Summertime (24 page)

Vivienne and Simon departed at dawn for civilisation, taking with them the broken outboard motor engine, so I am now Robinson Crusoe with my three children and our parrot until the arrival of Hedley, Tamsin and what the boat owner promises to be ‘a top-class outboard for you'.

Rather worried about being on a desert island with Hedley, as am not at all sure how we should conduct ourselves. Have discussed this with Vivienne, who says any romance must be suspended until we are back on dry land. We conclude that I shall put my faith in single camp beds and sleeping bags, ‘Better than condoms,' said Vivienne bracingly as she departed.

I have become expert at lighting fires, and using very few plates, knives and forks or indeed saucepans. Desmond would be delighted, I think, with our economy on this front, if surprised. Am keen to live in this more streamlined fashion at home, where far too much time is wasted on washing-up, putting away and laying the table. Much better to eat off a slice of bread than a plate, and more filling. This morning was a record. I managed to feed all children and myself with just one fork and a frying pan. Surely this is female emancipation in its highest form? Can't wait to share my wisdom with Rose, and wish it was her and not Hedley coming in with the next tide. She has not been in touch again since the migraine, which is pretty feeble if you ask me.

The channel from the sand bar to the harbour begins to fill with bright sails as the tide creeps in, the
water aquamarine and glittering as the sun intensifies. Giles takes his book down to our beached boat, determined to be the first to see Tamsin and Hedley. The Beauty and Felix run past me with water pistols.

‘Let's be aliens,' suggests Felix.

‘Yes, yes, yes,' squeals The Beauty, and they whisk into the tent to find torches.

Aliens, it soon appears, must have torches turned on in their mouths at all times. Settle down to read, but cannot concentrate on the improving volume of short stories translated from Icelandic and all about catching shellfish, which is my cleverly chosen seaside reading.

‘Roll me over, in the clover,' warbles Gertie from her perch on top of the chimney. She has been swearing at seagulls since we got here, and is now eyeing the oystercatchers with great interest. I find it best to ignore her.

Can't help Wishing I had brought a book on motor-boat engines instead, and something comforting – G. Heyer would be nice of course, but so too would a bit of Scott Fitzgerald, or Jane Austen. Anything about a civilised way of life before outboard motors and camping were invented, and preferably with clothes and food as well as a love story. The cookery book I have picked up, ‘One Hundred Ways with Mussels', is
not working for me. Have noticed, though, that just as I always pack clothes for holidays by including all the garments I have never previously worn, found at the back of my wardrobe and chosen for the holiday because it'll look good over a swimming costume or it'll look much better when I am brown, so do I pick my holiday reading from the giant pile of books I ought to read. This is a very dusty tower on the floor by my bed, much bigger than the pile of books I want to read, which in turn, good intentions being what they are, quite eclipses the pile of those I have read.

A thin cry interrupts my musings. Giles is jumping about by the water, gesticulating. ‘Look Mum, they're rowing. They haven't even got a motor.' He points to a small black insect, jerking towards us through the shimmering glare of midday sun. Its progress is painfully slow, particularly when a large catamaran slices past, throwing the tiny craft about in its wake, making the oars shake and wriggle like beetle's legs. Someone on the boat groans, and screwing up my eyes to look more closely, I see to my horror that it is Rose. Rose and Tristan with Hedley and the lovely Tamsin. What a terrible combination. Suddenly wish Jaws, or the Loch Ness monster, would come and get them all right now. Rose is bound to be on head commandant form as far as Hedley is concerned, and she's very outspoken. She'll never
believe that Felix needed a man here and Hedley was the only one I could get. She knows me too well.

August 7th

Everything is going much better than I expected. Hedley and Tristan have discovered that their sisters were friends at school, or their dogs were both born in November, or some equally tenuous, but to them cement-strong link, and it has served to unite them as hunter-gatherers and firewood-providers. The centuries have rolled back, and Rose and I have settled happily into our role as Stone Age home and hearth-keepers. It is easy to be gracious about this as there is no housework beyond the occasional shaking of a sand-filled shoe, and the once-a-day washing-up ceremony. Do not know whether to be relieved or insulted that Rose sees Hedley as a joke figure, and beyond saying with a giggle, ‘Really Venetia, what were you doing with him? Such a lapse of taste!' clearly considers my interlude with Hedley to have been an aberration. Perhaps she is right. I too am finding it hard to believe I ever managed it, or that anything more will happen when we reach real life again. Worried that the boys might notice something, I
have taken care not to be alone with Hedley at all, and am becoming increasingly skilled at avoiding meeting his eyes.

