In the end Stephen let her go without demur, however, just as if it had really been his own idea. This was not because he liked Anya, though he did, nor because he would not miss Sophie – he would miss her hellishly. It was because he was convinced that he had only to beckon and she would drop everything and fly to his side and, alongside this, was equally convinced that part of his power over her was his ability to manage very well without her. Or at least, he believed that Sophie thought him completely independent of her. So it followed, therefore, that in order to keep up the myth that he did not need her in the least, he was forced to let her leave him for a whole two weeks with what appeared to be a good grace.
So the parting on the station platform and then on the train was touching, tender even, but coloured by misunderstanding on both sides, for Sophie’s conscience, which had slumbered for the best part of nineteen years virtually untouched by human hand, was awake now and making itself felt. Sophie had friends, and she would never have retracted a promise made to one of them, and Anya had made it clear that her own departure was subject to Sophie’s.
However, Stephen did not know this, any more than Sophie realised that it was not just generosity and kindness which had persuaded Stephen to part with her, but a good deal of self-interest, so they were able to remain on the best possible terms, and to long, passionately, for their reunion at the end of two weeks.
Stephen had brought flowers to the station, too, for Devina, and a large bunch of grapes for his darling. He thought, without self-consciousness, that it had been a splendid gesture, and one which both women would appreciate. It would also ensure him a warm welcome should he ever decide to go home with Sophie. And vaguely, at the back of his mind, he knew that such a suggestion had been on the tip of his tongue right up to the moment that the train had begun to slide out of the station.
He adored Sophie – her curvy, creamy, althogether delicious body, perfectly shaped and fashioned for love and her gentle, tender personality. She was still unsure, needing to be led and protected, and her secret belief that she was neither pretty nor particularly desirable led her to regard him, he knew, as her saviour from the fate of a left-out fatty.
He was sure that she had slimmed for him and, now that she had reached his ideal of feminine womanhood, was equally sure that she must stop slimming, because he wanted her just as she was – not a penny more, not a penny less, he told himself humorously, making his way back to the car, which was illegally parked outside a greengrocer’s shop on Eversholt Street. He reached the car and got out his key, then swung into the driver’s street. Damn it, but he was going to miss her! He had neither wanted nor sought the company of other women since that weekend in Tunbridge Wells and he supposed, as he swung out into the traffic and got violently blared at by a passing taxi, that he had better start thinking seriously about marriage. He had had quite enough of casual affairs with casual women – actresses, flighty secretaries, girls of seeming softness hiding feelings which had been coated with hard gloss to give a brittle finish. He wanted cuddly, eager-to-please, vulnerable little Sophie.
Marriage, though? But he was in his mid-thirties and he wanted children, a real home, a wife who lived for him. He began to imagine Sophie’s starry-eyed, stammering disbelief when he proposed to her and cut a corner unwisely, nearly amputating the nose of a traffic warden. It would have made a good after-dinner story, but Stephen drove on, oblivious. He would enjoy being married to Sophie!
Sophie turned at last from the window, when Stephen and the platform alike were no longer to be seen, and made her way back to her seat, hoping that everyone in the carriage realised that the incredibly handsome and dishy man who had been loping alongside the train as it slid out of the station was her man, that it had been her to whom all those kisses and waves had been addressed.
Reaching her seat, she stood by it whilst the elderly woman beside her rose to allow Sophie to squeeze past and then, on impulse, she handed the bunch of grapes to a couple of children, already squabbling in the aisle and bidding fair to be a darned nuisance by the time their destination was reached.
The children’s mother thanked her, Sophie smiled and disclaimed, then sat down feeling smug. To be truthful, she had not been a bit grateful for the grapes which had make her feel like a gorilla at the zoo. Thank God it had not been bananas, but doubtless Stephen had been too aware of their calorific value. She smiled, opening the glossy magazine she had bought on the way here. Darling Stephen, he had got the grapes out of sheer kindness, she was an ungrateful cow – and that reminded her, she must dump those flowers before they reached Chester. She could just imagine Devina’s face if she handed her the bouquet on the platform, telling her that they’d been sent by Stephen. She could see the embarrassment, the incredulity, the downright disbelief.
