In the Summertime (30 page)

Steve drove the boat out of the creek and into the estuary, taking the route Clare was telling him to. Miranda sat at the back with Harriet and the children, thinking about how this would be the last event connected with Jack. From now on of course they’d talk about him, though presumably less and less as time passed. And he’d be remembered on anniversaries, preferably more on his birthday than on his death day, but essentially after today he would be in the past.

‘Fancy a drink?’ Harriet nudged Miranda. ‘Time to open a bottle?’

‘OK, let’s.’ Miranda could do with one, though she also knew quite well that, in the end, champagne can make you tearful and gloomy. Still, if they were having a funeral that wasn’t such an unexpected thing, was it?

Below the deck, Miranda unloaded paper plates for the cake and opened a bottle of champagne, pouring it into cheap plastic glasses and hoping the spirit of Jack wouldn’t mind such lack of class. He’d probably say something like ‘I can see you really pushed the boat out for me, then’ and wait, looking pleased with himself, for them to acknowledge the pun.

‘Drinks, everyone.’ The boat had slowed so Miranda felt steady enough to go back up the ladder with some of the glasses. ‘Steve? One for you?’

‘No thanks,’ he said, looking at her only briefly before turning back to look where he was going. ‘I like to keep a clear head on the water.’

At last Clare was happy with where they’d got to and asked Steve to slow right down. She took the urn of ashes out of the bag and Harriet fetched the bunch of flowers (agapanthus, lilies, cosmos, verbena) she’d picked from the garden that morning. Andrew had a bunch of roses from his own garden, the roses his father had grown. Miranda thought it poignant that Jack would have remembered those and she felt tears pricking in her eyes.

‘It’s the right place. You can see the headland,
Falmouth and across to St Mawes from here as well as right out to sea. Jack will start where he most loved to be and end up wherever the ocean takes him.’

Steve kept the boat steady and Clare unscrewed the urn, having first asked Andrew which side of the boat she should throw them from. Miranda was glad about that. She’d heard stories about ash mishaps; a friend of hers had tipped her late father off the end of Brighton pier only to have most of him fly back in her face. It wasn’t on a par with the apocryphal tale of Keith Richards smoking some of his father’s ashes but it was uncomfortably close.

In silence, Clare tipped the ashes over the side of the boat. Miranda watched as they floated out on the current, just a pale shadow going in and out of various shapes as she watched. She and Andrew dropped their flowers into the water, beside the spreading slick of grey. She stood close beside Clare, Harriet on the other side. ‘Bye, Jack,’ she and Clare murmured. Harriet was crying quietly. ‘Bye, Dad,’ she said, and they all raised their glasses and drank to his afterlife.

‘I hear you’re going away.’ Miranda was last off the boat and had to say something to Steve. She couldn’t just leave it like this, with this heavy and ridiculous silence between them. The others had gone ahead and this was her chance.

‘Am I?’ he said, looking startled. ‘Yeah, well, I have
been thinking about it for a while. You don’t always want to live and die in the same place.’

‘I suppose not. Well, good luck. And thanks so much for today. And … for everything.’

‘Look, Miranda …’

‘Yes?’

‘Sorry about dashing off back then, but … you know, that git of a husband of yours …’

‘
Ex
-husband. Very long time ex,’ she reminded him.

‘It was what he said. Just reminded me, that’s all, that we’re not the same, you and me.’

‘And reminded you I was a horrid, selfish little teenager back then? I didn’t know any better. And if that’s what you think I’m still like then it’s your choice. But I really thought you’d seen a better side of me now I’m grown up. Be lucky and be happy.’ She gave him a very quick kiss and turned and left, fast, before she could burst into tears. Up ahead on the path she could see Andrew and Jess walking together. He had his arm round her. Her spirits lifted at the sight. At least things would work out for someone, it looked like. For the absolutely best and most brilliantly right people too.

The regatta really marked the beginning of the rundown of the tourist season for the village, at least until the prices dropped in late September and the place refilled with older people down by coach for the off-peak prices and autumnal garden tours. After that small yet profitable surge, it would be an empty run for rentals and guest houses till the Turkey and Tinsel theme trips filled the place again, at a point way too early for any sensible person to be thinking about Christmas. After this bank holiday weekend the visitor numbers would crash to a sudden low as families – both renters and those with second homes – rushed back home to sort out school uniforms and get stuck into last-minute holiday homework.