Tamsin and Giles, with much snatched laughter and accidentally-on-purpose bumping into each other, have taken over the cooking, which is achieved on the open fire, while Felix bustles around, experimenting with a Spanish accent and writing fantasy menus. Best so far was the one which offered coffee and Indian or China tea for forty-five pence or fifty pence if stirred, and as the main course, steak and chips with the vegetarian option of ‘carrot puera'.

Theo and The Beauty have found an anthill and are playing God the Old Testament way with the inhabitants, re-routing ant motorways and pouring water, laboriously gleaned from the sea in small Barbie buckets, over ant villages. Gertie potters around them, cracking open her supply of pistachio nuts and heavily into character now. We have taught her ‘What shall we do with a drunken sailor', and also the words to ‘In the Ghetto'. The latter is performed as a duet with Felix, whose mission this week has been to learn to strut and gyrate like Elvis. To this end, he has requisitioned the only pair of sunglasses, a pink glittery pair belonging to The Beauty, and performs several times a day, usually wearing swimming trunks and using a baguette as a microphone.

Rose and I lie on the shingle, and the warmth of the sun on the stones penetrates my shirt as the shingle shifts slightly with the contours of limb and spine. Mention to Rose that it feels like a particularly sybaritic New Age health treatment.

‘If you call this sybaritic, remind me never to do anything spartan with you,' retorts Rose, putting a stop to any delusions of sophistication I had been harbouring. Have to take this lying down as I am so grateful to her for not having begun an open campaign to embarrass me with Hedley. However, almost as the thought enters my head, she lifts her head and peers around. Finding that we are quite alone, she stops behaving herself and launches into me.

‘So what's really going on?' she demands. ‘You've got to do something about your situation, you know, Venetia. You're not getting any younger, and your boyfriend is on the other side of the world. You don't know when he's coming back, or even if he's coming back. It would be different if you were married, but as it is now, you may as well cut your losses and go for Hedley. His eyebrow really isn't too bad, especially if he wears a hat.'

I squirm like a salted slug as she continues, half furious that she's speaking to me like this, and half miserable at the jabbing accuracy of her observations. The marriage bit is particularly below the belt, and
I just manage to prevent myself saying in retaliation how disgusting I find Tristan's toenails. On Rose goes, talking about responsibility to my children and them deserving the security and role model of a happy relationship. She stops when she sees I am in tears, and hugs me.

‘Don't worry Venetia, something will happen, you'll see.' The sympathetic version is definitely worse. I wonder if she's been talking to Vivienne?

August 9th

The last night. We have to leave at an ungodly hour tomorrow in order to do our refugee thing with the boat and all the stuff. Have packed up the house, taking with us pockets full of stones, bladderwrack and old crabs' legs, and now we are sitting around the fire, trying to dodge the wind which has the ability to blow in every direction at once in the manner of a localised whirlwind, even though the rest of the Sand Bar basks in a silk-still evening. The babies are in bed, Tamsin and Giles are stalking an oystercatcher to find her nest, following one of these comical birds with its orange road-cone beak as it totters through the heather to its babies. They have already helped
another one's chick out of its egg, and are diligent in their midwifery. Felix is toasting marshmallows on the campfire, gloating because he has got a whole packet to himself and there won't be any left by the time Giles and Tamsin come back.

The rose-petal sun, veiled by diaphanous heat haze, slips towards the sea, sending a ribbon of pink dancing across petrol-blue waters. A couple of miles to the east the sky darkens to violet and grey above the cliffs, the stormy light bringing vivid depth to a fringe of grass above the dusty chalk face, and all the way up the length of beach from the cliffs to where I stand, the sun sweeps a gold velvet beam, like a searchlight across the sands. Thunder rolls in the distance, but the clouds are moving inland and will not come here.

