Holiday (13 page)

‘Make the most of it, while you’re young enough.’

‘Where?’

The man spread his arms, flapped them comically as he retreated, kicking his heels up.

‘Here. Here.’

Fisher walked faster up the promenade, less sure of himself, but gayer. A stout young woman, brown as a fisherman, slapped along with her children. One jumped, stumbled into Fisher who was passing, was jerked peremptorily upright.

‘Look where you’re going,’ the mother called. ‘Sorry.’ She wore a short frock, rucked high up her legs from sitting.

‘Quite all right,’ Fisher said. ‘Wish I’d that amount of energy.’

The mother locked her lips, but said nothing, plunging on again, the two lively at the end of her arms, like shifting seaweed on an anchor.

Now the place seemed crowded, as perhaps the beaches emptied, and cars swished along the road, catching, flinging sunlight on their windscreens. But the life was tired, like the leaping flame as an old man put a match to his pipe in one of the sea-front shelters, a wild atom in surrounding enervation.

‘They’ll sleep tonight,’ some grandma shouted, pointing at children upside down on the prom-rails.

‘I know I shall,’ their mother answered.

Meg had been a poor sleeper, prowling in the night, sipping glasses of water. If she took a sleeping-tablet she’d manage only two or three hours, and then wake to toss.

‘Why don’t you read?’ he’d asked.

‘And wake you?’

‘I’d soon drop off again.’

He wondered if she woke like this to win time for herself. Even when she dropped with fatigue, so that she nodded off over a meal, when Donald needed night-feeds, she still became alert in the small hours.

‘Are you worrying? Is there anything on your mind?’

‘Not really.’

‘What is it, then?’

‘Just a bad habit.’

And she’d shrug him off, rationally, in what seemed to him a desperate appeal. He ought to settle her nerves, soothe or dominate her into sleep. Such fantasy nagged him. On holiday, at St. Tropez or Tunis, when they were drugged with sun, satiated with sex so that every muscle of his body relaxed into a perfection of comfort, she’d be awake at two, creaking the wicker chair in the bedroom, staring out into the light darkness, towards the small trees, the pool of night-sounds.

‘It’s my nature’ she said. ‘I’m a nocturnal animal.’

Yet she loved the sunlight, hated the white strips of flesh round her breasts, buttocks, low belly.

‘Ridiculous,’ she drew his attention with her finger, unnecessarily. ‘Look at that.’

And dizzy with the sun he’d tried with his fingers the change from sun brown to white until he lay exhausted inside her as she laughed and complimented him and tried without trying to reach for the bedside table a cigarette that was the symbol that she for once was sufficiently satisfied to demand a second gratification that was no concern of his, that did not spring from him.

On the morning he was to lunch with the Vernons, Fisher sat on a towel on the beach.

The sky stretched hazier; the wind had dropped so that the day promised real heat. Children scuttled about as if to prepare themselves for pleasure, digging trenches and fortifications, jumping and shouting, delighted because their parents had, for once, got the weather they wanted. The elderly sat to respectful attention in deck-chairs biroing postcards, ready for the brightness, they remembered, every day of summer showed when they were young.

Fisher idly watched two young women who had settled near him.

Their preparations were priest-like; Pope approached truth in the ‘Rape of the Lock.’ First they laid the huge beach-towel, weighted its corners with their baskets and bags. This took time, circumambulation, calculation of the sun’s position later in the day; both chattered with a kind of intensity, like a commentator into a handmicrophone, as if to ensure that their inanities arrived at the listener. He had been amused for a quarter of an hour before he realised that he was the target, he was the morning’s eligible young man, mark one. They did not look at him much, but made certain that they had his attention, by constant movement, barbs of conversation.

Curiously, as he examined himself, he felt flattered.

They were pretty, stocky girls, blue-eyes with blond, fluffy, well brushed hair. Now they had whisked their frocks off, and in bikinis sat to oil themselves. At first this seemed haphazard, a dab at the ankle or shin, but he found that they rubbed and smoothed with thorough care. He was, and he and they noticed, shamelessly staring at them. Their legs, strong-thighed, thick-ankled, were already tanned as their palms caressed, sliding over the youthful surface. One wore an engagement ring. After the arms, upper breasts, shoulders, belly had been leisurely treated, one lay flat for the other to deal with her back.

