‘I’ve booked a table at the pub,’ Dafydd said when they got back to the house. ‘I hope that suits everyone. I wouldn’t want to subject you to my culinary inadequacies.’
‘But you’re a great cook, Dad,’ Mimi said.
‘Not everyone appreciates corned beef hash, cariad.’
Jordan was sitting on the floor in the living room, hat on, playing a guitar. Elizabeth, on her way to the bathroom, paused in the hallway to listen. He was absorbed in the music – something slow and melancholy – and she wasn’t sure if he was aware that she was standing there. He played confidently, his fingers picking out the melody whilst his thumb kept up a rhythmic strumming. She had never learned to play the guitar – second flute in the school orchestra was the pinnacle of her musical achievement – but, having endured years of her sons’ enthusiastic, if mediocre, attempts, she knew that Jordan was rather good.
Diane joined her and they listened together until, looking up, he saw them and stopped.
Diane clapped gently. ‘What was it?’
‘Nothing. Just…’ he shook his head.
‘Well it was terrific.’
‘Thanks.’ Heaving himself to his feet, he took the guitar and leaned it carefully against the wall.
‘Have you been playing long?’ Elizabeth asked.
She sounded like the Queen speaking to a guest at a Buckingham Palace garden party.
‘Since I was five.’
‘Did you have lessons?’
Queen Elizabeth the Third.
He cleared his throat. ‘Dad.’
She noted the shiny patch of skin on his elbow, evidence of a recent fall, the faint scrawl of Layla’s phone number across the back of his hand which had resisted soap and water for several days. A leather bootlace and a wide yellow band, indented with a message that she couldn’t decipher, encircled his right wrist. He had taken his trainers off and she saw that he was wearing odd socks – one black and one navy blue.
Until last Saturday Jordan Fry had been an insignificant form, somewhere in the background of her son’s life. But she could no longer keep him there. There was no getting away from it, he could well figure in her life way beyond the end of the week. But that didn’t mean she had to like it. Or him. (Were you only allowed to start disliking someone when they reached the age of eighteen?) Jordan had mentioned his father and camping expeditions and visits to Manchester. He might have half-brothers and sisters, hosts of aunts and cousins. He must have (or have had at some point) two sets of grandparents. For all she knew, he was in contact with the lot of them. (So where the hell were they when Vashti needed childcare?) If Alex had ever given her the low-down on Jordan Fry, she’d made a point of not remembering. Clues were there but showing an interest implied acceptance of the Alex-Vashti ‘thing’ and its attendant lifestyle. She didn’t expect her son to give up his music – merely to keep it as a means of relaxation after a hard week in the office. (Didn’t they warn that it was a mistake to have the thing you most loved doing as your job? She just might mention that to Laurence if he returned from France with some grand plan to open a restaurant.)
She wasn’t ready to abandon hopes of a qualification and a more structured life for her son. Occasionally she detected in Laurence’s tone the intimation that, had Alex followed him to Eton he wouldn’t now be in thrall to an oddball woman ten years his senior, scraping a livelihood by playing the fiddle and existing in a three-roomed flat above a butcher’s shop in Stoke Newington. And occasionally she felt like hinting back that it had been Laurence who’d encouraged Alex to take up the wretched violin in the first place (although he’d had Fauré not folk music in mind). But none of this was explicitly expressed because… well, because they were broadminded liberals, weren’t they, whose only ambition for their children was that they should be happy.
‘Everything okay?’ she asked.
He nodded.
They walked up to the village. In places the arching branches of the hedges formed a green tunnel through which swallows dipped like miniature Spitfires, scattering swarms of midges. Wild honeysuckle and barbecueing meat scented the air. Lawns and porches were strewn with buckets and spades and shrimping nets. Wetsuits, like black shadows, dangled from rotary clotheslines and surfboards leaned against garden walls.
The pub was a long, low building, resembling a terrace of stone cottages. Opposite the pub, four sturdy but unkempt ponies grazed a triangular patch of coarse grass, barely bothering to raise their heads as the girls rushed to pet them.
‘They’re a menace,’ Dafydd said. ‘If you leave the gate open, they wander in and demolish everything in the garden.’
He raised his voice making sure that his daughters heard. ‘I’ve suggested to Ken, more than once, that he put them on his specials board.’ He chalked imaginary letters in the air. ‘Pony. And. Chips.’
‘Daaaad.’
