Just For the Summer

by Judy Astley

  The second-homers, who never went out without a pre-party drink inside them, arrived in cheerful mood, all except for Eliot. He was fuming quietly about the Commodore and wondering if Milo ought to be spoken to. Milo should perhaps be warned to stay on the right side of what was legal. Eliot did not of course care whether Milo stayed on the right side of the Commodore.

  The little children were excited. The Lynch twins pleaded to be allowed to show off, rowing their rubber dinghies in the creek. Liz wavered but Clare said it was getting too dark, they hadn’t got their life jackets and sensible things like that. What she really meant was that Amy and Harriet would follow them and she didn’t want the hassle of having to go and keep an eye on them.

  ‘I think you should all stay where we can see you,’ she said to her daughters. ‘Then there’s no danger of you getting into any more trouble.’

  ‘I think we’re being forgiven,’ Clare whispered to Jack as the lady from the post office said a quiet hallo.

  ‘Possibly,’ said Jack, ‘but I feel it’s a slow process.’

  ‘And you’re the one who thought we could live here!’ Clare teased, laughing at him.

  Liz was standing with her hands over her ears, exaggeratedly protecting them from the music which was faltering in bursts from the speakers set up in the trees.

  ‘If it rains again someone will get electrocuted,’ she said. ‘God it’s cold. I wish someone would light the bonfire.’

  ‘That’s supposed to be the highlight of the evening,’ Jack said. ‘There’ll be fireworks at 9 p.m., it says on the regatta programme.’

  ‘You get fireworks at any old party these days,’ Clare complained. ‘I want to go on associating them with treacle toffee and the smell of November.’

  ‘They didn’t used to let Christmas start till after bonfire night either,’ said Archie, who had extricated himself from the golfers on the balcony in order to stand close to Liz and her intoxicating perfume. ‘Now it’s in the shops as soon as we get back to Surrey.’

  ‘I always feel sorry for the children in July,’ Liz said. ‘By the time the school holidays start there’re those awful “Back to School” notices in all the shops and we’re all supposed to rush out and buy geometry sets and woolly socks for them.’

  ‘They spell “school” wrong as often as not,’ Jack complained gloomily. ‘How are kids supposed to take learning to spell seriously if it’s obvious that grown-ups getaway with jokey little numbers like s-k-o-o-l?’

  ‘Where are they by the way?’ Liz wondered, refilling her glass from one of the several bottles on their table. ‘I haven’t seen them for a while.’

  ‘As long as they keep away from the fireworks and the river I don’t really mind where they are,’ said Eliot, ‘but if you’re worried I’ll go and look.’

  He could have casually said, ‘Are you coming with me Clare?’ and I’d have wandered off with him to look for my own kids in all apparent innocence, Clare thought. The highlight of her holiday this year was destined to be no more than that uncomfortable and absurd grope in her kitchen, watched by hawk-eyed Celia. She was glad now that it hadn’t been any more than that, it was enough that it could have been more. There was plenty of thrill in that. She moved closer to Jack and teenager-like, held his hand.

  Liz was still peering into the dark for the children.

  ‘I can see them, they’re down there by the bonfire,’ Liz said. ‘Let’s just pray they haven’t nicked a box of matches between them.’

  ‘No they’re fine,’ Celia said, ‘they’re with the village children.’

  You could tell which were the local children, Jack thought, they were the ones who had dressed up for the party. The little girls wore neat dresses with sashes, frilled white socks, proper shoes. The boys wore trousers that they had been told to keep clean, and if they wore trainers they were clean ones. Jack could imagine the little boys persuading, cunningly manipulating their mothers: ‘you wouldn’t want me to muck up my new school shoes would you?’

  ‘Trust the kids to start getting friendly with the local children just as we’re about to go home,’ Clare said. ‘They’ll have to start all over again with them next holidays.’ Or perhaps they won’t she thought, suddenly excited that she didn’t know where they’d be next year.

  ‘It’s only because there are no more holiday-makers to terrorize,’ Liz said, observing her own two in filthy old jeans, tee-shirts that Jeannie would soon be using for dusters, shoes that weren’t good enough for the jumble. Only the rich, she knew, could afford to be so badly dressed.

