Last Guests of the Season

by Sue Gee

  ‘Yes, but we’d given him a travel pill for the plane,’ said Frances. ‘It probably hadn’t worn off.’

  ‘Ah. You haven’t got any with you now, have you? Never mind, I expect we can get something from the chemist in town. For the journey back.’

  Tom looked up, half a degree less white. ‘I’m not going in the car again.’

  ‘Just to the town …’ said Frances.

  ‘No.’

  ‘All right, don’t worry about it now.’ Claire smiled at him. ‘You sit there till you feel better, and then we’ll see.’

  ‘I’m not going.’

  ‘Tom …’

  ‘I’ll leave you to it.’ Claire, seeing Oliver approach them, went back to the car and reversed it over the pool of sick, and then went on sitting there, tapping her fingers thoughtfully on the steering-wheel, watching in the mirror the rest of her family wandering rather aimlessly up the path in the heat, and, through the window, Oliver and Frances, standing over Tom.

  ‘Feeling better?’ Oliver was asking.

  Tom nodded. ‘A bit.’

  ‘You didn’t bring the pills,’ he said to Frances.

  ‘No. But Claire says we can get some in town.’

  ‘I’m not going –’ Tom began.

  Frances looked at Oliver. ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘Leave him,’ said Oliver. ‘Let him get over it.’ He bent down to Tom, who had picked up a bit of stick and was twiddling it between his fingers. ‘Frances and I will go and explore,’ he said. ‘You stay here, there’s no rush.’

  ‘Where’re you going?’

  ‘Just up the path – see? Where the others are?’

  ‘Okay.’ Tom sounded flat and resigned. He lowered his head again and began to run the stick up and down the sand as his parents walked away.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Frances. ‘Poor Tom.’

  ‘He’ll be all right.’ Ahead, on the mountain path, Robert and the children had stopped and were waiting for them to catch up. ‘What about you?’ Oliver asked her, as they walked on.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I thought you seemed rather quiet in the car. Anything wrong?’

  She shook her head. ‘Why should there be?’

  He gave a small, exasperated sigh.

  ‘How’s the patient?’ Robert enquired as they drew near.

  ‘Recovering,’ said Oliver, and they all stood looking, from this height, at the harsh, unforested line of mountain peaks that stretched along the distant horizon on the far side of the valley. Below, uncultivated terraces tumbled towards the river.

  ‘Have you done much walking up here?’ Oliver asked.

  ‘Me?’ said Robert, and Jessica laughed, prodding the soft overhang of flesh above his trousers.

  ‘Can you see Dad walking up a mountain?’

  ‘Do you mind?’ He wiped trickling sweat from his forehead. ‘What about you, Oliver? Are you keen?’

  He nodded. ‘I enjoy walking, certainly, so does Frances.’

  ‘But not in this heat,’ she said. ‘Still, why don’t you go off one day, you’d enjoy it. I’m sure there must be maps in the house.’

  ‘There are. I was looking at them last night, after you’d gone to bed.’

  Oliver spoke as if to say: I don’t need you to tell me about maps, or anything else, and Frances said, ‘Oh. Good,’ and looked away.

  ‘Where’s Mum?’ Jack demanded suddenly. ‘What’s she doing?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Robert, taking in the unspoken sharpness between the Swifts, a little wounded by Jessica and very hot, was beginning to feel somewhat out of sorts. Below them he could see Tom, on his feet again, looking round, and he said abruptly: ‘Come on, let’s go,’ and set off back down the path.

  ‘I’m not going in the car,’ Tom announced as soon as they reached the bottom, and as Frances and Oliver both made to protest Robert said quickly:

  ‘Now, look, Tom, I’ll tell you what. You can sit in the front, if Mum and Dad agree, next to Claire, like a grown-up, and we’ll have all the windows down and play a game. And in no time we’ll be there, all right?’

  He was shepherding Tom towards the car in a manner, kind but firm, which did not allow for disagreement.

  ‘What sort of game?’

  ‘Animal, vegetable, mineral. If you don’t know it we’ll teach you.’ Almost before Oliver and Frances had made their murmurs of assent, he had opened the front passenger door and presented Tom to Claire with a flourish. ‘Your guide.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Claire, smiling in welcome. ‘That’s nice.’