The half-dozen tables on the pub’s terrace were fully occupied and, as they climbed the steps, Elizabeth noticed that several of the customers smiled at Dafydd and raised a hand. He responded with ‘Hi’ or something in Welsh. As he’d explained, he joined these people in their sitting rooms every evening which made him an honorary member of families across the Principality. Tomorrow at work or over the garden fence they’d say The Rain Man came into the pub last night, and everyone would feel a togetherness because Dafydd Jones was one of their own.
The restaurant was hot. Two ceiling fans made of brass and rattan looked bizarrely colonial as they rotated ineffectually above the knick-knacks that decorated every surface and covered every inch of wall space.
‘Evenin’ Dafydd.’ The paunchy man behind the bar pointed towards an empty table at the far end of the room. ‘I’ve put you down there. Bit more private.’
‘Thanks, Ken. Much appreciated.’
They ran the gauntlet of the diners. What did they make of the Rain Man and his entourage? Did they think she was Dafydd’s wife? Surely not. Diane, in her baggy print trousers and chunky jewellery, looked much more the part of celebrity partner.
They shuffled around the table and she found herself sitting between Diane and Jordan, and opposite Dafydd who had chosen to sit with his back to the room so he could ‘eat peas off my knife without it being reported to the nation’. Sets of cutlery, wrapped in red paper napkins, rested alongside raffia placemats. Salt cellar, pepper pot (the ready-ground variety) and stoppered vinegar jug were contained in a small metal crate next to the bottle of brown sauce and the plastic tomato which she presumed held ketchup. The menu – a laminated A4 sheet crammed with neat, rounded handwriting – was defiantly unfashionable. There was no mention of jus or coulis, no crushed potatoes and nothing at all served on a bed of puy lentils.
Diane was the first to make up her mind. ‘Bangers and mash, please.’
Dafydd, Angel and Mimi went for chicken curry – ‘It’s a Jones family favourite’ – and Jordan chose fish and chips.
‘Elizabeth?’ Dafydd said.
‘Ummm.’ She ran her finger down the list, searching, in vain, for something low-fat accompanied by fresh vegetables. ‘Ummm. Let’s see.’
He came to her aid, covering up her feeble indecision. ‘One golden rule. Never order anything that includes the word surprise. Or medley.’
To hell with it.
‘I’ll have fish and chips too.’ It wouldn’t kill her to skip her five portions once in a while.
The food arrived quickly, without ceremony. Everything was delicious and obviously ‘home-made’, and Elizabeth was surprised how hungry she was. They talked and laughed and sampled each others’ food. They shared horror stories about ghastly meals and pretentious restaurants. The girls bemoaned the looming exam results. Dafydd told a tale about a visit to his dentist who had tried to recruit him to his Morris-dancing team. Jordan, when coaxed, revealed that Stuff the Goldfish was changing its name to Ffish, thus necessitating the purchase of a new T-shirt.
Elizabeth furtively unbuttoned the waistband of her trousers and wondered what Laurence would make of the evening. He would be scrupulously polite, of course, but a host who allowed his guests to sit where they liked? Lemonade shandies? Ketchup in a plastic tomato? Tut, tut.
When they could eat no more, Angel asked, ‘Okay if we go back, Dad? You three stay and have coffee. Talk about us if you like.’
‘Don’t flatter yourselves.’ Dafydd handed her a bunch of keys. ‘Mind the road. Folk are still driving back from the beach.’
Elizabeth watched Jordan as he followed the girls out of the restaurant. ‘Jordan’s smitten.’ She screwed up her face. ‘Oops. I mean Jay.’
‘Things always slip out when you’ve been eating chips. It’s been scientifically proven that they loosen the tongue,’ Dafydd said. ‘Apparently it’s something in the saturated fat.’
Diane placed her elbows on the table and leaned – too close, Elizabeth thought – towards him. ‘Prove it.’
‘Okay.’ He took a discarded chip from Elizabeth’s plate, chewed it theatrically then, shielding his mouth with the back of his hand, whispered loudly ‘They called me “Quack” at college. Can you guess why?’
‘You studied medicine?’ Diane said.
‘No. I did meteorology, surprisingly enough.’
‘Cricket?’ Elizabeth suggested. ‘Were you always out for a duck?’
‘Nope.’ He folded his arms as though he were about to offer the proof to a complex theorem. ‘Dafydd … Daffy … Daffy Duck … Quack, quack.’
Diane laughed. ‘That’s so sweet.’