I strip quickly and run into the sea, splashing and dispersing the pink path to the sun. Am swimming in a pair of David's old boxer shorts and one of Giles's T-shirts, having lost my swimming costume, and several other beloved garments some months ago, when I became muddled and sent the wrong pile of clothes to the orphans in Hungary. Have been unable to face the grim prospect of buying, then acclimatising my body to another since then, and am rather pleased with my casually flung-together alternative, which is comfortable, and, I like to think, makes me look like a relaxed supermodel. Wallow
unrestrainedly, enjoying the flung sounds of Tristan and Hedley building up the fire, and the murmur of Rose and Felix talking. Colour is fading with the sun, and although the storm clouds have gone inland to unburden themselves, most of the light has gone from the beach now, and I hear Tamsin and Giles walking on the shingle before I see them. Am just about to call out when Giles speaks.

‘I don't mind Mum and Dad being divorced, but I think Mum needs to be married to someone. I don't know why David's left her, but she can't go on saying he's working in South America, can she?' Tamsin says something I can't hear, and Giles replies, ‘I know. She's always trying to be young, but she needs to get on with being grown-up and being married and stuff. Even our Uncle Desmond is married now, and he's wild. I had to be a pageboy, it was sordid.'

The sea is suddenly full of lights. Shaken by Giles's remarks, I think I am giving off electrical charges into the water, but steady myself and remember it is just phosphorescence. I lift my arm and liquid green runs down. Everywhere the tiny plankton dance in an underwater galaxy. I splash my way towards Tamsin and Giles, gasping, mouth full of water, and trying to hold up the slapping weight of my boxer shorts. Gravity proves too much for the aging elastic, and the waistband pings, adding sagging trousers to my
traumas. Rush to the shallows, interrupting them. ‘Hi there, you two, where did you spring from?'

Tamsin shrieks, ‘Urgh! What's that? Why is it luminous? What's it doing?' and grabs Giles's arm.

He rolls his eyes and says in a despairing voice, ‘Oh my God, it's Mum,' and I know I have let him down in every way possible.

August 10th

Inevitable result of all the home truths was that I became very drunk. Rose's wine is paint stripper with cochineal in it, but it also contains a merciful dose of oblivion. Cannot remember saying anything untoward, but Giles is not speaking to me. Rose is not much better; her demeanour is that of a brisk but kind nurse, and all I can get out of her is the odd flashing smile and the promise to deal with me later. I fear I must have done something awful to Tamsin or Hedley, as they couldn't wait to leave, and went on the boat with Tristan when he took the first load of our stuff back to the car park.

Have noticed that the main symptoms of hangover are an itchy nose and an air of irresponsibility comparable to that of being a teenager. The latter earns a
sharp ticking-off from Tristan when he returns to get us and sees The Beauty, who is playing cat's cradle with a crab line.

‘For God's sake, Venetia, look after that child, or we'll be in hospital.'

Everyone is against me. It is time to take stock and improve. Shall do so at home this evening.

August 12th

Very peculiar to be living in a house again. Everything eerily clean, except us. Have had to start wearing a turban, as hair has become hideous floss, like a hank of sheared sheep wool. Something has happened to the colour as well as the texture, so instead of lovely white-blonde elegance of my dreams, have yellowing rug which looks as though the dogs have wee'd on my head. Have only just remembered the dogs, and have decided not to collect them yet, as doglessness at home is like an extended holiday. None of my shoes fit any more, as my feet have become giant and black-soled. The boys say the same, and we all pad barefoot across the gravel without feeling it. All four of us have pronounced freckles, mad, staring eyes and smell dank and muddy. This is a reasonable price to
pay for a superb and healthy energy which comes from all that ozone. Cannot get over the heavenly comfort of my bed after a week sleeping on my yoga mat, or the civilised, pampered silence of a summer country garden compared with rushing waves, crunching shingle, the wild sea wind and the constant cry of gulls. The children are similarly lulled; none of us woke up until nine this morning, a lifetime record for The Beauty.