by Judy Astley
The Smokehouse was a bright modern fun place with pale wood-strip flooring, a big open bar area with chrome stools, plain wooden tables and lots of white and turquoise paint. The staff and customers were young, tanned and sun-bleached, as if they’d just come in from a hot day in the surf. A Beach Boys hits compilation was playing in the background to complete the ambience. The whole feel to the place was warm, casual and somewhat Antipodean, she thought – in which case Noel should like it, seeing as he’d shown so much interest in that Katie girl over dinner the night before. She watched him as he slid onto the restaurant’s scarlet bench against the wall and looked around with amusement at their fellow diners.
‘What do you fancy to eat?’ she asked, accepting a menu from a pretty young waitress dressed in a tight pink skimpy tee shirt with ‘Good Girl’ picked out in rhinestones, and scuffed jeans so low-slung the words ‘Calvin Klein’ could be clearly read at the top of her pants.
‘Hmm. Not sure,’ he said, frowning at the list of choices but glancing not covertly enough at the waitress’s bare, blonde-fuzzed tanned tummy. ‘I definitely don’t want a pizza.’
‘Me neither,’ Alice agreed abruptly. ‘I’m going to have the mussels with the tomatoey stuff and chips.’ More chips, she thought, stroking her own stomach. She’d put on pounds if she didn’t watch it.
‘Chips?’ Noel’s left eyebrow went up. Alice gave him a straight, unsmiling gaze back.
‘Yes, chips,’ she told him brightly. ‘You get potatoes, see, cut them into long thin wedges and cook them in boiling fat. Preferably twice.’
He laughed, which annoyed her even further. ‘I know what they are, my darling, it’s just that I don’t think I’ve ever seen you actually eat one. It must be something to do with the climate down here.’
Maybe it was, she thought. Or maybe, and a small regretful cloud passed over her conscience, maybe I don’t at the moment much like the pettily snobbish man I married.
The moment passed, leaving her feeling cooled. It reminded her of Arthur Gillings. Towards the end of his life he’d had moments of sudden intense silence, staring into the distance as if there was something out there that he was trying hard to see. Sometimes he would shudder as if a chill had blown on him from somewhere. ‘Just a goose on my grave,’ he’d say if anyone commented. These moments were more and more frequent as his last inactive months went on, and soon no-one commented on the shudders and the silences. Although he stopped mentioning the geese, Alice, who was just fourteen, could sense their ominous presence and could somehow feel them gathering and stamping hard on some distant patch of ground.
‘. . . the villa should be easily big enough if they want to.’ Alice became aware that Noel was speaking and that she hadn’t been listening.
‘Sorry. I was miles away for a moment, what were you saying?’ The waitress arrived at their table and opened a bottle of champagne that Alice hadn’t noticed Noel ordering. The cork exploded noisily and hit the ceiling.
‘Not really properly chilled,’ Noel admonished the girl and reached out to touch the bottle. ‘I suppose it’ll do though.’ The girl smiled broadly at him, showing a flash of a gold tongue stud. Looking pained, for Noel loathed body piercings, he turned back to Alice. ‘I was just saying, if Grace and Theo want to bring a friend each, there’d be room. In Italy. At the villa?’ Alice realized she must be looking crazily blank.
‘Ah Italy. Sorry, I’d almost forgotten we were going.’ She felt exhausted at the thought of venturing as far as Truro, let alone the great open world beyond Heathrow. She was beginning to understand how Mo and Harry managed to stay so resolutely untravelled. What, after all, was the point? Why leave such a beautiful place with its fabulous view just to go and look at another place with a fabulous view?
‘I can see that.’ Noel drank half his glass of champagne in one swift gulp. ‘It was your idea in the first place to book it, remember. Don’t you want to go now?’
Alice hesitated. Probably, she thought, she was just feeling lazy about packing up and moving off again. It was a feeling that was hard to shake off, as if an invisible spider with the finest invisible silk had started binding her up without her noticing.
‘Why are we going?’ she heard herself ask.
‘Why? What sort of a question’s that?’ Noel topped up both their glasses. ‘It’s a holiday. For us, for the children. It’s what people do in the summer.’