‘Maybe. But, when you’re nineteen, “sweet” is the last thing you want to be.’ He pushed the plate towards Elizabeth. ‘Your turn.’
She masked her face with the palms of her hands. ‘I can’t.’
‘Yes, you can.’
‘There’s no point in asking Lizzie,’ Diane intervened. ‘She’s led a blameless life.’
Elizabeth was startled to feel the slight pressure of a knee against hers beneath the table.
Dafydd raised his eyebrows. ‘Is that so?’
‘Diane has more than enough secrets for both of us,’ she said, waiting a second or two before moving her leg.
When they got back, the house was in darkness but the front door was on the latch. A note on the kitchen table explained ‘Party at Hills End. Won’t be too late. A, M & J ×××’
Dafydd crumpled the note and tossed it towards the bin. ‘They have to push their luck, don’t they?’
‘What’s Hills End?’ Elizabeth asked.
‘It’s the campsite down by the beach.’
‘Is there a problem?’
‘There was … a bit of bother down there last year. Which is obviously what makes it so attractive.’ He massaged his forehead. ‘I noticed Mimi talking to a couple of lads near the bar. I should have twigged.’
‘They’ve only gone to a party,’ Diane said. ‘The girls aren’t going to do anything silly. And Jordan’s with them.’
Elizabeth turned to Dafydd. ‘What sort of bother?’
‘Loud music. Drinking. Nothing terrible but people on the campsite complained and the police got involved.’
He checked his watch. ‘It’s ten-fifteen. I’ll ring Angel. Tell her that if they’re not back here by eleven-thirty, I’ll be down to fetch them.’
He pulled a sleek mobile from the pocket of his shorts and thumbed in a number. Within a second they heard a snazzy ring tone coming from the living room.
He tried again only to discover that Mimi’s phone was within arm’s reach, on the dresser shelf.
‘Very clever. It usually takes a local anaesthetic to detach them from the bloody things.’
‘I’ll try Jordan,’ Elizabeth said.
After several rings Jordan’s phone, wherever it happened to be, cut to voicemail.
‘Hi. It’s Elizabeth.’ She shrugged and looked at Dafydd, unsure what tone to take. ‘Got your note. Could you be back here in an hour or so? Eleven-thirtyish? Dafydd’s taking the girls to see their grandparents in the morning and he wants to make an early start. See you soon.’
He nodded and raised his thumb. ‘Thanks. I’d probably have blown my top but the diplomatic approach just might work. I’m still going down at half eleven if they’re not back. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll have a quick shower.’
‘That’s a weird thing to do,’ Diane said after he’d gone.
‘He’s on edge. He’s keeping out of the way because he doesn’t want us to pick up on it. I expect he feels bad that Jordan’s involved. Actually I am a bit concerned.’
‘They’re sensible kids,’ Diane insisted. ‘I think you two are getting steamed up over nothing.’
‘Possibly. But, like it or not, Jordan is my responsibility and this is the third time he’s gone AWOL in four days.’ She glanced at her phone. ‘I don’t blame him for going with them, but I do wish he’d get in touch.’
They took mugs of tea to their room. Elizabeth stretched out on her bed, unable to relax, wishing that her phone would ring or the front door would bang.
Diane, evidently bored with the unaccustomed role of parent, was rooting through her bag. ‘I’m sure I packed my pastels. I thought I might go down to the beach tomorrow and work up some colour sketches. Did you notice the banding of sky … against sea … against sand?’ She swept her hand through the air in broad strokes, emphasising each element. ‘And how the dunes look like reclining human forms? Giant sandmen.’
The beach was stunning. They had seen it at its most benevolent today, in the gentlest weather, yet Elizabeth couldn’t help feeling that it might, at times, be a cruel place. Perhaps Diane’s sandmen were simply lying low, ready to leap up and chase invading mortals into the sea.
Ten fifty-five.
‘Have you spoken to Carl since we got here?’
‘He rang before we went to the pub. Checking up on me.’
‘That’s a bit harsh. He really cares for you, you know.’
‘Don’t.’ Diane flopped forward onto her bed. ‘Poor Carl.’
‘That sounds horribly terminal.’
‘I’m not suited to this fidelity lark, Lizzie. I’ve been trying so hard to convince myself that compromise is the way forward. I really have. But does that necessarily mean that I have to forsake passion for friendship? Why couldn’t it mean forsaking friendship for passion? That’d be much more my sort of compromise.’
