Rough Music (36 page)

“Dad?”

A woman’s voice. He looked up and saw a taxi turning back up the hill and Poppy standing there, sunglasses pushed up on her hair, a large bag slung over one arm.

“You’re so brown!” she exclaimed. “I hope you’ve been using total block.”

“Where did you spring from?” Finding her before him was like not realizing how thirsty one was until someone offered one a glass of iced water. He stood to kiss her. She allowed herself to be properly hugged these days. It was one of the aspects he appreciated most to her becoming a mother. When she had first left school, she went through a phase of pecking him on the cheek which he had found deeply depressing.

Sandy appeared on the veranda too. “Hey!” He gave Poppy a kiss. “How come?”

“Oh. The squash course was postponed till the autumn,” she said. “Not enough takers. So I stuck around for a couple of days just doing things I hadn’t done for ages, like going to galleries and seeing old girlfriends. Then I thought, this is silly, I can join them. So here I am. You don’t mind, do you, Will? Is there room?”

“Course I don’t mind,” Will said from the doorway. “And Sandy’s broken into the fourth room, so I can sleep in there now.”

“You must have left at dawn,” John said.

“Pretty much.” She looked pale compared to the rest of them. Citified. “This is lovely.”

“The boys are on the beach with Frances,” Sandy said. “I’ll go and get them. They’ll be over the moon.”

“No,” she said suddenly. “Wait.” She frowned. “Can I have a drink or something? I’m boiling.”

“Of course. Come in, come in,” said Will, playing host, and John felt how relieved he was that Poppy was there. “Water, then something stronger?”

“Just water,” she said, following him in and glancing around her. “Look. I’d better be quick before she comes in. Is Mum OK?”

John exchanged a glance with Will and realized how guilty they must look. “Well,” he began.

“She hasn’t been brilliant,” Will added. “She got terribly distraught one night at a concert and her mood’s been all over the place ever since.”

“She seems OK today,” John said. “Why?”

Poppy sighed, took the water and sat heavily on the sofa. “The squash wasn’t postponed. I was really enjoying it, actually. But I came because I was worried. She rang me last night. In the middle of last night. It was really scary. She ranted about needing me here and … and she said Will could explain. In fact she got quite obscene. For her.”

“There’s been a lot of that,” Will said.

“You should have rung me on the mobile if you were worried,” said Sandy. “You didn’t need to come all this way.”

“I tried last night but it was turned off. And several times at the station and on the train but you were permanently engaged.”

“Hugo was on the Net first thing,” John said.

“I’ll bloody murder him,” said Sandy.

“Her actual words, if I got this right, were that she was worried about Sandy. Then, when I asked how she was and was she having one of her bad days, she completely lost it and said,
Just get your effing butt down here and ask your filthy little brother what he’s been up to
.”

Will shifted uneasily and sat beside her. “God,” he said.

“She’s worse than I realized,” John said. “Darling, I’m so sorry. It must have been vile.”

“Don’t be silly,” Poppy said. “But I had to come. You see that?”

“Oh yes,” Will said. “Absolutely. I mean … You didn’t think she was serious about me …”

“No.” She laughed. A little tensely, John thought.

“Or you’d have rung me on
my
mobile.”

“You promised to leave it at home,” she said sharply.

“Yes, but, well. Old habits. I was worried about an emergency at the shop.”

“You are hopeless. Has he been pestering poor Kristin every day?” she asked John.

“No,” he said. “I’ve been taking more calls on it than he has.”

“Which reminds me,” Will said. “I thought that journalist was ringing you half an hour ago. You’re not going to let them ruin lunch? Not now we’ve got a surprise guest.”

“What journalist?” she asked.

John was starting to explain about Farmer and the proposed extradition agreement when Sandy, who had fallen quiet, jumped up and interrupted.

“Come and look round,” he said. “Come and see our room.” She looked puzzled but Sandy was holding out a hand so, bemused, she smiled and took it. “There’s something I want to tell you,” he added.

