The Last Weekend (6 page)

‘Looks like someone’s been enjoying the sun,’ Em said, nodding at the tube of suncream on the wooden lounger.

‘The house gives me the creeps so I lie out here,’ Daisy said.

‘Topless usually,’ Ollie said, appearing with olives and champagne. ‘The neighbours have been having a field day.’

‘Rubbish. It’s completely secluded. I hope you’ll join me, Em. You’re looking so
well.’

Had Daisy noticed that Em had put on weight? Did she think that she was pregnant? Or was the compliment an insult in disguise, drawing attention to her own slim body? If Em inferred a subtext, she didn’t show it. While Ollie opened the champagne, and Em described her fear of skin cancer, I studied Daisy’s hair. It had always been the core of her being — her pilot light. I remembered its shimmer under street lights. How it snagged on buttons. Or tickled your nose if you got too near. It wasn’t just her it enfolded — it was you.

‘What a treat,’ Em said, taking a glass from Ollie. ‘Normally at this time I’m seeing my ASBO boys.’

‘Your what?’

‘My juveoffs. My teenage criminals. My kids in care. A good pep talk on a Friday stops them doing something daft over the weekend. That’s the theory anyway.’

‘You’re so brave, Em,’ Daisy said, patting her arm. ‘I could never do a job like yours.’

‘No danger of me getting bored, anyway.’

‘I’m going to make sure you take it easy while you’re here. You too, Ian. We haven’t planned a thing.’

I doubted that as much as I doubted the sincerity of Daisy’s solicitude. But it was hot, and the champagne tasted good, and I sat back.

In a corner of the orchard was a fruit cage, its wire netting festooned with black ribbons — I thought of the dead crows I’d once seen strung from a gate on Cleckheaton Moor.

‘Paradise, eh?’ Ollie said. ‘Sun, cornfields, butterflies, waves breaking in the distance.’

The sea couldn’t be less than ten miles away. But there was no point arguing with Ollie. If I couldn’t hear the waves, that was my fault.

The bare tree in the middle of the field was dead, I realised. Had it been hit by lightning? It looked that way, as if suspended at the moment of impact. Like the photo of an electrocution.

‘How did you find the place?’ I said.

‘On the Internet,’ Ollie said. ‘Funny story, actually.’

‘Not funny,’ Daisy said. ‘Just weird.’

‘Em and Ian will find it interesting.’

‘You tell them while I sort out lunch,’ Daisy said.

‘Let me help,’ Em said.

‘It’s only a matter of putting dishes out.’

‘I’m finding it too hot here,’ Em said, standing up.

‘OK then, but bring your glass with you. Two minutes, boys. We’re hungry.’

They walked off, Em overdressed in a black knee-length skirt and white high-collared blouse, Daisy light and easy in a short blue cotton dress.

The sun glowed whiter than phosphorus. I sat there dazed behind my sunglasses, the heat lapping my face like a dog’s tongue.

‘I was talking to my ma one day,’ Ollie said. ‘Before she broke her hip and went gaga, this was — she’s in a nursing home now.’

‘I’m sorry.’

I wasn’t
that
sorry, having met her only the once, but I let him witter on about her dementia and what it’s like when your own mother doesn’t recognise you.

‘Anyway,’ he said, his voice washing over me, ‘before she lost it we were discussing the holidays we’d had when Pa was alive, and I asked her the name of the last place we went to, in the summer of ‘76. Badingley, she said. So last Christmas I went online, and among the entries for Badingley was a house for holiday lets. I recognised the place from the photos.’

‘The village?’

‘The actual house. Flaxfield Grange. We stayed here.’

‘That
is
weird.’

‘When I emailed I found it was free in August. So here we are. The owner lives in Belgium. A woman from the village looks after it. A real battleaxe. Talking of which — Daisy will give me hell if we don’t go in.’

