by Judy Astley
Andrew started wandering up the stairs, starting to feel the familiar rising pleasure, but nearing the top, from the landing window he noticed Jessica and Miranda walking together along the street towards the cottage. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be seen, and glanced down to see if the bulge in his trousers was likely to be visible to them. It was not, which was half a disappointment, but at least meant that he could talk to the girls. He opened the window and waved to them. Jessica’s tee-shirt had an off-the-shoulder neckline and there was no white strap mark. Topless sunbathing in her garden, Andrew thought, as the trouser-bulge lurched up a notch. Lucky gardener.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked them, trying to sound casual and as if he didn’t mind whether they told him or not. ‘Nowhere special, just to the beach,’ Jessica said.
‘Wait for me,’ Andrew said, ‘I’ll come with you.’
‘We’re not doing anything particular, just walking the children,’ Miranda said, rather off-puttingly.
‘That’s OK, I don’t mind,’ said Andrew. ‘Wait for me.’ He refused to take her hint, after all how much longer could summer last? He ran down the stairs, grabbing a long erection-covering sweater from the bannister rail as he did.
Outside the cottage Jessica was contrite.
‘I’m sorry Miranda, it’s just that when I’m put on the spot I automatically tell the truth. That’s why I never get away with anything at school.’
‘Well I suppose it’s all right. He won’t know what we’re doing, it’s already sealed in the shell. We can tell him it’s a baby bird or something.’
‘I’m glad it’s in the shell, I’d have had to look otherwise. Is it gruesome?’
‘No, just a clot, hardly even that really. Nothing to see. And I’ve stuck the shell down with glue. Don’t want seagulls.’ Andrew joined them, slamming the cottage door and running up the path.
‘Getting dark earlier now isn’t it?’ Andrew remarked feebly. Miranda thought that was exactly the sort of thing his father would have said.
‘We’re going to have a funeral on the beach,’ she said to him abruptly, and deliberately for shock effect.
‘Oh. Whose?’ Andrew asked.
‘A baby bird,’ Jessica said quickly. Miranda was looking sulky. ‘Found it in the garden.’ Miranda was relieved to hear Jessica had had time to think about what lie to tell.
‘Little children like that sort of thing,’ Andrew said comfortably. ‘Where are, they by the way?’ for the small ones were noticeably absent.
‘We’ve let them walk through the creek, the tide’s just low enough for them. They’ll be at the beach before us I should think.’
I’m taIking to Jessica, Andrew thought. I’m walking through the village at dusk and she is next to me. We’re only talking about a dead bird and the little children but she is with me. If Miranda wasn’t here, we’d be walking all alone. We would look like a couple. It would be so easy to get hold of her hand. Not that she looks like the hand-holding type. She was wearing jeans so torn that Andrew wondered why she hadn’t thrown them away. His mother would have done long ago if they’d been his. It couldn’t be lack of money, Eliot was one of the all-time best-selling authors. If he married Jessica, Andrew thought, Celia would be telling all her friends he had Done Well. Even better than passing exams.
Miranda walked a little ahead, comfortable now that the dragging pain was being numbed by the strong pain killers she had found lying around in the kitchen drawer. If she’d had this baby, she allowed herself to think, she would never have allowed dangerous drugs like that to lie around. She had put them away in the bathroom cabinet, just in case, even though Amy and Harriet were both past the age of popping pills into their mouths mistaking them for sweeties.
Across the creek, as she neared the beach, Miranda could see the fishermen on the pontoon unloading crabs. Steve was probably with them, and she stopped looking across in case he was, and she would have to wave to him. She’d wanted this to be a woman’s thing, like Tess of the D’Urbervilles baptizing her dying child, and she minded very much the presence of Andrew, tagging along.
The tourists had all gone from the beach for that day. They were all by now watching TV, putting children to bed or sitting in the pub garden admiring the view and battling with the sleepy wasps. There was a line of litter left by the tide, plastic mineral water bottles, middle-class debris, Eliot called it. Clare always bought water in glass bottles and was careful to visit the bottle banks with them.