Miranda, thinking about this, realized that neither Silva nor Bo had so much as opened a book since they’d got here.

‘Um – I know I must usually be the least pushy mother on the planet, but is there something you two should have been doing for school while we’ve been away?’

Her children, about to get in the pool for one last practice go on their raft, looked at her blankly, as if she was talking in a strange and unfamiliar language.

‘School?’ Silva asked, looking puzzled. ‘Do you have to mention school? On my
birthday
?’

‘Yes, I’m sorry but I do. And school, well, it’s a big building with lots of teachers in it. You go there to learn stuff so you can get some kind of job, maybe, later in life?’

‘I like, know what it is, Mum. Chill,’ Silva said, sliding off the diving board and into the water. Bo was saying nothing.

‘So – was there something?’

‘Bit of maths,’ Bo said with a don’t-know shrug, ‘And like maybe a book.’

‘
Maybe
as in definitely?’

‘Yeah, but it’s only a
book
. Plenty of time when we get home.’

‘Which book?’

‘
Wuthering Heights
,’ he mumbled, pulling one of the raft’s ropes a bit tighter. Miranda could see he didn’t need to and was just avoiding looking at her. No knots of any son-of-Andrew would be loose.

‘
Wuthering Heights?
It’s quite long. And I know you’ll
only read it in reluctant bits. If you’d brought it with you, we could all have read it and talked about it or something.’

‘I did bring it with me,’ he admitted, giving her a grin. ‘Also, yeah, but I saw it on telly. Tom wossname, Hardy. He was thingy. Heathrow.’

‘Heathcliff,’ Miranda said.

‘Not a nice bloke. Can’t see how that can be what Miss Fenlon at school called a “romantic lead”. He’s not hero material, in my opinion.’

‘No – well, you know, it takes all sorts,’ she said, suddenly thinking of the moody look on Steve’s face. He and Heathcliff, they could glower for Britain. Best to forget about both of them for now, maybe. She would, instead, be cheered up by the big chocolate cake Clare had made for Silva.

‘I made costumes for you and Amy, for the fancy dress,’ Clare was telling Harriet over a lunch on the kitchen terrace of bread with various hams, cheese and pickles and leftovers trawled from the fridge. It wasn’t worth having a major stock-up, Miranda had decided, as they’d be going in a day or two. And they could fill up on cake for now. She wasn’t looking forward to the Saturday traffic on one of the busiest turn-round days of the year but even sitting in a jam for hours could be endured.

‘I vaguely remember,’ Harriet was saying. ‘Were we Romans?’

‘Antony and Cleopatra. You looked wonderful, even if I say it myself. You didn’t win, though. That would have broken the rules.’

‘Rules?’ Silva asked. ‘What kind of rule says you can’t win if you’ve gone in for it? That’s not fair.’

‘The kind of rule that says it has to be a local, full-time resident to get prizes, because the visitors are just
that
, backed up with a sub-clause that it mustn’t be a child who has led a thieving spree at the village shop.’

Bo burst out laughing. ‘Harriet? You
stole
?’

‘Certainly not. What do you take me for? I just dared all the others to do it.’

‘Hmm – that’s not how it was seen at the time. But anyway, that was then. Let’s hope Bo and Silva do better with their raft. It’s certainly looking good.’

‘Maybe we should whisper to the judges that it’s Silva’s birthday and see if that helps.’

‘Silva wouldn’t want an unfair advantage, would you, darling?’ Clare said. Silva didn’t look so sure about that and sat frowning, considering. ‘I want to win. But it’s a race so there’s no way to cheat. Is there?’ She looked hopeful.

‘No cheating,’ Miranda said. ‘Jeez, what have I raised here?’

‘Fourteen,’ she said later to Jessica when she met her on the way to the regatta. ‘Where did that go to? I don’t remember how she went from being a tiny baby to, say, twelve.’

‘We had them pretty young, compared with parents now. God, don’t I sound old?’ Jess giggled. ‘But most of my friends are only just thinking about having their first babies. In our mothers’ day they were all told their eggs had gone rotten by the time they got past thirty. You could start again,’ she said as they walked across the footbridge to go and bag places on the pub terrace to watch their children. ‘You could have a whole second family.’