  ‘I hate this kind of party,’ Jessica was saying to Milo as they strolled down the lane towards the sailing club. ‘No-one knows who the party is aimed at, there’s always a disco that no-one will dance to because all their parents are around and watching, and there’s all the old grannies looking out for a bit of debauchery to talk about.’

  ‘And all the little kids are a pain because they are up too late and their parents are too drunk to care,’ added Milo. ‘And when it’s really late the disco starts on with a few sixties hits and they all get up and leap around to Honky Tonk Women.’

  ‘And make total fools of themselves,’ Jessica laughed.

  ‘We’ll just ignore them, we always do,’ Milo said, ‘Are you going to be specially nice to poor old Andrew tonight?’

  ‘Because of the race, or because of his persistence?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘How nice do I have to be? I rather thought I might be “nice” to Paul from the boatyard. He’s been persistent too.’

  ‘But Paul won’t be here next year. Andrew will.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Jessica said. ‘Perhaps he’ll improve with time, like wine.’

  Andrew pretended he hadn’t been watching Jessica arriving. When she and Milo approached he just grunted hello, as if he hadn’t really been gazing at her bare midriff slinking along the road. He clutched his hand tightly into his pocket to stop it sliding involuntarily under her cut-off tee-shirt. There wasn’t much skirt either. Perhaps fourteen inches or so of pink lycra, and a lot more inches of warm brown thigh.

  ‘Want a drink?’ he offered, thinking a walk to the bar would at least give his body an alternative outlet for its energy. If he could walk. He and Milo crossed the floor of the bar together, Andrew’s confusion disguised by the flashing lights of the disco. Jessica had been right, Milo noticed, the dance floor was empty, the DJ playing records for his own amusement and looking quite happy. Round the walls sat the elderly ladies in hand-knitted cardigans, trying to hold conversations against the noise and shouting to each other. Excited children ran across the floor, skidding on spilt beer and sending glasses and walking sticks crashing to the ground.

  Andrew bought drinks and Milo disappeared with his through the door out to the car park. Outside on the balcony there was still Jessica. Andrew could see her as he walked across the bar. She was talking to someone, Miranda he thought he could see. But when he got there it was Miranda and that Paul. Paul who never, as far as Andrew could tell, had trouble with finding something to say, or an out-of-control erection. All Andrew could do was be polite. He turned back to the bar and went to get more drinks.

  ‘Nights are drawing in,’ Archie was saying, rubbing his hands together in a gesture that reminded Clare of boy scouts starting a fire. She doubted that Archie was hot-blooded enough to burst into flames.

  ‘I’m sure they’re about to light the bonfire,’ she said. ‘I do hope so,’ Liz said, ‘I’m freezing,’ she shivered in her cashmere sweater and turned to Eliot for a warming hug. Clare felt disturbed. She’d never seen Eliot touch Liz with affection before, and rather stupidly assumed that he didn’t. He actually loves her, she realized.

  ‘We could always go inside,’ Celia suggested.

  ‘Too noisy,’ said Archie. ‘And besides, we won’t have many more nights this year we can enjoy being outside like this, might as well make the most of it.’ The Commodore appeared out of the gloomy twilight next to Eliot.
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  ‘Your son, did you speak to him?’ The others looked up with interest.

  ‘No I didn’t. Why don’t you, if you’re so keen on moral lectures?’

  ‘Because he’s in the car park with my son, that’s why,’ fumed the Commodore.

  ‘Well you know where to find him then don’t you?’ Eliot said, snuggling back into Liz’s collar, nuzzling the soft wool.

  ‘Find who? Me?’ Milo said, his soft tread unheard as he joined his family. ‘This man wants to speak to you about morals,’ Eliot said, dangerously quiet.

  ‘Oh really?’ said Milo, cheerfully. ‘Oh well before you do perhaps I can give you this. It’s for Simon, he wanted to borrow it, you don’t mind taking it for him do you? I’m just going up to have a drink with my sister,’ and Milo wandered off leaving the Commodore holding a copy of The Birds of Britain and Europe.

