Last Guests of the Season (24 page)

‘I'll come with you,' she said to Frances, and wanting to lighten the atmosphere for Jack's sake she held out her hand to him. ‘Come on, you can help.'

Robert dropped the dinghy and paddles and wiped his forehead. ‘We're in Portugal,' he said. ‘Don't flap. He's safer here on his own than in London, wouldn't you say? Somebody give me a drink.'

‘You don't have to come,' Frances said to Claire, her voice tight, as they set out.

Claire held Jack's hand. ‘Of course I'll come.'

He'd just go and see how the pig was getting on, then he'd go back to the others. He began to climb, counting, panting: eleven steps, twelve, thirteen … rounding the bend … twenty-one, twenty-two … they went on for ever. Twenty-nine, thirty … thirty-four. He had reached the top, and come to the gap between the houses: he rattled his stick along the wall and came out into the silent cobbled street, frowning, trying to work out where he was. It was boiling up here, much hotter than down on the path, and he was sweating and thirsty from the climb. But he couldn't see a tap anywhere and after a moment or two he remembered where the pig was, somewhere near the shop, off to the left, and set off slowly, passing curled up brown dogs asleep in the sun, and mangy cats.

‘Pig!' he called. ‘Pi-ig!'

Someone moved on a balcony above him: a fat old woman with rotten teeth, staring down at him.

‘I'm looking for the pig,' said Tom, and walked on.

But when he came to the rough wooden door set in the wall, with its peeling black paint and gap at the bottom, he couldn't hear a sound. He knelt on the worn step, peering in, screwing up his eyes to see through the smelly darkness. He saw churned-up wet straw, and then, right at the back, the huge pale hairy shape of the pig, on its side, not moving a muscle, as if it was dead.

Tom rattled his stick all along under the door. ‘Pi-ig!'

There was a snort, and the animal raised its head. He could just make out a whitish-pink eye and white lashes; then it moved, awkwardly, grunting, heaving its enormous bulk, getting up on small, filthy feet, coming towards him.

‘Hello.' Tom pressed his face to the gap, looking up at dirty pink chest and swaying belly, and the pig, reaching the door, lowered its head and began to nose about, hopeful, grunting again. ‘Oh, dear. Sorry.' He should've thought. You couldn't just come and visit without bringing anything, that was mean.

‘I'll go and get the apples,' he told it. ‘I shan't be long. You stay there, all right?' The pig snorted, moving its wet bristly nose all along the gap: you couldn't help laughing, even though you felt sorry for it. Poor thing. Poor thing, all shut away. How could they shut it away down here? It should be out in the sun, out in a nice sunny field, with turnips. He scrambled to his feet and hurried up the hill to the house, wondering if Robert was there, hoping he wasn't.

He wasn't. The house was shut up, the double doors on the terrace locked, the door to the kitchen locked. Tom stood outside it wondering what to do. People would start looking for him and getting cross.

Behind him, water poured into the green-tiled tank. He didn't know if it was drinking water, but no one had said it wasn't, and anyway he didn't care. He climbed the steps and stood beneath the line of clean clothes drying in the sun, and dunked his face in the water, getting his hair wet, splashing his neck and arms. He cupped his hands beneath the brass tap in the wall and drank and drank, and then, feeling much better, he went down the steps to the garden and up the next steps to the terrace again.

Out across the valley grey smoke rose from the pines. Beneath, the faraway river looked like a river in a dream. He turned away, sinking on to the swing-seat, feeling it sway, stretching out, yawning. Shadows of the leaves of the lemon trees played on the canopy as he swung; after a while his hand went down inside his shorts again, finding it waiting for him, stiff and smooth. There was no one to see him, no one to know, and he did it and did it and did it, as much as he wanted, until he stopped wanting, and fell asleep.

Jessica lay back, one hand trailing in the water, her straw hat slipping down a little on to the broad rim of the dinghy, warm in the afternoon sun. The water was like greeny-brown silk, deep and still beneath the cliffs on the far side, holding the shady reflections of the trees, breaking in a rippling rise and fall against the silver paddles as Oliver rowed slowly upriver, leaving the flowery meadow behind. Robert was resting now, flat out in the shade with a drink and his book, beginning to drop off.

