Last Guests of the Season

by Sue Gee

  ‘There’s usually an “And yet”,’ said Frances. ‘About most things.’

  ‘Mmm. And yet: I suppose I still try to behave as if I believe.’

  ‘And what does that mean?’ She tapped ash into the saucer. ‘As if you are to be judged?’

  He thought about it. ‘Not judged, exactly. But as if there were some kinds of absolutes.’ He finished his glass and poured another. ‘It’s easier to talk about absolutes than specifics, isn’t it – you can get carried away with the sound of your own voice, if you’re not careful. I can, anyway. When it comes down to it, living by absolutes can mean being kind, that’s all. What more do you want?’ He picked up the wine jug and waved it. ‘Who wants more out of this?’

  ‘I’m surprised there’s any left,’ said Claire, rocking.

  He looked. ‘There isn’t much. Oliver? Want to finish it? Want to tell us what you believe in? Are you a fucked-up Catholic?’

  ‘Robert …’ Claire stopped rocking.

  But Oliver was smiling, pouring the last of the wine. ‘I don’t know. Possibly. I don’t know if I believe any more. But I do believe in the search, I think. That does seem important, still.’

  ‘The search for –’

  ‘Meaning. For salvation, too, I think.’ He was tapping on the table, concentrating. ‘Anachronistic though it may sound.’

  ‘And strangely enough,’ said Robert, ‘anachronistic though it may sound, I think one of the things I believe in is sin.’

  ‘Mighty and magnificent words.’ Frances drew on her cigarette. ‘Milton words. The Fall. Salvation. Sin. Do they still mean anything?’

  ‘Well?’ said Robert. ‘Do they? What do you believe in, Frances?’

  ‘I used to believe that work was my salvation.’ She gave Claire a smile. ‘Remember?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Claire, looking away. ‘I do.’

  ‘You two must have a lot to catch up on,’ said Robert.

  ‘This and that.’

  There was no elaboration.

  ‘Go on,’ he said to Frances. ‘Be serious. Just for fun.’

  She put out her cigarette. ‘Like the man said: I don’t know what I believe in, but I know what I want.’

  ‘And what is that?’

  ‘The moon,’ she said, and fell silent, sensing Oliver’s eyes upon her.

  There was a pause.

  ‘Well,’ said Claire helpfully, rocking again, ‘if anyone wants to know what I think, I find it irritating that people should feel you have to have religion in order to have a moral code. It requires much more of people to go through the world without the prop of faith.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Robert. ‘We are as one.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘But we are. On this, anyway.’ There was a brown dish of fruit on the table, mostly finished by the children, one or two soft pears left and a lot of pips and grape stalks. He picked at the few remaining grapes. ‘Anyway, doubt is surely far more interesting than faith. As you said, Oliver, it’s the search that counts.’

  ‘But meanwhile one has to live,’ said Claire. ‘And you don’t keep the show on the road with quests and questions, not as far as I’m concerned. Life is sustained by the ordinary, the everyday.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Frances. ‘Life is sustained by dreams.’ Robert looked at her. She picked up her packet of cigarettes, tapped out another one, and lit it.

  Oliver apparently ignored this. ‘I still think there are quite a few questions left. I still think humanism has its shortcomings. Enduring pain, for instance. Christianity has all sorts of explanations for suffering –’

  ‘Far too many,’ said Robert.

  ‘I don’t know. How you cope with illness? With death? In moments of crisis everyone prays.’

  ‘Do you?’ Claire asked him.

  ‘I used to.’

  Robert flicked grape pips over the parapet. ‘Well, I neither pray nor expect to look for something outside myself when something dreadful happens. But then, so far, nothing dreadful has. Perhaps, if it does, I shall change.’ He drained his glass, and stretched, yawning.

  Oliver waved more smoke away. ‘You said you believed in sin – what, in the last gasp of the century, might constitute sin, do you suppose?’

  Robert tugged off the last grape and swallowed it. ‘As the man said, I think I might know if I saw it. Betrayal? Screwing up people’s lives? That gives quite a bit of scope, wouldn’t you say?’ He got up, the iron chair scraping on the tiles. ‘On which note, I think I might hit the hay.’ He looked across at Frances, still smoking. ‘You’ve gone rather quiet.’

