Just For the Summer (22 page)

I'm in my filthy kitchen, with Jack only a wall away, with fourteen children and two teenagers in my garden and I'm having the most erotic experience I've had in years, Clare thought. She closed her eyes and gave in to the bliss of it. Eliot's tongue was in her mouth, his hand was moving expertly up her skirt. Clare opened one eye to remind herself that this was real. In the kitchen window, fetchingly framed by the hanging dried flowers, the knife rack and the shelf of storage jars was Celia, mouth open like a codfish, staring in at Clare. Clare pulled away from Eliot abruptly and reluctantly. Oh God, she thought, now what. Over Eliot's shoulder a dark shadow was filling the doorway. Clare couldn't see who it was but thought, please God don't let it be Jack. It wasn't, but this was no relief as the figure was that of a large uniformed policeman.

Clare disentangled herself from Eliot and straightened
her dress. The wet tea towels had made her dress damp and clingy at the back, it was hard to collect her dignity.

‘Yes, Officer, can I help you?' she asked, in her best south west London voice.

‘I think you can Madam,' the policeman said, getting the inevitable notebook from his pocket. ‘We've had a report from the postmistress. There's been a large amount of pilfering from the village shop.'

‘I don't think Clare is likely to go shoplifting, Sergeant,' Eliot said. ‘Fancy a drink?' he offered.

‘No thank you Sir. No it's not you, Madam. I'm afraid the culprits are children. Some of these are yours aren't they? Perhaps we could have a word.'

Outside was another policeman, and a woman police officer (they have to bring one if it's children, Clare thought), and there was a panda car, blue light still going round, quite unnecessarily drawing the attention of the entire village. Trippers were collecting on the bridge to get a good look. Anxious parents of the party guests seeing the light from their gardens and balconies, arrived to retrieve their children. Clare sat on the grass, her head whirling from the afternoon's events. She looked at Celia and noted a sly little grin on her face. The police were talking to Jack, in that low monotone that police have when they're going about their duty. She caught the words. ‘prosecution' and ‘taking this further' and ‘serious'.

‘I think it's time to open another bottle,' said Eliot.

‘It'll be all round the village by closing time,' Jack said to Clare as the police, the children and their tight-lipped parents dispersed. ‘They've forgotten their going-home bags,' said Clare, feeling forlorn. Some of these families weren't going home for another ten days and would have to be faced in the pub and post office. Except of course, Clare thought, we can't really go in the post office any more. She'd have to get in the car every morning and drive for papers and milk in the next village. Ought to make Amy and Harriet cycle for them, that would teach them.

‘What are we going to do about the children?' Clare asked Jack as she collected burst balloons from the garden.

‘Well ours didn't actually do the stealing,' Jack said. ‘They only organized it, really.'

‘What do you mean “only organized” it. The Mafia only organize crimes too, it doesn't make them any less guilty. They dared those kids, they made it a condition of coming to the party.'

‘I suppose so. I suppose we'll have to think of some punishment for them. Seems a shame on holiday,' Jack said reluctantly.

‘You suppose right,' Clare said. ‘Honestly Jack, don't be so wet-liberal. They've behaved appallingly and they should damn well know that we both think so, holiday or not.'

Eliot was still there, lounging now on a deckchair, glass in hand.

‘Come on now Clare, every kid nicks stuff from Woollies at some stage, it's traditional, a rite of passage.'

‘No they don't, I never did. They haven't been brought up to be criminals, “organizers” or otherwise. Why is it only me that takes it seriously?'

‘Are you sure you're not just slightly over-reacting?' Jack said tentatively. The two men were now both sitting in deckchairs, looking up at her. They looked like a pair of school-boys, she thought. The grin on Eliot's face reminded her that small children don't have the monopoly on naughty behaviour.

‘Don't be too hard on them Clare,' Eliot put in his plea for clemency.

‘They wouldn't behave like this normally,' Jack added. Harriet and Amy could be heard at the window above them, sniggering at the adults' indecision.

