Last Guests of the Season

by Sue Gee

  ‘In that case, they can go and look for their shoes, can’t they? And if they can’t find them, no doubt their fathers will assist.’

  Frances looked at her gratefully.

  ‘You wanted to talk to me,’ said Claire.

  ‘Yes.’ Frances visibly took a breath, but said nothing.

  Claire waited. ‘What a strange mixture you are,’ she said, after a while. ‘One minute you clearly can’t bear having children around you, and the next you’re all concerned about bare feet.’

  Frances shook her head. She was looking out across the terracotta rooftops of the village beneath them, where the streets were filled with the sounds of activity again as the air grew cooler. Voices called, buckets clanked, children ran up and down. ‘Don’t most mothers feel like that?’

  ‘I’m sure. But with you I sense that it’s different.’

  There was a pause. ‘I’m different, certainly,’ said Frances, and tapped out another cigarette from the packet. She lit it without turning, leaning back in her chair, her feet resting on a ledge in the stem of the table. She suddenly looked drawn, despite the day in the sun.

  ‘How about a drink?’ said Claire. ‘Shall I go and –’

  ‘No,’ said Frances, ‘please don’t go. You’ll get all tangled up with the children …’

  ‘Well, what is it, then? Come on, Frances, it’s okay, you can trust me. Is it about children? Tom? He’s a nice boy, I like him. You and Oliver mustn’t worry so much about things, it’ll all be fine.’ She could hear herself sounding brisk and dismissive and capable; perhaps that in itself was a threat to someone so apparently unsure of motherhood, someone who she had guessed was perhaps not, in any case, Tom’s real mother. So she stopped, and Frances said abruptly:

  ‘It’s not about Tom, it’s about me.’

  ‘You mean – you and Oliver?’ Claire asked, following this morning’s train of thought.

  ‘Indirectly, yes. Well – perhaps I should say directly.’ She drew on the cigarette; smoke drifted up towards the overhanging vines and away towards the cloud of midges which had begun to dance above the path. She said: ‘I thought everything would be all right, but it isn’t. I thought I had changed, but I haven’t.’ There was another silence, and this time Claire did not attempt to break it. Frances said slowly, ‘I’ve been in love with someone else for a long time.’

  Claire waited; nothing more came; Frances still did not look at her.

  ‘Well,’ Claire said at last. ‘That must be rather difficult. Does Oliver know?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. No one knows.’

  ‘And are you actually having an affair?’

  ‘No.’ The hand which held the cigarette was shaking. ‘I mean, I’d like to, but she’s married.’

  The running footsteps and laughter of the boys, the squawks of panic-stricken hens, had faded: they had moved right across to the other side of the garden, beneath the lemon trees. The sounds from the village seemed distant, too, as Claire let those last little words sink in. From the end of the path came the steady, unending flow of water pouring into the tank, a sound which was always with them, soothing and cool, but which now felt profoundly altered.

  ‘Oh,’ she said carefully. ‘Oh.’

  ‘Don’t look so worried,’ said Frances drily, turning at last to meet her eyes. ‘It isn’t you.’

  ‘I –’ Claire swallowed. ‘I didn’t think it was.’

  And then Frances smiled, warm and direct, and Claire felt suddenly as though she were seeing her properly for the first time. ‘Didn’t you?’ she asked. ‘Not even in Bristol?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Didn’t you realise what I felt for you then?’

  ‘What?’

  The house, the garden, Robert and the children were whirling away: Claire, frozen into this moment, sat looking at Frances in transfixed astonishment. With such clarity that the last eighteen years might never have passed, she saw her: jumping each time Claire came near her; hiding away; talking freely only when they were alone; hiding away again; finally disappearing, without so much as a goodbye. She saw her, pretty and self-assured, smiling at Simon Blair, the tutor everyone had dreamed about, distantly acknowledging Claire across a sunlit room, as if she cared nothing for her at all.

  ‘I need a drink,’ she said at last, and then, as Frances tipped forward on her chair and made to get up to fetch one, she added: ‘No, wait, just a minute. You’re right, we’ll get all tangled up with the children.’

  ‘What about a cigarette?’ asked Frances, offering the packet. Claire took one, lit it, and coughed violently.

  ‘Ugh.’ She put it straight out again. ‘You smoke far too much.’

  ‘I know. I’ve tried to give it up, but I can’t.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘Change is never so easy.’

  Claire sat with her elbows on the table, looking at her. ‘Go on. Who is this woman?’

  Frances looked away. ‘We work together – she was there when I arrived.’

  Claire tried to remember what Frances had told her, the day they ran into each other again. ‘You went there when Tom was two … That’s a long time.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And does she know?’

