Just For the Summer

by Judy Astley

  Mrs Smith had a quick look at her clients for the morning ride. ‘You two big girls are on these larger ones,’ she indicated vaguely to Jessica and Miranda. ‘You’ve both done a fair bit of riding, I remember from Easter, so you’ll be OK’ Miranda and Jessica were not the tallest people in the group, so Miranda assumed the ponies were probably the two most difficult to handle.

  ‘Do you really think you should,’ Jessica whispered, giving Miranda a leg-up on to the grey mare. ‘You know, in your condition?’

  ‘Yes of course I should. Don’t fuss. I don’t suppose we’ll be doing more than a slow trot anyway.’

  ‘Yes I know, but you won’t, you know, you wouldn’t, sort of do anything on purpose …’

  ‘Like jump off and break my neck do you mean?’ Miranda said. ‘No of course I won’t. It would have been cheaper to fall down the stairs at the cottage. Give me a break, Jess. Let me pretend there’s nothing happening, while I still can.’

  The assortment of ponies set off towards the woods. In the distance was the sea, little sailing boats scudding across the harbour entrance using the hippy raft as a marker buoy. Ahead of Miranda and Jessica, little girls chatted about Ponies they had Ridden, outdoing each other with tales of pony club camps and gymkhana triumphs.

  Listening in to their conversation, Jessica turned to Miranda and said, ‘Just shows, you never can tell can you?’

  ‘You’d think, wouldn’t you, that if they do that much riding, they’d bring all their gear with them.’

  ‘Don’t know, depends on the size of the car, and of course the mother. Not the size of her, but you know they say things like “well it’s either your riding boots darling”,’ Jessica mocked a home-counties yowl, ‘“or it’s Daddy’s case of Chablis.”’

  ‘Yes and guess which wins.’

  Eliot was sitting quietly on a log in the woods when he heard the ponies. His tape recorder was abandoned on the ground, his dog was snuffling for rabbits, and he sat idly filleting leaves with his fingers, wondering if going round titillating housewives counted as infidelity. It was a bit like when he was young and girls used to warn him against going ‘too far’. What constituted ‘too far’ used to vary from girl to girl, and finding out their individual limits was an exhilaratingly risky mind and body game. One had always to be prepared, condom-wise, for the ones who thought that going too far involved getting pregnant, but were all right with anything short of that. But one also had to be prepared, self-control wise, for those whose ‘too far’ meant a warm eager hand inside the bra. ‘Nothing below the waist’ was how one of them had coyly put it. She’d worn, he recalled, a very tightly belted skirt, as if to emphasize the instruction, but also a half-cup black lacy bra. He should have taken that as a sign, and tried a bit harder to find out if all her underwear matched. Oh these lost opportunities. He could have had Clare against her kitchen dresser if it hadn’t been for those little local difficulties. (Quite a lot, really, he remembered, fourteen children, her husband, Celia, three police officers.) It was the thought that counted. The horses he had heard in the distance were trotting now along the woodland path. He could hear the voices of children and got up to look and see if any of them were his. Jessica had said she was going out that morning with Miranda. As he got up and moved, he saw the front horse, a grey, shy away from something, rear up and he watched as if in slow motion the girl crashed to the ground. She didn’t scream, just lay quietly looking stunned. The other horses bunched up behind her, stopping. Eliot came forward, to be helpful, and saw that the fallen rider was Miranda, lying on the ground looking up at him, pale and fragile, her riding hat askew but apparently having done its job, for her eyes focused clearly on his and she smiled.

  ‘Hello Eliot, what are you doing here?’ she said.

  ‘Miranda! Are you all right? What did you do that for, you said you wouldn’t,’ Jessica came up, shouting to her.

  ‘I didn’t do anything. The horse shied, it saw something.’

  Later Jack said ‘It was probably Eliot, the sight of him in the woods is enough to frighten anything half out of its wits’ remembering his own early morning moment of terror when Eliot had come shambling like a bear through the bracken.

