The End of Summer (5 page)

"That's OK. Mitzi's highly-strung I guess. Something to do with being so highly-bred." She put up her face, lips bunched, lo receive my kiss. I gave her one and the poodle started yapping again.

"For God's sake," said my father, "keep that bloody dog quiet," whereupon Linda tipped it unceremoniously out of the car and climbed out after it.

Linda Lansing was an actress. Twenty years or so ago she had turned up in Hollywood as a starlet, which meant a prodigious personal publicity campaign followed by a string of undistinguished movies, in which she usually played some sort of a gipsy or peasant girl, wearing an off-the-shoulder drawstring blouse, dark red lips and brooding expression, very sulky. But, inevitably, this type of movie, along with her style of acting, went out of fashion, and Linda went with them. Astutely, for she was never stupid, she swiftly married. "My husband comes before my career," read the captions beneath their wedding photographs, and for some time she disappeared from the Hollywood scene altogether. But lately, having divorced her third husband, and not yet having buttonholed the fourth, she had started to appear again, in small parts and on television. To a young generation of viewers, she was a new face, and, with clever direction, revealed an entirely unsuspected flair for comedy.

We had met her at one of those dreary Sunday brunch pool parties which were so much part of the Los Angeles scene. My father had latched on to her at once, as being the only woman in the place worth talking to. I like her as well. She has a vulgar sense of humour, a deep plummy voice and a surprising ability to laugh at herself.

My father is attractive to women, but has always handled his liaisons with an admirable discretion. I knew that he had embarked on an affair with Linda, but I had hardly expected that he would bring her back to Reef Point with him.

I decided to play it very cool. ”Well, this is a surprise. What are you doing in this neck of the woods?"

"Oh, you know how it is, honey, when your father starts twisting your arm. And just smell that sea air." She took a great lungful, coughed slightly, and turned back to the car to extricate her handbag. It was then that I saw the lavish luggage piled on the back seat. Three cases, a wardrobe-bag, a beauty box, a mink coat in a plastic bag, and Mitzi's dog basket, complete with pink rubber bone. I gaped at its quantity, but before I could say anything, my father had elbowed me out of the way and already lifted out two of the cases.

"Well, don't stand there with your mouth open," he said. "Bring something in."

And with that he headed for the cabin. Linda, after one look at my expression, tactfully decided that Mitzi needed a run on the beach and disappeared. I started after my father, and then thought better of it, went back for the dog basket, and started off again.

I
found him in the living-room, having put the two suitcases down in the middle of the floor, thrown his long-peaked cap
on
to a chair, and unloaded some bundles of old letters and papers out of his pocket on to the table. The room, which I had only just cleaned and tidied, became immediately disordered, impermanent, frantic. My father could do this to any place simply by walking into it. Now, he went over to the window to lean out and check on the view, and get a good lungful of sea air. Over his massive shoulder I could see the distant figure of Linda, skittering about with the poodle at the sea's edge. Rusty, still sulking on the window seat, did not even thump his tail.

My father turned, reaching in his shirt pocket for his cigarettes. He appeared delighted with himself. "Well," he said, "aren't

you going to ask how everything went?" He lit the cigarette, and then looked up, and frowned, flicking the lighted match out of the window behind him. "What are you standing holding the dog basket for? Put the bloody thing down."

I didn't. I said, "What's going on?"

"What do you mean?"

I realised that all this hearty good cheer was part of a big bluster.

"You know very well what I mean. Linda."

"What about Linda? You like her, don't you?"

"Of course I like her, but that's hardly the point. What's she doing here?"

"I've asked her to stay."

"With all that luggage? How long for, for heaven's sake?" "Well
..."
he gestured vaguely with his hand. "For as long as she wants."

"Isn't she working?"

"Oh, she's chucked all that." He went prowling off to the kitchen in search of a can of beer. I heard the refrigerator opening and shutting. ”She gets just about as sick of L. A. as we did. So I thought why not?" He appeared again at the kitchen door with the open beer can in his hand. "The suggestion was hardly out of my mouth, when she found someone to rent her house, along with the maid, and she was packed and ready." He frowned again. "Jane, have you conceived some sort of an affection for that dog basket?"

I continued to ignore him. ”For how long?'' I insisted grimly.

„Well, as long as we do. I don't know. For the winter maybe.''

I said, "There isn't room."

"Of course there's room. And whose house is this anyway?"

He drained the beer can, tossed it neatly across the kitchen into the trash can, and went out to bring in the next load of luggage. This time he carried the cases into his bedroom. I put down Mitzi's dog basket and followed him. What with the bed and the suitcases and the two of us, there wasn't much room.

I said, "Where's she going to sleep?"

"Well, where do you think she's going to sleep?" He sat on the monstrous bed, and the springs complained bitterly. "Right here."

I could think of nothing to say. I simply stared at him. This had never, ever happened before. I wondered if he had gone out of his mind.

Something in my face must have got through to him then, for he suddenly looked contrite and took my hands.

„Janey, don't look like that. You're not a kid any more, I don't have to pretend to you. You like Linda, I wouldn't have brought her back if I didn't know you liked her. And she'll be company for you, I won't have to leave you alone so much. Oh, come on, take that dismal face off and go and make a pot of coffee."

I pulled my hands free. I said, "I haven't got time."

"What do you mean?"

"I
...
I have to go and pack."

I went out of his room, and into my own, and I pulled my suitcase out from under the bed, and put it on the bed and opened it, and started to pack, like people do in films, opening drawers one by one and emptying them into the suitcase.

From the open door behind me my father spoke.

"What do you think you're doing?" I turned to look at him, my hands full of shirts and belts and scarves and handkerchiefs. I said, "I'm going."