Having made up her mind that the flowers must be disposed of, it was an easy enough task. She left her seat once more, carrying the vast cone of cellophane as inconspicuously as possible, and went into the toilet. There, she tried to persuade the flowers down the loo but they were too wide, too enmeshed in satin ribbons and tissue, so in the end she poked them through the window one at a time and forced the wrapping through the loo hole with averted eyes and fastidious fingers. She left the small compartment as soon as the bouquet had disappeared, feeling a bit like an acid bath murderer, but no one challenged her and she quickly forgot it in increasing trepidation. What would it be like to see the family again? She still dreaded a reunion with Lavvy, for her sister had not so much as written a line during her absence. But still, worrying would not help.
The journey took over three hours and Sophie was grateful for it. She felt like an astronaut in an airlock, the train being neither one world nor another but an essential part of the two, and it gave her time to adjust to being a daughter again, who had so long been just a single girl.
The worst moment came when the train had stopped and she was on the platform. There they were, Devina, Dad, Poppy and Lavinia, and none of them recognised her; even when she called and went over to them, staggering beneath the weight of her suitcase, there was a moment’s doubt before Devina began to coo and Dad to mumble greetings.
‘Darling! Oh Sophie, my dearest child!’ Sophie let Devina’s kindly lie pass unchallenged and allowed herself to be fervently hugged. ‘It’s been so long … you look wonderful, darling, absolutely wonderful, and so slender … I scarcely knew you, my own dear little girl!’
‘Yes, well, I’m doing my hair differently and …’
‘Good to see you, luv. Come on, into t’car.’
Dad took her case, kissed her cheek, and then led the rush out to the car park but Devina took Sophie’s arm, patting it, giving Lavinia, who was notably silent, a good old glare as she did so.
‘Come along, darling, you and I will sit in the back and natter, Lavvy and Poppy can share the front seat. My, what a lovely time we’ll have now you’re back! A whole fortnight – I can’t wait!’
The three days she actually spent at home were an almost unmitigated disaster. As soon as her mother could do so, she explained that Lavinia’s unfriendliness was really nothing to do with her sister’s return.
‘She failed her first-year examinations and had to resit them, you see,’ Devina explained. ‘And she’s been in trouble since, though I’m not sure exactly what she did wrong; some silliness, I expect. And then poor Poppy didn’t get an end-of-term prize in June and last week we heard she’d failed her Grade IV. Only small disappointments, but it makes it all the nicer to hear how well you’re doing.’
Over a homecoming dinner of home-made tomato soup, roast chicken and lemon surprise pudding, Sophie was regaled with more news, including the titbit which Devina plainly felt was almost unbearable. Janine’s husband had left her.
As Devina and Lavinia chorused out the sad story, the deceptions, the lies, the extreme cruelty meted out to Janine after a mere four years of marriage, Sophie found herself feeling more and more remote, as if these happenings had taken place on some far-off planet, light-years away from her London life.
She refused the lemon surprise pudding and drank coffee, whilst the rest of the Markhams ate with undiminished appetite and bewailed all over again poor Lavinia’s ill-luck in failing her exams – though they were very sure that she must have passed her resits – Poppy’s misfortune in not getting a prize or her Grade IV, and Janine’s unhappy lot. And there sat Sophie, sipping coffee, murmuring what she hoped were appropriate remarks and trying not to notice how very small her home had grown, how shabby, how crowded. Far worse than the flat because there were more people here, and because outside there were the little streets full of people also obsessed with family matters, whereas outside the flat London flourished – wicked, vigorous, exciting.
After their meal they went into the living room to drink more coffee, to eat Devina’s shortbread, which was every bit as delicious as Sophie remembered, and to talk. It was here that it occurred to Sophie that when she had left the family home, it had been like a Jonah quitting. Whilst she was there, all the troubles had swarmed round the head of the fat family Perdita, but once she left the troubles had not simply gone away, they had descended, a veritable swarm of locusts, on the rest of the family.