‘What do we do now?’ Jessica said to Miranda.
‘Send it out to sea I suppose,’ Miranda said, feeling rather self-conscious. What exactly were they supposed to do, now she came to think of it. She was too old to play uninhibitedly at funerals like small children can, and she’d only been to one, her grandmother’s cremation, a sterile affair that had seemed.
‘We should ask the little ones,’ Andrew said, ‘Isn’t it supposed to be their game?’
‘Oh I think they’ve forgotten about it. They’re looking for jellyfish,’ Jessica said quickly, tactfully. ‘We should say a prayer,’ said Miranda. ‘Does anyone know a suitable one?’
‘Well there’s the Lord’s Prayer, but it’s a bit long,’ said Andrew, ‘especially for a baby bird.’
‘The peace of God, which passeth all understanding …’ Jessica started declaiming, the twins looked up from their jellyfish, startled.
‘Ssh!’ said Miranda, starting to giggle. ‘There might be people on the footpath, they’ll think we’re crazy!’ Not far wrong, thought Andrew.
Miranda put the clamshell on a piece of broken polystyrene and they all walked down to the water’s edge. She sailed it out into the waves but the sea kept bringing it back.
‘Go away, damn you,’ she shouted at it angrily. She waded out into the water, past her knees, past the hem of her dress so it stuck to her legs and flowed out at the edge like seaweed on the water’s surface as she walked. Jessica and Andrew watched her from the sand.
‘May the Lord bless and keep you, and bring you peace now and ever more,’ Miranda murmured, recalling the words from school assemblies, as she let go of the makeshift raft. The shell floated away on the ebbing tide. Miranda watched for a moment and then turned quickly back to the beach, not wanting to be looking when it sank.
‘Not terribly appropriate for something dead, but not bad,’ Andrew commented. ‘Could’ve just said “Rest In Peace”, that would have done for a baby bird. Was it a cat do you think …’ but he stopped, his sentence trailing away. There were tears on Miranda’s face.
‘Come on Miranda,’ Jessica said kindly, putting an arm around her. ‘Let’s go to the pub.’
‘I can’t. I promised Mum because of the children. I’ll just take them home to bed,’ Miranda said weepily.
Lot of fuss over a bird, Andrew thought. He hadn’t realized Miranda was that wet. He’d seen her catch and gut many a mackerel in the five summers he’d known her, never a hint of a tear then.
Jessica rounded up the little ones.
‘Why was there a piece of God in that shell?’ Amy asked.
‘For that you deserve a coke,’ Miranda said, laughing. ‘OK, we’ll all go to the pub, if you promise not to tell.’
Nobody minded Miranda’s wet dress in the pub. The male customers thought it clung to her slim legs in a most alluring way, and they watched interestedly as the filmy fabric started to dry and fall back into gentle translucent folds. Beryl served Andrew three illegal vodkas and gave him a come-hither wink with his change. Andrew smiled back uncertainly, but speculated whether Beryl might do to practise on; it was getting rather monotonous on his own.
Andrew took the drinks into the garden and saw Milo sitting at a table by the swing.
‘Aren’t we going to sit with Milo?’ Andrew said to the girls, who were heading for another table.
‘Er, I don’t think so,’ Jessica said, ‘He’s got a hot date. I don’t think he’d like to be disturbed.’
Well they must have had a r
ow at home or something, Andrew thought, and not be speaking to each other. Milo was leaning across a small table, his elegant hands wafting gracefully as he talked intently to a young and very blond boy, who was laughing back at him, admiringly. Well anyone would admire Milo, Andrew thought, his life seemed so effortless. He was one of those people that others tried to emulate, not one of those gauche boys who always felt out of place. Poor old Andrew, Miranda thought, watching him. What an awful lot he doesn’t know.
Back at the cottage Miranda sent Amy and Harriet to bed and felt the need for an early night. She brushed her hair and cleaned her teeth, wanting to be asleep well before her parents came crashing in from the restaurant.