  But Miranda wasn’t hurt. She lay there looking up at Mrs Smith and Jessica and Eliot, and, the strange upside-down faces of the curious horses. Her pony had wandered away nonchalantly to graze under the trees, as if it was nothing to do with her. Miranda moved her limbs in turn to give each of them a chance to hurt individually, but the only sensation she was aware of was a pleasing dampness inside her jodphurs. If she hadn’t known she was pregnant, she’d have sworn it was a period starting, and she’d have begun to worry about blood beginning to show through. When did you get over that nervousness? Did one ever become confident enough to wear a white skirt at any old time of the month, even when you were due? Miranda’s mind wandered as she lay there, in a rather happy and vague way. Is this concussion she thought?

  ‘Well we can’t stay here all day can we,’ Mrs Smith said briskly. ‘If you’re not hurt, then up you get. Back on the horse immediately, it’s the only way to keep your confidence.’

  Miranda got back on the pony, helped by Eliot.

  ‘I’ll lead you back,’ he said quietly to her, taking hold of the bridle. ‘I don’t go for this confidence nonsense. You don’t get right back into a car after a smash.’

  ‘I’m all right really, Eliot, but thanks, it’s kind of you,’ Miranda said, smiling. She kept smiling in the same secret way, looking disconcertingly happy and serene for someone who would feel the bruises tomorrow. But that’s youth for you, Eliot thought. If he’d fallen like that, he’d be in bed for a week, not to mention spending a good afternoon queuing in X-ray.

  But it wasn’t just youth. Miranda was smiling about the increasing damp feeling, which had just started to be accompanied by an old familiar low dragging pain in her stomach. She simply wanted to get back home as quickly as possible and take a look in her knickers.

  That afternoon Jack tore up a painting. He didn’t like doing that, it was such a waste of time, such an admission that it had got the better of him. When he had worked in oils, all those years ago, he had been able to rework a painting till it felt right, in fact the problem had been recognizing when it was finished. Watercolour was less forgiving, let you get away with nothing. A mark on the paper was your finished mark. Overworking the paint meant dull mud-like colour, and Jack was still working on getting the delicate balance right. It was the view across the river towards the raft, he’d had several goes at it, some very successful. This time the trees all merged into a splodge of viridian and olive. The colours were changing, autumn was on its way and Jack was finding the technique difficult. Like life, he thought. How was one ever supposed to be ready for that great autumn when it came? Would he just keep plodding on pretending he was still in his salad days, till the very end? It would be typical of his generation. Meanwhile, the painting was torn to shreds. There was always another piece of paper to have a go at. He took the reject down to the dustbin, not wanting to leave it in the kitchen bin for the family to comment on. In the bottom of the bin he found the little blue and white package, just where Clare had left it, and his heart sank to the bottom of the bin with it. Why hadn’t Clare said anything? How many more years was he going to have to go on being Supportive. Just when he thought his hunter-gatherer days were coming neatly to an end. There went freedom.

  SIXTEEN

  MIRANDA HAD EXPECTED more blood. She associated miscarriage with haemorrhage and had wondered if she might have to be taken off to Truro in the air ambulance. That was rather a thrilling thought, but then of course if that happened they’d all know, and there’d be all the family complications associated with that. As it was, the blood had gone through and stained her jodhpurs, but not more than unexpected blood usually did. She took them off, screwed them up and buried them in the laundry basket, hoping Clare’s environmentally-friendly washing powder was up to the challenge
. The pain was still there, but no worse than she had had with her first few periods only a couple of years ago, when she had tried to get off hockey and been made to play in goal instead, sweating from the cramps in her stomach and letting in goals obliviously, caring only that her insides felt they were draining away.

  Miranda turned on the bath taps and undressed. Clare had once told her that her own mother hadn’t let her have baths when she was bleeding, in case the blood went to her head. What strange mental maps of their insides some people must have, Miranda thought, and fancy telling your mother whenever you had a period anyway. One thing left to do, she thought, before getting in the bath. She took the tweezers from the basket on the window ledge and firmly quashing both scruples and distaste, collected ‘clotted’ bits of blood from her knickers. If anyone saw me doing this, she thought, they’d be appalled, but disgusting as it was, it was also fascinating. This stuff might have been my child, she thought, trying out the possibility of feeling some emotion. But she felt nothing but curiosity and relief. Disinterestedly, she wondered how she could get to borrow Andrew’s microscope to see if this brownish blob was human shaped, or just a brownish blob.