‘Why a battleaxe?’ Em said, when Ollie repeated the story. There was a metal picnic table on the terrace but we were in the dining room, because of the heat. The room faced east and felt dank. We were told to help ourselves. A simple salad, Daisy called it — smoked salmon, tiger prawns, Parma ham, pâté, vine tomatoes, rocket, fennel, watercress, Roquefort, Cheddar, ciabatta, New Zealand Sauvignon, sparkling water. That’s not how we do simple salads in our house.

‘The old bitch obviously resented us coming at all,’ Daisy said. ‘It chucked it down all the way here — remember rain? – and took us four hours, so you can imagine how we were feeling when we finally arrived. It looked like no one had stayed here for years. You’ll see when you go upstairs — there are weapons hanging on walls and the wardrobes topple over if you open them. Plus I’m sure there’s a ghost. To be honest, I was all for getting straight back in the car.’

‘I carried the luggage up,’ Ollie said, ‘and there was Daisy, in the bedroom, ranting that the owner should be paying
us
to stay here, not the other way about. When I went downstairs again, blow me, the bloody woman from the village was
there — she’d come to see if we needed logs for the wood-burner. As if anyone would need logs in the middle of summer.’

‘Mrs Banks, she’s called,’ Daisy said. ‘She was due to come in yesterday to change the sheets but she didn’t turn up.’

‘You frightened her off.’

‘We decided to stay the night then go back to London next day. But the sun was shining when we woke, and it’s been shining ever since. We either sit in the garden or go to the beach — so the state of the house doesn’t seem to matter. I’m sorry it’s uncomfortable. I was going to call you to warn you but Ollie stopped me.’

‘Who needs comfort?’ Ollie said. ‘Holidays should be an adventure.’

‘It’s certainly that,’ Daisy said. ‘Cheese, anyone?’

‘When the wind gets up, you can hear the timbers creak,’ Ollie said. ‘It’s like being at sea.’

Even without the wind, I could hear movements above our head.

‘They didn’t bother with foundations in the 1700s. They built straight onto sand or earth. It shows.’

He pointed to the walls. Three were plastered and had long cracks. The fourth was a flint wall backing onto the corridor, with several large fissures and holes.

‘Let’s hope there isn’t an earthquake,’ Daisy said.

‘The house has been standing for three centuries,’ Ollie said.

‘They didn’t have global warming then.’

‘They had gales and floods, just the same as us,’ Ollie said. ‘All this talk about climate change is hysteria.’

Em raised an eyebrow my way. I lowered mine in discouragement. I couldn’t face arguing with Ollie when we’d just arrived.

‘What about the village?’ Em said. ‘Has it changed much?’

‘The shop has closed down,’ Ollie said. ‘Otherwise it looks the same — no housing developments, thank God.’

‘The place is in a kind of time warp,’ Daisy said.

‘That’s what I like about the countryside, it’s ten years behind.’

‘More like fifty. Some places don’t even take plastic.’

‘Sounds rather fun,’ Em said.

‘Fun till you try to buy something, but you’ve no cash, and the nearest ATM is ten miles away.’

They to-ed and fro-ed while we listened politely, Ollie lauding the beaches and fresh air while Daisy bemoaned the lack of designer shops and delicatessens.

‘I’ve ice cream if anyone wants it,’ she said, standing up. ‘Coffee? Herb tea? No?’ She sat down again. ‘I don’t mean to whinge. But this time last year we were in the Maldives, in a five-star hotel.’

I threw Em a surreptitious here-we-go look as Daisy ran through their recent holidays — the cities, deserts and mountains they’d seen during travels from Aleppo to Zanzibar.

There were more thumps from upstairs. For a minute I thought it might be Rufus but he was lying under the table, waiting for scraps.

‘Though in some ways Madagascar is nicer, of course,’ Daisy said. ‘I wanted to go back but Ollie insisted on a
British
holiday.’

I stared at the tablecloth, which had tiny peasant women in colourful costumes embroidered round the edge.

Another loud creak from above.

‘Is that your ghost?’ I asked, interrupting Daisy’s holidays.

‘More likely Archie. We should have said — he came with us. His plans for the summer fell through.’