  She gave her little laugh. ‘Am I usually rowdy?’

  ‘Not exactly. Are you all right?’

  Her eyes met his, wary, surprised. ‘Of course. Why?’

  ‘Just wondering.’

  ‘Don’t quiz her,’ said Claire, and swung her legs off the swing-seat. ‘She’s tired, and so am I. I think I’ll join you.’ She held out her hand towards Robert. ‘Help me off here, I can’t move.’

  He pulled her to her feet and they stood holding hands, saying goodnight to the others.

  ‘Sleep well.’

  ‘Thank you. You too.’

  ‘And I hope Tom sleeps well,’ said Claire, as they went towards the doors.

  ‘I’m sure he will,’ said Frances. ‘Please don’t worry. He’s had a lovely day, thanks to you both.’

  ‘Well, we’ve enjoyed it as well. Goodnight.’

  Frances watched them cross to Jessica’s room and check her for the night. She heard them walk along the wooden corridor, and Robert go into the bathroom and Claire, yawning, climb the stairs. ‘Shan’t be long,’ said Robert, closing the bathroom door.

  Beside her, Oliver had picked up her cigarettes and was turning the packet over and over, tapping it on the table, where the candle had almost burned down. Above her, the moon and the stars were brighter than she had ever seen anywhere.

  ‘Tom will be all right, won’t he?’ she asked.

  Oliver went on turning the packet of cigarettes, over and over, between long, beautiful fingers. ‘I expect so.’ There was a pause. ‘What about us? Are we going to be all right?’

  She did not know how to answer.

  ‘Frances?’

  There came, with that enquiry, the memory of endless evenings in London, supper over, Tom long since in bed, the television news switched on.

  ‘I must do some work,’ said Frances, when it had finished.

  ‘Yes,’ said Oliver, getting up, turning off famine and war and desolation. ‘I’ve got quite a bit, too.’ He moved towards his desk in the corner, piled high, like hers, with other people’s writing. He put on the lamp she had bought for him one Christmas, thought for a moment, turned.

  ‘Frances?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You seem a bit – is everything all right? I mean, at the office?’

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Frances. ‘Busy, that’s all. What about you?’

  He shrugged. ‘I’ve been in meetings all day, I told you. I just get the feeling – never mind.’

  He pulled out his chair and sat down. Frances went to her own desk. Pages were turned.

  ‘Frances?’ he said again now.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The thing about going on holiday …’ He put down the cigarettes. ‘The thing about going on holiday is that people have to talk to each other.’

  ‘Oliver …’

  ‘Is that what you were trying to avoid, staying in the house this evening?’

  ‘No, not directly.’

  ‘Were you thinking about all this? About us?’

  She thought: I could get up now and put my arms round him and say to him, Oliver, I am torn in pieces, help me, help me, forgive me –

  She said, ‘No, not exactly.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I didn’t suppose you were.’

  He got up and went into the house.

  Frances lit a cigarette. Dora came out and sat beside her. She had her own views on G
od, as on most things.

  Chapter Six

  Days passed, each hotter than the last. They fell into a pattern of activities: swimming, boating and walking when it was cool enough, reading and resting in the heat. Oliver, who often woke early, as he did at home, took a map and walked through the village before it was fully awake, making preliminary excursions into the mountains, returning as the others were just getting up or having breakfast. He and Jessica took to playing chess at odd moments in the day: after lunch; after tea; in the library corner of the sitting-room, or on the upper path when the boys were in the pool. She was getting rather good. The families made plans to visit the cathedral town, and posters appeared on the telegraph poles along the mountain road announcing a fiesta in a neighbouring village. For the moment they stayed local, exploring all along the river, Robert and Claire rediscovering and describing to the others a particularly pleasant stretch about half a mile east of the village.

  Its banks there were broad and marshy, the way to it a long shady path below the village, bordered on the right by the gates and gardens of houses at the bottom of the sloping streets, and on the left by a cool damp ditch and little fields, where unyoked oxen wandered in the evenings, grazing, sounding bells.