It’s really a mess in here, she thought, looking round the little bathroom. They were a terribly untidy family, Jeannie’s cleaning couldn’t keep up with them. No-one had even noticed the little glass phial from the pregnancy test kit still sitting on the window ledge. Miranda rinsed it out and put it back on the ledge while she put moisturiser on her face. Poor Mum, Miranda thought, even when I leave clues like that sitting under her nose she doesn’t manage to work out what’s going on. Now she had neither a problem nor an embryo to carry around, Miranda rather looked forward to being nice to Clare again.
SEVENTEEN
IN THE PARROT, while her daughter conducted the burial at sea, Clare was happily eating things she couldn’t organize at home, like a mushroom souffle for which she’d never have got everyone to sit at the table before it sank flat to irretrievable sogginess. Then she had rabbit, which would have had all the children saying, ‘ugh, yuck’ and ‘How could you, the poor little bunny’ and Amy would have been in tears. She munched away delightedly, hoping Jack would not mention the recent outbreak of myxamatosis in Richmond Park, and wishing she hadn’t thought of it herself. Later, she planned to choose a raspberry concoction which would have taken her all day to assemble. This, she thought, was the entire point of going out to eat. How sad it must be to be so accustomed to waitress service that you could, like Liz, pick away at a warm duck salad like an anorexic eating under protest.
Liz was concentrating hard on her plate, trying to avoid having to watch all three of the men eating lobsters. She couldn’t think why they were supposed to be an aphrodisiac when any potential partner watching could only be repelled by the messiness of the process, especially the way Eliot ate. The butter was floating down through his beard on to the napkin tucked into his neck. Liz found it most unerotic to watch him eat like a toddler and thought perhaps she should have had oysters so that their moods at bedtime had some small chance of coinciding.
Clare thought Eliot looked magnificent. Jack handled the unfamiliar creature with fastidious and irritating care, as if there was still a chance the claws might nip him, whereas Eliot attacked his with uninhibited and noisy enthusiasm, finally sucking at the claws greedily to lick out the last of the juice.
I could do with some of that kind of attention, Clare thought lasciviously.
Conversation was standard dinner party, covering such familiar items as builders and the difficulties therewith, bits of houses that cleaning ladies won’t touch (Clare pink with embarrassment of knowing that Jeannie was just through the swing doors, washing up in the kitchen), the cost of pool heating, power steering versus manual.
Jack realized he hadn’t read a newspaper for anything but the crossword for several weeks, and as they hadn’t a TV at the cottage either, he could not for once complain that no-one discussed current affairs. He’d never talked about politics in Cornwall, not with anyone, for everyone was too polite to get into that sort of discussion. There were too few people to be friends with to risk expressing radical views. You might find, in the pub or sailing club, that there were only half the usual number of people to talk to if you started claiming sympathy with the Monday Club, or asked people to concede that Tony Benn often had a point.
By the time the cheese arrived they were all inevitably on to education, that mainstay of suburban conversation. Liz had said, ‘It’s beginning to feel like the end of the holidays. I’ve already sent a case full of clothes back to London with Eliot’s secretary. I shan’t be needing them again this year.’
Or next, probably, thought Clare, imagining Liz’s one-season cast-offs being passed on to a poor relation, if she had any, and a new lot being bought by next May.
‘I’m quite looking forward to going back, seeing the garden again,’ Celia said. ‘The exam results are due out about now, aren’t they and I feel that will mark the end of our summer. If Andrew hasn’t done well we shall have to think about our arrangements for the autumn.’
‘Why not just let him leave school?’ asked Jack, provocatively.
‘And do what?’ Archie asked. ‘He won’t be qualified for anything, he’ll need A-levels at least.’
‘I’m afraid that if he hasn’t done well at GCSE level he probably won’t do well at A-level either,’ said Jack in his authoritarian teacher voice. ‘The level of work is much more intense, and needs a high degree of motivation.’
‘Oh well, it’s a good school,’ Celia said, sensing conflict on the way, ‘They’ll be able to sort it out.’