‘Oh, good,’ Em said. ‘Good for us, I mean. We’re dying to see him.’

‘How’s he doing?’ I asked.

‘Oh, you know, typical teenager.’ ‘Still in bed, then,’ Em said. Ollie and Daisy looked embarrassed. ‘Actually —’ Daisy began.

‘He’s not at his best,’ Ollie said, cutting her off. ‘I dare say you’ll see him later.’

‘No hurry,’ Em said. ‘The food was delicious by the way.’ ‘Are you sure you don’t want dessert?’ ‘Not me.’ ‘Ian?’

‘I couldn’t.’

‘Let’s go in the garden, then. It should be cooler now.’ We stood up, scraping our chairs across the brick floor. ‘You go in the garden,’ Ollie said. ‘Ian and I should make a move.’

‘For God’s sake, Ollie, let Ian relax. He’s only just got here.’

‘You did bring your clubs?’

‘Yes, but —’

‘And shoes?’

‘Sorry, should I have?’

‘There’s a dress code.’

‘I didn’t realise.’

‘Of course not,’ Daisy said. ‘You’ve had a long drive. It’s boiling hot. And you’ll be late for supper if you go. Forget it, Ollie, it’s ridiculous.’ She turned to Em. ‘We thought we’d eat out tonight, if that’s OK with you. Ollie knows this seafood place.’

‘We could just play nine,’ Ollie said, ‘if Ian’s up to that. You can wear what you like on the short course.’

‘Nine is OK by me,’ I said, ‘if Daisy and Em don’t mind.’ ‘We’ll be relieved to get rid of you, won’t we, Em?’ ‘Mightily,’ Em said.

‘You’re to be back by seven,’ Daisy said.

‘No problem,’ Ollie said.

‘Take Rufus with you,’ Em said. ‘He could do with some exercise.’

‘They don’t allow dogs,’ Ollie said.

‘We’ll
take him for a walk, then,’ Daisy said. ‘He’ll love it by the sea.’

Golf? I know. Like you, I hate it — or hate the associations, anyway. It’s a nob’s game, a snob’s game, not a sport for the likes of me. But friendship demands compromise. I was doing it for Ollie.

At secondary school I’d worn glasses and been put in the lowest set for ball games, on the grounds that I lacked hand-to-eye coordination. Golf, so I learned from Ollie, was preferable in that respect: the ball stayed motionless until you swung your club at it — sometimes even then. He taught me to play that first summer at uni, when exams were over and his cast came off. Until his Achilles healed, he was banned from more strenuous sports, so we spent every day on the golf course. I deplored the accents, the dress code, the inane rules about shouting ‘Fore!’ or replacing divots. But over time I took pleasure in beating the middle classes at their own game. Not that I played with anyone other than Ollie. And not that I beat him more than once or twice. But I did slowly learn the rudiments of the game.

‘You’re not bad, you know,’ he said, on the occasion of my first birdie (my drive over water had hit the back of the green then rolled down to within six inches of the hole).

‘I got lucky,’ I said.

‘You should have a go at other sports.’

‘Good idea. Polo, say. All I need is a horse. And riding lessons.’

‘I mean it.’

‘So do I. What do they call those clubs they use — chukkas?’

‘Mallets.’

‘There you go. I’m good with mallets. I used to knock in the tent pegs when we went camping.’

‘I’m serious, Ian. Get in shape and have some lessons over the summer and you could be good.’

‘At what?’

‘Whatever you choose.’

I told him there was no chance of it — that my summer job back in Manchester, in a jam factory, would take all my time.
‘Make
time,’ he said, and, though I scoffed at the idea, once home again, driven mad by my parents, I took his advice. Every evening after work I’d head for the local sports centre, to work on exercise bikes or weights. I also signed up for squash and badminton lessons at weekends — the more middle class the sport, the better. Those three months were a revelation. What I’d assumed was lack of skill turned out to be lack of application: once fit and focused, I did OK.

My mother found my enthusiasm hard to believe.