‘Why?’
‘Why holidays? Because . . . battery recharging, rekindling sparks, that sort of thing? Look,’ Noel took hold of her hand, ‘what’s the matter with you? It’s your bloody mother, isn’t it. She’s been having a go at you about me. I can tell.’
Alice slid her hand away and picked up her glass. ‘No she hasn’t. Actually she hasn’t mentioned you at all. She’s more concerned with herself at the moment.’
‘Ah, the man from the telly. And of course she is concerned with herself, when isn’t she?’
‘No. I meant the fact that she’s realized she’s actually mortal.’
‘Left it a bit late,’ he spluttered into his drink. ‘Most of us work that one out in our mid-teens!’
‘Ah but do we? And should we? Isn’t it better, or at least luckier, not to have any notions of anything more than perpetual vitality, especially when you are young?’
‘Well when you are young, I suppose,’ Noel conceded. ‘But Jocelyn is pushing seventy. A nodding acquaintance with the Grim Reaper can’t be that much of a surprise, surely.’
‘But that’s the thing. For her it is. And I think that’s incredibly lucky. She’s lived her life assuming that all that’s available for the young, the curious, the optimistic is always going to be there for her. I envy her.’ Alice was surprised to feel tearful suddenly. It didn’t seem to be just because of the champagne.
‘You didn’t answer my question,’ Noel persisted as the food arrived. ‘Do you think Grace and Theo would like to bring anyone to Tuscany?’
‘Oh, possibly.’ Alice brightened as she poked a fork into the first tender mussel. ‘I think we should suggest they invite Chas and Sam.’
Eleven
‘I’LL GET SOME 3-in-1 for that creaky bed.’ Noel came up behind Alice while she was honeying toast in the kitchen and squeezed himself against her. ‘Half the village must have heard it.’ He nuzzled her neck and chuckled. ‘And heard you as well.’
He smelled of blokey shower gel, sharp and tangy. Alice felt guilty; she simply wanted to pull away, to go out to the terrace with her tea and toast and sit quietly by herself, like an animal that turns on its mate as soon as copulation is over. Noel, by contrast, was full of post-coital affection – something he didn’t go in for a lot back home, especially on working-day mornings when he usually got up in a tearing hurry, showered and raced off to the office with little more than a shouted ‘Bye, see you tonight.’
‘Why don’t you go and sit in the sun, Noel, and I’ll bring some toast out for you,’ she offered, wriggling out of his clutches.
‘OK, sounds good. Are the kids back from their sleepover up at the house yet?’ he asked.
‘Not yet. Grace is probably swimming in the bay and Theo won’t even be awake. That seems to be the pattern so far.’
‘Strange how they’ve happily hooked up with the wild-boy cousins. You’d have thought the age gap would get in the way.’ He laughed. ‘That seagull thing though, just the sort of stunt to impress Theo.’
‘Hmm, not Grace though,’ Alice said. ‘Can’t see what she’s found in common with them.’
Noel grinned at her. ‘And yet you think she’d want them to come to Italy.’
‘Well they’ve hardly seen anything of the world beyond the Tamar bridge.’
‘Staying out like that perhaps Grace and Theo were being tactful,’ Noel suggested. ‘Maybe they thought we’d like a bit of teen-free time together. And how right they . . .’
‘. . . Tea? Or do you fancy coffee this morning?’ Alice interrupted quickly. She really didn’t want to ta
lk about it. She didn’t even want to think about it. Sex with Noel, even on the most mechanically dutiful occasions, was usually pretty good. Sex with Noel while she was thinking about Aidan was phenomenal, quite blush-makingly so. Noel was right – it was just as well the children hadn’t been anywhere near the place. He was looking very pleased with himself. Alice was glad. It made up in some way for the uncomfortable remoteness she felt towards him. It must be the Penmorrow premises, she decided as she took her first sweet, luxuriant bite of the toast. Everything would be all right, back to normal once they were back in London. And why, she wondered, did that thought seem so depressing?