“Sandy?” Will said, then jumped up for all the world as if to hold them back. “How about drinks first?” he said. “What about Bloody Marys? I’d love a Bloody Mary. Dad?”

“Oh. Well, yes?” John said uncertainly.

“Sis?”

“Sure. Let’s be devils,” she laughed.

But when Sandy led her into his room and shut the door, Will made no move toward the kitchen but merely stared for a while before walking out on to the veranda. John thought he would be fetching in Frances but he only stood out there, staring at the people on the beach. Then, when the breeze fluttered his shirt, he reached to unhook the sculpture thing Frances had wasted her money on and nudged into motion the wind vane that drove it. The sculpture began its regular thwacking noise, which Frances had explained was a rook-scarer but which John thought served merely to crank up an unpleasant sense of tension in all who were forced to hear it. Perhaps it was Will’s playful way of summoning Frances.

Suddenly there came a gasp from behind the bedroom door followed by the unmistakable whack-whack of a double-handed face slap. Then Poppy emerged even whiter than when she arrived and John jumped up. “What the hell …?” he started.

Fury made her lips tight. “Where are they?” she asked. He had not seen her like this since she was a girl.

“On the beach,” he told her. “What’s going on? I’m sure they’ll be in any second.”

But she was flying out through the French windows.

Will stood in her way. “Listen. Whatever you think … It was over. Don’t listen to him, all right? Whatever he’s told you wasn’t true. He loves you.”

“I’m not speaking to you,” she said, her voice dangerously level.

“No,” he said. “Of course you’re not. I’ll get the others. You’ll be wanting to pack.” He turned toward the garden gate.

Poppy hesitated, torn, robbed of a gesture perhaps, then marched back inside. “Dad? Where were they sleeping? Hugo and Oz, I mean.”

“In there.” John gestured to the middle bedroom. “Look, would someone please …?”

But she marched on into the room and started hurling the children’s clothes and toys into a suitcase. She packed with single-minded fury, even leaving out dry clothes for them to change into. As awed as he was confused, John merely watched. Sandy emerged slowly from his room, heard what was going on and walked to the bathroom, whence he returned with the children’s plastic carrier bag of wash things. “You’ll be wanting these,” he said, standing outside their bedroom door.

“Thanks,” she said, and grabbed the bag.

“Please,” John said, firmly this time. “What in God’s name has happened?”

She looked up, startled, as though she had forgotten he was there. “Sandy can tell you. Can’t you, Sandy? He has a little speech all ready.”

“Look, can’t we just …?” Sandy began but Poppy slammed the door on him and continued thumping around behind it. Sandy looked mournfully at John, shrugged and said, “You were bound to know sooner or later. The thing is, John, I’m gay. Bisexual. Whatever. And the reason I’ve realized this is because as long as I’ve been happily married, I’ve also been having an affair with Will and he tried to split up with me last night, which is what made me see. That I’m … not straight.”

The room felt very still and very small, as though someone had switched off the beach. While Sandy was making his announcement, Frances and the children arrived on the veranda, Oscar shouting. “Mum!” Hugo only staring solemnly. Poppy emerged with their suitcase and a hand held out.

“Keys,” she demanded.

“What?” said Sandy.

“Car keys. Now.” Obediently he handed over a bunch and she marched past Frances and the boys—Oscar was starting to cry—saying only, “Come on. Quickly. Get them out of those things, would you, Mum?”

Sandy ran after her. Frances struggled to comfort Oscar as she freed him from his wetsuit. Hugo peeled off his own. John took them out their dry clothes. Frances was crying too. And all the time the bloody sculpture was going
thwack! thwack!
Returning from the car to help, Sandy obviously became maddened by it too. He tried to fasten it again but his hands were shaking and he shoved it instead. There was a sound of splintering wood and the thing tilted over and became disconnected so the wind vane spun on in silence, to no effect.