  Eliot hissed at the Commodore ‘You don’t mind, of course do you “old chap”?’ The man backed away, he wasn’t known for his aggression, but Eliot was. As he backed, the Commodore’s foot slipped on the wet grass, and the rest of his body followed it, like slow motion in the greying light, down into the mud-filled creek. A few yards away in the twilight the soft knowing laughter of Milo could be heard, back towards the clubhouse. No-one would be able to say Eliot had pushed.

  God these people, Celia thought, what on earth was going on. She’d be glad to be back in Surrey where people knew how to behave.

  ‘I think it’s time to light the bonfire now,’ Archie called in his best rallying voice, taking charge. ‘Someone go and tell all those in the clubhouse to grab a sausage roll and come outside or they’ll miss the fireworks.’

  It was just as Archie lit a match that Clare noticed the small children standing at a safer than usual distance, giggling and pointing. As Archie bent to light the fire she heard one of the fishermen say ‘What happened to that other box of rockets?’ But it was too late.

  At least they’d placed them carefully, and upright, so they didn’t kill or maim anyone. There were many shrieks from old ladies, squeals of delight from all the children and groans of despair from all the parents. As the fire took hold, rocket after rocket whooshed and whizzed with terrifying unpredictability heavenwards, showering sparks and slivers of light all over the river.

  ‘What a wicked waste,’ said Celia, tight-lipped.

  But no-one was watching the fireworks any more, the flames of the bonfire lit up something much more interesting. Against the dead elm by the car park, just where the serious dark began and the clubhouse lights ended, a pair of humping buttocks, bright white where the sun hadn’t tanned, could be seen. It crossed Clare’s mind that Andrew, for it was he, looked rather like a woodpecker drilling into a duvet. Oblivious to the audience, to the gathering hilarity and applause, Beryl from the pub was leaning back ecstatically against the tree, a pint of Cornish ale slopping dangerously in one hand and her purple knickers in the other. Celia and Archie watched in a shock of slow recognition as their only son, trousers round his ankles and head smothered in the folds of Beryl’s ample and comforting breasts, finished what he had set out to do six weeks ago. He wasn’t about to stop now. He couldn’t.

  TWENTY

  IN THE MORNING the air smelled of left-over bonfire, of smoke and dewy leaf mould. Clare, up early, could see chill clouds of breath when she went out for a last look out along the creek and out into the misted harbour.

  The hippy on the raft had gone, off to the Azores to pickup a crewing job on a yacht to the Caribbean for the winter, heading south like a migrating swallow. Clare wondered where he had parked the raft, or if he dismantled it and built a new one each summer, like a new nest. You had to be alone to live life as such an insecure adventure, she thought.

  ‘I can smell autumn,’ Miranda said, coming to stand next to Clare by the creek wall, and sniffing at the air like a cat.

  Clare put an arm round her thin shoulders. Miranda, at last did not flinch, or flounce off into the house. I’ve got her back again, however temporarily, thought Clare, glad now that Liz had saved her from a close intrusion into Miranda’s diary, glad about the torn-out pages, and knowing that she would never be tempted to pry like that again.

  ‘You’ll catch your death in that thin kimono, let’s go in,’ she said.

  The sounds of furious cleaning could be heard very early in Celia and Archie’s cottage. The sink was scoured, the fridge emptied and scrubbed, the terrace hosed down. There were soda crystals down the drains, bleach down the loo. Archie kept well out of Celia’s way, doing things with the dinghy, the trailer and the car. He had already made one mistake, the night before, of admitting with a smirk that he had found the whole episode rather amusing. He couldn’t help grinning to himself, even now, alone in the garage at the thought of Beryl and Andrew. Fancy the boy having that much nerve.

  Celia, in a state of profound and unrelenting shock, had said nothing more than ‘humiliation’. If she could have scrubbed Andrew’s soul that morning, disinfected it along with the kitchen floor, she would surely have done so.

  In the car she sat silent throughout the long drive, longing and longing for the safety of Surrey.