She might not have thought of it for herself, but she read it plainly enough in Lavinia’s sly, sideways glances and even, to an extent, in her mother’s voice as she related every one of the indignities poor Janine had suffered. No one actually said, you left and did well for yourself and the rest of us paid the price, but it was there, in Lavinia’s attitude, in Devina’s plaintive reiteration of Markham woes.
Lavvy really believes it, Sophie thought, half horrified, half unwillingly amused. She thinks that I should have stayed and kept all the bad luck and the failure for myself! Oh dear, oh dear, the girl’s a worse idiot than Penny could ever be.
If it had stopped at that, all might yet have been well, for on the first full day home Lavinia took herself off out and Devina and Sophie settled down, first to strip the big old apple tree at the end of the garden of all the big, pale green fruit, and then to peel, core and slice it for the freezer.
‘Now tell me about you, Sophie – are you going out with anyone? You did mention a Stephen something. I’m longing to hear your news.’
Devina was sincere, yet even so Sophie hesitated to say too much. Her own good fortune and happiness would only highlight poor Janine’s broken marriage, and she would beso embarrassed if Devina started telling her the facts of life, or giving her marital advice.
However, she could scarcely say nothing. She told her mother that Stephen was taking her out and was relieved when Devina murmured, in time-honoured motherly fashion, that she was glad and that she hoped Sophie would not be taken in, as Janine had been.
‘I don’t think so – he’s my first fellow,’ Sophie said, and heard the defensive, almost sulky note in her voice with impotent horror. What was happening to her? Devina had meant nothing but kindness and she had been on the verge of turning back into the old Sophie, the one who expected unkindness and so reacted to it, frequently before unkindness had been delivered.
‘Oh darling, I didn’t mean … It’s just that poor Janine’s landed with a home she doesn’t want and a mortgage she can’t repay, and yet she won’t come home, let Daddy and I help her. She doesn’t know any young men in Bedford, not many people at all really because Bill used to pretend he was working late so they couldn’t go out, whilst all the time … So she doesn’t know many people apart from the others in the solicitors’ office, and they’re all old and married. I’ve begged her to come home, but …’
‘She’ll be all right,’ Sophie said, meaning it. ‘She’s only twenty-three and very pretty’, she’ll meet someone else and get married again, if she wants to, that is.’
‘Of course she’ll want to,’ Devina said sharply. She was a married woman and could not imagine any female remaining single from choice. ‘But she’s lost that certain something … I mean, she’s a married women, there are men …’
She lost herself in fumbling for an explanation which would not include the word ‘virginity’, and whilst Sophie was trying to find a way of helping her out, proceeded to put her foot firmly in it.
‘Oh dear, you know what I mean, I’ve brought you all up right, I hope, so you know what happens to girls who are too generous with their favours and give away what can’t be replaced idly, just because … Not that Janine did that of course, she was a married woman, but I can’t help wondering whether any man …’
‘Mother, you’re being absolutely ridiculous and anachronistic,’ Sophie said, giggling. ‘Any moment now you’ll be talking about damaged goods, and saying that Janine gave Bill the flower of her womanhood! For God’s sake, Queen Anne’s dead!’
‘Does that mean what I think I means?’ Devina was wearing the most sensible of her dresses this morning, because picking apples can be trying on delicate materials, but even so, clad in loops and whorls of blue-green shot silk, she looked more like a tragedy queen than a worried twentieth-century parent. ‘Sophie, I hope you haven’t let that Stephen take any liberties just because he’s a television producer.’
Sophie had a delicious vision of Stephen’s face, mouth curled into his most satyrlike smile, just in that moment before kissing. She could see his bare shoulder, almost feel his bare chest as he moved over her. But she answered precisely and truthfully.