  I’m assuming the worst is over, Miranda thought as she got in the bath, or was the water about to turn scarlet, and the pain get so much worse they’d have to break down the door and find her lying soaking in the gore as if her wrists were slashed.

  Too embarrassing. She washed quickly and dressed in clean fresh clothes. She washed her hair under the shower hose, rinsing away the last of her sins, like Lady Macbeth, leaving only the stains on her underwear and on her conscience.

  ‘Miranda are you in there?’ Clare was knocking impatiently. ‘Hurry up, I need to wash my hair, we’re going out tonight don’t forget.’

  ‘OK Mum, just give me a minute.’

  Miranda looked round the bathroom, picked up the soap box in which she had hidden the blood clots and hiding it under a heap of her clothes, carried it out to her bedroom.

  ‘About time,’ said Clare. ‘What do you find to do in there?’ she said as Miranda wafted a cloud of Clare’s Bluebell perfume out of the bathroom with her.

  ‘Don’t forget you’re babysitting.’

  ‘I know, I know, but I might go out for half an hour or so, can I take Amy and Harriet with me?’

  ‘Well you certainly can’t leave them on their own, and please try to make sure they’re in bed by nine. Oh and please don’t let them near anyone else’s children.’ Miranda went downstairs to the phone, from upstairs she could still hear Clare complaining about the lack of hot water. Miranda phoned Jessica.

  ‘Meet me at about 8 p.m. here, there’s something I want to do on our beach. I’ll tell you when I see you.’ ‘Sounds exciting!’ Jessica said. ‘A mystery, like we used to play when we were little.’

  ‘It’s absolutely not like when we were little,’ Miranda told her. ’I wish it was.’

  Liz was one of those people who always have the right clothes. She never agonized over what she was going to wear. She would have been appalled at the heap of rejected clothes on Clare’s bed, the last-minute ironing, and the bathroom scrubbing of the only possible (but uncomfortable) pair of shoes with a J-cloth soaked in Flash. Liz left enough time for her nail varnish, hair and deodorant to dry. She did not shave her legs in the bath. and then have to put up with the feeling of wanting to scratch her ankles all evening. Liz’s twins had eaten a neat Marks and Spencer’s supper at 6.30 p.m. and Jessica would put them to bed. The evening was well-organized, except for Eliot who lay on the bed in socks and purple boxer shorts, the newspaper propped up on his paunch.

  ‘We’ll be late Eliot, do hurry,’ Liz said, now at the final point of decoration, the putting-on of the earrings.

  ‘No rush,’ he mumbled, ‘It’s only down the lane.’

  Eliot didn’t like eating out. That was something he associated with his work. He was taken out to lunch to be told off by his publisher about deadlines, to talk of sales figures, book launches and public appearances. Lunch was never free, as they say, someone always wanted something in return for the filet mignon. Smooth journalists interviewed him over dinner in fashionable places, noting what he ate, checking over his consumption of alcohol, eyeing his waistline and ignoring what he said, judging by the rubbish they made up back in their offices. Eliot’s heart sank whenever he read a rave review of a new restaurant, a sure sign that that was where the next greedy expense account hack would be suggesting they meet ‘Haven’t you been there yet?’ ‘Heard it’s terribly good’ they always said. Some pithy comment about his paunch usually followed the meal, in one colour-supplement or another. Sometimes he was recognized by other customers, people who had seen him on chat shows they would never admit to watching, discreetly craning their heads past their companions and whispering.

  The Parrot was in the Good Food Guide. The villagers waitressed and cooked in it but didn’t eat there. When they wanted a meal out they got in their cars and drove to Penzance or Truro. It couldn’t be called a night out if you just walked up the road, no matter how good the food, and you could get a three course Indian for a tenner at the Ganges in Penzance.

  The visitors from London were more used to those traumatic evenings in which they had first allowed an extra half-hour for parking, and then spent much of their time worrying about their cars, which option would it be, clamped, broken into, vandalized or towed away? No wonder in London they all got indigestion and never listened to anything that was said to them. For Eliot, however, the advantage of the Parrot’s proximity was nothing to do with cars and parking: it was simply that he could get as drunk as a skunk and it was only fifty yards to bed.

