Just For the Summer (24 page)

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 muscle. 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.

Andrew started wandering up the stairs, starting to feel the familiar rising pleasure, but nearing the top, from the landing window he noticed Jessica and Miranda walking together along the street towards the cottage. He wasn't sure he wanted to be seen, and glanced down to see if the bulge in his trousers was likely to be visible to them. It was not, which was half a disappointment, but at least meant that he could talk to the girls. He opened the window and waved to them. Jessica's tee-shirt had an off-the-shoulder neckline and there was no white strap mark. Topless sunbathing in her garden, Andrew thought, as the trouser-bulge lurched up a notch. Lucky gardener.

‘Where are you going?' he asked them, trying to sound casual and as if he didn't mind whether they told him or not. ‘Nowhere special, just to the beach,' Jessica said.

‘Wait for me,' Andrew said, ‘I'll come with you.'

‘We're not doing anything particular, just walking the children,' Miranda said, rather off-puttingly.

‘That's OK, I don't mind,' said Andrew. ‘Wait for me.' He refused to take her hint, after all how much longer could summer last? He ran down the stairs, grabbing a long erection-covering sweater from the bannister rail as he did.

Outside the cottage Jessica was contrite.

‘I'm sorry Miranda, it's just that when I'm put on the spot I automatically tell the truth. That's why I never get away with anything at school.'

‘Well I suppose it's all right. He won't know what we're doing, it's already sealed in the shell. We can tell him it's a baby bird or something.'

‘I'm glad it's in the shell, I'd have had to look otherwise. Is it gruesome?'

‘No, just a clot, hardly even that really. Nothing to see. And I've stuck the shell down with glue. Don't want seagulls.' Andrew joined them, slamming the cottage door and running up the path.

‘Getting dark earlier now isn't it?' Andrew remarked feebly. Miranda thought that was exactly the sort of thing his father would have said.

‘We're going to have a funeral on the beach,' she said to him abruptly, and deliberately for shock effect.

‘Oh. Whose?' Andrew asked.

‘A baby bird,' Jessica said quickly. Miranda was looking sulky. ‘Found it in the garden.' Miranda was relieved
to hear Jessica had had time to think about what lie to tell.

‘Little children like that sort of thing,' Andrew said comfortably. ‘Where are, they by the way?' for the small ones were noticeably absent.

‘We've let them walk through the creek, the tide's just low enough for them. They'll be at the beach before us I should think.'

I'm taIking to Jessica, Andrew thought. I'm walking through the village at dusk and she is next to me. We're only talking about a dead bird and the little children but she is with me. If Miranda wasn't here, we'd be walking all alone. We would look like a couple. It would be so easy to get hold of her hand. Not that she looks like the hand-holding type. She was wearing jeans so torn that Andrew wondered why she hadn't thrown them away. His mother would have done long ago if they'd been his. It couldn't be lack of money, Eliot was one of the all-time best-selling authors. If he married Jessica, Andrew thought, Celia would be telling all her friends he had Done Well. Even better than passing exams.

Miranda walked a little ahead, comfortable now that the dragging pain was being numbed by the strong pain killers she had found lying around in the kitchen drawer. If she'd had this baby, she allowed herself to think, she would never have allowed dangerous drugs like that to lie around. She had put them away in the bathroom
cabinet, just in case, even though Amy and Harriet were both past the age of popping pills into their mouths mistaking them for sweeties.

Across the creek, as she neared the beach, Miranda could see the fishermen on the pontoon unloading crabs. Steve was probably with them, and she stopped looking across in case he was, and she would have to wave to him. She'd wanted this to be a woman's thing, like Tess of the D'Urbervilles baptizing her dying child, and she minded very much the presence of Andrew, tagging along.

The tourists had all gone from the beach for that day. They were all by now watching TV, putting children to bed or sitting in the pub garden admiring the view and battling with the sleepy wasps. There was a line of litter left by the tide, plastic mineral water bottles, middle-class debris, Eliot called it. Clare always bought water in glass bottles and was careful to visit the bottle banks with them.

‘What do we do now?' Jessica said to Miranda.

‘Send it out to sea I suppose,' Miranda said, feeling rather self-conscious. What exactly were they supposed to do, now she came to think of it. She was too old to play uninhibitedly at funerals like small children can, and she'd only been to one, her grandmother's cremation, a sterile affair that had seemed.

‘We should ask the little ones,' Andrew said, ‘Isn't it supposed to be their game?'

‘Oh I think they've forgotten about it. They're looking for jellyfish,' Jessica said quickly, tactfully. ‘We should say a prayer,' said Miranda. ‘Does anyone know a suitable one?'

‘Well there's the Lord's Prayer, but it's a bit long,' said Andrew, ‘especially for a baby bird.'

‘The peace of God, which passeth all understanding …' Jessica started declaiming, the twins looked up from their jellyfish, startled.

‘Ssh!' said Miranda, starting to giggle. ‘There might be people on the footpath, they'll think we're crazy!' Not far wrong, thought Andrew.

Miranda put the clamshell on a piece of broken polystyrene and they all walked down to the water's edge. She sailed it out into the waves but the sea kept bringing it back.

‘Go away, damn you,' she shouted at it angrily. She waded out into the water, past her knees, past the hem of her dress so it stuck to her legs and flowed out at the edge like seaweed on the water's surface as she walked. Jessica and Andrew watched her from the sand.

‘May the Lord bless and keep you, and bring you peace now and ever more,' Miranda murmured, recalling the words from school assemblies, as she let go of the makeshift raft. The shell floated away on the ebbing tide. Miranda watched for a moment and then turned quickly back to the beach, not wanting to be looking when it sank.

‘Not terribly appropriate for something dead, but not bad,' Andrew commented. ‘Could've just said “Rest In Peace”, that would have done for a baby bird. Was it a cat do you think …' but he stopped, his sentence trailing away. There were tears on Miranda's face.

‘Come on Miranda,' Jessica said kindly, putting an arm around her. ‘Let's go to the pub.'

‘I can't. I promised Mum because of the children. I'll just take them home to bed,' Miranda said weepily.

Lot of fuss over a bird, Andrew thought. He hadn't realized Miranda was that wet. He'd seen her catch and gut many a mackerel in the five summers he'd known her, never a hint of a tear then.

Jessica rounded up the little ones.

‘Why was there a piece of God in that shell?' Amy asked.

‘For that you deserve a coke,' Miranda said, laughing. ‘OK, we'll all go to the pub, if you promise not to tell.'

Nobody minded Miranda's wet dress in the pub. The male customers thought it clung to her slim legs in a most alluring way, and they watched interestedly as the filmy fabric started to dry and fall back into gentle translucent folds. Beryl served Andrew three illegal vodkas and gave him a come-hither wink with his change. Andrew smiled back uncertainly, but speculated whether Beryl might do to practise on; it was getting rather monotonous on his own.

Andrew took the drinks into the garden and saw Milo sitting at a table by the swing.

‘Aren't we going to sit with Milo?' Andrew said to the girls, who were heading for another table.

‘Er, I don't think so,' Jessica said, ‘He's got a hot date. I don't think he'd like to be disturbed.'

Well they must have had a row at home or something, Andrew thought, and not be speaking to each other. Milo was leaning across a small table, his elegant hands wafting gracefully as he talked intently to a young and very blond boy, who was laughing back at him, admiringly. Well anyone would admire Milo, Andrew thought, his life seemed so effortless. He was one of those people that others tried to emulate, not one of those gauche boys who always felt out of place. Poor old Andrew, Miranda thought, watching him. What an awful lot he doesn't know.