Invincible Summer (2 page)

H
ARD TO BELIEVE
it's finally over, isn't it?' said Sylvie. ‘No more lectures, no more exams, no more diabolical vending machine coffee.'

The friends were back in their spot on Brandon Hill, which over the last few years had been the scene of many a boozy afternoon. The day felt dreamy and momentous all at once. Was it possible to feel nostalgic about something before it was even over? Eva shook her head gently to dislodge the thought that the afternoon, their last all together in Bristol, was slipping away from them minute by minute. She was sharply aware that after today it could be any amount of time before she saw Lucien again. He and Sylvie were leaving to go travelling, and while Sylvie was definitely planning to join her in London afterwards, she knew from bitter experience that Lucien was altogether more unpredictable.

‘It's not over for all of us, don't forget,' grumbled Benedict. ‘Think of me, won't you, when you're off swanning around the world and I'm right back here after the summer.'

‘If you're mad enough to stay on for a PhD you deserve everything you get,' Sylvie said. ‘I couldn't be more ready to get out of here.'

He shrugged. ‘Well, a change of scene would be nice but at least the work's going to start getting interesting. We barely touched on proper particle physics in the undergrad years, so I'll finally get a chance to get stuck into the really exciting stuff.'

Sylvie raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘Yes, well. I'm going to stick my neck out here and say that travelling in India is going to be quite a lot more exciting than being stuck in a lab in the basement of the Physics department.'

‘In some ways it's very similar,' Benedict said, and then laughed at her incredulous expression. ‘No, really. We're all looking for answers to the big questions in life. Maybe you'll find enlightenment in an ashram and I'll find it in a particle accelerator, but the questions are the same.'

Lucien let out a snort. ‘We're not all looking for the meaning of life, mate. I'm not, and nor's Eva for that matter.'

Eva glanced across at the reclining figures of her friends, trying to gauge their reaction to Lucien's comment. Normally she would have been pleased at his allying himself with her, but had she imagined it or had they been a bit sniffy when she'd recently announced that she'd made it through the fiercely competitive selection process to land a traineeship in derivatives trading at one of the top investment banks? During their undergraduate years she'd constantly struggled to keep pace with Benedict and lived in burning envy of the minimal hours that Sylvie's course seemed to require, but now, exams finally over, she could at least allow herself a certain amount of satisfaction that her hard work was about to translate into something more tangible than another three years of study. Someone like Benedict might go on to discover the secrets of cold fusion but she was reasonably confident that the world of physics wasn't going to be shaken to the core by her decision to pursue Mammon instead of elusive particles.

Besides, there was an intoxicating buzz around the City these days. The guys manning the Morton Brothers desk at the recruitment fair had only been a few years older than her but they were so effortlessly confident, smart and worldly that they might as well have been a different species. She'd tried for a moment to imagine
them
scrabbling about for a school bag in a bush in front of a jeering crowd and when she found she couldn't, had accepted an application form for their graduate program.

‘Oh, yes.' Sylvie's face spread into a smirk. ‘Thanks for reminding me that my best friend's selling out to The Man.'

‘Are you calling me a sell-out, Comrade?' Eva paused to search for a suitable comeback but eventually gave up. ‘Okay fine, I'm selling out, but at least it's to a high bidder. And do you know what, I have lived the alternative to selling out, and it's towns full of shit buildings with nothing to do, where everyone dresses the same and has the same views on everything and woe betide you if you're different in any way.'

Unmoved, Sylvie twirled an imaginary moustache. ‘Capitalist running dog.'

Everyone was smiling now, but each of the smiles contained a glint of steel, the flinty protrusion of a serious undertone which had been the subject of a thousand drink-fuelled arguments over the last few years. Simultaneously aware of the futility of the endeavor yet unable to resist making her case one last time, Eva launched into her spiel.