  In Indian file, one morning after breakfast – and after a detour to see Tom’s pig – the two families made their way along this path, wearing sunhats, carrying fishing nets, swimming things, a picnic. Robert and Claire were up in front, followed by Tom and Jack, Jessica and Oliver; Frances brought up the rear, walking slowly.

  The foliage brimming over the garden walls was lush. Down here, the shimmering dry heat of the mountains and the pines, even of their own house, set high above the valley, felt distant as another country: this was a place where the climate became manageable, where it was possible to imagine working for much of the day. They had reached the path by cutting through a gap between two houses up in the village, discovering a winding, surprising descent of steps, flanked by stone walls, generously shaded by trees. At the bottom, a wicket garden gate was set in the curve of the wall, and beside it a ceramic plate, stencilled with the number four.

  The others went on ahead, the children excited by the secret feeling of the steps, the anticipation of a new, or partly forgotten place to spend the day. Frances, seeing the wicket gate, lingered, and looked over the mossy wall, feeling like an intruder.

  But there was, it seemed, no one to intrude upon. Within the small, stone-flagged garden, a low house with tiled roof and dark green paintwork was shut up and silent, as if long unvisited. It did not, however, look neglected: the closed shutters and unarguably bolted door were in good condition, and the geraniums which stood in tubs beneath the windows were fresh, as if someone came in from time to time and watered them.

  So. A house for a summer let which had not been let, a house well cared for, awaiting occupation. Frances saw a table, like the table in the garden of the house she had dreamed of: weather-beaten, warped, but still solid. It needed a couple of chairs with old, sun-warmed cushions, a pile of books, plates put out for lunch. It needed Dora to come with her calm grave air from the house and arrange these things, or it needed Frances to arrange them for her, to sit half asleep at the table with her head on her arms in the still and unbroken warmth of the afternoon, and wait for Dora to join her.

  Who lived here? Who might be approached and enquiries made of, for a long summer let in some timeless future where such things might be possible?

  ‘Frances!’ The others were calling her. ‘Where has she got to?’

  ‘Coming!’

  She moved away from the gate and waved, calling, going slowly along the path to catch them up.

  And now, the last in the procession, she walked alongside Dora, who had returned. Last night, said Frances, I dreamed I came upon you sitting in a square in a foreign city. It was the afternoon, and I was walking down a cobbled street – I suppose that must come from the streets in the village here, but it wasn’t here – and I saw you, sitting on a low wall with your back to me. You were wearing a white shirt and a dark soft skirt, and you were writing, working. And as I approached you, you turned round, and took off your glasses, and smiled as if you had been waiting for me …

  They had reached a point in the path where it was joined on the left by another; broader, more open and very sunny, scattered with drifts of straw.

  ‘This way,’ said Robert, up at the front.

  Within a hundred yards or so they had come to two buildings. On their left was the ruin of a house that had once been grand, at least by the standards of the village: substantial, with mellow brick and large double doors still remaining beneath the ornate façade of an upper storey whose lines at once struck Frances as familiar from her dream, so that, not for the first time, she felt as though she were living on a blurred line between dream and reality, where one might at any time spill into and re-create the other. Opposite this house, on the other side of the path, stood the ruins of a small barn, or outbuilding, where vines had been strung across the gaping roof. This was where the straw was coming from: bales of it were piled up in the sun and a brown-painted handcart stood nearby.

  ‘It smells like a farm,’ said Tom, wandering over, and he began to climb up on the bales, which were loosely made, tearing out handfuls to get himself a grip. ‘It’s very scratchy.’ Straw and chaff floated out into the air, the upper bales began to shift a little.

  ‘Steady,’ said Robert.

  ‘Get down,’ said Oliver.

  ‘I’m coming up too,’ said Jack.

  ‘I shouldn’t,’ said Claire.

  ‘Why? Why not? Tom’s up there.’

  ‘No, he’s not.’ Robert reached out an arm and scooped Tom off the tottering pile. ‘Come on, Worzel.’ Tom giggled, bits of straw clinging to his shirt, and put his arm round Robert’s neck. ‘Crikey, you weigh a ton.’

