosmetic counters, wishing they’d had the nerve to insist on staying behind to watch the highlights of yesterday’s cricket on TV. Truro would be full of shoppers looking for crafts and gifts to take home, and there’d be nowhere to park. People like Clare shopped once a week just like at home, regardless of the weather, and today was, like Jeannie with her floors, her day for it.

  In spite of the traffic, it was still with a feeling of escape that Clare drove with Jack into Truro. She felt that following Eliot’s performance from her garden the day before it might be wise to get away from the village. She wondered what on earth had happened to that feeling of getting away from it all, as the saying goes. She seemed to be bogged down in curiously suburban pursuits and concerns. She decided to treat herself to a trip round the estate agents while Jack was at the framers and see if they had cottages in the middle of nowhere, with land for growing vegetables, and no neighbours whatsoever. Dream on, she thought. She was tired of tourists photographing her house and hearing them say ‘Oh how sweet, it looks just like a tea-cosy’. They didn’t have to think about the price of thatch, or the wind-rotted window frames. If only Miranda was not so moody, if Jack wasn’t so uncommunicative, if Jeannie didn’t keep following her round looking as if she was trying to say something that was obviously proving too difficult to express (like she’s leaving, or wants a pay rise, Clare thought). If only, let’s be honest, she thought as she negotiated a difficult double roundabout, Eliot showed some sign that he’d at least had a passing fancy for her, even if he’d thought better of it since.

  Clare was driving badly. Every time they went round a corner Jack glanced back to see if any of his paintings were falling off the seat. He could stretch an arm back and hold on to them, just to keep them in place, but that would draw attention to the fact that he not only thought Clare was driving too fast, but also that he hadn’t the guts to say so. She looked so intent, obviously miles away in thought, he’d only get snapped at. What he really needed was a new portfolio to keep them safe, but Clare would only point out that he already had about six at home in perfectly good condit
ion, why not get a friend to mail one down to them. She didn’t understand the lure of art shops though.

  He smiled at her and thought about cheering her up.

  ‘Isn’t it nice to be on our own for a change?’

  ‘Well it’s not dinner at the Ritz, we’re only going shopping,’ she snapped back, her thoughts disturbed. Then she added, ‘Couldn’t we go away somewhere, to a hotel maybe, just for a couple of nights?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ he said hesitating, ‘But what about the children, and surely it’s a holiday being at the cottage?’

  ‘I feel I could do with being waited on a little sometimes. Here I still have to cook and clean and all that, it’s just like home. I need to be somewhere where someone else changes the beds.’

  ‘You’ve never complained before,’ Jack said.

  ‘I’m not complaining now. I just feel sort of stuck, unrested. And there’re always so many people around, there’s no peace.’

  Aha, Jack thought, so it’s sex.

  ‘It’s not sex,’ Clare said, guessing his thoughts.

  ‘We used to do it all the time in summer,’ he said. ‘You couldn’t wait to get to the country. Now you read feminist novels in bed and wear old tee-shirts. You’ve gone off it.’

  ‘I’ve got other things to think about,’ Clare said, ‘And so have you it seems, you say nothing to me, hardly a word from one end of the day to the next, you go out drawing, visiting that old hippy on the raft, then you eat dinner in almost total silence, climb into bed and expect me to feel romantic. I don’t have an “On” switch, I need warming up, like an old radio.’

  ‘Well perhaps we could go to Paris or Venice at half-term. Would you like that?’

  ‘I’d love it,’ she said, turning to him with the first smile he’d seen from her that day. ‘But it doesn’t make me feel any better now. Miranda and you hardly say a word, and living with her at the moment is like treading on eggs. One wrong word and she storms out to her room and stays there for hours.’