by Judy Astley
‘What have you won Harriet?’ Jack asked her as she scrambled on to the terrace next to them a brown envelope clutched between her teeth. She opened it and said ‘It’s a £2 coin.’
‘What will you do with it,’ Clare asked, ‘put it in your piggy or spend it?’
‘I shall spend it,’ Harriet told her, then added loudly, ‘But not at the post office.’
Andrew was getting nervous. If Jessica wasn’t there it was going to be a waste of a whole new wetsuit (black and turquoise, all smart zips and pockets, from the Surf Shack). Not to mention all those hours spent alone sweating with the weights and putting the Laser through its paces out in the estuary while he could have lazed around watching women tanning on the beach. He had already won two of his three races, without her being there to see it. There was only the big one to go, the all-comers menagerie class, up against every kind of boat and some excellent sailors.
He paced around the pub terrace watching the adults getting drunker, watching his father win only one less cup than the year before in the rowing. (Later Celia would call that the Beginning of the End, Anno Domini creeping up, as if Steve, who had caught up and overtaken Archie at the finishing line, had been the grim reaper himself.)
Andrew went and sat on the edge of the terrace, some distance from his parents. He didn’t want to listen to Liz and Clare oohing and aahing over the fishermen racing in Cornish gigs. The fast sleek boats sped through the water, at speeds which put the panting tourists to shame. They looked, he thought, like those Hawaiian boats that cut so powerfully through the surf. One of the few races that distracted the villagers, they abandoned the shop and the bar and the ferry to line up in front of the drinking visitors on the terrace and cheer.
Then it was the turn of the men to ogle the fishermen’s wives, strong and tanned from working year round in the open, first in the bulb fields, then harvesting and potato picking. The girls raced in tee-shirts and jeans, not the clutter of oilskins, guernseys and life jackets that the tourists seemed to need. They manouevred their skiffs with the same single-minded aggression with which they drove their battered Cortinas along the narrow lanes, frightening elderly trippers half to death.
‘You never seem to get the holiday-makers and the locals in the same race do you?’ Jack commented to Archie.
‘Our sort of rowing, the prams and dinghies stuff, must seem rather tame to them, being out there on the water all year round,’ Clare said. ‘And hardly any of them seem to sail.’
She glanced at Eliot. He was watching the girls who were now climbing up the terrace. The winner of the skiff race was still smoking the cigarette that had been in the corner of her mouth throughout the race. He really was shameless, Clare thought, watching Eliot raise his glass to the girl in appreciation, though not of her rowing. It was like window-shopping to him. Coming down through the pub garden Clare saw Miranda with Jessica and Milo.
‘Come and join us,’ she shouted, ‘have a drink, there’s plenty here.’
The three regarded their parents with slight disgust. There among the neat holiday-makers and villagers was the carnage of their parents’ table. Four bottles of wine stood open and nearly finished, glasses and crisp packets, remains of pasties, puddles of beer, Archie’s trophies, all mingled like the strewn-out contents of a bin liner. Around them, small parties of villagers eyed them warily, clutching half pints and the hands of their small children, just in case.
‘I’m going down to the beach to get a better look at the races,’ Miranda said.
‘Have you seen Andrew?’ Milo asked. ‘Jess and I are going to enter one of the races that he’s in.’
Andrew heard them. He had been watching for Jessica and seen her from a distance walking with her brother and Miranda through the village. He had had time to compose his mind and his body (the wetsuit was reliably flattening, he was glad to find, as well as rather flattering).
‘How can you be in the same race,’ Liz said, ‘he’s racing a Laser and you’ve got the Fireball.’
‘It’s a mixed class, we’ll all be in it together, won’t we Andrew,’ Milo said with a sly challenging grin.
‘Shall we put money on them?’ Eliot said. ‘£1 on Jess and Milo, any offers?’
Sulkily, Andrew pushed the Laser out from the shore and clambered aboard. It wasn’t enough that he had won two races, he wanted Jessica there on the shore to watch and cheer. She wasn’t to know, and he couldn’t point it out, that the two largest trophies on the table in front of his proud father belonged to him and not Archie. He had seen himself as a medieval knight, claiming her as his prize. It had been all he could do not to go to her house that morning and ask to wear her favour, a scarf, or her life jacket, or whatever twentieth-century equivalent to a lace handkerchief or kid glove she would bestow on him. Even with two of them on board the Fireball could easily beat the Laser.