‘All you have to do is open your eyes and look around at the world: capitalism is the system that's produced the greatest wealth and freedom. It may not be terribly equal but then, nothing is more equal, and no equality easier to arrange, than ensuring that everyone is fucked. Anyway, it's alright for you,' she nodded towards Sylvie. ‘You're just one of those people who'll be fine wherever they go. Not all of us can just sail through life on raw talent, you know.'

Sylvie grinned but didn't demur and not for the first time Eva experienced the treacherous sensation that her sadness at going their separate ways was tinged with a hint of excitement about finally wriggling out from Sylvie's shadow.

‘When do you set off on your travels anyway? Is your mum picking you up?' Benedict asked the others, and Eva glanced over to see Lucien's features assemble themselves into sort of sneering bravado. It made her think, as she had a thousand times since the night they'd spent together, about how much he hated his vulnerabilities being exposed, and how maybe the reason there had never been a repeat of that night was that he couldn't quite forgive himself for having revealed them, or her for having seen them.

‘Do be serious,' he told Benedict. ‘She's working off her latest drink-driving ban. And she wouldn't have come anyway, I'm
persona non grata
with her current bloke, remember?'

‘We're catching the train up to London this afternoon and staying the night with a mate in Fulham,' Sylvie said. ‘Our flight doesn't leave till tomorrow morning.'

‘How about you, Eva? What time does Keith get here?' Benedict had met Eva's father, a lecturer in Gender Studies at what he still insisted on referring to as Brighton Poly, on a number of occasions but was still clearly uncomfortable with calling him by his forename. Keith had always eschewed ‘Dad' as a title, imbued as it was with patriarchal associations of authority. He was another one who had received the news of Eva's nascent investment banking career with less than unequivocal joy. He'd been so torn between paternal pride and Marxist disgust when she told him that she thought he might implode in a puff of cognitive dissonance. But as she'd explained, there was a third way now, a route between the heartless conservatism of old and the unavoidable impracticalities of socialism; a new world order was about to assert itself and Eva intended to be a part of it. The Berlin Wall had come down, the Soviet Union had dismantled itself, and while calling it the End of History might be overegging it a bit, it didn't feel too grand an assertion to say that it was the dawn of a new era, and not just for a freshly-minted graduate.

‘Well, your mother would have been proud,' he'd allowed eventually, and Eva had swiftly changed the subject as she always did when that quality of gruffness entered his voice.

‘We'd better get going or we'll miss the train,' Sylvie said to Lucien, and Eva looked round at her friends with a sudden sense of something precious sliding away from her.

She didn't have her camera with her—it had already been packed up with the rest of her things—so instead she tried to snatch the scene out of the air and etch it onto memory: Lucien, eyes darkly gleaming, Sylvie, hair flaming like a radioactive halo in the sunlight, and next to them Benedict, silhouetted against clear blue sky, turning towards her now and catching her looking at him and breaking into his broad, lopsided smile. Hold it right there, she thought. Everything's about to change, but just let me keep this moment.

And now there was no putting it off, it was time to say goodbye to Lucien. Eva urgently wished she could have a minute alone with him but Sylvie and Benedict were watching expectantly, so she just sat there as he leant down and dropped a kiss on her face, not quite on the mouth but not quite on the cheek either.

‘See you around, kiddo,' he said with a grin, and it was all she could do to stop herself reaching up and pulling his face down toward hers, but already Sylvie was tugging him away and off down the hill they went, turning back to wave but still heading inexorably away from library days and party nights and mornings-after and endless afternoons spent huddled together laughing and clutching steaming cups of terrible coffee and everything else that had formed the fabric of their old lives together and which had seemed all along as if it would never end but was now, suddenly and irrevocably, over.

M
INUSCULE, ISN'T IT
?' yelled Benedict cheerfully above the roar of a landing plane as he tossed Eva's rucksack into the boot of the battered old Peugeot. ‘Best sort of car to have out here though, you'll soon see why. The air con doesn't work, I'm afraid,' he added as they lowered themselves into their seats.

