Last Guests of the Season

by Sue Gee

  He could see the path now, a baked cart track running from one of the upper terraces to the hamlet, and down again to the distant road; he could see, too, the shining solar panels set alongside: large rectangles, criss-crossed with mesh, upturned to the open sky. It was hard not to expect to hear a humming as he approached them, but there was no hum, and the hamlet, when he entered it, was silent.

  On its threshold stood a little shrine: a cave of piled-up rocks, with a plaster Virgin, much smaller than the one used in the fiesta, set within, plastic roses laid at her feet. He didn’t want to think about the fiesta, or the events which had followed it, and he looked beyond the shrine to a ragged cluster of stone houses, roofed in weather-beaten tiles, set along a narrow cobbled street. It was barely mid-morning, but already the shutters were closed: except for a few trees, blown out to the side by winter gales, there was otherwise no protection from the sun. There were no geraniums on balconies, no little brown bird in a cage. This place, perhaps two thousand feet above the river, felt deserted, abandoned: who could bear to live up here?

  Oliver walked slowly over the cobbles, seeing with relief at the far end of the street a stiff old man loading a cart with cabbages. Between the rails a drooling bullock blinked away flies. Well. If there were cabbages there must be gardens, brave and exposed, with crops for market, watered from the pump he could see near the cart, fed by the stream. Life, somehow, went on. The shutters were closed, but some of the doors stood open, hung with plastic strip curtains; outside one of them a dog was curled up asleep, flea-bitten, dull-coated, thin. There were dogs like this everywhere in their own village, but this one seemed somehow different, though until he drew closer he couldn’t work out why. Then, at his approach, it raised its head and he saw: its neck was ringed in spikes.

  They were there for the animal’s protection – but against what? There were no wolves any longer; what might come prowling along here at night, ready to kill? Whatever it might be, the effect of the spikes was threatening and disturbing, and meeting the eyes in that long mongrel face, with its cruel-looking frame, he hesitated, and stopped.

  Slowly, the dog rose to its feet, seeing a stranger; he growled. Oliver felt the sweat on his back grow cold and he looked away. The old man at the end of the street had his back to them: if he called out – and what should he call? – it might provoke more than growling. He could hold out his fist for the animal to smell, but that gesture, too, might be misinterpreted. So he stood, without moving a muscle, looking about him, and then the plastic curtain in the doorway was pushed aside, and an old bent woman came out, carrying a basket. She looked at the dog – ‘O que éque tens?’ – and then at Oliver. He moved forward, raising his straw hat.

  ‘Bom dia.’

  ‘Bom dia.’ She looked at him with a sharp inquisitiveness much as the dog had done; at her command he retreated to the step, still watchful. She and Oliver regarded each other; he pulled out his map and gestured at its folded pages, and at the mountains beyond; he smiled in reassurance, and the old woman nodded. Side by side they went along the street, she in cracked and flattened shoes, in widow’s black, with eggs in her basket, calling to the old fellow loading the cart. He looked at Oliver with slow-witted curiosity, took the basket of eggs from the woman and put it carefully into the cart, then stood staring after Oliver as he walked out of the village.

  The cart track wound away towards the mountain road below; he was crossing stony ground now, broken by tufts of coarse grass. Up ahead was the ridge he was making for, strewn with boulders. On the other side was his own valley: a long, exposed climb lay before him, but then he would come down among trees again, the familiar dense plantations giving shade. He put the map back in his bag and began the ascent, turning every now and then to look down upon the diminishing village and the bullock cart making its slow way down along the track between the terraces, towards the road.

  Like his gesture with the hat, the scene was something from another age; there might be twentieth-century solar panels up here, but everything else felt medieval: a remote mountain village where travel was by cart, where hungry wolves once roamed and where a scrawny dog still wore a vicious-looking collar.

