Just For the Summer (3 page)

‘You won't throw up in the car will you Randa?' Amy had kept saying anxiously, worried about having to travel uncomfortably with a Smell.

‘I bet she does before Okehampton,' Harriet said cheerfully, ‘I bet you 20p Amy.'

‘Nah, I think Bodmin,' Amy had answered, and then added worriedly, ‘But let's find a bag for it to go in.' Clare didn't want Miranda's grumpiness with her in the cottage. She wanted to regain her mood of secret anticipation, and most of all she wanted to know whether Eliot had arrived yet. Bringing in boxes of Sainsbury's food from the car, she wondered how soon she could decently stroll up the road, drop in at the converted coach house and wish Eliot, Liz and the family a happy summer. She'd send Miranda instead, she decided, it
would give the girl something to do and an opportunity to cheer up a bit .

‘Why don't you go and get some fresh air, Miranda,' Clare asked her casually. ‘You could wander up to the Lynchs' house and see if Jessica and Milo are here yet.'

‘No point,' Miranda growled, heading for the door. ‘They're not coming till tomorrow. I rang Jess last night to ask.' It was quite a relief really, Clare thought later as she unrolled fresh honeysuckle drawer liners into the old pine chest in her bedroom. It gave her an evening for slopping around and arranging herself for his arrival. It also gave her a chance to see she was being rather silly. I've got everything. I want, she thought, looking through the window at her three daughters, sitting in a row on the creek wall at the end of the garden. When the phone rang, and Jack was asking her about the journey, Clare was able to say, with some honesty, ‘Yes, I wish you were here as well.'

At 6.45 a.m. the next morning Eliot Lynch drove his new Range Rover off the train at Penzance. How, he wondered, could a journey so expensive be so uncomfortable? He felt unrested, unshaven, jet-lagged and hungry. Liz and the twins shivered in the pale chill air, somehow looking pitifully out of place in their Knightsbridge clothes among the cars and the crowd, the Cornish mail sacks and the stacked newspapers. They all crushed into the car, Eliot opening the window to disperse Liz's cloud of
Poison perfume. The twins squashed in the back seats along with the luggage, the golf clubs, fishing gear and new bits of sailing equipment, Eliot's new toys from Harrods, bought to tempt his son Milo into being his playmate for one more summer. Milo was now eighteen, and the time he spent with Eliot was now governed by his own choice and not by the long ago custody arrangements made with Wife no 1. The deal had been that Eliot got Milo and Jessica for the summer, and the Cornwall house was where Eliot would continue to be each year while Jess and Milo still wanted to stay with him. The problem was that now Milo was old enough to match Eliot's skill at sports, he wanted to spend more and more time with his friends. Milo could be bribed by the new equipment only until its novelty wore off. This year Eliot was even more pessimistic. How could he look forward to spending time with Milo and Jessica when he hadn't got further than chapter six and had an October deadline?

All this pressure, all these children, for he had a total of four, and these wives (two) to support. They all brought Eliot many moments of panic and sometimes he felt close to abandoning ship. Often he ran away to foreign places with his passport in his pocket and an overnight bag, phoning home on the way to the airport and calling it work.

Liz, clipping their six-year-old twins firmly into their seat belts, was thinking about the practicalities. Someone
had to. Milo and Jessica would be arriving by plane from Heathrow that afternoon, so someone would have to drive over to St Mawgan. She couldn't trust them to get a taxi, they'd probably rush off to Newquay and not come home till 3 a.m., wanting £200 to pay the driver who they would keep waiting for hours. There was the steak for the barbecue to be organized for the next evening, and had she ordered enough food? Miranda Miller might have friends staying, Andrew Osbourne probably hadn't.

Perhaps she could ask Clare to make a salad. Liz hoped Archie wouldn't be pedantic about the wine this time, a barbecue was a casual thing after all. Vast bottles of plonk would do, surely, or something fizzy. Although, she thought as she looked sideways at Eliot, some of us seemed to need an awful lot of Scotch these days. Then there were the beds., Liz wondered how Jeannie always managed to put the wrong duvet covers on. Surely she could tell which colours had been chosen to go with which rooms? Did she do it on purpose? The garden lights needed checking too and the swimming pool. The gardener could never believe that anyone would want to go to the expense of heating a pool to over 80 degrees. Too much like getting into a hot bath, might as well take the soap in there with you. Eliot complained too that it was tepid, but Liz didn't want him to have a heart attack diving into cold water and his many over-indulgences made it fairly likely. Liz was too young to be a widow,
even a rich one, and besides, she thought callously, nobody invites lone women to dinner parties.

