Last Guests of the Season (32 page)

Hello, Oliver. Did you have a good walk?

Very good, thanks. How nice to see you.

Oh, he had such a beautiful, beautiful voice. Then what would they say? She began to worry – she never used to think about what they might talk about, they just talked, it was easy, that was what was so nice. But since he'd gone so strange and funny, after that terrible night she didn't want to remember, it felt all difficult, and awkward, and she was scared of saying the wrong thing, of making it all worse.

Hello, Oliver. Did you have a good walk?
Surely there was nothing wrong with that. Surely it was okay to come down to meet him. It was, wasn't it?
Hello, Oliver
…

‘Hello, Jessica.'

She jumped six feet in the air and went scarlet. He was here! She'd been walking along looking at the ground, muttering probably – God, how stupid – when all the time he was walking up towards her, watching her make a fool of herself.

‘Hello.' She raised her head diffidently, feeling her heart racing. He looked exhausted, absolutely exhausted, hot and sweaty and much much older than she remembered, but still it was so wonderful to see him again, to have him here again, as if everything was falling back into place.

‘What are you doing here?' he asked her, smiling:

‘I – I came to look for you.' Well, she had, hadn't she, why not say so? Why not say everything, why not, when all she wanted to do was fling herself into his arms, like Jack had done with Claire, only different.

‘Did you?' he said, and they began to walk up the hill together. ‘That's nice.'

It was nice! He said it was nice! He hadn't gone off her, everything was going to be all right.

‘Did you have a good walk?' she asked him, just as she'd planned.

‘Very good, thanks. But guess what happened?'

‘What?'

‘I met a pack of wolves.'

‘Wolves!'

‘Well, almost wolves.' He told her about it, walking slowly because he was so tired, and she slowed down to keep in step with him, listening in absolute and utter silence. ‘So,' he said, finishing. ‘That was my day. How was yours? Any wolves?'

‘No.' They had come to the gate, which stood open from where the others had gone trooping in with the shopping. The kitchen door at the bottom of the steps was open too, and they were all doing things and talking; this might be her last chance to be alone with him for the rest of the day. She said, not looking at him: ‘I'm glad you're all right.'

‘Thank you. So am I.' He gestured towards the gate for her to go through, but she didn't move. She wanted to say: ‘I'd die if anything happened to you,' but she didn't, she couldn't, she just stood there.

‘Go on,' he said kindly, and put his hand on her shoulder, ushering her through, down the first steps to the upper path. ‘I'm going to get straight in the pool. Will you tell the others? I shan't be long.'

‘All right,' she said, and stood watching him walk away between the trailing vines, tall and tired and wonderful, and she shut her eyes, seeing him up in those distant woods all alone, conquering wild dogs, hurling stones, a hero. And he had told her first.

‘Jessica? Jess?' Claire was calling her from the kitchen doorway; she opened her eyes. ‘Are you joining us for tea?'

She nodded without speaking; she didn't want to speak to anyone, she only wanted to think of him, and his voice, as he told her. Told
her.

‘Oliver back?' Claire asked, as she reached the bottom of the steps, and she nodded again.

‘Lost your voice?' Robert asked breezily, but she didn't bother to answer, it simply wasn't worth bothering. What did it matter, what did anything matter? Nothing mattered at all except that he was safe, he was back, and they were all right again.

All through tea she kept quiet, waiting for him to come down from the pool and join them, hugging all her feelings to herself, deep inside, where no one even knew they existed, waiting for his special smile, just to her; and then she heard his footsteps.

‘Hello there,' said Robert, when Oliver stepped out on to the terrace at last, cool and changed. ‘How was it?'

‘Good,' said Oliver. ‘Very long and very good.' He didn't particularly smile at her, but it didn't matter; she knew he couldn't really. She watched him go over to Frances and put his hand on her shoulder, a bit as he had done to her, but of course it wasn't the same; she watched them smile at each other, and she watched him go over to Tom, and greet him, and saw Tom gaze at the air in that funny way, and Oliver give the flicker of a frown, and then he sank down into a chair and Claire passed him a big mug of tea and he drank and drank.