‘Have no fear, Mother, I wouldn’t let anyone take liberties just because they were a television producer. And now I think we ought to take these apples indoors and start peeling them.’
‘Yes, all right.’
As they carried the buckets of apples indoors, Sophie pondered on her mother’s expression. Even now, she concluded, Devina did not quite believe in Stephen. So perhaps it wouldn’t have have mattered much had she admitted she was his mistress; Devina would only have thought she was boasting.
The second day was complicated by the fact that Lavinia, who had been very quiet since Sophie’s arrival, came back from a day’s shopping in Chester with her arms full of bargains and with Peter Brewer by her side. They breezed into the kitchen where Sophie and Devina were making, part-cooking and then freezing large numbers of apple pies.
Peter, obviously warned in advance of Sophie’s arrival, greeted her backview as she sat at the kitchen table, but when she stood up and turned to say hello, she wondered for a moment just what Lavinia had told him, since his glance of startled admiration was completely spontaneous.
‘Nice to see you again, Sophie – I say, you’re fearfully glamorous, even in your pinny!’ He kissed her cheek. ‘I claim a kiss because I’m the nearest thing to a brother you’ve got in this kitchen – Lavinia and I have an understanding, you know.’ He stood back, head tilted, one eye brow rising. ‘Well, well, well! Who’d have thought it?’
You patronising little pipsqueak, Sophie thought, smiling noncommitally as she turned back to her work. He was so young, so callow – had she really once thought him wonderful?
‘I said she’d lost some weight,’ Lavinia said. She jerked Peter’s arm. ‘Come on, they’re busy in here, come into the front room and I’ll give you a mannequin parade of all the stuff I’ve bought.’
‘I’ll wait here, then we call all enjoy the mannequin parade,’ Peter said. Sophie and Devina had made tea and he picked up the pot and poured a cup for himself, then sat down at the table. ‘Go on, sweetie, off with you, big sister can amuse me with tales of London life.’
Lavinia left with an ill grace and came back in a pink dress with a slit skirt which did almost nothing for her, and her oft repeated rejoicings in its cheapness faded into sulks when Devina pointed out that the skirt was too tight and so badly cut that it would be impossible to alter, and Sophie, forgetting to be tactful in her interest, asked her sister if it had been available in other colours.
Lavinia, her voice rising, asked whether Sophie was criticising her choice and before Devina could do more than begin, nervously, to suggest that Lavvy show off the rest of her bargains, her younger daughter was in full voice, shrieking that if losing a bit of weight meant Sophie thought herself an authority on dress then she wished her sister was still a ton, or whatever it was she had weighed last year.
Sophie felt the colour wash over her face and neck and knew that if she spoke it would be in a yell as forceful as Lavinia’s, so she very sensibly got up and left the room, hearing Lavinia screaming after her in a way which really tempted her to go back and give Lavvy a good slapping.
It blew over, of course. Devina came up and persuaded Sophie to go down again so that Lavinia could apologise, explaining all the while that Lavvy was only taking it out on Sophie because she was dreading the resit results and that she really loved her sister dearly. Sophie, wanting peace, listened and accepted Lavinia’s grudging, sulky apology, and knew instinctively that worse was to come.
Worse came. On the evening of the second day, Peter Brewer made a pass that was so heavy and so uncongenial that Sophie was forced to slap his face hard, just as Lavinia walked into the kitchen. She promptly started screaming and weeping, accusing Peter of two-timing her and Sophie of coming home just to get Peter back. Devina, who knew nothing of Sophie’s original friendship, if such it could be called, with Peter, started, open-mouthed, but Sophie assured her sister crisply that far from wanting Peter she had no intention of getting involved with someone who still needed nappy training. This, not surprisingly, put Peter’s back up too and he assured her, nastily, that he shared her feelings.
‘You think you’re so bloody special, with all that London gloss and those nice clothes,’ he sneered. ‘Well, you aren’t special to me – I wouldn’t touch you with a bargepole when you tried to throw yourself at my head last year, and I feel just the same now.’