  ‘No, I don’t. Gee up.’ His legs were wrapped round Robert’s waist, he felt down his shirt front for straying straw. ‘It’s all itchy.’

  ‘I want a ride,’ said Jack.

  ‘Can’t have both of you,’ said Robert, beginning to sweat. ‘Go on, Tom, down you get, we’re almost there.’ He prised away large hot hands and clinging feet in sandals.

  ‘My turn,’ said Jack, as Tom dropped to the ground.

  ‘Give me a break,’ said Robert.

  Jack scowled; Claire took his hand. ‘Do you remember any of this?’

  ‘A bit,’ he said, crossly.

  The path widened again, was bordered by dense bushes, and they had come to the edge at a meadow. Bees and butterflies buzzed and fluttered through tall grass and wild flowers, peat-brown patches of water shone, the air was full of the sound of crickets. Beyond was the slow calm river, much broader here than on the stretch they had grown used to. And –

  ‘Frogs!’ said Jack and Tom together.

  The grass was alive with them: thumb-sized, mossy-green and speckled yellow, leaping at approaching footsteps, disappearing, reappearing, visible, invisible, everywhere.

  ‘Got one!’ said Tom, leaping forward with his net. But when he lifted it, peering beneath, there was only flattened grass. ‘Where did it go?’

  ‘I’ve got one!’ said Jack.

  ‘Where? Let me see.’

  The grown-ups and Jessica left them to it after a while, walking on towards a clump of trees some distance from the water’s edge, finding a good place to settle. It felt refreshingly different to spread out their towels on grass instead of grey sand.

  ‘Who’s for a swim?’ asked Oliver.

  ‘Me,’ said Jessica.

  ‘And me,’ said Robert, wiping his forehead. ‘Claire?’

  ‘In a bit.’ She had parked the picnic bag in the coolest and shadiest patch and was leaning up against a tree trunk, opening the flask. ‘I’ll keep an eye on the boys,’ she said, getting comfortable. ‘I’m not feeling energetic enough yet.’

  ‘Nor me,’ said Frances, sitting down beside her.

  �
��Coffee?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Look at them,’ said Robert, pulling off his shirt as they drank. ‘Dear things.’

  ‘Buzz off,’ said Claire.

  When they had gone, Oliver and Jessica holding hands in a sudden dash into the water, Robert following more slowly, splashing himself before he took the plunge, Claire said firmly: ‘Okay. Now talk.’

  Frances pulled out her cigarettes, looking round for the boys.

  ‘The boys are perfectly all right,’ said Claire. ‘They’re enjoying themselves. Talk to me.’ She put a hand on Frances’s hand. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘I think you should, don’t you?’

  A packet was turned over, a lighter fiddled with. ‘I don’t know where to start.’

  ‘There is this person,’ said Claire gently. ‘Do you want to tell me her name?’

  Frances was silent. ‘Dora,’ she said at last.

  ‘This Dora, who you care so much for. Yes? Or is she fading a little, while you’re here?’

  Frances looked up. Iridescent dragonflies darted above the reeds along the river; beyond them, Robert, Oliver and Jessica were swimming away. ‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘She isn’t fading.’

  ‘Well. Tell me about her. Why is she so special?’

  And why was I? Claire found herself wondering, as she waited for an answer, recalling jumpy encounters in distant Bristol days. I wasn’t, I was just me.

  Frances was smoking. Frances was always smoking. ‘Who knows?’ she said at last. ‘Do you know why you fell for Robert?’

  Claire thought about it, trying to remember. ‘I’m not sure if “fell for” is quite the term I’d use,’ she said. ‘We felt right. We fitted.’

  ‘And you still do?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, on the whole.’

  ‘Then you’re very lucky.’

  ‘Yes,’ Claire said again. ‘I know. I think,’ she added, ‘that perhaps what you’re going through is more like what I went through with someone before Robert.’

  ‘Marcus?’

  ‘Who? No, no, not Marcus. Oh, I wonder what happened to Marcus? No, not him. A man in London, whom I was mad about and who made me unhappy.’

  ‘Dora doesn’t make me unhappy,’ said Frances. ‘She makes me complete.’