13

Living from Saturday to Saturday as I did seemed to make time travel faster, and the summer term was over, the exams sat and passed almost before I’d noticed it had begun. The rounders season had come and gone, and our despised summer uniforms – straw boaters and turquoise dresses which showed dark sweat patches under the arms – could be consigned to the back of the wardrobe. The long holiday approached, bearing down on me like an express train. I anticipated its arrival with something close to dread. By an unhappy accident the Radleys had planned their holiday for the first three weeks, while my parents were taking me away for the second three. We overlapped by a day so there was no possibility of my seeing Frances all summer. Six weeks – it didn’t seem possible. Frances’ composure in the face of this catastrophe was an added provocation. It was prompted no doubt by the prospect of an exciting trip abroad: Lexi was taking her to Menton via Paris, while father and son went somewhere called ‘The Trenches’, an annual pilgrimage, apparently.

‘Poor Rad,’ tittered Frances. ‘Three weeks of Dad’s driving. He’ll be a nervous wreck – if he’s not killed.’ Mr Radley’s reputation as a bad driver was part of family lore. He would always set off without doing up his seat-belt, and then once on a busy main road would think the better of it and fumble about looking for it down the side of the seat and tugging it across himself while the car veered from side to side. And he seemed to have an aversion to windscreen wipers – refusing to deploy them until the screen was a blur. His most dangerous habit, though, was his inability to hold a conversation with his passengers without continually swivelling round to address them face to face.

‘Why do you go on separate holidays?’ I asked, slightly shocked by the arrangements.

‘We always do – we just like different things. Mum doesn’t want to go traipsing round The Trenches year after year.’

‘What’s The Trenches?’

‘Something to do with some war. Lots of graves and stuff – really gloomy. Dad loves all that. So does Rad, actually. It’s the only thing they agree on.’ At the end of the three weeks, I gathered, the family, plus any extras collected on the way, would meet up for a night in a hotel in northern France to exchange stories before returning home together.

My chances of an exciting holiday did not look so rosy. Mother and father tended to stick to the British Isles – usually its wettest and most windblown reaches – favouring walking holidays to places of literary or historical significance. Blasted moorland or chilly cathedrals were their holy places. This year there was an added significance to the choice of destination. For Christmas mother had bought herself a stone polisher she had seen advertised in a craft catalogue. She had sent off for it, at some expense and in great excitement, with plans to decorate the house with jars of sparkling stones in which one would be able to trail one’s hands in times of anxiety. The venture was not an immediate success: the machine, a small drum containing iron filings, had to be left running for weeks on end; mother stowed it in the spare room under a table to muffle the noise, but it could be heard grinding away day and night, persistent as toothache. It was mother’s ignorance of geology, however, that proved her undoing. Most of the stones she had collected were soft rocks like limestone, and when at the appointed time she opened the drum, instead of uncovering a sparkling horde of treasure, she was faced with a mass of grey slurry. Even those few surviving pebbles, glossy and jewel-bright when wet, looked much as before when dry, only smaller. This summer, then, we were off to the Isle of Skye in search of igneous rock.

The night before Frances’ departure I went over to say goodbye. A quarrel was in progress over which party was to take which car. Finally it was decided that the women would have the Spitfire while the men took the Estate.

‘You’ll hardly have the weather for an open-topped car where you’re going,’ Lexi pointed out.

‘We’ll need a four-seater anyway,’ said Mr Radley, addressing his son in a stage whisper, ‘for picking up girls.’ Rad laughed. All four were in high spirits. Lexi’s cases were already in the hall, the larger of the two strapped to the wheels of Auntie Mim’s shopping trolley. Upstairs Frances was sorting clothes into four piles, categorised Hot Weather, Cold Weather, Smart and Scruffy, of which the fourth was by far the largest. Her journal and a blurry photo of Growth in the back garden were the only items so far packed. The house seemed quiet without Growth: he had been billeted with Daphne and Bill, his original owners, for the duration. I had almost offered to have him myself, but mother abominated all animals, and Growth, with his unprepossessing appearance and continual scratching, was unlikely to commend himself to any but the most ardent dog-lover. Auntie Mim was staying with Clarissa in case she left a pan of sprouts on and burnt the house down.

‘Send me a postcard, won’t you?’ I said, watching Frances squash the last of her clothes into a large nylon hold-all.

‘Oh no, I’ll write proper letters,’ said Frances. ‘I’ve written one already actually, so you should get it tomorrow. And if we stay anywhere with an address for long enough I’ll send you that and you can write to me.’ I allowed this thought to cheer me a little.

