Just For the Summer (19 page)

‘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 get 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.'

‘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 started 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.

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.