It had definitely been the right decision to come, she thought, as they swept clear of the garish sprawl of Corfu Town and shot out along the coast, the plastic car seat hot beneath her legs and salty air buffeting her through the open window. When Benedict had suggested she join him for a week at his family's holiday home as they walked back from Brandon Hill at the end of their final afternoon in Bristol she'd wavered, but it was her only chance of a holiday in an otherwise tedious summer that would be spent living at home and working in a shop before she took up her traineeship in September. A whole holiday for the cost of a cheap flight was too tempting, even if it did mean the slightly intimidating prospect of staying with Benedict's family.

‘Wouldn't it be a bit strange, though?' she'd asked as they walked back from Brandon Hill at the end of their final afternoon in Bristol. ‘Your parents will probably think we're girlfriend and boyfriend or something.'

‘Of course not,' Benedict assured her. ‘The whole family takes guests there. More than likely my brother Harry will have a pal with him too.' Then, sounding just a little offended, he added, ‘It's a genuine offer from a friend. I'm not going to jump on you if that's what you're worried about. Besides, who knows when we'll have another chance to really hang out together? You'll be off doing your thing and I'll be back in Bristol on my own. Think of it as a last hurrah.'

So she'd accepted, and now they were charging north along the twisting coastal road bounded on one side by the cliff wall and on the other by a sheer drop down to the glittering Ionian Sea below. The journey was spellbinding and hair-raising in equal parts; every time a car zoomed towards them they were forced perilously close to the road's edge, leaving Eva clutching the edges of her seat.

‘You see?' bellowed Benedict above the roaring air. ‘You wouldn't want to be in a Hummer on these roads.'

‘Christ!' she yelped as they rounded a hairpin bend and swerved to avoid an oncoming coach. ‘Are those things really allowed on roads like this? Couldn't they erect some bloody crash barriers or something?'

‘It's all part of the distinctive Corfiot charm. You get used to the roads and anyway, it's part and parcel of being in such an undeveloped place. No crash barriers but no McDonalds either, at least not where we're going. Don't worry, staying on the road's a simple matter of friction and momentum.' He grinned, seeing Eva grab the dashboard to avoid being thrown against the door as they rounded another sharp bend. ‘Trust me, I'm a physicist.'

‘Yeah, well, there's theory and then there's practice,' muttered Eva, but her words were lost in the wind. She did her best to sit back and enjoy the journey, soaking up the sparkling expanse of water and the unfamiliar abundance of light that drenched the air and bounced playfully off every available surface. The further they travelled, the fewer cars they passed, and the white-walled shops and houses gradually gave way to a more sparsely populated landscape in which gnarled olive trees grew at improbable angles on steeply ascending terraces. Eventually they turned off the coastal road and started to climb a hill of nerve-wracking gradient.

‘Mount Pantokrator,' said Benedict. ‘Nearly there.'

They pulled onto an unsurfaced road, bounced over a series of potholes and finally slowed to a halt in front of a pair of huge iron gates which, prompted by the wave of a key fob, swung open to reveal a large sand-coloured villa. Around the side of the building Eva glimpsed the same captivating seascape that had provided the backdrop to most of their journey.

‘Better go and say hello to the olds and find out where you're quartered,' said Benedict, clambering out of the car and stretching. ‘I expect they'll be on the terrace.'

He led the way through an open gate at the side of the house and along a dusty gravel path running through a herb garden. The late afternoon air was heavy with the scent of thyme and hummed with cicadas. They wound their way around the building and up a flight of stone steps onto an enormous terrace overlooking the sea, where a willowy, fair-haired woman was gazing out over the railing. As she turned and came towards them, arms outstretched in welcome, Eva realised she must be Benedict's mother.

‘Hello, darling. That was quick,' she said as they reached her. ‘And you must be Eva.' She released her son from a brief embrace and turned towards her.

 ‘Very pleased to meet you, Mrs Waverley,' replied Eva, adopting her best meeting-the-parents manner, and was surprised to notice Benedict shift uncomfortably. Was she imagining it or had Benedict's mother almost imperceptibly raised an eyebrow at him? What possible blunder could she have perpetrated so soon and with so innocuous a greeting?