  Robert helped Tom with the seat belt and closed the door. ‘Jess, you go in the back with Jack, please.’

  ‘But I want to sit next to –’ She broke off, seeing his face, and went round. Everyone got in, doors were pulled shut.

  ‘Mum?’ asked Jack, as Claire eased out on to the road again. ‘Why didn’t you come with us? What were you doing, all by yourself?’

  ‘Thinking,’ said Claire, turning the wheel.

  ‘Fatal,’ said Robert, as they drove away.

  The town was clogged with traffic, a crawling line of little local vans, beat-up cars and motor bikes, with a few tourists in larger, sleeker vehicles like theirs. Baking heat hung over unfinished concrete apartment blocks and the narrow streets leading steeply off the main through road. Petrol and exhaust fumes shimmered; they crawled past a draper’s and an ironmonger’s on one side and a piazza with a news-stand on the other, where fountains sparkled between dusty trees. Up on the hill to their right, the covered food market and open stalls of pottery and clothes stood below another building site.

  ‘Christmas,’ said Robert, wiping his forehead again as the car inched forward. ‘I don’t remember it being like this.’

  Claire was changing into second gear. She glanced at Tom, sitting beside her. ‘You okay?’

  ‘A bit hot,’ he muttered, ‘and thirsty.’

  They had finished the mineral water a mile or two back. ‘Won’t be long now,’ she said. ‘You keep your eyes out for a parking place.’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘Animal with vegetable connections,’ said Robert gamely from the back.

  ‘A donkey after a carrot,’ said Jessica. ‘God, Dad, you’ve done that one millions of times.’

  They eventually found somewhere to park on the other side of the town, squeezing in between a trailer and a Fiat outside some offices. Jack and Jessica, released from the back, stretched themselves and groaned.

  ‘It’s awful in there.’ They stepped into the road as a motor bike sputtered fiercely past.

  ‘Careful,’ said Oliver, putting an arm across.

  Jessica gave him a dazzling smile. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Hats on,’ said Claire, emerging from the front with her shoulderbag. ‘So. How shall we organise ourselves?’

  ‘I thought you were going to organise us,’ said Oliver drily.

  ‘Did you? In that case I suggest drinks all round, and then whoever wants to come to the market can do so, and whoever doesn’t can explore. There’s the church’ – the children groaned – ‘and various cafés,’ she went on, ignoring them. ‘We can all meet up for lunch.’

  ‘Can I come with you?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Of course. I expect Mum’s coming anyway, aren’t you, Frances?’

  ‘What? Oh, yes, yes, that’s fine.’

  Oliver wanted to look at the fish stall, and so did Jessica. Neither Jack nor Robert, seeing the crowds, wanted to go near the place, but Jack wanted to be with Claire. So in the end, after bottles of fizzy orange from a stall, they all set off up the steep, half-made road to the market. Motor bikes bumped unsteadily up and down over the potholes, weaving in and out of shuffling old women in black with baskets and plastic shopping bags; children darted. ‘Careful,’ said all the grown-ups together, taking hands. They passed endless pairs of shoes, set out on the ground on tablecloths, and stalls of glazed brown and yellow pottery.

  ‘A good place for presents,’
said Claire.

  ‘Not now,’ said Robert.

  Dora, wrote Frances, I wish you were here. I wish we were drinking from cool tall glasses in an empty café shaded with slatted blinds, listening to the whirr of a fan …

  Tall iron gates, fastened back, stood at the entrance to the covered market. They could smell fish and cheese and sausages as they stepped into the welcome cooler air, passing a fat old woman in a headscarf: she sat on a low wooden chair beside baskets of herbs, a basket of eggs, and three plump brown hens. They lay on a piece of sacking, their feet stretched out and their beaks open.

  ‘Look,’ said Tom, quite recovered now from the sickness.

  ‘Come on,’ said Claire.

  ‘Look! They’re alive.’ Glossy brown wings lifted feebly, feathery chests rose and fell. ‘They’re tied up, their feet are tied up!’

  Claire looked. Orange wool bound scaly yellow legs; the hens were gasping. The fat old woman smiled. ‘Mil escudos.’

  ‘What did she say?’ Tom demanded. ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She said they were a thousand escudos.’

  ‘A thousand what?’

  ‘Escudos,’ said Jack, from the other side of Claire. ‘Don’t you know what escudos are?’