“Sorry,” Sandy said, possibly for breaking the sculpture, possibly for more.

There was a yell from the car. “Will you come
on
!”

“Come on, small fry.” Sandy picked Oscar up while Hugo ran on ahead. With a desperate glance round at John and Frances, Sandy ran over to his car, loaded the boys in and went round to the passenger side. But the car flew off before he could open the door.

John turned to find Will standing on the veranda behind them. He had their bags packed too. He must have moved like a demon. A shirtcuff trapped in the lid of one case bore testimony to his speed. He had even slung Frances’s precious herbs and spices and the remaining drinks bottles into the cardboard box in which they had traveled down.

“What …?” John began.

“I think you’d better be off too,” he said.

“Darling,” Frances began and he turned on her.

“Go,” he said. “Just go. You stupid, meddling,
ignorant
woman.”

“No,” she whimpered. “No!”

“It was over. It was all over. I had ended it. No one would have been hurt. But you had to put your … your
fucking
oar in and now this happens!”

“Look, Will,” John began.

“Go.” Will was like a stranger. A tall, gaunt, exhausted stranger. There was real hate in his eyes as he spoke to Frances but when John, thinking to stall matters, asked if they might at least use the bathroom before they set off, the hate melted and Will crumpled against the door-jamb. “Yes, of course,” he said. “Do whatever you need.”

John checked quickly for their belongings and Frances’s drugs and filled a few more bags. Will’s mobile telephone rang. John answered, thinking
bloody journalists
, but it was Harriet. “This really isn’t a good time,” he told her.

“Really? God. Sorry. John, look, it’s just to say that Heather Sutton won’t be ringing after all. The extradition’s off.”

“It’s off?”

The tone of her quick explanation was one of real concern but it could not have mattered less. Will had disappeared. Frances had sunk on to the teak bench outside. No longer crying, she was vacant, utterly lost. Sandy was standing in the drive, no less helpless.

John assumed control. He led Frances to the bathroom to tidy herself up and change out of her swimming things then, having easily persuaded her to take a couple of sleeping pills, shepherded both her and his son-in-law to his car.

Many fathers in his position would have refused Sandy a lift or, at best, have taken him no further than the nearest station. But they were on the motorway, buying petrol, before this thought dawned on him, by which time any such gesture would have been both limp and inconvenient. Besides, he felt dismay, not anger. Sitting on the back seat, while Frances snored quietly in the front, Sandy seemed intent on making himself as small and inoffensive a presence as possible. He was, John thought, as much a victim of fortune as the rest of them.

When they finally reached the outskirts of Barrowcester, John dropped him off at the foot of the drive to walk to his wife and house like a lost thing. Frances had woken by now and gave Sandy a farewell kiss that was nonetheless loving for her having temporarily mislaid the unfortunate circumstances.

“Farmer’s not coming back after all,” John told her as they drove on. “Harriet rang to tell me. Court found in his favor and said it would be an infringement of his civil liberties because in Brazil a crime no longer holds so many years after the event.”

“Oh darling,” she said, eyes wet again. “Do you really mean that? Clean slates all round? Oh I’m so glad!” and she shyly stroked his forearm as he changed gear, a gesture that took him back to 1968 and another crime entirely.

It was a Saturday so the beach was crowded with people who were not on holiday but happened to live nearby. The tide was extraordinarily low, which made matters worse. Skip, like Julian, had come to think of the small cove before the bungalow as
their
beach and joined him in despising the invasion. As the tide receded past the last rocky defense against the hordes of Polcamel and the first few people waded round in their flip-flops, the two of them talked in scornful voices and stared as witheringly as they could but no one seemed bothered. Before long the precious private sand was a maze of striped wind-shelters, folding chairs and lunch boxes. There were numerous dogs bounding around lifting their legs and worse on sandcastles and one family who knew no better had actually produced a portable gas burner and was boiling a kettle.