‘Oh, I could do with this all day,’ the patient said. There was something sexual in the whole performance as if they were inviting Fisher to join the ritual, the initiation. When the first girl sat up, she smiled at him, showing good teeth, patting her hair. After the second lubrication, one girl made a dart for the other who sat touching herself, to tickle; it seemed out of place, clownish compared with the hieratic slow ease so far, childish, a lout’s trick. The second girl squeaked, thrashed over fast to dodge the assult, kneeing a zipped shopping carrier and a complement of sand onto Fisher’s towel.

‘Stop it, Tricia,’ she squealed. ‘You are daft.’ She looked at Fisher. ‘Oh, I am sorry.’ She picked up the bag, began to brush sand ineffectually.

‘That will do no harm.’ he said.

She was deep-breasted, pretty, utterly humdrum.

‘It gets into your food, it’s so fine.’

‘I shall go back for lunch,’ he answered. ‘I’m meeting somebody.’

‘A lady.’

‘Two. And a gentleman.’ They were all laughing.

‘In a restaurant?’ the first girl, Tricia, asked.

‘A hotel. Yes.’

‘Do you think we could guess which?’ she persisted.

‘You could try.’

They preened themselves, brushing sand from their knees, for the game.

‘The Frankland Towers,’ the second girl said, eyebrows sarcastic.

‘Yes.’

A small silence.

‘Did she guess right first time?’ Tricia asked.

‘She did.’

‘Good guessers never marry,’ the first answered, fingering her engagement ring.

‘I wonder what Philip would think about that.’

More laughter, while Fisher placed Philip as the girls fiancé.

Soon they began to talk, not easily, and in their case with a modesty which he found old-fashioned. This suited them, as did their rather ample bikinis, in red and blue with polka dots; they wanted to chat to him because he looked sensible, dressed respectably, but now he’d proclaimed himself a patron of the Frankland, they were faintly suspicious, wondering what he was about, sitting alone on the beach. They were sisters, he learnt, and Carol, the elder, the engaged one, was a primary teacher. Patricia was secretary to a manager in a textile factory in Nelson.

He liked them, immediately, with their big healthy limbs, their common sense, their careful vocabulary delivered with a slightly northern voice. They were interested when he told them he used to be a teacher, questioned him about his schools, but did not press to know his present occupation, when he said nothing. They always took holidays together, were here this time because a fortnight’s motoring in Ireland had fallen through at the last minute. In simplicity, he found them amusing talkers, sharp but charitable; both clearly had more intelligence than their superiors at work, but neither resented this, saw it pehaps as an order of nature. One evening a week they ran a uniformed group for small boys, and on another they attended together a class on oil painting.

‘Do you bring your paints with you?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Carol replied. ‘We’re both copiers.’

‘We drive the teacher barmy, because we’ve no initiative.’

‘I can’t believe that.’

‘It’s true enough,’ Carol answered. ‘We go. We pick up tips. We turn out things our mother thinks are marvellous, but they’re nothing to Aubrey.’

‘Can he paint?’ Fisher asked. They considered.

‘I suppose so. He had plenty of daubs in the local exhibitions.’

‘You sound guarded.’ Fisher was enjoying himself.

‘He’s an excellent teacher. But very conservative, I should think, wouldn’t you Tricia?’

‘And trying to encourage us to splash out in the way he won’t himself.’

‘That’s acute. I’m glad I don’t teach you.’

‘It’s obvious,’ Carol said, pleased with the comment.

The pair bend to pouring and oiling.

When later he went to fetch a pot of tea for the three of them, Tricia slipped on a short bath-robe to accompany him. They stepped over legs, round castles, laughing. She stood with him in the queue, chose the biscuits, chaffed the stall-keeper with the result that Fisher found the trip a source of pleasure. About these girls, he thought, there was an innocence, a goodness. If he had been asked to specify what this quality consisted of, he’d have been forced to mere picture-making. He could, for example, though they had no mention of religion, imagine these two as members of a Harvest Festival choir, bearing a strong contralto, ‘The Sceptre of Thy Kingdom is a Right Sceptre’ maestoso by Sir A. Sullivan.

This pleased him, though he recognised it as fantasy. No such simplicities existed in real life. When these girls married, and they were the sort to become excellent housewives, their husbands would be plagued with their moods, and fears, and boredom, because this was universal; nobody was exempt. But at present he felt no qualms.

