Last Guests of the Season (11 page)

They were all packed into the Murray car, an ageing blue Sierra estate whose upholstery bore the marks and stains of years of clambering feet, spilt drinks, wet knickers and burst packets of crisps. A jumble of cassettes lay between the two front seats; more were stuffed into the glove compartment. They had played endless tapes on the drive through Spain, letting rip, as you could do only when it was just the family. Sinatra for Claire, in moments of indulgence; Jason Donovan for Jessica, Roald Dahl and Chesney Hawkes for Jack. When he'd had enough of all this, and enough of driving, Robert got into the passenger seat, put on Bach or Satie, and let himself drift.

He was in the passenger seat now; in the end, he'd done most of the driving through Spain. He sat next to Claire, the window wound down but not so far as to blow out the others in the back. He wouldn't have minded a tape on now, but Oliver was asking about landmarks – a village within walking distance of the house, a radio transmitter set high on a bare and distant peak. He did his best to answer. Next to Oliver, Jess sat silent; the boys, bundled into the back like puppies, were playing on a pocket game that belonged to Jack.

Frances, on the other side of Jessica, was looking out of the window, miles away.

The car climbed higher; she gazed out at dry pines and sandy rock face, composing a letter.

Dear Dora
,

We arrived here two days ago, and find ourselves in a place of great beauty: a spacious house, hens and fruit trees in the garden, a broad, tranquil valley. Our friends are kind and generous, and the children, after a little initial friction, seem to be getting on well.

How is your summer? I imagine this letter will be amongst a pile of post waiting for you on your return from Greece, which I hope was enjoyable
…

Dora is walking up the path to the black front door of her house in Barnes. She is suntanned and fit, if tired from a long journey; she is carrying a heavy suitcase and the shoulder-bag she always carries, in which, stopping now, she searches for her keys. Behind her, outside the gate, her husband Adrian is paying the taxi-driver and her daughter Sophie stands beside the pile of luggage on the pavement: sixteen years old, faded jeans, loose T-shirt, tossing back a stream of silken brown hair and allowing the taxi-driver to admire her. Sophie's brother, Jason, has been dropped off to buy milk and bread and pick up the papers from the news agent on the corner.

It is Sunday afternoon, and the sunlit street is quiet and still and empty, looking, to all of them, somehow reinvented by their absence and return. Adrian comes up the path with Jason's suitcase and his own; Dora has found her keys. She goes inside with a sigh of pleasure, stepping over the pile of letters on the coconut mat, into the hall, with its tiled floor and dark banister. She puts down her suitcase; she drops her keys and bag on the table and bends down to pick up the post: brown bills, postcards, a scattering of white, an airmail letter from Portugal. She carries them through to the kitchen, where she puts on the kettle and unbolts the door to the garden; she stands looking out on to uncut, unwatered grass, fallen apples bruised, oozing, crawling with wasps. Time to clear it all up. Not yet. She sits down at the garden table and sorts through the post, putting it in piles for Adrian, for Sophie, for Jason, whom she can hear putting milk cartons down in the kitchen, and for herself.

And who is to say, or ever to know, whether or not it is the letter from Frances that she is most pleased to come upon and open first, or save until last?

The road wound on and on: Frances continued, in dreamy conjunction, both this scene and her letter:

I look forward to hearing all about your holiday when I come back to work. In the meantime, I think of you at your desk, and wonder how you are
…

To think of Dora had become, over the years, so much a part of Frances that it was almost like breathing, a natural function of being. It was a companionship, an internal tide of feeling which ebbed and flowed through her so continually that in times of practical necessity – a meeting with an author, a meeting with Tom's teacher, an unexpected ring at the door – to discover that time had passed without thinking of her was cause for remark. At such moments Frances would briefly wonder at her own absorption – behold, it is possible to live without it – and then she would return: to unwritten letters, unspoken conversations, dreams. Sometimes she relived the real encounters of their friendship, the meetings and discussions at work, and the times they shared outside it: lunch hours in Covent Garden cafés, evenings now and then at a concert or a play. Sometimes these encounters were rewritten, or new scenes invented, so that what had in reality been one conversation became, in imagination, quite another. And between the lines of the memos left on Dora's desk, mostly formal to the point of dullness, between the lines of occasional letters written over the years, was always something else, a continual reworking and rephrasing of the same, eternal letter:

Dora, I want to tell you something, but I am afraid to tell you
…

‘I feel sick,' said Tom.