Liz watched the hedgerows reaching out their scratchy branches to attack Eliot's precious new car. He was silent and preoccupied just now, but she knew how furious he'd be when he saw the damage later on. Then she would remind him yet again that there were lots of nice wide roads in the South of France, they didn't have to come here. She wished she could still rely on him to do what she used to think were ‘men's things' around the house, but he was usually too irritable to be asked and she had promised to leave him alone to work on his new book. It was, after all, how the money, such a comforting lot of it, was earned.

THE TEMPORARY RESIDENTS
brought with them to Cornwall more than their luggage. Along with all the expensive sports equipment, boating paraphernalia and such they packed their little snobberies, the means by which to reassure each other that they may be roughing it in a village, but they certainly knew what was what.

‘At the shop today,' Liz was saying, ‘I asked for walnut oil and they actually had it, isn't that marvellous? A few years ago you couldn't even get a decent extra-virgin olive, now there's all sorts. Just like home.'

‘Well I suppose the foodie culture had to get here eventually,' Clare said. ‘I brought some beers, I thought the boys might like some.'

The village was now full. The summer residents were re-establishing their flimsy part-time friendships with people they lived only a few miles from in London but only socialized with on holiday.

Clare had spent a long time getting ready for Liz and Eliot's annual start-the-holiday barbecue, and Miranda had been banging on the bathroom door, impatient to get at her make-up. Clare, looking in the mirror had caught Miranda staring at her in astonishment.

‘Mum, you don't need to dress up, you never usually do here.'

‘Makes a nice change,' Clare had mumbled, caught without an excuse. Miranda squeezed past her, reaching across to the window ledge for her make-up bag.

‘It's not your colour you know,' she had said to her mother, inspecting Clare's green-painted eyes in the mirror. Clare had picked up a black and gold scarf, wondering if it would be going just too far over the top to tie it round her hair. It would look good against the black linen dress. Or at least it would if she was going to a formal dinner party.

‘What, the green? I always wear it, it matches my eyes,' she said to Miranda, still deciding about the scarf.

‘Too stark, now you're getting a tan. You should be wearing grey or bronze.' Well, Miranda thought, she couldn't let the poor old thing go out like that. ‘This is all the wrong way round,' Clare said. ‘How come my daughter knows more how I should look than I do?'

‘Anyway,' Miranda continued, ‘Why are you all dressed up?'

Clare closed her eyes to wipe off the green goo, ‘Well
I'm just looking forward to seeing Liz again, it's been so long.'

Miranda's eyes were wide and incredulous: ‘But you always said she was a dumb broad, with a fish for a brain.'

‘Rubbish,' Clare lied briskly, avoiding Miranda's exquisitely made-up eye in the mirror. ‘And anyway I don't get much adult conversation, surrounded by you infants all day and Jack still in London. I'm looking forward to a party.'

‘Party! Fish-brain Liz, drunken Eliot and boring old Celia and Archie! You're wasting your lovely frock!' She was probably right, Clare thought, scrabbling in the crumbed depths of her handbag for a lipstick. It would probably be another of those well-behaved parties where there are just enough people so the conversation did not run out, but not so many that anyone could slope off without the others noticing. The opportunity to behave uncharacteristically dreadfully only arose at a vast gathering where only one's own partner kept an eye on what one was up to and could easily be lied to later. Not that Clare had any practice at this, but she did read a lot.

Clare blotted her inexpert lipstick and glared at herself in the mirror. Why am I thinking in this appalling way? she asked her reflection. It's immoral, it's unsisterly, it's despicable. It was also fun. She put her hands each side of her face and pulled gently on the soft skin, flattening
out the lines and taking away a good ten years. It's my age, she concluded.

Now they were on the Lynchs' terrace, by the pool. Clare had brought a tomato salad and a very large bottle of Beaujolais along with the beer. The Lynchs' pool was splashy and noisy with small children. The older ones sprawled on deckchairs, renewing their holiday friendships, going over their recent exams and showing off as to who had done worst.