  ‘It’s the Portuguese money,’ said Claire, wondering if Jack were sickening for something. ‘Come on, Tom.’ She turned to the others behind her. ‘Perhaps we should split up, and one lot do fruit and veg and the others meat and fish. We should have worked out a budget, I suppose.’ She moved aside as another, Portuguese family pushed past.

  ‘Does that mean they’re for sale?’ Tom asked. ‘Does it?’

  ‘Of course they’re for sale,’ said Jack. ‘What else would she be doing with them?’

  ‘But how much? How much is a thousand thingummy in English money?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘Jack …’ said Claire. ‘Please. What is the matter with you?’

  ‘I’m hot.’

  ‘We’re all hot. Come on, buck up, the sooner we do the shopping the sooner we can go home.’

  ‘How much is it?’ Tom persisted.

  ‘Oh, Tom.’ She checked a sigh of impatience. ‘It’s about four pounds.’

  ‘Four pounds …’ She could see him struggling to add up weekly sums. He turned to Frances, his broad face passionate with longing. ‘Mum? Frances? How much pocket money do I get?’

  ‘Surely you know how much pocket money you get,’ said Jack.

  Claire said, ‘I’m going to get cross with you in a minute.’

  ‘Seventy pence,’ said Frances. ‘Because you’re seven. Next year it’ll be eighty.’

  ‘And how much have I got in my money box?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’ She stepped aside in the throng. ‘I think we’d better move on, hadn’t we, Claire?’

  ‘I’m trying to.’

  ‘What’s the hold-up?’ Robert asked.

  ‘How many seventy pences are in four pounds?’ asked Tom. ‘Mum? Frances? Please can I buy them?’

  ‘Buy what?’

  ‘The hens. Look at them.’

  ‘No,’ said Frances, looking.

  ‘Please. If I haven’t got enough saved up, you can stop giving me pocket money for the rest of the holidays, I don’t mind, honestly. Please.’

  ‘Tom, don’t be silly, what on earth would you do with them?’

  ‘I’d have them as pets, of course. We could take them in the back of the car …’

  ‘No.’

  Claire left them to get on with it, seeing that Oliver, Jessica and Robert had long since decided to do the same and were well ahead in the crowd, stopping at a stall of shining sardines on a marble slab. She took Jack’s hand and they made their way towards them.

  ‘Tom’s bonkers.’

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘Fish tonight?’ Robert suggested, as they came up.

  ‘I should think so.’ She gazed at rows of sunken eyes. ‘We’d better make a plan for the week.’

  ‘I thought you’d have a list.’

  ‘Well I haven’t. I was going to make one last night, but somehow –’ She took a breath, and released Jack’s hot hand. ‘Fish tonight, whatever Oliver and Frances want for tomorrow, what about cold meat on Wednesday? I suppose someone had better do groceries, too; we’ll have to go to the supermarket after this …’

  ‘May I suggest,’ said Oliver, ‘that Frances and I take over for today? We can work out and buy, and you can just cook on your days from whatever we’ve got. I should think between us we could manage to stock up sensibly.’

  ‘Now you’re talking,’ said Claire, and he smiled at her, charming and considerate. She smiled back, relieved that for once she did not have to plan and be practical, but also thinking: he’s okay, he’s nice, he just needs getting to know.

  Beside him, Jessica was saying: ‘Can I come with you?’

  ‘All right. You can help choose things.’ He looked at Robert and Claire enquiringly. ‘Is that permissible?’

  ‘Of course.’ Claire’s eyes searched the throng near the entrance for Frances and Tom, but she could not see them. ‘Well, we’ll do the supermarket, anyway. And we’ll meet you back at the car in about an hour. Yes?’

  And she and Robert, with Jack between them, left Oliver and Jessica buying a kilo of fat sardines and moved towards the aisle on the left, where the cheeses were.

  ‘Hurray,’ said Jack. ‘Just us.’

  Claire put her arm round him. ‘Is that why you’re in such a grump?’

  ‘It’s nice being just us sometimes.’

  ‘Yes.’ She stood watching Robert exchange halting pleasantries with a pretty girl behind one of the stalls, trying a bit of rubbery cheese, and wondered what their lives would have been like if they had had only Jack, just the three of them, like Oliver and Frances and Tom. Looking down into Jack’s adoring eyes, she thought it would probably be rather nice: no quarrels, no need to balance the needs of one against the other. But the Swifts? Despite her new found liking for Oliver, on the evidence so far it was hard to decide which might be more difficult: to have Tom as child, or Oliver and Frances as parents.