The car climbed higher, and swayed round another bend.

‘I feel sick.'

‘Well, don't be sick on me,' said Jack.

‘Frances …' Oliver was tapping her on the arm, across the back of the seat. She looked at him distantly, and he nodded behind him. ‘Problems.'

She turned round to see Tom, white-faced, huddled up in the corner.

‘Oh dear.'

‘Everything all right back there?' asked Robert.

‘I'm afraid Tom's feeling a bit sick.'

Robert looked in the mirror; the road began to descend, winding horribly.

‘Want to stop for a minute?'

Tom nodded, ashen, mute.

‘Pull in, Claire, okay? Go on, quick.'

But the road was very narrow, and another British car was approaching, climbing towards them.

‘There's a passing place down there, let me get to it,' said Claire, also looking in the mirror. ‘All right, Tom? Hold on, just for a minute …'

‘You'd better not be sick on me,' said Jack again, edging away from him.

‘Stop it.' Claire drove down the hill towards the passing place, the opening of a path leading high into the pines. ‘Here we are, well done …' She drew in as the climbing red car came up alongside and went by, and pulled on the handbrake; Frances jumped out and ran round to the back, opening the door just in time to get Tom out on to the sandy path. He stood for a moment heaving, then threw up violently.

‘Ugh,' said Jack, watching in fascination. ‘Yuk.'

Frances drew Tom away from the car in mid-heave. Tears leapt from his eyes; he continued to throw up convulsively, then stood there shaking. A long line of drool hung down from his open mouth.

‘Here,' said Claire, approaching. ‘Tissues. Poor old Tom.'

Frances took the pack of tissues gratefully and wiped the trembling mouth. ‘Blow your nose, Tom, that'll help. Do you want a drink?'

He nodded, still very white.

‘Mineral water,' said Claire. ‘There's some in the box – hang on.'

Frances watched her walk back to the car, where doors were opening, everyone getting out, Jack making an exaggerated detour round the pool of sick. Claire, returning with the plastic bottle of water and a mug, looked, in unironed scarlet skirt and sleeveless white top, like a beacon of competence and good sense.

‘You're wonderful,' said Frances.

‘Why don't you two sit down for a bit and have a rest,' Claire suggested. ‘We can stretch our legs.' Tom, still standing there, waiting for his drink, looked like someone surrounded by far too much space: she wanted to take him on her lap and smooth down his hair. ‘I'm afraid these roads are rather a nightmare,' she said, as Frances passed him the mug of water, and he sat down. ‘But he was all right on the drive from the airport, wasn't he?'

‘Yes, but we'd given him a travel pill for the plane,' said Frances. ‘It probably hadn't worn off.'

‘Ah. You haven't got any with you now, have you? Never mind, I expect we can get something from the chemist in town. For the journey back.'

Tom looked up, half a degree less white. ‘I'm not going in the car again.'

‘Just to the town …' said Frances.

‘No.'

‘All right, don't worry about it now.' Claire smiled at him. ‘You sit there till you feel better, and then we'll see.'

‘I'm not going.'

‘Tom …'

‘I'll leave you to it.' Claire, seeing Oliver approach them, went back to the car and reversed it over the pool of sick, and then went on sitting there, tapping her fingers thoughtfully on the steering-wheel, watching in the mirror the rest of her family wandering rather aimlessly up the path in the heat, and, through the window, Oliver and Frances, standing over Tom.

‘Feeling better?' Oliver was asking.

Tom nodded. ‘A bit.'

‘You didn't bring the pills,' he said to Frances.

‘No. But Claire says we can get some in town.'

‘I'm not going –' Tom began.

Frances looked at Oliver. ‘What are we going to do?'

‘Leave him,' said Oliver. ‘Let him get over it.' He bent down to Tom, who had picked up a bit of stick and was twiddling it between his fingers. ‘Frances and I will go and explore,' he said. ‘You stay here, there's no rush.'