Clare envied the Lynchs their domestic arrangements. Bringing plates (no cracks, everything matching) from the kitchen, she had had a quick look round at all the stuff, the dishwasher, the microwave, ice cream maker, food processor. Clare had a kitchen just like this back home in Barnes and she wondered as she stood amongst Liz's paraphernalia why on earth she left it each year to rush to a cottage which was hardly better equipped than a campsite. If this was their summer place, what must the Lynch Hampstead homestead be like? Liz was so good at these things, she could give lessons. She had towels the right colours in the bathrooms, matching sets of bedlinen, complete canteens of cutlery, proper napkins, just like a new bride. She had lampshades that looked like they'd been chosen for the rooms they lit, not just moved from place to place haphazardly as and when they were needed like Clare's. There were rugs that toned with
the pale sofas, which had frilled and tasselled cushions all in quiet earthy coordinated colours. Liz's interior was designed, Clare's cottage was left-over bits and pieces from London, items evicted from the Barnes house on their way to becoming jumble. Both houses were cleaned by Jeannie, though on a quick glance round, Clare suspected that Liz must be paying her more than she was. Clare would be willing to bet folding money that Jeannie had been round for a last minute flick with the duster just before Liz and Eliot arrived. And opened all the windows, no trace of mustiness here, no hint of damp. Clare, strolling down the lawn towards the pool terrace, could see Liz rearranging the salad. Liz was in Barbecue Outfit, too-short gingham dungarees, hair in plaits with outsize girly pink bows, white baseball cap and trainers. She looks like bloody Pollyanna, Clare thought, feeling uncomfortably over-smart in her simple cap-sleeved black linen shift. When she'd bought it the dress had seemed deliciously understated. Clare didn't like clothes you had to live up to. Even the sales assistant had said, doubtfully, as if it was what she'd been trained to say, that she supposed it was the sort of thing that could be Dressed Up for Evenings. Now Clare simply felt sedate and matronly compared with the youthful, boylike figure of Liz, and she wondered if the dress was, after all, a bit tight across her stomach. She put the pile of plates down on the table next to Liz's salad.

‘Is Jack coming down?' Liz asked Clare, careful in case she was treading on marital stress.

‘Probably next week,' Clare told her. ‘He's got to do some last minute interviews for next year's course. They'd rejected so many of the original applicants they had to advertise the extra places. Jack says they were all as thick as bricks.'

‘Milo says it's getting harder to pass A-levels,' Liz said, turning the steaks in their glossy marinade. ‘But I think he's paving the way with excuses in case he fails.'

‘I still remember that awful waiting for exam results,' Clare told her, ‘And that feeling that your entire future depends on it.'

Liz giggled. ‘Heavens, I didn't do A-levels. I was finished in Paris and then launched, such fun!'

Clare had a sudden vision of Liz being shot from the top of the Eiffel tower, long limbs flailing round and round like a Catherine Wheel, literally a social whirl.

‘And then I met Eliot. Wasn't I lucky?' Clare looked at Liz, but Liz hadn't stopped smiling.

Clare sipped at a glass of wine, looking around for Eliot and feeling tight little apprehensive knots in her stomach. Too much fantasizing leads inevitably to disappointment, she tried to tell herself, sensibly. She couldn't, in all honesty, do much with Eliot, they were both married after all, and besides, you never knew where he had been. Also, she thought ruefully, if she took off all her clothes he'd see her cellulite and
stretch marks. No-one goes through three pregnancies unblemished. Possibly one of the reasons he had traded in his first wife for Liz had been that an ageing life-scarred body was no longer what he wanted to live with. Still, it was exhilarating to feel again like a schoolgirl fancying a rock star. It would do.

Eliot came out on to the terrace at last and Clare gulped down more of her wine too quickly and nearly choked. He gave her a chaste kiss on the cheek and she noticed the aroma of whisky and the growing paunch. That wouldn't be too pleasant unclothed either, she thought. Why were romance and fantasy so much better than sex and reality? Eliot gave Clare no hint that he remembered the Easter incident, no sideways smirk or conspiratorial wink. Probably does it all the time, Clare thought, disappointed.