The couple who’d been renting Cygnet had left three days early. It was like that sometimes and Mo resented it every time, taking the disgruntled premature departures as a personal slur on her standards as a housekeeper. Secretly, Harry thought this lot had a point. The couple, thirty-somethings from Potters Bar and apparently taking an experimental break from their usual fully catered Mediterranean holidays, stated in their list of complaints that they expected their holiday cottage to have a shower that did more than grudgingly trickle. They had chosen the property specifically for its relative remoteness – having a pair of giggling mud-smeared boys casually dropping in whenever they felt like it and demanding biscuits and crisps had made it impossible to relax. They preferred a sink that wasn’t crazed with germ-ridden scratches and, if the bathroom floor really had to have carpet instead of hygienic tiles, could it please be one that wasn’t mould-eaten all round the edges and smelled like a dead rat in a drain?
This last had made Harry (but definitely not Mo) chuckle. How innocent – and quite generous really – of these urban visitors not to conclude that if something smelled like a dead rat in a drain then in all likelihood it was a dead rat. He’d have to get the side panel off the bath (not difficult, one sharp punch in the right place on the painted plasterboard and it easily gave up and fell down) and see what was lurking in there. It was possible that big old cat of Grace’s had taken some creature in and let it scuttle away to die in a dark corner. Or, and the suspicion was deeply uncomfortable, it was also possible that Chas and Sam had sneaked into the bathroom on one of their drop-ins and slid a bit of rotting wildlife down beneath the bath taps just for the hell of it. Little sods, he wouldn’t put it past them. It would be their idea of revenge if Mr and Mrs Potters Bar didn’t have a satisfactory supply of their favourite prawn cocktail Wotsits in the food cupboard.
‘I suppose they think they’ll be getting a refund. If they do they can think again. They stayed more than half the week,’ Mo commented sourly as she surveyed the kitchen that looked as if it had been abandoned by panicked fugitives. The sink contained a tottering pile of dirty plates and saucepans. A blue and white striped jug on the draining board held just about the entire stock of the cottage cutlery soaking in murky, grease-slicked water. The fridge was humming at full pelt as it hadn’t been shut properly, and the icebox at the top was quickly forming a lumpy berg where the opening flap’s broken spring didn’t quite meet the casing.
‘That’s another thing on their list,’ Harry said, peering at the long, detailed note. ‘They’ve complained there wasn’t a dishwasher.’
Mo snorted, tipping the jug-water down the sink. Spoons and forks clattered after it to join the rest of the crockery. ‘Dishwasher! They were never told there was one. There’s only the two of them and they went out most nights! Some people don’t know they’re bloody born.’
Harry, though, had seen the inside of the Gosling kitchen now that Alice had given it a bit of a spruce-up. It was amazing how much more inviting it looked without all the surface clutter, with a set of shiny new door handles, the quarry-tiled floor scoured till it shone and the curtains chucked out. She’d even ordered (and paid for) a new cooker for it. It still wasn’t exactly showroom standard, but Alice did have a knack of geting the best out of what there was.
‘It is a bit run-down though, Mo, you must admit. Maybe we should ask Alice to . . .’
‘Alice? What does she know about the holiday-rent trade? OK she’s all right with a bit of paint, but once we start on that track we’ll be thousands of pounds down the line that we won’t get back in profit.’
‘Well we could charge a bit more, get it back off the punters. It makes good business sense.’
Mo stared at him. She looked quite sexily furious and formidable with her wet, soapy hands in challenge position on her hips and her eyes hard and angry. ‘And say doing this place up costs, what? Five thousand? And we put the rent up from three hundred a week to maybe four hundred and fifty? And that’s mid-season, there’d be a lot less margin outside that. How long would it be before we got back the outlay? Work it out, Harry; any cash we put into this place means we’re stuck with it that much longer. Years longer. Is that what you want? Cos I don’t.’
‘What we’ll do is . . .’ Patrice stopped in mid-sentence and stared round the orchard, taking in the scene and, Alice presumed, working out the best film angle. The grass was long and sun-scorched, shot through with buttercups and wild cornflowers. The apple trees looked like something from a fairy tale, their low branches, bending to the ground, weighed down with masses of gleaming scarlet fruit. Plums were already ripening and attracting idly buzzing wasps. Chickens ran about squawking and pecking at the legs of the intruders to their home ground. Joss’s ancient tortoise, speeded up by the hot sun, made frantic circuits of his territory, stopping only to snatch a dandelion leaf in his fierce jaws or crash frustratedly into the biggest stones that lay around, in the hope that one would miraculously prove mateable.