"Where?"

"Back to Scotland."

He took a single step into the room, and jerked me round to face him. I went on quickly, not letting him say a word. "You had four letters,'' I told him. ”Three from my grandmother and one from the solicitors. You opened them and you read them and you never told me, because you didn't want me to go back. You didn't even discuss them with me."

His grip on my arm never loosened, but I thought his face lost a little of its colour.

"How did you know about those letters?"

I told him about David Stewart. "He told me everything," I finished "Not that I needed to be told," I added recklessly, "because I knew it all anyway."

"And just what exactly did you know?"

„That you never wanted me to stay at Elvie after Mother died. That you wouldn't ever want me to go back." He watched me, puzzled. "I was
listening,"
I shouted at him, as though he had suddenly gone deaf. "I was in the hall, listening, and I heard everything that you and my grandmother said to each other."

"And you never said a word?"

"What good would it have done?"

He sat carefully on the edge of my bed, so as not to disturb my packing. "Did you want to be left behind?"

His obtuseness infuriated me. "No, of course I didn't, I've loved being with you, I wouldn't have had it any other way, but that was all seven years ago, and now I'm an adult, and you had no right to hide away those letters and not say anything to me."

"Do you want to go back so badly?"

"Yes, I do. I love Elvie, you know how much it means to me." I picked up a hairbrush, my photographs, jammed them down the sides of the case. "I
...
I wasn't going to say anything about the letters. I thought it would make you miserable, and I couldn't go anyway, because you hadn't anyone to look after you. But now, it's different."

"All right, so it's different, and you're going. I'm not going to stop you. But how are you going to get there?"

"David Stewart's leaving La Carmella at eleven. If I hurry I can catch him. He has a seat booked for me on the New York plane tomorrow morning."

"And when are you coming back?"

"Oh, I don't know. Some time I suppose." I pushed in a book, Anne Morrow Lindbergh's
Gift from the Sea,
which I can never be without, and my Simon and Garfunkel LP. I shut down the lid of the case, and everything bulged out and it wouldn't close, so I opened it again, and flattened things frantically, and still it wouldn't work, and in the end it was my father who did it for me, by sheer brute force, holding down the lid of the case, and forcing the locks to snib.

Over the closed suitcase, I met his eye. I said, "I wouldn't be going if Linda hadn't come . . ." My voice trailed away. I look my raincoat from the hook on the back of the door, and put it on over my shirt and jeans.

My father said, "You're still wearing your apron."

It was the sort of thing that once we would have laughed at. Now, in deathly silence I reached round and untied it, and tore it off, and dropped it across the bed.

I said, "If I take the car, and leave it at the motel, could you
or
Linda pick it up?"

"Sure," said my father . . . and then, "Wait
..."
and he disappeared into his room again, only to return with a fistful of money, five-dollar bills, ten-dollar, one-dollar, all dirty and ragged as a bundle of old newspapers. "Here," he said, and shoved them into the pocket of my raincoat, "you'd better take this. You might need it."

I said, "But you
..."
but at that moment Linda and Mitzi chose to return from the beach, Mitzi shedding sand all over the floor, and Linda delighted with her short commune with nature.

"Oh, those waves, I've never seen anything like them. They must be ten feet high." She noticed then, my suitcase, my raincoat, my presumably miserable face. "Jane, what are you doing?"

"I'm going away."

„Where, for heaven's sakes?"

"To Scotland."

"I hope not because of me."

"Partly. But only because it means that there's someone to look after Father."

She looked a little disconcerted, as though looking after Father had been the last thing she expected to do, but she gamely covered up and made the best of it. "Well, that's fun for you. When're you going?''

"Today. Now. I'm taking the Dodge over to La Carmella
..
." I had already started to back away, because the situation was becoming more than I could bear. My father picked up my case and came after me. "And I hope you have a good winter. And that there aren't too many storms. And there are eggs and canned tuna fish in the icebox
..."

I went backwards down the porch steps, was out of the house, turned, and ducked under the line of washing (would Linda have the sense to bring it in?), and I got in behind the wheel of the car and my father heaved the suitcase in on to the back seat.

"Jane - " but I was incapable of saying goodbye. I was actually moving, on my way, when I remembered Rusty. By then it was too late. He had heard me, heard the car door, heard the engine start up, and he was out of the house and after me like a shot, barking indignantly, racing alongside me, his ears flat against his head, and in imminent danger of almost certain death.

It was the last straw. I stopped the car. My father with a great bellow of "Rusty!" came after the dog. Rusty stood on his back legs and scratched and scrabbled with his claws on the car door, and I leaned over and tried to push him off and said, "Oh, Rusty, don't. Get down. I can't take you. I can't take you with me."

Father, actually running, had caught up with us. He swept Rusty up into his arms and stood looking down at me. Rusty's eyes were hurt and reproachful, but my father had an expression
on
his face which I had never seen before and did not wholly understand. But I knew in that moment I didn't want to say goodbye to either of them, and I burst into tears.

„You will look after Rusty, won't you?'' I bawled, my mouth going square. "Shut him up so that he can't follow the car. And don't let him get run over. And he only likes Red Heart dog food, not the other kind. And don't leave him alone on the beach, someone might steal him." I groped for a handkerchief. As usual I hadn't got one, and as usual, my father took one out
of
his pocket, and silently handed it to me. I blew my nose, and i hen I put up my arms, and pulled him down so that I could kiss him, and Rusty too, and I said goodbye and Father said, "Goodbye, my Pooch," which he hasn't called me since I was six, and bawling harder than ever, and hardly able to see a thing, I never looked back, but I knew that they stood there, and that they watched until I was over the ridge and out of sight