‘It's like a film,' she said, as they drew further away from him and rounded a bend. Tall reeds grew at the water's edge; soundless fish broke the surface and disappeared.

‘Yes.' Oliver looked at her and smiled, and then he lowered the paddles and they drifted for a while, carried by the sleepy current, listening to the birds.

‘We're going backwards,' said Jessica.

‘
You're
going backwards. I'm going the right way.' He reached for the paddles again, looked up for a moment and frowned.

‘What?'

‘There's a fire, can you see? Almost at the top of the mountain – it's spreading quite fast.'

Jessica turned, craning her neck. Dark clouds billowed angrily from pines along the ridge of a mountain she recognised as one they could see from their house; the smoke rose towards the pale haze of the sky, became diffuse, disappeared, was followed by more.

‘What's going to happen?'

Oliver shook his head. ‘I don't know. I expect it'll go on spreading and ruin half the plantation. They'll probably send beaters up when they can, but there's not much they can do really, is there?'

‘Try water, dear Henry.' Jessica began to giggle.

‘What?'

‘Don't you know that? We're always singing it in the car – “There's a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza …”'

‘Oh, yes. Yes, of course. “Then mend it, dear Henry, dear Henry…”‘

‘You be Henry,' said Jessica, as they rowed on, approaching more maize fields, leaving the fire behind. ‘Go on, you start, and I'll be Liza.'

‘No.'

‘Please.'

‘God, you're a pest.'

‘Go
on.
‘

Oliver cleared his throat, began and stopped. ‘I can't sing.'

‘Of course you can. Anyway, who's going to hear?'

‘Oh, all right.' He cleared his throat again. ‘There's a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza …'

His voice grew stronger; Jessica took up the next verse, and the song, after a couple more, rang out over the water so that anyone passing, though no one passed, would have smiled to see a father and daughter so clearly enjoying themselves.

‘With what shall I fetch it, dear Liza, dear Liza …'

Jessica left a long pause.

‘With a bucket, dear Henry …' She burst out laughing.

Oliver looked at her solemnly. ‘There's a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza …'

‘That's much better,' said Jessica, when he had finished. ‘You don't look half as cross.'

‘Did I look cross?'

‘With Tom.'

‘Don't your parents ever get cross with you?'

She thought about it. ‘Not quite like that.'

He didn't answer.

‘And Frances, sometimes,' she said. ‘Why are you cross with her?'

He didn't answer that, either, but rowed on, the air a little cooler now, a breath of wind beginning to rustle through the maize.

‘Are you going to have any more children?'

‘I – no, I don't think so.'

‘Why?'

‘That's quite enough questions.' He turned the dinghy round in a slow circle; she looked at him in consternation.

‘Where are we going? I don't want to go back yet.'

‘I think we should, it's getting on.' They rowed in silence; every now and then a fish came up. He offered her the paddles. ‘Want to?'

‘No.' She shook her head, gazing down into the water. ‘I like it when you row.'

‘Well I will then. It's all right. Don't look so stricken.'

Jessica didn't answer, her mood changed, subdued. After a few moments she said: ‘Are we going back because of the questions? I didn't mean to be rude.'

‘You weren't. I want to find out about Tom, that's all.' He nudged her with his foot. ‘Come on, what's the matter? Am I such an ogre?'

‘You can look terribly fierce sometimes.'

‘Well,' he said, lifting the silver paddles high, letting the water fall in shining waves, ‘I can assure you I'm not feeling fierce with you –' He broke off. ‘Look! Look – there's a kingfisher!'

‘Where?' She sat up quickly, rocking the boat. ‘Oh, yes!'

They gazed after it. A bright and glorious flash of blue streaked past the cliffs on the far side, followed by another, swift as light, vanishing, gone.

‘That was amazing!' Jessica turned back to him, radiant, all smiles again.

‘Wasn't it?' He lowered the paddles and reached out suddenly, touching her sunburnt face. ‘Happy now?'

‘Yes,' she said, and watched him lean back again and take the oars, rowing with the current now, but still going slowly. They still had plenty of time.

‘He's here,' said Claire, climbing the steps to the terrace. ‘I told you he'd be all right.'