Jack felt cross, these complacent people expecting schools to babysit their children till they were eighteen and not even consider the vocational courses on offer at more enlightened tertiary colleges.
‘Perhaps he could go to college and do a B. Tech,’ suggested Clare gently.
‘Oh Clare, I don’t think so,’ Liz chipped in brightly. ‘He’s surely too young to be taking a degree …’
‘It’s not a degree …’ Clare attempted to explain and then gave up, infuriated that Liz had charmed all three men into easy laughter by being so utterly thick. She looked at Jack’s bewitched smile. If I’d said anything as dopey as that I’d be getting an earful of sarcasm, she thought. Clare wondered if Jack had had a lot to drink, there was no way of knowing for the waitresses had efficiently and discreetly removed the bottles from the table as soon as they became empty.
The educationally-deprived villagers in the kitchen were fully aware how much drink had been consumed and had no trouble at all, without so much as an O-level in maths between them, in calculating how much must get spent per week on booze if these people from up-country drank like that all the time. The likely tips from that night were also calculated quite accurately to be roughly equivalent to a good fish supper for each of them in Truro.
Eliot, whose children had always been so clever that their education had never needed discussion, was falling asleep quite rudely.
Liz prodded him, not very gently.
‘You never get chairs this comfortable in London restaurants,’ she said, making an excuse for him. Eliot’s head drooped forward and a teddy-bear rumble sounded suspiciously like a snore.
‘They always want you out in time for the after theatre rush,’ Liz went on, as if the others wouldn’t know this. Celia turned away disapprovingly from Eliot, and found herself having to talk to Clare, of whom she was beginning to disapprove even more.
‘What are you going to do this autumn, Clare?’ she asked politely, ‘Do you have any plans for Miranda after the exam results?’
‘Well, actually Miranda’s already made her own plans,’ Clare said carefully, ‘She’s going to do A-levels staying at the same school.’
Jack saw the great moment for his plan, now, safely while he and Clare were not terrifyingly alone.
‘Of course, there’s no real need for us to go back to London at all,’ he said rather loudly, laughing a bit as if he’d only just thought of it. Clare stared at him, her Bath Oliver and Stilton crumbling on to her plate. Eliot woke up and paid attention as Jack went on, giving his precious plans a tentative airing in the safety of company.
‘What I thought was, maybe we could sell the London house, live here while I paint. Invest the money while interest rates are so good.’
‘What about the children?’ asked Liz.
‘Well they do have s
chools down here you know,’ Jack said rather sharply, as if, Clare thought, he had anticipated that question from her and not from Liz. ‘Miranda could go to the sixth-form college or be a weekly boarder at Truro if she wanted.’
‘Actually,’ Jack said, grinning and looking modestly down at his plate, ‘I’ve been doing rather well this summer. Up at the craft centre, I’ve sold a whopping great wall full of paintings.’
‘Would you live here all the time?’ Liz said, incredulous, and insultingly ignoring his proud achievement. ‘You can’t do that, nobody does!’ Celia joined in. ‘Well of course they do,’ Clare said, exasperated by their snobbery, though furious with Jack. ‘But I’m not sure I want to,’ she said, firmly.
She made it sound non-negotiable, infuriating Jack: ‘Well what do you do in London that you’d be so sorry to miss? Aerobics in the church hall? Getting ripped off in those chic little food shops? Grumbling with the neighbours about number thirteen’s attic conversion?’ Jack banged his glass impatiently on the table and leaned closer to Clare, looking menacingly across at her. He’d kept all this inside for far too long; ‘You’re always saying we never do anything spontaneously any more. Here’s your chance!’ He waved his arm around dramatically, spilling wine.
‘You can do whatever you damned well like here! Be creative! Write something! Knit something! Make another bloody baby!’
‘Baby? What makes you think I want another baby?’ Clare asked loudly. The others sat back, listening intently. The swing doors to the kitchen opened just a little further, as the staff sensed an interesting row.