‘Children, children,’ Devina said weakly. ‘Don’t quarrel, what’s it all about, anyway?’
Sophie, speechless, was fighting tears, but Lavinia had recovered. She crossed the kitchen and slapped Peter’s face even more ringingly than Sophie had.
‘You’re despicable, Peter! You were making a nuisance of yourself but you haven’t even got the decency to admit it. Just you apologise to Sophie, or I’ll never speak to you again.’
‘Huh! That’s one of those promises you won’t keep,’ Peter sneered. ‘Anyway, there are plenty more fish in the sea.’
‘You bastard! How dare you …’
‘Just watch your language, my girl, or …’
‘Forget it, it’s over,’ Sophie interjected. ‘Please, you two …’
‘Mind your own business,’ Lavinia shrieked and rounded on Peter again whilst Sophie, catching Devina’s eye, tactfully left her mother to finish the apple pies whilst she watched the news on television.
Yet, despite the shouts, slams and shrieks, when Devina and Sophie were alone in the kitchen making late night drinks it transpired that Peter and Lavinia had made it up.
‘They do quarrel,’ Devina confided. ‘Peter’s a dear boy but he does like girls and Lavvy gets terribly jealous. I’m sure they’re in love but it’s such a strain, not being able to get married for at least three years, so they fall out.’
‘Are they sleeping together?’ Sophie asked thoughtlessly and was immediately horrified at herself as her mother, eyes saucering, assured her that they were not even engaged, so there could be no question of ‘anything like that’.
‘They’re apart during term time, except for social events at each other’s colleges and they always sleep in their hall’s guest room,’ Devina explained. ‘And at home, Lavvy has to be in by eleven on weekdays and midnight at weekends. So there’s no opportunity for any hanky-panky.’
Sophie did not feel she could tell her mother that what could be done after midnight could equally well be done at three in the afternoon, if her sister and Peter Brewer felt so inclined, and, anyway, it was none of her business, but she found herself wishing fervently that she was back in London, far from whatever mischief was brewing. She wondered if she could pretend she’d had a phone call from the Centre, but if she did she would be cheating on Anya and making things difficult for Penny, who had asked a cousin to stay in their absence and would also have her mother at the flat for a few days.
On the third day Peter Brewer came round with a box of chocolates for Devina and some roses for Lavinia. He was noticeably cool to Sophie and noticeably loving to Lavinia, and whilst they were all desperately trying to be natural the doorbell rang.
It was Janine, home for a few days. She had lost weight and her arms were like sticks of celery, and she had had her hair frizzed and bleached to the consistency of yellow wire wool. She was accompanied by a young-old man called Truman who had a completely bald pate, a boyish face with a tiny, goldfish mouth, and rimless glasses. Truman, it transpired, worked in television, for the Beeb.
As soon as Truman found that Sophie, too, worked in television, he tried to buttonhole her to talk shop, and it became clear that Janine bitterly resented Truman so much as looking at another woman. Sophie, who had seen at a glance that her sister’s friend was not only a creep but was also at least partially homosexual, tried very hard to be polite but cool towards Truman whilst, at the same time, reassuring Janine that she had acquired a charming friend. This, not surprisingly, proved impossible and Sophie found herself most uncomfortably placed. Peter Brewer scarcely spoke to her, Lavinia was coldly sarcastic whenever she did speak and Truman oozed Sophie into corners at every available opportunity so that he could breathe bad breath into her face and try to pass on various titbits of probably apocryphal gossip.
That night Sophie went into her parents’ bedroom when everyone else had gone to bed. Devina and her father were sitting up still and reading, but there was enough tautness in their attitudes to tell Sophie that they, too, were feeling the strain.
‘Sorry to interrupt,’ Sophie said. ‘But I’m afraid I’ll have to be moving on. You need my bed now that Janine and Truman are here, and though it’s been lovely seeing you all again, it’s been a bit of a strain, too. I’ll come back for Christmas.’
Devina removed her reading glasses and dabbed her eyes.
