Last Guests of the Season (20 page)

From up on the hillside came the chime of the church clock, five wavering strokes. Frances stopped reading and looked at her watch: it was just after ten. She sat with her hand on the open pages, listening to the crickets whirr and the low voices of the others outside, engaged in conversation: they sounded at ease, interested in one another, recovered from the effects of the night before. Perhaps the very events of the night before had helped to break the ice. They were beginning to settle – into the place and each other – and England was beginning to feel an immeasurably long way away, as if their lives there were no longer of any importance, no longer, even, quite real.

Dora
, wrote Frances, uneasy with this feeling,
I think of you, and wonder what you are doing now
…

There were times when the letter, the long internal conversation, brought Dora so close that Frances could spend whole hours engaged in it – making the journey home from work, collecting Tom from the child-minder, walking back with him to the house and preparing supper all in a daze. Now, she could neither continue writing nor summon Dora's calming presence to her side. Virginia had loved Vita – had been, it seemed, in some ways devoted to her – but not as Vita loved her. Not in that way.

Dora
, wrote Frances,
I am losing you, come back, come back
–

It was no use. Dora, an unwilling spirit in a seance, would not, tonight, be summoned. Frances slowly closed the book and got up to replace it on the shelves, feeling flat and bereft.

She walked back towards the doors to the terrace; she heard the rustle of other pages, and she turned to see Jessica, falling asleep, propped up in bed with her Walkman on, her book sliding down to the floor. What was she reading? What had Frances been reading at twelve, going on thirteen? Long empty summer evenings came back to her as she crossed the wooden floor to Jessica's doorway. She saw herself, up in her bedroom, hearing lawnmowers pushed up and down suburban gardens by men in shirtsleeves, hearing birds call, beginning to settle, and the bus on the main road changing gear, driving off and away. Tomorrow's school uniform lay on the chair at her desk by the window; in her pyjamas, Frances sat propped up against the pillows, lost in
Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, Anne of the Island
…

Did I know then? she asked herself, entering Jessica's room. No. Anne of Green Gables fell in love with Gilbert, in her class at school, who grew up to become a fine doctor, and marry her, and I fell in love with him, too. It was later, when Rowan came to live near us and came to the grammar school late: that's when I knew. That's when I tried not to know. I used to comfort myself: when you grow up, all this will be behind you, you'll grow out of it, fall in love and get married – like Anne of Green Gables, like everyone else. And I did. And then I met Dora.

She bent down to retrieve Jessica's fallen paperback. Judy Blume:
Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret.
She smiled, and closed it, and put it on the chest of drawers by the bed.

Music came faintly from the Walkman, slipping down.
So we gotta say goodbye for the summer … I'll send you all my love, every day in a letter
… Jess wasn't listening now, she was fast asleep, head lolling, skin flushed from the sun. Frances leaned forward and carefully slipped off the headphones: drifts of thick soft hair clung to the little foam pads. She lifted the cassette player and wires away from the sheets, and put it all down by the books on the chest of drawers, and then she leaned forward and kissed her, as she might have kissed her own daughter, surprising herself, because until now she had not really taken Jessica in at all.

Goodnight, she said silently. Jessica did not stir, and Frances switched off the light by the bed and went out, thinking, as she walked towards the terrace doors, of Dora's daughter, Sophie, coming into the kitchen one evening as she and Dora sat talking over their coffee. Adrian had gone to Milton Keynes for a couple of nights.

Sophie, smiling distantly at Frances, and ignoring her mother, was looking for something in one of the cupboards, swishing back long glossy hair, different from Jessica's mane, but in a gesture not dissimilar.

‘Can I help?' asked Dora.

‘No, thanks, it's all right.' Sophie went on searching, opening each door in turn, and at last went out again – whatever could she have been looking for? – and up to her room with her silent boyfriend.

‘I must go,' said Frances, wondering about Sophie and her search through the cupboards as she and her mother sat together. She spooned up crystals of brown sugar in the bowl on the table between them, watching them fall. A concert came to its end on the radio – the radio was always on in Dora's kitchen – and the applause began, fading as the announcer returned his listeners to the studio. Getting late. Time for Frances to return to her family.