The next day, as promised, the first letter arrived.

Dear Abigail

By the time you get this we’ll be At Sea! We’re getting the early boat to Calais and stopping at a place called Amiens for lunch. I spent all this morning hoovering dog hairs out of the Spitfire then Rad said they wanted to take it, so I had to do the Renault as well just in case. I wish you and Growth were coming too, but there’s quarantine and all that, and your holiday getting in the way. Dad keeps taking Rad’s books out of his suitcase when he’s not looking; he says they’ve got to talk to each other in the evenings! Rad asked in a sarcastic voice if Dad was taking his paints, and Dad got all uppity and said yes he might. Can you imagine him setting up his easel in the middle of some square? Rad will die of embarrassment. Well, I’d better go and post this now. My next letter will come from Paris.

love

Frances

The next few days passed with agonising slowness. I knew from careful interrogation of my parents that mail from abroad was notoriously unreliable, took weeks to arrive and sometimes didn’t arrive at all. I cast around for new ways of occupying myself. I practised my cello with more dedication than usual, finished all my holiday homework within a day, and rearranged the few pieces of furniture in my room into every possible permutation. The weather during all this was hot and dry: the sunshine would clearly have exhausted itself before our trip to Skye. I helped mother in the garden, weeding and spraying and dead-heading. I went for long cycle rides around the streets. On about the fourth day I cycled further than usual, drawn irresistibly towards Balmoral Road. I don’t know what I was expecting to find, but as I drew level with the house I could see the Renault still parked in the driveway and the top floor windows wide open. Too shy to ring the doorbell I pedalled home at a furious pace, careering down hills and weaving up on to the pavement to avoid traffic lights. As soon as I got home I tried Frances’ phone number. After a dozen rings Rad answered.

‘Hello, is Frances there?’ I asked timidly.

‘Is that Blush?’ he said. ‘They’re in France, remember.’

‘Yes, yes, but I was just passing the house and I saw the car and thought maybe she was still there. Why haven’t you gone yet? Weren’t you all supposed to be leaving together?’

‘We were, but Dad couldn’t get organised in time so Mum and Frances went on ahead, and then Dad realised he didn’t have any money in his account, so he had to go round to Bill’s and borrow some. And then he found his passport had expired. We’re supposed to be trying again tomorrow.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘He does something like this every year. I’m used to it.’

This was the longest conversation I had ever had with Rad and I was grateful for the protection of the telephone and the several miles’ distance between us which prevented him seeing my burning cheeks. Sometimes I had been known to blush so violently that I gave myself a nosebleed. I was convinced that there was something pathological about my condition, but mother had dismissed my demands to see the doctor as ridiculous. In her view it would have been unhealthy for a twelve-year-old girl not to blush. It was one of the things she found suspicious about Frances, this refusal to be cowed.

‘Just think of something cool when you feel a blush coming on,’ was her suggestion. So for a while I would mutter ‘frozen peas, frozen peas’ to myself whenever embarrassment threatened.

The Paris letter finally arrived the day before we were due to depart for Skye. I had spent the previous weeks moping around the house, bored and fidgety, rising late and driving my mother to distraction by shutting myself indoors watching television for hours at a time instead of enjoying the sunshine.

‘You’ll get rickets,’ she warned.

I had made one other trip to Balmoral Road on my bike but the house was locked and dark. I even peered through the letter box, half expecting to hear the sound of yapping and paws skittering on the tiles, but there was nothing.

Then it came at last, fluttering on to the mat in its airmail envelope, as light as an autumn leaf. I withdrew upstairs to my top bunk, closing the bedroom door in case the letter contained secrets that would otherwise escape. It had been posted two weeks ago: to Frances the events described would already be history.

Dear Blush

I’m writing this in the hotel room. It’s boiling hot and Mum is lying on the bed with nothing on. We’re having a great time – we’ve been to the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre and Notre-Dame where I lit a candle for you and one for Growth. It cost two francs. You have to put your money in this tin box but no one’s there checking. Mum keeps expecting me to talk French. I’ve tried telling her we only know stuff like ‘Il fait beau aujourd’hui’ and ‘Le chien est sous la table’ which is no good in shops or anywhere. There are loads of beggars in the underground with little bits of cardboard saying ‘J’ai faim’ – even I understood that! I gave one a franc and he said ‘Merci’ and I panicked and said ‘Merci’ back. I’ll never get used to this food – last night I ordered fish and that’s all I got – just a whole fish on a plate in a bit of sauce, staring at me. No chips or anything. I think I’ll stick to the steak from now on. Guess what? This morning we were in this café and guess who walked in? Lawrence. He’s in Paris for a few days at some architects’ conference so he’s taking us out to dinner.