  Robert had finished flirting with the girl behind the cheese stall; he took Jack’s other hand and the three of them wandered off. They passed stalls of old grey socks, which they recalled were dried fish, and a butcher where fresh-cut pork oozed blood on to the chopping block and stiff white rabbits hung upside down on hooks.

  ‘Tom would have something to say about them,’ said Robert.

  ‘He’s got animals on the brain,’ said Jack.

  ‘I thought you liked animals.’

  ‘I do, but not like he does.’

  ‘Yes. Well …’ Claire searched the crowd, wondering if Tom and Frances had met up with the others yet – and, indeed, if Frances would mind having the whole week’s shopping devolved upon her. Ah. There she was, looking fresh and cool in her striped blue shirt and cotton skirt, with her hair tied back and her hands in her pockets; she was walking unhurriedly along the stalls on the far aisle, lost in thought. And where was Tom? Well, where was he? Hard to pick out children in this throng unless they were close by; easy for one to get lost.

  ‘Robert? Can you see Tom anywhere?’

  He looked around. ‘No. Where’s Jess?’

  Jess was in a queue at a fruit stall right up at the end – they could see her because they could see Oliver, head and shoulders taller than almost everyone, making a list in a small black notebook. Tom, it seemed, had disappeared, and his mother seemed not to have noticed. Well – Claire checked reproach by thinking how easily that happened, how she’d nearly lost Jack in Sainsbury’s once, bumping into someone from school and gossiping, taking her eyes off him for five minutes. Still. In a foreign country, in a place you’d never been to before … She remembered the sudden lurch of sickness and fear when she’d realised Jack had vanished, the rush of relief at finding him, moments later, prising open a tube of Smarties at the checkout. And she fe
lt a tingle of fear and panic now, beginning to rise. If she were Frances she wouldn’t let Tom out of her sight in this place for a minute.

  ‘Where is he?’ she said to Robert. ‘Where on earth is he?’

  ‘Could be anywhere, couldn’t he? Give her a shout.’

  ‘Frances! Frances!’

  She turned, frowning, caught sight of them and gave a little wave.

  ‘Where’s Tom?’ Claire called.

  Frances frowned again and looked round, clearly expecting to see him beside her. They pushed through the crowd.

  ‘He was here,’ she said, as they reached her. ‘He was right here. Where’s Oliver?’ Claire pointed. ‘I’d better tell him …’ Frances sounded as if it were the last thing she wanted to do. ‘How on earth can this have happened?’

  ‘Do you think he’s been kidnapped?’ Jack asked hopefully. ‘Are there kidnappers in Portugal?’

  ‘Stop it,’ said Claire, still looking. People around them jostled and shoved. ‘Where was he when you last saw him?’

  Frances spread her hands. ‘I can’t remember –’

  They searched among half a dozen stalls of knobbly potatoes and onions the size of grapefruit.

  ‘Tom!’ Robert shouted, cupping his hands. ‘Tom!’ One or two people in the queues turned, curious.

  ‘Oh, dear God,’ said Claire, and then she became aware of a ripple of laughter and exclamation, and Jack suddenly tugging at her hand, saying:

  ‘Look! Look at that hen …’

  On a nearby stall, feathers fluffed out, head cocked, a fat brown hen was perched on the top of a pile of potatoes, clucking quietly. As they watched, she began to pick her way along open sacks of other vegetables, pecking here and there at broad beans and carrots, dropping messes. The stallholder made to grab her, and she retreated, flapping her wings, unsteady feet clinging to potatoes; messes splattered everywhere. There was more laughter.

  ‘Lay an egg,’ Robert murmured. ‘Please lay an egg.’

  And here was Tom, a hen under each arm, grinning from ear to ear, triumphant.

  ‘I untied them when she wasn’t looking – it was easy. I tried to get them all together, but that one, she’s called Mary, she made a dash for it.’ He looked down proudly at the birds on either side of him, darting their heads. ‘This one’s called Beaky, and the other one hasn’t got a name yet, but she’s really nice. They’re terribly thirsty, what can we give them?’