‘One more coffee,' said Dora, getting up to put the kettle on. ‘Stay a bit longer, it's so nice having you here.'

And Frances smiled, lighting a last cigarette, watching the crystals tumble slowly down the sides of the sugar bowl, and settle there.

She stepped out on to the terrace.

‘Hello.' Claire, from the swing-seat, stretched out a hand. ‘We were wondering where you had got to.'

‘I switched off Jessica's light,' said Frances obliquely, picking up her cigarettes from the table. ‘She's fast asleep.' She crossed to the chair next to Oliver, and lit a cigarette. ‘So,' she said, wanting to show an interest, to make up for so clearly having chosen solitude. ‘What have you all been talking about?'

Robert reached for the wine jug. ‘Your husband has been trying to raise the tone.'

‘Not at all,' said Oliver. ‘It had no need of raising, and I should hardly count myself qualified to do so in any case.'

It was the kind of overcourteous, verging on the pompous, disclaiming and meaningless remark of which Oliver was master, distancing himself from any real engagement, and Frances, who had heard it too many times over too many dinner tables, said, more sharply than she intended: ‘Well, what heights did you reach, anyway?' and felt at once his rise of irritation at her tone. She blew out smoke. ‘Sorry. I've interrupted everything.'

Robert was refilling glasses. ‘We were talking,' he said, ‘prompted by the ring of church bells, about religion.' He sat down again, rather heavily. ‘So there.'

‘Were you, now?' Frances could not think that either he or Claire had introduced this one: she looked at Oliver enquiringly. ‘Has this been particularly exercising you recently, for some reason?'

He shrugged, still irritated. ‘It interests me as a general question, as you know.'

‘As far as I'm concerned,' said Robert, who seemed to have drunk rather more than usual, ‘there are only two questions when it comes down to it. Do you love me? Is there a God? What else is important, after all?'

Frances regarded him with a hitherto unquickened curiosity. ‘That's a rather interesting remark.'

‘Isn't it?' said Oliver. ‘But I think there are other questions.'

‘Do you?' she asked him. ‘Can't things be simple for once?'

He looked at her. ‘You are not simple, Frances.'

‘Nor are you. All the more reason to crave simplicity.'

There was a silence, an exclusion of others that was impolite. It was broken by the fierce whine of a motor bike, racing up the hillside towards them. When it had passed, Claire said: ‘At least three questions, surely. Do I love you? That's just as important.'

‘Well,' Oliver said drily to Robert, ‘I should not presume to ask you about affairs of the heart, but I should like to know about God. Is there one? Jessica gave me to understand that you were a family of atheists.'

‘Jessica?' Robert looked at him in astonishment. ‘Since when has Jessica gone in for discussion? About anything.'

‘As I recall, it was more in the nature of a passing remark. Anyway,' he waved cigarette smoke away, ‘was she right?'

‘I suppose so. About me, anyway,' said Robert. ‘I believed when I was little –'

‘When you're little you'll believe anything,' said Claire.

‘Quite. Adolescence put paid to all that, as it usually does – well, either that or you go overboard about religion, don't you? I gave it all up with a sigh of relief, as far as I can remember. More than that – there were things about it I deeply disliked.' He stopped and drank. ‘And yet –'

‘There's usually an “And yet”,' said Frances. ‘About most things.'

‘Mmm. And yet: I suppose I still try to behave as if I believe.'

‘And what does that mean?' She tapped ash into the saucer. ‘As if you are to be judged?'

He thought about it. ‘Not judged, exactly. But as if there were some kinds of absolutes.' He finished his glass and poured another. ‘It's easier to talk about absolutes than specifics, isn't it – you can get carried away with the sound of your own voice, if you're not careful. I can, anyway. When it comes down to it, living by absolutes can mean being kind, that's all. What more do you want?' He picked up the wine jug and waved it. ‘Who wants more out of this?'

‘I'm surprised there's any left,' said Claire, rocking.

He looked. ‘There isn't much. Oliver? Want to finish it? Want to tell us what you believe in? Are you a fucked-up Catholic?'

‘Robert …' Claire stopped rocking.