‘You can’t go, darling, you said a fortnight; everyone knows you’re home for a fortnight, what do you think they’ll say? God knows I’ve tried to make you feel welcome, you mustn’t take against Lavvy just because she’s been a bit difficult, and then there’s …’
All the time she was justifying herself and moaning about the shame of having Sophie leave after a mere three days, Sophie’s father sat there, with his glasses on the end of his nose and his stomach protruding through the front of his ill-buttoned pyjamas, and watched her with eyes that said this is my child and though I don’t understand her, I’m proud of her and I love her, and Sophie’s heart bled because she had never even tried to like him, not really. She had taken his love for Lavinia for granted and had never looked to see if she, fatty, had a corner of his heart. So that now when he found a solution to the problem she was hardly surprised at all.
‘She’s right, Dev,’ he said mildly. ‘Pack your stuff, Sophie luv, and I’ll tek you down to the ’van. No need to say owt besides the girl needed peace and quiet which wasn’t to be had here, with Janine and her fellow home. What do you say?’
The caravan! At that moment, it was like remembering heaven to consider it. The Markhams owned a static caravan on a site in Anglesey to which the entire family repaired at holidaytimes, or at any rate they had done so when the girls had been younger. Sophie would not have claimed to have had a happy childhood, but the happiest times she had known had been spent at the Van. It had meant being alone without being lonely, wandering along a rock-girt shore or up country lanes heavy with the scents of summer. It had meant a closeness with nature, seabirds swooping with in ten feet of one’s windows, rabbits feeding on the short-cropped grass as the sun sank, to say nothing of the pools with their sea-anemones, shrimps, tiny, penny-sized flatfish.
Even company of a sort had been available, for though children might not want to play with ‘the fat one’, there were dogs, owned by other people on the site and eager for rambles, and being with a child, be she never so fat and lonely, lent respectability in farmerly eyes to the most ragged and unkempt of canines.
‘I say, Dad!’
Sophie knew it was the ideal solution from everyone’s point of view. Devina, she could see, was already planning how she would tell people that Sophie, worn out by the exertions of London life, had gone down to the ‘van for a few days’ much needed relaxation. Everyone would accept that, even her sisters, because they loved Anglesey too and knew how happy Sophie had been there, how she had shed tears of sheer misery on departure day.
‘Right, then that’s settled, luv,’ Sophie’s father leaned back against his pillows and opened his book once more. ‘Mother will pack you a box of food and you can get fresh milk from the farm. It won’t be crowded, the site I mean, but there’ll be others down, I dare say. They’ll get you bread and such and give you the odd lift into Valley.’
‘I’d walk,’ Sophie said fervently, and then, remembering the seven miles, amended it to: ‘or ring for a taxi.’ She smiled at Devina, who still looked a trifle undecided. ‘Don’t worry, Mother, I’d rather be at the ’van than anywhere. I’ll go and pack.’
Sophie and her father reached the site at eight in the evening and he had to turn round and leave again at once since he was working next day, so they said brief goodbyes, checked the gas and the level of the jacks, and then Sophie walked with him as far as the well and waved him off before filling her water carrier and returning to the van.
As she pottered about, charging the chemical loo, boiling the kettle, turning on the gas fire just to air the place through, she reflected that her departure had been worth it, if only for the new closeness which now existed between herself and her father.
He had not said much on the journey down, neither of them had. But, forced into the proximity of a three hour car journey – for the car was old and slow – they had exchanged some idle chat and, encouraged by the fact that he did not ask questions, Sophie told him a bit about her life in London, considerably more than she had managed to bring herself to tell Devina.
She appreciated the fact that he had listened, laughed once or twice, and then capped her story with one of his own about a chap at work; never, for one moment, did he give her the impression that he doubted what she told him, thought her actions foolish or, in fact, wished her in any way different. It was curiously relaxing to find herself to totally accepted.