  It was a long time since Oliver had felt afraid, as he had done at the sight of those spikes, hearing that growl. He had forgotten what fear felt like. He wanted to forget it now, among many other things, not least the fact that in the last forty-eight hours what had most frightened him had been himself. He had come on this walk for distraction; he began to climb higher, panting, pouring with sweat.

  The ground was stony and hard. Beetles and little clambering creatures moved through occasional clumps of fern and leggy heather, but there were no birds, no cicadas, no trees. The sun beat down from a sky of cloudless blue; his legs were beginning to tremble, but he climbed on, forcing himself not to give in, to reach the top of the ridge without stopping, thinking of nothing but the next few steps, the next scattering of rocks or boulders. There was only the climb, the summit.

  He reached it at last. A rough plain of barren earth and sun-browned grass, criss-crossed with low stone walls, stretched out before him as he stood there gasping. Good walking land, harsh and unyielding farmland, though people had, clearly, once farmed up here in these little fields, as they had cultivated the terraces below. He drew out his bottle of water and drank and drank, walked on a little, looking around. He was higher than he had ever been: stretched out on either side was a panorama of mountain and valley, of bare rock, tumbling terraces, clumps of woodland, isolated villages. Here and there the river gleamed, here and there a speck of traffic crept along the winding road; he was far above all of it, with this bare and lonely place, this view, this moment.

  He looked at his watch: just after one, he’d done well, and from now on the going was easy. He would sit down in the pine woods and have a rest and something to eat, before he began the long walk home.

  Not home. Back. Beautiful as it was, he could not see the house as anything more than a place where people were staying, and at present he felt not so much as a thread of connection with any of them. Frances and Tom he could not bear to think about, although he knew he must; the Murrays, virtual strangers until this holiday, pleasant and kind as they were, he could contemplate since the other night only with embarrassment. As for the children: Jack was too painful a contrast to Tom; it was Jessica, alone among the whole group, whose company he had found enjoyable: bright, pretty, easy, while his own child so distressed him.

  No, don’t think about it. Keep walking. Walking was better than drinking, better than thinking. But thinking was what he was used to, books and thought were his work, his life, and as he stepped over one of the low stone walls an elegant little sentence came up from nowhere, again from another, but more recent age: Forgive me – I am not myself. It spoke of courtesy and formality, qualities he had always valued; it indicated a self that was used to being in control, running things smoothly; it reassured: this state of affairs is only temporary. He had not been himself the other night – furious, murderous, beating on the door in the dark. That was not a self he recognised.

  Forgive me – I am not … It also implicitly asked for comfort, that little phrase. It looked for someone else to run things smoothly for a while while the door of the sickroom was gently closed, and the patient rested. He was used neither to behaving as he had done nor to asking for such things. He was used to – what was he used to? He wasn’t used to anything any more: in the last few years everything in his life had changed. Forgive me – I am … Who was he? Where did he belong?

  He had come to the end of the level ground; almost without noticing he had reached a depression from where he could look down again upon the valley he knew. He could see – just – the tiny white spire of the church, and the village below; he could see – just – the house, far up on the climbing road.

  He did not want to see the house. He did not want to go back. Not only because he was relishing the physical challenge of the walk itself,
as he had known he would; not only because there was no one there he wanted to talk to. It was because, in this free and wandering solitude, he was beginning to feel able to discard things in himself recently discovered and much disliked, as though, like Peter Pan, he had peeled off his dark shadow and left it behind. The house contained that shadow now: irritation, frustration, anger, violence. Here he might try to rediscover the person he had once thought himself to be: formal and reticent, yes, but capable of warmth and generosity, capable of love. Might he do that? Might that be possible? He felt, and had felt for a long time, a very long way from any impulse which might be graced by the name of love. Neither the love of man, nor the love of God … And where did those words come from? Somewhere in a youth or childhood where faith, or loss of faith, had seemed to be everything.

