Excess Baggage (2 page)

‘Right. Me in front, Ma and Pa and Plum just behind, I think, then Becky and Luke in the far back well out of harm’s way.’ Simon Morgan, the luggage safely stowed, chuckled and gave the driver a grin that invited amused response but got none. The driver shrugged and opened two of the big Volvo’s doors at the same time, then looked at his watch and waited for Simon’s children to arrange themselves in the car. Becky and Luke glared and scowled, their eyes hooded in the usual way of teenagers hauled out of bed long before their preferred twelve hours were up.

‘Those seats face backwards. I mean when you said it was gonna be a
limo
…’ Luke grumbled.

‘Yeah, backwards like li’le school-run kids,’ Becky agreed.

‘
Little
– the word’s got a “t” in it, Becks.’ Simon had promised himself that on this holiday he would limit himself to one telling-off per day about their speech. It wasn’t even eight o’clock yet, on day one, and he knew he’d never last.

‘Lit-tle. And there’s two “ts”, actually Dad,’ Becky mocked. Simon sighed and just managed to stop
himself
running his fingers through his hair. Strands of it came out, these days, when he did that. It might be a sign of something, some disease, or just age. Either way, he didn’t want to be standing there on the pavement wafting hairs off his hands and everyone seeing.

‘Look, you can’t expect Gran and Grandad to climb in the back and face the wrong way, now can you? After all, this holiday is their treat for us, they’re the ones forking out a fortune.’

‘You keep saying that,’ Luke pointed out. ‘They never say it, it’s just you. You keep going on about us being so
lucky
and about how we’ve got to
behave
and be
good
’cos they’re
paying. They
don’t go on all the time, and if they didn’t like us the way we are they wouldn’t have asked us to come, would they? They’d have said, “Everyone’s really welcome but not Becky and Luke because we hate them.” But they didn’t, did they?’

Speech over, and shattered by his own early-morning verbosity, he slumped into the car and settled himself with his feet on his bag. He fastened his seat belt and clamped his headphones to his ears, isolating himself from further contact. Simon sighed again and wondered about his blood pressure. One teenager in, one to go, then the rest of them could get in the car. If the whole fortnight was going to be like this …

Simon’s wife Penelope looked at the Volvo and wondered, as her son had, what had happened to the pram-like Daimlers so beloved of small-town mayors and senior royalty. She hoped Simon’s parents weren’t disappointed, seeing as this was the only aspect of the trip they’d allowed her and Simon to pay for. It was always hard to tell what they thought, priding themselves as they did on having the good manners to keep
trivial
carping and criticism to themselves. It wouldn’t surprise her if during these two weeks they tried to teach Luke and Becky a thing or two about that. They’d find it uphill work: all teenagers were self-obsessed and growly – it went with the territory and the rest of the world was just supposed to lump it for the duration. Theresa, who’d forgotten she was ever under thirty, tended to assume teenagehood was something nastily infectious and gathered her children to her like a litter of threatened pups whenever they were in range of
youf
-contamination. Plum took a last loving look at her tall, reassuring Edwardian house, hoped the dog would forgive them for putting it in kennels and that Simon’s patients would forgive him for all the last-minute cancellations and not take their orthodontic problems elsewhere. She started jollying her in-laws towards the car. ‘In you get, Shirley. And Perry, do you want to go round to the other side?’ She took hold of her mother-in-law’s arm and steered her across the pavement.

‘No need to fuss, Plum. We may be old but we haven’t got to the stage of requiring heavy engineering just to get into a vehicle.’ Shirley Morgan, full of lady-of-Cheshire independence and enough breakfast to sustain her for a journey far longer than this one, pulled her arm free from Penelope and slid herself along the seat next to Perry. She inhaled the scent of clean leather and felt pleased with life. You had to have done well to be able to afford to take your three grown-up children, their spouses and six grandchildren off to a Caribbean island for a fortnight, even if it was September and about the cheapest season you could get. Christmas would have started to be in the shops when they got back, with winter in the air and nights well drawn in. This holiday would set them all
up
. The driver of the Volvo had a Christmas-tree-shaped air-freshener hanging from his rear-view mirror. Shirley assumed he hadn’t bought it recently, that it was left over from the year before. She sniffed discreetly, but couldn’t smell pine or cinnamon, just the delicious, expensive leather.