The start-gun went, and all the boats became entangled in the usual scramble. Fathers shouting frantically at their children, shrieks for water, giggling boys out of control in their ancient Mirrors, Toppers capsizing, and the rescue boat buzzing about like a wasp, not knowing who to help first. Gradually the mess sorted itself out. Ahead of him Andrew could see Jessica leaning out on the trapeze, competent and concentrating, eyes firmly fixed on the buoy ahead and not at all on him.
Gradually, Andrew pulled away from the struggling armada and headed out, catching some good gusts of wind. He and a few of the experienced sailors took off towards the buoy, Andrew’s Laser light and strong enough to be catching up with the Fireball. I could still do it, Andrew thought, though maybe I should let her win. But a combination of social codes, from his father and from school, wouldn’t let him do this, playing the game meant playing to win, so he let the Laser skim the waves and speed towards the estuary. Milo and Jessica had hit a calm spot.
‘Andrew’s catching up!’ Jessica shouted to Milo. ‘He’s in a much better position, he’ll be at the buoy before us!’
Andrew relaxed, watching her watching him. Confident of his skill, he swung the Laser out past the other boats and headed in to the buoy, meeting it at the same time as Milo. Behind him, but not too close, he could hear shouts of ‘water!’ as boats fought to avoid collision. He tried to take it on the inside of the Fireball and lost, Milo had gone about and was safely round the buoy heading for home. In panic, Andrew turned too fast and the Laser clipped the edge of the buoy. He felt hot. No-one had seen.
Jessica was tired now, she lost concentration a few times and Milo had started to shout at her. Her feet were sore from the toe straps and her back was aching. She didn’t particularly care whether she won or not, though she’d done her best for Milo. Winning things, she thought, seemed to be something that boys minded about most terribly. It was probably hormones, or sex or something. Not watching properly, she headed the boat straight into a mooring rope. She was actually yawning when Andrew, his face taut with concentration, whizzed past them on the Laser. She heard the gun go as he passed the line, and close after it sounded again as Milo, the boat safely disentangled, cruised past the committee boat. On the shore Archie beamed with pride.
‘You see, there are some things he can do,’ he said to Celia. ‘What you might call a chip off the old block I think.’
‘It doesn’t earn a living, playing with boats,’ Celia said.
‘I don’t know,’ said Jack. ‘Someone has to teach people how to sail. Perhaps Andrew could do that.’
‘Of course he might not have won,’ Archie said. ’It depends on the handicap. The Laser is a fast boat.’
‘How do they work it out?’ Clare asked.
‘It’s a peculiar system, a thing called the Portsmouth Yardstick,’ Archie explained patiently. Liz choked on her drink.
‘I think my filthy-minded wife thinks it’s a device for measuring sailors’ dicks,’ said Eliot.
‘No actually,’ said Archie, still with his serious face on, ‘it’s all to do with weight, and length and speed and such. They’ll be some
time before they announce the actual winner, though I rather think it will still be Andrew.’
Andrew could hear him as he walked up the terrace.
All the well dones and congratulations could not make up for the fact that he knew what he knew. He had hit the buoy. Automatic disqualification. Jessica and Milo panted up the steps behind him.
‘Well done Andrew,’ said Jess and kissed him in a brief and sisterly way on the cheek. ‘You beat us by miles,’ she said. ‘You were brilliant.’
Andrew glowed, and he made his decision. If she admired him as a winner, how much more would she admire him as a man of honour? He smiled at her, thanked her, and went to find the Commodore.
NINETEEN
‘THE TROUBLE WITH two parties on the same day with the same people is that you’ve run out of things to say by the time you get to the second one,’ Clare was saying that evening as she emerged from the bathroom with her washed hair up in a towel.
‘Not to mention having a hangover from the first one before starting all over again,’ Jack said, ‘and I still want to talk to you about moving. Have you done any thinking about it this afternoon?’