‘Oh, plain old Marina is fine. How wonderful of you to join us, we've heard so much about you. Bunny, why don't you go and give Eva's things to Eleni so she can sort out her room?' she said, spotting the rucksack in Benedict's hand. Eva struggled to convert her mirth at the pet name into something resembling a grateful smile, but if Marina noticed Benedict's glowering face and Eva's faint snort she showed no sign of it. ‘Eva, come and I'll make you a drink. Did you fly Sleazyjet? Frightfully convenient I know, but leaves you feeling quite soiled and in need of a tipple, don't you find?'

Standing at the edge of the terrace clutching the cold glass that Marina had pressed into her hand, Eva was finally able to take in the scenery that terror had prevented her from fully appreciating on the drive. The calm sea stretched across to another coastline, where a flat plain led from the water's edge to a mountain range behind. Here and there, clusters of white buildings were scattered across the plain and the foothills. The azure sky was cloudless and yet just barely hazy.

‘This view,' she exclaimed. ‘It's breathtaking.'

Marina smiled. ‘Isn't it? In all my travels I've never found one more perfect. That's Albania over there across the water. In the mornings the mountains look as if they're rising up out of the mist like an enchanted land. You almost expect to see unicorns bounding across them. I know everyone bangs on about the light in the Greek islands but really, there's nowhere on earth quite like it.'

She took Eva's arm, led her to the wall at the edge of the terrace where the land dropped away and pointed down the hillside. ‘Down there, you see that peninsula with the house and the beautiful bay? The owners have taken out a hundred-year lease on that bit of the Albanian coast you can see there, just so that no one can build on it and spoil the view.'

A tall man immediately recognisable as Benedict's father ambled out of the house and joined in the conversation. ‘Of course, they don't have half the view that we have up here. It's all very well being down by the water I suppose, for the swimming and all that, but I'd rather be up here in the heavens.' He dropped his voice dramatically and turned towards her, gesturing towards the vast expanse of sky. ‘Wouldn't you?'

Eva nodded. It felt as if she were being drawn into in a conspiracy, in fact this whole place felt like a marvellous secret that she had stumbled upon, a world she hadn't quite known existed. She wasn't at all sure what she had imagined whenever Benedict had mentioned spending summers at his family's holiday place, but it certainly wasn't this. It was utterly dreamlike, otherworldly, like being suspended in a thousand shades of blue.

‘We like to think that our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be coming here long after we're gone, don't we Hugo?' said Benedict's mother. ‘It's wonderful to know that all this beauty will be preserved for them.'

Was Eva mistaken, or had Marina cast a twinkling look in her direction?

‘Indeed,' agreed Hugo. ‘And one does so need a bolt-hole to escape the unwashed hordes every now and then. Far from the madding crowd and all that.'

Eva responded with a non-committal smile. She wasn't wholly confident that if the world was divided up into the Hugos and the unwashed hordes that she herself wouldn't fall into the latter category, and was relieved to spot Benedict making his way back across the terrace towards them.

‘I see you've met Dad,' he said as he joined them.

‘Well, sort of,' said Eva, blushing as she realised she hadn't actually introduced herself.

‘Oh, silly me for not doing the introductions,' said Marina. ‘This old curmudgeon is Hugo, dear,' and then, turning to her husband, continued, ‘and Benedict's young lady here is Eva.'

‘Ah, I'm not exactly Benedict's young lady, we're more, you know, friends,' Eva said as she shook Hugo's proffered hand and felt her cheeks further redden.

‘Bloody hell, just ignore them,' muttered Benedict. ‘They marry me off to every girl I so much as glance at. It's supposed to be an old family tradition that the Waverleys marry young, but they've got more chance with Harry than me. Come on, let's go for a swim before they start planning the nuptials.'

‘Better unpack and grab my bathing suit,' Eva said, glad to be extricated from the situation but cursing Benedict silently for his false assurances.