  Andrew had less luggage to take home than he had brought with him. He wished he could be around to see the dustmen’s faces when they emptied the bins at the Parrot. Before the rest of the village was awake he had taken his collection of pornography, gloves, magazines, notebooks and all and dumped them, unwrapped and exposed in one of the restaurant bins. Probably, he thought, the one from which he had taken the empty wine bottles all those weeks ago, before the non-seduction of Jessica. He didn’t need any of that stuff any more.

  In the back of the Rover he watched contentedly as Devon went by, smiled quietly to himself and slotted a tape of Mozart opera into the Walkman.

  Eliot unplugged the word processor, packed the disks ready for use in London and wished his deadline was a couple of months later. It might be an idea to take Liz somewhere hot, so she could keep herself occupied doing nothing in comfort while he finished the book. He thought Jamaica might appeal to her, he’d mention it in the sleeper on the way home. It would put her in an excellent mood, and he liked sex in trains, so very James Bond.

  Liz did not need to empty her fridge and clean her house, that was what Jeannie did. There wasn’t much to pack either, the secretary had taken most of it. So with Milo, Jessica and the dog despatched by taxi to the airport, and the twins more than ready for a good night’s sleep, Liz boarded the sleeper at Penzance in her best knickers and an accommodating frame of mind. If she was nice to Eliot, he might be persuaded to take her somewhere hot, then she could recover from the summer.

  Clare drove up the A38 past Plymouth, thinking about the family’s future.

  ‘What we really need is somewhere with a few outbuildings,’ she said to Jack.

  ‘A studio each, you mean, so we can work properly?’ ‘Partly that, though what I really had in mind was something like stables that we could convert into holiday cottages, rent them out,’ she smiled broadly. ‘There’ll always be people like us, wanting a brief taste of country life.’

  ‘Poacher turned gamekeeper!’ Jack laughed. ‘We could do painting holidays too, where people pay and I teach them and accommodation is included. What do you think Miranda? How much do you mind about where you finish your schooling?’

  But Miranda wasn’t listening. She was playing a noisy fortune-telling card game with Harriet on the back seat, giggling like a tickled child.

  A little later when the game finished she looked up and gazed out of the window. A spiritual county, Devon, full of mysteries, it would do very well. She settled back into her seat, making a start on her A-level reading list, with James Joyce. The syllabus would probably be much the same wherever they decided to live.

  As Miranda read she thanked whatever gods there might be out on the Devon hills that when she started to feel sick it would be entirely due to the fact that she was reading in the car.

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sp; As the car filled up with sweet papers and crisp packets, Dartmoor was looming temptingly ahead and Clare took a turning off the main road.

  ‘Can you find Totnes on the map for me please Jack,’ Clare said, smiling. ‘I think that’s about halfway.’

  ‘Are we going to find somewhere for lunch?’ Amy, ever-hungry, asked.

  ‘No, love,’ said Jack, grinning at her happily, ‘We’re going to find somewhere to live.’

  Jeannie took a large cardboard box up to Eliot’s house. You needed one that big, for the contents of their fridge and larder. It was lunchtime. She rooted round the cupboards and made herself a sandwich and a cup of tea. Then she wandered into the sitting room and went and sat with her feet up on Liz’s cream sofa. She didn’t bother to take off her shoes. Who was to know? Jeannie picked up the remote control, switched on the vast television and settled back on the silk cushions to watch Neighbours.

  They’ve all gone home, she thought. No question, this is always the very best day of the year.

  THE END

  Catch up with these characters in Judy Astley’s latest novel,

  IN THE SUMMERTIME

  now out in paperback

  In the Summertime

  Judy Astley

  * * *

  IT’S TWENTY YEARS since Miranda, then sixteen, holidayed in Cornwall and her life changed forever. Now she’s back again – with her mother Clare and the ashes of her stepfather Jack, whose wish was to be scattered on the sea overlooked by their one-time holiday home.

  The picturesque cove seems just the same as ever, but the people are different – more smart incomers, fewer locals, more luxury yachts in the harbour. But Miranda and Clare both find some strangely familiar faces, and revisit the emotions they both thought had disappeared.