1 a.m. We’ve just come back from dinner with Lawrence. My feet are killing me. We went to this really flash place – Mum made me wear a dress and lent me a pair of her high heels. She was all dressed up of course. Lawrence speaks really good French – he didn’t ask us what we wanted or anything, he just went ahead and ordered a whole load of stuff – about six courses. And he bought Mum and me a red rose each from this chap with a bucket who was wandering around the tables. I’ve just tried to press mine between the pages of my journal but it’s gone a bit squashy. After dinner he took us to this club for more drink – I’d already had about two pints of Coke! – and you won’t believe it but there were these women on the stage, sort of formation dancing, wearing loads of feathers and sequins and stuff, but nothing on their boobs or bums! Honest! And no one except me even seemed to have noticed. Better not tell Dad about this place or he’ll be down here with his easel. I asked Mum afterwards if she’d seen them and she said yes, of course, and I said why did they have those bits showing, and she said, wait for it, ‘because a woman’s body is the most beautiful thing in creation’ and then I got a lecture about not being ashamed of my body because in the eyes of Nature even the ugliest woman is beautiful, not that I was at all ugly, etc etc. I think she was a bit sloshed actually. She’s fast asleep now, anyway. Tomorrow we’re off down south. Mum wants to find a nudist beach to get an all-over tan. Perhaps I’ll bury myself in sand, or stones, or whatever they have down there.

lots of love

Frances

There were no all-over tans to be had in Skye. In fact we had to add layers of clothing as fast as Lexi had been shedding them. The holiday cottage we were renting was small and bare and bleakly furnished with cheap, mismatching chairs and tables that no normally inhabited house would have contained. It smelled empty – of stale air and unfilled cupboards and a faint suggestion of gas. Draughts blew in around the rattling windows making the curtains flutter; the night storage heaters raged for a couple of hours in the middle of the night but were cold as marble by morning. Mother had pulled a face at the decor but pronounced the place perfectly adequate ‘as a base’ – words which, threatening day-long hikes over the hills, made my heart sink. Father, having marked out his territory on the coffee table with piles of holiday reading, guide books, local history and a couple of Walter Scotts, seemed unperturbed. We had at least come prepared for the cold, with extra jumpers, thick socks and hot water-bottles.

On the living-room wall was a crude oil-painting, executed in colours straight from the tube, of the view from the window – the garden wall, the gate, a frothy stream, some tussocky grass, a whitewashed cottage in the middle distance and, in the background, the Cuillins against a violent sunset. The day of our arrival was our only chance to compare the picture with the original as the following morning sheeting rain and mist swept in, turning the world beyond the windows a uniform grey. After three days of confinement to the house I had read all the books I had brought from home and moved on to the odd assortment of ancient hardbacks and broken-spined paperbacks on the dresser: Lord of the Flies, which I remembered seeing on Rad’s desk, and which mother predicted, wrongly, that I wouldn’t enjoy; Tropic of Cancer, into which I made furtive and troubling forays when unobserved, and The Call of the Wild, which was to do with dogs, and less interesting.

By the fourth day it was decided that we would not let the weather spoil our plans any longer, and would go out in hail or flood. Shouldering the rucksack containing maps, sandwiches and a flask of hot soup, father led us, gloved and booted, plastic macks crackling as we walked, on a day’s march to Elgol and back. In the evening as a reward for blistered feet and raw noses, he drove for miles around the island in search of a fish and chip shop, returning an hour later with three lukewarm, greasy packages which we fell on like a pack of wolves. By tinkering with the night storage heaters father had managed to get the dial stuck at Constant so that they burnt ferociously day and night. No amount of adjustment would bring them to order. The wallpaper behind them, dry perhaps for the first time, started to lift away from the plaster; wet clothes draped over them dried to a crisp in half an hour; we awoke each morning with sore throats and cracked lips; mother had a migraine, and then another.

At the end of the second week came a reprieve: after a walk to the nearest phone box to call Granny, mother returned with the news that she had fallen off a step-ladder while trying to dust the china on her topmost shelves, and hurt her back. She hadn’t broken anything, except the card table on which she had landed, but was bedbound and sore. We would have to go home; mother would have to look after her. Father concealed his disappointment: the end of the holiday meant the approach of another school term. I concealed my joy, as we loaded the car, locked up the cottage, and rode the heaving ferry to the Kyle of Lochalsh, the gateway to home.