‘No excuse,' Clare said. ‘This is “normally”, we live here a lot of the time. They'll grow up into a pair of lager louts or something. Why did those kids steal anyway, why didn't they just buy the presents, not that they needed to bring anything at all.'

‘I must take my kids home,' Eliot said. ‘Liz will be wondering what's happened. If it's any help, I shall not be treating your family as the village outcasts. You and your delinquent children are welcome to come and play with me and my children any time at all.' Eliot bowed,
and winked at Clare. The children weren't the only ones to misbehave that afternoon. Celia, Clare remembered, where had she gone off to?

Celia was sipping a gin and tonic on her terrace and telling Archie: ‘I don't know how she could, Eliot is so unkempt, and that was when the police arrived.'

‘Gosh,' said Archie, boyishly. ‘Clare and Eliot. I wonder how long that's been going on.'

‘Years probably. I can't imagine what Clare thinks she's up to. Of course one expects that sort of thing with Eliot, he's the Type,' Celia said firmly.

‘Better not let Andrew know anything about it,' Archie said. ‘He's very friendly with Milo and Jessica and Miranda too of course. Wouldn't do for them to know.'

‘Perhaps we shouldn't see so much of them from now on,' Celia said, sipping her drink.

‘Oh of course we must. It will be much more fun, knowing what we know. Just like watching a play!'

CLARE FACED THE
collective wrath of the village by painting the kitchen doors out in her garden. She unscrewed the louvre doors from the unit frames and carried them outside, leaning them against the bench and the pear tree, trying to keep them in the shade as much as possible to stop the sun drying the paint too fast.

Her pleasure in the dirty-rose pink colours she had chosen was marred by a sense that she was out there doing penance for the collective sins of herself and her children. Amy and Harriet were allowed to go to the beach with Miranda or Jack, but had to be kept away from other children, as if they were covered with chicken pox scabs. It wasn't difficult, for most of the villagers were just as intent on keeping their children away from Amy and Harriet.

Clare's guilt also extended to cover the knowledge
that, unforgiveably, she had snooped on Miranda, trying to find out what was in her diary. Perhaps it was time to let go a little, to realize that she should be happy that Miranda could feel capable of dealing with life's inevitable problems by herself. Wasn't that what being grown up was supposed to be about?

Clare smoothed the paint on to the knotty chipped old wood as gently as she could. The one thing she didn't feel bad about was Eliot. The thought of him squashing her none too gently against the dresser and rummaging under her dress made her face crease into an involuntary gleeful smile and her hand trembled so the paint dripped. Aware that her solitary grin must make her, from the other side of the creek, look like she was deranged, she leapt up at the first ring of the phone, glad of an excuse to get her elated expression safely into the cool of the house.

‘I was so sorry to hear about your little bit of trouble at Amy's party,' Liz purred down the phone to Clare. ‘Eliot says it was ghastly for you, all those police. He says we should take you and Jack out for dinner at the Parrot, just to keep the communal flag flying. What do you think?'

She certainly managed to make it clear it wasn't her idea of fun, Clare thought, but what she said was: ‘Yes we'd love to, thank you, a super idea.'

‘Oh and we've asked Archie and Celia too,' Liz said. ‘Just to keep our numbers up.'

‘We've got to show our faces in the village then,' Jack said, when Clare told him.

‘We can show our faces any time,' Clare said. ‘We've done nothing wrong. It's the children who need to keep out of the way.'

‘And we're not responsible for what they do?' Jack said filling in the last clue in
The Times
with a casual skill that Archie would have envied.

‘Not to the extent that we can't go anywhere and be seen. I shall have to wear that black linen dress again.'

Of course the villagers weren't talking about the family at all, even though everyone knew. The summer visitors always caused some trouble or other, and this would be stored up for the winter months when boredom set in and you could hear yourself think in the bar at the Mariners. Then the apocryphal tales of the summer could be got out, exaggerated, pulled apart, reputations shredded and innocent personalities damned, ready for the next year when the poor victims would return for a fresh start, in cheerful innocence. It was the wrath of the renters from which Jack was hiding, all their children led astray by his. These no-good middle-class second-home types with no morals, ruining the only holiday some people get in the year, and no come-back from the police either. Jack was guiltily collecting his newspaper from the next village,
shopping at Safeway in Carn Brea instead of Tesco's in Truro as if the notoriety of his brood could possibly extend that far. His paintings were hanging in the craft centre, but he was too cowardly to go and find out if they were selling, scared that when he got there he would find they had all been removed in disgrace from the walls and be out piled up in the back storage room with all the other rejects. He'd have to get over that one, there was a living to be earned, and he still hadn't told Clare he wanted to leave London and settle down here.