‘Where're you going?'

‘Just up the path – see? Where the others are?'

‘Okay.' Tom sounded flat and resigned. He lowered his head again and began to run the stick up and down the sand as his parents walked away.

‘Oh dear,' said Frances. ‘Poor Tom.'

‘He'll be all right.' Ahead, on the mountain path, Robert and the children had stopped and were waiting for them to catch up. ‘What about you?' Oliver asked her, as they walked on.

‘What?'

‘I thought you seemed rather quiet in the car. Anything wrong?'

She shook her head. ‘Why should there be?'

He gave a small, exasperated sigh.

‘How's the patient?' Robert enquired as they drew near.

‘Recovering,' said Oliver, and they all stood looking, from this height, at the harsh, unforested line of mountain peaks that stretched along the distant horizon on the far side of the valley. Below, uncultivated terraces tumbled towards the river.

‘Have you done much walking up here?' Oliver asked.

‘Me?' said Robert, and Jessica laughed, prodding the soft overhang of flesh above his trousers.

‘Can you see Dad walking up a mountain?'

‘Do you mind?' He wiped trickling sweat from his forehead. ‘What about you, Oliver? Are you keen?'

He nodded. ‘I enjoy walking, certainly, so does Frances.'

‘But not in this heat,' she said. ‘Still, why don't you go off one day, you'd enjoy it. I'm sure there must be maps in the house.'

‘There are. I was looking at them last night, after you'd gone to bed.'

Oliver spoke as if to say: I don't need you to tell me about maps, or anything else, and Frances said, ‘Oh. Good,' and looked away.

‘Where's Mum?' Jack demanded suddenly. ‘What's she doing?'

‘I don't know.' Robert, taking in the unspoken sharpness between the Swifts, a little wounded by Jessica and very hot, was beginning to feel somewhat out of sorts. Below them he could see Tom, on his feet again, looking round, and he said abruptly: ‘Come on, let's go,' and set off back down the path.

‘I'm not going in the car,' Tom announced as soon as they reached the bottom, and as Frances and Oliver both made to protest Robert said quickly:

‘Now, look, Tom, I'll tell you what. You can sit in the front, if Mum and Dad agree, next to Claire, like a grown-up, and we'll have all the windows down and play a game. And in no time we'll be there, all right?'

He was shepherding Tom towards the car in a manner, kind but firm, which did not allow for disagreement.

‘What sort of game?'

‘Animal, vegetable, mineral. If you don't know it we'll teach you.' Almost before Oliver and Frances had made their murmurs of assent, he had opened the front passenger door and presented Tom to Claire with a flourish. ‘Your guide.'

‘Oh,' said Claire, smiling in welcome. ‘That's nice.'

Robert helped Tom with the seat belt and closed the door. ‘Jess, you go in the back with Jack, please.'

‘But I want to sit next to –' She broke off, seeing his face, and went round. Everyone got in, doors were pulled shut.

‘Mum?' asked Jack, as Claire eased out on to the road again. ‘Why didn't you come with us? What were you doing, all by yourself?'

‘Thinking,' said Claire, turning the wheel.

‘Fatal,' said Robert, as they drove away.

The town was clogged with traffic, a crawling line of little local vans, beat-up cars and motor bikes, with a few tourists in larger, sleeker vehicles like theirs. Baking heat hung over unfinished concrete apartment blocks and the narrow streets leading steeply off the main through road. Petrol and exhaust fumes shimmered; they crawled past a draper's and an ironmonger's on one side and a piazza with a news-stand on the other, where fountains sparkled between dusty trees. Up on the hill to their right, the covered food market and open stalls of pottery and clothes stood below another building site.

‘Christmas,' said Robert, wiping his forehead again as the car inched forward. ‘I don't remember it being like this.'

Claire was changing into second gear. She glanced at Tom, sitting beside her. ‘You okay?'

‘A bit hot,' he muttered, ‘and thirsty.'

They had finished the mineral water a mile or two back. ‘Won't be long now,' she said. ‘You keep your eyes out for a parking place.'

He didn't answer.

‘Animal with vegetable connections,' said Robert gamely from the back.