Diane had rolled on her side and was facing Elizabeth, twiddling the zip on her sleeping bag. ‘We always end up talking about me, don’t we?’ She extended her arm, her hand clenched around an invisible microphone. ‘Tell me, Mrs Giles, now that you’re approaching your half century, how d’you see it going from here on? What do you want out of life?’
As schoolgirls, they’d sprawled on Elizabeth’s bedroom floor, hour after hour surveying the future, populating it with handsome princes and silken palaces. Now here they were, in this plain little house, together again, this time contemplating the ostensibly featureless plain of middle age.
‘What do I want?’
Such an innocent, terrifying question.
‘Oh. I don’t know. Lots of things. A bra that fits properly. The slugs to leave my hostas alone. People to stop telling me “cheer up, it’ll never happen”.’
‘Easy, peasy. Ditch the bra. Buy a bumper tub of slug pellets. And … I dunno … adopt the veil.’ Diane swung her legs around and sat up, looking intently at Elizabeth. ‘Obviously life’s a brutal joke, Lizzie, but there comes a time when we have to think really seriously, and – I know this will horrify you – selfishly about how we’re going to spend what’s left of it.’
Elizabeth’s phone chirruped and she snatched it up.
‘Jordan?’ Diane asked.
‘No. Laurence. He says, “Laid up with tummy bug prawns you ok looking forward to sunday × L.” She frowned. ‘No punctuation. He must be ill. He’s usually such a stickler.’
‘He would be,’ Diane said. ‘But I’m not going to let you off the hook. Let’s try another approach. Laurence says he’s looking forward to Sunday. How about you. Are you looking forward to Sunday?’
‘Yes…’ Elizbaeth closed her eyes and let her head fall back, ‘and no.’
‘For fuck’s sake.’ Diane’s tone was solemn and despairing. ‘You’ve got to stop censoring every word before it comes out of your mouth. You’ve developed this habit of deflecting questions. Those you can’t, you turn into a joke. It’s not good for you.’ She picked up her wash bag. ‘I’m going to see if Dafydd’s finished in the bathroom.’
Elizabeth heard voices followed, before long, by the murmur of water gurgling through pipes. Taking her novel out of her bag, she tried to pick up the threads of the story but within minutes she replaced her bookmark. Hearing an irregular ping, ping, ping, she glanced up to see a small moth throwing itself against the paper lampshade. This room, benign and welcoming only a matter of hours earlier, had become oppressive, the atmosphere laden not only with heat but with unanswered questions.
What had Diane demanded? The uncensored version?
No, oddly enough, she wasn’t much looking forward to Sunday. She wasn’t dreading Laurence’s return from France or anything like that. They enjoyed a lovely life and did lots of lovely things together – theatre, concerts, galleries. As a rule, after a few days with Diane, watching her friend ricocheting around in freeform chaos, she was delighted to get back home where everything ran like clockwork and where she knew precisely what was what. This visit had been threatening to follow that pattern but then Dafydd Jones had invited them to Llangennith. She’d been away without Laurence lots of times – well, quite a few – but she’d never before felt this slackening of ties with all that was familiar.
Although she’d only been here for a few hours, she was beginning to acquire a taste for this new world, where boundaries were loosely drawn, decisions made lightly and things not entirely as they seemed. As it was so agreeable, there was no reason why she couldn’t open herself up to more of this sort of thing when she returned to her ‘normal’ life. Become more impulsive, more laissez-faire. Say ‘yes’ more often as Diane suggested. (After all, it wasn’t as if she were a downtrodden little wife.) Yet she had the suspicion that her new-found appreciation of spontaneity was contingent on a very particular set of circumstances. A man. And a place. And a moment.
Now she supposed she must address her friend’s first and scarier question: ‘What do you want out of life?’
She lay on the bed, her face buried in the pillow, easing the censorship stopper off her bottled-up wishes.
I want Ben to come back from America. Not necessarily to live in London but in some place like York, or Lancaster, or Bristol, where I stand a chance of seeing him more than once a year. Ben – my firstborn who was once the sun in my solar system.
I want Alex – the little boy who used to creep into my bed and ask if we could get married one day – to split up with Vashti (amicably, so that he won’t mope about for months) then fall in love with a bright, straightforward girl who adores him, and has the minimum number of body piercings and a proper job. A girl who can persuade him that folk-music is a wonderful hobby but not a viable career, who wants to become part of the family, who wants to share him with me.