Alice and Joss, Noel and all the children were in the orchard along with Patrice, Katie, Nick and a skinny lad called Dez, who sniffed a lot and said, when Theo asked what he did, that he was ‘Work Sperience’. Aidan had stayed in the house to make some progress with the book. Alice had assumed Joss would want to be alone with the crew – the programme was about her, after all, but she’d been almost insistent that they join in. ‘You can come and make sure I don’t have spinach on my teeth, and that my hair isn’t unravelling, that sort of thing,’ she’d said to Alice, who gathered she was supposed to feel honoured at being allotted a task. ‘And you can remind me if I forget things.’
And here she addressed Patrice. ‘One does, you know, when one’s so very old.’ Alice didn’t contradict her. This must be Jocelyn’s new ploy – having spent years insisting she was still ripe with youth’s vitality, she was now going to fast-forward into majestic old age and insist instead that she was due the deference of extreme antiquity. She had taken to using a stick, more for wielding than for walking, a stout, lumpily carved glossy piece of wood that Alice remembered Arthur using to help him get around in the last weeks of his life. If Joss was a city woman, Alice thought, she’d be the kind who prodded everyone out of her way with the stick, shouting, ‘Let me through, I’m eighty-six!’, slyly reversing her true age figures.
Patrice didn’t seem to have made any kind of cohesive plan for his programme. ‘We’ll just see how it’s hanging,’ he said, grinning at the assembled company and making Theo and Grace cringe at his choice of words. There wasn’t much, Alice was reminded as she caught Grace’s anguished expression, that could be more scathing than a teenager catching out a grown-up with dated terminology.
‘What we’ll do is,’ Patrice said again, though now he seemed to have made his mind up, ‘is you can talk us through where exactly we’re at and tell us about the parts of Penmorrow that have the most significance to you. Dig?’ Jocelyn nodded. Idly, Chas aimed his catapult and sent a stone clattering through the tallest plum tree. Sparrows whooshed up into the air, flapping angrily.
‘Behave,’ Noel warned him quietly.
‘No! No, it’s fine! All part of the ambience!’ Patrice told Noel.
‘He’ll regret saying that,’ Noel commented to Alice. ‘I dread to think how far those two will push the ambience envelope.’
‘OK we’re running!’ Ka
tie called to Patrice.
‘Just ignore the camera,’ Patrice told Joss, squeezing her wrist. Jocelyn gave him a smile that Alice interpreted as suggesting the words ‘grandmothers’ and ‘eggs’ and the two of them trailed off among the trees, accompanied by Nick and Katie and with Dez shambling after them through the orchard, dragging flexes and complicated-looking gadgets. Chas and Sam ran ahead, kicking at fallen apples and grinning back over their shoulders towards the camera. Joss and Patrice drifted ahead out of hearing range, leaving the others to sit and relax on the ancient sun-greyed wicker chairs at the lichen-bloomed table.
‘I wonder what she’s telling them,’ Noel said, perching himself carefully on a collapsing chair. ‘I bet she’s listing who had sex with whom out here under the stars.’
‘I doubt it – for quite a few years no-one in their right mind would have had sex here; there used to be a couple of old pigs – Gloucester Old Spots – running loose. They had thoroughly evil tempers.’
‘Did you eat them?’ Grace asked.
‘No – we’d had them so long they were more like pets. In the end they went to a farm up the road in exchange for freezer packs of lamb, all pre-cut and looking clean like stuff from the supermarket.’
‘Bit of a cop-out, surely?’ Noel said.
‘In a way,’ Alice agreed. ‘But you’ve got to remember that most people who came here were from London or other cities, here for a quick taste of arty-farty communal living – none of that hands-on self-sufficiency malarkey.’ She pulled a face, remembering. ‘It was as much as anyone could do to look at the food rota and sling any kind of meal together. Boiled socks. I remember boiled socks.’