‘Oh, thank God.' Frances, following, came up beside her; they looked at Tom fast asleep beneath the gentle shadows of the canopy of the swing-seat, sprawled out, relaxed. ‘Well – let me get you a drink.' She felt beneath the stone by the double doors for the key and went into the cool dark sitting-room.

Claire sank down on to one of the chairs at the marble table; below, in the garden, Jack had picked up a cricket bat and ball left outside the door to the cellar, and was swiping into the vines.

‘Don't knock the grapes off,' she called.

‘I'm not knocking them off.'

‘Good.'

She stretched, running her hands through her hair, feeling, despite the rest earlier on, like lying down beside Tom and going to sleep again. They had been looking and calling for over half an hour, along the paths, through bushes, up the steps to the village, barely talking to each other apart from that, restraining Jack from over-enthusiastic shouting. Now she just wanted to be left alone: no children, no difficult marriages, no problems. She leaned back on the hard white chair, looking out across the valley, noticing another forest fire raging along the mountain. I've had enough of this heat, she thought, for the first time since they arrived, and remembered the rain last year, sweeping over the rooftops in the village, falling steadily on the garden and the terrace, dripping from the lemon trees on warm damp afternoons while they all played games indoors with the windows open. I wouldn't mind if the weather changed, she thought, and rested her arms on the table and put her head upon them, wishing, suddenly, for tranquil rain and tranquil companions, too.

And Frances, inside the creeper-shaded kitchen, which smelled, as always, faintly of gas, made tea and squash for the boys, found biscuits, put everything on a tray and carried it out to the terrace. Where she stopped, seeing Claire in that restful and picturesque position, reminded at once of the morning's reverie, of herself at the weather-beaten table in the quiet secluded garden, her head on her arms, waiting in the warmth of early afternoon for Dora to come out from the house and join her. For a moment she stood there, pierced by feelings so powerful she thought she might drop the tray, and then Claire looked up, with her lazy smile, and said: ‘Oh, how lovely,' and Frances stepped calmly towards the table, and put everything down, saying, as if it were nothing at all, light and remote:

‘I'm sorry about this morning – can we just draw a veil?'

The next day felt easier. They spent the morning down in the village, buying provisions from the shop, calling on the pig as they went past, visiting the butcher, who once a week opened a little shop eight feet square, white-tiled, the floor sprinkled with sawdust. Slabs of cheap meat lay in the window, hens hung from hooks above them. Claire glanced at Tom, gazing up at the limp bodies, but he, like Jack, was soon distracted by two wiry and bare-chested men over the road, who began sawing piles of pine logs, the branches brought in a wheelbarrow out along a path from the mountain. The activity and the sound felt soothing, and the air through the open door of the shop smelled sweet and fresh. The two boys wandered across and stood watching, joined in a little while by Jess and the grown-ups. Smiles and greetings were exchanged; the boys squatted down and ran streams of sawdust through their fingers, watching it fall.

‘We'll need a lot of sawdust for my mouse,' said Tom.

They walked on, round the outskirts of the village, taking the road which became a bridge over a dried-up tributary of the river, where children were playing among bricks and weeds. The road broadened to run towards the main road and the market town. The post office was on this road, and the little café next to it; they sat beneath the awning of vines, having coffee and ice cream, watching their corner of the world go by.

It felt easier, but Claire, from time to time observing Oliver and Frances, wondered at how little they spoke to each other, how much time they spent apart.

Back at the house they made lunch for everyone. Coming into the kitchen to fetch drinks for the children, who were up at the pool, she found Oliver chopping cucumber and tomato for salad, sprinkling in herbs she knew the children would pick out bit by little bit, and Frances laying a tray of plates and cutlery, in a silence that felt heavy with words unspoken.

‘That looks wonderful,' she said brightly, as Oliver laid out pieces of fish, and he smiled at her, but she felt like a fool, and went out quickly, spilling squash on the floor.

After lunch, they all retired to rest. Claire felt grateful to be indoors in a shady room after yesterday's heat and the long search for Tom, who seemed all right today, making his noises as usual but enjoying the pool, happy to go up with Jack after lunch and lie down. She settled them into their beds and crossed the rag runner to her own room, closing the door.