‘So,' said Frances, ‘tell us all about it.'

And he told them, describing it all, boring stuff about solar panels and agriculture, and then, casually: ‘I was telling Jessica – I had a bit of an adventure towards the end.'

She listened to it all again, she could see they were all impressed with how brave he had been, not that he was boasting or anything, just describing it. It did feel a bit funny, having him tell everyone else, but still, he had made it clear to them: he had told her first, there was something special about her.

And she held that close, all through the evening, through helping her mother get supper, though she wasn't sure if he'd noticed her doing that, through eating all together, catching his eye, just once, and being given a beautiful tired smile. Twenty miles! He went to bed early, so of course there was no chance to suggest a game of chess so that they could be alone together, but tomorrow there might be. Tomorrow was Wednesday: three days left of the holiday. Seventy-two hours before they had to say goodbye. She looked at her watch. That was four thousand, three hundred and twenty-two minutes. Twenty-one. She would tell him, and then, at last, he'd tell her. She went off to bed without a murmur, hardly noticing when her mother came in to say goodnight and switch off the light. She just lay there, going over it all again, planning it all.

‘Dora,' says Frances, ‘I wrote you a letter …'

‘Yes.' Dora is standing at her desk, busying herself with a pile of transparencies in plastic envelopes. She turns away, holding them up to the light, one by one, scanning the sheets, searching for something. Frances, from her desk across the room, can see nothing of what she is looking at, only Dora's back, straight and beautiful, as she stands at the window overlooking the street. She is wearing her navy jacket and a straight dark skirt; it feels as though thorns surround her.

‘Dora …' says Frances again. There is no one else in the office, but from downstairs she can hear a door bang, and footsteps on the stairs. She must be quick. ‘Did you get it?' she asks, trying to sound matter-of-fact, as though it were any letter, and this were any day.

The telephone rings on Dora's desk; she moves to answer it. ‘Please,' says Frances, ‘leave it.' But Dora does not leave it, and Frances waits, taking a cigarette out of the packet. She has lost her lighter, and uses a box of matches; she opens it the wrong way and all the matches fall to the floor. She gets down to pick them up, scrabbling frantically, as if it is very important, so that when the telephone is put down again, and Dora is free to be addressed, she is kneeling like a supplicant, trying to get to her feet again, but with feet and legs filled with lead, so that she cannot move.

‘Did you get it?' she asks again, looking up. Dora has her back to the light now, so that Frances cannot properly see her face, cannot tell what expression is there.

‘Yes,' says Dora, ‘I got it,' and then the door swings open, and the room is full of people, people they both know, who have come to a party: Derek and Kate and Elaine, and Jocelyn with his wife, and various authors and sales reps, and Robert, who comes over to Frances.

‘What are you doing down there?' he asks, and bends to pick up the fallen matches.

‘Nothing,' says Frances. ‘Leave me alone.'

Somehow she gets to her feet. She pushes through the crowd of people towards Dora, who does not look at her, who is looking at everyone but her.

‘Dora,' says Frances, ‘Dora, please. I just want to talk to you – about us, about our friendship. Something happened between us …'

Then Dora turns to look at her, and in her face is everything Frances has ever feared she might one day see there: embarrassment, unease, retreat. Unequivocal retreat.

‘Oh, no, Frances,' she says carefully, and suddenly looks very tired. ‘Something happened to you.'

‘Well – yes,' says Frances. ‘Yes, of course that's true, you're right, of course, I didn't mean … But even so. But please. But Dora, please …'

But Dora has turned away again; she will not meet her eyes. Frances goes slowly back to her desk; she sits there staring at her piles of paper, hearing people talking to each other with interest and animation. Every time she looks up she sees Dora in conversation with someone different: she is receptive, revealing; she is looking at each of them but somehow never at Frances; her eyes are everywhere, she can take in everyone, but somehow Frances has become invisible.