‘You all right, Ma? Not getting a cold, are you?’ Simon turned round at the sound of the sniff and looked anxious.

‘No, Simon, I’m not. Nor, before you ask, do I have any chest pain or tingling in my arms or a cold feeling in my leg or anything else. So please don’t worry. We’re all going to have a lovely time!’

Penelope laughed. ‘He likes worrying, it’s his hobby; leave him alone.’

Perry tapped the back of Simon’s seat. ‘It’s all covered by insurance anyway. I took out the Platinum Scheme. For that price they’ll fly the bodies back in hand-carved marble coffins on a chartered bloody Concorde. And you’ll know where to go for the cars, you could get a good few in this for the funeral.’

Simon could feel his left eye twitching. They might laugh now, but what
was
this sudden, short-notice, no-expense-spared trip all about? He and Theresa and Lucy hadn’t been on holiday with their parents since the last Devon visit, and those used to be carefully arranged a good six months in advance, not rushed into at three weeks’ irresponsible notice. He must have been in his mid-teens for that last Torquay fortnight, at the age when you just prayed you’d be swallowed into the sand rather than have a bunch of giggling girls on the beach twig that you were with your mum and dad. They’d gone on taking Lucy away long after that of course, seeing as she was ten years younger than him. He vaguely remembered his mother showing holiday
photos
and saying things like, ‘This is the little friend Perry found for Lucy on the beach.’ He could imagine his dad accosting small girls of the right age and luring them to the immaculate sand castle he’d have constructed for Lucy. Parents now would be narrow-eyed with suspicion but Perry had simply been buying time off for Shirley with every ice-cream offered to a stranger.

‘North Terminal, sir?’ The driver interrupted Simon’s thoughts.

‘Oh, er … Gatwick already. Yes, North Terminal, thanks.’

‘Oh and look, there’s Lucy and Colette by the luggage trolleys.’ Plum leaned forward and shoved her arm past Simon, pointing through the windscreen.

‘She looks as if she’s arguing with someone,’ Perry commented.

‘No change there, then,’ Shirley muttered, watching, as their Volvo pulled up, her younger daughter furiously crashing her bag onto a luggage trolley that was being tugged at by a stout young man in an orange tracksuit. Colette was a few yards away, staring at the sky.

‘God, is that Ross? Her new bloke? He doesn’t look her type. Or anyone’s come to think of it.’ Becky sat staring while around her Simon and Penelope unloaded the bags.

‘What new bloke? She’s not bringing a …’ Simon craned past the throng of holidaymakers.

‘A what? An outsider?’ Plum murmured to him. ‘If she has, that’s her choice and her business. Just because she hasn’t had the marital luck you and Theresa have had. Please don’t you start picking fights too.’

‘You only picked on me because I’m female,’ Lucy hissed at the man as she wrenched the trolley away from him.

‘I only picked on you because you nicked my fucking trolley. I’d bagged that. I’ve got a family of six over there.’

‘Oh, that gives you priority, does it? The nuclear family, the nation’s pride and joy. Me, I’m just a lone parent, bottom of the social heap,’ she sneered.

‘Take it, lady. You deserve it for being a nutter.’ He gave way, hands up in surrender, let go of the trolley and walked off.

‘We didn’t need it, Mum.’ Colette was looking embarrassed. ‘We’ve hardly brought any stuff. We could have just carried it.’

‘No way. I got there first, it’s mine. You have to learn to stand up for yourself when there’s no big fix-it super-hero taking care of you.’ She giggled suddenly. ‘But it’s got a wonky wheel.’

‘Lucy! Don’t rush off, we’re all here!’ Simon caught up with her and Colette. He looked, she thought, flustered and already exhausted.

‘You OK, Si? You look knackered.’

‘Tricky journey. Moody kids and I’m sure Mum’s coming down with something.’

Lucy leaned on her trolley, conscious that they were obstructing the busy corridor. ‘How tricky can a twenty-mile trip in a chauffeured limo be? You should try the Gatwick Express, matey. Clapham Junction is a delight in the rush hour.’

‘I thought you were bringing your van.’ Simon’s brow wrinkled. ‘Dad booked you into long-term parking. And paid for it.’