I want Laurence to stop all this cooking foolishness. I wish he would read fiction. Occasionally I want him to forget to put the bins out and to lose the car keys. To laugh at mistakes – both his and mine – not subject them to forensic scrutiny. And, once in a while, it might be interesting if he were less … courteous … in bed.
There. It hadn’t been so very difficult.
She went to the window and drew back the curtain. A faint breeze stirred, carrying distant voices and cooling her sweat-damp neck. The full moon cast its silvery trail across the sea and dappled the land with moon shadows. Down the hill, towards the beach, lights from campsite and caravan park stippled the blue-blackness.
Gazing at the moon, she reviewed her wish list. What was the matter with her? Had she lost all sense of self? Diane certainly wouldn’t stand for such passive desires predicated, as they were, on the whims of others. Panic, seasoned with disappointment, swamped her.
She had watched her parents, still hale and hearty, limit their lives with timidity and apathy. She’d listened to lame reasons why they shouldn’t do … whatever they might have done. Inertia was a chronic malady infecting willpower and purpose. Well, sooner or later, they wouldn’t need to concoct excuses. Their options would be reduced by infirmity and perhaps, like Dafydd’s mother-in-law, they would lose the plot – slight though their plot was.
Her own life had turned into a sort of well-run bank account, credits and debits coming in and going out on fixed dates. She knew that Laurence would ‘surprise’ her with a fiftieth birthday trip to Paris. That she would still be living in Cornwall Gardens when she finished work. That she would do a couple of mornings at the Oxfam bookshop and attend yoga classes for ‘sprightly seniors’. And then she would die.
If she wanted to escape this balance sheet, she would have to become a born-again Elizabeth Giles. If.
Diane, wrapped in a towel which barely covered her torso and revealed the scorpion tattooed high up on her thigh, was in the kitchen talking to Dafydd.
‘Anything from Jordan?’ he asked when he saw her.
‘No.’
He checked his watch. ‘I might as well go now. It’ll be eleven-thirty by the time I get to the car park.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ Diane said. ‘It won’t take me a second to slip my clothes on.’
‘Okay.’
Diane disappeared to get dressed.
‘We should exchange numbers,’ Dafydd said, taking out his phone.
‘Is there any point in my coming too?’
‘We really need someone to stay here.’
After they’d gone, Elizabeth wandered through the house, phone in hand. Dafydd’s room – presumably the one vacated by ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’ – was larger than theirs. The contents of his bags were strewn across the bed and hung over a chair. It was furnished with matching double bed, wardrobe and dressing table, much like the set – Stag? G-Plan? – that her parents owned thirty years ago before fitted units and king-sized divans became the norm. The standby light glowed on the compact music system next to the bed. She checked the stack of disks. Vaughan Williams. Willie Nelson. Michael Nyman. The Proclaimers.
She climbed the stairs, the air growing hotter as she entered what had originally been the bungalow’s roof space, feeling that here, too, she had crossed a time zone into the era of exposed pine and cotton ‘throws’. Through an open door, she could see, the girls’ clothes littered across a twin-bedded room as if a whirlwind had swept through.
Hesitating before opening the second door, she half-wondered – ridiculous – whether she might find someone inside. Jordan, with his customary inconsistency, had stacked DVDs, books and iPod neatly on the bedside cabinet whilst his clothes lay in a snarled heap on the uncarpeted floorboards.
She was in the kitchen, washing up, when her phone rang.
It was Alex. ‘At last. I’ve been trying to get you for days. What’s going on, Mum?’
‘Don’t be silly. Nothing’s “going on”. And you’re pretty elusive yourself if we’re going to start into that. We’re staying with Diane’s friend for a couple of nights. Near Swansea. I assumed Jordan was keeping you up to date.’
‘I don’t really think that’s his responsibility, do you?’
‘Responsibility? You’re on very thin ice there, Alex.’
‘Yes. Well. So everything’s okay?’
‘Fine. And you?’
‘Good. Well … pretty good.’
She needed to end this call quickly, before she was forced to lie about Jordan’s whereabouts.
‘When will you get back to London?’ she asked.
‘Sunday. We’ve got a gig in Sheffield on Saturday night. You?’
‘Saturday, at the latest. Dad’s due back on Sunday.’
‘See you on Sunday, then. And Mum? Thanks.’
As soon as the call was finished, she composed a text to Jordan.
£25 if you get back before 12.30. E
To avoid risking any ‘misunderstandings’ she added That’s 12.30 AM then pressed ‘send’.