The people thin out, the door of the office keeps opening to let them go; Frances sits watching them all, absolutely still, waiting for the moment when the last of them will have gone, and she can try again. But Dora goes out talking to another woman; she does not even flick a glance towards the corner, and Frances slowly picks up the pieces of paper on her desk, and rips them into shreds.

She woke in the darkness, in tears. Beside her, Oliver was deeply asleep, turned away from her, next to the wall, long heavy limbs stretched out beneath the covers. The room was quiet, the house was quiet; a thin line of blueish light from the village street lamps came through the cracks in the shutters. I shall go back to sleep, thought Frances, as the church clock struck one, and find another dream. I shall go back to sleep and forget about this one, which is, after all, only a dream, and will never happen.

She turned over, wiping her eyes, tugging her pillow down into her arms, and lay looking at the cracks of light coming through the shutters at the other, smaller window at the side of the room, overlooking the garden. She tried to find Dora, the Dora she knew – but who did not, of course, know Frances, or the truth about her and her feelings. I have deceived her, thought Frances; I have implicitly lied to her throughout our friendship, and if she were to react like that I should only be paying the price. But I certainly could not bear it.

Her fingers dug into the pillow; she closed her eyes and tried to breathe deeply, steadily, to sink into sleep again, taking Dora with her. But an unapproachable Dora was waiting, and Frances, giving up, on the edge of tears again, softly pushed back the covers and crept from the room, closing the door behind her.

The corridor was lit by the moon, shining through the window on the landing which overlooked the peach tree. Silver squares of light, patterned with the shadows of leaves, fell on to the faded green carpet, an echo of the brilliant sun which lay here in the afternoons, when they all climbed the stairs to rest. She walked on bare feet over the creaking floorboards towards those shining squares, and down the wooden stairs which lay beyond them. She went into the sitting-room, so large, so open, and across to the desk in the corner, and she knelt down, quietly tugging open the bottom drawer, feeling inside for her writing case at the back. She drew it out, unzipped it, took out the letter; she zipped the case up again, replaced it, carefully closed the drawer. Then she slowly got to her feet, wondering what to do.

She could tear the letter to pieces, but what should she do with the pieces? Even a scrap, discovered, might betray her.

Then what? She could take it into the kitchen, which smelt of gas, and burn it at the little leaky cooker. Or she could do more than that.
I shall come down at night, when everyone is asleep, and seal up every crack
… That had been when Oliver was raging. He wasn't raging now. Besides.

Besides, it has not come to that, not yet, thought Frances, pacing the room. That is for when Dora – if Dora – is ever to be as she has been in my dream tonight. But she will never be, for I shall destroy this letter, and shall never write another.

On the table in the middle of the room where they left all their books and sunglasses, she had left her cigarettes and lighter. She picked up the lighter, and opened the terrace doors.

It was cool, and the sky was full of stars. A breeze stirred the leaves of the fruit trees and rustled the vines on the far side of the garden. The moon had risen high above the mountains beyond, where Oliver had gone walking; where wolves, or almost wolves prowled through the pines.

Frances shivered, holding her letter, holding the cigarette lighter tight. The moon climbed higher, and was taken by moving clouds. She stood in the darkness, afraid, and then suddenly a swooping streak of light shot through the starry sky beyond the mountains, and fell to earth. It happened so quickly, so silently, that she almost doubted she'd seen it at all, but she knew that she had: a shooting star, a moment's blazing arc, a star outshining all the others, rare and beautiful, and then it was gone.

Dora, said Frances, searching the sky for another, knowing it was unlikely that there would be another, I really did adore you, you know. I looked at you across that room, and everyone else disappeared.

Then she flicked on the lighter, and by its steady flame began to burn her letter, starting at the corner of the envelope, watching the edges begin to curl. Soon it was burning quickly, and she had to drop it on to the tiles, where she watched the flame consume it all, until only dark papery ash remained, which the breeze soon carried away.

The moon came out again from behind the clouds, and disappeared again, and Frances went on standing there. Unwillingly, she saw herself: a woman up in the night alone, out in the darkness unknown to anyone, destroying a letter she should never have written, estranged from her husband, thinking of death, and she thought: you are close to the edge.