‘Eleni's already unpacking for you,' he told her. ‘She's the housekeeper and she'll do all of that while you're here. Woe betide you if you attempt to put her out of a job by making so much as a sandwich for yourself. Come on, I'll show you where your room is.'

Her ‘room' turned out to be more of a suite, composed of a capacious bedroom, a dressing room big enough to comfortably house a sofa and several wardrobes, and a generous bathroom with free-standing tub in front of French doors looking out towards the sea.

Eva stood and boggled at her surroundings. ‘Sweet Jesus, Benedict.
This
is what you've meant all this time by your family's holiday pad? Not exactly a flat in Benidorm, is it? I mean, I've always known that you weren't a pauper but seriously, just look at this place.'

Benedict shuffled his feet awkwardly. ‘Well, obviously property doesn't cost half as much here as in England.'

Watching him squirm it suddenly all made sense: the reason that Benedict had never invited her to his home despite visiting her in Sussex several times during university holidays was not that he was embarrassed by her but by his own background, which was apparently far more opulent than the others had imagined even in their wildest flights of speculation. Eva found herself feeling somewhat sympathetic; Lucien was already prone to calling him Gatsby, and he would have a field day if he could see this place.

An awful thought occurred to her. ‘Shit, what am I going to wear?' She grimaced at the memory of Marina in her crisp white linen dress and silver butterfly necklace. ‘Look at these cushions, and this bedding, and these sofas. The entire place is colour-coordinated. It's all white and…what would you even call that? Taupe?'

‘I know, terrifyingly tasteful, isn't it? My mother's in her element here. She likes to think of herself as dreadfully modern, so she considers it a welcome escape from all the mahogany furniture and gilt mirrors at home, the old family stuff that my father would never dream of parting with.'

‘It's impeccably, immaculately tasteful,' Eva agreed, thinking of the peeling lino at home and feeling faint with embarrassment at what Benedict must have made of her determinedly unsophisticated father. ‘But the point is, I flew hand-luggage only and here's what I packed: a swimsuit, a pair of jeans, some T-shirts and an acid yellow sundress with two of the buttons missing. Oh God, I bet your parents have dinner in top hats and ball gowns.'

‘Nah, don't you know understatement's where the real money's at?' teased Benedict. ‘Seriously, don't worry about it. Your sundress will be fine, no one will care. Besides, Harry's arriving later with his girlfriend. Sit next to her and I guarantee that whatever you wear, you'll look like a nun.'

On this point at least, Benedict was as good as his word. Harry and Carla made their entrance at dusk in a whirlwind of kisses and handshakes, half-hugs and backslaps, so that it somehow seemed as if ten people had arrived instead of two. They swept off to their room to change for supper, leaving Eva with the impression of a more solid version of Benedict and a lissom, barely-clothed goddess.

Examining the pair more closely as everyone gathered on the terrace for dinner, Eva was struck most by the uniformity of their skin. They both appeared unnaturally smooth and unblemished. Were there really humans without a single freckle or mole? And Carla's limbs—her legs flowed for miles from shorts so short they could reasonably be referred to as hotpants. There wasn't even the usual consolation of tall, slim girls being flat-chested and sexless; Carla's gravity-defying breasts threatened to escape their orange halterneck at every dip and sway.

It was impossible for Eva not to feel dumpy in her old yellow sundress, held together by several safety pins rustled up after a desperate plea to Eleni, but then, she comforted herself, it didn't really matter, at least not in the way it would have if Lucien had been there. She could just picture him leaning in towards Carla with a predatory smile, as much a feat of memory as imagination, having watched him do just that with what seemed like an infinite number of girls in countless bars over the years. Benedict, on the other hand, seemed more amused than anything by Carla's indecorous outfit, while his father appeared intensely appreciative, surveying the acres of exposed flesh with the manner of someone savouring a fine painting. Marina gave every impression of having failed to even notice Carla's near-nudity, bathing her in the same gracious warmth she had bestowed on Eva when she arrived.