When he had first met Meg, that evening at the theatre, he remembered an element of guilt, of treachery. She’d called him over to spite her fiancé who was running at her pleasure. Fisher, attracted, had sensed danger, uncertainty. Meg’s love was never more than half given, grudgingly displayed. These girls would open their fingers, clasp a man’s hand in theirs, and mean it, whatever scarred or spoilt the future. Meg’s whole self seemed devious.

Perhaps, he conceded that he had fallen immediately in love with Meg and this had stirred the waters. He laughed out loud at his metaphor, in a mood to see his own faults while he was with these two. Very likely he needed a Meg, an indeterminacy, a treason to match or outpass his own.

‘My, you’ve been long enough,’ Carol said on their return.

‘We had to queue.’ Tricia.

‘I thought you’d eloped.’

There’d been a little patch of awkward silence, then, but they were soon at ease with Carol pouring and bullying Tricia about her appetite for biscuits. At twelve Fisher made his excuses, spoke his pleasure.

‘Shall we see you again?’ Carol asked outright. Her ring gave her this privilege.

‘Very likely. I’m here till Saturday.’

‘We’re usually round about this spot.’

He picked up the tray and teapot to return, arranging all neatly.

‘You look really domesticated,’ Carol said.

‘I do my best.’

‘Watch out at the Frankland,’ she warned. Tricia said nothing, looking away from him except at the last moment when she waved, mouth slightly, attractively open from white teeth. At the stall, when he returned the crockery, took his deposit, it was as if he was selling off some valuable part of his life.

At the boarding house, which stood deserted, he changed shoes, suit and tie. He examined the handsome, respectable figure in clerical grey, eased himself breathlessly down on to his bed to waste five minutes.

The plate glass doors of the Frankland Towers stood open to the foyer, which with long windows, cunning neon-tubes seemed hugely filled with cool sunshine and banks of flowers. The surface of the reception counter was thick glass, the chairs modern, gay-bright, the spiked palms small and flourishing. Footsteps made no sound; no music, and even voices muted themselves in the high expanse.

Vernon was already by the reception-desk, at ease with the busy blonde.

‘This way, this way,’ he said, voice little, but suitable. ‘I could guarantee you’d be on time. You’re the only young man I know who is. The Tudor bar for you, I think.’

‘Cymry am byth.’

‘Ah, ah, No, not really. My wife is already there. Ensconced, shall we say?’

They moved along corridors into a stone room of darker, warmer light, low roof with black beams, mullioned windows, by one of which Irene Vernon sat. She had dressed herself for the occasion, with a toque, whorling upwards, a matching beige coat, both regimental yet flowing, block-heeled shoes; she ought, Fisher thought, to carry a white parasol, or a sword-stick.

She smiled, motioned Fisher alongside, brusquely demanded dry sherry, gently inquired how he was.

‘Meg not here yet?’ His voice was hoarse.

‘She’s due at one.’ Irene made motions towards the clock, which indicated ten minutes’ wait.

‘Has she ever been on time?’ her face asked. ‘What’s yours, Edwin?’

‘Is she here, in Bealthorpe?’ Fisher asked.

‘That we don’t know.’ Vernon spoke back from the bar, where a man obsequiously, hands splayed, head forward, waited his order.

‘David phoned her last night. At home,’ Irene said, putting a gloved hand on Fisher’s arm.

‘She’ll drive over.’

‘I see.’

He thought of the phone in the hall, where she’d answer, by the Bellini madonna with its rubber-doll Christ across her knees. In the evening there’d be sufficient light for Meg’s face to be reflected in the picture-glass, and he could see her fingers disarranging curls as she spoke. She would also, he was certain, leave too little time for the journey, if he knew her. He was certain that he did. Shivering he looked about him.

They settled to their drinks, Vernon smiling, founder of the feast.

Fisher glanced round the other drinkers, who huddled over dark tables in conspiracy, never raising voices, bronzed as Indians.

‘Your health,’ Vernon proposed. They drank.

‘Keep you eye on the clock,’ Irene warned. ‘It won’t do to keep Meg hanging around.’

‘Don’t come between a man and his drink,’ her husband answered, patting her knee.