  Clare and Jack arrived at the Parrot at the same time as Liz and Eliot. Clare looked sleek, clean and slightly uncomfortable in her high-heeled shoes. She looked rather self-conscious, as if she had made a tremendous effort, which depressed Eliot: the whole point of her attraction for him was her rather unkempt look. He preferred her with a bra-strap showing, with her hair falling over her eyes, and with her feet slightly grubby in old flip-flops. He’d never seen her with a handbag before either, she didn’t look as if she quite knew what to do with it. All that gloss and polish he could get at home.

  It was a pretty restaurant, decorated in a pastel version of country house chintz. The curtains had frills and fringes but not swags and bows, rosettes or ribbons. Someone had been careful not to overdo it. There were flowers on the tables, but not so many that there wasn’t enough room for the glasses, and the chairs were comfortably padded, no stocking-snagging cane. Eliot noted the air of careful restraint and hoped he’d get enough to eat.

  Archie and Celia had already arrived, and everyone kissed everyone else with dinner-party politeness. Celia looked a little excited and gleeful with that ‘I know a secret’ smirk that small children have. Clare hoped she wouldn’t drink too much and make sly remarks. She’d never seen Celia drink more than one glass of anything and wasn’t therefore sure how it would affect her if she did.

  ‘Shall we go straight in?’ Archie said, already leading the way.

  ‘Who was it said that that was the most depressing phrase in the English language?’ Jack said quietly to Eliot as they both looked longingly towards the bar.

  ‘I’m fairly sure it was John Mortimer,’ Eliot replied. ‘And I’m absolutely certain that he was right.’

  Andrew was lying on the sofa looking through his dinghy brochures. They all featured glowing, tanned, weekending young executive types in wetsuits and heavy-duty diving watches, leaning confidently out from their boats, grinning inanely through the seaspray. Their women wore pale lip-gloss and their hair was blonde and flowing, though in reality Andrew knew that no serious woman sailor would let her hair flap around like that, they all tied it into neat French plaits on the Surrey reservoirs he frequented, so it wouldn’t whip out their contact lenses or prevent them seeing the boom. Andrew was feeling happier. His weight had gone up, and he was sure it was all m
uscle. He felt bulkier and stronger and could lift the weights for longer now. Sometimes in the village he had to stop himself swaggering like John Wayne, conscious as he was of his increasing power. He thought he’d grown too, either that or his jeans had shrunk. He no longer had to roll the bottoms of the legs up, and there was an indelible line where the fold used to be and a darker piece of denim below it to testify to an extra inch or so. He had tried to measure the width of his shoulders when he had started with the weights, but found it impossible. It meant holding down one side of the tape measure with his chin, which gave him a distorted shape, and then he had tried holding the tape with his fingers and looking in the mirror to try and read the results. He had been so appalled at how camp he looked with his fingers perched like that on his shoulders that he had given up. He thought of asking his mother, but she’d have only thought he was hinting to have something knitted.

  One of the girls in the brochure looked rather like Jessica. Andrew hadn’t seen her for several days. She had, he heard, been spending most of her time up at the stables. He still wished she would ride him instead of the horses, and at that thought he closed his eyes and groaned quietly. What chance did he have now? Soon it would be the end of summer and back he would go to his chaste little boarding school. He still had the precious little strip of photos, now absolutely convinced they were of Jessica. They had, in spite of his good resolutions, given him many a moment of lonely pleasure. Thinking of this reminded Andrew that his parents were out and here was an opportunity to get the more exotic items out of his experiment box. Ever since he had heard Oliver Reed on Desert Island Discs requesting an inflatable woman to take with him as his luxury, Andrew had wished he had the nerve to send away for one. But there wasn’t anywhere he could even get one delivered to. Both home and school were out of the question. And suppose he didn’t get caught having it delivered, but worse, got caught in possession of it. It wasn’t, he imagined, something that would deflate in a hurry. And all the boys at school would want to have a go. He wouldn’t fancy her after that.