Now, in the last grey and gold glow of evening, she made herself a large cheese and tomato sandwich and sat with it and a cup of coffee in the window, to watch the lights of Holyhead appear across the harbour as dusk deepened. The tide was right in, but for once it was a still, windless evening and the lights lay on the sea perfectly reflected, with even the moon’s path ruled across the watered silk of the bay without so much as a ripple to break its perfection.
Only out to sea was there movement. Lights flashed rhythmically, shipping moved on the face of the waters and out of her view, beyond the ridge of rock which hid the beginnings of the long beach, the Skerries light would be flashing, its beam catching the quiet sea, the short turf of the site and the ruins which stood, stark, along the small cliffs. Romance personified, she had once thought. And I think it still, she realised now, smiling to herself. Sitting here with the window open so that the scent of shore and country drifted in, she knew that this was something altogether special, each incident unrepeatable, unforgettable.
She had not been here much since her sixteenth year. It had been too difficult and, besides, the older girls wanted to bring friends with them and they did not want Sophie. It meant two journeys for her father, too – one ferrying her, Devina and bedding, food and other paraphernalia, another taking the rest of the family. He had been prepared to do it whilst they were all young, but it had become too much of a chore once Sophie’s size made it impossible for the family to travel down together. I made things so difficult, Sophie thought now, ashamed. It never occurred to me that I made things difficult – or perhaps it did and perhaps I thought it served them all right.
She thought, for the first time, of the day-trips out in the car which had come to an end round about the time Poppy had been born. Because Sophie overflowed the back seat. She had never consciously acknowledged the fact, but she acknowledged it now. What a selfish creature the Sophie Markham of two years ago had been, bemoaning her lot, miserably eating herself square and never allowing it to cross her mind that it was not only she who suffered for her size.
She realised that she was thinking of the former Sophie as though they were, in truth, two different people. The Sophie of now acknowledging for the first time that the Sophie of the past had been a coward who had never dared to look facts in the face. If she met that Sophie now, she would dislike her every bit as much as other people had disliked her – perhaps more. Understanding does not necessarily bring compassion.
She finished her sandwich, drained her coffee cup and told herself that she should move, light the gas, start getting ready for bed, yet she stayed just where she was. The view of the dark bay with its garlands of brilliant lights forbade her to steal its beauty, to rob the sky of its blue-black splendour and the moon of its peerless gold by turning on a silly little gas lamp.
She sat there for a long time, with the peace emptying her mind of any but gentle thoughts. The Sophie of long ago was forgotten, her peccadilloes forgiven, as the hushing of the sea and the tiny meadow night noises worked their magic on her.
She moved, in the end, because she was almost asleep, and knew just what she would feel like if she slept, fully-clothed and upright, after the sort of day she had had. She pulled the curtains, shutting out the hypnotic night, and padded barefoot up the length of the van to the bedroom at the end. There was a full-sized double bed in there and she had heard stories of its comforts from her sisters, though she had never taken a turn at sleeping in it. No one had fancied sharing even the fullest-sized bed with the old Sophie.
The bed had cool, pale blue sheets and a duvet with a flower pattern in pinks and purples, but now the moonlight had sucked all the colours to itself, leaving only stark black and white. Sophie dropped her clothes in a heap on the floor and climbed between the sheets. Bliss! She snuggled down, her cheek sinking gratefully into the softness of the pillow, and then remembered she had not drawn the curtains. Damn! She should, just in case someone came over early in the morning, before she was up, and spied on her through the glass. There were very few people on site, judging by the number of cars standing beside vans – she had seen two – but it was possible that others, like herself, were here in search of peace and quiet and had not brought transport. Reluctantly, she climbed out of bed and took the two small steps to the window, glancing out as she did so. There lay the caravans in the moonlight, the Ashleys’, the Sullivans’, the Barrass’ vans, all curtained, carless, empty. And then, even as she went to draw the curtains and scuttle back to bed, a light appeared in the van to the rear and to the right of her. A small, flickering light like a will o’ the wisp, which appeared briefly in the big, end room and then moved jerkily away.