The dustmen had been that morning. Just as careless as binmen anywhere else, the village had slightly the air of an upended litter bin. Tissues blew about, cats sat in doorways crunching discarded chicken bones. and bits of torn plastic were caught at the bottom of the hedges. Clare conscientiously tidying up around her own front door, picked up the cardboard box she had found crushed beneath her own upended bin lid, and wondered who in the village was testing for pregnancy. The unhappy-looking tenant up the road perhaps, or that pale peaky waitress at the Parrot. She put the carton in the bin and forgot about it.

‘Isn't it a bit hot for wetsuits?' Andrew asked Milo on the beach the next morning.

‘You'll need it,' Milo said. ‘You'll spend far more
time in the water than on the board at first and it gets surprisingly cold and tiring. I know you're an ace sailor but this is as much to do with balance as anything else. It's a knack, it takes time.'

Andrew and Milo carried the board down to the water's edge.

‘You're not going in the water yet,' Milo said, ‘I'll give you your first lesson here on the beach.'

Andrew looked around to see if there was anyone he knew. How embarrassing, he felt, he hated learning things in front of others. It reminded him of when Archie had taught him to swim. Andrew must have been about six, and his daddy was the one with the loudest voice at the local pool, yelling ‘one two three breathe, one two three breathe!' Andrew had wanted to join the other children with their Wednesday afternoon Penguin Club lessons but Archie had been going through a phase of Involvement in his son's development and took on the teaching of swimming to Andrew much as a proud new owner takes on the training of a puppy.

After that, Andrew had become wary about the learning of new skills and wherever possible did it in the company of his peers where there was less chance of being singled out as the new boy. He made sure his name was one of the first on the list for the school ski trips, the sailing weeks in Norfolk, the extra tennis lessons.

Andrew wandered self-consciously back to the clubhouse to get the windsurfer's rig. Milo even had to tell him how to carry it.

‘Wishbone over your shoulder Andrew,' he yelled up the beach, while Andrew changed its ungainly position and tried to look as if he was sauntering casually down to the water. There weren't many people on the beach this early, but the water was packed with eager sailors. The windsurfers whizzed among the dinghies, like go-faster road hogs on a motorway. Andrew wanted to look that flash, but the wetsuit he had rented from the club wasn't something he particularly wanted to be seen in. It was a good brisk day for windsurfing, so most of the boards and wetsuits had been rented out to eager holiday-makers. All that was left that came close to Andrew's size was an old black one that was rather too large in the body and perished in places. Andrew had to roll up the sleeves and legs a bit and he felt like a toddler who has been bought an outfit to grow into. He wondered if it would be easier to get his father to fork out for a state-of-the-art wetsuit than it would be to get his mother to buy the towelling robe he had not yet dared ask for.

Andrew stood on the board clutching the boom, leaning back as instructed by Milo. ‘The further you lean back, the faster you'll go.' Andrew let a brief vision of himself flash across his mind, himself in a luminous
blue shortie wetsuit, good and tight around his new muscles, tanned legs braced on the board, leaping across the swell as Jessica watched admiringly from the sailing club balcony. He saw himself redeemed, her interest and lust at last awakened. He had once heard Clare say to Liz about some actor or other ‘one feels ones thighs part involuntarily every time he's on TV'. Andrew wanted Jessica, or anyone female in fact, to feel exactly like that about him.

But when they put the board in the water it was quite different.

‘Try to keep the wind behind you.' Milo said. ‘Lean the mast forward if you want to turn to the right, and if you feel you're overbalancing, just drop the sail.'