  ‘No.’ Frances was distant again. ‘No, she hasn’t a clue.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Certain. After all, you didn’t guess, did you?’

  ‘No. But perhaps this person is a little more astute.’

  Frances touched her arm affectionately. ‘You’re astute enough, Claire.’ She paused. ‘And what would you have done if you had guessed? Or if I had told you?’

  Claire considered. ‘Probably run a mile.’

  Frances gave a little laugh, and then she suddenly crumpled, and looked so stricken that Claire, in a wave of pity, found herself saying quickly: ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean – just because I said that, doesn’t mean that she – your friend now –’ She broke off, feeling, although she had been invited, as if she were trespassing in unknown territory. And anyway, what was she thinking of, giving the slightest encouragement?

  Footsteps from the far end of the path, and the chink of glasses: Robert, carrying a tray, with a blue-striped china jug.

  ‘Oliver and Jessica are deeply engaged with the chessboard,’ he said, plonking it down on the table, ‘So I thought I’d do the decent thing. Claire, move all this tea stuff out of the way, will you?’ He sat down, and began to pour, handing them each a glass; he raised his own. ‘Cheers.’ He looked from one to the other. ‘Oh. Sorry. I’m interrupting.’

  ‘At last the penny drops,’ said Claire, as much to herself as to Robert. She picked up her glass and drank quickly. Never had red wine hit the spot more accurately, or been more welcome.

  ‘Shall I disappear?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ Frances was standing; she picked up her glass. ‘This is very nice, thank you. I’ll take it with me, if I may, and start the supper.’

  ‘No rush …’ Robert began, and stopped as she swept her cigarettes and lighter off the table and walked rapidly away.

  ‘I’ll do the children first,’ she said, over her shoulder. ‘In a little while, okay?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Claire, and watched her rapid progress between the vines, turning to run past the water tank, down the steps to the house.

  ‘Well,’ said Robert, drinking again. ‘This looks promising. Drama on day two. Day one, really.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Sorry. Only joking.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Want to tell me about it?’

  ‘Not at the moment. Just let me gather my thoughts, will you’? And make sure the boys are all right.’

  ‘I will,’ he said kindly, patting her shoulder. ‘See you in a bit.’ And he took himself off again, up to the poolside to survey the view, then back again and past her, pulling off a few grapes on the way.

  Claire sat at the round white table. A scooter puttered past, on the mountain road, going down towards the
village. It was growing cooler, but she did not move. She thought: I am a woman of my time, I should surely be able to take all this in my stride. But she found that she could not, that she was unsettled and bewildered, feelings with which she had long been unfamiliar. If Frances had felt so much for her, all those years ago, did that say something about herself, as well as everything about Frances? And what, anyway, was this ‘everything’about someone who seemed to be neither one thing nor another? She refilled her glass, hearing, from down in the garden, Robert’s voice, organising Tom and Jack, who had stayed too long in the pool, towards the idea of a bath and pyjamas.

  ‘I don’t want a bath with him,’ said Jack.

  Claire pulled on her sweater, and shivered.

  Upstairs, in the bedroom at the back of the house, which still held the warmth of the day, Frances swung back the peeling wooden shutters and looked through the open window out across the valley. The sun was very low, and the sky’s streaks of grey were thickening; she stood with her glass of wine and cigarette listening to domestic evening noises drift up from the village: clattering dishes, a tinny signature tune, a wailing baby. She could hear women talking.

  She leaned on the narrow window-sill and tried to let these sounds distract and calm her, but they did not. She thought about secrecy and disclosure: about the distance, which she had just discovered to be infinitely greater than she had supposed, between knowing something about yourself and revealing it. There seemed to be, as she had always thought there to be, very good reasons for keeping up appearances.

  She watched below her the children playing in the yard of the threshing barn, pulling their wooden cart up and down, laughing. Keeping up appearances helped keep everything as it should be – and I am not as I should be, she thought, seeing again the change in Claire’s face as she listened, her expression of shock and retreat. No matter that she had quickly tried to cover it: it had been there.

  Well. A lesson had been learned: there would be no more revelations. She drew on her cigarette, and closed her eyes, and Dora’s calm and lovely face came floating up before her.

  Chapter Four

  The road to the market town, some twenty miles away, wound high through the mountains, between forests of pine and eucalyptus which oozed milky gum into little cups like half coconuts, fastened to the bark. On the left the ground sloped steeply down to the river; clusters of red-roofed houses were sprinkled on the far hillside, beneath a cloudless sky.

  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 shoulderbag 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 descen
d, 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?’