‘Change of plan. Not mine, the local clamping mafia. They’ll tow it away and scrap it while we’re sunning
ourselves
and I’ll never have to see the sodding thing again. The only bit that was any use was the roof rack and that’s stashed in Sandy’s shed with my ladders.’

‘Lucy! Well done, pet, you got here nice and early!’ Shirley emerged from the stream of travellers and hugged Lucy.

‘Did you think I wouldn’t, Ma?’ Lucy grinned at her and then reached across to kiss her father.

‘Punctuality was never your strong point,’ Perry said as they walked towards the check-in desks.

‘When I was twelve. But I’m all grown-up now, Dad, I can do VAT returns, tile a bathroom and check tyre pressures all by myself.’

Shirley looked Lucy up and down. ‘I suppose that old sweatshirt’s all right, for the back of the plane. And what have you done to your hair? It’s all short and spiky.’ She lowered her voice, ‘It makes you look as if you’re
fishing from the other pond
.’

Lucy counted to ten and plastered on a smile. ‘Well, you won’t have to look at me, Ma, lording it up front in club class.’

It was important to be patient. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t rise to the slightest crumb of bait, wouldn’t revert to the third-child, baby-of-the-family petulance that seemed to overtake her whenever she spent more than a few hours in the company of her parents. As they scanned the departure screens to find out where to check in, she wondered if the same thing happened to other people who’d assumed, wrongly, that by their mid-thirties their relationship with their parents would have stopped being so ludicrously immature. At what point did parents realize it was not their place to worry about whether you’d renewed your TV licence? When did they start pouring you more than a token half-glass of wine when you came
for
Sunday lunch? Perhaps it was simply because Lucy hadn’t actually married anyone and therefore had not been handed over to be someone else’s responsibility. Or perhaps it was something to do with being what her mother so coyly used to call the ‘little afterthought’ of the family, meaning, Lucy only realized as she’d entered her teens, the little mistake, little contraceptive failure, or, as she’d squeamishly recognized as she in her turn discovered sex, the little night of passion that was just too hot for considering consequences.

‘It says that desk over there in Area B, but that can’t be right because there’s the most ghastly queue.’ Theresa appeared at Lucy’s side. ‘We’re all there by that pillar, waiting to see where we’re really supposed to go.’ Lucy looked at where she pointed and saw Theresa’s children, swinging energetically from Marisa’s hands and looking ready to make trouble. They were bouncing up and down and laughing and making grabs at the doughnuts Becky and Luke and Colette were munching. Mark was observing them rather uncertainly from a little apart, as if wondering whether he was supposed either to join in and play with them and risk being blamed for getting them overwrought, or do nothing and be accused of copping out.

The queue that so distressed Theresa was a long snake of overburdened baggage trolleys and vividly dressed people, many already kitted out in holiday garb with shorts and flip-flops, sleeveless vest-tops and straw sunhats that were too awkward to pack. Fractious, shrieking children were scrambling up and over the mountains of luggage and women in cotton floral dresses and pale bare legs were handing out sweets and crisps in an attempt to keep them still. Theresa looked deeply puzzled, as if the process of the holiday exodus of her fellow humans was one that had
passed
her by till now. This was, Lucy recalled with a quiet smile, the woman who’d once confessed that the best day in her life was the one when Sainsbury’s started doing home deliveries and she no longer had to queue at a check-out with ordinary mortals. She was wearing a knee-length black linen skirt, white shirt and a long cream knitted jacket (Joseph, she was sure), a choice that Lucy suspected had been made with the fervent hope that she might be (surely
would
be?) selected for an upgrade to club class. It certainly wouldn’t stand up to nine cramped hours with three small children.

‘This is the right place, Theresa. We just have to join the riff-raff, you see. It’ll be an experience for you.’

‘One I could well do without.’ Theresa stood awkardly, her hands resting warily on her trolley rail, the set of matching leather bags gleaming expensively among the cartloads of sports bags and chainstore suitcases. ‘And so many people are
eating
. Why?’ She moved backwards a little, avoiding the sticky hands of a small boy with a bag of lurid-orange crisps.

‘They’re hungry?’ Colette suggested pertly.

‘Surely they could wait for some proper food in a proper place. I’d never let mine scoff on the hoof like this. Even Becky and Luke are chewing disgusting doughnuts, full of additives and sugar and God knows what rubbish.’