‘That’s an abrupt change of subject,’ Clare said evasively switching on the hair dryer.
‘Can’t you turn that thing off? This is the rest of our lives we’re supposed to be discussing.’
‘Sorry,’ Clare said. She sat down heavily on the bed and looked around the little room. ‘You know, we can’t live here, we’re used to so much more space.’
There was hardly room for more than the sagging old brass bed. Clare could remember the trouble they’d had trying to put it together. The wardrobe door hadn’t opened properly since. She hadn’t got round to painting the room yet either.
‘We don’t need half the stuff we’ve got in London. I feel it’s time to jettison some of our possessions,’ Jack said solemnly.
Clare laughed. ‘You sound like an old hippy.’
‘I AM an old hippy. I want to be free again, like that guy out there on the raft. I’m shackled to all these bits and pieces, and the mortgage.’
‘And to me and our children I suppose,’ Clare finished for him. ‘Most of these possessions you’re so keen to get rid of are part of us. You jettison what you like, but leave us some choices too.’
‘All right, all right, but will you think about it? We could have just one house, here in the country. A house we don’t spend half the year driving away from. I’ll be able to work at something I want to do, not something I’m stuck with to pay for a house we don’t need.’
In just a few days, Clare thought, as she combed through her tangled wet hair, she would be rejoining the Volvo Valkyries on the school run, back to those repetitive little routines, the lunch boxes, ballet classes, piano lessons, gym clubs. Traffic jams, pushy mothers, Barnes Common that no-one dared walk on because of flashers and rapists. Public transport that wasn’t safe after dark. Bomb scares. All those things she celebrated escaping from at the beginning of every summer. I don’t want to go back either, thought Clare. But neither do I want to stay here.
Jack was still hovering in the doorway as Clare studied her mouse-and-grey-coloured hair roots in the mirror. She looked at his anxious face and tried to explain how she was feeling.
‘It’s not that I’m desperate, not any more, to stay in Barnes. You’ve convinced me that far. But it’s here, this village. We’re outsiders, even more so after this summer, we’ll never fit in. It’s all right if you’ve always lived here; when everyone’s gone, all the visitors, that’s when it feels normal for them. It wouldn’t for us. We’ll always be incomers here, I can’t face being part of the bungalow-on-the-hiIl brigade, not for a million years yet. And this house really is too small, you’ll need a proper studio.’
There was a gleam of hope in Jack’s eyes. Clare could see it in the mirror and smiled at him.
‘Don’t worry too much. I think I might be able to do what you want, literally to meet you halfway, like you said this afternoon. Go and tell the kids they don’t need to bother doing too much packing.’
In Eliot’s house everyone was shouting at everyone else to answer the doorbell. The dog was barking furiously, running first to Liz, who sneakily kicked it away from her newly-laundered trousers, then to Milo who gave it a biscuit and finally to Eliot who grudgingly trailed to the door, glass in hand.
On the step stood the Commodore of the sailing club.
‘What can I do for you Admiral?’ Eliot asked, waving his brandy glass. ’Come in and have a sundowner.’
‘I don’t think so, this is rather serious. ‘
‘Nothing is so serious that it doesn’t call for a drink,’ said Eliot determinedly, waving the man into the kitchen and preparing himself for a speech declining to open the Harvest Fete.
‘It’s your son,’ the Commodore began nervously. ‘Which one,’ said Eliot. ‘Big or little?’
‘Big I suppose,’ the man hesitated, grabbing one of the glasses of brandy from the kitchen table and taking a large gulp. ‘He’s been seeing, been seen seeing, my son.’
Eliot was at a loss.
‘What do you mean, “seen seeing him”? you can see anyone seeing everyone round here, can’t miss them. What’s the problem?’
The man gulped more brandy and shifted his feet awkwardly.
‘Well I understand he’s been seeing rather a lot of him in fact. My wife …’ he became cowardly now, shifting responsibility, ‘she’s not exactly happy …’
Eliot understood now and was angry, but not with Milo. He baited the Commodore.