Sophie watched until it went out, then drew her curtains and got back into bed. If she remembered correctly that was the Samuels’ van, so either they were down here themselves or they had lent the ’van to friends. Unless it was a burglar, and that seemed unlikely. What was there to steal in a static caravan, where nearly everything was glued to the floor or taken home when the season was over? She snuggled down, speculating idly. She could not remember much about the Samuels though they had two sons whose names she could not recall. Two thin, dark boys, older than she, always out in a boat, fishing or putting down crab-pots or riding the long, low rollers on curved surf boards, or getting into the car with ropes and pitons and all the rest of the stuff they took on climbing expeditions to Snowdonia. Boys who regarded their holidays as one long outdoor pursuit, a challenge to skill and muscle, who never lolled on the beach or helped Trevor with the haymaking or hung around the horses hoping for a canter. She had seen them, once, at South Stack, where the cliffs plunge three hundred feet sheer into the sea. A clever and resourceful climber can find a foothold in the tower where the cliff birds nest, and come up the echoing chimney from the wicked sea-surge in the caves and troughs below, up and up to the springy heather and the short, sheep-nibbled turf of the clifftop.
She had been proud, then, to know the Samuel boys, as holidaymakers had lined the steps and peered through the rock window from which you got the best view of the chimney, cheering the boys on. She could still remember the seeming casualness of their ascent, the quick, neat way they both climbed. And the way they had ignored their audience. But not their names. Their names had gone, into the mist of the years. They were just the Samuel boys.
One of them might be in the van now, or both. Though did boys come back? Were they like girls, in love with a place, relishing each moment there, or did they cut loose completely once they went? She had no idea. The thought made her remember other boys who had swum and chatted and flirted with the Markham sisters on those long-ago summers. Paul with the red hair, Aiden who liked to kill things, Barry and Chris who had vied for Lavinia’s love all one long, hot summer. And Jeremy, who would not wear shorts though his parents devised every ploy imaginable to get him out of long trousers, and David, who wore glasses and had a dog called Flea because she was so small and who had befriended Sophie one year. That friendship had been very sweet, even though David was a good six inches smaller than she and had a pronounced stammer. But though she had longed for the holiday to come round again, by the following year David had outgrown fat Sophie. He’d lost his stammer for a start, and his parents had brought him a wet-suit with which he could go skin-diving far out, staying in the sea far longer than the others. He was keen on canoeing too, and the canoe which could comfortably take a Sophie-shape had not yet been invented. Not that she had not tried. Made brave by David’s insistence that she at least have a go, she had wedged herself into his canoe and allowed his father to tow her out into deep water, since it was obligatory, it seemed, that she know what it felt like to drown before she was allowed to canoe alone (though David’s father had not put it quite like that).
Once in deep water he had turned the canoe over, instructing Sophie to kick herself free of the craft, and when she had failed to reappear (for the simple reason that even the most panic – stricken of kicks could not free her from the canoe’s loving embrace) he righted the canoe again, whereupon her weight had plucked it from his hands and turned it over once more, so that she had been forced to hang there, humiliatingly upside-down and desperately short of air, until father and son had manhandled the horrid craft right way up once more, holding it long enough for her to get out and be sick into the wretched thing.
Remembering, Sophie smiled. Bliss, to be able to smile over that stupid incident, to know that however silly she had been made to look, David’s father had looked sillier. All that talk about safety and he could not even make the thing do an eskimo roll. And by the time the next holidays came round Sophie’s proportions had made her safe from a repeat performance.
I could canoe now, if I wanted, Sophie reminded herself sleepily. And bathe, of course. Not that anything could have stopped Sophie swimming, only she had not used the long beach for years, but had taken herself off further along the coast, to small, unfrequented bays where she might wallow alone, bobbing in the surf like some exotic and over-inflated rubber doll.
Just before she slept, Sophie twitched the curtain aside an inch and gazed across to the Samuels’ van. The roving light was out, the uneasy prowler sleeping. Sophie followed suit.