‘Ha, yeah, and that would be with …?’ She laughed. ‘Nobody wants me.’ Would it be a little lone afterthought if she
did
have one, she wondered. But her mother had had her first and then years later the two other girls. And Jess had little half-brothers much younger than her. It wasn’t such an unfeasible idea.

‘Steve did. I bet he still does,’ Jessica said. ‘He’s just, you know, got too much stubborn pride.’

‘He’s got Cheryl, is what he’s got.’

‘No he hasn’t. You’ve got to let go of that one.’

‘But she said …’

‘She didn’t, you just think she did. Look, I know better than most that life’s too friggin’ short. If you want him, make an effort.’

‘Why doesn’t he? He’s the one who took off the minute he’d shagged me. What does that tell you?’

‘Well, there is that. But there’s something else. And I’ve Cheryl to thank for the information.’

They were walking past the old phone box. Someone
had added another, smaller gnome to the hideous giant one. A gnome-baby.

‘What is it?’

‘Well – did you actually see any boxes of actual fish in the back of Steve’s van last week?’

Miranda thought for a moment. ‘Well no. But they were in the separate bit at the back.’

‘Ah, but were they? Cheryl told me he never delivers to London on a Wednesday. Only Tuesdays and sometimes Fridays. And someone else had already done Monday.’

‘And that means …? An extra unexpected order? An event or something?’

‘No, you idiot. He just took the opportunity to give you a lift. To
be
with you. Don’t you get it?’

‘But then why would he bolt?’ Clouds were beginning to clear a bit. She wondered if it could possibly be true. But how did he know she was going that early and would be at the end of the lane right then? She could hardly accuse him of deliberately getting lightning to strike that tree.

‘You see, I just think if you two got together on your own, for ten minutes, you could sort this right out.’

‘Hmm … maybe.’

‘No maybe, just do it. Give him a call and make him talk to you. Do it now.’

They were just passing the village shop. Cheryl was inside, squealing with laughter. Could Jessica be right?
If she didn’t actually find out now, she’d go away wishing she had. Miranda took her mobile out and clicked it on. Nothing, no signal.

‘Typical, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Just when you really need it.’

The pub was open all day and doing a massive trade in pasties and beer. The spectators crowded on to the terrace to watch the boats racing in the various categories. Freddie was out in Andrew’s dinghy, showing a lot of skill against slightly miffed local sailing club stalwarts and winning two of his three races.

‘Chip off the block, Andrew,’ Clare said, pleased for him. Even Geraldine looked thrilled when Freddie did so well.

‘It’s hardly changed at all, has it, Miranda?’ Clare went on as a line of small children in home-made fancy dress outfits (as well as one in a blatantly shop-bought Snow White frock) lined up on the terrace to wild applause from doting parents. ‘I bet it’ll still be the same when your own grandchildren are coming down here.’

Miranda felt unexpectedly tearful at that. What were the chances of that, after all? Unless Jess was still in the village (and with Andrew, it now looked pretty certain from the way they seemed hardly able to be more than a foot apart), she doubted she’d be back. Unless …

Bloody phone, Miranda thought, moving up to higher ground in search of a signal. Still nothing. Below
on the river, the races continued. Rowing for the over-fifties, mixed pairs, parent and child, on they went till the last one of the day, the raft race.

Miranda watched as Silva and Lola, dressed in bikinis plus pink and purple sarongs and garlands of flowers and bracken on their heads, went down to the water with their raft still hidden under cloths. Bo and Freddie, who had come to the decision that speed was preferable to participation, were no longer going to be aboard as there simply wasn’t the room, so they were on launch duty and there for the cheering on instead. There were about six other entrants, one of them including the streaky surf-boy that Silva talked to. Miranda saw him say something to Silva down on the shore and she moved closer to get a better view of the race, fnding herself standing next to Cheryl who was wearing the highest espadrilles Miranda had ever seen and tiny denim shorts with a pink glittery halter-neck top. It all seemed quite a get-up for a simple village event, but then, Miranda remembered, she was moving on. Probably to Essex, she caught herself thinking rather nastily.

The klaxon blared and the rafts were off, two of them immediately capsizing to encouraging cheers from the onlookers. Silva and Lola seemed to be just about keeping their balance and the pair of bright crocodiles were heading out to the halfway mark quite strongly, closely followed by the blond surfer and his friend on
something made, it seemed, entirely of big plastic water containers.