‘But seeing Milo is a wonderful thing. I love it when I see him, everyone does. Your wife should be very happy, your little Kevin or Nigel is it, is very lucky.’
‘Simon actually,’ said the man, recklessly gulping the last of the brandy. ‘Look I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘This is rather embarrassing.’
‘Tell me,’ Eliot said playfully, ‘does your son go to boarding school by any chance?’
‘Well yes, rather a good one actually.’
‘Well if you really want boys like my son, who I’ll have you know is an artist and a genius, not a common or garden shirt-lifting sodomist, if you want boys like him to keep away from your pretty son, you should transfer the commonplace little sod to the local comprehensive forthwith and let him get roughed up by the run of the mill riff-raff. That’ll make a man of him. Also you’ll know where he is nights. As far as I am concerned it is a rare and wonderful privilege for anyone, man, woman or adolescent bumboy to be taken notice of by my son. I shall see you later at the sailing club party. I suggest you keep out of my way. Good night.’
The dog showed the Commodore the way to the door, barking its contribution after him.
So it’s going to be boys, Eliot thought sadly, pouring himself another large brandy. Whose fault would Liz say that was, he wondered, and did wife number one know?
Andrew was embarrassed. His parents liked to arrive at parties early ‘in case we want to stay just a little while’ Celia explained, as if she had to put in exactly two and a half hours and wanted to get them over and done with. Andrew felt like their prize little boy, being shown off at the sailing club for not quite winning the largest trophy of the afternoon, and all because he had been Honest.
‘We brought him up to be Honest,’ Celia kept saying, as if nobody else did that any more. People kept saying ‘never mind’ about the race, and Andrew had to pretend that he didn’t. He scowled and kicked at the balcony rail and wished he were one of the village boys larking about in the car park throwing lager cans at each other and exploding crisp packets behind startled girls. His father bought him half a pint of lager, in a generously man to man gesture, but the barmaid had absent mindedly put lime in it and Andrew would have poured it into the creek if he could have been sure of getting another one that night. He stood shuffling on the edge of his parents’ conversation with the Commodore, forgotten and bored and waiting for Jessica, with a pessimistic feeling that
here too he was about to blow his last opportunity.
Miranda waved up to Andrew as she walked through the car park with Clare and Jack. She too noticed the boys in the car park, one of them was Steve. He leaned against his motor bike and smiled gently at her, just a small acknowledgement. So he hadn’t told anyone either, she thought. It might all never have happened. She didn’t feel anything for him, just perhaps a little natural rancour that he obviously didn’t feel anything either. She saw him walk into the bar with a girl not much older than herself, maybe seventeen or eighteen or so, tight short skirt, high heels, sharp laughter. They’d probably be married by the time Miranda next came to the village. While they brought up their children, Miranda would still be a schoolgirl. She’d be a lot more careful next time, that much she’d learned.
In the sailing club Clare offered Miranda some wine, as it was their last night. How they could drink again when they’d been drinking all afternoon was beyond Miranda and she refused, going off outside to the balcony to cheer up Andrew.
At least the drizzle had stopped, people were spreading out, wandering round both inside and outside the clubhouse wondering which social group to join. The regular members swaggered around, shouting loud greetings to their friends, taking up a lot of space. Teenagers who looked as if they would rather be somewhere more fashionable on a Saturday night were misbehaving down on the pontoon, yelling across the creek to friends, kicking aimlessly at moored tenders, jumping in and out of rubber dinghies. The retired couples from the hillside had come down for an evening of sherry and gentle conversation about golf and gardens. They settled themselves into the best chairs on the balcony, from which they had no intention of moving. If they got up to go to the loo, or the bar, they quietly urged the person next to them to ‘keep my place’ as if well aware that this was really rather unacceptable but excusable on the grounds of age.
Villagers hung around in little family groups, talking and drinking cheerfully, celebrating the end of the season and looking forward to a bit of peace. They talked of the nights drawing in, huddled into pastel cardigans over floral frocks, congratulated each other on the good weather that had made it a profitable year. The fishermen in unaccustomed suits shifted their feet uncomfortably and took refuge from the noisy middle-classes in the rather warm beer and leathery sausage rolls.