  He had left the bare and rocky mountaintop behind; he was walking amongst the pines. I am trying to cast out demons, he thought, looking down at the sharp needles beneath his feet; that is a biblical phrase, and is, surely, an impulse which must be called religious – to cast out demons, to look for the goodness within. Where is the goodness left in me?

  The needles abruptly came to an end. He could smell charred wood, and he looked up to see that he had come to burnt-out land, a place where a forest fire had raged. Blackened tree trunks stood skeletal and bare above others which had fallen; the ground itself was black, heaped here and there with grey ash, brown branches. It stretched silently for perhaps a quarter of a mile, bleak and devastated, and walking through it, trying to get out of it, Oliver thought, perhaps this is how I am, or how I shall become – burnt-out, godless, lifeless.

  It came to an end at last. At some point the fire had consumed itself and died; he was back amongst living trees again, the smell of resin and sun-warmed earth.

  But he was still a long way up the mountain, the ground scattered here and there with small rocks and stones, a long way from the path which would lead him down again. It was still very quiet, and deep in the forest there was no longer a view to distract him, or erase a rising despair. I am unloved and unloving, he thought … and there is no health in me. That is from the Confession. Of whom, if there is such a thing as sin, should I ask forgiveness? Who might ask forgiveness of me?

  A faint, animal sound disturbed the quietness: he stopped, and looked round, but could see nothing. I said to Robert that I believed in the search, he thought, walking on again. I was talking about God, but let us forget about God for a while. I can continue to pursue abstractions or I can search for real answers to these questions. I can search my child, who does not seem to be my child; I can search my wife, who no longer seems to be my wife, who is remote, distracted. I can try again to confront her, search out her own demons – but when I do, mine threaten to destroy us both. What am I to do? How should I be?

  The sound came again; he stopped again. Something was padding over the pine needles, sniffing about, growing closer. As in the hamlet, seeing the dog with its collar of spikes get to its feet and growl, Oliver felt a ripple of fear run through him, and then the sounds grew louder as whatever it was caught his scent and increased its speed, and he suddenly saw what it was: not one, but several, not wolves but starving dogs, barking and snarling now, as they raced through the trees towards him.

  Dora, wrote Frances, following the children back from the river through the maize fields, everyone else is away today. Oliver has gone walking, Claire and Robert have gone to the market town, so I am in charge of the children. We have spent the morning swimming, as usual, and now we are going back to the house for lunch. It is another hot, beautiful day – we have all forgotten what rain looks like, although I think of you, in London, where perhaps it is pouring now.

  I think of you all the time … No. This was not that kind of letter. That kind of letter lay with the envelope sealed, zipped up in her writing case, tucked right at the back of the bottom drawer of the desk. She would post it tomorrow. Perhaps. One more night to sleep on it, and then perhaps. This, now, was an ordinary letter, such as she might send to almost anyone.

  The children are all brown and fit. We had one difficult night with Tom, early on, but since then he has been fine …

  Dora was concerned about Tom. She listened sympathetically to compressed accounts of broken nights and difficult behaviour, was inclined, in fact, to press further, seeking for explanations, while Frances herself made light of it all.

  ‘Our GP says it’s a phase …’

  ‘Yes, but even so. Living through phases can be hell, can’t it?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  They were sitting at a table out in the Covent Garden piazza, just a few minutes’ walk from the office. A Friday, people in a good mood, taking long lunches, so that the tables were crowded, but they had managed to find one for two, up at the end near the open space near the buskers. A young couple, he in collarless shirt and waistcoat, she with long, unbrushed hair, were playing the violin and cello: thin, high-speed Mozart spun in and out of clattering dishes and scraped-back chairs and conversation. Dora moved her own chair in a little, to let new arrivals pass, and put out her hand to protect the shrub she’d bought from a stall on the way there to plant in the garden at the weekend. Dora cherished her garden; she cherished her husband and her children, too.

  ‘Did Sophie and Jason go through bad patches?’ Frances asked.