But Oliver was smiling, pouring the last of the wine. ‘I don't know. Possibly. I don't know if I believe any more. But I do believe in the search, I think. That does seem important, still.'

‘The search for –'

‘Meaning. For salvation, too, I think.' He was tapping on the table, concentrating. ‘Anachronistic though it may sound.'

‘And strangely enough,' said Robert, ‘anachronistic though it may sound, I think one of the things I believe in is sin.'

‘Mighty and magnificent words.' Frances drew on her cigarette. ‘Milton words. The Fall. Salvation. Sin. Do they still mean anything?'

‘Well?' said Robert. ‘Do they? What do you believe in, Frances?'

‘I used to believe that work was my salvation.' She gave Claire a smile. ‘Remember?'

‘Yes,' said Claire, looking away. ‘I do.'

‘You two must have a lot to catch up on,' said Robert.

‘This and that.'

There was no elaboration.

‘Go on,' he said to Frances. ‘Be serious. Just for fun.'

She put out her cigarette. ‘Like the man said: I don't know what I believe in, but I know what I want.'

‘And what is that?'

‘The moon,' she said, and fell silent, sensing Oliver's eyes upon her.

There was a pause.

‘Well,' said Claire helpfully, rocking again, ‘if anyone wants to know what I think, I find it irritating that people should feel you have to have religion in order to have a moral code. It requires much more of people to go through the world without the prop of faith.'

‘Exactly,' said Robert. ‘We are as one.'

‘Shut up.'

‘But we are. On this, anyway.' There was a brown dish of fruit on the table, mostly finished by the children, one or two soft pears left and a lot of pips and grape stalks. He picked at the few remaining grapes. ‘Anyway, doubt is surely far more interesting than faith. As you said, Oliver, it's the search that counts.'

‘But meanwhile one has to live,' said Claire. ‘And you don't keep the show on the road with quests and questions, not as far as I'm concerned. Life is sustained by the ordinary, the everyday.'

‘Oh, no,' said Frances. ‘Life is sustained by dreams.' Robert looked at her. She picked up her packet of cigarettes, tapped out another one, and lit it.

Oliver apparently ignored this. ‘I still think there are quite a few questions left. I still think humanism has its shortcomings. Enduring pain, for instance. Christianity has all sorts of explanations for suffering –'

‘Far too many,' said Robert.

‘I don't know. How you cope with illness? With death? In moments of crisis everyone prays.'

‘Do you?' Claire asked him.

‘I used to.'

Robert flicked grape pips over the parapet. ‘Well, I neither pray nor expect to look for something outside myself when something dreadful happens. But then, so far, nothing dreadful has. Perhaps, if it does, I shall change.' He drained his glass, and stretched, yawning.

Oliver waved more smoke away. ‘You said you believed in sin – what, in the last gasp of the century, might constitute sin, do you suppose?'

Robert tugged off the last grape and swallowed it. ‘As the man said, I think I might know if I saw it. Betrayal? Screwing up people's lives? That gives quite a bit of scope, wouldn't you say?' He got up, the iron chair scraping on the tiles. ‘On which note, I think I might hit the hay.' He looked across at Frances, still smoking. ‘You've gone rather quiet.'

She gave her little laugh. ‘Am I usually rowdy?'

‘Not exactly. Are you all right?'

Her eyes met his, wary, surprised. ‘Of course. Why?'

‘Just wondering.'

‘Don't quiz her,' said Claire, and swung her legs off the swing-seat. ‘She's tired, and so am I. I think I'll join you.' She held out her hand towards Robert. ‘Help me off here, I can't move.'

He pulled her to her feet and they stood holding hands, saying goodnight to the others.

‘Sleep well.'

‘Thank you. You too.'

‘And I hope Tom sleeps well,' said Claire, as they went towards the doors.

‘I'm sure he will,' said Frances. ‘Please don't worry. He's had a lovely day, thanks to you both.'

‘Well, we've enjoyed it as well. Goodnight.'

Frances watched them cross to Jessica's room and check her for the night. She heard them walk along the wooden corridor, and Robert go into the bathroom and Claire, yawning, climb the stairs. ‘Shan't be long,' said Robert, closing the bathroom door.