  ‘You know they did. When Jason was three I thought I should murder him. I thought I should murder Sophie only yesterday.’

  They laughed, but Frances knew that people who really felt like murdering their children did not talk like that, open and easy, making a joke of it. She knew that Dora and kindly Adrian would see their children through anything, and when Dora said now, serious again, ‘It must be hard on you both at the moment – must be a struggle for Tom, too, poor chap,’ Frances said quickly:

  ‘I’m sure we shall all survive.’

  For everything must be seen to be under control, and she, holding back so much, must be seen to be ordinary, capable, coping.

  Since no one else in the office had children, and since Frances, dropping off and picking up Tom from the child-minder each day, had little contact with other parents in his class, it was natural that she should spend more time discussing him with Dora than with anyone. She did not want to discuss him. Faced with Dora’s directness, with the central place her children had in her life, Frances could feel only a heightened awareness of her own shortcomings and inadequacy as a mother. And anyway –

  ‘Dora?’

  ‘Yes?’

  It’s not the children I want to talk about, it’s you. It’s us. What would you say if I told you that I …

  ‘Yes?’ Dora asked again. She put down her knife and fork and looked at Frances. Her lovely face was receptive, attentive; she stretched out a hand across the table. ‘You can tell me,’ she said. ‘Don’t lock it all away. Children can get under your skin like nothing else, it’s painful, I know.’

  ‘You make it seem so easy, you’re so calm …’

  ‘Frances – we all try to seem calm. Please don’t be under any illusions. Come on, what is it?’

  Frances swallowed. ‘It’s not –’

  They were looking at each other directly. For a moment, just for a flicker, it might have been not as their eyes usually met, with the ordinary warmth of friendship. That was, as usual, all to be seen in Dora’s eyes, but Frances nearly – oh, so nearly – allowed into her own an expression which would say everything.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, and looked away. ‘Perhaps another time.’

  Dora shook her head, smiling in affectionate exasperation. ‘You’re hopeless. Never mind – you know I’m always here.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Frances. ‘I know. Coffee?’

  ‘Lovely. I’ll get it.’ Dora got up, and made her way through the noisy tables to the counter.

  In love and fear Frances sat watching her, standing in the queue in her navy jacket with the collar turned up, bag slung on her shoulder, steppin
g aside for a waiter to pass, smiling at him as she smiled at everyone, sure of herself, relaxed. She watched her taking the two white cups, coming back towards their table, graceful, concentrating, looking at Frances as if to say: I’m here, it’s okay, stop worrying, and behind them the thin sounds of Mozart came to an end, and everyone clapped.

  The children are all brown and fit … It’s not the children I want to write about, it’s you …

  The sun beat down upon the field, upon the bare backs of the children, wandering ahead in shorts and sunhats, not talking, wanting their lunch. I shall blow it all apart if I’m not careful, Frances thought, and felt in her bag for her cigarettes, stopping to light one, walking on. Blow it all apart, then – go on, do it, post it, see what happens. No no no.

  ‘Frances?’ Jessica had stopped, and was waiting for her. ‘D’you think Oliver will be there when we get back?’

  She looked at her watch. ‘No, I’m sure he won’t. It’s not even half-past one, he won’t be much more than halfway.’

  ‘Oh.’ Jessica was silent, walking alongside. Cicadas rasped in the stubble by the ditches, the air was dry, burning.

  ‘I’m thirsty,’ said Tom, turning towards them. ‘I’m thirsty!’

  ‘So am I,’ said Jack, but subduedly, as if he felt he shouldn’t say it, mustn’t complain.

  ‘We’ve finished the drinks,’ said Frances. ‘Never mind – we’re almost there.’

  The field stretching ahead of them looked endless, the path beneath the vines unreachable.

  ‘I feel funny,’ said Tom, and stood there, waving at the air as if brushing insects away.

  ‘You’ll be better when you’ve got some food inside you.’ She came up beside him, moving him on.